That Barra hadn’t held a cabinet post in more than two years didn’t matter; in Argentina these days no politician is immune from the scorn of a once proud nation. As the country staggered through another week of political and economic turmoil, the life span of Argentine presidents came to be measured in hours rather than years. When Peronist Sen. Eduardo Duhalde donned the presidential sash last week, he became the fifth man to hold the job in 14 days. Vowing to complete the remaining two years of former president Fernando de la Rua’s term, Duhalde frankly acknowledged the blame he and his fellow politicians bear for the state of the nation: “We Peronists are part of the problem, as are all who have governed this country, whether they be soldiers or civilians.”
That view is gaining ground among hundreds of millions of Latin Americans whose hopes for a better future have been dashed by broken promises and economic stagnation. Argentina may be the worst of the lot, but throughout Latin America presidents and other politicians are facing the worst crisis of confidence in a decade. Call it the curse of rising expectations. Disillusioned by the lack of prosperity and freedom that were supposed to accompany economic liberalization and political reform, citizens from Mexico City to Lima are demanding that insulated and corrupt political elites put up–or get out. “This reflects a regional malaise,” says Francisco Sagasti, head of the Lima-based think tank Agenda: Peru. “The social and economic situation in Latin America has created a lot of pent-up frustration and impatience, and people aren’t as prepared to put up with cronyism and self-serving politicians.”
Not long ago Latin America seemed poised for greatness; the 1990s saw strong economic growth replace the “lost decades” of the ’70s and ’80s, and technocrat-capitalists rout the cliched dictators and socialists of old. The most optimistic Latin America boosters predicted that the rise of world-class economies and stable political systems would elevate the region to quasi First World status. For a time, the rosy scenarios seemed in reach. But in the last few years, anger over the corruption of long-entrenched political parties triggered seismic shifts of power. In Mexico, voters ended the 71-year rule of the Institutional Revolutionary Party, and in Argentina de la Rua took office in 1999 with a promise to halt the blatant graft that marked the decadelong rule of Peronist incumbent Carlos Menem’s government.
But something happened on the way to the promised land. In the volatile politics of the hemisphere, a beaming president-elect can be transformed into a lightning rod of popular disgust within a matter of months–or days. The dithering de la Rua’s paralysis in the face of a three-year-old downturn made him a laughingstock. His Peronist successor Adolfo Rodriguez Saa fared no better. Days after he was sworn in as caretaker president with a promise to suspend payments on Argentina’s $141 billion foreign debt, Rodriguez Saa was rocked by a new round of street demonstrations over controversial cabinet appointments. His presidency lasted barely a week before pressures from within his own party prompted him to resign, and neither of the Peronist congressmen who preceded and succeeded Rodriguez Saa as interim chief of state held the job for more than 48 hours.
A similar fate threatens self-styled outsiders elsewhere, who marketed themselves as fresh alternatives to sclerotic establishments. Take Alejandro Toledo. Peru’s first elected president of mainly Indian heritage was hailed as a hero, but then he awarded himself a monthly $18,000 salary; his initial approval rating of nearly 60 percent was halved in his first 100 days. During the first two years of his tenure, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his political allies won five consecutive elections by railing against the two parties that took turns looting the country throughout much of the 1980s and the 1990s. Today Chavez’s support base has shriveled to roughly one third of the populace, and many political analysts doubt he can last the year.
The backlash against politicians is rooted in the popular conception that like the regimes they replaced, they have lined their pockets at their countries’ expense. In a recent survey of Venezuelans, Caracas pollster Alfredo Keller found that 85 percent of the respondents considered their oil-soaked country to be among the richest in the world. Yet less than a quarter believed they were reaping their fair share of the wealth; most thought the elimination of government corruption would best ensure a decent standard of living for all Venezuelans. The pollster has encountered similar attitudes in far more impoverished countries like Guatemala and Bolivia, and Peruvians are wont to describe their country as a beggar seated on a throne of gold. “People basically believe that our nations are extraordinarily rich,” says Keller. “And since the people themselves know they are poor, their explanation is that their governments are composed of thieves.”
And it’s not just heads of state who are coming under fire. Many of the middle-class Argentines who banged pots during the December protests that led to de la Rua’s resignation held up placards denouncing the country’s Supreme Court justices as stooges of banks and other powerful interests.
