Democracy in Peru: A Human Rights Perspective
Summary
By
Gladys Acosta and Javier Ciurlizza
Lima, February 1997
Historical and Theoretical Framework
A Bit of History
The changes that have occurred in Peru over the past forty years converged in a nearly cataclysmic crisis during the decade of the 1980s. Peru's erratic economic history was always based on the absence of national investment and savings, on the pillage of the nation's resources and on a government marked by frequent military intervention. The changes of the 1980s wrought the breakdown of traditional social structures which had been based on semi-feudal forms of subordination. At the same time, millions of Peruvians participated in a rapid process of internal migration that altered in substantial and definitive ways the relationship between city and country.
Peru, a country of over 22.5 million inhabitants, is today facing the weakening of the foundations of its democratic system, and that seriously hampers the state's capacity to develop policies which respect international standards in human rights. The internal armed conflict, raging since 1980, undercut democratic institutions and served to justify the intrusion of the Armed Forces in normally civilian duties. Following the "self-coup" of April 5, 1992 carried out by President Alberto Fujimori, a system of restricted democracy has been sought as a means of trying to resolve the serious problems faced by Peruvian democracy at the end of the last decade and the beginning of the current one.
The origins of the democratic crisis can be traced to long before the "self-coup" of 1992. It can be attributed in large part to the difficulties civil society encounters when seeking participation and representation in the state. These difficulties were evident in all their magnitude while the Constitution of 1979 was in force. That constitution was pivotal in Peruvian politics because it expressed, on the one hand, the great broadening of citizenship that emerged from the social movements of the 1970s, and, on the other, the incapacity of a constitutional system and of particular political actors to make representative democracy viable.
By the great broadening of citizenship, we refer to the emergence of a civil society made up primarily of popular organizations which developed with particular impetus during the decade of the 1970s. That civil society grew stronger through a process of social emancipation that produced a deep-rooted awareness of both social and political rights. At the same time, this emancipation was expressed in a democratization of social relations and a significant increase in new civil society organizations and institutions which gave voice to the demands of the population regarding its basic needs.
However, the granting of rights was not accompanied by the design of effective mechanisms for citizen participation which would reduce the distance between the institutions of civil society and the sphere of political society. The new social movements were fragmented, limited to certain sectors and distanced from the political sphere. Similarly, the political actors (principally parties) in their role of government or opposition, were not capable of representing this great broadening of citizenship, since they conceived of themselves more as machinery for the promotion of leaders and for ministering to a particular political clientele than as means for translating the will of the people into policy. In other words, they placed the particular interests of the individuals directly involved in the political process over the general interests of the electorate.
The 1980s frustrated the social and economic expectations generated during the previous decade. Levels of extreme poverty increased and the majority of the economically active population was excluded, creating the conditions for the emergence of the "Shining Path". The profound disintegration of social organizations limited their immediate potential for articulating the demands of the people and therefore eventually to become new political alternatives.
The internal war initiated by the Communist Party of Peru "Shining Path" came at the same time as a galloping economic crisis which deepened in 1988. By the beginning of the 1990s, the country had reached the end of its rope.
Peru in 1996
In 1996 several contradictory aspects of Peru's efforts to achieve modernization based on the logic of the country's insertion into the world economy were evident. The solidity of the regime rested on the catalytic strength of one leader, President Fujimori, without real democratic checks and balances. Reelected in 1995 with the largest majority of the past fifteen years, he was supported by the Armed Forces and, with certain qualifications, by a good part of both the dominant and popular sectors of the country.
Those qualifications of Fujimori's popularity came to light by the end of 1996 when polls showed it to have dropped to 40% from the 70% he enjoyed six months earlier. People felt deceived by the lack of employment opportunities, the language and authoritarian style of the president, accusations of corruption against top officials, and other elements. Although Fujimori retains a high degree of popularity, this decline signals the beginning of a new chapter as yet to be analyzed.
Two key elements ought to be considered: on the one hand, the substantial reduction in political violence due primarily to the weakening of the Shining Path and the Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement (MRTA), and on the other the relative dynamism of the economy. The high growth rate of the gross national product (as high as 12% in 1994) was based on raw materials exports, construction and services without any decrease in the high rate of unemployment nor any increase in depressed wages. In Peru there are more highways, health posts and schools, but there has not really been a reactivation of the economy in the productive sphere. This is all the more evident when one goes beyond national statistics to examine what has occurred in the country's interior.
Peru is at the beginning stages of an uneven process of modernization of state and society, manifest in the development of a commercial business class immersed in the importation of consumer goods for that small proportion of society with buying power, while poverty continues to characterize the lives of 49.6% of the population. The supply of goods in the national market has no relation to demand, which becomes ever more depressed.
These aspects of the country's economic life only underline the definitive weight of history. The Peruvian model of accumulation has been in crisis for decades and the modalities of its insertion in the world market make any independent path to development impossible.
That said, it is remarkable that people trust in their own hard work. President Fujimori, by making constant appearances throughout the country that are all broadcast by the media, has managed to convince Peruvians that there is sufficient reason to believe in the possibility of bettering their lives. People will work at anything at all, investing as much time as is required. Youth and children invent all sorts of things to generate income. The notion of the future, which had been lost during the years of the worst violence and economic chaos, seemed to have returned by 1995, despite the fact that there was no stable basis for it, as became evident with the downward trend in Fujimori's popularity at the end of 1996.
The growth of the informal market is demonstrating a potential heretofore unknown for creative solutions to the need for income, although without any clear long-term prospects. Personal income becomes family income and that is the only way of surviving. An extensive range of informal services linked to the commercial, importing and tourism sectors of the economy has emerged, and that is a good part of the answer to how people survive amid such high indicators of poverty.
For a long time, people did not reject the president's authoritarian tendencies. Opinion polls, so common in modern politics, indicated high popularity for the top leader between 1990 and 1995. Among the people, safeguarding the independence of the Judiciary or the proper role of Congress vis a vis the Executive do not appear to be priorities. Respect for the rules of democratic politics does not seem to be a broadly felt concern. In Peru a system of government based on the pragmatic search for immediate economic results is taking root for the medium and long term.
Economic, social and cultural rights are being trampled by policies of extreme liberalization. Everything can be bought and sold, even the lands of indigenous communities which until not long ago were untouchable. These peoples are being affected by the economic logic of policies which do not respect traditional cultural rights. Public services have begun to be privatized, and some of these decisions have left many people without access to quality services. Regarding rights of participation, an enormous effort has been made to convince people that voting is the sum total of such rights. Because of that, the opposition lacks ways to develop, political parties have been seriously weakened, and there are no effective channels for holding the state accountable.
Political violence has been invoked to justify the restrictions on civil and political rights expressed in the innumerable regulations which establish or prolong states of emergency. And although there is no longer any solid basis for maintaining the country under military rule, given the weakness of the subversive movements, nearly 22% of the national territory is still under a state of emergency. The Armed Forces have assumed many civilian functions and they maintain an exorbitant degree of decision-making power, both formal (expressed in various laws) and informal (clearly manifest in the development of the "La Cantuta" case). The government has even passed an amnesty law for all military personnel who committed crimes against human rights during the years of internal armed conflict.
Judicial reform, which seeks to diversify the ways for resolving conflicts and to reduce the suffocating logjam of cases in the courts, even when it is motivated by the healthy desire for modernization and efficiency, is limited in particularly sensitive areas. Basically, it would appear that certain parts of the justice system are off-limits to any attempt to bring that system into line with the overall thrust of liberal modernization: military justice, the allocation of jurisdiction in cases relating to human rights, and generally all cases which touch on issues considered to be of special interest to the political authorities.
Peasant communities, indigenous peoples, the displaced and all those who do not fit within the proposals for liberal modernization suffer exclusion and discrimination. The continuation of discrimination against women, however, is the result of established cultural and religious norms. Even less discussed, but no less real, is discrimination against those who have chosen to express their homosexuality openly. These facets of discrimination turn up in all aspects of human rights and daily life.
All this occurs in the midst of a severe weakening of civil society. In part this situation is due to profound institutional crises, such as the case of political parties, but it is also evident in the development of state policies which could potentially destroy the social fabric. Social policy, for example, tends to adopt the form of charity, ignoring the propository capacity of social and popular organizations. Other important actors on the scene, such as non-governmental development organizations, are also restricted by their role as intermediaries between popular organizations and national and international state institutions. Even the role of local government seems to have been mediated by a concerted central government offensive to restrict its autonomy.
In this context, international cooperation has a political role to play, in the broadest sense of the term, increasing the potential for action of certain particularly important sectors and promoting dialogue among various institutions and actors. Such possibilities are expressed with particular intensity in the following thematic areas: the defense of human rights; the modernization of the justice system; the strengthening of institutions of democratic control; and the strengthening of the role of organized civil society as an interlocutor. These four themes are developed in this paper and constitute its central thread.
Theoretical Framework
This document is a study on the prospects for democratization and human rights in Peru. What follows are the concepts and framework that orient our analysis.
We understand democratization to mean the construction of a social project, carried out jointly by a legitimately constituted state authority and an organized society, based on constitutional rules that guarantee citizen participation in decision-making and in the election of officials. More precisely, democracy exists when there are channels by which individual opinions, argued in freedom and equality, can be amalgamated into a certain unity by the choice of the majority. It is democratic processes which guarantee that such an approach forms the basis of the state's social praxis.
Our analytical perspective on the democratization process focuses on civil society and its links to the institutionality of the state. State policies ought to be made on the basis of interaction and on-going consultation with civil society, such that the aspirations of the latter find adequate channels for expression, and at the same time public decisions are bestowed with an indispensable legitimacy. When we speak of civil society we refer to the terrain of voluntary human associations and the organizational networks which occupy that area, including social organizations and forms of public communication by which a democratic culture and effective consensus for resolving concrete problems can be generated.
Civil society is also the space where rights originate and are exercised, and where the duties that make one a citizen are accepted. The development of social organization creates an awareness among individuals of their rights and their capacity to exercise them.
We presume that human rights form the basis of democratic life, that the state recognizes them as such, and they cannot be "negotiable" under any circumstances. Not even making use of legal or legitimately constitutional mechanisms is the restriction of the substantive content of human rights acceptable. The suspension of certain guarantees leaves rights intact and must be subject to strict rules regarding length, rationale and application of the measures adopted.
The human rights highlighted in this paper are codified in the international instruments ratified by Peru, including social, economic, cultural, civil and political rights. Based on the rights classification framework utilized by Canada's International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, the following rights will be analyzed: rights of security, rights of well being, rights of non-discrimination, and rights of participation.
These rights, as has been noted, emerge and develop in civil society, in step with the democratization of social relations. Similarly, affirming them as fundamental rights gives substance to the membership of individuals in a particular political community. In other words, it gives meaning to citizenship. Citizenship as such is achieved within the institutional structures of a political community, that is to say, under the functioning of the Rule of Law.
Over the past few years, political violence has caused a drastic deterioration in respect for human rights in Peru, especially those rights that refer to the physical security of persons. Such has been the magnitude of violations in this regard that "human rights" generically are often confused with "security rights". These rights to physical security must be analyzed in the context of the internal armed conflict the country has suffered, taking into account the impact their violation has had on respect for all other rights.
Rights of well being will be analyzed in terms of the obstacles that exist for their promotion and development. The concept of "human development" is linked to a vision which gives priority to the ultimate goal of all economic processes: the promotion of economic and social rights.
The situation of non-discrimination rights has to do with structural characteristics of Peruvian society and is approached in the text through an analysis of basic inequalities caused by differences in ethnicity, race, gender and age. In this sense priority is given to analyses related to the rights of women and ethno-cultural discrimination.
Rights of participation are analyzed through an evaluation of the development of the organizations of civil society, their capacity to produce leadership and to exert influence on the decisions of the state. The difficulties in achieving these rights in the institutional environment of the political community are analyzed through noting the obstacles to incorporating people into the category of full citizens. Similarly, these difficulties are evident when examining the incapacity of the state to legitimize its actions in the eyes of sectors of society that are excluded.
After human rights, the functioning of the institutionality of the state in Peru is the second central theme. On this point, the political motivation implicit in models of social management are analyzed. Particular attention is paid to the evolution of the ground rules for society contained in the Constitutions of 1979 and 1993. This study focuses on reforms to the judicial system, but also includes a brief description of the way the state functions in certain sectors.
Conclusions
1. The protection of human rights in Peru is intimately linked to the process of democratization, which in the past fifteen years has suffered several setbacks. The Peruvian state, faced with the task of overcoming the difficult economic straits inherited from previous governments, and of resolving the armed conflict, has not fulfilled its important commitments to the international community in the area of human rights, and has set up an authoritarian political system based on ad-hoc rules, wrapping itself in democratic formalities while ignoring the rules of truly democratic process.
2. Despite the existence of several interesting proposals for judicial reform, the administration of justice continues to suffer from serious problems, particularly regarding the excessive formalistic steps required in judicial procedures and the Judiciary's weak capacity to affirm its independence from the Executive. Simultaneously, the role of Peru's judges is limited by the public's reticence to accept their legitimacy and by material limitations on carrying out their work. Sensitive areas within the administration of justice do not seem to have been included in any serious attempt at reform: the application of anti-terrorist legislation, general impunity in cases related to human rights violations, and the role given to military justice.
3. The legal-institutional framework erected on the basis of the Constitution of 1993 and the coup d'etat of April 1992 contains a new model of society and the state which gives priority to economic modernization, understood as open markets and deregulation, and to strengthening of centralized control over decision-making. This is reflected on the one hand by the abandonment of key state functions regarding the provision of public services.
4. Presidential power, reaffirmed by the reelection of 1995, is backed not only by a constitutional regime that favours the chief executive, but also by broad popular support for a tacit link between civilian power and the Armed Forces as a condition for keeping the peace. For ordinary Peruvians it is more important to know that the country has a minimum of economic stability and is not directly exposed to political violence from internal war, than to be concerned about the government operating by democratic rules. In other words, there is still no social movement firmly demanding democracy.
5. The modernization of the state is oriented toward strengthening a centralized system that concentrates decision-making power in a few offices, such as the Ministry of the Presidency, while weakening the rest of the ministries and the other levels of government. The institutions which control economic policy are run by highly qualified technicians and, in some cases, are financed by resources from the World Bank or the Inter-American Development Bank. The purpose of such technocratic administration, which is highly dependent on politicians, is to maintain Peru's credibility with international financial institutions and investors.
6. The macro-economic stabilization achieved in recent years has not been accompanied by structural reforms in several sectors. Priority has been given to the modernization of certain public institutions while attention to social policies has been postponed. The ministries in charge of health and education, plus the municipalities with their own peculiarities, seem to have been explicitly excluded from any serious attempt at modernization.
7. The process of democratizing civil society in the decade of the 1970s was interrupted by populist practices which, though they offered immediate benefits to the poor, weakened the medium-term potential for development. The coming years will only offer new possibilities for democratization if the citizenry manages to take advantage of the legal framework for exercising direct democracy contained in the Constitution of 1993 in order to open up channels for participating in political decision-making, to broaden electoral options, and to establish mechanisms for holding government accountable.
8. The fact that the political parties are in crisis places limits on the potential for building democracy since there are no political mediators between the citizenry and the state. New ways of organizing party politics are needed, ones capable of interpreting the interests and demands of citizens and transforming them into policy proposals. Otherwise, Peru will be stuck in a system which is formally democratic, but which in the practice of the Executive, especially the President of the Republic, is deeply authoritarian.
9. Urban and rural social movements, based on a wide diversity of existing associations, are networks of support for resolving people's most urgent daily needs, above all in the case of women's organizations. These have the effect of building "horizontal" social relations. The most important result is the ongoing dialogue with local and national state officials which has set new terms for responding to the social demands of the poor.
10. The rupture between the popular/community leadership and the political leadership frustrates the potential for a democratic development that expresses the diversity of Peruvian society regarding culture, ethnicity, gender and age. A renewal of political culture on the basis of democratic values is required to inspire a new political praxis.
11. Trying to resolve the most urgent problems derived from the economic situation and political violence has absorbed the energy of people who are organized, while weakening their capacity to propose alternative solutions to those being promoted by the government. The opening to the international market, the recession of domestic production, and the weakness in the trade balance are not perceived as major economic problems for three reasons: the growth of self-employment schemes to achieve immediate income without questioning the country's macro-economic policies has been favoured; direct income has been generated by the policy of privatizations; and new debts have been contracted which allowed for significant investment in focused social programmes.
12. One of the sectors most affected both by political violence and by the de-regulation of natural resources are indigenous peoples and peasant communities. The new law on lands and the proposed laws on water and titling threaten to extinguish some of the key characteristics of indigenous identity. This attitude of the state is contrary to the content of ILO Covention 169.
