Latin America’s Year of Anniversaries
(4). In 1992, participants in the long Salvadoran civil war signed a final peace accord; Hugo Chávez led a failed coup attempt in Venezuela; Iranian agents bombed the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires, killing 29 people; and Peru experienced a constitutional crisis when President Alberto Fujimori initiated an “auto-coup.”
Twenty years later, El Salvador is beset with violent crime, and it is now embroiled in a serious constitutional crisis. On the other hand, a recent gang truce has slashed the homicide rate considerably, and Salvadoran democracy should be strong enough to overcome the current power struggle between the supreme court and the national assembly. While Hugo Chávez has failed in his bid to create a friendly autocracy in El Salvador, he continues to fortify his oil-driven autocracy in Venezuela, where the election rules are rigged in his favor and opposition media have been virtually abolished. In Peru, the story is quite different: Democracy has been consolidated, and economic growth is now the fastest in Latin America. Unfortunately, neighboring Ecuador is helping the Iranians to withstand the pain of Western sanctions and expand their strategic footprint in South America. Tehran also enjoys a close alliance with the Chávez regime.
(5). In 2002, Argentina formally defaulted on its debt, sparking an economic crisis throughout South America’s southern cone; Chávez survived a coup attempt in Venezuela; the conservative Álvaro Uribe was elected president of Colombia, amid a grave security crisis; and the leftist Lula da Silva was elected president of Brazil, much to the dismay of business leaders (“Investors,” the BBC reported in August 2002, “dislike Lula intensely”).
Ten years later, Argentina is once again headed for an economic disaster, and Venezuela is effectively living under a dictatorship (one that is protected by both drug-trafficking generals and civilian paramilitaries). But Colombia is a relatively stable democracy with a much better security climate and a much stronger economy than it had in 2002. Uribe deserves enormous credit for transforming Colombia, just as Lula does for rejecting Chávez-style socialism and keeping Brazil on the path of economic stability. Indeed, Uribe and Lula were arguably Latin America’s two most consequential democratic leaders of the past decade.
(You can read this article in Spanish here.)
A fine summary. When the military dictatorships got toppled one by one in the 1980s, most of us thought that caudillos would become a thing of the past. Unfortunately,we have seen that there is a strong authoritarian streak in the Latin American mindset, as shown by Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. Dictators weren’t simply something the CIA imposed to fight communism, as the popular narrative would have it. The man on horseback, often with populist tendencies, satisfies a lot of Latin Americans. Juan Domingo Peron was a caudillo who gained a lot of political capital by posturing against the US while distributing goodies to his supporters. Sound like anyone we know today?
Nonetheless, in most of Latin America, democracy is stronger than it was 30 or 40 years ago. Three steps forward, two steps backward.
Colombia has had 50 year communist insurgency. The dilema for the communists was that only about 1% of he population supported them.
They must have called in some consultatnt types who advised them to “leverage their strenghts”. Aftter a corporate retreit they refocused their energies on muling drugs for the Sinaloa Cartel and kidnapping innocent Colombians for ransom.
Whether they use the power of the government or an AK-47, leftists are invariably bullies who crave power.