The Dictionary of Contemporary Politics of South America

Phil Gunson, Andrew Thompson, Greg Chamberlain

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781138195110
• eBook ISBN: 9781317271345
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Global Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

First published in 1989, The Dictionary of Contemporary Politics of South America provides a guide to the most important organizations, figures, events and themes in the contemporary politics of South America. The countries covered are Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru, Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Brazil, Suriname and Guyana, as well as the French overseas department of French Guiana. Central American and Caribbean affairs are also touched on when they have implications for South American politics.

Taking a broad definition of the term 'contemporary', the authors isolate the strands of recent history which have a continual influence on political thinking. Although first published in 1989, this book will be a valuable resource for journalists, students, diplomats, business people, and anyone else who is interested in the politics of this richly diverse continent.

A

Abadía Rey, Adelaida see Workers’ Self-Defence Movement.

Abadía Rey, Héctor Fabio see Workers’ Self-Defence Movement.

abertura

The Portuguese word for ‘opening’, abertura was used by the Brazilian President Gen. João Figueiredo after he came to power in 1979 to signify the opening out or widening of the closed political system under military rule. Although abertura ultimately led to the ending of military rule – Figueiredo was the fifth and last military president after the 1964 coup – it was an uneven and at times contradictory process. The government concentrated its efforts on maintaining control of and manipulating the liberalisation. The 1979 political amnesty, for example, was designed not only to seek conciliation, but also to protect the military from eventual human rights charges and sow dissension in the ranks of the opposition by permitting the return of exiles likely to set up competing parties. Likewise, the political reforms of the same year ended the two-party system, in a move designed to fragment anti-government forces. When it looked as if the opposition – even when split among various groupings – might win, Gen. Figueiredo cancelled municipal elections in November 1980. The main PMDB opposition made important gains in November 1982 in the state and congressional elections, and under the pressure of an economic and foreign debt crisis, strikes, and growing popular mobilisations, Gen. Figueiredo accepted the need for a return to civilian rule. But even then he refused to cede the demands of the diretas já campaign, invoking special powers in 1984 to frustrate the attempt to modify the constitution to allow direct elections for his successor.

See also amnesty (Brazil 1979); Brazilian Democratic Movement Party; diretas já; Figueiredo.

ACHA (Chilean Anti-communist Alliance) see death squad.

Action for National Liberation (Acão Libertadora Nacional/ALN)

A Brazilian guerrilla organisation set up by Carlos Marighela in the late 1960s. Marighela and other dissident members of the Communist Party (PCB) attended a conference of the Latin American Solidarity Organisation (OLAS) in Cuba in 1967, without party authorisation. They returned convinced of the need to launch an armed struggle against the military regime. The group broke with the PCB and issued a manifesto stating that ‘our main activity is not building a political party, but unleashing revolutionary activity … guerrilla activity is itself the command of the revolution … the revolutionary’s duty is to make revolution’. The ALN began military activities from early 1968. It provided military support in September 1969 for the kidnapping of US ambassador Burke Elbrick (carried out by MR–8) and kidnapped the Swiss ambassador in December 1970. Marighela was killed by the police in November 1969 and his successor, Joaquim Cámara Ferreira, was killed in October 1970. The ALN was one of the larger guerrilla groups active in 1968–71, but like the others it was unable to survive the counter-insurgency onslaught by the security forces.

See also Brazilian Communist Party; Guerrilla movements (Brazil); Marighela; MR–8.

AD: see Democratic Action.

Adams, John Quincy: see Monroe doctrine.

adhesionistas: see Brazilian Democratic Movement.

Advanced Democracy (Democracia Avanzada): see Communist Party of Uruguay.

AFL-CIO: see American Institute for Free Labor Development.

Agency for International Development (AID): see American Institute for Free Labor Development.

Agrarian Labour Party: see Frei Montalva, Eduardo.

Aguirre Cerda, Pedro: see Popular Front.

ALADI: see Latin American Integration Association.

Albuja, Gen. Manuel: see Vargas Pazzos rebellion.

Albuquerque Lima, Gen. Alfonso: see Authoritarian Nationalists.

