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Homo Politicus. Manuel Pardo, La Poltica Peruana y Sus Dilemas, 1871-1878

CARMEN McEVOY: Lima: Instituto Riva Aguero, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, y Oficina Nacional de Procesos Electorales, 2007.

ManuelPardo w as one of the most important statesmen of the nineteenth century inLatin America. His significance f or the history of the

continent iscomparable to that of Benito Juarez in Mexico,Domingo Sarmiento in Argentinaand, perhaps, Jose Manuel Balmaceda in Chile.

He w as president of Peru f rom 1872 to1876, elected after a campaign that somewhat changed Peruvian politics. Pardofounded the

Civilista party, w hich played a tremendous role in the politicalsystem and culture of the country at least until 1919. In 1930-1932,

theparty's efforts to elect another Civilista president failed miserably duringthe very dangerous political and economic crisis of the

1930s, w hich w as calleda revolutionary crisis by Peruvian sociologist Carmen Rosa Balbi. Pardo wasassassinated in November 1878,

w hile serv ing as a senator of the Republic forJunin, a key and w ealthy department(province or state) in the Peruvian central highlands.

If Pardo deserves a biographer, he w ould be pleased w ith thepolitical cultural historian Carmen McEvoy, w ho w rote her M.A. and Ph.D.

dissertationson him, as w ell as other books that include him as a key f igure in thepolitical history and culture of the nation (see Un

Proyecto Nacional en el siglo XIX. Manuel Pardo y suVisin del Per[Lima, 1994]; La Utopa Republicana. Ideales y Realidades en la

Formacin de la Cultura PolticaPeruana, 1871-1919 [Lima,1997]; Forjando la Nacin. Ensayos de Historia Republicana[Lima,1999]).McEvoy has also edited books on Peruvian and Latin American politics, politicalsystems, and political culture. Manuel Pardo is

definitively her hero; she seeshim in many respects as f law less, visionary, intrepid, sharp, and consequent.In this sense, Homo

Politicus readsfor the most part as a hagiography, rather than a critical book of historicalanalysis.

Methodologically, too, HomoPoliticus does not follow the traditional conventions of w riting history.There are no footnotes or endnotes,

and paragraphs and ideas are not supportedw ith references. The book is rather a personal essay on Pardo, Peruvian politicsand its

dilemmas, complemented w ith a bibliographical essay at the end, w hichdiscusses the w ork of other scholars. There are six chapters

related to thebook's main topics: 1) A somewhat disappointing overview of the economichistory of the country , particularly in relation to

the guano boom of the1845-1876 bonanza w hich, according to the author, created a Peruvian encrucijada (cross-road); 2)

Apresentation of Pardo's development as a modern politician, compared to theprevious Peruvian politicians, military leaders, orcaudillos;

3) A discussion of the election of 1871-1872 and itsimplications for the political system and culture of the country and, moreimportantly,

an analysis of the nature and characteristics of this electioncompared to previous ones. The Sociedad Independencia Electoral (SIE),theearly organization of w hat w ould become the Civilista party, constituted,according to McEvoy, a breakthrough for developing a clear

and nationalRepublican and civilian consciousness of an enlightened bourgeoisie w hoseabsolute leader w as Pardo himself ; 4) A

descr iption of the dramatic eventsleading to the inauguration of Manuel Pardo's government, in w hich the Republicw as violentada

(subjected toviolence) w ith the attempted coup of the Gutierrez brothers and theinsurrection of the civilian and Limenian multitudes,

w hich ended w hen thebodies of colonels Silvestre and Marceliano Gutierrez and others w ere burned infront of the National Palace in

Lima's central square; 5) A discussion ofPardo's government and his efforts to reform the state, presented as laRepblica Prctica

(thePractical Republic); 6) Finally, an examination of the government of GeneralMariano Ignacio Prado, w ho succeeded Pardo after the

1876 election; theassassination of Pardo w hile he w as serving as a senator from Junin; and thereturn, according to McEvoy, to a new

Leviathan. She uses the Leviathanmetaphor for most of the book to refer to the early Republic w hen Peru w as mostlyadministered by

military caudillos.

