Ivan Briscoe: Latin America’s new left: dictators or democrats?
[In Mexico, Bolivia and Venezuela constitutional government is under attack.]
... Meanwhile, even in those nations run by what the new standard typology of Latin America applauds as a soft, market-friendly left, the health of constitutional democracy has been seriously questioned. The strongheaded rule of Néstor Kirchner in Argentina has brought a sharp fall in poverty rates (now down to 31.4%), but the president has operated through executive decree, intolerance of criticism and populist stagecraft.
... Many established Latin American intellectuals, having lived through resistance and dissent during the continent's cold-war dictatorships, are wringing their hands in despair . For the likes of Mario Vargas Llosa, or former Uruguayan president Julio María Sanguinetti, the new radical leaders are not so much "refounding" their nations as repackaging old dictatorial methods for a multimedia era interspersed with acclamation at the polls .
In this perspective, there have been three great waves of Latin American authoritarianism: the 19th century's post-independence strongmen (including capricious butchers such as Paraguay's Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia); the mid-20th century's military rulers, inspired by national-security doctrines and the demonisation of the left after the Cuban revolution; and - today - the "third wave" represented by Morales and Chávez.
The former shunned democracy entirely, while the latter shelved altogether the need for popular consultation ("the ballots boxes are in safe keeping" proclaimed the Argentine junta of 1976); what marks the current generation (so the argument goes) is that it rules through the "tyranny of the majority", exploiting long pent-up grievances to overrun all state institutions and taint opposition with the stigma of being oligarchs, imperial lapdogs, enemies of the poor.
This story, wholeheartedly propounded by the US military's southern command (whose chief, General Bantz J Craddock, predicts a "backwater of violent, inward-looking states") is not without its truths. At the level of rhetoric, both Morales and Chávez do specialise in bombast and confrontation. The actions of their states tend to be sudden, top-down, geared to mass approval: take the 1 May nationalisation of Bolivia's hydrocarbons, or Chávez's blizzard of forty-nine decrees in 2001 and his incessant military build-up....
The criticisms are valid, but in themselves they hardly amount to the dawn of leftwing tyranny. In all cases, barring Cuba, the opposition is alive and vociferous, the ballot secret, the press free, and the courts still function; there is definitely no sign that prison cells are receiving political inmates. Yet the sense of imminent institutional shutdown is undeniably strong....
Read entire article at Open Democracy
... Meanwhile, even in those nations run by what the new standard typology of Latin America applauds as a soft, market-friendly left, the health of constitutional democracy has been seriously questioned. The strongheaded rule of Néstor Kirchner in Argentina has brought a sharp fall in poverty rates (now down to 31.4%), but the president has operated through executive decree, intolerance of criticism and populist stagecraft.
... Many established Latin American intellectuals, having lived through resistance and dissent during the continent's cold-war dictatorships, are wringing their hands in despair . For the likes of Mario Vargas Llosa, or former Uruguayan president Julio María Sanguinetti, the new radical leaders are not so much "refounding" their nations as repackaging old dictatorial methods for a multimedia era interspersed with acclamation at the polls .
In this perspective, there have been three great waves of Latin American authoritarianism: the 19th century's post-independence strongmen (including capricious butchers such as Paraguay's Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia); the mid-20th century's military rulers, inspired by national-security doctrines and the demonisation of the left after the Cuban revolution; and - today - the "third wave" represented by Morales and Chávez.
The former shunned democracy entirely, while the latter shelved altogether the need for popular consultation ("the ballots boxes are in safe keeping" proclaimed the Argentine junta of 1976); what marks the current generation (so the argument goes) is that it rules through the "tyranny of the majority", exploiting long pent-up grievances to overrun all state institutions and taint opposition with the stigma of being oligarchs, imperial lapdogs, enemies of the poor.
This story, wholeheartedly propounded by the US military's southern command (whose chief, General Bantz J Craddock, predicts a "backwater of violent, inward-looking states") is not without its truths. At the level of rhetoric, both Morales and Chávez do specialise in bombast and confrontation. The actions of their states tend to be sudden, top-down, geared to mass approval: take the 1 May nationalisation of Bolivia's hydrocarbons, or Chávez's blizzard of forty-nine decrees in 2001 and his incessant military build-up....
The criticisms are valid, but in themselves they hardly amount to the dawn of leftwing tyranny. In all cases, barring Cuba, the opposition is alive and vociferous, the ballot secret, the press free, and the courts still function; there is definitely no sign that prison cells are receiving political inmates. Yet the sense of imminent institutional shutdown is undeniably strong....