a comparative study of nationalismo mexico argentina and peru
TRANSCRIPT
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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION: EXPLAINING TRANSFORMATIONS OF
NATIONALISM
WRITING SAMPLE FROM DISSERTATION:
“CONTESTED INCLUSION: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF NATIONALISM
IN 20TH
CENTURY MEXICO, ARGENTINA, AND PERU”
September 7, 2006
Matthias vom HauDepartment of Sociology
Brown UniversityBox 1916, Maxcy HallProvidence, RI 02912
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discourses into hegemonic cultural scripts in the context of an already established cultural
machinery. Finally, for most of the twentieth century Peru epitomized a blocked
transformation of nationalism, marked by the continued exclusion of popular national
narratives from dominant state ideology. Only under Velasco (1968-1975), with the
emergence of new ruling coalitions, did popular nationalism become an official national
discourse.
This dissertation explains these striking similarities and variations in the
transformation of nationalism in twentieth century Mexico, Argentina, and Peru: why did
popular nationalism emerge as an official state ideology; why did the timing of thisdiscursive change vary; and why did these countries differ in the extent to which popular
national ideologies gained prominence as an everyday frame of reference. To answer these
questions it is necessary to conceptualize how continuities and changes of nationalism
unfold more generally and what the key causal processes and configurations involved in
these historical processes are.
To explain why transformations of nationalism occur this study advances a
state-focused approach.1 Such an approach builds on key insights from the literature,
that nationalism constitutes a powerful discursive tool for both the legitimization and
the contestation of state power (e.g., Brubaker 1996; Calhoun 1997; Chatterjee 1993;
Hobsbawn 1990), and that patterns of state institutional development are critical for
the dissemination of nationalism (e.g., Anderson 1991; Gellner 1983; Mann 1993). I
analyze changes in official national ideologies as driven by conflicts and alignments
between state elites and subordinate movements, and by the timing of state making.
1 See Yashar (2005) for a similar approach to explain indigenous mobilization in contemporary LatinAmerica.
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The label “state-focused” seeks to avoid confusion with the state-centered literature
(e.g., Evans, Rueschemeyer, and Skocpol 1985), and its emphasis on states as
institutional actors and its lack of attention to the agency of social movements.
In developing these theoretical arguments, this dissertation speaks to several major
theoretical issues. Many classical works (e.g., Anderson 1991; Breuilly 1982; Gellner
1983; Hobsbawn 1990; Smith 1986; Tilly 1994) have developed a sophisticated set
of arguments about the origins of nationalism. Yet they remain silent when it comes
to explaining how ideas about national membership—the question of who is a
member and who can claim rights—evolve over time. The study of popularnationalism in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru sets the stage for theorizing
transformations of nationalism—as opposed to its emergence.
The focus on these three Latin American cases also addresses another
shortcoming in the literature, the relative absence of comparative works on nationalism in
the region. Most theories of nationalism are grounded in European countries and probe
their theoretical claims in light of empirics from these cases (Gellner 1983; Hobsbawn
1990; Smith 1986; Tilly 1994).2 A comparative approach to nationalism in Latin America
affords the opportunity to develop an analytical framework that confronts existing
theories of nationalism with evidence from outside their context of construction.
Analogously, many excellent monographs and historical studies have focused on
nationalism in the region. Yet, this growing literature (e.g., de la Cadena 2000; Gutierrez
2 One of the few notable exceptions is Benedict Anderson’s highly acclaimed Imagined Communities (1991), which argues that early nineteenth century “Creole pioneers” invented nations in the strugglefor Independence from Spain, thereby establishing a “blueprint” for nationalism around the globe.Yet, Anderson’s argument about the Latin American origins of nationalism did not work out: Ideasabout popular sovereignty and citizenship employed by insurgent creoles originated in WesternEurope (Greenfeld 1992; Guibernau 1996), and Anderson’s elite-centered argument ignored theagency of subaltern actors in the construction of national imagined communities (Lomnitz 2001,Guardino 1996; Mallon 1995; Thurner 1997).
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1999; Quijada 1994; 2000; Shumway 1991; Thurner 1997) remains—with a few
exceptions3—largely confined to one particular country. Without a comparative
perspective, however, these studies often lack the necessary tools to identify the causal
sequences of nationalism. The study of nationalism in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru
facilitates the synthesis of this important literature into a comparative framework for
explaining this kind of ideological transformations.
Patterns of nationalism had tremendous consequences for lived experiences.
Official national discourses were highly consequential for policy decisions in the
three countries. Ideas about national identity and history informed citizenshipregimes and redistributive policies (e.g., Collier and Collier 1991; Yashar 2005).
Boundaries of national belonging shaped the political, civil, and social rights granted
to that particular imagined community. At the same time, criteria of national
membership often established hierarchies of belonging, thereby configuring the
practical exercise of these rights. For instance, in the three countries, social welfare
provisions were more limited for those segments of the population that did not fit
into corporatist categories established and legitimized by popular nationalism and its
class-based understanding of the nation (e.g., Hamilton 1982; Plotkin 2002; Stepan
1978).
Moreover, studying the historical formation of nationalism provides a matrix
for the analysis of contemporary contestations to official ideologies. In Mexico and
Peru indigenous movements gained prominence throughout the last decades, while
Argentina witnessed the increasing mobilization of its indigenous people and recent
3 Comparative approaches to nationalism include Brading (1991), Quijada (1994; 2000), and Bouchard(1998). Yet these works are largely descriptive and not grounded in a theoretically motivated explanatoryframework.
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immigrants from the Andean countries. These movements advanced alternative
national narratives that challenged the homogeneizing and hierarchical aspects of
popular nationalism (e.g., de la Cadena 2000; García 2005; Gutierrez 1999; Stephen
2002; Yashar 2005). Their struggle illustrates once more a central contention of this
study: the inherently contested and changing character of nationalism.
Transformations of Nationalism: A Conceptual Framework
Like with most other concepts in the social sciences scholars engage in heated
debates about the meaning of nationalism and advance competing definitions.Nationalism has been used to describe movements, regimes, policies, ideologies,
rhetorical styles, and collective emotions. Discussions about the appropriate
conceptualization overlap with polemics over whether nationalism is modern or ancient
(e.g., Armstrong 1982; Breuilly 1982; Gellner 1999; Gorski 2000; Smith 1999),
subjective or objective (e.g., Bauman 1992; Calhoun 1997; Tamir 1993), alive and well
or destined to disappear in the dustbin of history (e.g., Hobsbawn 1977; Kedouri 1960;
Nairn 1977). Despite the overall conceptual dispersion the literature can be roughly
divided into three distinct approaches that emphasize different aspects of nationalism.
One group of scholars stresses collective action and views nationalism as a set of political
behaviors. In this perspective nationalism refers to social movements or state policies that
advance the interests of collectivities framed as nations (e.g., Beissinger 2002; Breuilly
1982; Hechter 2000; Tilly 1990). A second group highlights emotions and depicts
nationalism as a collective sentiment. This “emotional” approach defines nationalism as a
form of social solidarity infusing with passion ties to the national community and
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establishing a sense of belonging (e.g., Guibernau 1996; James 1996; Marx 2003). A
final position views nationalism as a primarily cognitive and normative phenomenon
(e.g., Anderson 1991; Brubaker 1996; Gellner 1983; Smith 1986). In this perspective
nationalism is often portrayed as a set of classification schemata, normative orientations,
and categories that help to constitute nations as imagined communities.
For conceptualizing nationalism this study draws on the latter two approaches. I
refer to nationalism as a particular form of discourse, a way of speaking and thinking
about collectivities in terms of nations and national identities (Calhoun 1997; Özkirimli
2005). Its basic underpinning is the idea that a political unit is congruent with animagined cultural community of nationals.4 Nationalism charges certain normative
principles, cognitive schemata, symbols, myths, and rituals with emotions and collective
meaning and fuses them into specific reference points for the construction of national
inclusion. These boundary markers are historical fabrications, but they may be
experienced as primordial elements of collective life (Billig 1995; Eisenstadt 1998;
Finlayson 1998).
The emphasis on cognitions, evaluations, and emotions situates the concept at the
interface between politics and culture and avoids the overemphasis of the political
dimension inherent in the behavioral approach. A focus on the collective action of
movements and state policies ignores a key feature of nationalism, its peculiar power to
bring the political and the cultural together. Moreover, this definition avoids conflating
explanans and explanandum, because it includes neither the actions producing particular
4 This definition provides a basis for distinguishing between nationalism and other forms of discourseinvolved in the legitimation or challenge of state power. For instance, agrarianism is distinct fromnationalism because it evokes an imagined community of peasants rather than nationals.
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understandings of national identity nor the political behaviors these national discourses
might inspire.
Nationalism as a discourse constitutes a powerful orientation for both the
legitimization and contestation of state power. In framing collectivities as sovereign,
equal and inherently limited nations, and a state as their political embodiment,
nationalism is a critical source of legitimacy for state authority. Analogously,
nationalism also forms a grid for the challenge of state power. The idea of a sovereign
political community with the potential right to self-determination establishes an important
ideological underpinning for contentious mobilization.This study identifies three distinct but interrelated discursive formations of
nationalism. The main distinction is based on the major social actors that advance and/or
embrace a particular form of national discourse. First, nationalism is a highly explicit
and consciously articulated state ideology. States draw upon national discourses to
legitimate authority and achieve social control (Gellner 1983; Hobsbawn 1990; Smith
1991). This form of nationalism is reflected in presidential speeches, school textbooks,
monuments, and public ceremonies. Second, nationalism is a consciously articulated
alternative narrative. Social movements employ nationalism in order to mobilize
political support and challenge state authority. Stark empirical examples are the vignettes
about the nation by leaders of the Zapatista movement in Mexico. Third and finally,
nationalism is a cultural script with almost self-evident plausibility that provides a lens
through which social reality is framed in daily habits and routines (Anderson 1991; Billig
1995; Brubaker 1996). This form of nationalism is reflected in the cheering for one’s
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national soccer team during the World Cup, or taking the national framing of news for
granted.
