Analysis: Political terrain shifts in Latin America

The Cold War is over, but in Latin America the Russians are coming. And the Chinese. And the Indians. While the United States is fixated on Iraq, Iran and Afghanistan halfway across the globe, closer to home the economic and political terrain of Latin America is changing quickly.

Meanwhile, a new generation of Latin leaders schooled in the social teachings of the Catholic church is emerging, augmenting moves that are taking their nations further from the U.S. orbit.

Some recent events should give Americans pause:

* In September, Bolivia expelled the American ambassador. In sympathy, Venezuela did the same, while Honduras delayed the approval of the new American ambassador there.

* In retaliation, the United States expelled the Bolivian and Venezuelan ambassadors.

* This month a Russian fleet entered the Caribbean off Caracas, Venezuela, for joint maneuvers with the Venezuelan navy. And Venezuela is looking for a billion-dollar loan agreement to buy Russian arms, and to acquire nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

* Russia and Iran have deepened diplomatic ties to send professional and technical people to help Venezuela and Bolivia develop some of the richest oil and gas fields in the Western Hemisphere.

* In 2007, the Mittal Group of India, in a joint venture with the state, bought the largest iron ore deposits in Latin America, located just inside Bolivia’s eastern border with industry-hungry Brazil.

* Earlier this year China’s president toured Latin America seeking agreements about trade and natural resources.

Since the year 2000 Bolivia has suffered through a period of nearly constant social protests and convulsions, with much government violence. Five presidents have been unseated in five years, all because of failed economic policies.

The indigenous vote

The first indigenous president, Evo Morales, was elected on a platform of land reform, nationalization of resources, and writing a new constitution to include indigenous civil rights and land rights. With overwhelming support from indigenous groups, he won with the unprecedented total of 54 percent of the vote in December 2005. In a recall vote in August, he received 67 percent approval.

The changing scene in Latin America is part of a decades-old decolonization process. It has been the result of the failed policies of neoliberal, free-market capitalism that have particularly excluded the indigenous poor. The criticism and popular street protests of indigenous citizens generated detailed political platforms and programs for change from progressive intellectuals and religious schooled in social justice discourse since the 1970s and the time of the Latin American fascist dictatorships.

-- CNS/Reuters/Rafael Urzua: Paraguay’s President Fernando Lugo attends Mass at a Catholic church in Limpio, Paraguay, Aug. 17.The recent election of an ex-bishop, Fernando Lugo, to be president of Paraguay was notable for at least two reasons. First, it essentially threw out the ruling class that had presided over more than 70 years of one-party corruption. Second, the winning platform came directly from the social justice teachings of the Catholic church, which focused on human and cultural rights of indigenous peoples and the need for a more equitable distribution of the nation’s resources for the common good.

Paraguay extended the progressive social initiatives of its Latin-American colleagues.

Similarly, Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa was elected in December 2006. He has the backing of large indigenous minorities who reside in the mountains of Ecuador, many schooled as catechists in base communities by progressive bishops since the 1970s.

Correa proclaimed as his platform the ethical values of the teaching of the church on economics that he learned at the University of Louvain in Belgium. These values are now enshrined in Ecuador’s new constitution, approved last month by a national referendum.

U.S. foreign policy in Latin America, meanwhile, continues to miss the beat of profound change sweeping Latin-American societies and democratic states.

Also somewhat out of tune is Latin-American Catholic leadership and its pastoral planning for the largest number of Catholic faithful in the world. Recent public conflicts between Catholic church leadership in Argentina, Venezuela and Bolivia and those countries’ governments will have to be worked out. The governments believe the church has aligned itself with the old oligarchs and elite classes in a time of great change. They accuse the church of not proclaiming its own social teachings about the common good and just distribution of a nation’s wealth.

This dissonance continues despite the publication last year of social analysis and pastoral guidelines coming out of the Latin-American bishops’ meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in Aparecida, Brazil.

Decolonization

The overriding, all-embracing Latin-American leitmotif in both church and state continues to be de-colonization. As seen from the South, Latin America first suffered colonial political and economic submission to Spain and then, since 1823, a colonial economic submission to the United States.

The process of throwing off that yoke of dependency is taking place in the midst of globalization. Latin-American leaders are adamantly and independently opening themselves to the world. At the same time they are unilaterally reopening arguments about the proper role of private (mostly transnational) ownership of natural resources and industries versus a new appreciation of state ownership and control of these resources with more equal distribution of national riches for the common good.

Entering the 21st century, the bottom had fallen out of the economy of both Argentina and Brazil. Their presidents, too, were subject to quick changes from blockades and massive street protests as their monies lost 66 percent of their value. The causes were mostly the same: fiscal policies (pay off your unjustly incurred debts with terrible internal social costs and sell all your industries and natural resources to outside investors) imposed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

In other words, the social and political changes of Latin America are rippling through the hemisphere from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego. The new governments are not anti-American. They are opposed to America’s colonial policies. They are a natural reaction to failed programs of debt and trade in a democratic society. People voted out the old guard and asked for new policies. The U.S. government and the American people will have to live with other people’s free choices. Colonialism is dead.

Meanwhile, developments are being molded by current events. “Capitalism” and “socialism” are being redefined by such things as the Wall Street bailout. Labels and slogans like “leftist” or “socialist” or “state” have become weary flag words empty of contemporary content, because these words are being redefined daily in the streets of Latin America. Decolonizing is indeed complex, but inevitable in church and state.

Fr. Michael J. Gilgannon is a priest of the Kansas City-St. Joseph, Mo., diocese. He has been a missionary in Bolivia for the past 34 years.

National Catholic Reporter October 17, 2008