Latin American populism to manufacture military equipment but quickly expanded to include such nonmilitary enterprises as mining and real estate The Peronist regime also pursued the nationalization of crucial sectors of the economy such as public utilities, transportation, and foreign trade Vargas for his part attempted to lay the foundations for industrial growth by infusing capital into projects to improve the nation’s infrastructure and by organizing state marketing systems, in addition to developing state-owned petroleum and steel enterprises Although specific policies were not without their critics, the populist desire to strengthen domestic industry was certainly shared by a broad spectrum of society The labor movement typically supported a protectionist policy, while middle-class industrialists as well as the military championed economic nationalism and domestic industrial development As long as the economies continued to expand—as, for example, during the wartime and immediate postwar export boom in 1940s Argentina—such support was relatively easy to maintain ZERO-SUM GAME Populist governments were able to dispense benefits to certain segments of society without reducing the incomes of other sectors A much different picture emerged in the later phases of growth, when populist regimes faced a zero-sum game: Without an absolute rise in national income, policy makers were forced to decide whether to become genuinely redistributive To so was to risk alienating the middle classes, while failure to so meant the loss of the working-class support on which populist regimes likewise depended Either way, a broad-based coalition became increasingly difficult to maintain in the later years of the movement The results of economic stagnation, growing inflation, and increased social tensions were disastrous for Latin American populist leaders Gaitán, who was widely expected to accede to the Colombian presidency in 1950, was murdered in downtown Bogotá before he could take office Velasco, who had dominated Ecuadorian politics for nearly five decades, was forced into exile at the end of his fifth and final term Perón also went into exile after he was ousted by a military coup in 1955 He spent the next 17 years in exile before returning to Argentina in 1972 Perón was elected to a third presidential term the following year but was rendered nearly powerless by out-ofcontrol inflation and factional violence; he died in 1974 Cárdenas’s presidency ended amid dissent and controversy, and Vargas concluded his second term (1951–54) 207 by committing suicide By the late 1960s the armed forces had outlawed populism in most of Latin America and established military regimes instead Several factors can be adduced to help explain populism’s failure to live up to its initial promise Above all, the changed economic circumstances following World War II rendered the policies difficult, if not impossible, to sustain Several Latin American countries faced economic crises in the early 1950s due to rising inflation and lagging economic growth Promises of continually expanding social benefits could not be met in a period of relative economic stagnation, at least not without exacerbating the already rampant inflation At the same time, the very nature of populism as an expansionist movement and a great mobilizing force contributed to mounting instability as a larger and more confident working-class electorate pressed the populist regimes for more increasingly radical redistributive policies In some cases the regime’s capitulation to such radical demands prompted the middle classes to withdraw their support from what was formerly a multiclass coalition Elsewhere the fear of widespread uprisings, particularly in the aftermath of the Cuban revolution, provided the armed services with a pretext for launching military coups to oust populist leaders Although the prevalent instability in several Latin American nations can be regarded as the unfortunate legacy of populism in that region, the movement had positive repercussions as well Above all, the populist era ushered in mass participation in the electoral process on an unprecedented scale The vote was extended to lower- and working-class citizens as well as to women, and these formerly marginalized groups were drawn into the realm of public discourse and debate Additionally, the effort to integrate and unite various classes through an inclusive national identity fostered a revived interest in native culture that has continued to the present day Further reading: Burns, E Bradford Latin America: A Concise Interpretive History 6th ed Boston: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1994; Conniff, Michael L., ed Latin American Populism in Comparative Perspective Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982; Tenenbaum, Barbara A., ed Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture Boston: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1996; Vanden, Harry E., and Gary Prevost Politics of Latin America: The Power Game Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002; Wynia, Gary W The Politics of Latin American Development 2d ed Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984 Kathleen Ruppert