In a temporal perspective, state ideologies, cultural scripts, and alternative
narratives are connected to each other in a dynamic process. As illustrated in Figure 1, I
propose the following conceptual model for tracing transformations of nationalism. State
ideologies aim to become gradually translated into hegemonic cultural scripts.5 These
implicit frames of reference help to propel the pervasiveness of states in the life-world of
their resident populations (Eley and Suny 1996; Verdery 1993). At the same time,
cultural scripts enjoy relative autonomy from state control and therefore providesubordinate groups with a frame of reference for constructing alternative narratives in
order to challenge state ideologies (Chatterjee 1993; Mallon 1995). On the basis of this
conceptual model, I argue that transformations of nationalism entail the reorganization of
official ideas about the nation. A transformation of nationalism is associated with (1) the
production of alternative narratives, which refers to the “framing work” of social
movements; (2) the selective incorporation of alternative narratives into state ideologies,
and (3) the institutionalization of state ideologies into cultural scripts.6
---------------------------------
Figure 1 about here
---------------------------------
5 National discourses are hegemonic if they have achieved the status of broadly diffused reference points.In this definition, hegemony is not equated with citizens’ acceptance of official national ideologies, butrefers to the use of these discourses in daily life (see Gramsci 1971).6 This model is inspired by Robert Wuthnow’s (1989) “social-structural” approach to ideological change. Inhis empirical work he discusses the production, selection, and institutionalization of the Reformation, theEnlightment, and socialism as ideological forms.
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Movements usually do not “invent” alternative national narratives from scratch,
but draw on cultural scripts to construct contending visions of national history and
identity that achieve broader resonance across public spheres. Movement organizations
and their networks with cultural producers—the agents involved in the creation and
articulation of ideological forms, such as intellectuals, artists, or political leaders—
constitute the institutional context of these framing activities. Alternative national
narratives often exist parallel to state-sponsored national discourses. At certain critical
turning points, however, alternative narratives replace established state ideologies or
become partially incorporated into official national discourses. This adoption of alternative narratives by state elites tends to involve the cooptation of contentious cultural
producers and/or the appropriation of movement facilities engaged in ideological
production. State authorities seek to institutionalize these transformed national ideologies
as regular products of state organizations, with the aim to translate these discourses into
hegemonic cultural scripts. Key in this process are the institutional domains of education,
mass communication, social policy, and public rituals.
Explanatory Framework: A State-focused Approach
This study advances a state-focused approach for explaining transformations of
nationalism. Building on the idea that nationalism is involved in both the legitimation and
contestation of state power, this perspective focuses on the institutional underpinning of
state action and the contestation and alliance structures between state elites and social
movements. The empirical point of departure for developing such an explanatory
framework is that during the early and mid-20th century in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru
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political demands as the “national interest,” and to portray the claims of contending social
actors as antagonistic to national well-being (see Gamson 1988). Moreover, especially
for movements of subordinate actors, the identity of “national” provides a power resource
in the struggle for the extension of social and political rights (Kastoryano 2002). Thus,
movements draw on nationalism especially by orienting the appeal to “national interests,”
facilitating the mobilization of support, and fashioning a power resource.
At the same time, not every movement automatically manages to formulate
appealing alternative narratives and make this vision heard in the public sphere. Both the
ideological tactics and the organizational forms of movements are crucial for explainingwhen and under what conditions the alternative narrative production of movements
reaches beyond the boundaries of contentious networks themselves and achieves broader
resonance.
National narratives are more likely to achieve public attention if they refurbish
already broadly diffused myths and symbols and manage to infuse them with a different
political meaning. For instance, alternative narratives may appropriate commonly
recognized figures by emphasizing different character traits and political legacies and
downplaying established interpretations (Jansen forthcoming). Analogously, movements
may reinterpret the main historical events and periods from official history to embed their
critique of the dominant political order. Thus, movement-based narrative production
tends to be more effective when framing strategies draw on state-sponsored national
ideologies and use the common language of cultural scripts to construct coherent
alternative visions about national identity and history.
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An effective framing strategy alone, however, does not guarantee success (see
Gamson 1990). Mobilizing structures—the meso-level bases of collective action
(McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001)—are critical for advancing alternative narratives.
These organizational forms constitute the institutional backdrop for the production and
diffusion of movement-sponsored national discourses. Both formal movement
organizations and informal networks generate resources necessary for the financial
support and collective coordination of ideological projects (McCarthy and Zald 1977).
For instance, movement organizations may recruit and finance the work of cultural
producers engaged in the formulation of national narratives and protect them from directstate repression. Moreover, these collective vehicles facilitate access to larger audiences
and provide the means for the public circulation of ideological products. Movements
tend to be more successful in alternative narrative production when they feature formal
organization and membership networks beyond the local or regional level, when they are
organized around relatively stable interests and collective identities, and when they
display ties to cultural producers.
State Alliances and the Selective Incorporation of Alternative Narratives
Alternative national narratives often exist parallel to official ideologies articulated
by state authorities. At certain critical junctures, however, state-sponsored national
discourses may change dramatically and incorporate alternative narratives (or key
elements thereof) into official national discourse. For instance, presidential speeches may
depict certain episodes of national history in a way previously found only in coffeehouse
publications of subordinate intellectuals. Thus, an additional social force needs to be
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taken into account for explaining transformations of nationalism: the state. States are
potentially autonomous actors endowed with certain capacities to pursue political,
socioeconomic, and also ideological and cultural projects (Gorski 2003; Loveman 2005).
At the same time, states are embedded in a series of relationships with other social actors,
and these ties are marked by varying degrees of cooperation and conflict (Evans 1995;
Migdal 1988; 1994; Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens 1992).
This study builds on insights from the political development literature, which
argues that state action is fundamentally shaped by the type of alliance structures upon
which states base their power (e.g., Collier and Collier 1991; Huber and Stephens 2001;Lipset and Rokkan 1967; Luebbert 1991; Waldner 1999). Translated into the domain of
ideology and discourse, such an analytical perspective suggests that changing political
alignments and confrontations set the stage for transformations of state-sponsored
national ideology. As nationalism contributes to the legitimation of state authority, shifts
in the balance of power between state elites and social actors may create an incentive to
adopt a different form of official national discourse.
This study emphasizes two likely paths through which changing political
configurations motivate state elites to incorporate alternative national narratives into
official state ideology. In an elite-initiated trajectory the decay of accomodationist
alliances between state authorities and entrenched economic elites sets off the
refashioning of official national discourses. Such a context, usually marked by high levels
of social mobilization, intra-elite conflict, and the emergence of new political leaders,
induces executive authorities to adopt new strategies for attaining and consolidating state
power. By drawing on alternative forms of nationalism state elites seek to represent
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themselves as distinct from the old regime and to differentiate their political and
ideological projects from other elite factions.
By contrast, in a mobilization-based trajectory alliances between states and
movements representing subordinate classes such as labor and the peasantry motivate the
incorporation popular narratives into official ideology. With these alliances, subordinate
movements acquire new political weight, enabling them to pressure more effectively for
the redefinition of state-sponsored national discourses. In turn, state elites are bound to
consider alternative narratives for maintaining these new ruling coalitions and
consolidating state power. Thus, in both paths, changing alliance configurations betweenstate authorities and collective actors constitute a likely context for the incorporation of
alternative nationalisms into state-sponsored national discourses.
Meso-level organizational and institutional mechanisms establish important
linkages between state alliances and ideological outcomes. The incorporation of
alternative national narratives into official ideologies is grounded in state regulation of
various social and material goods (e.g., prestige, access to audiences) valuable to
subordinate movements and associated cultural producers. One incorporation strategy is
the cooptation of alternative cultural producers into public knowledge-producing
facilities. For instance, state authorities may offer alternative intellectuals a career in
state-sponsored universities or in the ministry of education, thereby providing them with
a more effective forum for their visions of the nation, and at the same time loosening
their financial and organizational dependence on a movement. Another incorporation
strategy is the appropriation of social movement organizations and their ideological
products (McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly 2001: 44). For instance, states may embrace
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organizations involved in the reinterpretation of national history by selectively funding
their activities or providing them with a logistical framework for diffusion. This process
may even entail the eventual absorption of social movement organizations into state
agencies of cultural production and consumption (Gorski 2003: 166-168). Thus, the
incorporation of alternative national narratives into state ideologies is associated with
changing ties between cultural producers, movement organizations, and state agencies.
It bears emphasis, however, that states usually do not act as monolithic entities.
From a more microscopic perspective, states each encompass a variety of organizations.
Of particular importance for the study of nationalism is the relationship between culturaland ideological organizations on the one hand, and the executive branch of the state on
the other. These different state agencies potentially marshal distinct interests and
identities, and their relationship might be marked by conflict and contradicting activities,
rather than by cooperation and coordinated information flows. For instance, the ministry
of education might oppose the coalition-building efforts of the government. Thus, the
scope of state alliances may vary, depending on whether new alliance structures become
“sticky” and extend beyond executive authorities to include state organizations engaged
in ideological production and diffusion. A limited scope is expected to constrain the
incorporation efforts of state authorities.
