The pandemic has exposed governments to a number of dilemmas that do not exist in normal times: Prioritizing the economy or health? Respecting civil liberties or social control? Prioritizing health in broad welfare terms or reduced to an anti-viral shield?

These dilemmas go beyond a choice between alternative paths and challenge authorities on their ability to navigate its contradictions and conceive a modern notion of a healthy and sustainable society. Leaders from Western Europe and neighboring countries such as Uruguay have been able to pilot them. They have relaxed quarantines and revised their position in cases of outbreaks and have taken responsibility for the mass testing of their populations instead of keeping them repressed or confined. They have mobilized citizens to adopt an ethic of prevention without abdicating their role of effectively guaranteeing collective health.

In contrast, some of the leadership in Eastern Europe and Latin America would seem to have shipwrecked in the face of these dilemmas or, worse, to have turned the intensification of these contradictions into a form of governance.

Among the shipwrecks, an obvious one appears. As a result of social isolation and of a health policy anchored in the fear of contagion, governments end up worsening collective health when they try to preserve it. This occurs where anti-infection confinement led to increased overweight, diets based on processed foods with serious cardiological consequences and muscle atrophy. In these contexts, cases of child and adult depression, generalized anxiety, insomnia and panic syndromes are triggered and the consumption of psychotropic drugs, illicit drugs and alcoholic beverages explodes.

That combo, plus the postponement of examinations and treatments of medical problems, certainly does not augur a victory for health under very long quarantines. If to this, as in the Argentine, Peruvian, Colombian or Ecuadorian cases, we add an acceleration of cases of Covid, the shipwreck seems very clear.

One of the most unthinkable paths has been to turn contradictions into a form of government.

One of the most unthinkable paths has been to turn contradictions into a form of government. Riding on the recovered centrality of the state in the face of the pandemic, leaders like that of Argentina promoted a peculiar intensification of antagonisms over how to govern a crisis. These were expanding their interventionism in areas unrelated to the management of the virus while transferring to individuals the responsibility of exercising the disciplining self-control of their own health.

The pandemic reveals the myopia of a neoliberal model that dis-finances the public health system under the argument of greater private efficiency. However, populist governments that rhetorically embody an alternative model of interventionism that promotes collective well-being, in practice abdicate their role as agents of change, shifting the blame to individuals. In this way they reproduce the neoliberal card.

The presence of an effective state in the face of the pandemic is far from being the case when, as in the Argentine case, not even half of the budget for the health emergency is executed, tests are being carried out, and kits are distributed on a scale close to the one required, or 1/3 of the upper classes are allowed to bag the emergency aid. A sum of inefficiencies to which are added the cases of parallel businesses and overbilled purchases.

This contradiction consecrates a cult of constant individual self-management of one’s own health

The distribution of emergency subsidies, the absorption of partial labor costs of companies or discretionary sectoral bailouts simulate a rescue of the welfare state. This occurs – paradoxically – in parallel with the omission of effective public health management, as to the individual is delegated the central role in maintaining procedures and obtaining results. This contradiction consecrates a cult of constant individual self-management of one’s own health, which transfers to the individual the responsibility and the blame for personal vigilance and eventual failures in anti-infection prophylaxis.

If there’s an increase in the figures of contagion, deaths and the feeling of an uncontrolled pandemic, it is not because the government failed to provide large-scale testing or because it did not acquire the equipment in time or bought the with unsupervised flaws. It is the result of people who failed to assimilate the quarantine. Interestingly, the more rhetoric in favor of a strong state, the more intense the preaching that transfers commitment to the individual.

The neoliberal turn of populist interventionism rests on four pillars. The first is the reduction of the notions of health and well-being to the viral shield via confinement. The second is the discursive transference to the individual of the capacities and responsibility for executing that armor. The third is the dissemination of an individual prophylactic mantra anchored in hygiene and cleaning rituals. And the last, the assignment of blame to individuals and not to the State or its leaders for eventual failures in controlling the pandemic.

