Democracies under siege in Latin America | Opi …

From Quito

The alarms were triggered when Colombia’s deputy prosecutor arrived in Quito a few days ago with Andrés Arauz’s case in his hands. Crisis situation, scenario analysis, and finally a calm and cold night. It was a new threat in the presidential campaign, which From hour zero, he was marked by the maneuvers against the candidacy of those who seek to join the Palais Carondelet to reconstruct the project of the citizens’ revolution.

The picture is similar to that of the Bolivian elections of 2020, with the victory of Luis ArceNothing can be taken for granted until the presidential belt is put in place, the elections are not held, or the event has a stable development in the days following the results, if Arauz wins. The difference between one process and the other is that in Bolivia there was a de facto government, while in Ecuador it is a constitutionally elected president.

The Ecuadorian case is paradigmatic: the government of Lenín Moreno not only betrayed the project for which he was elected and many of his former colleagues – others accompanied him in the stabbing – but also opened the doors to a process of internal closure of democratic channels .. The persecution has covered different levels: the main leadership, ie Rafael Correa, the second and third lines, successive parties after the loss of Alianza País, with causes ranging from corruption to crimes of rebellion.

This process involved an institutional design with hotspots, such as the pursuit. There is now the main cause mounted against Arauz, in an operation carried out with the Magazine week and the Colombian prosecutor’s office, a media and an institution under the command of factors of the Democratic Center, the party of Álvaro Uribe, at the head of the government. The situation in Colombia is tragic: according to data from the Institute for Development and Peace Studies, between 2020 and 2021 there were 110 massacres with a total of 446 victims, the murder of 342 social leaders and human rights defenders. human rights, 12 family members of the leaders and 74 signatories of the peace accords.

The case, mounted from the prosecutor’s office, This is the main public letter to try to strike the candidacy of Arauz. Other threats have already been addressed, such as a pact between Guillermo Lasso and Yaku Pérez -second and third respectively- for a count that did not finally take place after a turn by Lasso, or a public appeal by Pérez, representing a sector of power, for an intervention of the armed forces in the electoral process to criminalize Arauz, change the National Electoral Council and cancel the first round.

In Ecuador, the main elements of what constitutes a restricted democracy are concentrated, where the main political force is persecuted and prevented from participating. There are many parallels with the Argentine case: the media and political deployment to systematically accuse the former government of corruption, linked to the attempt at discipline via the judiciary. What will Arauz do in front of these powers in case of victory? This is one of the main questions, as in Argentina after more than a year of government.

The similarities in using a media-judicial apparatus to persecute the main leaders of countries where popular governments existed are already known: Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia and Ecuador. The Venezuelan case is on another scale, the blockade of Washington, the theft of assets, covert armed operations, parallel institutions, the formation of the conflict on the ground of the trenches, the precipice, the permanent and prolonged crisis.

In each case, the question is the same: what are the rules of the game? Where do the national and international powers in place and their political representatives seek to advance? Put it in perspective, you can see that In thirteen years, four coups d’état have taken place on the continent against progressive governments -Honduras, Paraguay, Brazil, Bolivia-, the deployment of the law, a siege communication, the construction of electoral bodies in scenarios of destabilization, the mutation of rights with exhibitors like Jair Bolsonaro, which represents a developing trend on the continent, established in various countries of Europe and the United States.

There is no single answer to the other big question: what to do about it? The situation is different depending on the strengths of popular movements and governments, the institutional framework, or the place each country occupies according to the American strategic map in the context of world conflicts with China and Russia.

The coordinates change if Argentina is analyzed, with the existence of a labor movement, territorial, feminist, human rights, and the fabric of Peronism, Bolivia, with strong indigenous, peasant, miners and MAS, or Ecuador, with popular organization and party structures within the Citizen Revolution, and an indigenous movement in conflict between the left and right sectors – Pérez being an expression of the latter. The objective of the right in this case is twofold: to ban Correismo and to move within the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador those who led the uprising in 2019.

From this diagnosis of the scenario, we can trace the recent events in Bolivia, with the arrest of Jeanine Añez, former ministers of the de facto government, high-ranking officers of the army and the police, and the chief of the resistance of the young Cochala, Yassir Molina. This last factor is essential, it is a question of neutralizing an armed structure in Bolivia, created before the coup d’état of 2019, deployed in its days by assault with international advice and later protected by the de facto government. This is not the only armed formation – its location in Cochabamba, the center of the country, is strategic – the main point of accumulation of the forces of the putschist right is Santa Cruz, with the putschist and now governor Luis Fernando Camacho.

The evolution of conflicts in several countries casts doubt on the possibility of an agreement with the dominant economic and political power factors, which would surely imply the maintenance of a deeply and increasingly unequal status quo. This difficulty of agreement does not lie in the will of dialogue of progressive governments. The case of Argentina is a clear example.