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As you know, I have not posted thoughts on Latin America for some time. Covid has been a major distraction from normal activities. Confined to my desk at home for most of the last year or so, I have devoted considerable time to investigating populism in general and its particular manifestation in Latin America in particular. In an attempt to understand Chavez’s enormous popular appeal in Venezuela, and its ensuing tragic consequences, I began to read Hugo Chavez’s speeches, focusing on the ones delivered to the general public by nation-wide television and radio and those delivered to poor communities when he toured the country at election time. This made for fascinating reading; I came to understand the way in which history and context had shaped both the man, his political style, and, by extension, his enormous appeal. Venezuelans loved and reviled him; for much of his time in power those how loved him probably outnumbered those who hated him.

While the term “banana republic” refers to just about any form of political instability occurring in Latin America, the term originally arose with reference to Central America (Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, El Salvador) where the American-owned United and Standard Fruit companies engaged in fruit production and export, and often dominated economically and politically. In these countries legitimately elected regimes were overthrown, often with US complicity, if not direct military intervention.

Much of the media has focused on the behavior of Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s current populist right president, comparing him to Donald Trump (“Trump of the Tropics”) and to the right populists of Europe. In Latin America, both left and right populisms struggle to recruit political support in deeply divided societies. These efforts reflect and exacerbate the deep inequalities and divisions peculiar to the region.

Globalization has failed Latin America. It created the vulnerability that is making it so difficult for the countries of the region to address the developing social tragedy brought about by the pandemic. A recent OECD report suggests that the way forward is for countries to negotiate a “new social contract”—one that involves a revamping of institutions and social priorities.

Latin America is now the epicenter of the coronavirus epidemic: while the region accounts for 8% of the world population, it now accounts for nearly 30% of global fatalities. The Covid-19 pandemic is aggravating already deteriorating social conditions and increasing political turmoil—both developments set in motion by the decline of commodity prices that began in 2011. The pandemic has also put a serious strain on already weak health care services. A United Nations report warns that if the region is unable to control the spread of the disease, an estimated 45 million people will fall below the poverty line.

Extensive media attention has covered how Latin America countries have been handling the coronavirus. Regular accounting of how many cases in each country, including how many deaths, has been unremitting. Government officials have provided lengthy treatises on the nature of the disease and how citizens can avoid contracting it. Political leaders have repeatedly provided assurances to their populations of their government’s capacity to confront and contain the disease. Given the relatively small number of cases (17) and no reported deaths as of March 4, a casual observer might think everything is in hand. It is not.

With the decline in commodity prices and the receding of the pink tide (the recent removal from power/defeat of various populist left governments), we are now seeing an emergence of two linked phenomenon: a return to neoliberal policies and the emergence of the political right, increasingly with populist features. Populist right movements are garnering significant electoral support; successfully recruiting supporters from a wide spectrum of social sectors, including from among the poor—the very part of the population whose expansion is linked to neoliberal reform. While the most notable case is of Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro, another worrisome case is that of Costa Rica—the very country widely assumed to be one of the region’s strongest bastions of liberal democracy and civil liberties.

I am currently on leave in the beautiful and seemingly untroubled country of Panama. Although planning to spend my time writing about Latin American populism, I have become distracted by this country’s deviation from the Latin American (and indeed global) phenomenon of populism and relentless mass unrest. In the era of economic globalization with its mantra of ever-expanding trade, relative social and political peace in a country that is a central hub of trade is essential. Roughly $270 billion worth of cargo crosses the Panama Canal each year; the canal serves more than 140 maritime routes to over 80 countries.

The year 2019 witnessed protests across the Global—from Europe, to Asia, to Latin America. While it is tempting to focus on the broad similarities among these protest movements, it is important to bear in mind important distinctions.

While lack of government responsiveness to public demands and concerns about inequality have been a common feature of many protests, the specific contexts of public angst vary significantly among countries. Whereas issues of distribution, including substantial deprivation and poverty along with large-scale corruption, are drivers of protest in the Global South, northern protests revolve around opposition to attempts to dismantle welfare states, environmental issues, and less serious issues pertaining to the erosion of democracy.

Since the decline of commodity prices in 2013, Latin America has witnessed mounting political turmoil: widespread protests against transportation fare increases in Chile, against the removal of fuel subsidies in Ecuador, and over the legitimacy of the Bolivian presidential election. Brazil’s period of political upheaval began earlier with protests against corruption, leading to the impeachment and removal of President Dilma Rousseff. Following these events, Brazilians elected populist right president, Jair Bolsonaro, whose racist remarks about the country’s Indigenous people combined with his accelerated burning of the Amazon, have aroused international and domestic disapprobation. In a worrisome development, Latin American presidents have been appearing in public flanked by their Generals, suggesting that political leaders are at a loss as to how to address the growing political chaos. Most observers accept that the military played a key role in Evo Morales’ exist from power. Latin American history is rife with export commodity dependence, popular unrest (if not insurgency), political repression, authoritarian rule, and military meddling (if not direct intervention). The transition to democracy and market liberalization of the 1980s was supposed to end all of this. They have not.

