Social Movements in Politics, Expanded Edition: A Comparative Study (Perspectives in Comparative Politics)

Social Movements in Politics PERSPECTIVES IN COMPARATIVE POLITICS Published by Palgrave Macmillan The Struggle agains...

Author: Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh

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Social Movements in Politics

PERSPECTIVES IN COMPARATIVE POLITICS Published by Palgrave Macmillan The Struggle against Corruption: A Comparative Study Edited by Roberta Ann Johnson Women, Democracy, and Globalization in North America: A Comparative Study By Jane Bayes, Patricia Begné, Laura Gonzalez, Lois Harder, Mary Hawkesworth, and Laura Macdonald Politics and Ethnicity: A Comparative Study By Joseph Rudolph Immigration Policy and the Politics of Immigration: A Comparative Study By Martin Schain Politics, Policy, and Health Care: A Comparative Study By Paul Godt Social Movements in Politics, Expanded Edition: A Comparative Study By Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh

Social Movements in Politics A Comparative Study expanded edition

Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh

SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN POLITICS

© Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh, 2006. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2006 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 and Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS Companies and representatives throughout the world. PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–6376–5 (HB) ISBN-10: 1–4039–6376–2 (HB) ISBN-13: 978–1–4039–7047–3 (PB) ISBN-10: 1–4039–7047–5 (PB) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Zirakzadeh, Cyrus Ernesto, 1951– Social movements in politics, expanded edition: a comparative study / by Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh. p. cm.— (Comparative government and politics) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–6376–2 (hb. paper)—ISBN 1–4039–7047–5 (alk. paper) 1. Social movements—Political aspects—Case studies. 2. Political participation—Case studies. 3. Bündnis 90/Die Grünen. 4. NSZZ “Solidarnosc” (Labor organization) 5. Sendero Luminoso (Guerrilla Group) 6. Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (Mexico) I. Title. II. Comparative government and politics (Palgrave Macmillan (Firm)) HN17.5.Z57 2006 306.209⬘045—dc22 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: August 2006 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

2006041562

For Vanessa and Daniel

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CONTENTS

Preface to the Expanded Edition

ix

Acronyms

xi

Part 1

How We Think about Social Movements

1 Recent Traditions in Social-Movement Theorizing

Part 2

3

West Germany’s Greens and the Politics of Party Movements

2 A World to Be Remade: Sociopolitical Circumstances of Green Politics

21

3 Political Antecedents

34

4 Clashing Shades of Green

49

Part 3

Poland’s Solidarity and Movements against Dictatorial Regimes

5 A World to Be Remade: Sociopolitical Circumstances of Solidarity

77

6

Political Antecedents

89

7

Discord within Solidarity

102

Part 4 Peru’s Shining Path and Agrarian-Based Movements 8 A World to Be Remade: Sociopolitical Circumstances of Shining Path

133

9

145


10 Diverse Directions along the Shining Path

156

viii

Contents Part 5

Mexico’s Zapatistas and the Globalization of Protest

11 A World to Be Remade: Sociopolitical Circumstances of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation

177

12


194

13

Wanderings of Zapata’s Ghost

207

Part 6 14

From History to Theory

Conclusions 229

Notes

245

References

250

Name Index

265

Subject Index

267

PREFACE EXPANDED

TO

THE

EDITION

This book is an exploration and application of contemporary socialmovement theory. It is intended to familiarize advanced students in the social sciences with different ways that European and North American scholars since World War II have thought about social movements. A further aim is to promote reflection on similarities and differences between four social movements that captured worldwide attention during the 1980s and 1990s. The first chapter elaborates three major theoretical traditions that for half a century have informed studies of social movements: (1) modernization theories, which stress the human costs of social change; (2) theories about organizational resources and political opportunities; and (3) identityformation theories. The next dozen chapters describe the circumstances, ideological debates, and actions of West Germany’s Greens, Poland’s Solidarity, Peru’s Shining Path, and Mexico’s Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Using themes and questions from the three major theoretical traditions as springboards for reflection, the book offers a multidimensional picture of each movement that highlights (1) the recent social changes and national political situation that activists in each movement confronted; (2) the preexisting traditions of popular protest from which each movement drew symbols, leaders, and other resources; and (3) the competing social goals and political strategies and tactics that major factions in each movement espoused. The book’s final chapter compares the four cases and juxtaposes the historical record with the representations of social movements made by each of the major theoretical traditions. The book ends with a call for a fourth theoretical approach to social movements that emphasizes their internal politics. The extended case studies form the heart or core of the book. Complex descriptions of social movements informed by multiple theoretical traditions are valuable for several reasons. They can enhance one’s resistance to simplistic generalizations and black-and-white judgments about popular protest. In addition, by mulling over others’ efforts to control their destinies, we sometimes develop greater awareness of and self-confidence in our own political potential. Last but not least, we sometimes educe from

x

Preface to the Expanded Edition

historical details new general lessons about the difficulties and advantages of current forms of nonelite politics. As historical studies of social movements can affect the way one views oneself and one’s political situation, a passive, distant approach may not be the best way to read this book. A reader probably will benefit more if, while reading, she or he asks: How do I think about social movements? Do I like them, fear them, or am indifferent to their existence? Do these accounts of the Greens, Solidarity, Shining Path, and the Zapatistas seem plausible to me, and why (or why not)? And finally, are there any social movements occurring near me at this time? If so, how are they being represented in the conventional press and by government officials, and what alternative interpretations does this book suggest? I have been studying social movements and social-movement theorizing for 25 years. In addition to the numerous publications that are cited in the following chapters, I have benefited from ongoing conversations with Colin Barker, William Caspery, Myra Ferree, Andrei Markovits, Michael McCann, and George Shulman. I thank the “Frontiers of Social Movement Theorizing” group within the American Sociological Association and the participants at the annual “Alternative Futures and Popular Protest” conferences in Manchester, England for holding international meetings where people who love to talk about social movements can exchange opinions, stories, and theories. Without these experiences, scholarship would be much less fun and rewarding. The University of Connecticut has offered a supportive and pleasant setting for writing this type of book. The library’s remarkable alternative press collection helped me piece together local “Left” histories for Germany, Poland, and Peru. My social science colleagues, especially Bob Asher, Betty Hanson, Henry Krisch, and Kent Newmyer, cheerfully shared scholarly references, empirical findings, and personal views about social movements in politics. Current and former graduate students continue to inspire me with their enthusiasm and curiosity. Several of my newest university colleagues—Mary Bernstein, Robert Fisher, Shareen Hertel, Nancy Naples, and Jeffrey Ogbar—are also students of social movements and have taught me fresh ways of conceptualizing what movements do and their possible raison d’etre. Writing a book can be a lonely experience if not for close friends who encourage perseverance and provoke smiles. Five such friends were involved at different stages in the preparation of the expanded edition of this manuscript: Garry Clifford, Kay Lawson, Daniela Melo, Betty Seaver, and, in particular, Barbara Zirakzadeh. Vanessa and Daniel Zirakzadeh have grown up and today live away from Barb’s and my home. But I have fond memories of their childhood adventures and how they balanced my life as I wrote the first edition. To all whom I’ve mentioned, a heartfelt thank you.

ACRONYMS

Germany AL APO AUD A3W BBU BUF CDU/CSU FDP FRG GAZ GDR GLU JUSO KB KPD NPD SPD SDS SPV-Greens USP

Alternative Slate (of Berlin) Extraparliamentary Movement Action Group for an Independent Germany Action for a Third Way Federal Association of Citizens’ Initiatives for Environmental Protection Federal Conference of Independent Peace Groups Christian Democratic Party/Christian Social Union Free Democratic Party Federal Republic of Germany Green Action Future German Democratic Republic Green List for Environmental Protection Working Group of Young Socialists Communist League Communist Party of Germany National Democratic Party Social Democratic Party Socialist German Students’ League Alternative Political Alliance-Greens Environmental Protection Party Poland

KKW KO KOR KPN KSS-KOR OPZZ PPR PSL

National Executive Commission Citizens’ Committees Workers’ Defense Committee Confederation for an Independent Poland Committee for Social Self-Defense-KOR National Federation of Trade Unions Polish Workers’ Party Peasant Party

xii PZPR RMP ROPCiO SdRP SKS TKK UD

Acronyms Polish United Workers’ Party Young Poland Movement Movement for the Defense of Human and Civil Rights Social Democracy of the Polish Republic Students’ Solidarity Committee Temporary Coordinating Commission Democratic Union Peru

APRA CGTP CTP ELN IU MIR PCP PCP-SL

American Revolutionary Popular Alliance General Confederation of Peruvian Workers Confederation of Peruvian Workers National Liberation Army United Left Movement of the Revolutionary Left Communist Party of Peru Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path Mexico

CIOAC CND EZLN FLN LP MLN OCEZ PAN PRD PRI PRONASOL UU

Independent Confederation of Agricultural Workers and Peasants National Democratic Convention Zapatista Army of National Liberation Forces of National Liberation Proletarian Line National Liberation Movement Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organization National Action Party Democratic Revolutionary Party Institutional Revolutionary Party National Solidarity Program Union of Unions Miscellaneous

EEC NAFTA NATO OECD OPEC UFW UN USSR

European Economic Community North American Free Trade Agreement North Atlantic Treaty Organization Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries United Farm Workers United Nations Union of Soviet Socialist Republics

PART

1

How We Think about Social Movements


CHAPTER

1

Recent Traditions in Social-Movement Theorizing

All mass movements generate in their adherents a readiness to die and a proclivity for united action; all of them, irrespective of the doctrine they preach and the program they project, breed fanaticism, enthusiasm, fervent hope, hatred and intolerance; all of them are capable of releasing a powerful flow of activity in certain departments of life; all of them demand blind faith and singlehearted allegiance. Eric Hoffer, The True Believer The term social movement connotes different things to different people. Many look upon the ideologically nonviolent and democratic U.S. civil rights movement as a quintessential social movement (Chong 1991). Some would select the German Nazi Party of the 1930s (Arendt 1951; Fromm 1941; Hoffer 1951). Others would apply the term to almost any formally organized group that periodically petitions the state for aid, such as Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (Judkins 1983; McCarthy and Wolfson 1988; Schwartz and Shuva 1992). Still others would think of social movements as largely unorganized, illegal, and episodic actions, such as ghetto riots, wildcat strikes, or spontaneous boycotts of unpopular taxes (Piven 1976). This study looks at four late twentieth-century social movements that appeared in very different regimes: West Germany’s Greens, Poland’s Solidarity, Peru’s Shining Path, and Mexico’s Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Each is viewed from three perspectives: (1) in terms of the national, political, and social contexts that conditioned the movement’s goals and strategies, (2) in terms of previous efforts by nonelites to change social and political conditions, and (3) in terms of the activists’ own beliefs, and strategic and tactical decisions. However, I first clarify the construction I put on social movement to prevent possible misunderstanding by readers and describe briefly some major postwar traditions of thinking about movements, for each tradition has greatly influenced my own reading of recent political events.

4

Social Movements in Politics What Is Meant by Social Movement?

Like social class and political representation, social movement is a term that various authors use idiosyncratically. I employ social movement whenever I discuss political phenomena that have at least three partially overlapping yet distinguishable characteristics. First, a social movement is a group of people who endeavor to build a radically new social order. Here, I agree with J. Craig Jenkins (1981: 82), for whom a social movement is “a series of collective actions conducted to bring about change in social structures,” and is guided by “a vision, however dimly articulated, of the alternative order desired and of the basic measures necessary to put it into effect.” Participants in a social movement not only challenge decisions made by authorities and make demands on authorities but also try to make lasting, large-scale, and significant changes in the texture of the society. To borrow from movement analyst John Wilson (1973: 3), participants see themselves as engaged “in the building of new social worlds.” Of course, not every person in every group that I ordinarily call a “social movement” wishes to transform the society in toto. Movements range widely in terms of proportion of participants who desire radical change. As Dennis Chong (1991) points out, in every social movement, some activists primarily seek immediate gratification and private benefits, such as an increase in local prestige, and are not deeply committed to long-term social change. Furthermore, participants in most movements want to preserve specific institutions. Peasant rebels in the Chiapas region of Mexico, for example, desire the continuation of a type of communal property known as an ejido. Still, a social movement differs from an interest group in that at least a plurality of participants in the case of a social movement seeks a far-reaching restructuring of their society.1 Second, when I use the term social movement, I have in mind political activity by people from a broad range of social backgrounds who, following current scholarly convention, I call the “nonelite.” They normally lack political clout, social prestige, and enormous wealth, and their interests are not routinely articulated or represented in the political system. For Cornel West (1993: 29), they have often been “culturally degraded, politically oppressed, and economically exploited.” Doug McAdam (1982: 36) deems them deprived of “any real influence over the major decisions that affect their lives.” William Gamson (1975: 140) says they lack “routine access to decisions that affect them.” The foregoing descriptions do not imply that movement participants perceive themselves, their opponents, and their actions in classical Marxian categories, such as “proletariat,” “monopoly capitalism,” and “class struggle.” Indeed, most social-movement scholars agree that participants do not see themselves in such abstract terms. Frances Fox Piven (1976: 311–12), for example, notes that participants, although desirous of transforming a social situation in dramatic ways, often direct their actions toward visible targets,


5

such as local plant managers or particular landlords. Many of the scholars, nonetheless, believe that movement activists often perceive themselves both as being placed outside centers of power and as being embedded in exploitive relations, and that these perceptions are accurate. The last distinguishing characteristic of a social movement is its confrontational and disruptive tactics, such as occupying buildings, boycotting businesses, and blockading streets. Movement activists, of course also employ scrupulously legal tactics, such as lobbying and lawsuits. But the mix of socially disruptive tactics and legal tactics differs from the mix used by most interest groups or political parties. The activists generally bend (if not break) the parts of the legal code having to do with public order and public safety. However, despite opponents’ charges, social movements are never simply outlaw organizations; they are better seen as walkers on both sides of the legal fence.2 Are Movements Historically Significant? Many North American and Western European social theorists agree that the term social movements refers to nonelite attempts to remake societies through combinations of socially disruptive and nondisruptive tactics. Scholars disagree, however, on whether social movements significantly alter the course of society and whether they significantly help nonelites. Early in the twentieth century, University of Chicago sociologist Robert Park interpreted social movements through an evolutionary framework and construed them as leaving policy and institutional legacies that subsequent generations often find useful and beneficial: [E]very institution may in turn be described as a movement that was once active and eruptive, like a volcano, but has since settled down to something like routine activity. It has, to change the metaphor, defined its aims, found its place and function in the social complex. (1972: 22) Park contended that the historical impact of a movement is inversely related to the utopian ambitions of its leaders. Some movement leaders seek to sweep aside almost every aspect of the society; others, more moderate, seek limited changes in selected institutions. European and North American labor movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, for example, were relatively “minor” and “slowburning” movements when juxtaposed to, say, the French Revolution. The labor movements succeeded in bringing about important changes in labor laws because of their modest aims. The French revolutionaries’ radical ambitions, in contrast, spurred a counterrevolution that in the opinion of Park and some later scholars, for example, Crane Brinton (1938), undermined almost all of their short-term accomplishments.

6


During the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, many North American and Western European scholars agreed with Park’s conclusion that social movements have significantly affected the course of history. Unlike Park, however, they believed that social movements were inimical to civility, democracy, and liberty. Even Park, who generally advanced an evolutionary theory of movements, deplored rash and impatient activists, and warned of a subset of social movements that he called “crowd movements,” which usually disrupted without making positive changes (Park 1972: 47–8, 96). William Kornhauser (1959), for one, emphasized in his widely read book how certain types of movements unravel the social fabric and destroy desirable social arrangements. Other influential writers who routinely stressed the possible negative effects of social movements included Hannah Arendt (1951), Eric Fromm (1941), Eric Hoffer (1951), Seymour Martin Lipset (1955; 1960), and Arthur Schlesinger (1949)3. These authors typically depicted social movements derogatorily, dwelling on childish, immoral, and antidemocratic features. Their negative judgments were rooted in part in painful memories of National Socialism in Germany, Fascism in Italy, and McCarthyism in the United States.4 Modernity and Social Turbulence Postwar social-movement scholars explained the rise of social movements in terms of the pace and extent of contemporary social change. For the most part, they thought that societies everywhere were becoming much more urban, literate, bureaucratized, mechanized, and organizationally large-scale. All parts of the globe seemed to be converging toward the work experiences and lifestyles of northern England, the U.S. iron and steel belt, and southern California. Conversely, local communities, small workplaces, precapitalist forms of exchange, and voluntary associations appeared to be facing extinction. Scholars read contemporary social movements as the social-psychological consequences of the rush to modernization. Most movement activists, it was argued, were recent urban immigrants from small towns and petite-bourgeois rural families (Fromm 1941; Lipset 1955). The newcomers to the city needed a psychological balm for the social dislocation and personal loneliness inherent in modern life. As daily life became noticeably more industrialized, bureaucratic, urban, and large-scale, people felt increasingly insignificant and normatively out of place. Furthermore, market dislocations, labor organizations, and big business threatened small merchants, independent artisans, and workers with small-town backgrounds. Uprooted, economically beset, and disconcerted by their declining social status, the urban immigrants approached movements as a therapeutic corrective, an environment in which they could safely unburden themselves. The psychological appeals of movements were said to be many. At rallies and meetings, participants were systematically exposed to easily understood


7

ideologies that unmasked the hidden conspiracies behind their daily problems. Ideologues pointed to unfamiliar cohorts in cities—such as “Jews,” “bankers,” and “communists”—as ruthless enemies of petite-bourgeois values and small-town social structures. Traditional ways of life, meanwhile, were depicted as unproblematic and preservable, if not for the unprincipled conspirators. Except for the scapegoatism, the movement’s ideologies were thin in substance. Social-movement leaders, purportedly, failed to propose specific policies and institutional reforms that might solve the urban immigrants’ daily grievances and failed to discuss the benefits of modern life. Postwar scholars explain the attraction of movements’ programs in terms of the paucity of community activities, neighborhood ties, and small-scale organizations (Kornhauser 1959). Modern culture (for example, mass media), modern education (for example, metropolitan school systems), and modernization of the workplace (for example, corporations with enormous factories at multiple sites) meant that small-scale institutions and groupings, which once had helped the individual deal with life’s exigencies, lost effectiveness and significance. Local union chapters, neighborhood churches, and extended families no longer protected individuals against illness, illiteracy, and hunger. Impersonal citywide and national organizations now ministered to people’s immediate needs, rendering it unnecessary for citizens to labor side by side in pursuit of common interests. At best, coworkers and next-door neighbors had a passing interest in others’ circumstances. City dwellers in general were unfamiliar with one another’s fates and were indifferent to much of the human travail about them. For a goodly number, urban life was increasingly private and somewhat lonely. Because city dwellers were no longer involved in multiple local organizations that address proximate concerns, they lacked familiarity with public issues as well as practical political experience. Hence, they could not pragmatically assess a movement’s ideology. Instead of using common sense and accepting the paradox that there may exist many, and perhaps even logically incompatible, truths about how the world works, participants in a social movement would not deviate from the fixed “Truth” as delivered either in manifestos or by movement leaders. Furthermore, having subjectively lost a sense of community and objectively lost control over their lives, people in urban, industrialized, and impersonal environs were desperately seeking a new source of meaning, a way to regain dignity. As Arendt (1951: 323–34) put it, a member’s uncritical faith in a movement’s hate-filled ideology can be expected only from the completely isolated human being who, without any other social ties . . . derives his sense of having a place in the world only from his belonging to a movement. Or in the words of Hoffer (1951: 44), A rising mass movement attracts and holds a following not by its doctrine and promises but by the refuge it offers from the anxieties, barrenness and meaninglessness of an individual existence.

8


Most social-movement scholars believed that movements and their scapegoat ideologies were threats to liberal democratic constitutional systems. Movement participants, deprived of firsthand experience with public affairs, trusted their leaders without qualification. Blind faith replaced common sense and independence of thought. Uprooted and insecure, participants were thought not to be open to judicious reasoning and to intelligent discussion of their circumstances and political options (Arendt 1951: 315–16, 352). They wanted someone to blame, an assurance that their older ways of life were valuable, and promises that modern social orders would not prevail. Hence, they were easily manipulated by the peddlers of nostalgia and scapegoat rhetoric. Many scholars during the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s feared that contemporary social movements were not abnormalities but foreshadowings. It was argued that as the world became more and more “modern” (that is, more bureaucratic, industrialized, urbanized, secularized, commercially competitive, and migratory), market dislocations would continue, anomie would abound, and antimodern and violent social movements would become widespread. Fascism in Italy, Nazism in Germany, Stalinism in the Soviet Union, and McCarthyism in the United States thus not only were despicable but augured an era of impatient, enraged politics. To demonstrate that contemporary movements, such as Stalinism, were not simply the result of a uniquely charismatic leader or of a singular confluence of conditions, some researchers combed the historical record for other cases of social movements amid rapid change. Thus, Christian millenarianism during the Middle Ages was creatively reinterpreted as an expression of middle-class disorientation amid rapid urbanization, as was the Populist movement during the 1880s in the United States and the street violence in Paris during the French Revolution.5 Second Wave of Movement Theorizing Around the middle of the 1960s, an alternative view of social movements gained ascendancy. The new style of interpretation arose partly because a younger generation of movement specialists either had directly participated in recent movements for social justice and peace or had sympathetically observed such events as the Montgomery Bus Boycott (McAdam 1988). Participants in social movements did not seem overly intolerant, antidemocratic, or violent. To the contrary, the activists seemed remarkably pragmatic in their politics, civil in their interpersonal behavior, and thoughtful and articulate about their ethical principles and long-term goals. As James Rule (1988: 183) put it, By the 1960s, a new generation of social scientists was responding, mostly sympathetically, to protest movements of blacks and university students. A theoretical view of movements and social contention as irrational, retrograde, destructive forces would no longer do.


9

The new generation of social-movement scholars were, generally speaking, mistrustful of “liberal-democratic” polities, of “free-market” economies, and of the spread of capitalism around the world (Gamson 1968; Perlman 1975). Many contended that the so-called liberal democratic states frequently violated citizens’ rights to privacy and obstructed citizens’ rights of dissent, association, and free speech. Many also maintained that “free-market” economies were, in fact, sophisticated systems of private power, day-to-day oppression, and endless exploitation, with big business enjoying benefits paid for by other classes. After 1970, the once nearly ubiquitous theme of social modernization disappeared from most academic writings on social movements, replaced by the new theme of structural inequality (political and economic). According to most of the new social-movement analysts, in every known society a small group systematically influences decisions made in the political system and monopolizes the resources needed to create wealth. Occasionally, members of that elite may disagree among themselves about specific policies but generally harmoniously advance their common interest in reproducing current patterns of inequality in status, wealth, and power. The younger analysts argued that participants in social movements shrewdly calculate the probable costs and rewards of alternative courses of action and then act accordingly. Movement participants are not (contrary to the assertions of earlier analysts) blind dogmatists overwhelmed by rootlessness and general vulnerability. The decision to participate is made, usually, only after a person who is exploited or oppressed (1) has found the stated aims of the movement relevant to his or her immediate situation, and (2) has calculated the cost : benefit ratio associated with participation. Movement participation is a practical and considered activity, a form of “bargaining by riot” (Thompson 1971: 115–23) and “a continuation of politics by other means” (Garner and Zald 1985: 138) that is “deliberate and purposeful” (Piven 1976: 309). One can discern within the second wave of scholarship three distinguishable traditions of theorizing, which for our purposes can be called “resource-mobilization theorizing,” “indigenous-community theorizing,” and “political-process theorizing.” Although each tradition focused on a different set of political processes and activities, all three rejected the sociological and psychological logic of the preceding generation of theorists and, instead, assumed (1) significant political and economic inequalities in all known societies and (2) the prudential nature of movement participation. The resource-mobilization tradition emphasizes the role of leadership. It is said that in every society most people are unhappy with the status quo, are ignored and mistreated by their government, and suffer economic injustices. People, however, seldom form or join movements because they are cognizant that they lack adequate material and organizational resources with which to battle vested interests. A movement normally emerges only after a group or person with appropriate political experience, vision, and resources first organizes that constituency. A researcher should therefore study

10


organizers, often called “issue entrepreneurs,” who creatively bring resources from third parties to an aggrieved population (McCarthy and Zald 1977). The emergence of the United Farm Workers (UFW) movement during the 1960s illustrates how one issue entrepreneur, César Chávez, attracted resources from established labor organizations, sympathetic consumers, and selected government officials (Zirakzadeh 2004). Prior to Chávez’s efforts, U.S. labor activists had looked upon California’s farm workers as almost impossible to organize because of their extreme poverty (which made them chary of risking even a day’s wages), the seasonal nature of their employment, the here-today gone-tomorrow nature of their lives (which militated against development of feelings of group solidarity), and the fact that many harvesters were Mexican citizens (a status that generated fears of deportation). In addition, farm owners had at their disposal compliant police forces and numerous vigilante groups. Lacking numerous key resources—such as time, money, legal expertise, judicially defensible rights, and even sound equipment for strikes—farm workers for decades had been unable to mount a successful challenge to the owners’ prerogatives, and understandably had become reluctant to join any movement organization. Chávez’s brilliance as an organizer was his ability to foresee the need to enlist financial, legal, and media support from such nonunion groups as the National Council of Churches, local university communities, and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party. Patiently courting such contacts, he was able to launch an effective national boycott of California’s grapes and, ultimately, to win concessions from owners, despite their considerable local sources of power. According to one chronicler, [S]tudents and clergy marched through grocery stores, harassing store managers, conducting “shop-ins,” and closing off entrances; liberal politicians, including two presidential candidates (Senators Kennedy and McGovern), joined prominent celebrities in endorsing the boycott; liberal clerics sermonized their congregations on the boycott; universities and Catholic schools cut off standing orders to grocers that continued to handle “scab” grapes; and millions of consumers shunned grapes and the grocery stores that continued to handle them. By the summer of 1970 the grape growers faced a closed marketplace. ( Jenkins 1983: 65) In the wake of the boycott’s surprising success, thousands of migrant workers, once notoriously difficult to recruit, themselves contacted the United Farm Workers’ offices, spontaneously launched their own marches and set up strike committees, and began to direct their own grievance committees on farms with UFW contracts. Thus, by mobilizing appropriate groups, Chávez helped establish a social movement among a highly discontented population. The second tradition that developed after 1960 still lacks a convenient and widely used label but might best be called the “indigenous-community


11

approach.”6 Indigenous-community thinkers explore how local-level social institutions, such as neighborhood clubs, union locals, and community churches, provide the organizational structures, communication networks, tactical ideas, and leadership training for later social movements (Adam 1987; Evans and Boyte 1986; Morris 1984; Tarrow 1994; Zirakzadeh 1991). Unlike the early postwar scholars who believed that modern life was increasingly lonely, indigenous-community theorists contend that the rhythms of modern life—particularly in industrialized cities—have produced a wealth of small-scale social interactions that facilitate the formation of indigenous social movements. For example, according to Tilly et al. (1975), modern European factory towns are hardly socially disorganized. To the contrary, large factories and their nearby residential districts contain numerous public spaces where every day people regularly meet, discuss common grievances, and plan collective actions. Aldon Morris (1984) likewise argues that the urban migration of southern African Americans resulted in the spontaneous growth of churches, schools, clubs, and other forms of local association that enabled previously isolated rural people to congregate, to discuss common grievances, and, ultimately, to plan collective actions. Political scientists Wayne Cornelius (1971) and Janice Perlman (1975) maintain that residents of rapidly growing Latin American cities routinely form associations to help satisfy physical needs (medical care, water, police protection) and social and emotional needs (recreational groups, sports clubs, choirs, libraries). Having observed hundreds of such associations, Cornelius and Perlman contend that theories of the profound social disorganization and loneliness of urban life grossly misrepresent city life in Latin America. According to indigenous-community theorists, most urban dwellers belong to multiple nonpolitical associations, regularly attend local meetings, and communicate through numerous informal friendship networks. Because of such ties, individuals find political partners and allies with relative ease. Neighbors and coworkers are familiar with methods for raising funds, collecting materials, rallying interest, and building morale. Over time, a local leader cohort naturally emerges that is in constant communication with friends and neighbors, addresses local concerns and promotes local values, and, if the time seems right, organizes disruptive collective actions. A subset of indigenous-community theorists explores how fledgling movements learn from one another’s political experience. Supposedly, the victory of one group often inspires nearby discontented groups and also provides models of useful strategies and tactics. In addition, every sizeable movement usually leaves in its wake a corps of practiced leaders, evocative symbols, and communication networks that a successor movement might use. Movements, in other words, do not spring full-blown from Zeus’s forehead but arise from long lineages of popular protest and small-scale politicking (Banaszak 1996; Tarrow 1989a, 1989b; Tilly 1978, 1986; Zirakzadeh 1989). The third influential understanding of social movements that evolved after the late 1960s is today widely known as the “political-process

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approach.”7 Political-process theorists, such as Anne Costain (1992), Doug McAdam (1982), Joel Migdal (1974), John Duncan Powell (1971), Christian Smith (1991), and Joe Foweraker and Todd Landman (1997), hold that constitutions, national-level policy-making institutions and processes, and intra-elite struggles over power profoundly influence both people’s decisions to join movements and the strategies and tactics that a movement employs. For example, a fledgling movement has a better chance of attracting new participants and procuring resources if the nation’s constitution recognizes civil liberties and thereby allows spokespersons to hold assemblies, print and distribute literature, and demonstrate peacefully in public (Foweraker and Landman 1997). Another relevant political circumstance is the degree of unity and the number and nature of divisions within the governing elite. Some social problems and political arrangements, such as an economic depression or intense electoral competition, may spawn such deep disagreements among government officials that rival factions will be motivated to find allies among the nonelite. The temporary alliance between the northern wing of the U.S. Democratic Party and the civil rights movement during the early 1960s, for instance, brought many people into the movement because it seemed to have guardians in high places (McAdam 1982). Fashioning Identities After the mid-1960s, fewer and fewer scholars saw social movements simply as uncalculated expressions of rage against modernity and only as threats to democracy. Growing numbers interpreted movements as pragmatic political responses by nonelites to objective social inequality, political oppression, and economic exploitation. Whereas the postwar generation of movements theorists viewed social movements with dread, the newer generation tended to view movements as opportunities to redistribute wealth and power and thereby to achieve democracy. Contemporary movements, such as the civil rights movement and the antiwar movement, were seen as evidence of increasing political health, not disease. This was not the last word, however. In Europe, culturally sensitive approaches to the study of social movements appeared during the mid- and late 1960s and had attracted significant numbers of adherents by the end of the 1970s. A similar theoretical evolution occurred in both North and South America during the late 1970s and 1980s. For convenience, I shall call writers associated with this third major wave of social-movement theorizing “identity-formation” theorists.8 Identity-formation theorizing was developed and refined by scholars in diverse social science disciplines, including history (Evans 1979; Goodwyn 1978; Hill 1972; Kelley 1994; Thompson 1963), sociology (Breines 1982; Laclau 1985; Melucci 1985, 1988; Touraine 1981, 1985), anthropology (Escobar and Alvarez 1992; Kubik 1994), and political science


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(Ackelsberg 1991; Apter 1987; Apter and Sawa 1984; Gaventa 1980). Although affiliated with different disciplines, these scholars shared the belief that “culture”—broadly understood as how we interpret social arrangements, how we see our places within those arrangements, and how we see our immediate opportunities, powers, and limitations—profoundly informs and shapes our political actions. Cognition and political action should not be treated as unrelated phenomena; political activity expresses and embodies cognition.9 We may see, for example, a sudden rise in local unemployment as a problem deserving of public discussion and government action; however, we also might see a surge in unemployment as a temporarily inconveniencing but ultimately healthy “market correction” that should not occasion meddling. Similarly, whether we write a letter to a local newspaper criticizing a specific government policy depends in part on our presumptions about the efficacy of such an action and about our ability to influence others through our prose. Although the details of the identity-formation argument vary from scholar to scholar, the basic position is as follows. We never view events directly but through intellectual prisms (or lenses) composed of our presumptions about our society and ourselves. The prisms give our observations meaning (e.g., whether we see crowds of people thrusting clenched fists into the air as principled protesters or a violent mob), shape our emotions (e.g., whether we are frightened or inspired by demonstrators), and determine whether in our political responses to social circumstances we are tolerant or outraged, passive or active, cooperative or confrontational. Although we may almost always believe ourselves to be completely open-minded, unbiased, and uncommitted to any cultural myth when thinking about public affairs, we never can escape our cultural presumptions. Indeed, we need our interpretive lens to organize our observations, to make judgments, to see alternatives, to predict consequences of imagined alternative courses of actions, and to determine what political actions (if any) are effective and appropriate. Cultural assumptions thus profoundly (and inevitably) influence both our understanding of our powers and our exercise of them. Most identity-formation theorists further maintain that although people constantly receive ideas from the social environment—for example, from friends and family, from schools and churches, and from the mass media— the mind is hardly soft, formless clay upon which social forces impress ideas. Humans have the capacity to amend, sift, enhance, and reject the ideas that are presented to them. We both consume currently available ideas and produce fresh ideas about our situations and ourselves. True, many people and institutions teach us to view the world in particular ways, but to an important degree we also endlessly define and redefine our social identities. One can discern two theoretical subapproaches within the literature on identity formation. First, some scholars emphasize the themes and images of what is sometimes called popular culture (Apter and Sawa 1984; Evans and Boyte 1986; Hill 1972; Kelley 1994) and argue that unconventional ideas and rival cultural traditions are being constantly developed by ordinary folks in everyday, prepolitical public spaces, such as churches, cafes, recreational

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clubs, and street corners. When recruited into social-movement organizations, new members bring their own previously developed ideas that often differ from and clash with the ideas of the movement’s titular leaders. For example, African Americans who joined the Communist Party in the 1930s accepted many Leninist ideas but also retained their earlier notions of black nationalism that party leaders strongly opposed. The upshot was a complex process of factional conflict, ideological compromise, and cultural cross-pollination within the party (Kelley 1994: 123–58). According to identity-formation theorists who emphasize popular culture, in order to understand a social movement’s activities, goals, and popular support, one must be sensitive to the diversity of beliefs within popular culture and to the ideological conflict this generates within a movement. Scholars of this persuasion decry attempts to portray any movement as internally homogeneous and free of clashing ideas and corresponding factions. The second subset of identity-formation theorists, whose position I sometimes call the “autonomous movement-culture approach,” hold that social movements themselves are “climates,” “environments,” or “atmospheres,” in which novel and subversive ideas are invented and nurtured. Movements resemble safe, nourishing hothouses where nonelites exchange ideas that elites deem silly, dangerous, or immoral. In addition, many social movements—because they tend to be understaffed and decentralized in organizational structure—must rely on part-time volunteers to run local-level projects and offices. The arrangements allow people who normally do not hold positions of authority to become experienced in running meetings and addressing crowds. Gradually, the grassroots volunteers acquire confidence in their own capabilities to act and think independent of elites, and begin to entertain audacious and (from the elites’ perspective) sacrilegious ideas (Apter and Sawa 198410; Breines 1982; Fantasia 1988; Goodwyn 1978; Kubik 1994). Like most of the second-wave social-movement theorists, most identity-formation theorists contend that highly unequal distributions of power,status, and wealth exist in all known societies, including liberal democratic orders (Apter and Sawa 1984; Goodwyn 1978; Kelley 1994). According to identity-formation theorists, elites often try to legitimize inequalities of power and wealth by disseminating ideas about the advantages of the status quo and about the dangers of alternatives. The indoctrination takes myriad forms, including government manipulation of public-school curricula and big business’ direct and indirect influence over the news media. Despite the efforts of elites at thought control, nonelites often question the representations of reality coming from the higher-ups. Social movements are one weapon in the ongoing struggles between elites and nonelites over how best to understand and appreciate social inequalities. Some identity-formation theorists view the future with alarm because electronic means of communication have reduced the hoi polloi’s opportunities to question elites’ representations of reality (Edelman 1988; Gitlin 1980), as has the proliferation of scientific and legal jargons. U.S. historian


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Lawrence Goodwyn (1978: 315) holds that because of distinctively modern cultural traditions, Americans seem to have lost the capacity to think seriously about the structure of their own society. Words like “inevitability,” “efficiency,” and “modernization” are passively accepted as the operative explanations for the increasingly hierarchical nature of contemporary life. Goodwyn’s pessimism is not yet endemic among identity-formation scholars. Most believe that today’s social structures—cities, for example— provide places where nonelites can freely mingle and exchange opinions (Melucci 1985, 1988). Secularization, literacy, and modern forms of communications (the airways, print, the Internet, and the like) further facilitate the development and dispersion of nonelite ideas. In sum, social-movement activity is likely to grow (not shrink) as news of novel programs of social change and successful tactics takes wings across cities, nations, and regions.11 From Theories to Observations In the following chapters, I draw on the above traditions (and subtraditions) of social-movement analysis to understand West Germany’s Greens, Poland’s Solidarity, Peru’s Shining Path, and Mexico’s Zapatista Army of National Liberation. Although a few commentators view the above waves of theorizing as not only different but logically incompatible (Evans and Boyte 1986; McAdam 1982), I treat them as complementary but certainly see different emphases and concerns. The first approach (of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s) focuses on rapid, large-scale social change, emphasizes distinctively modern threats to economic security and social status, and views human beings as isolated, disoriented, and fearful. The second approach stresses politicking by indigenous communities, movement entrepreneurs, and elite factions, and views human beings as social beings, prudent calculators, and choice makers. The most recent, cultural approach focuses on beliefs about one’s self and one’s social and political situation, emphasizes educational experiences within social movements and society as a whole, and sees humans as susceptible to intellectual conversions and as constantly able to reinterpret their situations. Each approach seems to partake of truth and seems to be worth keeping in mind when reconstructing the histories of social movements. The first reminds us that humans are reactive creatures who respond emotionally to changes in their environment. The second reminds us that humans contemplate consequences, benefits, and disadvantages associated with different available courses of action. The third reminds us that humans are interpretive and constantly reimagine their situations and identities. None of the approaches seems by itself to provide a “full” or “complete” account of the social movements in politics, however. Each, indeed, may be

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misleading and may give an overly deterministic, rationalistic, or voluntaristic picture of movement politics. Humans, after all, are not simply blindly terrified by harmful change, nor are they merely prudent calculators, nor are they only creative dreamers. But the assumptions about human nature and the general logic of each theoretical approach ring partly true, and therefore each approach seems potentially useful in thinking about social movements in politics. The above theoretical traditions provide me with themes and questions to use in narrating the histories of the Greens, Solidarity, Shining Path, and the Zapatistas. Initially, drawing upon the insights of the first and second waves of social-movement theorists, I look closely at large-scale social changes in Germany, Poland, Peru, and Mexico and consider the specific discontents that components of modernization—for instance, rapid urbanization and industrialization, the evolution of big enterprises, business cycles, and the vagaries of the international economic order—generated. I also look at the political histories of the four countries and consider the limits and opportunities that each political system’s constitution and patterns of intra-elite conflicts posed for peaceful, nondisruptive reform. Next, I adopt a more mid-range view of each country and, using ideas of indigenous-community theorists and identity-formation theorists, look at the legacies left by previous organized efforts toward social change. As we see, the four movements were shaped and informed by earlier grassroots actions that provided experienced leaders, organizational resources, rallying calls and meaningful symbols, and lessons about practical politics. Last, I recount each movement’s activities (political and cultural) and some of the intramovement debates that preceded and followed them. I draw upon ideas of resource-mobilization theory and that of the identity-formation theorists to help understand the diversity of goals, priorities, and strategies within each movement and thereby view movements and their leaders as autonomously generating new ideas about tactics, goals, and immediate possibilities for social change. The succeeding chapters, because they are informed by three very different theoretical traditions, will, when combined, provide multidimensional histories of the four movements. The multidimensional accounts are valuable because they help us reflect on how everyday people who do not hold public office periodically try to change their world and become agents in their own histories. From knowledge about the particulars, we can begin to generalize and form new hypotheses about how social movements in other times and places originated, developed, and interacted with other social and political forces. Furthermore, when examining others’ efforts to control their destinies, we sometimes change how we think about ourselves. From knowledge of other peoples’ struggles, we sometimes acquire self-confidence in our own political potential; we sometimes gain practical wisdom about the difficulties and advantages of different forms of nonelite rebellions and nonrebellious


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politics; and we sometimes indirectly gain fresh perspectives on our own social, political, and cultural histories. The careful study of particular social movements, in other words, is somewhat akin to looking into a mirror for the first time: we are surprised by what we discover. The brighter and sharper the mirror and the larger its surface, the more we can see of ourselves. The multidimensional accounts also may help us to be better scholars and more thoughtful citizens because we may become more circumspect whenever generalizing about other social movements. Detailed pictures of social movements remind us that they are complex phenomena affected by myriad social and political conditions. In acknowledgment of that immutable fact, we will be less likely to be satisfied with simplistic, single-sentence statements about the origins, goals, and likely behavior of movements that “make” the news we see on television and read about in newspapers. Awareness of the internal complexities of social movements can sensitize us to the difficulty of evaluation and prediction. As with other political phenomena (say, elections, court decisions, and major pieces of legislation), social movements can be maturely judged only from a balanced, multidimensional, and evolutionary perspective. The attainment of “complete balance” in political judgments may be out of reach, but by attempting to see diverse social and ideological forces working upon and within a movement, we can help reduce the always-present temptation to praise or damn without qualification. I close with a brief caveat concerning methodological challenges facing students of social movements and with mention of the research opportunities open to them. The so-called historical record with respect to social movements (even the most famous movements) is very incomplete and, in many ways, unreliable. Social movements are usually of short duration, and movement activists seldom keep extensive archives or writings. Former activists are difficult to track down, are usually preoccupied with more recent political events, and seldom are disinterested respondents during interviews. The accuracy of government and journalistic accounts of movements are not fully trustworthy. Indeed, they must be taken with a grain of salt, for their authors are generally politically motivated by a desire to demonize (and occasionally to romanticize) particular movements (Edelman 1988; Gitlin 1980). There is, in short, always more to learn about any movement’s social and political contexts, political precursors, cultural inventions, and organizational evolution. The following readings of the Greens, Solidarity, Shining Path, and the Zapatista Army of National Liberation are syntheses based on currently available information from scholarly and journalistic reports. Readers should not treat my interpretations as “definitive.” They reflect theoretical frameworks that I find useful (a different set of theoretical frameworks would result in different story lines12) and accuracy of the descriptions will require updating as more information becomes available.

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Although one of my goals is to educate readers about four social movements, I do not wish solely to convey information. I also wish to inspire potential future social-movement scholars, partly because there is so much that we do not know. I hope that the following narratives will introduce readers to some surprising and previously unknown facts that will spark curiosity about the four movements and about other movements closer to the readers’ homes. My goal is to whet readers’ appetite for studying social movements and also to help readers see movements around them as complex, puzzling, and interesting phenomena. If the reader periodically puts down the book and asks, “If this is true about the Greens, I wonder if it is also true about the movement that occurred last week in . . . ,” I will be gratified.

PART

2

West Germany’s Greens and the Politics of Party Movements

Participants in a social movement, by definition, attempt to restructure their society. They want to remove features they perceive as harmful and immoral, and to establish social institutions and values not yet widely found or accepted, save in their imaginations. Critics sometimes find such commitment to reordering dangerous and fanciful, and accuse movement activists of being unrealistic or cantankerous. Yet research shows that activists are seldom simply utopians or cranks (Clark 1984; Halebsky 1976; McAdam 1988) and often resemble other political actors. They are dreamers in part and malcontents to some extent, but they are also optimistic, reformers who articulate a vision of a better world and who believe that they have found the means to move toward its realization. What sorts of tactics and strategies do movement activists utilize? According to political-process theorists, activists select tactics and strategies partly in light of constitutional arrangements and ongoing intra-elite struggles for power. Political contexts—such as rights to assemble, and free and fair elections—encourage some types of activities and discourage others. As demonstrated throughout this book, activists within a single movement utilize diverse tactics and strategies, sometimes including armed assaults upon the state’s security personnel and wanton destruction of private property. But they do not always (or even typically) engage in violence or illegal actions. They generally first explore legal opportunities to pressure their government into abetting the desired societal transformations. Since the mid-nineteenth century, many social-movement leaders in North America and Western Europe have argued that because of their countries’ liberal-democratic constitutions, elections could function as the Archimedean fulcrum needed to move their societies. In theory, election campaigns offer an invaluable opportunity to educate citizens about issues and to inculcate new values and ways of thinking. Further, victories at the polls enable members of a movement to enter the governance process and “work from within,” so to speak, legislating major social change notwithstanding elites’ opposition.

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The U.S. Populist Party of the 1880s (Goodwyn 1978), the German Social Democratic Party of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries (Schorske 1972), and the Saskatchewan Cooperative Commonwealth Federation of the mid-twentieth century (Lipset 1950) illustrate the recurrent belief among European and North American movement activists that one can remake society through a shrewd use of electoral processes and institutions. The Green Party alliance in the Federal Republic of Germany provides yet another, more recent example of what might be called the party-movement tradition of Western radicalism. To understand the German Greens’ decision to pursue an electoral strategy, let us investigate their political situation—in particular, West Germany’s constitutional arrangements, party system, and patterns of elite consensus and conflict. In addition, let us review some recent major changes within West German society. Social-movement theorists immediately after World War II typically argued that rapid social change—especially urbanization, industrialization, and the expansion of big business—generates widespread fear, uncertainty, and anxiety, feelings that enable socialmovement activists to attract sizeable followings. If we tentatively accept their reasoning, then an examination of recent social change in Germany may provide us with clues as to how the Greens, a fledgling movement in the 1980s, attracted support.

CHAPTER

2

A World to Be Remade: Sociopolitical Circumstances of Green Politics

The Green Party movement appeared during a recession in the world capitalist economy and after Western powers, led by the United States, had rearmed the Federal Republic of Germany (thereby placing the country in a precarious position were the Cold War to heat up). German politics at the time seemed ideologically stagnant. Major parties were imitating one another rather than offering telling criticisms of the current social order and recommending imaginative reforms. Also, many West Germans were fearful about the environmental consequences of the country’s rapid industrialization and consumer culture. The confluence of these circumstances shaped the Greens’ dreams and provided an opportunity to mobilize other Germans. Toward a New Constitutional Order At the close of World War II, the Soviet Union, Britain, France, and the United States stationed troops in their treaty-stipulated zones of the defeated enemy.1 The Soviet Union occupied what later became organized as the German Democratic Republic (the GDR, or colloquially, East Germany). The other three powers controlled zones in what later became the Federal Republic of Germany (the FRG, or colloquially, West Germany). The initial overriding goal of the occupiers was to dismantle Germany’s military apparatus and Nazi Party, and thereby prevent future military aggression by the German state. The rapid escalation of the Cold War, however, altered the policy priorities of Britain and the United States. Soviet troops, after all, were stationed in Romania and Hungary, and the Soviet Union had begun to provide material aid to West Germany’s Communist Party. Wary of their wartime ally’s expansionist aims, Britain and the United States decided to remake their zones in their own image. With the somewhat grudging cooperation of France (whose leaders tended to fear a united Germany more than they feared the Soviet Union), the three governments created a new entity: the Federal Republic of Germany.

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Many government leaders in Britain, the United States, and France believed that Germany’s previous democratic regime (the Weimar Republic, 1919–1933) had been dangerously flawed, which contributed to the rise of the Nazis. The occupying countries therefore were in accord that the mistakes of the interbellum period not be repeated. What specific constitutional errors did the occupiers seek to avoid? First, many British, U.S., and French leaders contended that the Weimar Constitution had failed to establish an effective system of institutional checks and balances between the major branches of government. In theory, branch rivalry would have prevented any single party from attaining too much power. However, the Weimar Constitution gave the president and chancellor, who were not directly accountable to parliament, broadly defined emergency powers that enabled them to rule by decree whenever they deemed that the political order was in danger. During the early 1930s, President Paul von Hindenburg and his chancellors used the emergencypower provisions to impose unpopular policies, such as reductions in wages and social services. Adolf Hitler, von Hindenburg’s last chancellor, pressured the parliament into expanding the constitution’s already generous emergencypower provisions and then used the powers to outlaw rival parties, to purge the civil service of democratic sympathizers, and to restructure the labor movement. By the time of von Hindenburg’s death in 1934, the executive branch was virtually unfettered. In the opinion of many policy makers for the occupying nations, Hitler’s ability to bully parliament into expanding the constitution’s emergencypower provisions was partly a result of a second widely perceived problem with the constitution: an unqualified proportional-representation system of voting. Some countries, among them the United States and Great Britain, have a winner-take-all form of election: only the leading vote getter in an electoral district sits in the legislative body. No other candidate is seated, regardless of number of votes received. Proportional representation, however, allows nonwinning candidates a legislative presence because seats are allocated according to the proportion of the vote that each party receives. For example, a party winning 3 percent of the ballots cast in a federal election might be entitled to 3 percent of the seats in the federal legislature. (The Nazis, for example, were able to enter the Weimar parliament and wreak havoc even though they had won only 2.6 percent and 3 percent of the ballots cast in the December 1924 and 1928 elections, respectively.) According to defenders of proportional representation, it contributes to political stability because almost every well-organized minority interest is represented in parliament and thereby has a voice in the political system. However, many Western politicians and diplomats in the 1940s believed that proportional representation also facilitated the Nazis’ seizure of power (Rogers 1995: 119–38). According to this line of argument, during the 1920s and 1930s between twelve and twenty-four parties held seats in the Reichstag (Germany’s parliament). The small parties successfully blocked one another’s legislative initiatives despite widespread unemployment and

A World to Be Remade

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the fact that annual inflation rate for 1924 alone topped 26 billion percent (Dalton 1993: 18). Angry about the unproductive parliamentary infighting, large numbers of voters began to cast their ballots for parties that opposed the constitutional status quo. By the early 1930s, parties that openly advocated the dismantling of parliament held a majority of the seats within that institution. The Nazis, in particular, attracted voters by (1) denouncing the irresponsibility of other democratically elected leaders, and (2) blaming international conspiracies and domestic minorities, such as Gypsies, homosexuals, and Jews, for the country’s current social ills. The policy-making difficulties arising in proportional representation thus propelled a dangerously antidemocratic party to power. (Many scholars today see a weak and indirect causal link between the Weimar Republic’s system of proportional representation and the Nazis’ rise. For different sides of this historiographic debate, see Bracher (1969), Hermens (1951; 1984), Lakeman (1984), Powell (1982: 74–174), and Smith (1984: 78–81, 94–7).) In many occupiers’ opinions, the Nazis also benefited from a third constitutional weakness: a highly politicized judiciary. Throughout the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, conservative political parties and business elites had used court decisions to protect the privileges of old wealth. Judges routinely allowed the government to suspend the civil liberties of liberal and socialist reformers. During Hitler’s chancellorship, judges once again disregarded legal precedents that ran counter to Hitler’s decrees and allowed the government to ban non-Nazi parties and to seize Jewish property. The leaders of the British, U.S., and French governments bore these constitutional weaknesses in mind when “requesting” (read: insisting) that representatives from each occupied West German regional state (or Land ) write a new constitution for the non-Soviet zones of occupation. Many German political leaders were ambivalent about this charge. Most hoped that one day soon the two Germanys would be reunited and feared that a constitution would institutionalize political differences between them and make future unification much more problematic. The representatives, as a compromise, offered to draft not a constitution per se but a “Basic Law” that would function as a provisional constitutional framework until the zones became one nation. The Parliamentary Council (the assembly that was to design the Basic Law) attempted to placate the occupiers by designing a federal political order that apportioned government authority among ten states (or Länder) and the semiautonomous city-state of Berlin. Under the Basic Law, the Land cabinets and parliaments popularly elected by the citizens of each state were to be given primary legislative authority in education, transportation, social services, and environmental protection. In addition, each Land government was to implement the vast majority of domestic laws made by the federal government, an arrangement that gave the Land governments considerable discretionary power. Land governments also were to appoint representatives to a federal council (the Bundesrat) that had the right to

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review and veto all proposed federal legislation affecting the “material interest” of the Länder. The Parliamentary Council also established the so-called 5-percent rule: to gain representation in a legislative body, a party must receive at least 5 percent of the ballots cast. The requirement was designed to impede the access into government of small hate-oriented parties that represented the views of handfuls of voters. Finally, the writers of the Basic Law, following the occupiers’ directives, created a constitutional court with unusually broad authority to decide explicitly political questions, such as the limits of the federal government’s authority vis-à-vis the Länder and the content of citizens’ rights. Like the Supreme Court of the United States, the Federal Constitutional Court had authority to declare laws that violated the Basic Law as null and void. In addition, the constitutional court had the authority to identify and outlaw political parties whose words and actions gave evidence of antidemocratic intentions. Economic Expansion and Stagnation Britain, the United States, and France also tried to influence the shape and pace of West Germany’s economic recovery. World War II had devastated Germany’s transportation system and destroyed much of the housing stock. Hundreds of thousands of Germans were hungry, lacked shelter, and could not find work. Yet, political leaders of Britain, the United States, and France were ambivalent about helping to rebuild the German economy because of the Germans’ purported propensity for war. Indeed, initially many Western officials hoped to cripple Germany’s industrial base permanently. U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, for example, advocated the transformation of Germany into an agricultural society (Black et al. 1992: 60–1). The United States and Britain, however, soon realized that the continued impoverishment of West Germans was producing heavy burdens for U.S. and British taxpayers, whose money was being spent on supporting desperately hungry and unemployed people in the occupied zones. France, however, insisted that German economic redevelopment be slow and carefully monitored. During the late 1940s, conflicts of interest and opinion among the three Western allies came to a head. Britain, having wearied of helping the United States do global battle against communism, announced that it could not continue to provide its current levels of aid to West Germany, Greece, Turkey, and other nations; West Germany would have to carry its own economic weight and develop as quickly as possible. The United States generally agreed with the British position, which provoked public outcries and demonstrations in France. The 1947 Marshall Plan temporarily resolved the conflict of interests. The United States offered interested European governments large grants to


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be spent on American capital goods, raw materials, and foodstuffs. The arrangement enabled American producers to sell abroad and allowed both Germany and its former enemies to import necessities. West Germany began to produce industrial and manufactured goods for North American and Western European markets. The Korean War of the early 1950s increased the international demand for German industrial goods. Shortly afterword, seven Western European countries, including West Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Italy, established a common market, which greatly reduced tariffs and legal barriers to the movement of labor and capital among the signatories. The arrangement helped West Germany’s economy (because of that country’s shortages of raw materials and its comparative disadvantage in food production) and provided West German companies with new sales opportunities. By the early 1960s, West Germany was Europe’s predominant economic power in terms of industrial production and the world’s leading exporter of manufactured goods. Its gross national product grew 51 percent between 1961 and 1970 and unemployment averaged a mere 1 percent (Katzenstein 1989: 104–5). During the 1950s and 1960s, average household income grew nearly sevenfold (Dalton 1993: 82). Luxury items of the early 1950s, such as automobiles, became widely affordable. Political leaders were proud of the “economic miracle.” The longevity of the economic boom had several social consequences. Because jobs multiplied primarily in cities, residential patterns shifted. During the beginning of the boom years, approximately a third of the population lived in the countryside; by 1990, only a fifteenth did. The agricultural proportion of the workforce correspondingly dropped from 25 percent in 1950 to 5 percent in 1981 (Conradt 1986: 22; Dalton 1993: 83). The urbanization of West Germany coincided with and contributed to the expansion of mass media. By the early 1960s, about two-thirds of adults watched evening televised news, and three-fifths read daily newspapers (Conradt 1986: 40). Most radio and television broadcasts were (and are) regulated and managed by nonprofit public corporations, but the print media were (and remain) privately owned and heavily concentrated in the hands of a few companies and families. Mergers and consolidations in the newspaper industry shrank the number of independent editorial staffs from 225 in the mid-1950s to fewer than 120 in the mid-1980s (Dalton 1993: 170). Perhaps the most controversial of the independent publishing houses was (and is) the so-called Springer chain, headed by Axel Springer. Approximately 60 percent of the newspaper-reading population turned to magazines and newspapers (including West Germany’s one major nationwide tabloid, the Bild-Zeitung) produced by the chain (Conradt 1986: 40). Although apolitical during the late 1950s, Springer became highly critical of leftist politics, decried restrictions on free trade and possible reunification with East Germany and, through editorial involvement with his publications, regularly portrayed protesters derogatorily and as dupes of international communism (Conradt 1986: 41; Dalton 1993: 170, 178).

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Despite the migration to cities, urban jobs soon exceeded available workers. Business leaders during the early 1960s began to argue that more workers (especially low-wage workers) were needed if the economy were not to sputter and contract. Many outspoken business leaders argued that constant labor shortage was contributing to excessively high wage levels, which both reduced profit margins and fueled inflation. Eventually, the country’s international competitiveness would deteriorate, which (business spokespersons argued) would lead to painful domestic recessions, layoffs, and closings. The West German government tried to allay the fears of the business community by opening the borders to foreign laborers, especially from Turkey and southern Europe. The number of immigrant workers increased from 100,000 in 1957 to 2.5 million in 1973. In larger cities such as Hamburg and Frankfurt, foreigners made up as much as 20 percent of all workers by the late 1970s (and perhaps as much as 40 percent of all manual workers) (Conradt 1986: 69; Katzenstein 1987: 214). Most West German officials and citizens viewed the immigrants as temporary “guests” who would lead quiet, frugal lives in Germany and then return with nest eggs to their native countries. They would perform the menial, arduous, lowpaying work that the better-paid and better-educated West Germans could afford to avoid. Meanwhile, smaller payrolls would entail less cost, increase profits, and expand production. Everyone would benefit. Many foreign workers chose not to live out the unwritten “guest worker” scenario, however, and stayed on for more than a decade, taking advantage of the amenities of West German cities, raising families, and becoming a permanent feature of the social landscape. By 1981, 4.7 million foreigners lived in West Germany, and more than a third of the children born in some cities were to families of foreign workers (Conradt 1986: 70; Katzenstein 1987: 216–18, 230). During the 1960s, big business also voiced concern about possible upcoming shortages of skilled and white-collar workers in the increasingly automated economy and warned that unless the workforce became more technically knowledgeable prosperity would end. The government moved to overcome the projected labor shortfall by dramatically expanding the postsecondary educational system, by increasing subsidies for students, and by opening universities to applicants from a broader range of social backgrounds. The number of universities increased from 112 in 1950 to 735 in 1980, and the number of students in postsecondary schools increased 500 percent between 1950 and 1975 (Dalton 1993: 83; Katzenstein 1987: 319). West Germany had an unusually well-educated workforce by the close of the 1970s: almost a half of all wage earners held white-collar jobs (Conradt 1986: 24). A new working class had been born—one that did no factory manual labor and that expected a materially comfortable lifestyle in exchange for years of study. To nurture the economy, officials of the federal and Land governments since the 1950s had met regularly with leaders of large business and labor


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associations to discuss possible legislation regarding taxes, land use, budget expenditures, factory safety, and consumer protection. As well as official consultations, there were meetings in private quarters with no minutes distributed to the general public. None of the participants viewed the meetings as inappropriate in a democracy. After all, they declared, such cooperation contributes to an overall healthy economic climate, which benefits not only a few plutocrats and unionized workers but the entire society. Some West Germans were critical, nonetheless, and argued that the interests of smaller and less organized groups—such as consumers, the chronically unemployed, guest workers, and retirees—were not being fully considered in economic decisions made behind closed doors. Public opinion surveys suggest that a majority of West Germans believed that the political order was “on the side of the rich” (Conradt 1986: 29), a view that may have contained a kernel of truth. Economic historian Eric Owen Smith (1983: 188) contends that capital ownership in the 1970s was “highly concentrated”; “only 20 percent of the households” owned more than 85 percent of all productive property (business assets and shares). He also notes that “income inequality was generally more marked in 1950 than in 1928 or 1913” (1983: 29). During the 1960s, West Germany’s average annual growth rate slowed slightly—to 5 percent—and the rate of inflation began to creep upward. Citing inflationary pressures, businesses signed conservative three-year wage contracts that ultimately cut the purchasing power of workers (Allen 1992: 266). Wildcat and general strikes, including strikes by immigrant workers, occurred in significant numbers for the first time since the postwar occupation. Still, the economy remained basically healthy: in a typical year only 223,000 workers could not find jobs, and the decade’s average unemployment rate was less than 1 percent (Conradt 1986: 26). Then came the 1970s, when the economic order that the government had once hailed “a miracle” fell to earth. In the international oil crisis of 1973 and 1974, oil prices quadrupled, rendering exports much costlier. At the same time, new manufacturing competitors materialized in East Asia. The country’s annual GNP growth rate dropped from 5 percent in 1973 to 0 percent in 1974, and to ⫺2 percent the next year (Pulzer 1995: 189). It rose briefly in the late 1970s, but in the first three years of the 1980s was just 0.8 percent (Conradt 1986: 26). Heavy industry was especially hard hit: employment in the Saar steel industry fell from 22,000 in 1978 to 12,500 in 1985 (Dyson 1989: 162). Between 1970 and 1976, West Germany suffered a net loss of 1.3 million jobs (Kolinsky 1984: 173). Official unemployment for the nation rose from under 1 percent in 1970 to almost 5 percent in 1975 to more than 9 percent in the early 1980s (Pulzer 1995: 189; Owen Smith 1989: 53–5, 73). By 1983, 2.5 million people (approximately 10 percent of the official workforce) were “pounding the pavement” (Conradt 1986: 27). The economic stagnation had political repercussions. In January 1970, unions for the first time brought their own economic projection data to

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meetings with business and government leaders, and normal consultations between government, business, and labor became less cordial. Government officials and business people wanted to trim labor costs. Workers perceived business as not making equal sacrifices and argued that mismanagement, not consulting workers about production issues, and excessive executive perks were the primary causes of economic hard times. By the late 1970s, large-scale labor strikes were more common than at any time in West Germany’s postwar history (although strike incidence remained low compared to other Western European countries). Industrial workers demanded both significant pay increases to keep up with inflation and shorter workweeks as a way to combat spiraling unemployment. The period of overt industrial strife symbolically culminated in a two-month strike by printers and metalworkers, the largest strike in the history of the Federal Republic.2 To revive the economy, successive federal and Land governments in the late 1970s and 1980s tried to freeze the size of the public sector and to cut tax levels and thereby enable businesses to retain a larger proportion of their revenues and consumers to have more discretionary funds. The reforms were largely rhetorical: few reductions in public services took place. Still, the new budget controls meant that teachers, social workers, and other public-sector employees no longer could expect significant improvement in income, career, or lifestyle. Moreover, hundreds of thousands of postsecondary students preparing for white-collar careers saw their hopes dashed as doors closed. The share of university graduates finding publicsector jobs tumbled from 60 percent in the early 1970s to 25 percent by the end of the decade, and unemployment rates among university graduates began to converge with the high unemployment rates among workers in general (Katzenstein 1987: 321–2). White- and blue-collar workers were disillusioned not only by the economy’s downturn but by the environmental costs of rapid industrialization. The dense concentrations of industry alongside waterways meant unsightly waste, death of wildlife, and unusable water. Factory smoke led to deforestation. As cars multiplied, so did urban smog. The rising demand for electricity posed a difficult choice: the construction of controversial nuclear energy plants in a very densely populated country or the continued reliance on dirty coal-consuming plants. During the 1970s, the government launched an ambitious nuclearpower program, in the hope of decreasing dependency on foreign oil producers, cutting energy costs, and reviving the then sluggish economy. Government spokespersons asserted that nuclear power would not only reduce dependency on Middle East powers but make manufacturing less costly and cleaner. Fresh in many West German minds, however, was a lesson from the 1979 Three-Mile Island accident in the United States: nuclear power was inescapably dangerous for all people and highly profitable for a few energy companies. Meanwhile, best-selling books by highly reputable scientists, such as the Club of Rome’s report Global 2000, intensified many


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citizens’ awareness of an ecological dark side to West Germany’s economic miracle (Markovits and Gorski 1993: 80, 132). Roughly thirty years of economic growth at a pace unprecedented in European economic history arguably had produced irreversible damage that thus far had foolishly been downplayed. Remilitarization Economic hard times were not the only problem facing West Germany. Its foreign policies were stirring some discontent. In 1979, NATO’s leadership and West Germany’s government agreed to station U.S. Cruise and Pershing II missiles on West German soil in response to the earlier placement of 300 SS-20 missiles in the Soviet Union. The stationing of nuclear missiles generated opposition not only among pacifists and other leftists who did not feel threatened by the Soviet bloc but also among nationalists worried about West Germany’s sovereignty. The roots of the dispute lay, once again, in decisions made during the postwar occupation. Shortly after the formal conclusion of World War II, the United States became worried about the military capabilities of the Soviet Union and worked quietly to rearm West Germany. Not surprisingly, the semisecret U.S. efforts alarmed groups both inside and outside West Germany. French and British leaders recalled the German aggression of two world wars. One French parliamentarian declared, “I don’t know if they [German armed forces] would frighten the Russians, but, by God, they’d frighten me” (Dalton 1993: 392). Many West Germans, mindful of the past, also opposed remilitarization, the presence of foreign troops, and the stores of unknown quantities of weaponry. Peace demonstrations proliferated in the early 1950s (see chapter 3), and some groups called for referenda as a legal method of challenging the ongoing, more-or-less clandestine rearming. The government chastised the groups advocating referenda, saying their proposals were, in effect, “attacking the constitutional order,” “threatening peace,” and “working in the service of communism” (Hülsberg 1988: 33). Despite the hubbub, the United States indefatigably pursued the rearming of West Germany, the Korean War redoubling its resolve. Many American foreign-policy experts saw the invasion of South Korea by North Korea as a diversionary move masterminded by Moscow. If U.S. troops were redeployed in East Asia, a successful Soviet invasion of Western Europe could be a fait accompli. The U.S. proposals for rearmament provided a window of opportunity to the many German politicos who steadfastly opposed continued occupation. Using military bases and allies in central Europe as bargaining chips, Germany’s leaders succeeded in negotiating, in addition to economic support, an official end to the state of war with Great Britain, the United States, and France. By 1955, the military occupation was terminated, and West Germany’s sovereignty was recognized.

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The Western powers, nonetheless, retained the right to station troops and weapons within the country. The three former occupiers further specified that West Germany could introduce a military draft and create a sizable standing army, conditional upon the understanding that in time of war, all West German forces would be under the supreme commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). For better or worse, Germany’s foreign policy would be thenceforth linked to that of NATO and the United States. Party Convergence While West Germany’s economic and environmental difficulties unfolded and its entangling alliances became problematic, its party system atrophied. The economic programs of the major parties, which during the occupation had been ideologically distinct, had been converging for several decades. By the 1970s none of the major parties was proposing a distinctive solution to the souring of the country’s once widely lauded economic model (Dyson 1989; Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 25–9).3 The era of rapid economic growth (roughly 1950–1970) had coincided with the development of what many call the “two-and-a-half party system.”4 In 1949, fifteen parties had received enough votes to be represented in the federal parliament—a high-water mark. All but three—the CDU/CSU, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), and the Social Democratic Party (SPD)—would disappear by the close of the 1950s. After 1953, the SPD and the CDU/CSU regularly controlled about 80 percent of the seats in the federal parliament. However, apart from 1957 to 1961, neither was able to win a majority of the seats. To pass key legislation, each had to form coalitions, once with each other but more often with the FDP, which normally received between 8 and 12 percent of the ballots cast in federal elections. In exchange for its support, the FDP received concessions, usually a combination of ministerial appointments and support for some of its own legislative agenda. With FDP support, the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) governed West Germany from 1949 through 1957 and then ruled alone for four years. The CDU/CSU coined the phrase “social market economy” to describe its economic cum moral vision: a synthesis of Christian compassion for the less fortunate with hardy defense of individual initiative and competence from state regulation. Leaders of both the CDU/CSU and the FDP favored free-market and free-trade policies and close cooperation between West Germany and the United States. The FDP, however, was generally hostile to state-sponsored social services and more conscientious about protecting civil liberties from the state than was the other member of the coalition. As we have noted, the West German economy during the 1950s surpassed the growth rates of almost every other Western industrialized country.


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In 1955, for example, the rate was an almost unbelievable 15 percent. The CDU/CSU reaped the electoral rewards of a booming economy—especially in the 1957 elections, when it secured 50.3 percent of the vote. This was the first (and only) time in West German history that a party received an absolute majority of the ballots cast in a parliamentary election. From there it was a downhill slide for the CDU/CSU because of ageing leadership, the growing popularity in the 1960s of a small right-wing nationalist party (the National Democratic Party, the NPD), a recession in the mid-1960s, and the government’s heavy-handed treatment of journalists critical of it. The CDU/CSU’s decision in the late 1960s to raise taxes to cover a growing public debt prompted the FDP to resign from the coalition government. Then, to almost all observers’ surprise, the CDU/CSU decided to form a new coalition government with the SPD, the second largest party in the federal parliament and hitherto the CDU/CSU’s primary electoral rival. Having been excluded from the federal government during the late 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s, the SPD had undergone profound ideological changes. Founded in the 1860s, it had originally adopted a working-class, socialist ideology. Its most famous leaders and chief theoreticians argued that it was possible for a working-class party to win a majority of seats in parliament and then through the democratic process gradually pass legislation that would bring about a socialist order. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, many observers had expected the SPD to become the ruling party of West Germany partly because of (1) the acute postwar economic suffering and (2) the SPD’s moral prestige for its steadfast resistance to the Nazis. The immediate success of Germany’s export-oriented industrialization caught the leaders of the SPD unawares. Repeatedly unable to garner more than a third of the ballots cast, they decided in 1959 to assume some of the CDU’s more popular economic positions and to discard the party’s traditional revolutionary ideas (including proposals for extensive nationalization of industry and for systematic state planning of the economy). In an ideological about-face spokespersons endorsed free trade, pledged to preserve a modified market economy, and declared support for greater economic and military cooperation with the West. It was a shift from Marx to Keynes to enlarge its electoral base by attracting middle-class voters. The SPD would no longer confine itself to promoting the interests of industrial workers alone. The performance of the CDU/CSU-SPD coalition government greatly benefited the Social Democrats. Many voters began to see the SPD as reliable and effective, and credited SPD economic ministers for leading West Germany out of the short but sobering recession of 1966–1967. Many also liked the SPD’s endorsement of a nuclear nonproliferation treaty and its efforts to improve East-West relations. In the 1969 federal elections, the SPD finally broke out of its “30-percent ghetto”; it received 43 percent of the vote and formed a coalition government with the FDP as the junior partner. The series of such coalitions would continue until 1982. During the 1970s, the CDU/CSU criticized the SPD-FDP coalition governments for being soft on terrorists and wildcat strikers; for being

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unable to pull West Germany out of its economic doldrums; and for naively trusting the Soviet Union. The SPD-FDP governments were also criticized from the left (in particular, by a dissident group of socialist democrats who belonged to the SPD’s youth organization, the Working Group of Young Socialists, JUSO) for supporting U.S. policies in Vietnam, for not supporting union demands for increases in real wages, and for cutting social welfare programs while increasing defense expenditures. As the economic crisis deepened in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the SPD-FDP coalition governments failed to discover solutions to the sluggish economy and rising unemployment. The governments, leaning on past successes, incrementally changed public policies to contain social expenditures, to seek greater U.S. economic aid in exchange for West German cooperation with U.S. foreign policy aims, to promote nuclear power, and to encourage the development of industrial exports through selected tax incentives and grants. The CDU/CSU, now the loyal opposition, proposed essentially the same policies, although the CDU/CSU favored more stringent limits on wage increases. Many voters—especially unemployed citizens and young adults—concluded that neither side offered a real choice. Political scientists Gene Frankland and Donald Schoonmaker (1992: 26) later wrote that relative to economic prescriptions, environmental insensitivity, and pro-U.S. foreign policy, the SPD and the CDU/CSU appeared as “Tweedledum and Tweedledee.” Conclusion The Greens emerged in West Germany during a period of economic stagnation and novel social changes. Some developments were of the type that social-movement theorists of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s had emphasized: rapid urbanization, growing market fluctuations and employment insecurity, and the consolidation of big business. But those theorists had not anticipated several other changes, such as the radical expansion of higher education, the influx of immigrant workers, and widespread pollution. Geographic uprootedness, economic uncertainty, and urban loneliness were evident, but there were other problems as well, such as new dangers to health, exploitation of immigrants and other blue-collar workers, and scarce employment for university students. The constitutional and political circumstances facing the Greens partly favored the formation of a new party. The federal political structure and its modified system of proportional representation—with a relatively low threshold of 5 percent of the vote—offered multiple opportunities for a social movement to launch an electoral campaign and perhaps win a seat. The three major parties—the CDU/CSU, FDP, and SPD—held strikingly similar visions of the processes and desirability of economic growth, the desirability of nuclear power, and the appropriateness of a pro-U.S. foreign policy. A major left-wing party, advocating radical transformation of society,


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did not exist. The major parties, instead, celebrated the impressive increase in Germany’s economic productivity between 1950 and 1970, and were calm before the growing cries of discontent. Although the 5 percent requirement for elections was somewhat daunting (since the end of the 1950s, no challenger to the three major parties had managed to win at least 5 percent of the vote in national elections) and although the private news media was largely hostile to leftist politics, perhaps space was available for a new party that would openly question the status quo.

