Studying Latin American Politics

Chapter 1

For many North Americans, whether from Canada or the United States, the closest contact they will have with the Third World will be on a Latin American holiday. The resort they stay in will naturally be First World, indistinguishable from what exists in Florida. But on their way from the airport to the hotel,or on a shopping expedition to a local market, they will glimpse what life is like in a much poorer place than their own. Some may ask themselves how things got that way and why the people that live there have not made their governmentdo something about it. However, few of us explore these issues much further. By reading this book and taking a course in Latin American politics, you are one of those few.

The reasons people become interested in Latin America obviously vary. For political science students,it could be as simple as migrating aroundthe department, an interest in the politics of development, or from recent news stories coming out of Latin America. Students from other disciplines—anthropology, archeology, biology, comparative literature, economics, history, music, or sociology, for instance—will probably have conceived an interest in some aspect of the region and want to round out their knowledge by learning about its politics. Whatever your reason, you can be sure that somebody will ask you, “Why the heck are you taking that?” This chapter outlines some good reasons why you ought to study Latin American politics.

However, we will also go beyond why and address the question ofhow to study Latin American politics. At first blush, that might seem obvious:you study it in the same way you study anything else. But that intuitive answer is misleading. Political science regularly distinguishes between comparative politics, which deals with both individual foreign countries and comparisons between and among countries, and national or domestic politics. Making comparisonscan be tricky, and it is easy both to miss and to misinterpret important features.This is especially true when examining cases drawn from political systems with different histories, structures, and dynamics from your own.

[A]Why?

The election of George W. Bush as president of the United States in 2000 was supposed to raise Latin America’s profile in that country, which would doubtlessly have put the region onto people’s radar screens and would probably have made the world much more aware of Latin American affairs. Things did not work out quite that way. Afterthe attacks on the United States in September 2001, North America’s attention, and indeed the world’s, became fixed on the War on Terror, especially as it has been waged in Iraq and Afghanistan. Occasionally, events in the rest of the world do catch our attention, but they have to be special to do so. Kim Jong-Il’s bringing North Korea into the nuclear club in 2006—then leading it back out two years later—and the cyclone that hit Burma in 2008 are just two examples, though all have been dwarfed by the global economic crisis that hit in autumn 2008.But among the eventsthat did not often break through were political developments in Latin America.

Obviously, the 20 republics that constitute Latin America did not go into hibernation. Life went on, and political, social, and economic affairs continued evolving. Yet aside from rumblings about vexatious leaders (the most notable of whom in 2009 is Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela), the dangers of cocaine production in Colombia or Bolivia, or, in the United States, illegal immigration, Latin American affairs ceased to be newsworthy. This does not mean that nothing important has been happening there; only that, for people in Canada and the United States, Latin America has not been a significant source of concern over the past few years. Professor Claudio Lomnitz ,goes so far as to argue that since the end of the Cold War, Latin America “is as close to irrelevant for the United States, East Asia, and Europe as it had been since the First Word War.”[1]Under the circumstances, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that university students and their professors should apply their intellects to learning about places and issues that “matter”: today’s hot spots and hot topics.

This chapter begins by arguing that as attractive and persuasive as that argument might be, there are many valid and legitimate reasons for learning about Latin America and its politics. On the one hand, we will find pragmatic grounds for examining the western hemisphere specifically, and that these grounds will encompass diplomatic, economic, and political concerns. On the other, we will encounter a host of conceptual or disciplinary reasons for being attentive to political questions in Latin America. These include problems of and prospects for further democratization, challenges that governments will be facing in the future, and the performance of alternative economic development policies.

[B]What Makes Latin AmericaInteresting and Important?

We can answer this question in two steps. The first part stresses basic data. Latin America’s size—550million inhabitants spread over 7.9 million square miles (20.5million sq. km)—and the fact that it producedUS$2.1 trillion in goods and services every year in the early twenty-first centurymake it significant—as does its proximity to North America. Latin America’s historic political tendencies also make it a region of note: it has been seen by Washington, and other big powers, as both a source of problems and a region that an actual or aspiring great power needs to have on its side. Although these considerations are plainly significant, they are still not completely satisfying. Which brings us to the second part. Most of us need more than dry facts to convince us to invest the time and energy to learn about something. We want something that catches our eye, and when talking about a particular region of the world, that something is usually a headline or lead story on the evening news. In other words, what stories might make us pay attention to Latin America and its politics?

