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| Author: | Bruce Stokes |
|---|
November 23, 2002
National Journal
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the left-wing president-elect of Brazil, is engaged in "a race between fear and utopia," observed Kenneth R. Maxwell, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Brazil's poor expect Lula to turn the nation's economy around and redistribute its wealth after he takes office in January. Local bankers and investors on Wall Street doubt the likelihood of the former and dread the latter.
To date, Lula has walked a fine line between his supporters' unrealistic expectations and his opponents' unreasonable apprehensions. Nonetheless, for American conservatives, Lula has already become the regional boogeyman. "No matter how much he tries to make his agenda look a pale shade of `pink,' [Lula] is at heart a red Marxist," fulminated Paul M. Weyrich, the chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, in the online version of American Enterprise magazine. With Argentina having defaulted on its loans from the World Bank, anti-privatization protester shaving toppled a Cabinet in Peru, and demonstrators rioting in the streets of Bolivia and Ecuador over the past few months, free-market advocates worry that Latin America is rapidly rejecting hard-won market reforms, undermining the region's already-fragile democracies.
It's a compelling nightmare. But it is fueled more by anecdotes than by hard evidence. Carol Graham and Sandip Sukhtankar of the Brookings Institution, in a recent paper analyzing region-wide public-opinion data, conclude that the people of Latin America "support markets and democracy in general." They are simply "more critical of how they are working," say Graham and Sukhtankar. But neither free markets nor democracy is currently delivering the goods for much of the Latin American public-especially the all-important middle class. So dire conservative predictions of a swing to the left in Latin America could still become a reality if economic conditions in the region do not turnaround soon.
There is no doubt that Latin America is in deep trouble. The region’s economy will contract 0.6 percent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund. Latin nations are plagued with inequality, poverty, violence, crime, and corruption. Not surprisingly, people are dissatisfied with the way things are going, and they worry that today’s children will be worse off than their parents. Concern about unemployment is on the rise and only one in eight people thinks income distribution is fair.
Yet, despite what intellectuals on the right fear and ideologues on the left avow, Latin Americans generally don't blame their ills on the open markets, foreign investment, and private enterprise that accompanied the region’s globalization in recent years. Despite all the economic turmoil, a plurality of people still support a free-market economy, and strong majorities believe in free trade for both their countries and their families. The people feel worse off than they did five years ago, but they remain strongly optimistic about the future.
Politically, most Latin Americans are moving right, not left, according to the Latinobarometor, a periodic 17-nation survey of public opinion. Only in Argentina and Peru, said Marta Lagos, director of the Latinobarometro, have the people moved somewhat to the left. In most countries, people define themselves as center-right. As for the future, only in Brazil do the young increasingly see themselves on the left: In 1995, 15 percent thought this way; today, that number is 30 percent.
Contrary to conservatives' fears, support for democracy is up this year in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela, according to the Latinobarometro, and it is down significantly only in Peru. "I don’t think there will be an authoritarian regression," Lagos said. "Think democracies will prevail."
But she warns against deriving much solace from these findings.” There is a minimalist concept of democracy [in Latin America],"Lagos said. "The less content a democracy has, the more support it has. Venezuelans [whose democratically elected president, Hugo Chavez, rules like an autocrat] are very content. Chileans [who have a vibrant two-party democracy] are very critical."
Moreover, public-opinion data show that economic insecurity and relative income differences are stoking dissatisfaction among middle-income people-the solid core that a democratic, market economy is usually built around. This may be a particular problem for Lula in Brazil, where barely a third of the people currently think democracy is preferable to other kinds of government. "If Lula has not succeeded in the next 14months," Lagos warned, "we will have very serious problems." And with Brazil accounting for nearly a third of the Latin American economy, Lula's economic and political problems will reverberate throughout the region.
For these reasons, Argentina's default is fair warning. If the Bush administration and Wall Street let Lula stew in the economic mess he has inherited-a massive foreign debt that is dragging down the economy-Brazil may feel forced to follow Argentina's route-and U.S. conservatives' worst fears about a tilt to the left throughout Latin America may be realized. If U.S. political leaders and financiers act now to help Lula restructure Brazil’s debt, public faith in free markets and democracy in Latin America can be sustained. But if Washington and New York drop the ball, they may have only themselves to blame for a lurch to the left in Latin America.
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