CHAPTER

3


Some social-movement theorists—especially those whose approach is either an indigenous-community or a popular-culture approach—have described social movements as the offspring of earlier forms of nonelite politics that furnished prerequisites for a new movement. Several journalists and scholars who study German politics, among them Kim Holmes (1983), Werner Hülsberg (1988), Andrei Markovits and Philip Gorski (1993), and Elim Papadakis (1984), have observed such cross-pollination processes at work in the case of the West German Greens. As Markovits and Gorski (1993: 81) put it, the Green Party movement [d]oes not lend itself easily to metaphors of diffusion and intensification . . . did not “spread” from a central location . . . or a central organization. . . . Rather it possessed the character of a “crazy quilt,” gradually sewn together out of a multitude of smaller leftovers and scraps of “new materials.” According to writers of this persuasion, before the Green party movement became official in 1980, other groups of nonelites had tried to change German society and politics. Rearmament, the Social Democrats’ acceptance of a social market economy, and West Germany’s support of U.S. foreign policies, including military involvement in Vietnam, all had provoked petition drives, street blockades and battles, or other forms of protest not sanctioned by political or economic elites. The downturn in the once robust economy and the pollution of the once pleasing landscape prompted action by angry laborers and citizens associations. Meanwhile, in the country’s booming cities, squatter communities, student neighborhoods, and feminist cultural networks generated an alternative set of social experiments that rejected the “German model” of economic development. These diverse challenges to the postwar status quo provided the Green party movement with much of its program, most of its ambivalence toward established parties, and a great deal of its organizational resources. Moreover, many leaders of the Greens had participated in earlier collective actions and brought to the new party their earlier perspectives on and


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prejudices about what West German politics could and should become. Taking seriously the metaphor of a social movement “born” from earlier nonelite politics, this chapter looks at the diverse social and political groups whose ideals, agendas, methods, personnel, and organizational networks the Greens inherited. Evolution of Politics for Peace As noted in chapter 2, during the 1950s, groups of concerned citizens protested the rearmament of West Germany. A few groups also called for immediate reunification with East Germany. Protestant churches and, to a much lesser extent, Catholic clergy played key roles in funding and organizing the protests. Activists from the trade union federation, the SPD, and the Communist Party (which would be declared unconstitutional by the Federal Constitutional Court in 1956 and ordered to disband) also played a role. By the close of the 1950s, rallies and demonstrations of over 100,000 people were taking place. A few trade unionists called for a general strike against nuclear weapons, but most labor leaders were preoccupied with domestic economic problems, such as protecting jobs from breakneck automation (Cooper 1988: 84–5; Hülsberg 1988: 35; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 43). Initially, leaders of the SPD opposed the public marches and proposed political strikes on the grounds that they were politically counterproductive and helped conservatives to redirect popular concerns from economic inequalities and hardships to issues like lawlessness and social disorder. In 1957, the SPD, facing an upcoming federal election, decided to publicly oppose rearmament but avoid declarations of support for the street demonstrations. Rearmament appeared to be an unpopular policy, especially in light of recent revelations of semisecret negotiations between the Christian Democratic government and the United States on the stationing of nuclear warheads. The antiarmament stance was unavailing during the campaign. The Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and their allies in the print media effectively painted all critics of rearmament as communist sympathizers. And the public demonstrations frightened many middle-class voters, who read accounts in Springer’s newspapers and magazines that routinely equated pacifist with communist. After 1957, the SPD briefly attempted to regain a following among the propeace constituency and cosponsored the so-called Battle Against Nuclear Death campaign. Many younger party members, delighted by its new interest in peace politics and street activity, were shocked when the party suddenly withdrew from the campaign in 1959—the same year that party’s leadership decided to jettison its traditional socialist rhetoric and to recognize the effectiveness and desirability of a market economy. A number of the younger party activists dissolved their ties with the SPD and joined nonpartisan organizations opposed to rearmament, such as the

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Easter March of the Opponents of Atomic Weapons, headed by a dynamic Protestant priest in Hamburg. After the influx of former SPD members, the Easter March organization began to disseminate neo-Marxist critiques about how capitalism spawns militarism; changed its name to the more secular-sounding Campaign for Disarmament and then to Campaign for Democracy and Disarmament; and cosponsored activities with tiny communist associations and clubs (especially Trotskyist and Maoist) and with the left wings of the SPD and the trade union federation. The tone of the annual marches and rallies also changed. No longer quiet and sedate but loud and festive, they grew increasingly popular among young adults. In 1960, only 1,000 people participated in Easter marches and rallies; in 1964, 130,000 (Burns and van der Will 1988: 91–5; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 47–9). Most veterans of the short-lived Battle Against Nuclear Death campaign remained in the SPD, however, believing that they could rekindle the party’s radical and proletarian traditions. Many belonged to the Socialist German Students’ League (SDS), the SPD organization established in 1954 to recruit and train new party members from campus milieus. During the late 1950s, SDS leaders repeatedly chided the older party leaders for abandoning the SPD’s original principles and anticapitalist program. The elders, in turn, found many of the activities of the SDS politically embarrassing, such as its participation in a Congress against Nuclear Weapons conference at which known members of quasi-illegal communist splinter parties were present. Between 1959 and 1961, the SPD severed its relationship with the SDS, and the latter turned to leftist university professors for organizational support and ideological direction. Herbert Marcuse, in particular, intrigued members of the SDS with his controversial theory that workers in advanced industrialized societies had been rendered apolitical and nonrevolutionary by their high incomes and mass culture. Other sources of inspiration were the guerrilla campaigns of Che Guevara and Franz Fanon’s anti-imperialist indictment Wretched of the Earth (Burns and van der Will 1988: 19–21; Hülsberg 1988: 39; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 50–1). According to a growing number of SDS theoreticians, such as Rudi Dutschke, only students and other “decommodified” groups (economically marginalized groups, such as prisoners, the chronically unemployed, and Third World peasants) acutely suffered from market economies and lacked the material comforts and cultural pacifiers—such as television—that made large-scale production, regimented working life, and daily toil at home bearable. The marginalized populations alone could see the need for a complete overthrow of capitalism and for starting a radically new social, economic, and cultural order. Other classes, such as industrial workers and white-collar professionals, were rendered conservative by their high levels of consumption, stable incomes, electronic gadgets, and television and other forms of mass entertainment. Radicals, therefore, should say farewell to the traditional industrial working class as a social force capable of transforming capitalism. Instead, they should seek alliances with the decommodified population not yet fully integrated into an affluent capitalist labor market.


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Extraparliamentary Protests During the late 1960s, the somewhat small SDS (only slightly more than 2,000 members at the height of its popularity) and the larger Campaign for Democracy and Disarmament joined forces and organized a series of protests that scholars have come to call the Extraparliamentary Movement or APO. The immediate trigger of the protests was the government’s tacit support of U.S. military intervention in Vietnam and the government’s increasing repression of protesters. The Vietnam War dismayed West Germans, young and old. Many feared that they would be dragged into an escalating military conflict between the United States and the communist world, and that if a war broke out between the superpowers, West Germany would become a central battlefield. By 1966, demonstrations against the Vietnam War had fanned out from academic communities in Berlin (a longtime hothouse for antiwar politics, partly because Berliners were exempt from conscription and therefore the city attracted a large number of pacifist youths) to university towns and large cities across West Germany. Traffic intersections were blocked; buildings were occupied; and teach-ins were held. These activities coincided with a growing level of labor unrest, especially among immigrant workers, as West Germany struggled with its first serious postwar recession. Unused to popular contestation, the Christian Democratic government pushed for passage of emergency-power laws to suspend constitutionally guaranteed civil liberties, such as the right to assembly, whenever domestic tranquility was seriously threatened. Once the SPD joined the CDU/ CSU’s governing coalition in 1966, it did not want to appear light-handed as regards lawlessness and began to express support for the CDU/CSU’s emergency-power legislation. In the hope of dissuading the SPD, trade union leaders, peace organizations, and the SDS organized numerous mass demonstrations during the fall and winter of 1967–1968. The federal parliament nonetheless approved the constitutional amendments in May 1968. Many members of the SDS were taken aback by the SPD’s apparent indifference to violations of civil rights, even before the passage of the emergency-power laws. In the summer of 1967, for example, police in West Berlin fatally shot a young bystander during a demonstration against the shah of Iran. More than 100,000 youths protested the police’s behavior. The Christian Democratic prime minister refused to express regret or acknowledge administrative wrongdoing. The SPD, perhaps because it was fearful of the electoral consequences of siding with what the Springer newspapers were calling “rampaging youths,” remained silent. Angered by the government’s intransigence and the SPD’s silence, some younger members of the SDS argued that a state-sanctioned murder had occurred and that, in consequence, illegal and even violent resistance was justified. The conservative press fanned middle-class fears of long-haired radicals. In April 1968, Dutschke, the charismatic SDS leader, was shot on

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West Berlin’s main boulevard. Thousands of youths and workers marched side by side, protesting the near-fatal assault. Some blocked the offices of the Springer conglomerate and engaged in vandalism. Soon demonstrators and police clashed. Bloody street battles spread throughout West Germany, and at least two demonstrators were killed. Shortly after the Dutschke shooting, 60,000 people, including a large number of unionists, marched in Bonn against the impending passage of the emergency-power legislation. Trade unionists, anti–Vietnam War activists, students, and professors argued that passage would endanger much-needed public expression of collective dissent. After the bills had passed, many activists concluded that the SPD had proven itself irredeemably corrupt and thirsty for power only. Some even speculated that the SPD had earlier secretly agreed to support the emergency-power legislation in exchange for inclusion in the governing coalition. Extraparliamentary Politics in Decline The story of the extraparliamentary Left after events of the spring and summer of 1968 is one of rapid fragmentation and novel experimentation. Passage of the emergency-power laws convinced a sizable number of the street protesters that West Germany’s politics was hopelessly antidemocratic, militaristic, and socially unjust. Some retreated bitterly into personalistic and even mystical adventures. Hashish, vegetarianism, and self-cleansing seemed to be more productive ways to live one’s life. In the words of one disillusioned sixty-eighter: “What does Vietnam have to do with me? I’ve got orgasm problems!” (Markovits and Gorski 1993: 82). Other former extraparliamentary activists, who came to be informally known as “spontis,” lived in tiny utopian communities within cities, where they thought spontaneous humanistic impulses—not the dogmas of radicals or the repressive norms of conventional society—would guide human relations. Pleasure and unpredictability were celebrated as a new summum bonum—a way of life far superior to nongratifying, mind-numbing careers in enormous public and private bureaucracies and factories. Slogans of the often playful-sounding spontis included “A bit more pleasure principle can’t hurt!” and “Experiment without knowing where you’ll land!” (Markovits and Gorski 1993: 85–6). Participants in the sponti subculture instinctively explored alternative ways of deciding public issues that, in their opinion, went significantly beyond traditional bourgeois and Marxist conceptions. Many lived in communal apartment complexes, with all members equally sharing chores, furnishings, and purchases. Group policies were decided through face-to-face discussion and unrestricted debate. Self-declared spokespersons often described their small-group self-government as “grassroots democracy,” “spontaneist,” and “undogmatic,” and as superior to the two-and-a-half party system by which the country was currently being governed. Except for the experiments in face-to-face democracy there


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were few identifiable goals or strategies for change in what might be called “sponti politics.” Typical group activities were street dancing and impromptu presentations of flowers to police, often undertaken with no aim other than to reject conformity and Germany’s consumer culture. By 1975, groups loosely associated with the sponti subculture had large followings on campuses, where they attempted to counter communist and socialist-inspired student organizations. A less colorful but nonetheless creative and socially critical youth subculture emerged alongside the spontis during the mid-1970s. “Biobakeries,” cooperative businesses, collective day-care centers, and leftist periodicals mushroomed in quarters of cities where people between the ages of 15 and 25 were concentrated. Alternative movie houses, coffeehouses, bars, and bookstores also sprang up. The youths’ understandings and interpretations of public events differed considerably from the images commonly found in the Springer-dominated news media (Hülsberg 1988: 73–5; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 83–5). Illegal squatter settlements also materialized during the middle and late 1970s, when legions of unemployed youths took shelter in vacant buildings. By the early 1980s, more than 500 “squatments” existed in fifty urban areas (Conradt 1986: 227). Berlin’s young squatters had been seizing empty buildings for a decade and were living in almost 160 apartment houses that had been scheduled for demolition. Battles between police and thousands of illegal squatters and their allies persisted for more than four years (Burns and van der Will 1988: 175–8; Eckert and Willems 1986: 130–3, 141–2; Papadakis 1984: 123–30). Contemporaneous with these various experiments in alternative lifestyles and living arrangements was another distinctively post-APO political phenomenon: terrorist organizations (Burns and van der Will 1988: 55–8, 109–11, 117–18; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 65–75). Throughout the 1970s, terrorist groups bombed department stores, bridges, and other infrastructure, and killed and kidnapped government leaders, industrialists, and bankers. As did many spontis, the terrorists often had histories of involvement in the SDS and, ironically, in the pacifist-inspired antinuclear-arms groups of the 1960s. Disillusioned by the parliamentary parties’ foreign and domestic policies, the terrorists saw violence as the last means available for achieving change. In theory, only shocking violence could ignite a widespread rebellion, either by inspiring others to stand up to the government or by provoking the government into acts of brutality that would reveal its true nature. Injustice and oppression obviously existed; the masses just needed to be shown how to fight. The crest of the terrorist wave passed during the last years of the decade, although politically motivated murders and sabotage of nuclear-power plants and military bases continued well into the 1980s. The kidnappings and murders neither revolutionized nor mobilized the populace. The violence did, however, prompt the Social Democratic government, already sensitive to charges by the conservative news media of being soft on radicals, into

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supporting tough security measures that gave police the legal right to ask for identification from people in public places, even if not pursuant to a specific crime. The police were also given the right to detain suspicious persons who could not provide proper identification for up to twelve hours and could hold suspected terrorists incommunicado for up to thirty days. Security forces could screen lawyers defending suspected terrorists, as well as monitor the lawyers’ telephone calls (Markovits and Gorski 1993: 75–8). The security legislation of the mid- and late 1970s, like the emergencypower legislation of the late 1960s, did not slide through easily. The incommunicado detention, for example, passed the federal parliament by only one vote. Within parliament, the Free Democrats denounced the SPD legislation on the grounds that it violated citizens’ constitutional rights. Radicalizing the SPD Although many opponents of the Vietnam War severed their ties with the SPD following its support of emergency legislation in 1968, a goodly number remained within the party and attempted to resuscitate its radical spirit. Their faith seemed vindicated by the results of the 1969 elections, when for the first time in two decades the SPD won 40 percent of the ballots cast. This enabled the SPD to form a governing coalition with the FDP and without the CDU/CSU. The openly procapitalist, pro-NATO, and pro–nuclear weapons CDU/CSU would not be in power at the federal level for the first time in postwar history. The SPD’s charismatic leader, Willy Brandt, spoke glowingly of “social renewal” and novel democratic experiments at the workplace and in neighborhoods and asked young adults for their help. Many of the sixty-eighters took him at his word and joined the SPD’s young socialists club, commonly known as JUSO. Membership in JUSO jumped from 150,000 to 350,000 between 1968 and 1974 (Hülsberg 1988: 46). In Munich, Frankfurt, and Berlin, Jusos were extremely active and came close to being the center of gravity of SPD politics (Conradt 1986: 96). The Jusos articulated a number of strategic theories that the Greens later echoed. They first of all advocated the “democratization of all areas of life”—a phrase that, for the Jusos, referred to a dual political strategy of cooperating with the SPD politicians while simultaneously organizing local communities so that they could autonomously fight for their own goals, such as freezing rents, preventing the widening of a local highway, and building community playgrounds. The Jusos believed that by working locally they soon would be able to establish an independent electoral base from which to challenge more conservative leaders within the SPD. Many, further, believed that by addressing immediate concerns of citizens, they could awaken German voters to broader questions of social justice and bring about a long-term partisan realignment that would benefit the SPD in general and the Jusos in particular.


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To undermine the power of conservative SPD cliques, the Jusos also proposed novel intraparty decision-making procedures, such as informal “primaries” (akin to caucuses in the United States) to select candidates for elected office, rather than having the party insiders handpick candidates. The Jusos also proposed that party officials receive policy instructions from local constituencies, who, the Jusos believed, would oppose the continuance in power of unresponsive leaders. Another recommendation that later materialized in the Greens’ system of organization: strict limits on the number of offices a single party leader could hold. Some Jusos, in addition, wanted to restructure the economy. According to an ideological current within JUSO known as the Stamokaps, workers should comanage enterprises, and some key industries (including the banking and credit system) should be nationalized. Jusos also urged SPD leaders to legislate a thirty-five-hour workweek, and some (but not all) Jusos advocated cooperation between the SPD and the newly legalized German Communist Party and various Marxist splinter parties, known colloquially as K groups. Conversely, many Jusos expressed discomfort over the number of economic concessions that the SPD was making to its coalition partner, the FDP. At one point, some Stamokaps adherents argued that the SPD-FDP governing coalition was acting as if it were an “agent of monopoly capitalism” (Markovits and Gorski 1993: 97). In 1974, the Brandt government was rocked by a spy scandal, and power within the SPD shifted to its more conservative wing, headed by Helmut Schmidt. As the new chancellor, Schmidt retreated from many of Brandt’s social reforms and supported closer ties with NATO and a tougher stance vis-à-vis the Soviet Union. Whereas Brandt had frequently tried to appease the Jusos, even if only on a symbolic level, Schmidt had little patience with the party’s youthful and socially radical naysayers. He quickly saw to the passage of party resolutions prohibiting Jusos from participating in rallies and local-level activities in which the German Communist Party or any of its ancillary groups were present. He also insisted that the rest of the world envied West Germany’s economic achievements, and hence the proper task of the party was not to seek a foolish transition to an imagined socialist and participatory democratic utopia but to consolidate the country’s accomplishments. Many Jusos who had cheered for Chancellor Brandt felt completely alienated from the SPD of Chancellor Schmidt. Some left the party to join nonpartisan protest groups, and some subsequently joined an alternative party movement formed in the 1980s, the Greens. According to political scientists Gene Frankland and Donald Schoonmaker (1992: 74), “As many Greens later noted, Schmidt was one of their best recruiters.” Citizen-Action Groups While many young radicals were experimenting with partisan methods of changing society, more established middle-class adults were becoming

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increasingly active in local political-pressure organizations, soon to be known as citizen-action groups. As early as the mid-1960s, thousands of middle-class West Germans had organized themselves into groups at the grassroots level in order to influence local public officials. These groups typically engaged in voter mobilization behind particular candidates. The major political parties, especially the SPD and CDU/CSU, initially encouraged the formation of grassroots groups because they hoped the groups would plead for social policies that the parties were advancing. To the parties’ surprise, the groups often acted contrariwise; they mobilized behind issues that the parties found either unimportant or incompatible with their overriding goal of promoting rapid industrial growth. Around 1972, the politically active local groups became more numerous, became less tied to election campaigns, and began lobbying for schools and other local-government services. By 1979, approximately 1.5 million West Germans—a disproportionate number of whom were university-educated— belonged to roughly 50,000 of the politically active groups (Mewes 1983: 53–4). Some were former Jusos or had been active in the urban sponti subculture. A larger number were socially conservative, earned above-average incomes, and were either independent business owners, middle- and upper-level civil servants, or holders of middle-level managerial positions in service-sector enterprises. Stated differently, the citizen-action groups were the political activity of choice among Germany’s university trained middle classes (Hancock 1989: 117; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 100). During the early 1970s, citizen-action groups almost exclusively engaged in institutional forms of politics, working the courts and lobbying local governments and Land legislatures. Typically, a group would pressure a local government into addressing an overlooked local matter, such as building a progressive kindergarten, cleaning up a polluted lake, reducing noise pollution, or protecting tenants’ rights. Once a matter had been dealt with, the group typically disbanded. It would be a mistake, however, to view the groups as ephemeral, for many a local problem took years of work to settle. Moreover, some activists migrated from one local action group to another, producing relatively permanent local core groups of activists (Dalton 1993: 193–4). Most citizen-action groups involved no more than thirty regularly active members and generally reached decisions democratically through open discussions and formal votes (Dalton 1993: 193). Further, they seldom resorted to confrontational tactics or rhetoric but instead attempted to open communication with government officials and municipal councils. Groups would sometimes engage in colorful demonstrations, such as bicycle marches or bus boycotts, that were in a sense a watered-down version of some of the more daring actions of the extraparliamentary protesters of 1968. During the mid-1970s, a growing number of citizen-group activists formed translocal federations around broad themes—for example, protection of the environment. The first enduring nationwide federation formed in response to the government’s ambitious nuclear-energy program. The scale of collective actions also increased. Construction sites for reactors


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were occupied by teams from dozens of citizen groups. Rallies at times attracted tens of thousands of participants. Local governments usually sought to make peace with the citizen-action groups by including them in local policy-making loop—say, on city advisory councils. Federal officials, on the other hand, were annoyed by what they deemed meddling in complex policy questions and subversion of democratic politics. The SPD-FDP governments of the 1970s, for example, viewed citizens’ resistance to the building of roads and reactors as obstructing economic development and contributing to unemployment. The CDU/CSU, too, regarded many of the opposition groups as a “plague on the land” that threatened the authority of elected officials (Roth 1991: 78–9). As the decade progressed, the citizen-action groups gained in popularity, probably involving more people than belonged to the political parties (Dalton 1993: 193; Katzenstein 1987: 357; Mushaben 1985: 31). Political analyst Horst Mewes (1983: 54) contends that “this degree of citizen participation in local protest actions was unprecedented in the political history of postwar Germany.” Most groups pursued parochial goals, such as keeping local zoning laws intact or stopping construction of an expressway through a residential neighborhood. However, a growing number began to express a general prejudice against all bureaucracy, and viewed neither capitalism nor particular parties but the intransigent arrogance of state-level bureaucrats and planners as the primary source of local problems. Members of the German Communist Party and tiny Maoist parties increasingly figured in citizen-action groups’ meetings and protests during the 1970s and tried to expand their agendas and radicalize the groups’ goals. The Jusos, who since the early 1970s had advocated community activism in such works as Local Politics—for Whom?, also attended citizen-action groups’ meetings, despite the SPD elders’ opposition. The vast majority of groups nonetheless remained nonpartisan and modest in their goals. During the late 1970s, individuals and small groups intent on violence sometimes would throw stones during a large citizen-action group rally and thus provide police with a reason to use batons and tear gas. Police would spy on citizen-action groups with reputations for unruly behavior. Toward the close of the 1970s, the occupation of nuclear-reactor construction sites occasionally led to violence and hundreds of injuries. Even though most citizen-action groups denounced violence, attacks on governmental property were often considered legitimate. A slogan at one occupation site conveys the tension between legality and illegality: “Flowers for the police, wire cutters for the fence” (Hülsberg 1988: 62). At that time some citizen-action groups began to advocate “marching” through the electoral system and campaigning for their own lists of non-party-affiliated candidates. These “rainbow” or “alternative” candidates were, in theory, to replace career politicians from established parties, who seemed dismissive of constituencies’ wishes. To the surprise of many observers, in scattered rural and urban communities alternative-list candidates received enough votes to enter the political system at the local level.

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Encouraged by their successes, some groups proposed forming a nationwide coalition to compete in the European Economic Community’s elections and, later, West Germany’s federal elections. Once again, the goal was not to implement a particular ideology or platform but to demonstrate widespread popular concern about the specific harms that rapid industrialization was causing and to use electoral muscle as a way to compel the SPD, FDP, and CDU/CSU to do something about it. These cross-local electoral coalitions, as we see in chapter 4, gradually coalesced into the Green party movement of the 1980s. New Social Movements Of the many political phenomena that flourished during the 1970s and provided the social bases for the Greens, perhaps none would have as much of a love-hate relationship with the party movement as the so-called new social movements. In terms of future Green politics, three new social movements were especially important: the new women’s movement, the new ecology movement, and the new peace movement. As in other parts of Western Europe and North America, a distinctive, nationwide women’s movement materialized in West Germany following the anti–Vietnam War mobilizations of the late 1960s. As in the case of the United States, the new women’s movement emerged in part because of women activists’ anger at being excluded from leadership roles within antiwar organizations. Tired of being treated contemptuously as servants and sex objects in the offices and meetings of the SDS, women activists responded by criticizing the hypocrisy in male activists’ calls for peace. A female member of SDS, for example, hurled a tomato at a male SDS speaker after he and his fellow male speakers had berated a feminist speaker during a 1968 SDS conference. In the words of a slogan used at one women’s congress in 1969, women activists should “liberate the socialist eminences from their bourgeois dicks!” (Markovits and Gorski 1993: 87). Previous women’s groups in West Germany had sought to achieve goals through conventional parties—especially the SPD—and government bureaus. In contrast, the new women’s movement sought to liberate women in “autonomous spaces” (that is, social situations from which men were excluded) where women could comfortably discuss issues related to sexuality, child rearing, and home life—issues that men’s groups dismissed as secondary to the “more important” issues of war, peace, and wage earning. Within ten years, numerous women’s magazines, publishing houses, and bookstores had been established. Local associations of women disrupted beauty pageants and walled up entrances to pornography shops. Homes for battered women, women’s psychotherapy centers, women’s restaurants, and even women’s driving schools were in place. Most were organized exclusively on the local level (because of the fear that large-scale actions and organization promote male notions of hierarchy and centralized authority).


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The new women’s movement thus was deliberately uncoordinated at the national level and a highly parochial phenomenon (Kolinsky 1989: 195–6). Germany’s mainstream press dismissed many concepts the new women’s movement took seriously—for example, that women could understand and love one another in ways that surpassed men’s understanding and love of women. Music festivals for women and women’s communes became the substance of lurid stories of lesbianism in the sensationalist press. Despite the news media’s frequent ridicule, thousands of normally apolitical women experimented with women’s consciousness-raising groups each year. Few, however, remained active in the groups for more than a year. On the other hand, local women’s groups did leave an important, enduring institution: feminist shelters for battered women. These places of respite from male domination were run relatively democratically, with few hierarchical distinctions between residents and volunteers, and provided an opportunity for women to regain self-respect, to discover and develop skills in running meetings and interacting with others, and to acquire a sense of power (Ferree 1987: 185–7). The primary goal of the new women’s movement never was to capture positions of power in existing economic and political institutions but to nurture distinctively female values and patterns of thinking. To be sure, the new feminists also pursued legislative goals—such as more reasonable abortion laws and tougher laws against rape and domestic violence. But the West German movement first and foremost wished to encourage a deeper awareness and appreciation of women’s different nature—in particular, women’s purported greater propensity toward pacifism, mutual respect, and cooperation. As against the organizationally decentralized women’s movement, the new ecology movement grew more centralized, year by year. In 1972, sixteen citizen-action groups established the Federal Association of Citizen Initiatives for the Environment (BBU). Within a decade, its membership had grown to more than 1,000 affiliated groups and more than 300,000 individuals (Burns and van der Will 1988: 185; Mewes 1983: 55). At first, the BBU simply sought government protection of the environment. Frustrated by the government’s refusals to scale back its ambitious plans to construct nuclear reactors, BBU activists began to look more closely at the political context of pollution. In 1973, a coalition of citizen-action groups challenged government plans to construct a nuclear reactor in the upper Rhine region and cited a conflict of interest: four members of the nuclear regulatory committee for the Land of Baden-Württemberg also belonged to the board of directors of the power company that was constructing the nuclear-power plant. That circumstance corroborated growing suspicions within many citizen-action groups that graft, corruption, and misinformation were the defining features of energy politics in West Germany. To combat the party politicians’ and business leaders’ backroom style of policy making, environmentally oriented citizen-action groups began to call for local referenda and government investigations. In 1975,

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groups began to occupy reactor sites, build “alternative” settlements, and thereby halt construction. In the late 1970s, some groups that belonged to the BBU called for an “ecological economy” that would protect the “natural balances” of the earth and the organic reproductive processes of land, sea, and air. An ecological economy would entail slower growth rates than those the West German governments had pursued during the postwar years, more spartan habits of consumption, and new priorities in everyday life, which in toto were sometimes called “ecological humanism.” Arguments about “irrevocable damage to nature” and threats to “the earth’s survivability” began to appear regularly in BBU speeches and writings. The stationing of a new generation of NATO-owned nuclear weapons in West Germany reinforced the BBU’s increasingly apocalyptic worldview. The ecologists’ proffered solution was to reorganize social life according to the principles of “simplification, decentralization, and deconcentration.” In contrast to advocates of economies of scale, the BBU argued that “small is beautiful” and that large businesses and enormous governmental systems are economically inefficient as well as spiritually destructive. In smaller settings, human beings are more tolerant, more responsible, more humble, and more self-restrained. The goal, therefore, was not simply prevention of pollution, elimination of nuclear-power plants, and the establishment of natural refuges. The ecologists also desired decentralization of government, smaller-scale and face-to-face lifestyles, and labor-intensive modes of production (Dobson 1990). Several ideological currents passed through and informed the broader ecological movement (Dobson 1990: 171–204; Hülsberg 1988: 65–6; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 105–6, 125–41). Self-described ecofeminists believed that women more easily learn nature’s moral lessons, partly because their unique childbearing capacity draws them into a healthier relationship to nature, whereas men tend to embrace competitive, hierarchical norms. To achieve ecological values, the German patriarchic culture must be replaced with more feminine sensibilities. So-called ecological socialists argued that large-scale capitalist production and consumer lifestyles (induced by advertisements) have yielded alienated and insecure human beings. Men and women compensate by acquiring unnecessary manufactured goods, which generate vicarious feelings of status and power. To end antiecological thinking, Germany’s big-business and commercial economy must be reconstructed. The Bible inspired yet another current of thought. Protestant eco-Christians argued that God entrusted humans to be custodians of the earth. It followed that ecological organizations should be concerned not only about environmental destruction but also about the arms race and that global disaster can be prevented by a widespread cultural conversion from materialism to Christian-inspired spiritualism. Few ecological theorists trusted the industrial working class to bring about an ecologically sensitive society. The proletariat seemed too spiritually based and too wedded to technological gadgetry and consumerism to


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overthrow industry. Electronic toys and disposable plastic goods had become the opiate of the masses. A postindustrial revolution would have to come primarily from other social groups. A third social movement that had a profound impact on the Greens’ goals, resources, and strategies was the new peace movement, whose history partly overlapped with that of the new ecology movement. During the late 1970s, several BBU leaders approached some of West Germany’s peace organizations, nearly dormant after 1968 and the passage of the emergencypower legislation, about cosponsoring public demonstrations against NATO’s proposed stationing of U.S. missiles on West German soil. The hawkish rhetoric of President Ronald Reagan (echoed by Chancellor Schmidt) had convinced many West Germans that their homes were being sacrificed for the good of outsiders. Spokespersons for the new ecological movement (especially those of the BBU) linked new public fears of an impending nuclear war to the ecological theme of the survivability of the world. The new peace movement, like the new women’s movement, was highly decentralized. Alice Cooper and Klaus Eichner (1991: 160–1) report that “The ideal of grass-roots democracy and an abhorrence of hierarchy pervaded most of the movement.” The new peace movement attracted unprecedented numbers of West Germans to demonstrations and petition drives (Cooper and Eichner 1991: 152; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 110). Their political backgrounds were diverse. Some were Christian pacifists who declared themselves “ready to live without the protection of military arms” (Markovits and Gorski 1993: 109; see also Burns and van der Will 1988: 209–11, 216–17). Angry with the government’s decision to make Germany an expendable pawn in the Cold War, several socially conservative military leaders resigned their commissions and, warning that the country’s chances of surviving a war between the superpowers was now zero because destruction of the missiles would be one of the Soviet Union’s first priorities, joined diverse peace organizations. Groups of young anarchists, squatters, spontis, and “violent pacifists” formed the Federal Conference of Independent Peace Groups (BUF) in 1982. Unlike the generally restrained participants in the 1950s peace organizations, many of the youths viewed social disruption as a legitimate political tool, intentionally engaged in offensive behavior, and seemed undeterred by the possibility of street violence (Mushaben 1984: 178–9). Among the people who played key roles in developing and disseminating arguments about the ecological costs of stationing NATO’s missiles were BBU leader Jo Leinen and peace activists Petra Kelly and Roland Vogt. They and others organized “eco-pax” conferences, where participants insisted that both nuclear missiles and reactors invite the destruction of humanity and the extermination of all life on the planet by means of a “nuclear winter.” They further argued that both problems are caused by a common cultural sickness: Europeans’ and North Americans’ drive to master the world and to use nature as raw material. So long as nature is not revered but sacrilegiously treated as inert material to be mastered, Europeans and

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North Americans would go on building reactors, bombs, and other mechanisms that could easily destroy the planet. The only solution to the arms race (and to the concomitant drive for greater and cheaper nuclear energy) is ecological reasoning. Conclusion Before the Greens appeared on the national scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s, multiple radical political theories, nonelite traditions of protest, and alternative cultural milieus had already evolved in West Germany. Some of these oppositional groups collaborated with one another; many did not. Different groups—say, the Campaign for Democracy and Disarmament, the SDS, the spontis, the Stamokaps, the citizen-action groups, the BBU, Berlin’s urban squatters, the Christian pacifists, and the new women’s movement—were troubled by different problems, upheld different values, and adopted different tactics and strategies. The richness of nonelite oppositional politics provided key resources for the Green Party movement, such as communications networks, organized constituencies, social goals, and tested leaders. Moreover, some Green leaders hoped that by unifying these multiple disgruntled groups, they would forge a sufficiently large electoral coalition to remake the world. But Germany’s rich oppositional environment, while suggesting a political strategy, also posed a problem: to lead a broad electoral coalition, Green leaders had to find a way to link the energies, strategic ideas, and personnel of social groups with strikingly different objectives and grievances. The Greens had to discover an ideological common ground. This would prove a difficult task.

CHAPTER

4

Clashing Shades of Green

Some theoretical approaches to social movements explore the social and political circumstances that facilitate or hamper their emergence. Other approaches focus on activists’ perceptions, beliefs, goals, and strategies and ask, “What ideas do participants in a particular movement share?” and “What ideological factions and wings does the movement comprise?” This chapter explores continuity and changes in the beliefs of West German Greens between 1980 and the end of the century. The topic has fascinated many observers because the party movement has attracted activists with seemingly incongruent beliefs, priorities, and styles of reasoning.1 There have been advocates of guest-workers’ rights, cultural conservatives dissatisfied with the CDU/CSU, middle-class Germans worried about environmental problems and unsafe power plants, feminists. pacifists, urban squatters, former spontis, unemployed youths, lesbian- and gay-rights advocates, libertarians, and former Jusos, among others. Spokespersons for the Greens commonly argued that the seemingly diverse visions were in fact complementary and linked to each other. Wings of the movement clashed, nonetheless. After the Greens gained seats in the federal and state parliaments, the activists’ disparate beliefs repeatedly threatened to pull the movement apart. Electoral Experiments before the Greens The Green Party movement emerged toward the end of the 1970s, when small groups of disgruntled West Germans began to form “alternative” electoral organizations in towns and cities. Almost all the slates developed spontaneously without long-term goals other than the correction of specific local problems. A few national political events also spurred thousands of younger citizens to experiment with electoral politics. First, there was the unsuccessful occupation of nuclear-reactor sites. Since mid-decade environmental activists had been occupying construction sites and creating settlements. Gradually, the power companies and the government resorted to force in expulsion attempts, especially in Brokdorf

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and Grohnde. Among the tens of thousands of protesters massed at a construction site in Grohnde in 1977, some were determined to resist removal. In a battle involving a few thousand demonstrators, hundreds were injured. The extensive coverage by the largely conservative press plus news of the surprising victories of French ecologists in their local elections convinced many antinuclear activists that civil disobedience had become an ineffective and probably counterproductive means against the government’s current energy policies; the electoral route seemed much more promising (Fogt 1989: 93; Hülsberg 1988: 80; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 103–4; Padgett and Burkett 1986: 173–5). That same year the government, to prevent further terrorism, suspended several civil rights of suspected terrorists. The SPD’s endorsement of the government’s action exacerbated the ongoing conflict between the party’s leaders, who were fearful of right-wing smear campaigns, and its left wing, including leaders of JUSO. Key activists on the SPD left, such as Jochen Steffen, resigned in disgust. Some joined electoral organizations headed by radical ecologists such as Petra Kelly, who argued, We can no longer rely on the established parties, and we can no longer depend entirely on the extra-parliamentary road. The system is bankrupt, but a new force has to be created both inside and outside parliament. (Hülsberg 1988: 78) The tiny parties failed to attract many voters, but because of the absence in certain regions of the 5 percent requirement for municipal elections, they nonetheless won a few seats on town councils, which kindled hope. In Hildesheim, for example, the Environmental Protection List won only 1.6 percent of the ballots, but it was enough to capture one council seat. In the Hameln town elections, Nuclear Power, No Thanks won 2.3 percent and a council seat. In two small towns within the Land of SchleswigHolstein, electoral alliances opposed to the construction of nearby nuclear plants won 6.0 percent of the vote and two council seats and 6.6 percent and three seats (Hülsberg 1985: 8; Scharf 1994: 65). After the 1977 municipal elections, members of more than a dozen local electoral lists in Lower Saxony explored forming a regionwide coalition to win enough votes in the upcoming Land elections to draw the government’s attention to the heavy polluting of the North Sea and the opening of a nuclear-waste dump. Some coalition members belonged to the fledgling Environmental Protection Party (USP) of Lower Saxony, headed by former Christian Democrat Carl Beddermann. Beddermann’s USP had no intention of creating a permanent party or challenging the overall authority of the established parties; its members wanted simply to move the major parties to address local environmental concerns: The USP’s founders and first members were anything but young radicals. Indeed, they were hostile towards the Chaoten, the longhaired radicals


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with whom they had little, if anything, in common, and whose participation they perceived as detrimental to their cause. The USP advocated a solution to ecological problems from within the system. (Markovits and Gorski 1993: 193) Lower Saxony’s Green List for Environmental Protection (GLU) was another key member of the coalition. It advocated not only immediate protection of the natural environment but also a “total socio-ecological alternative” (Hülsberg 1988: 82) that included an unregulated economy and an end to the progrowth, materialist culture. Small left-wing organizations, among them, the Communist League (KB), joined the coalition. As a result, its platform included demands for more women’s rights and a shorter workweek. The coalition performed respectably in the 1978 Land elections: 3.9 percent of the vote. But Beddermann and other leaders of the USP were alarmed by the group’s nonenvironmental goals and resigned immediately. Meanwhile, in Germany’s three northern city-states—Berlin, Hamburg, and Bremen—countercultures were beginning to experiment with electoral politics. In Berlin, activists from the sponti subculture, small communist parties, and feminist, gay, lesbian, and squatter communities formed the Alternative Slate (AL) on the eve of the 1979 local elections. The AL emphasized social issues, including social and political rights for women and homosexuals, protection of low-income housing stock, improvement of health care, and the shortening of the workweek. Some AL candidates addressed environmental issues, such as air pollution, but those issues were not a key part of the AL program. Perhaps because the AL emphasized social issues, many local journalists portrayed it as a communist front. Even Otto Schily, a Berlin-based social activist who joined the AL and who later would have a leading role in Green Party politics, at one point disparagingly described Berlin’s AL as the “KPD [Communist Party of Germany] under a new name” (Fogt 1989: 98). Despite rumors that the AL might be a communist Trojan horse, it received 47,000 votes (3.7 percent of the ballots cast) in the 1979 Land election. The AL also won more than 5 percent of the vote in each of four Berlin borough elections, thereby seating ten AL representatives on the councils (Hülsberg 1988: 89). The presence of communists in the electoral coalitions caused controversy in Hamburg, where Communist League members already had joined numerous citizen-action groups and various women’s, immigrants’, prisoners’, ecosocialists’, and youth groups during the mid- and late 1970s. The KB helped the groups compete in local elections as a coalition, the Rainbow Slate, which primarily addressed the concerns of women, homosexuals, foreigners, students, and the unemployed. Only a tenth of the Rainbow Slate’s fourteen-page program spoke of environmental matters per se, whereas half discussed social issues (Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 127). The formation of the Rainbow Slate prompted similar formations. Environmentally concerned but otherwise socially conservative candidates

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soon appeared under the label “Green Slate” and asserted that the Rainbow Slate was controlled by “communists, queers and criminals.” The Rainbow Slate countered that the Green Slate harbored a significant number of “Neo-Nazis” (Hülsberg 1988: 85; Mewes 1983: 57). Another electoral slate, Independent Germans’ Action, proposed a vague “third way” of organizing society that would be neither communist nor capitalist but would terminate environmental destruction in the West, the arms race, and economic and natural exploitation of the Third World. Bitter polemics characterized the run-up to the 1978 city-state elections. Each slate failed to meet the 5 percent threshold necessary to win a seat. Shortly afterward, hundreds of members of the KB and other communist groups infiltrated the Green Slate, and over the next five years, the initially conservative Green Slate and much more radical Rainbow Slate fused. The more inclusive coalition won almost 8 percent of the vote in Hamburg’s 1982 Land elections (Fogt 1989: 93–4, 107–8, 110–11, 114–16). The first major victory by an alternative list in a Land election occurred in Bremen, where several former SPD members hoped their list would pressure the SPD into revising its positions on economic and foreign policies. The so-called Green/Rainbow Slate was ideologically eclectic, denouncing not only environmental pollution but capitalism, Stalinism, and the government’s recent attacks on civil liberties. It was “a motley crew of environmentalists, sixty-eighters, radical leftists and disillusioned social democrats” (Markovits and Gorski 1993: 189). A few disillusioned CDU/ CSU party members also joined the Green/Rainbow Slate, as did Rudi Dutschke, the former SDS theoretician who had been shot during the years of anti-Vietnam protest and vilified by the Springer press. Communist groups, however, were not welcomed (they responded by creating their own alternative list). To the surprise of many, the Bremen Green/ Rainbow Slate received 5.14 percent of the ballots in 1979. By crossing the 5 percent threshold, it became the first organization in more than a decade to break the monopoly of the CDU/CSU, FDP, and SPD in the Land parliaments. Within a year, it would be cited by many founders of the federal-level Green Party as a model of how to construct an ideological heterogeneous yet electorally successful alternative party. Alternative Visions of a Future Green Party Movement After the 1979 victory in Bremen, there was, to borrow from Markovits and Gorski’s (1993: 195) construct, a “race” between right- and left-wing activists for influence within the emerging alternative electoral lists. Conservatives were particularly influential in the South, where they contended that the SPD’s overzealous commitment to economic growth had destroyed West Germany’s natural environment, corrupted its cultural heritage, and compromised its national sovereignty. Because the SPD-FDP


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coalition government would not heed advice from the well-educated and hardworking members of the middle classes, critical problems—such as the presence of guest workers, the construction of nuclear reactors, and the stationing of foreign armies on German soil—were multiplying. One of the most influential conservatives was Herbert Gruhl, who led an electoral organization called Green Action Future (GAZ) and who wrote A Planet Is Plundered (a popular book about impending global ecological catastrophe). In speeches and writings, Gruhl constantly decried West Germany’s “growth ideology,” celebrated older values including motherhood, and advocated development of a military sufficiently strong to resist invasion by the Communist bloc. To avoid an ecological disaster, the country needed a highly disciplined culture and a centralized political order that would pursue “an optimum of military preparedness with a minimum of consumer satisfaction and, therefore, a much smaller utilization of natural resources” (Hülsberg 1988: 87). Gruhl conceded that to achieve these goals, an ecodictatorship might be the desideratum. Even so, the values inspiring the authoritarian regime should be neither socialist nor fascist, and neither collectivist nor private-business oriented. The values, rather, should be “neither left nor right, but forward” (Hülsberg 1988: 125). In northern Germany, the local alternative electoral lists tended to celebrate cultural diversity and freedom of expression and to propose the replacement of West Germany’s “impersonal” system of parties and professional civil servants with a radically decentralized, “first-person” system of local-level participatory democracy. Feminists, ecological-pacifists, leftwing Social Democrats, Jusos, Communist groups, radical immigrant organizations, and even some formerly apolitical spontis formed the nuclei of alternative electoral coalitions in cities such as Frankfurt, Cologne, and Berlin. In contrast, in the South, the alternative electoral organizations were more likely to be supported by mildly conservative middle-class citizens living in smaller towns or the countryside and generally averse to far-reaching social and political change. Alongside the northern radicals and southern conservatives were selfdescribed “ecological” or “centrist” groups, such as the Action Group for an Independent Germany (AUD), the GLU, and the Action for a Third Way (A3W). The centrists concurred with the urban radicals that West Germany had become a social nightmare, with one-third of the population either unemployed or employed in underpaid, menial labor, and two-thirds needlessly consuming luxury items and plundering the earth of its resources. Even so, the centrists viewed the inequality in industrial societies as a consequence not of capitalism per se but of the ignorance and boorish materialism that prevailed in countries with free-market systems and also in countries with socialist economies. A new type of economy and culture that was neither capitalist nor socialist but a “third way,” was needed. Here, the centrists partly agreed with the leaders of the conservative lists, who argued that there are natural limits to what people can do, that people must be circumspect whenever thinking about social change, and that people

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should never presume that they can alter nature harmlessly. Yet the centrists were not simply cultural conservatives because they also celebrated diversity in lifestyles, equality among all social groups, feminist values, and international peace—all of which were unappealing to most conservatives (Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 105, 126–9; Hülsberg 1988: 82–4, 88, 232; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 193–5; Mewes 1983: 58–61). The popularity of the culturally conservative, radically democratic, and centrist types of electoral lists varied in part according to economic conditions. In Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, and Rhineland-Palatinate—three Länder with unemployment levels considerably below the federal average and, correspondingly, with economic growth rates considerably above— conservative lists were relatively powerful and readily formed alliances with centrist lists, especially the GLU. To some extent, this pattern occurred in Hesse as well, although it is difficult to generalize about Hessian politics because of the significance of Frankfurt’s left-alternative political traditions. In more economically troubled Länder, such as Berlin, Nordrhein-Westfalen, and Lower Saxony, strong left-alternative lists appeared and usually merged with the centrist ecology lists, forming broad “rainbow coalitions.” In the two poorest Länder, the Saar and Schleswig-Holstein, none of the three types of new lists gained much strength, partly because of the ideological flexibility of the local SPD branches, which quickly adopted many of the themes of the ecological and left-alternative lists (Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 74–82; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 102, 190–8, 208–17, 219, 221, 226–9, 231, 233; Mewes 1983: 54–8). “Ecology” provided a superficially common ground for members of these lists. Members of all three ideological camps agreed in principle that the natural environment must be protected from the federal government’s unbridled commitment to economic growth. They disagreed, however, over how best to talk about the government’s destructiveness and progrowth orientation. Was modern industrial capitalism at fault, as the urban radicals tended to think, or was West Germany’s secularism at fault, as the many rural conservatives believed, or was the problem the hegemony of masculine values, as some centrists contended? Because of their differing answers to this question, the three distinct types of allies frequently championed very different economic and cultural policies, which, as we shall see, contributed to intra-Green feuding and ill will for almost a decade. Competing Factions among the Early Greens In the first months of 1979, AUD, GAZ, GLU, and a diverse assortment of other nonleft environmental and ecological lists formed a federal-level electoral alliance to participate in the upcoming elections for the European parliament. The effort had been spearheaded by the federal BBU, which convened a West German environmental conference to discuss possible participation in the European Economic Community (EEC). Many


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left-alternative lists declined the invitation to join, partly because of their principled opposition to the free-market orientation of the EEC. As a result, the new electoral coalition, which named itself the Alternative Political Alliance-Greens (SPV-Greens), adopted a strictly anti-industrial, culturally conservative program that criticized the current materialistic culture but not capitalism per se. The new federal-level coalition performed credibly in the June European election: 90,000 votes (slightly more than 3 percent of the total) (Fogt 1989: 100). Encouraged, the founders of the SPV-Greens decided to participate in the upcoming federal parliamentary elections. The centrists, certain that the coalition would attract more than 5 percent of the voters only if it included activists from the left-alternative lists, prevailed upon the conservatives to allow members of left-alternative lists—such as the Hamburg Rainbow Slate and Berlin Alternative Slate—to join the SPVGreens and, furthermore, to become part of its program commission. From June 1979 until March 1980, conservative and left forces struggled over the direction and fate of the fledgling federal party. At the official founding congress of the Green Party in January 1980, the conservatives moved to make membership in the party incompatible with membership in another party—a motion that if implemented would have expelled 20 percent of the delegates present, many of whom belonged to communist organizations. A slight majority of the delegates voted for the conservatives’ motion. The representatives of the alternative lists then threatened to walk out, which would have decimated the party. The centrists proposed a compromise: each state and local organization would make its own decisions about whether to permit dual-party membership. All political wings found the proposed resolution satisfactory, and the crisis was temporarily sidestepped. Two months later, the Program Commission for the SPV-Greens, having hammered out a statement of goals, presented it to a congress of delegates for approval. The document called for, among other things, a thirty-five-hour workweek, the dissolution of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, the unilateral disarmament of West Germany, greater legal rights for homosexuals, and abolishment of the then-current antiabortion statutes (Fogt 1989: 100–7; Hülsberg 1988: 92–7; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 195–7). Conservative delegates were outraged by the goals, which Gruhl called a “socialist shopping list” (Hülsberg 1988: 95) and a “fairy tale utopia” (Mewes 1983: 62). A second congress was held in June to review a more moderate version. Conservatives were still outraged, partly because Gruhl, a cochair of the earlier Euro-election coalition, had not been selected for the three-person party presidium. Feeling ideologically and organizationally outmaneuvered, leaders of GAZ and the AUD walked out. Subsequently, roughly a thousand conservative activists left the Green Party out of a membership of about fifteen thousand (Hülsberg 1988: 95–6; Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 104, 127, 129–30). Four factions quickly emerged and began holding their own meetings and publishing their own magazines and manifestos (Frankland

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and Schoonmaker 1992: 110–15; Hill 1985: 37; Hülsberg 1988: 177; Roth and Murphy 1998: 51–64). One, popularly known as the “ecolibertarians,” took the position that state economic planning and large-scale business organizations were responsible for the destruction of the environment, and that a free-market system and local self-help projects would yield a much healthier society. It also warned other Green activists to be cautious about cooperating with the SPD, whose traditionally liberal spending policies and excessive cooperation with the United States had dangerously weakened West Germany’s culture and international status. According to ecolibertarian reasoning, the Greens, if they had to think about potential legislative allies, should consider the CDU/CSU, whose cautious outlook and Christian values naturally complemented the Greens’ vision of a nonmaterialistic culture and society. Moreover, the Greens should increase their programmatic and policy appeals to farmers and other self-employed petite-bourgeois producers, whose spirit of independence dovetailed naturally with the Greens’ proclaimed antihierarchical and antistate values (Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 89, 140; Hülsberg 1985: 24–5, 1988: 148–9; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 145–7; Roth and Murphy 1998: 55–6). The so-called ecosocialists constituted a second ideological faction. As did ecolibertarians, ecosocialists sometimes advocated building coalitions with other political parties and organized social groups. However, unlike the “ecolibs,” the ecosocialists viewed industrial labor and the SPD as the Greens’ most promising potential allies. They contended that the industrial working class remained a powerful force for change because of its numbers, its organization, and its increasing discontent amid a stagnating and increasingly impersonal market economy. If the Greens vigorously pursued policies that benefited wage earners in concrete ways, such as passage of a mandatory thirty-five-hour workweek and a legal ban on lockouts, then workers would feel grateful to the Greens, desert the SPD for their benefactors and thereby provide the Greens with sufficient electoral clout to remake German society. One ecosocialist argued, The Greens must not abstain from the fight against mass unemployment and against cuts in social welfare for pensioners, young people and unemployed, but must actively join in and help to lead this fight. (Hülsberg 1988: 151) The ecosocialists also believed that the Greens had to educate workers about the ecological dangers of current social arrangements. According to the ecosocialists, workers (both employed and unemployed) are unsophisticated victims of bourgeois culture and its celebration of consumption. Tired by uncreative, repetitive labor and goaded by carefully crafted advertising, workers consume unneeded commodities—especially technological gadgetry—heedless of the waste left behind. Smaller units of production and increased worker participation in production decisions would foster a more altruistic spirit in workers because they would begin to enjoy their


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labors and to perceive how they themselves impact their surroundings. This cognitive and moral conversion, in turn, would lead to further changes in politics and society, as workers begin to adopt new and more humanistic and ecological values when evaluating social arrangements and acting in politics (Hülsberg 1988: 149–52, 189; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 147–50; Roth and Murphy 1998: 54–5). Members of a third ideological faction were often known as realos (or realists). They viewed the SPD as a potential ally (at least on the national level) and, like most ecosocialists, advocated defending industrial workers’ concrete interests. The realos endorsed laws that increased job security, reduced the workweek, and promoted higher wages. But whereas the ecosocialists often viewed workers as a potentially revolutionary population, the realos, concurring with the New Left ideas of Herbert Marcuse, doubted that a fundamental transformation of society could be spearheaded by the proletariat. They deemed industrial workers to be consumption oriented and wage focused, and hence socially conservative. To them, the more socially marginalized groups in society—such as immigrant workers, the chronically unemployed, the homeless, gays and lesbians, and women— would be more likely to support a program of radical social change. The realos accordingly argued that the Greens should adopt a strategy called radical reformism, which involved winning elective offices and then skillfully using the offices to channel benefits to marginalized populations and to draw public attention to their plight. If the legal rights and standards of living of such groups were improved through progressive legislation, the groups—whose values and lifestyles differed greatly from those celebrated by “polite” bourgeois society—would soon culturally diversify the country and then surreptitiously and peacefully contribute to the emergence of a new society. The realos repeatedly proclaimed that a social revolution could not be forced upon unwilling West Germans. Revolution would have to arise gradually from a cultural transformation inspired by groups on the fringe of bourgeois society. In order to help socially marginal groups survive and organize, the Greens must forge alliances with other mainstream political forces wherever and whenever possible and then jointly press for enabling legislation. In the immediate circumstances, the application of their strategy of radical reformism meant that the Greens should build bridges with the SPD because the CDU/CSU more often than not was indifferent to marginal groups and often reproved countercultural groups for their “corrupt” values. To cooperate legislatively with the SPD, the realos posited, the Greens must eschew revolutionary rhetoric and avoid disruptive actions that might anger or embarrass SPD allies. The realos conceded that to the untrained eye, such restrained political behavior and speech might seem nonrevolutionary and a sellout of principles. However, that is not the case; significant change comes incrementally and, specifically, through the gradual construction of alternative milieus and subcultures. Openly confrontational behavior, although perhaps attention-getting, would neither help the marginal

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groups nor change the world. As one realo leader put it, if the Greens truly wished to remake the bankrupt order, they should become “the natural junior partner of the SPD” (Hülsberg 1985: 23, 1988: 145–6; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 142–4; Roth and Murphy 1998: 57–9). The realos’ radical reformism contrasted sharply with the views of the so-called fundamentalists (fundis), who deemed electoral activity, alliance building, and legislative reform inherently futile. They reasoned that the West German state was controlled not through elections but by government officials’ prejudices, special-interest lobbying, and the political constraints imposed by economic dependency on foreign markets. Because of these circumstances, the leaders of the SPD (like those of the FDP and the CDU/CSU) would always seek rapid economic growth, cooperation with the United States, and export-oriented capitalism. The SPD, whatever it had been in the past, no longer was a progressive force that seriously challenged capitalism. One fundi theorist declared, If we want to build ourselves up to be the junior partner of the SPD then we may as well hand in our weapons now. Then we would no longer stand for the radical reversal of the capitalist industrial system, destructive on a world scale and internally destructive, but rather for some eco-reformist tinkering with the “German model.” (Hülsberg 1988: 147) Most fundis also agreed with the realos that industrial workers’ shortsighted love of material comfort and electronic gadgetry made them an unreliable ally. However, whereas the realos placed their faith in state aid to socially marginal populations, most fundis contended that West Germany could change only if the new social movements (that is, the new women’s movement, the new peace movement, and the new antinuclear movement) taught West Germans (especially middle-class citizens) about the dangers of their cultural and economic situation. Once in the know, the citizens would eagerly participate in large demonstrations that pressure government officials into changing policies. In the meantime, any Green member elected to public office should use it as a bully pulpit to denounce the evils of the status quo. In press releases and parliamentary speeches, Green officials should expose the intrigues and misconduct of the governing parties, even if the revelations jeopardize alliances among legislators. Such denouncements are important because by informing the citizenry about the daily wrongdoing of the ruling parties the Greens will be able to change the landscape of West German politics (Boggs 1986: 872–82; Dobson 1990: 138–9, 143–5, 166, 191; Hülsberg 1985: 11–12, 24, 1988: 146–8; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 119–41; Roth and Murphy 1998: 56–7). Different ideological tendencies predominated in different parts of Germany, prompting some analysts to describe the Greens as “the most regionally diverse of West Germany’s political parties” (Frankland and


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Schoonmaker 1992: 154; see also Scharf 1995). Ecolibertarians were influential primarily in the cities and towns of Baden-Württemberg, the ecosocialists’ strongholds were Berlin and Hamburg, the realos were most visible and influential in Hesse and Lower Saxony, and the fundis, while visible everywhere, were particularly strong in Frankfurt. Leaders of the Greens tried to make a virtue of the obvious ideological diversity (if not confusion) within the party movement by utilizing such slogans as “Unity in Diversity” and “Neither Right nor Left but Forward.” Searching for a Common Program Aware of the various views, goals, and interests among the groups that composed the new party movement, its leaders repeatedly attempted to cobble together a coherent legislative agenda, especially on the eve of federal elections. To many observers’ surprise, the so-called federal programs gave relatively little space to environmental issues. Instead, issues of social justice, labor rights, personal freedoms, and international peace were at the fore. As the 1980 preamble to the Green Party program put it, the Greens viewed themselves not as a “ ‘single-issue party’ ” but as a party concerned with “all essential areas of human existence in our society and in the entire world” (Schoonmaker 1988: 69). A common theme in the federal programs of the 1980s was the need to replace modern West German “capitalism” (broadly understood to include a mindset oriented toward the accumulation of material resources), which encourages war, unemployment, and the rape of nature. Short-term, smallscale actions, say, the development of fuel-efficient cars, were too little and too late. The Greens instead called for a total revamping of West Germany’s big-business and export-based economy and an end to its materialist and consumerist culture: “A radical reorganization of our shortsighted economic rationality is essential” (Die Grünen 1983: 6). European and Anglo-American cultures, at least as far back as the Enlightenment, has celebrated humankind’s scientific mastery of nature and presumed that homo sapiens has the unlimited right to consume the earth’s resources. In consequence, Europeans and North Americans have (mis)treated nature as a disposable convenience rather than as a treasure to be prudently used and protected. Modern forms of capitalism (characterized by enormous firms, bureaucratic and impersonal modes of production, and close ties between owners of large enterprises and the state) have reinforced this cultural predisposition in multiple ways. Competitive big businesses, to reduce costs and increase profits, produce environmentally harmful goods and indifferently dump waste; they also try to induce unnecessary consumption. At the same time, the mind-numbing, fast-paced, and highly specialized industrial production processes create subconscious desires in wage earners to add excitement to their lives, and in consequence, they consume excessive amounts of mass-produced and environmentally harmful goods. Also,

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companies lobby the state for expenditures on big-ticket infrastructure items, such as highways and airport expansions, and for international economic policies that give companies privileged access to foreign markets and allow extraction of nonreplaceable raw materials at minimal cost. Interpreting immediate ecological problems as inextricably linked to the economic order, the Greens’ federal programs concluded that to escape the impending ecological disaster, West Germany’s state-aided corporate capitalism must be destroyed. Large private enterprises should be divided, as soon as possible, into smaller units of production and be comanaged by their workers and by local communities. The government should also redistribute unused land and abandoned plants and buildings to fledgling cooperative firms. The authors of the federal programs argued that if smallscale and cooperative production were widespread, the environmental crisis could be avoided; the intimacy among producers would remind workers of their immediate impact on surrounding nature. Also, self-directed work would be more pleasurable and rewarding, would reduce and perhaps eliminate workers’ need for psychic compensation via ownership of a plethora of material goods of little real utility and much disutility (Capra and Spretnak 1984: 43, 83–5, 88–90, 100–1; Dobson 1990: 123, 126–7; Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 130, 134–5; Hülsberg 1985: 11, 1988: 125–6, 183–5; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 159, 166–7; Mewes 1983: 64–5; Schoonmaker 1988: 51). The Greens’ programs further recommended that the government regulate the production and sale of goods so as to protect both human health and the environment. Almost all programs called for closer regulation of fishing and the chemical industries, a ban on the manufacture and export of toxic substances, and greater regulation of the health-care sector and the use of marketing techniques relative to unnecessary medicines and hospitalizations. Short-distance air travel was out of bounds because of damage to the environment, and public transportation and alternatives to automobiles were promoted. Public officials should lead by example in all their activities. Some federal programs called for the creation of a ministry of the environment with powers to enforce antipollution laws on land and sea. According to most programs, the government should break the hold of the print media and mass advertising by promoting and protecting small independent newspapers, and should regulate the content of television and radio advertising of products deleterious to health (tobacco, spirits, and fertilizers) (Capra and Spretnak 1984: 35, 91–3, 121–2, 124; Die Grünen 1983: 11; Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 130, 135; Hülsberg 1988: 190, 193; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 155–6, 162, 176, 179, 203–4; Mewes 1983: 64–6). Although the Greens’ programs did not advocate the creation of communal property (and at times endorsed the principles of private ownership of property and of a nonregulated market economy), they did recommend that the government ensure a dignified standard of living and spiritually elevating work. To accomplish this goal, they recommended reduction of


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income differentials and a minimum income for all workers (and even the person out of work). They also recommended that the state regulate the introduction of labor-saving technology and retrain at public cost those persons who have lost jobs because of automation (Capra and Spretnak 1984: 97–8; Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 127, 132; Hülsberg 1985: 12, 1988: 125, 129–30, 193, 195; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 161–2, 164–5, 177–8; Mewes 1983: 65). The federal programs acknowledged that most of the Greens’ legislative proposals probably would not be passed by the existing federal and Land governments, primarily because of opposition by other parties. The Greens therefore called for radical restructuring of the political order. Ideally, all public policy would be made at the town and neighborhood levels, with each community determinative. To prevent abuses of government power, the federal programs’ endorsed “street” politics (demonstrations, blockades, general strikes) and the expansion of citizens’ rights to call referenda and to initiate judicial proceedings against officials. New laws were needed that would universalize political rights (including rights of assembly and speech)—especially for the chronically poor, foreign workers and prisoners, who are normally defenseless before the state. Foreign workers, for example, should have the right to vote in local elections and, after five years of residence, the right to vote in federal elections (Capra and Spretnak 1984: 47–9, 94, 106, 114–15, 122–3; Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 131, 137; Hülsberg 1988: 132–3, 189; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 161, 181–2; Mewes 1983: 62–4; Schoonmaker 1988: 52–4). The federal programs in addressing West Germany’s foreign-policy issues declared that the overarching goal of foreign policy should be neither international military status nor greater access to foreign markets but the protection of all of nature (including human life). The programs called for immediate withdrawal from NATO, the dismantling of the standing army, and revocation of permission given foreign countries to station military units on German soil. According to the programs, human communities can peacefully coexist without weapons or soldiers. If a nonarmed community were invaded by another country, the “victims” could (in theory) expel the occupier by forming local strike committees, engaging in social ostracism, and spontaneously practicing noncompliance in the workplace (Capra and Spretnak 1984: 61–6, 102–3, 184–5; Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 130, 131–2, 136; Hülsberg 1988: 195–6; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 173; Mewes 1983: 66–7, 74–7, 84–5). In explaining why costly wars were occurring, the federal programs usually pointed to the United States as the culprit. Its international aggressiveness arose from its spiritual corruption and economic practices—in particular, its pathological culture of consumption and immoderate commitment to enormous profits and high wages. Authors of the federal programs, particularly during the last half of the 1980s, generally interpreted military actions by other nation-states, such as the Soviet Union, as acts of self-defense against the expansionist policies of the United States.

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Some Green theorists, such as Petra Kelly, however, viewed all large nationstates as inherently expansionist and therefore prone to war (Capra and Spretnak 1984: 48, 60–2; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 169–73; Mewes 1983: 73–7, 84–5). The Greens’ programs recommended suspension of international debts for Third World countries and the transformation of the World Bank into a set of development funds for Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The West German government should increase its aid to the Third World “to at least 0.7% of GNP” (Die Grünen 1983: 28). Deeming many Third World governments as superpower puppets, the federal programs also endorsed peaceful support of all national liberation movements and the “creation of opportunities for the Third World countries to disconnect themselves from the world market, which has proved to be more of a hindrance than a help” (Die Grünen 1983: 29; see also Capra and Spretnak 1984: 63–6, 102–3; Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 130–1; Hülsberg 1988: 196; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 184–5; Mewes 1983: 66–7). As the years passed, feminist themes grew in prominence in the federal programs (although numerous observers, including women within the Green Party, have questioned the dedication of male members to feminist causes) (Capra and Spretnak 1984: 151–3; Kolinsky 1989; Pinl 1998). From the outset, the federal programs advocated equal access to vocational training for males and females and job-protection laws that would allow men as well as women to participate in infant rearing for up to eighteen months with full pay. Men’s participation was partly defended on pedagogic grounds. In theory, by nurturing children, men would acquire desirable feminine values and outlooks. Such cultural development would help end the predominance of capitalist values and of Enlightenment thought and its hostility to nature. Further, the federal programs denounced government discrimination against lesbian households and other nontraditionally structured families and called for strictly enforced laws against marital rape (Capra and Spretnak 1984: 49–53, 108–14; Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 136–8, 144; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 165–6, 179–81). Electoral Successes in the 1980s The federal programs were not endorsed with equal enthusiasm by all Green organizations. Many groups at the Land and local levels viewed the federal programs as interesting but largely irrelevant and as suggestive but not binding. A few chapters disbanded because of the federal programs’ prochoice stance. All Green organizations at the Land level, moreover, had their own autonomously drafted programs. The Hamburg Greens’ 1983 program, for example, denounced parliamentary politics as an instrument for social transformation and called for greater involvement in street demonstrations, by which, it asserted, real change could be made (Kolinsky 1984: 304; Papadakis 1984: 178–83).


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The Greens’ multiple programs, aims, and priorities may help explain the party movement’s success in attracting large numbers of voters, for by the mid-1980s Greens slates routinely received over 5 percent of the vote in federal elections and in elections for most Länder. In 1983, the Greens captured 5.6 percent of the vote—becoming the first party in three decades to break the SPD’s, FDP’s, and CDU/CSU’s monopoly on seats in the Bundestag. Between 1985 and 1987 the party movement captured more than 10 percent of the ballots in Land elections in Berlin, Bremen, and Hamburg. The zenith of the Greens’ success probably occurred in 1987, when the party movement won 8.3 percent of the ballots in the federal elections, 10.2 percent in Bremen’s Land elections, 9.4 percent in Hesse, and 5.9 percent in Rhineland-Palatinate (where they gained representation in the state parliament for the first time) (Frankland 1989: 69–71; Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 69–71; Mez 1998: 78–9). The Greens matched their strong showings in federal and Land levels elections with hundreds of victories in town and district elections (the size and administrative responsibilities of a German district are roughly comparable to those of a U.S. or British county). In 1986, 7 percent of council seats in all West German communities with more than 20,000 inhabitants were held by members of the Green Party movement (Scharf 1994: 72). By the close of the 1980s, approximately 6,000 Greens activists held local-level offices throughout West Germany (Roth 1991: 75). Who voted for the new party movement? Most public opinion surveys suggest it tended to be younger adults (thirty-four or younger) (Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 87; Hülsberg 1988: 114). Although the Greens seldom won more than 8 percent of the all ballots cast in federal elections during the 1980s, they usually received between 15 and 25 percent of the young-adult vote (Bürklin 1987: 113; Frankland 1989: 71–2). Many people who voted for the Greens were well educated. According to one study, approximately 10 percent were professional academics, and 20 percent were college students (Hülsberg 1988: 115). Another study concluded that although approximately 10 percent of the adult population had attended some sort of postsecondary school, more than 20 percent of Greens voters had done so (Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 87; see also Frankland 1989: 72; Hülsberg 1988: 114–15). A disproportionately large number of unemployed voters cast their ballots for Green candidates. In the opinion of Jens Alber (1989: 205), “Among the unemployed, the Greens are the second strongest party, outrunning the Christian Democrats and falling short only of the Social Democrats.” Almost a fifth of all ballots for the Greens were cast by unemployed voters (Hülsberg 1988: 113). Many of the unemployed voters were also well educated, leading some scholars to speculate that they may have been part of West Germany’s so-called new poor, who despite years of higher education either could not find steady work or could find only work that was not commensurate with their skills.

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Among unemployed academics voting for the Greens is found seven times more frequently than in the population. The typical supporter of the Greens, we may conclude, is young, highly trained, and unemployed or not economically active. This makes the Greens appear as a party of frustrated academic plebeians rather than as an organization of the educated new leading strata of post-industrial societies. (Alber 1989: 205) At the same time, the Greens did well among white-collar and middlemanagement workers. During the 1980s, approximately 53 percent of all Greens voters were working professionals, slightly higher than the proportion of working professionals in the population at large (48 percent) (Hülsberg 1988: 115). The Greens thus did “well in labor market segments with very low and very high job security” (Poguntke 1992a: 343). Approximately 40 percent of the people in the Greens column lived in big cities (where approximately 30 percent of the West German population lived). Still, the popularity of the Greens was not simply an urban phenomenon. Greens candidates received large numbers of votes in some medium-size towns (especially those with colleges) and in some rural areas affected by recently proposed government projects, such as nuclear plants and airport expansions (Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 76; Hülsberg 1988: 116; Rothacher 1984: 113). Eva Kolinsky (1984: 317–18), noting the Greens’ ability to capitalize on local environmental issues in selected rural communities, writes that the Greens “are not just a party for university students and critical intellectuals.” In the early 1980s, the Greens managed to break into small towns, rural areas and win a more diverse group of older voters: indeed, they won about one third of their electorate in this way. Who would have thought that the Bavarian hamlet of Neufahrn near Freising would have 9.8% Green voters? Compared to voters for the three major established parties, significantly higher percentages of Greens voters (1) had previously participated in protests and demonstrations and (2) had participated in the ecology, the antinuclear, or the peace movement. According to one survey, approximately two-thirds of self-reporting Green voters had been active in the antinuclear movement, and two-thirds in the peace movement. In contrast, less than a quarter of SPD voters and less than a seventh of all CDU/CSU voters reported supporting the antinuclear movement, and less than half of the SPD voters and less than a third of CDU/CSU voters supported the peace movement. In another study, 18.9 percent of the sample of Greens voters stated that they had participated in at least one illegal demonstration, compared to 2.1 percent of SPD voters, 1.9 percent of FDP voters, and 0.2 percent of CDU/CSU voters (Hülsberg 1988: 109; Mez 1998: 73–4, 91; Poguntke 1992b: 251–3).


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Public-opinion surveys tell us that people who voted for Green candidates tended to be pessimistic about current social conditions and ambivalent toward technology. One poll asked if modern technology hurts more than it helps humanity. Almost four-fifths of the respondents who voted for Green candidates thought it does; less than half of the sample for the entire West German population thought so. Another poll showed that large majorities of Greens voters believed that West Germany (1) was insufficiently concerned with tolerance, (2) was insufficiently concerned with social justice, and (3) was insufficiently concerned with equality between men and women, whereas less than half of those who voted for each of the other major parties expressed such beliefs. In a third poll, less than half of the sample representing the entire West German population but more than 70 percent of the sample representing Greens voters said that they expected economic conditions in Germany to decline in the near future (Hülsberg 1988: 110, 112–13). Social scientists have developed at least three explanations for the Greens’ electoral performances in the 1980s. First, scholars such as Ronald Inglehart (1990) and Herbert Kitschelt (1988) have argued that the Greens’ success among younger adults is a manifestation of the new cultural phenomenon called “postmaterialism.” According to scholars who make this argument, after the Great Depression and World War II, North American and Western European societies experienced four decades of steady and rapid economic growth, during which the average standard of living rose dramatically. Freed from worries about war and poverty, younger adults seek “postmaterialist” goals, such as personal creativity and self-expression, and are less preoccupied with worldly comforts and high incomes. The Greens’ concern for the natural environment and their advocacy of a decentralized and participatory economy and polity appeal to the younger adults with a new orientation toward life. Postmaterialist theorists believe that the Greens will continue to receive a disproportionately large vote from younger voters so long as Germany’s prosperity persists, so long as the Greens advocate a postmaterialist agenda, and so long as the other major parties remain committed to materialist agendas. A second common stance relative to the Greens’ electoral ascendancy can be labeled the “labor-market” perspective and has been articulated by Jens Alber (1989), Wilhelm Bürklin (1985, 1987, 1988), and Joyce Mushaben (1984, 1985). These scholars note that the West German economy struggled during the 1970s and 1980s and that unemployment rose to record levels for the post–World War II period, especially among younger adults and recent college graduates who had hoped to find well-paid jobs in the public sector. According to this line of reasoning, a disproportionate number of young, educated workers voted for the Greens because (unlike the SPD, the CDU/CSU, or the FDP) the Greens criticized the economic status quo and recognized that Germany’s so-called “model economy” benefited only about two-thirds of the populace while leaving the remaining third to face a bleak economic future. In the opinion of many labor-market

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theorists, if and when the German economy resumes its rapid rate of growth, the Greens’ share of the vote will precipitously fall. Until then, the party movement should receive a disproportionately large share of the votes cast by well-educated but often economically frustrated citizens. A third set of explanations for the Greens’ electoral successes can be conveniently labeled “crisis-of-modernity” theories. Writers who have contributed to this type of reasoning include Robyn Eckersly (1989), Andrei Markovits and Philip Gorski (1993), and Claus Offe (1987). They begin with the assumption that the modes of production and consumption typical of advanced industrialized societies pose some serious problems, such as excessive and spirit-numbing bureaucracy in the workplace, unprecedented technological threats to the environment, new health hazards to producers and consumers, and the creation of low-skilled, dead-end, and poor-paying service-sector jobs. At the same time, modern production processes need skilled workers and therefore require the rapid expansion of higher education. This turn of events has meant that many adults are intellectually equipped to perceive the costs of modern society, to question the desirability of current social trends, and to doubt the wisdom of public policies and political leaders. [H]igher education not only increases an individuals ability to acquire information but also helps to cultivate the ability to think critically, question everyday assumptions, form an independent judgment and be less influenced by the judgment of others (including those of high status). (Eckersley 1989: 221) Unlike postmaterialist theorists, crisis-of modernity theorists assert that younger adults and older adults hold the same values, including personal freedom and dignity. Offe (1987: 88), for one, writes, There is certainly nothing new in moral demands such as the dignity and autonomy of the individual, integrity of the physical conditions of life, equality and participation, and peaceful and solidaristic forms of social organization. All these values are firmly rooted in political philosophies (as well as aesthetic theories) of the last two centuries. According to the crisis-of-modernity approach, large numbers of young, well-educated adults voted for the Greens primarily because of its telling criticisms of modern society. Older established parties, meanwhile, have resisted addressing social problems spawned by the country’s postwar economy, such as shortages of affordable housing in cities, the exploitation of immigrant workers, the construction of unsafe nuclear power plants, and the regimentation of the modern workplace. Disenchanted with the nonresponsiveness of established parties, many young and well-educated Germans have voted for the only party that has refused to interpret postwar society through rose-colored glasses.