Ideological Infrastructure and the Institutionalization of National Ideology
States cannot simply adopt alternative narratives as state ideologies and turn them
automatically into cultural scripts. For a comprehensive transformation of nationalism to
take place, new forms of national ideology need to become a regular product of state
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organizations, and need to be embedded in professional roles and collective rituals (see
Wuthnow 1989). For tracking variations in the ability of state organizations to
institutionalize new national discourses, I build on the concept of state “infrastructural
power,” which refers to the institutional capacity of states to permeate society and
implement their projects throughout the territories that they claim to govern (Mann 1984;
1993). This form of state power enables central state organizations to shape and regulate,
both normatively and by force, the social relations within their territorial boundaries.
Infrastructurally more powerful states exhibit the logistical techniques necessary to name,
register, tax, police, conscript, and educate their subjects, and they do so both in thecapital and the farthest points of their territories. Thus, key sources of state infrastructural
power include transportation and communication networks, bureaucracy, monopoly over
force, and tax collection (see Evans, Rueschemeyer and Skocpol 1985; Goodwin 2001;
Kiser and Linton 2001).
Yet, roads, police officers, and tax offices alone do not win over citizens’ hearts
and minds. Cultural and educational state organizations therefore require analytical
attention in their own right (Gorski 2003; Loveman 2005). This study centers on the
“ideological infrastructure” or cultural machinery of states for demarcating the specific
sources of state power necessary to fashion discursive transformations. State ideological
infrastructure includes the organizational facilities, resources, communicative networks,
and rituals dedicated to regulating the production and diffusion of ideological products,
and controlling cultural producers and their organizations (Berezin 1991; Wuthnow
1989). Thus, the concept seeks to trace the “third dimension” of state power (see Lukes
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1974), the capacity of state organizations to pursue their projects on the basis of
persuasion, rather than coercion.
As a strategy to assess the power of state ideological infrastructure this paper
focuses on different institutional domains engaged in the production and diffusion of
ideological forms (e.g., public education), corresponding state organizations (e.g.,
schools), and principal actors in such a domain (e.g., educational authorities and
teachers). While public schooling is certainly of critical importance, other relevant arenas
for examining the ideological work of states include mass communication, art and
entertainment, public ceremonies and rituals, and social policy. State ideologicalinfrastructure varies with respect to the reach of state organizations in these institutional
domains. For instance, an extensive network of public primary schools facilitates the
broader circulation of state-sponsored ideological products. Another important factor is
the amount of resources dedicated to an institutional domain of the cultural machinery.
For example, monetary patronage and subsidies for national history institutes facilitate
control over these organizations and their intellectual production. And finally, the cultural
machinery of states varies in their bureaucratic capacity to engage in the regulation of
ideological products. For instance, state authorities issue detailed guidelines defining the
content of school textbooks or engage in the explicit promotion or censorship of art
works or literature.
Networks of cultural producers constitute another defining feature of state
ideological infrastructure. The relationship between executive authorities and these actors
is of critical importance for the institutionalization of state ideologies. Even with
resources and regulations in place, strained relations may foster the opposition of cultural
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producers and thereby inhibit the production and diffusion of ideological forms from
“within the state.” For instance, public school teachers may resist the ideological
orientation of the official curriculum designed and implemented by educational officials
and employ a variety of strategies to subvert its content in the classroom. Thus, state
ideological power is not exclusively a function of geographical reach, resources, and
regulatory capacities of state organizations, it is also based on the training and outlook of
cultural producers and their alignments and contestations with executive elites.
Ideas about timing and historical sequence are useful for assessing the impact of
state ideological infrastructure (Ertman 1997; Rueschemeyer 1973; see also Pierson2004). I argue that an already established cultural machinery makes it more difficult for
state elites to convert a new national ideology into a regular product of state
organizations. By contrast, the diffusion of hegemonic cultural scripts is facilitated when
the institutional development of state ideological infrastructure is temporally congruent
with discursive transformations. An established cultural machinery is marked by an
already routinized production and diffusion of ideological forms, marshals a substantial
geographical reach, and maintains cultural producers who were trained under the
previous ideological regime. As such, an established cultural machinery is usually
invested in the professional identity of these cultural producers, which in turn enhances
their capacity to resist ideological changes proposed by executive authorities.
Comprehensive, Contained, and Blocked Transformations of Nationalism
The question remains how social mobilization, state alliances, and state
institutional development interact to shape distinct trajectories of nationalism. The
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subsequent section brings the conceptualization of nationalism and the explanatory
framework outlined above together.
To recapitulate, transformations of nationalism involve nationalism as (1) an
alternative narrative advanced by social movements, (2) an official ideology put
forward by the state, and (3) a cultural script with almost self-evident plausibility.
This study distinguishes three major trajectories of nationalism. A comprehensive
transformation of nationalism includes the incorporation of alternative national
narratives previously articulated by public intellectuals or contentious movement
organizations into official national discourses advanced by state elites. Thesetransformed state ideologies gradually achieve status as hegemonic cultural scripts.
By contrast, in a contained transformation state ideologies incorporate elements of
alternative national narratives, yet these refurbished official discourses do not
achieve broader resonance. Finally, a blocked transformation of nationalism is
marked by the exclusion of new alternative narratives from state ideologies, with the
result that these narratives remain confined to social forces without access to state
power.
The central explanatory argument advanced in this dissertation suggests that a
particular trajectory of nationalism depends on the presence or absence of three key
processes: (1) the formation of movements that successfully advance alternative ideas
about the nation, (2) the change of alliance structures between state authorities, oligarchic
elites, and subordinate movements, which provide an incentive for the incorporation of
these alternative narratives into state ideologies, and (3) the congruence between
discursive changes and the expansion of state ideological infrastructure, facilitating the
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institutionalization of these new official ideologies. When all three processes are present,
then a comprehensive transformation of nationalism unfolds. By contrast, an already
established cultural machinery impedes the institutionalization of a new national
ideology, leading to a contained transformation of nationalism marked by the persistent
instability and contestation among discursive formations. Finally, the continued
grounding of state power in accomodationist alliances with oligarchic elites prevents the
incorporation of alternative national narratives, ultimately inhibiting a transformation of
state-sponsored national ideology.
A Typology: Liberal, Romantic, and Popular Nationalism
To evaluate this theoretical framework through the close inspection of actual
cases requires a clear understanding of what kind of national discourses were present in
each case at a given point in time. In other words, we first need a device for tracing cross-
sectional variation of nationalism and within-case transformation from a comparative
vantage point. This section develops an inductive typology for identifying differences and
similarities among national discourses found in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru.
A major typology well entrenched in the literature on nationalism–the distinction
between civic and ethnic forms of nationalism– tracks whether inclusion into the national
community is based on political or cultural criteria (Brubaker 1992; Greenfeld 1992;
Hobsbawn 1990). Civic nationalism portrays the nation as a political community that is
constituted by its territorial and political frame. By contrast, ethnic nationalism
conceives the nation as an ethnocultural community that is neither causally nor
conceptually dependent on political territory.
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At a first glance, this typology provides certain comparative insights for Mexico,
Argentina, and Peru. During the late nineteenth century national discourses in all three
countries exhibited key elements of civic nationalism. Promoting a political
understanding of the nation, official state ideologies emphasized the public institutions of
state and civil society, most importantly the Constitution, as major identity markers.
Attachment to the nation was based on the commitment to a shared set of political
practices and values and had to be reinforced by carefully calibrated civic rituals.
Analogously, national discourses in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru also showed important
traits of ethnic nationalism. During the twentieth century alternative national narrativesadvanced by contentious actors and, later on, official national ideologies propagated by
state elites articulated a cultural understanding of the national community grounded in a
common language, religion, and tradition. Cultural sameness, and not shared rights,
constituted the main underpinning of national belonging.
Yet the analytical leverage provided by the distinction between civic and ethnic
nationalism ultimately is limited, ignoring critical aspects of national discourses in the
three countries. This dissertation illustrates that late nineteenth century national
ideologies not only evoked Enlightment ideas of popular sovereignty and individual
citizenship, they were also deeply infused with Comtean political positivism and adopted
late nineteenth century racial thinking with its emphasis on biology, eugenics, and social
darwinianism. Achieving “order and progress” appeared as the most promising recipe to
secure the nation’s wellbeing. Official national discourses depicted enlightened and
benevolent elites as the natural leaders of these states and portrayed them as the
protagonists of national history. Their actions were critical to propel the respective
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national community from “barbarism” to “civilization”—a category associated with
economic modernization, urban and cosmopolitan European culture, and ideas about
biologically determined racial hierarchies. A small state and an export-oriented economy
constituted the ideal underpinning for a society favoring natural selection and the
domination of “the fittest.” Excluded were those who did not match the image of a
“civilized nation.” As a matter of fact, official national ideologies in these three countries
recreated the ethnoracial hierarchies from the colonial period and conceived of only small
segments of the population, wealthy, white, and literate, as fully included nationals. Thus,
late nineteenth century nationalism in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru fused civic idealswith highly elitist imageries of national belonging.
