Academic and jurist Kenneth Roth coined the concept years ago “zombie democracies” to describe a set of opportunistic political models standing on the fringes of the system of representation they vampirize.
His reference was broad. He cited autocracies such as those of Belarus, Egypt, Uganda, North Korea or Russia among many other examples and, for our places, the authoritarian schemes of Venezuela, Nicaragua or Cuba.
“They are the living dead of electoral political systems, recognizable in the form but devoid of substance or value”. he wrote. In those formats, the “managed surveys” They are not there for the elector to choose, but only to ratify, in an eternal plebiscite, the holder of power «indifferent to the popular interests he presumes to serve».
The contribution of Roth, the gritty former director of Human Right Watch, is particularly valid today because it clarifies some simplifications that have spread throughout the region where the democratic ideal is going through a serious identity crisis.
Today less than half of the Latin American population defends this institutional format, according to the Latinobarómetro survey, and at least a quarter say that he doesn’t care in which system it would be preferable to live.
This data should alert you to a obvious risk to freedom in a space that not long ago was dominated by military dictatorships and in which authoritarianism has not disappeared, as demonstrated by the coup attempts in Peru with Pedro Castillo or in Brazil, with the ultra-Bolsonarist herd.
At the same time, the idea that everything is the same and that is promoted “We are all rights and human” Explain impunity and unconsciousness with which he tries to equate totalitarian regimes with republicans.
deform the stained glass
The recent CELAC summit in Buenos Aires was a stained glass consistent with these deformations. With the aggravating circumstance that the central figure of the meeting, the Brazilian president Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, despite the bitter insurrectional experience of which he has just been the victim, did not even distinguish one from the other.
Instead, he quietly accepted the formulation of his host, President Alberto Fernández, which he described as democratic for all countries affiliated to that bodyincluding without filters Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.
The Brazilian has also gone one step further by rightly repudiating the absurd lock ruling against the island of the Antilles, a remnant of the Cold War, but in a strange defense of the regime in Havana, he argued that Cubans “do not want to replicate the Brazilian model or replicate the US model, they want their model. ” .
But how do you know if it is not possible to choose and if it is right you pay with jail time when required. She didn’t explain it. As for the Chavista experiment, the maximum that Lula has achieved was proclaiming that “Venezuela’s problem will be solved with dialogue, not with a blockade.” But he avoided putting words to the “problem”.
Ultimately it was a bad strategy that left a series of wrong signals at various levels. One of these is that of modernity. The information is too vast to underestimate public knowledge about what is happening in those countries.
The alleged revolutions that in the past flavored the political discourse with the anti-imperialist axis are today banana grotesque. Nicaragua contributes eloquently to this characterization.
The critical attitude has changed due to this expansion of knowledge and it is no coincidence that young people, even on the left, are protesting against these national-populist regimes. formatted as civic-military dictatorships.
A persistent consequence of this uncomfortable silence, now joined by the Colombian Gustavo Petro, is that leave the moral option to the centre-right administrations. Once again, it must have been Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou, together with his Paraguayan colleague, who clearly warned that there are nations in CELAC that do not respect human rights and are not democratic.
Human rights without ideology
The Chilean Gabriel Boric, who claims to be on the left like Lula and understands the electoral significance of these denunciations, instead joined the condemnations arguing that “human rights are a civilizing and no matter the political color of the government that violates them”. He did so by recalling the Pinochet dictatorship that his country suffered. Those are words Lula must have said.
The main failure of these uncritical constructions is that they are associated with the growing questioning of the system which is what should be defended by the domes. Skepticism about how things work is behind the wave of no votes sweeping the region.
In the last four years there has been a surprising chain of 15 opponent victories in free elections in Latin America, including Brazil, an indicator of what could happen in Argentina in October this year or, earlier, in Paraguay in April.
“Latin America is trapped in a vicious circle. Its economy has suffered a decade of stagnation and low growth. People, especially young people, who are better educated than their parents, get frustrated by the absence of opportunities. And they turn that fury against their politicians who they see as corrupt and motivated only by self-interest,” she said. The Economist in a special report on the territory.
In this sense, recalls Oliver Stuenkel, professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation Quarterly of the Americas mediocre growth in Latin America, a meager 1.7% in 2023 according to the IMF, “will maintain the high discontent and regional leaders’ approval ratings are low”-
“This will increase the political cost of the necessary fiscal adjustments – he adds -, for which most leaders will probably delay or abandon them to avoid popular anger.
The idea of dialogue as a formula for reparation defended by the Brazilian Foreign Ministry is correct, but it shouldn’t be in conflict with the public recognition of the despotic format exhibited by those countries.
In Brazil there have been criticisms for these absences of condemnation, but this is how analysts interpret Lula he pointed to its inner rostrum. Nonetheless, CELAC was a bilateral Brazilian-Argentine summit decked out with guests. But for the new Brazilian president, this, his first trip abroad, was an extension of the electoral campaign.
Lula, let us remember, put together his third government with the least PT government in its history. The discourse on the left would try to reassure those sectors of the party that suspect the landing of far-right formations such as Union Brasil with three portfolios including Turismo led by Daniela Carneiro, identified by her links with the mafias of the parapolice of Rio de Janeiro.
“Lula is still trying to find a balance between internal and external speech. When he was president for the first time, the digital dynamics we have today did not exist, it was easier to maintain international discourses inside a certain boxanalyzes Guilherme Casaroes, political scientist and professor at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, quoted on the portal of State.
The cost of this strategy is that the messages from Buenos Aires expose a hostage president to barricaded tones that tarnish his image and what is proposed as revival of international politics of Brazil.
On that street Lula missed a great opportunity show a leap in maturity both in the face of the challenge of the radical sectors of the voluminous electorate who did not vote for him and among those who elected him while discounting that evolution.
The episode could also reveal that the Brazilian internal crisis would be bigger than expected than the government of the South American power.
This verification is what will overshadow the initial intention, in the electoral campaign and in the coronation of the leader of the PT, to exercise vigorous leadership in the area. Which is what was shown in CELAC with the return of the dusty speeches of the first mandates and the unpunished claim of the zombie democracies.
©Copyright Clarin 2023
Source: Clarin
Mark Jones is a world traveler and journalist for News Rebeat. With a curious mind and a love of adventure, Mark brings a unique perspective to the latest global events and provides in-depth and thought-provoking coverage of the world at large.