This is Democracy – Episode 41: Latin America: Democratic Challenges and Opportunities

Unknown Speaker 0:05
This is Democracy,

Unknown Speaker 0:07
a podcast that explores the interracial intergenerational

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and intersection of unheard voices living in the world’s most

Patrick Iber 0:13
influential democracy.

Jeremi Suri 0:17
Welcome to our new episode of This is Democracy. Today we’re going to talk about democracy in Latin America, which in fact, has a very long history, history, in many ways, separate and different from the United States. But also a history that has reached a point of very serious and complex challenges today, particularly in countries like Venezuela. And we’re going to talk today with I think, one of the foremost experts in the Western Hemisphere on these issues, friend of mine and a great scholar, Patrick Eibar. He’s a professor at the University of Wisconsin, and he’s written a wonderful book called neither peace nor freedom, the cultural Cold War in Latin America. Patrick, thank you for joining us.

Patrick Iber 1:07
Thank you, Jeremy. That’s very kind introduction.

Jeremi Suri 1:09
My pleasure. My pleasure. Patrick’s joining us from Mexico appropriately enough for this discussion. We’re going to start of course, with our poem by Zachary Siri, what’s the title of your poem today? Exactly? Who are you? I don’t know. Let’s find out.

Zachary Suri 1:25
Who are you the small countries, the dark the Caribbean Sea and the larger expanses that fill up time zones, and mountain ranges like tea cups, and whom we capitalized with to goosey GABA and endless buenos Iris? The diverse populations that file up from Honduras and Paraguay and thousand assumptions into the border gates of the endless desert? Oh passos? Are you not the Mexican restaurant by the train tracks? The people who cut my grass who clean my house? Are you not those who dwell beyond the highway far across the great dividing line? Are you more than the catalyst of the mass hysteria of our age of the last I already have the immigrant persecutors of immigrants? Are you more than all the stereotyping of a continent that I carried out to father onto this page, the hateful words that seep into our brains through the television sets with the kind of electrodes that make 16 million men want to go crazy and eat till their stomachs explode and later put a wall around an entire nation? Why can I not write poetry about your continent without emphasizing the fastness of it all? the vastness, the enchanting distinctness of even your most hateful divisions? And why do I constantly hear of your democracy when I can hear the spirit of freedom and every one of the voices over the radio when the protesters have 1000 protests? And why is it that we speak of us and foreign anomaly when I have known you in the parking lots across the Texas of my youth and in the cafeterias of all my schools? And why do we speak of you as if you are a self destructing elephant? When we work blue core out of your democracy with Panama canals and El Salvador Reaganites and when we know you and sit with you every morning on the school bus,

Jeremi Suri 3:05
I love your references equity to the Panama Canal and El Salvador, what is your poem about?

Zachary Suri 3:10
Well, my poem is really about how little we understand the Latin American culture that we interact with how much we ignore it, and place it into certain categories, and associated with certain ideas and things, but also how the United States has forever been entangled with the culture and cultural and political history of Latin America.

Jeremi Suri 3:33
Yeah, I think that’s very well said. And this takes us of course, to Patrick’s work at Patrick, how do we understand this current moment, it seems as if in Venezuela, and throughout the region, Mexico, Colombia, every day, we’re reading about new back steps on democracy, new challenges to democracy, how do we understand this?

Patrick Iber 4:00
Well, I think one thing to say in response to that is that we’ve had, we’ve had a period in American history recently in which the definition of democracy has been, has been contested. These are societies that are deeply unequal. When considered economically, if you look at most of the 20th century into the 21st century, there are some of the most unequal societies on on the planet, now, somewhat overtaken by Sub Saharan African countries in Sub Saharan Africa, but still have countries with enormous inequality. Right. And I think it’s, it’s challenging to create a democratic system under those conditions. So what has happened is that as formal democracy, electorial democracy has succeeded, and in basically almost all the countries in the in the region by the end of the 1990s period of military dictatorship, 6070s and 80s, and those mostly go away and and you’re left with your losses, electorial democracy.

But

what will be the content will be the social content of that democracy has been enormous, an enormous question. So we had a period that was often referred to as a kind of taste tied were left governments with various types of power, beginning in Venezuela with the election of charges in 1999. And then sort of spreading across the region. There were a few exceptions, but Colombia, Mexico gardens, the most prominent one.

And then

very intense controversy over whether those were those governments represented democratic advances, or democratic backsliding? I think the answer in some ways is both although clearly, in a case like Venezuela, the the steps away from democracy have told me overwhelming the demo democratic initiative that existed at those sort of grassroots level during some of the earlier years of being in power.

