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.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreTo many observers the Maduro regime has remained surprisingly resilient. His government withstood widespread opposition protests through the spring of 2019. It has survived the recognition by over 50 countries of opposition Juan Guaidó as the country’s rightful ruler, a move that severely challenged the regime’s legitimacy. The mainstream media’s excited anticipation of Maduro’s fall from power reached its height with Guaidó’s attempt to instigate a military uprising. The uprising failed, however, and opposition protests have petered out.
Read MoreThe 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.
Read MoreIncreasingly, right-leaning governments are replacing left regimes in Latin America or, if left governments continue to cling to power, they are adopting policies normally associated with the political right. There has been a shift back to some neoliberal policies that contributed to poverty and inequality in the past. Sympathetic observers placed great hope in the left regimes that came to power between the late 1990s and the mid-2000s—these regimes seemed to be on the right track since they reduced poverty substantially and made inroads into high levels of inequality. What went wrong?
Read MoreWhile some observers, both journalistic and academic, maintain that Latin American politics is either moving to the political right or becoming less polarized, the clearest trend is rising political turmoil with a final destination that is far from clear. Political polarization continues to be an integral part of the Latin American political scene.
Read MoreAndrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) won the Mexican presidential election with a resounding majority of around 53 percent of votes cast—the highest since 1982 when the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) was still able to manipulate electoral outcomes. Mexican public expectations are high and the problems that the country’s new president must deal with are enormous. Making his task more difficult is that fact that AMLO has a heterogeneous support base with the various groups having different interests and priorities.
Read MoreInequality is not good for democracy and it is, as is widely known, on the rise everywhere. While wealth has always been instrumental in shaping political outcomes in electoral democracies, the concentrated wealth that has arisen with economic globalization has produced ever-more brazen forms of authoritarian behaviours on the part of political elites as they respond to the interests of their powerful economic allies. While details differ from country to country, there is an important common denominator: the role of economic power in giving greater leverage to political claims. In the worst cases, the economically powerful buy politicians, the media, and troublesome individuals. In all cases, the alliance between political leaders and economic elites has coincided with a notable distancing between political leaders and their publics.
Read MoreChile’s run-off presidential election, held on December 17, witnessed the victory of billionaire businessman, Sebastían Piñera over the left-wing candidate Alejandro Guillier. This will be Piñera’s second term in office; he served as president between 2010 and 2014. The victory was a substantial one, with Piñera winning 54.6 percent of the vote while Guiller, supported by outgoing left-centre President Michelle Bachelet, garnered 45.4 percent of the vote. Much of the press coverage of the election claims that the Chilean election is part of a general right-ward swing in Latin American politics. However, such an assessment papers over what is really going on—not just for Chile, but for other countries of the region as well.
Read MoreWhen charges against former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff resulted in her removal from office, protests throughout the country led many within the mainstream media to speculate that widespread public intolerance of corrupt behaviour would usher in a new public morality. Surely, such a demonstration of public anger against corruption would alert the country’s politicians to the fact that appropriation of the public treasury for personal gain would no longer be tolerated. Unhappily, this was naïve thinking as recent events so clearly demonstrate.
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