It’s not surprising, then, that the debacle in Argentina has reopened the debate in many corners of Latin America over the neoliberal model of economic growth that Washington and the International Monetary Fund touted throughout the 1990s. Under de la Rua’s predecessor, Menem, Argentina embraced those policies with unparalleled gusto, privatizing hundreds of state-owned companies and opening the domestic market to imported goods. But “el modelo”–as the economic program was dubbed–also hastened the closure of inefficient Argentine factories and companies, and the resulting loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs caused many to question the free-market gospel. While those policies aren’t entirely responsible for the depression now plaguing Argentina, the politicians who earned six-figure salaries putting them in place have utterly discredited themselves for the foreseeable future. Says Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky, “People got fed up when they saw those political classes continuing to enjoy certain privileges while the economic situation worsened by the day.”
Those lessons have not been lost on Duhalde. The veteran politician is anything but a new face: he came up through the ranks of the Peronist party machine, winning his first election as a city councilman at the age of 31. Chosen as Menem’s running mate in the 1989 election that brought the Peronists back to power after a 13-year hiatus, Duhalde served as vice president for two years and went on to be elected governor of the most populous province twice. A year after his defeat in the 1999 presidential election at the hands of de la Rua, Duhalde spoke in unusually blunt terms about the shortcomings of Argentina’s political leadership: “We have a political class that is a piece of s–t, and I include myself in that.”
Duhalde served notice in his Inaugural speech as president that he would no longer play by the rules of the IMF. He brought congressmen to their feet with promises to abandon “an exhausted economic model” and introduce new policies that would restore growth. One of those policies will please his party’s rank and file: he has no intention of resuming the interest payments on the country’s massive foreign debt. That has cut off Argentina from all access to international credit markets, but the default in the short term may free up government funds for traditional Peronist social programs. Another policy initiative could prove to be his undoing, however. He plans to devalue the peso, which has been pegged to the dollar one to one for the past 10 years. That could decimate the disposable income of peso-earning homeowners and tenants who have taken out mortgages and leases quoted in dollars. Duhalde may soon find his fledgling government in the cross hairs of infuriated wage earners faced with foreclosure and soaring personal debt. To make matters worse, as shopkeepers began marking up prices last week, economists warned of an imminent return to hyperinflation.
Observers believe most of the economic pain will be limited to Argentina, but po-litical turmoil may not. The specter of revolving-door governments hangs heavy over Venezuela, especially, where the pri-vate sector brought the country to a stand-still in December with a lockout to protest 49 “revolutionary” decrees issued by Cha-vez to promote land reform and modify private-property rights. Opposition leaders in Venezuela have used de la Rua’s downfall to warn Chavez of the fate awaiting any leader who falls out of touch with his people. In Colombia, voters long ago tired of lame-duck President Andres Pastrana’s fruitless efforts to end a 38-year-old civil war and look forward to his departure in August.
Other leaders are faring better. Mexican President Vicente Fox, buffeted by a stubborn Congress and a U.S. recession, has fulfilled few of his campaign promises in his first year in office. But the afterglow of his victory over the long-ruling–and notoriously corrupt–Institutional Revolutionary Party has prevented his approval rating from sinking below 50 percent. In Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso is poised to become his country’s first democratically elected president to serve two consecutive terms when he steps down later this year. And Chile’s longstanding democratic traditions have helped Ricardo Lagos weather a sluggish economy and rising unemployment.
Those countries should be role models for the rest of the region. The chronic absence of a majority party in the Brazilian Congress, for example, has forced Cardoso to give opposition parties a say in governing. In Argentina, coalitions are usually seen as electoral vehicles that soon crumble after a new administration is installed. And in contrast to Chileans, Argentines grant neither their judiciary nor their Congress much legitimacy. “In Chile, people can agree or disagree with the policies of the institutions,” says Chilean political scientist Ricardo Israel, “but in the end the institutions have the last word.”
Sadly, Chile remains an exception in Latin America. In most societies institutions have thoroughly discredited themselves in the judgment of the people. That extends to the armed forces: for all the disenchantment with politics as usual, there is no clamor for a return to military rule. But that doesn’t represent a ringing endorsement of democratic rule and the political classes. Governments need to show themselves more accountable in an era when democracy and liberal economics have failed to deliver the goods for most Latin Americans. The appointment of truly independent ombudsmen and prosecutors might be a step in the right direction. Otherwise more people may follow the lead of the pot-clanging Argentines who took to the streets and brought down a government all by themselves.