13. Longstanding discrimination due to ethnicity/culture and gender has been worsened in the context of poverty. Efforts to correct discrimination have not been eliminated, but these are certainly not institutionalized to a sufficient degree. State social policy is based on utilizing the unpaid volunteer labour of large numbers of women who help out with state campaigns in health, education, food and housing. There is no recognition of autonomous organizations as valid interlocutors for making and implementing state policies. Despite some innovations on the institutional level, there is still no coherent legal protection of women's human rights, either in the law or in its application.
14. Popular and social organizations in Peruvian society are being increasingly fragmented and weakened. The broadening of citizen participation of previous years, which gave rise to new social actors, has not found adequate channels for expression. An important symptom of this is the crisis of the political parties and their incapacity to give voice to opposition sentiment. The lack of mechanisms for holding the Executive accountable is another sign of the weakness of the links between society and the state. However, these adverse circumstances are also giving rise to new forms of social organization, a new, more concrete way of answering people's needs. Politics is no longer just a discourse for buying votes or talking about local or national power. It is a debate on the best way to resolve problems.
15. International pressure, on the basis of monitoring activities, regarding the government's lack of compliance with human rights obligations has evoked a number of reactions. In some cases it helped transform legal parameters that were in violation, while in others it made public opinion aware of abuses committed by the state. Economic conditionality clauses have been questioned in the name of national sovereignty, but the debate over the precedence of international human rights protection over national norms has yet to occur.
Proposals for promoting the protection of human rights and political agenda in Peru
Given the panorama in Peru in the middle of the 1990s, the day when state policies will be respectful of human rights and linked to a process of national democratization and the building of viable local development alternatives seems as yet far off. The democratic challenge is to find ways to strengthen internal processes that act on the web of institutional power "from the top and from the bottom", linking up all sorts of efforts, some individual, others collective, national and international. The challenge is to alter the monotony of accommodation to a demanding world market that does not take into account the building of democracy or the quality of life of its people, who struggle to affirm their diverse and overlapping identities, demonstrating their constant desire to improve and to build their own country.
The proposals that follow are inspired by the desire to offer ideas for a political agenda for strengthening democracy, a task that requires a joint effort by international actors, national bodies, and Peruvian civil society if the praxis of social life is to find some correlation with ever greater respect for human rights. Each proposal contains both a description of the problem and the proposed response of the actors involved.
1. Development of a social understanding of human rights
The problem: Lack of a human rights culture which includes the totality of people's lives. Predominance of power relations transferred from society to the legal and political order. Violence is easily justified and there is less concern if such violations harm people who are discriminated against or are powerless. Human rights are confused with security rights, both conceptually and in the most important activities of human rights groups. The integrated vision of human rights promoted by the 1993 World Human Rights Conference is not well known. Lack of an overall gender perspective.
The proposal: The promotion of an overall vision of human rights is required so that it can become the ethical framework for the state and for society. Each group and each person ought to develop the capacity to acknowledge their own human rights, starting from the diversity of individual and collective identities (belonging to a certain ethnic or cultural group, gender, generation, social sector, etc.). Discrimination can only be confronted with integrated plans that involve the state and as well as all of society.
Diverse social groupings have to take on an active role in the defense of immediate security rights (as in the case of summary justice by faceless tribunals for the crime of terrorism, or civic campaigns on the amnesty law) to end the current isolation of human rights groups. At the same time people's awareness of the links between democracy, development and human rights must be rebuilt. The justice system needs to be modified to bring it into line with the principles of international protective law, so that the unity among civil, political, social, economic and cultural rights is established.
The actors: First of all human rights organizations should broaden their own perspective and promote ever broader arenas for their work, involving all sorts of organized social groupings (women, youth, workers, service-recipients, consumers, small and mid-sized businessmen, etc.), especially their local expressions. To transform the culture of rights will require the commitment of the mass media and a transformation of the formal and informal content of the educational system. Legislative bodies also have the task of adapting domestic law so that it broadens citizen protection.
2. Responsibility of the State and it's inter-action with civil society
The problem: Formal protection in the legal system does not guarantee its enforcement. State bodies systematically deny responsibility. The justice system is used to justify violations by state organisms, arguing that the causal dynamic is the existence of subversive groups. The argument is made that violations by the Armed Forces is "exceptional". There is little space for an autonomous Judiciary. The predominance of the Executive, without adequate checks and balances, risks accentuating the authoritarian-technocratic aspects of the political system which generate impunity, especially when the mediating capacity of political institutions is weak and the political influence of the Armed Forces is disproportionately strong. The re-centralization of the state has diminished the creative capacity of local expressions of the state, especially local government. The virtual non-existence of political organizations weakens the potential for democratic rebuilding.
