Jorge Dezcallar
Ambassador of Spain
The inauguration of Gabriel Boric as president of Chile in the presence of King Felipe VI is the latest example of the shift to the left that the American subcontinent is experiencing. These are lean times, as in the rest of the world. Long gone are the first decade of this century when Latin America grew at an average rate of 5 per cent. Millions of people were lifted out of poverty, swelling a middle class that worked, opened savings accounts and got into debt to buy a flat and leave the shantytown behind.
Then the 2008 crisis hit the region, which had little or nothing to do with its origins in the United States. And then came COVID-19 and with the pandemic came the fall in economic activity and international trade, the drop in commodity prices and the decline in Chinese imports. The middle classes collapsed, unemployment and poverty increased, and disenchantment with democracy grew due to unabated corruption, social and racial stratification that was difficult to overcome, and the lack of money for education and healthcare, leading to a loss of confidence in political leaders and institutions that preached equality while the unchecked liberal economy favoured growing inequalities. And then, as in other parts of the world, came populism with its attractive but unrealistic promises in countries such as Mexico (López Obrador), Argentina (Alberto Fernández) and Brazil (Jair Bolsonaro). Frustration has continued to grow and today we are witnessing a left-wing tide that has left Uruguay, Ecuador and El Salvador in the hands of the right.
Leaving aside the cases of the dictatorships in Cuba and Nicaragua, where it matters little what people think or don’t think, and the case of Venezuela where “Bolivarian socialism” has managed to impoverish a country that swims in oil and from which eight million people have already fled, the rest of Latin America is opting for left-wing leaders: first there was Luis Arce (a follower of Evo Morales) in Bolivia, Laurentino Cortizo in Panama, and Pedro Castillo in Peru, a rural teacher with mentors close to the Shining Path. Honduras recently elected Xiomara Castro, who promises a universal basic wage, and Gabriel Boric has won the Chilean presidency by soundly defeating a close rival of Pinochet’s and thus highlighting another continental feature, which is a growing political polarisation that blurs the centre to the benefit of the extremes. This year there will be elections in two major countries: Colombia and Brazil. In the former, the favourite is Senator Gustavo Petro, the former mayor of Bogotá who once had links with the M-19 guerrillas, while in Brazil Luis Inácio Lula da Silva is ahead in the polls by more than thirty points over the populist Jair Bolsonaro, who has made a disastrous management of the pandemic for which he prescribed home remedies in the style of Donald Trump with whom he likes to compare himself. It seems that the law of the pendulum rules and that citizens vote to change what is there to see if others will do better, and we must wish them so.
But these left-wing leaders who promise such sensible things as a better distribution of wealth, fighting against the bleeding inequalities, better public services and universal education or healthcare, etc., do not have it easy because the poor economic prospects that the war in Ukraine is aggravating are not going to help them do what they need to do to reverse the current unjust situation. Up to 200 million Latin Americans have recently fallen into poverty, which is the highest rate in recent years, unemployment is also very high, especially among young people, and moreover 50% of those who work do so in the informal sector and have no social security coverage, while corruption and tax evasion are endemic and ensure insufficient budgets to improve basic social services, from education to health or transport. Add drugs, gangs and criminality. All this portends more frustration and populism, and more and more people are trying to cross the Rio Grande in search of better life prospects.
Meanwhile, Putin is killing in Ukraine and this is sowing confusion among the victorious Latin American left, although it is not the only left to which this is happening. One would have to see the demonstrations on the streets if the invaders were North Americans. These leftists should learn from Chile’s Boric, who from the very first moment condemned the Russian invasion without complexes. Let us hope that things work out well for him in Chile and that others in and outside the American continent learn from him, abandon dogmatism and leave behind old clichés that still plague them today.
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