Also the concept of ethnic nationalism does not capture important dimensions of
twentieth century alternative national narratives and state ideologies. This study shows
that these forms of nationalism highlighted the cultural bases of national identity in
Mexico, Argentina, and Peru, yet they did not employ imageries of shared ethnic decent
or common blood ties. Even when imagined as cultural communities, assimilation into
these nations remained a possibility. In other words, these national discourses recognized
the diverse racial or ethnic origins of the nation, but intended to blend those differences
into a homogeneous national present. This cultural-assimilationist vision for achieving
national unity was complemented by an emphasis on “the people” as the “true” carriers of
Mexican, Argentinean, and Peruvian identity and protagonists of national history. The
main cleavage was between the “masses” and the “oligarchy,” the latter marked as not
fully belonging to the national community. Representing oligarchic influence as closely
intertwined with foreign interests, these national discourses often took a strong anti-
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imperialist stance and envisioned a strong state and an inward-oriented economy as the
ideal institutional order of the nation. A strong state was also deemed necessary to
channel mass mobilization and organize popular inclusion in terms of corporatist
categories, rather than in terms of equal individual citizenship. Thus, in all three cases
twentieth century nationalisms combined a cultural understanding of the nation with
popular and corporatist ideas about national membership.
Based on these patterns I argue that a different typology is more suitable for
tracing the similarities and differences among national discourses in Mexico, Argentina,
and Peru: the distinction between liberal and popular nationalism. As summarized inTable 1, this typology traces these forms of nationalism along four dimensions:
membership criteria—tracking what the defining features of the national community are;
modes of incorporation—distinguishing projections about how to achieve national unity;
symbolic universe—pinpointing the key actors and main cleavages within the imagined
community; and political vision—detecting imageries about the ideal institutional order
for the nation. Based on this distinction it is possible to identify two main variations
among national discourses. Liberal nationalism conceives of the nation as a community
grounded in its political and economic institutions, and its territorial boundaries. This
political conception is complemented by the idea that national unity can only be
accomplished through the move from “barbarism” to “civilization” and the creation of a
“civilized” nation. By contrast, popular national discourses emphasize criteria like
language, religion or shared traditions as key identity markers. Becoming a
“homogeneous” nation is realized in the assimilation of the resident population into a
peculiar national culture. Liberal nationalism advances an elitist image of the nation
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organized around the agency of enlightened leaders, while popular nationalism
emphasizes that subordinate sectors embody the authentic national community and
therefore are legitimate historical agents. Finally, the two forms of national diverge in
their representations of the proper institutional order, liberal national discourses
representing a “night watchman” state and an export-oriented economy, and popular
nationalism viewing a more interventionist state and inward-oriented economy as
essential ingredients for securing national wellbeing.
---------------------------------Table 1 about here
---------------------------------
I employ the label “liberal” because in the context of Latin American
historiography, the term is widely used to describe the dominant political and ideological
project in the region during the mid- to late nineteenth century (e.g., Brading 1973;
Gootenberg 1993; Hale 1968; Halperín Donghi 1987a). Distinct from the contemporary
use of the word in the United States, and also distinct from the classical liberalism
associated with theorists such as Adam Smith, John Locke, and John Stuart Mill, the
form of liberalism present in nineteenth century Latin America was strongly influenced
by the philosophical positivism of Auguste Comte (e.g., Mahoney 2001; Eastwood 2004).
As such, this ideology was marked by the tension between individual rights and
freedoms, and the inherent value assigned to natural social hierarchies. Latin American
liberalism supported the idea that all people are equally capable of reason and progress,
while also embracing Darwin’s theory of natural selection and depicting lower classes as
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biologically incapable of governing themselves. The term “popular” is also grounded in
common characterizations of modern Latin American history. This type of nationalism
occurred in the context of broader economic and sociopolitical change during the early
and mid twentieth century, precisely when previously marginalized sectors mobilized for
their political and symbolic inclusion, and when both fascism and communism gained
increasing prominence as global ideological models. Scholars often describe this epoch as
“populism” or “populist period” (e.g., Cotler 2005; Stein 1980), defined by political and
ideological projects evoking the idea of a national people in opposition to an elite (e.g.,
de Ipola 1979; Zabaleta 1997).The distinction between liberal and popular nationalism leaves room for an
intermediary, yet qualitatively different type: romantic nationalism. This form of national
discourse shares with popular nationalism the cultural-assimilationist orientation. At the
same time, romantic nationalism resembles liberal national ideology in its elitist image of
the national community, and its hierarchical projections about the proper institutional
order of the nation. The label “romantic” points to its grounding in nineteenth century
German Romanticism, an intellectual and artistic movement that arose in reaction to the
Enlightment. Its most prominent advocate, Johann Gottfried von Herder, countered the
voluntary aspects of civic nationalism with the idea of the nation as an a-historical entity
grounded in a shared language and culture and guided by an enlightened intellectual
class. In early twentieth century Mexico, Argentina, and Peru romantic nationalism
could be first identified in alternative national narratives articulated by middle sectors and
excluded elites. Later on, it found its way into official state ideologies in the context of
major social and demographic change or revolutionary state breakdown.
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Why Mexico, Argentina, and Peru?
The theoretical argument about transformations of nationalism is explored and
assessed against evidence from Mexico, Argentina, and Peru. This case selection is
driven by theoretically and methodologically relevant similarities and differences among
these countries, which facilitates the matching and contrasting of cases integral to any
comparative analysis. I combine two strategies of comparison, a most similar and a most
different systems design (Collier and Collier 1991; Przeworski and Teune 1970) for
explaining transformations of nationalism across these cases. While exhibiting broadhistorical similarities Mexico and Peru embarked on very different trajectories of
nationalism. The comprehensive transformation in postrevolutionary Mexico contrasted
sharply with the persistence of liberal nationalism in Peru. At the same time, countries as
distinct as Argentina and Peru experienced similar transformative episodes. Finally, each
of these cases constitutes a stark empirical example of one of the ideal typical
transformations of nationalism. As such, these three cases constitute extreme points on a
continuum, with other countries in Latin America likely to follow these trajectories or
combinations of them.
Mexico and Peru exhibit important similarities with respect to colonial history,
economic history, and demographic composition. The Audiencia of Mexico and the
Audiencia of Lima, roughly corresponding to the areas of modern Mexico and Peru, were
the political, economic, and sociocultural centers of Spanish colonialism. Attracted by
complex precolonial societies and their large indigenous populations (Newson 1985;
Sánchez-Albornoz 1984), Spanish colonizers implemented an extensive set of
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administrative and coercive state organizations in these territories, which remained the
bureaucratic cores of the empire throughout the colonial period (Guardino and Walker
1992; Mahoney and vom Hau 2005). In both Mexico and Peru economic activities were
predominantly oriented towards the extraction of precious metals and the exploitation of
indigenous labor (Andrien 2001; Brading 1971; Cole 1985; Stern 1993). The creation of
mercantile actors and ethnoracial stratification systems during the colonial period had
large implications for subsequent national development and continues to shape the
institutional set-up and lived experience in these two countries today (Mahoney 2003a).
Argentina is included because this case illustrates how transformations of nationalism played themselves out in a completely different context, a settler society with
massive European migration and a booming export economy. The region corresponding
to modern Argentina lacked a dense indigenous population, and during much of the
colonial period played only a marginal role for economic production and political
administration in the Spanish colonial system (Halperín Donghi 1993). In fact, state
formation in Argentina only gained momentum in the late colonial period (Rock 1987;
2002). As a former colonial backwater, Argentina was spared from the most delirious
effects of entrenched mercantilist institutions and high degrees of ethnoracial polarization
found in postcolonial Mexico and Peru (Klarén 2000; Knight 1992; Mahoney 2003a;
Mahoney and vom Hau 2005). Instead, extensive economic expansion was accompanied
by the massive inflow of European immigrants (Devoto 2003; Halperín Donghi 1987b).
Thus, the choice of comparing Mexico and Peru to Argentina follows a most
different systems design. During the twentieth century these countries exhibited a key
similarity: all three witnessed a transition from liberal to popular nationalism in a context
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characterized by state expansion, incorporation into the global capitalist economy,
urbanization, and agrarian development. The exact dates when this discursive change
unfolded differed for each country, though they roughly fall in between 1910 and 1950—
with the exception of Peru, where a comparable discursive change only occurred much
later, during the 1960s and 1970s. The profound historical differences between Mexico
and Peru on the one hand, and Argentina on the other, provide a stronger basis for
inferring that transformations of nationalism were driven by conflicts between states and
contentious social movements and by the timing of state making.
Selecting Mexico, Argentina, and Peru also sets the stage for explaining contrastsand similarities through pairs of comparison. The comparison between Mexico and Peru
follows a most similar systems design. Exhibiting important historical similarities, these
two countries experienced contrasting trajectories of nationalism. Mexico came closest to
a comprehensive transformation. After the revolution, new state elites ascended, and
under Cárdenas (1934-1940) popular forms of nationalism grounded in mestizaje
obtained hegemony. By contrast, Peru provides an example of a blocked transformation
of nationalism. During the 1930s and 1940s subordinate forces repeatedly advanced
alternative national narratives based on indigenismo, but these discourses remained
excluded from state ideology. The comparison between Argentina under Perón and Peru
under Velasco follows a most different systems logic. Both resemble a contained
transformation. Peronist state elites emphasized a class-based understanding of national
belonging, portraying the “masses” as the carriers of national identity. Analogously,
during the military government in the 1970s popular nationalism gained prominence as
official national discourse in Peru. Yet, in both cases state elites did not manage to
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translate this popular national ideology into more implicit cultural scripts. Thus, the
selection of Mexico, Argentina, and Peru is both theoretically and methodologically
motivated, seeking to maximize the set of comparisons for explaining transformations of
nationalism and their variation across cases and over time.
