Thinking through Right-Wing Populism and Progressive Elites: On the Caviar as a Politico-Cultural Category in Peru

ABSTRACT:Caviar or izquierda caviar (caviar left) is a term in Peru that describes privileged actors who advocate for progressive causes. The label is typically employed by right-wing commentators to criticize politicians, intellectuals, and activists. A systematic analysis of uses of “caviar” in Peruvian newspapers draws attention to the way the term comes to refer to the pursuit of wealth and influence through an embrace of progressive ideals and projects, as opposed to merely pointing to a correspondence between social privilege and left political views. This focus on “benefiting” responds to Peru’s uneven neoliberal development and recent experience of political violence but can also be understood as a reconfiguration of class relations and inequality that is characteristic of populist political styles around the globe. Engaging with scholarship on the place of progressive elites in right-wing populist formations, we suggest that anthropological attention to the meanings surrounding figures like the Peruvian caviar offers opportunities for understanding the role of normative ideas of wealth, inequality, and social mobility in contemporary populist appeals to “the people.”