We present below the translated version of the notes on the webinar “Democracies in Dispute: Latin America”. The webinar was held on May, 7th, 2024, as part of the Pending and Emerging Debates Forum. The original report, in Spanish, is available here.
In 2024, more than 60 countries will have elections at different levels of government [1]. The disputes will not only be electoral, but also about the very meaning of democracies with a struggle for political and narrative power among multiple actors, including populists, who have instrumentalized the democratic concept and practices to erode democracy from within. It is therefore a decisive year for the progressive camp to be ready to mobilize majorities to defend democracy and human rights.
Aiming to debating this intense electoral cycle, we resume the conversations of the Pending and Emerging Debates Forum, a joint regional initiative of the Sexuality Policy Watch, Akahatá, Promsex, Puentes, and Synergia, convening a series of debates that will take place throughout the year. We expect that these conversations will help activists and researchers working in the field of gender, sexuality, and human rights to better situate their actions and projects in what is undoubtedly a complex and very uncertain situation [2].
This cycle of debates began with an electoral panorama of Latin America, the contents of which are presented in this report written by the Argentine journalist Mariana Carbajal.
Elections in Latin America
The debate on electoral dynamics in Latin America offered a regional overview and specific analysis of the electoral processes in Mexico (June 2) and Uruguay (October). It was moderated by Sonia Corrêa, coordinator of the Observatory of Sexuality and Politics – SPW and was presented by lawyer and political scientist Juan De la Puente, who opened the conversation with a regional perspective; Fernanda Díaz de León, from Ipas Latin America, who analyzed the electoral context in Mexico; and Pablo Álvarez, from the Observatory of Women and Health Uruguay (MYSU), who offered an overview of the situation in Uruguay.
Sonia opened the session by posing the question about the future of democracies. She invited us to think of this complex situation, as yet undefined, “as a landscape in motion in which there are many forces and dynamics at play and a quite reasonable degree of unpredictability”. She said that we must prepare for “negative outcomes” while noting, however, that we must not simply subscribe to visions of “pure catastrophe”.
She then presented a map of the election cycle foreseen for this year, clarifying that some key elections were still to be held [3], such as, for example, the local elections in Brazil, which will take place with Jair Bolsonaro defeated, prosecuted, and at risk of imprisonment; at the same time, the ultra-right, his electoral and political base, is still very active. There are also European Parliament elections that will take place at the beginning of June.
At the same time, some of the 2024 elections that have already happened show rather paradoxical results. For example, there was the return to power, after almost a decade, of the moderate right-wing in Portugal, which did not obtain a majority in the National Assembly, while there was a significant growth of the far-right Chega party. After the elections, there were concerns that Chega could be part of a coalition government, as happened in Uruguay in 2019, but this did not happen. In addition, Sonia highlighted the growth of the Livre party, which represents the new left and emphasized the importance of the commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Carnation Revolution on April 25, interpreting it as a sign that Portuguese society seems to be mobilized against the return of fascism or the rise of neo-fascism.
She also commented on the contexts of Turkey and the United Kingdom, where there have been local elections in the first half of the year. She stressed that the results indicate that both the Erdoğan regime and the British right-wing Brexiters appear to be losing ground. In the UK, more specifically, polls are projecting a possible victory for the Labour Party by a margin of up to 20% of the vote in the general election called for early July.
In Latin America, however, according to Sonia, the signs have been less auspicious. 2024 began in the wake of last year’s elections, particularly in Ecuador and Argentina, which could be described as “quite catastrophic”. These were followed by the elections in El Salvador, which consolidated Bukele’s autocracy, and then in Panama, “the results of which are also worrying”.
Latin American Panorama: the difficulty of tracking regional trends
Juan de la Puente highlighted three factors that define the current situation in Latin America:
– The difficulty of establishing regional trends due to the exceptions that have arisen in recent years, such as in El Salvador, Argentina, Peru, and Chile.
– The decline of US influence in the region, exemplified by the long period without a Bolivian ambassador to the US and the increase of Chinese economic influence throughout the region.
– The absence of alternative models to neoliberalism in the last 20 years, which had a great impact on progressive movements.
He pointed out how the ultra-right is contributing to the erosion of the democratic pact, noting that this erosion is not only due to the authoritarianism of the right. In other words, a wider variety of situations and events such as left-wing authoritarianism in Venezuela and Nicaragua, state corruption in Guatemala and Peru, the crises of progressive governments in Ecuador and Chile, and the recent “disaster” of the left-wing in Argentina must be taken into account in this assessment.
