Monthly Archives: November 2017

Towards an Uncertain Future

I can’t believe that this term, this class is already coming to an end. I didn’t expect to learn about this many types of ideologies that I never heard of, besides learning about the history of Latin America. For this week, I decided to watch a video of a conversation with Max Cameron.

Starting with Hugo Chavez’ presidential campaign, Latin America has shifted to the left in recent years. Before that, there were various powerful social movements like the Zapatistas in Mexico. Dawson claims that left’s successes in Latin America were disenchantment with neoliberalism, disappointment with the functioning of a democracy and its international context.

Latin America was forced to go through wrenching programs of structural adjustment through the 1980s where the world was calling for democracy. However, growth under neoliberalism in Latin America had been disappointing. There is economic growth due to the consequences of not the market reforms, but the change in international prices.

Those reforms were particularly destructive in countries with weak institutions such as Bolivia. Because the adjustment process for the poorest of the poor is difficult, neoliberalist failed, and there were no alternatives to democracy, Bolivia followed a left different to countries like Uruguay and Chile.

There are two types of left: a radical populist, anti-democratic left in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela, while the mature reformist in Chile, Uruguay, and Brazil. These types of left-wing government that emerge reflect local conditions.

Bolivia, where everything seems to be against democratic movements, a lot of extraction of resources, substantial excluded indigenous, long and difficult legacy of colonial rules in the countryside, highly military intervened. But, it has uninterrupted democratic rule since the 1980s, with Evo Morales. Social movements come to power and carry out sweeping reforms, which enables indigenous people to organize according to their own customs. It also promoted development to reduce poverty, which showed a success. Though not done democratically, as Morales is a radical, anti-imperialist, with corruption, consider its circumstances…

Brazil has a history of having citizens with unequal wealth and rights. Now, their policy focuses on redistribution. But, when you distribute wealth, you will generate angry politics and reaction. So, the business promoted investment in the poorest of the poor. But another problem arises, where the middle-class questions, “What about us?” The politics of redistribution can produce a backlash from the middle classes, where ‘lazy’ people in the northeast are not receiving aid without any action.

Reflecting on its history, the largest challenge Latin America will face is going to be distributing the wealth. Should wealth distribution be based on skin colour or the residential area? Based on what should wealth be distributed in a such a complex Latin America?

Speaking Truth to Power

For this week, I decided to watch a video of a conversation with Rita de Grandis, a UBC professor from Hispanic Studies, focusing on the Argentine military regime and the protest known as ‘Mothers of the Disappeared’ until the end of the dictatorship.

Military dictatorship began from 1976 to 1983, and it was done far too brutally, that Argentines began to use the expression ‘disappear’, for the suspects who left no trace behind. Victims were often young because the military government’s target was to anybody with beard or jeans.

First organisation to resist against this military regime was ‘Madres de Plaza de Mayo’, where mothers and grandmothers of their missing child accused the corruption. Without denying their gender roles, these women infused them with political value. It was also interesting because of these middle-class mothers and women associated with a political agency. Argentina was facing a rare situation, where usually political issues take precedence.

Raúl Alfonsín declared that military officials had merely been acting out of duty. Followed by the declaration, Carlos Menem, who took his role as a president, issued pardons to military figures. Finally, Néstor Kirchner rises up in power, where pardons were quashed, allowing old cases to be re-opened. Detention centre where educated military officers were forced to be kept has turned into museums and was revealed to the public.

The first Argentine democratic government began under Alfonsín’s regime. However, he resigned in 1989 due hyperinflation that led to the severe economic crisis. With a short-lived democratic government, neo-liberalism and inequality took over during the Menem regime, fueling new populist ways to emerge.

Resistance nowadays has been transformed into negotiation and reformism, where it was inspired from utopianism or some kind of a radical power, which has given way to a more pragmatic attempt to seek small reforms in civil society. With the utopianism of the 60s and 70s in Nicaragua, it has ceded to a more pragmatic vision of what it means to run a country.

Latin Americans find it difficult to emulate the republican tradition of democracy because of a long-standing tendency to Caudillismo and charismatic leadership. Also, at the same time, the middle class still thinks in terms of civilization and barbarism. Towards the end of the video, she told her audience that Canadian citizens should be more aware of the power in the democratic voting system. My question for this week is: If Alfonsín was able to continue to take power (putting aside the economic crisis that led to his resignation), until the present day, how different would Argentina be?

