A recent Latinobarómetro report, released on July 21, 2023, confirms what is a shouted secret and has become a trend: Latin Americans deepened their dissatisfaction with democracy, while authoritarian and despotic airs begin to make themselves felt in several countries of the region.
This situation creates a propitious field for the advance of populism, for the depreciation of parties and the installation of dictatorial regimes.
Only 48% of Latin Americans currently believe that democracy is preferable to any other form of government. Or, put another way, more than half of those who inhabit this continent would have no qualms about having another model, as long as their basic personal needs are met.
If we compare it with what happened in 2010, we have suffered a dramatic decrease of 15 percentage points, since at that time 63% understood that democracy was the system they preferred for their countries.
Uruguay (70%), Argentina (62%) and Chile (58%) -countries that suffered brutal civil-military dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s- are the countries where democracy is most valued, according to the latter measurement, with the particularity that Argentines value it more than in the last measurement (+7%), while in Orientals (-5%) and trans-Andeans (-4%) a decrease has been verified.
Meanwhile, the worst rates are registered in Guatemala (29%), Honduras (32%) and Mexico (35%).
Panama (+11%), Argentina (+7%), Brazil (+6%), Colombia (+5%), Peru (+4%), Ecuador (+4%) and Honduras (+2%) are the nations where the appreciation of democracy grew compared to the last report, the rest of the countries of our continent appear with a negative balance.
28% of Latinos don’t care about a democratic system exactly as much as one that isn’t. The worst rates are found in Guatemala (41%), Honduras (41%) and Ecuador (37%). Argentina (15%), Uruguay (17%) and Costa Rica (22%), as usually happens, are at the antipodes of this item, but with the particularity that there are 5% more Uruguayans than in the last measurement that they would have no problem living in a dictatorial regime.
Democracy in Latin America, a continent that has a history plagued by bloody dictatorships, is increasingly weak, due to the fact that occasional rulers have not been able to meet the expectations of citizens who need urgent solutions in the economic sphere. social and also in citizen security.
So they light up several red lights on the map. In El Salvador, where we have the president with the highest approval rating in the region, politics begins to be personalized in the figure of Nayib Bukele, parties and institutions are weakened, democracy begins to travel a dangerous path where the constitution itself of the Republic remains in the background before the re-election interests of the president. It is the return of the caudillo in his maximum expression.
But alarms are also going off in countries like Peru, Ecuador (where presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated this week) and Guatemala, among others.
91% of Peruvians are dissatisfied with their democracy, something that should not surprise anyone who is moderately informed, since the country is on the verge of a social outbreak, under the command of a president who was not elected for that function. and that he refuses to give up power, something that thousands of people in the streets demand every day and that on more than one occasion are violently repressed.
Within the Ecuadorian people there are 88% dissatisfied with democracy, in a country that is suffering one of the biggest political crises in its history, which was even forced to call early elections and is the victim of violence and insecurity that has no precedent in this nation, as seen not only with the assassination at the beginning of this week of the candidate Villavicencio – second in the intention to vote for the general elections next Sunday – but also with attacks on other aspirants for elective positions popular.
Paraguay (31%), Guatemala (41%) and Ecuador (46%) are the countries with the lowest rates of rejection of supporting a military regime at the head of their government. Here it is worth making a parenthesis and analyzing the case of the mentioned Central American country.
Guatemalans are living through an electoral process that has suffered many irregularities, with notorious cases of lawfarewhere the judiciary and the electoral institute, undoubtedly influenced by the Executive Power, have intervened in the elections with the sole objective of preventing certain forces and political figures from reaching the government.
In Guatemala, democracy is much more than weak every time. Freedom of expression suffers violations on a daily basis, there is political persecution for ideas and freedoms are curtailed, which ends up constituting a new country in this fragile situation that Latin America is experiencing. The corrupt pact lives and fights.
The alarms are on. There is a clear trend that shows that our democracy is in trouble. The “outsiders” populists appear bringing magical solutions that are incredibly adapted to the moment in which we live, but those formulas bring hidden old recipes that our continent has suffered on more than one occasion. The siren songs cloy our ears, we are at risk.
* Master in Political Communication and Management of Electoral Campaigns. Story Director and Coordinator of the Diploma in Political Communication at Claeh University (Uruguay)