Jeremi Suri 6:32
So Patrick, is it? Is it fair to say that one of the challenges has been that the democratic processes have produced undemocratic regimes?

Patrick Iber 6:43
That’s a good question.

So I mean, this is tied up with a complex word, concept of populism, right? Which has a long history in, in Latin America. And I mean, the idea there’s some you know, there’s some people in in my field and in Latin America don’t think that that’s a useful, useful concept. I certainly think that it’s an overused concept, for trying to understand things, it strikes me as being sort of structurally similar not in content, but to do liberalism in that way. But there really is something there really is, I mean, liberalism, that’s important for us to talk about, but that sometimes gets thrown out a little bit carelessly, and doesn’t actually help identify the thing that is supposed to identify. So you know, it populism is a political style, usually, in which the people are situated against an elite.

And

it’s often you know, there’s often a kind of single ruler who’s supposed to represents the relationship between political power and the people from which that power is supposedly drive. Right.

Jeremi Suri 8:09
Well, I mean, example.

Patrick Iber 8:10
Correct. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. And another classic example, and like American history, maybe Peroni in Argentina,

in an earlier era, so.

So Travis does have this very charismatic relationship with the with the people, he had a, he had a variety show. I mean, Trump has Twitter, right. And he had a variety show that he would be on was a sort of unscheduled program called Albertans. Didn’t say, Hello, President. And he would be he would be on on Sundays, for any number of hours, and he would interview people, he would cold, essentially sort of being prompted cabinet meeting there, he would fire cabinet ministers on TV, he would hire cabinet ministers on TV would talk to local politicians, he would move around the country. And you know, there was this kind of charismatic relationship, he would tell people what his garden is doing. And when he was in what his plans were, what his ideas were, he would saying, so it was, it was he was, he was very entertaining, in a certain way. And he also, you know, he brought all of these social programs to the poor, who felt excluded by previous regime. So it’s important to say that, but it was not a country. without, you know, without a democratic tradition. The last leadership fell there 1958. And, but the Democratic parties that came after in Venezuela had come to be seen as kind of exclusionary and not fully incorporating the demands of the population. We were challenged, first came to, to, to national attention in a coup attempt that he made in 1992, after a very unpopular government of the old system, had attempted a set of new liberal reform, to use the word and increase the price of gasoline transportation, there was a big riot in the capital city, and it’s failing in Caracas in 1989, in which the security forces turned their weapons on the people and large numbers of poor protesters were killed. So Chavez, tried to overthrow that government. He was in the military and, and he didn’t succeed. But he appeared brief on TV after the event. And that was the first time that it came to national attention. And he was sort of the basis for his later popularity when he was elected by popular vote and elected to totally democratically in 1999. And then he was elected many times again. So

Jeremi Suri 11:12
So Patrick, on that point, which is such an important one, what is the appeal in recent years? And as you pointed out, it’s not unique to recent years that one could go back to one Peron in Argentina, decades earlier. What is the appeal for voters in a country like Venezuela, to a figure like Chavez, Annette continue to appeal even to job as his successor, when the country seems to be going down into into difficult economic circumstances as a consequence of mismanagement by a figure like that?

Patrick Iber 11:46
Sure. Okay. So a couple of things to a couple things to two separate. I mean, I think, first of all, that, you know, a huge, huge part of his appeal was that he was going to take on the traditional lead of the country that people with people had run dissatisfied. So I think that we see this phenomenon in black America, we’ve seen in many other parts of the world to where traditional, you know, traditional parties, are really struggling to maintain their social base in a shifting world. And that’s been happening in Latin America for a long time. And so, you know, when we talked to those key tied government for the effects of Venezuela in just a second, we talked about those state type governments, some of them were more sort of normal social democratic one, like the government of Lula and Brazil, for example, that was an older party that was a party that grew out of the struggle against the dictatorship that Workers Party and it had been around for a long time and definitely wasn’t a new thing. And then you have places like Chavez, where the old party systems that kind of collapsed, and out of that these single unitary parties with the charismatic figure at the head to dictate