Repeating the neoliberal credo, the governmental harangue insists that disciplined, autonomous and informed self-control of one’s body leads to emancipation. This “empowerment” of individuals does not lead to a weakening of the state, its authorities continue to control resources but use them discretionally while placing responsibility for the results on others.

It is not the first time that authorities enthusiastic about more state interventionism end up neoliberalizing the administration of serious problems. The management of climate change follows the same path. There, campaigns and public policies put the consumer’s self-regulation as the main axis of transformation towards the goal of a smaller ecological footprint, stimulating the reform of individual consumption (its greening), making the individual responsible and blaming him/her for eventual non-compliance with the objectives of decarbonization.

the state exempts itself from executing policies that affect established interests or change the functioning of the system itself.

Thus, the state exempts itself from executing policies that affect established interests or change the functioning of the system itself. In this way, it preserves its easy financing through fuel taxes or car ownership and avoids the long-term work of creating, for example, a new, entirely renewable energy matrix. As with Covid-19, this empowerment of the consumer, rather than weakening the state, makes the former a scapegoat and relieves the latter of sectoral pressures.

The contradiction between state interventionism in relation to resources and the promotion of individual self-management, as a solution to crises, emerges as a form of government, rather than as a dilemma to be resolved. Rather than fighting each other, they are complementary approaches, proposing an ordering of society based on a regulation exercised from above (State policies of quarantine, economic emergency measures and assistance) and from the population itself (disciplining self-control).

At the heart of the paradox of seeing interventionist governments that privatize responsibility for surviving the current crisis are long-term tensions. Will citizens accept the burden of caring for their own personal solution without questioning the purpose of the state promoting such a transfer? Given the scarcity of resources, will the state not be tempted to extend this exemption and transfer of responsibility to other areas?

_{*Translation from Spanish by Emmanuel Guerisoli}

As the US continues to lead the world in coronavirus (with four percent of the population and 22 percent of the cases), it is becoming increasingly clear that President Trump could learn a lot from many nations about tracking and testing, or even just about encouraging the wearing of masks and reinforcing the findings of science.  As the US election draws near and challenger Joe Biden assumes a wide lead in  popularity, President Trump has threatened to disregard the electoral results. 

Indeed, President Trump is taking lessons from the playbook of some of Latin America’s most notorious leaders.  But those leaders commanded Latin American nations as authoritarians during the 20^th Century.  Here in the 21^st Century, Latin America has democratized, placed a greater emphasis on the rule of law, and – at least in many nations – sought to diminish economic inequality.  There are several lessons the US could learn from Latin America this election season.

In the US, we expect that Chief Justice John Roberts will not swear in an electoral loser

First, if electoral losers do not leave, they can be dragged out, by the military if necessary.  South America’s Southern Cone nations faced military coups in the 20^th Century, but they also experienced military support to ensure that duly elected presidents could take office.  In the US, we expect that Chief Justice John Roberts will not swear in an electoral loser on January 20, 2021.

But the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the military may need to back Joe Biden to guarantee Trump’s peaceful departure (and this might depend in part on the public positions taken by past and present military leaders and on prominent members of Trump’s republican party, such as those in Congress).  While many Latin America watchers never imagined that military support of civilians would be so vital in the Western Hemisphere in this century, I never thought this would be particularly needed in the US.

A second lesson from Latin American political history for the US, gleaned from precarious elections like Mexico’s in 1988 and Panama’s in 1989, is that sometimes “dirty elections” must be cleansed through the efforts of extensive citizen mobilization and the “bearing of witness” by domestic and international leaders.  US electoral laws are deeply flawed, especially regarding the Electoral College which lets just a few “swing states” decide elections. 

Additionally, the bottomless pockets of campaign finance in the post Citizens United US, and the allowance of each county to have its own electoral laws, are tragedies which would make Latin American democrats wince.  We will have to fix these after the election.  But in the days before the election, we may have to take our “Black Lives Matter” mobilizing experience to organize cacerolazos of the type used in Chile to draw attention to dictators in the 1980s.

