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.

Populism as Politically Polarizing

Political Science likes grand theory; much of the literature is trying to develop a general theory of populism. Such an attempt may obfuscate much more than it illuminates, however. Those writing on Latin American, and particularly Venezuelan populism, stress the demagogic aspects of populist leaderships, their predisposition to authoritarian forms of political control, the antagonistic rhetorical appeal of populist leaders and the ensuing political polarization. While the perceived failure of institutions to respond to popular demands is often cited as a triggering component of the process, much of the discussion has focused on leaderships’ ability to foster hatred against entrenched elites—characterized as selfish “oligarchies.” These oligarchies are contrasted with the virtuous and deserving people to whom the leader is devoted.

From Conciliation to Intransigence

Chavez, president of Venezuela from 1999 until his death in 2012, certainly engaged in this type of rhetoric. However, prior to the attempted coup of 2002, a coup backed by the country’s traditional political elites, business interests and sectors of the middle classes, this negative characterization of the political opposition was moderate, sparce, and targeted almost exclusively to the political leaders of the country’s old political parties, the Democratic Action (AD) Party and COPEI (the Social Christian Party). Indeed, during his first few years in power Chavez met with the leadership of the country’s major organization of industrialists, Fedecámaras, assuring them that they and capitalism had a central place in Venezuelan development. Further, he appears to have cultivated a relationship with the Fedecámaras president from 1997 to 1999, Francisco Natera, who later became a minister in his cabinet. Chavez’s relationship with the technocratic managers of the state petroleum company, Pdvsa, was rocky from the start, however, as he sought to extract more revenue from resource development and reduce the influence of foreign companies.

Following the 2002 coup and his restoration to power, Chavez’s rhetoric against the oligarchy heated up enormously. By the mid-2000s, the oligarchy included not just the leadership of the old parties, but their supporters, and almost the entire business community, particularly Fedecámaras, which was singled out as an unpatriotic ally of North American imperialism. Chavez’s commitment to radical socialism, with an ever-diminishing role for capitalism, particularly big capitalism, becomes increasingly clear. By the late 2000s, U.S. imperialism was seen as the country’s main threat, with domestic groups as America’s weak and pathetic lackies.

Tapping into the True Source of Popular Angst

From the beginning, however, there were more important elements of Chavez’s presentation, rhetoric, and political style than his focus on an anti-patriotic oligarchy and U.S. imperialism. While Chavez, especially after 2002, did not hesitate to link poverty and inequality to both the oligarchy and imperialism’s penchant for neoliberal policies, his heavy focus on social issues resonated profoundly with the masses of less-well- off Venezuelans. From the outset, issues of dignity, poverty, misery, and inequality dominate Chavez’s speeches—mentioned far more frequently than references to the oligarchy and US imperialism. Further, these issues were not left as vague promises. Chavez detailed how he was expanding and would continue to expand access to health care and education (largely through his programs known as misiones). He often repeated his commitment to expand employment and provide land for farming. When visiting local communities, he would point to what new services had been provided and specify what new amenities in the form of credit, housing and other amenities, would be forthcoming.

Moreover, these issues were repeatedly linked to historical forms of exclusion and cultural/racial identity issues. Chavez, a history buff, claimed that popular suffering had its origins in the failure of the independence leader, Símon Bolívar, to achieve a genuine independence and a truly democratic republic that would accord a place of dignity and economic opportunity to the country’s Indigenous, Black, and mixed-race population. His speeches challenged the inherent racism of Venezuelan society. He declared that he was proud of his mixed Indigenous, African, and white heritage. He addressed the particular exclusions faced by Indigenous and Black Venezuelans and the standards that privileged those of European appearance. In several speeches, noting that the opposition considered him to be uncouth and ugly (referring to his dark skin and curly hair), he challenged the opposition to forget about his appearance long enough to actually listen to what he had to say. He addressed the opposition’s characterization of him as a “monkey” by explaining that white people’s DNA was just as close to a monkey’s as his own. Chavez, therefore, addressed the collective humiliation felt by a large proportion of the population, with its linked socio-economic and racial and cultural dimensions. The more the opposition resisted his calls for policies to improve the social conditions of the lower socio-economic groups, the more this rhetoric calling for racial/cultural and socio-economic equality resonated.

Establishing a Personal Connection to the People

Chavez professed a childhood of poverty in the state of Barinas and therefore declared that he understood the conditions of the masses and what their needs were. The son of rural school teachers, the social conditions of this early life were probably not as difficult as he claimed. However, his speeches at rallies involved close personal interaction with the audience in ways that related to their suffering. He would frequently single out individuals from the audience, asking their names and asking for details about their life and particular problems they faced. He would then follow these encounters with a description of how his polices were going to help that person and others with similar problems. If he spotted someone in apparent distress (an elderly person, for example, who appeared unwell), he would direct an official to provide aid. Such a personalistic approach was also used by Eva Peron. Offers of improved services and individual aid by a leader might best be described as “populist.” However, this rhetoric and style was never juxtaposed with the demonization of the political enemy—the oligarchy and U.S. imperialism. In fact, when speaking to the disadvantaged Chavez frequently called for love, tolerance and particularly for non-violence. He repeatedly claimed that his 21st century socialist revolution was a peaceful one.

At the same time, Chavez evinced a strong dislike for the country’s political opposition. He characterized the country’s oligarchy as immoral and unpatriotic and U.S. imperialism as evil (though he was always careful to say that the U.S. government was, not the American people, who he cared about). By the mid-2000s, Chavez had despaired of any form of cooperation from the Venezuelan business community. He railed against the mass media treatment of his regime, and did not hesitate to revoke the licenses of media outlets he felt had been treating him unfairly. After 2002 until his death in 2012, Chavez was increasingly preoccupied with possible plotting among his political opponents and the pressure for his removal from power by the U.S. By 2010, U.S. imperialism replaced the oligarchy as the country’s main enemy. While Chavez always proclaimed the importance of the electoral process, it is also true that that his regime became increasingly centralized. He often proclaimed that the opposition must never be allowed to return to power because should they do so they would return the country to free market polices, dismantle his social reforms, and the poor would suffer. By 2010, he had concluded that there was no possibility of any form of compromise with the opposition. His speeches also clearly revealed his determination to remain as president until the 2020s.

Venezuela is deeply polarized. But this was a process driven as much by the opposition and U.S. pressure as by the political movement that Chavez fostered. Chavez’s initial position was conciliatory. That position became progressively rigid after 2002, although there were conciliatory gestures calling for a strategic alliance with industrialists even in 2003. It was Chavez’s appearance, his symbolic representation of the previously excluded, his rhetorical commitment to social justice and redistribution, and his policies, such as land redistribution, that made his continued hold on power untenable to the forces of the opposition. The ever-increasing intensity of that opposition was instrumental in accelerating Chavez’s revilement of his foes. The historical context was polarizing. Chavez merely brought that reality to its inevitable culmination.

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.

The comparison of the unstable politics of Central America to that which occurred in the U.S. on January 6 with the assault on Congress to block President-elect Joe Biden from taking power, is misleading. The only similarity is the fact that a portion of the population regarded the results of the electoral process as illegitimate and attempted to override the process by illegal means.

Central America: Where politics has been historically unstable but rational

In Central America, the conditions for social and political stability have been historically notable by their absence: concentrated land ownership in the hands of a few big landowners and/or multinational companies, large poor peasant populations, and military establishments closely aligned with the landowners. Political mobilizations demanding land redistribution invariably elicited stiff opposition from big landowners and their business allies and repression. When elections brought reformists to power, big landowners and the military often removed them from power. It makes sense that big landowners and their military allies would use force to protect their main source of wealth: their big landholdings.

The case of Guatemala is a good example. In 1954 a U.S.-supported military coup occurred in Guatemala, carried out at the behest of United Fruit in response to the plans of a democratically elected reform government to distribute the company’s unused land to poor peasant producers. From the late 1970s and into the 1980s, insurgencies were underway in most Central American countries. One of them (in Nicaragua), culminated in a revolutionary government coming to power with an explicit agenda of land redistribution, an end to illiteracy, improved access to health care, and an end to political repression. Whatever one might think about the efficacy of the Nicaraguan Revolution, or its respect for liberal democratic processes, it is difficult to dispute the fact that the insurrectionists knew why they were angry and knew what they were fighting for.

America: Where politics has entered the twilight zone

The same cannot be said for America’s January 6 “insurrectionists.” The assailants consisted of a heterogenous mélange of violent right wing white supremacists and nationalist groups, many sporting bizarre conspiracy theories, such as the use of the coronavirus to steal elections and a deep state conspiracy to target children. These extremist groups were accompanied by many disillusioned mainstream republicans who had become convinced that the election was stolen from their candidate.

Beyond a strong expression of anger, there was not much uniting these disparate groups. The event lacked both unified leadership and coherent goals—beyond pressuring Congress to abandon certification of Biden’s election. Clearly, many Americans are fearful and angry—extremely angry. One wonders how the disparate demands that seem to emanate from the Trump movement (building a border wall, limiting immigration or expelling immigrants, an end to penalizing discrimination, or further reducing the role of the state) would operate to dispel such intense anger.

The most accepted explanation for the events of January 6 is that President Trump had used his leadership position and social media to convince Americans of a variety of untruths, in particular that there had been massive fraud in the election. But this is not a sufficient explanation for the events of January 6th because it does not address the receptivity of millions of Americans to Trump—why so many people are inclined to belief what he tells them. To answer this question, it is probably important to recognize that Americans, like all of us, seek to make sense of their reality. I suggest that today, America does not make sense to many Americans.

The Basic Untruth of American Mythology

American mythology about itself (about its virtues and ideals) has so thoroughly penetrated the American psyche that the adoption of untruths, and bizarre explanations have become preferable to a rejection of that mythology for many millions of Americans. These myths arise from the ideology of American exceptionalism: the idea that the United States is characterized by the very best political ideals and virtues. These ideals--equality before the law, individual responsibility, representative democracy, a belief in progress, freedom of speech, among others, are key components of American liberty. Linked to these virtues is the firm belief that the US is the land of opportunity: everyone is free and equal, with an equal opportunity to succeed—a belief that President Obama articulated during his presidency. America, however, suffers from a huge gap between these aspirational ideals and its current reality. Citizens who fail to succeed in American society, or come to fear downward mobility or failure, therefore believe that they have only themselves to blame—this is a formula that can only produce anger, hatred of others, and polarization.

Latin America and the Absence of Unifying Myths

At their founding, most Latin American countries failed to develop belief systems that penetrated the popular consciousness and effectively bound their nations together. Nationalism has historically been very shallow engendering a deep skepticism about political inclusion and reform even when it appeared to be offered. Indeed, during my decades of field research in Mexico, I was often struck by the clarity with which the humblest of Mexicans understood the politics of their country. During the period of authoritarian one-party rule, which ended in 2000, no one I talked to bought into the idea that the Institutionalized Revolutionary Party (the ruling PRI) was the party of the Mexican revolution supporting the welfare of peasants and workers. Latin Americans do not believe in the inevitability of progress. Their history has taught them otherwise. As Latin Americans continue their struggle for social justice, their politics will continue to have banana republic-like qualities. However, these are, for the most part, authentic struggles, unencumbered by the elite generated myths that are probably a key ingredient in inhibiting more authentic political struggles in the U.S.

Deeply ingrained myths about political reality inhibit the development of a new consensus that can address the angst that afflicts so many mainstream Americans. Recognition that life is unfair, that the free market and rugged individualism will not produce inclusive prosperity, and that there are some serious defects in U.S. democracy, all need to become part of a new American ideology.

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.

Until the late 20th century transition to electoral democracy, Latin America had experienced alternating cycles of electoral democracy and military rule. Now political swings involve electoral struggles between a populist left and the political right. While the political right defeated left populist leaders in mid 2010s, only one of these right leaning leaders, Jair Bolsonaro, was populist in the sense of providing a charismatic, emotionally-charged leadership. Meanwhile, the populist left survives as seen in the recent election of socialist MAS presidential candidate, Luis Arce, to the presidency of Bolivia in 2020. Mexican left populist president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO), elected in 2018, has remained popular (with a 52 percent approval rating) despite harsh criticisms of his handling of the pandemic and his failure to provide more generous financial support for the poor. The notable rise in poverty and unemployment occasioned by the pandemic, could set the stage for a resurgence of parties and leaders with redistributive priorities. Given rising debt and past restrictions imposed on government spending required by the International Monetary Fund, popular mobilizations against taking loans from that organization have been mounting—suggesting the anti-neoliberal predisposition of the populist left is alive and well.

Brazil’ Right Populism as a (Somewhat) Special Case

Jair Bolsonaro’s win of the Brazilian presidency, with 55 percent of the popular vote, is illustrative of innovative nature of right populism in its efforts to gain power. Aided by a deep political and economic crisis, Bolsonaro won by knitting together a heterogenous support base. That support involved middle classes, fearful of downward mobility and disgusted with the country’s high level of corruption. It also involved support from the poor due to having the allegiance of key evangelical church leaders and their followers—the former able to direct the vote of their congregations. Bolsonaro also won over the Brazilian business community and their technocratic allies due to his stated adherence to market principles. A key aspect of Bolsonaro’s appeal, from both middle and lower classes, was his socially conservative position on women and sexual diversity issues.