emerged, and

they often accumulated like a lot of different social sectors and support and, and there’s a sort of improvised quality to the party is equal realize this is where the political action is going to be where the power is going to reside their time. So I mean, champions really offered a huge, he offered a lot of things to people, not just the not just the charisma wasn’t empty of content, he supported social programs, and significant reductions in poverty and significant reductions in inequality at the same time. Now, the display, of course, has huge oil reserves. And in the early 2000s, when he was when he was at his peak, and the government was was operating successfully, the price of water was very high, much higher than it is today. And this allows that government to really provide a lot of very needed social services to people in poor neighborhoods and in the countryside. And that really was the basis of his power. He really was making people’s lives better. And they were, you know, they were organized into collectives and cooperative. And, and, you know, that was all seen as a solid, you know, as a sort of democratic advance. There were always people along the way, that the way that he exercised powers not democratic. And then there were always people that countered, well, let me just have to look at the grassroots like, what is the mobilized grassroots? That’s a form of kind of direct, direct democracy. Right. Now, you you mentioned that economic mismanagement, that I think is absolutely fundamental to understand that even during the time when they had these enormous high oil revenue, they didn’t diversify the economy, they didn’t save for when the when oil prices would decline, right. And they created a kind of parallel exchange rate system, which is too technical to get into on a podcast. And, and, you know, and other some, you know, some other some other areas that really laid the foundation for the future for the problems that so has now been experiencing once the oil prices decline and child has gone to died of cancer in 2013, as a successor mother, has, you know, has been in power since with declining levels of popular support. And as that popular support has wind and that’s this evening receivable at the end of Travis’s term of the end of life really reluctant. But there was a decline in popularity and an increasing repression that went along with that. So when they were doing well, there was there was relatively little need for refreshing, but as the sort of substituted charisma and popularity for that, but the situation has worsened repression and electoral machinations have been the strategy that that government has been used and used to stay in power. Now, I think it’s very clear that they have minority support, of course, support, but it’s going to be 25% of population and something like that their base. And they use repressive techniques that you that they say power

Jeremi Suri 16:32
that that actually lays lays out the historical circumstances very well. Zachary, you had a question?

Zachary Suri 16:37
How does the idea of United States interventionism in many Latin American countries influenced democracy?

Patrick Iber 16:49
Well, that’s a good question. Zachary. And I liked the way that you your poem, you laid out some of the longer history of us intervention in the region. But also the way that it’s important to say that, that the US history is also Latin American history in a way

that people

it’s not a separate people from the US people, you know,

people in the United States often think of as coming from Latin America, yes, there’s a, there’s a migration history. But this is also lived on those lands for long on the land that are now for the United States for a long time. Since it’s an entwined history. And I think you said in your, in your poem. So there’s a long history is in in the United States, intervening in Latin American countries to try to get rid of governments that the US likens often to been left wing governments. The most famous cases are Guatemala and 1954, where the CIA overthrew president, democratically elected president who was trying to receive land reform, that the United food company just like, and to lay in 1973, when the US when the Nixon administration, trying to damage the economy to lay and use other needs to try and ensure that the socialist president founder agenda wouldn’t succeed. And he was specially overthrown by the joint military. And then there are the words in Central America, where the US is supported in the case, Nicaragua, for example, supported a civil war, under the Reagan administration, to try and dislodge government there that it didn’t like, and then, of course, all the machinations against Cuba. Still, of course, it’s still a socialist data, marketplace state in itself conception. So this is definitely something that’s been on my mind as the Trump administration has ramped up pressure against Venezuela. And something that I think is, you know, Islam is on a lot of people’s minds as something that a lot of people and hope that we didn’t move past that both both in the United States and in Latin America, and hope that we can pass an era of that kind of direct intervention into Latin American politics. At the same time, you know, the government, like, no one was very happy to assume this mantle, you know, and say, Oh, well, you know, here I am. being attacked just the way that our then again, day was, but you know, it’s a much more repressive government that that people who are familiar with both me personally familiar people who are connected to the to the end government, saying that you’re No, your nose, how was your end? That’s right. I don’t think that tells us what how we should feel about us intervention, because us intervention. I think it’s putting it is probably it probably counterproductive. You know, what should be the end game in Venezuela at this point? It should. I think it’s pretty clear that it should be free and fair, open, Alexa. And that there were a number of elections that the Chevy says one, especially when I was in power, but it’s clear that they’ve lost electoral support, and and that it’s clear that it’s no longer a democratic system, in a sense, I mean, with the minimal condition that we want for democracy is that if people don’t like the people who are in power, they should have the capacity to vote them out? Well, I mean, there were parliamentary elections in 2016, that, that the opposite is from one by a very significant margin. And they were going to have two thirds of the seats, which according to the Constitution, which was the Chevy’s, the Constitution, by the way, but in late 1999, by which Allah gave them the power to recall, to impeach remove the president, which, you know, they would have done but they were a few just made that two thirds threshold. And then there were the government alleged and use friendly judges to invalidate a couple of those results.

