What do refugees, Rolex watches, and lithium mines have in common? They all figure in the carnival that Latin American politics has become. As Europe, the Middle East, and the United States tumble toward instability, many countries south of the Rio Grande are tumbling too. An outburst of political madness has gripped Latin America.
In the last few months, military officers in Bolivia have attempted a coup, soldiers in Ecuador stormed a foreign embassy, and El Salvador’s president was inaugurated in a Star Wars costume. On March 30, Peruvian police raided President Dina Boluarte’s home and found a trove of expensive jewelry, notably 14 Rolex and other high-end watches. She said she had borrowed them “from my friend.” Boluarte came to power a year and a half ago after her predecessor was impeached. She is the country’s sixth president in the last six years. One lasted just five days.
Next door in Ecuador, a lightly experienced young president is struggling to confront rising violence from emboldened drug cartels. He was elected last year after another leading candidate, who railed against corruption and called Ecuador “a narco-state,” was assassinated. In April Ecuadoran police broke into the Mexican embassy to arrest a corrupt politician who had been given asylum there. It was a flagrant violation of embassy neutrality, and Mexico immediately broke relations.
Last month in Bolivia, the army commander led a column of tanks and infantrymen into the capital’s main plaza and announced that he was seizing power. Political parties rallied to defend the elected government, and the coup failed. It came three weeks after President Luis Arce returned from an economic summit in Russia. Bolivia is sitting on the world’s richest deposits of lithium, a mineral vital to digital technology. “In every coup since I can remember,” Arce said after facing down the plotters, “all of them have always had the economic issue as a premise.” Bolivia is awash with rumors about who planned the rebellion and why.
Three Latin American countries that once claimed to be models of social justice have collapsed into crisis. Cuba is barely able to satisfy its people’s basic needs. Venezuelans are streaming out of their country — 20 percent of the population has fled since 2015. Nicaragua is under the thumb of a bizarre husband-and-wife dictatorship influenced by teachings of the late Indian mystic Sai Baba. A combination of misrule and punishing sanctions has consigned all three to poverty.
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President Javier Milei of Argentina travels the world with an insult for everyone, calling the president of Colombia a “terrorist murderer” and Pope Francis “an imbecile who defends social justice.” Last month President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador began a second term in a country where presidential reelection is forbidden. He did it by packing the country’s highest court with lackeys and having them rule that the constitutional ban on reelection is unconstitutional.
Recently I visited Mexico, and on my first day I read news that both inspired hope and dashed it. President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, a climate scientist, is shaping a team of superstar technocrats into what may be the most highly qualified cabinet in the hemisphere. In the same day’s paper, though, I read about the murders of a police chief and, in another part of the country, a candidate for mayor. In Mexico, impunity mocks the rule of law.
Only three countries in Latin America qualify as full democracies: Costa Rica, Chile, and Uruguay. Or is it only two? Last month President Rodrigo Chaves of Costa Rica, a gleeful political arsonist, set off a firestorm by asserting that his much-admired country is in fact not a democracy but “a perfect dictatorship that has been run by very intelligent people for 75 years.” Eight outraged ex-presidents issued a sharp statement rebuking him. “Maybe the word ‘dictatorship’ wasn’t appropriate,” Chaves said with a shrug, “but ‘perfect tyranny’ would be.”
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Chile can claim to be a stable democracy, but its people are deeply divided. Voters rejected a proposed new constitution for being too leftist, and then another for being too rightist. As a result, the country still lives by the constitution written under a dictatorship nearly half a century ago.
That leaves wonderful little Uruguay, one of the most successful countries in the Western Hemisphere. Politics is civil, elections are fair, presidents are sensible, scandal is rare, and power alternates between center-left and center-right. Uruguay is far from world trouble spots, and it shows.
Jarring tremors are shaking Latin America. Politics there is degenerating into intolerance, corruption, politicized courts, trash-talking, and scorn for democracy. The same thing is happening in the United States. The first half of 2024 has been scary for the Western Hemisphere. More shocks are likely.
Stephen Kinzer is a senior fellow at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.