Let’s consider three issues in the region that have been evolving since 2006: Cuba facing its post-Fidel future; the emergence of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez as a significant regional force; and the Pink Tide—the return of the left in Latin American politics. The first two stories, concerning Castro and Chávez, did receive pretty good coverage in the North American English-language press, certainly more than the growth of the Pink Tide did. Yet all three are significant developments in contemporary Latin American politics.

The significance of any change in Cuba’s leadership hardly needs to be explained.On August 1, 2006, the Cuban government informed the world that Fidel Castro had undergone emergency surgery and handed over power temporarily to his brother Raúl. The Cuban exile community in Miami danced in the streets and speculated that Fidel had already died, meaning that their moment of triumph was at hand. Even where there was not such an immediate interest in the Cuban president’s health, pundits began pontificating, and the Latin American desks in foreign ministries doubtless started examining their plans for dealing with Cuba’s first new leader since New Year’s Day 1959.

All this attention went to Cuba while a war between Israel and Hezbollah was raging in Lebanon. Cuba, small and poor, moved into the spotlight for a few days, reminding everyone that it remained a critical part of the broader international puzzle. It also reminded everyone that important things still happened in Latin America.

Of course, Fidel did not die; neither, however, did he return to office. Rather, a year and a half later, on February 24, 2008, Fidel passed the baton permanently to his younger brother. Raúl Castro was 76 when he took over as president; healigned himself with economic modernizers and removed some of the onerous limitations on Cubans’ personal freedom by allowing them to own cell phones and rent cars. What he did not do was threaten in any way the monopoly of the Communist Party.And although Fidel gave up his official positions, he began a column in Granma, the official daily paper of the Cuban Communist Party, and started developing a role as elder statesman.

This episode is important for several reasons. First, it signaled that the most stable government in the western hemisphere, with only one president in 49 years, was beginning to change. Second, since Fidel has stepped aside, it may become possible for Havana and Washington to take some very small and cautious steps toward normalizing relations. Finally, the ostensibly unproblematic passage of power from one Castro brother to the other may indicate that Cuba has avoided one of the greatest political problems a dictatorship can face: changing leadership without provoking instability. However, Raúl Castro’s Cuba still must confront the delicate matter of generational change and find a way to transfer command over the state to men and women who did not make the Cuban Revolution but instead grew up with it.

Fidel Castro’s departure from Latin America’s political scene opened the way for Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez, to step into the role of Washington’s nemesis-in-chief and unofficial leader of the region’s radical left. Chávez entered politics in 1992 as the leader of a failed left-wing coup attempt, something more common than many think, which was launched to put an end to the austerity politics being applied by the government. Jailed and later pardoned, Chávez returned to political life as a presidential candidate in 1998, taking 56 percent of the vote and finishing 17 points ahead of the runner-up. He then held a referendum seeking public approval for a constitutional convention, won it overwhelmingly, gained a huge majority in the constituent assembly, and got a constitution tailored to his needs. The result was the BolivarianRepublic of Venezuela, whose name recalls Simón Bolívar, also known as the Liberator, whose goal had been to unite the newly independent Latin American republics into one state.

Chávez has been overwhelmingly re-elected twice already.He has followed a left-populist line domestically: greater focus on the needs of the poor, and hence more redistributive policies; a reassertion of the state’s role in the economy, best seen in the renationalization of PDVSA, the national oil company; but his administration is also notable for its neglect of fiscal controls and, interestingly, of public security too. These are familiar trends in Latin America over the last 60 or so years, but the Venezuelan president’s foreign policy has combined the familiar with some new touches. It blends anti-imperialism—focused on the United States—with a rejection of neoliberal free-market economics and an active attempt to build a “Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas.”Chávez has found three solid allies in Latin America (Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua), and he has agood relationship with Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Skyrocketing oil prices in recent years have provided Chávez with the resources needed to finance his plans. However, since the fall of 2008, the price of a barrel of oil declined by roughly two-thirds: from just over $140 to around $40.[2] This may hamper the Venezuelan president’s ability to continue his policies.

