The ghost of disappointment

A specter haunts Latin America —and much of the world—: the specter of disappointment.

Or, rather, of multiple disappointments: towards democracy, in the first place, as longed for as it is vilified, and towards those who undermine, question and underestimate it day after day.

If for much of the 20th century this appeared to us as an ever-postponed dream that would put an end to our authoritarian or dictatorial regimes and establish a bright future, when it finally settled in our region —at least in its electoral aspect— it has done nothing more than get disenchanted

At the dawn of the 21st century, none of its promises seems to have been fulfilled: we are still stuck in our same ancestral conflicts, now accentuated by this double frustration.

When, a few days ago, we participated in a forum organized by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the disaffection with democracy that permeates the subcontinent, both Martín Caparrós and I referred with some discomfort to the idea that in Latin America the “social contract” that feeds democracy needs urgent reform.

Caparrós rightly insisted that, in our Latin American environment, that social contract has never existed;

For my part, I equated it with the agreement we signed when we joined, for example, Facebook: we do not stop to read the fine print and never notice the leonine conditions that allow the company to sell our identities to the highest bidder.

If it exists, in Latin America the social contract that its inhabitants have inadvertently signed is one that, since our independence, is designed to benefit only a few: the same elites that created our constitutions and our legal systems with the sole objective of safeguarding their own interests.

That throughout these two centuries these elites have been displaced by others has hardly ever meant a paradigm shift: we continue in societies designed to guarantee inequality.

Or, rather, multiple inequalities: political, economic, legal.

It is not, therefore, that our systems do not work or require adjustments: they work perfectly in their mission of protecting only a few and leaving the others completely unprotected.

The legal fiction of the social contract hardly has a place among us since, with few honorable exceptions, justice simply does not exist in Latin America.

Or it only exists, again, for a few: those who already enjoy political or economic privileges.

Take the Mexican case as an example, not very different from most of Central America or the Andean countries: a place where only 0.4% of the crimes that are reported end up being solved.

That is to say, where 95.6% of them go unpunished and where there is no possibility of even knowing the truth of the facts.

A system, then, in which there is no rule of law.

Scourged by tyrants of different stripes and subjected to brutal oligarchic rules, for decades we Latin Americans fought hard, at the cost of thousands of lives, for democracy: that panacea that would alleviate our ancestral ills.

Unfortunately, when, between the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, it finally expanded widely in the area —with a few stubborn exceptions—, it did so only in its neoliberal aspect: from then on we enjoyed elections more or less transparent and reliable that allowed alternation in power, but the new democrats were not concerned with undermining the abominable structures of oppression inscribed in the system, but rather, for the sake of globalization and free markets, they made them even deeper. .

The culprits of the disaffection towards democracy are the democrats themselves: that is, all those politicians who, boasting of the legitimacy conferred on them by the polls, preserved the previous rules or, worse, twisted them even more: thanks to them, in many In other parts, the State became a machine for extracting resources from the popular and middle classes to the elites, who have become richer than ever.

Corruption, in this scheme, does not represent an anomaly, but rather an essential condition of the system.

This is the reason that companies like Odebrecht could buy politicians in every nation: Bolívar's true dream.

Democracy, then, only seemed to worsen the situation of the majority: in places like Mexico, it did nothing but unleash unprecedented levels of violence — Calderón's "war on drugs" — and widespread corruption that surpassed that of the hegemonic PRI .

In other places the result was not very different: elites that, regardless of their ideological affiliation, only care about themselves.

It is hardly surprising that all professional politicians are assimilated into the same drawer: a corrupt caste where everyone is, whatever they say, the same.

It was inevitable that here and there new leaderships would emerge, outside the traditional parties, created or sponsored by the media and the new social networks, dedicated full time to beating traditional politics and the democratic game itself.

The worst thing is that they were completely correct in their diagnosis: their complaints reflected, without the condescension of their rivals, the disenchantment, fears and anger of millions.

Branded as populists of the left or right — a term that has ended up emptying themselves — they have seized power by dint of exacerbating the emotions and disappointment of their supporters and fans.

The lucidity of his diagnoses contrasts, however, with the radical clumsiness of his solutions once in government.

Almost everywhere, their measures to correct the inequalities they previously denounced have only accentuated them.

On numerous occasions, they have hardly been slow to reiterate the neoliberal policies of their adversaries —and, on occasions, have taken them even further— or to adopt identical strategies to prosper at the expense of the treasury.

To avoid or mask their failures, they have cunningly used the same tools that allowed their triumphs: declaring themselves in a permanent campaign, demonizing any critic —and in particular the press—, pointing out traitors to the country everywhere and polarizing the public discourse, in the image and likeness of the networks: with me or against me.

This is the terrifying scenario that we Latin Americans face today: impossible not to succumb to disappointment.

Not too many ways out are in sight: we need new models of coexistence, but, contrary to the polarization, handouts and immobility advocated by the so-called populists, we need to create independent and effective justice systems that put an end to the overwhelming inequality before the law;

escape from the neoliberal model —not only in words— and build states that actually correct the inequalities of the market, for example, by taxing the richest;

and, finally, encourage criticism not so much of rivals, as of the old structures designed for centuries to protect a few.

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