There are surpr ises in this new book, for example, thedisconnect betw een economics and politics that appears in her analysis

ofnineteenth-century Peruvian political society. This is the f irst time McEvoyaddresses economic questions, as compared w ith her

previous w ork on Pardo'srepublican ideario (set of ideas).Her discussion of economic developments before and during Pardo's life

does nottake into account other economic sectors beyond guano, and does not deal w iththe full implications of this rather brief and old-

fashioned economic analysis(particularly in chapter one). Her main conclusion repeats over and over againthe 1940s historical concept

ofprosperidadfalaz(fictitious prosperity), created by venerable Peruvian historianJorge Basadre, and Leviathan guanero,w hich implied

that the guano exports created a more pow erful Peruvian state,although still controlled mostly by the military, oruna cultura de guerra (a

w ar culture). But, was this really aLeviathan? A caref ul reading of Thomas Hobbes's Leviathan w ould place the seventeenth-century

vice-regal Peruvianstate, or perhaps the Bourbon late eighteenth-century one, closer to a truepow erful absolutist state rather than the

fragile caudillo and post-caudillogovernments.

Homo Politicusnever engages in the 1970s historiographical debates (Jonathan Levin, HeraclioBonilla, Shane Hunt, etc.) about w hether

or not the guano export boomcontributed to national development. Did the revenues generated by guanoaccumulate mostly in the

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financial sector, or in manufacturing, transportation,mining, or agriculture for export and domestic consumption? Did guano

revenuesc reate an infrastructure apart f rom railroads and new and better educationaland health facilities? Did it create obra(material

progress through public w orks), as it w as called in thenineteenth century? What w ere the multiple social and economic effects of

thisnew formation of capital boom in the country? She seems to argue, followingAlfonso Quiroz's w ork, that a good part of this new

w ealth w as lost throughcorruption. But corruption also has economic eff ects, w hether throughconsumption or investments. Lavish

spending styles w ere the basis for a fashionculture of boutiques, magazines, and other industries that, w e know for sure,based on

w ork done on photography and photographic studios en la Limade Ricardo Palma, bloomed in the 1860s and 1870s. Andcorrupt

business entrepreneurs w ere also economic investors. McEvoy emphasizesthat all the guaneros as a block wereclosely linked to the

state through f inancial connections, a key elementdefining the guano Leviathan political model set firs t by president RamonCastilla in the

1840s, and still certainly in place by 1871-1872. All theseeconomic changes that the reader w ould like to know about took place inthoseyears.

Then, in this historical essay, w hich reads mostly as anarrative, people such as Jose Canevaro, Daniel Ruzo, Toribio Sanz, and

AlvarezCalderon, appear to be part of a "transnational plutocracy," based rather inParis than in Lima (127-30), w hereas Pardo's group

and the members of the SIEw ere au contraire the leadingmodernizing bourgeoisie, austere and ethical (moralizadora, moralista),who

gave place to a new , w atershed political model republicano-burgus (bourgeois-republican). How ever, Pardo himselfbenefitted from

the guano business. He and his brother- in-law Jose Antonio deLavalle, as McEvoy show s (105-106), also invested in guano exports to

the United States,some 20,000 pesos, a fortune for the average Peruvian w orker at the time w hoearned, according to Shane Hunt's

research based on the 1876 census, 87 soles (pesos) per year. And don Manuel Pardo later on married thedaughter of one of these

guano oligarchs based in Paris, Felipe Barreda yAguilar. Likew ise Manuel Pardo and Jose Antonio de Lavalle had been ow ners ofthe

hacienda villa, a large landedestate located close to Lima,w hich for most of its history w as an agricultural slave plantation and

thesource of their initial capital investment before their guano business. Thus,did not these inter-bourgeois conflicts suggest rather that

Pardo, the SIE, andlater the Civilista party, w ere the modernizing bourgeoisie and the others,transnational oligarchic plutocrats? Finally,

the political career of Pardostarted as Minister of Finances (Secretariode Hacienda) of President-dictator, colonel Mariano Ignacio

Prado, the sameindividual w ho w as his rival and later succeeded him in the National Palacein 1876. Is it possible then that a large

landowner, a slave-plantation owner,guano exporter, and f amily-linked w ith the other class of guaneros, was really the pristine symbol

of bourgeois republicanismand civic moral virtues, w hereas other political leaders, w hether national,regional, or local, w ere not?

To end, according to the 1876 census, Peru w as anation of 2.7 million inhabitants: two-thirds indigenous peasants, eitherQuechua,

Aymara, or other, and 86 per cent of the total population living inthe countryside. Was the Lima-centered modernizing project of Pardo

and the SIEduring the election of 1872 capable of completely changing the structure andnature of the nation? Or w as it just a w ishful

attempt? Even more w ishful, ifit came from a Limenian bourgeois "aristocrat" w ho, before becoming a full-timepolitician, w as a sugar

hacienda-ow neron the outskirts of the Republic's capital?

Jos R. Deus tua C. EasternIllinois Universi ty

Cerrar ventana

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