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Power and Discontent in the late 1980s Whatever the sociological causes of the Greens’ electoral victories, they proved evanescent. Having successfully run campaigns at almost every level of government, the party movement quickly began to unravel toward the end of the 1980s, as different wings, currents, factions, and cliques disagreed about what to do next. Much of the infighting can be understood as intensification of the old disagreements between the fundis, who favored participation in public demonstrations and extraparliamentary politics, and the realos, who advocated working within government institutions. The fundis, led by such figures as Rudolf Bahro and Jutta Ditfurth, viewed parliamentary politics with a deep suspicion bordering on hostility. They feared that Green activists, if exposed to government policy making for too long, would soon become morally corrupt and indifferent to the people’s needs. Bahro, for example, stated that “political space is a trap into which life energy disappears, indeed, where it is rededicated to the spiral of death” (Dobson 1990: 139). The realos, among them Joschka Fischer and Otto Schily, also looked askance at established parties yet believed that some factions within the parties were still redeemable and hence useful for promoting radical social change. From the realos’ perspective, patience, diligence, and hard work within legislative institutions would allow Green officials to use the state to remake society. The newly elected Green legislators entered the federal parliament with aplomb. Ignoring traditional dress codes, they appeared in blue jeans and sweaters (except for a woman delegate who wore a man’s three-piece business suit). They carried large pots of flowers to their seats, a symbolic countercomment on the aesthetic and spiritual environment of the legislative institutions. At one point they wore gas masks when debating nuclear energy. Although leaders of the established parties at first grumbled about their new colleagues, the Greens quickly acquired reputations for being hardworking and well prepared. Between 1983 and 1987, the Green caucus submitted 367 legislative proposals, 53 bills, and 87 inquiries about executive policies and behavior (Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 161–2; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 220). The Greens also initiated more topical debates than did any other parliamentary group. Granted, the Bundestag approved only one of the Greens’ bills—a ban on the importation of sea turtles; nonetheless, the Greens doggedly pursued a public investigation into the Flick financial scandal, which ultimately brought shame to many leaders of the SPD, CDU, and FDP who were involved in a complicated bribes-and-paybacks scheme. Green parliamentarians played a key role as well in the eventual defeat of a proposed census survey that, according to a broad range of observers, would have violated personal privacy. Perhaps most important, the Greens’ constant criticisms of the placement of NATO nuclear weapons on West German soil and of the construction and relicensing of nuclear-power plants (especially after the Chernobyl disaster) struck a chord among a sizable number of German voters.

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In the 1987 federal parliamentary election, the percentage of voters for the Greens jumped from 5.6 percent in 1983 to 8.3 percent, and the number of Greens holding seats in the Bundestag correspondingly jumped from 27 to 44. The older parties were forced to admit that the upstart party movement had found a way to win votes. After 1987, the SPD, CDU/CSU, and FDP began to echo a number of Green positions on environmental protection, the stationing of foreign weapons on German soil, and women’s rights. Green parliamentarians, meanwhile, were feeling hamstrung by their party movement’s lack of policy experts and of experience in crafting detailed, workable bills (Kolinsky 1984: 325). Other major parties had fulltime professional researchers looking into the particulars of legislative proposals. The parliamentarians gradually employed more assistants and began to formulate policy positions independently of the Greens’ Federal Executive Board, which lacked both the time and expertise to do so. Members of the Greens’ Federal Executive Board, composed primarily of fundis, became alarmed by the increasingly independent behavior of the Green parliamentarians and charged that they were “hot to govern” and had become part of the establishment. The parliamentarians in turn accused the board of “Stalinist practices,” political irresponsibility, and immaturity (Markovits and Gorski 1993: 225–32). The parliamentarians’ refusal to take instruction also troubled parts of the Greens’ social base. One coalition of feminists, for example, wanted the Green parliamentarians to introduce legislation that would ensure a two-year mandatory jail sentence for convicted rapists. Both the board and the 1988 Green Party Assembly endorsed the feminists’ position, and all expected the Green parliamentarians to fall in line. The parliamentarians, however, dug in their heels and argued that mandatory sentences were unwise, given the questionable procedural characteristics of the legal system and also given the Greens’ stated positions on the importance of protecting the rights of criminals and reducing the sentence severity. They therefore refused to support a proposal for mandatory sentencing. Shocked members of the board purchased advertising space to announce that the parliamentarians no longer represented the views of the Greens’ rank-and-file activists (Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 164; Kolinsky 1989: 202–3; Pinl 1998: 134–5). Rising violence at antinuclear rallies also pushed wings of the movement in different directions. During the mid-1980s, growing numbers of demonstrators began to throw Molotov cocktails and use slingshots when confronting police at construction sites. Police responded with water cannons and gas (which, according to law, was not to be used against civilians). Many Greens with fundi orientations publicly defended the demonstrators’ behavior. Greens with more realo tendencies, in contrast, feared a conservative backlash among the public and refrained from defending the protesters’ violence and from denouncing police actions. The fundis, in turn, called the realos traitors to extraparliamentary movements and servants to socially conservative voters. Meanwhile, the CDU/CSU embarked on


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vicious publicity campaigns, accusing the Greens of being “child murderers” (because of their periodic calls for more liberal abortion laws), “agents of Moscow,” and “terrorists” who generated “chaos” and were causing the “ruin of the nation” (Hülsberg 1988: 202–3; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 213). When in 1985 police using a water gun killed a Frankfurt activist, the fundis demanded a government investigation of police brutality at demonstrations. The realos, however, tried to distance themselves from the controversy and not be connected in the public eye with unruly demonstrators. During the final years of the 1980s, feuding between the fundis and the realos threatened to tear the party movement apart. Many Green activists wanted to remain neutral; some, such as pacifist Antje Vollmer, dedicated themselves to finding a middle ground. In 1987, a group of grassroots activists entered a Green leadership meeting and demanded an end to the back-stabbing and squabbling. “Your quarrels truly disgust us,” shouted one. Another declared, “Resign or we will” (Markovits and Gorski 1993: 228). In the summer of 1988, an unexpected scandal rocked the movement. Newspaper writers discovered that a number of fundi leaders had improperly used party funds, officially earmarked for ecological and humanitarian causes, to help like-minded activists. Loans were made with little expectation of repayment and were often put to personal use. The publicity embarrassed members of the Greens, and numerous activists who did not ally themselves with any wing resigned. Schily and a few other realo leaders left to join the SPD. Ironically, many fundis also left the party movement, angry about other factions’ lack of loyalty and mutual respect.2 While factions within the Greens were squabbling, the SPD, FDP, and CDU/CSU continued to adopt the Greens’ pioneering policy positions on nuclear energy, women’s rights, and environmental protection. The established parties, for instance, no longer held that unlimited economic growth and international cooperation with the NATO powers were always in the nation’s best interest. As one SPD official later put it, the Social Democrats “can also make very good Green policy without the Greens” (Lees 2000: 88). Weakened by internal acrimony and by the major parties’ adoption of selected Green policy positions, the Greens failed to win the qualifying 5 percent of the ballots cast in the 1990 federal election. About 250,000 former Green voters chose not to vote at all, and roughly 600,000 voted for the SPD (Markovits and Gorski 1993: 234). Resurgence in the 1990s Although the Greens had disappeared at the federal level, they remained visible in scores of towns and cities where they won enough votes to hold local public office. Generally comporting themselves like realos, they formed alliances with the SPD, the FDP, and even the CDU/CSU in order to open women’s shelters, aid the homeless, regulate road construction, and locate appropriate sites for waste disposal (Scharf 1994). They won seats in

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a few Land parliaments, too, where they again sought alliances with the major parties (Frankland and Schoonmaker 1992: 158). In 1991, the party movement convened a congress to determine its future. The meeting was rowdy; no faction left satisfied. Afterward, some well-known fundis—Jutta Ditfurth, for one—resigned and formed rival electoral organizations. The separatists’ contention: the realos and the moderates were turning the party movement into a “petty bourgeois party of careerists” (Poguntke and Schmitt-Beck 1994: 97). Truly principled Greens should form their own alternative party movements and use any office captured in an election as a pulpit from which to educate citizens about the hypocrisy of other political parties, and the futility of halfhearted, fragmented reform. Once sufficiently disillusioned, citizens would demand immediate and total change. In Ditfurth’s words, genuinely conscientious Greens must operate in a consciously disillusionary manner with regard to the actual function of the parliament, continually questioning our own representative role and by means of a process of classic disillusionment reaching the point at which the citizens no longer allow themselves to be administered, but rather increasingly represent their interests themselves. (Scharf 1994: 119–20) The breakaway groups did not attract many voters; Ditfurth’s group received only 0.5 percent of the vote in the 1991 Hamburg Land elections. The resignation of several prominent radical ecologists was significant, however, because it diminished the party movement’s propensity to remake the world through extraparliamentary protest and confrontational rhetoric. According to Christian Joppke and Andrei Markovits (1994: 236), “The departure of the Fundis cleared the way for the Greens to establish themselves as a reform-oriented ecology party.” Having lost several outspoken radicals, the Greens in 1993 joined Alliance ’90, an anti-Marxist, pro-civil-rights, and pro-environmentalprotection movement that had formed in East Germany on the eve of unification. Not all Green activists were pleased. Some resigned, arguing that the party movement would no longer openly criticize capitalism or denounce the increasingly bureaucratic and centralized German state (Betz 1995: 207–8; Braunthal 1995: 41–2; Joppke and Markovits 1994: 236–7; Markovits and Gorski 1993: 260–2; Schoonmaker 1995). Other longtime Green activists saw matters differently and were pleased that the party movement was finally shedding its utopian clothing and acting responsibly in its attempts to effect political change. It was at last recognizing “the realism of taking small steps” (Scharf 1994: 123). In 1994, delegates met in Mannheim to approve a joint Alliance ’90/Greens political program. To mollify the outspoken fundi minority, the delegates included calls for Germany’s immediate withdrawal from NATO and a shortening of the legal workweek. Still, the Greens’ program


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no longer called for the dismantling of big business, the decentralization of the nation-state, or the establishment of local, highly participatory democratic communities (demands common to Green programs during the 1980s) (Braunthal 1995: 40–2). The Alliance ’90/Greens coalition performed well in the 1994 federal elections, winning more than 7 percent of the vote. The next year, it received 10.1 percent of the ballots cast in an election for the EEC parliament. In Lower Saxony’s 1994 Landstag election, the Greens attained their highest electoral success to date in that Land (7.4 percent of the vote). The party movement also won more than 10 percent of the vote in Landstag elections held in Bremen (1995), Hesse (1995), and Hamburg (1993). The Greens, however, failed to make inroads in the five Länder that formerly had been part of the GDR. By the end of 1995, members of Alliance ’90/Greens had won seats in only one eastern Landstag (whereas the Greens had won seats in all but one Landstag in former West Germany). In the 1995 federal parliamentary election, Alliance ’90/Greens received approximately 8 percent of the vote in western Germany, but only 4 percent in eastern Germany.3 The maldistributed support for Alliance ’90/Greens reignited debate over the Greens’ programs, strategies, and tactics. The fundi minority once again asked whether scaling down demands for social change (and forsaking calls for an immediate revolutionary transformation of German politics and society) had attracted significant numbers of disgruntled voters from other parties, had repelled significant numbers of potential voters dissatisfied with status quo (such as radical feminists and former spontis), and had squandered opportunities to educate the electorate about social issues and alternatives. Meanwhile, a surprisingly large minority among the movement’s grassroots supporters began criticizing the Greens leadership for overstressing protection of the environment and civil liberties during election campaigns; the electorate (especially voters in the economically depressed Länder of eastern Germany) seemed much more interested in “material” problems, say, unusually high unemployment and widespread business closings. In late 1997, the party movement held a series of conferences on formulating a program for the upcoming Bundestag election. The voices of fundis and other radicals initially triumphed over those of moderates, such as Fischer. The first draft called for an immediate end to the use of nuclear power and for the disbanding of NATO. After several more contentious meetings, platform demands were toned down. Dissolution of NATO, for example, was cast as a long-term goal. Still, the Greens continued to advocate steep increases in the gasoline tax (totaling roughly 300 percent over ten years), and one spokesperson asked Germans to restrict their air travel to one journey every five years. Opponents of the Greens took advantage of the fundis’ rhetoric to portray the party movement as out of touch with modern times. Gerhard Schröder, the SPD’s candidate for chancellor, described the Greens as suffering from “automobile-phobia” (Lees 2000: 103).

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Despite the ceaseless infighting, the party movement seemed to be regaining the electoral strength that it had shown in the 1980s. In the 1998 federal elections, Alliance ’90/Greens once again cleared the 5 percent hurdle and netted forty-seven seats in the Bundestag. Because the SPD also did well in the 1998 federal elections, the Greens now faced a dilemma. Should they form a coalition government with the Social Democrats, who, 37 seats short of a minimum-winning majority within the Bundestag, were offering the Greens three cabinet posts in exchange for the Greens’ support of SPD policy proposals?4 Or should the Greens remain primarily an opposition party, relentlessly pointing out the government’s shortcomings? Complicating matters was that many Greens did not share the priorities of the current generation of SPD leaders, the so-called innovators and modernizers, who advocated promoting business growth through deregulation, tax cuts, and reduced government spending. In the end, the Greens’ realos (wishing to legislate social change) persuaded and cajoled other factions within the party movement into entering the governing coalition. The political marriage was not harmonious. Germany’s stagnating economy preoccupied the SPD’s leadership to the extent that it opposed nearly all ideas that might impede economic growth. For instance, the SPD refused to support the Greens’ efforts to immediately close all nuclearpower plants because (the Socialists argued) such action would increase energy costs for German manufacturers as well as reduce jobs in the energy sector. The SPD, instead, proposed and passed legislation that mandated a review of the plants after thirty-two years of operation. Likewise, the Socialists refused to support several Green proposals to improve public transportation (too expensive) and to lower speed limits on the autobahns (too unpopular among the already beset working class). The Socialists also refused to back the Greens’ proposals to expand immigrants’ voting rights and increase their access to social services. During spring 1999, Germany participated in NATO’s air strikes against Slobodan Milosevic’s regime. The action further strained SPD-Green relations, in part because the bombing inadvertently killed civilians, including refugees. Many Greens with pacifist and fundi backgrounds considered air strikes unlawful (partly because the United Nations (UN) had not endorsed the NATO action) and demanded that the Greens’ legislators immediately withdraw from the governing coalition. When longtime realo Fischer (who had served as foreign minister in the SPD-Green government) argued at a party-movement convention that it was Germany’s responsibility to stop Serbian aggression, an antiwar protester ran to the podium and threw a paint bomb that perforated one of Fischer’s eardrums. In 1999, it looked as if the SPD-Green coalition would unravel at any moment. It also looked as if the SPD—because it had failed to resuscitate the economy—would lose at the next national election. Fortuitous events, including Milosevic’s sudden capitulation and German journalists’ discovery of CDU financial improprieties, enabled the coalition to survive. The Greens’ share of the national vote rose slightly above 8.5 percent (its best showing


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in a Bundestag election to date). The SPD’s share of the vote dropped slightly, but not below that of the CDU/CSU. Today, the Greens have been involved in Bundestag politics for more than two decades. Over that time, a certain ideological “graying” has taken place. Incrementalists, who work patiently and nondisruptively for piecemeal change, have acquired a larger voice within the movement at the expense of advocates of extraparliamentary politics. Still, the days of protest are not over, and many Greens continue to question the desirability of Germany’s political and economic order and dream of establishing a radically new society. As Lees (2000: 141) puts it, “It will take more than what has so far been achieved to convince their own supporters that the ‘Long March through the Länder’ has indeed been worth the effort.” So long as the party movement continues to attract activists with diverse beliefs, its long-term aims, tactics, strategy, and constituencies may change in surprising ways. Indeed, the movement’s more uncompromising fundamentalist wing may recover its strength and add, in Frankland and Schoonmaker’s phrase (1992: 232), “a dash of color, unconventionality, and high principle” to German politics.


PART

3

Poland’s Solidarity and Movements against Dictatorial Regimes

Political-process theories of social movements emphasize how constitutional arrangements, elite factionalism, and government behavior influence people’s attempts to remake their world and redirect their histories. In competitive party systems, for example, movement leaders and activists often view elections and legislative work as effective tools for changing societies. But what happens if constitutional arrangements preclude such legal initiatives? What happens if everyday people do not have constitutional rights to air their discontents? What happens if a government routinely represses nonelites’ collective opposition to its decisions and policies? Between 1960 and 1990, numerous social movements appeared in communist-party states, illustrating the generative capacity of movements even when constitutional arrangements and official hierarchies seem inimical to their existence. In Hungary and Czechoslovakia, for example, instances of local popular resistance, including rallies, marches, and building occupations, multiplied and became sizable during the 1970s and the 1980s. Even in the Soviet Union—the world’s first stable communist-party state—increasingly large groups challenged the regime between 1970 and its collapse in 1989 (Bernhard 1993: 9–23; Hosking 1991; Mason 1992: 24–7, 36–7). Solidarity, in Poland, was arguably the most internationally famous of these social movements. In 1981, approximately twelve million people (75 percent of the workforce) participated in the movement, despite the government’s attempts to co-opt, intimidate, and coerce nonelite activists (Mason 1992: 29). The Polish party-state instituted martial law in December 1981, sending Solidarity underground. However, the movement reappeared toward the end of the 1980s and helped usher in a new regime. Let us ponder the context, predecessors, and aims and activities of Solidarity for clues as to how a large and influential social movement can emerge and evolve in a repressive political order.


CHAPTER

5

A World to Be Remade: Sociopolitical Circumstances of Solidarity

According to the definition of “social movement” introduced in chapter 1, social movements involve deliberate efforts by everyday people to alter radically their social and political order. Movements are neither simply disrespectful gestures toward government authority nor simply disruptive behavior within social institutions (even though movements sometimes manifest such characteristics). Movements entail critiques of existing social conditions, proposals for new values and institutions, and strategies for change. Consequently, the analyst cannot understand the aims and activities of a social movement ahistorically but must become familiar with its social and political context. The question that must by asked: “What is the existing order that participants in a movement wish to remake?” In the case of Solidarity, most movement activists wished to curtail the powers of a communist-party state that was militarily backed by foreign power and that sought rapid economic development by means of short-term sacrifices by nonelites. Three sets of rulers had tried to turn Poland into an advanced industrialized society between 1945 and 1980.1 Historians often associate the periods with the names Josef Stalin, W2adys2aw Gomu2ka, and Edward Gierek. The differentiation signifies, in part, different levels of repression and different approaches to industrialization and international trade. But in all three periods, one party—the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR)—monopolized all official “levers” of power and, despite periodic promises of greater civil liberties, ruled with a heavy hand, outlawing numerous “oppositional” organizations and severely restricting freedom of expression and association. And in all three periods the economy stagnated, compounding the material suffering of many citizens. Solidarity sought a fresh start.

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Social Movements in Politics First Attempt at Economic Development: Polish Stalinism (1945–1956)

Like Germany, Poland emerged from World War II in shambles. More than a fifth of its population had died during the war, and a third of its material wealth had been laid waste. In Warsaw, the national capital, upward of 90 percent of the buildings had been leveled or were beyond repair. Sixty percent of the country’s schools and scientific institutes were in ruins, and the transportation system was virtually nonexistent (Ascherson 1987: 131, 139). According to Lawrence Goodwyn (1991: 46), “For no nation on earth was World War II the catastrophe that it was in Poland.” Poland’s fate was meted out in treaties and agreements whose terms lay beyond most Poles’ control. In summit meetings in Yalta and Teheran, the major Allied forces agreed to the Soviet Union’s temporary administration of Central Europe. The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), according to the terms laid out in various documents, would establish regimes both democratic in political procedures and “friendly” toward itself. Further, the Allies decided to move Poland’s frontier some hundred miles westward, at the expense of prewar Germany. The externally imposed annexation benefited Poland because it thereby gained greater access to the sea as well as control of a number of industrial centers, including the shipbuilding centers of Danzig and Stettin, soon to be given the Polish names of Gda†sk and Szczecin. Even so, the territorial expansion posed immediate economic challenges, for the retreating German armies’ scorched-earth tactics had reduced these cities to rubble. Moreover, Poland was required to cede approximately a third of its eastern region—primarily farmland—to the Soviet Union, displacing millions of its citizens. Fearful of even a short-term Soviet occupation of Poland, leaders of Poland’s government-in-exile urged British and U.S. diplomats to reconsider their foreign policy. As the expatriates saw the situation, Poland’s neighbor to the east—a traditional enemy—would always subordinate Poland’s interests and needs to those of its own. The Americans and the British dismissed these entreaties, deeming the Poles inflexible and lacking in political imagination; they were fretting excessively about long-past feuds. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, for example, at one point reproached the Polish prime minister and said of him that because he protested the Red Army’s presence, he ought to be committed to a lunatic asylum. “You’re a callous people who want to wreck Europe,” Churchill is reported to have shouted. “I shall leave you to your own troubles. You have only your miserable, petty, selfish interests in mind!” (Ascherson 1987: 135). Whether Britain and the United States could, in fact, have compelled the Soviet Union to end its occupation of Poland is unsettleable. U.S., British, and French forces had fought almost exclusively in Western Europe and were stationed there. To uproot the Soviet troops would have required transportation networks and personnel that were not at hand. Citizens of

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Britain and the United States, furthermore, did not feel immediately threatened by the Soviet Union and yearned to begin restructuring their own economies. Any decision to use troops to uproot the Soviets from Eastern Europe (and thereby risk renewed warfare) would have been highly unpopular, perhaps politically suicidal. Many British and U.S. diplomats, moreover, did not anticipate aggression by the Soviet Union. It had, after all, agreed to establish freely elected governments in Eastern Europe that would be “responsive to the will of the people.” The Soviet Union initially appeared to abide by its promises, at least in Poland. Under its stewardship, a coalition government had been formed in 1945 that included representatives from all major communist and noncommunist parties, except those with ties to the Nazis. Representatives of the procommunist party, the Polish Workers’ Party (PPR), held only a fifth of the coalition government’s ministries—a significant number but, still, a minority. The coalition government immediately undertook a number of social reforms that many Poles (especially intellectuals) believed were needed to rebuild their nation in ways to overcome its longstanding economic backwardness. The government divided existing large estates and then redistributed the smaller parcels to formerly landless peasants. Redistribution permitted more than three million tiny farms to be established, accounting for 75–85 percent of the country’s arable acreage. True, many of the new holdings could not accommodate modern agricultural machinery (only 14 percent had more than 10 hectares; more than 50 percent had fewer than 5 hectares) (Singer 1982: 189). However, it was believed that social justice had been done and that greater productivity would follow. By the end of 1946, the government also had begun to construct large plants, such as a steel mill near Kraków, and to rebuild the shipyards. These initiatives relieved severe rural overpopulation and unemployment. Between 1946 and 1950, more than seven million peasants migrated cityward (Ascherson 1987: 141; Goodwyn 1991: 399). Although Poles generally supported the economic reforms, many viewed the PPR and the Soviet Union askance. Consequently, membership in the PPR seesawed as Poles continued to seek out ideologically attractive affiliations. PPR membership skyrocketed from 30,000 at the beginning of 1945 to 300,000 in April. More than 200,000 then left during the next four months, as leaders of the government-in-exile returned and reestablished the Peasant Party (PSL) and other noncommunist organizations (Ascherson 1987: 142). Despite such popular undertakings, the Soviet Union and the PPR were not welcoming of early elections, largely because of the strength of noncommunist parties, especially the PSL. Communist leaders feared that voters might elect an anticommunist government that would ally itself with the capitalist nation-states and pose a direct military threat to the Soviet Union. Consequently, the Soviets postponed the promised elections, declaring that antidemocratic forces had not yet been rooted out. In the

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meantime, civil war broke out in the countryside between armed bands of communists and anticommunists. Between 1945 and 1947 the Soviet Union became more and more directly involved in Poland’s domestic politics. Poland’s security forces, under the direction of Soviet advisers, orchestrated mob attacks on meetings of the PSL, the PPR’s major rival. The civil war wound down, but many villages in southeastern Poland were leveled and many of the region’s Ukrainians had been executed summarily or deported to forced-labor camps in the Soviet Union. By the time Polish elections were held in 1947, thousands of PSL activists had been jailed (including all 142 of the party’s candidates for parliament). The PPR, resorting to widespread fraud, won convincingly and then absorbed several smaller parties, leaving itself only two minor-party rivals. The expanded PPR renamed itself the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) and took an openly pro-Soviet stance. Leaders of the PSL, facing a very hostile political climate, either fled the country or withdrew from public life. The now-powerful PZPR rewrote the constitution and in effect reduced the Sejm (parliament) to a rubber-stamp institution. By the end of 1948, democratic Poland had metamorphosed into a one-party state, purportedly ruled by an elected parliament with a couple of small opposition parties but in fact directed by the PZPR. Several features of the de facto one-party system closely resembled the Soviet Union (Ascherson 1987: 137–60; Bernhard 1993: 31–6; Starski 1982: 5–28). Like the secret police in the USSR, the secret police in Poland engaged in extralegal intimidation of critics of the regime. Textbooks glorified Stalin’s moral vision and political acumen, and provided a revisionist national history that stressed the accomplishments of the PZPR. Also like the Soviet Union, the new party-state sought to modernize the economy through multiyear plans that emphasized rapid development of heavy industry to the detriment of people’s immediate needs. In an attempt to rationalize agricultural production, the party-state established more than ten thousand collectivized farms. It also replaced all independent trade unions with a system of licensed labor organizations that gave priority to increasing production over the protection of workers’ rights. Viewing the Catholic Church as a potential political rival, the party-state reduced its role in education and arrested prominent clerics. Moreover, pro-Soviet factions within the PZPR used the secret police to purge the party of factions whose actions departed even the slightest from Stalin’s wishes. Among the imprisoned was W2adys2aw Gomu2ka, the former secretary of the PPR and a deputy premier in the early postwar coalition government. Meanwhile, Poland’s industrial economy became more and more linked to that of the Soviet Union. Poland mined coal, built ships, manufactured machine tools, and turned out much else that was useful to its political neighbor. By the early 1950s, the Soviet Union was receiving approximately a third of all Polish exports (including three-quarters of all ships built) (Kami†ski 1991: 82–3; Singer 1982: 165). Many Polish workers believed


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these exports were being sold at ridiculously low prices, in effect, for the cost of transportation, but some analysts dispute this contention and maintain that the Soviet Union in fact propped up the Polish economy (Laba 1991: 120, 211). Poland’s version of Stalinism never became as brutal as the original (Ascherson 1987: 151–5). Aware that forced collectivization of all farmland would lead to a near revolt, the Polish party-state only halfheartedly implemented its collectivization program, and private farming remained widespread—in contrast to East Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, where private farming largely disappeared during the Stalinist years. Further, intraparty purges in Poland lacked the inhumanity of the purges inside the Soviet Union, and in most other Eastern European countries; show trials and murders of former party members did not occur. Even Gomu2ka, whose earlier support of Yugoslavia’s Tito had enraged Joseph Stalin, was not forced to recant. DeStalinization under Gomu2ka (1956–1970) Police repression and state terror subsided throughout much of Eastern Europe soon after Stalin’s death in 1953 (and especially after Nikita Khrushchev’s critique of Stalin’s rule in his famous 1956 speech at the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Communist Party). Supporters of Gomu2ka, although they remained a minority within the PZPR, gained significant influence within the party and began to advocate a “Polish road to socialism” that would be sensitive to (1) the large number of persons employed in agricultural production (more than half the workforce in 1950 (Mason 1992: 20)), (2) the ubiquity of private farming, (3) the nation’s hostility toward the Soviet Union, and (4) the institutional power and cultural influence of the Catholic Church. The Gomu2ka cohort soon became known as a “revisionist” faction. The popular label obscures the fact that the so-called revisionists disagreed over many policies and lacked a common view of how Poland should be constitutionally and economically organized. Even so, almost all revisionists did agree that policy-making institutions should remain in the hands of the PZPR, that socialism was workable and a noble ideal, that the economy and politics of the Soviet Union misrepresented true socialism, and that a genuinely socialist society should include extensive freedom of expression and assembly for everyone.2 While ideological debates were taking place within the PZPR, rebellions were flaring elsewhere. Farmers spontaneously disbanded the agricultural collectives and seized the holdings without waiting for government approval. In the last three months of 1956, the number of collectivized farms fell precipitously from more than ten thousand to slightly more than fifteen hundred (Bernhard 1993: 34). Individual farmers once again held some three-quarters of Poland’s arable land.

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Urban workers also began to rebel against PZPR rule. The government’s six-year plan introduced in 1950 had failed to achieve its twin goals of rapid industrial development and significant improvement in the living conditions of workers. Between 1950 and 1953, real wages had dropped at an average annual rate of 3.7 percent (Bernhard 1993: 35). Tens of thousands of workers in Pozna† marched through the city’s streets in June 1956, shouting “We want to eat!” and “We want bread for our children!” The subsequent skirmishes and melees, including an attack on police headquarters, brought on retaliatory police violence and eventuated in more than seventy civilian deaths. The government, worried that workers elsewhere would learn of the Pozna† rebellion and take to the streets as well, acted promptly to increase real wages in the city and promised to consult workers during future management decision making (Goodwyn 1991: 55–80; Persky 1981: 25–9). At roughly the same time, workers’ councils began to appear in large plants throughout Poland. These were led by plant managers and technical workers disgruntled with ill-advised, if not wholly unrealistic, production decisions made by government ministers and lower-level PZPR hacks. The councils called for greater plant autonomy and managers selected on the basis of technical competence rather than political correctness. Many of the councils joined the revisionists in calling for both internal reform of the PZPR and reinstatement of Gomu2ka as PZPR secretary (Biezenski 1994: 63–7). By mid-1956, the leaders of PZPR found themselves confronting defiant farmers, rebellious workers in Pozna†, and increasingly vocal advocates of workers’ councils. They foresaw either a general insurrection or, perhaps worse, an intervention by Soviet troops stationed on the border in case events got out of hand. The party defused the situation by reinstating Gomu2ka as party first secretary. This was a diplomatically risky action; Gomu2ka, who had a history of acting independent of Soviet wishes, was not well liked by the Kremlin elite. Nonetheless, Khrushchev chose to accept the new PZPR leader rather than invade Poland and risk full-scale war. Gomu2ka became PZPR secretary in October 1956 and initially enjoyed widespread support from workers, who desperately needed better wages; from PZPR revisionists, who dreamt of a more democratic socialism; from nationalists, who disdained the Soviet Union; from the technical intelligentsia, who wanted economic decentralization; and from pro-Soviet PZPR leaders, who believed that a counterrevolution was in the air and that Gomu2ka’s ascension was the sole means of continuing the party’s rule. Gomu2ka attempted to buttress his popularity by accepting the de facto decollectivization of agriculture and by permitting workers’ councils to operate. By the end of 1957, in almost half the large and medium-sized enterprises, elected councils helped set production policies (Biezenski 1994: 64). The new government, meanwhile, reduced censorship of domestic newspapers and tolerated foreign books and music. Student clubs and cafes, avant-garde painting, journalism, and filmmaking proliferated. Religious education reappeared in state schools, new lay organizations emerged with


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their own journals, and the government relaxed its oversight of church appointments. And the powers of the secret police were curtailed, making police behavior temporarily more predictable and legalistic. Poland’s economy expanded. Per capita gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 6 percent between 1950 and 1960. Between 1956 and 1958, real wages rose at an annual average rate of just below 8 percent. Many farm workers, weary of manual labor, migrated to the industrial cities. The percentage of the total workforce employed in agriculture dropped from 56 in 1950 to 39 in 1970, the last year of Gomu2ka’s tenure (Bernhard 1993: 20–1, 37, 220–1). The stunning changes caused many observers to label Gomu2ka’s first months “the October Revolution” because the government seemed to have turned the preceding Stalinist order on its head. The PZPR enjoyed newfound popularity among intellectuals, who increasingly viewed the party as an effective tool for reforming and liberalizing Poland. Some even anticipated that the Sejm would again become a center of open debate and policy initiatives, where groups with different values and priorities could exchange views and forge compromises in civil fashion. From the perspective of advocates of democratization and liberty, all seemed well until mid-1957. The next two years proved disappointing. Gomu2ka, a committed Leninist, believed in enlightened rule by a vanguard party, and therefore viewed most revisionists within the PZPR as dangerous (at one point he announced that the “revisionist wing must be cut out of the party” (Bernhard 1993: 221)). Their writings and speeches about freedom of speech and assembly and their support for elected workers’ councils in factories seemed to threaten the party’s vanguard role. In 1957, Gomu2ka purged almost 200,000 members from the PZPR, many of whom were revisionists. In the meantime, the party-state passed laws that gravely reduced the autonomy of workers’ councils, rendering them, in effect, impotent before state officials (Bernhard 1993: 39; Biezenski 1994: 66). The party-state also soon began to curb freedom of thought. Theatrical productions either overtly or covertly critical of the regime could not open. Religion no longer could be taught in school. By 1959, the government was either sacking outspoken editors of student magazines or shutting down the magazines altogether. If students dared to demonstrate against the renewal of censorship (which they sometimes did), they risked being mercilessly clubbed by the police. In the early 1960s, the government once again was micromanaging most production and steering resources away from light industry, social services, and agriculture and into metallurgy, electronics, and machine tools. Gomu2ka reasoned that with a proper heavy-industry base, Poland could attract Western capital and eventually Western trading partners. A vibrant export sector would generate plentiful jobs and higher wages. Toward that end, workers patriotically were to lower their earning and consumption levels. The government used factory-council meetings as opportunities to exhort workers to put in longer hours and work harder (for less pay). At

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such “consultative” meetings, government representatives typically accused workers of laziness and simultaneously announced reductions in overtime opportunities and in bonuses for reaching state-mandated quotas (Laba 1991: 16–17). Gomu2ka hoped that sacrifices would be short-lived and that workers would soon enjoy the fruits of economic growth. Food shortages, however, were becoming a severe problem by the mid-1960s, as domestic supplies fell far behind demand. Private farmers, complaining that they already were being starved by a party-state that would not pay prices needed to cover costs, refused to expand production. They further argued that the party-state gave scarce fertilizers and tractors to collective farms, which forced private farms to remain excessively labor-intensive and therefore inefficient. To bring agricultural supplies and demands for agricultural goods into equilibrium, the government announced sharp increases in the prices of basic food items in December 1970: fish by 12 percent; pork, 17 percent; beef, 19 percent; lard, 33 percent; and jam, 38 percent, for example (Laba 1991: 19; Singer 1982: 157). The increases enraged urban workers because food accounted for more than half of the average family budget and because the increases were made known on the eve of the holiday season. Workers in numerous industrial cities, and especially in the coastal provinces, both marched on local party headquarters and called general strikes, and even briefly took control of some local government offices. The disaffected and the police suffered deaths in the resulting altercations. Militant labor leaders denounced the “Red Bourgeoisie” (referring to the party’s plant managers and the PZPR in general), and in the textile city of 1ód•, crowds sang that they would “beat the Muscovites and hang the Magnates” (Laba 1991: 25, 82). A frantic Gomu2ka entreated the Red Army to intervene. The Soviet Union, however, had other international concerns (in particular, the growing rift with the People’s Republic of China), and advised him to seek a “political” solution. In the midst of this popular revolt, a cerebral hemorrhage partially blinded Gomu2ka. In his enforced absence, a majority of the Politburo expressed more freely their reservations concerning the current course of economic reform and concluded that Gomu2ka had become a political liability. Edward Gierek was the chosen successor. The Third Try for Affluence (1970–1980) Gomu2ka had entered office amid showers of applause and left power amid opprobrium. Naturally, Gierek wanted to avoid the same fate. Acutely aware of the extent of economic dissatisfaction among workers, Gierek immediately sought to improve the government’s image by traveling to local plants and speaking with representatives of factory crews. He assured his listeners that their standards of living would rise if workers would


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become more efficient. Gierek was convinced that the PZPR’s rule could be legitimized only if the workers’ standards of living actually increased. In theory, material well-being would divert popular attention from potentially explosive issues, such as personal freedoms and democracy. Gierek accordingly sought loans from Western businesses and governments to enable (1) raising wages, which workers could then use to purchase consumer goods, and (2) the development of internationally competitive export industries, whose profits would then pay off the Western loans. He reasoned that a vibrant export sector would provide new jobs and high wages to energetic and enterprising workers, whose enthusiasm and high productivity would rapidly increase the country’s overall wealth. There was at least one rub: Poland’s “friendly ally” might resort to invasion or some other kind of reprisal if Poland seemed too chummy with Western creditors and trading partners. To calm Soviet fears, Gierek attempted to make Poland politically more like its hegemon by adding phrases to the Polish constitution about Poland’s “unshakable fraternal bonds with the Soviet Union” and the “leading role of the PZPR in the state.” Reformers within and outside the party (including members of the Catholic Church) protested. They argued that the constitutional amendments compromised national sovereignty and Poland’s possible evolution into a more liberal democratic order. Unable to silence critics and at the same time attract Western investors and creditors, Gierek reluctantly backtracked. His advisers replaced the offending phrases with more obscure and ambiguous terminology. Gierek, like Gomu2ka, was unsympathetic toward private farmers and reserved expensive equipment and fertilizers for the collectivized operations. In 1974, the government introduced legal restrictions on the inheritance of land, a move that convinced many farm families that the PZPR meant to destroy the private agricultural sector through pauperization. Gierek’s export-oriented, loan-based policy initially seemed to work. Between 1971 and 1975, the gross national product grew at an average annual rate of 10 percent and in 1973 was the third-highest growth rate in the world. Real wages rose by 40 percent during the first five years of Gierek’s rule (Ascherson 1987: 186, 191; Fallenbuchl 1982: 6). Poland’s first automobile factories opened, and privately owned cars became commonplace. Their higher wages netted disposable income for many middle-class Poles with which to purchase televisions, foreign apparel, and even out-of-country vacations. In the words of Neal Ascherson (1987: 186), “It was the steepest, fastest boom Poland had ever known.” In late 1973, Poland painfully awoke from its dream of perpetual affluence. The Middle East war and formation of OPEC produced an international oil shortage. Western economies sputtered and, consequently, Western demand for Poland’s nonagricultural exports plummeted. Meanwhile, workers, who were more economically secure than they had been in the past, increasingly called plant-level strikes whenever a local grievance—such as safety-code violations or reductions in overtime pay—was not adequately

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addressed by management. The Gierek government, always chary about another popular uprising, constantly sought to placate strikers, real and potential, by raising wages and giving special access to commodities in short supply. Gradually, a set of feudal-like arrangements developed, with the government granting different economic privileges to workers in different factories in return for their declarations of political loyalty. The patronage “solution” carried its own dangers. Income inequalities between regions and factories increased as strategically important groups were paid off more generously than less well-organized and economically less important groups (Laba 1991: 92–3; Staniszkis 1984: 102). Moreover, because workers had more money to purchase limited goods, inflation steadily rose. Owners of private farms, whose revenues were determined by government price-control policies, discovered that their incomes were no match for the steadily upward-spiraling cost of living and production. But the government was reluctant to increase food prices (because of the near-certain reaction of urban workers) or to increase subsidies to private farmers (because government funds were also immediately needed for export-industry development and for the repayment of international loans). After 1974, the farmers, already uneasy about their future, given the new inheritance laws, refused to increase production because revenues would not offset the entailed increased costs. Food supplies in urban areas accordingly suffered, forcing the government to spend valuable foreign exchange on agricultural imports. The mounting importation of food and the dwindling international sales of manufactured goods alarmed the ruling elite because debts were piling up. Hard-currency foreign debt skyrocketed from $100 million in 1971 to $6 billion just four years later (Ascherson 1987: 190). In 1976, the government decided to raise food prices to stimulate agricultural production, which in turn would reduce costly imports. An announcement was made in June that the price of vegetables and poultry would rise 30 percent; butter and cheese, 60 percent; meat, 70 percent; and sugar, 100 percent. Stated differently, the average family would have to spend 39 percent more on food to maintain its current level of consumption. Outraged workers once again closed factories and marched on local party headquarters. In some cities, they ransacked the headquarters and street fighting broke out. Gierek promptly canceled the proposed price hikes. To punish workers for their insolence, he gave police permission to brutalize residents in cities where the violent protests occurred (Bernhard 1993: 49–64; Singer 1982: 180–5; Starski 1982: 48–51). Without raised food prices, the party-state sought to solve its inflation and food-shortage problems by borrowing from the West. By the end of 1979, foreign debt exceeded $17 billion (Singer 1982: 187); by the end of 1980, it stood at $23 billion (Ascherson 1987: 197). Because of sagging exports, the party-state could not repay its creditors on time and asked for debt restructuring and additional long-term loans with which to help pay the interest due.


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Economic disarray appeared everywhere. Dilapidated machinery led to idle factories because normally imported replacement parts were unavailable. Even the well-paid working class could not easily find food or simple household staples, such as matches and soap. The party-state, in the mistaken belief that adequate amounts of imported medicine would always be available, had neglected to develop a pharmaceutical industry; remedies of all sorts were in dangerously short supply. Poles’ health sharply deteriorated; the infant mortality rate soared as infectious diseases spread. Because of coal shortages, power stations could not provide sufficient energy to city dwellers for light and heat. Just a few years after its amazing economic boom, Poland “was now entering the worst economic disaster suffered by any European country for over thirty years” (Ascherson 1987: 197). Soviet Worries Poland’s deteriorating economy and apparent political instability troubled leaders of the Soviet Union, some of whom in the late 1970s gave serious thought to armed intervention.3 After all, Poland played several important roles in the maintenance of Soviet hegemony. Economically, it was part of a regional division of labor, and its economic problems rippled into neighboring countries. Factories in East Germany, for example, relied on Polish raw materials, and their productivity suffered greatly whenever Polish workers went on strike. Poland’s railways enabled troops stationed in East Germany to procure supplies from the Soviet Union, and Polish ports would be valuable as naval bases should war break out between the Soviet Union and the West. Some Soviet leaders, in addition, were troubled by the Polish communists’ experiments in cultural liberalization and democracy within factories and the PZPR. Many communist parties around the globe were already criticizing the Soviet Union for its intraparty hierarchy and its highly centralized command economy. Eurocommunist leaders in Western Europe were pointing to the PZPR’s experiments with social and political reform as valuable lessons as to what other nations’ communist parties should more vigorously attempt. Most members of the Soviet Union’s Politburo did not favor armed action, at least for the moment. They argued that if Soviet troops invaded Poland, a quick military victory was unlikely, given the depth of Poles’ hostility to the Soviet Union. Financial burdens of a full-scale war and long-term occupation precluded that option. Another consideration was that armed intervention in Poland would probably provoke a backlash among Western powers, and the United States would probably extend the trade restrictions imposed after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Viewing Poland as a conundrum, Leonid Brezhnev and other Soviet leaders elected to wait in hopes that the PZPR could soon reenergize the economy and imitate the Soviet model of a transition to socialism.

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Social Movements in Politics Conclusion

By 1979, the basic materials Poland needed to sustain its urbanized and industrial society had almost completely run out. There were endemic shortages of food, machine parts, and medicine. As belts tightened, Poles looked desperately for ways to escape the downward spiral. Appeals to the communist party-state had proven dispiriting—periods of cultural liberalization and prosperity seemed always to end in further repression and skyrocketing prices for necessities. Overthrowing the regime seemed risky because it might prompt occupation by Soviet troops (even though the Soviet Union had economic problems and diplomatic worries of its own). In this conjuncture of (1) yet another economic crisis after thirty-five years of heavy-handed PZPR rule and (2) the Soviet Union’s ambivalence about intervening militarily in Poland, Solidarity appeared.

CHAPTER

6


Solidarity materialized partly as a response to the hardships that a communistparty state had produced when rapidly reconstructing and industrializing the Polish economy after World War II. Recurrent shortages—almost always on the heels of several years of prosperity—generated widespread feelings of betrayal, anxiety, and frustration. Nonelites were angry and wanted to act. According to PZPR-commissioned public-opinion surveys conducted during the mid-1970s, almost half the workers in large factories deemed themselves exploited by the state and 40 percent favored illegal strikes as an appropriate recourse to resolve conflicts with authorities (Bernhard 1993: 152). In the late 1960s, social-movement theorists shifted their attention from the political and psychological consequences of social change toward organizational resources and political beliefs. Movements seldom arise directly from rapid and large-scale social change and corresponding feelings of grievance (the new generation of theorists argue). More is involved. Earlier forms of nonelite protest and rebellion teach future movement participants the art of resistance—say, how to recruit allies, define common goals, and avoid elites’ punishments. This chapter retells many of the historical events mentioned in chapter 5 but looks at them in terms of nonelites’ acquisition of political knowledge. Like West Germany’s Greens, Solidarity emerged in an environment rich in popular politics. Since World War II, groups of industrial workers, student activists, religious leaders, and urban intellectuals had been launching public challenges to the government and its policies. These earlier events provided Solidarity with its requisite leaders, communication networks, and strategic and tactical lessons. Traditions of Proletarian Resistance The participation of countless industrial workers differentiates Solidarity from the numerous social movements that appeared in communist-party states during the early 1980s. Industrial workers had resisted Poland’s new

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political order since its inception.1 During the mid-1940s, they seized factories in the former German coastal provinces and created independent plant councils and labor unions in the mines of Silesia, in the city of Pozna† (a center for heavy industry), and in the city of 1ód• (a textile center). The government, wishing to industrialize Poland as soon as possible, called on workers to labor for free on Saturdays and attempted to reduce the factory councils’ role in setting wages and determining work conditions. The workers opposed the transfer of authority from workers’ councils to the new managers, refused to donate labor on Saturdays, and demanded that special bonuses for management be eliminated. When the PZPR tried to discipline the workers and curb the factory councils, many workers either struck or took to the streets and fought police. For example, in 1ód•, 6,000 workers occupied the largest enterprise in the city, while tens of thousands of workers elsewhere in the city participated in sympathy strikes (Stefancic 1992: 3–8). Wildcat actions multiplied during the early and mid-1950s, as workers protested the government’s six-year industrialization plan. From the government’s perspective, the plan insured long-term prosperity and high levels of productivity for the nation; from the workers’ perspective, it promoted breakneck production levels at the cost of their safety and standard of living. Miners and transport workers were especially prone to strike. Sometimes workers and their sympathizers marched on police and party headquarters and partially destroyed dossiers and furnishings. In some places, the national flag waved alongside banners calling for “Bread and Freedom.” Police repression followed (Persky 1981: 26–7; see also Goodwyn 1991: 55–87). While the government was using its censorship powers to contain public knowledge of the labor unrest, the state-sanctioned trade union was trying to convince strikers that it could adequately defend their interests only if they returned to work. Many workers in the 1950s, however, perceived the union as indifferent to those interests. One Warsaw worker was succinct: “[T]he unions are a cancer on the body of the working class” (Goodwyn 1991: 71). To reestablish the regime’s legitimacy among the restive proletariat, Gomu2ka and other new PZPR leaders promised to be more sensitive to workers’ concerns, to sack government and union officials who in the past had either mistreated or ignored workers, and to grant workers the right to form autonomous factory councils that would represent their interests before trade-union and government officials. In addition, better housing, pay raises, and greater attention to shop-floor safety codes were pledged. The government was especially conciliatory to workers in industries with high growth potential. Because concessions were made in plant-by-plant negotiations, workers in favored industries began receiving significantly higher wages. By 1958, industrial struggle was in remission, and the communist government merged the newly established workers’ councils with the older trade-union apparatus. PZPR officials and trade-union activists soon


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dominated the factory councils and took power away from those who were not party members. The PZPR also tried to silence permanently more outspoken labor activists through material incentives (new apartments, access to party stores, and so on) and through intimidation (often, beatings either in police stations or on streets by “unknown assailants”). In some cases, managers reassigned prominent activists to distant work sites and demeaning jobs. Workers were quiet through most of the 1960s, even though Poland’s once impressive industrial growth had slowed considerably. Their standard of living sank, especially during the last half of the decade, partly because Gomu2ka had shifted resources out of social consumption (e.g., public housing and health) and into selected industries that had high growth potential. When the government proposed food price increases less than two weeks before Christmas 1970, the ensuing strikes and protest marches were even larger and more ferocious than those of the mid-1950s. Workers in some cities marched on party headquarters and there were further enraged by the quarters and sumptuous lifestyles afforded party functionaries at worker expense. Gomu2ka became the target of their fury; in Gda†sk, some even dared to chant “Hang Gomu2ka!” Party buildings occasionally went up in smoke. The police used tear gas, guns, and clubs in attempts to restore order. Almost always a protester would be seriously, if not fatally, hurt (Goodwyn 1991: 112–28; Laba 1991: 15–82; Persky 1981: 38–44; Singer 1982: 164–80; Starski 1982: 39–42; Stefancic 1992: 21–30). Some protesters in the port city of Gda†sk called for wage equality between party and union officials and manual workers. One group marched onto university grounds to recruit students, but few responded. Shipyard workers in nearby Gdynia also went out on strike, partly in support of their Gda†sk peers. They had more on their minds than a rollback of the price increases; they wanted a wage structure such that no one in the same enterprise would be paid a wage more than double that paid to the lowest earner. In both Gda†sk and Gdynia workers employed sit-down-strike tactics. They reasoned that the government would not want to do battle inside the yards and endanger expensive machinery. On December 16, 1970, armored tanks encircled the occupied premises. Protesters in Gda†sk attacked the vehicles and in turn were shot at. Commuting workers in Gdynia were surprised by the tanks. The security forces began shooting water cannons and actual bullets into the crowd of thousands, killing at least four workers. In the street fighting that followed thousands were injured, and at least two hundred were killed (Starski 1982: 41). In another shipbuilding city—Szczecin—workers at some ninety enterprises accepted direction from a citywide strike committee, which organized security forces, interfactory communication, and medical services for wounded strikers and non-working-class supporters. Because of the authorities’ refusal to meet with workers, a series of brief general strikes were called (usually lasting less than a fortnight), during which workers’ militias patrolled city streets and strikers published their own newspapers and broadcasted their own radio programs. According to one activist, the

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Warski Shipyards became an “enormous Hyde park of discussion” (Laba 1991: 79). In retrospect, perhaps the most politically portentous feature of Szczecin’s remarkable strikes was the demonstrators’ demand for a trade union totally independent of the state and the PZPR. After Edward Gierek became the new leader of the PZPR, Poland briefly enjoyed prosperity and high annual growth rates. As we have seen in chapter 5, he gambled on using Western loans to build an export economy that would lead to both high wages and to sufficient profitability to enable loan repayment. Gierek won the gamble in the short run: labor quiescence. Then came the 1973 oil crisis and world recession. Low-interest loans became unavailable, and world markets shrank. To limit domestic consumption, increase food exports, and spur private agriculture, Gierek announced June 25, 1976 an increase in the prices of key foodstuffs. Workers once again took matters into their own hands. Strikes immediately broke out at a hundred or so work sites, including three-quarters of the largest enterprises. In the Warsaw suburb of Ursus, workers ripped up railroad tracks, stopped trains destined for the Soviet Union, and seized food from some of the cars. In Radom, an industrial town south of Warsaw, workers lay down their tools and marched with students, housewives, and others, chanting such phrases as “The young will not be able to live!” (Bernhard 1993: 53). One crowd descended upon the local party headquarters and taunted officials there. A party notable whose clothes seemed too elegant was stripped. Barricades were built and bonfires appeared on several streets, and many onlookers threw their party cards into the fires. The national anthem was heard occasionally, and the national flag was flown. As happened in other Polish cities, the regional party headquarters’ accoutrements enraged the strikers to the point of setting the building ablaze. Looting brought out special security forces to quell the riot. At least two people were clubbed to death. Approximately seventy-five police officers were wounded. Elsewhere, workers acted much less violently, though they sang subversive songs, declared that the party-state was a “dictatorship,” and shouted that workers had been systematically brutalized. In the aftermath of the uprisings, tens of thousands of workers were sacked from their jobs (Bernhard 1993: 52–9, 61, 64–75). In the opinions of some scholars, such as Roman Laba (1991) and Lawrence Goodwyn (1991), the nationwide strikes of 1970 and 1976 were etched on the collective memory of Poland’s proletariat. For years, workers’ groups wrote letters demanding the reinstatement and back pay for coworkers who had been dismissed for illegally striking. In some towns, Gda†sk for one, workers doggedly petitioned the government to construct memorials to honor workers killed in past struggles. Many future leaders of Solidarity observed the events firsthand and pondered the reasons for the successes and failures. Stanis2aw W˛ ado2owski, for example, participated in the Szczecin strike of 1970 and later became the vice president of Solidarity. He declared that the street fighting affected him tremendously: “Up until then I was not interested in politics”


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(Laba 1991: 64). Other future Solidarity leaders included Marian Jurczyk, who was a strike leader in Szczecin in 1970; Lech Sobieszek, who organized strikes in Gda†sk in 1970; Lech Wa2≈sa, who in 1970 served on the workers’ negotiating committee at the Lenin Shipyard in Gda†sk; and Zbigniew Bujak, who as a teenager watched his father and other factory workers strike in Ursus in 1976 (Goodwyn 1991: 32, 143, 203, 208, 236–7, 379; Touraine et al. 1983: 146–7). Although young (many of Solidarity’s earliest national and regional leaders were in their middle and late twenties), the founders of Solidarity had been tested and were familiar with the pitfalls in negotiating with PZPR and the government, with the effectiveness of different types of strikes (wildcat strikes, sit-ins, and general strikes), and with the emotional appeal of various kinds of demands. The movement activists would draw on this sizable store of practical knowledge when launching Solidarity in 1980. Desertion of the Intellectuals While disgruntled workers periodically marched and went on strike, most politically discontented intellectuals chose to work within the system of government.2 As far back as the revisionist movement of the early 1950s, Poland’s scholars, artists, and white-collar professionals had attempted to better society by first reforming the PZPR. Few now questioned the vanguard party’s right to mold society according to its design. The pressing question was how to clarify and improve the party’s goals, not how to limit its authority. Revisionists chose to bore within the PZPR, to change its policies through enlightened thinking and persuasive argumentation. They were not, however, of one mind as to the reforms that they wanted the party to pursue. Some desired greater democracy within the party, so that its policy making might be more in tune with the needs of the people. A few advocated workplace democracy and argued for the creation of workers’ councils that would challenge the prerogatives of the government’s economic planners. Other revisionists championed greater autonomy for the Sejm and viewed it as an ideal forum for policy debate and advice. Whatever their vision of reform, all revisionists believed that the principles of Marxism could be reconciled with greater liberty for Polish workers, including the right to associate in factory councils. After all, Marxist political thought called for the overthrow of all exploitative conditions; it did not prescribe a regimented and repressive society of the sort that existed in the Soviet Union. Gomu2ka’s rise to power in 1956 raised the hopes of many revisionists. He permitted dissenting views to be voiced and circulated in print. Between 1956 and 1958, Polish newspapers, including the national party daily Trybuna Ludu, carried cautious criticisms of party-state policies and straightforward descriptions of social conditions. Publishing houses began

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adding translations of works by such writers as Bertrand Russell and Herbert Marcuse to their lists. A dark and foreboding quasi-fictional literature on life in Poland (including writings by “beat” authors) flourished. Some students and younger intellectuals turned out a small biweekly, Po Prostu (To Put It Plainly), that covered the seamy side of Poland (corruption, poverty, government incompetence) (Ost 1990: 39–53). To the surprise of many revisionists, the period of free inquiry quickly came to an end. In 1957, the government began closing down organs of dissident opinion, such as the cheeky Po Prostu, and fired the entire editorial committee of Trybuna Ludu. The police beat students who demonstrated in defense of their publications. By 1962, all independent publishing houses and private discussion groups had breathed their last, including the Club of the Crooked Circle, an informal Warsaw-based seminar that had attracted many of the most prominent and influential intellectuals. Some of Poland’s intelligentsia responded to the new censorship by collecting petitions and writing critical “open letters” to the government and the PZPR. Jacek Kuro† and Karol Modzelewski, two disillusioned party activists, wrote a provocative and widely read “Open Letter to the Party” in 1965. They described the party bureaucracy as an exploiter of working people and declared that there was no seriously “democratic” decision making within the party. Using statistics on working-class life, Kuro† and Modzelewski (1982: 35–56) detailed how the PZPR’s monopoly of political and economic power had failed to improve workers’ lives. To the contrary, “The working class has been deprived of its organization, its program and its means of self-defense.” Echoing Leon Trotsky’s line of argument in The Revolution Betrayed, the two authors also heretically interpreted the Pozna† strikes and street fighting in a positive light and referred to them as Poland’s “first anti-bureaucratic revolution.” Kuro† and Modzelewski urged the intellectuals and workers to work together for a politically decentralized, factory-council form of socialism that promotes the freedom of each citizen. Workers should have the right to organize any number of political parties, should enjoy freedom of speech and assembly, and should be able to participate in “trade unions absolutely independent of the state with the right to organize economic and political strikes.” Further, in their imagined socialist order there would be no professionally trained security forces (“Under a workers’ democracy, political and regular (standing) armies cannot be maintained in any form.”). Instead, society would protect itself through a system of popular militias under the direction of factory councils. The government sentenced Kuro† and Modzelewski to three and a half years in prison for their Trotskyist-sounding heresies, but their revisionist peers eagerly read the pair’s writings. According to one student activist, Kuro† and Modzelewski’s letter “became practically the basic reading for the student counter culture” after 1968 (Starski 1982: 174–5). In 1968, the government shut down a production of the nineteenthcentury drama Forefathers’ Eve on grounds that it was inciting anti-Soviet


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feelings. The play was set during Poland’s struggle against the tsar’s occupation, and its plot could be easily viewed as a thinly veiled critique of Poland’s dependence on the Soviet Union. When students at Warsaw University protested the play’s closing, police entered the campus, from which they traditionally had been prohibited, and began clubbing suspects. Student sit-down strikes and marches spread across the country. Some students saw themselves as part of an international “new left”; others, as Maoists. A few student groups even adopted names such as “The Commandos,” which derived from a romanticized image of Third World guerrillas (Ost 1990: 12, 51). In the end, the Ministry of Education expelled hundreds of students from the universities, fired several professors who sympathized with them, and disbanded Warsaw University’s Department of Philosophy and Sociology, a center of student and faculty political activism. Meanwhile, a right-wing faction of the PZPR organized an anti-Semitic pogrom. The official press identified student activists of Jewish origin and argued that Jews had organized the recent protests and, furthermore, had been the true cause of Stalinism. Jews, under threat of losing their jobs, were compelled to denounce “Zionism” before coworkers. Thousands of Jews who received threatening leaflets and read degrading news accounts took measure of their situation and fled Poland. When Gomu2ka refused to discipline the anti-Semites within the PZPR, many outraged revisionists turned in their party cards (Ascherson 1987: 174–7; Ost 1990: 49–51; Singer 1982: 162–4; Weschler 1984: 16–24). Although many college students, scholars, and former PZPR revisionists turned away from party politics, they did not lose interest in public affairs. During the early 1970s a growing number of dissidents—influenced in part by Kuro† and Modzelewski’s writings—concluded that desirable political change could be initiated by organized social groups, such as industrial workers and white-collar professionals, whose threats of social disruption might force the PZPR to change its ways. Many disgruntled former party members joined religious, academic, artistic, and professional associations. Student theater groups (organized on communal-participatory principles), art centers, and coffeehouses also provided homes for the new wave of political activists, who wanted to organize diverse sectors of society and then build alliances and thereby create a potent “civil society” outside the state (Bernhard 1993: 7–9; Bromke 1978: 38; Ost 1990: 1–32; Starski 1982: 25–53). Fighting Poland and the Polish League for Independence were among the newly formed groups (Bromke 1978: 39, 43, 46; Zuzowski 1991: 60–70). Both called for the restoration of parliamentary politics and for independence from the Soviet Union. They secretly produced subversive books, pamphlets, and leaflets and distributed them throughout cities. Members believed that exposés of brutality and corruption, once widely circulated, would motivate citizens to resist the status quo mentally. In theory, once a people’s mindset becomes subversive, they will not tolerate further abuses. Poles will spontaneously overthrow the regime and resist “the gradual sovietisation of Poland” (Zuzowski 1991: 65).

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Social Movements in Politics Church-Based Dissent

Before World War II, the Catholic Church had supported Poland’s rich and powerful, and stood steadfast against the redistribution of rural wealth. During the first decade of the PZPR’s tenure, the church continued to side with the rulers and did not question the party-state’s secular authority in exchange for a free rein in carrying out its spiritual charge.3 The political relationship between the church and the PZPR became more complex during the 1950s. The lay group known as Pax and the so-called patriot priests’ movement continued to cooperate with the PZPR and participated in the party’s periodic anti-Semitic campaigns. The communist government, in turn, placed confiscated church-owned hospitals, nursing homes, and orphanages under the authority of the patriot priests (Nowak 1982: 5). Nonetheless, there were signs of growing restiveness within the church—for example, Tygodnik Powszechny, a major Catholic weekly, refused to print Stalin’s obituary despite pressure from the government. During the 1960s and 1970s, the tension between the Catholic Church and the party-government became much more overt. The politicoreligious group Znak allowed antiparty intellectuals to use church property for meetings, held discussions of officially banned books, and for a time published an influential public opinion journal. Some clerics (especially in the larger towns and cities) delivered sermons on the pronouncements and workings of the Second Vatican Council, on the value of inalienable rights (including the right of workers to form unions), and on human dignity as a principle in politics. Prominent Catholic officials denounced the PZPR’s anti-Semitism campaigns, as well as the government’s repression of students during the late 1960s. In a letter to the government after the 1976 strikes and the subsequent punishment, the primate of Poland admonished: The workers who partook in the protests should have their rights and their social and professional positions restored; the injuries they suffered should be compensated; and those who have been sentenced should be amnestied. (Bernhard 1993: 77) Stunned government authorities in several cities refused to grant building permits for new churches in working-class districts. Working-class parishioners jerry-built chapels and, if their priests were arrested or the authorities tore down the structures, held demonstrations and clashed with police. Although the Catholic Church never advocated insurrection, it exacerbated the government’s struggles with workers and intellectuals by scheduling a visit by Pope John Paul II, a former archbishop of Kraków. The visit was to coincide with the celebration of the nine-hundredth anniversary of the martyrdom of Saint Stanis2aw, who in 1079 died while resisting a tyrant. The party-state, believing that cooperation would earn international goodwill, gave its assent to the visit. During public addresses and masses, the pope stressed social peace but also dispensed what some


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activists interpreted as implicit words of support—for example, “The future of Poland will depend on how many people are mature enough to be nonconformists” (Garton Ash 1991: 31–2). The successful organization of the visit did not go unnoticed. Thousands of opponents of the regime took it as evidence of the latent political power of the people. The state, after all, had played little or no role in mobilizing the huge assemblages and providing crowd control. Of the rallies, one Solidarity activist later recalled, “We discovered an extraordinary and quite unsuspected competence within ourselves: we could do all kinds of things by ourselves, we didn’t need the authorities” (Weschler 1984: 15). Emergence of KOR Prior to 1976, rebellious workers, intellectual dissidents, and religious activists had minimal contact with one another. The government’s highly questionable “legal” prosecution of participants in the June strikes of that year, however, set in motion a train of events that brought the three groups closer together. To help the arrested workers, a small cohort of intellectuals began to arrange transfers of money from church resources to prisoners’ families. Doctors were recruited to provide pro-bono medical care to the fired workers and their families. Defense lawyers were found. The treatment accorded the imprisoned workers was monitored. Infractions of legal rights were publicized. And, professional contacts were used to organize prisonersupport committees across the country and overseas. That autumn the supportive intellectuals published an open, signed statement in which they described themselves as the Workers’ Defense Committee (KOR), dedicated to the protection of the strikers’ legal rights, not to the advocacy of illegal acts. KOR numbered fourteen at the time; twenty-five by June 1977; and in the hundreds a year later (Bernhard 1993: 76, 84, 87). As the size of group steadily grew, so did its political aims, which within eighteen months of its founding included a request for a parliamentary investigation of the alleged torturing by police of labor activists and political prisoners. By summer 1978, KOR had established official centers in nine cities, and its calls for the parliamentary investigation of police abuses had been endorsed by scores of prominent intellectuals and church leaders (Bromke 1978: 40). The government did not appreciate KOR or its legalistic defense of workers, whom one party official characterized as “anarchists, brawlers, enemies of true working people, old malcontents, trouble-makers, drunkards, provocateurs, and hooligans” (Bernhard 1993: 67). Gierek delineated the KOR membership as “a small group of persons of old bourgeois political orientation and incorrigible revisionists” who poison national debates with their demagoguery, and try to attack the basis of our sociopolitical system and international policy. These people are in fact raising their hands against the fatherland. (Bernhard 1993: 110)

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Most KOR members had long personal histories of political activism. Some had fought the Nazis during the occupation. Some had been revisionists within the PZPR or had been involved in such “subversive” intellectual discussion groups as the Club of the Crooked Circle during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Some had participated in the campus protests of 1968. Some had been part of the 1970s underground publications movement. Some were politically oriented members of the clergy, inspired by the Second Vatican Council (Bernhard 1993: 77–80, 84–7, 104–5; Bromke 1978: 39). Younger KOR activists (usually in their twenties and thirties) often attended workers’ trials and visited workers’ families, and underwent police harassment and surveillance. Many of the older KOR members (not infrequently in their seventies and eighties) enjoyed considerable national and international status. Novelist Jerzy Andrzejewski and economist Edward Lipi†ski were two such personages; they mobilized public opinion to protect their targeted junior peers (Bernhard 1993: 82–3, 85–7, 110–21; Persky 1981: 47–57). At first, the government attempted to intimidate KOR. Its younger members were subjected to searches, detentions, and physical abuse. One KOR activist who was preparing a report on police brutality in Kraków was beaten to death (by government security personnel most of his colleagues believed). Senior KOR members used their contacts with foreign organizations and notables, such as the Italian Communist Party and West Germany’s Willy Brandt, to mobilize pressure against the party-state. International groups and prominent foreigners reacted by petitioning the Polish government on behalf of the imprisoned activists, and peaceful demonstrations were held in several European capitals. Meanwhile, major cultural groups, such as the Union of Polish Writers and the Polish Academy for Sciences, told the public that the activists behind bars were innocent and warned the government that groundless arrests could stir up widespread defiance. The public relations crisis impelled the government to free KOR activists in the summer of 1977. Meanwhile, the dramatic face-off between KOR and the party-state inspired the formation of more than a dozen new groups, each wishing to defend by legal means a specific civil or human right—for instance, the Believers’ Self-Defense Committee and the Christian Community of Working People, both of which were concerned with freedom of worship and the protection of “illegal” chapels, and the Students’ Solidarity Committee (SKS), which advocated greater freedom of academic speech. Ironically, just before the prisoners were released, KOR splintered because of differences over its raison d’être. One faction that included the writer Kuro† insisted that KOR should work thenceforth to protect and expand the civil liberties of all Poles. In theory, a general expansion of civil liberties would enable various social groups to become more self-directing, and multiple autonomous groups, as they become more confident, would


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together be able to limit the state through legal forms of opposition and to force it to be truly responsive to the governed. KOR’s task was not to tell social groups what to do but to facilitate their self-formation through development of an appropriate legal framework. KOR, moreover, should avoid overtly plumping for either the removal of the PZPR from power or a major reorientation in Poland’s foreign policy. Advocacy would surely provoke Soviet military intervention. KOR’s goal should be as politically nonthreatening as possible. In the words of KOR activist Adam Michnik (Bromke 1978: 46): We realize that in Poland today the Communist party must rule, and that Poland must stay in the Soviet bloc—we just want them to rule more justly. We want a dialogue with the party, not a clash. In spring 1977 this faction, the larger faction within KOR, officially renamed the organization the Committee for Social Self-Defense-KOR (KSS-KOR). The other KOR faction left KSS-KOR in 1977 and joined a new organization, the Movement for the Defense of Human and Civil Rights (ROPCiO). This organization sought not only an increase in civil rights but a regime transformation, including (1) the immediate restoration of a West European-style parliamentary democracy and (2) Poland’s economic and political independence from the Soviet Union. KSS-KOR contained a large number of Marxists, revisionists, and socialists, and even a few wellknown members of Poland’s Communist Party, such as Edward Lipi†ski. In contrast, members of ROPCiO were generally hostile toward socialist thought and especially Marxist-Leninism. They favored the liberal and nationalist traditions of Polish political theorizing that were popular in the interwar period. In addition, some ROPCiO members openly advocated the overthrow of the party-state. Disagreements over goals and strategies soon splintered ROPCiO into smaller nationalist organizations. The Confederation for an Independent Poland (KPN) disapproved of ROPCiO’s periodic collaboration with KSS-KOR and accused the latter of being a communist and pro-Soviet Trojan horse. The KPN hoped to overthrow the PZPR one day by means of a general strike. According to the KPN’s chief theoretician, “A few days general strike in the whole country will force the authority to capitulation.” He added that the Soviet Union would be reluctant to intervene because “tanks cannot influence strikers to return to work” (Zuzowski 1991: 77). The KPN’s immediate task was to organize sectors of Polish society for rebellious action but without help from other opposition groups, especially KSS-KOR, whose “genealogy was shamefully infected going back straight to the Stalinist terror” (Zuzowski 1991: 78). Another ROPCiO splinter was the Young Poland Movement (RMP); its members were recent university graduates in Gda†sk, for the most part. This nationalist organization celebrated Poland’s cultural heritage, especially

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Catholicism. RMP activists argued that any human, in order to fully realize his or her powers, must live in an independent nation-state whose policies reflect and embody citizens’ common norms. Members of the RMP admired the ideas of Roman Dmowski, an early twentieth-century political thinker who defined a “true Pole” largely in religious terms and who celebrated the nation-state as a tool for advancing a people’s collective interest. RMP activists, however, insisted that they did not embrace Dmowski’s well-known racism (especially his resentment against Jews), that they were nonsectarian in their politics, and that they were willing to work with all people of “good will” to liberate Poland from the Soviet Union. Workers and Intellectuals Converge KOR’s efforts in 1976 to protect labor activists from state repression helped bridge the gap between two classes in Poland: intellectuals (including college students and white-collar professionals) and the proletariat. Polish intellectuals had a tendency to look down on workers as politically ignorant and inept. Polish workers viewed intellectuals as pampered by the regime and as patronizing toward workers. To open lines of communication between white-collar professionals and industrial workers, KSS-KOR began publishing Robotnik (The Worker), a national newspaper with a circulation of between 30,000 and 100,000 (the highest circulation of any underground publication in Poland at that time) (Bernhard 1993: 161). Many articles in Robotnik were written by longtime labor activists and called for wage increases, safer working conditions, the right to strike, abolishment of privileges for party members, and an independent press. Contributors also reflected on tactics for winning strikes and covered such topics as defending leaders, creating favorable publicity, and overseeing implementation of agreements. Most members of KSS-KOR opposed the use of violence in labor struggles (a possible retaliatory Soviet invasion could easily be envisioned) and repeatedly urged worker activists to explore peaceful, legalistic alternatives to street riots and wildcat strikes. Partly as a result of the articles in Robotnik and of KSS-KOR’s own behavior, many labor organizers came to see work stoppages and street violence as last resorts for disaffected workers. One of Solidarity’s most experienced leaders declared, “KOR taught the people that there are other means of arguing with the authorities than molotov cocktails” (Karabel 1993: 46). Meanwhile, members of KSS-KOR, ROPCiO, RMP, and KPN joined shipyard workers in Gda†sk and other cities in organizing rituals to commemorate the deaths of workers in earlier struggles against the PZPR regime. In private apartments, small groups of workers and intellectuals planned how to demonstrate for the fallen workers and celebrated any successful liberation of worker activists from prison. At the private meetings, labor leaders and academics exchanged ideas on the relative efficacy of various


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types of resistance and on the desirability of a labor organization independent of government and party ties. Bonds of trust were gradually built not only between workers and intellectuals but also between workers from various factories (Karabel 1993: 30, 33–5, 37; Pravda 1982: 182). It was at one private gathering in Gda†sk that plans were first laid for a local strike that would culminate in the nationwide movement called Solidarity (Persky 1981: 6–8). The participants—a dozen or so local workers and intellectuals—drew on the extensive network of contacts that had been built during the past years of organizing. Demands and arrangements for publicity (such as informing other factories and local residents) were discussed in advance. Resources were pooled. One scholar observes, Of the scores of strikes that swept over Poland in the summer of 1980, the one that began in Gda†sk on August 14 was almost certainly the best planned and organized. (Karabel 1993: 34) Conclusion Solidarity appeared in a time of economic crisis, but it also was a time of widespread resistance to the party-state. Diverse labor, religious, academic, legal, and countercultural organizations questioned the party-state’s policies and, in a few cases, advocated the forceful overthrow of the regime. Theories about how to change the regime multiplied over time and ranged from working through the party and the judicial system, to propagating new values and ideas about freedom and civil society, to conspiring to overthrow the regime. These diverse goals and strategies (and the plethora of oppositional organizations that advanced them) provided nutrition for Poland’s future, fledgling social movement. They would affect the goals, strategies, and tactics that Solidarity’s leaders would consider, and would generate some of the disparate ideological currents that would gradually tear the movement apart.

