LATIN AMERICAN POPULISM IN THE XXI
CENTURY.
Gustavo Coronel.
1. POPULIST POLITICAL LEADERSHIP IN LATIN
AMERICA.
I fully agree with the description of populist leaders given by Julio
Cirino in his presentation.I would like to add that Latin America
has been long on populist political leaders and short on statesmen.
Peron, Eva, Menem in Argentina; Vargas and Color de Mello in
Brazil; Velasco Ibarra and Bucaram in Ecuador; Velasco Alvarado,
Fujimori and Alan Garcia in Peru, Carlos Andres Perez and Hugo
Chavez in Venezuela are some of the many examples of populism
in Latin American politics. Betancourt in Venezuela, Lleras
Camargo in Colombia, Cardoso in Brazil are some of the few
examples of statesmanship. During the last 100 years of Latin
American history we can see how politics have prevailed over
policies. The reason is that politics is short term oriented while
policy formulation and execution are long term. Populist leaders
belong to the short term but statesmen prefer to see beyond the
immediate future. Populists are sprinters while statesmen are
marathonists. This explains the preference of populist leaders for
promises. Populists will always talk about the things they will do
while statesmen talk about the things they have done. Populists
share a vision of personal and absolute power. Statesmen usually
share the power of a vision, which has much more to do with the
improvement of their people than with their attempts to consolidate
personal power. Populists are essentially dissonant leaders, in the
terminology of emotional intelligence. They do not govern, they
rule. As such their legacy is usually one of hate, resentment and
fear.
The Dornbush& Edwards model is useful to understand the way
populist leaders work. Populists, the model stipulates, are
disdainful of economic constraints. They are free spenders. Their
main theme is often wealth redistribution but they do not know
how to create new wealth, so they restrict themselves to taking
money from the have’s, many of whom have earned it through
hard work, to give handouts to the have nots’s. To do this, they
connect directly to the masses, commonly bypassing organized
political parties and labor unions and promise them that they will
get the money that the rich have taken away from them. In talking
to the masses they use the ways of folklore. Bucaram danced,
Chavez sings, Fujimori wore native headgear. Populists choose an
enemy, often the rural and industrial elites and focus their hostility
on them, sowing social and even racial hate among the population.
They decide on wage increases by executive decree and combine
them with price and exchange controls to give the masses a
temporary illusion of prosperity. For them the poor are good, the
rich are bad. I recently heard a neopopulist leader here in
Washington, vice-president Garcia Liniera of Bolivia. He talked
about building a strong Bolivian state, which can use the economic
surplus to inject it into the communities, so that they can build
what he calls a new “Andean capitalism”, combining big industry
with small, family size enterprises. It made for an entertaining talk
but he failed to tell the audience how could Bolivia generate
economic surplus by ostracizing the private sector.
2. THE IMPACT OF HUGO CHAVEZ IN VENEZUELA
AND ABROAD.
Julio Cirino analyzed the role played by Hugo Chavez and his
potential domestic and global impact. I agree with Cirino in that
Chavez is a textbook example of neopopulism. He has made a
direct connection with the masses through television. He has
become a very authoritarian leader and what he calls “participatory
democracy” only means “participarle al pueblo ”, to tell the masses
after the fact what he has decided to do. Although he is driven by
megalomania, just as the other populist leaders of the region, there
are two factors that separate Chavez from most other populist Latin
American leaders: one, he has a pocket full of money and, two, he
is obsessed with destroying “the empire”, as he calls the United
States. These two factors have driven him beyond Venezuelan
borders, something that not even Juan Peron tried to do. In doing
this Chavez has committed all the financial resources of Venezuela
to structure a global anti-U.S. alliance. This is forcing him to
neglect the domestic scene. He now spends most of his time and
Venezuelan money abroad, buying loyalties from small countries
by giving them handouts (Bolivia, the Caribbean states) or from
big countries by promising them Venezuelan oil (China) or buying
from them billions of dollars in weapons (Russia). His
megalomania has gone global and he is now clearly aligned with
the most dictatorial regimes of the world: Zimbabwe, Iran, North
Korea, Syria, Libya, Cuba and with terrorist and/or drug trafficking
paramilitary groups such as FARC and ELN in Colombia and
Hezbollah in Lebanon (Hezbollah already has a small group active
in northwestern Venezuela, near the city of Maracaibo).
