Carlos A. Astiz has written a remarkable hook revealing some of the methods by which Peruvians through the years have been able to give life and meaning to the old adage—the more things change, the more they remain the same. In spite of superficial appearances of change on countless occasions, Peru since its independence has remained a rigidly stratified, hierarchical society in which middle sectors, the Church, and the military have generally cooperated with the aristocracy (often called the oligarchy) in preventing the emergence of a socially pluralistic structure. This is not necessarily a censorious appraisal of Peru. Throughout his book Astiz happily refrains from preaching. He does not seem to be asking that Peruvians measure up to the criteria of alien cultures; rather, he seems to be seeking the Peruvian reality and finding it.
The principal chapters of the book deal with the upper and middle classes, the lower class, political parties, the military, the Church, interest groups and the problems of interest articulation, and the external or foreign factors that have influenced contemporary Peruvian politics. In discussing these external factors Astiz is simplistic and suggests that the Yankee investor always plays a nefarious role.
Other chapters contain virtues well exemplified in his discussion of the military. Scrupulously avoiding unwarranted generalization, Astiz notes that the military is often allied with but also (and especially in most recent years) occasionally at odds with the traditional aristocracy. He observes that “the country’s armed forces may tend to reflect some of the contradictions of its middle class” (p. 145) and concludes with an appraisal that recent events have confirmed: “Regardless of the type of decision-making process in existence within the armed forces, they continue to be the most influential political party, the most effective labor union, and probably the key power holder in Peruvian politics; nothing currently within the political system offers a realistic possibility of altering that fact” (p. 161).
Astiz perceptively points to the difficulty which the aristocracy faces in seeking an alliance both with the increasingly conservative APRA and with its traditional enemy, the military. If the aristocrats hoped to draw on both the APRA and the military for support, the armed forces apparently have decided to maintain their hostility to the APRA even at the cost of offending once privileged landowners. Thus the decision of the military government to seize Peru’s modernized coastal estates and convert them into worker cooperatives (announced after this book had gone to press) strikes a blow at landowners. More important as far as the military is concerned, it may deal a death blow to one of the main sources of power controlled by the APRA, the labor unions of the coastal agricultural workers.
Astiz correctly concedes that some Peruvians—even, perhaps, priests—are working for genuine change. Throughout the Hispanic world, however, whenever a few particularly benighted oligarchs have jeopardized the hierarchical, paternalistic order by their total intransigence, priestly voices have always been raised to demand their elimination for the good of the system.
In his final chapter Astiz makes a masterful analysis of the forces and factors that seem destined to prevent radical social change in the immediate future. Moreover, in his “Postscript: the Coup d’État of October 3, 1968” he marshals impressive evidence to discourage the hope that the military now in power will perform in such manner as to force him to revise his analysis.