And then

created a kind of constituent assembly that goes over the National Assembly sort of stripping the powers away from that, from that electoral body when they didn’t like the result of that. So there’s really no way to describe to describe it, as well as any kind of democracy whether, you know, grassroots democracy is not that anymore.

The government has

IT security forces against the population against the against poor neighborhoods, things like that. And it’s certainly not an electoral democracy. So the NBA has to be free and fair elections in the country. So then the question is, well, how do you? How do you get how do you get there? I mean, is having the us with this long history of intervention in the region, putting this kind of pressure and saying that it wants to zoom change, putting people in charge of this process? who were involved in the wars in Central America in the 1980s, like Elliot Abrams, I mean, is that actually going to be helpful? Or is that going to be polarizing? There are some people feel like, well, there needs to do the kind of stick out there that, you know, potentially threatening to get the process going, as other people who think that, that this is effectively not something that the opposition, which has traditionally you know, the traditionally from the social leagues with traditional pies, the United States, it’s something that sort of undermined its credibility at the popular clause. And I think that we’re at right now is a stalemate. There, the opposition is not sufficiently strong to claim democratic legitimacy, North libido government, of course, they have the army and the gun. So for the moment, there’s there’s little little action, and would be nice to think that. Sorry, you’re

Jeremi Suri 23:33
not just gonna say, Patrick, you brought us to a perfect point here, if American intervention, both in the past as you refer to and as Zachary did in his poem, and in its current moment is insufficient. And it’s often cases counterproductive. What what are the alternatives? What what are the things we could because you also said, I think brilliantly that you know that this area is actually part of American Hustle Street and American history is part of the history of this region. So what should American citizens be thinking about? What should policymakers be thinking of trying to do that could advance the cause of fair and free elections in Venezuela and other countries as you put it?

Patrick Iber 24:16
Well, so this, I think, is a very hard problem, and one that where, if you don’t know the history, you’re

you might come to this conclusion that if you do,

and for the for the first approximation, I think it’s kind of kind of important, but I think the first approximation, there isn’t very much that us can do I mean, it’s an internal conflict and in within Venezuela, and you can’t always the United States has a tendency to want to put a thumb on the scale of these kinds of things. Right? It can’t always do that. I mean, it can’t always get and it can’t always get the outcome that I want, that can always make the situation better, even if we acknowledge that this is a deeply repressive and unpleasant government. Sometimes, you know, the United States is not a condition to, you know, to really do anything about that. It’s what it’s done us recognize this opposition figure, which many other governments have done to the most of the governments of Europe and most of the governments of Latin America, including centralist governments and like right wing governments. I recognize his opposition figure one way, though, who was the head of this National Assembly whose powers had been devolved by by the machinations of the Maduro government. And you know, whether that’s a good strategy, or whether that’s something that, you know, increases the likelihood of armed conflict or military intervention, I mean, we’ll have to

only the future will tell us

what your of those things turns out to have been correct. But, you know, there are groups that has that has better have supported, negotiate and negotiated and the conflict. There’s a contact group of European countries, there are a couple of your Latin American countries, Mexico and Uruguay, and if it’s supported, supported negotiation. And I think it would be wise for the United States to mostly Stay out of this conflict, I think it would be better handled if it were a regional constant, you know, regional effort, and not handled by countries who have, you know, clearly have a clear history of intervention, the way that the United States does, and that doesn’t mean that there will be no foreign intervention within Venezuela. I mean, all of Minnesota’s neighbors are dealing with a huge humanitarian crisis, right, as people who are desperate, have spilled over into the, into their, into their country. So it’s, it makes sense for them to be involved in trying to bring an end to the end of the situation. And, you know, one way or another, and but I just, I think that because of the particular US history, it would be wiser for the United States to at the very least, not be out in front of this effort. I seem

Jeremi Suri 27:23
to be

Patrick Iber 27:24
way, way, way in the back and to let the negotiation develop as they’re going to develop according to the kind of internal and regional logic that that’s there. The the the counter argument to, you know, to be fair to two people who feel differently, there are people within Venezuela, were deeply opposed to any kind of us intervention, or people in Venezuela would welcome even US military intervention at this point, because the situation, you know, so, so bad, our economy is going to be 40% of what it was just a few years ago, which has never happened. Peace.