Alende, Oscar: see Intransigent Party (PI); Radical Party (Argentina).

Alessandri Palma, Arturo: see Alessandri Rodríguez; Ibáñez del Campo.

Alessandri Rodríguez, Jorge

1896–1986. President of Chile 1958–64. Born in Santiago, son of expresident Arturo Alessandri Palma (‘the Lion of Tarapacá’) (1920–4 and 1932–8). Attended the School of Engineering, from which he graduated in 1919, obtaining a faculty position. Congressional deputy 1926–30. President of a paper and cardboard manufacturing company in Puente Alto. Minister of finance (1947) under President Gabriel González Videla. Senator 1956–8. Elected president 1958, with the backing of the Conservative Party (PC) and the Liberal Party (PL), together with the ‘Doctrinaire’ faction of the Radical Party (PR) and other minority parties of the centre in a coalition called the Alliance of Popular Parties and Forces (dissolved after the election). Alessandri defeated the left’s Salvador Allende by only 33,000 votes. In government he attempted, with partial success, to combat inflation by stabilising wages and prices, but severe inflation followed the 1960 earthquake; the peso was devalued and a new currency, the escudo, introduced. A mild agrarian reform law was passed in 1962. He was chosen as presidential candidate of the National Party (PN) in 1970, this time losing by a narrow margin to Salvador Allende, due to the conservative vote being split between the PN and the Christian Democrats, whom the former saw as too radical. He withdrew from politics after the election and was not an enthusiastic supporter of the Pinochet regime, installed after the 1973 coup against Allende, although in 1976 he agreed to participate in Gen. Pinochet’s Council of State.

See also National Party (Chile).

Alfaro, Gen. Eloy: see Alfaro Lives!

Alfaro Lives! (Alfaro Vive!)

(aka Alfaro Vive, Carajo!, sometimes loosely translated as ‘Alfaro Lives, Dammit!’, and as the Eloy Alfaro Popular Armed Forces). An Ecuadorean guerrilla organisation, founded in the 1970s but not militarily active until 1984. Named after the author of Ecuador’s nineteenth-century Liberal reform, Gen. Eloy Alfaro (president 1895–1901 and 1905–12). Alfaro was a profoundly anti-clerical mestizo leader who dominated Ecuadorean politics until his death in 1912. The Liberals instituted freedom of religion, curbs on Church power, and economic reforms. Alfaro was imprisoned during a brief Conservative resurgence in 1911 and murdered by a mob in 1912. Alfaro Vive is thought to have under 1,000 members. It has strong links with Colombian and Peruvian guerrillas (M–19 and Túpac Amaru), with whom it formed the America Battalion in 1985/86. Four M–19 members were reported to have been among those who died in a gunbattle in Guayaquil in 1985 when troops sought to rescue an Ecuadorean banker kidnapped by Alfaro Vive.

The organisation claims to be left wing (but non-Marxist) nationalist, and to identify with the parties of the Democratic Left (ID) in Congress. Its aims include the nationalisation of foreign oil investments, banks and foreign trade. In May 1986 it said it would end armed actions if the government resolved the country’s economic problems and strengthened democracy. The Febres government claimed that members had received training in Nicaragua and Libya. The AV leadership says no links exist with the Montoneras Patria Libre, the other Ecuadorean guerrilla group, whom it accuses of ‘adventurism’. Top leader Arturo Jarrín (‘Ricardo’) was killed in a gunbattle in October 1986, bringing deaths of key members to three in 10 months.

See also America Battalion; Free Nation Montoneras.

Alfonsín, Dr Raúl

b. 1926. An Argentine Radical Party (UCR) politician and lawyer who was elected president in 1983 after the collapse of the Process of National Reorganisation (PRN) military regime. Born in Chascomús, province of Buenos Aires, he graduated from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata as a lawyer. He joined the UCR in 1944. Elected a Chascomús municipal councillor in 1950, he went on to sit on the Buenos Aires province legislature in 1952. Alfonsín was imprisoned briefly by the Peronist government in 1953. He was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1963, and retained this position until the military coup in 1966. In the same year Alfonsín founded the Renovation and Change Movement (Movimiento de Renovación y Cambio), which emerged as a left of centre tendency within the UCR, initially in a minority. He stood unsuccessfully for the UCR presidential nomination in 1973. In that year’s elections he was again chosen to sit in the Chamber of Deputies and remained a member until the military coup in 1976.