Methodology
This dissertation draws on comparative historical methods for evaluating the
state-focused approach outlined in this chapter. Comparative-historical analysis, as it is
understood here, is a mode of social scientific inquiry that moves back and forth betweenhistory and theory in effort to develop and refine concepts, and identity and assess causal
arguments (Mahoney and Rueschemeyer 2003). Drawing on recent methodological
developments this dissertation employs two major forms comparison. Cross-case
comparisons are used to contrast theoretically important aspects of the different cases
with one another. These comparisons are predominantly informed by “nominal”
strategies of causal assessment (Mahoney 1999). For instance, I argue that the presence
of alliances with subordinate actors is a necessary condition for the emergence of popular
nationalism as an official national ideology, while its absence propels the continued
dominance of liberal or romantic nationalism.
Within-case analysis constitutes a complementary strategy and moves beyond the
highly aggregated level of cross-case comparisons. This method helps to assess causal
arguments by confronting insights from cross-case analysis with observations from
within specific cases. Of particular importance for this mode of analysis are “process
tracing” and analytical narrative. The former explores whether there is a causal
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association between explanatory factors and the outcome of interest by detecting whether
the within-case dynamics follow the hypothesized causal path (George and Bennett
2005). In other words, this methodological tool involves the identification of causal
mechanisms—or the continuous processes and events that unfold from effect to outcome
(Hedström and Swedberg 1998)—and their assessment against fine-grained historical
evidence. This dissertation also uses analytical narrative (Mahoney 2003b; Stryker 1996).
This informal technique is focused disaggregating explanatory factors and outcomes into
smaller event processes with the aim to do justice to causal complexity. It is especially
useful for tracing configurations of causal factors and their interplay and making causalinferences through the comparison of particular event sequences. Organized around the
overarching theoretical framework, the treatment of historical cases in analytical
narrative is necessarily selective, informed by the key concepts and explanatory
arguments.
For the analysis of nationalism this dissertation is centrally concerned with the
reconstruction of historical discourses about national identity and history. Its main focus
is to unearth patterns and variations of nationalism across institutional contexts, social
groupings, and temporal periods. In doing so, this study employs a variety of historical
sources, combining primary evidence with secondary sources on the three countries. For
analyzing nationalism as consciously articulated state ideology, I draw on original
material, most importantly school textbooks on national history, literature, and civic
education. I use textbooks because public schools are arguably the major nationalizing
institution of the state during the 20th century. State authorities put major efforts into
establishing an official curriculum and regulating the content of these texts, for instance
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through special approval commissions. The relatively wide circulation of textbooks
grants them a significant advantage over other plausible sources. For instance, writings
of political elites or intellectuals were much more limited in their diffusion, and therefore
do not provide an adequate source for reconstructing broadly disseminated state
ideologies. Moreover, textbooks provide a window at the long-term ideological
orientations of states. In comparison, other plausible sources, for instance radio
broadcasts of presidential speeches, were more subject to short-term political
calculations, such as winning the next election. Finally, a comparative study of textbooks
from the three countries affords the opportunity to develop an analytical framework thathelps to synthesize the already existing country-specific literature on textbooks and
nationalism in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru (e.g., Cucuzza and Somoza 2001; Heise and
Degregori 1973; Plotkin 2002; Portocarrero and Oliart 1989; Vaughan 1982; Vázquez
1970).
My textbook analysis starts with the implementation of obligatory public
schooling during the late 19th century, a period that witnessed the prevalence of liberal
nationalism. I end with the comprehensive (or contained) institutionalization of popular
nationalism. Thus, this dissertation traces trajectories of nationalism as state ideology
over substantial periods of time, from 1884 to 1955 in Argentina, from 1888 to 1960 in
Mexico, and from 1905 to 1978 in Peru. In each country I reviewed between 50 and 70
textbooks for these periods, collecting at least five publications per decade. For the
selection of textbooks I employed three main criteria. First, I focused on primary school
textbooks because only a small segment of the population attended secondary schools
during the time of interest. Second, I selected those textbooks that were published or
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approved by national educational authorities. Third and finally, among the approved
textbooks I preferred those that were reprinted in several editions, indicating their actual
use. For contextualizing this textbook analysis I also collected information on the
regulation of textbook production and circulation. I tracked guidelines for editorials and
textbook writers, commission reports on the approbation of textbooks, and resources
available for textbook distribution. Moreover, I gathered secondary literature on national
discourse aired in radiobroadcasts, shown in movies, or employed in public celebrations
to crosscheck with my findings from textbook analysis.
Studying the institutionalization of official national ideologies as cultural scriptstouches upon one of the most difficult tasks in historical research: the reception of
ideological forms among common people. Especially in past societies with low literacy
rates the historical record of nationalism as an implicit frame of reference is notoriously
small. Historians interested in reconstructing the broader resonance of state-sponsored
discourses face substantial methodological challenges. As a result, the appropriateness of
different sources and modes of inquiry are highly contested (e.g., Knight 1994; Mallon
1995; Thurner 1997). In this study I draw on interviews with teachers and periodicals
from independent teacher associations for tracing the institutionalization of new
ideological forms. For exploring teachers’ role in this process I zoomed in on the
activities and outlooks of primary school teachers during the main transformative
periods: the transitions towards popular nationalism under Cárdenas in Mexico (1934-
1940), Perón in Argentina (1946-1955), and the military government of Velasco in Peru
(1968-1975). For Mexico I relied primarily on detailed interviews with teachers already
active during the 1930s found the Archivo de la Palabra, an oral history archive that
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consists of several hundred biographical interviews with individuals involved in Mexican
Revolution. I also consulted El Maestro Rural, a journal that mostly published articles
written by teachers for teachers. In Argentina I combined semi-structured interviews with
teachers already active during historical Peronism with an analysis of La Obra as a
periodical written by teachers for teachers. I screened this journal for outlooks on national
identity and history by sampling those issues that were published around the major
national holidays. In Peru I relied exclusively on semi-structured interviews with public
and private school teachers already active during the Velasco regime.
In contrast to other plausible sources, for instance legal records, this focus onteachers affords the opportunity to continue to focus on the domain of education and to
complement the textbook analysis with sources from the same organizational context. As
producers and consumers of national ideology teachers play a double role in the
institutionalization of nationalism. They are the first to be exposed to the ideological
products advanced by state authorities and constitute the initial transmission belt in the
translation of nationalism. At the same time, teachers exhibit a distinct professional
identity and marshal a certain degree of autonomy to interpret, package, and rework state
ideologies in the classroom. Thus, a focus on teachers provides a window for exploring
both the contestations of nationalism among different state organizations and the
negotiation of official national discourses within larger society. The exclusive focus on
teachers over another highly plausible source within the domain of education, students’
reactions to textbooks, has largely pragmatic and empirical reasons. With the exception
of Argentina I was unable to gather comparable evidence on student reception. And as
Gvirtz’ (1999) study of student notebooks from the Peronist period indicates, these
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lecture notes were highly dependent on the topics and textbook sections emphasized by
teachers.
Only for the analysis of alternative national narratives this study departs from an
exclusive focus on education. For reconstructing state-challenging nationalisms I
combined secondary literature with the analysis of periodicals that showed a close
affinity to the movements of interest. For instance, I consulted daily newspapers and
weekly magazines that were either published by an oppositional organization, such as
APRA’s La Tribuna in Peru during the 1930s, or that were known as an important
ideological voice of a movement, such as the political Catholics’ Criterio in Argentinaduring the 1940s. The review of periodicals built on my findings from the textbook
analysis and predominantly concentrated on the ten year period before a major
ideological transformation took place or was theoretically expected to unfold. The main
rationale behind this collection strategy was to identify the alternative national narratives
that were immediately available to (new) state elites in a context of changing political
configurations. The selection of actual articles was selective. As a rule of thumb I focused
again on sampling texts from issues published around major national holidays, such as
the Dia de la Independencia (“grito”) on the 16th of September in Mexico. Moreover, I
reviewed the relevant periodicals more extensively during certain years with special
events, such as the 400th anniversary of the foundation of Lima in 1935. My final sample
included those journal and newspaper articles that explicitly dealt with themes related to
national history and identity.
These distinct historical sources provided the textual corpus for reconstructing
nationalism as alternative national narratives, cultural scripts, and state ideologies in each
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case. For tracing their continuities and variations over time I screened the selected texts
according to several major themes. With respect to national history I explored founding
myths, dominant periodizations of national history, normative judgments of major
historical epochs, and the main forces “driving” national history. When focusing on
national identity I traced statements organized around archetypes of national character as
well as representations of external others and major enemies. I was also interested in
ideas about hierarchies found within the national imagined community and therefore
tracked the imageries associated with immigrants or indigenous populations. Finally, I
searched for depictions of the most important national heroes, symbols such as flags andmaps, and national holidays and the reasons given to celebrate them. In the case of
textbooks I supplemented the textual analysis with a focus on their iconography. Across
all historical sources, this analytical grid provided the backdrop to identify distinct
patterns of nationalism in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru from a comparative vantage
point.
Historical Argument
This section elaborates on the previous discussion and introduces the cases
examined throughout this study in more detail. While acknowledging the peculiarities of
each case the following discussion explores trajectories of nationalism in Mexico,
Argentina, and Peru through the optic of a state-focused approach and seeks to the broad
similarities and variations among these cases.
Liberal Nationalism
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During the late nineteenth century, often described as period of “oligarchic
domination” (O’Donnell 1977: 66), Mexico, Argentina, and Peru left the vicious circle of
political turmoil and economic stagnation behind that characterized the immediate
postcolonial era. Central states consolidated, expanding their power vis-à-vis local
caudillo rule. Political centralization was closely intertwined with economic expansion,
largely driven by foreign investment, the production of agrarian exports, and incipient
industries.7 The rural economy was dominated by large estates, the main beneficiaries of
the commercialization of agriculture. In the three countries oligarchic regimes grounded
their political power in an alliance with a narrow elite of large landowners andindustrialists, the main beneficiaries of the export boom. The majority of political offices
went to members of these elites who ruled through a combination of clientilism, electoral
manipulations, and repression.
