How the political sphere in Latin America is changing

By Soumya Ghosh

After nearly twenty years of rule by politically repressive regimes covertly supported by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as a part of Operation Condor, Latin America, in the late 20^th century, underwent a transcendental political and societal change. It moved away from reactionary conservative governments zealously implementing neoliberal economic policies.

The prelude

To put things into perspective, after the collapse of the USSR, an epoch of unipolarity was ushered in by the United States which maintained its economic hegemony on the world by virtue of the Bretton Woods institutions. For a certain country to attain loans from the Bretton Woods institutions, it had to adopt the ‘Washington Consensus’, which, among other things, included austerity measures, trade liberalisation, and deregulation of businesses.

This neoliberal experiment had dire long-term economic repercussions on the respective Latin American nations; as high rates of unemployment, increasing levels of inequality, and endemic political corruption became the recurrent themes. Arising from this economic cauldron were the figureheads of a new political movement espousing radical change. In 1998, Venezuelans elected the firebrand politician Hugo Chavez to the office. This was followed by the election of Lula da Silva in Brazil and Evo Morales in Bolivia. A new political fervour had slowly gripped the continent with echoes of political and economic reformation permeating the Latin American conscience.

The emergence of a new ideology

Coinciding with the commodities boom of the 2000s, the leftist governments of Latin America ratcheted up their social spending and investment on infrastructure projects. A new political ideology by the name of Socialism of the 21^st Century soon had its genesis. This revolutionary new ideology, initially proposed by the German-born Mexican analyst Heinz Dieterich, was a convergence of democratic socialist ideals with elements of Marxist revisionism. It was a radical deviation in a continent so deeply intertwined with the Catholic Church and its philosophies.

A neo-developmentalist approach, with the State playing an activist role in reducing the economic malaise, soon became the dominant motif. Liberal welfare and pension policies were soon implemented by the Pink Tide governments with the objective of reducing the economic woes of downtrodden and the marginalised sections of the society. The populist undercurrent of these policies was strong as neoliberalism and market fundamentalism were fundamentally excoriated.

Washington’s aspirations of forging a trade pact called the Free Trade of the Americas (FTAA) soon ebbed as the Pink Tide politicians painted it as another attempt at establishing American hegemony in the continent. Venezuela, under Hugo Chavez, promoted regional economic integration as a deterrent to multinational trade agreements with significant American influence. Thus, regional pacts like CELAC, Mercosur, and ALBA soon gained traction and regional sway.

Role reversal and the conservative wave

As the influence of the United States soon waned in the region, the power void was conspicuously filled by a rising China. Trade volumes between the respective nations increased manifold to satiate an ever-increasing demand of the ascending middle-class. A gradual economic slowdown in China coupled with the collapse of the commodities boom left a lasting impact on the Latin American economies. An era of economic recession in a post-2008 world soon engulfed most nations in Latin America. With its over-dependence on the exports of commodities and its contraction thereof, the policies which kept the fervent voters at bay were now observed to be unsustainable. Public angst grew as clamours for change reverberated in the continent.

The Machiavellian politicians of the Pink Tide, who so vehemently denounced corruption as a tool utilised by the neoliberal politicians, were now accused of the same. Conjoined with economic incompetence and authoritarianism of the 1980s-type, anti-democratic principles—only now of a differing political paradigm—were contrived to foster their perpetuation in power. The democratic facade of the leftist politicians was evaporating as opposition politicians were jailed, especially in countries like Venezuela.

Soon, one after another, the dominoes started falling. In 2015, Argentinians elected the pro-business right of centre candidate Mauricio Macri after decades of rule by Peronist populists. In Brazil, Dilma Rousseff of the Worker’s Party was impeached from her office due to corruption allegations as a part of Operation Car Wash. Elsewhere in countries like Peru, Chile, and Paraguay, right-wing governments stormed into office as leftist ideologies were roundly repudiated at the ballot box.

Epilogue and the road ahead

George Orwell, in his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, once said, “One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes a revolution in order to establish a dictatorship.” These words iterated in an antiquated era are still germane today as six Presidential elections are slated to be held in the region in 2018. A new political renaissance is taking shape, as the jejune dictions of leftist utopianism are perceived by the citizenry to be detached from the palpability of reality. The ubiquitous corruption, government overreaches, and economic mismanagement are at the forefront of public discourse–as the commoners tread to chart their own course via the power of the ballot. Perhaps, the most worrying trend isn’t the gradual diminution of leftism in Latin America but the gradual decline in support for democracy.

The Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP), in its recent public opinion survey, found out that the support for democracy in the region was receding. Citizens were gradually becoming warier of supporting their national governments as they perceived it to be either too corrupt or ineffective. The cynicism and despondency which now define the political climate in Latin America could be reversed if politicians of any political stripe and belonging to any nationality for that matter could for once assume responsibility for their delinquency, bland rhetoric, and gross negligence. Perhaps Latin America and the world, by extension, will be a far better place to inhabit if the politicians were held accountable for their words and deeds. As the region enters into an election marathon, let’s just hope for now that confidence in democratic principles and economic optimism returns.