On the other hand, it is necessary, according to Juan, not to forget the examples of effective democratic politics in the region, such as the formation of anti-authoritarian coalitions in Colombia, Brazil, Mexico, and Honduras. These coalitions, led by figures such as Petro, Lula, AMLO, and Xiomara Castro, are, despite their limits, “promises” of change and recovery of the sense of national unity “as an element that accompanies the defense of democracy or the fight against authoritarianism.”
He also warned about the ongoing change in electoral processes in Latin America, which have shifted from debates based on detailed programs “with greater partisan identity” to the formation of broader coalitions as a strategy to respond to authoritarianism. He said that this is not yet reflected in the electoral prospects for 2024 but that this should be a path to be pursued in the future. He observed that the current regional political scenario entails a clear diversification or even polarization of social protests, since even though there are demonstrations against neoliberalism, there is also a proliferation of conservative protests, that is, of ultra-right-wing forces, as was seen during the pandemic. In relation to this paradox, he added:
“What I mean by this is that elections are perhaps no longer and will not be sufficient in the short term to renew democracy in the region. To elucidate the exercise of power, which is today trapped in a kind of asphyxiation of presidentialism, in the exhaustion of the second rounds in several countries, much more open games are underway that go beyond the electoral process”.
Juan also pointed out that the view that the region is polarized is not false, but it is incomplete. There are countries where the political options do not necessarily imply a contrast between right and left: “So polarization, the rise of the ultra-right, the erosion of the democratic pact, are not sides of the same coin, but sides of a die that rolls in each country with a spectacular property and originality”. In other words, contexts matter a lot because these dynamics are similar – they have common elements – but they manifest themselves very differently depending on local conditions.
On the other hand, he noted that winning a second round of elections no longer guarantees the stability of the elected president, citing recent examples in Latin America. Both democratic and conservative mobilizations can influence political power, as seen in the cases of Dilma in Brazil and Castillo in Peru. In such contexts, the quality of democracy depends more on electoral transparency and the ability to mobilize society before and after the elections, he stressed.
In this same context, we may be witnessing the end of the cycle of “constituentism” in Latin America. An example of this is Chile, where the constituent process has ended without a new constitution. Although initially 78% voted to change the constitution, the final proposal was rejected by 56%, suggesting fragmentation and lack of a long-term policy there.
Finally, Juan stressed the need to renew and transform democracy and the economy in Latin America, beyond simply defending possibly obsolete institutions and neoliberal models. He stressed the crucial importance of the debate on authoritarianism and democracy, on the one hand, and, on the other, “to address the demands of a radicalized society faced with the abandonment of the state, with hunger, with insecurity”. He mentioned that, according to several reports, societies today support democracy but also vote for leaders who can weaken it. Even if this is paradoxical, Juan thinks that “there is no room for pessimism”.
“The victory of Lula, of Arevalo in Guatemala and the defeat of the Conservative Coalition in Mexico give us a chance to discuss a different moment in Latin America, where there is probably not much clarity regarding the proposals, but there is room for a new defense of democracy from the perspective of national unity”, he observed.
Electoral perspectives in Mexico and the transnationalized far right
Fernanda Díaz de León began her remarks with a description of the political parties and their alliances, highlighting the evident blurring of the programs of the different platforms for the June 2 elections [4] . She stressed that these are the largest elections in Mexican history due to the enormous number of positions at stake: more than 19,000 at the federal, local, and municipal levels, including the presidency of the republic and 9 of the 32 local governments; 500 seats for deputies and 128 seats for senators in the federal congress; and 31 of the 32 state congresses in their entirety. In addition, she made a brief presentation of the main political forces at play in the electoral scenario. Starting with the parties, Fernanda briefly described the PT, the Movimiento Ciudadano and the Green Party:
– PT (Workers’ Party): Although small, with a long tradition in Mexico, it calls itself a leftist party.
– Movimiento Ciudadano (Citizens’ Movement) has recently gained strength and currently governs the states of Nuevo León and Jalisco, which are two of the most important areas in political and economic terms after Mexico City. Although it also identifies itself as leftist, in these states it governs, it has not presented or supported any initiative to decriminalize abortion.
