POPULISM
| 1940’s to 1960’s
The American influence was a crucial factor for the choice and the governing inspiration of many American countries. with a model of liberal democratic republic, the United States formed influence in several countries imposing an expectation of more democratic republics. But the question that remains is, Republic is a synonymous of democracy? This modern confusion makes sense when regimes and forms of government cannot be distinguished. Most American countries define themselves as republics, but it is difficult to say what the regime of these nations is. Of course, there are also republics that are democracies, with efficient administration and governance models, but there is also the opposite, where countries call themselves popular, democratic, or republican, even if their regime is unpopular, undemocratic, or tyrannical. It is the case of Brazil, with the artificial and arbitrary coup that created a new nation, the symbols that linked the Brazilian to its own history were replaced by forged republican symbols. The imperial flag was replaced by a green and yellow copy of the flag of the United States, later being replaced by the republican flag that contained the yearnings for a country again stable and prosperous stamped in its positivist motto “order and progress”. With the new constitution, Brazil chose to strengthen its oligarchies and allow a model that was often dictatorial, with a model of democracy that only strengthened autocracy and distanced the natural union of the Brazilian people. The relationship between state and oligarchies created the perfect model of toxic cooperation, where oligarchs transferred power between them. For two decades the corruption formed by these oligarchies allowed the oligarchic republic to choose presidents, with a breakdown in the elections of 1930. Era Vargas, a period of authoritarianism, persecution of the press and opposition, torture, and institutional repression, justified by a populist and charismatic leadership, which organized the Brazilian state around its own image.
Reaching the Brazilian case in the 60’s we can note that the country has reached significant economic development levels, but with social problems like high poverty rates. Developmentalism was flawed, reaching only a few segments of the population, and designing a concentration of wealth that could not be delayed any longer by the conciliatory actions of the populism. An example is the rapture of the government of Jânio Quadros, populism had its last representation in the government of João Goulart. Before taking over the government, Jango had to accept the demands of the military who did not admit his arrival in the government. Subjected to the limitations of parliamentary rule, he would previously be prevented from reviving nationalist populism.
LAS DICTADURAS
| 1964 to 1983
The United States, afraid of socialist expansion, especially after the Cuban Revolution, began to actively intervene in Latin American countries to prevent the growth of ideas considered communist. The military dictatorships in the region were then mechanisms to curb these movements and both in Brazil and in other Latin American countries, they were supported by the United States. In 2014, documents released by the United States, and investigated by the National Truth Commission, revealed that more than 300 military personnel spent time at the School of the Americas (the US war institute in Panama). There, between 1954 and 1996, the Brazilian military took theoretical and practical classes on torture. In addition, recordings released by the White House of conversations between former President John Kennedy and the ambassador of Brazil at the time, Lincoln Gordon, prove US involvement in the Latin American military dictatorship. Military dictatorships in Latin America are, therefore, part of a context of global political dispute, being unfolding of the Cold War. Operation Condor lost its strength with the democratic transitions, but the marks left by it and by dictatorships are permanent. Traumatized societies were left, carrying the pain of repression, torture, the loss of loved ones, forever.
Shortly after the beginning of American interference with Operation Condor, the first country to align itself with an autocratic government was Brazil. In 1963, João Goulart managed to approve a plebiscite that restructured presidentialism and, consequently, strengthened the action of the Executive power. At that moment, João Goulart offered the country a set of changes foreseen by the Basic social Reforms. Gaining the quick support of union leaders, nationalists, and left-wing political parties, João Goulart was no longer able to assume the dubious behavior that marked populism. Already at that moment, groups with a conservative tendency were distrustful of the social projects of the Basic Reforms. With that, on March 31, 1964, the military took up arms and struck democracy and populism in Brazil at once. Three days later, João Goulart went into exile in Uruguay and a military junta assumed power in Brazil. On April 15, General Castello Branco takes office, becoming the first of five soldiers to govern the country during that period. Thus begins the military dictatorship in Brazil, which will last until 1985.
Nine years after the beginning of the Brazilian military government, Chile also suffered a coup d’état. On September 11, 1973, against then-president Salvador Allende. The new regime, led by General Augusto Pinochet until 1990, was characterized by intense repression and censorship and caused the death of more than three thousand people, the torture of approximately 40 thousand and the exile of thousands of Chilean citizens. Alvador Allende was the Chilean president elected in the 1970 presidential elections. He was a socialist politician, and his candidacy received the support of a coalition of leftist parties in Chile that became known as Popular Unity. Allende’s government was marked by the serious economic crisis and political polarization in the country. After taking over the Chilean government, President Allende put his measures to socialize the economy into practice. For this, an agrarian reform program was initiated in the country and the nationalization and nationalization of banks, copper mines and countless large companies that were installed in the country. The measures imposed by Allende brought great dissatisfaction in large corporations installed in Chile, as these companies saw their economic interests in the country at risk. In addition, the socialist policy implemented by Allende generated discontent in the United States, which maintained a policy of non-acceptance of socialism in Latin America.