Strong opposition to the recognition of gay marriage and the right to abortion are core issues for evangelicals and their followers in Brazil and elsewhere in the region. In Brazil, evangelicals vigorously opposed the left populist regime’s efforts to legalize gay marriage (finally achieved in 2013). The 90 or so evangelical members of Congress were formidable foes to L.G.B.T. oriented legislation and played an important role in impeaching the left female president, Dilma Rousseff. Indeed, the gains made by the left regimes of Presidents Lula and Rousseff appear to have triggered a socially conservative backlash that the political right was able to capitalize on. Indeed, Bolsonaro’s social conservativism has garnered support from very unlikely sources: he has been able to recruit black electoral candidates, linked to Christian evangelicalism, from poor regions of the country despite his blatantly racist rhetoric.

While there have been similar populist right movements and leaders in other Latin American countries, none have achieved national power, although in Costa Rica, in 2018 a populist right presidential candidate placed second in the popular vote in the first round of voting. Like Bolsonaro, Fabricio Alvarado ran with the support of evangelical leaders and their poor adherents and was backed by a group of free market technocrats and the business community. In the 2018 Mexican presidential election, another populist right leader, Jaime Rodríguez, (El Bronco) garnered only about 5 percent of the vote. In 2015, however, he was the first independent candidate to win a governorship—that of Nuevo Leon. He has been instrumental in the anti-AMLO protests in Mexico. Hence, Bolsonaro emerges as somewhat of an anomaly.

Left Populism’s Social Conservativism

The strength of Bolsonaro’s brand of populism in Brazil is in part linked to the depth of Brazil’s economic and political crises and to the more rapid rise in popular adherence to evangelical Christianity, which has provided the popular support need to win elections. However, just an important in avoiding the sort of right populist backlash found in Brazil may well have been timidness of left populist regimes in addressing gender and sexual diversity rights. This insight is illustrated by the fact that Costa Rica’s significant support for a right populist presidential candidate involved mobilization against legal recognition of same sex unions. Mexico’s left populist president, AMLO, on the other hand, has resisted commitment to abortion and gender equality, his electoral coalition having included a socially conservative party founded by evangelical Christians.

Nor did Bolivia or Ecuador’s left populist leaders pursue liberal social reforms aggressively. In fact, Evo Morales homophobic comments aroused sharp criticism from feminist and LGBT groups in his country. The exception is Argentina which was the first Latin American country to approve gay marriage. Its progressiveness arises due to a variety of unusual features, including greater secularism, fewer evangelicals and a weaker conservative political right. For the most part, however, these examples suggest the (unhappy) possibility that left populist leaders had a better chance of political survival if they avoided progress in gender and sexual diversity rights--in deference to a significant socially conservative popular base that can be mobilized to remove or block the left (or populist left) from power.

The New Context and the Instability of the Populist Coalitions

The evangelical churches have provided the mass support that right parties have lacked. As I have explained elsewhere, key aspects of church teachings served the purpose of creating hope among marginalized peoples, thereby opening the way for political allegiance to parties and leaders not primarily concerned with distributive issues. However, the pandemic and its severe impact on the region’s poor has introduced a new ingredient into the picture, destabilizing Brazil’s populist right alliance. The sharp economic downturn that Brazil experienced, followed by the very negative impact of the pandemic, has resulted in the dispersal of minimum income payments (at an estimated 9.7 B US) to the country’s increasing number of poor. At the same time, privatizations, dear to the hearts of his business and technocratic allies, have been put on hold. This new direction involving the abandonment of the market agenda of keeping the public deficit in check and reducing the role of the state has created tensions with Bolsonaro’s market favoring Finance Minister who promised privatizations and tight control of government spending. This situation has produced resignations from the finance ministry and market turbulence.

The left populist regimes of Latin America were fraught with conditions that made their hold on power tenuous: commodity dependence, which made the flow of government resources for social spending fragile, and growing alienation on the part of middle and business groups. The economic downturn linked to the decline in commodity prices set the stage for a growing political backlash, which, particularly in the case of Brazil, included opposition to the left regime’s liberal social agenda. The Brazilian left’s inclusionary social agenda appears to have provided the political right ample ammunition for oppositional mobilization. However, the deepening social crisis arising from the pandemic may breathe new life into the political left, including the populist left, insofar the sharp rise in poverty makes necessary attention to the pressing material needs of the poor. The outcome of all of this is deeply uncertain given that the deep fissures in Latin American societies set the stage for the tenuous coalitions that constitute left and right populisms. In this context, gender and sexual diversity rights may well fall by the wayside.

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.

Most Countries have never had Inclusive Social Contracts

This recommendation ignores the unfortunate realities of Latin American history: the fact that most countries, with a few exceptions, never had a “social contract” that involved compromises on the part of the upper middle classes and the wealthy to pay taxes to support the health and welfare of the majority of the population. While by 1970 nearly 70 percent of workers in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, had social security protection (health coverage and pensions), for most of the countries, coverage was less than 50 percent. Further, the political settlements of mid- twentieth century Latin America depended not on concessions from propertied classes but on high commodity prices from which populist governments extracted resources for social improvements.

With the debt crisis of the early 1980s, the proportions of the economically active population covered by social security declined as formal sector employment dropped and unemployed workers moved into informal employment. As is widely documented in the scholarly literature, despite the fact that Latin American countries were electoral democracies during this period, market liberalizing reforms, policies that were deemed essential to the region’s economic recovery at the time, were negotiated in secret in Washington by small groups of domestic and international technocrats and usually imposed in an authoritarian way, frequently through presidential decrees. The economic crisis and market liberalizing policies resulted in a sharp rise in poverty. Less well documented, particularly in the English language scholarly literature, was the widespread popular resistance to these market liberalizing reforms. Protests against the abolition of subsidies on basics necessities and the privatization of public enterprises in strategic natural resource sectors, were particularly intense. Governments abandoned even the limited “social contracts” of the 1950s to 1970s once the economic crisis of the early 1980s hit.

Economic Globalization and the Creation of Extreme Economic Vulnerability

Given that the market model assumed the efficacy of comparative advantage, countries’ industrial support systems—tariff and quota protection, requirements for technology transfer and the use of domestically produced inputs--were all abandoned. According to the conventional wisdom of the day, the inefficiencies of Latin American industry meant governments must end supportive measures, a policy direction that generated processes of de-industrialization. The industrial expansion that did occur now involved incorporation into global value chains at the low-paid, low technological end. This was particularly the case for Mexico and Central America where market policy reforms combined with various types of tax advantages, encouraged an influx of foreign firms into export processing zones. For most countries, however, the dismantling of domestic industry, especially when combined with a rise in commodity prices beginning in the early 2000s, resulted in a marked increase in export commodity dependence. By 2012, over 90 percent of the exports of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela were natural resources, while over 60 percent of the value of exports from Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay were some combination of fuel, minerals, and agricultural products. Increased demand for commodities on the part of China, was instrumental in stimulating increased production and export commodity dependence.

Hence, the region’s economic decline, initiated with the decline in commodity prices beginning 2011/2013, has accelerated with the pandemic as demand for the region’s major exports dwindled further. As exports declined, growth slowed and government revenues fell, triggering a tightening in expenditures and rises in unemployment. Social protest was widespread in 2019. The pandemic has also disrupted global value chains, as economic growth in the U.S. has dropped. Covid-19 has decimated the region’s tourist industry. Rising unemployment in the U.S. has resulted in a decrease in remittance payments, sent by migrants who cannot find employment in their home countries, further contributing to the rise in poverty.

The Boom Years: Poverty Reduction but the Failure to create Decent Employment

The way in which Latin American countries became integrated into the global economy, involving as it did increased commodity dependence and the dismantling of industry, failed to produce adequate decent employment. Economic activities such as mining, petroleum extraction, and commercial agricultural production have not been good employment generators. Export processing zones were largely unintegrated with the rest of national economies and so did not stimulate other employment generating economic activities. Even with the high levels of economic growth that occurred during the commodity boom years, a high proposition of the economically active population remained without decent employment and social security protection. This commodity dependence also made countries highly vulnerable.

While commodity prices were high, political leaderships were able to direct a significant amount of the increased revenue into poverty reduction programs, particularly for the extremely poor. However, the regimes of the 2000s that took an active role in promoting poverty reduction, did not orchestrate new “social contracts”—in the sense of agreements to redistribute wealth from the upper middle classes and the wealthy toward the disadvantaged. Rather, they harnessed the revenues generated by commodity export led growth. Even though the upper middle class and the wealthy also benefitted from the commodity boom, they usually opposed left regimes pursing “populist” agendas. Indeed, the market liberalization process had increased the economic power of domestic business interests, which had bought up privatized public companies, invested abroad, and moved into export markets. The right parties that represent these interests have returned to power in an increasing number of cases, most notably in Brazil, Chile, and Bolivia. Where they are not in power, they have enormous political clout.

Challenges to Negotiating a New Social Contract

Given the extent of political polarization in most countries of the region, addressing the needs of the disadvantaged in the context of the current pandemic faces almost insurmountable obstacles. Politically, doing so requires economic growth so that upper middle and wealthy classes are not adversely affected and mount opposition. Even in the medium term, given that economies will remain weak, governments, even if so inclined (and most are not), are not likely to have much success in negotiating an inclusive social contract that involves an equitable distribution of sacrifices. Continued adherence to a market model that supports the notion of comparative advantage restricts Latin American economies to economic activities that will fail to produce sustained growth and adequate decent employment.

The market model in general and the way in which Latin American has become inserted into the global economy, makes it very difficult for countries to address the pandemic and its economic consequences. The conditions for an enduring social contract require a major rethinking of the current political and economic model—towards commitment to an accountable and activist state committed to incorporation into the global economy in a way that stimulates economic growth, reduces vulnerability, and enhances decent employment-- a state committed to the creation of comparative advantage. Aid from the Global North and the multilateral institutions it dominates, in the form of debt relief and loans, will not be effective unless there is a major challenge to the basic assumptions of economic globalization—one that facilitates policy choices that stimulate economic diversification and productive employment.

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.

Race and Disadvantage in Latin America

The pandemic is not only disproportionately hitting the disadvantaged—poor Afro, Indigenous and mixed-race communities--but the attendant rise in poverty will mean a loss in the social improvements these citizens obtained since the mid-2000s. In retrospect, the period of the pink tide—the rise of left political leaders to power throughout the region—was a period without precedent. Poverty and inequality declined as commodity booms produced economic growth, a rise in government revenue, and the implementation of programs to address the needs of the poor. Between 2002 and 2012, the incidence of poverty in Latin America declined from 44% to 28% of the population, and extreme poverty from 19% to 11% of the population.

In Latin America, ethnicity/race and social class coincide. White and lighter skinned people are generally better educated, have access to better services (education and health care, for example), have better jobs (are much more likely to have formal employment), and higher incomes. Darker skinned populations (Afro Latin Americans, Indigenous people, and darker skinned mixed blood populations), on the other hand, have suffered a high incidence of poverty, are often own-account workers with precarious employment, are poor peasant farmers, or work as day labourers in the rural sector. With the rise of right-wing governments to power, these groups are faced with governments which, if not out rightly racist in their attitudes, are unsympathetic to the difficulties faced by their Black, Indigenous and dark-skinned populations. Brazil is a good case in point.

Brazil, Racial Exclusion, and Covid-19

Despite its mythology of racial equality, Brazil has long been characterized by a socio-economic hierarchy based on race. According to the 2010 Brazilian census, white and Asian Brazilians earned twice as much as black or mixed-race Brazilians. However, the commodity boom and pro poor policies under the left governments of Presidents Lula and Rousseff signalled some progress toward closing the gap insofar as a significant proportion of the 30 million Brazilians who ceased to be poor over the past decade were Black. Since the structural nature of exclusion remained largely intact (lower educational opportunities, racial discrimination in hiring, lack of formal employment), these newly non-poor are already seeing their economic gains disappear, while facing much greater health risks than their lighter skinned middle and upper-class compatriots. While the commodity boom stimulated some increase in formal employment, significant numbers remained in informal employment and therefore without social protection—across the region an estimated 25 percent of the economically active population were still own-account workers when the decline in commodity prices hit. With the slowdown of economic activities arising with both the decline in commodity prices and the pandemic, incomes have declined. In Brazil, in the beginning of 2020, the average income of the poorest half of the population dropped 7.7% while inequality is on the rise. Although the cavalier attitude toward the pandemic on the part of current president, Jair Bolsonaro, has certainly contributed to the spread of the disease, poverty and the conditions associated with it have been instrumental in contributing to high levels of covid-19 infections. Without social security protection, informal workers had no choice but to continue working (selling food in the streets, shining shoes, cleaning the homes of the middle and upper classes). In addition, living in densely populated urban areas, Brazil’s darker-skinned citizens have no hope of avoiding infection through social distancing. Brazil’s slums, as is the case throughout Latin America, have inadequate access to water and sanitation, making it difficult to follow basic hygiene recommendations like hand washing with soap.

Not surprisingly, in Brazil (and elsewhere in the region), the virus has spread rapidly into the favelas (slums) of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro where the cities’ Afro and dark-skinned poor reside. The Brazilian Health Ministry has acknowledged high COVID-19 death rates among Afro-Brazilians, a category that includes people who identify as “black” or “brown” in the census. In addition, people younger than 50 years have been hospitalized and have died at higher rates in Brazil than in Europe, China and the USA, a fact highly suggestive of the impact of poverty on increased vulnerability to the disease. With its health system on the brink of collapse, poor Brazilians, who might have survived had they been able to access good hospital care, are dying of COVID-19. It is important to bear in mind that Afro and dark-skinned Brazilians were already facing significant health risks, such respiratory and kidney problems, prior to the onset of the pandemic due to food insecurity and inadequate access to medicine.

Meanwhile, the Brazilian government’s preoccupation with opening up the Amazon for increased commercial agricultural production, has increased the risk to poor communities in that region during the pandemic. Bolsonaro’s government has rapidly dismantled policies that protected Indigenous and traditional communities, with the result that Covid-19 has spread rapidly into the Amazon, with unusually high fatality rates. Such blatant disregard for the welfare of the country’s Indigenous population is a reflection of what can only be described as a deep seated racism perhaps best reflected in Bolsonaro’s statement that, “Indians are undoubtedly changing … They are increasingly becoming human beings just like us.”

Politics in the Time of Covid-19

When the coronavirus arrived in Latin America, the region was already experiencing widespread protest activity—in Ecuador, for example, against the removal of gas subsidies, cuts in government expenditure, and corruption. In Bolivia there were protests against electoral fraud, against the exit of Evo Morales from the presidency, and, more recently against the government’s decision to postpone the election due to the pandemic. These latter protests reflect deep Indigenous fears that the gains under Indigenous president Evo Morales will be lost if the election is not held immediately. The extent to which race has become a polarizing political issue was reflected in the words of the current right-wing president, who did not hesitate to cast dispersion on the Indigenous identity of outgoing president Morales, referring to him as “the poor Indian clinging to power”—an indication of the deep animosity of upper and middle class Bolivians to the ascent to power of an Indigenous leader.

In Brazil, “Stop Bonsonaro” protests have occurred in a context where the number of deaths from the virus have risen above 57,000. Demanding Bolsonaro’s resignation these anti-government protests have merged with unrest over other related issues, particularly racism and gay rights. The government has responded with repression. In addition, Indigenous protesters blocked major highways in Brazil, demanding increased government efforts, in the form of restrictions on the entry of outsiders into their communities and more protective equipment, to help them cope with the pandemic. Mobilization by Brazil’s racialized populations has been made even more difficult because of the President’s tough-on-crime, and shoot-to-kill policies.

In both Brazil and Bolivia (among others), where governments have overpaid private sector cronies for hospital and other equipment related to the pandemic, Covid-19 has opened the door to even more corruption. While corruption was common before the pandemic, the health crisis has spurred the abandonment of competitive bids and oversight in the rush to disperse emergency funds. At the same time, the pandemic has triggered emergency measures (the imposition of curfews, restrictions on movement) that suggest a growing centralization of power and a tendency to authoritarian solutions, particularly given what appears to be unrest and growing political polarization, in contexts of sharp economic and social deterioration. Covid-19 is shining a harsh light on Latin America’s deep social and political fissures and raising increasingly difficult political challenges.

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 treaties 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.

The Disease will have a substantial
negative economic impact on the region

The disease will quickly exacerbate the already difficult economic problems faced by most countries of the region. Over recent decades, China became the region’s second highest export market with trade rising 27 percent between 2000-2013. In seven Latin American countries, China has surpassed the United States as the main destination for exports. Agricultural commodities, such as soy, and minerals are leading exports to China. China is a particularly important trading partner for Peru, Brazil, and Chile.

It was the rise in commodity exports that drove economic growth and poverty reduction during the first half of the 2000s. However, already the coronavirus has produced a significant slowdown in the Chinese economy, and this will mean a further decline in demand for Latin America’s commodities and a consequent drop in economic growth. In addition, the closure of factories in China has resulted in the interruption of production chains. The manufacturing sectors in Mexico and Brazil rely heavily on Chinese suppliers for parts and intermediate goods. Samsung and Motorola have had to stop producing cellphones in Brazil due to the lack of parts. There is speculation that car manufacturers, electronics and appliances makers, and pharmaceutical companies could also be forced to reduce production. The Central American garment industry is currently facing delays in imported fabric and yarn from China. The disease will also significantly negatively impact the tourist industry.

The deterioration of trade, the further slowdown in economic growth, and increasing layoffs will contribute to a rise in poverty, an increase already underway with the end of the commodity boom. The decline in government revenues occasioned by the drop in economic growth and activities will reduce the ability to governments to provide much in the way of investment stimulus.

The Region’s Heath Challenges

While the commodity boom years saw significant improvement in health care delivery in a number of countries for the poorest citizens, Latin America’s health care infrastructure remains inadequate. The economic downturn occasioned first by the decline in commodity prices, and now by the coronavirus, will mean a continuing decline in government resources to improve health care delivery. Even now, few countries meet international standards for numbers of doctors/nurses or hospital beds per 100,000 inhabitants. Average investment in public health remains below that of the Global North. An estimated 30 percent of the population lack access to health care for economic reasons while 21% do not seek care because of geographical barriers. Moreover, the region faces new and increasingly serious health care challenges linked to the interrelated processes of deforestation and climate change.

In response to demands for its commodities, countries significantly expanded the area devoted to such commodities as soy and beef production. With the drop in commodity prices, there has been increased pressure to further increase production. Indeed, the recent rise in clearing forest land through fires in the Brazilian and Bolivian Amazon has been linked to the strategy of increasing beef and soy production. Deforestation has been an important contributor to the expansion of new diseases throughout the region—diseases whose spread has received only scant coverage by the media in comparison with the coverage of the coronavirus. These diseases have become increasingly serious, impacting the most vulnerable sectors of the population.

Deforestation Contributes to the spread of Mosquito-borne Diseases

In the last few years, mosquito-borne diseases, such as dengue fever, malaria, and the zika virus, have reached record levels in Latin America. In 2019 nearly 3 million cases of dengue fever were reported across Latin America, 20 percent higher than in 2015. In 2019, more than 1300 died of this disease. In Argentina’s region of soy production, there are currently 700 cases of dengue fever with three deaths. In Paraguay, where soy production by American and Brazilian multinationals has involved the deforestation of some 325,000 hectares, an epidemic of dengue fever in 2013 infected 150,000 and claimed 252 lives.

A growing body of scientific information suggests that deforestation, apart from its specific impact on climate change, is a major contributor to the spread of dengue fever and other mosquito-borne diseases. Deforestation accelerates transmission dynamics because it not only stimulates mosquito breeding but places humans in close proximity with pathogen-carrying mosquitoes. Warming temperatures, of course, contribute further to mosquito breeding. Mosquitoes then travel to cities where they find excellent breeding grounds in pools of stagnant water or excessive water due to flooding. Urban slum dwellers become particularly vulnerable to these diseases.

The Multidimensional Impact of the Coronavirus

Despite the low levels of infection, the coronavirus represents a potentially serious threat to Latin America. The economic slowdown will exacerbate poverty by contributing to unemployment, while compromising governments’ ability to improve essential services, particularly health services. Given this context, the pre-existing health threats, linked to commodity dependence and deforestation, impact vulnerable populations (the urban and rural poor) disproportionately, rendering these populations susceptible to other infections such as the coronavirus. As noted, governments have been struggling with serious health challenges prior to the arrival of the coronavirus scare. The arrival of the coronavirus represents yet another setback in a region already experiencing an overabundance of social and economic challenges. Should the coronavirus spread significantly in the region, there will likely be political fallout as well, perhaps in the form of rising public opposition to an economic dependence that has rendered countries so socially and economically vulnerable.

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 phenomena: 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 was linked to neoliberal reform. While the most notable case is 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.

Populism Left and Right: Distinct Concepts of “The People”

Populism is best thought of as a political style involving charismatic leadership, a direct appeal to “the people,” overriding what is characterized as a corrupt political institutional framework. This latter, so populist leaders claim, has been manipulated by the “enemies” of the people. In the case of the populist right, those enemies are the “traditional” party leaders, particularly, and most recently, left leaderships. For the political right, this political style is an essential component in electoral success as it facilitates a cross-class coalition of heterogeneous social groups in a way that obscures the objectives of powerful economic interests. As I have noted in a earlier post, populism is largely a reflection of the absence or fraying of distributive settlements and, particularly in Latin America, the fact that nation building projects excluded a significant proportion of the population, particularly Indigenous people, but also those of significant African heritage.

The populist left sought to address these distributive and identity-based exclusions; hence, “the people” are the poor” (“los de abajo”), who had been excluded from economic prosperity and political access. The populist right seeks to obfuscate the distributional issue, establishing a concept of the people that while superficially integrative, allows discrimination and inequality to not only persist, but deepen. The populist right concept of “the people” facilitates the unbridled pursuit of neoliberalism with its destructive human and environmental implications. Its concept of the people is those who commit to its socially conservative values of Christian morality, entailing a traditional definition of family, a rejection of women, gay, and transsexual rights, opposition to morally questionable behavior, particularly corruption in public life, and values of hard work and individual responsibility in achieving prosperity. As such, it is a nice fit with radical neoliberalism’s assumption that the market, without collective action or state intervention, will lift all boats.

Brazil: Knitting together a Coalition of Contradictory Interests

While support for Jair Bolsonaro has declined since his election as president of Brazil in 2018, it is important to consider the social forces behind his ascent. His support has come from the Brazilian business class, particularly commercial beef and soy producers, technocrats supporting radical neoliberal economic policies, sectors of the middle classes concerned about public morality and corruption, and the popular classes particularly those adhering to the county’s powerful Christian fundamentalist organizations.

Bolsonaro is explicitly pro-business and free market; both inclinations are closely linked to his anti-environmental stance. In his efforts to expand beef production for export, he has encouraged the burning of the Amazon. JBS, a powerful Brazilian meat processing company behind the expansion of cattle production, is alleged to have made illegal campaign donations to Bolsonaro’s chief of staff and leader of his transition team, Onyx Lorenzoni. Meanwhile, Bolsonaro’s economic team, headed up by former investment banker Paulo Guedes, is committed to a radical neoliberalism of free trade and full privatization.

The Politics of the Poor in Brazil

Despite a pro neoliberal stance that had been no harmful to popular groups in the past, Bolsonaro was able to garner considerable electoral support from the poor, due to his close alliance with Protestant fundamentalist preachers, particularly of Pentecostalism. About 30 percent of the Brazilian population is Protestant, about 70 percent of which are Pentecostal. Aggressive proselytizing on the part of Pentecostal preachers has been instrumental in the rise of the sect. Recruitment has been particularly successful among rural migrants and has also had important success within Indigenous communities in the Amazon, attracting adherents by such tactics as not condemning illegal survival activities (such as illegal mining), even as preachers demonize Indigenous culture and encourage commercial ventures on Indigenous lands. Prosperity gospel (a form of Pentecostalism), has attracted the poor because it gives them hope that their material situation will improve with sufficient faith, prayer, and adherence to strict social rules such as abandoning drinking and smoking. Faith healing is also an important draw for the poor as it provides hope for those who have multiple health problems and lack of access to health care.

By 2002, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (president 2003-2010), whose candidacy had been opposed by powerful Protestant organizations, succeeded in obtaining the support if not quiescence of these powerful sects--and consequent votes from the Protestant poor. However, the global economic crisis, the drop in Brazilian commodity prices, and the emergence of large-scale corruption scandals all opened the way for a right-wing demonization of Lula and the Workers’ Party and a political shift of popular classes to the populist right. Pentecostal sects mobilized against the political left and in support of Bolsonaro. Sect-based media engaged in inflammatory and false campaign allegations to discredit the left. Fear of downward mobility among the newly non-poor, who had benefited from the left regime’s social policies, was likely also a powerful factor in this shift in political support, as were rising crime rates, which fed support for Bolsonaro’s law and order agenda among all social groups.

The Worrisome Case of Costa Rica

A similar process has been emerging in Costa Rica where right populism has been fueled by the rapid expansion of fundamentalist Protestantism with its attendant conservative social values. While voting on the second ballot in 2018 gave the presidency to the centrist Popular Action party, the first round saw Fabricio Alvarado (National Restoration Party), an evangelical preacher, in first place with 25 percent of votes, ahead his opponent at 22 percent. Seventy percent of his support came from evangelical Christians.

As in Brazil, protestant sects have become a political force to be reckoned, now constituting a socially conservative block in the country’s legislature. As in the case of Brazil, their recruitment of popular support has focused on the poor with Avarado’s support coming largely from the three provinces which have been most abandoned by the state and where the evangelical churches have stepped in to provide state functions. Like Brazilian president, Fabricio Alvarado is supported by a group of radical neoliberal businessmen and technocrats.