Over the last week, the extensive media coverage of the fires raging in the Amazon has caught the attention of the leaders of the world’s most powerful countries. The G-7 meeting of western nations offered $20 million (U.S.) in aid and urged the Brazilian government of right populist president Jair Bolsonaro to take measures to contain the growing inferno in the Brazilian Amazon. What is happening in the Amazon is a disaster of horrific proportions is beyond doubt; the fires are destroying vegetation and wildlife and threatening the lives and livelihoods of the Indigenous peoples who live there.

The U.S. has just instituted a new round of even more devastating economic sanctions as part of its ongoing campaign to oust Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro from power. These sanctions, like past efforts, will not contribute to Venezuelan democracy. As explained in an earlier post, the roots of the Venezuelan crisis are complex. The international reaction to the Venezuelan case illustrates the extent to which the U.S. (and now Canada and Europe) fail to understand Latin America’s political struggles. Forcing a particular regime from power will not solve anything; it will not make Venezuela a more democratic or just society.

To many observers the Maduro regime has remained surprisingly resilient. His government withstood widespread opposition protests through the spring of 2019. It has survived the recognition by over 50 countries of opposition Juan Guaidó as the country’s rightful ruler, a move that severely challenged the regime’s legitimacy. The mainstream media’s excited anticipation of Maduro’s fall from power reached its height with Guaidó’s attempt to instigate a military uprising. The uprising failed, however, and opposition protests have petered out.

With the third wave of democracy, which began in the 1970s, most countries instituted presidential term limits stipulating limits on the number of times presidents could be re-elected. Since then, an increasing number of countries have abandoned these limits, leading many observers to identify yet another piece of evidence that authoritarianism is on the rise. This phenomenon has been especially evident in Latin America where term limits have been a long-standing feature of constitutions; from the nineteenth century, reformers have sought to limit the hold on power of personalistic caudillo leaders. The link between authoritarian leadership and the removal of term limits was highlighted recently when President Trump was reported to have applauded Chinese President Xi Jinping’s removal of that country’s two-term presidential limit, remarking that “its great. . .[that] he was able to do that.” The obvious conclusion is that countries should strive to maintain or re-institute term limits in order to restrict unscrupulous authoritarian and increasingly populist leaders.

Venezuela is facing a catastrophic economic, political and social crisis: there is widespread hunger, inflation is at 1,000,000 percent, and millions have fled the country. By all accounts, the country is now ruled by an oligarchy of criminals. Most Venezuelans want the regime of Nicolás Maduro gone. Opposition leader Juan Guaidó has proclaimed himself acting interim president; thus far, he has been recognized as such by the U.S., Canada, Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Australia, Israel, and the European parliament. China and Russia, Venezuela’s first and second most important creditors, remain staunch Maduro supporters. Other countries, with less questionable motivations, have also failed to get onto the Guaidó bandwagon: Mexico and Uruguay have urged a negotiated solution—an offer that Guaidó has flatly turned down.

The term “populism” is used these days to refer to a vast array of leaders, movements, and parties—from Viktor Orbán’s far right anti-immigrant Fidesz party, to Evo Morales’ left radical anti-neoliberal Movement for Socialism, to recently elected Jair Bolsonaro, who has glorified Brazil’s period of military rule, promised to rid Brazil of socialism, and give the police free rein to kill suspected criminals. Does the term have any meaning if applied to such a disparate array of leaders, parties, and governments?

The pink tide in Latin America, which saw a slew of left leaders elected throughout the region during the first decade of the century, has pretty much come to an end.

Right wing presidents have been elected in Chile (2010 and 2017) and Argentina (2015). In Brazil, the political right gained executive power with the impeachment of left president Dilma Rousseff. This development was followed by the election of right populist, Jair Bolsonaro, as president in 2018. While a left president was recently re-elected in Ecuador, policies are becoming increasingly business friendly. The main outlier is Mexico, which recently elected left President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). That government is already facing rising business opposition.

The Caravan of Central Americans making its way toward the U.S. border has led to the amassing of some 5000 U.S. troops along that border. This mass migration is driven by a confluence of factors that have a long-standing history in the region: most notably widespread poverty and violence. Central American countries, more than any other countries of the region, are, in the words of the Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes, “at war with the past.” They have a history of repressive dictatorships, extreme concentrations of wealth, and poverty. Part of that history, however, has involved the involvement of the United States in ways that have exacerbated the very problems that are causing the current massive out-migration.

When Latin America made the transition to electoral democracy in the mid-1980s, the process was hailed as marking the end to the region’s fluctuations between authoritarianism and democracy. Recent, events, especially in Brazil, tell a different story.  Between 2006 and 2011, it seemed possible that the program of a moderate social democratic program could be reconciled with a neoliberal global orientation: Brazil dramatically reduced poverty, public spending was kept in check, while big businesses expanded both exports and investments abroad. Now we see a sharp turn to the political right in Brazil and the inevitability of policies that will contribute to social deterioration. With 99 percent of the votes in, right populist presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, leads with 46 percent of the vote. He is expected to win the second round of voting on October 28. 

