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Editor's note:
Jorge G. Castañeda is a contributor to CNN.
He was Mexico's Secretary of Foreign Relations from 2000 to 2003. He is currently a professor at New York University and his most recent book, “America Through Foreign Eyes,” was published by Oxford University Press in 2020. The views expressed in this commentary They are solely the author's.
You can find more opinion pieces at CNNe.com/opinion.
(CNN Spanish) --
That democracy in Latin America is under threat seems to be an urban legend today.
In recent times, long articles in
The New York Times
have reported on it;
two distinguished academics have analyzed the trend in an essay just published in
The Journal of Democracy
.
The reasons for the concern are well known, and the examples too, but a certain confusion or simplification seems to prevail in this regard.
It is convenient to quickly review the examples and their roots.
Brazil, Peru and El Salvador are the most iconic and dangerous cases.
They are well known.
On January 8, a mob of several thousand forced their way into Congress, the Supreme Court, and the offices of the Presidency in Brasilia, protesting against alleged electoral fraud against former President Jair Bolsonaro, without the slightest evidence.
They wreaked havoc, caused terrifying images to be broadcast around the world, and forced incoming President Luiz Inácio Lula Da Silva to resort to arrests, trials, investigations, and symbolic acts of unity to defend a robust but clearly endangered democracy.
Not so much because of the protesters, but because of the huge number of Brazilians who, in effect, believe Bolsonaro's big lie about the election results,
and wanted to trigger a coup.
The event goes beyond simple polarization, which may exist in other countries or even in Brazil at other times.
It encompasses disbelief and lack of legitimacy of the institutions in the eyes of a good part of the population, judging by the electoral result and as indicated by polls such as Gallup's.
The Peruvian example is different.
The dispute there is not so much about electoral results, but in relation to the set of institutions in the country.
Certainly, the 2021 elections, where Pedro Castillo was elected in the second round by a small difference, were questioned by his opponents.
And the Peruvian Congress, powerful due to the hybrid system that exists in that country, spent a year and a half making life difficult for Castillo, trying to remove him on several occasions, accusing him of corruption and incompetence (charges credible to some).
But the country was not facing a simple conflict of powers.
Behind the confrontation, there was —and there is today more than ever— a class, regional and ethnic rift.
Despite the best economic performance in Latin America since the year 2000, an ancestral claim of a majority of Peruvians for a multifaceted exclusion subsists.
The protests that began in the south of the country after the Castillo discussion and have spread to Lima were violently repressed —with more than 50 deaths— and at times seem to take on an almost insurrectionary character.
The protesters demand the resignation of the president, who constitutionally replaced Castillo, immediate elections instead of 2026 —as Boluarte announced— and a Constituent Assembly.
They consider, also with some reason,
Unlike Brazil, where the economic evolution has been more deficient, without people blaming representative democracy for the serious social lags, in Peru people expected prosperity thanks to democracy, or at least a profound redistribution.
The feeling has also arisen in other countries: tens of millions of Latin Americans ask their democracy —new or old— for well-being, health, education, housing, stable prices and better jobs.
Strictly speaking, that's not what democracy is for.
It serves to legally oust governments that do not deliver good results and, where appropriate, and after many years, to more fairly distribute economic growth, when it exists.
But that happened in the old democracies after endless struggles, reforms, wars, elections and crises:
it was not done in a day.
Peruvians may feel fully justified in demanding more from their democracy, but it will take time to respond.
In El Salvador, its democracy has owed much to the citizens of the Central American nation.
At the end of decades of authoritarianism, violence, poverty, and exile or emigration, the 1992 peace accords paved the way for a bipartisan system of representative democracy that could have changed the entrails of the country.
The parties to the war—the FMLN and the Salvadoran elites, with the Army, businessmen, and political parties—gave a great lesson in wisdom, skill, and nobility.
But everything that followed was backwards.
The almost 30 subsequent years, where the guerrilla party and Arena, that of the elites, were divided into cake.
Corruption reached extremes;
the economy grew only thanks to remittances, and the violence of the gangs or maras followed that of the war.
Nayib Bukele installs a heavy hand in prisons, in neighborhoods, in Congress, in the Supreme Court with judges loyal to him, in all the country's institutions.
He gets results against violence and the pandemic;
the people applaud him according to presidential popularity polls, and almost no one defends either the peace accords or the precarious representative democracy to which they gave rise.
He is, according to him, the coolest
dictator
” of the world, one of the most popular leaders in the world, and is poised to be re-elected—until now illegally—by a wide margin.
Almost the entire society seems to approve of authoritarian regression, believing that this will solve its problems.
That is where the 2021 Latinobarómetro numbers come from, with data from 2020, according to which support for democracy as the best system of government has fallen precipitously in recent years in Latin America.
For the moment, the regional instruments for the collective defense of democracy have not been able to fully respond to these threats.
The parties, movements, and leaders that contributed to the installation of democratic regimes throughout the region —except for the dictatorships in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela— have also failed to convince their followers that, despite all their deficiencies, the institutions built over the years Several decades are preferable to any alternative, even if they do not deliver the desired and deserved well-being.
New dangers loom in Argentina —due to the growing conflict between the Executive Branch and the Judiciary— and in Mexico, in view of the onslaught of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador against the electoral authority and various autonomous entities.
Latin America is not Europe,
where authoritarian temptations in several countries —and in some governments, such as Hungary— have been rejected, until now, by sensible electorates at the end of the day.
We are on notice.