Left and Right Populism and the Absence/Fraying of Political Settlements

The perceived threat to the traditional family represented by Inter-American Court of Human Right’s 2018 decision that all members must recognize same sex unions provided the ideal event around which the Popular Restoration Party could rally the faithful. However, the story of the weakening of Costa Rica’s social democracy and the groundwork for the rise of the populist right and the spread of evangelical Christianity began much earlier, with the gradual erosion of the country’s commitment to social democracy and its equitable social welfare system. Since the mid-1980s, both inequality and poverty have risen in Costa Rica. The betrayal of the country’s distributive settlement produced, by 2014, the disintegration of the traditional bipartisan party system and the emergence of new parties, articulating popular disillusionment with the traditional political elite and the political system.

In Brazil, the absence of a distributive inclusive political settlement set the stage for the rise of the populist left in the early 2000s. The threat to the economically powerful that this represented, the various conditions giving rise to the expansion of Pentecostalism, and the recent economic downturn, have all facilitated the emergence of the populist right. In Costa Rica, it has been the breakdown of a much more inclusive social democratic political settlement that has made possible a similarly constituted populist right. In both cases, dominance by neoliberal business and technocratic elites raises the likelihood of worsening social outcomes and further political upheaval.

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.

Limited Social Protest and No Real Populism

Panama has not been entirely bereft of protest. In the fall of 2019, there were protests, largely carried out by university students, against proposed constitutional reforms. Protesters objected to the elite-pacted nature of the proposed reforms and to some of the terms, which involved, among other things, a reduction in university autonomy; they demanded a more participative process that would include a broadly representative constituent assembly. The protests ended when the President signed an agreement for further dialogue before the reforms became law. While the country was governed by a purportedly left-centre government (with populist origins) between 2004 and 2009, that regime did not have poverty and inequality reduction as its central aim - either in rhetoric or in policy; nor did it display the anti-oligarchical, or anti-imperialist rhetoric characteristic of regimes of other left populist regimes of the first part of the 2000s. A common explanation for the country’s relative social peace and lack of political polarization is its high economic growth rates—for a decade Panama has had one of the fastest growing economies in the region, with an average annual per capita growth rate of 5 percent between 2008 and 2018.

But There Are Two Panamas

However, the benefits of this growth have been very unevenly distributed. Panama has one of the highest levels of inequality in Latin America, ranking only behind Brazil and Honduras. It also has sharp regional inequality, with the benefits of economic growth going largely to the urban middle and upper classes, particularly in Panama City. As in so many other Latin American countries, there is a close correlation between race and social conditions. The highest poverty levels are found among the Indigenous population, who constitute about 13 percent of the population. In rural Indigenous regions, over 90 percent of the population faces extremely high levels of deprivation including the virtual absence of electricity, adequate nutrition, clean water, and access to education. While official sources, like the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, report poverty reduction from 34 percent to 17 percent in recent years, these figures have been disputed due to their failure to take into account the high cost of living of the poor in urban areas. Panama has implemented targeted transfer programs to help the poor. However, the small amount of money transferred has not been enough to lift many of the poor out of extreme poverty. In fact, Panama stands out as having one of the lowest levels of social spending in Latin American and the Caribbean. The country has a large informal sector (almost one-half of the economically active population), meaning that half of all workers lack social security (heath and pensions protection).

The Economic Model: Canal Dependence (probably worse than the resource curse)

Dependence on natural resource exports with its attendant large inflow of revenue during boom times has proven destructive to agriculture and mining, with detrimental consequences for employment and poverty reduction. The canal has had a similar impact, albeit without the usual collapse in revenue that attends commodity price declines. The existence of the Panama Canal has discouraged vigorous efforts to support economic diversification. Revenue from the Canal, which has grown substantially since expansion of the canal was completed in 2016, and provided about 1.7 million dollars to the Panamanian government in 2018. The country’s high economic growth rates have been largely driven by the canal and the related construction and service industries it has generated—hence, the benefits have been largely concentrated in Panama City. Reliance on the canal as the driver of economic growth has meant tax rates are low and not sufficiently distributive.

Moreover, the adoption of a neoliberal economic model since the early 1980s further exacerbated the regional disequilibrium and rural poverty. Agriculture was hit hard by trade liberalization and the removal of rural supports, resulting in a sharp decline in rural employment and agricultural production and an increase in food imports. The government’s solutions have been less than optimal in terms of their ability to generate sufficient decent employment. In an effort to rejuvenate the rural economy and increase employment, for example, the government invited a subsidiary of Del Monte to resurrect large-scale banana production in the province of Chiriquí, a move that generated farmer protest against land evictions and resulted in government repression. The establishment of “petroleum free zones,” providing generous tax treatment for companies engaged in petroleum and gas related activities such as refining and storage, will generate few jobs. Nor do the country’s export processing zones provide much in the way of decent employment. Government incentives to MNC mining investment has caused land contamination and deforestation, particularly in Indigenous areas. Indigenous protests were met with repression.

In this context, Panama’s relative political stability is probably ephemeral. The country has what the casual observer would describe as a multiparty competitive electoral democracy. However, power rests in the hands of a privileged oligarchy who exercise personalistic control of the major parties; these parties incorporate supporters through various forms of clientelism. There is no mass-based party with a programmatic social justice agenda. The main issue in the 2019 election, corruption, is an important one but does not involve any significant departure from the canal-focused neoliberal strategy of past governments. The country’s political conditions combined with the its high degree of inequality, reinforced by distinct racial identities, appear to set the stage for the rise of populism and its ultimately polarizing impact.

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.

Protests in France and Haiti

In France, the yellow vest movement emerged in 2018, originally largely composed of rural dwellers who could least afford the increased fuel prices announced by the government. As the movement gained momentum, however, it garnered a broader spectrum of supporters and expanded its concerns to the high cost of living more generally. Increased taxes on wealth and an improvement in the minimum wage were among the demands. More recently, the yellow vests have joined the country’s trade unions in protesting various measures aimed at eroding the country’s welfare state, such as the slashing of unemployment benefits, changes in labor law making it easier to hire and fire, and pension reforms, which would reduce the age of retirement from 62 to 64 and merge the country’s 42 pension schemes. Meanwhile, the French government has reduced taxes for the wealthy. Nevertheless, France is one of only five OECD countries where income inequality and poverty have declined over the past 20 years. France’s poverty figures are below OECD average. Protesters in France have been fighting to retain the country’s generous welfare state.

Consider, on the other hand, the protests in Haiti, where widespread unrest emerged in response to an increase in fuel prices and expanded to demonstrations against large scale corruption. Haiti is the poorest country in the western hemisphere, with an extreme poverty level (the proportion of the population living on less than $1.25 per day) of 25 percent. Inequality is extremely high: Haiti has one of the highest numbers of millionaires per capita in the Western Hemisphere. About one quarter of the population lack electricity, approximately one half lack access to safe water and a similar percent of Haitian children do not attend school. An estimated 100,000 children are malnourished. The current situation is desperate. In addition, the high level of civil unrest has further reduced even the minimal public services that are normally available while the high level of criminal violence and government repression have worsened problems of physical security. Millions face food insecurity. Protesters are demanding the government resign and that the corrupt ruling class be prosecuted. Protesters also maintain that the current regime remains in power due to international support. The Trump administration, for example, has supported current Haitian President Jovenel Moise due to his opposition to Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro.

Contextual Distinctions: North versus South

These are, admittedly, starkly contrasting scenarios. However, these features highlight important differences in context: issues of material deprivation and democratic quality are generally far more serious in the South than in the North. The Hong Kong protests are not about material deprivation; rather they arose in opposition to a new law that would try Hong Kong residents in mainland China. The movement has since evolved into a pro democracy movement. In the Netherlands, farmers have been protesting the government’s claim that cattle farming is responsible for high emissions and that some cattle farms should therefore shut down. In Britain, protests have revolved around the Brexit issue (Britain’s departure from the European Union)—for and against, with one of the largest demonstrations in British history demanding a fresh referendum on the issue. While there are economic issues involved (distinct differences in the regional bases of support for and against Brexit), additional protests were triggered by Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s move to suspend parliament, with protesters chanting “stop the coup” and labelling Johnson “a dictator.”

In poorer countries, protests are more closely connected to basic survival issues and arguably much more serious democratic quality and corruption complaints. In Peru, protesting Indigenous farmers and labourers, faced with threats of pollution of their land and their water supply, blocked mining company access to copper mines—the government has sided with the mining companies. In Chile, ongoing protests, originally triggered by an increase in fuel prices, have expanded to general opposition to the country’s very high level of inequality. While many countries of the Global North have witnessed a weakening of labor protection and their social welfare systems, Chile’s labor and social protection was almost totally dismantled during the period of military rule. Most Latin American countries failed to develop anything close to equitable social protection—only recently were social programs expanded during the commodity boom of the 2000s. In Ecuador, a poor country that only recently saw a substantial reduction in poverty and inequality, protesters have demonstrated against an increase in fuel subsidies—part of a package of spending cuts agreed to with the International Monetary Fund. These reductions will impact negatively on the living costs of the poorest. With the decline in commodity prices, extreme poverty is once again on the rise in Bolivia. In this context, President Evo Morales’ attempt to manipulate the electoral system to secure a fourth term became intolerable to much of the Bolivian public. Both Morales’ interference in the electoral process and the explicit involvement of the military in his departure from power are serious challenges to democracy.

These important differences in context serve to remind us of the persistence of world inequality and of the distinct ways in which power structures, both domestic and international, have impacted human welfare. Worldwide protests tell us that something is wrong—that governments are not responsive. Their contextual differences remind us of the differential nature of human suffering across the globe.

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.

The Root of the Problem: Misguided Economic Policies

Latin America’s current political turmoil is, to a significant extent, the unhappy culmination of the last thirty-five years of misguided economic policies—mostly arising in the awake of the international debt crisis of the early 1980s, and the market liberalizing reforms that countries pursued at the vigorous urging of the international financial institutions. The pre-existing social, economic, and political conditions were, admittedly, not optimal. The region’s history of colonial conquest, wealth concentration, political turmoil, and authoritarianism, along with racialized socio-economic inequality, and periodic U.S. intervention overturning governments committed to dealing with some of these problems, certainly provided a difficult historical legacy. However, economic globalization with its market liberalizing agenda exacerbated these very problems, contributing to increased political polarization.

On the assumption that countries should build on their comparative advantage, International Monetary Fund and World Bank policy urged elimination of industrial protection, a policy direction that resulted in processes of de-industrialization and a consequent rise in unemployment and underemployment. Revisions to labor codes, making it easier to hire and fire, had a similar negative impact on employment. Privatization of public companies and efforts to promote export expansion produced a concentration of wealth as only the biggest domestic companies (often in alliance with foreign capital) were in a position to purchase public companies and take advantage of export incentives. Exploitation of commodities particularly of mineral and hydrocarbons and the establishment of cheap labor export processing zones, seen as essential ingredients in achieving economic growth and prosperity, failed to provide sufficient decent employment. The demise of inefficient domestic enterprises was supposed to be compensated by economic growth and new employment generating activities. This did not happen. While economic growth returned in the 1990s, it was punctuated by economic crises; only a slow decline in poverty, and inequality that was now higher than ever.

The Political Consequences: Even more Political Polarization

All of this would have profound political consequences. Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s Latin American civil society mobilized against the market liberalizing reforms. Meanwhile, the power of business increased from the 1980s as governments became increasingly dependent on their investment to drive economic growth and as the numbers of entrepreneurs obtaining formal positions of power within the state, particularly cabinet-level appointments, increased. Popular disillusionment with the failure of socio-economic conditions to improve sufficiently during the 1990s finally culminated in the election of a series of left government: by 2009, over 2/3 of countries had such regimes. These electoral wins caused great consternation among business and many members of middle classes, who often remained intractable opponents, the case of Venezuela being the most notable case. In countries with large Indigenous and mixed blood populations, the arrival to power of leaders representing the poor darker skinned masses engendered strong feelings of insecurity, and even fear. Ongoing tensions between governments and business interests during the 2000s deterred private investment. However, because these electoral wins coincided with the rise of commodity prices and substantial increases in state revenues, these regimes (with the notable exception of Venezuela) could spread around the bounty in ways that would keep powerful opposition interests at bay.

Things have fallen apart with the decline in commodity prices, however. While the various left regimes had been able to reduce poverty substantially during the boom years, none were able to diversify their economic base, or significantly increase taxes on non-resources sectors. As trade balances, deteriorated and fiscal deficits shot up, unemployment increased and governments cut back social programs. In a number of cases, these economic downturns prompted the election of right leaning governments (Brazil, Chile, and Argentina). Whatever their ideological predisposition, governments scrambled to maintain revenues by increasing commodity exports; in the cases of Bolivia and Brazil by burning the Amazon to increase beef and soy production.

