Democracy in Latin America
Engler, Mark
ARGUMENTS Democracy in Latin America MARK ENGLER In general, I'm not a big fan of leaders in Latin America eliminating or loosening term limits so that they can stay in office longer. I also...
...Extreme poverty has fallen even more, by 72 percent...
...At this point, the authors are two for two in using random anonymous sources to make their accusations...
...thus, they have pushed for public processes of constitutional reform...
...Rather, they allow insinuation to stand in the place of evidence...
...Colburn and Trejos charge the Venezuelan government with issuing "laws and edicts" that are "deliberately vague...
...Colburn and Trejos make no effort to examine their grievances...
...Certainly, Colburn and Trejos have a right to challenge the data used by CEPR's economists...
...Bolivia has also performed remarkably well in times of economic crisis...
...In contrast, the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) reports that, in Venezuela, "the poverty rate has been cut by more than half, from 54 percent of households in the first half of 2003 to 26 percent at the end of 2008...
...Had voters supported it, a referendum on setting up a body charged with redrawing the constitution would probably have been held at the same time as November's presidential election...
...But then (apparently unable to resist themselves) they go right ahead and compare groups of Bolivian activists to Nazi "Brown Shirts," smearing with a type of innuendo they themselves suggest is irresponsible...
...He can be reached via the Web site www.DemocracyUprising.com...
...That agency reports, "Mr...
...Instead, they give us another unnamed voice saying that democracy under an elected left-wing government in Ecuador is illusory...
...They say nothing about the frightening wave of human rights abuses against anti-coup critics that has continued into 2010...
...Mark Engler is a senior analyst with Foreign Policy In Focus and author of How to Rule the World: The Coming Battle Over the Global Economy (Nation Books, 2008...
...Trying to slam the Latin American governments for being purveyors of patronage, the authors explain that "there is a wide gamut of social programs" in Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia...
...But they show no interest in entering this level of debate...
...They note that it would be unfair to compare current elected leaders in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela with Adolf Hitler, who also came to power through democratic means...
...became less 'rule-bound,' less predictable"), followed by a quote from an anonymous critic, who finds the reforms "unnerving...
...In a classic use of the passive voice to flatten an incredibly politicized sentence, they state, "Elections were held in November 2009...
...It is a sorry display...
...You might ask, do Colburn and Trejos ever use a named source critical of these administrations in their article...
...That hardly disapproving sentence ("and yet...
...Answer: they do not...
...This characterization of events differs substantially from more evenhanded assessments from news sources such as, say, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC...
...Let's grant that Zelaya's critics are correct...
...Instead, the article is a broadside filled with careless generalizations, overblown rhetoric, and statements that are either misleading or factually incorrect...
...When I picked up the article by Forrest Colburn and Alberto Trejos in the Summer 2010 issue of Dissent ("Democracy Undermined"), I had hoped that it would provide such a review...
...However, I tend not to quote him when I write articles...
...At the end of their article, Colburn and Trejos tell us, "Democracy is more than a regime type...
...In fact, in the four years after Evo Morales took office in Bolivia in 2006, annual growth averaged 5.2 percent, the highest the country has seen in decades...
...Even though Ecuador and Venezuela have been hit by the global economic recession, they too have seen impressive periods of growth under their progressive administrations...
...Colburn and Trejos's treatment of Honduras sets the tone for the rest of their article...
...Of all the places to look for lessons in the ongoing practice of democratic politics, Colburn and Trejos have stumbled upon one of the very worst...
...In fairness, the authors do allow that the military action was "clumsy...
...Yet, given the litany of prior disgraces in their article, maybe that is a fitting end to their argument...
...It is telling that in providing a summary history of recent Venezuelan politics, with an eye to how democracy there has been threatened, Colburn and Trejos manage not to mention—not even in passing—a coup by Chavez's opponents in 2002 that overthrew the elected government...
...it is an ongoing practice...
...But they then suggest that it was a "way to avert a very real threat to democracy— Zelaya's move to call an unprecedented special election to remove a term limit on the presidency...
...It consists of a list of broad generalizations ("Public administration...
...Zelaya's critics said the move was aimed at removing the current one-term limit on serving as president, and paving the way for his possible re-election...
...A massive wave of national and international outrage (not led, as it turns out, by the Bush White House) was needed to restore democracy...
...They then return to Honduras...
...These poverty rates measure only cash income, and do not take into account increased access to health care or education...
...They prefer to off-handedly dismiss all expanded social programs in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela as "un show" and to view the electoral majorities that choose to vote in defense of these programs as dupes of populist rhetoric...
...It is a fair, indeed vital, question to ask whether progressive governments in Latin America are delivering on their promises to better serve the poor...
...On this point, I might note that an unnamed relative of mine believes that America under Obama has become worse than Stalinist Russia...
...In most parts of the hemisphere, a leader's trying to create conditions for his or her "possible reelection" at some point in the future is not generally considered legitimate grounds for overthrowing a government...
...They provide no evidence to back up their statement...
...is as critical as Colburn and Trejos get of the coup leaders...
...I also believe that recent processes of constitutional reform in many Latin American countries have been sweeping enough to warrant careful and critical review...
...Zelaya repeatedly denied he was seeking re-election...
...You know an article about democracy in Latin America is going to be bad when it starts off by coming within a hair's breadth of endorsing the coup in Honduras...
...Everything else they have to say about the coup is positive...
...In Ecuador and Bolivia, large groups of indigenous people who have lived in quasiapartheid conditions have argued that they had been largely excluded from national political life under previous constitutional regimes...
...Surely Colburn and Trejos could do better, especially considering that Venezuela is a country of more than twenty-five million people, many thousands of whom are vociferous critics of the Chavez government and are willing to go on the record any time of day to express their distaste for the administration...
...Zelaya planned to hold a non-binding public consultation on 28 June to ask people whether they supported moves to change the constitution...
...They make no mention of the fact that a huge percentage of the country's population boycotted the elections, nor do they note that bodies such as the European Union and the Organization of American States refused to send observers...
...The IMF currently predicts that Bolivia's real GDP growth for 2009 was 3.3 percent—which topped virtually every other country in the region—and that in 2010 its growth will be nearly 4 percent...
...It is, sadly, so smug and smothering in its biases that it precludes any sort of constructive debate about the Latin American Left...
...But they choose to believe that "what has been gained" from such initiatives "has been largely symbolic...
...Attempting to suggest that progressive leaders have mismanaged their economies, the authors write that "economic growth is flat in Ecuador and Bolivia and falling in Venezuela...
...But at least in this latter case they assure us that their Ecuadoran informant is "well educated...
...Instead, the authors perversely suggest that a new Honduran president should have "learned a lesson in democracy" from his ousted predecessor's fate...
...But instead of offering any detailed analysis of constitutional reforms in the country, they provide an assessment that itself is deliberately vague...
...Yet, once again, Colburn and Trejos do not actually investigate this issue...
...The authors argue that when the Honduran military removed the democratically elected president from office, "What they did was wrong, and yet, there is an alarming trend in Latin America toward dismantling democracy by legal subterfuge under the cover of populist and even socialist rhetoric...
Vol. 57 • October 2010 • No. 4