– Green Party: It is a party that today is allied with Morena. It presents itself as an environmentalist party, but its focus is not necessarily on the defense of the environment or economic and social rights. Rather, it seeks to maintain its registration as a party and access public financing.
He then spoke of the largest and most competitive parties.
– The PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party): For more than 80 years, the PRI ruled Mexico, until 2000, when the alternation with the National Action Party (PAN) began. In modern history the PRI has occupied a central position in Mexican politics, but since 2000 it has experienced ups and downs in its popularity and power.
– The PRD (Partido de la Revolución Democrática) split from the PRI in the 1980s. It governed Mexico City many times and was responsible for the decriminalization of abortion in 2007 (the first state to do so). It was historically a leftist party, whose influence has declined drastically in recent years, particularly after the emergence of Morena [5].
– The PAN (National Action Party) represents the old partisan right-wing whose origins date back to the so-called Cristero War of the 1920s. It returned to political life after the electoral reform of the late 1990s. The PAN has been the gateway for the extreme right-wing Catholic organization El Yunque to infiltrate governmental structures during the governments of Vicente Fox (2000–2006) and Felipe Calderón (2006–2012).
– Morena (Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional) was created in 2011 as a political movement to support the candidacy of López Obrador, then a member of the PRD, for the presidency. It then registered as a party, recruiting its cadres and electorate mainly from the PRD. Morena is positioned on the left of the regional political scene, but in domestic politics it has established “questionable alliances” such as, for example, with the evangelical Social Encounter Party, which has already lost its electoral registration. However, before its disappearance, many of its deputies joined the ranks of Morena. One such figure is Lili Telles, who has now moved to the PAN but was a senator for Morena and is well known for her stances against sexual and reproductive rights.
According to Fernanda, in May, all forecasts predicted that Morena’s candidate, Claudia Sheinbaum, would win against a coalition formed by the PRI, PRD, and PAN, which, until 2018, had been historic enemies. Heading the opposition, very significantly, was another female candidate, Xóchtil Gálvez. Those predictions have been validated, making Sheinbaum the first woman president in Mexican history [6].
Fernanda also shared information about the Mexican ultra-right. She mentioned, for example, Eduardo Verastegui, a Mexican political activist who leads anti-gender offensives in Mexico. Verastegui tried to run for the presidency but failed to get on the ballot because he did not get the necessary signatures. Nonetheless, he announced the creation of a far-right party that could eventually run in the 2030 elections.
Fernanda, above all, delved into El Yunque, an ultra-Catholic paramilitary secret society. In doing so, she clarified a key point: it is not that Latin America is a target of these ultra-conservative movements but that the region and, in particular, Mexico, with the case of El Yunque, has been a nest of production of thought, strategy, and formations of the ultra-right that has long been in dialogue with Europe, especially Spain.
She noted, for example, that in 2021, the Investigative Journalism Project Intolerance Network revealed that through El Yunque and since the PAN governments, Mexico has been a center of a wide ultra-right network that later expanded to Spain and today has a strong global structure with a presence in 50 countries. In 2001, in Spain, Ignacio Arzuaga, who was already part of that network, founded HazteOír and later in 2013 his digital arm CitizenGo, which is today widely influential in the region, Europe, and Africa. According to Fernanda, even though the ultra-right is very old and extensive in Mexico, “after the PAN periods from 2000 to 2012, these forces have not been able to gain electoral traction at the federal level beyond certain states that are traditionally Catholic”.
When asked what to expect from Claudia Sheinbaum’s government, Fernanda stated that based on Ipas’ analysis in collaboration with other groups, they do not expect a marked change. Sheinbaum’s government in Mexico City “was one of the most repressive against women’s demonstrations, for example”; doubts persist as to what her relationship with feminists will be like. In addition, in terms of sexual and reproductive rights, specifically, Fernanda pointed out that during her term as governor, there was little progress, even though during that period a court ruling decriminalized abortion nationally.
She also assessed that, from a feminist perspective – considering the poor state of the health system, the persistence of structural violence and the growing presence of the military in public policy – one cannot project what might happen in a second Morena government without taking into account the inconsistencies that have marked AMLO’s tenure and Claudia’s government in Mexico City. For this reason, the outlook facing civil society is to continue mobilizing to build the rule of law and a strong and participatory democracy, which will continue to be at risk.