Resource Extraction and the Growth of Authoritarianism

Without the achievement of economic diversification, Latin America’s left regimes could do little to increase formal employment opportunities substantially. At the same time, the project of growth-led extractive activities caused increasing opposition from previous supporters, particularly in the cases of Bolivia and Ecuador where the disruption of local communities and contamination of land occasioned by resource extraction activities negatively impact Indigenous groups located in resource rich regions. Fears of the erosion of mass support combined with intransigent middle class and upper class opposition have probably been at the root of the authoritarian tendencies of the populist left, most notably in Venezuela but also in Bolivia. However, right-leaning regimes have by no means been immune to the use of repression. While protests have been more or less permanent features of Chilean politics since the early 2000s, the current right government of Sebastían Piñera has dealt with protests demanding a new constitution and an end to inequality by deploying soldiers and tanks--the first time the government has responded in this way since the return to civilian rule. There have been with violent clashes between protesters and security forces.

Latin America’s difficult history is now more difficult than ever. Polarization between previous supporters of the political left and their opponents has increased and is now laced with racial disparagement. Fear and suspicion are endemic. At the same time, countries have become heavily dependent on commodity booms as drivers of economic growth—in large part a consequence of an ideological faith in the efficacy of the market and the merits of comparative advantage. Today, as in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, declines in commodity prices trigger political unrest among those most adversely affected, fears among middle and upper class, and dismay among political leaders who are tempted to find authoritarian solutions to contain increasingly explosive political situations.

A shortened version of this post also appeared in three major Latin American newspapers:

El Universo, Ecuador

Folha, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Pagina Siete, La Paz, Bolivia

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; the fires are destroying vegetation and wildlife and threatening the lives and livelihoods of the Indigenous peoples who live there.

The Root of the Problem: Latin America’s Commodity Dependence

The media, for the most part, has placed the blame on Brazil’s president, who has made no secret of his blatant disregard for the environment and for Brazil’s environmental regulations. He has proclaimed his support for the agricultural development of the Amazon, backing big agribusiness in its designs to expand production there. The use of man-made fires has been a common mode of clearing land and this has increased markedly since Bolsonaro took power. However, a less reported fact is that fires are also raging in the Bolivian Amazon—a country ruled by left populist president Evo Morales, who has (in the past at least) declared support for both environmental protection and Indigenous peoples.

Hence, while the ideological predisposition of Latin American political leaders plays some role in this latest global environmental crisis (Bolsonaro flouts environmental protection openly), it is far from the whole story. The reality is that recent and current governments in Latin America, regardless of their particular ideological bent, have been intent on finding ways to expand commodity production—the difference is that left governments have made a more concerted effort to reap higher levels of government revenue from these exports, which are then used to expand social programs and national infrastructural development. Indeed, left populist leaders have proclaimed accelerated resource extraction as a necessary component of national development and improved social welfare. However, as the academic literature on the topic has shown, Latin American left governments have garnered tough opposition for the harm their commodity extraction policies have wrought on local environments and Indigenous communities.

It is this preoccupation with commodity extraction and export expansion that is at the very root of the crisis faced by the Amazon—and it is not just agricultural development that threatens the Amazon but mineral, oil extraction, and logging are also a growing cause of environmental degradation and community destruction. Economic globalization has operationalized a set of neoliberal policy prescriptions premised upon the notion of comparative advantage: that if every country focuses on the economic activity (ies) that it does best, the economies of all countries will growth efficiently. A corollary assumption is, of course, that the benefits of economic growth will trickle down to the less-well-off within each country, thereby “lifting all boats.” In the current era of economic globalization, what Latin America is deemed to do best is commodity production and exports. While criticisms of this still dominant paradigm have been vociferously pronounced from many quarters given its many failings (inequality, environmental degradation, among others), its major premises are still very much in place.

Latin America’s role as a Commodity Exporter

Latin America’s insertion into the new global economic order occurred with the implementation of neoliberalism in the wake of the debt crisis of early 1980s. Countries were pressured to dismantle industrial support systems (tariff protection, tax regimes, industrial development banks), and various other types of state intervention geared to the expansion of productive activities. Not only did countries eliminate any controls on foreign investment, but in accordance with the advice of international financial institutions and conventional economic wisdom, governments took measures to attract foreign investment, particularly in resource development. In the ensuing decades, Latin American countries, became increasingly dependent on commodity exports (minerals, oil and agricultural products such as soy beans) as the driver of economic growth and foreign exchange earnings. Over 90 percent of the exports of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela are natural resources, while over 60 percent of the value of exports from Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay are some combination of fuel, minerals, and agricultural products.

As long as commodity exports and prices were rising on the international market, as they did between the early 2000s and about 2013, Latin American countries did well. The left leaning populist regimes of the region increased the revenue obtained from resource extraction and used the funds for social programs that contributed substantially to poverty reduction. The economic growth of commodity booms facilitated job creation and rises in wages and salaries. However, the commodity boom had various negative consequences, not the least of which was the sharp rise in corruption, a process facilitated by the sudden availability of enormous commodity-generated resources. These revenues, in some cases, became an essential ingredient facilitating business confidence and political stability.

The sad end of the Commodity Boom and its Implications

All of this has come to a sad end, however. The drop in commodity demand and prices has rendered the economic situation of Latin American countries desperate. It has produced political turmoil and a shift to the political right in a number of cases and provided an ideal opening for the return of regimes attuned to the dictates of the free market, comparative advantage, and sympathetic to international capitalist interests. This difficult set of circumstances has encouraged even greater interest in even more commodity extraction as a strategy to spur economic growth, bolster export earnings, and make payments on the debt.

Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro, whose administration enthusiastically supports a return to free market neoliberal policies has called for an increase of logging and agribusiness in the Amazon. His administration has stated that environmental laws infringe upon export earnings, particularly in the agricultural sector. Bolsonaro is closely allied with international capitalist mining and agribusiness interests, which have been lobbying the Brazilian government for further opening of the Amazon.

Bolsonario, however, is not alone in his enthusiasm for promoting investment in the Amazon. Up to 800,000 hectares of the Bolivian Chiquitano forest were burned to the ground between August 18 and August 23, which is more forest than is usually destroyed across the country in two years. This spike in fires was immediately preceded by two events. One was a law supporting slash and burn farming practices. The other was an announcement by President Morales of measures to promote beef production for export. While providing farming opportunities for poor peasants (one of Morales key bases of political support) was no doubt a motivation for encouraging the fires, increasing export earnings from increased agribusiness production was likely a much more important objective. Garnering poor peasant support and increasing export earnings are both powerful incentives to clear land for agriculture in the Amazon.

Economic globalization, which has contributed mightily to Latin America’s heavy dependence on commodity exports, has bred political turmoil and regimes (whether leaning left or right), which are now committed to deepening the resource extraction model. The de-industrialization promoted by market liberalization programs initiated in the 1980s was premised on the argument that Latin America’s import substitution industries were non-competitive and inefficient--and they were. But, better industrial policy, not its elimination, was the answer. The fires in the Amazon clearly illustrate how economic globalization, with its blind faith in the free market model, is leading to disaster. Importantly, the decisions made by Bolsonaro and Morales are symptoms, not root causes, of the problem.

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.

Imperialist Involvement has never solved anything

The strategy being employed to change the Venezuelan regime comes from a timeworn playbook in which the U.S. supports the representatives of the middle and upper classes, big landowners and business elites--the currently supposed supporters of liberal democracy and civil liberties. I say “supposed” because in the past U.S. support has involved backing military interventions and the sponsorship of brutal military dictatorships. These efforts aimed to dislodge leaders who, although often less than sterling supporters of liberal democracy and civil rights, stood for redistributive measures to benefit lower socio-economic groups. There are many examples, such as U.S support for the overthrow of populist left regimes in the southern cone from the mid- 1960s to the early 1970s, and U.S. support for brutal dictatorships in Central America during the 1980s.

Lessons of Peronism: Sharp Identity and Distributive Conflict

The left and the particularly the populist left in Latin America (like pretty much all populisms) has always railed against the enemies of the people. In Latin America these have been some combination of elites and U.S. imperialism, typically seen as closely aligned. No matter how badly left populist regimes perform in the realm of economic policy, they can often retain an amazingly resilient core of solid support. A case in point: Peronism in Argentina (1946-1955). When U.S. Ambassador Spruille Braden came out in support of Perón’s opponent in the 1946 election, Perón’s claim that the U.S. was supporting the oligarchy against the Argentine people and that the election was a choice between “Perón or Braden” no doubt played an important role in his winning over 52 percent of the vote.

However, there other important factors accounting for Perón’s popularity. His promise of social justice rang true. As Minister of Labor between 1943 and 1946, he took measures that improved the living standards of workers enormously. Another key ingredient accounting for Peronist support was his (and his wife Eva’s) identification with the mestizo (racially mixed) culture of the country’s working class. Peron and Eva turned the middle and upper class derogatory term for Peronist supporters—cabecitas negras (a reference to their dark skin)--into a term of endearment. Perón spoke to his supporters in Lunfardo (the dialect of the lower urban classes) and drew on themes found in the tango, the music of the mixed-blood lower classes. Perón’s leadership fused deep seated popular aspirations involving escape from material and spiritual humiliation. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that Peronism survives, an integral part of the deep polarization that characterizes the current Argentine electoral process.

Latin America and Venezuela: Racial and Social-class Hierarchies

Latin America is characterized by reinforcing class and racial hierarchies involving denigration of the popular mixed blood population, who are excluded both socially and economically by the white/light skinned middle and upper classes. This is the story of the rise of Chavismo. Hugo Chávez, elected in 1998, with generous revenues from the petroleum boom increased social spending and reduced poverty substantially. He too railed against U.S. imperialism. In a 2006 speech to the United Nations, he denounced American imperialism and referred to the U.S. president as the “devil.” While Venezuelan standards of beauty denigrate non-white characteristics, most Venezuelans are black, Indigenous or mixed race. As elsewhere throughout the region, middle and upper classes are white in Venezuela. Chávez’s physical appearance and his folksy method of delivering speeches garnered a close connection with the Venezuelan masses. There was a distinct racial/cultural component to his appeal and to the opposition to it: his opponents called Chávez a monkey and Chávez supporters “hordes of monkeys.” Like Peron, Chávez identified with, and promoted popular culture. He embraced his black and indigenous heritage, claiming that racial hatred against himself was due to his physical non caucasian appearance. Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro, lacks his predecessor’s political skills and abundant petroleum revenue. Neither managed their economies well.

Because Chávez gave poor Venezuelans dignity in the broadest sense of the term, support for Chavismo will not disappear even when Maduro, who is widely disliked, leaves office. In reaction to the latest sanctions, Maduro has played the anti-imperialist card, identifying Donald Trump as an imperialist promoter of racism and white supremacy. This is a statement that will likely resonate with many Venezuelans. Venezuela is a deeply divided society and it will remain deeply divided until Venezuelans themselves grapple with their profound distributive and identity-based conflicts. Economic sanctions, particularly ones imposed by an imperialist power that is backing one side in this tragic struggle and is regarded as deeply racist, will not accomplish this task.

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 leader Juan Guaidó as the country’s rightful ruler, a development 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.

The Failure of the Opposition Strategy and the Onset of Negotiations

By mid-May, both government and opposition were sending representatives to Oslo to open preliminary discussions. Beginning this week, Norway will host discussions to resolve the crisis by negotiation—a process that Guaidó had steadfastly refused until now. The U.S., which pursued harsh sanctions against the regime in 2017 and 2019, resumed its purchase of Venezuelan oil in the week ending May 17. The strategy of diplomatic isolation and economic sanctions, which exacerbated the country’s already deteriorating economic situation (high inflation, devastating shortages of food and medicines) failed to dislodge Maduro from power. How did Guaidó’s international supporters not anticipate this outcome?

Explaining Maduro’s Resiliency: The Loyalty of the Military and the Legacy of Chavismo

The answer to that question lies in a failure to grasp the peculiarities of the Venezuelan context, both historical and current. As noted in an earlier post, the opposition’s track record on respect for democracy has been far from stellar. A number of its leaders instigated a military coup (with U.S. support) that ousted Chavez from power in 2002—he was brought back after massive demonstrations in Venezuela and international condemnation. Not surprisingly, therefore, both Chavez and Maduro stacked the military with loyal supporters, dismissing those whose loyalty was suspect. More importantly, however, is the fact that both the Chavez and Maduro regimes afforded the upper echelons of the military and the National Guard opportunities to acquire substantial wealth. Insight Crime has extensively documented the involvement of the top leadership, particularly the National Guard, in drug trafficking. Without a negotiated agreement that provides assurances against criminal prosecution, senior military leaders and the National Guard have an enormously powerful incentive to remain loyal to the regime.