Mexican, Argentinean, and Peruvian state elites advanced liberal nationalism with
the aim to legitimate the reigning oligarchic order. The respective national Constitution
appeared as the centerpiece of a “civic religion” built around carefully calibrated rituals
and ceremonies, and only enlightened leaders were capable of achieving greater degrees
of “civilization,” while the indigenous population constituted the main obstacle to
national progress. The broad-based institutionalization of liberal national ideologies as
cultural scripts, however, faced substantial limitations. In all three countries the reach of
state ideological infrastructure was limited. In Mexico and Peru, the development of
public schooling and the regulation of mass communication and cultural politics
remained at an embryonic stage. And even in Argentina, endowed with more
7 In Argentina this economic bonanza was accompanied by the equally dramatic demographicreorganization of society based on massive European immigration.
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consolidated cultural and pedagogical organizations, the reach of the state’s cultural
machinery remained modest at best.
Liberal nationalism was contested. The three countries witnessed the growth and
politicization of middle sectors and working classes that mobilized for their political and
symbolic inclusion; regional elites felt threatened by the rising power of the central state;
and the expanding “ideological work” of state organizations upset the established balance
of church and state. Representatives of these social forces often employed contending
national narratives. These movements, even though they varied in their framing
strategies, organizational strength, and constituencies, reframed the established notionsabout national history and identity found in the reigning liberal nationalism and infused
them with a different political meaning.
Middle sectors and excluded elites advanced variations of romantic nationalism.
In Mexico oppositional groups depicted the cultural essence of Mexican identity as
grounded in mestizaje and idealized representations of the Aztec Empire. In Argentina,
artistic and political movements, worried about the consequence of European mass
migration, emphasized the Hispanic roots of the nation and imagined the gaucho as the
most authentic representative of such a national identity. In Peru, indigenismo, a
movement largely composed of regional elites from the Andes, portrayed the Inca Empire
as the origin of a peculiar national culture. By contrast, anarchists, the main political
force among organized labor during this period, depicted nationalism as a bourgeois
invention and rejected the nation as a category of mobilization.
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State-initiated Transitions towards Romantic Nationalism
Transformations of nationalism only began to unfold in contexts of changing
political configurations. Both Mexico and Argentina witnessed transitions from liberal to
romantic nationalism, set off by state elites responding to substantial subordinate
mobilization and intra-elite conflict. During the armed phase of the Mexican Revolution
(1910-1920) intra-elite conflicts and popular rebellions toppled the old oligarchic regime
and led to the temporary collapse of the central state. Both the peasantry and urban labor
became important political powers, mobilizing in various alliances with different
revolutionary leaders.The revolutionary struggles ended with the military defeat of these popular forces
and the ascendance of a new postrevolutionary state elite, composed of provincial elites
and middle sectors. Confronted with a highly mobilized society and recurrent conflicts
among the “revolutionary family” itself, state power became grounded in alliances with
urban labor and, to a lesser degree, with peasants. During the 1920s these alliances took
the form of paternalistic ties between political caudillos and subordinate leaders, and
were therefore highly volatile and subject to change. Eager to distinguish themselves
from the Porfirian era the new state elites adopted romantic projections about national
identity and history. Official national ideology envisioned a transcendental “cosmic race”
of mestizos as the basis of a genuine national identity and celebrated the Aztec past as the
critical epoch of national history, while maintaining an elitist and hierarchical
understanding of the national community. The institutionalization of romantic
nationalism remained limited. Throughout the 1920s the state cultural machinery
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continued to lack the reach necessary for the translation of the official national discourses
into hegemonic cultural scripts.
In Argentina, romantic nationalism gained prominence as an official ideology
without revolutionary transformation. Yet again, this discursive change developed on the
background of intensified subordinate mobilization and declining oligarchic power, and
the almost complete demographic reorganization of the country. Between 1890 and 1910
European mass immigration accelerated to unprecedented levels, and immigrants
predominantly sought to maintain their distinct identities and rejected naturalization. A
powerful labor movement emerged among a rapidly expanding urban proletariat, and theRadical Party became an increasingly influential vehicle of oppositional mobilization
among middle sectors and dissidents within the oligarchic elite. State authorities
responded to this multifaceted opposition with a mixture of heavy-handed repression
against labor, a more rigorous project of “nationalizing” the immigrant population, and an
attempt at a controlled political opening from above. It was in this context that romantic
nationalism emerged as official national discourse.
This romantic state ideology depicted Argentina as a crisol de razas (“fusion of
races,” the local version of the melting pot ) and celebrated the gaucho as the most
authentic representative of a Hispanic national culture, the endpoint of this assimilative
process. The idea of the nation as an organic and self-regulating cultural community
appeared to be in no need of an interventionist state. When the conservative elite’s
strategy of controlled political opening backfired, and the Radical Party won the election
in 1916 and established itself as the dominant political force for the subsequent decade,
the new state authorities continued to advance romantic nationalism as an official
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national ideology. In contrast to postrevolutionary Mexico, Argentina witnessed the
dramatic expansion of state ideological infrastructure. State authorities systematically
expanded the reach of “mass socializing” institutions such as public schooling and
patriotic rituals and invested heavily in cultural politics. The temporal congruence
facilitated the institutionalization of romantic nationalism as hegemonic cultural scripts.
When compared to Mexico and Argentina, Peru did not experience a similar
transition toward romantic nationalism during the early twentieth century. The 1910s and
1920s witnessed heightened labor protest, and indigenous movements in the Andes
launched a series of rebellions to oppose the encroachment on communal lands.Subordinate mobilization was accompanied by intensified intra-elite conflict. Augusto
Leguía, an outsider candidate for the presidency, won the 1919 elections and staged a
coup when defeated candidates contested the election results. In the face of substantial
opposition from the oligarchic establishment Leguía tried to base his political rule on the
support from urban middle classes, and engaged in some—largely symbolic—gestures
toward popular sectors. His speeches resonated with romantic nationalism, celebrating
the Inca Empire as the cradle of the Peruvian nation government. Leguía, however, soon
abandoned these postures. State power remained grounded in an oligarchic alliance of
coastal and highland elites, romantic nationalism did not find its way into the state’s
organized ideological production, and liberal nationalism ultimately prevailed as an
official national ideology in Peru.
Thus, during this initial transformative phase the three countries embarked on
distinct trajectories of nationalism. In early twentieth century Mexico and Argentina
romantic nationalism gained prominence as state-sponsored ideology, while in Peru the
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reigning liberal nationalism managed to persist. Based on a state-focused approach this
study shows that changing political configurations were key in shaping these divergent
ideological outcomes. In both postrevolutionary Mexico and Argentina, episodes marked
by very different structural contexts, state elites initiated a discursive change in response
to increased subordinate mobilization and the decline of oligarchic power. By contrast, in
Peru under Leguía subordinate mobilization and intra-elite conflict did not entail a similar
reorganization of political alliance structures. Moreover, the analysis of the temporal
order of state-making reveals that in Argentina the simultaneous expansion of the cultural
machinery facilitated the translation of romantic nationalism into hegemonic culturalscripts, while in Mexico state ideological infrastructure remained limited. These different
patterns had important consequences for subsequent transformative periods.
Mobilization--based Transitions towards Popular Nationalism
In Mexico, Argentina, and Peru transitions toward popular nationalism were again
shaped by changing political configurations. In contrast to a state-led path, these
transformations of nationalism involved more direct agency of contentious movements
vis-à-vis state elites. Changes in official national ideology were not only motivated by the
decay of accomodationist alliances, they also included the active formation of new
coalition structures between popular sectors and state authorities. In this mobilization-
based path, the incorporation of popular nationalism as official ideology was grounded in
populist alliances and the increased political weight of subordinate forces. State
authorities tended to include subordinate forces and popular national narratives in their
calculations to consolidate and legitimate state power.
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In Mexico, the revolutionary struggles had left behind highly mobilized
subordinate sectors that remained a powerful oppositional force throughout subsequent
decades. Urban workers, even though numerically smaller than the various peasant
movements, exhibited a greater ideological presence. The Confederación Regional
Obrera Mexicana (CROM) and the Communist Party subscribed to a class-based
understanding of the nation and depicted peasants and workers as the protagonists of
national history. In Argentina an already well-established labor movement with a long
history of militancy expanded its political influence during the 1930s. Socialists and
communists, the main representatives of organized labor, marshaled considerableideological reach. Their alternative national narratives reworked official story lines,
portraying Spanish colonialism as the onset of imperial exploitation and depicting the
gaucho as a wage laborer and symbol of subaltern revolutionary spirit. In Peru the
Socialist Party under the leadership of José Carlos Mariátegui and Alianza Popular
Revolucionaria Americana (APRA), a multi-class populist party, fused an emphasis on
“the people” as the “true” national subjects in opposition to the “oligarchy” with the
revalorization of indigenous culture and the Inca Empire as key markers of Peruvian
identity.
