{"id":49963,"date":"2025-08-13T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-08-13T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/?p=49963"},"modified":"2025-08-12T11:55:05","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T14:55:05","slug":"perverted-democracies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/perverted-democracies\/","title":{"rendered":"Perverted democracies"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The approval of indefinite re-election in El Salvador, which paves the way for President Nayib Bukele to remain in power indefinitely, along with the pantomime through which Nicol\u00e1s Maduro proclaimed himself the winner in Venezuela\u2019s recent elections, brings us face-to-face with the true nature of political regimes in the region. Are they democracies? If democracy means more than merely casting a vote from time to time, then the answer is no.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are they \u201cfatigued democracies<\/a>,\u201d as some now label these regimes? But wait\u2014fatigued from pursuing what, exactly? Fatigue arises after sustained effort, which usually results in some achievement but leaves the actor exhausted. To describe our political regimes as \u201cfatigued\u201d suggests, perhaps unintentionally, that at some point these \u201cdemocracies\u201d (quotation marks very much intended) were genuine democratic regimes that have simply lost steam in continuing their development. But is that really the case?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we subject the experiences endured across the region to relatively simple tests, serious doubts arise. Let\u2019s begin with the balance of power among branches of government. In how many countries has the judiciary truly acted as a counterweight to the executive and legislative branches? This may have been the case in Costa Rica in another era, but it\u2019s no longer so clear. Not even in Uruguay, a country often praised for its democratic tradition<\/a> while forgetting its dark dictatorial period from 1973 to 1985, have judges consistently lived up to their role.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consider a higher-order principle: equality of rights, an unquestionable pillar of democratic society. What level of equal rights has been achieved by citizens across Latin America? If we look beyond the empty promises of constitutions and deceitful legislation and turn to reality, equality of rights remains a distant goal in nearly every country in the region. Poverty, rudimentary education systems, and other massive barriers prevent citizens from exercising their rights on equal footing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In those countries where some progress has been made toward this goal, it often came thanks to governments that we would hesitate to call democratic. Take two examples. In Argentina, Juan Domingo Per\u00f3n fostered a degree of social equality by empowering labor unions, which he, of course, co-opted and brought under political control. In Peru, a government born out of a military coup and subsequent electoral fraud\u2014Manuel Odr\u00eda\u2019s regime\u2014introduced women\u2019s suffrage and established public social security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If what we\u2019ve had in the region can hardly be called more than regimes that occasionally allowed voting, why then insist on labeling them \u201cfatigued democracies\u201d? The more compelling trend reflected in repeated surveys is the rise of fatigued citizens<\/em>\u2014men and women disillusioned by the \u201cdemocracy\u201d they live under, one that merely lets them periodically choose who will next betray their expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out of this collective weariness, perverted democracies<\/em> have emerged and spread. These regimes retain voting processes and respond to some broad social demands while simultaneously working\u2014through good or bad governance\u2014to eliminate any opposition. The rise in crime and insecurity has given oxygen to proposals like Bukele\u2019s, which, in exchange for cracking down on gang violence, is dismantling the basic rights of Salvadoran citizens.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cases of Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua and Nicol\u00e1s Maduro in Venezuela show just how far democratic perversion can go. So far, in fact, that no one in good faith could still call these systems democracies. Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, know no limits. They don\u2019t even bother with appearances, jailing anyone who dares to oppose them without even trying to disguise it. Maduro clings to power by any means necessary, at the cost of millions of Venezuelans who have fled the country not only for political reasons but, above all, for economic survival. And when it comes to Cuba, this somber review doesn\u2019t even need to go there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, even in these most extreme examples of degeneration, the origin is not \u201cfatigued democracy\u201d but rather failed democracy\u2014regimes incapable of delivering meaningful results for their citizens. That\u2019s why, alongside mounting dissatisfaction, surveys now reveal a sharp decline in people\u2019s faith in democracy. That\u2019s the landscape we face.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

*Machine translation, proofread by Ricardo Aceves.<\/em><\/sup><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some Latin American regimes maintain voting rights while eliminating opposition. Are these really democracies, or just perverted versions of them?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":49960,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16729,17157,16844],"tags":[17180],"gps":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-49963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politica-en","8":"category-politia-en","9":"category-democracia-en","10":"tag-ideas"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49960"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49963"},{"taxonomy":"gps","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gps?post=49963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}