Uruguay: the probable return of Frente Amplio
Before addressing the Uruguayan context more directly, Pablo Álvarez made a general comment on the regional political climate, stressing that, in his view, the region is experiencing a fatigue with hegemonic political thinking:
“A few years ago, many of us talked about how the old did not finish dying and the new did not finish being born. Today it is perhaps a little worse, because the old has not finished dying and the new has not finished announcing itself. We are in a crisis which should not be overlooked because the analyses we make should be oriented to a transformational purpose beyond this particular moment.”
Returning to one of Juan’s initial remarks, he stressed that this crisis must be situated in the new geopolitical scenario, since we are facing the fall or exhaustion of the American hegemony. This is because, at other times in regional history, geopolitical contradictions have conditioned contradictions, crises, and national trajectories, as happened during the Cold War. However, according to Pablo, it should be noted that the current geopolitical dynamics involve tensions and confrontations – between the US and China, between Russia and the West, not to mention the less debated tensions between China and India in Asia – which are not so clearly expressed at the national level. That should be the subject of greater attention on our part, among other reasons, because at the moment, due to geographical and cultural distances, Asian models do not seem adaptable to our countries. However, that does not mean that they cannot be in the future, as is already the case in other regions such as Africa.
Between the early 1900s and the late 1990s, the Colorado Party was the main party in Uruguay. On the other hand, the Frente Amplio, the unified political left, created in 1971, has had a continuous rise since then, came to power in 2004, and stayed there until 2019, when it was defeated by a right-wing coalition led by the National Party. The Frente Amplio is unique in the continent in that under its umbrella there is a spectrum ranging from anarchists, communists, former guerrillas, and other leftist forces to Christian democrats. In the 2019 elections, the victorious right-wing coalition included the Colorado Party and the far-right party Cabildo Abierto, which obtained 11% of votes a few months after its creation. As we have analyzed in our 2020 study for the SPW research program [7], Cabildo Abierto emerged then as a new political actor that encapsulated the ultra-conservative narrative of the time. It is the only political party in Uruguay that explicitly defines itself as opposed to “gender ideology” and abortion rights, whose leadership is a former high-ranking military officer, and which evokes both the military structure and the “military family”, in line with dictatorship denialism.
In the regional context, it is interesting to mention that Cabildo has an ultra-conservative ideology but does not manifest adherence to the neoliberal discourse, which differentiates it from other ultra-right forces in the region. This approach is very typical of the Uruguayan political culture where the state is defended by almost all political parties, but it is also associated with a deep Hispanic logic, and, in this respect, Cabildo may have similarities with Vox and El Yunque, although there are differences.
Despite this rise of the right-wing in 2019, for the 2024 elections, polls indicate that Frente Amplio may win, with projections of 45% of the votes. On the other hand, data indicate that Cabildo Abierto may weaken as an electoral force. Even though there is a relatively high number of undecided voters, the prospects are quite favorable for Frente Amplio, even with possibilities of winning in the first round. These projections starkly contrast with the trends seen in other countries where there has also been a rapid growth of the ultra-right, such as Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and El Salvador.
In addition, Pablo noted that Uruguay also stands out in the region with respect to the valuation of democracy, even though, according to Latinobarómetro, since 2010, there has been a significant decline with respect to those percentages, which reached their lowest level in 2018. Another important aspect to consider is that Uruguay is a historically secular country where the separation between the state and the church was very early, while in recent times there has increasingly been a loss of trust in the Catholic Church. In contrast, the armed forces, which, since the democratic transition, had lost a lot of trust from the citizens, have gained credibility in recent years, and that is, in part, what explains the electoral success of Cabildo Abierto.
To understand this gain in credibility, it is important to consider that in Uruguay, as in Brazil and Mexico, progressive governments have invested heavily in bringing the armed forces closer to the population, a strategy that, in some way, “humanized” them. According to Pablo, one could say that in these cases there was a kind of “military-washing”. Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, he observed that this greater confidence in the military is associated, in all cases, with public security crises, from which the extreme right also benefits. In this sense, it must be considered that this is the result of a significant democratic neglect on the part of progressive forces, since we have spent the last decades with a focus on debates about wealth redistribution, minimizing problems of security and fear.
Finally, Pablo noted that in Uruguay there is also disinformation, fake news, and lawfare, or, in other words, new dynamics of pursuing political objectives through media articulation, lies, and legal action. To illustrate this “novelty”, he described a complex case that began with a complaint made by a trans woman, related to the government coalition and who has many followers on social networks, against the main senator of the government coalition that he was involved in cases of sexual abuse and sexual exploitation of minors. The complaint led to the arrest of the senator, who was charged in October 2023 for several of these crimes. However, that same influencer announced and co-sponsored a complaint against the leading candidate in the Frente Amplio primaries, accusing him of not paying for sexual relations with a trans woman and doing her violence. In the pre-election context, the new complaint created a great pandemonium, but soon after, the complainant denied the accusation, and it was possible to prove the falsity of the accusation. According to Pablo, the new scandal was intended to affect the electoral performance of the Frente Amplio and also attack the law that was approved in previous years on gender-based violence that includes trans people. The episode suggests that the electoral process will be intense and tense. In other words, even if the results of the polls are positive, Uruguayan democracy is also at stake.
Brief notes on the final discussion
Following the presentations, many questions were asked and the responses from Juan, Fernanda and Pablo were quite extensive. A group of questions addressed distortions noted in relation to the AMLO government and the limits and possibilities of the Sheinbaum government that takes office in October. The final discussions, above all, examined problems and paradoxes regarding how to define left and right today in relation to some key issues such as the aforementioned public security crisis and also corruption.
Although it is not possible to summarize these rich exchanges here, we consider it productive to revisit some final comments by Pablo Álvarez on what is happening in Uruguay in relation to the way in which the extreme right has appropriated and distorted central concepts of democracy. In Uruguay, the right has had many difficulties in responding to the democratic work of the left and, for that reason, it attacks using examples of the regional left that are not democratic. This is rather ineffective since the Frente Amplio has positioned itself critically with regard to these regimes, especially Ortega’s in Nicaragua.
However, the Uruguayan right and far right are involved in a strong ideological attack regarding the issue of freedom, but not in the brutal and grotesque style of Milei or Bolsonaro. As regards that specific crusade, Pablo emphatically stressed that the left is challenged to embrace the idea of freedom or, rather, to energetically remember that freedom is a progressive, transformative idea. According to him, this is urgent because we have abandoned freedom as a non-negotiable point of our worldview: “As the left, we cannot defend an idea of distribution, or of better distribution of resources, of more equality, or of fighting inequality, abdicating the principle of freedom.”
Brief biography of the speakers and the author of the report
Juan De la Puente, lawyer and political scientist, professor at the San Martín and San Marco universities in Lima, policy consultant for the United Nations system, columnist for the newspaper La República, directs the public affairs portal Pata Amarilla and has just published the book La humanidad vigilada: un alegato en favor del interes público. Juan gave a panoramic view of Latin America.
Fernanda Díaz de León, who addressed the Mexican context, specializes in the design of laws and public policies with a gender and human rights perspective. She is a lecturer and invited to courses and seminars at various Mexican universities and also to forums convened by state legislatures. She is currently the Director of Policies at Ipas Latin America.
Pablo Álvarez is a political scientist and member of the MYSU Observatory and was a national legislator in Uruguay, general director of the Ministry of Education and Culture and, later, general coordinator of the Planning and Budget Office of the Presidency of the Republic.
Mariana Carbajal is a journalist, writer, communication and gender consultant, and feminist activist from Argentina. Since 1991 she has written for the newspaper Página 12 on gender issues and the rights of women and LGBT+ people and is the editor of the weekly newsletter Feminismos. She was one of the founders of the PAR Network, Argentine Journalists Network for Non-Sexist Communication, and was part of the Ni Una Menos collective.
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Notes
1 See the interactive map created by Idea International at https://www.idea.int/initiatives/the-2024-global-elections-supercycle.
2 In conjunction with this cycle of debates, SPW’s periodic newsletters will also devote attention to the 2024 election cycle. The first covers elections that have taken place between January and June 2023 and is available at https://sxpolitics.org/sexual-politics-from-january-to-june-2024-part-1/23162 The second notes sexual policy trends in that changing landscape and is available at https://sxpolitics.org/es/politica-se- xual-from-January-to-June-2024-part-2/5890.
3 The map is available in note 1.
4 The discussion took place one month before the Mexican elections.
5 Due to the low number of seats won in the elections of 2024, the PRD lost its electoral registration.
6 The Mexican elections were briefly analyzed in the SPW newsletter of June 2024, accessible in note 1.