CHAPTER

7


Identity-formation theorists are sensitive to the diverse viewpoints within every social movement. What the outside world sometimes perceives as unity of purpose and ambitions is often, on closer inspection, a kaleidoscope of aims and viewpoints in an endless process of negotiation and cross-fertilization. During its first year and a half, Solidarity lacked a coherent program other than distrust of the PZPR and a demand for nonpartisan trade unions. Viewpoints multiplied on the eve of martial law. Thereafter, one view and set of values came to characterize the movement’s leadership, which led to disillusionment among the rank and file, desertions, and organizational fragmentation. Seemingly overnight, the once Herculean movement disintegrated into many small and often squabbling political organizations. Confrontation in Gda†sk In summer 1980, the Polish party-state proposed yet another round of price increases. Workers again organized local strikes and marched on party headquarters. In July alone, 81,000 workers struck in 177 enterprises (Pravda 1982: 198). There was practically no coordination of worker activity. Certainly, there was little thought of overthrowing the political and economic order. Across the country a pattern emerged. If a group of workers lost a strike and were punished, restless workers in nearby plants temporarily became more quiescent. If, on the other hand, a group won concessions, news would spread, inspiring imitative behavior in others. In July, a strike at the enormous Lenin Shipyard in Gda†sk collapsed. But the workers, with encouragement and support from KSS-KOR, decided to try again. They revised their earlier list of demands to include reinstatement of a popular labor activist, Anna Walentynowicz, who recently had been laid off. The second strike began inauspiciously on August 14.1 A few onlookers joined the march, which soon lost direction and meandered, at one point


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almost moving harmlessly outside the yard and into the streets. The director of the shipyard met with the demonstrators and promised to negotiate on the workers’ behalf for better wages and the reinstatement of Walentynowicz if they returned to work. The small crowd—between 100 and 1,000, no one can say for certain—had almost dispersed when Lech Wa2≈sa, a well-known local activist who formerly had worked in the yard, unexpectedly appeared on an excavator. The strike organizers had arranged for him to be present at the beginning of the strike, but he had been unable to smuggle himself into the yard until later in the morning. He shrewdly turned a scheduling “mistake” into an opportunity, dramatically interrupting the director’s argument. Wa2≈sa, using his remarkable oratorical skills, persuaded the workers to return to the yard until the matters had been completely settled with the director. Only an occupation, he proclaimed, would halt production and also protect workers from the police because the government would fear potential damage to the equipment. The assemblage rejected the director’s proposal. Meanwhile, they persuaded others to strike and formed a new negotiating committee, which expanded the initial, almost exclusively wage-oriented, list of demands to include the reinstatement of Wa2≈sa and all other workers fired during the 1970s; job protection for all strikers; and family allowances comparable to those given to members of the police and secret police. Stalemate ensued: the authorities refused to negotiate until work resumed, and the workers refused to leave the shipyard until their demands had been met. Every passing hour seemed to benefit the strikers because as workers elsewhere in the shipbuilding industry heard of the standoff, they engaged in similar actions—in effect, a general strike. Information about the actions was communicated by students. Members of ROPCiO, RMP, and the KPN also served as couriers and poster makers. As workers in other local factories joined in, the list of demands grew to include investigation of the activities of the official trade union and construction of an official memorial to honor victims of police violence during the 1970 strikes in Gda†sk. The Strike Committee and the director reached an agreement on the afternoon of August 16, and Wa2≈sa announced to the occupiers that the strike had officially ended. Some strikers pleaded to continue the occupation because it would help workers on strike in other factories and in other cities. Some delegates from those places accused the negotiating team of betraying Poland’s other workers. When the strikers began to leave the yard, they were met by outraged women at the gates who spat at them and jeered. Sensing widespread discontent, Wa2≈sa suddenly turned to the remaining workers and unexpectedly called for a vote on whether to continue the strike. They voted overwhelmingly in the affirmative. Angered, the shipyard director reminded the assembly of the just-signed agreement. He was ignored. The next morning the thousands who had gone home before the

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vote rejoined the occupiers. The Strike Committee, to convey its commitment to all workers, changed its name to the City Strike Committee; later, to the Inter-Factory Strike Committee. Over the next few days, the negotiating committee drafted a list of twenty-one demands, many of which went far beyond the almost purely economic demands that had been acceded to on August 16. The new demands echoed many goals discussed in recent issues of Robotnik and also the demands made in the strikes of the 1970s: the right to strike; an end to censorship; the release of all political prisoners; an end to mandatory Saturday work; a lower retirement age; and greater access to food at reasonable prices. Perhaps the most controversial of all (and certainly the demand that most members of KSS-KOR viewed as utopian and needlessly confrontational) was a call for unions independent both of the state and of the PZPR. By the morning of August 18, workers at 40 local factories had declared occupation strikes, had endorsed the demands of the Inter-Factory Strike Committee, and had given it authority to negotiate for them. By evening workers at 156 local factories had endorsed the twenty-one demands and joined in the citywide general strike. By August 23, workers at more than 380 factories and enterprises in and around Gda†sk had declared themselves part of the Inter-Factory Strike Committee. The PZPR, discomfited by the growing power of the strikers and annoyed by the demand for a politically independent trade union (in effect, a repudiation of the party’s claim that it alone adequately represented workers’ true interests), launched a vicious disinformation campaign through the state-controlled media. Television, radio, and newspapers portrayed the strikers as criminals and bullies. The government also cut all communication between Gda†sk and the rest of Poland, preventing workers from telephoning sympathizers elsewhere. Nonetheless, news of the events in Gda†sk leaked out, thanks largely to KSS-KOR’s network of underground publications and to numerous nationalist couriers who produced and smuggled leaflets and posters into other factories. Interfactory strike committees appeared throughout Poland. White-collar workers went out on sympathy strikes. The Catholic Church declared support for the strikers (but simultaneously urged moderation in demands and avoidance of violence). Numerous groups of intellectuals provided favorable publicity and legal advice. In Gda†sk, guitar-playing students, many of whom were members of the nationalistic RMP, entered the shipyards to bolster spirits. Faculty and students at the nearby Gda†sk Polytechnic University ignored party directives and voted to support the strikers. Housewives and private farmers brought food. The Gda†sk strike, which had begun as an isolated action by manual workers for better wages, had mushroomed into a socially and politically complex phenomenon, involving diverse causes, groups, and classes. The strikers pursued a variety of short- and long-term goals, motivated by a range of moral and political visions. Some viewed themselves as


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traditional socialists; some as Christian humanists; some as narrowly nationalist; and some as New Left. Strikers listened to and played music of all kinds, including “The Internationale,” hymns, patriotic songs, and the Beatles’ “Yellow Submarine,” among others. Before sitting down at the table, the negotiating committee insisted on the government’s recognizing the workers’ right to have independent trade unions; the reopening of communications between Gda†sk and the rest of Poland; the tape recording of the proceedings; and the stopping of arrests and physical intimidation of individuals who were disseminating posters, bulletins, and leaflets in support of the strikers. The committee carefully avoided statements and behavior that the party-state might construe as criminal, politically insurrectionary, or hostile to the Soviet Union. Alcohol was banned from the shipyards to minimize reckless behavior. By August 29, more than 600 factories and enterprises had joined the Inter-Factory Strike Committee in Gda†sk. Workers at another 130 factories had separately gone on strike in Szczecin. Workers at the Cegielski plant in Pozna†, where workers had helped topple top party leaders in 1956, threatened to go on strike should the government not accept the twenty-one demands of the Gda†sk committee. Delegates from one of Poland’s largest coal mines arrived in Gda†sk and reported that the miners had gone on strike to show support for the so-called Twenty-One Points and to protest the death of eight miners in a work-site accident. Poland’s ruling elite was over a barrel. Hardliners within the PZPR wanted to storm the factories. General Wojciech Jaruzelski, however, was of the opinion that the hundreds of occupied factories were the equivalent of hundreds of fortified castles, and that Polish soldiers would be loath to fire on fellow citizens. Such assaults would be fruitless and could eventuate in civil war—to say nothing of putting temptation in the Soviets’ way. Another PZPR faction endorsed a compromise: if the strikers would leave the yards, the party would cease selecting the vast majority of the official trade union’s leaders and instead would hold competitive elections for the posts. Even though the party leadership tentatively endorsed the proposal, the Inter-Factory Strike Committee in Gda†sk did not. Fearing the further spread of the nearly out-of-control epidemic of general strikes and occupation strikes, the PZPR capitulated. The party-state reopened telephone lines between Gda†sk and the rest of Poland; police harassment of middle-class groups aiding the Gda†sk workers ceased; and, most surprisingly, the PZPR recognized workers’ rights both to strike and to form an independent trade union. In effect, the PZPR agreed to stop viewing itself as the sole legitimate representative of workers’ interests. Origins of Solidarity The Gda†sk committee never called itself “Solidarity.” However, during the strike and negotiations, several local KSS-KOR activists described the

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day-to-day unfolding of events in their newsletter Solidarity. Jerzy Janiszewski, a graduate student with skills in graphic design, created its logo. He wished to convey the chaos, energy, and intense loyalty that he observed. The logo was simply the word Solidarity written in red (the traditional symbolic color in Europe for workers’ struggles) with the letters evocatively leaning against one another, as if they were a group of people engaged in helping and encouraging. One of the letters resembled a flag-waving activist—an image that, Janiszewski later stated, was intended to convey the broader, nationwide significance of the shipyard’s occupation (Janiszewski 1982). Some of the enthusiastic and unemployed in the shipyards began to produce T-shirts and posters carrying the logo. Over the next months, hundreds of organizations in Poland would adopt and modify the logo, and identify themselves as members of a nationwide “Solidarity” movement. But “Solidarity” also acquired a narrower organizational meaning; it referred specifically to a new network of local independent unions that emerged in the wake of the Gda†sk agreement. Between August and December 1980, workers in hundreds of mines, shipyards, and factories tried to organize themselves into legalized independent unions. They received almost no help from the party-state’s official trade union, which deemed them illegitimate competitors for worker loyalty and relentlessly tried through judicial rulings to block their emergence. The new unions also were opposed by local party officials, who viewed the Gda†sk agreement as either nonbinding or relevant only to the shipyards along the Baltic. Despite the party-state’s stance, independent unions gradually materialized, at first in Warsaw and the major seaports, and later in smaller towns, where workers were more vulnerable to police harassment and job losses. Their emergence generated debates over how best to organize the broader movement. The question was linked to numerous questions about tactics (Laba 1991: 101–14; Ost 1990: 100–9). Should each plant-level body pursue its own demands and depend on its own resources during strikes? Should local unions belong to a nationwide (or at least regionwide) organization with a modicum of control over the actions of each constituent union? The answers that workers offered to such questions varied from city to city and from factory to factory. In Gda†sk, for example, many activists advocated development of a loosely federated system of regionally based unions. In theory, within each region, the factory-level unions would be encouraged to cooperate with one another and to submit themselves to the authority of a single regional-union committee. Each regional committee, in turn, would send delegates to a national coordinating body, which would issue general policy statements, but day-to-day policy-making authority would remain primarily at the regional-union level. Many outside Gda†sk favored a far more centralized national union because they feared that their local unions, even if regionally organized, would lack the experience and resources to resist pressures from the government and party. As one Solidarity activist wryly joked, for the sake of a strong ally the centralists wanted “to accept the bondage of Gda†sk” (Drzycimski 1982: 112).


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On September 17, 1980, representatives from 35 coalitions of local unions and 150 individual factories met in Gda†sk to discuss the possible pooling of resources. It was agreed that all local unions would henceforth register with the state as belonging to a unified, nationwide trade union called Solidarity (the name derived from the popular logo and also from the motto used by the Gda†sk strikers: “Solidarity and Prudence”). Solidarity, however, would be composed primarily of regional coalitions whose actions would be “coordinated” (but not controlled) by the central, national Coordination Commission, which would issue broad resolutions about common policy. The regional bodies were to be responsible for interpreting and applying common union resolutions but also for supporting local-level union activities in their respective territories. The Coordination Commission and the regional bodies together would form a federal system of union government (although the exact powers of the regional bodies and also the limits to the powers of the Coordination Commission were never clearly stated). In the confusing yet telling words of Wa2≈sa, Let everybody know that Gda†sk has become the headquarters for everybody—no wait, that’s wrong—that . . . a central authority has emerged in Gda†sk, though it’s not really a central authority, something like it, but not that exactly. (Ost 1990: 106) Most local branches of the new trade union attempted to develop radically democratic procedures that would ensure accountability of leaders to the led. The following summary of policy-making procedures in Gda†sk’s Lenin Shipyard illustrates the sort of arrangements that local Solidarity units were exploring. Workers organized themselves into subdivisions, which elected ninety-four representatives to a council of delegates. Each week the council discussed constituents’ concerns and complaints; final policy decisions required a three-fourths majority vote. An eleven-person presidium elected by the council administered all council policies, reported all actions taken to the council at its weekly meetings, and was answerable to the council for any action taken. Members of the presidium and council were elected to two-year terms and were subject to recall at any time; no delegate or presidium member was allowed to serve more than two consecutive terms (Weschler 1984: 39–40). Internal Disputes over Goals Members of Solidarity soon became divided over short- and long-term goals. Differences proliferated during the union’s first sixteen months, before the regime imposed martial law.2 Initially, most members simply desired a strong organization that would secure just compensation for industrial workers. Some white-collar workers then argued that the new organization should help create a new economic system in which elected

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workers’ councils would make workplace policies, replacing the incompetent party functionaries. Still other members proposed that Solidarity help other oppressed populations, such as students and farmers, acquire legal rights to associate and petition the government. A tiny minority wanted to compel the PZPR to democratize Poland’s political system and to secure the nation’s independence from the Soviet Union. Only days after the Gda†sk agreement was signed, Gierek suffered a heart attack and, while hospitalized, fell from power. His successor, Stanis2aw Kania, immediately sought to incorporate Solidarity into the party-state, primarily as a consultative organization rather than as an independent union. He reasoned that by offering workers in different factories different economic incentives (wages, work-free Saturdays, and so on), the PZPR could divide the emerging trade unions. The party-state then would be able to isolate and repress any remaining Solidarity “anarchists.” The party-state, however, lacked the financial resources to undertake Kania’s co-optive strategy. During the fall of 1980, the economy hit unprecedented lows in terms of growth rates and unprecedented highs in terms of aggregate foreign debt. Shortages of basic goods increased. Without milk, infants began to suffer malnutrition. Without oil, machines began to break down and buses stopped running. Times were becoming desperate. Unrest seemed to be spreading rapidly. The courageous and successful trade-union struggles inspired other social groups—including students, journalists, and scholars—to create independent associations. Independent farmers began to lobby for their own freestanding, selfgoverning “Rural Solidarity” trade union. Women were founding small feminist groups (Anonymous 1982; Garton Ash 1991: 82, 110, 117–41, 144–7, 154–71, 203; Inter-University Coordinating Commission 1982; Persky 1981: 174–219; Starski 1982: 112, 115–18, 120, 122, 135–8, 147–50, 231–8). For sixteen months Solidarity and a growing number of imitators met a seemingly unmovable wall. The party-state implemented few of the twenty-one points in the Gda†sk agreement. For example, the electronic mass media remained closed to the new union in most places; the government had yet to implement the promised five-day workweek; and promised wage increases had yet to appear. Security forces, meanwhile, routinely invaded Solidarity headquarters and bullied organizers. On October 3, 1980, Solidarity for the first time flexed its nationwide organizational muscles. Workers in selected factories across Poland laid down their tools for an hour. The discipline and geographic extent of the action shocked the PZPR, and the government momentarily accelerated implementation of aspects of the Gda†sk accord. The turnabout was shortlived. Within weeks the authorities were again refusing to abide by earlier agreements. The party-state, furthermore, began to water down the Gda†sk agreement’s provisions for an independent trade union. The courts added to the union’s statutes a reference to the authority of the party to rule society and deleted from the statutes all references to the right to strike. The


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tampering angered Solidarity’s membership. Even workers in traditionally politically cautious regions, such as Silesia, began to call for selective strikes to compel the party-state to implement the terms of the original Gda†sk agreement. The PZPR attempted to sway public opinion by televising old film clips of Polish-Soviet military maneuvers and implying that Solidarity was provoking another invasion. But the PZPR leaders faced difficulties keeping their own members away from Solidarity. Some disgruntled lower-level party members long had believed that the PZPR was neglectful of workers’ needs; that the party had made wrongful policy decisions (especially concerning economic reform); and that the party’s top leadership was corrupt. Consequently, hundreds of thousands of party members had joined groups that identified with the slogan “Solidarity,” including the trade union itself. Some party activists, in addition, began to hold unauthorized local meetings to discuss changing the PZPR’s decision-making processes. The meetings became known as the “horizontal movement.” Many horizontalists identified with the democratic principles of Solidarity. At meetings, they contemplated the overthrow of several “Barons” of the PZPR and establishment of several institutional checks—such as fair, secret elections for party officers, and mandatory rotation of offices among party members—on the power of the party “establishment” (Caen 1982; Garton Ash 1991: 104–5, 179–82, 304–5; Goodwyn 1991: 291–3, 306–7). Bydgoszcz Crisis An incident on March 19, 1981, almost led to a collapse of the political system.3 In the province of Bydgoszcz, delegates from Rural Solidarity and Solidarity received permission to discuss farmers’ grievances before the provincial council. The chair of the council presidium assured the delegates that they would have a chance to speak at the end of the session but instead quickly closed the meeting. Angered, they stayed in the hall, and forty-five provincial councilors joined them. Hundreds of plainclothes and uniformed police surrounded the group. When the delegates refused to leave, the police officers began to hit, club, and kick them. The beatings continued as the delegates were herded into the streets. Several, after being systematically bludgeoned in front of shocked pedestrians, were hospitalized. The Catholic Church issued a statement denouncing the police action. The government denied any wrongdoing, arguing that the delegates had illegally occupied a public building and that the police carried out their duty “in a firm but not brutal manner” (Persky 1981: 204). Solidarity and Rural Solidarity demurred, insisting that the government had a duty to monitor its security forces and that the police officers must be tried and, if found guilty, punished. Workers in Bydgoszcz called two warning strikes. The party-state held its ground: such rebellious action served only to place the country in a precarious international situation.

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Within Solidarity, frustration with the government had reached a boiling point. Ongoing food shortages, continuing censorship of the news, and repeated violation of citizens’ civil liberties (including the recent arbitrary arrests of high-profile KSS-KOR activists) had convinced many in Solidarity that continued peaceful petitioning of the party-state was futile. The organization’s local and regional leaders and rank-and-file members increasingly believed that they could advance their goals only through widespread and large-scale disruptive strikes. A vocal minority further argued that the regime needed to be completely reconstituted; in particular, free elections must be held and multiple parties must compete so that the PZPR’s misuse of power would end. For most of Solidarity’s national leaders as well, the police brutality at Bydgoszcz was the last straw. The party-state needed to have its claws trimmed, to paraphrase Wa2≈sa (Persky 1981: 204). At minimum, it ought to arrest and punish all police officers involved. Consequently, a majority of Solidarity’s National Commission (the new name of what had been known as the Coordination Commission) voted to hold a nationwide general strike unless the government arrested those responsible for the Bydgoszcz attack. A general strike probably would have taken place if not for Wa2≈sa, who feared (along with the PZPR) that an indefinite and probably combative general strike would set in motion a train of events that would culminate in a Soviet invasion and the end of all liberties. He proposed an alternative: a four-hour “warning strike” that would convey simultaneously Solidarity’s anger and Solidarity’s respect for order and its trust in the authority of the PZPR. If the party-state did not respond positively to the warning strike, then a more serious general strike would take place. Wa2≈sa initially marshaled little support within the National Commission and among Solidarity’s rank and file. Indeed, many local unions were calling strikes independently of the National Commission and viewed the commission as dragging its heels. Only by threatening to resign if Solidarity declared a general strike, did Wa2≈sa succeed in toning down the proclamations made by Solidarity’s regional and national leaders. The leadership, with limited enthusiasm, called the four-hour warning strike. The extent and self-discipline of the warning strike impressed almost all observers, many of whom were uncertain about the capacity of the workers to act as a unit nationwide. Except for essential services and heavy-industry plants that were dangerous to stop, such as steelworks, the country came to a complete halt. In terms of participation numbers, the strike was the largest in the history of the Soviet bloc. Moreover, more than a million middle- and lower-level members of the PZPR participated in the action, despite the Politburo’s explicit orders to the contrary (Garton Ash 1991: 165). The party-state would not acknowledge that its police may have acted criminally at Bydgoszcz or that it had improperly interpreted and implemented the terms of the Gda†sk agreement, especially those dealing with civil liberties, such as the right to associate and to engage in union organizing.


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Because of the party-state’s stance, an indefinite general strike seemed imminent. Visiting observers uneasily looked on. Foreign governments advised the workers to act prudently. Representatives of the Pope urged restraint on the part of Solidarity and warned that a general strike would lead to civil war or a Soviet invasion. Not desirous of a showdown, Wa2≈sa negotiated secretly with the partystate. Many members of the National Commission wanted to participate as well, but Wa2≈sa declared that because of the gravity of the situation, “democracy must be limited” (Garton Ash 1991: 167). On the eve of the general strike, Solidarity rescinded the order. Wa2≈sa had convinced the National Commission that the party-state would deliver on enough concessions that the strike was unnecessary. In particular, the party-state promised to continue investigating possible criminal behavior at Bydgoszcz (although it carefully avoided saying that either undercover or uniformed police had in fact beaten anyone). In addition, it promised to end harassment of farm-union activists and to help draft a new trade-union law that would implement the remaining terms of the Gda†sk agreement and recognize farmers’ right to unionize. Timetables, however, were never provided. In the opinions of some scholars, Wa2≈sa’s secret negotiations marked the beginning of severe fragmentation within the Solidarity movement (Garton Ash 1991: 169, 171; Goodwyn 1991: 297–8; Weschler 1984: 140–1). Many activists—especially private farmers in Rural Solidarity—saw the vague terms of the agreement as a “sell-out” (Persky 1981: 214) and a “farce” (Garton Ash 1991: 168). Many were troubled by what they deemed Wa2≈sa’s dismissive treatment of other Solidarity officials. Karol Modzelewski, the highly respected coauthor of the 1965 “Open Letter to Party Members” and now the union’s national press spokesperson, resigned, declaring that Solidarity had degenerated from a democratic trade union into a “monarchic mechanism” (Persky 1981: 216). “I think, Lech, that if you had presented the whole problem to us, all the difficulties of the situation, we would have understood it and there wouldn’t have been any criticisms,” stated one member of Solidarity’s National Commission. “We should always be treated seriously” (Persky 1981: 215). Wa2≈sa publicly accepted the criticisms of his style but worked to restructure Solidarity so that his noncombative style of negotiating with the regime would gain ascendancy over what he saw as the irresponsible militancy of the National Commission. Wa2≈sa helped establish the Presidium, a fifteen-to-twenty-person executive committee for the National Commission that met whenever the National Commission was not in session and, at such times, served as the union’s highest internal authority. Unlike the National Commission, which comprised representatives from all the regional unions plus elected representatives from the National Congress, members of the Presidium were handpicked by the president, Wa2≈sa, who argued that he needed a group in which he had confidence. As time passed, Solidarity’s national leadership increasingly bifurcated

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between the moderate Presidium and the more militant National Commission (Ost 1990: 134, 143, 245). Internal Disintegration and External Defeat Wa2≈sa’s leadership style was not the only cause of Solidarity infighting. There were substantive issues, such as the future of the economy. For want of materials, many factories had closed their doors. For want of energy, many homes were dark and, during the winter, quite cold. During summer 1981, hunger marches, some with as many as 30,000 participants, took place throughout the country. Local Solidarity organizations often cosponsored the marches, and local Solidarity activists helped carry them off. Very few of the marches received the blessings of Solidarity’s national leadership, in particular of Wa2≈sa and the Presidium. After all, many among the leaders saw the marches as likely to provoke a Soviet invasion because of their threatening aspect for social order. In addition, a number of local labor groups initiated so-called active strikes in which workers temporarily took over factories, produced goods, and then exchanged them with consumers of their choosing. Miners, for example, might spend a Saturday working and then use the coal they brought out to buy medicine or milk. Similarly, industrial laborers might exchange their manufacture to procure food. Active strikes, which first appeared in heavy-industry plants in August 1981, had spread by October to white-collar establishments, such as schools, and by November to mines in Lower Silesia. Solidarity’s National Commission was hesitant to endorse such anarcho-syndicalist behavior. In autumn 1981, however, it acknowledged the legitimacy of active strikes, primarily to satisfy Solidarity’s increasingly militant rank and file (Garton Ash 1991: 261, 265–6, 271; Kowalewski 1982; Touraine et al. 1983: 96, 125–6, 153–4, 161). Meanwhile, numerous midlevel administrators, engineers, and technicians advocated factory self-management as a solution to the economic crisis. They argued that the workers, being knowledgeable about the production process, should elect a managerial body to make binding decisions in each plant about resources, tools, output levels, and division of labor. That accomplished, administrative inefficiencies would end and prosperity would ensue. In spring 1981, a small group of self-management advocates founded an association called Network (shorthand for Network of Solidarity Workplace Organizations of Leading Workplaces). Its members began to capture key offices within Solidarity during the union’s summer elections. In the words of Robert Biezenski (1994: 69, 79), the elections resulted in an “oligarchic takeover of much of the Solidarity administration.” Most of Solidarity’s blue-collar members were lukewarm toward the white-collars’ proposals for factory self-management. According to several Solidarity opinion polls taken in summer 1981, only 10–20 percent of Solidarity’s members thought self-management should be a high priority


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for the union (Biezenski 1994: 72; Touraine et al. 1983: 109–10, 125, 160, 163). As Wa2≈sa had put it in 1980, “We are not pushing our way into management . . . we’re just workers. We don’t want to be managers, just activists” (Biezenski 1994: 70). In the words of another Solidarity official, “Self-management is the self-exploitation of the workers” (Touraine et al. 1983: 125). The growing influence of Network within Solidarity also troubled leaders of the PZPR, who viewed Network’s proposed factory-management councils as both an “anarcho-syndicalist deviation” and a direct challenge to the party’s prerogative of placing loyal members in administrative positions (Goodwyn 1991: 284–5; Singer 1982: 253). Some government leaders wondered aloud: if self-managed factories were established—with each factory deciding its own standards, product lines, and marketing policies— how would coordination of production among such autonomous, selfmanaged factories occur? What if, for example, shipbuilders decided to make a certain kind of tanker, and workers in steel mills decided not to produce the requisite steel plates? The PZPR, in the meantime, went right on stonewalling demands for compliance with the September 1980 Gda†sk agreement. This fueled disenchantment within Solidarity over Wa2≈sa’s strategy of moderation and bridge building. According to one popular poster that appeared during the first anniversary of the Gda†sk agreement, “STILL, AFTER A FULL YEAR, ONLY 2 X YES AND 19 X NO” (Weschler 1984: 58). In other words, the party thus far had honored only two terms of the Gda†sk agreement: (1) the legalization of an independent trade union, and (2) radio broadcasts of Sunday masses. In the year following the Gda†sk strike, pro-Solidarity currents within the PZPR lost clout. The horizontal movement was tactically outflanked by party elders at the party’s July 1981 Extraordinary Congress (Garton Ash 1991: 175–90; Singer 1982: 255–60). Pro-Soviet party activists expelled pro-Solidarity reformers. In addition, right-wing communist factions suddenly appeared with anti-Semitic creeds and rituals. By autumn 1981, the party-state clearly had had its fill of Solidarity and its relatives. The constant wildcat strikes, active strikes, and hunger marches embarrassed and infuriated party leaders, who believed that Solidarity’s defense (if not encouragement) of local strikers was undermining the economy. For the first time representatives of the party-state openly refused to negotiate with Solidarity representatives concerning implementation of the Gda†sk agreement—a significant development, even if earlier negotiations often led to ruses and minimal concessions. Solidarity’s national leadership, in turn, tried to force the PZPR to the negotiating table by calling another one-hour general strike in October. The party-state responded with a brief flurry of meetings with Solidarity’s negotiators, and then with another suspension of talks. On winter’s eve, the leaders of Solidarity experienced a crisis of confidence. Scholars interviewing union officials at that time reported a noticeable

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change in the activists’ spirit. One international research team observed a “feeling of paralysis, of having lost control of events and being at the mercy of destiny.” “It was as though the group felt that it could not escape the course of history” (Touraine et al. 1983: 172). Ironically, the disillusionment coincided with Solidarity’s First National Congress, which by all accounts was highly raucous (Garton Ash 1991: 216–43; Payherin and Zirakzadeh: 2006; Sanford 1990: 1–25; Singer 1982: 260–5; Starski 1982: 150–63; Touraine et al. 1983: 139–52; Weschler 1984: 58–79). Advocates of different values and goals clashed. There were, to name but a few of the perspectives present at the congress, nationalists calling for freedom from Russia; self-management advocates; trade unionists indifferent to political reconstruction but concerned about standards of living; and utopian democrats who desired the creation of a multiparty parliament and a judiciary independent of the PZPR. According to some sociologists, the variety of viewpoints reflected both Poland’s complex economic geography and workers’ different experiences with the PZPR. In Gda†sk, for example, straightforward trade unionism was a significant tendency among shipyard workers, in part because the local party officials had in fact been cooperative and had given the union access to the daily party newspaper (Ost 1990: 137). Miners in Silesia, on the other hand, tended to be extremely patriotic (perhaps because they knew that they were extracting Polish coal for export to the Soviet Union) and viewed Solidarity’s proper task as freeing Poland and its natural resources from the grip of the Soviet-serving PZPR (Touraine et al. 1983: 117–27). Not surprisingly, Solidarity’s first official program was a quilt of clashing colors. Almost all factions at the congress had their ideas mentioned. The result was a sometimes inconsistent-sounding document, which at one point noted that “Solidarity embraces many social currents” (Solidarity National Congress 1982: 205). The program stated that the goal of Solidarity was not merely to end abuses by the party-state but “to rebuild a just Poland,” to spawn a “national renewal,” and to promote “the moral rebirth of the people” (Solidarity National Congress 1982: 206). The national renewal and moral rebirth involved, in part, a revival of Christianity but also the promotion of a more democratic system of government (“a true socialization of our government and state administration”) and a more egalitarian economic system (“a just distribution of the nation’s material and spiritual wealth”) (Solidarity National Congress 1982: 206). Regarding international relations, the program stated that Solidarity desired the preservation of current international alliances: “Indeed, we seek to provide more solid guarantees for those alliances.” The program also declared that Solidarity was committed to a “strengthening of the sovereignty of our nation and state” and to “freedom and total independence.” Thus were commended both greater national independence and apparently closer ties with the Soviet bloc in the space of less than two pages (Solidarity National Congress 1982: 206–7).


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The document endorsed three distinct and arguably contradictory images of economic policy making. One section called for the creation of factory management councils that would make decisions on production goals and methods independently of government ministries. Another section called for creation of a social council for the national economy that would make economic plans and design appropriate legislation. Yet another section called for the use of referenda on basic economic policy questions, such as the continued use of ration cards for major consumer items, so that “society” could decide on how the economy is organized. Somehow, factory independence, government planning, and popular referenda were to be combined into a single, workable, and efficient policymaking process (Solidarity National Congress 1982: 211–14). Private commercial farming was also endorsed (“because private farms are more efficient than socialized ones”). But this apparently straightforward endorsement of free-market economics soon was contradicted, because the program also endorsed the union’s influence on the state in creating nationwide policies that would reduce income inequalities between regions and enterprises (Garton Ash 1991: 236; Solidarity National Congress 1982: 210, 212). At one point, the program called for a “new economic and social system to combine planning, autonomy and the market,” but the practical meaning of the terminology was unclear. Was the union in favor of an economy based primarily on free-market principles, or did it endorse more extensive government intervention? Different parts of the program supported each position. According to some sections, Solidarity intended to abolish all “bureaucratic barriers” to market exchange and to support antimonopoly legislation. Other sections called for not less but more efficient government involvement in the distribution of goods and services, including a new system of government food rationing that “ensures that every citizen has the minimum necessary” and that provides “essential consumer items,” such as clothing, shelter, education, and health, to all citizens. Finally, “We demand a major increase in social welfare” (italics added) including “a special fund to restrain retail price rises on certain goods and services (milk, schoolbooks, children’s clothing, etc.)” (Solidarity National Congress 1982: 208–13). In contrast to the confusing and seemingly inconsistent array of market and nonmarket principles in the economic sections of the program, the political sections provided a more-or-less coherent picture. The congress proposed establishment of a decentralized Western-style liberal democracy akin to West Germany’s federal system, with extensive civil liberties, an independent constitutional court, and elected regional and national legislatures. Despite efforts by national leaders to tone down anti-PZPR rhetoric and avoid unnecessary confrontation, the program seethed with hostility. The country’s economic problems were laid squarely at the feet of the PZPR: “[C]ontinual party inference in the functioning of enterprises is the main reason for the present crisis of the Polish economy” (Solidarity National Congress 1982: 214). The document not only mentioned the police brutality at Bydgoszcz but called for the prosecution of all members of security forces

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who violated the law. In addition, the program proposed that criminal proceedings be instituted against all politicians “who, by their actions between 1970 and 1980, have brought the country to economic ruin,” sparing “no one, including those who occupy the highest functions in the party and government.” Solidarity would “insist categorically on this point. If legal proceedings have not begun by December 1, the national committee will convoke a people’s tribunal to hold a public trial and render a verdict” (Solidarity National Congress 1982: 217). The program closed on an ambivalent note. It warned that Poland confronted an impending economic “catastrophe” that threatened the “survival of society,” but also announced a solution: the formation of an anticrisis coalition composed of Solidarity and the party-state. The trade union and the vanguard would jointly work “for a radical change in the existing economic order.” But this prescription jarred with much of the document’s analysis of the PZPR. After all, if the party was as corrupt, inept, and intransigent as the program repeatedly stated, what hope was there for a meaningful union-party agreement (Solidarity National Congress 1982: 206, 208, 214, 217, 224–5)? The Soviet Union described Solidarity’s Congress as an “anti-socialist and anti-Soviet orgy” (Touraine et al. 1983: 140). The statement contained a kernel of truth in that the congress repeatedly questioned the legitimacy of the PZPR, the Soviet Union, and the Leninist notion of a single partystate with a command economy. Wa2≈sa and other national leaders of Solidarity who shared his bridge-building orientation were shocked at the turn of events. At one point Wa2≈sa reportedly declared, “I’m just sitting here trying to figure out what it is you guys ate today that makes you talk like you do” (Ost 1990: 145). The daring of the congress contrasted with the silence in the streets. Grassroots support of and confidence in Solidarity was clearly waning as hunger persisted. By winter 1981, nightmarish conditions prevailed. Ration cards, which in the best of times could not assure very much, were no longer honored. In some regions, grassroots meetings organized by Solidarity no longer attracted scores of participants but fewer than handfuls (Ost 1988: 200; Ost 1990: 142, 147). According to 1981 opinion polls, many people began to deem Solidarity as no better than the government in terms of solving the immediate economic crisis (Ost 1988: 200). After the congress had completed drafting and approving its program, wildcat strikes, involving several hundreds of thousands of workers, exploded. Wa2≈sa and other activists from the Gda†sk region attempted to talk workers out of uncoordinated acts of resistance and into preserving the union’s reputation for self-discipline, but most strikers refused to return to work. Further, students angry over political appointments to educational offices went on strike in early December and closed 70 of Poland’s 104 institutions of higher learning. In mid-December the newest party secretary of the PZPR, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, declared martial law. The Polish military closed down


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Solidarity’s regional and national headquarters, banned its publications, and arrested hundreds of its activists (including almost all of the National Commission and most former members of KOR). Local groups, especially students and miners, tried to resist the soldiers, but resistance was uncoordinated; and the military won easily. The once-mighty and popular Solidarity—whose membership, ironically, included a third of the Communist Party’s 3 million members (Penn 2005: 186)—was reduced to a collection of local resistance groups putting out clandestine publications and endlessly feuding over goals and tactics. Years of Repression (1981–1985) The first year of martial law was harrowing for members of Solidarity and for the PZPR itself.4 The military blamed Poland’s economic and political disorder partly on Solidarity’s disorderly behavior and combative rhetoric and partly on the PZPR’s corruption and incompetence. Former party personages, such as Gierek, were arrested. By the time the military transferred political authority back to civilians in 1983, it had sacked more than six hundred party-appointed directors of major enterprises and filled 80 percent of the PZPR’s posts with new faces (Brown 1991: 78; Weschler 1984: 199). Leaders of the regime tried to split Solidarity by arguing that the movement was primarily constituted of well-intentioned and hardworking citizens who had been misled by opportunistic intellectuals associated with KOR— the very same power-hungry cohort that supposedly had masterminded the strikes in 1980 and 1981, which had wreaked havoc with the economy and brought on hard times. At one point, to further undermine the popularity of Solidarity’s leadership, government officials maintained that KOR was ideologically and organizationally connected to Italy’s notoriously violent Red Brigades. The military government also tried to dilute Solidarity’s appeal in 1982 by creating a new, semiautonomous union, the National Federation of Trade Unions (OPZZ), which in theory would represent workers’ interests before government officials. What was left of Solidarity’s leadership issued statements from underground urging workers not to join the OPZZ. Initially, many did not, but as time passed Solidarity became less relevant to day-to-day struggles for economic survival. Moreover, the OPZZ proved to be a relatively conscientious defender of workers’ interests at work sites, a generous dispenser of patronage, and a more autonomous agency than had been anticipated. By 1984, 4 million workers had joined the new union (Brown 1988: 192). By the time Solidarity was relegalized in 1989, membership in OPZZ stood at approximately six million, easily surpassing Solidarity’s 1.5 million (Bernhard 1990: 333–5). The Polish economy, meanwhile, continued flirting with disaster. In 1981, on the eve of the military coup, gross domestic output declined 13 percent. In 1982, after the Military Council of National Salvation had

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ruled Poland for a year, the economy shrank another 8 percent. According to the government’s own statistics, 30 percent of all workers were living below the poverty line (Weschler 1984: 108). Solidarity was uncertain how to respond to martial law. Prior to the coup, the movement had almost always denounced physical violence and sought to increase communication with the regime, through a mixture of dialogue and strike threats. What should be done when the regime outlaws discussion, public assembly, and legal petitioning? About five months into martial law, a few regional leaders who had escaped to the underground and lived with false identities formed an ad hoc leadership group, the Temporary Coordinating Commission (TKK). The TKK for the most part counseled moderation and patience. It urged activists to produce and distribute clandestine literature that would sustain pride and courage, and warned that grand strikes would not topple the regime but only lead to needless suffering, especially because Western powers were not about to intervene militarily and free Poland from its military rulers or from the Soviet Union. Most Solidarity activists who had eluded the police agreed with the TKK’s advice. As early as summer 1982, more than 250 periodicals were being printed, with press runs as high as 30,000 (Weschler 1984: 149). Because many male activists were either in prison or busy escaping the police, female activists, largely ignored by the Polish security forces, managed a vast underground newspaper that was published weekly from 1982 until 1989 and, at its height, had a circulation of 80,000 (Penn 2005: 148–62, 171–8). Polish workers were becoming impatient, especially because the government was raising prices on necessities. Demonstrations and street battles exploded here and there but usually lacked support from Solidarity’s leadership and were easily repressed. A few illegal Solidarity cells existed in larger factories but, as one activist put it, they were “so deeply underground that many workers didn’t even know they existed” (Ost 1990: 208). From his jail cell, Kuro† called on Solidarity in February 1982 to organize a disciplined nationwide general strike that would force the government to grant liberties and end martial law. He acknowledged that violence might erupt during the strike but insisted that No program can be built on the hope that the generals and the secretaries will voluntarily agree to a compromise. . . . It has to be assumed that violence retreats only before violence. (Weschler 1984: 154) The TKK and other Solidarity leaders, such as those belonging to the Polish Academy of Sciences, strongly disagreed with Kuro† and insisted that the best strategy was to protect the underground presses and petition the PZPR and the military for peaceful conciliation. For one activist, Solidarity must patiently pursue “the long march” (Ost 1990: 152). In the words of another, “We have to tell the people the truth: no spontaneous or


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organized strike will bring about independent free unions” (Weschler 1984: 155). Military rule formally ended on July 22, 1983. The PZPR once again monopolized the Sjem. Many observers, journalist Lawrence Weschler (1984: 194) among them, judged the regime’s liberalization a charade because of continuing restrictions on civil liberties. New laws permitted managers to lengthen workweeks without extra pay whenever production quotas were not met. Students could be expelled if they participated in organizations not approved by the regime. The Solidarity trade union remained officially illegal, and hundreds of Solidarity officials remained incarcerated. Additional remnants of martial law included the admissibility in court of evidence obtained through wiretaps, the dismissal of a worker who “sows disorder,” and the banning of almost all professional organizations whose members frequently criticized the regime, including the actors union, the Polish Journalists Association, and the writers union. Wa2≈sa declared to a group of reporters, “I would rather have martial law than this” (Weschler 1984: 195). Liberalization (1986–1989) The year 1986 was a watershed for Solidarity and the Polish regime. The government granted full amnesty in the fall to all remaining 225 political prisoners (including key figures within Solidarity). At the PZPR’s Tenth Party Congress in July, Jaruzelski, who held the party’s top leadership position, called for economic reform by means of “market socialism,” that is further decentralization of economic decision making, deregulation of prices, and increasing reliance on market dynamics to determine allocation of scarce resources. At the end of 1986, to help plan the reorganization of the economy and then to disseminate information about upcoming reforms, Jaruzelski created the Social Consultative Council, with members from key nonparty constituencies, such as the Catholic Church, OPZZ, and the intellectual community. These changes in PZPR policy occurred partly because of new international circumstances. Conservative Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev, who had pressured Jaruzelski to quell Solidarity in 1981, died in 1982. A few years later Mikhail Gorbachev became the Soviet Union’s highest-ranking official. Believing that traditional trade relations with Eastern Bloc countries were draining the Soviet Union of its economic resources, Gorbachev encouraged Poland and the others to become more involved in world trade and less economically tied to the USSR. Believing, too, that those countries could develop extensive trade relations with the West only if they improved their record on civil liberties, he urged them to do so. And during the mid-1980s, Gorbachev gave his blessings to Jaruzelski’s efforts to grant amnesty to remaining Solidarity prisoners despite demands by the PZPR’s hard-liners for a crackdown on all opposition groups.

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The relatively liberal Marxists, who for decades had advocated some degree of trade-union pluralism and multiparty pluralism, were suddenly the ascending faction with the PZPR. Through astute coalition building and careful replacement of key committee members, the reformers consolidated their power and thereby were able to relax censorship and even establish an ombudsperson office to protect civil liberties. The reformers also passed legislation making it easier for citizens (usually party members) to start private businesses, acquire foreign exchange, and import overseas investment capital. Finally, to stimulate agricultural production, they sharply raised food prices on February 1, 1988. As we shall see, this action sparked another period of labor unrest, which would have great consequence for Polish constitutional history.5 Between 1986 and 1988, some local and regional workers associations tried (without success) to register themselves under the title Solidarity. The TKK and Wa2≈sa’s handpicked advisers, in the meantime, formed a new leadership body called the National Executive Commission (KKW) and ignored these grassroots efforts to resurrect a federated Solidarity union. In the opinion of political scientist David Ost (1990: 164–5), “[M]ost Solidarity leaders did not want to get bogged down in union work per se. They were after bigger game.” Wa2≈sa and his allies wanted to build a market economy. The reason for Wa2≈sa’s and his allies’ ideological commitment remains a subject of debate and conjecture. Some scholars argue that during the mid-1980s almost every well-educated Pole fantasized about the virtues and benefits of liberal economics and overlooked the costs. Perhaps many of Solidarity’s national leaders were following Polish intellectual fashion? (Ost 1989; 1990: 165–9) Other scholars contend that the leaders’ interest in free-market economics was evidence of their maturity and pragmatism, their rejection of socialist dogmatism and utopianism, and their respect for historical demonstrations of capitalism’s superiority to other modes of production (Sachs 1993). In the words of one Solidarity leader, “We know what works in the world, and we know what doesn’t, and we want what works. . . . We don’t need to rediscover America” (Weschler 1989: 103). Still other scholars believe that the new interest in market reform among Solidarity’s leaders reflected changes in their life experiences. During the 1980s, many were prohibited from working in state-owned enterprises. To survive, they formed independent businesses. Rewarded for their own entrepreneurial skills and constantly thinking about market conditions, they were gradually transformed into bourgeois theorists. They no longer viewed economic security of the working class as a summum bonum and no longer viewed the state as the proper guardian of the poor. For them, market competition justly rewarded the creative and hardworking, and justly punished the indolent and incompetent (Weschler 1989: 82, 84, 99–102; Zubek 1991a: 358–9). Not all Solidarity activists were free-market converts. A plethora of nonmarket ideas also commanded loyalty, especially at the local and regional levels. One leader in 1988 compared the movement to “a fresco—it has


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everything in it” (Weschler 1988: 64). An American journalist, after interviewing Solidarity activists, concluded that the movement “runs the gamut from proponents of Milton Friedman to disciples of the young Marx” (Weschler 1988: 66). Troubled by the national leadership’s advocacy of market reform, several Solidarity activists who back in 1981 had been elected to the National Commission requested a meeting of that representative body to discuss the leaders’ new political agenda. Wa2≈sa, his allies, and the TKK refused to convene another rambunctious meeting with opponents to their ideas. Frustrated, the veterans (including the three principal challengers of Wa2≈sa in his successful 1981 bid for the presidency of Solidarity) withdrew from the trade union and established their own labor organizations, with such evocative names as Workers Group, Fighting Solidarity, and Solidarity ’80 (Bernhard 1990: 335; Ost 1989: 71, 86; Ost 1990: 169). While Solidarity was undergoing an ideological tug-of-war, the Polish economy staggered. Food and other necessities were in short supply, and average meat consumption in 1987 was almost 15 percent below its already low 1980 level (Weschler 1988: 52). Plants sat silent because of shortages of raw material and spare parts. In 1987, more than 60 percent of industrial capacity was unused (Brown 1991: 81), and more than 60 percent of Poles lived below the poverty line (Penn 2005: 265). Neither the PZPR reformers nor Solidarity leaders had anticipated the waves of wildcat strikes in summer 1988. According to Weschler (1988: 48), [T]he truth was that Solidarity’s underground national leadership had not called any of these strikes and really wanted nothing to do with them. As far as most of the national Solidarity leaders were concerned, this was the wrong time for a strike. . . . These strikes seemed to be bubbling up of their own accord. Strikers’ demands soon grew from wage hikes (to compensate for government-decreed price increases in February) to the legalization of Solidarity (even though the national leadership was not pressing for the latter). Sometimes post-Solidarity groups, such as Solidarity ’80, helped organize the uprisings and, to Wa2≈sa’s chagrin, declared themselves the genuine descendants of pre-martial-law Solidarity. Some strikes were led and supported by the OPZZ, which, competing with Solidarity and postSolidarity groups for workers’ loyalties, loudly defended workers’ wages, safety, and other rights before state authorities. But most strikes were launched by unaffiliated younger workers who had never had contact with Solidarity’s underground cells and who often viewed Solidarity’s leaders as out of touch with current suffering (B2aszkiewicz et al. 1994; Ost 1989: 80–4; Ost 1990: 182, 207–9; Weschler 1988; Zubek 1991a: 359; Zubek 1991b: 72). The waves of economic protest overlapped with the rise of a new counterculture. Many thousands of young adults (some of whom had been

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active in the Solidarity student movement of 1980–1981) participated in unorthodox street theater and protests (or “happenings”), such as public gatherings of citizens dressed as Santa Clauses in shackles, to denounce the commercialization of Polish culture and illustrate the implications of the regime’s economic policies for an increasingly poor working class; “patriotic” marches on national holidays with banners calling for shorter workweeks “on behalf of” security police; and public “funerals” for toilet paper and sanitary napkins, to highlight how a socialist regime had made it difficult for citizens to acquire even simple necessities (Anonymous 1988; B2aszkiewicz et al. 1994: 131–4; Penn 2005: 262–4; Staniszkis 1989: 46–9). The strikes and happenings troubled leaders of the PZPR, who could conceive of no solution to Poland’s economic malaise and apparent social breakdown short of further market reform. To retain political power, the PZPR decided to invite Solidarity’s leaders to help construct a new constitutional order. Many of those leaders were not averse to working with the party-state (indeed, many had advocated cooperation with the PZPR in the years before martial law). They also generally agreed that the creation of a market economy was a prerequisite for Poland’s stability and growth. Even so, a few veteran labor activists were uneasy and feared that Solidarity was on the verge of betraying its original prolabor orientation (Brown 1991: 90; Millard 1994: 57–8, 135; Staniszkis 1989: 37, 40–2). During the summer and fall of 1988, while Solidarity and the PZPR were exploring possibilities for power sharing, Wa2≈sa traveled to sites of labor unrest. There, he argued that by returning to work and accepting low wages temporarily, striking workers could facilitate long-term economic reforms that would benefit all Poles. Some strikers jeered and accused Wa2≈sa of selling out. Most trusted him and agreed with his argument and resumed work (Ost 1990: 182–4, 209–10; Zubek 1991b: 71). During winter and spring 1989, teams representing Solidarity and the PZPR negotiated a transition to a more pluralistic, democratic, and market-oriented society.6 The negotiators basically agreed that if Solidarity helped contain labor militancy, the party would create a new Polish parliament with two chambers (a Senate and the Sjem). Parliamentary elections would be a compromise between a wholly free process and a wholly prearranged one. All registered parties could run candidates for the slightly less powerful Senate. Only 35 percent of the Sjem’s seats would be contestable by all parties; the remainder would be contestable only by candidates affiliated with either the PZPR or its long-standing allies (the Democratic Party, the United Peasant Party, and Pax). This arrangement, it was thought, would ensure the legislative authority of the PZPR. The negotiating teams concurred on three economic issues as well. Henceforth, average real wages would not fall more than 20 percent behind the annual inflation rate. Social services, including health and education, would be protected from future budget cuts. And the promotion of producer cooperatives would be a priority in future privatization programs.


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Solidarity as a Party Movement Elections for the new parliament were held in June 1989. The PZPR wanted them as soon as possible because members of Solidarity would not have time beforehand to prepare a campaign (or even select candidates, given Solidarity’s relegalization little more than a year earlier, and its absence in many locales). The PZPR, contrariwise, could count on its extensive organizational networks, financial resources, and monopoly of the news media. To deal with the unpromising milieu, Wa2≈sa deftly created a nationwide coalition called Citizens’ Committees (KO), that united locally well-known dissidents, many but not all of whom were intellectuals and other middle-class professionals with previous ties to Solidarity. A colorful anti-PZPR initiative was launched with the help of local clergy, who during sermons would urge parishioners to vote for the KO-slate; international radio stations, such as Radio Free Europe, that broadcasted endorsements; and members of Poland’s art community, who designed eye-catching posters. To almost everyone’s surprise, KO-endorsed candidates won all but one of the Senate seats and all 162 of its allotted maximum in the lower chamber. Even in the more prearranged contests, the PZPR did poorly, sometimes losing to candidates sponsored by the Democratic Party, the United Peasant Party, or Pax. In contests where PZPR candidates ran against only PZPR candidates (the party did not limit itself to one candidate per district), those who openly sympathized with Solidarity generally defeated hard-liners.7 Shortly after the election, members of the Democratic Party and United Peasant Party, eyeing future elections, distanced themselves from the Communists by announcing that they would not vote for the PZPR’s candidate for the presidency. Wa2≈sa again showed his political dexterity by meeting secretly with the former PZPR allies, discussing prime minister options, and arranging for their support for a KO-endorsed candidate and inclusion in a proposed KO-led government coalition. Wa2≈sa’s secret negotiations caught many in the KO off guard, especially because he himself had not run for office and was not an official member of the parliament. His promises of senior cabinet posts to the two parties also troubled some Solidarity-affiliated groups—for example, Rural Solidarity, which had expected to monopolize the ministry of agriculture. Many KO parliamentarians were miffed when Wa2≈sa insisted that his friend, the colorless Catholic journalist Tadeusz Mazowieck, be prime minister rather than the parliamentarians’ favorite, the astute and eloquent Bronislaw Geremek, whom Wa2≈sa increasingly saw as a rival. The parliamentarians nonetheless accepted Wa2≈sa’s fait accompli (Weschler 1989: 68–70). In autumn 1989, the members of the new government were announced. It was a broad coalition, including PZPR leaders in sensitive foreign-policy ministries, members of the United Peasant Party in the ministry of agriculture, and members of the Solidarity-KO alliance who strongly advocated

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free-market economics in the ministries of finance, industry, and housing. Twelve ministries (including the premiership) were headed by participants in Solidarity-KO, two by the Democratic Party, three by the United Peasant Party, and three by the PZPR. For the first time in four decades, a predominantly noncommunist government ruled Poland. Embarrassed and deflated by the election results, the PZPR officially disbanded in January 1990. Those who favored continued political and economic reform founded a new party called the Social Democracy of the Polish Republic (SdRP). More than a few former PZPR members withdrew from politics altogether and entered the business world, such as Tadeusz Zakrzewski, who became a public relations director for Mercedes-Benz (Brown 1991: 94–5; Weschler 1992: 42, 57–9; Zubek 1995: 280–5). The new, Solidarity-KO led parliamentary government accelerated the promarket reforms begun by PZPR and ignored the agreements over wage increases and worker self-management made by negotiators representing Solidarity and PZPR negotiators in early 1989. The government, instead, turned for advice to a “wunderkind” economist from Harvard University, Jeffrey Sachs, who was an ardent advocate of free-trade and corporate forms of capitalism and an indefatigable critic of producer cooperatives, which he once had called “pernicious.” Sachs argued that gradual economic reform was out of the question; Poland’s economic problems were too severe; they included but were not limited to outmoded machinery, food shortages, hyperinflation, heavy foreign debt, and excessively high wages. Sachs prescribed price deregulation, privatization, and free trade, to be pursued as soon as possible. Otherwise, the careening economy would generate so much political instability that Poland’s democratic experiment would fail (Millard 1994: 76, 174–6; Sachs 1993; Weschler 1989: 84–94). The government’s enthusiasm for a free-market reform perturbed many members of the newly legalized Solidarity trade union. The union’s publication contended that recent application of Sach’s ideas in Bolivia had produced economic chaos (including the closing of 75 percent of the mines) and dramatically increased unemployment (Ost 1990: 221). The union’s executive board, fearing that the Solidarity-affiliated parliamentarians were out of touch with the wishes of Solidarity’s working-class constituencies, recommended that the union itself henceforth become the primary instrument for candidate selection and voter mobilization, and that the largely middle-class Citizens’ Committees be done away with. The Solidarity-KO government ignored the recommendation. In January 1990, Poland became the first country in Eastern Europe to legislate so-called shock therapy—that is, rapid and simultaneous free-market and free-trade reforms. Tariffs were lowered; price controls in several sectors dismantled (for example, in energy), and several subsidies and favorable credit programs for state firms eliminated. More than 100,000 small state enterprises (such as restaurants and stores) were either sold to private investors (often to their former managers and directors) or liquidated. Upward of 500,000 new private small businesses appeared (Mason 1992: 123).


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By September 1991, 75 percent of all retail business was in private hands (Curry 1992: 387). Advocates of shock therapy had anticipated a year of hard times, as adjustments were made. Industrial production was expected to decline by 5 percent, for example, and the annual inflation rate was expected to jump, perhaps to 100 percent. Thereafter, inflation would abate and the economy would rebound (Millard 1994: 81; Weschler 1990: 88). The short-term dislocations proved to be much more profound than the proponents of market reform had predicted. The rate of inflation reached 800 percent in 1990 (Mason 1992: 94). The gross national product shrank 11.6 percent that year and another 8 to 10 percent in 1991 (Curry 1992: 387). Total annual industrial production fell 23 percent in 1990. Total agricultural production dropped almost 40 percent between May 1989 and May 1990 (Bernhard 1990: 326; Mason 1992: 93). In cities heavily dependent on state-owned factories, such as 1ód• (one of Poland’s textile centers), official unemployment soared beyond 20 percent (Kramer 1995: 84). Because the government refused to raise wages, the average real wage in industry fell 32 percent in 1990, and average real household income for the nation as a whole fell nearly a third (Garton Ash 1991: 365; Kramer 1995: 80, 89; Mason 1992: 93). Divided over continued free-market reform, the Solidarity-KO alliance began to splinter rapidly into rival factions: profarmer (Solidarity Peasant Party); proworker (Group for Defending the Interests of Working People); and promarket (the Christian Union Alliance) (Bernhard 1990: 325; Millard 1994). Profarmer activists wanted higher tariffs to slow the influx of cheap food, removal of all remaining price controls on foodstuffs so that farming would again be profitable, and government subsidies to help small farmers procure the chemicals and machinery necessary to their becoming internationally competitive (Bernhard 1990: 324; Zubek 1991b: 80–1). Solidarity’s prolabor activists pleaded for indexing wages to the inflation rates, price controls (especially on food), job protection (especially in the nationalized firms about to be sold to private investors), more government-subsidized housing for urban workers (apartments were so scarce in some cities that waiting lists projected fifty years into the future), more worker-managed cooperatives, and larger government expenditures on health, education, and unemployment compensation (Zubek 1992: 585–9; Ost 1990: 210–11, 214). Farmers and agricultural and industrial workers protested outside parliament via antigovernment hunger strikes, transportation general strikes, and road blockades (Bernhard 1990: 326–7; Kramer 1995: 91–8; Zubek 1991b: 80–1; Zubek 1992: 594–5). Discouraged but hopeful, some profarmer and prolabor groups left Solidarity altogether and formed rival political parties, the Polish Socialist Party, for one. The organizational breakup of Solidarity was excruciating. “For thousands of individual men and women, Solidarity was a part of their identity, of their emotional life,” writes historian Timothy Garton Ash (1991: 368). “There was no mistaking the genuine pain, sorrow, and often bitterness felt at the parting of ways with former comrades.”

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Within the Sjem, the KO-affiliated parliamentarians were becoming restless with Wa2≈sa’s persistent intervention. At the time he was president of the Solidarity trade union but held no government post (although many government and union officials were aware of his aspirations for the presidency). His earthy language and endless wheeling and dealing offended many of his critics, who often contrasted his behind-the-scenes cajoling and arm-twisting with the urbane, eloquent, and above-board political style of Yugoslavia’s new president, Václav Havel. The favorable and unfavorable assessments of Wa2≈sa’s leadership style were reinforced in some cases by differences in economic faith. Many of Wa2≈sa’s supporters shared his well-known admiration for Margaret Thatcher and her laissez-faire vision for Great Britain. Several of his opponents (many of whom were former KOR activists) favored a more Sweden-like order, in which the state plays a larger role in distributing income and protecting the weak and vulnerable. The two parliamentary wings of Solidarity-KO fought for control over Solidarity’s locally powerful KO, which had so effectively mobilized voters in 1989. Wa2≈sa’s side won and proceeded to dismantle local branches sympathetic to his rivals. After Wa2≈sa announced his intention to run for president in 1990, mudslinging broke out. Wa2≈sa’s opponents accused him of being clownish, uncouth, and intellectually inept, and a potential ultranationalist and religious extremist. Wa2≈sa responded with red-baiting, calling his opponents “pinkos” and cryptocommunists, and at one point making anti-Semitic remarks about his rivals.8 When Wa2≈sa won, many of his opponents organized a new party, the Democratic Union (UD), that sought a modified free-market economy with welfare and regulatory features. In autumn 1991, Poland’s second parliamentary elections were held, and twenty-nine parties won seats. The two largest, the post-Solidarity UD and the post-Communist SdRP, each received approximately 12 percent of the seats in the Sjem. Every other party received far less than 10 percent. The following sample of party names illustrates the variegated interests and priorities now represented: Catholic Election Action, Peasant Party-Programmatic Alliance, Peasant Accord, Solidarity, Labor Solidarity, Solidarity ’80, German Minority, Movement for Silesian Autonomy, Great Poland and Poland, Friends of Beer, Women Against Life’s Hardship, Union of Political Realism, and Party X.9 The election stunned Wa2≈sa and the leaders of the UD. Wa2≈sa had not openly endorsed any party because he wished to play the role of a nonpartisan leader of all Poles, but he had not anticipated dealing with such a fissiparous parliament in which only short-lived governing coalitions, combining a half-dozen parties with incredibly diverse policy agendas, could be formed. It seemed as if the government teams he would put together would be in charge for only a few months (at best) before being rendered wholly ineffective. Frustrated by the prospect, Wa2≈sa took to describing Poland’s parliamentary politics as anarchistic and irresponsible, adding that the predominance of organized special interests prevented him from shepherding


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legislation through that reflected the real will of the people. Accordingly, he advocated constitutional amendments that would give the president (a.k.a., Wa2≈sa) sufficient power to override a divided and stalemated parliament (Holc 1995: 71, 75–7; Millard 1994: 89–90, 96, 146–66). The leaders of the UD were likewise stunned by the election results. The UD was the largest single party in the Sjem, capturing slightly more than 12 percent of its seats and approximately the same percentage of the vote. Its leadership, however, had hoped to win at least 25 percent of the vote and to become the centerpiece of a governing coalition. After all, the party counted among its members many of the most famous intellectuals associated with Solidarity in the 1980s. But the UD’s grand expectations went unfulfilled: the vast majority of voters cast ballots for other candidates. Furthermore, other parliamentary parties were hesitant to form a coalition with the UD because of its apparent intolerance of other interests and viewpoints (a perception fueled by the UD’s somewhat combative election campaign). The promarket reforms of 1990, meanwhile, seemed to be finally producing some positive results. After more than a decade of negative and near-zero annual growth rates, the gross national product grew 1.5 percent in 1992 and 4.5 percent in 1993. International corporations such as Fiat and Levi Strauss were investing in plants. Annual inflation (though still high by Western European standards) dropped below 50 percent in 1992 (Kramer 1995: 80, 102–3; Sachs 1993: 69–72). Despite these positive signs, there was reason to worry. The official unemployment level rose to the midteens in 1992 and 1993. Well over two million workers were on the dole. High prices and frozen wages meant consumer belt-tightening, which in turn meant reduced sales for many retailers, service-sector companies, and light industries. Caught between low consumer demand and the flooding of the domestic market with cheaper imports, Poland’s textile industry was almost decimated. Farmers’ standard of living declined according to several measurements (for example, farmers’ per capita annual consumption of meats and fruit). Approximately 300,000 peasants joined a new organization called Self-Defense that blocked roads, occupied government buildings, and demanded suspensions of debt repayments. Industrial workers, meanwhile, manifested discontent by striking. Even the Solidarity trade union now regularly denounced the government’s commitment to capitalism (Kramer 1995: 80, 91–2, 95, 102–4; Millard 1994: 89, 92, 98, 108, 111; Sachs 1993: 70, 77; Weschler 1990: 88, 95–6; 1992: 64; Zubek 1995: 297). Another parliamentary election was held in September 1993. Candidates had to receive at least 5 percent of the ballots cast in a district to earn a seat. For the first time, Solidarity and post-Solidarity parties failed to capture together at least half of the total ballots cast. The Union of the Democratic Left (an electoral coalition led by the postcommunist SdRP) and the PSL (a reincarnation of the PZPR’s traditional ancillary party, the United Peasant Party) were the two most successful vote getters (and jointly controlled a

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majority of seats within the Sjem). Solidarity and post-Solidarity parties had been ousted by parties comprising leaders of the former regime.10 For Solidarity, the worst was yet to come. In 1995, several post-Solidarity parties, including those headed by Kuro† and other former KOR activists, refused to endorse Wa2≈sa during the runoff presidential election. Wa2≈sa failed to win majorities in a number of traditionally pro-Solidarity districts, especially in blue-collar areas dominated by government-owned enterprises specializing in mining and heavy industry (Taras 1996: 125, 127–8). Wa2≈sa also failed to attract a large percentage of younger voters; generally they saw Solidarity’s famous 1980–1981 mobilizations as part of the distant past. To the chagrin of Wa2≈sa and other Solidarity veterans, a former PZPR leader with extraordinary public-relations skills, Aleksander Kwa«niewski, won the election.11 Garton Ash writes (1995: 10), [T]his was an astonishing result. Six years after the end of communism, the country which had the strongest anti-communist opposition and the weakest communist party in the Soviet bloc has both a government led by former communists and a president who is one. Anyone who had predicted this in the autumn of 1989 would have been laughed out of the room. By the mid-1990s Solidarity and post-Solidarity leaders were once again on the outside of the political system looking in. But unlike the glory days of 1980–1981, Solidarity was now ideologically polarized and organizationally disunited. Its prospects looked bleak. Conclusion The ideological story of Solidarity before martial law is largely about activists from different social and political milieus joining the movement and bringing with them heterogeneous opinions about political strategies and social goals. During the mid-1980s Solidarity became more ideologically coherent. Under highly repressive conditions, advocates of capitalism monopolized leadership posts at the national level. As David Ost (1989: 85) notes, their ideological commitment did not trickle down to the movement’s regional and local levels: “[T]he problem is Solidarity now has a leadership that supports economic reform and a rank-and-file that opposes it.” In the parliamentary elections of 1989 (the first fairly free elections since World War II), Solidarity beat its communist rival with ease. Thereafter, the social movement organizationally splintered, partly because of growing disagreements over social and economic goals. Parliamentarians pursued a program of radical economic reform; opponents of shock therapy organized competing political organizations. By 1995, the movement had fragmented into a score of quarrelling political and social groups and factions unable to control the Sejm or capture the presidency.


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Solidarity’s ideological evolution resembled and differed from that of the West German Greens. Both movements at first attracted activists embracing disparate ideological traditions. The Greens’ initial amalgam included ecologists, Marxists, libertarians, pacifists, feminists, cultural conservatives, and the spontis’ and squatters’ avant-garde, countercultural, and semianarchistic pastiche. Solidarity’s initial amalgam included trade unionists, advocates of worker comanagement and producer cooperatives, communist revisionists, nationalists calling for independence from the Soviet Union, democratic reformers, and civil libertarians. Both movements underwent an ideological metamorphosis in roughly a decade. In Germany, the more economically radical and semianarchistic Greens were pushed aside by groups committed to parliamentary politics and reform via the state. In Poland, staunch advocates of capitalist reform pushed aside opponents of shock therapy. The ideas and actions of both movements shaped the broader political culture of their respective countries. In Germany, ecology and feminism were part of mainstream political discourse by the beginning of the 1990s. Solidarity likewise disseminated free-market theory among Poland’s political classes between 1986 and 1991 and through its legislative actions created a range of economic expectations, institutions, and practices concerning free trade and private enterprise that would shape Polish politics for the remainder of the twentieth century. One striking difference between the Greens and Solidarity was the latter’s greater ideological disjointedness. The so-called realo tradition was always a central component of the Greens’ syncretic ideology. Such ideological continuity was absent in Solidarity between 1981 and 1990. Many national leaders suddenly pursued a new idea (free-market economics) and jettisoned almost all of the movement’s earlier goals. Why the discontinuity? Part of the explanation may lie in Poland’s nondemocratic political circumstances, especially between 1981 and 1985. Repression silenced many factions within Solidarity (especially prolabor groups) and gave promarket groups an opportunity to capture key offices at the national level. Also recall that when preparing for the transition to a partly elected form of government, the PZPR chose to work with the pro-free-market wing of the movement rather than with some of its prolabor offshoots. These conditions enabled the national leadership to move in new ideological directions without feeling overly constrained by rival factions. Skeptics of free trade and free markets could only look on in frustration as national spokespersons acted on ideas that the rank and file did not share. This contrast between Solidarity and the German Greens suggests a pair of hypotheses that might be applicable to other movements. First, social movements that emerge in despotic orders have a greater likelihood of undergoing root-and-branch ideological transformations and, therefore, becoming exposed to broad swings in nonelite popularity. Second, movements that emerge in liberal constitutional orders, are not repressed by the state, and engage in electoral politics have a greater likelihood of undergoing

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incremental (as opposed to radical) ideological change and, therefore, having a stable level of popular support. The broader generalization lying behind these propositions can be summarized as follows: to forecast the organizational unity of a social movement and the durability of its popular support, one must attend not only to the diverse beliefs that its activists hold but to the constitutional circumstances in which its factions jostle.

PART

4

Peru’s Shining Path and Agrarian-Based Movements

Although the Greens and Solidarity emerged in very different political contexts—a liberal democracy and a communist party-state—both movements appeared in urban societies and in countries in which agricultural production was largely mechanized. These environmental facts affected the resources available to (as well as the tactics and strategies, and goals adopted by) Germany’s Greens and Poland’s Solidarity—so much so that it is difficult to imagine the Greens independent of university towns and nuclear reactors or Solidarity without shipyards, factories, and large working-class neighborhoods. Each movement was informed and shaped by its country’s mechanized mode of production and urban hubs. This pattern corroborates arguments advanced by Barry Adam (1987), Sidney Tarrow (1994), and Charles Tilly (1978) that urban settings, industrialization, and modern mass media facilitate the emergence of social movements. Social movements, however, sometimes appear in countries with relatively small industrialized sectors, and sometimes involve large numbers of geographically dispersed, rural folk. For example, Peru’s Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso) was contemporaneous with the Greens and Solidarity. Unlike them, its initial theater of action was an impoverished region—the southern Andes—where paved roads were novelties, where few households had indoor plumbing (much less television), where literacy was uncommon, and where tiny villages often viewed one other antagonistically as territorial expansionists. Let us look more closely at this initially and primarily nonurban movement and for clues as to how social movements emerge and develop in countries with limited urban development and industrialization.


