As a young man, he embraced socialism, like many in his time. He used to participate in marches against dictatorships, write in left-wing magazines and march with Daniel “el Rojo” in the remembered May of 1968. Until he visited Cuba. From then on, Mario Vargas Llosa became a liberal. In his life, he has been a presidential candidate, a Nobel Prize winner for literature, and Cervantes. He writes like few others; perhaps the best of all. But not so many know about his facet as an active promoter of freedom and democracy, in his Foundation for Freedom (FIL), based in Madrid, Spain.
For Vargas Llosa, the origin of the autocratic drift in Latin America is Cuba. “Cuba’s problem was the PRI. The PRI was the one who established a system in which the presidents instituted a kind of radical government that was beneficial for them, ”he said, after the participation of former president Felipe Calderón.
As president of the FIL, the Nobel laureate led, last Friday, the XVI Atlantic Forum, “Ibero-America: Democracy and Liberty”, in which the former presidents Mauricio Macri, Felipe Calderón, Sebastián Piñera, and the President-elect of Paraguay, Santiago Peña, as well as the two presidential candidates Patricia Bullrich, from Argentina, and Maria Corina Machado, from Venezuela. The Venezuelan opponent, Leopoldo López and the thinker and politician, Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, and other panelists also participated.
Democracy or disappearance
The notion of left and right, to describe the political system, does not seem correct at the moment, according to several panelists. From Santiago, former President Piñera, who last year created the “Democracy and Freedom” foundation, estimated that today’s conflict “is not between left and right, but between freedom and dictatorship.” “Populism is a global challenge,” Macri noted along the same lines. “They seek to consolidate power, it is the capitalism of friends, they seek to close economies, and what they achieve is to have poor countries.”
Chile does not necessarily display this dichotomy. As the thinker Cristian Larroulet explained, in this country there is an “enormously inept” and unpopular government. “The expectation is in how the text -new Constitution- will be perfected by the majorities of Congress.”
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Instead, run by an autocratic regime, Venezuela cannot afford to hold free and monitored elections. “We are facing a tyranny that has ties to all the tyrannies in the world like Russia, Iran and Cuba.” “That Venezuela that looked sad has woken up,” commented Maria Corina Machado. “The primaries are the prelude to Maduro’s defeat,” she declared.
Three years ago, what happened in Chile was the prelude to the political turn in Colombia, Brazil and Bolivia. The higher rates of growth and human development were not enough to convince the public. “We cannot think of these development processes only as a linear phenomenon. There are lessons about changes generations and multisectoral phenomena. The processes happen much faster. For this reason, the State has to be able to provide public goods”, highlighted Larroulet.
In this permanent democratic construction, citizens play a central role. For the former Mexican president, Felipe Calderón, the big question in Latin America is “what do we politicians do, what do we citizens do? “We cannot continue with this absurd division between citizens and politicians.”
In much of Latin America, the authoritarian and populist drift often constrains the freedom of action of citizens and political organizations. For this reason, according to Cayetana Álvarez, a liberal thinker, the debate should be between “submission or conflict”.
“Let’s defend our institutions without fear, let’s avoid anti-politics, let’s tell the truth to the citizens, let’s reaffirm that liberal optimism,” he said. “I prefer conflict than submission (…) We are going to win.”
Learnings and challenges
Peronism, the invention of Juan Domingo Perón that has combined corporatism, populism and paternalism, is the root of left-wing projects in the region and in Spain, both today and before. “From Latin America in Spain, Peronism has been installed in a much more open way as a model of government. Peronism as a way of intervening in society, occupying it completely, giving subsidies,” said Javier Fernández-Lasquetty, former adviser to Isabel Díaz-Ayuso. “It is not classical socialism. Spain has been without fiscal rules for 4 years”.
In this reading, the Argentine presidential candidate, Patricia Bullrich, agrees. Favorite in the polls, the right-wing candidate says that she must “rearm Argentina (…) which today has three provinces -departments- with more public than private employment.” Votes and a political base emerge from this model. It is Peronism in action that Fernández, Álvarez Toledo and Bullrich point out as not only a national evil, but also an international one in many countries.
The end of this model, or at least its gradual disappearance, seems to be close. “In 2015 there was a lot of confusion, today there is more clarity (…) about the fact that the State is not a solution to all problems,” former President Macri commented on his panel.
While in Argentina there is an enormous yearning for change, in Paraguay the right won with a young 44-year-old president-elect, Santiago Peña, who represents an alternative to Daniel Lacalle in Uruguay. “We need to integrate with the world. I will fight so that Paraguay is a uniting element between all the countries of the region”.
Faced with challenges, many fall into populist temptation, as Salvadoran economist Manuel Hinds recalled, referring to Nayib Bukele. Without falling into this drift, the Dominican Republic is a model of success, with year-on-year growth of 4.3% of GDP, the highest in the entire region. “It’s fashionable, that’s why I’m here, sharing the news of a totalitarian threat means danger to everyone,” said the Minister of Commerce of this country, Víctor Bisonó.
While the forum was going on, the death of the Cuban thinker Carlos Montaner was announced. In him, who was never able to return to his island due to the denial of the Castro regime, “we find a true example to fight for freedom.”
Freedom Foundation
The forum, financed by the Atlas Network and other organizations, which brings together foundations, think tanks and other groups in favor of freedom and democracy in the world, has taken place at a time when almost all of Latin America is governed by the left and The possibility that this phenomenon begins to change begins with the next elections in Argentina, in October, when, as Mauricio Macri has said, it can be “in the country where populism was invented, it is ending.”