Professional Militarism in Twentieth-Century Peru: Historical and Theoretical Background to the Golpe de Estado of 1968
M /[OST discussions of background to the Peruvian golpe de estado of 1968 and the regime it introduced emphasize the immediate causes. These stress the military-APRA "rivalry," economic nationalism as a guiding doctrine of officers educated at the Centro de Altos Estudios Militares (CAEM), and rising hostility of officers toward civilian political leaders. Some suggest a hazily defined "leftward drift" of the officer class toward a neo-Marxist, corporatist position on socioeconomic development and political organization based on elimination of the possibility of revolution from below.' Basic to this line of reasoning is the linking of national defense to economic development and internal security, owing to fears that insurgent movements in the Andes during the 1960s might repeat the Cuban experience, thus destroying the military profession in the name of social justice. This may suffice in a general and immediate sense, but it raises several questions that beg for answers. First, was hostility toward civilian leaders linked solely to military-APRA mutual distrust, or was it a historical theme with variations? Second, were economic nationalism and developmentalism phenomena of recent origin, or were they traditionally a part of military ideology? Third, was interest in all phases of modernization symptomatic of a