Globalization and neo-liberalism had real costs to peoples’ quality of life

A third lesson from Latin American political history for the US comes from the 21^st Century center-left governments of leaders like Rousseff of Brazil, the KIrchners of Argentina, and even Correa of Ecuador and Morales of Bolivia (before he seemed to get greedy for more terms).  Globalization and neo-liberalism had real costs to peoples’ quality of life, and the only way to “make them whole” again is to make them share-holders in the new economy through the expansion of social welfare and government services. 

Over the past two decades, US Income inequality has dramatically worsened, and is now the worst – by far – among the developed economies.  As measured by the United Nations GINI coefficient, the US in the last few years has ranked 51 out of some 160 nations in inequality, lower than the western European and Asian economic powers, slightly higher than Bolivia (36) and Peru (39), but also lower than Argentina (53^rd most unequal), Uruguay (63^rd most unequal), and even El Salvador (73^rd most unequal).  More importantly, most Latin American nations are in a trajectory towards less inequality while the US is on a trajectory towards greater inequality.

My father taught me to never publicly use the term “idiot” to describe anyone, but he passed away before learning of Trump’s COVID policies.  Trump is the Perfect North American Idiot (with apologices to Alvaro Vargas Llosa and co-authors).  Even before COVID, starting with his 2016 campaign’s centerpiece of building a wall with Mexico, Trump has insulted people from all around the hemisphere, heck, from all over the world.  Joe Biden would reverse Trump’s xenophobic immigration policies and integrate the US back into the world system in important areas like trade and climate change mitigation. 

And perhaps most importantly, he and Kamala Harris and their administration would have the empathy and curiosity to look to others for examples.  He could do no better, in learning how to improve broken electoral systems and improve citizen well-being, than to look to Latin America, which has done a commanding job of improving elections, and a reasonable job of improving citizen well-being. The task of fighting poverty is far from over in Latin America, but governments there have devoted resources to public works and citizen welfare, which helps improve peoples’ civic education, diminishes their interest in clientelism, and readies them for electoral participation.  Biden is our last best hope for abrazos again in US relations with the Americas, after the twin nightmares here of COVID-19 and Donald Trump and to turn our polarized social media echo chamber back into a civil democracy

To my compatriot gringos fatigued by the authoritarian turn in the US, remember the hard-fought chants of our Latin neighbors in their hard-fought struggles against more brutal and oppressive dictators in the last century: el pueblo unido, jamas sera vencido.

_{Photo by sniggie on Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA}

September is a month full of national holidays in many Latin American countries. The 7th in Brazil, the 15th in Mexico and Central America, the 18th in Chile… Days that allow the exaltation of the nation and the excitement of identitarian enthusiasm. Catalonia has not been immune to this. Whoever was its president between 2010 and 2016, the period in which the political tension between that Autonomous Community and the central state that would explode in 2017, Artur Mas, declared last September 14th: “I cannot end my political career in a project that could lead to separation”.

The separation he referred to was not from Spain but from the forces of the deeply divided pro-independence nationalism. His political trajectory was finished not only since he ceded the presidency of the Catalan government to Carles Puigdemont but before, even though he pretended not to know it, when the validation of his political project was frustrated. This happened in the early elections of November 2012, called to expand his majority but ended with his party loosing 2 seats. A defeat that in any parliamentary democracy would have brought with it the departure from politics of the leader who called the elections.

This could be the closure to the Catalan nationalism events that are being celebrated around September 11. This is the date on which nationalist mythology lays to rest Spain’s alleged injuries against Catalonia as a result of the 1714 dynastic lawsuit to rule the Spanish monarchy. There, the supporters of the House of Austria, made up of a good part of the Catalan notables, were defeated by the Bourbon ascendants.

The languid popular expression for the events called for that day as a consequence, without a doubt, of the restrictions to mobility that COVID-19 entailed, disguised, however, the serious fracture of the independence front. This is due, at least, to three factors that are becoming increasingly peremptory.

In the first place, there is the ideological rift that separates conservative sectors from other centrists and from some third parties that are located in a left that sometimes flirts with anti-system expressions. In the second place, there is a notorious struggle in leadership since figures of a very different nature are confronted against each other, which, moreover, as time goes by have reflected opposing styles of action.

