Power to the People (LAST100 wk 10)
Channel: UBC Latin American Studies
Date: 2020-10-11

There is no more powerful or persistent spectacle in Latin American political history than populism, which stages of an entire people. Part of populism’s power is that it is not easy to pin down, that it resists precise definition. It is a gesture that divides the social world into two: the people and the elite. And it identifies wholeheartedly with the people, a collective subject in the first-person plural (“we”) that is the origin and foundation of society, but which for some reason has been denied its rights by an illegitimate and untrustworthy elite. Then populism tells us it will put things back in their rightful place.

Latin Americans are the past masters of populist politics. And among Latin Americans, none do populism better than the Argentines.

0:00 Intro
0:21 Recap
2:20 Defining the Undefinable
4:36 The People and Its Enemies
8:19 Populism and Latin America
9:30 Politics without People
10:21 Break and Questions
12:10 Evita's Renunciamiento
21:31 Credits

Transcript https://last100.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2020/10/10.power-people.pdf

#last100 #latinamerica #peronism

Video by Jon Beasley-Murray for the University of British Columbia course, LAST100, "Introduction to Latin American Studies." See https://last100.arts.ubc.ca/syllabus/week-10/.

LAST100 Lectures: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFjDuS6mZI_lgiq7IhOIJh4HOAiinVIUj