CHAPTER

8

A World to Be Remade: Sociopolitical Circumstances of Shining Path

To begin our analysis, let us recall the insights of the first two waves of social-movement theorizing and examine Peru’s economic development, constitutional arrangements, and divisions within the governing elite. Early Capitalist Development in Peru Shining Path evolved amid a long economic contraction that began in the mid-1970s and continued through the early 1990s. Over these two decades, Peru’s per capita gross domestic product declined at an average annual rate of 2.16 percent, real wages at 3.89 percent. The annual inflation rate averaged 293.5 percent and at times exceeded 1,000 percent (Gonzales de Olarte 1994: 160). Most scholars agree that economic conditions contributed to the appeal of Shining Path. “[H]ow important is a crisis of subsistence to peasant revolt?” asks Cynthia McClintock (1984: 49). “I will argue that in the Peruvian case, it has been outstandingly important.” In the words of John Sheahan (1994: 19), [T]here is a strong sense among young people that there is no future in the society and that the only alternative is to leave. We see people leaving the society both physically and by joining the violent organizations that are attempting to tear the society apart. It is safe to presume that an economy that is perpetually in decline and that fails to offer any evident future to its youth is going to face a lot of violence. Peru had faced economic setbacks before. Several historians of Latin America such as Thomas Skidmore and Peter Smith (1992: 193, 197), contend that Peru, after winning independence from Spain in 1821, underwent a process of capitalist development unique in Latin American history. In the opinion of Aníbal Quijano Obregón (1968: 291–2), “the whole history of the development of this [Peruvian] society can be considered

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largely as the history of successive modifications of this relationship of dependency.” Between 1840 and 1870, the Peruvian government exported guano, a valuable seabird dung used as fertilizer by commercial farmers. European brokers set up a thriving worldwide market in the product. The government used its share of the profits to establish a standing army and a bureaucracy, to develop public education, and to abolish plantation slavery (through compensation to slaveowners), and pledged future profits as collateral for international loans with which to build ports and railroads. A worldwide recession tumbled guano demand, prices, and profits. Government revenues plunged, and interest payments on outstanding foreign loans could not be met. Public works and the government’s modestly sized bureaucracy soon became unaffordable. The government responded with draconian measures—for example, downsizing the military by three-quarters. The economic crisis overlapped a war with Chile over nitrate mines on Peru’s southern frontier that the Peruvians lost badly. Chilean forces raided Peru’s ports with impunity and at one point even occupied Lima, the capital. By the mid-1880s, the once-modest state apparatus was in shambles (Rudolph 1992: 29, 146; Skidmore and Smith 1992: 190). Political salvation again arrived via Europe. British investors offered to cancel Peru’s entire foreign debt in exchange for long-term control of future guano exports, the country’s railway system, and large tracts of ore-bearing land. In 1889, the Peruvian Congress reluctantly agreed to the so-called Grace Contract. At first, it did not seem to be a sellout. The short-term infusion of British capital allowed a railroad to be built in the department of Junín, where mineral deposits awaited extraction. Mining profits and the new system of transportation helped spur another period of prosperity. Gigantic sugar enterprises with highly mechanized mills and irrigated cotton plantations appeared on the northern coast and utilized tens of thousands of workers, including sharecroppers of African descent, Chinese indentured laborers, and indebted Indians from the interior. In the central mountains, enormous farms (owned primarily by very wealthy Peruvians) raised sheep and produced wool for export. Smaller farms harvested their diverse cash crops for sale in the coastal cities. On the eastern slopes of the Andes, both foreign and domestic adventurers established rubber plantations, which initially relied on unremunerated labor, including debt peonage, to compel Amazonian Indians to participate in a short-lived boom. Attracted by the government’s generous taxation and profit-remittance schemes, foreign investors soon dominated the national economy. They purchased oil fields in the North and held mineral rights in the northern and central mountains. U.S. investors, for example, financed vast mining operations for copper, silver, lead, and zinc. By 1919, international investors controlled upwards of 90 percent of the mining industry, 80 percent of sugar production, and 75 percent of textile production. By the 1960s, they owned 80 percent of the oil industry and nearly all of the major telephone, electricity, banking, and railroad companies (Poole and Rénique 1992: 104; Rudolph 1992: 34, 55).

Peru’s Shining Path

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Not surprisingly, many smaller domestic manufacturers felt unfairly disadvantaged by the ever-lenient free-trade and foreign-investment policies. Couching their arguments in patriotic language about the national interest, they contended as early as the 1920s that foreign interests were monopolizing the most profitable sectors and setting unreasonably high prices for raw materials, which made adequate profit margins hard to come by. Other middle-class groups—in particular, intellectuals—soon joined in the nationalistic chorus against what they described as foreign (and especially Yankee) “imperialism.”1 Most of Peru’s wealthiest capitalists, who tended to invest in export and multinational companies, disagreed with the petite-bourgeois naysayers and argued that the country’s involvement in the world capitalist system was a boon for all. Measurements of economic growth seemed to support that reasoning. Even the most radical critics of Peru’s economic order were conceding by the late 1960s that Peru was one of the most rapidly industrializing countries in the hemisphere and that its economic growth rates during the second third of the twentieth century may have been second only to Mexico’s (Quijano Obregón 1968: 326; Pastor and Wise 1992: 83). Failure of Populist Politics Wanting to sustain and, if possible, accelerate economic growth, Peru’s elite sought additional low-interest loans from international banks and development organizations, such as the Alliance for Progress. Many government leaders viewed the loans as nearly risk-free gambles with which to develop the economy’s infrastructure—such as highways, railways, utilities, and ports. They also believed that domestic taxes could not be relied upon because the private banks and individuals who collected taxes for the government were notoriously corrupt and skimmed off large sums disguised as “service” charges. Foreign loans thus came to be the favored instrument for underwriting public works. Peru’s foreign debt rose from approximately $10 million in 1919 to $100 million in 1930, and then soared to $750 million in 1968 (Rudolph 1992: 37, 50). A minority of elected government leaders, generally known as “populists,” proposed using borrowed money to help the rural poor (Skidmore and Smith 1992: 201–13; Stein 1980). They argued that economic growth had thus far bypassed most Andeans. Lucrative cattle and sheep ranches in the central Andes, for example, had taken over villages’ and smallholders’ lands at the expense of indigenous forms of agriculture, such as communal herding and planting. The populists proposed using a portion of the public purse for public education, public housing, and ambitious road construction programs that would bring fresh business and employment opportunities to the mountains and eastern jungles. This would make the mountains and jungle areas more attractive to domestic and foreign investors and thus bring prosperity to Peru’s inland poor.

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Most conservative business interests viewed experiments in the countryside as unnecessary and wasteful. They argued that the government should invest primarily in sectors of the economy—such as sugar and mining—that had already proven either to be highly profitable or to have significant growth potential. As export industries prospered, wealth would trickle down to other classes. Peru’s constitutional arrangements limited the political power of the populists, partly because until 1980 Peru’s several constitutions did not extend suffrage to illiterates, who accounted for the vast majority of the rural poor. On the few occasions when a populist politician was elected president and might threaten the prerogatives of the rich, either a coup occurred (e.g., in 1948) or the export-oriented Congress skillfully emasculated the proposed legislation (e.g., between 1963 and 1968). Economic inequality was alive and well, despite Peru’s impressive economic growth rates. By the mid-1960s, less than 2 percent of income earners received 45 percent of the aggregate national income, and less than 1 percent of the rural population owned almost 80 percent of all commercial farmland. A statistical study during the late 1960s of economic inequality in fifty-one nation-states revealed that Peru was the most economically inegalitarian (Handelman 1975: 24; McClintock 1984: 64; Quijano Obregón 1968: 326). Failed Revolution from Above Despite business leaders basking in glowing reports about economic growth, unrest was brewing. Land invasions and wildcat strikes (to be described in chapter 9) took place in the Peruvian highlands and coastal plantations in the 1950s and 1960s. Meanwhile, a small cohort of conspirators toppled a brutal dictatorship in Cuba in 1959 and then repelled a counterrevolutionary invasion that was financially backed and militarily orchestrated by the United States. In 1968, the Peruvian military, both fearful of a Cuba-inspired revolution on Peruvian soil and insulted by Peru’s seemingly endless concessions to foreign investors (especially Standard Oil, ITT, and Chase Manhattan Bank), overthrew the civilian government and for the next dozen years ruled Peru. The officers promised that they would take away undeserved privileges and create an economy that would be “neither capitalist nor communist” but would resemble the ethos of the armed forces in its enthusiasm, fairness, and opportunities for social advancement.2 The self-defined Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces seized holdings from more than a dozen large foreign-owned firms (including Standard Oil) and nationalized mainly foreign-controlled banks, as well as Peru’s electricity and telephone systems, airports, and railways. It put in place new guidelines to prevent international investors and international corporations from unfairly benefiting from Peru’s wealth. The government, for


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instance, insisted that foreign-owned companies sell raw materials at discount to public and private Peruvian enterprises. The government also limited the amount of stock foreigners could own in nominally Peruvian companies. The government, besides wresting control of the economy from foreigners, sought to improve the workers’ standard of living by expanding public health, education, and social security programs, which had been among the least funded and developed in Latin America. It imposed price ceilings on consumer goods, especially food and transportation. A newly enacted employment-stability law prevented employers from dismissing employees who had been on the job for at least three months. Perhaps the military government’s most controversial action was its attempt to defuse rural discontent through land redistribution. The 1969 Agrarian Reform Law, one of the most radical land reforms in the history of Latin America, affected about 40 percent of all farmland. The government transferred ownership of almost all large coastal estates—including the highly profitable sugar plantations—to their employees, who were to manage the enterprises by means of producer cooperatives. During the first six years of the military’s rule, the economy grew at an average annual rate of more than 6 percent. The Revolutionary Government, confident that prosperity would continue, sought low-interest loans to finance public works projects. Foreign debt quadrupled between 1968 and 1975, reaching $3 billion in the latter year. The government believed that it could easily pay off its new loans through overseas sales of metals, sugar, wool, and fishmeal. International prices for petroleum, sugar, and copper sank precipitously during the late 1970s, however. Domestic economic growth slowed too because businesses could not move inventories and could not find the foreign exchange needed to import parts and machinery. The government responded to the recession by reversing many of its earlier reforms. It reduced consumer subsidies for transportation, food, and utilities, and courted foreign investors through more lenient regulations on profit remittance. It amended the once-radical job-security law; workers now had to be employed for three years (instead of three months) before they could secure tenure. The ailing economy did not recover as anticipated. Many companies in the export sector went bankrupt. The government, needing to import food and other consumer goods so as to quell growing social unrest in the cities, took out additional loans and thus exacerbated the debt crisis and fueled inflation. By 1980, foreign debt topped $9 billion. The working classes were especially hard hit. By the late 1970s, between 50 and 60 percent of the workforce could not find permanent employment (Palmer 1990: 5). Real average income of the urban workforce fell 40 percent between 1973 and 1978 (Skidmore and Smith 1992: 217). According to David Werlich (1984: 78), the declining real wages “translated into widespread malnutrition, dramatic increases in poverty related diseases and a sharp rise in the rate of infant mortality.”

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Social Movements in Politics Three Failed Searches for Prosperity

The economic crisis persisted, and protest actions, including general strikes, multiplied in the cities and countryside. Dismayed and disillusioned, the Revolutionary Government relinquished power to civilian politicians. In 1980, Fernando Belaúnde Terry, an advocate of prosperity through foreign capital and international trade, won the first postmilitary presidential election by courting both big-business owners on the coast and smaller merchants and owners of mid-sized farms in the economically backward mountains and jungles. He had pledged to the former constituency that he would resurrect the export sector through a mixture of radical free-market and free-trade policies, and had told owners of small businesses that he would initiate grandiose economic development projects in the mountains and eastern jungles that, in the long run, would encourage sufficient private investment to create a million well-paying jobs. Belaúnde tried to live up to his promises. He quickly tore down tariff walls, ended government subsidies to infant industries, and deregulated the prices of gasoline, food, and public services. His government also launched the promised irrigation, education, and highway undertakings in the mountains and jungles. The envisaged miracle never materialized.3 Many domestic industrialists and manufacturers were wary of foreign competition, and, contrary to Belaúnde’s expectations, did not expand production facilities. Indeed, several textile and automobile-assembly plants significantly reduced production. Meanwhile, declines in international prices for petroleum, copper, and fishmeal had doleful effects on the export-based economy. These and other problems (including unusual weather patterns that brought the fishing industry to its knees, destroyed cash crops, washed away roads, and ruined irrigation systems) combined to create five years of unprecedented economic disaster for Peru. Between 1980 and 1982, manufacturing output declined 20 percent. By 1985, 60 percent of industrial capacity was idle. The total output of the economy contracted by almost 12 percent in 1983 alone. Average real wages meanwhile dropped 35 percent between 1980 and 1985, and by the end of Belaúnde’s five-year term, were only slightly more than a third of what they had been in 1973 (Dietz 1986–1987: 142; Pastor and Wise 1992: 94; Poole and Rénique 1992: 125; Rudolph 1992: 82, 101). In 1985, disgruntled Peruvians elected a new president—Alan García, the leader of the American Revolutionary Popular Alliance (APRA). Drawing on Peru’s populist tradition, García argued that business activity could be stimulated by simultaneously (1) protecting indigenous businesses from foreign competition, and (2) increasing the purchasing power of middle- and lower-income Peruvians through tax reductions, wage increases, and a higher minimum wage.4 Once in office, he banned the importation of more than two hundred products, cut payroll and sales taxes, and raised minimum wages. He also attempted to encourage agricultural production


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by dismantling six hundred cooperatives established by the military regime and by parceling the cooperatives’ holdings among private farmers. To increase the foreign exchange (needed for the importation of machinery), García announced that Peru would limit its debt service payments to 10 percent of its annual export earnings (full debt service in 1985 would have consumed about 60 percent of the $3 billion annual export earnings). He pressed other Latin American presidents to join him in demanding more lenient debt repayment schedules. To increase Peru’s foreign-exchange reserves further, he drastically cut back military armament purchases and urged other Latin American countries to adopt a multilateral arms reduction treaty, including a region-wide freeze on the purchase of weapons. At first, García’s policies seemed to rejuvenate the economy. In 1985, the annual inflation rate dropped 100 points, to 158 percent; in 1986 it fell to 63 percent. The nation’s aggregate output rose 8.5 percent in 1986 (the fastest GDP growth in Latin America that year) and another 6.9 percent in 1987. Real wages went up by at least 7 percent in 1986. Even total agricultural production, which for more than a decade had slumped as new investment went to other sectors of the economy, rose 3.6 percent in 1986 (Rudolph 1992: 132; Werlich 1988: 14). The rosy statistics hid structural problems. Even though previously underutilized factories were humming at close to full capacity by 1987, private investment in new enterprises was lagging. In addition, a food crisis was brewing because farmers, unhappy over the low prices set by the government for their goods, refused to increase production. Rising food costs and wages contributed to inflation, which soon exceeded 100 percent a year and discouraged private investors from launching new enterprises. To stimulate business investment, García allowed prices for certain key agricultural commodities to rise (which, in theory, would increase profit margins and thus further induce private investment and greater production). He also capped wages to contain inflation. Consequently, workers’ real income declined dramatically after 1986. In 1987 Peru’s unions called their first general strike against García’s administration. García, desirous of stimulating further economic growth without antagonizing organized labor, decided to increase the state’s role in channeling private investment. In 1986, he shocked both his supporters and his adversaries by announcing a plan to nationalize private banks and insurance companies. His position: Peru’s financial institutions were not investing enough of their profits in either domestic companies or government securities but, in fact, were encouraging the flight of investment capital. He argued, too, that bank nationalization would lead to fairer lending policies because smaller investors would be able to secure loans at rates normally reserved for larger corporations. Although García may have intended to reassure and inspire Peru’s petite bourgeoisie, his proposal for bank nationalization alarmed the middle classes and marked what Manuel Pastor and Carol Wise (1992: 104) call

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“the beginning of a war with private capital.” Middle-class Peruvians, already unnerved by triple-digit inflation, believed that the proposed seizure of the banks was representative of the regime’s secret plan to take over all private property. The socially conservative print media meanwhile carried allegations that the government intended to establish a proletarian dictatorship. The government quickly backed away from the bank-reform proposals. Nonetheless, the political damage had been done. Business owners in Peru, always somewhat chary about risking capital, now became extremely reluctant. The economy continued to contract. The effects of García’s bank-nationalization blunder were compounded by the international financial community’s cool response to his radical rhetoric about foreign debt servicing. The United States pressured international lenders to offer loans on more attractive terms to poorer nations, who eagerly seized the new credit opportunities. Having lost his Third World allies, García had to face an irritated international financial community by himself. Angry at García’s impudence and fearful that his unilateral reduction in debt repayments might serve to inspire other indebted countries, that community chose not to extend Peru’s credit line. Peru’s economy deteriorated badly during the last three years of García’s presidency. In the words of Skidmore and Smith (1992: 220), “Peru suddenly turned in Latin America’s economic basketcase.” Between 1987 and 1989, the annual gross domestic product declined 28 percent. The annual inflation rate skyrocketed to a stratospheric 1,722 percent in 1988 and then to 2,778 percent, higher yet, in 1989. Average real salaries declined by more than half between 1985 and 1990. Then, the worst drought in thirty years destroyed 100,000 hectares of crops in the Andes. Hundreds of thousands of country folk migrated cityward and soon exhausted the always limited urban resources, including medical services and drinking water (Poole and Rénique 1992: 134; Rudolph 1992: 132–4; Skidmore and Smith 1992: 220; Werlich 1991: 62). In 1990, voters rejected all the major parties’ presidential candidates and instead installed as the country’s top executive Alberto Fujimori, a political neophyte, an engineering professor, and a television talk-show host. Fujimori won partly because low-income voters were divided among at least three “left-wing” candidates and partly because the principal conservative candidate, Mario Vargas Llosa, had advocated a radical program of price deregulation, wage controls, and free trade that many believed would eventuate in drastic price increases, numerous bankruptcies, and widespread joblessness, at least in the short run. Fujimori argued that Vargas’s program was far too extreme and proposed a more spiritual and scientific program of economic recovery involving, in the words of his campaign slogan, “Honesty, Hard Work and Technology.”5 Once in office, Fujimori faced the daunting task of repairing an economy that according to international economic observers could not meet the nutritional needs of almost a third of the populace (Rudolph 1992: 145).


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Fujimori, believing that additional international loans were needed to pull Peru out of its downward spiral, accepted the International Monetary Fund’s loan requirements. He set about privatizing state enterprises, dismantling tariff barriers, eliminating price controls on necessities, and slashing public expenditures on social welfare. The press dubbed his policies “Fujishock,” which highlighted how they contradicted his earlier calls for policy moderation. Within weeks of the inauguration, the prices for food, gasoline, and water exploded upward. For example, in one day, the cost of gasoline soared 3,000 percent and electric rates quintupled (Werlich 1991: 82). By 1992, the government had sold its gas stations, airline, and a mining company to private investors, and was attempting to sell its electricity company and a publicly owned bank. Because of budget constraints, salaries for nurses and teachers were frozen (which meant that their real wages fell sharply), and tens of thousands of these professionals emigrated. Fujimori’s free-market and free-trade policies did not lead to immediate economic recovery. The gross national product contracted 4.5 percent in 1990, expanded 2.1 percent in 1991, and then contracted 2.8 percent in 1992. The total number of workers employed in the manufacturing sector decreased by a fifth between 1990 and 1992. By the early 1990s, more than 90 percent of the workforce could not find permanent employment and, if lucky, held temporary jobs or worked at marginal pursuits, such as street vending. A quarter of all Peruvians suffered chronic malnutrition; more than half lived in conditions that met the United Nations’ statistical criteria of “absolute poverty” (Gonzales de Olarte 1993: 63–4; Poole and Rénique 1992: 22–3). Diverse Economic Conditions in the Countryside If one focuses on national economic statistics, it is easy to forget that in the countryside conditions were often worse. While the once-prosperous Peruvian economy was collapsing, Peru’s rural economy remained underdeveloped and rent with poverty. During the 1970s, for example, per capita income on the urbanized coast was two to three times higher. Whereas 85 percent of all permanent housing in metropolitan Lima received sewage services, electricity, and potable water during the 1970s, less than 10 percent of the homes in the mountainous department of Ayacucho had such basic amenities. During the 1970s, 73 percent of all doctors in Peru resided and worked in Lima (about one doctor for every 500 residents). In contrast, there were fewer than thirty doctors in two of the poorest mountain provinces (one doctor for every 29,000 residents). Life expectancy in the countryside was on average twenty years shorter than in Lima (Gianotten et al. 1985: 184; Handelman 1975: 19–21; McClintock 1989: 66; Rudolph 1992: 9). Even so, rural Peru was not of one cloth. At least four economic regions can be identified, each with a distinctive mode of production and typical standard of living.

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Social Movements in Politics Coast

Almost all of Peru’s largest plantations are found in the twenty-mile-wide flat and dry northern coastal region. Here, expensively irrigated holdings employ tens of thousands of low-skilled workers, most of whom live either on site (usually as full members of the cooperatives) or in small nearby villages (usually temporary employees who are not allowed to be cooperatives’ members). The average standard of living of the full members of the cooperatives tends to be noticeably higher than that of agrarian populations elsewhere in Peru, and even temporary plantation workers enjoy wage levels higher than the national norm. Despite the relative comfort, there tend to be social restlessness and conflicts of interest between the full members of the cooperatives and the neighboring peasant villagers, who often feel underpaid and threatened by the expansionist tendencies of the mechanized and profitable cooperatives (Rudolf 1992: 63). Northern and Central Andes Towering immediately east of the coastline are the Andean Mountains, where prior to the 1970s a majority of Peruvians lived. Uneven terrain postponed the development of mechanized farming in the central and northern Andes until after 1920. Thereafter, mining flourished in the central Andes; dairy farms prospered in the North. Compared to northern Andeans, central Andeans have generally been more prosperous and materially comfortable, partly because of the availability of part-time work in nearby mines and partly because of the proximity of Lima’s markets for peasants’ cash crops. Per capita farm income in the central region is about 40 percent greater than per capita farm income in the northern mountains (McClintock 1989: 67). But life was not completely rosy in the central Andes after the early 1970s; its economy contracted due largely to declining world demand for Peruvian metals. Many mines closed. Those that remained open laid off thousands of part-time workers. Males increasingly traveled to Lima for work but found few jobs because economic conditions there were no better. Southern Andes With the exception of Cuzco department, which has benefited from a relatively prosperous tourist industry, the standard of living in the southern Andes has been well below that of the central and northern Andes. Most farmland is windswept, rocky, and arid. Until the early 1960s, the vast majority of farmers relied on hand tools. During the 1960s and 1970s, the mean farm income in the southern highlands was a third of the mean farm income in the central and northern highlands. “Peru’s southern highlands are a region in a Third-World country where poverty is at Fourth-World levels” (McClintock 1984: 59, 1989: 66–8).


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Ayacucho—a severely impoverished department in the southern Andes—deserves special mention because of the persistence of poverty despite signs of economic modernization. The department enjoyed its first all-weather road in the mid-1960s, and telephones were installed in the capital city (also named Ayacucho) in 1964. In 1959, the government reopened the National University of San Cristóbal de Huamanga in Ayacucho city. The university’s primary mission was similar to that of many U.S. land-grant institutions: the dissemination of modern agricultural techniques and business practices to the local population. In the words of the university’s first rector, “[W]e are preparing our students to bring about the socioeconomic development of our area” (Palmer 1986: 135). The government also tried to familiarize locals with the notion of wage labor by means of a variety of “self-help” charity programs, such as Food for Peace, which gave youths cash and food in exchange for their work. Within fifteen years after the reopening of the university, Ayacucho department had noticeably changed. The newly built “Highway of the Liberators” rendered the department more accessible to outsiders, and roughly thirty thousand families arrived in search of economic opportunities. The university helped boost the permanent population of Ayacucho city, which grew at an average rate of 4.5 percent per annum between 1961 and 1972. A new electrical system in the city contributed to the proliferation of television sets during the mid-1970s. Partly because of the opening of elementary and secondary schools, adult literacy rose from slightly over 20 percent in 1961 to slightly over 55 percent a decade later (McClintock 1989: 72; Poole and Rénique 1992: 34). Hard times persisted. Despite the bustle of Ayacucho city, in 1972 only 5.5 percent of all households in the department had electricity, and only 6.6 percent had potable water. The department’s infant mortality rate in the 1970s was among the world’s highest. Per capita real income declined by a third between 1961 and 1979 as high inflation and unpredictable government price controls on foodstuffs wreaked havoc even as commercialism took hold. By 1981, only 7 percent of the department’s households had running water, and only 14 percent had electricity (Harding 1987: 187; McClintock 1984: 59–61, 1989: 68; Palmer 1986: 134, 139; Poole and Rénique 1992: 36). Jungles Peru’s jungles and the Amazon basin lie to the east of the Andes and are, in terms of surface area, the largest of the country’s three major land formations (the coast and the Andes being the other two). This region is not densely populated, containing less than 10 percent of Peru’s total population. In the colonial period, Christian missionaries attempted to convert the multiple indigenous and seminomadic peoples, but the Spanish rulers, generally indifferent to the region’s economic possibilities, focused their energies on the coast. At the end of the nineteenth century, British capitalists

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established a coffee plantation system and gained a marketing monopoly. Rubber tapping, which began in the 1870s, was a short-lived industry in which Indians were forced, through debt servitude and by threats of flogging, beheading, and other physical punishments, to engage in the tedious and lonely labor (Brown and Fernández 1991: 57–60). Despite these and other attempts to develop commerce, the eastern economy remained backward until, that is, the cocaine industry flourished in the 1980s. Even then, the region was singularly lacking in infrastructure, diverse commercial establishments, and the presence of government officials, agencies, and services. Conclusion To some extent, the economic turbulence of Peru in the 1980s resembled conditions in West Germany and Poland. Years of seemingly miraculous macroeconomic growth suddenly ended, and older policy formulas for economic success no longer seemed to work. But the situation in Peru was much more desperate. After being widely viewed in the mid-twentieth century as an economic success story, Peru had become one of the poorest countries in Latin America. Average income levels lagged far behind those of Argentina, Brazil, and Chile. Life expectancy was much lower than in all other Latin American countries, save Bolivia and Haiti. Subsistence itself had become an issue between 1970 and 1990, when the annual incidence of chronic malnutrition jumped from 985,700 cases to 5,753,600 (McClintock 1989: 68; Poole and Rénique 1992: 22–3; Rudolph 1992: 8; Skidmore and Smith 1992: 408). A succession of military and civilian leaders tried alternately to break with Peru’s economic past and to return to its traditional reliance on both export industries and foreign loans. Each attempt to cure or at least ameliorate Peru’s economic distress unintentionally ended in greater unemployment, a higher cost of living, lower production levels, and added indebtedness. In this challenging economic environment, Shining Path appeared and attempted to mobilize an insurrection against the status quo.

CHAPTER

9


Over the past two decades, social-movement scholars have emphasized how opposition parties and traditions of nonelite protest contribute meeting places, experienced activists, and communication networks to later movements, and also pioneer tactics and strategies that later movement activists emulate, modify, or, in some cases, intentionally avoid. Several political parties, unions, shantytown communities, and other social organizations antedated Sendero Lumino. Some developed critiques of Peru’s distinctively dependent capitalist economy; some coined myths about the natural communalism of Andean Indians. Some experimented with electoral politics; some with guerrilla warfare. Some desired greater involvement of the state in the reconstruction of society; some were advocates of producer cooperatives and shantytown self-rule and approached the government ambivalently. From such diverse ideas, dreams, and experiences, Shining Path was born. Opposition Parties Peru’s first mass party appeared in the 1920s. Its goal was to reconstruct the country so that excessive inequalities ended and dependency on foreign markets, capital, and businesses ceased. Fearful of alienating middle-class voters, its founders avoided using the adjective “socialist” in the party’s name. Instead they called themselves the American Revolutionary Popular Alliance (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana, or APRA). The Apristas contended that if the government continued to favor bigger domestic businesses and foreign investors, Peru was destined to remain a second-rate world power, subject to the arbitrary will of the United States and Western Europe. They therefore called for 1. immediate and steadfast opposition to continued U.S. presence in Peru’s economy; 2. promotion of the economic and political unity of Latin America and international control of the Panama Canal;

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3. development of agricultural cooperatives and independent trade unions; 4. nationalization of land and of key industries, whose policies would then be determined by a national economic council comprising representatives of labor, management, the professional classes, and government; 5. extension to all Peruvians of political freedoms and social rights, including government regulation of working conditions; 6. promotion of Indian values and social and economic institutions. APRA promptly attracted a significant following among intellectuals and wageworkers, especially on the northern coast, where the foreign-controlled sugar industry predominated. APRA-sponsored unions soon became the primary representatives of wageworkers in struggles with management. The party, however, was never oriented solely toward the proletariat. Many of its leaders viewed the middle classes (both salaried professionals, and small farmers and business owners) as unjustly beleaguered by the country’s extensive involvement with foreign markets and unusual openness to foreign investment. In the words of APRA’s most influential theorist, Víctor Raúl Haya de la Torre, It is the middle group that is being pushed to ruination by the process of imperialism. . . . The great foreign firms extract our wealth and then sell it outside our country. Consequently, there is no opportunity for our middle class. This, then, is the abused class that will lead the revolution. (Skidmore and Smith 1992: 206–7) According to Haya de la Torre, the middle classes not only were justifiably angry with the government but had the technical training needed to promote economic growth. At least half of all government offices therefore should be filled by intellectuals and white-collar professionals; the remainder by people with working-class backgrounds. We want a state in which the technician and the expert direct state activities in order to put them on the correct path of solving our great problems. We propose the organization of a technical state; we propose moving toward a functional democracy. (Haya de la Torre 1995: 243) APRA initially intended to use the ballot box to win control of the state and then legislatively redirect Peru from export dependency toward a more rational economic order. During the 1930s worldwide depression, many Peruvians were receptive to the Apristas’ critique of imperialism and voted for Haya de la Torre in the hotly contested 1931 presidential election. He received large numbers of votes in the sugar-producing areas around the city of Trujillo and in Lima, but lost the election, apparently due to massive fraud by government officials (Rudolph 1992: 39). The government closed


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APRA’s offices and deported Haya de la Torre and APRA’s representatives in Congress. A small group of APRA militants, angered by the government’s high-handedness, tried to assassinate the president in 1932, and another group launched an unsuccessful insurrection that ended in their brutally murdering some fifty prisoners, including ten military officers and fifteen policemen. A year later the Peruvian president fell to Aprista assassins. The armed forces—especially after the bloody uprising and the assassination—increasingly viewed APRA as dangerous and extremist. In the late 1930s, the government (with the military’s blessings) annulled congressional elections that had been won by Apristas, and in 1948 officially prohibited APRA from fielding candidates. For the next eight years, a socially conservative dictatorship promoted free trade and courted international investors. Despite legal prohibitions and the periodic jailing of known APRA activists, the party remained popular within labor circles. During the late 1950s, the APRA leadership bit the political bullet and agreed to support a conservative party’s presidential candidate in exchange for increased government tolerance of APRA electoral activities. Peruvian Marxists, in the meantime, were divided on how to relate to APRA and the quasi-socialist-sounding ideas of Haya de la Torre, who had been interested enough in communism to have visited the Soviet Union during the 1920s (he afterward concluded that the Soviet experience was not relevant to Latin America). Attracted by his energy and organizational skills, many of his Marxist compatriots initially viewed him as a potential ally, even though they questioned his theory about the revolutionary potential of the middle classes and his apparent blindness to the extent of racism in Peru. In the words of one activist, To imagine that a feeling of revolutionary nationalism will develop among the middle and upper classes . . . would be a serious mistake. The creole aristocracy and bourgeoisie do not feel a bond of solidarity with the common people by ties of common history and culture. In Peru, white aristocrats and the bourgeoisie look down on popular traditions, on national traditions. They feel themselves before anything else to be white. (Mariátegui 1995: 231) For almost a decade, Peru’s Marxists and Apristas worked side by side. The marriage of convenience ended around 1928, when José Carlos Mariátegui, one of the most creative and influential Latin American Marxists of the twentieth century, established a separate socialist party and also a socialist trade-union alliance known as the CGTP (General Confederation of Peruvian Workers). The ideological and strategic trajectories of APRA and Peru’s Marxist movement increasingly diverged between 1940 and 1980. APRA’s leaders, hungry for political power, began to avoid public discussions of social revolution and replaced the party’s once stridently anti-U.S. rhetoric with attacks on communism, which prompted murmurings within APRA’s more

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radical ranks. Haya de la Torre, ever hopeful of capturing the presidency, at one point adopted the strikingly conservative slogan “We do not want to take away the wealth of those who have it” (Smith 1989: 185). Meanwhile, the fragmentation of the international communist movement into Trotskyist, Maoist, Stalinist, and Fidelista currents (and then into innumerable smaller factions) was replicated in Peru, where a half dozen self-defined “Marxist” and “Communist” organizations materialized during the 1960s and early 1970s. Despite the rivalries, the primary communist trade union, the CGTP, remained highly popular among workers. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the CGTP surpassed the APRA-affiliated union, the Confederation of Peruvian Workers (CTP), in terms of total numbers of members and local chapters. Ironically, the Marxists’ ascension in the world of organized labor occurred during the twelve-year military regime. The military government, recalling APRA’s earlier armed uprising and assassination attempts, supported communist unions, in hopes of producing an organizational counterweight to the CTP. In the late 1970s, the friendly relations between the military government and the Marxist unions began to fray. The regime’s labor policies became more conservative after 1975, and workers refused to accept the government’s proposed reductions in legal rights, job security, and real wages. Peru’s first nationwide general strike occurred in 1977 and was followed by more in 1978 and 1979. Not only unionized workers but also students, peasants, women’s organizations, and shantytown organizations demonstrated (Mauceri 1995: 15; Stephens 1983: 57–79; Stokes 1995: 45). During the revolutionary military government, primary and secondary school teachers, especially in rural areas, were drawn to Maoist and Trotskyist labor organizations. Parents, too, were incensed by the government’s periodic attempts to raise tuition either for all students or for students who had failed a course. In the opinion of parents and teachers, the major communist union, the CGTP, was excessively conciliatory toward the military government. The more confrontational Maoists and Trotskyists seemed to offer a more appropriate political option. Later, Shining Path would recruit activists from this cohort (Angell 1981). After the military government relinquished its power in 1980, most Marxists concluded that the time was ripe for a patient, peaceful, legal, electoral march to socialism. After all, the new constitution had lowered the voting age to eighteen, and for the first time ever illiterates had the right to vote. Factions disagreed, however, as to whether electoral politics should be supplemented with forms of extrainstitutional protest. Broadly speaking, two camps evolved. Some Marxists advocated a strictly legalistic road to socialism and argued that only by forging an alliance with the middle classes could wageworkers and peasants capture a majority of seats in Congress and then gradually legislate the abolishment of mass poverty. According to this classical social democratic line of reasoning, radicals should discourage lower-class strikes, land invasions, and other types of tumult that might frighten off middle-class voters and induce the military to overthrow the


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newly established democratic political order. Other Marxists insisted that electoral victories alone would never yield enough political clout to transform the society partly because the government bureaucracy was riddled with corruption and overwhelmingly committed to the status quo, and partly because the middle classes were so worried about their disappearing wealth and diminishing incomes that they themselves would never willingly support a serious program of economic redistribution. To offset these conservative pressures, Marxists should not spend too much time seeking broad, interclass electoral coalitions. Instead, they should nurture strong and militant worker, neighborhood, and peasant organizations with the capacity to demonstrate and push the government into progressive action. Because of differences in tactical and strategic reasoning and because of personal rivalries among candidates, the myriad organizations on the Marxist left seldom made common cause after a short-lived 1980 alliance called the United Left (or IU). After IU’s splintering, the fragments competed against one another in national elections and in most municipal elections. Organizationally divided, the Marxist left suffered several embarrassing defeats. Most Peruvians (including the poor) decided not to waste their votes on obviously unstable coalitions. Instead, those dissatisfied with the social and economic status quo cast their ballots either for APRA candidates, such as García in the 1985 presidential elections, or for candidates with no longstanding party affiliation, such as Fujimori in 1990. Only in local elections in the largest coastal cities did Marxist parties forge relatively harmonious and durable coalitions, and there they often won decisively, especially in poorer districts (Dietz 1986–1987; Taylor 1990). Evolution of Peasant Protest After World War II, economic security for many rural residents deteriorated. As haciendas became more mechanized and capital intensive, they furnished fewer jobs. Meanwhile, prosperous landowners were encroaching on poorer villagers’ common lands; inequality in land ownership intensified. By 1963, 0.1 percent of Peru’s population controlled more than 60 percent of land under cultivation (Campbell 1973: 45). During the late 1950s and early 1960s, land invasions and labor strikes spontaneously broke out throughout the Andes and in the sugar plantations along the central and northern coast. Between 1959 and 1963, approximately 300,000 peasants seized hundreds of private estates in southern Peru alone. In the North, newly established agrarian unions involving fieldhands, serfs, and semiserfs repeatedly called general strikes, which sometimes lasted as long as two months. Some of the strikes yielded stunning benefits for wage earners and farmers. Others, such as the enormous strikes by sugarcane workers, ended with brutal repression (Campbell 1973: 45; Poole and Rénique 1992: 113; Smith 1989: 212).

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Despairing landowners saw barbaric communism and anarchism on the horizon. Their anxiety is understandable, given the scale of the collective actions. One team of scholars (Starn, Degregori, and Kirk 1995: 255) has concluded, “Between 1956 and 1964, Peru witnessed the largest peasant movements in South America.” Nonetheless, few of the participants were motivated by either revolutionary class consciousness or a desire to restructure the economy. Most simply wished to supplement their own small holdings, and many were hostile to the idea of sharing seized land. They saw themselves not as trespassers but as its actual owners. Most invasion campaigns therefore coincided with ongoing attempts to secure legal transfers of titles from the state. What the landowners perceived as imminent communism and anarchism, the landless and relatively landless mostly saw as justifiable and legal (Smith 1989: 169–236). Regardless of the peasants’ and farm workers’ nonrevolutionary motives, their deeds caused many radicals to believe that a social revolution was about to occur in Peru. The Trotskyist Hugo Blanco, for example, threw himself into the exhausting tasks of helping to organize land seizures in the southern Andes as well as village schools and militias. He opposed open armed insurrection against the state, advocating, rather, a “dual-power” pattern of authority in which local farm workers provided their own public services and relied on community notions of justice instead of passive obedience to the state, its laws, and its notions of economic development (Brown and Fernández 1991: 85–8; Campbell 1973: 45–70). Others discerned in the rural rebellions potential support for a Cubanlike guerrilla movement. Some younger members of APRA, put off by its increasingly conservative rhetoric and conduct, left the party during the early 1960s and formed the more militant MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left) that organized several rural guerrilla cells. MIR’s leaders called for the dissolution of Peru’s congress (which they deemed a tool of Peru’s export-oriented capitalists), liquidation of all large estates, transfer to the poor and landless of urban and rural land (except for plots worked by independent farmers and the homes and business sites of midsize and small property owners), and abrogation of all treaties and trade agreements that compromised national sovereignty. Unlike Blanco, most MIR activists did not take time to master indigenous Andean languages and did not spend years working alongside peasants and earning their trust. They viewed themselves as members of a vanguard that would liberate peasants from backward thinking. They even self-consciously dressed differently than local peasants: black jackets, jeans, and high-top boots (Brown and Fernández 1991: 79–140; Campbell 1973: 51–7; Petras 1968: 345–50, 362–6). Peru’s single largest Marxist party, the Communist Party of Peru (PCP), incessantly trumpeted that guerrilla violence was counterproductive because it led to the needless repression of useful and nonviolent union work. But some PCP activists found the party’s patient organizing in workplaces and proletariat neighborhoods too slow and accommodative to the


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status quo. A few of these more restless members resigned and formed Peru’s first significant Marxist rural guerrilla organization, the ELN (National Liberation Army). Like MIR members, ELN’s members did not familiarize themselves with the language, values, and outlooks of the peasantry, who mostly wanted to recover local lands and had little interest in remaking Peruvian society. Although the ELN and MIR were contemporaries, each distrusted the other, even when both were being hounded by security forces. By 1966, the Peruvian military, armed with helicopters, napalm, and infrared technology, had routed both the socially isolated guerrilla organizations. While chasing ELN and MIR, many military officers were stunned by the rural poverty they encountered. For them, it was a revelation. Their newly awakened compassion (combined with their fears of an impending Cubanstyle revolution) contributed to the military uprising in the late 1960s, in which redistribution of rural property became one of the government’s primary goals. “We are not alone,” declared General Juan Velasco, one of the first leaders of the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces. “In the work of the agrarian reform, we have at our side peasants, workers, students, the immense majority of intellectuals, priests, industrialists, and Peruvian professionals. And this is what counts. These are the authentic people of our motherland.” General Velasco’s “authentic people,” it is worth noting, did not include the oligarchy, which he described as a privileged group of political elites and economic monopolies . . . which will see its antipatriotic dominance of Peru in jeopardy. We do not fear them. To this oligarchy we say that we are determined to use all the energy necessary to crush any sabotage of the new [Agrarian Reform Law] and any attempt to subvert public order. (Velasco 1995: 268) To help the rural poor, the new government handed over hundreds of large estates to their former employees, who were to run the property as jointly owned and jointly managed cooperatives. The new government also limited the size of all private holdings, for “land must be for those who work it and not for those who charge rent without tilling” (Velasco 1995: 267). In theory, the property would be well used because of workers’ pride and concern for profitability. Rural discontent would subside. The coming “[r]obust agricultural production” would “benefit not the few but society as a whole” (Velasco 1995: 266). The experiments in cooperative production fell far short of the government’s rosy predictions. Estate owners sold machinery and choice parcels to private investors before the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces could legally expropriate their properties. Many of the new cooperatives, furthermore, lacked cash for badly needed machinery, fertilizer, and seed, and went deeply into debt. New forms of interclass tension emerged as cooperatives hired landless peasants and nearby villagers for part-time

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work at very low wages, and as cooperatives tried to expand holdings at villages’ and small farmers’ expense. During the military regime’s waning years, several peasant unions shifted the targets of their land invasions from the former estate owners to the new cooperatives, seizing livestock and unused cooperative machinery and dividing the land into individualized private holdings (Petras and Havens 1981a: 223–34). By the time the military returned to the barracks and civilian parties were once again in charge of government, many peasants distrusted the state to an unprecedented degree (Petras and Havens 1981a: 229–36). They not only were land hungry, often unionized, and often experienced in labor struggles, but viewed the state as the primary cause of their poverty. Cynthia McClintock (1989: 76), who in the 1980s surveyed both Andean and coastal peasants, wrote, “More than ever before, peasants and students blamed their abject poverty on the government.” One peasant respondent told her, “There’s no help from the government. . . . Here, they’ve always forgotten us. There’s no help. Exactly the opposite. . . . They’re killing the poor people.” Evolution of Shantytown Politics Between 1960 and 1980, protests and political initiatives multiplied in not only the countryside but also the cities, which of late had grown much more populous. Metropolitan Lima, for example, had 645,000 inhabitants in 1940, 7 million in 1990. One-third of Peru’s total population could be classified as urban in 1940; two-thirds in 1980 (Rudolph 1992: 7, 24). Many of the new city folk were former peasants who had traveled to town in hopes of finding well-paid jobs and comfortable housing. Jobs were relatively plentiful between 1945 and 1975. Until 1970 the average standard of living in most cities was slowly yet steadily rising. Housing stock, however, seldom met the newcomers’ needs, and many were incredulous to find themselves employed but homeless. In response, as early as 1946, newcomers seized unused property in well-planned land invasions and built shanties from tin and mud. In 1956, about 10 percent of Lima’s populace lived in these squatter communities; the proportion was about 25 percent in 1970; 40 percent in the 1980s (Rudolph 1992: 15; Stepan 1978: 160). The squatments did not always remain impoverished. Villa El Salvador in Lima, for example, soon had brick and stone dwellings, and within decades a majority of its dwellings had running water (Carlessi 1989: 15–16). During the 1960s many powerful international organizations, such as the Catholic Church and the United Nations, helped finance a wide range of services for Peru’s squatter settlements, including schools, day-care programs, dining halls, and medical centers. The Catholic Church—divided between traditionalists, who urged the poor to accept their place in society, and liberation theologists, who advocated social equality on earth and the


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right of the poor to a larger portion of society’s wealth—became active in community organizing after 1968, when clerics entered shantytowns in large numbers and helped establish dining halls and medical centers. Even top ecclesiastical figures intervened in the squatters’ behalf when police threatened evictions (Blondet 1995: 275–6; Stokes 1995: 19, 39–40, 72–3, 107). Before the arrival of the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces in 1968, most shantytown settlements had elected community representatives who lobbied for outside funds. The representatives were chosen seldom on the basis of ideology or party affiliation but for their reputed effectiveness in dealing with national and international funding agencies. Often when the national government changed, so did the representatives. As a result, the settlements lacked stable ideological orientations and partisan loyalties.1 In the words of urban sociologist Manuel Castells (1983: 193), The picture of the Liman squatters’ movement appears as one of a manipulated mob, changing from one political ideology to another in exchange for the delivery (or promise) of land, housing, and services. And this was, to a large extent, the case. . . . [T]he behavior of the squatters was not cynical or apolitical, but, on the contrary, deeply realistic, and displayed an awareness of the political situation and how their hard-pressed demands could be obtained. The 1968 military government sought the squatters’ support (largely because it feared that the overcrowded shantytowns might become a hothouse for insurrectionary movements) and quickly recognized the residents’ claims to the land. The settlements were renamed “pueblos jovenes” (new towns). The government also offered to cover part of the cost of public services if each settlement rank ordered its needs (say, of paved streets, water, and electricity) and made a down-payment to cover some of the costs (Stepan 1978: 158–89). Government policies prohibited election of neighborhood spokespersons who either (1) lacked a recognized occupation or (2) had a police record suggestive of a “subversive” political background. The policies, which were intended to screen out full-time labor organizers and left-party militants, reinforced the longstanding clientelistic relationship between the settlements and the government. When the government decided in the late 1970s to reduce public expenditures and services, the settlements began to organize street protests, to erect barricades, to engage in street battles, and, for the first time, to cooperate with oppositional parties and participate in trade union general strikes. In 1979, squatter settlements in metropolitan Lima established a citywide political alliance. In 1980, pueblos jovenes throughout Peru sent representatives to the founding meeting of a nationwide organization, the General Confederation of City Dwellers (Carlessi 1989: 16–17). The new organizations were short-lived. Unfamiliar with one another’s needs and values, individual settlements could not settle on a common goal or program beyond resisting the military government’s proposed cutbacks.

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After democratic elections were reinstituted in 1980, some Marxist parties tried to use the alliances as an organizational basis for a left-wing electoral campaign. But as we have seen, the Marxists were hardly a homogeneous group. Disagreements over ideologies and over public-service priorities split the left coalitions over and over again. Urban settlers who at first had tended to support the United Left candidates soon became disillusioned with the Marxists’ infighting and policy ineffectiveness and began to cooperate with other parties and work with nonelectoral organizations, such as the Catholic Church and even Shining Path (Cameron 1991: 293–313; Dietz 1986–1987: 153–9; Stokes 1995: 49–51, 53–5). Many experienced neighborhood activists returned to their former habits and resumed the politics of patronage, of charity, and of nonpartisan projects, such as citizen police patrols and local cultural clubs. But the country’s economic crisis was leaving its scars on the squatter communities, which no longer could acquire the external funding needed to support ambitious public projects. The shantytowns increasingly undertook projects designed not so much to enrich life as to ensure the residents’ physical survival, such as the administration of free-milk programs and collectively run soup kitchens. Meanwhile, refugees from the countryside continued to flood the cities. Declining job opportunities in the Andes and the escalating war between Shining Path and the military had made life in the hinterland, always on the edge of subsistence, unbearable for many. Ill-housed, ill-fed, and disillusioned, urban immigrants were receptive when Shining Path activists came to their doors and offered aid of one sort or another (Burt 1997; Poole and Rénique 1992: 40, 84–95). As the stagnation continued, government cutbacks weakened the legitimacy of many older neighborhood leaders, who continued to advocate peaceful petitioning rather than street protests. A younger generation of leaders appeared, more ambitious for social change, more global in policy demands (including an end to Peru’s international economic dependency), and more confrontational in rhetoric (Petras and Havens 1981b: 248; Stokes 1991b: 75–101, 1995: 61–83). Despite frequent lack of formal training in Marxism, Leninism, or other radical political philosophies, the new leaders often called for an extensive remaking of the society. One washerwoman and activist in an urban mothers’ club announced: “[O]ur objective is that there should be a new society, a change. . . . We hope that there will be a change like this: either we all eat or no one eats” (Stokes 1995: 74). Conclusion The 1960s and 1970s were decades of protest in Peru, as well as years of hunger. Land invasions, labor mobilizations, and ebbs and flows of shantytown militancy were features of a tumultuous political landscape. APRA, Marxist parties, and rural guerrilla organizations attempted to channel popular discontent and local protests into organized actions for radical change, but


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the radicals’ popularity was mixed, at best. The sectarianism of Peru’s Marxists frustrated the urban poor, and the rural guerrillas’ refusal to familiarize themselves with the customs and values of the countryside (the Trotskyist Hugo Blanco being a notable exception) alienated peasants. Many Shining Path activists were aware of ongoing protests and oppositional programs. As we will see in the next chapter, a number of Sendero activists had participated in land invasions, labor demonstrations, or other forms of popular politics. When deciding what to do, they drew upon their own experience and that of other parties, and studied past mistakes and victories. In a sense, the movement was a recapitulation of Peru’s oppositional traditions, which provided warnings and lessons, along with inspiration.

CHAPTER

10

Diverse Directions along the Shining Path

The year 1980 was seminal in Peru’s political history. Citizens elected a president for the first time in more than a decade. The new constitution allowed illiterate citizens and 18-year-olds to vote for the first time ever. And a new social movement known as Shining Path held a rare plenum of its Central Committee that, among other things, adopted the slogan “Initiate the armed struggle.” Shining Path’s first armed action was brief, local, and certainly not bloody. On the eve of the 1980 presidential election, a team of young activists, masked and carrying two malfunctioning pistols, broke into an election office in the remote mountain town of Chuschi in the department of Ayacucho. They burned unmarked ballots and unused ballot boxes in a public plaza, and then fled. The next day replacement ballots arrived, and the election proceeded without further disturbance (Isbell 1992: 65; Poole and Rénique 1992: 57–8). This chapter explores the activities and ideological evolution of Shining Path from 1980 to the mid-1990s. Shining Path’s leaders often spoke about imperialism, about the need for an inter-class alliance among the nonrich, and about the value of violence as a political tactic. At the same time, they were not of one mind about the appropriateness of specific forms of violence—for example, assassination of civilians versus industrial sabotage— and about the proper ratio of violent to nonviolent forms of struggle. How to combine politically “necessary” violence with equally important nonviolent activities was their predicament. The diverse answers to this problem reflected and reinforced the movement’s ideological factionalism. Origins and Early Ideology Shining Path came into being a decade before it mounted its attack in Chuschi. Known officially as the Communist Party of Peru–Shining Path (or PCP-SL), the movement at first seemed to be just another local splinter


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group within the constantly expanding universe of Marxist parties. The group’s name derived from a college-student publication, Along the Shining Path of Mariátegui, whose own title referred to an understanding of Andean economic and cultural history pioneered by Peru’s renowned Marxist, José Mariátegui. The most visible (and, from the government’s perspective, perhaps the most notorious) leader of Shining Path was Abinael Guzmán Reynoso, who was born in 1931, the illegitimate son of a prosperous import wholesaler. When Guzmán was five years old, his mother died. Shortly thereafter, he moved in with his father, and they traveled to various port cities, living in relative comfort. In an 1986 interview, Guzmán recalled how, as a teenager, he observed street battles between poor people and government forces: I saw the fighting spirit of the people. . . . And I saw how they fought the army, forcing them to retreat to their barracks. And how forces had to be brought in from other places in order to crush the people. This is an event that, I’d say, has been imprinted quite vividly in my memory. Because of that, after having come to understand Lenin, I understood how the people, our class, when they take to the streets and march, can make the reactionaries tremble, despite all their power. (Guzmán 1988: 99) Guzmán also recalled being excited about World War II, hearing news on the radio about faraway bombings and meetings of the “Big Five” Allied leaders (including Stalin), and celebrating what seemed to be a turning point in world history. I’d say these events left their mark on me, and impressed upon me in an elemental and confused way the idea of power, of the masses, and of the capacity of war to transform things. (Guzmán 1988: 100) Guzmán attended an exclusive Catholic high school and excelled academically. Toward the end of his studies, he formed a discussion group with some classmates, who debated “all kinds” of political ideas (Guzmán 1988: 100), including the significance and shortcomings of Peru’s economy. He first seriously studied political theory in college, where he also observed firsthand confrontations between Apristas and communists. He read many biographies and developed a lifelong love for novels and the theater, having culled political lessons from the writings of Thomas Mann and William Shakespeare. A classmate lent him Lenin’s One Step Forward, Two Steps Back, which was Guzmán’s first Marxist reading. He became increasingly interested in the Bolshevik Revolution and admired Stalin’s ideas, nerve, and perseverance. Meanwhile, instructors exposed him to European analytic philosophy, to the natural sciences (physics became one of his favorite subjects), and to socialist-realist theories about revolutionary

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art. To meet a course requirement, Guzmán collected census information in Arequipa city following a major earthquake; once again, direct observation of Peru’s poor profoundly affected him (Gorriti 1992: 152–3; Guzmán 1988: 100, 103–4; Strong 1992: 4–9). Toward the end of the 1950s, Guzmán underwent a political conversion. A social democrat for most of his early adult years, he came to doubt that electoral politics could transform Peru and end widespread poverty. In his opinion, career government bureaucrats and professional party machines always had and probably always would appease international corporations, foreign investors, large landowners, and export businesses, while ignoring the sufferings of the rest of society. He therefore placed his faith in local direct democracy and vigilante justice rather than an elected parliament and career civil servants (Tarazona-Sevillano 1990: 18–19, 24–7). Guzmán joined the Peruvian Communist Party ca. 1960. His persistence helped secure his admission, for many older party members argued that only sons and daughters of workers should join. At that time, the party was splintering between supporters of Stalin and supporters of Khrushchev. Guzmán sided with the Stalinists and later stated that “taking him [Stalin] away from us would have been like taking away our soul” (Guzmán 1988: 100). In 1962, Guzmán accepted a teaching position at the University of San Cristóbal de Huamanga in the southern Andes. He began to think seriously about the countryside as a theater for revolutionary politics and about the possibility of a peasant-proletarian revolutionary alliance. “Ayacucho allowed me to discover the peasantry,” he said in a 1988 interview, “I started to understand Chairman Mao Tse-tung” (Guzmán 1988: 101). The Peruvian government had reopened the university to stimulate the local economy (see chapter 8). It was to combine instruction in traditional academic subjects with extension programs in commercial agriculture. Guzmán looked askance at the extension programs, for he was not convinced that the machinery, chemicals, and financial strategies that the university promoted actually helped struggling farmers. He thought that the new agricultural and financial methods condemned farmers to perpetual indebtedness—indeed, to greater poverty. The involvement of the U.S. Peace Corps and international development agencies in the development of the university’s extension programs and academic curricula also troubled Guzmán. He began organizing student protests. The university administration, partly because of the pressure, terminated Peace Corps instructional contracts. In 1969, university students, high-school students, and townspeople protested the government’s proposed tuition increases. The local peasants and the urban middle class had viewed formal education as one means to change their personal circumstances in an otherwise highly stratified society. Guzmán performed liaison services among student, family, and community groups. The protests turned violent: police and youths began to exchange bullets and various projectiles. Police shot randomly into crowds, and gangs of students tore down telephone lines and destroyed bridges.


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Some officers believed that Guzmán had incited the students and jailed him. He was later released because of lack of evidence. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Guzmán relentlessly criticized most of Peru’s communist groups who, by and large, supported Khrushchev and hoped to persuade Peru’s military government to change its economic policies. With a view to convincing the military government of the wisdom of redistributing land, seizing foreign-owned assets, and collectivizing production, many communists tried to dissuade peasants and workers from land invasions and other forms of protest lest they feed the officers’ fears of social disorder. Guzmán—ever a gadfly—insisted that by trying to reduce poor people’s protests, Peruvian communists were in fact perpetuating a system of exploitation and suffering. Toward the end of the 1960s Guzmán traveled with a delegation of Peruvian communists to the People’s Republic of China. He attended a cadre school, where he became fascinated with the idea of a peasant-based revolution and with the ongoing struggle between government bureaucrats and the party radicals who were calling for a permanent “Cultural Revolution.” The radicals, Guzmán believed, correctly argued that political privilege was inherently corrupting and counterrevolutionary. Guzmán was also intrigued by his instructors’ use of light explosives (such as fireworks) in classroom demonstrations. He began to take seriously the notion that explosives were political tools that could be applied with scientific precision and whose outcomes could be reliably foreseen (Poole and Rénique 1992: 33). While in China, Guzmán systematically studied the writings of José Mariátegui, whom Guzmán later would list as one of his mentors. Guzmán found Mariátegui’s arguments about Peru’s dependent pattern of capitalist development convincing. Guzmán also concurred with Mariátegui’s theories on the importance of educating oppressed people about the structural origins of their daily sufferings. Guzmán returned to Peru more distrustful than ever of Peruvian communists’ attempts to build bridges to progressive wings within the military government. He argued that the military was, at best, halfheartedly committed to the equalization of property and that conservative elements within the military would repeal such reforms at the first opportunity. Guzmán was equally distrustful of the ELN and MIR because they foolishly used guns without educating peasants beforehand. Guzmán held firmly that armed struggle, although sometimes necessary, must always complement, never overshadow, the preceding education of the oppressed and the exploited (Gorriti 1992: 156–7; Poole and Rénique 1992: 37–8). Other faculty members and students at the University of Huamanga who shared elements of Guzmán’s thinking were drawn to him. Antonio Díaz Martínez, among others, developed some of the earliest ideas and strategies of Shining Path. Díaz, an internationally traveled agricultural economist and prolific researcher, was an advocate of radical land redistribution and collective forms of production. After joining the university faculty in

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Ayacucho, he criticized the university for pressuring peasants into borrowing money for the purchase of expensive machinery and chemicals. He argued that local soil conditions and the distance between the southern Andes and coastal markets made it impossible for highland peasants to succeed as even temporarily indebted commercial farmers. The traditional habits of local peasants, such as cooperative production and local consumption, served them to greater advantage and had the impressive plus of solvency. Still, Díaz was hardly a blind opponent of social change. He abhorred the extreme poverty and inequality in the Andes and believed that rural poverty could be overcome if there were radical banking reforms; if utilities were nationalized in order to direct more resources into the hinterland; and if transportation monopolies were legally compelled to develop badly needed infrastructure in the mountains (Harding 1988; Starn 1991: 72–5, 80–4). Over the years Guzmán, Díaz, and others formed study groups on Peruvian economic history and helped organize like-minded study groups at other major universities, such as the National University of Engineering and the National University of San Marcos in Lima. The groups gradually coalesced into a semisecret party that although broadly Marxist in theoretical orientation was also very critical of the politics of most other communist parties in Peru. Gradually, the Ayacucho-based coalition became informally known among radicals as Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path). (Some activists do not like the shorthand “Shining Path” or “SL” and prefer to have their organization called by its actual title: Communist Party of Peru-Shining Path). During the early 1970s, participants in Sendero Luminoso became highly influential within the University of Huamanga. Its representatives sat on the university’s Executive Council and on bodies that selected faculty and designed and implemented curricula. Shining Path activists organized the José Carlos Mariátegui Center for Intellectual Study, where faculty members delivered public lectures on topics in philosophy, social science, and the natural sciences. Guzmán, always energetic and active, held several key administrative offices on campus; at one point, he was provost. During the mid-1970s, members of rival groups won elections to the student union and the faculty union and began to displace key members of Shining Path. Losing their campus monopoly, Sendero Luminoso activists in Ayacucho increasingly worked off-campus. Members contacted teachers in nearby villages, who had been recently trained at the university, and encouraged them to set up “people’s schools” where students would be exposed to social criticism as well as to noncapitalist agricultural practices that might improve their standard of living. In addition, Sendero Luminoso began to establish labor cells in cities throughout central and southern Peru and to participate in squatter-settlement politics. A number of experienced peasant and labor organizers—such as Julio César Mezzich, Félix Calderon, and the Red Star group in Lima—joined the Ayacucho-based radicals. By the early 1980s, Shining Path cells could be found throughout southern and central Peru and in numerous major cities, including Lima (Poole and Rénique 1992: 38–43; Smith 1992: 131–3).


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Members of Shining Path argued that the roots of Peru’s current economic problems lay in the Spanish conquest of South America. One Shining Path document stated: “[T]he modern Peruvian economy was born retarded and ill at its roots” (Communist Party of Peru 1985: 26). According to Shining Path theorists, the early owners of haciendas and plantations, relying on the cheap, forced labor of Indians, had never rationalized production or invested profits in expensive labor-saving machinery. Rather, large landowners adopted an easy lifestyle and spent their wealth importing manufactured luxury items and imitating European fashions. Since the mid-nineteenth century, U.S. and European investors have removed irreplaceable natural resources. In order to prop up the ailing socioeconomic order, the Peruvian government has forced indigenous people to work for less-than-subsistence wages on haciendas and plantations and in foreignowned mines, and has repressed union drives among Peru’s few industrial workers. The national economy therefore should not be viewed as a healthy capitalist order with a multitude of small entrepreneurs risking hard-earned profits on expensive machinery. The economy is better depicted as a mixture of “imperialism, semifeudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism” (Communist Party of Peru 1982, 1985). To rescue Peru from its chronic poverty, Shining Path strategists proposed a mixture of armed struggle and political education of wage earners, peasants, and small-business owners. Armed struggle was necessary because (they argued) Peru’s current elite would never peacefully give up its wealth and privileges. The intransigence of the rich is revealed by Peru’s long history of antidemocratic coups, launched whenever populist presidents had attempted to introduce modest economic reforms. Violence alone, however, will never generate economic development. In addition, the country’s three major popular classes—the peasantry, the proletariat, and the petite bourgeoisie—must form a political coalition, plan a new constitutional order, expel the large landowners and foreign capitalists, and then pursue autarky and establish a humane system of small-scale capitalism. For this scenario to be realized, Shining Path must patiently teach the popular classes about politics and economics, because at this time they do not see that their class interests converge or that a social revolution is necessary. Shining Path writers proposed educating peasants, workers, and smallbusiness owners in hypothetical “revolutionary base areas” where the Peruvian government had already been forcefully expelled by guerrilla units and where local communities ruled themselves through a mixture of direct democracy and representative institutions. There, with advice from Shining Path activists, members of the popular classes would make their own social and economic policies and learn about one another’s interests. Shining Path theorists counseled movement activists to establish revolutionary base areas in remote parts of the Andes and then steadily expand the areas’ borders until the entire nation, except for large cities, had become part of a “New Democratic People’s Republic.” If revolutionary base areas were properly nurtured, Peru’s elite would prudently abdicate power

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rather than face the wrath of an enormous, confident popular polity. Ideally, a federated polity and autarkic economic system would follow the collapse of the imperialist, semifeudalist, and bureaucratic capitalist regime and would protect small-scale private property and encourage local entrepreneurship. In addition, the new political order would seize large estates and foreigners’ holdings, would distribute them to the poor, and would promote wage earners’ rights to bargain collectively. Shining Path theorists, being Marxists, favored the abolishment in the long run of private property and introduction of collectivized property. They warned, however, that a communist revolution should not yet be attempted. Peru’s productivity level was too low, and the country’s proletariat was too small and politically inexperienced. Moreover, international superpowers, such as the United States and Japan, would use their military might to destroy such “a really free, sovereign country” (Communist Party of Peru 1982: 1). In the distant future, once Peru’s manufacturing base had been adequately developed and a sufficiently large proletariat had emerged, a communist revolution might succeed. Until then, Shining Path should focus on establishing revolutionary base areas, meeting the government’s repression with guerrilla violence, and educating the popular classes as to why the current social order is unredeemable and why a socioeconomic revolution through a broad inter-class coalition is Peru’s only hope (Communist Party of Peru 1982, 1985, 1986). Despite government efforts to represent Shining Path simplistically as “terrorist,” the movement never relied solely on physical violence to achieve its ends, especially during its first decade. Only during the late 1970s (about seven years after the group’s formation) did the movement leadership officially agree to use armed action to supplement, not follow upon, the time-consuming political education of the poor. The decision was never unanimously and unequivocally supported, even within the party’s Central Committee (Guzmán 1988: 26, 42).1 Some Shining Path leaders—for instance Luis Kawata Makabe—argued that if the movement engaged in armed struggle, it was doomed to repression and self-destruction. But the opponents of armed action could never completely defeat its advocates, who held several key organizational positions (especially in Ayacucho) and from time to time purged the most vocal naysayers (Gianotten, de Wit, and de Wit 1985: 193, 202; Gorriti 1992: 164–5; McClintock 1989: 78; Poole and Rénique 1992: 40, 48; Smith 1992: 135). Over time, Shining Path developed two organizational and ideological faces. One was that of a sophisticated guerrilla army, whose combatants generally graduated from Shining Path’s military school, established in 1979. There, teachers taught—in addition to military skills and weapon making—Marxist, Leninist, and Maoist theories of historical change; the irreplaceable role of the proletariat in revolutionizing capitalist society (and therefore the futility of a premature Communist revolution); and the need for a vanguard party to unite the peasantry, urban and rural proletariat, and small-business classes into a single, anti-imperialist coalition. In the words


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of Guzmán (1988: 48), “Modern weapons are necessary, but their performance depends on the ideology of the man who wields them. Lenin taught us that.” The second and apparently older current within the movement manifested itself in the so-called organismos generados (party-generated organisms) that burrowed within union chapters, neighborhood schools, squatter settlements, and other local-level social institutions. These activists (who accounted for most of the movement) generally eschewed arms but nonetheless were radicals, encouraging residents to experiment with local forms of collective production. In theory, the Shining Path movement as a whole acted in a coherent, unified manner because of the authority formally vested in its national executive committee, known as the “Cupola.” The committee, in principle, coordinated all of the movement’s subordinate units and closely supervised its tens of thousands of activists.2 However, the Cupola, having limited knowledge about different areas of Peru, often allowed local cells of approximately four to five members to pursue projects of their choice, based on their knowledge of local opportunities. A common movement slogan—“Centralized strategy and decentralized tactics!” (Communist Party of Peru 1986: 27; Guzmán 1988: 46)—suggests the tension between the movement’s nominally centralized authority structure and its often decentralized day-to-day decision making. Neighboring guerrilla and educative cells, normally unaware of one another’s plans and activities, periodically worked at cross-purposes; for example, an unexpected bombing might undermine the efforts of a local cell to gain influence within a laborunion chapter. Local activists who opposed particular forms of violence sometimes cagily turned a deaf ear to unwanted commands from top-tier leaders, who for the most part were strangers whom locals had never met face to face.3 Those who lost in the endless local squabbles over the priority to be given to violent and nonviolent tactics sometimes left Shining Path rather than work with unpredictable colleagues (del Pino 1998; Gianotten, de Wit, and de Wit 1985: 193; McClintock 1989: 78–9; Poole and Rénique 1992: 43; Smith 1992; Tarazona-Sevillano 1990: 55–70). Because of the variety of local political activities, scholars have had difficulty generalizing about Shining Path’s tactics. In the words of one U.S. political scientist (McClintock 1989: 83), “Especially since 1982, it has seemed possible that there is more than one Sendero.” Armed Struggle in the Southern Andes The activities of the armed wing of Shining Path began to overshadow the activities of the nonviolent educators in 1981, when hooded Shining Path guerrillas began to appear regularly in the more remote villages of Ayacucho. Enforcing community laws and norms, they punished cattle rustlers from neighboring villages, local officials who were reputed to have abused their authority, unfaithful husbands, and store owners who, in the

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public’s opinion, swindled their customers. Public whippings and occasional executions were carried out. Many of these actions earned Shining Path the villagers’ gratitude (Isbell 1992: 65–6, 68, 71). After having enforced the moral economy of a village over several months, the guerrillas, seeing themselves as vanguards, often attempted to transform the village. They imposed systems of communal planting and bartering and insisted that villages terminate market relations with the rest of the country. In some places guerrillas also tried to enforce sobriety and sexual abstinence at previously rowdy adolescent rituals (Isbell 1992: 66–7, 71–2; Nicario 1995). The zealotry usually backfired. Most peasants treasured their private plots (even if the plots were very small), and many communities found Shining Path’s prohibitions impractical. In the words of one, “We could not let them close the markets. Where would we get our salt and matches?” (Isbell 1992: 66). Peasants who earlier had tolerated and even welcomed Shining Path guerrillas began to report them to the police and even asked the government to build nearby police stations as protection. Rural support for the radicals thus constantly waxed and waned, partly depending on the number of Shining Path initiatives and their congruence with local custom (Crabtree 1992: 102–3; del Pino 1998; Harding 1987: 190–2; Isbell 1992: 66–9, 72–7; Poole and Rénique 1992: 60–4; Salcedo 1986: 38–9). In 1981 and 1982, Shining Path guerrillas appeared for the first time in departments abutting Ayacucho. Once again, locals were initially supportive because Shining Path activists enforced local notions of justice. According to some anthropologists who conducted studies in the area, villagers, who initially had referred to the guerrillas as “terrorists,” by the mid-1980s were calling them “buddy” and “comrade” (Berg 1992: 98). Only a small minority, however, supported the guerrillas’ proposals to restructure the local economy. Popular support for the guerrillas vacillated, once again based on the guerrillas’ declared aims and immediate actions (Berg 1992: 90–103; Gianotten, de Wit, and de Wit 1985: 193–6, 198). The Belaúnde government initially dismissed the geographic range and social bases of support for the Shining Path movement and described the guerrillas as “isolated criminal delinquents.” However, when local officials in the southern Andes began to resign in large numbers because of death threats (some of which were carried out), the government dispatched an experienced counterinsurgency force known as the Sinchis that two decades earlier had defeated the MIR guerrillas. States of emergency were declared in several provinces of Ayacucho (a Peruvian province approximates in size and administrative duties a county in the United States or Britain). The Sinchis were allowed to detain suspected terrorists and their supporters without formal charges and to enter homes without warrants. Public demonstrations against purported military misbehavior were outlawed. Freedoms of speech and press were circumscribed; for example, anyone who spoke in favor of the guerrillas could be incarcerated for up to 25 years.


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Believing that Shining Path was part of an international communist conspiracy, police and soldiers investigated all local radicals, reformers, and known Marxists, including so-called red priests (clergy who worked among the Andean poor). Security forces entered villages said to have been friendly to Shining Path, indiscriminately arrested and tortured young males, and destroyed homes and property. Carlos Ivan Degregori (1998: 142, 144) maintains that security forces turned the southern Andes “into an Armageddon” between 1983 and 1985. “They did not perceive nuances . . . when they saw dark skin, they fired.”4 During the mid-1980s, human rights organizations around the world told of widespread torture and extrajudicial executions by Peruvian security forces. Amnesty International, for one, stated that human rights violations were taking place “on a scale unprecedented in modern Peru.” A Peruvian Senate commission on human rights reported that security forces had killed 6,935 civilians in 1983 and 1984. According to these and other talliers, by the mid-1980s more than 3,000 civilians had been killed in the military’s campaign against Shining Path. Many more had simply “disappeared,” presumably into secret prisons or unmarked mass graves. Most of the brutal repression occurred in Ayacucho, where military actions in 1983 and 1984 reportedly resulted in more than 5,000 deaths (civilian and combatant) out of a local population of roughly a half million. Belaúnde responded blithely to critics’ concerns, joking at one press conference that he recently had tossed Amnesty International’s reports into dustbins (Crabtree 1992: 96; Degregori 1994: 82; McClintock 1989: 89; Poole and Rénique 1992: 7; Reid 1986: 44). The presence of security forces in Ayacucho and neighboring departments did not noticeably diminish Shining Path violence. To the contrary, the guerrillas began to kill more often and more viciously (according to some reports, eye gouging and setting human bonfires). They also began to bomb bridges and the pylons that brought electrical energy to Lima. By 1985, both Shining Path and the military had begun to kill off entire populations of mountain villages suspected of aiding the opposition. The escalation took a toll on the movement’s morale, especially among those who were engaged principally in nonviolent projects. Some activists feigned sickness to avoid bloody and depraved assignments. Some resigned from the movement rather than remain in it (del Pino 1998: 182–5; McClintock 1998: 68–9, 340). According to Shining Path publications, more was occurring in the mountains than gunplay and revulsive behavior. Several hundred People’s Committees had been established by the mid-1980s in remote villages that the security forces could not police, and the movement hoped to establish several hundred more before the end of the decade (Communist Party of Peru 1985: 34; 1986: 34–5; Guzmán 1988: 20–3, 34–7, 43–6, 51, 73, 78–9). The People’s Committees were intended to be public spaces where wage earners, peasants, and small entrepreneurs could freely discuss and settle on public policy. When the People’s Committees were not in session, public

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policy was to be made by Delegate Assemblies, whose members were elected by each of the three constituencies in a community: the proletariat, the peasantry, and the petite bourgeoisie. There has been little scholarly research on the actual workings of these novel political structures. Scattered anthropological accounts suggest that serious policy debate took place in at least some of the communities, with local residents challenging local Shining Path activists about their efforts to forcefully remake village norms and institutions (del Pino 1998: 170, 180). Closer to the front, guns continued to blaze. The Belaúnde government, embarrassed by its apparent impotence vis-à-vis the revolutionaries’ insurrectionary politics and outraged by the continuing murders of public officials, suspended civil liberties in additional provinces and departments. Andean peasants responded variously to their increasingly violent and volatile environment. Many felt anger toward their alleged champions whose presence had brought the wrath of the government down on them. Some women began to practice birth control in the hope of denying Shining Path future recruits (del Pino 1998: 180). In at least one village, residents sought to prove their loyalty to the regime by seizing more than a half dozen Shining Path activists, stoning three to death, and taking the others to government authorities (Salcedo 1986: 41). The indiscriminate brutality of the Sinchis, however, often exacerbated many peasants’ dislike of the state and increased the attraction for some of Shining Path’s activists. According to social scientist Ronald Berg (1992: 98), most Andean peasants believed that the police acted more cruelly and arbitrarily than the guerrillas. When the guerrillas struck, it was against people whose “crimes” were well known or against specific targets such as the cooperatives. On the other hand, the police arrested and interrogated blindly, the numbers of “disappeared” increased rapidly, and those whose relatives were taken away were left with great bitterness.