Jeremi Suri 28:01
Right. And it’s a humanitarian crisis. Right. I mean, you have it you have

Patrick Iber 28:04
a humanitarian crisis, right. I mean, so. So the government and can be fair to the critics of dialogue, the government has participated in dialogue, before then used to sort of string out his own time and in power. So you know, it’s not a it’s not an easy problem by any means. And I don’t pretend to, you know, know what the what the wisest path forward is. But that’s my that’s my sense that the US should be very careful about the image that is project.

Jeremi Suri 28:36
Well, well said. Zachary has has another question along those lines, Zachary.

Zachary Suri 28:41
Um, I was wondering how the refugees and the immigrants from countries like Venezuela, but also Mexico and parts of Central America, how does immigrants affect the that many of whom come to United States? how they affect the relationship between the United States and those countries?

Patrick Iber 29:03
Good question. Very good question. Something impressive, Zachary. So, you know, there’s a difference between kind of overland migration and air migration. So the Central Americans who are coming through Mexico or and the next used to be, you know, Mexican migration across the southern border. Now, it’s sort of almost at net zero, but there’s large number of Central Americans come through Mexico through the through that land border, and then there’s more Caribbean migration that often come through the air and Florida right. So now the largest concentration of Israel, United States, Florida, and they’re playing a role that’s kind of very structurally similar to the Cuban community. In in Florida politics interest, which is to say that they are extremely hard line and and, you know, and and quite right wing and in a very attractive, electorial constituency for the Republican Party, which struggles to attract minorities for the obvious free, had incredibly racist. And so, you know, Republican politicians can go to the Venezuelan community and the cumin communities in in Florida, and have a pitch and say, Look, we’re trying to deal with the tyrants and your countries and the democrats are, you know, are not actually most democratic politicians in the country has been to their job board with the Trump Trump’s actions and Ben Swann, Venezuela there are few exceptions, but by buying the quite a bit of bipartisan consensus on on this, which is not necessarily a good thing. But that’s that’s that’s the reality of the politics is the thing, and nobody wants to be very few people want to be sitting around defending, defending, defending government, even people being critical of efforts like, like Sanders and Representative Rotana have, you know, wanted to put conditions between the cells of the rural government, which I’m glad that they’ve done.

But

But that is a that is certainly a complicating factor, you know, that that, that Florida is such an important part of electoral math for anybody who wants to win the presidency, and that you have these constituencies in Miami who are made up of not exclusively, but you know, very, in most cases, very determined opponents of their machines at home, often who have socked away a ton of money, because they came from the social elites of those of those countries. I did, I didn’t want to say one thing I had, you know, you asked me in advance. What’s the most what’s an, you know, an important thing that us people can do? Yes, please, Pastor? Yeah, I’m not sure, you know, on the individual level, not sure that there’s a lot that people can do. But people are primarily responsible for the politics in their own countries, right? Yes. So I think that that one thing that in the long run, that would be helpful in improving the quality of governance and therefore, of democracy in general, this is in a big deal in Latin America, but in other places, as well, would be to work to elect people and then to agitate politically, extra, you know, outside of voting other ways that we participate in democratic politics. For something like a global wealth tax, or some international effort to eliminate tax shelters, that would reduce the power of oligarchy, I think that would improve both the quality of right wing governance in Latin American countries, and I think that will also improve the quality of left wing government that, you know, often emerged in a sort of out of response and frustrations. So that’s one side of, you know, like a out of left field kind of answer, and a very long running kind of answer. But the but reducing the power of all these arcades and move its wealth around the world and increase the possibility of taxation and the provision, reasonable universal social services, I think, would improve the quality of democracy.

Jeremi Suri 33:24
It’s a it’s a great point, Patrick. And it comes back to one of the central themes of our weekly podcast episodes, which is how we have to reallocate power in our countries and in our world, to younger people away from small groups of individuals who, through economic and other means, have monopolized power in many countries. And certainly the story of democratic challenges in Latin America is a story of inequality, as you say, and as you pointed out, so well, also a story of power that’s been held on particular groups and and the uses of violence to hold on to that power. So I think your your suggestions, very well stated. So, so I want to thank you, Patrick. This has really been a tour de force and giving us a historical framework for the region, understanding how Venezuela fits into these regional dynamics, and thinking about both the limitations on us power, and the role of broader economic circumstances. And this last point about tax shelters in particular. And Zachary, thank you for your wonderful poem today. As always, thank you for listening to this is democracy.

Unknown Speaker 34:47
This podcast is produced by the liberal arts development studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.

Unknown Speaker 34:54
Music In this episode was written and recorded by Harrison Lemke and you can find his music at Harrison lumpy dot com.

Unknown Speaker 35:01
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