The winds of political change blowing off the Andes mountains in South America over the past few years have created a paroxysm of worry among the media and Washington policymakers, concerns that are often distorted.
The fear is misplaced, given that the new “leftists” are more focused on practical rather than ideological concerns and are determined to solve social and economic problems spawned by the failure of faulty prescriptions imposed by Washington and international lending agencies. Many of the new leaders also feel that much can be gained politically in domestic politics from anti-imperialist, anti-American rhetoric.
This is a critical year in Latin America because of the large number of presidential elections that suggest a distinct political trend, one that is being interpreted by the U.S. media in alarming tones as one of a dangerous “leftism.”
Of the more than a dozen elections that will take place this year, Mexico (July) and Brazil (October) are the most important because of trade, investment and financial stability. No Mexican candidate left or right has a large lead in the polls, and earlier fears of a populist resurgence is fading as candidates espouse a more predicable set of policies. Still, a victory for the left in Mexico would mean that for the first time in its history, the United States would have a leftist government on its doorstep. If this happens, a confrontational stance by Washington would be counterproductive, particularly given that U.S. popularity is already declining in Latin America.
The region is too varied and politically complicated to label what is happening as a simple shift to the left. There is no doubt the political trends in Latin America should be of deep interest to Washington policymakers. However, nowhere in the current electoral landscape is there a commitment to carry out a socialist revolution. Statism and residual anti-imperialism are alive and well, but the left-of-center candidates are primarily interested in eradicating social inequities.
To help understand the political winds in Latin America, five important factors should be considered.
The recent string of election results – Lula da Silva in Brazil, Néstor Kirchner in Argentina, Tabaré Vásquez in Uruguay, Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia – have stirred up the fears that Latin America is shifting leftward. However, what is happening is more of a patchwork of political ideologies with strong doses of pragmatism. Moreover, Latin American politics have always been strongly personal, meaning that skilled political personalities carry far more political weight than party labels or specific ideologies.
Conservative media in the United States, worried about “communist” advances in Latin America, see the newly-elected leaders as “authoritarian democrats” who will do nothing about rampant corruption and poor governance. Such commentators also dismiss the importance of the new leaders’ social-democratic platforms. While it is easier to campaign against social evils than actually do something about them, left-of-center candidates have been more successful at doing that than those on the non-left side of the political spectrum in Latin America.
Anti-Americanism is growing, and it forms one of the pillars of left-of-center victories throughout the hemisphere, but this attitude is aimed more at President Bush and his policies than it reflects any distaste for American democracy and freedom.
American policymakers get overly nervous when Cuba’s Fidel Castro is thrown into the mix. What has contributed the most to foster the image of Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez as closet communists or authoritarian democrats is their close personal relations with Castro. However, cozying up to Castro is done more in the name of asserting independence from the United States. It doesn’t reflect a desire to emulate the Cuban model. President Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution more closely resembles “protectionist capitalism” and FDR’s New Deal than some form of radical socialism. The current frontrunner in Mexico’s July 2006 election, Manuel López Obrador, candidate of the leftist Democratic Revolutionary Party (PRD), is left-of-center and often portrayed by neo-conservatives in the White House and the media as a “radical populist,” but in power he would more than likely be far more centrist than his campaign rhetoric would suggest.
The United States is going to have to learn how to deal with political leaders who come to power on a platform of economic and political reform. The current left-of-center governments in Latin America need to be given a chance to govern without having to conform to failed economic and political formulas that Washington prescribed for Latin America’s ills. Many of these recently-elected leaders are savvy politicians who are determined to eradicate corruption and poverty; to do this often requires compromises that hardly reflect leftist dogmatism.
David W. Dent of Broomfield is professor emeritus at Towson University and author of the “Historical Dictionary of U.S.-Latin American Relations.”