Geographic Expansion Between 1982 and 1987, Shining Path activists extended their operations to the southernmost region of Peru and its eastern jungles. In some respects, little changed other than the landscape. The guerrillas continued to assassinate and issue death threats to unpopular local officials and business owners; other activists were organizing communal work sessions and popular schools (Crabtree 1992: 192–3). Nonetheless, the ratio of violent to nonviolent activity seemed to change, with nonviolent educational activity apparently receiving higher priority. The change in tactics was especially noticeable around Lake Titicaca, where many local peasants were already organized into unions, church


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groups, and auxiliaries of the IU. Local groups provided many services, such as protection of villagers against outlaws, that had earned Shining Path temporary trust and support in Ayacucho. Because they were entering an organizationally dense environment, Shining Path activists decided to seek out and win over established local leaders and their organizational resources rather than compete with them. On occasion, guerrillas attacked government officials (the mayor of Salina was murdered), but overall, Shining Path engaged in far less violence in the southern tip of Peru than it had in Ayacucho (Crabtree 1992: 113–14; Taylor 1987). In the mines of the central Andes, Shining Path also tried to collaborate with existing unions but met with less success. Relations were strained because the miners, having won hard-fought victories in the past, saw collective bargaining as a valuable means to wage increases and improved working conditions. Shining Path activists, many of whom repeatedly called for tough, no-concessions contract negotiations, soon found themselves politically isolated. They attempted to impose more radical goals and a more combative negotiating stance by threatening and occasionally murdering recalcitrant labor leaders, which only intensified the hostility of established union partisans (Crabtree 1992: 114–15, 193; Poole and Rénique 1992: 78–83). Shining Path greatly expanded its activities in the eastern jungles, especially the subregion known as the Upper Huallaga Valley. U.S. drug consumption had made coca a very profitable crop. The promise of decent wages and quick profits attracted tens of thousands of migrants. By the late 1980s, more than a quarter million Peruvian small farmers and entrepreneurs were in the coca business, which each year generated millions of dollars in foreign exchange and accounted for almost 40 percent of the value of all Peruvian exports (Crabtree 1992: 115–18, 195–201; Gonzales 1992: 105–25; Poole and Rénique 1992: 167–202). Middlemen in the coca trade came from Colombia, where leaves were turned into paste. The traffickers attempted to underpay the Peruvian farmers and threatened harm to any who tried to band together for bargaining strength. The police, poorly paid by the state and better paid by the Colombians, looked the other way when hired gangsters harassed the farmers. According to numerous observers, the eastern jungles resembled the proverbial American “Wild West”: lawless and savage (Crabtree 1992: 117; Rosenberg 1991: 153). Shining Path stepped into the valley’s political vacuum during the mid-1980s, offering to protect small farmers from the traffickers and to finance infrastructural improvements, such as roads, that the government in Lima had failed to provide. The movement’s activists also organized local vigilante committees to control drinking and prostitution, created locallevel representative government institutions, and even supervised wedding ceremonies. In some communities, activists organized townwide litterremoval campaigns, in which all residents (even bankers) participated. The political services and organization became so extensive and sophisticated

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that legends grew about a “republic” run by Shining Path (Crabtree 1992: 117–18; Gonzales 1992: 108–11; Poole and Rénique 1992: 185–6). Shining Path did not provide its administrative services without cost. It directly and indirectly taxed local residents (for example, road tolls), and insisted on a share of coca revenues. Some experts estimate that during the middle and late 1980s, Shining Path took in somewhere between $20 million and a billion annually from its “governmental” operations (Gonzales 1992: 121; Rudolph 1992: 123). The movement used a portion of its revenues to finance guerrilla and educative operations in other parts of the country. Members of Shining Path, perhaps having learned a lesson in Ayacucho, avoided trying to force collectivization in the eastern jungles. British scholar John Crabtree (1992: 118) notes that despite its dogmatic-sounding ideology, Sendero showed in the Alto Huallaga a notable pragmatism in responding to the needs and concerns of those it chose to work with. Though it would tend to enter a village, assemble the people and give its usual ideological harangue, it took care to tailor the message to those to whom it was intended. . . . [G]enerally it offered to organise the sort of services such as justice and even infrastructural improvements which governments in Lima had conspicuously failed to provide.

Repression under García At the same time that Shining Path was extending its sphere of influence, the Peruvian government was trying to check the movement through more conciliatory methods. Belaúnde’s heavy-handedness had resulted in a public relations black eye. At home and abroad the government was being criticized for large-scale violations of human rights. International companies and financial institutions were being pressured to stop investing in and lending money to Peru. Unrestrained repression had international repercussions that the economically battered country could not afford. In 1985, President García Pérez reined in the military commanders whose underlings seemed unusually prone to act against innocent civilians. He promised that Peru’s security forces henceforth would scrupulously observe international norms in regard to human rights and civil liberties. He also organized a peace commission in the hope of convincing leaders of Shining Path that a legal road to social change was available. After journalists revealed that army troops had recently massacred scores of civilians and had left them in unmarked graves, García sacked three high-ranking generals. The dismissals troubled many officers, who were unused to such high-handed treatment from a civilian politician (a member of APRA, no less). García’s attempts to balance the budget by slashing weapons purchases further angered Peru’s


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military commanders. Rumors of an imminent military coup soon circulated in Lima. García, well-aware of the military’s longstanding hostility toward APRA, reached a compromise: if the military would regulate itself in regard to tortures, massacres, and disappearances, the government would protect the military from external investigations of alleged human-rights violations. Human rights advocates in Peru and abroad erupted in denunciation of García’s sudden solicitude for the military (Crabtree 1992: 108–10, 201–6; Poole and Rénique 1992: 8; Rudolph 1992: 18–20). García also earned enemies because of his failure to implement the program of economic development promised to poorer departments in the Andes. Many of the projects, which he had announced with great fanfare, existed on paper only; funding never arrived. The government also failed to repair many of the bridges, communication lines, and electrical systems that were being destroyed daily by Shining Path guerrillas. Many observers soon concluded that García was ineffectively fiddling while Peru’s economically beset highland burned (Crabtree 1992: 110; Mauceri 1995: 199). In 1986, García attempted to bolster his international standing by hosting a meeting of the Socialist International. Representatives came from numerous socialist parties and social-democratic governments around the world, happy to help their Third World cousin gain publicity and stature. The public relations spectacle turned sour when Shining Path inmates in three prisons organized a strike to protest their impending removal to a new prison where, they believed, their already frequently violated rights would be subject to more abuses. Embarrassed, García ordered military attacks on the prisons. Highly destructive weaponry, including aircraft and artillery, demolished the structures, and (perhaps with García’s foreknowledge) more than one hundred prisoners who already surrendered were massacred. The bloody events outraged many of the country’s foreign guests—especially representatives of European governments—and saddled García with international notoriety. García subsequently unleashed the military and extended the suspension of civil liberties to additional departments. By the end of the 1980s, more than half of the population of Peru lived in the so-called emergency zones. Secret detentions and mysterious disappearances, which had declined immediately after García’s inauguration, skyrocketed. Numerous human rights groups, including Amnesty International, concluded in the late 1980s that Peru had the highest number of forced disappearances in the world, even exceeding the total set by the Pinochet regime in Chile (Degenhardt 1988: 292; Degregori 1994: 92, 97; Palmer 1990: 8; Rosenberg 1991: 186, 201–2; Woy-Hazleton and Hazleton 1992: 216–17). Developing an Urban Presence The last three years of García’s presidency were a time of bloodshed and fear. Criminal violence, such as armed robbery and assault, became commonplace

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as seemingly endless economic insecurity pressed people to desperate acts. Paramilitary right-wing death squads killed scores of suspected Sendero members and sympathizers, including lawyers and teachers. Villages organized self-defense patrols, or “rondas campesinas,” that, at best, protected their territories from, or at least gave warning of, encroachment by the military and the guerrillas. Sometimes, however, the rondas attacked neighboring villages to gain land or avenge past injustices. In 1987 alone, political violence by groups other than security forces accounted for approximately 850 deaths; in 1989, almost 2,000 (Crabtree 1992: 184–7; Poole and Rénique 1992: 9, 70; Rudolph 1992: 116; Woy-Hazleton and Hazleton 1992: 215–16). In the summer of 1987, the national leaders of Shining Path held a plenary session to discuss the increased presence of security forces in the highlands and the effectiveness of current educative and guerrilla strategies; the extent of government repression; and their assumptions about current social trends and economic conditions. They agreed that the movement should channel more energy and resources into mobilizing the poor in the coastal cities, where social discontent seemed to be rapidly rising, and that the movement should increase its presence in established trade unions and squatter institutions controlled by IU and APRA. They also urged a change in policies regarding the urban middle classes. Henceforth, the movement would see them more consistently as potential allies in a broad popular struggle against international capitalism (Dietz 1990: 142; Woy-Hazleton and Hazleton 1992: 213). After the 1987 plenary session, Shining Path became much more of an urban phenomenon. It attempted to recruit radicals and reformers in Lima who were rapidly becoming disillusioned with the García government’s failure to turn the economy around. It recruited young instructors from local universities to teach in various shantytown public schools and college preparatory academies. New pro-Shining Path associations of lawyers (troubled by the government’s blatant violations of civil liberties) and university students (angry because of the lack of job opportunities and shocked by García’s brutal response to the 1986 prison strike) were formed. The staff of El Diario (a newspaper that hitherto had supported the IU and that was almost the only Lima daily that regularly covered labor disputes) began publishing pro-Shining Path articles regularly and even occasional communiqués from the group’s spokespersons. In some squatter communities, Shining Path activists ran in elections for community office. They also acquired positions of influence in three of the four major labor unions in Lima’s eastern corridor and began participating in soup kitchens, school milk programs, and even “rival” political parties. Meanwhile, Sendero guerrilla units bombed the cars of absentee landowners who threatened to evict squatters, threatened merchants who appeared to overcharge, and beat (and sometimes even killed) thieves, prostitutes, wife abusers, drug dealers, and unprincipled money lenders (Burt 1997; Mauceri 1995: 27; McClintock 1998: 75, 87, 342, 414; Poole and Rénique 1992: 84–96;


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Smith 1992: 136–41; Stokes 1995: 48–51; Strong 1992: 79; TarazonaSevillano 1990: 52–4; Woy-Hazleton and Hazleton 1992: 213). Political scientist Jo-Marie Burt (1997: 298–300) contends that many Limans accepted Shining Path because of its law-and-order functions in poorer neighborhoods, where police forces are few in number, underpaid, and often corrupt. In wealthier neighborhoods, residents often deal with daily security problems by hiring private guards. This is not on option for the poor. Public opinion surveys corroborate Burt’s thesis. According to one set of surveys from the early 1990s, dissatisfaction with government services was so acute that at least one in every six residents of metropolitan Lima considered subversion “justified,” and another one in ten “understood” the desire to subvert the status quo. In another study, more than 20 percent of those polled said that Shining Path did not kill and torture innocent people; more than 45 percent said that Shining Path punished “the corrupt”; and 35 percent said that if Shining Path were to triumph over the government, society would be either “more just” (13 percent) or “as just” (22 percent) as it currently was (Burt 1997: 288; Kenney 2004: 160, 163). Not all the victims of the movement’s armed actions were criminals and unprincipled business owners, however. Shining Path assassination teams periodically dispatched trade-union activists and community leaders who refused to work with the movement. More than one hundred community leaders were slain between 1989 and 1992 (Burt 1997: 286). James Ron (2001: 573) estimates that nationwide, Shining Path assassins killed roughly two hundred “leftists”—community leaders, union officials, or politicians belonging to left-wing parties—from 1986 through 1992. Shining Path’s leaders continued to struggle over the proper role of violence. In public statements Guzmán played down the rifts within Shining Path. For example, in a twelve-hour interview published in El Diario, he said that there were no profound intraorganizational disagreements over tactics or strategy. He insisted that the movement was simply engaging in pragmatic, nondogmatic experimentation: [W]e will advance, even if we begin by feeling our way in the dark, finding temporary solutions for certain situations or for brief periods of time, until we find the definitive one. As Lenin taught us, no revolution can be planned out completely ahead of time. (Guzmán 1988: 91) But the numerous local deviations from a common course of action belied the movement’s purported agreement on strategy, as did the appearance in 1990 of Shining Path street leaflets calling for the abandonment of armed struggle (Crabtree 1992: 208–9). Shantytown and union leaders, in turn, were torn about how best to relate to the movement. On one hand, its use of violence often seemed immoral and sometimes prompted police repression. On the other hand, Shining Path activists provided badly needed energy and enthusiasm to grassroots organizations, and peaceful petitioning of the government

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increasingly seemed ineffective. In the words of one Lima community organizer (who would be assassinated in 1992 by Shining Path guerrillas), If there is a Shining Path member who believes in equality, in a better world, I ask him or her to think more. I don’t believe they all are murderers. . . . Political parties are not monolithic and impenetrable. . . . Within the Shining Path, there are currents, and this is something we can take advantage of. (Moyano 1995: 375) Ironically, perhaps Shining Path’s greatest ally in developing an urban presence was the government. The military tended to overlook the ideological and strategic differences within Shining Path and between the Shining Path and other left-wing organizations, and tended to treat union organizers, community activists, and radical priests as fellow travelers of Shining Path. More than one urban activist became a sympathizer of Shining Path after being arbitrarily arrested and detained in prison or tortured. Summary executions by security forces and poorly explained “disappearances” of suspected Shining Path activists further nourished sympathy (if not always active support) for the movement. Also, one should never forget the scale of the security forces’ activity: between 1989 and 1990, one-third of Lima’s metropolitan population had been subjected to police and military searches (Poole and Rénique 1992: 13; Bourque and Warren 1989: 24). The Path Ends? In 1990, Shining Path completed a decade of armed struggle. Many of its activists were cognizant that violence had not sparked the hoped-for popular insurrection. Arrests of activists and sympathizers (including labor lawyers) during the late 1980s led to new calls within the movement for the abandonment of armed struggle. According to Ponciano del Pino (1998: 189), disenchantment with armed struggle in some places had become so strong that it “placed the viability of the Senderista project in question.” Then Peru’s constitutional order abruptly changed. In 1992, President Fujimori, facing growing restlessness over his economic policies, dissolved Congress and declared himself a temporary dictator. He granted security forces expanded powers; ordered the tapping of opposition parties’ telephones; restricted journalists’ rights to report on the government’s moves against the guerrillas; and created special military courts to try terrorist suspects. The government published a list of suspected Shining Path sympathizers that included several highly respected human rights activists whom few outside government viewed as guilty. Fujimori dismissed the concerns of civil and human rights organizations, accusing Amnesty International of being part of an international campaign against Peru. Even before Fujimori suspended Congress, his minister of defense had declared


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that a human-rights investigatory team sponsored by the World Council of Churches was functioning as the “international missiles of Sendero Luminoso” (Mauceri 1995: 23–5; McClintock 1993: 117; Poole and Rénique 1992: 17). The armed forces captured Guzmán in September 1992, and Fujimori announced that the Shining Path movement had been destroyed. A wave of car bombings in Lima’s wealthiest neighborhoods reminded Fujimori and the government that several guerrilla units remained active. ProSendero banners in marches also indicated that the movement’s nonguerrilla cells were alive and well. The movement, however, was fragmenting. Most of the leaders who had been arrested with Guzmán were advocates of armed struggle. Their absence, it seems, allowed a shift in ideological weight toward the Lima faction, which had been more pacifistic, alliance-prone, and urban-oriented than Guzmán’s so-called “Chanka faction” (Degregori 1994: 94–9). The growing power of the more pacifistic wing may explain why in 1993 Guzmán (to the surprise of many) called on all Shining Path activists to abandon armed struggle. Many activists complied and channeled their energies and resources into grassroots organizing and neighborhood-level politics. Other local cells— especially outside Lima—ignored Guzmán’s dictate and continued to cause mayhem (Burt and Ricci 1994). One group insisted that Guzmán lacked authority to direct the movement because “[i]t is a norm of the Communist movement that Party leadership cannot be exercised from prison” (Izaguirre 1996: 38). About one thousand militants formed a new organization, Sendero Rojo, that held fast to the Shining Path’s older strategy of a popular war. During the final five years of the twentieth century, the progeny of Shining Path killed between one hundred and three hundred people a year (a smaller number of politically motivated killings than occurred during the late 1980s and early 1990s, but a painfully large number of deaths nonetheless). Some victims were members of Peru’s security forces, while others were everyday people killed by car bombs. At one point, local Shining Path units attacked and briefly occupied a score of district and provincial capitals. The movement, however, seemed to be entering a new phase. Even leaders of the cells opposed to Guzmán’s order to lay down arms conceded that guerrilla attacks needed to be scaled back and more energy directed into clandestine involvement in local community and labor organizations and nonviolent popular education (Izaguirre 1996: 38).5 Conclusion Why did the government have so many difficulties eliminating Shining Path, given the movement’s oddly Maoist rhetoric (certainly not part of the

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Andean peasants’ experience and self-understanding) and its violence against villagers, accused informers, and left-wing rivals? Indiscriminate government violence and the rapid deterioration of the economy certainly predisposed many citizens to take an antigovernment stance. The economy was in the worst tailspin in recent Latin American history, and a complete crash seemed imminent. The standard of living had deteriorated to such an extent that the hemisphere’s first cholera epidemic in current history broke out, laying more than 250,000 Peruvians low by 1991 and killing a tenth of that number (Andreas and Sharpe 1992: 77). All of these circumstances created acute dissatisfaction and a greater openmindedness about Sendero politics. In addition, Shining Path attracted recruits and support because of its demonstrated interest in the problems of the poor. In Andean departments (such as Ayacucho) and in the Upper Huallaga Valley, it provided services—such as schools, the enforcement of local norms, and protection from coca-leaf buyers—that were desired by the populace but not supplied by the government. Similarly, in Lima’s newest squatter communities, the popularity of Shining Path rested mostly on its ability and willingness to help new migrants find their way through an unfamiliar and often hostile environment. Popular support for this violent social movement rested on very pragmatic grounds: its social and economic services met a crucial need (Berg 1986–1987; McClintock 1989: 95–6; Smith 1992). Conversely, the movement’s popularity quickly dissipated whenever Shining Path activists departed from local norms and attempted to impose their own social visions on others. Overt radicalism almost always alienated the very people the movement wanted to help and represent. These observations corroborate Joel Migdal’s thesis about the social bases of support for revolutionary parties. He argues (1974: 212): Peasants join when there is something tangible to be had. . . . Their initial aims in joining are not to implement a particular ideology. . . . Instead they seek immediately useful concessions that will aid them in navigating their social and economic environment. Like the popular Third World revolutionary groups of the 1960s that Migdal studied, Shining Path survived and prospered in parts of rural and urban Peru because it offered immediate, tangible benefits in times of sudden economic change and dislocation. Perhaps in its public-service projects— and not in its acts of violence or its semi-Maoist revolutionary doctrines— Shining Path is representative of successful agrarian social movements around the world.

PART

5

Mexico’s Zapatistas and the Globalization of Protest

The Greens, Solidarity, and Shining Path appeared in countries with diverse social conditions and political arrangements. This partly explains differences in their goals, strategies, and tactics. Yet, they appeared and flourished at roughly the same time, that is, prior to the end of the Cold War, when many people still viewed the nation-state as their primary political reference point. Although spokespersons for each movement occasionally talked grandiloquently about worldwide change, the movements themselves primarily acted on behalf of constituencies within the borders of a nation-state and defined their adversaries as, in part, the incumbent rulers of nation-states. The few public statements about igniting a global transformation could not hide the reality that these were primarily single-state movements. In 1989, the Berlin wall fell and the world seemed to change. To some observers, the destruction of the Berlin Wall symbolized a larger convergence of the world’s economic, political, and cultural systems. Free trade, the electronic media, and the language of human rights seemed to be gaining momentum everywhere. Some writers speculated that a new generation of social movements was arising to defend local economies and cultures from foreign influences, and whose activities and constituencies spanned the globe. In some writers’ opinions, Mexico’s Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) epitomized the distinctively post–Cold War generation of social movements (Foran 2003: 11–12; Kopkind 2002; Paulson 2001). The Zapatistas were, indeed, concerned with developing international alliances and addressing global problems. The movement’s international features, however, were inextricably linked to efforts to survive locally and to solve local problems and quandries—processes that might be typical of other postwar movements that respond to the challenges of globalization (Tarrow 2005: 94–95, 139). To make sense of the evolution of the Zapatistas’ international goals and activities, let us follow our practice and begin with an examination of the social conditions that the movement wanted to change and of the political situation in which it was embedded.


CHAPTER

11

A World to Be Remade: Sociopolitical Circumstances of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation

Social-movement scholars in the 1950s and early 1960s typically argued that fast, unexpected, and extensive changes in a society can frustrate people to the point of joining and supporting movements for social reconstruction. Later scholars noted that political circumstances, especially intra-elite competition and the constitutional arrangements, can encourage the development of social movements by providing them with potential allies within the government as well as invaluable opportunities to organize and act in public. Drawing on these two views of causation, let us consider the historical context of the EZLN. What rapid, unexpected, and large-scale social changes motivated some Mexicans to band together and act collectively? What opportunities and challenges did Mexico’s distinctive political system offer and present to the Zapatistas? Origins of the Mexican Regime In terms of physical geography, Mexico is among the world’s fifteen largest states (Canak and Swanson 1998: 2). Its surface area of 761,000 square miles surpasses the combined surface areas of Germany, Poland, and Peru, and has hindered the development of a streamlined, centralized state system. Instead of a single state system, local pockets of governmental power with distinct political institutions, regional leaders, and notions of justice and fairness have emerged and persisted alongside the broader, federal system of governance. Mexico at one time was much larger. Its diminution is related to a second important geographic fact. Unlike Germany, Poland, or Peru, Mexico borders the United States of America, which for many generations has coveted Mexican land. In the early nineteenth century the United States supported

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the Texas independence movement and then annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845. Shortly thereafter, the United States defeated Mexico in the 1846–1848 War of the North American Invasion (or, as it is called in the United States, the Mexican-American War) and acquired even more. In less than a decade, Mexico lost more than half of its territory, much of it well suited for commercial agriculture. In 1876, Porfirio Díaz became Mexico’s president, an office he held for the next thirty-five years (except for a few years in the 1880s). According to legend, Díaz coined the popular Mexican saying “Poor Mexico! So far from God and so close to the United States!” He contended that Mexico could best protect its borders through (1) state promotion of large-scale commercial agriculture and (conversely) the prompt dismantlement of inefficient peasant holdings, and (2) the inducement of foreign capitalists into building technologically up-to-date work sites in Mexico. In theory, importation of investment capital and technological know-how and exportation of foodstuffs and other raw materials would hasten Mexico’s becoming urban, literate, secular, industrial, and prosperous. These societal changes, in turn, would allow it to assume its rightful place among the world’s respected sovereign states.1 Pursuant to this strategy, the Díaz government offered generous tax breaks, long-term rights to natural resources, and monopolistic licenses to British, Canadian, French, German, and U.S. investors. They took the bait (from Díaz’s point of view). Total foreign investment jumped from 110 million pesos in 1884 to 3,400 million in 1910. Foreign entrepreneurs soon prevailed in key sectors of Mexican economy, including banking, cattle ranching, mining, and oil extraction and refinement. By 1910 twentyseven of the thirty-one largest mining companies were owned primarily by either British or U.S. investors (Aguilar Camín and Meyer 1993: 2; Gonzales 2002: 24, 48). To connect Mexico’s far-flung local economies, the government persuaded foreign companies to build and maintain railway lines. Between the late 1880s and 1900 total operational railway trackage increased from 750 to 12,000 miles. As domestic shipping costs dropped (according to one estimate by a whopping 90 percent), sales of unprocessed coffee beans soared from 8,161 tons in 1877 to 28,041 tons in 1910, and the annual production of rubber jumped from 27 to 7,443 tons. The annual extraction of oil increased from 10,000 barrels in 1901 to 13 million barrels in 1910. The total output of Mexico’s mines more than tripled between 1891 and 1910 (Gonzales 2002: 23, 31; Handelman 1997: 30; Ranis 1971: 93; Skidmore and Smith 1992: 227). Díaz’s ambitious economic program did not please everyone. Critics warned that outside corporations and capitalists were securing too much control over water, mineral, and petroleum resources. Foreigners, it was whispered, may be quietly planning to rule the country, and the worries may have been well founded. William Randolph Hearst, a U.S. tycoon who invested heavily in Mexico, wrote to his mother: “I don’t see what is

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to prevent us from owning all of Mexico and running it to suit ourselves” (Gonzales 2002: 8). Critics also fretted about the long-term budgetary implications of the government’s construction of docks, dams, irrigation systems, and other public infrastructure to lure foreign investors. By 1911, Mexico’s international debt had tripled its annual income and had surpassed that of any other Latin American country (MacLachlan and Beezley 1999: 102). Some denounced foreign capitalists’ discrimination in paying their Mexican employees. On average, a foreign-born miner, machinist, and blacksmith in 1906 received an hourly wage of 7.00, 7.50, and 8.00 pesos, respectively, while the typical Mexican miner, machinist, and blacksmith received 3.25, 4.00, and 5.00 pesos, respectively (Gonzales 2002: 52). Naysayers warned that commercial agriculture was displacing country folk. By 1910 (roughly thirty-five years into the Díaz reign), the transfer of land to mechanized farms and large ranches had pushed more than five million peasants off their traditional holdings. In the states of Puebla and Veracruz, 90 percent of the rural inhabitants were rendered landless. The share of the nation’s farmland in the hands of the rural working classes (dirt farmers, peasant villagers, part-time cowboys, and others) fell from 25 percent to 2 percent (Handelman 1997: 31; Hart 1997: xi; MacLachlan and Beezley 1999: 112, 190). To outwit opponents and carry out his economic strategy, Díaz reconfigured the political system. Many of his innovations continue till this day. When he first became president, Mexico was ruled by regional strongmen with private armies. Díaz tried to ally himself with local small-business owners and urban professionals who desired public office and who resented the old-fashioned, short-sighted economic thinking of many of the regional bosses. Where possible, Díaz and his bourgeois allies established new state governments, with governors provisionally appointed by Díaz himself and legislative assemblies elected by property-owning citizens. Partly to prevent local leaders from becoming independent of the federal government, Díaz prohibited state legislators from running for consecutive terms. The policy provided him with a never-ending carousel of public offices with which to reward new generations of supporters. Even with this constitutional strategy, Díaz often found himself not strong enough to defeat the warlords, especially in remote regions, such as the Baja California and Yucatan peninsulas. Compromise was necessary: Díaz agreed not to interfere with the warlords’ exercise of power—including their frequently corrupt running of provincial banks and their questionable taxation policies—as long as they did not challenge his interregional economic policies. Throughout this period, Díaz was fixing national elections for the presidency and national parliament. He distributed lists of his favorite candidates to regional elites during campaigns. In exchange for a free hand over a fairly wide range of local policies, the elites (both the nonelected bosses and the elected bourgeois legislators) helped Díaz’s favorites win their congressional races through a variety of legal and illegal means. The arrangement enabled

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Díaz to pass controversial economic legislation “democratically” through the rubberstamp parliament, and the regional oligarchs enjoyed control over many matters that preoccupied them—for example, setting local taxes and squeezing labor from indigenous peasants. By the dawn of the twentieth century, opinions regarding the modernizing regime were decidedly mixed. Many academics and journalists in Mexico applauded Díaz’s strategy for rapid industrialization and called the country’s political order an “honorable tyranny” (Gonzales 2002: 70). A goodly number of foreign investors and political leaders agreed. Robber baron Andrew Carnegie declared, “In all of the corners of the [Mexican] Republic an enviable peace reigns.” Theodore Roosevelt, hardly a person to minimize his own historical significance, proclaimed Díaz to be the world’s greatest living statesman (Aguilar Camín and Meyer 1993: 1; Gonzalez 2002: 5). The benefits of Mexico’s rapid economic growth were not trickling down, however. Despite the prodigious increases in the economy’s net output and productivity, average real wages for all workers declined 20 percent between 1876 and 1910, and real wages for unskilled workers declined 25 percent between 1898 and 1910. Per capita consumption of corn, a staple among Mexicans of modest means, fell by twenty pounds (more than 6 percent) between 1895 and 1910. Although the urban bourgeoisie now lived in modern cities with parks, electricity, and museums, more than a quarter of the country’s male infants in 1900 died before reaching the age of one year (Aguilar Camín and Meyer 1993: 4; MacLachlan and Beezley 1999: 119, 132; Skidmore and Smith 1992: 228). Consequences of the Mexican Revolution Growing dissatisfaction with Díaz’s economic policies and pseudodemocratic political schemes led to local uprisings at the beginning of the twentieth century, including land invasions, labor strikes, and rebellions by the country’s indigenous peoples. At first, Díaz was not overly worried. The country’s security forces—financed by the federal government, regional patriarchs, and U.S. interests—easily vanquished peasant, workingclass, and Indian rebels. Still, he was reluctant to harass members of the fledgling middle classes. After all, they were expected to benefit in the long term from Mexico’s commercial and industrial revolution and, Díaz believed, would become pillars of the new order. He gave them room to vent. In 1908, perhaps in jest, Díaz mentioned to an American journalist that he would step down as president if he were fairly defeated in the upcoming election. The article was reprinted in Mexican newspapers, where it gave a glimmer of hope to the regime’s opponents. One group of disgruntled merchants and middle-class professionals rallied behind the candidacy of Francisco Madero, scion of a wealthy landowning family in northern Mexico that had lost its local political power to Díaz appointees. Madero


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announced that, if elected, he would establish a new kind of capitalist economy, one that would protect native entrepreneurs from foreign competition and that would improve the living standards of workers and the rural poor. Madero also promised that he would hold office for only a single term and would ensure that all future presidential elections in Mexico were free and fair. Díaz initially tolerated Madero and his upstart No Relection Party. Once Madero began to attract crowds of more than twenty thousand, the stakes changed, as did Díaz’s mood. He shut down his challenger’s journal and jailed Madero and his fellow activists. According to government record-keepers, Díaz received more than a million votes in the 1910 election; the incarcerated opponent purportedly received fewer than two hundred. Díaz then allowed Madero to escape to the United States, where he denounced the election as a fraud and called for an armed uprising against the regime. In the opinion of many historians, it was at this point that the Mexican Revolution began.2 Madero, a socially conservative businessman, desired a political revolution, not an economic one that threatened private property. Even so, many peasants and workers misinterpreted Madero’s call to arms, thinking it was an endorsement of land invasions and factory seizures. Ragtag militias of the working poor spontaneously formed in disparate parts of the country. Some units, such as the northern army of Pancho Villa, numbered in the tens of thousands. The rebels’ multiple armed attacks on so-called Díaz-potism stunned the president. When insurgents captured Ciudad Juárez, Díaz decamped for the United States. Madero easily won the subsequent presidential election. In a conciliatory move, he reappointed several former high-ranking government officials who had served loyally under the old regime. The new president also initiated some prolabor regulations and probusiness laws against foreign competition but ignored the more radical economic proposals, such as land redistribution, that many of the revolutionary militias had in mind. His actions frightened some foreign investors. After fifteen months, military officers (apparently with encouragement from the United States) arrested and executed Madero. Over the next decade there was, in the characterization of historians Hector Aguilar Camín and Lorenzo Meyer (1993: 41), “a hailstorm of fragmented uprisings” that collectively became known as the Mexican Revolution. More than a million people died in the fighting inspired by radically different political visions and hopes. First, there were the counterrevolutionaries, who sought an immediate return to the Díaz program of capitalist authoritarianism. Then there were the liberal reformers, who championed free and fair elections, civil liberties, and a semiautarkic Mexican form of capitalism, closed to imports and foreign investors. Last, there were the numerous poor people’s armies (Brenner and Leighton 1943: 41–6). Many peasants followed Emiliano Zapata, who demanded the immediate dismantlement of haciendas and creation of ejidos, or collectively managed land to be held in perpetuity by a legally registered local community.

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Pancho Villa’s patchwork army of cowboys and miners was concerned less with land redistribution than with legalizing unions, securing decent wages, and ensuring job stability. Some anarchist platoons roamed Mexico’s urban areas and called for worker management of factories and mines. After a half dozen years of bloodletting, the leaders of the various armed groups crafted a constitution, which, according to historians Thomas Skidmore and Peter Smith (1992: 233), was “startlingly radical for this pre-Bolshevik era” and “permeated” with “socialist overtones.” Political sociologist Miguel Centeno (1997: 6) largely agrees: “[T]he 1917 Constitution may be seen as marking the birth of the [world’s] first socialist state.” The 1917 Constitution proclaimed that Mexico alone owned the country’s oil, water, and other underground resources. One article recognized the government’s right and duty to confiscate unused land on unreasonably large plantations and haciendas, to redistribute such property to the rural poor, and to establish ejidos. Article 123 acknowledged workers’ rights to unionize, to bargain collectively, and to strike. As well, the Constitution limited the workday to eight hours and the workweek to six days, and promised unemployment insurance and health care to all workers. Reflecting the widespread dissatisfaction with the nondemocratic nature of Díaz’s regime, the new Constitution explicitly barred presidents from holding office for consecutive terms and recognized the national congress, the Cortes, as the most influential branch of the political system—in theory it now had sufficient authority to check any future presidential tyranny. To ensure local communities a modicum of control over their destinies, the Constitution recognized subnational systems of governance, including states and municipalities, which were to be governed through elected officials (parliaments and governors). A gap soon appeared between constitutional promises and practice. For at least a decade, most of the socialist-sounding provisions of the 1917 Constitution were never implemented. Labor rights, such as the right to strike, were largely ignored. Little land was redistributed. Instead, the political elite continued to court foreign investors. By 1930, foreign capitalists controlled 98 percent of Mexico’s mining operations, 99 percent of its petroleum industry, and all sources of electrical energy. Moreover, the wealthiest 1.5 percent of Mexican landowners regained possession of 97 percent of the land, and the government had redistributed only 3.9 percent of all arable land from large landowners to the landless. Only in the Zapatista stronghold, the state of Marelos, did the ejido become the predominant form of agrarian property (Aguilar Camín and Meyer 1993: 113–14, 120; Cornelius 1973: 398–9, 403). Many of the Constitution’s democratic provisions were likewise ignored. Election fraud remained widespread, and local and regional elites and their personal armies soon recaptured large swaths of the countryside. To limit political bloodshed, most regional oligarchs joined the National Revolutionary Party—an organization that allowed oligarchs to jointly pick candidates for key public offices (and then systematically made sure


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that the party’s choices won). To ensure peace, the office of president was rotated among elites every four years (later extended to six). Those who tried to hold office for more than one term were often murdered. Gradually—after repeated assassinations as well as uprisings by irritated local chiefs—the presidential succession process evolved into a peaceful decision: each president would select (or, in the political jargon of Mexico, “finger”) his successor. In the 1930s, Mexico underwent what could be viewed as a partial realization of the more radical side of the 1917 Constitution. Between 1934 and 1940, President Lázaro Cárdenas surprised many in the political elite by raising workers’ minimum wages and protecting their legal right to strike. No less controversial were his decisions to legalize the Communist Party, to grant asylum to the exiled Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, to permit formation of village and worker militias, and to nationalize privately owned transportation and communication systems. Cárdenas also redistributed more than 40 percent of the country’s arable land from haciendas, plantations, and large ranches to ejidos (Cornelius 1973: 460, 474). Many of these resembled small towns and included hundreds (and sometimes even thousands) of families and independently run schools, hospitals, and other public services. The rural poor, having yearned for decades of having land to farm, were ecstatic. Perhaps Cárdenas’s most popular decision involved defiance of the United States. After international petroleum companies repeatedly refused to honor a series of proworker decisions by Mexico’s judicial branch, Cárdenas ordered the seizure of foreigners’ oil fields. Outraged U.S. oil corporations pressed for another invasion of Mexico, but the United States was facing an international crisis in Europe and therefore was reluctant to punish or otherwise alienate its neighbor. Mexicans, on the other hand, were jubilant because Cárdenas was “one up” on the United States, the giant that had militarily humbled Mexico and manipulated its politicians. Overnight, he became beloved, even among many business owners. Radical labor leaders declared a seven-week moratorium on strikes. The Catholic Church urged followers to rally to the government in its time of need. Cárdenas denied that his unorthodox economic policies threatened Mexican capitalism. To the contrary, he believed that his methods for generating economic growth were more realistic than the approach adopted by Díaz and like-minded Mexican presidents, who had put their faith in low wages, extensive foreign investment, and private, large-scale agricultural enterprises. In Cárdenas’s opinion, ejidos were on the whole more productive than most haciendas. Keeping food prices low through ejido production meant that unnecessary wage increases could be kept in check, and that capitalists could accumulate the profits necessary for reinvestment and growth. High tariffs and strict limits on foreign investment also contributed to economic growth by protecting domestic manufacturers from more technologically sophisticated international competitors. Further, unions and minimum-wage laws gave urban workers leverage to secure decent

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wages and the wherewithal to buy domestically manufactured goods. Through a moderately well-paid labor force, Mexico could develop the internal market essential to the manufacturing sector’s long-term prosperity. During his six-year term, Cárdenas invited leaders of labor and farmworker organizations to join the ruling party’s auxiliary bodies and help make public policy. The offer surprised many members of the regional elite, who had viewed government as their private preserve. Cárdenas, however, reasoned that expansion of the polity would contribute in the long run to political peace. In exchange for access to government officials, wage earners and peasants were expected to vote for the candidates that the ruling party endorsed and to accept government policies that on first glance may have seemed to require sacrifice, for example, laws against wildcat strikes. Cárdenas’s presidency proved a mixed blessing for nonwealthy Mexicans. By the end of his term, most workers and peasants were enjoying vastly improved housing, clothing, food, drinking water, and medical care. Still, his land redistribution and prounion policies had inadvertently contributed to declines in agricultural output (which meant sharp increases in food prices), fueled inflation (which partially neutralized the benefits of nominal wage increases), and led to capital flight. Meanwhile, industrial workers and peasants—now officially part of the ruling party—had de facto surrendered their rights to form independent trade unions and to call wildcat strikes, and were no longer free to challenge the government in the streets. Mexico’s Economic Miracle (and the Nonmiraculous Crash) After the Cárdenas years, Mexican politics became relatively stable and predictable. Elections were held regularly; there were no military coups. Through patronage, intimidation of rival parties, and ballot-box fraud, the National Revolutionary Party (renamed the Institutional Revolutionary Party or Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI), in 1946) monopolized power at the national level and in almost every Mexican state and municipality. Aiding different social groups through goods, protection, and subsidies, the PRI over the decades inadvertently created an economy that was neither classically capitalist nor consistently socialist (neither fish nor foul). It was a mix of (1) small-scale capitalist manufacturing sheltered from international competition, (2) government-owned basic industries, such as petroleum and electricity, and large corporations (in 1970 the government owned controlling shares in nine of the country’s ten largest firms (Skidmore and Smith 1992: 243)), (3) privately owned packaging-and-processing plants that assembled components produced in other parts of the globe and then exported the finished consumer goods, (4) collectively owned and managed ejidos, (5) small-scale private farms, and (6) mechanized, large-scale agribusinesses. Different modes of production predominated in different corners of the country. For example, along the northern border with the United States,


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so-called maquiladora industries—in which finished parts for consumer durables were imported from the United States and then assembled by workers in plants owned by multinational corporations—flourished. In some states in central Mexico, ejidos were the predominant form of agricultural production. In other states, such as Chiapas, a large proportion of agricultural production occurred on large haciendas, plantations, and ranches. For three decades Mexico’s peculiarly partly free-market, partly stateowned and state-financed, and partly community-run economy appeared to satisfy most citizens’ material needs. The gross domestic product grew at an average annual rate of 6.7 percent between 1956 and 1972 (Lustig 1998: 18), leading many international observers to deem Mexico an “economic miracle.” Because of improvements in nutrition, housing, clothing, and medical care, average life expectancy rose from 42 years in 1940 to 63 years in 1970. Infant mortality declined from 148 deaths per 1,000 live births per year in 1934 to 71 in 1970 (Cornelius 1973: 476; Grindle 2000: 393). In the mid-1970s the seemingly successful hybrid economy stumbled because of mounting government debts and growing shortages of foreign currency. The annual inflation rate inched up to 20 percent by 1973, which spurred momentary capital flight. The combination of inflation and balanceof-payments problems became unmanageable when the international price for oil skyrocketed in 1973. The government could no longer afford its social programs to help the working classes or the infrastructure developments that had facilitated business growth for almost four decades. The discovery of vast oil fields in the late 1970s saved the regime from the painful belt-tightening decisions. The international price for oil soared toward the end of the decade, and the income from Mexico’s nationalized oil fields correspondingly jumped from $500 million in 1976 to $13 billion in 1981. The government was suddenly awash in money. With the hope of remaining in power indefinitely, the PRI once again elevated citizens’ standard of living. The government took out international loans, to finance new schools, hospitals, roads, electrical systems, and other services. The external debt jumped from $19.6 billion (U.S. dollars) in 1976 to $92.4 billion in 1982. Rather than becoming alarmed, most government officials appeared almost giddy. One president proudly announced: “There are two kinds of countries in the world today—those that don’t have oil and those that do. We have it” (Skidmore and Smith 1992: 246). By 1981, oil accounted for more than 70 percent of Mexico’s exports (Grindle 2000: 395; Handelman 1997: 125; Lustig 1998: 24; Skidmore and Smith 1992: 247). In 1983, the price of crude dropped from $26.30 a barrel to $12.00 (U.S. dollars). The government, lacking other major income sources (as well as a systematic method for collecting taxes from businesses and wealthy individuals), could not meet payment deadlines. Hospitals and schools no longer could be repaired. Public-sector workers could no longer be given pay increases; between 1983 and 1988 teachers’ real salaries shrank by a

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third (Grindle 2000: 396, 400; Lustig 1998: 39). Shortages of foreign exchange led to shortages of imported machinery and capital goods, plant shutdowns, and layoffs. Industrial investment dropped 54 percent between 1982 and 1988. Real wages declined every year between 1983 and 1988, falling 40 percent between 1982 and 1985 alone. The country’s official unemployment rate doubled between 1983 (6.1 percent of the workforce) and 1988 (12.0 percent) (Centeno 1997: 93; Handelman 1997: 135; Skidmore and Smith 1992: 249). Rise of the Technocrats In the midst of the economic crises and confusion, Mexico’s elite began to rethink the country’s legitimizing formulas. Since the presidency of Cárdenas, government leaders had relied heavily on profits from nationalized industries, such as oil, to finance popular public goods and services. Believing that this was contributing to chronic boom-and-bust cycles and growing popular dissatisfaction with the regime, a faction within the PRI’s top leadership called for a more “modern” style of decision-making. Policy experts trained at U.S. universities in free-market theory began to replace the old-fashioned party bosses (“dinosaurs”) who handed out favors in exchange for citizens’ political submission. According to the foreigntrained clique, known as the Technocrats,3 the expensive welfare programs, public-sector wages, and protectionist policies that in the short-run pleased middle- and lower-income voters had to be curtailed because they cumulatively hindered economic growth. Ongoing and stable growth should be the government’s primary goal because it alone would eventuate in higher standards of living and social peace in the long run, and these would preserve the PRI’s political prerogatives. In 1988, a committed Technocrat, Carlos Salinas de Gortari, won a highly disputed presidential election. He appointed an unprecedented number of U.S.-trained Mexican social scientists (sometimes labeled the “Harvard Group”) to high-ranking government positions. Tariffs were lowered. Subsidies of basic consumer goods, such as corn, were reduced and in some cases eliminated. Scores of nationalized businesses, among them two leading airlines, the telephone monopoly, three steel mills, an insurance company, and a railroad-car manufacturing company, were sold to private firms. “Of the 1,115 firms that the government owned in 1987, it retained control of only 286 in 1992” (Camp 2003: 247). Arguably, Salinas’s most radical action occurred in 1992. It was the excision of references to land transfers from Article 27 of the Constitution. The practical implications of this amendment were obvious to many living in the countryside: the government would no longer expropriate unused land from private ranchers and agribusinesses and transfer ownership to the nearby propertyless. Members of an ejido, if they so desired, could divide their communal land into individual plots that each owner could then


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cultivate, sell, or rent. Many Mexicans believed that Salinas had broken one of the government’s key promises to poorer citizens. Political scientist Howard Handelman (1997: 129) makes a comparison: “Since the Mexican public has judged the agrarian reform to be one of the Revolution’s greatest achievements, altering the ejido system has been considered as unthinkable in Mexican political discourse as abolishing the Social Security system would be in the United States.” In the early 1990s, the Technocrats sought Mexico’s entry into the U.S. economy via a free-trade agreement among Mexico, the United States, and Canada. In theory, unfettered trade would compel producers in each signatory to focus on products in which the signatory enjoys a comparative advantage because inefficient enterprises would be eliminated. For many small farmers in Mexico (both private commercial farmers and ejidos), free trade seemed to spell trouble, especially given the Technocrats’ reluctance to spend public funds on road construction, port development, and irrigation systems. Peasants saw themselves as unfairly disadvantaged vis-à-vis the more mechanized producers to the north. The envisioned future augured lower agricultural prices, smaller profit margins, unpaid debts, and increased bankruptcies. The short-term consequences of the Technocrats’ policies were complex and can look different, depending on the observer’s interests and values. The annual total output of the Mexican economy finally increased substantially after years of negligible and even negative growth. Gross yearly investment increased 25 percent over Salinas’s six-year term, and foreign investment increased fourfold (Camp 2003: 244–5; Centeno 1997: 16; Skidmore and Smith 1992: 252). Yet other statistics suggest that poverty was persisting, perhaps even increasing. During Salinas’s presidency, unemployment rose to 18 percent, half the rural children remained hungry (5 percent died before their first birthday), a third of the populace did not have access to medical care, and formerly eradicated diseases reappeared. By 1990, the average caloric intake, which been declining steadily for at least a decade, approached half of the recommended minimum set by the World Health Organization. A 1992 UN study found that 37.2 million Mexicans (43.8 percent of the population) lived at or below the official poverty line (Camp 2003: 251; Centeno 1997: 19, 207; Cornelius 2003: 511). To ameliorate suffering (and partly to stanch the PRI’s loss of citizen support), Salinas set up several new patronage programs, perhaps the most famous of which was the National Solidarity Program (Programa Nacional de Solidaridad, PRONASOL). His declared goal was to help those bearing the brunt of free-market and free-trade reforms, without simultaneously entrenching party bosses and other opponents of free-market policies. In theory, PRONASOL provided supplemental funds only to Mexico’s most impoverished communities for health, housing, education, and employment initiatives. Community organizations, not local party machines, were to decide appropriate usage. With more than 70,000 local offices and an annual budget of almost two billion U.S. dollars, “PRONASOL became

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the most visible representative of the government in the urban shantytowns and rural communities” (Centeno 1997: 65–7). The program, however, did not always help those who were suffering the most from the new free-market order. Its funds were directed disproportionately to the states where opposition parties were posing a threat to the PRI. Moreover, although in principle PRONASOL’s programs were to be administered by local community organizations without partisan ties, at least half were designed and administered by PRI auxiliaries and functioned as yet another instance of party patronage (Piester 1997: 480–7). The Distinctiveness of Chiapas The EZLN gained and retained a large following only in Mexico’s southernmost state, Chiapas, which is not entirely surprising. Its geography and social and political history differ in many ways from those of the rest of the country.4 One can envision the economic geography of Chiapas by first picturing the state’s shape as a diamond and then dividing it into three vertical bands. In the eastern band of the state lie most of its dense rainforests (including the Lacandón jungle) and steep and narrow mountain valleys. Until the 1960s, this area had been barely inhabited because its terrain discourages farming. Once homesteaders remove the trees, rains wash away much of the topsoil, inducing homesteaders to move on after only two or three decades. Then there is a central band, with its cultivable highlands and numerous cattle ranches, especially toward the northern edge of the state. Here, indigenous peoples whose mother tongue is Mayan dialects live in ethnically homogenous and mildly autonomous villages that resemble selfgoverning U.S. Indian reservations. In the main, the land is cultivable but does not yield bountiful harvests. To supplement their modest crops, many adults periodically travel throughout the state in search of short-term wage-paying jobs. Finally, there is a relatively prosperous Pacific coast band where large-scale agriculture—for instance, coffee and sugar plantations—has predominated since the end of the nineteenth century. The land is flat, warm, and fertile, and by and large is owned by Mexicans of European decent, known colloquially as ladinos. Many wage earners and sharecroppers are indigenes who live permanently on the plantations. The variegated geography of Chiapas has contributed to an uneven pattern of capitalist development. Until the late nineteenth century, Chiapas was an economic backwater, in which descendents of the conquistadors and other immigrants from Europe forced local indigenous peoples of the territory to do their bidding. During the reign of Porfirio Díaz, the government transferred lands suitable for large-scale agriculture to residents of European descent and culture. The property transfers were justified on grounds that the fertile land would produce better yields if owned and


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managed by people who were more commercially oriented (i.e., people of European backgrounds and bloodlines). By the close of the nineteenth century more than one thousand plantations and more than three thousand small and medium-size commercial farms had been established (Stephen 2002: 95). During the Porfirian years a system of conscription and peonage was established to extract labor from Indians, who preferred to spend their time cultivating their own land rather than earning wages. Typically, owners offered loans or liquor to local males, who, after accepting the goods, would be forced to repay through service (or else be impressed into work). Once on a plantation or in a camp, the indigenes often found themselves falling deeper into debt because of the use of script and company stores. Bounty hunters would be dispatched, if workers tried to escape. Around 1890, western Chiapas took off economically thanks to Mexico’s railway system. Indians in the perpetually overcrowded highland communities sought work on the plantations. Eastern Chiapas, however, remained economically underdeveloped, barely inhabited, and, for the most part, politically ignored. The Mexican Revolution altered patterns of exploitation in Chiapas. Although the new Constitution prohibited debt servitude, indentured labor continued in some places for many years. Landowners in the West, who viewed themselves as comparatively enlightened vis-à-vis landowners elsewhere in the state, gradually abandoned openly coercive labor practices and either hired field hands or rented land to sharecroppers. Meanwhile, Socialist labor organizers arrived, established local chapters of the Socialist Confederation of Workers, and pressed for the return of plantation land along the coast to indigenous communities. Threatened by the Socialists’ apparent popularity, government officials established a new agency, the Office of Indian Affairs, to co-opt leaders of the Indian communities and persuade them to join procompany unions (Womack 1999: 8–9). This was the first of several attempts by the government to draw indigenous peoples away from radicals through offers of various forms of goods and services. During the Cárdenas presidency (1934–1940), government officials were dispatched to Chiapas to unionize workers, open public schools, and return plantation lands to villages. Hundreds of ejidos were established, and new local laws prohibited peonage service. Responding to the ruling party’s clout, 25,000 rural workers joined the government-affiliated Union of Indigenous Workers (Stephen 2002: 60). Even today many indigenous people in Chiapas remember the PRI as a past political ally and therefore seek services from the federal government. After Cárdenas’s term had come to a close, local ranchers and plantation owners recovered some of their political clout by monopolizing the PRI at the local level. Growers challenged the purported boundaries of the newly established ejidos and threatened, harassed, and sometimes even killed Indians who led strikes and pressed for further land recovery. Indians appealed to the PRI at the national level and to its subsidiary peasant organization, the National Peasants’ Confederation (Confederación Nacional

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Campesina), for protection. Sometimes the national government protected its past land transfers and even approved additional transfers. On other occasions, ladinos dissuaded the federal government from interfering in local affairs and diluted some rural initiatives, including plans to provide public education to indigenous communities. Mexico’s economic miracle was not fully realized in Chiapas. Although standards of living improved, they lagged far behind those in other regions. According to historian John Womack (1999: 11), of all the states in Mexico, Chiapas remains “the most agricultural, least electrified, least schooled, least literate, and poorest.” Of course, living standards were rising between 1940 and 1970, and key government programs (especially medical services) had been established. These bits of good news had a downside, however: the drop in infant mortality and longer life spans produced a local population boom (Womack 1999: 14). By the 1960s, younger Indian adults were realizing that they would never be able to own plots of land within the established boundaries of their communities. In consequence, some invaded unused land held by nearby ranchers and plantation owners, and then petitioned the federal government for official recognition as an ejido. These actions sometimes achieved their intended goals but at other times ended tragically when the local government condoned the landowners’ use of private armies to beat and murder those whom the ladinos deemed “trespassers.” Another option available to young adults was homesteading the largely uninhabited Lacandón jungle. In 1950, approximately 1,000 people called the physically inhospitable rainforests home; by 1990, 150,000 did so (Stephen 2002: 102). The new settlements in the eastern jungles were overwhelmingly indigenous. At the end of the twentieth century, approximately 7 percent of all Mexicans spoke an Indian language; 50 to 90 percent of the inhabitants of the jungle villages did so (Mattiace 2003: 2; Womack 1999: 4). The newer jungle settlements were, in general, ethnically mixed. Neighbors came from different Mayan linguistic groups and, in some cases, had migrated from adjacent states or were Guatemalan refugees. The new settlements also to some extent fell outside the government’s orbit. The federal and state governments provided few of the public goods and services—for example, schools, medical centers, and electrical systems— found elsewhere in the state. Perhaps equally important from the settlers’ point of view, when the natural resources under settled land appeared to have significant commercial value, local government officials made efforts to reclaim the land, to relocate the homesteaders, and then to lease the land to private companies. New Troubles Many regions of Mexico underwent a constitutional change during the 1980s that some social scientists call a “democratic transition” (Cadena-Roa 2003;


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Chand 2001; Eisenstadt 2004; see also chapter 12). Free and fair elections became more commonplace in Mexico City and a number of northern states; Mexican courts were increasingly cognizant of citizens’ civil and political liberties. Not so in Chiapas. There, most local elections were still hoaxes, and local government officials routinely violated the civil and political liberties of the poor. New York Times reporters Julia Preston and Samuel Dillon (2004: 443) maintain that as late as 1994 some landowners claimed the right to sleep with Indian brides on their wedding nights before the husbands shared the conjugal beds. All this was often justified on explicitly racist grounds, with ladino landowners insisting that the native populations were not capable of self-rule. According to many journalists and scholars (Collier 1994: 50–1, 79, 126–7, 131; Harvey 1998: 148–50, 159–60; Ross 2000: 27, 37–43, 47; Weinberg 2000: 35–6, 100, 172, 352), a key figure in the perpetuation of nondemocratic practices was General Absalón Castellanos Domínguez, governor of Chiapas from 1982 to 1988. Womack (1999: 199) writes: “Among all the many oligarchs who have governed Chiapas, General Absalón Castellanos had proved by 1986 that he was one of the greediest, most corrupt, most rigid, and most violent.” Being a wealthy rancher, Castellanos used his authority to benefit other large landowners and, in particular, to help his brother, the head of the State Forestry Commission, extract lumber from the rain forests for private profit. During his governorship, state coffers were mysteriously emptied, leaving public employees, such as teachers, unpaid for months. Those who questioned the integrity of the state and local governments of Chiapas became targets of police attacks and vigilante violence. Political scientist Neil Harvey (1998: 160) notes that the Mexican Academy of Human Rights in 1987 issued a scathing report that “denounced an average of two politically motivated killings per month in Chiapas since Castellanos Domínguez had been installed as governor in December 1982.” Castellanos’s tyranny was not necessarily the most pressing problem facing the poorer folks of Chiapas, however. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the local economy went from fairly bad (by Mexican standards) to worse. World coffee prices plunged from $1.32 (in U.S. dollars) a pound in 1986 to $0.53 in 1992 (Lustig 1998: 207), which hurt smaller commercial farms throughout the state and prompted plantation owners to cut production and, in some cases, to convert coffee farms into grazing land. More than 80 percent of the coffee-plantation jobs that existed in 1980 had disappeared by the decade’s end, contributing to a 1990 indigenous unemployment rate of more than 70 percent (Rus and Collier 2003: 44). The local coffee crisis coincided with the ascendancy of the Technocrats within the PRI and with the government’s dismantling of price supports and its slashing of popular programs for fertilizer, food, fuel, schools, health care, roads, and housing. Even though according to some statistics, the Techonocrats’ policies contributed to economic recovery in Mexico, the highlands and eastern wilderness became places of grinding poverty. In the 1990s, almost half the

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populace was illiterate; two-thirds of the homes were crowded, dirt-floor shacks without plumbing, electricity, or drinking water; and more than two-thirds of those who could find work earned below the minimum wage (Womack 1999: 11). To be sure, economic suffering did not appear everywhere in Chiapas. Western Chiapas continued to be home to prosperous plantations, to comparatively well-paid employees, and to Tuxtla Gutiérrez, the third-fastest-growing city in Mexico during the 1980s (although with its own pockets of urban poverty and remarkable wealth). Conditions were much worse in the central highlands and eastern jungles, where about a fifth of the state’s total population resides. Many Chiapanecans were stunned when the Salinas administration announced the excision of Article 27 (which dealt with the promotion of ejidos and the redistribution of land). Of the more than 1,800 de facto ejidos in the state, half were not yet legally recognized, and many were awaiting approval by the federal government (Stephen 2002: 64, 74, 77). The repeal of Article 27 was especially upsetting to indigenes in Chiapas because of the region’s history of debt peonage. Ejidos were associated in local popular culture with Indians’ escape from slavery and other demeaning forms of labor. Consequently, when government agents appeared in the early 1990s to explain the process by which individuals could privately appropriate their jointly owned ejido land, the ejidatarios often responded coldly, if not violently, for example, destroying the agents’ vehicles. Conclusions The Zapatista movement appeared during a period of economic upheaval. Approximately a decade before the movement captured international attention, Mexico had undergone its second economic revolution in less than a century—a dramatic shift from the hybrid economy inadvertently pioneered by Cárdenas and developed by subsequent presidents to the more free-trade and free-market economy championed by PRI Technocrats. The Technocrats, under the leadership of President Salinas, did away with a broad range of public services in the name of efficiency and sensible economic development. After 1992, legalization of new ejidos, the distinctive and widespread form of collectivized rural property enshrined in the revolution’s 1917 Constitution, was no longer on the government’s agenda. Within Chiapas, the economic miracle of 1940–1970 contributed to unmanageable population growth in the central highlands. Some younger adults opted to colonize the eastern jungles, where the soil was poorly suited for agriculture, where electricity and roads were still uncommon, but where living space was momentarily available. Although the federal government had on several occasions attempted to raise the material conditions of Chiapecans, ladino landowners had monopolized local politics, and in the 1980s, a new governor of Chiapas took the law into his own hands, leading to the deaths of more than one hundred activists.


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Meanwhile, the salience of the government—state or federal—was uneven. Government agents provided key goods and services to residents in the west and highland communities but were barely visible within the Lacandón jungles. In this conjunction of conditions—(1) the dissolution of Mexico’s revolutionary hybrid economy and tradition of ejidos, (2) migration into the eastern Chiapas jungles, and (3) an unusually repressive, corrupt, and (in some places) meager state government in Chiapas—a novel social movement soon would appear.

CHAPTER

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During the late 1980s and early 1990s, many Chiapanecans faced deteriorating economic prospects and a nondemocratic system of local government. Social movements, however, are set in motion by more than social problems and political exclusion. Movements also arise from antecedent popular politics—such as study circles, wildcat strikes, guerrilla cells, political parties, and neighborhood associations—that provide activists with tangible resources, as well as invaluable lessons about what everyday people can collectively accomplish. Student protests and youth culture, citizens’ demonstrations for electoral reform, Catholic base communities, small-business opponents of the Technocrats, and self-help experiments in cities and the countryside all provided frustrated Chiapanecans with slogans and symbols; recruitment networks; organizationally experienced leaders; inspiring stories of collective self-rule; and cautionary tales of failed rebellion. The Zapatista movement grew by drawing from and adapting to this rich soil. Early Student Activism According to Judith Hellman (1983: 174), university students in Mexico were politically quiet immediately following the revolution. By the end of the century, however, they had become important actors on the political stage, reflective of the college-student population that skyrocketed from 75,300 in 1960 to 838,000 in 1980 (Cadena-Roa 2003: 121). As early as the midcentury, handsful of university and high-school students were joining and forming support groups, local political parties, and even guerrilla units to help peasants, manual laborers, and schoolteachers secure their demands (Cadena-Roa 2003: 114–17). In the late 1950s, students eager to change campus policies began to use the political methods developed by peasant and proletarian groups. Students at the National Polytechnic Institute struck in 1956 over learning conditions (Cadena-Roa 2003: 117); Mexico’s medical students did likewise in 1958–1959 (Zolov 1999: 101). At the state university in Guerrero in 1960 students occupied buildings and demanded the chancellor’s resignation (Hodges and Gandy 2002: 109).


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The 1959 Cuban revolution and that country’s subsequent repelling of a U.S.-backed invasion quickened students’ political passion. Since the loss of Texas and the War of the North American Invasion, many educated Mexicans had harbored anti-U.S. sentiments. Recent events—including overt U.S. support of bosses during a hard-fought railway workers’ strike in Mexico in 1959—fueled the resentment. If Cuba could boldly say no to the expansionist and interventionist behavior, perhaps Mexico could as well. One pro-Cuba, anti-U.S. organization that attracted numerous student activists was the National Liberation Movement (MLN). Founded in 1961 by a coalition of political parties and party factions—including the Mexican Communist Party, the Popular Socialist Party, and a pro-Cárdenas faction within the PRI—the MLN was at first a nonconfrontational advocacy group, staying well within the letter of the law. It lobbied against U.S. imperialism and for Mexico’s “absolute independence with respect to the International Monetary Fund” (Bruhn 1997: 50). In terms of domestic policies, the MLN called for the protection and promotion of ejidos, and its leaders proposed a number of constitutional changes to improve Mexican democracy, for example, proportional representation in parliamentary elections (to increase the diversity of opinions and interests within the Cortes) and a variety of institutional checks on the president’s power. In 1963 a wing of the MLN began to sponsor its own candidates for public office, an initiative that infuriated the PRI. The governing party, the PRI, jailed several of the upstarts, including their candidate for president. Some lower-level PRI partisans, perhaps with approval from higher-ups, arranged murders of non-PRI candidates for local offices (Bruhn 1997: 51). The obstacles to ballot-box democracy splintered the MLN; some of the innumerable tiny factions favored armed action. In Chihuahua, for instance, a minuscule guerrilla outfit opposed both the government’s sale of public timberland (at one time earmarked for future ejidos) and its violence against local labor organizers. Mimicking the earliest days of the Cuban revolution, the rebels assaulted military barracks. Security forces captured the guerrillas and obliterated their organization (Bruhn 1997: 49–53; Cadena-Roa 2003: 117; Hellman 1983: 168; Hodges and Gandy 2002: 82–7, 89–91). Troubled by the MLN’s apparent powerlessness, impassioned activists pondered recent events in Chihuahua and also in Guerrero, where police twice fired into a large public demonstration and each time killed at least a dozen unarmed persons (Hodges and Gandy 2002: 110). Some called for a neo-Gandhian strategy of civil disobedience. Others insisted that recent events had revealed the limits of pacifism and contended that Mexico in the 1960s was not that different from Mexico in the days of Porfirio Díaz. It was a capitalist dictatorship, in which large landowners and international investors imposed policies on the government; foreign businesses trampled on the interests of smaller producers; and peaceful protesters met violent repression. Some of those who interpreted Mexico’s political history as changeless authoritarianism envisioned a way out. Genaro Vásquez and

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Lucio Cabañas, among others, argued that it was possible to ignite a popular insurrection by goading security forces into indiscriminate repression that would stoke the righteous anger of everyday citizens. Revolutionaries then could channel the fervent. By the end of the 1960s, proselytes for that notion were urging restive citizens to ready themselves. A declaration known as the Communiqué to the Students, for example, instructed young adults to ally themselves with the poorer peasants of southern Mexico and then prepare to launch an “anti-feudal, anti-imperialist, and democratic revolution” (Hodges and Gandy 2002: 112–13, 119).

Tragedy at Tlatelolco The political elite all the while were blithely looking forward to the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City as an opportunity to educate the rest of world about Mexico’s remarkable prosperity and cultural progress. Many business owners and salaried professionals were less assured. Shaken by memories of the hard-fought labor disputes of the late 1950s and by the recent appearance of guerrilla organizations—albeit small and easily defeated—in the countryside, they were stunned by the unexpected evolution of an urban counterculture known colloquially as La Onda (The Wave) (Zolov 1999: 93–200). Numerous urban coffeehouses, clothing stores, and radio programs had sprouted during the late 1950s and early 1960s. At these venues, younger adults from all classes (but from middleincome families in particular) developed signature apparel and musical tastes, as well as slang and recreational habits, that baffled parents and government authorities. Hair was cut in novel ways, nightclubs were sites of frantic jumping and screaming, and the vocabularies of younger citizens were strewn with vulgarities and neologisms. Conservative newspapers and magazines denounced the counterculture. One publication editorialized that “[M]en do everything possible to look like women: their long hair, their tight pants, and even their way of walking. . . . Mexico needs men, not jippies” (Zolov 1999: 134). Police raided clubs and sidewalk gatherings, routinely closed shows by musical groups such as Los Desenfrenados (The Wanton Ones), escorted longhaired males to cars that sped them away, and later released the newlybarbered detainees. The confrontations with police reinforced many young people’s distrust of the political order. In the words of one former 1960s student activist: I supported the youth, the students. This was because [President] Díaz Ordaz was a shithead, as were all the police; because they persecuted people with long hair; they repressed those who smoked pot; because they didn’t allow rock; because they were a bunch of shithead moralists. (Zolov 1999: 123).


