Scholars of populism have demonstrated that political discourses differ from scientific discourses. Because the goal of political speeches is to motivate people to act, well-reasoned arguments are less useful than emotional appeals (Álvarez Junco 1990, 234). As José Álvarez Junco notes, political discourse “does not inform or explain, but persuades and shapes attitudes.… It responds to areas of disquiet and problems, it offers reassurance” (1987, 220). Similarly, Braun suggests that “to search for a clear line of argumentation in Gaitán’s more political speeches is to misunderstand them. The orations were designed for dramatic effect, not intellectual consistency” (1985, 100). Even Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre, whose political discourses had more substance, “urged those who did not understand the doctrine to ‘feel’ it” (Stein 1980, 164). More recently, when evaluating his electoral defeat in 1990 to Alberto Fujimori, Mario Vargas Llosa reached similar conclusions.
The politician goes up onto the platform to charm, to seduce, to lull, to bill and coo. His musical phrasing is more important than his ideas, his gestures more important than his concepts. Form is everything: it can either make or destroy the content of what he says. The good orator may say absolutely nothing, but he says it with style. What matters to his audience is for him to sound good and look good. The logic, the rational order, the consistency, the critical acumen of what he is saying generally get in the way of his achieving that effect, which is attained above all through impressionistic images and metaphors, ham acting, fancy turn of phrase, and defiant remarks. The good Latin American political orator bears a much closer re semblance to a bullfighter or a rock singer than to a lecturer or a professor: his communication with the audience is achieved by way of instinct, emotion, sentiment, rather than by way of intelligence. (1995, 169)
Populist discourse and rhetoric divide society into two ethically antagonistic fields: el pueblo and la oligarquía. These terms do not refer to precise social categories but rather to a series of social relations; thus it is essential to examine who is included and excluded by these terms in each specific case of populism. El pueblo is positively defined as all that is not oligarquía. Given their suffering, el pueblo is the incarnation of the authentic, the good, the just, and the moral. It confronts the antipueblo, or oligarquía, representing the unauthentic, the foreign, the evil, the unjust, and the immoral. The political becomes moral, even religious. For this reason, the political confrontation is total, without the possibility of compromise or dialogue.2 The electoral campaigns of APRA and Sánchez Cerro in 1930 and 1931 illustrate the moralism, religiosity, and intransigence that characterize populist discourses.
Aprismo was presented as a moral-religious crusade for the regeneration of the Peruvian. Aprista political meetings always included the party hymn, the Marsellesa Aprista:
Peruvians embrace the new religion
The Popular Alliance
will conquer our longed-for redemption!
(Stein 1980, 175)
APRA was not only identified as a religious movement during political meetings, but, in addition, whenever two party members met they greeted each other with the messianic phrase, “Only Aprismo will save Peru”—a slogan also printed on electoral posters. Given his sacrifices and persecution, the figure of Haya de la Torre took on an aura of martyrdom and sainthood. The religiosity of APRA was also reinforced in his speeches through the use of biblical language: he identified his political action with a call to the priesthood. According to Haya de la Torre, political success absolutely required the ability to communicate a mystical sentiment. Such was the mysticism generated by APRA that a campaign song compared the Apristas’ suffering and persecution with that of the early Christians:
Men who suffer
a cruel pain
let us make
APRA a legion.
March! March!
brothers in pain!
Fight! Fight!
with the banner of love
with faith and unity …
(Stein 1980, 178)
Sánchez Cerro in turn presented his program as the moral and economic regeneration of Peru. When a foreign journalist asked him to elaborate on his plans, Sánchez Cerro responded that only he knew them. The mysticism inspired by this movement was reflected in this popular song:
When Sánchez Cerro is in power
We won’t work
’cause every little thing’s going
to rain on us like the manna from heaven.
(Stein 1980, 105)
Like their political rivals, the Sanchezcerristas also made use of religious symbols and language, for instance in the Credo Cerrista:
I believe in “cerrismo,” all powerful, creator of all the liberties and all the claims of the popular masses; in Luis M. Sánchez Cerro, our hero and undefeated paladin, conceived by the grace of the spirit of patriotism. Like a true Peruvian he was born in Holy Democracy and in the nationalist ideal; he suffered under the abject power of the “oncenio”; he was persecuted, threatened, and exiled, and because he gave us liberty he shed his blood in the sacrifice of his being; he descended triumphant from the peaks of the Misti (Arequipa) to give us liberty and teach us by his patriotism, rising thusly to Power, glorious and triumphant. (Stein 1980, 108–9)
The intransigence of both Apristas and Sanchezcerristas was expressed through personal insults and identifying the rival with the oligarchy, source of all evil. For instance, the Sanchezcerristas accused Apristas of being anti-Catholic, antimilitary, antinationalist, and therefore against Peruvian values—values that Sánchez Cerro was of course seen to embody. For their part, Apristas used racist arguments to degrade their rival. In doing so, they were illustrating the ambiguous relationship of populist politicians to the popular sectors, who sometimes are praised as the real essence of the nation and at other times are considered to be the embodiment of backwardness. They referred to Sánchez Cerro as “uncultured, illiterate, vain, smelly, dirty … a ridiculous, perverse, latent homosexual, mentally retarded and physically an epileptic, a fetid, Black-Indian half-caste whose primitive behavior and simian-like poses and attitudes suggested that a search for his origins would be like following the biological trail of a gorilla” (Stein 1980, 165–66).
Through discourse, populist leaders give new meanings to “key words” (Williams 1976) in their political cultures. Gaitán, for instance, offered his followers the dignity of human beings when he transformed the feared chusma (mob) into the chusma heroica and the despised gleba (servants) into the gleba gloriosa. Perón radically changed the significance of the meaning of words used to denigrate subaltern groups—such as the descamisados (“the shirtless”; the dispos sessed)—into the essence of true Argentine identity (James 1988b). Perón also expanded the significance of key words of his epoch, such as democracy, industrialism, and working class. “Perón explicitly challenged the legitimacy of a notion of democracy which limited itself to participation in formal political rights and he extended it to include participation in the social and economic life of the nation” (James 1988b, 16). The meaning of industrialism was articulated anew within social and political parameters, and the individual workers became instead the “working class.” Words like people and oligarchy acquired concrete meanings with Perón, as opposed to their purely rhetorical use. El pueblo became el pueblo trabajador. In addition, the nationalism
