After a Good Year in Latin America, Some Predictions for 2011
After a Good Year in Latin America, Some Predictions for 2011
"2010 has been particularly active for hemispheric elections, and the results are instructive as we look for clues of what may come in 2011," writes COA's Eric Farnsworth in PODER Hispanic.
Democracy requires more than elections. But democracy cannot exist without elections, which serve as a barometer of public opinion and offer citizens the opportunity to impact their government’s policies. This year, 2010, has been particularly active for hemispheric elections, and the results are instructive as we look for clues of what may come in 2011.
Here’s the executive summary: voters in the United States are looking for big change to the status quo, while voters in Brazil, Chile, and Colombia are largely satisfied with their course; Venezuelans, meanwhile, are increasingly anxious but not yet ready to demand wholesale change. Hemispheric relations will reflect these political realities.
November’s U.S. midterm election returned the House of Representatives to the Republicans, based largely on the sour political mood engendered by the sluggish economy. Policy toward the Western Hemisphere—not a top issue in the campaigns—will also be affected, particularly to the extent that Republicans believe the Obama administration has been too quiescent in the region. Policy toward Cuba and Venezuela could sharpen, and Iran’s continued forays into the region will draw greater notice. Neither agriculture nor immigration policy will change appreciably, thus continuing these regional irritants. On the plus side, security support—particularly with regard to Mexico, the Caribbean Basin, and Colombia—will likely continue or even expand, and the defeat of California’s referendum to legalize recreational marijuana will contribute to regional drug control efforts. Trade agreements with Colombia and Panama could advance.
At the same time, Brazil’s strong economic performance has perhaps been the main regional story for 2010, and as a direct result President Lula’s hand-picked successor, Dilma Rousseff, has been given a mandate to continue his policies. Brazilians are satisfied and want their broad-based economic growth to continue. Difficulties such as education, tax reform and physical infrastructure will challenge the new government, but the simple fact is that Brazil has been on a tear since the mid-1990s and, as the October 31 presidential elections showed, the electorate has no particular desire or need for fundamental changes, either domestically or in terms of foreign policy. Here’s the rub: an increasingly confident Brazil pursuing a more robust policy in the Americas and elsewhere, combined with a potential U.S. Congressional effort to reassert a different vision with regard to countries such as Iran or Venezuela that it perceives to be threats to regional democracy and security, could well result in a rocky patch in bilateral relations—unless both the U.S. and Brazil actively look for ways to draw closer together.
At the same time, voters in Chile and Colombia are looking to continue on their current path, and even pick up the pace. Chileans voted into office Sebastián Piñera, the first non-Concertación, conservative since the Pinochet era, in hopes of enhancing Chile’s global economic competitiveness. They were promptly rewarded by the new president’s steady leadership during the spring earthquake and the amazing rescue of the 33 miners that captured the world’s attention. Both of these efforts, of course, contrast with the government of Haiti’s response to its earthquake in January, which devastated the capital and killed a quarter-million people. As we approach the one-year anniversary, hundreds of thousands of Haitians remain in squalid tent cities without prospects for near-term change. This has to be the hemisphere’s most glaring failure in 2010.
Colombians, too, voted for continuity this year, electing Juan Manuel Santos to replace outgoing President Álvaro Uribe. Santos, the former defense minister, is committed to ending the long-running insurgency and continuing to fight illegal drugs, but he ran on a campaign of domestic economic growth, and it’s this agenda that captured the imagination of Colombians. It’s also what caused him to seek early rapprochement with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, while continuing efforts of his predecessor to open foreign markets to Colombian products and draw additional direct foreign investment. For their part, Venezuelans voted in their own elections for numerous opposition candidates in late September, a warning sign to the Chávez administration that its domestic popularity cannot be taken for granted.
Looking ahead, attention will shortly turn to upcoming elections in Argentina and Peru, neither of which can be predicted with any certainty. The late October death of former president Néstor Kirchner, husband of current President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, unexpectedly scrambled Argentine politics in ways that are not yet clear, and the spring elections in Peru remain completely up in the air.
In hemispheric relations, 2010 was a fascinating year; 2011 will be, too.