The three countries also witnessed the emergence of political Catholics. These
multi-class movements of Catholic lay organizations opposed state involvement in the
domains of social provisions and education, spheres traditionally dominated by the
Church, and sought to limit socialist and communist influence among popular sectors. In
Mexico, catholic mobilization probably took the most radical form. Once
postrevolutionary state elites started to enforce the anticlerical articles of the 1917
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constitution, already prevalent tensions escalated into a three year-long civil war, the so-
called Cristero Rebellion. In Argentina and Peru the boundaries between state and church
were somewhat more blurred than in Mexico, and political Catholics resorted to less
confrontational tactics. The Acción Católica emerged as the most important platform for
catholic lay organizations. These catholic movements advanced alternative national
narratives that envisioned a “catholic nation,” portrayed Spanish colonizers and
missionaries as major national heroes, and envisioned a corporatist state to secure
economic independence and class harmony.8
This intensified social mobilization and alternative narrative productionconstituted a necessary backdrop for transitions towards popular nationalism. Variations
in the timing of this ideological change were to an important extent driven by political
alliances between state elites and subordinate sectors.
Under Lazaro Cárdenas (1934-1940) popular nationalism replaced romantic
nationalism as official national ideology in Mexico. This ideological change took off
when the coalition between organized labor, peasants, and postrevolutionary state elites
consolidated. Even though popular sectors were subjected to increased state control, they
obtained more political weight and substantial material concessions, and executive
authorities made subordinate interests an integral part of their political calculations and
nation-building strategies. This shift in the domestic balance of power was accompanied
by change in language about the political community. Postrevolutionary state elites
8 A peculiarity of political Catholics in Argentina was their close affiliation with factions of the nationalistmovement. This oppositional force fused the celebrations of Argentina’s Hispanic origins with a stronganti-imperialist stance and drew on fascism as a model for the corporatist organization of society. Catholicmilitants were often nationalists and vice versa, and both often resorted to the same organizationalinfrastructure in their mobilization efforts.
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selectively adopted themes and discursive patterns previously found in alternative
popular narratives articulated by labor and peasant representatives. This reworked
national ideology combined a cultural understanding of national identity with a focus on
class. Popular nationalism also reinterpreted the mestizo nation as composed of peasants,
workers, and smallholders and depicted these subordinate sectors as protagonists of
national history. Their resistance reverberated throughout Mexican history and
culminated in the Revolution, setting the stage for a more egalitarian, industrialized, and
economically independent society. By contrast, ideas about Mexico as a “catholic nation”
did not gain entrance into state-sponsored national discourses.A comparable ideological transformation unfolded in Peronist Argentina (1946-
1955). During this period Juán Domingo Perón built a highly personalistic political
movement grounded in a coalition with organized labor. Similar to Mexico under
Cárdenas, this alliance entailed both the domestication of subordinate mobilization and
far-reaching material and symbolic concessions. In contrast to Mexico, these transformed
alliances also included political Catholics, at least during the initial phase of Peronism.
Official versions of national history assigned subordinate classes a critical role in shaping
national destiny, contrasting the actions of the dispossessed “masses” with the ones of the
“oligarchy.” Perón and his wife Evita appeared as the embodiment of the nation, equating
the political constituencies of the Peronist movement with the national community. While
popular nationalism depicted Argentina as a crisol de razas of immigrants (the local
version of the “melting pot”), it emphasized the Hispanic and Catholic roots of the nation.
Peru during the 1930s 1940s stands in sharp contrast to Mexico and Argentina:
Popular nationalism remained confined to the domain of alternative narratives and did not
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gain prominence as official national ideology. From 1945 to 1948, under the presidency
of José Luis Bustamante y Rivero, the country experienced a brief democratic opening.
Accomodationist alliances with oligarchic elites crumbled, and state authorities sought to
build a multi-class coalition that included APRA and communists, and that enjoyed tacit
support from political Catholics. Yet, these new alliance structures, suffering from
massive internal conflicts, proved to be highly volatile and ultimately too short-lived for
initiating the incorporation of popular narratives into state-sponsored national discourses.
A military coup ended this democratic experiment and state power continued to be based
on accomodationist alliances. These political configurations help to explain why during acomparable period of social mobilization liberal nationalism managed to persist in Peru.
It was only during the 1970s, under the military government Juán Alvarado
Velasco that state elites embraced popular nationalism as a state-sponsored national
discourse. Similar to Mexico and Argentina, this ideological transformation was driven
by changing alliance structures. More than any previous government in modern Peruvian
history the Velasco government marshaled full autonomy from traditional oligarchic
elites. Moreover, the military established new mechanisms to incorporate subordinate
forces. Yet, these new political alliances with popular sectors remained volatile and
contested, and did not achieve the same degree of institutionalization as in the other two
cases. Nonetheless, state elites adopted a focus on class and precolonial indigenous roots
found in communist alternative narratives and a focus on subordinate socioeconomic
integration found in catholic national discourses. As a matter of fact, popular nationalism
in Peru under Velasco portrayed peasants and workers as protagonists of national history
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and celebrated Túpac Amaru, the leader of an indigenous uprising during the 1780s, as
the initiator of national independence.
From a comparative vantage point, popular nationalism eventually replaced
liberal nationalism as official national ideology in all three countries. Yet the extent of
this discursive transformation varied dramatically, depending on the timing of state
making. In Mexico, the institutionalization of popular nationalism was facilitated by the
relative absence of a well established state ideological infrastructure in 1934. The
dramatic expansion of cultural and pedagogical state organizations only began with
Cárdenas. State authorities extended the reach of public schooling, increasinglyintervened in the control of radio broadcasting, and enhanced the regulation of cultural
politics. This temporal congruence between state making and ideological change
furthered the translation of popular nationalism into cultural scripts. By contrast, in
Argentina under Perón and Peru under Velasco, state making was disjointed from
transformations of nationalism. In both cases, state elites confronted an already
established cultural machinery. Well-trained and organized cultural producers exhibited
the capacity to resist the institutionalization of popular nationalism. Thus, state
institutional development before the adoption of a different national ideology impeded
the translation of popular nationalism into cultural scripts.
These contrasting trajectories of nationalism left important legacies in the three
countries. In Mexico the comprehensive transformation under Cárdenas resulted in the
installation of popular nationalism as hegemonic reference points in daily life. As such,
popular national discourses became “uncoupled” from immediate political conflicts.
During the subsequent decades, when the postrevolutionary regime was increasingly
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characterized by political authoritarianism towards subordinate sectors, popular
nationalism retained its hegemonic status as national ideology. By contrast, the contained
transformations of nationalism in Argentina under Perón and Peru under Velasco did not
entail the hegemony of popular nationalism. Instead, popular national discourses
remained fiercely contested and existed in a stalemate with the previously dominant
liberal and romantic nationalism. In Argentina after 1955, both Peronists and the anti-
Peronists represented themselves as the embodiment of the nation, translating conflicts
over policy and office into contestations over national belonging and identity. In Peru,
the removal of popular nationalism from state ideology after Velasco’s ousting fueled itsrapid appropriation by subordinate actors, while Peruvian politics continued to be marked
by conflicts over national inclusion.
Other Explanations—Competing or Complementary?
A state-focused approach is certainly not the only way of analyzing
transformations of nationalism in early 20th century Argentina, Mexico, and Peru. The
subsequent section explores other perspectives that emphasize different explanatory
factors and might even locate the transformation of nationalism in a different historical
time period. It is found that these approaches point to certain complementary factors, yet
that they ultimately fall short of the explanatory power of a state-focused framework.
Modernization
A major competing explanation is grounded in modernization theory. The central
question of this theoretical tradition is how the transformation from traditional to modern
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society plays itself out in different countries (see Eisenstadt 1970; Inkeles and Smith
1974; Parsons 1951). Modernization theory provides some of the major theories of
nationalism with a macrostructural grounding. Scholars have long argued that the
increased political relevance of nationalism is closely intertwined with economic
progress, industrialization, the expansion of state structures, and the diffusion of new
cultural institutions (e.g., Anderson 1991; Deutsch 1966; Gellner 1983). Thus,
nationalism forms an ideological backbone for the creation of greater cultural
inclusiveness, for instance reflected in the standardization of languages and the diffusion
of a culture of literacy, both crucial ingredients for the functioning of industrializedsocieties.
Translating these arguments into an explanation for the transformation of
nationalism establishes the basis for the following proposition: The formation of
relatively integrated economies and the rise of high-capacity states motivated transitions
towards popular nationalism in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru. The assimilationist and
homogenizing orientation of popular nationalism provided a feasible ideological
grounding for the legitimation of state-led socialization projects. Thus, when compared
to the explanatory framework outlined above, modernization theory emphasizes the same
starting point, major socioeconomic and political change during the 1880-1950 period,
for explaining distinct trajectories of nationalism in the three countries. And indeed, as
this dissertation will illustrate, state consolidation and economic development provided
an important backdrop for the effective articulation of both official national ideologies
and alternative narratives.
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Yet, this competing approach ultimately has far less explanatory power than the
state-focused approach. Modernization arguments assume a relatively linear process of
social-structural change leading to changes of nationalism. By contrast, this dissertation
shows that transformations of nationalism cannot be read off modernizing trends. For
instance, dramatic economic growth and state expansion in Argentina during the 1880s
and then again during the 1910s did not automatically translate into the adoption of
popular nationalism as official state ideology. Instead, the trajectory of nationalism in
Argentina requires a focus on politics; the transition towards popular nationalism is better
explained by contestations and alliances between states and social movements. Thus,compared to a state-focused approach a modernization perspective falls short because it
does not help to identify when transformations of nationalism occur.
World-Cultural Models
In a slightly modified version modernization theory also informs a competing
explanation based on ideas about the massive diffusion of world-wide cultural and
institutional models. This “world society” approach emphasizes the formation of a
“global culture,” that involves ontological assumptions, cognitive scripts and
prescriptions for action with a worldwide reach (Boli 1987; Meyer 1980). In this
perspective nationalism refers to world-cultural models that provide a standard form for
the construction of nations. These models define and legitimate the national discourses
advanced by states and movements. Local actors draw on world-approved norms about
the sovereignty of the people and adopt highly stylized forms for the depiction of national
culture and history. The diffusion and availability of these global models of nationalism
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accelerated dramatically during the early twentieth century and has become especially
important in the postwar era (Meyer et al. 1997).
