Daniel Masterson, professor of history at the U.S. Naval Academy, has drawn on Peruvian and U.S. archives, an impressive array of published materials, and more than 30 interviews to produce an excellent study of the military in Peruvian politics. Although he concentrates on the period 1931-1968, the author also provides a good overview of the professionalization of the military in the early twentieth century and a thoughtful essay on the 1968-1980 Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces and its legacy.
Masterson skillfully chronicles major episodes of military intervention in the political process—the coups of 1948, 1962, and 1968—and judiciously explores the troubled relationship between the military and the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance (APRA) from the civil war of the Sánchez Cerro era in the early 1930s to the 1948 Callao Mutiny and the Alan García administration of the 1980s. More than other case studies of Latin American militaries, this book gives considerable attention to the navy, an emphasis that in this case is justified.
Masterson’s core objective is to explain the much-studied reformism of the Peruvian military during the Velasco phase of the armed forces government. Haunted by a heritage in which defeat loomed larger than victory, Peru’s armed forces sought to justify their existence by contributing to the nation’s social, economic, and political development. This attitude was nurtured by the French military mission that trained the army from 1896 to 1944 and imparted its tradition of soldier as colonial administrator. Thus, General Velasco’s 1968 coup culminated the armed forces’ “search for a meaningful national mission” (p. 234), which was rooted not in the civic action programs of the 1950s but in developmentalist aspirations already visible in the early years of the century. For Masterson, the proximate incubator of the Velasco era’s doctrine of defense through development was not the often-touted Center for Higher Military Studies but the army’s intelligence school.
Masterson believes that the armed forces’ failure to secure profound reform during the 1968-80 docenio has produced a dysfunctional backlash. The military establishment reverted to a sterile “border defense mentality,” and now eschews a major role in national development. Within the military today, “high-profile social activism” is thought to threaten the unity of the armed forces. “Officers who voice . . . progressive views . . . are now seen as politically ambitious by their colleagues and as threatening by civilian politicians” (p. 283). This overreaction has hamstrung efforts to deal realistically with the Sendero Luminoso insurgency and has discouraged the armed forces’ appropriate participation in development programs.
Masterson’s book is essential reading for students of twentieth-century Peru. Except for the notable omission of key works on Sánchez Cerro by Orazio Cicarelli, the bibliography is a comprehensive guide for future research on the Peruvian military.