During the ensuing Process of National Reorganisation regime, Alfonsín spoke out against human rights violations. He became president of the Permanent Assembly of Human Rights. He was also one of the few politicians publicly critical of the decision by the administration of Gen. Leopoldo Galtieri to occupy the Falklands/Malvinas islands by force in April 1982. In December 1982 he forged an internal UCR alliance between his Renovation and Change Movement and the ‘Córdoba line’ branch of the party; this allowed him to obtain both the nomination and the presidency of the party. An intensely fought political campaign, together with his image as a man committed to respecting civil rights, are credited for his victory over the Peronist candidate, Dr Italo Lúder, in the elections held on 30 October 1983. During and after the campaign Alfonsín argued that his objective was to end the half-century-old cycle of militarism and political instability in the country, creating a modern democracy. After taking office on 10 December 1983, he announced the state prosecution of nine former members of military juntas (including three former presidents) on charges ranging from murder through to the disappearance of political opponents. Sentences were delivered in December 1985, and included life imprisonment for two of the accused. Dr Alfonsín also replaced many senior officers. But after a military uprising in April 1987 he was forced to make concessions to army demands for an end to the human rights trials, by introducing legislation on ‘due obedience’.

In June 1985, after inflation had grown to an annual rate of 1,200%, Alfonsín introduced the Austral austerity programme, and created a new currency of the same name. The programme succeeded in bringing inflation down below 100% in 1986, but thereafter it began increasing again. In 1986, he proposed a plan to move the federal capital from Buenos Aires to the town of Viedma in Patagonia, as part of a package of constitutional reforms to overcome the over-centralisation of the economic and political system. But after the UCR lost its congressional majority in the September 1987 elections, Alfonsín was forced to drop most of these reforms.

See also Austral: due obedience; Radical Party (Argentina).

Allamand, Andrés: see Party of National Renovation.

Allende Gossens, Dr Salvador

1908–73. President of Chile 1970–3. Born in Valparaíso, the son of a lawyer. Medical degree from the University of Chile School of Medicine (1926–32). His involvement in politics as a student led to his expulsion from the university, but after the overthrow of President Carlos Ibañez (aided by street demonstrations in which Allende took part) he completed his degree. He was a house doctor at a Valparaíso hospital during the short-lived Socialist Republic of Marmaduke Grove (1932), to whom he was related by marriage. Arrested and tried after its fall, but acquitted after five trials, Allende was to be imprisoned twice and exiled once in his life for political activities. A founder member of the Chilean Socialist Party (PS) in 1933, he was elected deputy for Quillotín and Valparaíso in 1937. In 1938 he was the Valparaíso organiser of the presidential campaign of Popular Front candidate Pedro Aguirre Cerda, and the following year he became minister of health in Aguirre’s government. During his tenure he introduced health insurance and accident compensation for workers and special benefits for working mothers and their children.

Elected senator for different areas of the country four times (1945–70), he was also vice-president of the senate for five years and its president for two (1968–9). From 1943 he was secretary general of the PS. On three successive occasions he was an unsuccessful candidate for the presidency of Chile: in 1952 (6% of the vote), 1958 (29%) and 1964 (39%). In 1955 he became president of the National Front of the People leftwing coalition, but he was elected president of the republic in 1970 as the candidate of the broad left Popular Unity (UP) coalition. He had to be confirmed in office by Congress due to his lack of an overall majority. Before taking office, Allende declared his main objectives to be: the recuperation (nationalisation) of basic resources; radical agrarian reform; nationalisation of banks and credit; and import and export control.

As president he introduced far-reaching economic and social reforms, including the nationalisation of the banks and of strategic resources such as the copper mines, as well as extensive ag...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of maps
• Introduction
• A
• B
• C
• D
• E
• F
• G
• H
• I
• J
• K
• L
• M
• N
• O
• P
• Q
• R
• S
• T
• U
• V
• W
• Y
• Z
• List of entries by country