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.
Read MoreLatin 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.
Read MoreWith the decline in commodity prices and the receding of the pink tide (the recent removal from power/defeat of various populist left governments), we are now seeing an emergence of two linked phenomenon: a return to neoliberal policies and the emergence of the political right, increasingly with populist features. Populist right movements are garnering significant electoral support; successfully recruiting supporters from a wide spectrum of social sectors, including from among the poor—the very part of the population whose expansion is linked to neoliberal reform. While the most notable case is of Brazil under Jair Bolsonaro, another worrisome case is that of Costa Rica—the very country widely assumed to be one of the region’s strongest bastions of liberal democracy and civil liberties.
Read MoreI 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 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 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 MoreIn a country of modern office towers, luxury condos, gated communities, and stylish outdoor cafes, 41 million people live in extreme poverty. In one major city, the extremely poor cover fifty city blocks, either living on the streets or in makeshift dwellings, without electricity, sanitation, or clean water. They suffer from the diseases of poverty, particularly intestinal parasites. This underclass is ignored, if they are not scorned, by the country’s middle and upper classes. This not a country in Latin America; it is the United States and the fifty blocks of desperately poor are in Los Angeles, one of the richest cities in the world.
Read MoreIn Mexico, earthquakes and politics are closely intertwined. The country’s 1985 earthquake (centred in Mexico City with a magnitude of 8.1) left 10,000 dead and 30,000 injured. It proved to be a defining political moment in the country’s politics. The failure of the government of President Miguel Hurtado to respond to the devastation, including his refusal of outside assistance, prompted widespread grassroots social mobilization. Spontaneously, thousands of assistance groups organized themselves to come to the aid of earthquake victims. A great many of these newly formed civil society organizations, and their opposition to the government, has been fueled by its callousness in the face of the earthquake tragedy, and has formed the bases of a new political front (the National Democratic Front) that challenged the ruling party (the Institutionalized Revolutionary Party, PRI) in the 1988 presidential election. It is widely believed that the PRI presidential candidate lost that election although the party managed to hang onto power. Faced with clear evidence of impending defeat, the government closed down the country’s computerized voting system, rejigged the vote tally, and declared victory. But Mexico’s transition to electoral democracy had begun. The use of electoral fraud gradually diminished as it became important to convince the country’s new NAFTA partners that Mexico was a worthy trade partner. By 1997, the ruling party had lost control of Congress and by 2000 the presidency.
Read MoreOn May 28, the EZLN (Zapatista National Liberation Army) and the Indigenous Council of Government (CIG), selected María de Jesús Patricio Martínez, an indigenous women from the Nahua community of the state of Jalisco, to run as their presidential candidate in the 2018 election. As she readily admits, she has no chance of winning. In fact, just obtaining the opportunity to run for the presidency will be a struggle since electoral law requires that an independent candidate obtain some 850,000 signatures across 17 of the country’s 32 states.
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