Carles Puigdemont is not only a politician on the run who did not confront his responsibility, as his vice-president, Oriol Junqueras, did, but he also still rules the Catalan government

Carles Puigdemont is not only a politician on the run who did not confront his responsibility, as his vice-president, Oriol Junqueras, did, but he also still rules the Catalan government, and more specifically, its current president, Quim Torra, in a vicarious manner. In his two years in office, Quim Torra has shown a worrying political ineffectiveness and has been charged with the crime of judicial disobedience.

Finally, the loss of political capital dragged along by the cases of corruption due to the illegal financing of the party and to the illicit enrichment of its unquestionable leader and Catalan president for more than two decades, Jordi Pujol, undermines the credibility of certain nationalist sectors that are now independent.

All of this does not prevent September 11 from being used, once again, in the inefficient and unnerving scenario drawn up on many occasions by the Spanish government, to try to consolidate the story of affront. This is one of the milestones over which Catalan independence movement intends to consolidate its claim along with myths that exacerbate differences. As Benedict Anderson stated in “Imagined Communites”: Reflections on the origin and diffusion of nationalism”, if the nation is “a political community imagined as inherently limited and sovereign… the magic of nationalism is the conversion of chance into destiny”.

It is in this direction that today the discourse is elaborated according to which in Spain there are political prisoners or that it is a country where the violation of human rights is systematic. However, the evidence shows the existence of politicians who have been tried and convicted, not for issues that violate freedom of expression, but for serious proven crimes of sedition and embezzlement of public funds in processes with full guarantees and total transparency, having been transmitted live to the judicial sessions.

However, the situation thus described is far from a more complex reality that is inserted in a territory where independence, adding its different families, has never had a social majority in a community with higher quotas of self-government than the Latin American federal states. Quotas such as the election by the citizens’ direct vote of their authorities, broad fiscal autonomy, absolute respect for their culture with the use of Catalan as the official language, which on many occasions has relegated Spanish, and with its own public security forces.

This is an independence project with policies that project xenophobic expressions against those who, supposedly, are not integrated into the organized community

This is an independence project with policies that project xenophobic expressions against those who, supposedly, are not integrated into the organized community. A community that exclusively extols what is different on the basis of a constant manipulation of history, which advocates the path of a single language and, in the case of the rupture, excludes from Spanish citizenship all Catalans who have expressed their will to be Spanish.

A scenario that does not welcome dialogue but rather unilateral imposition and whose articulation ignores complexity, structuring its work in a permanent advertising campaign that hides the reality and the responsibility of characters as sadly relevant as Artur Mas. A character who now happens to have left politics, as did his predecessor, Jordi Pujol, through the back door.

*Translation from Spanish by Emmanuel Guerisoli

Photo of Photomovement at Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND

During the 2017-2019 electoral super cycle, South America experienced a “turn to the right”. With the exception of Argentina, progressive governments gave way to a new wave of neoliberalism. Ecuador lived a sui generis experience, since the turnaround occurred more during the administration of President Lenin Moreno than as an immediate result of the elections.

During the campaigns, both in the presidential debates and in the interviews with candidates, the priority issues were national. Even so, certain aspects of international relations were addressed and there were divergences regarding the issue of Venezuela and Latin American integration. The right was more focused on recognizing the presidency of Juan Guaidó and negotiating the “exit” of Nicolás Maduro and his government, while the left was more inclined to a negotiated transition that implied the recognition of both parts as valid interlocutors.

Similarly, the right rejected the processes of regional integration considered “ideologized” such as UNASUR, CELAC, ALBA and to a lesser extent MERCOSUR, while the left did not succeed in articulating an alternative that recognized the difficulties of those integration processes, but at the same time was also capable of safeguarding the integrationist spirit.

integration is going through one of its worst moments and that there is no sign of Nicolas Maduro leaving soon

Today, with these governments in different periods of administration, we ask ourselves what the is their balance. The first impression is that integration is going through one of its worst moments and that there is no sign of Nicolas Maduro leaving soon.

