The success of ‘populism’

By Manuel Alberto Ramy

HAVANA – Electoral politics and the cheap press are one thing. The serious analyses by the think tanks that help formulate policies and in general turn them over to the world’s most important centers of intelligence are something else.

You can agree (or not) with aspects of them – with everything, even – but what’s undeniable is that they contain work done with a scalpel.

While the major media scientifically engage in the disqualification of the processes of change in Latin America, a report from the U.S. National Intelligence Council has done an analysis of the reality of our region that appears to be serene and realistic, as any in-depth, long-term exercise in thinking should be. At least, that’s how I see it, after reading several news items from international agencies.

The report, which according to the media is 137 pages long, is extremely eloquent and carries the weight of the institution that produces it for Washington, the capital of the Empire. Empires don’t work short-range; they have a vocation for eternity, despite the setbacks inflicted by universal history. Somewhere, the document says: “There will not be any hegemonic power. Power will shift to networks and coalitions in a multipolar world.”

That acknowledgment is not very novel (it was preceded by reality) but it is important. With the disappearance of the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, the emerging countries with strong economies have been forming alliances based on basic common interests and projecting themselves in the international arena.

The BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) is a good example. It is not the only one because there are others, more modest – for now.

“Latin America and the Caribbean have undergone far-reaching changes, including sustained economic growth and a reduction in poverty […] and is advancing toward cohesion and regional integration,” says the report, titled “Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds.”

The changes in our region have been occurring for more than 15 years, with the exception of the radical transformations made by the Cuban revolutionary process, which opened the floodgates.

Oddly, the changes have not been promoted by the traditional political parties but by genuine popular movements and new leaderships that assumed power through democratic means, none through guerrilla warfare. Democracy in practice and transparent elections that might make some blush have become a means and a path.

 “The principal conclusion that can be drawn is the history of success” in Latin America and the Caribbean in the past decade and “our relative confidence that this will continue,” said Matthew Burrows, an adviser to the National Intelligence Council, in a press conference, quoted by the German news agency DPA.

The successful experience and the changes in political-economic focusing have determined not only macroeconomic growth, political stability, a reduction in poverty and a rising trend to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor, but also have enabled several regional leaders to be reelected without resorting to trickery.

In other words, the growth, stability, greater social justice and regional integration that are occurring are not a product of the traditional governments and leaderships that Washington likes. Instead, the governments labeled as “populist” are the big promoters of the reality acknowledged by the intelligence analysts.

The changes in focus, structure and institutions in a plural framework are the work of “populism,” not of the overly serious leaders whom cartoonists picture as balding old men with glasses.

According to the report, not everything is rose-colored for the region. Central America and the Caribbean “will continue to be fragile” and therefore a focus of attention for the intelligence community, because they could serve as a “haven both to worldwide criminal networks and to terrorist networks and local insurgents.” I suppose that this is the reason why the U.S. will maintain the 10 or 12 military outposts or bases it keeps in our region. Or what?

The report’s authors must have data for these assessments, which look more like predictions. There’s more than enough reality. How do you determine and analyze “fragility”? Haiti, whose democratic course was frustrated twice in the past 10 or 12 years for the convenience of Washington? The Dominican Republic, which still doesn’t find a way to forge a robust popular movement and reduce its insulting poverty? Honduras, a country whose president, a wealthy and moderate man, was overthrown only because he announced he’d call for a referendum – read slowly: a constitutional referendum – and visited Cuba?

Cuba? Fragile? Can you thus describe a country that “makes changes in times of crisis,” against the counsel of Saint Ignacio de Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, in one of whose schools Fidel Castro studied and got his diploma?

Nowhere in the planet does stability reside in traditionalism. The facts give evidence of this; they’re there, palpable in technical figures and in the attitudes of the people. Anywhere in our increasingly smaller and interconnected world, fragility grows wherever governments try to cling to old ways, to the past, and to slow down the new and impede the changes.

That analysis by the U.S. intelligence community is quite interesting.

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