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In the mid-1960s, college and high-school students organized large demonstrations (often with tens of thousands of participants) to protest the imprisonment of pro-Cuba activists and of popular labor organizers, such as Demetrio Vallejo, who had launched hunger strikes. The government dispatched security forces to break up demonstrations and authorized riot police to enter campuses, ostensibly to break up fights between rival student groups. Occasionally, the security forces employed heavy arms, including bazookas, to gain entry into buildings. In turn, angry neighbors threw clods of dirt at and poured boiling water on soldiers and police (Hellman 1983: 182; Zolov 1999: 120). Whenever police gunfire resulted in the deaths of citizens, the antigovernment demonstrations became larger and more widespread. By spring 1968, the protests had become humongous with gatherings of more than one hundred thousand (not only students but also parents, teachers, public employees, and even small business owners). Young adults burned government officials in effigy, drove through cities with “Díaz Ordaz, Assassin!” and “Death to Díaz Ordaz!” blazoned on the cars, and hung posters with the profile of Mexico’s president superimposed over that of a gorilla. The government intensified its repression and expanded its use of torture (Hodges and Gandy 2002: 95–100; Zolov 1999: 119–29; Hellman 1983: 160, 176–7). In early fall, turnouts at the demonstrations temporarily subsided, reflecting in part the organizers’ disagreements about what to do next. The Young Communists, with a minority of seats in key planning committees, urged fellow students to negotiate with government officials for intra-PRI reform, new civil liberties, and freer and fairer elections. Other activists advocated greater militancy and pointed to France, where it was said, restive students had developed an alliance with the urban working classes that, in theory, would soon lead to a general strike, a government collapse, and ultimately a socialist revolution. The students’ National Strike Committee, attempting to be nonpartisan, refused to side with any single party or ideological faction. The slogans of that time—for instance, “Free the Political Prisoners!” “Worker, Your Cause Is Ours!,” “Respect the Constitution!,” and “Viva Zapata!” (Hodges and Gandy 2002: 95; Zolov 1999: 126–8)— indicate the broad range of goals motivating students and other youthful demonstrators. In Mexico City on October 3, just days before the opening of the Olympic Games, between five thousand and fifteen thousand people marched against the government’s heavyhandedness. They carried placards with the faces of past and present heroes, from Zapata to Mao. The procession ended at the Plaza of Tlatelolco, the center of an enormous middle-income housing project just north of the downtown. More than five thousand security and military officers were present. Once the demonstrators had assembled, a police helicopter dropped a flare, which signaled to government sharpshooters to open fire. For half an hour or so, military snipers, machine gunners, and tanks slaughtered demonstrators, only a handful of

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whom carried fire arms. The next day the PRI-controlled Cortes passed a resolution commending the use of violence to contain demonstrations. The government arrested the leaders of all groups suspected of fomenting the demonstrations, including the MLN. Shortly thereafter, foreign journalists reported that at least 200 demonstrators (and as many as 325) had been killed, with several thousand more injured and two thousand arrested and tortured (Gutmann 2002: 64; MacLachlan and Beezley 1999: 407; Zolov 1999: 130). As such stories spread, so did public outcry. Governments around the globe remained silent. The United States, which had quietly provided the Mexican government with intelligence reports on suspected subversives, asserted that the Tlatelolco killings were strictly a matter of internal politics, not relevant to U.S. interests and aims. Russia and Cuba, in hopes of strengthening ties with Mexico, also refused to embarrass their partial ally. The international press shifted its attention to the Olympics and to medal-winning athletes protesting racism within the United States. The massacre became a major scandal in Mexico. Prestigious scholars and journalists poked around for additional information and discovered the likely implication of the president and his top advisors in the massacre’s planning and approval. Some PRI activists resigned in disgust. Some among the conservative salaried and property-owning ranks deemed the massacre a predictable consequence of young Mexicans’ lack of selfrestraint and their ridicule of decorum. “It’s the mini-skirt that’s to blame,” one public employee determined (Zolov 1999: 131). The massacre was a blot on the PRI’s self-image. Many Mexicans (especially younger adults and members of middle-income families from whose ranks many of the student demonstrators came) openly questioned the government’s reputation for benign rule. Sociologist Jorge Cadena-Roa (2003: 119) avers that the massacre “severely damaged the state’s legitimacy and alienated intellectuals, faculty members, and several cohorts of students. . . . The interpretation of the Tlatelolco massacre influenced all debates on the means and goals of social change in Mexico.” Anthropologist Matthew Gutmann (2002: 67) opined, [A]fter 1968, the legitimacy of the regime, the government, and the PRI, and the people’s faith in the promises of the Mexican Revolution were shattered as never before. . . . In the decades since October 1968, Tlatelolco remains a constant point of reference for Mexicans. To reestablish its democratic credentials, the government released some prominent political prisoners (albeit after two more attacks on student demonstrations); promulgated a law prohibiting riot police from entering campuses; and repealed controversial legislation on “social dissolution” that permitted the imprisonment of political dissenters. But the scar on the regime’s popularity never completely disappeared. Several 1968 student


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leaders turned to extrainstitutional forms of politics—from helping the poor develop cooperatives to joining the nascent guerrilla units—and rejected further involvement in conventional political processes and the PRI. A campus slogan during the 1970 presidential election tellingly read: “To Vote in 1970 Is to Forget 1968” (Zolov 1999: 166). Mexican rock ’n’ roll meanwhile grew to be much more politically militant and critical of incumbent government officials. Bands sported such names as La Revolución de Emiliano Zapata, Bandido, División del Norte, and Reforma Agraria—all references to the peasant and working-class armies during the Mexican Revolution. The names implied that the longhaired musicians, and not government officials, were the authentic spokespersons for the Mexican Revolution’s goals. Record covers featured images of contemporary rebels and revolutionaries, such as Salvador Allende, Che Guevara, and César Chávez—heroes who had challenged conventions elsewhere. Songs discussed the corruption and intolerance of state agencies and PRI-affiliated social organizations. The lyrics of “Walking within My Brain,” a 1971 hit tune, are illustrative: Unions and bosses have Lowered my morality. If I keep my underwear on, They’ll lower that as well . . . Hey Christ, don’t return Don’t let them shave your head! No one will understand your Age of Aquarius . . . Just seeing your long hair, People are going to freak. Yeah, they’ll make you cry. (Zolov 1999: 187)

Emergence of Opposition Parties The government’s slumping popularity after the Tlatelolco massacre was not its only problem. The once-robust economy capsized twice, in 1976 and again in 1982–1983. Government officials and business leaders blamed one another for these moments of economic disorder. The government argued that private businesses were stashing profits that could be reinvested for the good of the economy, were failing to modernize their production methods, were overcharging consumers for shoddy goods, and were underpaying employees. Business leaders countered that the state had created a poor investment climate by pandering to the nonrich and seizing valuable private property. In 1976, for example, the government converted 100,000 hectares into ejidos (Cadena-Roa 2003: 123). Business leaders proffered a list of desiderata to promote economic growth. According to many entrepreneurs and corporate

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executives, it was imperative that state officials cut taxes, slash welfare to the poor, sell public industries to private investors, protect property from invasions by the poor, construct roads and other infrastructure, and promote exports yet protect infant industries from foreign competition. The fortuitous discovery of vast oil fields in 1976 gave the government enough collateral to secure large international loans and to finance ambitious social programs that, it hoped, would bolster its sagging popularity and recharge the economic miracle of the postwar years. The economy in fact regained its vigor and grew between 1978 and 1981 at an annual average rate of 8.2 percent (Cadena-Roa 2003: 125). Slumping oil prices led to a second economic collapse in the early 1980s. The so-called Technocrats, who by this point were becoming a predominant PRI faction at the federal level, called for deep cuts in public services and spending, the dismantling of tariff walls, and the freezing of wages of public workers. President Miguel de la Madrid vacillated, zigzagging between the laissez-faire reforms that the Technocrats advocated and greater government control of the economy (for example, nationalization of banks in 1988 and yet another wave of land redistributions that same year). President Madrid’s actions prompted the business classes along Mexico’s northern rim, hitherto nonpolitical for the most part, to sponsor their own candidates for public office and to push hard for constitutional reforms. The northern capitalists hoped to make the Cortes more responsive to citizens’ wishes and thereby a more effective check on presidents’ noncapitalist impulses, and to increase states’ economic autonomy vis-à-vis the federal government. Business leaders began to help organize and finance large demonstrations against fixed elections, such as road blockades and obstruction of bridges to the United States. A few prominent business leaders engaged in hunger strikes. Insisting that the government’s manipulation of election results violated their human rights, some business leaders filed a formal complaint before the International Commission for Human Rights (the commission agreed with the plaintiffs that the Mexican government had failed to protect citizens’ rights and was therefore obliged to change its electoral practices). The PRI feared that the road blockades, hunger strikes, and humanrights decisions, all of which were widely reported in the world press, might jeopardize the proposal for a North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which was meeting stiff opposition in the U.S. Congress. Pushed by the Technocrats the top leaders of the PRI finally agreed to a limited number of electoral reforms—for example, allowing elections to be monitored by both nonpartisan citizens groups and international observers. All told, national elections became much more difficult for the PRI to win via fraud, corruption, manipulation of rules (for example, last-minute relocation of polling places), and physical intimidation of opponents. Between 1929 and 1982, the PRI and its predecessors had handily carried the day in all presidential elections with between 70 and 100 percent of the


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vote. But in 1988, the PRI candidate received only 51 percent of the vote (and some observers insist that even that proportion is the result of fraud (Cadena-Roa 2003: 132)). In 1988, for the first time since the anti-Díaz Revolution, the president faced a lower chamber of parliament in which a majority of its members did not belong to the ruling party. The opposition party that arguably benefited the most from these changes in electoral rules was the National Action Party (PAN), whose share of the vote in Cortes elections doubled between the 1970s and the 1990s, and whose members held governorships in seven states in the mid-1990s. The PAN had originated as a Christian socialist party committed to mild government intervention in the economy and state support for ejidos. But in the late 1970s, entrepreneurs and business groups began to enter the party in large numbers. By the mid-1980s, the PAN had become a secular party of the probusiness right, pushing such issues as tax reduction and free trade. The party, however, was not neglectful of the less fortunate. PAN business leaders who won offices in municipal elections often helped shantytown dwellers secure legal rights to occupied land and to receive municipal services, such as water. PAN leaders, nonetheless, would not tolerate additional government seizure of private land or nationalization of private enterprises. As one leader put it after the PRI’s nationalization of banks in the early 1980s, “They [the PRI] took my banks from me, I will take Chihuahua from them” (Chand 2001: 113). A second grouping that benefited significantly from the electoral reforms was the Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), a broad coalition of small left-leaning parties, social movements, and study circles. In 1988, the PRD functioned primarily as an electoral machine for Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, son of the famous presidential reformer. By the mid-1990s the PRD had become less dependent on Cárdenas, especially in election battles for local offices. The policy goals of the PRD were many and diverse. Its members included feminists; ecologists; advocates of peasants’ rights, land invasions, and ejidos; labor organizers opposed to the PRI; and economic nationalists opposed to multinational corporations. Unifying the party’s distinct planks was a spirit of principled opposition to social inequality and a faith in the effectiveness of state intervention in promoting justice. Although both the PAN and PRD underwent government harassment, the PRD arguably was bloodied more. Its leaders reported that between 1988 and 1999, 639 party members were murdered (Cadena-Roa 2003: 142). The PRD nonetheless had won four governorships by the end of the twentieth century. Businesses Against the Technocrats After the Technocrats’ triumph following the 1988 presidential election, Mexico’s business community became increasingly divided on the subject

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of free trade. Although many larger industrialists and manufacturers in the North agreed that greater integration into the U.S. economy would enrich Mexico, other business leaders feared the free-trade and laissez-fair doctrines of the Technocrats and preferred that the government nurture small businesses, provide reasonable loans for expansion, and protect infant industries from foreign competitors who enjoyed “unfair” (from the perspective of Mexico’s small businesses) advantages. One of the more politically visible of these anti-free trade groups was El Barzón, which emerged in the early 1990s and by 1995 claimed to have between one and three million followers (Williams 2002: 671). Initially a rural movement whose members were primarily ladinos who spoke Spanish, wore Mexican cowboy garb, and owned modestly-sized commercial farms, El Barzón attracted a growing number of small-town merchants and urban professionals as the 1990s progressed. President Salinas’s decision to close a third of the government’s rural banks and reduce their funds for agricultural loans had originally stirred the movement into existence. The Technocrats’ unflagging pursuit of NAFTA fomented further interest. In the opinion of the movement’s leadership, free trade with Canada and the United States meant the extinction of thousands of Mexico’s small businesses and of a national tradition of entrepreneurial independence. “We are struggling to save Mexico from the clutches of a global class of speculators,” declared one spokesperson (Williams 2002: 670). Participants in El Barzón sometimes engaged in small-scale violence, such as tarring and feathering bank agents who tried to repossess property, and at times protested in highly original ways, such as disrobing in public, marching in prison pajamas, and blocking highways with machinery. It was a decentralized organization whose members launched different sorts of campaigns in different regions of Mexico. Some local affiliates threatened physical harm to U.S. investors interested in purchasing property in Mexico. Like the Zapatistas (described in chapter 13), the members of El Barzón were suspicious of the politics of electoral reform that was spreading elsewhere in Mexico and, moreover, were suspicious of political parties. Pressure tactics—directed at bankers, foreign companies, and their allies within the government—seemed more politically effective (Canak and Swanson 1998: 128; La Botz 1995: 182–5; Ross 2000: 36, 102, 124, 189; Weinberg 2000: 149; Williams 2002: 670–83). Church Activism Amid the topsy-turvy economy, clashes between the generations, and election-result-oriented campaigns, a quasi religious phenomenon known as liberation theology spread across Mexico. Relations between the Catholic Church and the Mexican state had been respectful but far from cozy for several decades. The 1917 Constitution prohibited parties from adopting names indicative of religious affiliation, and Catholic clergy were denied


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the right to vote, to hold public office, or to assemble for political purposes. After a series of unsuccessful counterrevolutionary insurrections between 1925 and 1940, the government agreed not to enforce a number of laws and constitutional provisions involving religious schools, religious education, and religious processions outside church buildings. In exchange, Catholic spokespersons tacitly agreed not to criticize the government or its policies in public, and not to back social groups opposed to the government (Klaiber 1998: 242–3, 246–7). In the 1960s, Catholic clergy became increasingly interested in public policies that affected the material conditions of the poor. The reasons for this were many. The inroads of Protestant missionaries within the poorer communities struck fear in some Catholics. The Cuban revolution also sparked reflection and debate: liberal priests admired some of the social reforms being undertaken by Castro’s regime. More socially conservative clergy believed that Cuba’s antireligious cast foretold what would happen elsewhere in Latin America unless poverty were quickly alleviated and economic inequality concomitantly diminished (Smith 1991: 90–4, 109–10, 115–17). Scores of Mexican clergy attended two international conferences: the Second Vatican Council in Rome (1962–1965) and a follow-up bishops’ meeting in the Colombian city of Medellín (1968). Keynote speakers discussed the Catholic Church’s earthly responsibility for the poor and its duty to mitigate inter-class inequalities. Novel forms of church management were also discussed, such as having laypersons supervise vocational classes for adults, daycare programs for parents, medical outreach for the unhealthy, and legal-aid services for the illiterate (Smith 1991: 89–164). The new understanding of the Catholic Church’s proper activities— often called liberation theology—attracted a far smaller number of enthusiasts in Mexico than in, say, Brazil or Peru. Still, more than 150,000 Mexicans in the 1970s and 1980s served as nonordained “catechists,” working for poorer parishioners in church-sponsored community centers known as base communities (La Botz 1995: 35). In the urban shantytowns, base communities resembled quasi governments, providing water, vocational education, trash collection, and public safety, and lobbying government officials for additional resources and services (Eckstein 1977: 112). In the countryside, base communities provided medical aid and promoted the cultural and legal rights of indigenes. Some of the catechists viewed the PRI as morally unreliable and oftentimes indifferent to poorer Mexicans. Some catechists participated in electoralreform campaigns and joined opposition parties, such as the PRD. The clergy generally avoided partisan politics, although some priests and bishops spoke forthrightly against electoral fraud and contended that any regime “that maintains itself in power on the basis of a high percentage of frauds” is, despite its claims to be a democracy, “a dictatorial system” (Chand 2001: 168, 180–1; Cadena-Roa 2003: 129; Klaiber 1998: 246). Liberation theologians’ attempt to build bridges with guerrilla groups annoyed many government officials. A vocal minority of priests enumerated

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the social and political problems that supposedly spurred people to join guerrilla organizations (although priests almost always criticized the groups’ violent methods). Typically, the priests argued that both the government’s nondemocratic behavior and the inherent problems of laissez-faire capitalism had driven the country’s poor to desperate actions. Once the PRI ceases manipulating elections and once business owners stop mistreating workers, peace will come to pass (or so the preachers predicted) (Chand 2001: 171–7, 195; Smith 1991: 125–6). The new wave of religious leaders criticized the obsession with material goods that both laissez-faire capitalism and state-run communism foster. Priests extolled a modified form of capitalism, in which the state owns a few enterprises—say, public-transportation companies—and assiduously deters private businesses from mistreating employees and misleading consumers. Noncapitalists, in the meantime, should enjoy rights of association (for example, the right to form unions) and of economic security, but should secure these rights through dialogue and verbal persuasion (including public demonstrations of private concerns), not through threats of coercion and physical harm. Popular Ambivalence toward the State El Barzón and the liberation theology movement were manifestations of Mexicans’ growing interest in public affairs. A plethora of groups formed throughout the country during the 1970s and 1980s. Some—for instance, women’s organizations and shantytown councils—pressured the government for particular policies through protest, lobbying, and promises of electoral support. Others simply ignored the government and provided public services, such as schools, medical centers, and credit unions, by and for themselves. The self-organizing traditions were particularly visible after the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City. The government, at first, chose not to deploy resources to poorer residential districts and instead dispatched police and firefighters to industrial centers, where they saved the goods and machinery of the rich. In order to remove rubble, bury the dead, and shelter the homeless, neighbors, friends, and acquaintances spontaneously organized. One journalist reported that “I went out at night and I saw that street gangs and punks and student radicals, people whom the society at large had rejected, were out there helping, forming bucket brigades to remove debris” (Preston and Dillon 2004: 109). The rescue operations, which continued for months, contributed to a myth of a vibrant “civil society” that existed independent of the Mexican state (La Botz 1995: 66–70; Preston and Dillon 2004: 95–115). Allegedly, everyday people with minimal income, social status, and political clout were meeting apart from the state and then acting collectively in their own interest. The state was viewed, at best, as incompetent and a hindrance to


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the common goals pursued by ordinary people and, at worst, as their adversary. There was, in the words of Vivienne Bennett (1992: 253), “a new awareness of what could be accomplished outside government channels.” After 1985, myriad coalitions of groups claiming to represent “civil society” marched and rallied against a variety of social conditions and public policies, including the construction of nuclear plants, shortages of medical services, rent increases, and inadequate garbage collection. The civil-society groups resembled what U.S. citizens call lobbying groups or pressure groups in that they desired not to hold public office but to alter public policy. But the Mexican associations in addition acted on their own to build schools, organize public transportation, and so on. A large number refused invitations from the PRI to become part of its pack of auxiliary organizations. They wanted independence to make demands of the government and to endorse or condemn specific government actions. Other associations believed that it was possible to secure benefits from the state and to collaborate with the PRI without becoming submissive. In Chiapas, citizen activism took different forms in different parts of the state (Kampwirth 2004: 155). In the western and central sections, the Independent Confederation of Agricultural Workers and Peasants (CIOAC) and the Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organization (OCEZ) assiduously pressured all levels of government to comply with labor statutes and to redistribute fallow land. They also attempted to educate the locals about events far from home. The OCEZ, for example, sponsored theater troupes and concerts, and circulated projectors and films (Harvey 1990: 194). In the eastern end of the state, settlers lived miles from government agencies and agents. Adapting to their political invisibility, they soon learned to make their own policies relating to health care, land distribution, religious rites and beliefs, education, treatment of migrant workers, and the occasional opening of a village to new settlers. Necessity forced the hamlets to become politically self-sufficient to a degree unknown in the rest of Chiapas. Because of the harshness of their existence, the shortage of cultivable land, and the confusion over property boundaries, the jungle villagers tended to be extremely loyal to their neighbors and, conversely, distrustful of outsiders. But possibilities for pursuing shared interests overcame the centrifugal force. In the 1970s, the villages petitioned the government for roads (to help move cattle and coffee to markets) and for cheap credit with which to purchase agricultural materials. To maximize their influence, villages organized translocal credit and marketing associations. The most widely supported was the Union of Unions (UU), which 180 communities founded in September 1980 (Harvey 1990: 188–9). The UU opened its own credit union in 1982, constructed a coffee-processing plant in 1987, administered schools, and ran consumer cooperatives. The UU also organized demonstrations from time to time to help villagers defend their interests—for example, sit-down strikes to protest the government’s efforts to evict settlers from the parts of the jungle that state officials had declared an ecologically

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sensitive bioreserve (Collier 1994: 75). The UU, by running banks and processing plants, resembled a regional political authority—at least in economic matters—that helped residents of different villages store, transport, and market their goods. To recapitulate, along the Pacific coast and in the central highlands of Chiapas, the Mexican state remained a valuable resource for wage earners, villagers, and squatters aspiring to found ejidos. In the eastern jungles, however, the government, in the conventional sense of the term, was conspicuously absent; labor laws were not central to most producers’ concerns; and most public services (police, health, and education, for example) were provided by the villagers themselves or through their regional economic alliance, the UU. Here, in the isolation of the jungles, the idea of “civil society”—a selfreliant, do-it-yourself style of politics—made intuitive sense. In the words of Womack (1999: 19): “These were frontier democracies, improvised soviets.” Elsewhere, government was far more salient in Chiapanecans’ daily lives.1 Conclusions The Zapatisa movement arose amid numerous and diverse efforts by everyday citizens to influence the state. As far back as the Tlatelolco massacre, Mexico had been a land rich with student protests, quasi-anarchistic “civil society” experiments, labor and peasant organizations, Catholic reformers, and guerrilla bands. As we shall see in chapter 13, the Zapatista movement emulated some of these popular political traditions and jettisoned others. The accumulation of predecessors’ resources and their lessons about successful and unsuccessful actions shaped how the Zapatistas saw their opportunities, options, and pressing tasks.

CHAPTER

13


On January 1, 1994, a few thousand Chiapanecans, armed with weapons ranging from powerful rifles to wooden sticks, attacked a local military base and overran four towns and several hamlets. Citing Article 39 of Mexico’s Constitution, the guerrillas’ spokespersons declared their “unalienable right” to alter the form of their government and insisted that President Carlos Salinas de Gortari was a “dictator” and “illegitimate chief” who should be immediately removed from office. The government had left millions with “no land, no work, no health care, no food, or education” and had given “absolutely everything” that rightfully belonged to the Mexican people to foreigners. If the other branches of the government did not depose President Salinas, the Chiapanecans’ army would march on the capital alongside citizen militias from other states. In the meantime, the soldiers of the self-proclaimed “Zapatista Army of National Liberation” would “initiate summary judgments against soldiers of the Mexican federal army and political police who have taken courses or have been advised, trained, or paid by foreigners” (Womack 1999: 248–9). Government troops and warplanes arrived within days, but by then most of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (or EZLN) had strategically withdrawn into the wilderness of eastern Chiapas. A low-intensity war commenced. Despite truces and cease-fires, both sides continually harassed, injured, and even killed opponents, suspected and real. Like a chameleon adapting to its environment, the armed rebels, now known worldwide as the Zapatistas, repeatedly changed their substantive program. What did not change was the Zapatistas’ distrust of Mexico’s system of governance and their faith in everyday people’s capacity to will into existence a totally new political order. Movement Gestation Some officials within the government had known for months that a guerrilla army was forming in the wilds of Chiapas (Klaiber 1998: 252–3; Ross 2000: 8, 32). In May 1993, responding to rumors of a subversive plan

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among some of the Chiapanecan Indians, an army column came upon one of the guerrillas’ training camps, and a firefight ensued. Afterward, local government officials filed a report about “a group of individuals of indeterminate number that were presumably involved in illegal activities” (Stephen 2002: 144). The minister of the interior decided not to inform President Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Since the 1968 Tlatelolco massacre, countless young adults had experimented with armed action. From the perspective of the subcommanders of the Mexican ship of state, a local official’s report of a rebel base in a distant region of the country merely pointed to another (possibly minor) reef in Mexico’s turbulent and largely unmapped sea of popular political mobilizations. Moreover, the political times were not propitious for a full investigation of the rebels’ camp. If too much attention was given to these mysterious troops, the news might reach the ears of members of the U.S. Congress, many of whom in the summer of 1993 were looking for reasons to reject President Clinton’s proposed NAFTA free-trade agreement between the United States, Mexico, and Canada. For now, it was best to keep news of Chiapas under the rug. Mexico’s elite had good reason to feel confused; the behavior and aspirations of Mexico’s numerous guerrilla groups did not fit a single mold. Some resembled pro-bono bodyguards, who, after either urban or rural land invasions, defended squatters from expulsion. Others, such as the Lacandones, the Vikings, the 23 Sepetember Communist League, the Sickies of Sinaloa, the Revolutionary Action Movement, the Party of the Poor, and the People’s Revolutionary Armed Forces, specialized in bank robberies and kidnappings of prominent diplomats, bankers, and other personages. Still others straightforwardly fought security forces in hopes that disenchanted citizens would join their causes.1 The EZLN was an offspring of the Forces of National Liberation (FLN)–a post-Tlatelolco organization with several cells in northern and central Mexico. In 1983, it had dispatched a few activists working in the highlands of Chiapas to the Lacandón jungle with instructions to recruit and train a local military force that at an unspecified later date would work with counterparts in other parts of Mexico to overthrow the regime. The uprising would occur in the distant future because (most FLN activists believed) political violence without prior, systematic development of revolutionary consciousness among local citizens is counterproductive. Serious guerrillas should hold a showdown with the state only after completing the necessary proselytizing spadework (Womack 1999: 190–7). Sociologically speaking, the jungle was unique. Because government services were absent (partly because the government did not recognize most of the new settlements as official municipalities), villagers depended on one another for water, education, health, security, and other public goods. Unlike the older villages in the central highlands, where public policies were usually decided in closed meetings of male elders, residents of the jungle settlements usually discussed public matters in community assemblies,


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which could last three hours and more, and were open to all adult members of the community, including women. In most villages a system of standing committees (with rotating memberships) informed and advised the assembly. Villagers were not equals in terms of political clout. Formally educated men often carried greater weight in deliberations than did illiterate men. Women, busy with domestic duties, often could not set aside sufficient time to hike miles to a meeting. Local political institutions and processes nonetheless allowed far more input from younger adults, from the nonwealthy, and from women than did the more secretive patriarchal councils of the highlands (Leyva Solano 2003: 164–9; Saldaña-Portillo 2003: 240–2). The FLN activists observed firsthand the region’s unique methods of deciding public policy and were smitten. Although the insurgents organized their military unit hierarchically (largely for reasons of security), they envisioned the local assemblies as a prototype alternative to the rigged “electoral democracy” prevalent in most of Mexico. At first, local settlers did not understand the foreign-looking newcomers, who initially relied on translators and who liked to talk about distant and abstract topics—such as the Cuban Revolution and the logic of capitalism. Later in the 1980s, the FLNers began to teach reading and writing (and, for the chosen few, military skills) to interested young adults. The FLN activists adopted the name the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) for their growing numbers of followers. The name “Zapatista” had captured the imagination of many Mexicans in the late twentieth century who were uneasy with the country’s increasingly probusiness and free-trade orientation. Allusions to Zapata appeared in the song lyrics, band names, and album covers that constituted Mexico’s burgeoning rock ‘n’roll scene (see chapter 11). Innumerable peasant, labor, and guerrilla groups in Mexico—for instance, the OCEZ—employed the name and thereby associated their cause with one of the country’s most beloved founders (Stephen 2002; Womack 1999: 196). The FLNers were simply appropriating an already popular icon. Toward the end of the 1980s (but perhaps even earlier (Ross 2000: 340)) EZLN militants began to protect jungle communities from small-time thieves and from thugs hired by nearby ranchers and plantation owners. Rather than proselytizing for an armed revolution, the organization provided a regional police force, directed by the local assemblies and working for the communities’ survival. Functioning as a community arm, the EZLN acquired prestige, and the number of its members suddenly soared from 80 in 1988 to 1,300 in 1989 (Harvey 1998: 165, 167). Political Competitors The EZLN was not alone in trying to change social and political conditions. Thousands of other political reformers, labor agitators, and social revolutionaries crowded the landscape. To secure popular backing, the EZLN

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would have to wean locals from other groups working for change. For present purposes, we will focus on only two rivals: the Catholic Church and Mexican Maoism.2 In the 1960s, the newly appointed bishop for Chiapas, Samuel Ruíz, tried to halt the growing popularity of Protestantism in central and eastern Chiapas. Inspired in some measure by the social-service doctrines of the Second Vatican Council, the bishop began to train laypersons to teach the faith, usually by word of mouth, and to conduct religious services. The catechists, besides disseminating church doctrine to local populations, established schools, medical centers, and producer cooperatives in the backwaters. In 1960, there were approximately two hundred catechists in all of the state. By the late 1970s, the number exceeded three thousand and by the end of the 1980s, more than eight thousand (Klaiber 1998: 255; Rus, Mattiace, and Hernández Castillo 2003: 10; Womack 1999: 130). The bishop persuaded the federal government’s department for Indian affairs to cosponsor a 1974 conference on the rights and conditions of indigenous peoples. Representatives from some three hundred Indian communities met, discussed their grievances and frustrations, and pondered solutions. The conference drafted a list of demands, including enforcement of labor laws, more government schools and medical services, and redistribution of land to those who directly work it. Some conferees contended that indigenous caciques (bosses) had gained control within local villages and were exploiting their friends and neighbors (Womack 1999: 55). The prevailing view, however, was that local entrepreneurs of non-Indian descent had knowingly hurt indigenous communities through illegal tricks and chicanery. Hence, it was incumbent upon the government to transfer the excessive property holdings of the wealthy to the landless poor and to punish ladinos who repeatedly broke contracts, overcharged for goods, and failed to pay wages owed to their workers. The list of grievances stunned local landowners and merchants, who warned government officials of the political dangers posed by Bishop Ruíz and his followers. Meanwhile, Ruíz’s catechists began to show a documentary about the recent conference in indigenous communities throughout the state. Laypersons also began to teach classes about Mexico’s and Chiapas’ political and economic histories in local Mayan languages such as Tzeltal and Mam. The Mexican Constitution prohibited the Catholic Church from participating directly in politics. So Bishop Ruíz established a largely independent network of lay organizers, called “deacons,” to lobby the government on behalf of the poor. The deacons, in turn, formed a secret society, Roots, that promoted the values and the rights of indigenous peoples, and that participated in electoral politics and labor organizing (Womack 1999: 35, 37–8, 39–41). To staff the growing number of local projects in the mid-1970s, the bishop invited to Chiapas activists who had worked elsewhere in Mexico and who belonged to Maoist organizations, such as the People’s Union and a larger coalition called the Proletarian Line (LP). He hoped to convert


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them into catechists. The Maoists, however, soon gained independent influence with the deacons, Roots, and a number of producer and consumer cooperatives. By the late twentieth century most Maoists in Mexico had developed a distinctively patient and peaceful approach to social revolution.3 Of course, they opposed capitalism and international “free trade,” and hoped one day to establish a socialist order in Mexico. There was, however, little talk of Maoist vanguards seizing the state and thereafter benevolently leading the poor. Socialism was to be established by the poor themselves. In the words of one LP publication: “The masses are those who work, who are in contact with practical problems, who confront the exploiters; and it is therefore they who know most, are most competent” (Womack 1999: 177). In theory, everyday people would discover their own capacity to influence history through small political victories for immediate goals—say, the construction of a schoolhouse. By teaching poorer people how to influence the local government and win resources, Maoist activists could help the poor recognize their collective power more quickly. Once poor people learned to see themselves as self-directing and powerful, socialism would appear in due course (Collier 1994: 72–3; Harvey 1998: 124–5). Many Maoists—and LP activists, in particular—believed that patient, polite, and strictly legalistic petitioning often failed to prompt government action although the Mexican system of governance contained some agencies and officials sympathetic to the sufferings and hopes of the have-nots. Disruptive actions, such as loud marches and building occupations, were needed as supplements. To borrow an LP slogan, everyday people needed to learn how to “fight with two faces”—to work cooperatively within the system (especially at the federal level) yet, when necessary, to confront government officials (especially at the local level) through demonstrations and protest. The Maoists’ collaborative/confrontational strategy was well suited for the political climate of the 1970s. To shore up the government’s popularity, Mexico’s presidents after 1968 poured money into rural regions in the hope of co-opting indigenous leaders and of fending off critics of PRI-style democracy. The LP and its organizational offshoots were successful in securing funds and licenses from the government for the transportation of coffee beans, for fertilizer and machinery, for medical centers and schools, and so on. Maoist-backed groups became arguably the most politically influential non-PRI organizations in Chiapas between 1975 and the early 1980s (Collier 1994: 72–5). The political and economic climate changed in the late 1980s, with plummeted oil prices and the Technocrats in ascendancy. The government slashed many of its public-assistance programs for fertilizer, food, fuel, schools, health care, roads, and housing. Guaranteed agricultural prices and minimum wages were suspended. To paraphrase Jan Rus, Shannan Mattiace, and Rosalva Hernández-Castillo (2003: 11): without money to grease its gears and wheels, the patron-client machine in Chiapas ground to a halt.

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The Maoists’ cooperative/confrontational tactics were no longer consonant with economic conditions. They also were ineffective because of the beliefs and cruelty of Governor Absalón Castellanos Domínguez (see chapter 11). The previous governor, Juan Sabinas Gutiérrez, had attempted to placate poorer Chiapanecans and had viewed both Catholic and Maoist organizations as co-optable. Governor Castellanos, in contrast, believed that non-PRI organizations were, in his words, “inciters of anarchism, pokers of the fire, fishers in troubled waters, who are not far from the trash the current carries” (Womack 1999: 199). Rather than negotiate with the independent interest groups, the Castellanos government and its vigilante allies harassed the poor, assassinated labor leaders, and destroyed squatters’ homes. John Womack (1999: 199) writes that the number of assassinations either directly commissioned or indirectly abetted by Castellanos’s government exceeded 150, “making his governorship one of the most gruesome in Mexico’s modern history.” FLN and EZLN activists, in the meantime, told potential followers that Maoist and Catholic reformers had overestimated the possibilities for working through the system. Poverty was not disappearing; electoral reform was not spreading. Armed uprising was the only sensible option. Unorthodox Uprising Shortly before the skirmish with Mexican troops in May 1993, several EZLN leaders feared that the government’s security apparatus had uncovered their clandestine operations. They concluded that the time had arrived to either fight or renounce their original plans for an armed uprising. FLN leaders outside Chiapas counseled patience and further preparation until sufficient forces were amassed in central and northern Mexico. But many activists inside Chiapas—including a figure known as “Subcomandante Marcos”—viewed the outsiders’ advice as out-of-touch (Ronfeldt et al. 1998: 34; Ross 2000: 148–9; Womack 1999: 40). Knowing that a successful military uprising would require popular backing, EZLN spokespersons asked a few dozen villages in central and eastern Chiapas whether the EZLN should go to war. The question was hotly debated. About half the consulted communities voted to launch a war, but even in these communities, sizeable minorities expressed a preference for nonviolent politics and feared that armed action would provoke fierce repression (Ronfeldt et al. 1998: 33–4; Stephen 2002: 141–2, 144; Womack 1999: 40, 43). After rumors of an imminent guerrilla uprising reached his ears, Bishop Ruíz traveled into the jungle. There, he argued in writings and speeches that it was better to treat adversaries as brothers than as enemies and that it was better to forgive rather than to kill. To do otherwise would prompt vengeance and lead to fratricide (Womack 1999: 41, 232–44). The warnings fell on deaf ears.


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The January 1 uprising occurred on the same day that NAFTA went into effect. Zapatistas spokespersons did not refer to NAFTA in their official declaration of war, but when a journalist from Europe asked if the uprising was partly a response to the injustices of NAFTA, their answer was “Of course” (Ross 2000: 21). The EZLN’s attacks resonated throughout Mexico. In nearby and far-off states—such as Sonora, Guerrero, and Oaxaca—Indian municipalities began to demand “autonomy” from other governmental institutions. Indebted small farmers in the state of Chihuahua parked their tractors on public highways and declared their support for the EZLN. City schoolchildren were drawing pictures of soldiers assailing Indians. Gigantic banners announced the support of teachers and farm hands for the armed insurgents. One peasant organization’s poster read: “For the Destruction of Latifundias! With Arms in Hand Defend Your Ejido!” According to an observer, “The lesson from this for the Indians is that if you pick up the gun, the government will finally listen to you” (Ross 2000: 39; Weinberg 2000: 1997). Within Chiapas, the January attacks inspired numerous audacious actions by groups not affiliated with the EZLN.4 Land-hungry residents, declaring their right to hundreds of thousands of hectares, invaded ranches and plantations. Peasant and labor organizations in the hundreds joined a vast coalition called the State Council of Indian and Campesino Organizations. Proponents of democratic reform forced their way into government buildings in dozens of cities and counties to demand that PRI officials immediately resign and that there be new elections. Scores of Indian communities seceded from PRI-run counties and declared themselves “autonomous municipalities.” Political rebellions and insurrections of one sort or another took place in 111 of the 112 PRI-controlled Chiapas counties (Ross 2000: 46). A relieved and grateful peasant acknowledged, “By grace, the Zapatistas have opened our eyes. We do not know them, but we must thank them. Before, we did not have the valor to do this” (Weinberg 2000: 110). Some of the local excitement was caused by rumors about inter-class revenge and social experimentation in the communities that the Zapatistas had seized. In Ocosingo, a fairly large frontier community on the edge of the wilderness, insurgents were said to have broken into government stores and distributed food to the populace. Prisoners (except for drug traffickers and murderers) were released. Zapatista spokespersons announced new laws, for example, that henceforth tenants who had lived in one place for fifteen years no longer had to pay rent, and that wife beaters would henceforth be severely punished. The meat packing plant was set ablaze. The EZLN, nonetheless, had failed to spark large-scale armed uprisings across Mexico. This was significant: regime transformation had been the rebel army’s primary goal—not simply settling local scores. Using the language of liberal moral philosophy, the rebel leaders asserted that their actions were inspired by notions of human rights and complied with internationally

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recognized conventions governing just war: “[W]e declare now and forever that we are subject to the stipulations of the Geneva Convention’s Laws on War. . . . Our struggle sticks to constitutional law, and justice and equality are its banners” (Womack 1999: 248–9). The rebels, many of whom spoke only indigenous Mayan languages, never proclaimed that their aim was to advance the rights of Indian communities within Mexico. Their goal was more inclusive and arguably more radical—to dismantle “a dictatorship for more than 70 years led by a clique of traitors who represent the most conservatives and sell-out groups in the country” and to establish an order in which “liberated people” can “elect their own administrative authorities freely and democratically” (Womack 1999: 248–9). Elusive Peace The Mexican government responded as one might expect. PRI officials declared that Mexico was not a tyranny and that the insurgents were not, in fact, principled freedom fighters. According to President Salinas, the leaders of the armed attacks were not even oppressed Chiapanecans but professional hit men from foreign countries, such as Guatemala. Furthermore, regardless of how small and dark-skinned many of the insurgents might look on television, “[t]his is not an Indian uprising, but the action of a violent armed group, directed against the public peace and government institutions” (Weinberg 2000: 108). In the name of national security, the government dispatched over ten thousand troops. Military aircraft bombed peasant communities. Soldiers killed not only scores of EZLN soldiers but perhaps more than one hundred civilians suspected of aiding the insurgents (Ross 2000: 33). International public opinion put a brake on the government’s violence. Church leaders and humanitarian organizations around the globe urged a stop. Journalists for international news agencies filed reports about the air force strafing hamlets and about the discovery of mass graves filled with civilian bodies. Perhaps recognizing that discretion is the better part of valor (and public relations), Salinas agreed to negotiate with the EZLN for permanent peace. To demonstrate its own goodwill, the EZLN released one of its imprisoned notables, former governor Castellanos. Bishop Ruíz agreed to help broker the peace accord. A few former LP activists—some of whom had climbed to positions quite high within the PRI-hierarchy—worked on the government’s negotiation team, trying to find ways to accommodate the rebels’ demands for social justice without destroying the state’s authority. Local landowners and PRI leaders viewed the negotiations with alarm and said that the government, by meeting with the EZLN, was legitimating terrorism and foolishly rewarding blatantly illegal behavior. Ranchers blamed much of the situation on the corrosive influence of liberation theology and on the secret procommunist leanings of Bishop Ruíz


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(Ross 2000: 48, 112; Weinberg 2000: 115–16). It was said that before the arrival of Ruíz, the LP, the FLN, and other outsiders, relations between the ladinos and indigenes of Chiapas had been cordial and productive: “The bishop has created this controversy. There is no injustice here. . . . We have lived peacefully with the Indians for over 500 years [sic] and never had a problem” (Womack 1999: 46). If the government did not restore order and authority, property owners would have no choice other than to rely on private security forces to remove squatters, arrest anarchists, and jail the guerrillas and their coconspirators. The exchanges between the government’s delegates and the spokespersons of the EZLN were testy at first. President Salinas insisted that his negotiators limit the issues under consideration to social reform within Chiapas and to questions of economic justice, narrowly understood as raising standards of living. Government representatives were to treat as verboten all attempted discussions about presidential resignation and constitutional reform, as well as all discussions about collective ownership of land and means of production. The EZLN wanted more far-searching changes. The Zapatistas asked for the immediate dismantling of the PRI, a new constitutional convention, and not only more public services for the poor in Chiapas but recognition of Indian rights to communal self-government and of peasants’ exclusive ownership of subsoil wealth (minerals and oil) without state interference. There were also demands for land redistribution, government subsidies for fertilizer, government expropriation and transfer of foreigners’ property holdings to the poor, and a complete renegotiation of NAFTA (Ross 2000: 53–5). A few months later, the government delegates—to many observers’ surprise—publicly acknowledged the reasonableness of almost every proposal advanced by the insurgents. One topic, however, that the government negotiators steadfastly refused to accept for further discussion was the resignation of President Salinas. The government spokespersons then proposed that negotiations begin on the details of such general ideas as indigenous people’s right to self-rule, but before these could take place, a permanent end to the hostilities would be necessary. Would it be possible for the Mexican military to withdraw and for the Zapatistas to lay down their guns? Newspapers around the globe, anticipating no further complications, crowed that peace had been achieved and that the Zapatistas had won unprecedented concessions from the Mexican state (Ross 2000: 55–6). These circumstances had not yet come to pass, however. The representatives for the EZLN and the government asked their respective clients—the village assemblies in eastern Chiapas, and the parliament and president in Mexico City—to ratify the proposed terms of peace. President Salinas was not yet ready as other concerns crowded his mind. The PRI had been rocked by two killings. The PRI leader picked to be Mexico’s next president had been assassinated under shady circumstances. Shortly thereafter, a minor PRI official fatally shot the secretary-general of the PRI. Rumors about blind ambition within the ruling party were

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spreading. Meanwhile, the economy had gone into another tailspin for a variety of reasons, including international investors’ jitters after the Chiapas uprising. The slump made it more difficult than ever for the government to fund new projects for social development, such as those contemplated by the negotiators in Chiapas. Belt-tightening loomed. The beleaguered bourgeoisie of Chiapas, meanwhile, was orchestrating attacks on the uppity peasants, sponsoring hit squads, and denouncing at every opportunity both Bishop Ruíz and the peace process. The rebels and their home communities refused to ratify the proposed peace settlement, sensing that it might soon become worthless paper (Ross 2000: 55–6, 69). Founding Flounders The leaders of the EZLN, ever hopeful of a large-scale revolution in the offing, cosponsored a meeting of all organizations in the nation that peacefully opposed the current system of governance. Advocates of armed rebellion were explicitly not invited. The gathering of some six thousand persons, calling itself the National Democratic Convention (CND), took place in the Lacandón jungle approximately a month before Mexico’s 1994 presidential elections (Harvey 1998: 205–6; La Botz 1995: 175–91; Ross 2000: 71–9; Womack 1999: 48). The EZLN presented an audacious plan to the attendees. The Zapatistas predicted that the PRI would once again falsely claim a ballot-box victory, and that this probably would prompt large-scale demonstrations in Mexico’s northernmost states. Such eventualities would offer a rare political opportunity if the CND were to announce that it would hold another convention in a few months to write a new constitution. During the expected tumult over electoral fraud, the CND would cite the street protests as irrefutable evidence of popular discontent with the political order and as grounds for respecting the future convention’s actions. Through this process, the jungle alliance would peacefully topple the PRI and found a new order. The CND declared its support for the EZLN’s plan, but the proposed constituent convention never came to pass. After the meeting, the numerous groups feuded over details and could not coordinate activities before the presidential election. Perhaps more important, the PRI won the election so handily that few Mexicans questioned the victory. Most citizens resigned themselves to the padded results, abandoned street protests, and failed to rally behind the confused and sporadic calls for a constitutional convention. Making of a Counterculture Immediately after Ernesto Zedillo was elected president, efforts to negotiate an agreement between the EZLN and the government turned sour. Unlike


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President Salinas, President Zedillo showed little interest in talking with the insurgents and promptly approved a covert mission to enter the jungle and capture the entire EZLN leadership (a mission that failed badly). By early 1995, both the EZLN and the Mexican army were routinely violating the terms of the temporary cease-fire and entering each other’s zone of influence. Tens of thousands of residents were displaced, either fleeing government troops or nervously following EZLN units as they retreated further into the jungle. Between mid-January 1994 and April 1995 more than seven hundred unarmed civilians died in the crossfire (Womack 1999: 47). Zedillo, thinking that the Zapatistas were a cult on the verge of extinction, offered to reopen negotiations only if the rebel army first laid down its arms. The EZLN countered that the entire regime was illegitimate and that it would discuss democratic reform only with non-PRI-affiliated groups that constituted the “civil society.” Moreover, the EZLN broadened its agenda. It now involved “Indian rights, democracy and justice, decent living standards and economic development, women’s rights” (Womack 1999: 49).5 The EZLN again shifted its strategy. It would no longer propose either a countrywide armed uprising or a people’s constitutional convention but would counsel indigenous communities to form alternative local and country governments independent of the Mexican state. Chiapanecans used various names when referring to the thousand-plus communities that followed the Zapatistas’ proposal: among them, “autonomous town councils,” “autonomous peoples,” “autonomous municipal councils,” “autonomous municipalities in rebellion,” and “rebel municipalities” (Burguete Cal y Mayor 2003: 206). The new polities appeared throughout Chiapas but mainly in the eastern half, where government services and agents were few and seldom seen. Some autonomous communities were little more than neighborhood blocks within larger civic entities. Some were sizeable intervillage federations, probably the best known of which was the Autonomous Region of Tierra y Libertad. The combined territory of all autonomous communities was approximately a third of Chiapas and contained 10 percent of the state’s population. Zapatistas called the philosophic principle that informed these experiments in local self-rule “resistencia” (resistance). The basic idea was to turn their backs completely on the existing state and to replace it with an amateur governance structure staffed by everyday citizens. In theory, nothing would be accepted from the official federal, state, or municipal governments: no electricity, no schools, no medical services, no supplementary income checks. Each community would completely sustain itself. “We will accept nothing that comes from the rotten heart of the government,” EZLN spokespersons declared as early as the summer of 1994, “not a single coin or a tablet of medicine, not . . . a grain of food or a crumb of the alms it offers in exchange for our dignity” (Preston and Dillon 2004: 449). In some sections of eastern Chiapas the exchange of rule did not noticeably increase day-to-day hardships. To the contrary, because the government

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had seldom been a significant presence, any form of government—including rule by the Zapatistas—was welcomed. In other regions, however, the government had provided important services. Consequently, in the central highlands, members of autonomous communities were bitterly divided over the desirability, costs, and benefits of self-rule (Kampwith 2004: 155). Compounding disagreements over the utility of secession, here and there supporters of the resistance theory lived next-door to staunch opponents. This made the entire experiment problematic because the supporters lacked the legitimacy to make morally binding rules for all residents and also often lacked the material resources to enforce new laws. In divided communities, partisans of the old regime refused to recognize the authority of the new autonomous government and sometimes physically attacked its officials if they tried to collect taxes or enforce an unpopular new policy—for instance, laws against drunkenness (Burguete Cal y Mayor 2003: 209–11, 213). If we ignore for the moment both the smallest and exceptionally weak autonomous communities and the largest and fairly wealthy autonomous communities, such as the Autonomous Region of Tierra y Libertad (where elected officials worked in public buildings), we can venture the following description of “typical” autonomous communities.6 First, most autonomous governments devoted a considerable amount of their limited resources to the promotion of cultural events and activities. Alternative schools were quickly constructed—albeit sometimes with glassless windows and sometimes even without books. Volunteers from outside the community (some from outside Mexico) taught local children in indigenous languages. Reflecting the communities’ egalitarian spirit, some teachers preferred to be called “promotores” (akin to “facilitators”) rather than “professors.” The curriculum comprised reading, writing, and appreciation of local myths, arts, and Zapatista political thought. Corporal punishment and threats of low grades were prohibited. Many autonomous governments also established the first libraries in their communities’ history. These were often hovels with catch-as-catch-can holdings from Zapatista sympathizers outside Chiapas (for example, books and magazines in English). Some local governments also built visitor centers, which resembled cheap youth hostels, with cots and hammocks for traveling guests and potential supporters. Second, although the laws of the Mexican state were not officially recognized within the autonomous communities, fairly elaborate systems of rules and regulations were in place. More ambitious autonomous governments attempted to replace almost all of the Mexican government’s record-keeping functions, issuing their own birth and death certificates and marriage licenses (Ross 2000: 269). Many communities established entire juridical systems, with police, judges, community laws, and jails. According to one scholar, the systematic administration of justice was often the most popular function of the new polities because the conventional government’s police force was seldom seen and, if seen, often corrupt (Burguete Cal y Mayor 2003: 211).


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Was the local exercise of authority excessive? It is far from clear that the autonomous communities were as “tyrannical,” “totalitarian,” and “Pol Pot-like” as some critics assert (Ross 2000: 237, 248, 295), but in some regimentation was evident. The new governments on occasion disallowed conversations between residents and outsiders (defenders of this policy contend that it was largely a security precaution) (Preston and Dillon 2004: 455–6, 458). Recreational activities—including the consumption of alcohol—were often strictly regulated (and in some cases banned). The smoking of marijuana was usually outlawed. Some observers judged the punishment meted out as too harsh—for example, being tied to a tree for three hours for repeatedly breaking laws about intoxication (Burguete Cal y Mayor 2003: 218; Stephen 2002: 173). Some communities also refused to allow the federal government to build dirt roads or expand electrical grids, largely on grounds that such amenities would encourage foreign cultural practices, including prostitution, thievery, and drug and alcohol consumption (Ross 2000: 316–17; Preston and Dillon 2004: 455). A third common characteristic of the pro-Zapatista communities was their promotion of local economic experiments that one might call autarkic socialism. Trade with outsiders was generally discouraged, and the little trade that did occur was often closely monitored (although the de facto isolation from regional markets varied tremendously from community to community). Many communities organized cooperative stores, factories, and farms either to produce essential goods, such as tortillas, at affordable prices for residents or to raise cash crops, such as coffee, that the community then collectively marketed to outsiders. Some public officials, especially teachers, were paid through donations of goods (instead of income) for their services (Preston and Dillon 2004: 447, 455, 457–8; Ross 2000: 235). Fourth, many (but not all) autonomous communities experimented with democratic forms of policy making, although the procedures of the autonomous governments differed greatly. In some communities, residents elected the equivalent of a town mayor who enjoyed extensive rights to issue decrees and interpret laws. In other communities, residents treated the community’s open assembly as its highest political authority. Usually, parties were not permitted to sponsor candidates for elected office. New titles were created for community officials that downplayed the implication of superior and subservient roles. Community police officers, for example, were sometimes renamed “plural officers.” Local slang referring to a community’s jefe (chief ) or cacique (boss) often fell out of use (at least in public settings) (Burguete Cal y Mayor 2003: 212; Preston and Dillon 2004: 443–4, 450; Ross 2000: 218). Relations between the autonomous communities and abutting nonautonomous settlements (almost always ruled by PRI politicians) varied. In central Chiapas, detente sometimes occurred. In the eastern jungles, however, suspicions ran wild and physical battles and confrontations were not uncommon. Women of neighboring communities might clash on a mountain path or by a river. Gunplay and machete hacking erupted

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periodically between neighboring militias, occasionally leading to massacres of unarmed civilians. Some clashes arose from seemingly minor causes, for example, pro-PRI toughs in a township beating members of a tiny autonomous neighborhood that refused to pay its electricity bills (Ross 2000: 220). The Mexican government presented itself before the international press as favoring neither side in these inter- and intravillage disputes. Still, many scholars and journalists believe that on repeated occasions—for one, the notorious massacre of unarmed women and children at Acteal— government security forces aided and abetted anti-EZLN militias (Ross 2000: 219–20, 239–55, 246, 248–9, 277–80; Womack 1999: 56–7; 344–54). To Vote or Not to Vote Zapatista activists often expressed contempt for elections and election-oriented parties. Very few leaders (especially among the veterans with FLN roots) believed in the viability of electoral strategies for political change. As early as February 1994, Subcomandante Marcos, the movement’s most widely quoted leader, remarked to the press: “We don’t trust anybody but the rifle we carry. But we think if there is another way, it’s not political parties; it’s civil society” (Womack 1999: 48). When an international news reporter in 1999 directly asked Subcomandante Marcos his preference for president of Mexico, the subcomandante snapped back, “Listen, we didn’t make this revolution in order to vote for a political party” (Ross 2000: 324). Consistent with their opposition to electoral politics, leading Zapatistas refused to endorse PRD candidates in local and congressional elections, urged the movement’s members and followers to boycott elections, and occasionally physically disrupted local elections.7 The EZLN’s anti-election posture proved highly contentious within Chiapas and outraged members of the Christian left and of constituent parties of the PRD (Womack 1999: 298–9). “How can we change things if we don’t vote?” one PRD supporter asked (Ross 2000: 348). The EZLN responded by insisting that electoral politics were meaningless (because of the amount of corruption and ballot-box tampering), politically enervating (because citizen attention shifts to candidates’ personality and away from pressing policy questions), and hypocritical (because the PRD itself had picked its candidates nondemocratically) (Ross 2000: 68, 346). The geographic, economic, and political diversity of Chiapas, makes generalizations about PRD-EZLN relations difficult. In the northern tip of the state, for example, local Zapatista and PRD organizations repeatedly collaborated, leading to a series of lopsided PRD victories in local elections (Ross 2000: 275). But customarily, the Zapatistas disdained elections. Moreover, in programmatic statements, such documents as the 1996 Fourth Declaration from the Lacandón Jungle, the movement declared that its long-term goal was to rewrite Mexico’s Constitution so as to give more


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power to “those citizens without parties.” This would to be done by creating a powerful parliament that would comprise representatives of communities and geographic regions but not members of ideologically coherent parties (Ross 2000: 154–6, 219, 346–7; Womack 1999: 301–2). Going Global By the winter of 1996–1997 the self-governing communities in Chiapas came increasingly under attack from both neighboring settlements (which accused the communities of thievery, murder, and other serious crimes) and the governments of Chiapas and Mexico (which accused the communities of being unconstitutional and violating the rights of Mexican citizens). The opponents tried to undermine the autonomous communities through bribes (offers of cows and farm machinery to citizens who would leave the communities), promises of public services (including roads and electricity to communities that would return to the fold), and outright military attacks (Kampwirth 2004: 143–60; Ross 2000: 310–11). As local support for the EZLN began to waver across Chiapas (relatively strong in the state’s eastern subregion and relatively weak elsewhere),8 ties between the Zapatistas and selected groups outside the region strengthened. The Zapatistas began to work closely with anthropologists and schoolteachers elsewhere in Mexico against the privatization of public monuments, and with consumer groups against foreign ownership of public utilities. In some cases, the long-distance alliances developed almost effortlessly (for example, the Zapatistas’ experiments with autonomous communities had inspired similar experiments in at least five other states) (Ross 2000: 275). One somewhat surprising development was the EZLN’s alliance with the sociologically dissimilar organization known as El Barzón (see chapter 11). The two groups shared a hostility toward the PRI, suspicions about elections, and concerns about economic inequality getting out of hand were the Technocrats to remain in power too long and foreigners to become too economically powerful within Mexico. Still the Chiapanecans’ defense of ejidos and the ladinos’ commitment to private property pointed to a potential clash of interest, as did the juxtaposition of the Zapatistas’ defense of indigenous people’s languages and economic habits, and the cowboy affectations of El Barzón. Both the EZLN and the government were caught off balance in 1996 and 1997 by the escalation of political violence within Chiapas and Mexico more broadly. New guerrilla organizations, such as the Popular Revolutionary Army, claimed to defend the interests of Mexico’s indigenous populations, shot soldiers and police officers, kidnapped business leaders, and robbed banks (Ross 2000: 182–6, 192–6).9 Within Chiapas, private militias (financed by commercial-property owners) continued to attack locals who were suspected of consorting with the EZLN. At the same time,

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class, ethnic, and generational rivalries within longstanding indigenous communities encouraged civil miniwars, with the rival groups’ organizing of paramilitary units, such as the “Throat-slashers,” the “Red Mask,” “Peace and Justice,” and the “Armed Forces of the People” (Ross 2000: 220, 232; Womack 1999: 54–6). By 1998, the total number of nongovernment and non-EZLN paramilitary groups in Chiapas exceeded two dozen (Alejos García 2003: 100). Perhaps the EZLN felt increasingly helpless before the escalating violence inside Chiapas. Maybe the EZLN felt frustrated that more and more Mexicans seemed to be placing their faith in electoral reforms and participating in elections. Whatever the reason, in 1996 the EZLN decided on a new tack and hosted the Intergalactic Forum for Humanity and Against Neo-Liberalism in the Lacandón jungle (Weinberg 2000: 160–2; Ross 2000: 189–92). Almost three thousand activists, intellectuals, and entertainers from around the globe attended, broke into issue seminars, and then reassembled to share ideas. German Greens were present; Basque nationalists were present; French feminists were present; Peruvian Marxists were present. In terms of publicity, the meeting was a success. It attracted internationalmedia attention and generated international support for the EZLN in its low-intensity war with government troops and vigilante militias. In terms of creating a political counterbalance to the Mexican state, the meeting was less than successful. Few attendees were ready to abandon their own nation-states as a political resource. Perhaps equally important, participants disagreed over social goals. The feminists, for example, believed that their concerns were not taken seriously by the males at the conference, and European participants pressed for a motion on the legalization of soft drugs, despite opposition from most of their Latin American counterparts, including the Zapatistas (Ross 2000: 190–1). Even the central theme of the gathering—combating the globalization of capitalism—generated divisions. Some Europeans, such as the German anarchists, proposed simply turning away from the worldwide spread of a commercial culture and capitalist economic practices and creating small, local havens where alternatives ways of life could flourish. The Latin Americans were more concerned about being included in the new global order but wanted agreements that would extend its benefits to inhabitants of poorer regions without some of its most negative aspects, such as the loss of local laws protecting workers and the environment. Although all participants declared themselves “Zapatistas” and danced joyously on the final night, there was little consensus on what should be done. “Each has come with his or her own notion of what Zapatismo should be,” a French participant wryly observed (Ross 2000: 191). The next year a second Intergalactic Forum was held in Spain, which laid the groundwork for the more permanent International Network Against Neoliberalism. Some EZLN leaders traveled to the meeting in the hope of drawing international support for the Zapatistas pinned down in Chiapas. Those in attendance were discomfited when radical feminists refused on principle to chant with others, “We all are Marcos!” and when


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they heard calls for the legalization of drugs (Ross 2000: 225–6). The global movement against neoliberalism was moving in distinctively non-EZLN directions. Friction between the Zapatistas and other international groups arose in part from the Zapatistas’ steadfast opposition to all conventional governmental institutions, including the European Union and the United Nations. In the opinion of the EZLN, parties, interest groups, and ambitious state leaders control conventional governing institutions. They, therefore, should be viewed not as potential vehicles for progressive politics but as another sham by which the world’s elite manages to keep quiet victims of the prevailing social order. The Zapatistas were not simply acting symbolically and mouthing words. To borrow youth slang, they talked the talk and walked the walk. The Zapatistas refused to meet with United Nations investigators sent to Mexico in 1999 to determine if human rights violations were taking place in Chiapas. The EZLN argued that the UN was not a morally legitimate political actor but a creature of nation-states that did their unprincipled bidding, as evidenced by its recent decision to bomb Yugoslavia. The only legitimate international political actor, the Zapatistas argued, was global “civil society” comprising Amnesty International, Global Exchange, and other non-governmental organizations. They were the “real UN” (Ross 2000: 326–7). Despite periodic disagreements with non-Mexican allies, the EZLN assiduously cultivated a worldwide network of supporters. By 1998, politically oriented entrepreneurs, like Global Exchange, were arranging bus tours to the autonomous municipalities (Ross 2000: 267). Also, international rock ’n’ roll stars, such as Carlos Santana and Rage Against the Machine, spread the word at concerts and in songs about Zapatista heroism (Ross 2000: 327–38). Cybermedia further enabled the EZLN to develop a large international audience and even to establish Zapatista solidarity clubs (Ronfeldt et al. 1998). The overall benefits of this electronic community have become a subject of debate among Western observers. Critics of the Zapatistas’ strategy, such as Judith Hellman (2000; 2001), contend that when non-Mexicans read about Chiapas on the computer screen, they too soon reach conclusions without adequate information. The Zapatista web pages allegedly reduce Chiapanecan politics to a tug-of-war between the EZLN and the Mexican government, to the exclusion of all else. Defenders of the strategy, such as Justin Paulson (2001), counter that the Zapatistas are shrewdly disseminating their innovative ideas despite opposition by the major parties, and that the EZLN’s electronic presentation of conflict within Chiapas is far less incomplete and one-sided than critics assert. In the course of building long-distance alliances, the Zapatistas have gradually expanded their issues and concerns. The legal rights of homosexuals, for example, have become salient in declarations, even though rank-and-file Zapatistas appear unfamiliar with the topic of sexual politics.10 Subcomandante

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Marcos has stated that the promotion of a worldwide spirit of resistance is now as important to the Zapatistas as any substantive program, such as realizing the political and economic principles of the 1917 Constitution (Womack 1999: 325–6). The expansion of Zapatistas’ interests may be a sign of undisciplined thinking but may reflect political necessity. In the words of one scholar (Leyva Solano 2003: 177): [T]he EZLN itself relies increasingly on international political networks and the cooperation of international militants, observers, and human rights activists. This is particularly important because its national support has been rather erratic since 1997.

Conclusions Between its formation in 1983 and 2000, the EZLN metamorphosed repeatedly. After serving as a local police force, its members decided in the early 1990s to renounce almost all forms of conventional politics. They spurned cooperation not only with the PRI but with the PRD, the LP, and local Catholic reformers. After the 1994 armed uprising failed to spark more such incidents across Mexico, the EZLN leadership helped organize a National Democratic Convention. When that project failed, the leadership encouraged the creation of autonomous polities within Chiapas, and built alliances with nonpeasant and nonindigenous groups outside Chiapas (and even outside Mexico). By the end of the twentieth century the EZLN had become an important symbol to activists outside Chiapas who opposed global capitalism and free trade, and who advocated gay and lesbian rights, liberalization of drug consumption, and other human rights. Within Chiapas itself, however, EZLN supporters were either being coopted by the state or exhausted by the constant crossfire between EZLN and anti-EZLN soldiers. Left-leaning political parties and associations, such as the PRD and the Peaceful Disobedience Movement, denounced the government’s military presence within Chiapas but also looked askance at the rebels’ refusal to lay down arms. Survey results in 1998 indicated that a vast majority of Mexicans, despite judging Zapatista goals as just, believed that the Zapatistas’ behavior was strident and had hurt the indigenous poor of Chiapas (Bruhn 1999: 48; Hernández Castillo 2003). A few days before the 2000 presidential elections, the EZLN leadership unexpectedly announced that voting was a “dignified” form of political struggle. This suggested that shifts in the movement’s reasoning, goals, and activities are ongoing. Zapatismo—shorthand for the theoretical vision of the EZLN—remains remarkably fluid and arguably even shapeless and


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unpredictable. In the words of Subcomandante Marcos, quoted in Bruhn (1999: 48): Zapatismo must be very clear in this; it cannot try to constitute a universal doctrine, to lead the new international, or anything like that. It is above all that generality, that lack of definition of Zapatismo that is important. The notable shifts in the goals and strategies of the EZLN remind us that social movements are dynamic entities whose plans can evolve in directions that founders never anticipated. This is because, among other things, movements exist in crowded, complex environments alongside other political actors. The existence of a plurality of goals, activities, and trajectories leads to disagreements and clashes. Further, as movement leaders become aware of the plans, characteristics, and potency of other political actors, new ideas arise about what can be done. Stated differently, although social-movement organizations may disseminate doctrines and produce documents, it does not follow that movement activists are either inflexible or dogmatic. Like participants in other political entities, movement activists deliberate their circumstances, adapt, and adjust. Constantly exploring possibilities, movement activists are not in a conventional sense “pragmatists” who sooner or later come to accept incorporation into the political system as inevitable or desirable. Movement activists are creative, however. Therefore, the observer can never predict with total confidence a movement’s future goals, actions, and pronouncements.


PART

6

Conclusions


CHAPTER

14


We began with a survey of three major theoretical approaches to the study of social movements and have used themes and selected hypotheses from the approaches to collect information about four movements that flourished during the 1980s and 1990s. We explored each movement’s economic and political background, nonelite political antecedents, and evolving goals and strategies. Let us compare some findings and then evaluate the theoretical traditions’ strengths and weaknesses on the basis of our new knowledge. Four Social Movements in Comparative Perspective West Germany’s Greens, Poland’s Solidarity, Peru’s Shining Path, and Mexico’s Zapatista Army of National Liberation were attempts by thousands of nonelite activists to re-create their societies, to establish radically new social orders. They straddled the line between legal and illegal activity, openly defied government orders and expectations, and at times employed socially disruptive tactics. Although the four movements were abstractly similar in that they fit our tentative definition of a social movement (chapter 1), there were noticeable differences among them. The differences can be categorized under four headings: (1) general strategies, (2) social and political contexts, (3) political antecedents, and (4) intramovement politics. The Greens from the outset relied heavily on elections to transform West Germany. Elections would afford an opportunity not only to enter government and affect policy but to disseminate new values and proposals among nonelites: the extension of political rights to foreign guest workers, withdrawal from NATO, support of national liberation movements in the Third World, the dismantling of the current system of consultation between business and government, and the creation of an extremely decentralized and participatory political and economic order. Over time, the Greens toned down their countercultural clothing, antibourgeois language,

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and harsh criticisms of other parties. They called less frequently for a thoroughgoing restructuring of the country’s political economy. These attempts to woo socially moderate voters and to enter governing coalitions caused some current and former Green activists to question whether the Greens in the 1990s should still be viewed as a social movement. Had they metamorphosed into a conventional party? Solidarity, in contrast, tried to rein in the Polish party-state by means of large-scale work stoppages. Organizations of industrial workers, private farmers, and intellectuals challenged government policies on prices, civil liberties, and cultural freedom. In 1981, the movement was repressed and became primarily a set of underground publications. After a period of martial law, a few factions broke with the movement’s national leadership, which cautioned against strikes and other disruptive actions, to form independent unions in the hope of improving wages and working conditions through industrial action. In 1989, Solidarity’s national leadership, in exchange for restraining strikers, negotiated constitutional reforms and then pursued an electoral strategy of social transformation. Disagreement over the desirability of free-market reforms splintered the movement after 1990. Solidarity’s organizational legacy was a constellation of rival parties, unions, and interest groups with very different social goals. Shining Path attempted to remake Peru through a protracted armed struggle in tandem with services to the poor and the establishment of alternative political and economic orders in the rural areas where the state’s armed forces were absent. The movement’s long-term goal was to repel international capital; to redistribute property from the big bourgeoisie to smaller capitalists, wage earners, peasants, and the chronically poor; and, afterward, to prepare Peru for communism. The movement contended that to transform oligarchic Peru, violence would be needed; the privileged classes and their international supporters would otherwise not give up their wealth and political power. The killing of politicians, civilians, and soldiers distinguished Shining Path from almost all other radical and reformist groups that we have studied. Within Shining Path, different cells and factions disagreed over the timing of violent acts and over the ratio of violence to nonviolence, but they concurred that radical change necessitated the use of guns. The EZLN also initially employed armed action in the hope of transforming Mexico’s social and political status quo, but after a nationwide popular uprising failed to materialize in January of 1994, the paramilitary movement began to promote quasi-anarchistic communities in rural Chiapas and alliances with nonpartisan groups in Mexico and around the globe. The EZLN’s low-intensity war with the federal government prompted tens of thousands of poor Chiapanecans to flee their homes, but the Zapatistas did not kill civilians or security officers anywhere near the scale that characterized Sendero Luminoso. The Zapatistas, moreover, limited their violence to Chiapas and seldom attempted to hurt people or property elsewhere. Outside Chiapas, they primarily hurled verbal spears. Unlike the


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Greens and Solidarity, they refused to participate in electoral politics and have kept themselves at arm’s length from government-sponsored social programs and seemingly benign state-based organizations, such as the UN. Besides strategy, the four social movements differed in economic aims, partly reflecting each country’s unique economic character. For example, as measured by per capita gross national product, West Germany’s standard of living in the 1980s was much higher than that of Poland, Peru, or Mexico. Official unemployment was much lower. True, its postwar economic boom had slowed by 1980, and the jobless rate, which during the 1960s had been almost zero, was temporarily rising (which help to explain the Greens’ appeal among the young and unemployed). Relative poverty, nonetheless, was restricted in the main to foreign workers and younger adults. The Greens’ federal programs, not surprisingly, never called for further enrichment of the haves. The Greens instead focused on distributional justice and advocated greater entitlements to groups who were not benefiting from the postwar boom. In terms of economic organization, the Greens pressed for the decentralization of the economy, with local residents and the employees in each enterprise participating in the making of business decisions. In theory, this would lead to more attention to the associated human and environmental costs and less attention to short-term profit maximization. Also, the Greens advocated greater state regulation of the manufacture of environmentally harmful products and increased state education of consumers about the ecological consequences of their spending habits. Solidarity’s activists, in contrast, desired prosperity. Poland’s standard of living, as measured by per capita gross national product, was a tenth of West Germany’s. Moreover, the gap between the economies of Poland and Western Europe seemed to be increasing. Between 1980 and 1991, the average annual growth of Poland’s economy was 1.2 percent; West Germany’s, 2.3 percent; and all the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nations, 3.0 percent (Haq 1995: 207–8). Solidarity, not surprisingly, called for growth to enable a comparable standard of living. Though movement activists disagreed about how to promote growth (some called for workplace democracy, some for a free-market system, and some for more efficient state planning and an end to corruption), they agreed that hard times must end as soon as possible. Shining Path also pursued materialist aims. After all, Peru’s per capita income during the 1980s was half of Poland’s and a grim twentieth of West Germany’s. According to UN statistics and definitions, more than 30 percent of Peruvians lived in “absolute poverty” during the 1980s. To make matters worse, the future looked bleak: during that decade, Peru’s gross national product “increased” at an average annual rate of ⫺0.4 percent. And, the distribution of wealth and income was remarkably skewed. During the 1970s and 1980s, the richest 10 percent of households received 40 percent of the nation’s total income; the poorest 40 percent, 7–12 percent. To place these figures in a comparative perspective, the richest 10 percent of

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West German and Polish households during the 1970s and 1980s received 30 percent and 20 percent of their respective countries’ total incomes; the poorest 40 percent, between 15 and 20 percent and 20 and 25 percent (Haq 1995: 207–12, 222; Taylor and Jodice 1983: 134–5; World Bank 1991: 115, 245, 249). It is not surprising, then, that Shining Path pressed for a new strategy of national economic development and a radical redistribution of wealth. Its leaders were far less interested than were some leaders of Solidarity in promoting rapid economic growth through market reform, increased foreign investment, and continued free trade. Past Peruvian governments had tried these strategies to no avail. Shining Path activists also were far less interested than the leaders of the West German Greens in preventing further industrial degradation of the environment (approximately half of Peru’s factories were shut down, in any event) and curbing consumers’ environmentally insensitive purchasing habits. The Peruvian radicals instead advocated immediate transfer of wealth and income from international corporations and large businesses to the poor, wage earners, peasants, and small entrepreneurs; protection of small businesses from foreign competition; development of indigenous forms of industry and commerce; and local experiments in collective production. The average standard of living of Chiapanecans fell significantly below that of Mexicans as a whole. Plummeting international demand for the state’s agricultural commodities, such as coffee, had temporarily rendered traditional small-scale farming unviable and persuaded larger landowners to switch to cattle raising and other income sources that did not require many hired hands. The Mexican government’s recent switch to a free-market ideology exacerbated the Chiapas unemployment situation by taking away the public services and price supports that provided a modicum of security for peasants and the rural poor. Some pro-Zapatista autonomous communities experimented with small-scale producer cooperatives and systems of bartering. Some of the EZLN’s most visible allies, such as El Barzón, clamored for the protection of small entrepreneurs from low tariffs, big banks, and foreign investors. But the EZLN never articulated a detailed economic vision of its own. Its solution was primarily political: the removal of narrow interests (including those of political parties) from government and ensuring local communities a louder voice in government policy making. Once the policy-making process was cleansed of the influence of big businesses and party machines, economically wise and just laws would be passed, the EZLN maintained. Each of the four movements drew upon a distinct set of social classes for support. The Greens attracted urban white-collar professionals and unemployed young adults, including recent college graduates who once had had hopes for secure public-sector jobs. Solidarity was largely a movement of industrial workers undergoing declining standards of living, independent family farmers saddled by government controls, and dissident intellectuals with patriotic and civil libertarian goals. Shining Path received support


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from peasants in the remote southern Andes, shantytown dwellers in Lima, and coca farmers in the eastern jungle, as well as university students and recent graduates who either could not find work or were employed for extremely low wages and salaries (for example, the schoolteachers who joined Maoist unions). The EZLN received support first and foremost from homesteaders in the eastern half of Chiapas, who had been largely ignored by the state and where traditions of do-it-yourself were well entrenched by the early 1990s. Each movement’s proposals for economic change partially reflected the actual economic problems its supporters faced. The white-collar professionals in the Greens found environmental protection and workplace rights important. The proletarian activists in Solidarity were initially concerned with union rights and protecting real wages, and its agrarian members wanted the government to help finance private farmers, halt food imports, and deregulate food prices. The supporters of Shining Path sought greater public services for the poor and protection from international market forces, including Colombian drug lords, who were driving down coca-leaf prices. Both inside Chiapas and outside the region, supporters of the EZLN were generally modest-to-poor agriculturalists suffering from the free-market and free-trade turn of the PRI. The four social movements evolved in different political contexts, which influenced the activists’ strategies and tactics. The West German constitutional order—multiple layers of government, elected legislatures, and modified proportional representation—predisposed Green activists to pursue electoral politics. An electoral strategy made no sense in pre-1989 Poland, given the PZPR’s domination of the Sejm, the precarious status of freedoms of speech and assembly, and the threat of a Soviet invasion should Poland depart from the Stalinist mode of one-party rule. Large-scale work stoppages, however, had proven effective in changing government policies in the past and therefore seemed a more viable tactic, so long as the Soviet Union was not provoked to intervene. Shining Path worked within an impoverished, constitutionally unstable, and often corrupt political system that was rife with racism. Government officials at all levels treated Indians (approximately 40 percent of the population) as second-class citizens. Since the 1920s, elite factions repeatedly ignored liberal democratic constitutions and established dictatorships rather than share power. Confronting an unloved and inefficient political system, Shining Path adopted a strategy of armed struggle and dual power. In West Germany or Poland, such a strategy might seem utopian, but Peru’s constitutional order was not as secure as West Germany’s liberal democratic order nor as efficiently policed as Poland’s Communist order. A gradual replacement of the state with Peoples’ Committees and a prolonged armed struggle seemed a plausible route to effect change. Mexico was an enormous nation-state ruled for decades by a single party that legally and illegally manipulated the electoral process to remain in power. In the 1980s and 1990s, electoral reform was in the air of Mexico

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City and some states along the U.S. border. In Chiapas, however, state-level politics seemed as corrupt as ever and democratization was far from evident (especially during the Castellanos governorship). Popular uprisings— reminiscent of the still widely celebrated Mexican Revolution—and quasi-anarchist self-rule seemed last (but perhaps necessary) resorts against unaccountable rulers. Activists in the four movements chose strategies that appeared reasonable within their political contexts: electoral and parliamentary politics in West Germany; general strikes and factory occupations in pre-1989 Poland; guerrilla warfare and communal self-rule in Peru; and mass uprisings and semi-anarchist experiments in the hinterland of Chiapas. It would be an exaggeration to say that the choices were inevitable. Rather, the nations’ distinctive political contexts “softly” determined certain courses of action as more self-evidently useful than others. Nonelite political activities predated each movement and provided prototypical goals and strategies. But neither the Greens, nor Solidarity, nor Shining Path, nor the EZLN simply repeated previous nonelite politics. Family resemblances, however, were evident. West Germany’s new social movements, squatters’ and spontis’ subcultures, and JUSO experiments with local-level and participatory democracy provided the Greens with activists, critiques of the status quo, and tested political tactics and strategies. Solidarity inherited Poland’s postwar tradition of working-class rebellions against government policies and Polish intellectuals’ experiences with legally scrupulous methods of resistance. Shining Path echoed earlier twentieth-century efforts at guerrilla warfare, land invasions, and, at least since the early days of APRA, armed attacks on state officials. The EZLN drew from Mexico’s guerrilla traditions, which came into vogue after the crackdown on student protest during the 1960s, and from experiments with extrapolitical, self-governing “civil society,” which had become popular throughout Mexico in general and in the jungles of Chiapas in particular. At the same time, each movement’s selection of goals and strategies reflected only a segment of its country’s entire tradition of nonelite politics. Armed struggle, after all, had been part of West German radical politics at least since the formation of terrorist groups in the late 1960s, but it was forgone by Green activists. Solidarity for the most part lacked the ultranationalist, anti-Soviet, and anti-Semitic agendas of such groups as Young Poland Movement and Confederation for an Independent Poland. Shining Path shunned the parliamentary strategies of most of Peru’s Marxist and Aprista parties. The Zapatistas were hostile toward both the PRD’s electoral projects and the Maoists’ persistent lobbying for state services. In short, the leaders of the Greens, Solidarity, Shining Path, and the EZLN selected only some of the various ways that nonelites previously had defied authorities, defined their problems and goals, and fought for their interests; the movements’ politics were not simply recapitulations of each country’s nonelite politics. The movements contained factions that battled over goals, strategies, and tactics. The predominant factional cleavages within the Greens and


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Solidarity changed over time, whereas the sources of ideological disagreement within Shining Path and the EZLN seemed relatively constant. The first major Green factional struggle involved socially and culturally conservative environmentalists, such as Gruhl, who fiercely opposed socialism, feminism, and libertine countercultural values, and ardent profeminist and anticapitalist radicals, such as Dutschke, who wanted to dismantle West Germany’s capitalist order. During the late 1980s the major factional division within the Greens involved the so-called realos, who favored parliamentary coalition building and moderate rhetoric during election campaigns, and the so-called fundamentalists, who distrusted the corruptive potential of government and who favored more revolutionary rhetoric and extraparliamentary mobilizations. Solidarity contained a plethora of ideologies and suborganizations before the declaration of martial law in December 1981. It included advocates of factory councils associated with “Network,” industrial trade-unionists, commercial farmers, civil libertarians, and advocates of greater independence from the Soviet Union. Following the 1989 parliamentary elections, the movement quickly fragmented into political and social organizations with wildly different economic visions. Wa2≈sa’s heavy-handed leadership style also created rifts. Cells within Shining Path disagreed over the usefulness of specific forms of armed struggle—for example, arson, industrial sabotage, the assassination of civilian politicians—and how best to combine violent acts with nonviolent organizing. In various villages, shantytowns, and regions, different mixes of opinion prevailed. Overall, the use of armed tactics was least frequently questioned among activists in the southern Andes and most frequently questioned in Lima. The EZLN’s decision to launch an armed uprising divided the organization. Later, the daily grind of the low-intensity war, electoral isolation from the PRD and other reform groups, and the government’s efforts at cooptation led to additional resignations and desertions. In each movement, national leaders pledged loyalty to democratic values and promoted some democratic procedures and institutions. They also from time to time adopted nondemocratic methods of rule vis-à-vis either rival movement factions or nonmovement political organizations. In their programs the West German Greens, for example, advocated the rank and file’s right to control movement leaders through recall procedures, and limited, nonrenewable terms for any activist elected to a national governmental post. Over time, the Greens’ national leaders jettisoned these procedural checks on their powers and, in the opinion of some of their intramovement opponents, flaunted their autonomy from the movement’s base. Struggles over internal democracy also were visible in Solidarity. Wa2≈sa frequently ignored the views of dissenting groups and acted unilaterally, without consulting other movement activists and governing bodies. Nonetheless, participatory democracy was evident in many of Solidarity’s local and national meetings, where members freely spoke their minds, publicly