Three years after the implementation of General Augusto Pinochet’s regime, another country in the southern cone suffered a coup d’état. In 1976, a military junta overthrew the government of Argentine President María Estela Martínez, known as Isabelita Perón, widow and successor of Juan Domingo Perón, who died while in power. Formed by General Jorge Rafael Videla, Admiral Emilio Massera and Brigadier Orlando Agostí, under the justification of containing mismanagement and inflation, and combating socialist influence, the junta instituted a military dictatorship based on the violation of human rights and the delivery of country’s economy. Congress was dissolved, judges were removed, and freedom of the press and expression were suppressed. The military called the measures they announced, “National Reorganization”, in a set of plans and social and economic policies developed by the State as a justification for the installation of terror and to contain guerrilla actions Over a period of 20 years, these dictatorial regimes sponsored torture, censorship, and the rigging of institutions based, in many ways, like the authoritarianisms carried out in the period of populism. The southern cone dictatorships shared many similarities and shared an equal down of those regimes.
RE-DEMOCRACY
| LATIN AMERICA AFTER THE 80’S
With the weakening of dictatorial governments from the 1980s onwards, the countries of the Southern Cone were approaching more favorable moments for the flourishing of democratic regimes. In 1984 IN Argentina, the government began to investigate disappearances and human rights violations, under great popular pressure. The country’s transitional justice thus became an example for the continent, also for the trials and punishments of torturers. Chile, in its first year of re-democratization (1990), created the first truth commission in the country, to investigate crimes against humanity committed during the dictatorship period. In 1992, the Reparation Law came into effect, with the aim of repairing the families of direct victims of the dictatorship. In 2010, the Museum of Memory and Human Rights was inaugurated. In the Brazilian case, the Amnesty Law (1979), still in full dictatorship, was a key point in the re-democratization process. Despite this, it is a law that also benefited the perpetrators, thus making legal investigations and convictions more difficult for the serious violations of human rights that occurred in the regime. In 1995, ten years after the military left the government, and with a lot of struggles on the part of the relatives of people killed and disappeared by the Brazilian State, Law nº 9.140/1995 was formulated.
The Latin American experience of redemocratization, starting in the 1970s to the mid-1980s, has a peculiar characteristic: it coincides with two other global geopolitical and economic factors that have influenced well-being. workers’ well-being and quality of life, directly and indirectly. The first of these is the rise of neoliberalism. The doctrine, strongly influenced by the ideas of the Chicago School, began to be put into practice in the mid-1970s, in Chile led by the dictator Augusto Pinochet. But it was in the 1980s, mainly through American President Ronald Reagan, that neoliberalism began to spread around the world. In addition to neoliberalism, another geopolitical factor that coincides with the redemocratization of Latin America is the weakening of the socialist bloc until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. It is no coincidence that the neoliberal doctrine advanced, in the 1980s and 1990s, in the as the socialist bloc weakens and ceases to exist. The fall of the Berlin wall, for example, took place in the same year as the Washington Consensus, in 1989.
CONCLUSION
Latin America is historically a region of political instability, having gone through several breaks since the beginning of the 20th century, not only in the presidentialism as well as democracy, with the establishment of dictatorships in numerous countries. However, since the third wave of redemocratization, in the late 1970s, democracy was established on the continent of more lasting way. It cannot be said that democracy has remained unshaken since the period mentioned above, but since then there have been few cases of failure. However, the same cannot be said about cracks in presidentialism, the which even encouraged some authors to have pessimistic views about the democratic stability on the continent. Therefore, I conclude that the current scenario in Latin America continues to be a picture of injustices, tyrannies, and political economic instabilities, of populist and military governments. Both represent an equal crime for Latin American countries, because in both cases, there was a pairing of institutions, strengthening of local oligarchies, cult of government personality (where in the recent case it is nostalgia for the military regimes in LA), and state-sponsored tyrannies. Latin countries suffered the loss of their sovereignty when they were influenced externally by the United States, which in fact played a crucial role in the implementation and maintenance of these governments for almost 20 years. That is why it is impossible to say that Argentina, Brazil, and Chile did not suffer losses that were enough to cause damage in their democracies in the present days. Violence, corruption, risk of political rupture, economic instability, cult of personalism, bipolarity between extreme right and left spectrum. When read, it seems like a citation of the facts of Latin America between the 60s and 70s, however, it is a finding of Latin America today, which has not overcome the ghosts of its most recent tyrannical past.
RAYAN DOS PASSOS 2022
| BIBLIOGRAPHY
De La Torre, Carlos. The Oxford handbook of Populism (2017) – Populism in Latin America. Oxford University Press, 2017.
Costantini, Jaime, and Bittencourt, Mauricio (2013). Index of political instability in Brazil, 1889-2009. 2013. Federal University of Paraná (UFPR).
Rapoport, M., & Laufer, R. (2000). ESTADOS UNIDOS ANTE EL BRASIL Y LA ARGENTINA: Los golpes militares de la década del ´60 [Master’s Thesis].
O’Donnell, G. A. (1972). MODERNIZACION Y GOLPES MILITARES TEORIA, COMPARACION Y EL CASO ARGENTINO. Instituto de Desarrollo Económico Y Social.
Pérez, O. J. (2009). El crimen y el apoyo a los golpes militares en América Latina [Central Michigan University].
Nunn, F. M. (1995, June 1). The South American Military and (Re) Democratization: Professional Thought and Self Perception. Source: Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs , Summer, 1995, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Summer 1995), pp. 1-56.
Duque Daza, J. (2019). Los golpes militares revisitados Sudamérica periodo 1960-1980.
RAINEY, G. E. (1969). Contemporary American Foreign Policy: The Official Voice. Macmillan Company, Incorporated.
Fischer, K. (2015). The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Influence of Neoliberals in Chile before, during, and after Pinochet. Harvard University Press.
Muñoz, H., & Wesson, R. G. (1986). Latin American Views of U.S. Policy. Praeger, 1986.