Some international observers of Hugo Chavez tend to give him
credit he does not deserve, over estimating the effectiveness of
his social programs, which are ill-planned and plagud with
corruption. For example, when Chavez came to power in 1998
Venezuela already had a 93% literacy rate. But he claims to have
eliminated illiteracy from the country, teaching “1.5 million
Venezuelans to read and write in 18 months”. This comes out to
about two Venezuelans per minute, day in and day out. The United
Nations denied that they had validated this claim. The Barrio
Adentro mission, designed to give medical services to the poor in
the barrios is, of course, a valid concept, but it cannot replace a
structural, official health policy. While the Cuban medical and
paramedical staff prescribe aspirins in the barrios, the Venezuelan
hospitals lack the most essential equipment and facilities, starting
with oxygen. I disagree with those observers who say that
Chavez’s “missions” have come to solve problems that the
traditional political parties cared very little about. Statistics reveal
that many of the previous democraticVenezuelan governments in
the period 1958 to about 1982 paid more attention to structural
health policies than to programs designed for political effect. The
missions give Venezuelans an illusion of being tended to, but the
structural solutions to health and education are lacking.
The same applies to the use of oil as a political tool. By giving oil
for free to Cuba and subsidizing oil supplies to Bolivia and the
Caribbean countries he is illegally disposing of more than $2
billion per year in money that belongs to the Venezuelan people,
without getting very much in return, except vague and temporary
promises of political loyalty. His initiatives of PetroAmerica,
PetroCaribe, PetroSur and PetroAndina have not progressed
beyond the conceptual stage. They represent empty promises, just
as his idea of a $25 billion gas line from Venezuela to Argentina
represents an irresponsible and typically populist maneuver.
I do not agree about the irrevocability of Chavez’s impact on
Venezuelan political development or, even less, in the hemisphere.
In fact, I think Chavez’s regime represents an involution that will
leave Venezuela in physical and spiritual ruin for two generations.
His long-term hemispheric and global impact will probably be of
similar magnitude to second category populist leaders and dictators
such as Eva Peron, Kim IL Sung, Gahdaffi or Mugabe, never on
the level of Fidel Castro. He reminds me, in his paradoxical
combination of global messianic ambitions and small town,
parochial manners, of the Mahdi who captured Khartoum and
killed General “Chinese” Gordon in the late 19th century.
Hugo Chavez has conducted during the last eight years the most
corrupt and one of the most inefficient governments in Venezuelan
history. After receiving some $200 billion in oil income and
doubling Venezuela’s national debt he has managed to increase
poverty and to deeply divide Venezuela’s society, calling on
racism and class struggle, as strategic allies to promote hate and
resentment. He is the classical Dissonant Leader, as defined by
Daniel Goleman and collaborators in their book about “Primal
Leadership”. As such he will leave no permanent imprint.
3. CONCLUSSION.
I share an optimistic view of Latin American democracy. I think
democracy in Latin America has made significant progress and
remains a totally valid concept. In Brazil, Chile, Colombia,
Panama, Central America, Uruguay, Peru, Mexico and, yes, even
in Bolivia, democracy has so far prevailed. To those who despair
about the uneven democratic development taking place in our
region I say:Democracy is an ideal. The fact that most countries
have not reached this ideal is no reason to invalidate the concept. It
would be like eliminating marriage as a valid institution just by
looking at Elizabeth Taylor or Mickey Rooney’s marital records.
.