Is the Latin
American strong man
riding back into town?
By JONATHAN
POWER
May 14, 1999
MADRID- Venezuela's Hugo Chavez has lived out his
fantasy: not only did he win the hand of the local beauty
queen, he has taken over the country. First he attempted a
coup. When that failed--and from his prison cell--he tried
another. After that didn't succeed he ran for president last
year. He won, knocking his country's established political
parties right off their perch. Now he's trampled the
country's political elite into the ground. He mobilised mobs
around the legislature to make his point and cowed Congress
into granting him nearly all the powers he had demanded. In
short, to rule by decree. Then on April 25th he won with a
huge majority a referendum to create a new assembly to
re-write the constitution.
Welcome back the Caudillo! Welcome back the parade of
military men galloping into the arena of democratic politics
in Latin America, as the International Institute for
Strategic Studies has just concluded. Ever since Peru's
president, Alberto Fujimori, (who is not a military man),
suspended the constitution and dissolved Congress in 1992
there has been a clear new authoritarian trend at work in
Latin American politics. Democracy is still the formal
parameter of power all over Latin America, but it is often,
particularly in the north, a constrained, manipulated, very
personal kind of democracy, markedly different from one that
flourishes--by the year ever stronger--in the southern
reaches of the continent--in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and,
despite the watchful eye of the military, Chile.
In Bolivia, former general Hugo Banzer who led a military
government notorious for its human rights abuses was voted
back into office last year. In Paraguay, the southern
exception, a jailed would-be coup maker, General Lino Cesar
Oviedo, would have probably won last year's election if the
Supreme Court had not annulled his candidacy.
Authoritarianism finds fertile soil when there is
significant official lawlessness, a rigged political system,
patronage and non-compliance of the law by congressmen ,
argues George Philip of the London School of Economics,
explaining Chavez's sweep to near total power in Venezuela.
Yet it does not explain everything. In neighbouring
Colombia, where confidence in institutions is also at a low
ebb and where left-wing guerrillas and right-wing
paramilitaries, both financially fueled by the drug trade,
control large parts of the country, authoritarianism has yet
to gain a serious foothold. In last year's presidential
elections Harold Bedoya, a former general who argued for a
draconian crack down on endemic political violence, won only
2% of the votes cast.
In Peru there is also a strong undercurrent working
against the apparent plans of incumbent Fujimori to run for
yet another term in office, claiming that the electoral
rules of the constitution do not apply to him. Public
opinion which went along with his authoritarian ways as long
as he was breaking the legislative log jam and destroying
the nihilistic guerrilla movement, the Shining Path, no
longer perhaps is prepared to be quite so tolerant, when
there is no evidence that he has either created many new
jobs nor got on top of Lima's frightening crime wave.
In Mexico authoritarianism, now 70 years old, appears to
be entering its terminal stages. The monopoly on power of
the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party finally cracked
in 1997 when, for the first time, it lost control of the
lower house of Congress. Many observers have been surprised
by how strong the pro democratic groundswell has become and
in next year's presidential poll there is a real possibility
that an opposition candidate will win. It certainly will be
the most closely fought and competitive election in Mexican
history.
In short, it is not easy to define one definite trend in
Latin American politics. Venezuelan headlines are not the
continent's. Yet, ominous for the future, undemocratic
practices, such as Fujimori's self-coup in Peru in 1992 and
Chavez's populist power grab today are feted not just in
their own country but all over the continent. Even in
Argentina, President Carlos Menem, who has done so much both
to restore democracy and good housekeeping, was badly
tempted--if no longer--to tamper with the constitution in
pursuit of another term in office. In Panama President
Ernesto Perez Balladares last year also tried but failed in
a similar effort.
It seems that the democratic breeze still blows the
strongest. The real democrats outnumber the phoney ones. The
return to democracy and the raising of the standard of human
rights in the 1980s--given a great deal of encouragement by
the presidency of Jimmy Carter--has left a flag that still
catches the wind. More and more citizens take this advance
seriously and are fearful that any corner cutting is in
reality a short-cut to another dark age of military rule and
ugly repression. Today, if a general wants to have a chance
in office, at least he must shed his uniform and throw his
hat in the electoral ring. And even then he will not succeed
in most countries.
Still, there are more authoritarians than there were a
decade ago. And despite steady economic growth during the
first half of this decade and a decline in inflation (which
always has been the poor's worst enemy) the world economic
crisis of last year is still playing havoc with most Latin
economies and makes the simplistic messages of the
authoritarians appear more appealing. Democracy and economic
reform cannot yet said to have made much impact on the
poverty that is still the lot of around 40% of the
continent's population. As long as that figure remains so
high there is always the danger that Latin America will
re-enter the era of political regression.
Copyright © 1999 By JONATHAN POWER
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail:
JonatPower@aol.com
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