The proposal: The structure of the state must be transformed democratically, and the mentality of government authorities, especially in the Judiciary, must be modified. It is imperative that the role of the Armed Forces in a democratic society be redefined so that they are subordinated to the norms of the Rule of Law. Constitutional principles ought to prevail throughout the legal order. The courts ought to guarantee the concrete application of justice with full respect for human rights, especially when enforcing constitutional guarantees. Local governments ought to recover the democratic momentum they once had when designing policies jointly with grassroots organizations to deal with the specific problems of each region. The combination of modernization and democratization is essential if we are to overcome the current impasse regarding the protection of human rights. The reform of political parties and their role as democratic mediators must be promoted, along with the explicit practice of respecting the expression of ideas by the government and the opposition.
The actors: Besides debating the state's responsibilities openly and without fear of reprisals, training programmes must be designed for employees of the justice system, by means of joint activities with professional associations, NGOs, social organizations and the judicial organisms themselves. Specific training on human rights ought to be offered to the Armed Forces and the police. The Constitutional Court and the Public Defenders Office are fundamental institutions for citizens to demand effective protection regarding human rights legally recognized in the country. The technical and political effectiveness of development plans and welfare programmes requires the active participation of the target population.
3. Role of the International community in the context of Globalization
The problem: It is no longer possible to find solutions to the problems of Peruvian democracy without taking into account the global processes in which the country is inserted. Even political representation lacks the framework of sovereignty that once supported it. Foreign powers condition national decision-making though international organisms.
The proposal: New ways of acting on the international scene to protect human rights must be found. New interpretations of the right to sovereignty and the principle of non-interference in internal affairs are needed. One of the arenas for action is international politics, by means of negotiations with multi-nationals bodies and with those foreign governments that have economic interests in the country. Another path opened in the United Nations is that of a privileged dialogue between states and civil society organizations. It is important that Peru sign and ratify the Convention for the Suppression of the Traffic in Persons and of the Exploitation of the Prostitution of Others to improve the legal framework for protecting the human rights of women.
The actors: International oversight by the United Nations and the Organization of American States, as well as the pressure exerted by organizations such as Amnesty International and Americas Watch, is important to achieve modifications in the way nations treat human rights, especially where national social and political organizations have been weakened. NGOs, professional and social organizations need to be supplied with information on how to intervene in the various international fora for protecting human rights. International mechanisms for coordination and long-distance communication (such as electronic networks) among human rights organizations of a number of countries ought to be encouraged in order to create new ways of understanding international solidarity.
4. Support for social actors
The problem: Peru's social movements have been weakened but not destroyed, and the same is true of its political parties. There are dynamic elements, such as women especially at the local level, that ought to be supported. What makes the current period difficult is the brusque transformation of institutional and organizational reference points for channelling democratic proposals from civil society, amid the predominance of de facto powers, like "technocratized" state institutions, ever more technological mass media and internationalized business groups. It is also important to recognize that Peru has not experienced a peace process between social actors and the state. A dynamic of "winners and losers" hardly favourable to the tasks of social and political reconstruction still prevails.
The proposal: Questioning of forms of organization that today appear obsolete or that exist for repressive ends, such as the case of "Self-Defense Committees" or some "Rondas Campesinas", must be supported. And creative efforts to formulate policies that are explicitly meant to build peace must be supported, as should new forms of political expression. Backing should be provided to the various ways social actors are finding to coordinate their activities, to organize community participation, to support dynamic elements like women, to resolve local problems and to hold state authorities accountable for their actions. From this basis social actors can improve their negotiating positions and agreements with the "de facto powers": the state technocracy, the mass media and internationalized business groups.
The actors: It is crucial to encourage the efforts of groups--women, youth workers (both within and outside unions), small and medium-sized businessmen, consumers, urban poor, peasant farmers, professionals, migrants, civic interest associations--to "reconstruct" or "recompose" civil society. Civil society can be rebuilt on the basis of responding to concrete problems. The political and social leadership needs state and social support and encouragement.
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