Liisa North’s short monograph, the second in David E. Apter’s “Politics of Modernization” series, outlines the pattern of civil-military relations from caudillo origins in three neighboring republics, Chile, Peru, and Argentina. The author characterizes the early national period by the fragmentation of authority created through the dissolution of royal organization and legitimacy. She measures progress in terms of achievement of internal stability—a rather coldblooded criterion but effective for her purposes.
Each country developed its armed forces sector according to local conditions and with markedly differing results. Following Independence the Chilean military drew from the conservative colonial elite, but by 1890 officers were coming from the middle class, and a German chief of staff was remaking the military on the Prussian model. After brief activity in politics during the 1920s and 1930s the armed forces withdrew from the political arena.
Disunity hindered the modernization process in Argentina; education of officers on European models began under Mitre’s presidency (1862-68), but caudillo traits remained beyond the Sarmiento era. By the post-Perón era the military had become so much influenced by middle-class polities that it divided ideologically among itself and temporarily destroyed its capacity for independent action. In Peru what the author calls the “persistence of the unlegitimized patrimonial order” (p. 21) preserved the military-elite alliance until the 1950s, when the officer corps reacted to what it considered insensitivity to social unrest among the upper classes. As far as Argentina is concerned, it would be interesting to see if the Ongañía golpe fits the author’s scheme. She does anticipate it, holding in her conclusion that “the ideology of development, and its justification for professional intervention, may be a genuine new factor in the future role of the military” (p. 63).
The Barber-Ronning volume examines this phenomenon as it has developed in the last decade, especially after the meetings in Bogota (1960) and Punta del Este (1962). Spurred by the United States, the Latin American military has cast itself in the role of protector against internal subversion and executor of technical progress. Such United States government programs as the Army’s Caribbean School in Panama and the Inter-American Defense College have trained scores of officers, most of them in counterinsurgency tactics. The effect has been to put the military, for better or worse, in the social reform business. Direct aid for roads, schools, hospitals, and public relations has enlarged the military role and placed added responsibility on its shoulders. In the light of the recent coups in the name of democracy and socio-economic progress in Brazil and Argentina, the civic action concept merits reevaluation.
Both works, especially the North paper, are effective but a little thin. They offer useful appendices, although the Barber-Ronning tables (p. 252) show editorial unfamiliarity with Brazil.