However, there are other reasons, extending beyond the simple fact of military loyalty, to have anticipated the current outcome. It is true, as the mainstream media so frequently noted, that the regime employed repression, jailing opposition leaders and at times employing lethal force against protesters--although the fact that opposition demonstrations continued might suggest that the repression employed was not especially brutal by international standards. It is important to recognize that despite the severe humanitarian crisis, the Maduro regime retains a core of diehard supporters, estimated at about one-fifth of the population, with that support coming largely from among the poor who have suffered the most from the current crisis. This fearless loyalty is understandable. Chavez funneled revenues from the petroleum boom into substantial poverty reduction, something past regimes had not done in any appreciable way. Guaidó’s supporters (particularly the international ones) also erred in their dismissal of demonstrations supporting the regime as weak and mostly state-orchestrated. Support for Chavismo (and by extension for Maduro, Chavez’s anointed successor) arises largely from the concrete material improvement experienced by many Venezuelans during Chavez’s years in power. The complexities of the unsustainability of Chavez poorly conceived neo-extractivist populism has not been part of the opposition’s arsenal of criticisms. Instead, the conflict between government and opposition has descended into an ideological war, between the evils of socialism and the machinations of imperialism. The mainstream media has been particularly inclined to focus on the idea of Venezuela as a dismal socialist failure, while Maduro has effectively played upon popular suspicions of U.S. intentions surrounding Venezuela’s massive hydrocarbon reserves along with popular fears of U.S. military intervention.

The Shortsightedness of the Opposition Strategy

The opposition’s success depended upon winning over and maintaining support from former Chavez supporters. Recall that public support for Chavez had been substantial: during his tenure in office, Chavez won the 2000 and 2006 elections with over 60 percent of the vote, and the 2012 election with 55 percent of the vote. The opposition and international strategy for removing Chavez was not a wise one. It involved the absence of a negotiated settlement. Not only do most Venezuelans support a negotiated settlement but a recent survey shows that nearly one-half support a transition government that includes Chavistas. The opposition strategy also involved obtaining international recognition and strong support for a hitherto obscure opposition leader. The strategy was particularly problematic because of the aggressive position of the U.S., whose aim was the immediate removal of Maduro from power. The U.S. followed its recognition of Guaido’s leadership with tough economic sanctions in 2017 and 2019 and supplemented these measures with U.S. presidential references to the “option” of military intervention. These developments combined with Guaidó’s statement that his new government would not require foreign oil companies to partner with the state petroleum company in the exploitation of Venezuelan reserves, played into public suspicions about foreign intent regarding Venezuelan oil reserves. In short, the opposition and the international (particularly U.S.) strategy for removing Maduro from power, was highly susceptible to the regime’s nationalist interpretation of events. Academics have debated the extent to which the U.S. sanctions have contributed to the country’s most recent social deterioration. Whatever the extent of the impact, the presence of U.S. sanctions plays into the interpretation of the U.S and its Venezuelan opposition allies as seeking to remove the current regime from power by deepening the suffering of the most disadvantaged.

Negotiations: More Difficult than ever

The opposition has opposed negotiations arguing that the Maduro government sabotaged past attempts at a negotiated settlement, using negotiations as a pretext to hold onto power. However, the current deadlock is clear evidence that negotiation, whatever its challenges, is probably the only way forward. Unfortunately, the events since January 2019, involving internationally supported opposition mobilization led by Juan Guaidó, has only served to increase political polarization in an already deeply polarized country. A negotiated settlement will now be more difficult than ever.

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.

Arguments for and Against Term Limits

There are, of course, various arguments in support of the removal of term limits. One of these is the argument that term limits restrict voter choice, particularly when a popular leader is prohibited from running. Another is that continuity in office provides chief executives with the time for reforms to demonstrate their positive impacts. Many more arguments, however, stand in favour of chief executive term limits. Indeed, observers generally link respect for term limits with high democratic quality, as countries less likely to remove term limits demonstrate stronger adherence to the rule of law. Further, supporters of term limits insist that fresh blood and new ideas should have access to the highest office of the land. More critical observers suggest that the absence of term limits allows for an inordinate concentration of power over time, arguably increasing the opportunities for corruption and opening the way for other restrictions on democracy. Scholars have often linked the elimination of term limits to authoritarian presidents’ pursuit of self-interest through expanding their political power, entrenching their control of office, and amassing personal wealth through increased corruption.

However, the removal of term limits cannot be explained by presidential priorities or actions alone. Presidential popularity, as reflected, for example, in share of the popular vote, may well open the way (through executive control of legislatures and judiciaries) for far-reaching constitutional reforms that undermine democracy—Venezuela being a case in point. However, an important question to ask is: What other conditions underlie the drive to eliminate term limits? After all, leaders do not remove term limits on their own; they usually must obtain the support of Congress, and they need public quiescence, if not public support to accomplish such a change.

The Underlying Conditions

Leaders, in contexts of electoral democracies (albeit usually problematic ones) face conditions in which there is a notable fraying of the rules of the political game. Hence the desire to remove term limits is usually just one aspect of a broader skepticism and disrespect for liberal democratic institutions. This disrespect is usually also manifested in other types of manipulations such as the stacking of judiciaries, the (sometime questionable) use of referenda, and other practices that enhance the power of the presidency.

The underlying conditions at the root of such maneuvers is uncertainty and fear. Most recently this fear and uncertainty arises from growing political polarization. Political polarization involves an increasing distance between positions at the extremes of the political spectrum in contexts where the out-of-power opposition, although possibly disunited and fractured, still has the possibility of obtaining office. Importantly, the differences in positions between the two extremes are profound. Hence, rotation in office is usually regarded with a certain degree of fear and trepidation as it presents the specter of reversal of either entrenched privileges or of recent policy gains. A look back at Latin American history shows how resilient this process has been.

Peronism, the end of term limits, and Political Polarization in Argentina

In the 1940s, a wide swath of Argentine public opinion was profoundly disillusioned with the fraudulent operation of the country’s electoral system—a system that excluded social reformers from political power. It was this context that brought Juan Perón to the presidency by a substantial majority in 1946 (53 percent of the popular vote). In 1949, Perón amended the constitution to allow the president to run for an unlimited number of six-year terms—but this was but one measure of a panoply of manipulations through which he sought to consolidate power. Peron subsequently won by 63 percent in the 1951 election. Peronism in power united a significant proportion of the population in opposition to business and landed elites, who had little interest in improving social conditions, which, by all accounts improved markedly during the period that Perón was in power. The extent of political polarization, already substantial when Perón came to power, increased even more in the decades to come. With the military coup of 1976, Peronists were imprisoned, tortured, and eliminated.

The Struggle over Term Limits is a Power Struggle

Hence, the struggle over term limits has to do with domestic power struggles, in which contenders for power have come to see those struggles as zero-sum—even when they have a substantial hold on power through strong electoral support. Those who rail about the universally non democratic nature of the Latin American countries where term limits were removed need to reflect on the fact that presidential overrides of term limits (as in Argentina in the 1950s) have often not impacted negatively on popular support, have usually required congressional agreement, and have occasionally had considerable public approval. (Venezuela, 2009; Nicaragua 2014). Bolivia’s Evo Morales ran successfully for a third term in violation of the country’s 2009 constitution, winning 60 percent of the popular vote While the Bolivian public rejected the removal of presidential term restriction in 2016, the decision was reversed by court decision in 2018. Evo Morales could win the Bolivian presidential election nevertheless.

What can we conclude from this? Although the manipulation of term limits is a stratagem to consolidate power, the removal of term limits also responds to a much broader and deeper problem than simply a leader’s desire to consolidate personal power and wealth. Removal of term limits also operates independently of the ideological position of the political leader.

The Case of Honduras: Term Limits and Holding onto Power

Consider the case of Honduras, a country with a long tradition of term limits (a firm ban on presidential re-election) and political exclusion of popular demands. In 2009, a military coup ousted popularly elected Honduran president Manuel Zelaya, a leader who took a turn to the left, pursuing measures to address deprivation by raising the minimum wage, expanding social programs, and improving infrastructure. He also sought citizen approval for the establishment of a Constituent assembly—a move that aroused the ire of the political opposition, which accused him of plotting to change term limits. Zelaya was removed from office in 2009 by a military coup supported by the country’s landed and business elites. Fraudulent elections in 2013 led to the election of conservative President Juan Orlando Hernández, a strong coup supporter and key figure in the replacement of four of five Honduran Supreme Court Justices. Shortly thereafter, the court overturned presidential term limits, a move seen as entrenching the political right in power. The new regime has pursued neoliberal restructuring, resulting in mass layoffs in the public sector, increased taxes, reduced subsidies on energy and transportation, and a decline in government spending on social programs. Protests and repression ensued.

Attempts to override term limits usually thrive in contexts of uncertainty and fear. Recall that the U.S. constitutional amendment restricting presidents to two terms came into effect following the election to a fourth term of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the country’s Depression and wartime president—before that, the convention had been two terms. Today one major feature of that uncertainty is political polarization. It could well be that Trump’s ruminations about the removal of term limitations resonate with his supporters, who already have misgivings about the fairness of the electoral process. While the removal of term limits is linked to the quality of democracy, this phenomenon is best understood as reflecting democracy’s deeper underlying problems—uncertainty, fear and political polarization.

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.

International involvement only adds to the problem

It is easy to understand why many in the international community believe that immediate political change is required—the depth of the humanitarian crisis worsens daily. However, any change of regime arising from foreign pressure will only serve to deepen political polarization and prolong (or even thwart) the process of consensus building that is so essential to democratic political stability. The strongest Guaidó supporter is the United States; the U. S. administration has been actively campaigning for international recognition of Guaidó’s claim to national leadership. Most recently, it has given him control over some of Venezuela’s U.S. assets.

The United States has a long history of intervention in the region, particularly against left regimes seeking social justice. Even if one views the policies of such regimes as misguided, it is obvious that inequalities and social deprivation are real problems and that these challenges were ignored for far too long, particularly by believers in the free market. Understandably, U.S. meddling arouses considerable fear and hostility among the political left—hence, if the U.S. is perceived as the prime instrument through which Maduro is removed from office, such a scenario will bolster support for Chavismo, if not for Maduro himself. Meanwhile, the prospect of strong international support from the U.S. and its allies is what has emboldened the opposition to continue to resist a negotiated settlement. In this way, international involvement places a negotiated settlement and future democratic stability, further out of reach.

U.S. concern about the quality of democracy in the region is highly selective (and so is Canada’s)

U.S. intervention has a long history of directly supporting brutally repressive regimes. The most nefarious U.S. involvement occurred during the 1970s with the alliance between Latin American military security chiefs and various agencies of the U.S. government (the CIA among others). Known as Operation Condor, not only did this operation support the military overthrow of democratically elected regimes, but it also orchestrated the assassinations of Latin American trade unionists, party leaders, and others associated with the political left. There was no alliance of liberal democracies lining up to condemn the brutal regimes of Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay, at the time—despite the fact that there was ample evidence from various human rights reports about the horrendous events that were transpiring in the region. Poverty also increased dramatically in these countries during the period. There is not much evidence that the U.S. has become more committed to democracy in general in the region. Let us not forget the 2009 Honduran coup. The US immediately recognized the coup-makers and Secretary of State Clinton prevented the ousted elected leader from returning to office. Canada continued its military aid to Honduras. There was no concerted effort by the west to bring the ousted elected leader back to power.

Let’s not forget the recent past

The fact is that the Venezuelan crisis is the product of deep political polarization with long historical roots. As I have said in an earlier blog post, this is not a story of good versus evil. Without a negotiated settlement, the opposition will likely become increasingly authoritarian should it come to power. It is important to remember that the opposition called on the military to carry out a coup against Hugo Chavez in 2002—a coup that removed Chavez from power for a few days until Venezuelan and international outcry secured his return to power. This coup had the support of the U.S. At that time, Chavez had substantial popular support having been re-elected in 2000 with 60% of the popular vote. In 2004, in response to opposition demands that a referendum on his recall from office be held, Chavez won with 58% of the vote. By all accounts, these elections and subsequent ones in 2006 and 2013 were relatively fraudulent free. Despite his obvious popularity, the opposition demonstrated and demanded Chavez’s removal from power throughout his rule.

Guaidó cannot bridge the gap between government and opposition

While Chavez certainly had authoritarian leanings, particularly in his wish to concentrate power in the presidency, the regime’s authoritarian direction has taken on a whole new meaning under his successor. Maduro lacks Chavez’s charisma and his access to revenue from a buoyant international petroleum market, and has no hesitation about employing high levels of repression. His replacement by Juan Guaidó, however, is not the answer. On the one hand, the mainstream media characterizes Guaidó’s Popular Will Party as a centrist social-democratic party and Guaidó as a reasonable compromise candidate—although this description is not universally shared. While Guaidó might appear to have a progressive bent insofar as he has promised basic income support for poor families, his call for an agreement with the International Monetary Fund suggests tough austerity and continued deprivation should he take power. Moreover, his party holds only 14 national assembly seats out of 167, rendering him subject to pressure from economic and political hardliners within the opposition coalition. The former leader of the opposition, Henrique Capriles, who ran for the presidency against Chavez and Maduro in 2012 and 2013, is a strong supporter of neoliberalism calling for an open door policy to foreign investment. Members of the opposition coalition are also demanding trials and imprisonment of leading Chavistas. Guaidó has already outraged some of those within his coalition by suggesting that his government could offer Maduro prosecutorial amnesty.

