Ricardo Pascoe Pierce
Simplifying what is happening in Latin America in political, economic, and social terms leads to a failure to perceive long-term trends. Instead, analyses tend to start from immediate circumstances to extrapolate long-term trends.
A first warning is that simplifying trends into “left” and “right” does not capture the complexity of ongoing processes. This is so because we find, as we move from country to country, a combination of social policies with a certain leftist character with liberal macroeconomic policies implemented according to International Monetary Fund mandates. Apart from one or two cases, this is the case throughout Latin America and the Caribbean.
Outside of Cuba, and even in this case, it is debatable that there is neither socialism nor communism. All economies are, with different nuances, market economies. What differentiates each country is the degree of state interventionism in managing the real economy. And that interventionism varies with the levels of tax collection and, therefore, the enforcement strength of the State in each nation.
This debate is clearly illustrated by what is happening in Argentina. An absolutely minimalist State is now being proposed to replace an absolutely interventionist State. They are indeed different approaches, but to say that one model is left-wing and the other right-wing, when discussing which is the most adequate capitalist management, seems a total abandonment of political ideologies for the sake of obtaining short-term results. And confusing the actual terms of the debate.
All, without exception, propose to do “what is best for the prosperity and happiness of their peoples”. That promise is never absent and never fails.
What fails are the political systems. Some propose to do “what the people demand of us”, establishing authoritarian regimes to achieve their objectives. They establish alliances between de facto powers, such as political parties, the military, drug traffickers, businessmen, or churches, to govern with unrestricted impositions. Others, less paranoid, can respect the differences that exist in any society and accept the democratic game and debate between diverse forces. In other words, the Latin American and Caribbean region moves between authoritarianism and democracies with their own particularities.
Thus, we see authoritarianism of the “left” and “right” and democracies oscillating between tenuous political colors.
What is permanently in dispute is which is the best model to address the great backwardness of the region: poverty, lack of education and health, crime and violence, aggression against women and girls, lack of rescue of the culture and historical traditions of the various regions and the general recovery from the scourge of the Covid pandemic.
The authoritarian temptation is always present as a “fast-track” way to solve the problems of each nation. Until it is discovered that the heavy hand and the “strong man” do not solve the problems either. Dissatisfaction with authoritarian options is expressed, for example, by the massive and illegal migration of its citizens. If things were so good in their countries, why do people migrate, risking their lives and their entire families?
But the more open and democratic regimes have also failed to overcome their countries’ terrible social and economic backwardness. The difference, in any case, is that people feel they can protest and express themselves without fear of repression, jail, and murder.
Ideological labels do not serve to understand which is the best model to follow in these times. Empirically, it seems to be a fact that, in a market economy such as Latin America and the Caribbean, the most functional is a democracy that collects enough taxes to be able to be an efficient regulator and, where necessary, a direct executor of redistributive policies that contribute to a better distribution of national income, in a scheme of economic rationality and transparency and accountability. Is it left or right? Pretending an ideological definition is useless in adequately addressing the needs of the people of our region. And the size of the State is a function of its effectiveness, not the ideology of a ruling bloc.
The economic and political system must work so people can stay in their country, participate in the national discussion, and see the effects of a useful State for all, without ideological obsessions.
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