In 2006, when Castro was taken ill, Chávez was pursuing his international goals, traveling the world and offering material support to Latin American politicians who shared his vision. Returned to office in 2006 with nearly 63 percent of the vote, Chávez proposed another referendum for 2007, this time to amend the constitution to remove presidential term limits and generally strengthen the executive’s already strong hand. In December 2007, Chávez suffered his first defeat in 15 years, as Venezuelans narrowly rejected his amendments by 51 to 49 percent. Early in 2008, Chávezmade the news again, this time after mobilizing his military forces against Colombia (see Chapter 10).A year later, in February 2009, he made headlines yet again by winning a rerun of the 2007 referendum on term limits (effectively winning the right to seek re-election as often as he wants)[3]and taking roughly 54 percent of the vote.

The success of Hugo Chávez brought back to Latin American politics a style and substance not seen since the early 1990s, when neoliberal economics and electoral democracy gained the upper hand. Although the political left went into eclipse, itwas not completelyabsent: the Chilean Concertación, an alliance of parties of the center and left, has governed continuously since defeating the chosen candidate of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship in 1989, while Luiz Lula da Silva of the Workers’ Party won in Brazil in 2002 and Nestor Kirchner carried Argentina in 2003. However, these were just the start of what has become known as the Pink Tide.

We can define the political left in very broad terms as favoring increased social spending, making greater efforts to redistribute wealth toward the poor, maintaining an independent foreign policy (in Latin America, this means not being in lockstep with Washington’s wishes), and strengthening individual and collective rights.At any point during the 1990s, it would have been hard to find even five leftist governments in Latin America at any one time. By mid-2008, though, there were as many as 14, depending on how strictly the definition of leftist was applied (Table 1), and another two or three could arguably have been classed as centrist. The right’s days of automatic victories may have ended.

Table 1Governments of the Left in Latin America, Early 2009

Country
Argentina
Bolivia
Brazil
Chile
Cuba
Dominican Republic*
Ecuador
Guatemala
Nicaragua
Panama*
Paraguay
Uruguay
Venezuela

*: More centrist.

Source:Author’s classification based on news reports.

Not all parties or governments of the left are the same. Cuba is resolutely Communist. Some—such as the Bolivarian Group of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua—favor radical economic, social, and political changesbut do so within the framework of electoral democracy. Most of the rest, notably Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, are usually described as social democratic nations, and their policies can be compared to those of socialists in Spain, France, or Germany. Argentina, though best grouped with the social democrats, has had more conflictive relations with private enterprise than others in that class.

The one constant of politics is change; therefore, it is not surprising to see the left oust the right, just as one day the conservatives will replace the left again. This shift represents politics as usual in historically democratic countries. However, Costa Rica is Latin America’s longest-lived democracy and it dates only from 1949. So the Pink Tide is not just about the left replacing the right as Latin America’s leading political force, but it is also a story of democracy being allowed to work in ways that North Americans and Western Europeans think normal. If our media missed this,it is because other questions preoccupied us, and the merely interesting ceded to the pressingly important.

[B]Why Would We Doubt That Latin America Is Important?

We need to put this question into historical perspective. In 1980, nobody would have asked, “Why Latin America?”because everybodyknew why we had to understand what was going on in the southern two-thirds of our hemisphere. The 20 countriesusually counted as forming Latin America—Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic,Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay, and Venezuela—were then either effectively one-party states, ruled by dictators, embroiled in guerrilla wars, in the midst of revolutions, or at least had next-door neighbors who were(see Text Box 1.1)

[A]Countries of the Americas Not inLatin America

Latin America was a problem for the powerful of the world, so the world worried about Latin America, analyzed it, and sought to make it less troublesome. In short, Latin America was relevant.

Text Box 1.1.Countries of the AmericasNot in Latin America

Besides Latin America, Canada, and the United States, there are another dozen independent countries in the western hemisphere:

Antigua and Barbuda
Bahamas
Barbados
Belize
Dominica
Grenada
Guyana
Jamaica
St. Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Suriname
Trinidad and Tobago

All but the formerly Dutch Surinameare former British colonies. Only two, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago, have populations of more than 1 million. One, Belize, is in Central America; two, Guyana and Suriname, are in South America; and the other nine are in the Caribbean. Strikingly, four of them—Bahamas, Barbados, St. Kitts and Nevis, and Trinidad and Tobago—rank among the 50 wealthiest countries in the world, according to the International Monetary Fund, and all are at least medium-income countries by World Bank standards. This is obviously an interesting array of countries, so why not group them with Latin America?