Latin America is a fascinating group of countries. They were among the earliest colonies to gain independence, but have nevertheless faced incredible challenges in overcoming some colonial legacies. Politics in Latin America is characterized by huge economic indifferences, weak institutions, and a tumultuous relationship with democracy.
In my first trip to South America, I remember visiting a huge, beautiful new government building, right across the street from a make-shift shanty town. Nearly every country in Latin America has about ten families that owned everything at the end of colonialism. Politics in Latin America often consists of the small, powerful traditional elites trying to maintain (and increase) their power and multitudes of impoverished lower class people trying to take and increase power for themselves. This inequality is a defining attribute of politics in Latin America. Venezuela is a widely recognized example. From the 50s until Chavez two parties of wealthy Venezuelans took turns looking for each other’s interests until Chavez took power by promising hope to the poor. Since then, the wealthy have tried to take back power (through demonstrations, a coup, and an oil strike) and Chavez’s supporters among the poor have tried to increase power (through demonstrations, constitutional changes, and Chavez’s authoritarian tactics). Because this situtaiton obviously lends itself to lower-class support of Marxism, coupled with the fact that most wealthy Latins speak English fluently and attend U.S. universities, the United States has often found itself naturally allied to the elites, for better or for worse.
Politics in Latin America is also plagued by weak institutions. Americans all know the stereotypes of Mexican corruption and nepotism; unfortunately this is true in many cases. Government employees are notoriously underpaid, meaning that bribes are seen as a necessity (and, sometimes, as a right). A friend of mine in Central America was running for congress; he was excited because if he won that seat he would control licensing for the night club district, meaning he would clean up it kick-backs. There are two exceptions that (partially because they’re strong) can sometimes dominate politics, the military and the church. I would wager that this institutional weakness is also a legacy of colonialism, when politics consisted largely of fronts of semi-autonomy that allowed Europe to rule.
These imbalances and weak institutions have not help democracy to rise to the fore of politics in Latin America. Democracy currently dominates Latin America (with the notable exception of Cuba). That hasn’t always been the case, click here to see a chart (created by the Southern Center for International Studies) that shows the history of democracy in Latin American politics. Democracy continues to be threatened. Every time the political power shifts between poor and wealthy, the losing side can be tempted to abandon democracy. Weak institutions mean that people can lose faith in politics in general, and when those institutions are part of democracy, people lose faith in democracy as a whole. In Paraguay there is (or was when I was last there) a popular bumper sticker that said, “Stroessner - We were happy and we never knew it.” That sort of questioning of democracy is alien to many American students of politics.
Anyway, there you go, my beginner’s guide to politics and democracy in Latin America. This post is a bit different from my normal stuff, so let me know what you think!
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Intriguing. I love following your blog. Each post gives me something new to think about. Thanks!
Great post. The phenomenon you are referring to is a market dominant minority .
We should be wary of a similar situation occurring in the US if our ethnic balance changes.
I can second your observation of that bumper sticker. The last time I was there I saw a graffito on a wall that said “1954-1989: un país serio.” There definitely seems to be some nostalgia for the stability of a dictatorship. Porfirio Diaz described his 35 years of more-or-less peaceful dictatorship over Mexico as a time of “no politics and plenty of administration,” which could also sum up the Stroessner era in Paraguay.
Similar sentiment expressed by a Brazilian I talked to: “Quando o povo esta morrendo de fome, a democracia e’ so uma palavra.” When the people are starving, democracy is just a word.
Regarding the “market-dominant minority” — regardless of ethnic considerations, the trend of fewer and fewer people controlling more and more of the wealth in the United States has been accelerating for years to the point that the gains in ownership made by the American middle class during the 20th century have at this point been entirely erased. This trend was only exacerbated by the policies the late Bush administration.
Moreover, for any lily-white readers out there concerned with “our ethnic balance,” they should bear in mind that in their failure to focus on raising families of productive, loyal future citizens — what any pop philosopher of the early 20th century would have taken for granted as an absolute immutable core American value — in preference to accumulation of essentially ephemeral material personal wealth, they have failed to have children at even replacement rate, so that without immigration and the higher population growth rates of indigenous “ethnic” groups, we would be faced with a net population decline which could not but bode ill for our country in terms of total economic output and concomitant international political influence.