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

• Author: Carlos A. Astiz,José Z. García
• Date: 01 December 1972
• Published date: 01 December 1972
• DOI: 10.1177/106591297202500407
• Subject Matter: Articles

THE PERUVIAN MILITARY: ACHIEVEMENT
ORIENTATION, TRAINING, AND POLITICAL
TENDENCIES
CARLOS A. ASTIZ
State University of New York at Albany
and
JOSÉ Z. GARCÍA
California State University, Chico
EARLY
four years after the Velasco government took power in Peru, stu-
dents
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 re-
warding 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 achieve-
ment-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 influ-
enced 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.
ACHIEVEMENT IN THE PERUVIAN MILITARY
The role played by achievement in advancement and assignment within the
Peruvian military establishment is worthy of discussion. Luigi Einaudi, probably the
most knowledgeable student of the Peruvian military, has claimed that
NOTE : The authors wish to express their appreciation to Luigi Einaudi and Victor VIlanueva,
with whom they have had long discussions on the subject; both were kind enough to
make available documents, data, and their own manuscripts. The senior author also
acknowledges with gratitude the support his on-going research on the Peruvian military
establishment has received from the State University of New York Research Foundation,
the Department of Political Science, and the Center for Inter-American Studies. Special
thanks are given to Professor Herbert Gerjouy and graduate assistant Robert Novak for
their help in processing the data. The junior author expresses his appreciation for the
support made available by the University of New Mexico, from its Ford Foundation
grant, which made it possible for him to complete his field research in Peru for his
dissertation and for this article.
In the course of interviewing prominent members of the Peruvian armed forces, the
authors felt that many of the remarks made by those being interviewed were not intended
for attribution. This is not surprising, since most observers of the Peruvian military have
noticed a strong ethic of silence among officers in reference to their institution; for that
reason, some of the sources have to remain unidentified.
667

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668
by relating this highly developed training system to the promotion process, the Peruvian mili-
tary leadership made educational activity and achievement the cornerstone of a rationalized
bureaucratic structure without parallel even in the major military powers....
As William F. White has suggested, most Peruvians do not believe that success in life is
based on merit. Within the military, however, the emphasis on professional training and educa-
tion in the promotion process has, for many years, made the military perhaps the most merit-
oriented sector at least of the state bureaucracy, if not of the society.’
His most important evidence is outlined in Table 1: according to it 80 percent
of those who reached the rank of Army general between 1940 and 1965 were in the
top 25 percent of their military academy graduating class, a record far superior to
that of the United States Army. Thus, Einaudi uses this evidence to convey the
notion that the Peruvian armed forces constitute the only island of achievement,
merit, emphasis on educational record, and hard work in what is otherwise a sea
of ascription, personal contacts, political pull, tarjetazos and plain acomodo.
We
feel that this is not the case, and that a more specific analysis of the meaning of
&dquo;achievement&dquo; in the context of the Peruvian military establishment will reveal why
this is not the case.2
2
TABLE 1
RANK IN GRADUATING CLASS OF ARMY GENERAL OFFICERS, 1940-65
SouRcE: Prepared by the authors from data made available by Luigi Einaudi, &dquo;Coded Biographies,&dquo; and
reproduced in his manuscript &dquo;The Peruvian Military.&dquo; (See footnote 1. )
To begin with, &dquo;achievement&dquo; within the Peruvian military means something
totally different from &dquo;achievement&dquo; at an American university, in the British civil
service, or in an international organization. While in every bureaucratic organiza-
tion recognition and rewards are distributed in part in relation to each individual’s
ability to perceive and accept the customary operation of the organization (often
identified as discipline), this characteristic is paramount in the Peruvian armed
forces, as it is in all military establishments. The more vertical an organization is,
the more important discipline becomes; in the Peruvian military establishment disci-
pline then ceases to be a theoretical concept of secondary applicability and becomes
1
The quotations are from Luigi Einaudi, "The Peruvian Military: A Summary Political Analy-
sis"
(Rand Corporation Memorandum RM-6048-RC, 1969), p. 7, and Einaudi,
"Peruvian Military Relations with the United States" (The Rand Corporation, P-4389,
1970), p. 5. Similar remarks appear in "Latin American Institutional Development:
Changing Military Perspectives in Peru and Brazil" (The Rand Corporation, R-586-DOS,
1971), p. 23, and in "Revolution from Within? Military Rule in Peru Since 1968"
(The Rand Corporation, P-4676, July 1971).
2
Einaudi does mention in passing the problem of conduct and discipline as part of "achieve-
ment" in the Peruvian military; but we feel that he fails to face the issue. See Luigi R.
Einaudi and Alfred C. Stephan, III, "Latin American Institutional Development: Chang-
ing Military Perspectives in Peru and Brazil" (The Rand Corporation, R-586-DOS,
1971), p. 23.

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669
an essential principle. In a very real sense, as will be seen, it gains preeminence over
other criteria employed to identify and reward those who distinguish themselves.
While we are not prepared at this time to present and analyze the hard evidence
provided by access to some of the records kept by military training institutions in
Peru, it is possible to mention here some aspects that substantiate our contention that
discipline and certain patterns of behavior play a crucial part in determining who
are the top officer. For instance, the grading system of the military academy and
of the special officers’ schools provides multipliers assigned to each item to be graded,
a procedure which increases the weight of those items considered important by the
Peruvian military establishment and decreases the weight of those considered less
significant in the formation of the future officer. As could be expected, conduct car-
ries the highest multiplier; thus a high grade in conduct would be multiplied by
five while a high grade in, let us say, sociology might be multiplied by one. Conse-
quently, a low grade in sociology would not be too damaging to the cadet’s overall
average, while a similarly low mark in conduct would be.
At the same time, it seems that the directors of the military training institutions
have the authority to determine the rank order of the graduates, taking all circum-
stances into account. We have identified at least one specific instance in which
neither the first nor the second top academic averages at the War College were
ranked at the top of their class; in fact, the officer with the best academic record
was ranked sixth. We
have reason to believe that this is not an isolated incident;
many top-ranked officers in Peru’s military training institutions are those who, in
addition to demonstrating intelligence, also got along with their superiors and with
the branch of the service to which they belong, who interiorized the values sub-
scribed to by the Peruvian military establishment, and who behaved in accordance
with their superiors’ interpretations of those values.
While nothing indicates that intellectually outstanding individuals are down-
graded (and it is perfectly possible for an officer to be both disciplined and intel-
lectually outstanding), the fact is that intellectually outstanding individuals tend
to be reluctant to accept the disciplinary requirements of a relatively small military
establishment, particularly one which frowns on dissent and places unity at the top
of its scale of values. Intellectually active individuals tend to be inquisitive, to de-
mand explanations of those things that do not make sense to them, and to search
for a rational justification for those things with which they do not agree. In a verti-
cal institution these attitudes often go unrewarded : things are...