Without a negotiated settlement, one which provides agreement on the political participation of members of the current regime and their known supporters, the fate of Maduro’s close allies in the military and the National Guard, and a consensus on the main lines of economic and social policy, political polarization will quickly re-emerge once Maduro is removed. Only a negotiated settlement can achieve a modicum of social peace and any hope of democratic stability. Indeed a negotiated settlement is exactly what most Venezuelans want.

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?

Populism and Political Settlements

The short answer is that it does if conceptualized not as ideology, but as a method of organizing power, arising from either the absence of, or deterioration of, a political settlement. Political settlements binds together contending social forces of a given society and obligate rulers to honour that agreed upon settlement. Populism is a means of addressing the angst that arises from absent, threatened or broken political settlements. Populism involves the following: a charismatic leader, who makes an emotional appeal drawing on deeply felt emotions of fear, insecurity, anger, and betrayal; invocation of the “will of the people” and the desirability of a direct relationship between the leader and the popular following. Populism usually involves a disregard for formal institutional processes because these have failed to address intense popular emotional angst. Populism entails appeals to nationalism, and it includes the identification of an internal or external enemy or both—often a rich oligarchy and/or foreigners. Populism arises when there is a feeling among a significant proportion of the population that their exclusion from the political process is having a deeply harmful impact. The characteristics of populism as identified here represent an ideal type construction; this means that populism in its pure form exists nowhere in reality, but various movements, parties and governments can be described in terms of the extent to which they approach these characteristics. A great many movements, parties and government have had elements of populism—but there have clearly been larger doses of populism more recently.

Identity and Economic Dislocation: The Mix Depends on the Context

Both the scholarly literature and recent discussions in the media have hotly debated what the root cause of this populist popular angst is: is it migration pressures, the increasing inflow of outsiders, or is it the dislocation created by processes of economic globalization that have contributed to de-industrialization, precarious labor, and the rise of poverty? The answer to this question depends on the particular context. In virtually all cases, of course, both identity protection and socio-economic welfare are important elements of national political settlements, but the balance between the two depends heavily on context. In the United States and Canada, and (to a lesser extent) Western/Northern Europe, one can speak of a socio-economic post-war political settlement involving capital and labor in which capital agrees to collective bargaining, labor protection, and the welfare state and, in exchange labor agrees to maintain relative social peace. As a voluminous scholarly literature has shown there were very substantial differences in the strength and balances of these settlements and in the nature of welfare states. In the immigrant settlement countries of the U.S. and Canada, where immigration was welcomed as part of nation building projects, identity was a less important state responsibility than it was in Western Europe. In Eastern Europe, on the other hand, identity protection has been a much more central aspect of political settlements. There are very important historical reasons for this: The Mongols and the Tatars invaded and conquered most of Eastern Europe over a three hundred year period from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. The death and destruction of these invasions survives in popular memory and in a vast scholarly literature. For countries such as Poland, the German occupation during the Second World War, with its objective of obliterating Polish culture, further reinforced the centrality of identity protection as the state’s mission. Economic globalization has severely disrupted the welfare state settlements. Large-scale migration flows have stoked anxiety everywhere, but particularly in those parts of the Europe where there is a long historical fear of outsiders.

Populism: Left and Right, More Lessons from Latin America

With the exceptions of Chile and Uruguay, Latin American countries have generally been bereft of either distributive or identity-based political settlements. Populisms of all political stripes have been and continue to be predominant in the region. The quandary about the left/right nature of these movements is perhaps better framed by asking the question of whether, or to what extent, a given populism improves people’s lives. It is certainly possible for a populist movement and leader to use the mobilizational capability of populism to achieve some social good. The case of Bolivia’s Evo Morales is a case in point. Under his tutelage and with strong social movement pressure from below, poverty declined dramatically. The same might be said of the presidency of Raphael Correa (Ecuador). In both cases, leaders, at times played fast and loose with the institutions of liberal democracy. This has certain dangers, however. The disregard for the niceties of liberal democratic institutions became the most marked in the case of Venezuela, where a particularly radical form of left populism confronted an especially intransigent capitalist class. As I have pointed out elsewhere the populist disregard for liberal democratic institutions and the political crisis that has ensued can be understood within the country’s long history of political exclusion. In the long run, however, it has been the popular classes that have suffered most from the ensuing political and economic crises.

An additional problem with populist movements is that because they are emotionally driven, they can be readily high-jacked by powerful vested interests, who play upon popular sentiments and use these movements for their own purposes, pursuing measures that are harmful to popular social welfare. It is under these circumstances that it often becomes difficult to place populist regimes on the traditional left right spectrum. The case of Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil illustrates this point. On the one hand, Bolsonaro’s stand against corrupt and greedy politicians who have become wealthy at the expense of ordinary citizens, appeals to the lower classes. At the same time, his movement has been effectively taken over by the country’s powerful private sector, a fact reflected in its adherence to neoliberal policies involving tax reductions for the rich, a reduction in the country’s most important social program, Bolsa Familia, and government streamlining. These policies will harm the country’s most vulnerable citizens. Similarly, while changes in Hungarian labour law, allowing for up to 400 hours of unpaid overtime a year have brought about labor protests, public support for Orbán’s anti-immigration stance has ensured continued widespread popular support for the regime.

Hence, populism is a useful concept. It tells us that something is fundamentally amiss in the underlying political landscape. It tells us that either a political settlement is lacking or that a pre-existing agreement has broken down or is under threat. Populism is a manifestation of the fact that there is a profound disconnect between a significant portion of the public and traditional political leaders.

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 Growth of (Latent) Business Power under Neoliberalism

Washington Consensus prescriptions (neoliberal policies involving such policies as labor flexibilization and privatization), which remained strongly supported by business throughout the period of left rule, have resurfaced. The increased power of business during neoliberal and left regime years and its strong commitment to the original Washington consensus policies, went largely unobserved by most scholars, who devoted much greater attention to popular mobilization and the policies of left regimes. In Brazil, widely considered to have had one of the most moderate left regimes in the region, the political tension between business and the state was fairly muted during the period of Labor Party rule from 2003 to 2016. Notably, however, the political right and the business community continued to call for privatization, further deregulation, labour flexibilization, and a reduction in corporate taxes. Countries with more radical left regimes—Ecuador, Bolivia, and especially Venezuela—experienced even greater strain in relations with their business sectors through the 2000s. Business opposition to left policies usually saw business either refusing to invest (Ecuador and Bolivia) or disinvesting (Venezuela). It was,largely the dynamism of the commodity export boom that facilitated economic growth and a flow of revenue to improve social programs. However, this growth and the ensuing poverty reduction papered over the reality of the latent increased power of capital. The consequence of both market liberalization during the 1990s and the rise of the left during the 2000s was the rising power of domestic business and their foreign business allies throughout the region.

Market liberalizing reform increased the structural power of business substantially. While business ownership was already heavily concentrated in most countries, the market liberalizing measures of the 1990s increased that concentrated ownership even further. This occurred because only big national conglomerates (often with multinational allies) were in a position to buy the large public companies put up for auction. In addition, it was also only countries’ biggest companies that were capable of expanding into export markets, having been given various government incentives, such as tax advantages, to do so. With the withdrawal of the state from economies through the 1990s, and the increase in the role of the private sector, Latin American business, now became the main driver of economic growth, a role that enabled it to discipline the state like never before by either failing to invest or disinvesting. However, this power remained latent during the commodity boom (from the early 2000s to about 2013), a period distinguished by a rise in both Chinese investment and demand for resources. With the drop in the price and demand for commodities, however, Latin America’s business groups are now able to impose their demands because their cooperation is required to spur economic growth.

The Political Mobilization of Business

At the same time, the rise and expansion of neoliberalism followed by the rise of the political left prompted political mobilization on the part of Latin American business and its increased participation in politics. In most cases, the transition to electoral democracy coincided with neoliberal economic reforms; both of these processes witnessed the increasing involvement of powerful members of the private sector and their representative organizations in politics. With the rise of the political left, the business sector was further motivated to participate in formal politics through running for Congress for right wing political parties. The result has been that business people increased their proportion of seats in a number of Latin American countries, including those with left regimes (Chile, Brazil, and Bolivia). Entrepreneurs also increased their representation among the highest ranks of right wing political parties, their participation in the most important positions in senates and lower chambers, and in top state political/bureaucratic positions, particularly in ministries of finance. Entrepreneurs also had direct channels to the highest reaches of power through their entrepreneurial associations.

The Resurgence of Neoliberalism and Business Power

The decline of commodity prices and the ensuing economic havoc has provided the ideal opportunity for business to assert both its power and its commitment to neoliberalism. Upon taking power in 2016, Brazil’s right wing President, Michel Temer, quickly developed plans to privatize the state-owned electricity company, airports and other sectors, to deregulate the state petroleum company, and to further open the economy to international trade and investment. He also planned to reform the labor laws to achieve greater labor flexibilization, making it easier to hire and fire—all policy proposals that generated fierce political opposition. Newly elected populist right President Jair Bolsonaro, supported by the country’s powerful business community, has promised privatizations and lower business taxes.

As detailed in an earlier post, Argentine President Mauricio Macri, elected in 2015, re-introduced a number of the neoliberal policies rejected by his left predecessor. In June of 2018, his government signed an agreement with the IMF in which the government promised to accelerate the reduction of the country’s public deficit but both the IMF and the Argentine government claim that social programs for the poor will not be touched. Nevertheless, there have been mass protests in Argentina against this agreement. In Ecuador, President Lenín Moreno, Raphael Correa’s successor, has announced business friendly policies (tax, labor and public spending reforms) aimed at reducing the role of the state and increasing private investment.

AMLO’s Dilemma

Already we can see efforts by Mexico’s powerful business sector to discipline recently elected left President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO). This has occurred despite AMLO’s overwhelming electoral majority and his party’s control of both houses and despite his best efforts to calm business fears by creating a business advisory council prior to his election. AMLO’s proposals are imminently sensible: policies to promote job creation and increased transparency to reduce corruption. His inaugural speech did however declare neoliberalism dead—a comment that might reasonably be interpreted as an accurate observation given the abysmal record of neoliberal reforms in achieving economic growth and poverty reduction. AMLO also announced the suspension of oil contracts granted to foreign oil companies due to their failure to invest, and the termination of an airport project owing to the high degree of corruption believed to be involved in the project.

The reaction of the country’s private sector was swift. Responding to AMLO’s inaugural speech and to his recently declared energy policy, powerful businessman, Claudio X González declared that AMLO’s “anti-free market views” showed that the new president favored “a repressive, statist, interventionist vision” that would discourage private sector investment and economic growth. A number of media outlets declared AMLO to have Chavez-like tendencies and to be a greater threat to democracy than the incoming President of Brazil, a politician who has declared his support for Brazil’s period of military dictatorship. Investor confidence has declined. Without co-operation from the private sector, AMLO is unlikely to meet most of his goals.

Latin America’s business sector and its foreign allies are now more powerful than ever. Hence, while popular organizations will continue to resist a return to the neoliberal agenda, their struggles will meet formidable resistance.

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.

Desperate Social Conditions are the Drivers of Migration

The worst poverty is found in those countries from which people are fleeing. Honduras, where the Caravan began, is the poorest country of the region, with 75 percent of the rural population living in poverty and 63 percent in extreme poverty. Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua follow closely behind in their high levels of deprivation.  Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, countries that constitute the infamous Northern Triangle, are marked by corruption, gang wars, violence and drug trafficking; out-migration from this region has increased five-fold since 2012. Ordinary citizens pay millions in extortion fees to organized crime. Young men are forced, against their will, into criminal gangs. San Pedro Sula, Honduras, the most violent city in the world, in the most violent country in the world, was the starting point for the current Caravan. El Salvador held this honor in 2015. 

The U.S. Role in Supporting Repression and Social Exclusion

U.S. involvement in the region has been uniformly counterproductive to peace and prosperity. In 1954, America organized and financed the overthrow of the democratically elected reformist regime of Guatemalan president Jacabo Arbenz, whose government sought to improve the lives of poor farmers by redistributing the unproductive lands held by United Fruit. This event ushered in a series of brutal authoritarian regimes that consigned most Guatemalans to both repression and high levels of deprivation for decades to come. 

By the early 1970s, the extreme land concentration and poverty in the region gave rise to peaceful mobilizations demanding reform. When demands for social justice were met with fierce repression, guerrilla insurgencies, with mass followings, ensued. The U.S. insisted that these insurgencies were Soviet and Cuban inspired and supported the brutally repressive regimes in the region with massive military aid. The 1984 Kissinger Report refused any negotiation with the guerrilla movements and insisted upon their military defeat. Arms sent by the U.S. to defeat guerrillas flowed into insurgent hands, a development that kept the conflicts going, particularly as governments lost legitimacy. Operating from bases in Honduras from 1979, the U.S. worked to destabilize the revolutionary Sandinista government through supporting the “Contras,” most of whom were former members of the Nicaraguan National Guard. In Honduras, the U.S. supported the country’s most reactionary and repressive forces.