In a “world-society” perspective transformations of nationalism are a function of
changes in global cultural and institutional forces. The diffusion of distinct templates for
the constructions of nations stimulates imitation and copying. Thus, an increased
international presence of popular nationalism motivated its incorporation into state-
sponsored national ideologies in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru. As such, this perspective
points to important complementary factors that shaped changes of nationalism in these
countries. Especially during the 1930s and 1940s popular nationalism thrived as a globalmodel. A variety of political projects, ranging from Roosevelt’s New Deal, the
emergence of fascism and transformations in international communism, focused
international attention on national discourses that envisioned the masses as protagonists
of national history and emphasized a distinct cultural identity as key ingredients to
national wellbeing. Thus, these schemata constituted important reference points for both
state authorities and movements and their respective national projects.
At the same time, a “world society” perspective has significant limitations. By
downplaying domestic factors such an approach cannot account for the contrasting
trajectories of nationalism found in the three countries during the 1930s and 1940s. As
this dissertation will show, a focus on global models cannot explain why popular
nationalism gained prominence as official national ideology in Mexico and Argentina,
and remained excluded from state-sponsored discourses in Peru, even though it was
embraced by subordinate movements. By contrast, a state-focused approach and its
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emphasis on political alliance structures can account for these distinct trajectories of
nationalism.
War Making
Scholars have emphasized the connection between nationalism and international
wars (e.g., Centeno 2002; Comaroff and Stern 1994; Mann 1993; Smith 1981). Military
conflict fosters the use and dissemination of national ideology. State authorities employ
nationalism as an ideological matrix to justify the mobilization of people and resources,
and armies and military experience contribute to the propagation of nationalist symbolsand the creation of a sense of nationhood. Military conflict also contributes to the
articulation of alternative national projects. States in war often trade material and
symbolic concessions for conscription, increased taxation, economic damage, and
potential loss of life among the resident population. Thus, wars can facilitate ideological
change and the diffusion of alternative ideas about national identity and history.
In the “war making” perspective international struggles play a critical role for
explaining transformations of nationalism. Military conflict provides state authorities
with an incentive to incorporate alternative narratives into state-sponsored national
discourses. During wars subordinate sectors gain prominence as potential defenders of
the national territory. This approach therefore suggests that episodes of international war
initiated a transition towards popular nationalism in Mexico, Peru, and Argentina. As
such, this approach also points to a possible alternative episode of change, located
roughly between 1850 and 1890. This is because major international wars that involved
the mobilization of substantial parts of the population were the US-Mexican War (1846-
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1848) and the French Invasion (1861-1866) for Mexico, the War of the Pacific (1879-
1884) between Peru and Chile, and the War of the Triple Alliance (1865-1870) between
Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay on the one hand, and Paraguay on the other.
Florencia Mallon’s Peasant and Nation (1995) is probably the best-known
example of a war-centered perspective on nationalism in Mexico and Peru. Her
remarkable analysis precisely emphasizes the 1850-1890 period for explaining the
distinct trajectories of nationalism in these countries. She argues that in Peru the War of
the Pacific enhanced the articulation of popular narratives, yet state authorities continued
to exclude these alternative forms of nationalism from official discourse. In Mexicoprolonged foreign intervention made subordinate movements more combative in
advancing popular nationalism and state authorities more responsive to these alternative
discourses. As a result, the Mexican state incorporated parts of these popular national
discourses (pp. 17-20, 310-318).
While Mallon’s study certainly gives important clues about the historical
differences in subordinate mobilization and popular narrative production between Mexico
and Peru, it does not provide an exhausting explanation of the distinct trajectories of
nationalism followed by these countries. As this study will illustrate, during the late
nineteenth century and thus after the critical juncture highlighted by Mallon, nationalism
exhibited striking similarities across the two cases: both Mexico and Peru marshaled
liberal nationalism as official national ideology. These findings point to a general
limitation of the “war making” perspective for the puzzle explored in this dissertation.
This approach ultimately cannot account for the dramatic changes of nationalism that
unfolded in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru after 1930.
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In sum, modernization processes, global models of nationalism, and international
wars have certainly affected trajectories of nationalism in Mexico, Argentina, and Peru.
Economic expansion and political centralization facilitated the production and
institutionalization of official national discourses and set the stage for subordinate
mobilization of popular narratives. Globally available templates of popular nationalism
provided both state authorities and movement actors with a discursive backdrop for
projections about national identity. Likewise, international wars opened spaces for
subordinate actors to articulate popular national narratives. Yet, to fully understand
transformations of nationalism in the three countries it is necessary to move beyond theseexplanatory approaches and focus on domestic political factors. A state-focused approach
does precisely that. In this study I suggest that domestic alliance configurations between
state authorities and movements and the institutional development of states were crucial
in mediating modernization trends and shaping how international models translated into
local forms of nationalism. Moreover, such an emphasis on domestic politics helps to
explain the vast differences found among transformations of nationalism in Mexico,
Argentina, and Peru.
The Analysis to Come
The analysis that follows will explore trajectories of nationalism in Mexico,
Argentina, and Peru through the theoretical framework outlined in this chapter. Chapter
Two argues that from a comparative vantage point the three countries exhibited liberal
nationalism as a dominant state ideology during the first decades of the 20th century. The
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chapter also examines the three countries along critical dimensions of the explanatory
framework. Mexico, Argentina, and Peru were marked by the relative absence of
powerful oppositional movements. State power was largely based on accommodationist
alliances with dominant economic elites, and the reach of state ideological infrastructure
was limited. Chapter Three compares Postrevolutionary Mexico during the 1920s to
Radical Argentina. Both cases represent state-initiated transformations of nationalism
where state elites adopted romantic national narratives in contexts of substantial social
mobilization, changing political alliance structures and the decline of oligarchic power.
By contrast, intra-elite conflict in Peru under Leguia did not entail the decay of accomodationist alliances, and liberal nationalism remained the dominant national
ideology.
The subsequent four chapters develop more detailed country-specific analyses of
transformations of nationalism. Chapter Four argues that Mexico experienced a
comprehensive transformation of nationalism. Under Cárdenas (1934-1940), the new
postrevolutionary state authorities established alliances with subordinate sectors, leading
to the appropriation of popular national narratives by official discourse. The
simultaneous expansion of state ideological infrastructure facilitated the broad-based
dissemination of popular nationalism. Chapter Five examines historical Peronism in
Argentina (1946-1955) as representing a contained transformation of nationalism. With
the forging of alliances between Peronist state elites and organized labor, official national
discourse became infused with popular nationalism. Yet, state authorities confronted
substantial resistance from cultural producers situated within an already well-established
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cultural machinery, and did not manage to turn popular national narratives into
hegemonic cultural scripts.
The next two substantive chapters focus on Peru. Chapter Six suggests that during
the 1930s and 1940s Peru epitomized a blocked transformation of nationalism. Popular
national narratives remained confined to subordinate movements and APRA a multi-class
populist party, and did not succeed in replacing liberal nationalism as dominant state
ideology. Chapter Seven shows that under the military government of Velasco (1968-
1975) popular nationalism was fully embraced by state elites. However, as an official
ideology, popular nationalism was contested from within the state apparatus and—similarto Peronist Argentina—did not gain hegemony as a project of national inclusion.
The concluding chapter highlights the major communalities and differences
among these transformations of nationalism. I also link these comparisons to a more
general discussion of the insights and limitations of a state-focused framework when
extended beyond the empirical cases of this dissertation. In particular, this chapter
focuses on the implications of my dissertation for the analysis of nationalism in the
context of Latin America. The chapter also speculates about the legacies of distinct
trajectories of nationalism in the three countries. In contemporary Mexico, Argentina,
and Peru, popular nationalism itself has been challenged by sectors excluded from its
homogenizing narrative, thereby illustrating a central claim of this dissertation, that
nationalism is inherently contested and changing.
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Figure 1. A State-focused Framework of Transformations of Nationalism
Official National Ideology
- highly articulated discourse- instrumental for legitimizing stateauthority
Cultural Scripts- implicit frame of reference- dual quality: grid for both statesand subordinate actors
Alternative National Narratives-articulated discourse- instrumental for challenging stateideologies
(2) Selective Incorporation
(1) Framing Work
(3) Institutionalization
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Table 1: Types of Nationalism in Argentina, Mexico, and Peru
Liberal
Nationalism
Romantic
Nationalism
Popular
Nationalism
Membership
Criteria(What is the basis of national identity?)
Political institutions;Territory
Culture Culture
Modes of
Incorporation (How to achievenational unity?)
“Civilization” Assimilation Assimilation
Symbolic Universe(Who are the main
actors/ What are themain internal
divisions withinimagined
community?)
Elite subject;Civilization vs.
Barbarie
Elite subject;Civilization vs.
Barbarie
Popular Subject;Masses vs.Oligarchy
Political Vision(What is the proper
institutional structureof the nation?)
Liberal-oligarchicregime;Export-oriented
economy
Liberal-oligarchicregime;Export economy
Mass-basedcorporate regime;Inward-oriented
economy
Argentina 1884-1910;
Mexico 1888-1920;
Peru 1906-1960
Argentina 1910-46;
Mexico 1925-34;
Peru 1960-68
Argentina 1946-55;
Mexico 1934-68;
Peru 1968-75