The future with Humala is uncertain.  Throughout the campaign, he was accused, again and again, of “Chavismo,” of being but a sidekick to Hugo Chavez, bent on applying the obsolete and even ridiculous Chavista template to Peru.  To counter this notion, Humala, dramatically and operatically, swore on the bible to scrupulously follow not Chavez’s but Lula’s steps, promising to actually strengthen the market with private as well as with state-oriented investment, while also building programs to increase redistribution of wealth.

No one realistically expects a Brazilian miracle in Peru within the next five years. But in a deeply polarized country, with an already large and zealous right-wing opposition, Humala has no choice but to fulfill his moderate, market-oriented promises. It is likely, therefore, that the economic growth that Peru has been experiencing in the past decade will continue, perhaps after an initial period of internal market speculation and attendant problems such as devaluation and an increase of investment risk indexes.

A couple of reflections

To be very schematic, two left wings seem to be emerging in Latin America.  On the one hand, there is the old-guard, populist, anti-imperialist, caudillo-dependent, big-government-oriented left wing headed by Chavez (“capitalism may have ended life on Mars”).  On the other hand, there is a socialist in name, but social democratic in practice, left wing, which is clearly market-oriented, pragmatic, generally concerned with redistribution of wealth, and with the environment, education, science and technology.  After Lula, particularly, but also after Ricardo Lagos in Chile, José Mujica in Uruguay, Mauricio Funes in El Salvador, and others –this sort of modern left wing is generally seen as successful, politically and economically, and thus as a viable political alternative.

Keiko Fujimori

Humala’s victory seems to be an indication that, probably on account of the “Lula effect,” this type of left-centrism is gaining ground in Latin America. Often headed by formerly radical Marxists such as José Mujica and Dilma Rousseff, presidents of Uruguay and Brazil respectively, both of whom were actually former guerrilla fighters,  this new left is rising as a clear alternative to both Chavismo as well as to so called “savage neo-liberal capitalism.”

The bad news is that Keiko Fujimori obtained almost half of the votes in Peru. Politics in Latin America have been a very important source of backwardness and violence. The fact that Fujimori almost got elected is a reminder that banana republic populisms and Mafioso political parties are not dead in this part of the world.

It’s mystifying to read The New York Times’ coverage of my other polity, Argentina, where the editorial positions seem to be the exact opposite to those of their coverage in the US. On the one hand, in American politics, the attacks on Obama and the Democrats as “totalitarian,” for having attempted and achieved a modest reform of the healthcare system are presented as borderline madness by the Times.  But on the other, the progressive, democratic, and successful reformist governments of Nestor Kirchner—from 2003 to 2007—and Cristina Fernandez—since 2007—are accused of “authoritarianism.”

Moreover, the sources quoted when making such accusation are often mediocre conservative political commentators and journalists that would hardly be taken seriously in the US—at least, I think, in The New York Times. In no way less problematic, but perhaps more understandable, due to their sharing social circles with members of financial global institutions, the journalists’ assertions often come straight from “risk consultants” in financial firms.  It is never made clear, however, that these are political adversaries of the democratically elected administration and significantly less appreciative of the working of democratic politics, to say the least, than the Argentine government.

While this strange phenomenon at first may seem difficult to understand without resorting to conspiracy theory, a closer examination of Argentine and American politics explains the apparent reporting anomaly.  In Argentina the working of democratic politics involved during the period serious conflicts about major issues—such as repealing amnesty laws giving impunity to the 1976-83 human right violations, appointing the most prestigious and independent Supreme Court in the country’s history, astonishingly reducing the national foreign debt in tough negotiations with international financial groups and the IMF, building a strong and democratic Union of South American Nations, and passing transformational laws de-monopolizing media markets, universalizing marriage (gay marriage,) extending social security benefits to millions of uncovered senior citizens, streamlining the path toward citizenship for hundred of thousands of Latin American immigrants, and creating a universal subsidy for children. In contrast, in the United States, we have come to expect very little change coming from administrations from the left of center of the political spectrum. In Argentina, the victory of the democratic left led to real changes, in the U.S., less so, revealing a fundamental problem.

Would it thus be too strong a claim to say that The New York Times’ coverage of Latin American politics is over-determined by an expectation that power is no longer an empty place, in the sense of Lefort, as I explored in my previous post?  Would it be too strong a claim to say that democratic politics seem authoritarian from a perspective no longer expecting, or even accepting, successful political agency from our elected leaders?