The Peruvian Military: Achievement Orientation, Training, and Political Tendencies

EARLY four years after the Velasco government took power in Peru, students and observers of Latin American politics are still exploring the extent ~ ~ to which the Peruvian military establishment is altering the distribution of social, economic, and political power. Without presuming in this brief article to reply definitively to these and other pertinent questions, we feel that it would be rewarding to consider two institutional aspects that have been associated wih the Peruvian military by those who have analyzed their political behavior: the degree to which achievement within the military establishment plays a more important role than in the rest of Peruvian society, and the type of intellectual orientation which senior officers have received from the Center for Higher Military Studies. The first item is relevant in practical terms because, if the military are in fact highly achievement-oriented and can impose (as they say they would like to) this orientation on the rest of Peruvian society, such change by itself might within a few years realign the still ascriptive social, economic, and political relations of the entire country. The second item is more abstract, but, if the Center for Higher Military Studies has influenced the thinking of the present regime, it may give us an idea of the ideological guidelines those in political positions are receiving from the military institution, and may help us in perceiving the internal preferences of the military establishment, as well as some of the cleavages that exist within it.