The Militarization of the State in Latin America

Autor: Stephen M. Gorman, Michael Lowy, Eder Sader
Rok vydání: 1985
Předmět:
Zdroj: Latin American Perspectives. 12:7-40
ISSN: 1552-678X
0094-582X
DOI: 10.1177/0094582x8501200402
Popis: Military dictatorships have been a characteristic feature of Latin America's political history since the time of the military caudillos (Bolivar, San Martin, O' Higgins, and others) who led the processes of national emancipation at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Since that epoch, military dictators have been one of the resources utilized by the dominant classes to impose order during times of crisis. After independence, military regimes constituted the means of finishing off the remnants of colonialism. Later these regimes were the means for repressing the "plebeian" tendencies within the emancipation movements that threatened the oligarchic society. Ultimately they were the means for imposing the formation of national states in the face of the separatist tendencies of the oligarchy's most backward fractions. With establishment of the new order, the caudillos gave way to more stable political systems that better represented the oligarchy as a whole (Halpenrn Donghi, 1969). In this century, as the primary export economies of many countries began to display symptoms of profound crisis and as the social struggles that this provoked became more violent, military regimes became an instrument for safeguarding established interests. It was no longer a matter of imposing a new order but of defending and maintaining the
Databáze: OpenAIRE