The Terror

For this week, I decided to watch a video of a conversation with Maxwell Cameron, a professor of Political Science, “Peru: Shining Path, Fujimori, and the Legacy of the Civil War.”

Peru is a unique country that faced reformist and revolutist movements backed by the communist party in the 1920s. Eventually, from the 1930s to the 1940s, it became an important reformation period where it aimed political incorporation, inclusion and state building. Those promises didn’t happen in Peru, which led to serious consequences by creating guerrilla movement in the countryside who struggled for land among the peasantry class. Military and young officers were shocked and sympathized the abandoned situation in the countryside due to the government failing to meet the promises.

General Velasco and his junior military air force officers conducted a military coup d’etat. Velasco then took radical reforms which promoted trade unions and emphasis on land reforms, ‘Shining Paths’. However, it failed to bring prosperity to the peasantry population in the highlands. Land reforms led to a collapse in the rural production. This operation was carried out by the military but did not follow up by providing training, credits, support for the new rural producers.

Cameron said that the reason for settling an agrarian reform is to pacify the rural population. I believe that this statement is especially relevant for regions where land was reclaimed from the natives. Because in the Americas, usually, each social class represented people with different skin colour. For example, majority of the agrarian population were the natives while the bourgeois were Europeans, and so on. I personally thought that by having the same skin colour, sharing similar negative experience from the Gamonales, made it feasible for creating organised guerrilla movements.

Peru was still facing a severely unstable society where there were many car bomb cases in Lima. In order to fight back these terrorists, Alberto Fujimori stands up. He made connections with intelligent parties to rise in political power and received support from Vladimiro Montesino for the forming of assassination squads to take down the rebellions. However, people began to question Fujimori’s commands such as massacre and violating human rights. Fujimori decided to resign and the Shining Path leader was captured soon after. By 1992, Peruvians believed that peace was finally returning to the country. Since Fujimori fled in 2000, Peru’s government began to recover democracy.

So, my question for this week is: What should the current Peruvian government prioritise for creating a better society? Is it to achieve a fully democratic governing system? A system that incentivizes political inclusion of the natives?

Power to the People

This week, I listened to the student’s video to reflect upon how populism became so popular and how it won Latin American people’s heart.

Populism: A political doctrine appeals to the interest and the ideas of the general people, especially contrasting those interest with the one with the elites. It is also characterised by having a charismatic leader who emphasizes with the public using colloquial language. Populist leaders respond quick and easier response to particular situations. Leader’s proposals or goals are usually non-rhetoric and unrealistic. This ideology works in a condition where the majority of the public is satisfied, but only in theory. Populism became a political phenomenon in the 20th century in Latin America, I wonder why.

After the detailed definition of populism, the video continued by introducing Juan Perón who was an Argentine politician who studied fascism and pursued it in the country.

Peronism is defined as:

1. Equality for everybody and redistributing the wealth in the country
2. Incorporates socialist ideas opposed to Catholicism

Peron appealed to the public that himself was same as the spectators of his speech, resonated and saught for the lower class’ support which made the majority of the country.

Then they make a comparison with Perón and the current president (at the time until 2015), Cristina Kirchner who was a Peronist and a first female to become the head of Argentina. Unions existed during the Perón regime but diminished during the Kirchner’s time. Kirchner alleviated poverty and lowered the debt, but criticised for weakening the ties with other Latin American nations.

Thinking about the fact that Argentina suffered from the financial crisis in 1989, I believe she was among the presidents in Argentina who followed Perón’s idea. Followed by Perón, Evita, who was the first lady of Argentina, also shared similar characteristics with her husband. Rather than Perón, Kirchner’s true model was Evita, who impacted Argentine society as a woman.

Towards the conclusion, the commentator questions if Perón was able to achieve democracy in the country. Perón only addressed to the people who have a voting power, and to lower class lowered Argentina’s political presence in the world.

Media, a cheap means of communication was one way that helped spread populist leader’s words to the people. Sure, Trump may be a populist who aims to bring jobs in the United States (sympathizing low-class Americans), and known for his colloquial and offensive language. But rather than criticizing Trump for what you hear over the media, why don’t we do more of our individual research and avoid from being influenced by the media who control our mind?