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criticized the national leaders’ decisions, and frequently rejected their advice. In Shining Path, Guzmán permitted some differences of opinion. He also endorsed the Peoples’ Committees and Delegates’ Assemblies, which in principle were radically democratic institutions where all popular interests could be heard and nonresponsive representatives could be immediately recalled. There were, still, obvious nondemocratic features in Shining Path politics. Guzmán periodically tried to purge activists whose commitment to armed struggle seemed either lukewarm or undisciplined, and the movement periodically assassinated opposing politicians, soldiers and police, and wealthy citizens. The Zapatistas also showed two faces when it came to political democracy. They constantly belittled Mexican elections and urged citizens to abandon organizations, such as the PRD, that tried to participate in electoral and parliamentary politics. On the other hand, the EZLN hailed the Lacandón tradition of assembly politics and supported self-ruling “autonomous communities” (although the amount of personal freedom within the autonomous communities remains unclear). Thus, democratic and nondemocratic beliefs and practices were evident in all four movements. These contrary tendencies may explain why scholars frequently disagree about the implications for democracy of social movement politics. Depending on specific events and actions that one has in mind, the same movement can appear to embody, promote, destroy, or threaten democratic values. Theoretical Insights and Oversights We have reviewed some parallels and differences between the West German Greens, Solidarity, Shining Path, and the Zapatistas. How does the logic of each postwar theoretical tradition illuminate some features of modern social movements and obscure others? Social Movements and Modernization As noted in chapter 1, immediately after World War II and before the late 1960s, many scholars who studied social movements interpreted them primarily as by-products of a set of worldwide, interconnected, and irreversible social changes called “modernization.” According to modernization theorists, these changes were in many ways beneficial. Even so, they generated feelings of social disorientation, anomie, and loneliness. The feelings were especially acute among newcomers to bustling, large-scale, and industrialized cities and among small farmers, self-employed urban artisans, and owners of small businesses. Reputedly, members of these classes enthusiastically followed movement leaders, who coined ideologies that berated


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modernity, celebrated older lifestyles, and identified convenient scapegoats for citizens’ problems and discomfort. The ideologies prescribed not piecemeal correction of remedial social problems but a radical destruction of the status quo and the reconstitution of past society. In addition, the ideologies provoked movement activists into violating the civil liberties of the scapegoats and physically harming them. The four cases we have examined partly corroborate the first postwar wave of social-movement theorizing. In West Germany, Poland, Peru, and Mexico, rapid social change either immediately preceded or coincided with the formation of the Greens, Solidarity, Shining Path, and the EZLN. The official programs of each movement criticized the types of worldwide, fundamental change that scholars commonly associate with the term modernization, such as rapid industrialization (the Greens), bureaucratic organization of the workplace (Solidarity), commercialization of the countryside (Shining Path), and exposure to transnational market forces (the Zapatistas). Leaders of these movements, moreover, advocated not merely the replacement of political leaders but a root-and-branch transformation of the entire social system. Still, histories of the Green party movement, Solidarity, Shining Path, and EZLN do not completely fit the modernization view of social movements. What are some of the mismatches? First, the modernization paradigm does not include all social and political conditions that coincided with the rise of the Greens, Solidarity, Shining Path, and the EZLN. Government threats to civil liberties and high unemployment among recent college graduates motivated some people to vote for and to join the Greens. Widespread electoral corruption and the absence of state services in the Lacandón jungle played key roles in the development of the EZLN. Increasing hunger and joblessness pushed many people to join Solidarity and Shining Path, as did patriotic opposition to perceived Soviet imperialism (Solidarity) and U.S. imperialism (Shining Path). Modernization, in other words, accounts for only a portion of the social context of these movements; other discernible circumstances and problems played a role as well. Second, the postwar modernization theories exaggerate the amount of social nostalgia in the four movements’ programs. Take the West German Greens. Their federal programs advocated an alternative, radically decentralized economy and numerous soft restrictions on modern consumer habits (for example, by way of regulations concerning advertising) to sustain the environment. The programs, however, neither rejected industrialization in toto nor called for a return to an idealized preindustrial, preliterate, preurban, and precommercial past. Solidarity’s leaders, likewise, were hardly advocates of a back-to-the-countryside movement. Even the programs of Rural Solidarity embraced the commercialization and mechanization of farming. Shining Path activists, admittedly, wanted to protect peasants and farmworkers from commercialization and sometimes coerced rural folk into not exchanging goods in markets and into establishing self-sufficient

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communal economies. These projects, however, never entailed a return to the “good old days” of paternalistic haciendas encircled by impoverished villages. Instead, the activists urged Peru’s rural poor to experiment with nontraditional collective forms of production and distribution. The Zapatistas sometimes spoke about indigenous self-rule. They did not have in mind, however, the ladino-run plantations of the Porfirio years; nor did they endorse the paternalistic system of rule typical of older indigenous communities in highland Chiapas. Moreover, many of the Zapatistas’ demands, such as rights for gays and lesbians, were hardly expressions of longstanding values in the region. All four movements, in short, strongly condemned the status quo, but their policy proposals were much more than a resurrection of premodern social orders. To be sure, there were some conservative wings to each movement (for example, the Gruhl conservatives, who were especially numerous in the formative days of the Greens), but the movements on the whole advocated social innovation. Relative to the third mismatch, close examination of the official programs of the Greens, Solidarity, Shining Path, and the EZLN suggests that the modernization theorists overstated the movements’ use of scapegoats in their explanations for current social problems. The ideologists and leaders of the four movements tended to interpret current conditions in terms not simply of conspiracies but also of impersonal social forces and historical trends, such as the spread of industrial capitalism and Enlightenment thinking (the German Greens), the influence of Soviet-style communism (Solidarity), and international market conditions (Shining Path and the Zapatistas). True, each movement vilified selected members of the political elite, such as SPD leader Schmidt and newspaper mogul Springer in West Germany; PZPR leaders Gierek and Jaruzelski in Poland; PRI leaders Castellanos and Zedillo in Mexico; and prime ministers Belaúnde, García, and Fujimori in Peru. The four movements’ theoreticians, however, saw social problems as solvable only through systematic social change; elimination of disliked individuals would not by itself set the world aright. In summary, the modernization approach to social movements seems a partly accurate but not an entirely valid interpretation of social movements (at least of the four examined). The case studies suggest that movements may indeed be prompted by large-scale social changes, such as industrialization, urbanization, commercialization, and the expansion of international trade. But other social conditions also generate movements, and plans of action encompass much more than vicious attacks on convenient scapegoats. Organizational Resources and Political Opportunities The next wave of postwar theorizing focused on how current political and local social circumstances affect nonelites’ decisions on whether to participate


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in social movements. Participation is a result of cost-benefit reasoning, not of particular types of socially induced suffering. Nonelites join movements not because they are unusually disoriented and lonely—to the contrary, participants tend to be unusually sociable and levelheaded about social situations. Nor do nonelites join because they are victims of unwanted social changes and suddenly feel exploited and disenfranchised. After all, the second-wave theorists argued, nonelites are always exploited and disenfranchised—even in societies characterized by liberal-democratic constitutions and free-market systems. Nonelites join social movements when the perceived benefits of participation outweigh the perceived costs, such as the threat of arrest or of being fired from work. Consequently, to understand the emergence and life spans of social movements, one must study political circumstances and see how the calculus of participation may have changed. In their explanations for nonelites’ decisions to join movements, the second generation of movement theorists has tended to separate into three groups: resource-mobilization theorists, indigenous-community theorists, and political-process theorists. Resource-mobilization theorists argue that nonelites join only if leaders first secure enough resources—such as legal expertise, money, and meeting places—to increase substantially the movement’s chances for success. Indigenous-community theorists contend that nonelites join only if local social institutions, such as churches and recreation clubs, have first supplied the organizational resources necessary for a movement’s success. Such resources range from meeting places to experienced community leaders. Political-process theorists look at constitutional arrangements and intra-elite struggles for conditions that might reduce the costs of movement participation and thereby might induce nonelites to join a movement. Generally speaking, the more repressive and tyrannical the political system, the less likely that nonelites will join. The greater the struggle among elite factions, the more likely that one or more factions will ally themselves with movements and, in turn, the greater the chance that a movement will attract nonelite support. The four cases we examined partly jibe with all three subtypes of secondwave theorizing. Movement activists, such as Kelly, Wa2≈sa, Guzmán, and Marcos, astutely mobilized the resources, including national publicity and foreign supporters, needed for their respective movements to succeed. Local social institutions, such as colleges, squatters’ associations, and the Catholic base communities, provided each movement with valuable resources. And, auspicious elite and constitutional circumstances—say, the desertion of many Jusos from the SPD, the horizontal and revisionist struggles within the PZPR, and the absence of a strong government presence in the southern mountains of Peruvian and the eastern jungles of Chiapas— reduced the costs to nonelites of joining these particular movements. However, the second tradition of theorizing is also deficient in accounting for the rise of the four movements. True, one can identify in hindsight numerous circumstances that, when combined, conceivably reduced the costs to nonelites of joining the Greens, Solidarity, Shining Path, and the

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EZLN. However, one could also cite circumstances that probably raised the costs. Recall, for example, the controversial emergency legislation in West Germany, the PZPR’s harassment of KOR and Solidarity activists even before the declaration of martial law, the suspensions of civil rights and the brutality of the Sinchis in Peru, and the low-intensity war in Chiapas. Once all conceivable circumstances are considered, it becomes much more difficult to assume that movement participation was obviously less costly than nonparticipation in the eyes of nonelites. Moreover, it becomes more plausible that other, less prudential motivations—such as moral outrage over economic inequality or a thirst for revenge after experiencing state repression—played important roles in people’s decisions to join these movements. In addition, the second-wave theorizing is somewhat disappointing because of its narrow thematic focus. Its hypotheses address few of the many facts that we uncovered about each movement and ignore many potentially interesting topics. Factions, for example, were quite visible in all four movements, and leaders endlessly struggled, with varying success, to unify the colliding groups. The hypotheses, however, say surprisingly little about intramovement politics. Resource-mobilization theorists, for example, concentrate on how movement leaders scrounge resources outside a movement. Indigenous-community and political-process theorists likewise emphasize how the social and political environment of a movement generates support and do not analyze movements’ internal decision-making processes, structures of authority, or patterns of rebellion and contestation. Another blind spot in the second wave of movement theorizing has to do with leaders’ periodically autocratic decision-making styles. Such behavior deserves detailed interpretation and systematic explanation but receives neither in the second-generation literature. Finally, the second-generation theories, perhaps because they are centered almost exclusively on the costs and benefits of joining social movements, say relatively little about the origins of social movements’ ideologies. Why are some widely held goals, values, and strategies embraced by a movement and others rejected? Why, for example, did the leaders of Shining Path embrace the notion of prolonged armed struggle when so many other Peruvian radicals had not?1 Similarly, why did the EZLN repeatedly reject partisan politics and elections, when many contemporaries on the Mexican left supported the PRD and electoral reform? Identity-Formation Theory The problem of ideology leads us to the third wave of social-movement theorizing: the identity-formation approach. This approach rests on a simple assumption: people’s actions are structured by deeply held beliefs. Nonelites construct their beliefs in at least two ways. Either they develop ideas autonomously in local social institutions, such as churches, quilting


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bees, and coffeehouses, and then bring these ideas to a movement (the autonomous popular-culture thesis), or they acquire new beliefs while participating in movements and partaking of their countercultural milieus (the autonomous movement-culture thesis). Some aspects of the Greens, Solidarity, Shining Path, and the EZLN correlate with the basic logic of identity-formation theory. As autonomous popular-culture theorists might expect, many movement activists had previously participated in other social groups and institutions, such as peace marches, religious organizations, and college political clubs. There, they developed many of the goals and strategies that they later would pursue via movement politics. In addition, as autonomous movement-culture theorists might expect, many activists developed and acquired new beliefs. The post-1981 conversion of many of Solidarity’s national leaders to free-market beliefs and the increasingly international orientation of the Zapatistas perhaps best exemplify this phenomenon. Although these findings seem compatible with scenarios commonly found in identity-formation writings, the historical record once again does not fully match the theory. Although there are numerous cases of nonelites forming deeply held political beliefs before joining a movement and then consistently acting on those beliefs later (Guzmán may be a good example of this process), counterexamples abound. Recall, for example, the former spontis and Jusos who joined the Greens after shedding previous, presumably deeply held political beliefs. Here, ideological discontinuity seems as striking as continuity. So, are activists’ actions shaped primarily by longstanding and deeply held beliefs, or are the activists’ political beliefs more temporary and contingent than identity-formation theorists commonly assume? The image of movements as sites of unfettered “free thought” also seems unsatisfactory once we have closely examined the historical record. True, heated ideological debates occurred in all four movements and, from national elites’ perspectives, the movements were hothouses of heresy. But there also were limits as to what notions members could explore without fearing consequences. Although partly havens from conventional ways of looking at society, the movements were also places where leaders strove to discipline thinking. The Greens’ Federal Executive Board, Wa2≈sa, Guzmán, and Subcomandante Marcos all endeavored to silence dissenters and browbeat ideological mavericks. The movements were, paradoxically, ideologically open and closed. Identity-formation theories, in addition, overlook several questions about movements’ popular appeal that we might want to ask. For example, why do some movement programs and ideologies resonate among the population at large and others not? And why did levels of electoral and popular support for our movements fluctuate so greatly over a few years? (Why, for instance, did Solidarity’s electoral fortunes plummet between 1989 and 1993—a period of only four years? And why did the Greens’ electoral fortunes rise in the early 1980s, fall in the late 1980s, and then rise

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again?) To explain shifts in popular support for a movement, one probably must go beyond microlevel analysis of the origins of activists’ goals and strategies and look at nonelites’ shifting attitudes, which may be products of emotion, temperament, and short-term prudence (not only thought and conviction) and which also may be responses to political events and developments. Finally, identity-formation theorists have thus far failed to explain how leaders in a large movement manage to unite members with diverse deeply held beliefs. How, for example, did leaders in the Greens temporarily reconcile the clashing views of the realos and fundis? How did Guzmán manage to unite the ideologically distinctive Ayacucho and Lima factions? And how did Wa2≈sa keep the ideologically diverse Solidarity movement unified for more than a decade? To explain how leaders unite activists who have logically discordant belief systems, it is necessary to think explicitly about power struggles, expedient compromises, and the art of rhetoric. Toward a Fourth Generation of Social-movement Theorizing? We have found that each postwar tradition of movement theorizing matches and explains some of the historical records, distorts some aspects, and fails altogether to account for some key developments. This is not surprising. One purpose of theory is to make our innumerable experiences understandable and manageable through a few convenient and valid generalizations. This condensing of experience necessarily entails omission and distortion. Stated differently, there is always a tension between the useful simplicity of a theory and the complexity of experience that the theory tries to sum up. Sometimes we are tempted to relinquish a theory solely because it fails to represent all aspects of reality. To do so is hasty and unwise. We need simplifying theories—to paraphrase Tocqueville, only God has no need of generalizations. Without theories, we would have no way of organizing our myriad observations, venturing predictions, or giving meaning to our actions. Instead of relinquishing theories because they simplify, which is one of their primary virtues, we should keep them but also be aware of their insights and limitations. In addition, we should supplement our store of generalizations by constructing new theories that address known oversights. One recurrent blind spot in postwar traditions of social-movement theory involves internal politics. Early modernization theorists seldom, if ever, portrayed movements as containing rival wings, currents, and factions that continually jostle with one another and that leaders must somehow reconcile. The second generation of theorists also seldom looked closely at ongoing factional struggles within movements or at how leaders find common ground among a movement’s ideologically disparate parts.


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Identity-formation theorists differ in their sensitivity to the amount of cultural diversity and conflict within a social movement. Some writers, such as Snow and Benford (1992), explore how identifiable movement leaders rally followers behind a common vision and program. Other writers, among them Marc Steinberg (2002) and Nancy Naples (2002), downplay the integrative activities of specific leaders and argue, instead, that a common movement outlook, or “collective identity,” arises spontaneously as anonymous local activists explore alternative ways of making sense of circumstances, share their ideas with other movement members, modify one another’s notions, and gradually reach agreement as to their plight and what to do about it. Both types of identity-formation theorists are fascinated by the emergence of consensus within a movement (even if they disagree as to the processes by which consensus is attained). Meanwhile the inevitability, the extent, and the intensity of continual intramovement clashes are downplayed, if not ignored. How, then, to begin theorizing about intramovement struggles? One modest proposal is to reexamine older political theories. They may provide some suggestive starting points. For example, Machiavelli’s maxims about a new prince’s dilemmas and alternatives, and Lenin’s analyses of the demands and dilemmas of revolutionary vanguards might help us ponder more systematically the nature of movement leadership. Aristotle’s and Marx’s classifications of divergent class interests, descriptions of the multiple forms of class struggle, and arguments about the fragility of inter-class alliances might help us formulate generalizations about the centrifugal forces haunting modern movements. Stories about Moses’ handling of rebellious “murmuring” in Exodus, which some political theorists have creatively used to make sense of twentieth-century revolutionary regimes (Walzer 1985), may similarly provide insights as to the sequence of factional struggles that movements undergo. The reflections in The Peloponnesian War, The Federalist Papers, and The English Constitution about the advantages and dangers of different decision-making processes could be used as a springboard for a systematic investigation of alternative patterns of intramovement governance. In short, one might find in classical political theory stories, concepts, and themes that can help us make sense of politics within social movements. Rummaging in the reflections of politically engaged writers—from Thucydides to Rosa Luxemburg—may be a desirable first move if we decide to make sense not only of the economic, social, and political contexts and ideological components of social movements but also of their internal fights and adjustments. The development of a fourth theoretical approach—one that focuses on (1) the plural viewpoints, material interests, and political ambitions that exist within any movement; and (2) the methods that leaders and other members use to reduce friction among activists and to promote temporary unity—would enhance our understanding of social movements in at least two ways. First, close examination of disputes would induce us to note the

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contingent, ambiguous, and tentative nature of many movement decisions and would dissuade us from presuming that movements must be fixed in their programs and activities—a mistake often made in journalistic accounts of contemporary movements. We would become more aware of the dynamic nature of movements’ aims and plans of action, of the sorts of twists and turns in goals and strategies that we observed in the cases of the Greens, Solidarity, Shining Path, and the Zapatistas. Second, greater sensitivity to intramovement political processes would aid our thinking about the ways that movement participation educates nonelites about political conflict and thereby indirectly shapes a society’s political culture. We know that people acquire many politically relevant beliefs, skills, and values through small-scale interactions in formal and informal social settings, such as schools, workplaces, and churches (Almond and Verba 1963; Pateman 1970; Verba 1961). Movements provide yet another classroom where nonelites can acquire a perspective on conflict that can later be used in other political contexts. The content of activists’ education can vary greatly; through processes of struggle and reconciliation, movement activists might learn democratic norms, but they might also be trained in authoritarian practices. What a participant learns depends in part on the specific methods that leaders of the movement use to forge agreement among members, and in part on the methods that factions and cliques in the movement use to advance their distinctive aims. The time may have come for us to develop a fourth postwar theoretical tradition (for convenience, let us call it a “discord” approach)2 that explicates intramovement struggles and borrows themes from classic political theory. A new approach,3 by emphasizing disagreement and divisions within movements and the efforts by leaders to forge unity, would complement the insights of already established theoretical approaches but would ask questions about phenomena that are now often overlooked. Previous waves of theorizing invited us to think systematically about (1) the relationships between movements and worldwide social changes; (2) the political resources, political opportunities, and strategic choices facing social movements; and (3) the multiple beliefs and cultural creativity of movement activists. The discord approach would draw our attention to the clashing rhetoric, priorities, interests, and decisions of different factions and circles. We would notice both leaders’ initiatives and dissenters’ resistance. Each social movement would appear polymorphous, with multiple, competing personalities and lines of development. Robert Park in the early twentieth century posed the question “Do modern social movements contribute to the emergence of democracy?” Since then, many alternative answers have been advanced. A discord approach would not enable a person to discover a simple answer to this question. One would see instead social movements as constantly evolving yet transforming—as they are internally dialectical—and therefore bearing multiple legacies for future generations.

NOTES

Recent Traditions in Social-Movement Theorizing 1. Other scholars who define social movements in terms of a group’s deliberate attempt to remake society include Goldberg (1991), Killian (1964), and Morris (1984). Piven (1976: 300–1), however, contends that the concept of social movement should not stress participants’ plans for radical social change. She concedes that her usage departs from scholarly norms and is somewhat idiosyncratic. 2. Social-movement theorists are not of one mind as to whether to view transient mobs, local street gangs, and unorganized riots as social movements. Piven (1976) is convinced that the term social movement should refer in part to these phenomena. Jenkins (1981: 82–3) excludes them. I am of mixed opinion but tend to agree with Jenkins. 3. Many of these authors feared both right-wing movements and Soviet communism. They were much more ambivalent (if not sympathetic) toward movements committed to democratic and social democratic goals. See, for example, Lipset (1950) on Saskatchewan’s Cooperative Commonwealth Federation and Arendt (1965) on local experiments in participatory democracy during the French and American revolutions. Because this chapter is a brief survey of social-movement theorizing over a half century, I have oversimplified some authors’ complex positions in order to highlight commonalities. In reality, scholars seldom work from a single theoretical script and frequently combine diverse viewpoints and approaches—often in highly creative ways. For present purposes (introducing readers unfamiliar with social-movement scholarship to its major themes, concepts, and points of view), the identification of specific authors and publications with archetypical positions seems heuristically justifiable and pedagogically wise. 4. For additional discussions of social-movement theorizing immediately following World War II, see Eyerman and Jamison (1991), Halebsky (1976), Jenkins (1981), McAdam (1982), Morris and Herring (1981), Rogin (1967), Rule (1988), and Scott (1990). 5. Cohn (1961) crafted perhaps the most famous reinterpretation of Christian millenarianism in terms of a crisis of modernity. For critiques of interpretations of the French Revolution and the U.S. Populist movement in terms of “the mob” and “anomie,” see Rogin (1967) and Rudé (1959). 6. This label was inspired by Morris’s (1984) description of his own approach to the study of the civil rights movement. 7. The label “political-process approach” became widely used after the publication of McAdam’s seminal book (1982). For a study of Latin American politics that foreshadows some of McAdam’s reasoning, see Powell (1971). For a creative application of McAdam’s political-process approach to a social movement with international dimensions, see Smith (1991). 8. In choosing this label, I am slightly modifying Cohen’s (1985) insightful distinction between “identity-oriented” and “resource-mobilization” theories about social movements. 9. Eyerman and Jamison (1991) coined the evocative phrase “cognitive praxis” to convey the role activists’ innovative language and thinking play in shaping movement activity. 10. Apter and Sawa’s study of protest politics in Japan looks both at popular culture at large and at cultural creativity within the anti-airport movement. Hence, I cite their book as an illustration of both subtypes of identity-formation theorizing.

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Notes

11. The literature on popular culture and social movements is vast and rapidly growing. Since the composition of the first edition of this book in the mid-1990s, several approaches, ranging from “framing analysis” to “dialogic analysis” to the analysis of “free spaces,” have either come into being or have been developed in novel directions. Limitations of space prevent me from elaborating on these approaches, but interested readers are encouraged to read reviews of the literature on movement culture by Goodwin and Jasper (1999), Polletta (1997, 1999), Swidler (1995), Steinberg (1998), and Payerhin and Zirakzadeh (2006). 12. See, for example, Penn’s (2005) retelling of the history of Solidarity from an explicitly feminist theoretical perspective and Kampwirth’s (2002) similarly insightful study of Latin American guerrilla movements in terms of women’s social experiences. Clearly, the theoretical lenses one puts on affect how one sees a social movement; every theory helps bring some important details into focus, while albeit inescapably obscuring others.

A World to Be Remade: Sociopolitical Circumstances of Green Politics 1. For histories of Germany’s occupation, see Black et al. (1992: 54–95) and Rogers (1995). See Hancock (1989) and Pulzer (1995) for highly readable introductions to the political history of postwar West Germany. 2. For more information on post-war labor policies and politics in West Germany, see Hancock (1989), Katzenstein (1987: 125–67), Markovits (1982), and Markovits and Allen (1989). 3. For discussions of West German parties’ consensus on economic policy, incrementalism in West German economic policy-making, and the SPD’s struggles to develop an alternative economic program, see Dyson (1989), Esser, Fach, and Dyson (1983), Hancock (1993), Katzenstein (1987, 1989), and Padgett (1987). 4. For a comprehensive discussion of West Germany’s parties and party system, see Padgett and Burkett (1986).

Clashing Shades of Green 1. See, for example, Fogt (1989), Frankland and Schoonmaker (1992), Hill (1985), Hülsberg (1988), Markovits and Gorksi (1993), and Roth and Murphy (1998). 2. Scholarly research has shown that the public taunting and mutual suspicions are bitter memories for numerous former Greens, who, when interviewed, looked back on their days in the party-movement with ambivalence, disappointment, and in some cases even hatred (Markovits and Gorski 1993: 229–33, 273). 3. For additional analyses of the Greens’ performances in the 1993–1995 elections, see Betz (1995), Braunthal (1995), Green (1995), Markovits and Dalton (1995), and Roberts (1995). For statistics on the Greens’ earlier electoral performances, see Frankland and Schoonmaker (1992: 70–1). For an analysis of Green voting patterns at the very end of the century, see Lees (2000: 89–98) and Mez (1998). 4. For histories and analyses of the SPD-Green coalition, see Hyde-Price (2003: 189–205), Lees (2000: 61–141), Rüdig (2002; 2003: 257–68), and Smith (2003).

A World to Be Remade: Sociopolitical Circumstances of Solidarity 1. For a highly readable introduction to Polish economic and political history, see Ascherson (1987). 2. For further discussions of the revisionists and revisionism, see Ascherson (1987: 156–7, 166–9), Bernhard (1993: 8–9, 38–41, 86–9), Karpi†ski (1987: 49–50), Michnik (1985: 135–48), Ost (1990: 39–53), and Singer (1982: 161–2).

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3. For analyses of Soviet foreign policy vis-à-vis Poland in the late 1970s and early 1980s, see Anderson (1982), Bromke (1978: 38, 50–1), Goldman (1986), and Wozniuk (1986).

Political Antecedents 1. For a useful introduction to Polish labor history, see Laba (1991). 2. For discussions of Polish intellectuals’ involvement in oppositional politics from the 1950s until 1980, see Bernhard (1993), Bromke (1978), Ost (1990), and Zuzowski (1991). 3. Nowak (1982) has written a history of the evolving oppositional politics of Poland’s Catholic Church after World War II. Additional information about the church and Polish politics can be found in Ascherson (1987), Bernhard (1993), Garton Ash (1991), Kubik (1994), Laba (1991: 83–7, 153), Singer (1982: 189–93, 233), and Starski (1982: 30, 219–24).

Discord within Solidarity 1. Accounts of the Gda†sk strike may be found in Garton Ash (1991: 41–72), Goodwyn (1991), Persky (1981: 3–24, 58–135), Singer (1982: 217–31), and Starski (1982: 57–92). 2. For detailed descriptions of both the diverse social and political viewpoints within the trade union and the recurrent conflicts between proponents of the different viewpoints, see Garton Ash (1991: 73–272), Starski (1982: 199–217, 247–8), and Touraine et al. (1983). 3. For additional descriptions of the Bydgoszcz crisis, see Garton Ash (1991: 154–74), Goodwyn (1991: 293–8), and Persky (1981: 197–214). 4. For additional information about martial law in Poland and its impact on Solidarity, see 1opi†ski, Moskit, and Wilk (1990), Millard (1994: 18–23), Ost (1990: 149–60), Penn (2005: 88–234), and Weschler (1984: 97–204, 225–32). 5. For more details on the PZPR’s reform initiatives in the late 1980s, see Brown (1991: 83–6) and Ost (1990: 160–3, 169–82). 6. For additional information on the roundtable negotiations, see Kowalik (1994: 136–7), Millard (1994: 56–63), Ost (1990: 206–7, 211–12), and Zubek (1991a: 359–65). 7. More information on the 1989 election may be found in Garton Ash (1993: 25–46), Glenn (2001: 102–29), Grabowski (1996: 220–4), Millard (1994: 64–70), and Zubek (1991a: 361–76). 8. For further details and anecdotes about the presidential campaign of 1990, see Millard (1994: 84, 119–32), Weschler (1990: 120–36), and Zubek (1991b; 1992). 9. For more information on the 1991 parliamentary election and parliamentary politics between 1991 and 1993, see Millard (1994: 92–3, 132–40), Weschler (1992: 73–7), and Zubek (1993). 10. Analyses of the 1993 parliamentary election may be found in Marody (1995), Millard (1994: 140–3), Wade et al. (1995), and Zubek (1995). 11. For analyses of the 1995 presidential election, see Garton Ash (1995) and Taras (1996).

A World to Be Remade: Sociopolitical Circumstances of Shining Path 1. For an example of early anti-imperialist literature and rhetoric in Peru, see Mariátegui (1971), originally published in 1928 and considered by many to be a classic in Latin American social theory. 2. For descriptions and analyses of the military coup and subsequent revolutionary regime, see McClintock (1981), Rudolph (1992: 53–76), and Stepan (1978). 3. Convenient chronologies and analyses of Belaúnde’s economic policies may be found in Pastor and Wise (1992), Rudolph (1992: 77–99), and Werlich (1984). 4. For discussions of García’s economic policies, see Crabtree (1992), Pastor and Wise (1992), Rudolph (1992: 101–50), and Wise (1986). 5. For descriptions and analyses of Fujimori’s economic programs and beliefs, see Andreas and Sharpe (1992), Kenney (2004), Gonzales de Olarte (1993), McClintock (1993), and Werlich (1991).

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Notes Political Antecedents

1. This is not to deny that radicals attempted to organize members of pueblos jovenes into more radical movements. But by and large the efforts failed to bear fruit. For observations on the extent of clientelism in the urban squatter communities, see Stokes (1991a, b; 1995) and Petras and Havens (1981b).

Diverse Directions along the Shining Path 1. For descriptions of Shining Path debates prior to 1983 over strategy and tactics, see Gorriti (1999: 23–32, 64–7, 178–87). 2. Estimates of the number of activists in Shining Path during the mid-1980s usually vary between 2,000 and 20,000, and the number seems to have grown quickly toward the end of the decade (McClintock 1998: 72, 74–5, 342). The Peruvian government in the late 1980s typically contended that Shining Path had around 5,000 members, while the movement reported that it had 15,000 members. Observers concur that a minority of participants in Shining Path are combatants (McClintock 1989: 63). For example, Ron (2001: 569) estimates that in the early 1990s, 10,000 members of Shining Path were “full-time fighters” while an additional 50,000–100,000 members were noncombatants. 3. Analyzing interviews by her research team with 33 former and current rank-and-file Shining Path activists, McClintock (1998: 71) was struck by the activists’ lack of knowledge about the movement’s leadership and its ideas and preferences. The gap between Sendero’s leadership and the rankandfile was especially evident among activists recruited from the peasantry. McClintock (1998: 277) reports of the six interviewed peasants, “none appeared to know Guzmán . . . and none expressed awe for Guzmán.” 4. For reminiscences by a navy veteran on the security forces’ treatment of Andean Indians ( whom the soldiers derogatorily called cholos, or “brown-skinned people”), see Pancho (1995). 5. For more on splits within Shining Path following the arrest of Guzmán, see Basombrío (1999: 205–6, 220, 222), Burt and Ricci (1994), Izaguirre (1996), McClintock (1999: 223, 243), and Palmer (2000: 61, 63).

A World to Be Remade: Sociopolitical Circumstances of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation 1. See MacLachlan and Beezley (1999: 86–210) for an introduction to the political history of Mexico prior to the Mexican Revolution. 2. There is no scholarly consensus on how to date the beginning or the end of the “Mexican Revolution.” Many students of Mexican politics associate the disputed presidential election of 1910 as its beginning, but anthropologist Eric Wolf (1969: 1–48), among others, cites the social uprisings of the previous decade. The Constitution of 1917 in a sense marks the formal end of the revolution, but fighting, assassinations, and uprisings continued for many years. Historian Michael Gonzales (2002), for one, sees the Revolution as continuing until 1940 and includes in his study of it a 1924–1928 insurrection (known as the Cristero rebellion) and Cárdenas’s vigorous application of the Constitution’s socialist provisions during the 1930s. Historian John Hart (1997), on the other hand, seems to view the Revolution more narrowly, ending in the mid-1920s. 3. For an explication of the Technocrats’ economic reasoning and policy positions, see Centeno (1997: 175–228). 4. For introductions to the economic and political history of Chiapas—especially the eastern half of the state, where the Zapatista movement attracted its largest followings—see Collier (1994), McGee (2002), Rus, Mattiace, and Hernández Castillo (2003) Stephen (2002: 91–102), and Womack (1999).

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Political Antecedents 1. For more on the geography of interest-group politics within Chiapas, see Collier (1994: 41, 69–76), Leyva Solano (2003: 163–4, 174), and Womack (1999:33–8, 162–4, 184–5).

Wanderings of Zapata’s Ghost 1. For an overview of armed groups in Mexico after 1968, see Hodges and Gandy (2002: 146–55, 173–86). 2. See Collier (1994) and Harvey (1998) for more extensive discussions of the many reform and revolutionary groups in Chiapas between 1965 and 1994. 3. For descriptions of Mexican Maoists, the history of Maoist organizations within Chiapas, and differences between Maoists and the EZLN, see Collier (1994: 37–87), Harvey (1998: 79–90, 124–5), La Botz (1995: 31–9), Ross (2000: 6, 37), Stephen (2002: 119–20), Weinberg (2000: 35, 179, 282), and Womack (1999: 173–81). 4. Surveys of popular political actions that followed the January 1994 attacks can be found in Weinberg (2000: 110–11, 113–16), Ross (2000: 39–40, 46–7, 58–9, 65), and Womack (1999: 45–6). 5. Indian rights was a controversial topic within Chiapas, where multiple linguistic traditions still thrive. There has been little agreement on the proper scale of indigenous self-government (what should be the relevant unit: a village? a county? a region?) or on how best to deal with multiethnic communities. Further, some indigenous communities understandably fear that autonomy could become a pretext for governmental neglect and abandonment. For more on this complex topic, see Mattiace (2003) and Leyva Solano (2003). 6. For detailed descriptions of the autonomous communities from three perspectives, see Burgete Cal y Mayor (2003), Preston and Dillon (2004: 441–60), and Ross (2000: 217–19, 235–8, 266–70, 275–6). 7. Low turnouts in most of the central and eastern countryside, where the Zapatistas enjoyed significant support and called for boycotts of elections, may have hurt the PRD during the late 1990s. Scholars, however, are not in agreement that the low turnouts were caused primarily by the Zapatistas’ call for boycotts (and not by other factors). For two different (but not necessarily incompatible) views on the impact of the EZLN boycotts on the PRD’s fortunes, see Mattiace (2003: 126) and Rus and Collier (2003: 55). For a sympathetic explanation of the EZLN’s boycott strategy, see Paulson (2001: 284–5). 8. Collier (1994) analyses the geographically uneven support for the EZLN within Chiapas and offers a political and economic explanation for why the EZLN has limited appeal outside the Lacandón jungle. For a description of how the EZLN’s security measures over time corroded its support within the Lacandón jungle (as villagers increasingly found the EZLN’s military norms a cultural strain), see Stephen (2002: 173). 9. For a systematic comparison of ERP and the EZLN, see Bruhn (1999). 10. Even though the top officers within the EZLN spoke before outsiders about the need to protect the rights of homosexuals, rank-and-file Zapatistas in Chiapas often did not understand the notion of lesbianism and, when pressed by foreign journalists and scholars, insisted that such forms of intimacy were absent from Chiapas. Likewise, the list of women’s rights in the Zapatista pamphlet “The Mexican Alarm Clock” was never seriously pressed in negotiations with the state (Kampwirth 2002: 106–7, 112–14). As Kampwirth notes (2002: 107), “Such accounts suggest the need for caution when interpreting official Zapatista communiqués, and for a realization that there are many versions of the Zapatista agenda.”

From History to Theory 1. See Ron (2001) for a thoughtful discussion of the limits of resource-mobilization and political-process theories to explain Sendero Luminoso’s tactics and reasoning. 2. Barker and Lavalette’s study of Liverpool dockworkers illustrates what I call the discord approach (or what they call “contention about contention” (2002: 143)).

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NAME

INDEX

Adam, Barry D., 131 Aguilar Camín, Hector, 181 Alber, Jens, 63, 65 Allen, Christopher S., 246n2 Anderson, Richard D. Jr., 247n3 Andreas, Peter R., 247n5 Apter, David E., 245n10 Arendt, Hannah, 6, 7, 254n3 Ascherson, Neal, 85, 246n1, 246n2, 247n3

Eckersly, Robyn, 66 Eichner, Klaus, 47 Esser, Josef, 246n3 Eyerman, Ron, 245n4, 245n9

Barker, Colin, 249n2 Basombrío, Carlos, 248n5 Benford, Robert D., 243 Bennett, Vivienne, 205 Berg, Ronald H., 166 Bernhard, Michael H., 246n2, 247n2, 247n3 Betz, Hans-George, 246n3 Biezenski, Robert, 112 Black, Cyril, 246n1 Braunthal, Gerard, 246n3 Breezley, William H., 248n1 Brinton, Crane, 5 Bromke, Adam, 247n2, 247n3 Brown, James F., 247n5 Bruhn, Kathleen, 249n9 Burguete Cal y Mayor, Araceli, 249n6 Burkett, Tony, 246n4 Bürklin, Wilhelm, 65 Burt, Jo-Marie, 171, 248n5

Gamson, William, 4 Gandy, Ross, 249n1 Garton Ash, Timothy, 125, 247n3 (Chapter 5), 247n1, 247n2, 247n3, 247n7, 247n11 Glenn, John K. III, 247n7 Goldberg, Robert A., 245n1 Goldman, Minton F., 247n3 Gonzales, Michael J., 248n2 Gonzales de Olarte, Efraín, 247n5 Goodwin, Jeff, 246n11 Goodwyn, Lawrence, 15, 78, 92, 247n1, 247n3 Gorritti, Gustavo, 248n1 Gorski, Philip S., 34, 52, 66, 246n1, 246n2 Grabowski, Tomek, 247n7 Green, Simon, 246n3 Guttman, Matthew C., 198

Cadena-Roa, Jorge, 198 Castells, Manuel, 153 Centeno, Miguel Ángel, 182, 248n3 Chong, Dennis, 4 Cohen, Jean L., 245n8 Cohn, Norman, 245n5 Collier, George A., 248n4, 249n1, 249n2, 249n3, 249n7, 249n8 Cooper, Alice, 47 Cornelius, Wayne A., 11 Costain, Anne N., 12 Crabtree, John, 168, 247n4 Dalton, Russell J., 246n3 Degregori, Carlos Ivan, 165 del Pino, Ponciano, 172 Dillon, Samuel, 191, 249n6 Dyson, Kenneth, 246n3

Fogt, Helmut, 246n1 Foweraker, Joe, 12 Frankland, E. Gene, 32, 41, 246n1, 246n3 Fromm, Eric, 6

Halebsky, Sandor, 245n4 Hancock, M. Donald, 246n1, 246n2, 246n3 Handelman, Howard, 187 Hart, John, 248n2 Harvey, Neil, 191, 249n2, 249n3 Havens, A. Eugene, 248n1 Hellman, Judith Adler, 194, 223 Herring, Cedric, 245n4 Hernández Castillo, Rosalva Aída, 211, 428n4 Hill, Phil, 246n1 Hodges, Donald, 249n1 Hoffer, Eric, 3, 6, 7 Holmes, Kim, 34 Hülsberg, Werner, 34, 246n1 Hyde-Price, Adrian, 246n4 Inglehart, Ronald, 65 Izaguirre, Carlos Reyna, 248n5 Jamison, Andrew, 245n4, 245n9 Jasper, James M., 246n11

266

Name Index

Jenkins, J. Craig, 4, 245n2, 245n4 Joppke, Christian, 70 Kampwirth, Karen, 246n12, 249n10 Karpi†ski, Jakub, 246n2 Katzenstein, Peter J., 246n2, 246n3 Kenney, Charles D., 247n5 Killian, Lewis, 254n1 Kitschelt, Herbert, 65 Kolinsky, Eva, 64 Kornhauser, William, 6 Kowalik, Tadeusz, 247n6 Kubik, Jan, 247n3 La Botz, Dan, 249n3 Landman, Todd, 12 Laba, Roman, 92, 247n1, 247n3 Lavalette, Michael, 249n2 Lees, Charles, 73, 246n3, 246n4 Leyva Solano, Xóchitl, 249n1, 249n5 Lipset, Seymour Martin, 6, 245n3 Lopi†ski, Maciej, 247n4 MacLachlan, Colin M., 248n1 Mariátegui, José Carlos, 247n1 Markovits, Andrei S., 34, 52, 66, 70, 246n2 (Chapter 2), 246n1, 246n2, 246n3 Marody, Mira, 247n10 Mattiace, Shannan L., 211, 248n4, 249n5, 249n7 McAdam, Doug, 4, 12, 245n4, 245n7 McClintock, Cynthia, 133, 152, 247n2, 247n5, 248n3, 248n5 McGee, R. Jon, 248n4 Mewes, Horst, 43 Meyer, Lorenzo, 181 Mez, Lutz, 246n3 Michnik, Adam, 246n2 Migdal, Joel S., 12, 174 Millard, Frances, 247n4, 247n6, 247n7, 247n8, 247n9, 247n10 Morris, Aldon D., 11, 245n1, 245n4, 245n6 Moskit, Marcin, 247n4 Murphy, Detlef, 246n1 Mushaben, Joyce Marie, 65 Naples, Nancy A., 243 Nowak, Jan, 247n3 Offe, Claus, 66 Ost, David, 120, 128, 246n2, 247n2, 247n4, 247n5, 247n6 Owen Smith, Eric, 27 Quijano Obregón, Aníbal, 133 Padgett, Stephen, 246n3, 246n4 Palmer, David Scott, 248n5 Pancho, 248n4 Park, Robert E., 5–6, 244 Pastor, Manuel, 139, 247n3, 247n4 Paulson, Justin, 223, 249n7 Payerhin, Marek, 246n11

Penn, Shana, 246n12, 247n4 Persky, Stan, 247n1, 247n3 Petras, James, 248n1 Piven, Frances Fox, 4, 245n1, 245n2 Polletta, Francesca, 246n11 Powell, John Duncan, 12, 245n7 Preston, Julia, 191, 249n6 Pulzer, Peter, 246n1 Ricci, José L., 248n5 Roberts, Geoffrey K., 246n3 Rogers, Daniel E., 246n1 Rogin, Michael Paul, 245n4, 245n5 Ron, James, 171, 248n2, 249n1 Ross, John, 249n3, 249n6 Roth, Roland, 246n1 Rudé, George, 245n5 Rüdig, Wolfgang, 246n4 Rudolf, James D., 247n2, 247n3, 247n4 Rus, Jan, 248n4, 249n7 Sawa, Nagayo, 245n10 Schlesinger, Arthur M., 6 Schoonmaker, Donald, 32, 41, 246n1, 246n3 Scott, Alan, 245n4 Sharpe, Kenneth E., 247n5 Sheahan, John, 133 Singer, Daniel, 246n2, 247n1, 247n3 Skidmore, Thomas E., 133, 140, 182 Smith, Christian, 12 Smith, Gordon, 246n4 Smith, Peter H., 133, 140, 182 Snow, David A., 243 Starski, Stanislaw, 247n1, 247n2, 247n3 Steinberg, Marc W., 243, 246n11 Stepan, Alfred, 247n2 Stephan, Lynn, 249n3, 249n8 Stokes, Susan C., 248n1 Swidler, Ann, 246n11 Taras, Ray, 247n11 Tarrow, Sidney, 131 Tilly, Charles, 11, 131 Touraine, Alain, 247n2 Wade, Larry L., 247n10 Weinberg, Bill, 249n3, 249n4 Werlich, David P., 137, 247n3, 247n5 Weschler, Lawrence, 119, 121, 247n4, 247n8, 247n9 West, Cornel, 4 Wilk, Mariusz, 247n4 Wilson, John, 4 Wise, Carol, 139, 247n3, 247n4 Wolfgang, Fach, 246n3 Womack, John, 190, 191, 206, 212, 248n4, 249n1, 249n3, 249n4 Wozniuk, Vladimir, 247n3 Zirakzadeh, Cyrus Ernesto, 246n11 Zubek, Voytek, 247n6, 247n7, 247n8, 247n9, 247n10 Zuzowski, Robert, 247n2

SUBJECT

Allende, Salvador as ideal in Mexican politics, 199 Amazon basin economy of, 134, 135, 143–4 Shining Path in, 167–8, 174 American Revolutionary Popular Alliance (APRA) armed action by, 147, 148, 234 populist programs of, 138–140, 145–6, 147–8 see also García Pérez, Alan; Haya de la Torre, Víctor Raúl Andes economy of, 134, 135, 140, 142–3, 154, 169 Shining Path activity in, 164–7, 174 anti-nuclear movement in France, 50 in Germany, 42–3, 45–6, 47–8, 49–51, 58, 68–9 APO see Extraparliamentary Movement APRA see American Revolutionary Popular Alliance autonomous movement-culture approach see second wave of social-movement theorizing autonomous popular-culture approach see second wave of social-movement theorizing Ayacucho economic conditions in, 143 repression in, 164–5 Shining Path activities in, 156, 160, 162, 164, 174 see also National University of San Cristóbal de Huamanga Beddermann, Carl, 50, 51 Baden-Württemberg Green ecolibertarian strongholds in, 59 party-movement experiments in, 54 social movements in, 45 Bavaria Greens in, 64 party-movement experiments in, 54 Berlin Greens in, 59, 63 party-movement experiments in, 51, 53, 54, 55 social movements in, 37, 38, 39, 40 Bremen Greens in, 63, 71 party-movement experiments in, 52 Britain foreign policies of, 21–4, 29–30, 78–9

INDEX

Mexican economy and, 178 Peruvian economy and, 134 Castellanos Domínguez, Absalón see Chiapas Catholic Church German politics and, 35 Mexican politics and, 183, 202–4, 210, 214 Peruvian politics and, 152–3, 154, 157, 165, 166–7, 203 Polish politics and, 80, 81, 82–3, 85, 96–7, 98, 100, 104, 109, 110, 111, 119, 123 United States politics and, 10 see also liberation theology Chávez, César, 10, 199 Chiapas economy of, 4, 185, 188–90, 191–2, 205–6, 234 Castellanos governorship in, 191, 192–3, 212, 234 Lacandón settlements of, 190, 192–3, 205–6, 208–9, 212, 217–18, 233, 234 racism in, 188–90, 191 social unrest in, 190, 192, 210, 213 vigilante violence in, 190, 209, 212, 215, 216, 219–20, 221–2 Chihuahua guerrilla organizations in, 195 PAN in, 201 support for EZLN in, 213 Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) civil-liberties controversies and, 31, 37–8 electoral performances of, 30–1, 40 foreign policy and, 32, 35, 40 governing coalitions and, 30, 31 Green policy positions emulated by, 68, 69 Church alliances (interdenominational) human rights investigations by, 173 labor movements and, 10 CIOAC see Independent Confederation of Agricultural Workers and Peasants citizen-action groups (Germany) electoral experiments by, 43–4, 50–1 evolution of, 41–4 ecological offshoot of, 45–8 Leinen, Jo and, 47 civil liberties and civil-liberty violations Amnesty International and, 165, 169, 172, 223 in Germany, 31, 37–8, 39–40, 50

268

Subject Index

civil liberties—continued in Mexico, 191, 192, 195, 196–8, 200 in Peru, 164–6, 168–9, 172–3 in Poland, 80, 83, 98–9, 108–10, 116–17, 118, 119, 129–30 political-process approach and, 12, 75, 129–30 civil rights movement (United States) as exemplar of social movements, 3, 8 origins of, 11, 12 Mexican politics and, 198 civil society as alternative to government, 95, 205–6 in Mexico, 204–6 Polish theories of, 94, 95, 98–9 Zapatista vision of, 217, 220, 223 Cold War German reconstruction and, 21–5 German rearmament and, 29–30, 35, 47 Vietnam War and, 37, 38, 40 social movements after, 175 Committee for Social Self-Defense-KOR (KSS-KOR), 99, 102, 104, 105–6, 110 communism and communist parties controversies in West Germany over, 21, 25, 29, 32, 35, 36, 41, 43, 51–2, 53 fragmentation in Peru of, 147, 148–9, 150–1, 154, 156, 158, 159, 173 see also United Left legalization in Mexico of, 183, 195 Mexican student movement and, 197 United States and, 14 Communist Party of Peru—Shining Path see Shining Path countercultures in Germany, 38–9, 44–5, 51–2 Kuro†, Jacek and, 94, 95 in Mexico, 196, 199, 209 Modzelewski, Karol, 94, 95 in Poland, 82, 94–5, 98, 121–2 Cuban revolution Mexican politics and, 195, 197, 203, 209 Peruvian politics and, 136, 148, 150, 151 cyber and electronic media democracy and, 14–15 social movements use of, 15, 175, 223 Czechoslovakia collectivization of agriculture in, 81 social unrest in, 75 democratic regimes movements as contributors to, 8–9, 11, 12, 14, 235–6 movement as threats to, 6–8, 12, 235–6, 245n3 Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD) as alliance of reformers, 201 EZLN’s refusal to support, 220–1, 224, 249n7 Democratic Union (UD), 126–8 discord theory see fourth generation of socialmovement theorizing ejidos concept of, 4, 181, 192 constitutional status of, 182, 186–7, 192

land transfers and, 182, 183, 189, 190, 195, 199, 200 threats to, 186–7, 189, 192–3, 213 ecology theories about, 46–7, 53–4, 56–7 Green alliance and, 54 nuclear war linked to, 47–8 El Barzón tactics of, 202 EZLN’s alliance with, 221, 232 ELN see National Liberation Army Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organization (OCEZ), 205, 209 Extraparliamentary Movement (APO), 37–8 Fanon, Franz German student activists and, 36 Fascism, 6, 8 FDP see Free Democratic Party Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) business-labor-government dialogue in, 26–8 chancellors of: Brandt, Willy, 40–1, 98; Schmidt, Helmut, 41, 47 Cold War origins of, 21–4 constitutional parameters of, 22–4, 29, 32–3 foreign policies of, 29–30, 32, 34, 35, 37, 41, 47 mass media in, 25, 33, 35, 37, 39, 45 party system of, 30–2 energy policies of, 28, 32, 43, 45, 72 First generation of social-movement theorizing basic argument of, 6–8, 15, 32, 177, 236–7 critiques of, 8–9, 11, 12, 16, 32, 89, 237–8, 245n5 FLN see Forces of National Liberation Forces of National Liberation (FLN) theories of armed uprising in, 208, 212 educational projects of, 208, 209 electoral politics opposed by, 209, 220 fourth generation of social-movement theorizing discord analysis and, 243–4, 249n2 factions and, 240, 242–3 France environmental politics in, 50 foreign policies of, 21–4, 29–30, 78 Mexican economy and, 178 1968 uprising in, 197 Frankfurt Greens in, 59, 69 party-movement experiments in, 53, 54 social movements in, 40, 69 Free Democratic Party (FDP) civil-liberties controversies and, 30, 39 economic programs of, 30–1 electoral performances of, 30 governing coalitions with, 30, 31–2, 40, 43 Green policy positions emulated by, 68, 69 French Revolution social-movement theorizing and, 5, 8, 245n3, 245n5 FRG see Federal Republic of Germany gays and lesbians EZLN and, 223, 224, 249n10 German party-movements and, 51–52 Greens and, 55, 57, 62

Subject Index Images in German mass media of, 45 Nazis and, 23 Gda†sk labor conflicts in, 91, 93, 99–100, 102–5 Lenin Shipyard strike of, 102–6, 107 Solidarity in, 106, 107, 114, 116 student politics in, 91, 104 Young Poland Movement, in, 99, 104 Gda†sk agreement (twenty-one demands), 104, 105, 106, 108–9, 110, 111, 113 Gdynia, 91 German cultural conservatives Carl Bedderman and, 50, 51 citizen-action groups and, 42 early years of the Greens and, 54–5 party-movements and, 50–4 see also Gruhl, Herbert German economy downturns in, 27, 31, 32, 37 growth of, 25, 27, 30–1, 231 industrial pollution and, 28–9, 32 inequality in, 27, 231–2 immigrant workers and, 26, 27, 32, 37 international trade and, 25, 27 regional difference in, 54 white-collar workers and, 26, 28 German Greens Alliance ‘90 and, 70–72 electoral performances of, 63–6, 68, 69–70, 71, 72–73, 231, 232 federal programs of, 59–62, 70–1, 229–30, 231 formation of, 50, 52, 54–5, 235 fragmentation of, 67, 69, 70, 246n2 fundi-realo rivalry in, 57–8, 67, 68–9, 70–1, 72–3, 235 geographic variation among, 58–9, 62, 71 ideological diversity of, 34, 48, 49, 55–8, 59, 63 parliamentary behavior of, 67–8 SPD coalition with, 72–3 Green leaders and activists Bahro, Rudolf, 67 Ditfurth, Jutta, 67, 70 Dutschke, Rudi, 36, 37–8, 52, 235 Fischer, Joschka, 67, 71, 72 Kelly, Petra, 47, 50, 62 Schily, Otto, 51, 67, 69 Vollmer, Antje, 69 Gruhl, Herbert authoritarian ecological theory of, 53 formation of Greens and, 55, 235 Guerrero student activism in, 194, 196 government repression in, 195 support for EZLN, in, 213 guerrilla organizations in Mexico after the Tlatelolco massacre, 199, 208 after EZLN’s uprising, 221–2 see also Forces of National Liberation; Zapatista Army of National Liberation Guevara, Ernesto “Che” Mexican counterculture and, 199 German student activists and, 36

269

Hamburg Greens in, 59, 62, 63, 70, 71 party-movement experiments in, 51–2, 55 social movements in, 36 Havel, Václav leadership style of, 126 Haya de la Torre, Víctor Raúl Marxists’ distrust of, 147 middle-class radicalism of, 146–8 Hesse Greens in, 59, 63, 71 party-movement experiments in, 54 Hungary collectivization of agriculture in, 81 social unrest in, 75 hunger strikes by Mexican business leaders, 200 by Mexican labor organizers, 197 identity-formation theory see third-wave of social-movement theorizing Independent Confederation of Agricultural Workers and Peasants (CIOAC), 205 indigenous-community approach see second wave of social-movement theorizing indigenous peoples in Mexico, 180, 188–90, 191–2, 208–9, 210, 213, 214–15, 217, 221, 222, 224, 249n5 in Peru, 134, 135, 143–4, 146, 248n4 in the United States, 188 Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) origins of, 182–3, 184 patronage and, 184, 185, 186, 187–8, 189–90, 211, 216 responses to EZLN, 207–8, 214–15, 219–20, 221 Technocrat faction in, 186–7, 191–2, 200, 201–2, 211, 221 violence used by, 191, 195, 196–9, 200 IU see United Left JUSO see Working Group of Young Socialists Khrushchev, Nikita Stalin and Stalinism criticized by, 81, 158 Poland and, 82 Peruvian Left and, 158, 159 KO see Solidarity, Citizens’ Committees KOR see Workers’ Defense Committee KSS-KOR see Committee for Social Self-Defense-KOR KPN see Polish nationalist movements, Confederation for an Independent Poland labor conflict in Germany, 27, 28, 37 in Mexico, 180, 181–2, 183–4, 195, 197, 213 in Peru, 136, 146, 148, 149, 152, 167 in Poland, 82, 84, 85–6, 88–93, 97, 100–1, 102–5, 112, 116, 120, 121, 127 in the United States, 3, 10

270

Subject Index

land invasions in Mexico, 180, 208, 213 in Peru, 136, 148, 149–50, 152, 159 liberation theology EZLN’s opposition to, 209–10, 212, 224 in Mexico, 194, 203–4, 210–11 in Peru, 152–3, 203 see also Ruíz, Samuel (Bishop of San Cristóbal) Lima economic conditions in, 141, 152, 154 shantytowns of, 152, 153, 170–2, 174 Shining Path in, 154, 160, 164, 170–2, 174 1ód• free-market reforms and, 125 labor struggles in, 84, 90 Lower Saxony Greens in, 59, 71 party-movement experiments in, 50–1, 54 Lower Silesia active strikes in, 112 LP see Proletarian Line Maoism and Maoist groups in Germany, 36, 43 in Mexico, 197, 210–12 in Peru, 148, 158, 162, 173, 174, 234 in Poland, 95 see also Proletarian Line Marcuse, Herbert German activists and, 36, 57 Polish activists and, 94 Mariátegui, José Carlos anti-imperialist thinking of, 147, 157, 247n1 Shining Path and, 157, 159 McCarthyism, 6, 8 Mexican business owners against PRI and for electoral reform, 200 National Action Party (PAN) and, 201 see also El Barzón Mexican economy agricultural sector of, 178, 179, 183–4, 185 see also ejidos downturns in, 185–6, 191–2, 199, 200, 211, 216 foreign investment in, 178–179, 182, 187 government’s role in, 182, 183–5, 186–8, 199–200, 234 growth of, 135, 178, 180, 185, 187, 200 Mexican politics constitutional parameters of, 182–3, 202–3, 207, 210, 221 decentralized nature of, 177, 179, 182 election reform in, 181, 182, 190–1, 200–1, 233–4 fixed elections and, 179–80, 182–3, 186, 195, 200–1, 203, 209, 216 one-party rule in, 182–3, 184, 195, 200–1, 215–16 see also Institutional Revolutionary Party United States interventions in, 177–8, 181, 183, 195 Mexican presidents Cárdenas, Lázaro, 183–4, 189, 195 Díaz, Porfirio, 178–81, 188–9, 195 Madrid, Miguel de la, 200

Salinas de Gortari, Carlos, 186–8, 192, 202, 207, 214, 215–16 Zedillo, Ernesto, 216–17 Mexican Revolution evocative symbolism of, 197, 199, 209 events of, 180–82, 248n2 Madero, Francisco, 180–1 socialist constitutions and, 182 Villa, Pancho, 181–2 Zapata, Emiliano, 181 Mexico City youth culture of, 196 civil society and, 204–5 Tlatelolco massacre in, 197–8 Middle Ages social movements during, 8, 245n5 MIR see Movement of the Revolutionary Left movement forerunners citizen-action groups and, 42, 43 EZLM and, 194, 206, 234 Greens and, 34, 44, 48, 234 Shining Path and, 145, 154–5, 234 Solidarity and, 89, 92, 97, 101, 234 theories about, 11, 13–14, 34, 35, 89, 145, 194 Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) failure of, 151, 154 Guzmán’s critique of, 159 vanguard aspirations of, 150 NAFTA see North American Free Trade Agreement NATO see North Atlantic Treaty Organization National Liberation Army (ELN) failure of, 151 Guzman’s critique of, 159 vanguard aspirations of, 151 National Liberation Movement (MLN) PRI suppression of, 195, 198 programs and strategies of, 195 National Federation of Trade Unions (OPZZ) Solidarity’s competition with, 117, 121 Poland’s democratic transition and, 119 National Socialism (Nazism) Allies’ responses to, 22–4, 78, 79 Polish politics and, 98 social-movement theory and, 3, 6, 8 National University of San Cristóbal de Huamanga economic mission of, 143, 158 Peace Corps at, 158 protests at, 158–9 Shining Path faculty at, 159–60 Nazism see National Socialism Network self-management program of, 112 Solidarity’s ambivalence toward, 112–13 New Left in Germany, 36, 57 in Poland, 95, 105 new social movements Greens’ relationship to, 44, 64, 234 types of, 44, 45, 47 see also citizens-action groups

Subject Index Nordrhein-Westfalen party-movement experiments in, 54 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) EZLN and, 213, 215 Technocrats’ promotion of, 200 Mexican businesses divided over, 201–2 U.S. and ambivalence toward, 200, 208 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) German foreign policy and, 29, 30, 41, 46, 47, 69, 72 Greens’ opposition to, 55, 61, 67, 70, 71, 72 OCEZ see Emiliano Zapata Peasant Organization OPZZ see National Federation of Trade Unions PAN see National Action Party participatory democracy Polish labor conflicts and, 91–2 Chiapas jungle settlements’ traditions of, 208–9, 236 German women’s movements and, 45, 234 party-movement experiments with, 53 Shining Path experiments with, 165–6 sponti counterculture and, 38–9, 234 Union of Unions and, 205–6 Zapatista autonomous communities and, 218–19, 236 party-movement strategy electoral opportunities and, 19–20, 233–4 Greens pursuit of, 20, 43–4, 49, 52, 234 Shining Path’s rejection of, 158, 233, 234 Solidarity’s late adoption of, 123–8 Zapatistas’ rejection of, 220, 233–4 peace movements in Germany against NATO missile sites, 46, 47–8 against rearmament, 29, 35–6 against Vietnam war, 37–8 Vogt, Roland and, 47 Peruvian economy agricultural sector of, 134, 135, 137, 138–9, 142–4, 149, 151–2 downturns in, 133, 137, 138, 140, 141, 144, 174, 231 foreign investment in, 134, 135, 137, 138, 141 Fujishock and, 141 growth of, 134, 135, 137, 138 inequality in, 136, 141–2, 149, 231 regional differences and, 134, 135, 138, 140, 141–44 Peruvian politics constitutional parameters of, 136, 149, 156, 164, 172 military-supported coups and, 136, 147, 172, 233 populist reformers of, 134, 135–6, 138–40, 145–7 racism and, 143–4, 147, 164, 233, 248n4 Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces, 136–8, 148, 151–2, 153–4, 159 state repression and, 147, 164–6, 169–70, 172 Peruvian presidents Belaúnde Terry, Fernando, 138, 164–6, 168 Fujimori, Alberto, 140–1, 172–3 García Pérez, Alan, 138–140, 168–169, 170 Polish economy agricultural sector of, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 120 downturns in, 84, 85–7, 88, 89, 92, 108, 112, 116, 117–18, 121, 125 factory councils and, 82, 83–4, 90 see also Network growth of, 79, 83, 85, 89, 92, 127, 231

271

inequality in, 86, 136, 231–2 shock-therapy and, 120, 123–5, 127 Soviet Union and, 80–1, 87, 90, 92, 114 Polish nationalist movements Confederation for an Independent Poland (KPN), 99, 100, 103 Dmowski, Roman, and, 100 Fighting Poland, 95 Movement for the Defense of Human and Civil Rights (ROPCiO), 99, 100, 103 Polish League for Independence, 95 Young Poland Movement (RMP), 99–100, 103, 104 Polish politics democratic transition and, 119–20, 122–4, 126–8 marital law and, 75, 116–19 nationalist sentiments and, 90, 92, 105, 108, 114 Soviet Union and, 78–81, 85, 87–8, 92, 94–5, 99–100, 109, 110, 111, 119, 233 vanguard-party rule and, 77, 79–80, 83, 104, 113, 119, 233 see also Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) anti-Semitic tactics of, 95, 96, 113 Gierek, Edward as leader of, 77, 84–6, 92, 97, 117 Gomu2ka, W2asdys2aw as leader of, 77, 80–1, 82, 83–4, 90, 91, 93–5 horizontal movement in, 109, 113 Jaruzelski, Wojciech as leader of, 105, 117, 119 Kania, Stanis2aw as leader of, 108 pro-Soviet factions in, 80, 113 revisionism and, 81, 82, 83, 93–94, 98 Populist movement (United States), 8, 20, 245n5 political-process approach see second wave of social-movement theorizing Pozna† labor conflict in, 82, 90, 105 PRI see Institutional Revolutionary Party PRD see Democratic Revolutionary Party Proletarian Line (LP) confrontational-cooperative strategy of, 211–12, 214 influence within Chiapas of, 210–11 EZLN’s opposition to, 212, 224, 234 Protestant churches Mexico and, 203, 210 German peace movement and, 35, 36 PZPR see Polish United Workers’ Party Radom, 92 resource-mobilization approach see second wave of social-movement theorizing Rhineland-Palatinate Greens in, 63 party-movement experiments in, 54 rioting social-movement theory and, 3, 245n2 Robotnik content of, 100, 104 formation of Solidarity and, 104 ROPCiO see Polish nationalist movements, Movement for the Defense of Human and Civil Rights

272

Subject Index

Ruíz, Samuel (Bishop of San Cristóbal) calls for peace by, 212, 214 landowners’ hostility to, 214–15, 216 community organizing and, 210–11 RMP see Polish nationalist movements, Young Poland Movement Rural Solidarity Bydgoszcz crisis and, 109, 111 formation of, 108 regime democratization and, 123 Saarland party-movement experiments in, 54 Saskatchewan Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, 20, 245n3 Schleswig-Holtsein party-movement experiments in, 50, 54 SDP see Social Democratic Party SDS see Socialist German Students’ League SdRP see Social Democracy of the Polish Republic second wave of social-movement theorizing basic argument of, 8–9, 15, 238–9 critiques of, 16, 239–40, 249n1 indigenous-community approach, 9, 10–11, 34, 239, 245n6 political-process approach, 9, 11–12, 19, 75, 177, 233–4, 239, 245n7, 249n1; see also partymovement strategy resource-mobilization approach, 9–10, 239, 249n1 Sendero Luminoso see Shining Path Shining Path armed actions by, 156, 163–4, 165, 166, 167, 170–2, 173 origins of, 148, 156–60 non-violent activities of, 160, 165–8, 170, 173, 174, 248n2 public services and, 154, 163–4, 166–8, 170–1, 174 strategic thinking within, 161–3, 170, 230, 248n1 universities organized by, 160, 170 Shining Path factions broad divisions, 156, 162–3, 165, 171, 172, 235, 248n3 Chanka faction, 173 labor activists, 160, 167, 170, 173 Sendero Rojo faction, 173 Shining Path leaders and activists Díaz Martínez, Antonio, 159–60 Calderon, Félix, 160 Guzmán Reynoso, Abinael, 157–9, 160, 163, 171, 173 Kawata Makabe, Luis, 168 Mezzich, Julio César, 160 Silesia nationalist sentiments in, 114 labor struggles, in, 90, 109 Solidarity and, 109, 114 Social Democratic Party (SDP) civil-liberties controversies and, 37–8, 39–40, 50 electoral performances of, 30, 31, 40, 72–3 electoral strategy of, 20, 31 governing coalitions with, 31–32, 37–8, 39–40, 43, 72–3 Green policy positions emulated by, 68, 69

intergenerational tensions within, 35–6, 39–40, 43, 50 programs of, 31, 32, 35, 40, 41 see also Working Group of Young Socialists ( JUSO) Social Democracy of the Polish Republic (SdRP) as successor to PZPR, 124 electoral performances of, 126, 127–8 social movement concept of, 3–5, 19, 77, 229, 245n1 diversity within, 14, 102, 234–5 metamorphoses, of, 129, 225 Socialist German Students’ League (SDS) New Left ideas of, 36 Extraparliamentary Movement and, 37 see also Rudi Dutschke Solidarity Bydgoszcz crisis and, 109–11, 112 Citizens’ Committees (KO) and, 123–4, 125–6 electoral performances of, 122, 123, 126–8 First National Congress of, 114–16 formation of, 92–93, 101, 102–7 fragmentation of, 102, 110, 112–13, 116, 121, 125–6, 128 free-market debate in, 115, 120–1, 123–5, 128, 129, 230 in government, 123–6 martial law and, 116–19, 129 organization of, 106–7, 110–12, 118, 120 size of, 75, 110, 116, 117 as symbol, 105–6, 109 as trade union, 106–7, 108, 110, 112–13, 114, 116, 117–19, 120, 121, 124, 127 see also Democratic Union; Rural Solidarity Solidarity leaders and activists Bujak, Zbigniew, 93 Janiszewski, Jerzy, 106 Jurczyk, Marian, 93 Kuro†, Jacek, 118, 128 Modzelewski, Karol, 111 Sobieszek, Lech, 93 Walentynowicz, Anna, 102, 103 Wa˛dolowski, Stanis2aw, 92–3 see also Wa2≈sa, Lech Soviet Union (USSR) foreign policies of, 21, 29, 47, 78–81, 82, 84, 87–8, 116, 119, 198 social movements in, 75 see also Stalin and Stalinism spontis, 38–9, 47, 51, 234 Springer newspaper chain political orientation of, 25, 35, 37, 38, 52 protests against, 38 squatter and shantytown movements in Germany, 39, 47, 51, 234 in Mexico, 203, 204, 208 in Peru, 148, 152–4, 170, 171–2, 248n1 Stalin, Stalinism, and Stalinist groups Guzmán’s admiration of, 157, 158 Social-movement theory and, 8, 245n3 Steffen, Jochen, 50 student movements in France, 197

Subject Index in Germany, 37, 39, 64 in Mexico, 194–5, 196, 197–9 in Peru, 148, 158–9 in Poland, 91, 94–5, 98, 108, 116, 122 in the United States, 8 Szczecin Second World War and, 78 labor conflict in, 91–3, 105 Technocrats see Institutional Revolutionary Party, Technocrats in terrorism and terrorist groups in FRG, 39 FRG policies against, 31, 39–40, 50 third wave of social-movement theorizing autonomous movement-culture approach, 14, 240–1 autonomous popular-culture approach, 13–14, 34, 240 basic argument of, 12–13, 15, 240, 245n8, 245n9, 245n11 critiques of, 16, 241–2 Tlatelolco massacre government cover-up of, 198 origins of, 197 regime damaged by, 199–200, 208 Trotskyism and Trotskyist Groups in Germany, 36 in Mexico, 183 in Peru, 148, 150 in Poland, 94 twenty-one demands see Gda†sk agreement UD see Democratic Union UFW see United Farm Workers United Farm Workers (UFW), 10 United Left (IU), 149, 154, 167, 170 United Nations (UN) Green pacifists and, 72 social programs of, 152 Zapatistas’ dismissal of, 223, 231 United States (US) foreign policies toward Germany, 21–5, 29–30, 37, 47 foreign policies toward Mexico, 177–8, 180, 181, 183, 195, 198, 200, 208 foreign policies toward Peru, 140, 158 foreign policies toward Soviet Bloc, 78–9, 87 global investors from, 134, 136, 178–9, 180, 183, 202 social movements in, 3, 6, 8, 10, 14, 44, 198, 245n3, 245n5 Union of Unions (UU), 205–6 UU see Union of Unions urbanization in Germany, 25–6 in Peru, 140, 152, 154 in the United States, 11 social-movement theorists and, 6–8, 11, 15, 131 Ursus labor conflicts in, 92, 93

273

US see United States USSR see Soviet Union Warsaw destruction of, 78 emergence of Solidarity in, 106 labor conflict in, 90, 92 student protests in, 95 Wa2≈sa, Lech free-market conversion of, 120, 121, 122, 126 as labor activist, 93, 103 leadership style of, 103, 111–12, 120, 123, 126 as president of Poland, 126–27 as Solidarity official, 107, 110–12, 113, 116, 119 women’s movements EZLN and, 222, 249n10 in Germany, 44–5, 51, 53, 58, 62, 68 in Mexico, 204 in Peru, 148 in Poland, 108, 126 in the United States, 44 Workers’ Defense Committee (KOR) Kuro†, Jacek and, 98 legal strategy of, 97–9, 100 Lipi†ski, Edward and, 98, 99 martial law and, 117 Michnik, Adam and, 99 off-shoots of, 98–9 Working Group of Young Socialists ( JUSO) democracy and, 40–1, 53, 234 program and strategy of, 40–1, 43, 53 SPD leaders challenged by, 32, 41, 50 Stamokap faction in, 41 World economy downturns, in, 21 Germany’s incorporation into, 24–6, 27 Mexico’s incorporation into, 178, 179, 182, 185, 187–8, 191, 200, 201–2 oil crises and, 27, 85, 92, 185–6, 200, 211 Peru’s incorporation into, 133–4, 135, 137, 138, 141, 178–9, 180 Poland’s incorporation into, 83, 85, 86, 92, 119 Yugoslavia, 81, 126 Zapatista Army of National Liberation autonomous communities and, 217–20, 221, 224, 232, 236 constitutional convention plan of, 216, 224 party politics opposed by, 202, 220–1, 223, 224, 234, 236, 249n7 as example of new global movements, 175, 224 global strategy of, 222–4 military actions by, 207–8, 213–14, 217, 224 shifting popularity of, 209, 212, 213, 224, 249n8 shifting programs of, 207, 213–14, 215, 217, 220–1, 223–5, 230–1, 232, 249n10 Subcomandante Marcos, 212, 220, 221, 223–4, 225

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