     Right wing populism, widely seen as a threat to liberal democracy, has been on the rise in the United States and Europe over the last decade. Latin America has a long history of both left and right populist movements, leaders, and governments. It also has had its share of programmatic political parties and leaders committed to social change and substantive democratization. Yet the region’s illiberal democratic features remain stubbornly persistent. There are lessons to be learned from the Latin American experience. Unfortunately, these lessons do not provide much reason for optimism. 

     Increasingly, right-leaning governments are replacing left regimes in Latin America or, if left governments continue to cling to power, they are adopting policies normally associated with the political right. There has been a shift back to some neoliberal policies that contributed to poverty and inequality in the past. Sympathetic observers placed great hope in the left regimes that came to power between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s—these regimes seemed to be on the right track since they reduced poverty substantially and made inroads into high levels of inequality. What went wrong?

     While some observers, both journalistic and academic, maintain that Latin American politics is either moving to the political right or becoming less polarized, the clearest trend is rising political turmoil with a final destination that is far from clear. Political polarization continues to be an integral part of the Latin American political scene. 

     Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) won the Mexican presidential election with a resounding majority of around 53 percent of votes cast—the highest since 1982 when the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was still able to manipulate electoral outcomes. Mexican public expectations are high and the problems that the country’s new president must deal with are enormous. Making his task more difficult is that fact that AMLO has a heterogeneous support base with the various groups having different interests and priorities.

     In the wake of its most recent economic crisis, Argentina has just signed an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The agreement will reinforce the austerity measures introduced by centre/right president, Mauricio Macri, since 2015. Most observers blame Argentine populism for the country’s current economic debacle and urge strict austerity, institutional reform, and an end to corruption as the solution. However, such measures are not likely to solve much because they do not address the root cause of populism. Understanding the enormous reliance of populism is key since the most pessimistic of observers suggest that the current Argentine crisis may be the harbinger of worsening economic and (political) troubles in the region and beyond. 

Inequality is not good for democracy and it is, as is widely known, on the rise everywhere. While wealth has always been instrumental in shaping political outcomes in electoral democracies, the concentrated wealth that has arisen with economic globalization has produced ever-more brazen forms of authoritarian behaviours on the part of political elites as they respond to the interests of their powerful economic allies. While details differ from country to country, there is an important common denominator: the role of economic power in giving greater leverage to political claims. In the worst cases, the economically powerful buy politicians, the media, and troublesome individuals. In all cases, the alliance between political leaders and economic elites has coincided with a notable distancing between political leaders and their publics.

     During the past two decades, China’s rapid economic growth and pressing need for commodities has resulted in increased trade and investment in Latin America, along with expanded lending operations to fund important infrastructural projects. Meanwhile, the U.S. administration has largely neglected the region and at times shown outright disdain. Amid the current Chinese/American trade spat, President Donald Trump is visiting a South American country (Peru) for the first time this week where he is expected to warn Latin Americans against continued close trade ties with China. The question is: what does U.S. Chinese rivalry mean for Latin America? Under the current circumstances: perhaps some short-term gains for some countries, but in the longer-term, Latin America needs to find its own development path, one that is as independent as possible from both the ideologies and interests of these two powers. 

     Mexican, U.S., and Canadian negotiators are currently meeting in Mexico City for the seventh round of North American Free Trade (NAFTA) negotiations. This round will deal initially with the least contentious issues, thereby opening the way to tackling the most contentious one. With the Mexican presidential election on July 1 rapidly approaching, however, arriving at an agreement on a “modernized” NAFTA is looking increasingly problematic.

    On Sunday, February 4th Ecuador held a popular consultation (consulta popular) on seven questions; five of which were binding while the remaining two are to guide the government in developing future policies. There are strongly opposed opinions on the meaning of this public consultation and on its consequences for Ecuadorian politics and for the political left. The case provides us with insights into the Latin American political dilemma.

     Much has been written on the fight of millions from Global South countries in recent years. The main drivers of this out-migration have been civil war and/or high levels of social deprivation. This flow of migrants has had profound political implications in the Global North where it has been linked to the rise of new populist movements and parties. Indeed, the Trump phenomenon has played on growing American xenophobia that has been deepened by economic instability, labor precariousness, and regional poverty--all of these features have characterized the current phase of U.S. capitalism. 

     In a country of modern office towers, luxury condos, gated communities, and stylish outdoor cafes, 41 million people live in extreme poverty. In one major city, the extremely poor cover fifty city blocks, either living on the streets or in makeshift dwellings, without electricity, sanitation, or clean water. They suffer from the diseases of poverty, particularly intestinal parasites. This underclass is ignored, if they are not scorned, by the country’s middle and upper classes.  This not a country in Latin America; it is the United States and the fifty blocks of desperately poor are in Los Angeles, one of the richest cities in the world.