Peace eventually came to the region in 1987 when the Central American countries signed their own peace agreements, without U.S. involvement. However, these agreements failed to address the social root causes of the conflict, particularly land redistribution. While political violence declined, criminal violence quickly replaced it. Prolonged civil war had entrenched violence into everyday life. At the same time, the failure of this liberal peace to address widespread poverty and the high levels of inequality fueled recourse to criminal activities in the absence of alternative economic opportunities, particularly among young men. The massive quantities of small arms that had entered the region during their civil wars provided the means for this upsurge while the militarization of policing further exacerbated the level of violence. At the same time, Central Americans, mostly El Salvadorians fleeing their war-torn countries in the 1980s, formed and joined criminal gangs in Los Angeles. In the 1990s, many of these gang members were deported back to their Central American countries of origin, producing a sharp increase in criminal violence. 

The Neoliberal Imperative and the Honduran Coup

Moreover, peacebuilding was accompanied by neoliberal (market) reforms that not only failed to produce sustained economic growth but arguably contributed to social deprivation given the insistence on trade liberalization and privatization—policies that increased unemployment. Most recently, the U.S. funded “Alliance for Prosperity Plan” to curb migration from Central America, like past initiatives, combines military aid (which ratchets up the level of violence) with measures to attract foreign investment. This latter provides only problematic economic opportunities in the form of insecure and low paid employment in such activities as export processing firms or community disruption and environmental degradation in the case of mining investment.

The 2009 Honduran military coup reflects the ongoing counterproductive impact of U.S. involvement in the region. The leader of that coup was a graduate of the U.S. Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly known as School of the Americas and nicknamed the “School of Assassins,” in recognition of the number of graduates who engaged in military coups in Latin America. The coup was supported by the Honduran business and landed elites. While the U.S. was not involved in the coup itself, the Obama administration failed to support the return to power of the democratically elected government. It then quickly recognized the new administration, and supported it in the face of massive protests. Subsequent years have witnessed the murders of trade unionists, environmentalists, opposition political leaders, and human rights activists. Both the government security forces and criminal gangs account for the sharp rise in violence. Notably, ousted elected president Manuel Zelaya had been moving to address deprivation by raising the minimum wage, expanding social programs, and improving infrastructure. Since his ouster, neoliberal restructuring has produced mass layoffs in the public sector, increased taxes, reduced subsidies on energy and transportation, and a decline in government spending on social programs.

Central American countries have had difficult histories. Arguably, however, these histories have not been allowed to unfold in ways that might have produced better prospects for peace and prosperity—and the United States has been an instrumental actor in this unhappy outcome. 

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. 

The rise of the populist right is a widespread phenomenon, but its political importance in Brazil is especially troubling. Jair Bolsonaro draws support not only from the business community and middle classes, but also from among the poor, many of whose lives improved substantially under Labor Party (PT) rule. Moreover, the rise of this political right coincides with a sharp drop in Brazilian support for democracy as the best form of government and a rise in the public’s predisposition toward military intervention.  Bolsonaro himself has close ties to the Brazilian military, has declared the period of brutal military rule between 1964 and 1985 to have been a golden age of peace and stability, and is likely to appoint military personnel to top government positions should he assume power. While many have rejected out of hand the possibility of a military take-over, there are worrying signs that the military is losing patience with the country’s political turmoil. 

The Commodity Boom Papered over the lack of a Political Settlement

It is not difficult to understand business support for Bolsonaro. While Bolsonaro is not the private sector’s first choice (that choice lacked the popular support necessary for any hope of success), he has won over business through his appointment of Brazilian investment banker, Paulo Guedes, as the head of his economic team. Despite the state generosity dispensed to business conglomerates while the PT was in power, the country’s private sector has remained intensely hostile to the PT and strongly committed to a much “purer” neoliberal agenda involving more privatization and labor flexibilization.  Business and landed interests never became reconciled to the social agenda of either Presidents Lula or Rousseff. Big landowners, where Bolsonaro draws an important base of support, remained particularly hostile. Middle classes were on board as long as there was economic growth and relative physical security. There is neither now. Moreover, as the PT’s social programs became increasingly directed toward the poor, support from middle classes arguably waned. 

Lula remains immensely popular--if he were not in jail, he could probably have won the election. This broader support, however, did not translate into support for his designated PT presidential candidate, Fernando Haddad. The enduring support for Lula arises from a combination of his commitment to social justice and the economic prosperity and real material improvements that occurred for the poor during the time he was in office. From 2011, the year his successor, Dilma Rousseff took power, the decline in commodity prices gave rise to mounting economic insecurity, particularly among those who had recently risen from poverty. Physical insecurity linked to increased crime rates exacerbated the situation. Hence, Lula, not the PT, is associated in the popular mind with good times and greater social justice.  Moreover, the hopes and expectations raised by the substantial improvements of the Lula years made the economic downturn that much more painful for those who feared the loss of recent improvements. 

The end of the commodity boom and a growing sentiment of economic insecurity gave the PT’s detractors the opportunity to rally opposition against the regime. Much of this opposition revolved around the issue of corruption, which was widespread, including among PT politicians. However, corruption, as I point out in an earlier post, is, among other things, a symptom of the lack of a political settlement insofar as it secures the quiescence of an otherwise recalcitrant private sector. 

For the commodity boom/social democratic years to have had an enduring positive impact on social welfare, a cross-societal consensus on the regime’s social justice goals was necessary. Business and middle class groups, and more privileged sectors of the working class, would have to make redistributive concessions. A strategy for employment generation in (new) productive activities was also required—not something that a business class so closely attuned to neoliberalism was likely to give strong support to.  While it is certainly true that even had there been a redistributive settlement the commodity downturn would have created political difficulties for the regime, the consequences would not likely have been as dire as they currently are. 

The Commodity Boom made a Redistributive Settlement and Structural Transformation Unnecessary

The commodity boom insulated the PT regime from the necessity of a redistributive settlement and basic changes in productive structure. Indeed, Brazil and other Latin American countries became ever more dependent on commodity exports as a consequence of the recent boom. Tough discussions about tax reform and other redistributive measures could be avoided. Interventionist measures encouraging investment and export diversification could also be sidestepped, an almost necessary choice given the private sector’s aversion to state intervention in the economy. Meanwhile, the boom did make available the resources for expanded government spending on social programs—but this was only a viable strategy for social improvement while the commodity boom lasted. 

A tilt to the political right and greater authoritarianism has occurred in other commodity-dependent South American countries (Argentina, Ecuador). Where the left has retained power (Bolivia), authoritarianism of the populist left has been seen as essential to protect social gains. The absence of redistributive settlements and the consequent lack of transformations in productive structure are an integral part of this fluctuation between left and right regimes and between democracy and increasingly authoritarian forms of electoral democracy. Political polarization is a predominant feature of the process. Generally, the more powerful, frightened, and internationally integrated the private sector (the Brazilian case), the more likely it will be to support extremist right candidates, particularly populist ones able to garner votes. Where the private sector is weaker, the populist left has had a better shot at survival but the situation is a deeply discouraging one. Given the integration of Latin American business elites with economic globalization, one might question whether the political settlements and structural transformations that are so desperately needed are possible—but this will be the topic of a later post. 

     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. 

Some General Features of Populism of the Right

     The critique of the populist right as anti-democratic revolves around its threat to the liberal democratic version of democracy—in particular to liberal democracy’s core belief in the primacy of individual and minority rights and its faith in formal institutions and the rule of law. These features are deemed to be essential to the fair and equitable treatment of all citizens. Far from deserving of state protection, the populist right sees minority ethnic, racial, religious, and other identity groups as representing a threat to the viability and survival of the majority. Reasoned debate, compromise, and consensus are not possible because liberal elites and their allies manipulate the media to serve their particular interests and to bolster their biased perspective. Hence, the core features of liberal democracy, according to the populist right perspective, inhibit the state from truly reflecting popular interests because liberal oligarchies dominate and manipulate its institutions. The solution to this rule by an unfeeling oligarchy is a strong leader willing and able to override biased institutions and laws in the popular interest. 

Does the Programmatic Left have a Solution? 

     Various observers have advocated ways to address this threat to democracy. Given the association between the rise of right populism and exclusion from the benefits of economic globalization, left parties have been urged to abandon their compromise with neoliberalism and to return to their social justice roots with strong redistributive programs. Civil society activism is seen as a way to compel leaders to deal more effectively with issues of social and political exclusion. One recent suggestion called upon left parties and leaders to incorporate elements of populism so as to more effectively appeal to popular aspirations. In this way, left populism can involve the construction of a “progressive populism” leading to a more profound form of democratization.

Populism: A Slippery Concept with a Core Meaning

     The scholarly literature on populism readily acknowledges that the term is tough to define. Unlike other “isms” populism does not adhere to a coherent ideology. Rather, populism is an array of distinct political features—most notably involving a charismatic leader who appeals directly to a popular base. Further, both left and right populisms share the conviction that liberal representative institutions are corrupt and controlled by unresponsive oligarchies. Hence populist leaders of all political stripes have little reluctance in bypassing or fundamentally altering liberal democratic institutions. In the Latin American experience, both left and right populisms gained momentum in contexts of economic and social exclusion when liberal democratic institutions were weak. Although both left and right populisms claim concern for the material welfare of their support bases the key distinction is in their commitment to actually alleviate material deprivation. The right populist regime of Carlos Menem (Argentina), for example, overrode democratic deliberative institutions and pursued neoliberal reform, a policy direction that increased deprivation and lined the pockets of the economic elite. Meanwhile, the left populist regime in Bolivia, under Evo Morales, substantially reduced poverty and incorporated social movements into policy deliberation. However, the Morales regime has displayed distinct illiberal features, controlling the opposition media and politicizing the courts. Ecuador, under Raphael Correa, reduced poverty substantially and gave rhetorical support to consulting civil society. He failed to honor the latter commitment. Constitutional reform heavily centralized power and weakened the Ecuadorian legislature. The most notable case of the harm wrought by left populism to representative institutions is, of course, Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro. 

Liberal and Populist Democracy

     As C.B. Macpherson pointed out many years ago, liberal democracy is a specific form of democracy: one that values the market, protects private property, and places special value on individual civil liberties. This form of democracy has worked well in the Global North until now because it was good at providing enough redistributive measures so that the vast majority saw the system as a fair one. Populist democracy (of both the left and right varieties), on the other hand, conceives of democracy as the “sway of the whole people” over all other considerations.  It espouses Rousseau’s concept of democracy as that of the primacy of the General Will of the People. A democratic left, particularly in a context where the legitimacy of political institution is under siege as it is in so many countries of the Global North, is going to have to navigate this basic conceptual difference if it is to recoup popular support. This is so because popular supporters of the populist right have abandoned the liberal democratic concept of the term. Addressing this fundamental conceptual dilemma will not be easy, particularly in contexts of increased inequality and wealth concentration. 

The Social Democratic and Populist Left in Latin America

     The Latin American case is illustrative. Left regimes rose to power in the early to mid- 2000s, through free and fair elections. Some of these regimes can be characterized as social democratic (Brazil, Chile, Uruguay), others as left populist (Bolivia, Ecuador).  However, in all cases, economic globalization and market liberalization, a process that had involved a significant reduction in the size and role of the state, had increased the power of domestic economic conglomerates. With the withdrawal of the state from the economy, left (both populist and social democratic) policy elites became more dependent than ever upon these economic actors for increased investment, economic growth, and job creation. These powerful economic interests were in a position to veto progressive policies. In all cases, there were sharp tensions in business/state relations, more so, of course, in the populist left cases than in the social democratic ones. 

     In all cases, business remained a strong and persistent critics of the left. Social democratic regimes compromised with the business community and engaged in redistributive measures through increased social spending. They failed to improve democratic deliberative mechanisms in any substantial way; indeed, keeping the institutional structure of representative democracy in tack (including the inordinate influence of economic elites over those institutions) and avoiding more inclusive civil society consultation was a necessary component of ensuring business confidence and quiescence. This was particularly the case in Chile as some of my own research has shown. Popular disillusionment and a turn to the political right was the ultimate outcome given the failure to secure any structural changes in economies that would ensure economic transformation and significant long-term employment generation for those who had been excluded from the neoliberal model. Brazil and Chile are now ruled by the political right. The populist political right is now in the ascent in Brazil. 

     Left populist regimes engaged in important redistributive measures (also largely through increased social spending) along with radical anti-establishment rhetoric. The consequence, of course, was considerably greater tension with business sectors and lower rates of private investment. High growth and significant social improvements occurred courtesy of the commodity boom, now at an end in these countries. Faced with a powerful, uncooperative, and threatening private sector, left populists sought to maintain  their social achievements through altering the constitutional order in ways widely perceived as infringing on liberal democracy (through manipulating constituent assemblies to enable their re-election, for example). In doing so, they saw themselves as ensuring the continuance of their reforms--of defending the interests and welfare of the “whole people” from greedy elite sabotage. 

     Neither social democratic nor populist left regimes have been able to bolster the legitimacy of liberal democratic institutions in Latin America. Admittedly, Latin American history is rife with discouraging political and social outcomes. However, it is probably fair to suggest that the political left in the Global North faces some serious challenges in restoring liberal democracy to its glory days.