Lack of democracy in Latin America

Carlos Cobo Marengo

ccobo@eslibertad.org

Business Engineer from Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Campus Guayaquil. He is currently
researcher and columnist for the Instituto Ecuatoriano de Economía Política. He is a Senior Campus Coordinator
with Students for Liberty, Ecuador.

Until the 1990s, the history of Latin America has been defined by revolutions, expropriations,
dictatorships, violations of civil liberties, wars, and military governments, all of this to reach
what today is known as democracy, and many of the mentioned events occur because our
society seems to have forgotten or maybe it has never understood the real meaning of
democracy, which is only understood as political freedom, in other words, the right to
participate in elections and elect rulers. Although this is an essential and a very important
part of democracy, unlike what most people may think, a well understood democracy defends
people’s rights and interests.

At the same time, Latin American countries have a long history of democratic elections and
constitutions inspired in good intentions, but this seems not to work very well. We have gone
from one coup to another without promoting pluralism and many of the leaders elected by
popular vote continue acting as dictators, keeping the law and property rights uncertain with
little inclusive political systems, with almost unlimited powers concentrated in few hands,
with no control over these people who have incentives to maintain institutions for their own
benefit and use the resources of the State to consolidate their control over citizens.

Due to politicians and small elites, our countries have continued with the old practices of the
Spanish rule instead of reaching genuine democracies. It seems that, from the independence,
our region has never enjoyed a real freedom because the governments just repeated the abuses
of their predecessors, even the liberator of America ⸺Simón Bolívar⸺ wrote a constitution
according to his beliefs, in which he proposed a strong executive power, a lifelong
presidency, and hereditary senates. These ideas and political and economic institutions have
endured and continue to condemn our region to poverty.

In most cases, the transition to democracy occurred without handover of power and it did not
create a pluralistic distribution of the political powers. What happened was that the corrupt
politicians, the patronage networks, and the conflicts persisted until today, hence we have
experienced different authoritarian leaderships/caudillo-style leaderships, anarchies, and
civil wars that are far from the practices of any form of libertarian democracy. For this reason,
we continue mired in instability. This demonstrates that democratic procedures do not
automatically ensure the respect to the citizen’s civil rights.
It is enough to see the many cases that have been happening around us in recent years. After
the 1998 elections that gave the presidency to the ex-coup leader Hugo Chávez who
announced a democratic revolution for Venezuela, beginning by changing the constitution
and in this way reaching participatory democracy to return power to the people, a year later,
this was approved with a very imprecise wording, interpretations that consistently favored
him, and a strong presidential character, which gave the State a strong role over the life of
the people and the economy, once in force, the government began to expropriate goods, attack
adversaries, fire any public servant who thought differently, close the media when he did not
like an editorial, and allow the armed forces to go beyond their constitutional powers.

These almost unlimited powers have allowed politicians and elites to benefit ignoring
authority and making use of the wealth generated by their citizens, what continues to this day
with Nicolás Maduro.

Ecuador is a very similar case. In 2007, Rafael Correa took the helm of the country and after
constant political problems he took advantage of the social unrest that the country faced to
promote the idea of creating a new constitution and correcting the defects of the previous one
in order to obtain a Magna Carta that would best suit the aspirations of his partisan project.
Once approved, in 2008, the results were not really what had been promised. Using the slogan
"The homeland is already of all of us" and in the name of democracy, the few vestiges of
independence of the other State institutions were destroyed granting an almost absolute
power to the president to decide on people’s life and the economy of the country. A citizen
participation council was also created as the body in charge of designating the control
authorities, which appointed people close to the government party. In the same way, the
judges who did not rule in favor of the state were dismissed and the opponents, the media,
and whoever reported corruption were persecuted.

Argentina's history is not very different, but its case is much more serious because it went
from having real incomes higher than those of Switzerland and Germany, exports equal to
those of Canada or Australia, and the second highest industrial rate of the world to stagnation
and decrease. Part of this is because our countries have abandoned the ideas of an open
society which was replaced by various forms of statism.

The main problem occurs because emerging democracies like ours vote for politicians with
extreme proposals. This does not mean that Argentines, Venezuelans or Ecuadorians see in
Perón, the Kirchners, Chavez, Maduro or Correa the defense of their interests, but they only
recognize that the rest of politicians have not given them a voice and they have not provided
them with utility services. So that is why people end up supporting their policies in spite of
overpricing or corruption, and in this way, at least, feel protected from the exploitation of the
local elites.
Although in all of these cases, the opposite was true, these same elites managed to maintain
and even some of them increase their prominence, the outstanding Guatemalan researcher
Marta Casaús Arzú, identified in her country a group of forty-eight families, all related to
each other according to what a genealogical study showed. The study determined that these
families have controlled the political and economic power in Guatemala since 1531, and also
have structured the institutions to guarantee the continuity of their power. They have
achieved it by being only concerned about their own interests and not those of the whole
country (Acemoglu & Robinson, 2012).