The election of the U.S. candidate Mauricio Claver-Carone as president of the IDB, ignoring the unwritten rule that such a function should be exercised by a Latin American, is a symptom of the current breakdown of the Latin American integrationist spirit. The region has fallen into a kind of realpolitik in which national interests prevail, with transactional arrangements whose only reference is the correlation of forces. Ivan Duque and Jair Bolsonaro positioned themselves in favor of the United States, in exchange for financial and political advantages, Mexico maintained its line of not importuning its northern neighbor, and there was no single alternative line with capacity for negotiation. Thus, the IDB joined the OAS in being the other great inter-American organ affected by post-electoral unpleasantness.

This new trend has lost sight of the long-term advantages of building international relations with the understanding that it’s better to have an international order in order to face, jointly and in a coordinated manner, the challenges of modernity. From the Covid-19 pandemic to deforestation and climate change. This is the perspective that Ikenberry calls “liberal internationalism” in his recent work, “A world safe for democracy”.

In contrast to political realism, Ikenberry proposes an order that is embodied in a system of international organizations and rules based on defined values and principles. These values include the defense of representative democracies, human rights, legality and public freedoms, and a market economy. Not a “neo-liberal” order, but an evolving liberalism that should include all human rights, as well as a vision of the development of capitalism marked by formulas of redistributive justice with full force solid social protection systems. Where the importance given to international trade is not a plea for unregulated free trade zones, but rather the opposite.

it is necessary to understand that the success of each person depends on the validity of a Latin American community.

The path chosen by the right has been that of aspiring to transactional success, case by case. However, the pandemic and post-pandemic crises are so severe that solutions are unlikely to be found through such an approach. Today, more than ever, it is necessary to understand that the success of each person depends on the validity of a Latin American community. The menu of concerns in the region is very varied, but one can begin by addressing issues where there is political consensus between the center-left and center-right. Issues such as tax evasion, corruption, citizen security, the formalization of the economy, employment, the transition to a knowledge-based economy, control of environmental impacts, infrastructure development, safeguarding democracy, the rule of law and the fight against organized crime, poverty reduction and social inclusion, among others. A range of issues that could be better addressed through an order of the kind advocated by liberal internationalism.

This is a region-wide approach that requires a certain type of leadership. One that is nourished by a vision of the State and therefore understands that foreign policy is not something that can be conceived from a particular political position. The same super-election cycle showed that the South American political world and to some extent Latin America is mostly manifested within a spectrum from center left to center right. And it is that great pluralistic political center that should build a long-lasting integrationist policy. An integrationist project that will endure beyond successive governments and parties.

Finally, we would say that an important part of this political effort has to do with the treatment of the Venezuelan issue. This is one of the obstacles that divide and prevent the region from advancing with broader consensus. During the campaigns the issue was used as a political watershed, establishing false equivalencies between recognizing Guaidó and being in favor of democracy and not recognizing Guaidó and supporting 21st century socialism.

The dilemma for the vast majority of political forces, however, is rather methodological: how to recompose democracy in Venezuela? In his recent inaugural speech before the meeting of the Lima Group, Ivan Duque repeated that the first of the four objectives of the Group is to “end the usurpation, end the dictatorship” and from there proceed with the transition. Is this so? If we thought about it in another order, wouldn’t we have better chances of strengthening the alignment and commitment of the countries with the return of democracy in Venezuela?

After the initial enthusiasm a year and a half ago when Juan Guaidó declared himself the legitimate president of Venezuela and achieved important international recognition, the usurper’s exit has been fading away. Is it perhaps the time to reconsider the order of factors? The question now takes on greater relevance in light of the new divisions within the Venezuelan opposition.

Perhaps the time has come for a change of strategy that brings together a broader regional front to propose a negotiation that emphasizes the transition to the end of the dictatorship, and thus also to stop the sharpening of political differences in the region. This would be an important step.

*Translation from Spanish by Emmanuel Guerisoli

Photo of the Casa de America at Foter.com / CC BY-NC-ND