Why So Much Political Turmoil in Latin America This Month?

What in the world is happening in Latin America?

In the last month there has been major political turmoil and protests in Haiti, Peru, Ecuador, Honduras, Chile and just this week Bolivia. There have been multiple deaths, hundreds wounded, government buildings attacked, subway stations set on fire, and state of emergency declared in Ecuador, Chile, and Bolivia. The reasons for the unrest are varied: Chile and Ecuador exploded over austerity measures, Haiti and Honduras over presidential corruption, Bolivia over electoral results, and Peru over a constitutional crisis involving the President and the Congress which resulted from the former dissolving the latter. Still, while the immediate sparks for the turmoil might be specific to the particular countries, the overall malaise is not. It is worth asking, then, about the underlying causes and the reasons why it is happening at this particular moment.

On the first matter, it is clear that Latin American citizens overall and in these particular countries are losing their faith in democracy and particularly in whether a democratic government can improve their lives. Latinobarometro, the main pollster for these questions in the region, has found dwindling support for the question of whether democracy is the best form of government and now stands at only 48% overall, and at 58, 53, 50, 43, 32 in Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, and Honduras respectively, a loss of about 10 points on average from its high in the 1990s. Moreover, in the region as a whole, only 24% say they are satisfied with their country’s democracy, and 42, 36, 27, 26, and 11 say the same in Chile, Ecuador, Honduras, Bolivia, and Peru respectively.

Even Chile which for years had been touted as the model for the region and has superior numbers to the other countries facing turmoil this month, has huge problems of inequality and unresolved issues inherited from the dictatorship. In particular, poorer Chileans have shown anger at a nearly entirely privately-run welfare state that does little to ameliorate poverty despite it being one of the richer countries in the region. Coupled with that is the sense that politicians are neither responsive nor understand the struggle that people face. Indeed, part of the reason why Chile’s unrest grew was because when the protests began the President was seen attending a family event, eating pizza, seemingly totally detached and indifferent to the anger that had engulfed Santiago.

That aspect is what most of the region’s unrest has in common. There is a clear sense from protestors that the normal political channels are not working either because they are corrupt (as in Peru, Bolivia and Honduras) have never really worked (Haiti) or the government refused to listen to people’s concerns over increase of fares and austerity measures (Ecuador and Chile). Given that, one can only wonder when similar unrest will happen in Paraguay, Brazil or Mexico.

It is clear then that the reasons for anger are deep and long-standing, but that does not tell us why the unrest is happening now and with such frequency. On that, what really seems to be making the difference is social media. Of the six cases, Ecuador and Bolivia’s seem to have been more organized—the latter because of its partisan nature, the former because it was led in part by CONAIE, one of the most important indigenous organizations in Latin America—although still relatively unstructured. The other four seem to have been much more spontaneous.

The thing is, collective action is difficult to initiate and sustain, particularly as rioting or engaging in activities against the government are bound to have very high costs. The cost of each additional person joining in protests, however, is systematically lowered to the point that more and more people find it acceptable. And this is where social media matters. The knowledge in real time that many others are joining creates network effects: more join because more join and so on. The perception of why people are joining however is just as important and this is why the response of the government is absolutely critical and how that gets portrayed in social networks. The state of emergency declared in Chile, Bolivia and Ecuador only expanded anger to the point that the Ecuadorian president had to backtrack while Chile and Bolivia seem to be only at the beginning of a much larger conflict.

This issue, in particular, is something that should matter to Americans. I joke with my political science colleagues that we are all comparativists now—the US is just another case and one that looks more and more similar to Latin America. Up until now, the daily constitutional crises that seem to dominate Washington have not spilled out onto the streets, but that is only in part because it still feels distant to people’s everyday lives. The underlying anger and sense of politicians’ indifference, however, seems very similar to Latin America and sooner or later it seems bound to explode here too. The question is only over what and for how long, but when it happens it will be as unexpected as it was to the Presidents of many of these Latin American countries.