Bad Times for Brazil

Brazil's Bolsonaro celebrates - but should Brazilians be celebrating?

One of the planet's largest, most multiethnic democracies will be governed by a racist, homophobic, misogynist with an admiration for dictators...and it's not the United States.

It's mind-boggling that a man who insults black and indigenous people could be elected president of a nation with a black and indigenous majority. But it's no more crazy than that a man who disparages women could be elected by a nation with a female majority.

Both of these things - as well as newly-elected Brazilian Pres. Jair Bolsonaro's endorsements of dictatorship and mass executions - should disqualify him from being president of anything but a neo-Nazi encampment in northwest Idaho.

Bolsonaro's presidency - part of an authoritarian wave across Latin America - will test Brazil's young and feeble democracy, already under huge strain because one former president is in prison for corruption and many other politicians are also under suspicion.

Brazil is far from the only nation in the region slipping into authoritarianism, or in danger of it. Venezuela and Nicaragua are ruled by self-described socialists who are really just authoritarians with plans for becoming presidents for life. Bolivia's Evo Morales appears to want to do the same thing. Many observers believe that Mexico's newly elected president, a leftist populist known as Amlo, believes more in himself than in democratic institutions. And Amlo will also enjoy majority support in Congress, giving him vast powers to reshape Mexico's institutions.

But if Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega is brutal and Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro is incompetent and brutal, both have at least preserved the forms of democracy in their nations. Bolsonaro, judging by his admiration for dictatorship, doesn't appear likely to do the same if he manages to consolidate power in Brazil.

Just a few decades ago, Latin America was emerging from a dark period of military strongmen into democracy. Today, many nations are electing authoritarians. Latin American democracy may have no more than a brief, passing phase.

Bolsonaro's victory is a massive tragedy for the environment, in a nation which is steward for most of the Amazon rainforest. And it will be a long-term tragedy for human rights and many young lives if Bolsonaro follows thru with his crackdown against criminals and popularizes gun ownership - a policy which has multiplied the U.S.'s homicide rate.

Perhaps Latin America's democracies suffered from a fatal error at birth by adopting presidential rather than parliamentary systems. In parliamentary systems the leader, or prime minister, must work his way up through the ranks, making compromises along the way. That process might produce predominantly mediocre, middling sorts of personalities. But, at least, the populists and extremists usually get filtered out.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Latin American Democracy in Retreat

Authoritarian Venezuelan
Pres. Nicolas Maduro.

In the mid-2000s, Colombia's popular and hard-right Pres. Alvaro Uribe wanted to run for a third consecutive term. But the Constitutional Court ruled against the idea, saving Colombia's fragile democratic system from falling into the grip of a strongman. Uribe instead selected his defense minister, Juan Manuel Santos, to run as his succesor. Santos won - but rebelled against his mentor, creating a sort of alternation of powers.

Similarly, in Ecuador Pres. Rafael Correa tried to maintain power by selecting his own succesor. But that man, Lenin Moreno, also rebelled against his mentor, saving Ecuador's instituations from becoming puppets of a strongman.

But Argentina did appear to be falling victim to a personality cult under the corrupt Kirchner dynasty - until Argentineans finally voted against them and elected Pres. Mauricio Macri, who is trying to clean up the Kirchners' mess.

Nicaragua's authoritarian president-for-life Daniel Ortega
and his wife, who is also his vice president.

Other Latin nations, however, have been less fortunate. In Bolivia, Nicaragua and, most notoriously, Venezuela, leftist leaders are turning themselves into presidents for life, sometimes with disastrous results in corruption, human welfare and the economy.

Now, some fear that Mexican president-elect Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO, a
leftist populist admirer of Cuba's ex-dictator Fidel Castro who will have few checks on his power and who appears to believe more in himself than in democratic institutions, will weaken Mexican democracy, which has just suffered through a presidential term marred by flagrant corruption and is under strain from chronic drug violence.

Jair Bolsanero, potential
dictator of Brazil?

But now the greatest threats to Latin democracy are coming from Washington D.C., where a leader
 who patently does not believe in democracy is setting a deplorable example for nations which once looked to the U.S. for democratic guidance, and Brazil, which is about to elect a racist, homophobic misogenist and unapologetic admirer of military dictatorship, as president.

Brazil's importance can hardly be exaggerated. It is the largest nation in Latin America and the world's fourth-largest democracy. It is also the protector - if it can be called that - of the Amazon, one of the planet's treasures of biodiversity and storehouse of carbon dioxide. And if virtual Brazilian Pres. Jair Bolsonaro is even more extreme than Trump, Brazil's institutions are much weaker.

It's all enough to make one wonder whether Latin America (and even the planet's) brief experiment with liberal democracy was only that, and experiment, which is failing.








By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours