Staff Writer Sofia Trujillo gets to know the latest facts and stats about the current challenges in Latin American politics.

There is an unshakeable pride when a Latin-American person speaks of their home country. Granted, most of us are more than willing to sing the praises of the place we call home. Yet, when preaching this love out loud, usually to those whose only images of the region are ones of poverty, mayhem, and nice beaches, one often feels like saying “I love it, despite…” Despite political crises. Despite rampant inequality. Despite administrative incompetence.

It is unmistakable that the democracies of many Latin American countries are undergoing an extremely turbulent time. Often, one can be so consumed by local news that there seems to be no time left to see how our individual Latin-American reality fits into a bigger picture. However, we must ask ourselves: “What if, with the right tools, we can discern our current landscape and better prepare for our future?”

Of course, this would involve a ridiculous amount of information and time, and even then, how would we even make sense of all that we accrued? Don’t worry, this is where the experts come in. On Tuesday, September 21st, Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies hosted “The State of Democracy in Latin America,” a discussion panel that invited four experts to debate and share their views.

Scott Mainwaring, an award-winning author and Political Science professor at the University of Notre Dame, started the panel with the cold-hard facts. He presents 14 cases of liberal democracy, all of which, according to V. Dem numbers, have shown little to no change in their democracy indexes between 2000 and 2020. I know what you’re thinking, “What the hell is V. Dem?” Think of V. Dem as a tool developed to conceptualize and measure democracy; a quantitative way to calculate a qualitative concept. According to V. Dem, a country can obtain a score between zero and one, with zero representing the least-democratic score and 1 representing the most-democratic score. All 14 countries have a score of around 0.49, so despite apparent stability throughout the years, we can still observe huge democratic deficits. 

If we consider ranking them, we can say that there are currently only three high-level democracies in Latin America (Uruguay, Costa Rica, and Chile) and two decent-level democracies with high deficits (Argentina and Panama). There are five cases of major democratic erosion (Bolivia, Brazil, Honduras, Venezuela, Nicaragua), with Brazil being the only major erosion that has not led to a breakdown. It is clear by looking at these grim statistics that democracy no longer has unassailable legitimacy in the West. 

Furthermore, these scores date back to 2019, before the ravaging effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on health, education, and employment. What, then, can we expect from these democracies, whose realities have been deeply changed in the last two years? Maria Victoria Murillo, an expert on institutional weaknesses who currently teaches at Columbia’s School of International Affairs, provides a searing answer to this question. The pandemic, she argues, has fundamentally altered the way in which Latin American citizens relate to their state. In the face of a health crisis and the socio-economic crises that cascaded from it, they have been left with unfulfilled expectations, as their respective governments largely failed to step up to the challenge. Vaccine distribution was slow and limited. Education was largely confined to virtual spaces for almost a year. Female labor participation declined to numbers we haven’t seen since the 2000s. All in all, we see the picture of a political system that has proved too weak to process the challenges and demands of the present moment. 

How can we explain this performance? Beatriz Magaloni, Professor of Political Science at Stanford and Senior Fellow at the Spogli Institute for International Studies, proposed a few reasons. She first touched on the rise of populist leaders such as Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico and warned against the polarizing tactics observed in their government which could potentially infringe upon our democratic rights. On the other hand, Professor Magaloni spoke about the growing influence of criminal organizations in the government, best seen in Colombia, where paramilitary groups such as FARC capture and finance local governments to serve their interests. Widespread corruption, which is now becoming further visible due to the somewhat democratization of the media, is also listed as a contributing factor. 

The most important question here is, now that we know where we stand, how do we move forward? Part of the answer seems to lie in redistribution and the political logic of poverty and relief. As Professor Magaloni declared: “We need policies that benefit the poor. Until then, our politics will stay very vulnerable.” Others, such as Professor Mainwaring, highlighted the obvious need for competent leadership, with the meaning of “competency,” of course, varying according to each context. The panelists themselves attempted to steer away from giving their audience an all-encompassing answer. Rather than ignoring the nuance and complexity that comes with each country, they provide a semblance of direction to be taken. In the face of dangerous strong populist rhetoric, there is a need for democratic solutions to the current challenges of democracy. As Daniel Zovato argued in his paper: “The rapidly deteriorating quality of democracy in Latin America”: “It is not merely enough to have quality and resilient democracies. We must also strive to build a modern and strategic state, better governance, and political leadership committed to democratic values, transparency, a connection to the people, empathy, and the ability to govern the complex societies of the 21st century.”

Latin America, in green via Wikimedia Commons.