Probably this is not an isolated case in our region. It is what happens in our countries every
day because these elites are more interested in exploiting the rest of the population than in
the long-term development. These elites become rich at the expense of damaging others and
limiting the maximum amount of political and economic rights. This is the best way to protect
their governments.

This small group not only receives protection from the State, but they also receive multi-
million bank loans and government contracts that guarantee them monopolistic profits and,
using economic nationalism as a flag, they have caused harm to all citizens, preventing us
from creating really democratic political systems. That is why the democratic institutions of
our region are very weak. We do not have a true rule of law, in which there are checks and
balances to the power of those who govern. On the contrary, there are many corrupt electoral
processes, a judicial power that lacks real independence from the executive power and current
elected politicians, and an extorted and threatened press freedom.

According to different measurement experts, Spaniards attribute much more importance to

security and authority than their individual freedom and responsibility (Montaner, 2005). I
am sure that Latin American society shares these same ideas. Actually, due to the
unpopularity of the ideas of a free society, our nations face a remarkable resistance at the
moment of undertaking reforms to reduce the protagonism and authority of the State and give
it to the civil society.

We have so deep-rooted the idea that development comes from a protective State in charge
not to protect individual rights but the interests of the community and the task of planning
the creation of wealth and its redistribution. So it is difficult for society to be willing to vote
for more freedom and responsibility.

For this reason, we citizens are guilty that the State has acquired an almost absolute power
over society. This means that nothing is beyond its reach, and it is always the government
that decides.

Keeping in mind what is happening around us, what is the best way to achieve a real change?
How can we achieve a real democracy? To speak better about this issue, we must keep in
mind the notion of the rule of law and introduce the idea in our society, in other words, the
principle that laws should be applied to all equally and these laws cannot be used by a few to
remove the rights of others.

We must explain and know how to show in more detail that our freedom and democracy,
apart from the elections, also covers legal freedom, that is to say, the right both in relation to
other individuals and with respect to the State to be judged by third parties, economic
freedom which refers to our right to freely dispose of our own assets, and our personal rights
to decide about our life and freedom to do what we want, but without violating the rights of
others (Pipes, 2002).

Already in ancient Greece, Aristotle proposed a model of organization in which the authority
was directed from the people to the rulers, in which sovereignty lay in the people and the
rulers obeyed them. He believed in the protection of private property and the right of people
to enjoy the fruits of their labor, with a strong rule of law where society would not delegate
authority to privileged elites but in the will of the people, and these ideas should be enshrined
in legal texts that would be above citizens (Schwartz, 2006).

This is why we must start with the important debate of ideas, promoting more inclusive
economic institutions that enforce and make property rights more secure, so we can all enjoy
equal opportunities with a correct division and separation of powers. As people are interested
in a society with greater freedom, they will seek at the same time a greater representation
before the community, fostering more inclusive political institutions that protect their rights
and that widely distribute political power to larger segments of society, gradually limiting
the power of politicians, establishing law and order, and a more inclusive market economy.

Latin America must understand at once that the vote is for us to sit at the table of those who
govern and be able to defend our interests and aspirations. It is the law which must protect
the individuals from the State, this will prevent us from continuing to depend on the decisions
of a few bureaucrats, who come to believe that, when elected by popular vote, they represent
the people and can strip other minorities of their rights by overriding the law.

As Lord Acton would say: "Absolute power corrupts absolutely" and this is what happens
with the rulers without good democratic behavior when we allow them to take charge of our
decisions and our rights in the name of democracy. We must remember that its essence,
sometimes called as the "Montesquieu Doctrine," is based on the fact that a single power
cannot make collective decisions without the collaboration, support or revision of another.
It is the mutual limitation of power, the necessary coordination, and respect of the minority
what must force them to take into account all the interests and points of view, so that nobody
is overlooked or exploited by public decisions (Tocqueville, 1989).
Bibliographic references

ACEMOGLU, D., & ROBINSON, J. (2012). Por Qué Fracasan Los Países. Barcelona:
Deusto.

BUCHANAN, J. M. (2000). Democracy in Deficit. New York: Liberty Fund.

EASTERLY, W. (2013). The Tyranny of Experts, Economists, Dictators, and The Frogotten
Rights of the Poor. New York: Basic Books.

MONTANER, C. A. (2005). La Libertad y sus Enemigos. Buenos Aires: Editorial

Sudamericana.

PIPES, R. (2002). Propiedad y Libertad: la Piedra Angular de la Sociedad Civil. México

D.F.: Turner Publicaciones.

RANGEL, C. (10 de enero de 2013). El Cato. Obtenido de elcato.org:

https://www.elcato.org/lademocracia-en-lati-noamerica

SABINO, C. (1999). El Fracaso del Intervencionismo, Apertura y libre mercado en

AméricaLatina. Caracas, Venezuela, Venezue: Panapo.

SCHWARTZ, P. (2006). En Busca de Montesquieu, La Democracia en Peligro. Madrid:

Encuentro

TOCQUEVILLE, A. D. (1985). La Democracia en América 2. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.

TOCQUEVILLE, A. D. (1989). La Democracia en América 1. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.