Dionisio Salas Astorga remembers well those days in 1984 when he crossed the Andes mountain range from Chile to start a new life in Argentina. He was one of many young people who saw a country ruled by the iron fist of Augusto Pinochet only promise them political repression and a dark economic future: “My classmates and friends in the neighborhood, an absolute diaspora, also left for any “place where they had the opportunity to seek asylum and leave the country under a regime that was already in decline.” This is the story of this Chilean teacher and poet who embraced the Argentine democratic spring of the eighties. In his new destination, he started a family, found a profession and, not far from himself, observed the authoritarian path that his beloved Chile followed.

exactly 50 years agoOn September 11, 1973, Pinochet began his long dictatorship with a coup d’état. – with US support – against socialist President Salvador Allende. With it came a state of siege, persecution of dissidents, political assassinations, disappearances and other horrors to which the military regimes of the Southern Cone were so subjected in those years.

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Half a century of celebration of this wild coup d’état, which included the death of Allende himself, who committed suicide (or was he murdered?) in La Moneda Palace, has deepened divisions in Chilean society over the legacy of the military dictatorship. A dispute that was never completely resolved in a country that started judging the crimes of military forces very late (as in the case of Victor Jara) and where a significant proportion of citizens refuse to condemn the 1973 coup. But this should not be surprising: a recent poll showed that 60% of Chileans justify authoritarianism under certain circumstances.

The most impressive thing is that this phenomenon is repeated in most Latin American countries. Report Latinobarometer shows that today only 48% of people support democracy in the region, the lowest since this measure began in 1995. In the same sense, the demand for military government has increased from 24% in 2004 to 35% in 2023.

Indeed, the vast majority of respondents (61%) do not support coups d’etatbut it is also true that today such an authoritarian figure as Pinochet (regardless of political orientation) could win the election and become president. For this reason, Latinobarómetro says that we are experiencing a stage of “democratic decline” because “authoritarianism is gradually being confirmed, to the point that it is not condemned, and it is not very well known what the threshold is beyond which a country ceases to be democratic.” Thus, Latin American dictators of the 21st century “are primarily civilians, elected in free and competitive elections, who then remain in power by changing the rules and holding pseudo-elections to maintain the category of “democracy.” They no longer use guns or the army to gain the presidency. They are elected by civil dictatorships,” concludes Latinobarómetro.

This phenomenon began with leftist forces, for example in Venezuela and Nicaragua. But now, Naib Bukele demonstrates that anti-democratic authoritarianism has no political overtones. El Salvador’s president is adapting to the new phenomenon of “suffrage,” as political scientist Andrea Bolcatto calls them. The co-author of New Faces of the Right in Latin America also mentions Argentine Javier Miley, the candidate with the best chance of becoming his country’s president in October. The libertarian leader frightens many with his radical ultra-liberal speech, he does not hesitate to brand those who interrogate him as “communists” and even justifies – through his partner on the presidential ticket – the military of the last Argentine dictatorship.

As Bolcatto says, “The problem that I think is very different between these right-wing coups and these rights that are in principle electoral—I wouldn’t call them democratic—is that they don’t have a nationalist discourse. On the contrary, they think about denationalizing the country’s most valuable resources and ignore science and technology as a fundamental strategic value for growth. So they are fundamentally identified by these anti-political, anti-state discourses and the promise that the freedom of the market will make all people free.”

Although some describe the waterfall as Evo Morales in Bolivia (2019) and Manuel Zelaya in Honduras (2009) as coups d’étatIn general, the 21st century was characterized by a democratic wave of more or less free elections in the region. Alarmingly, the last president so elected, Guatemalan Bernardo Arévalo, has just declared that his country is undergoing a “coup d’état” designed to prevent him from taking office.

He progressive Bernardo Arevalo – located on the ideological shore opposite Miley and the far right such as Chile’s José Antonio Caste and Ecuadorian Ian Topic – is another representative of the “outsiders” challenging the political establishment. This has given rise to a phenomenon parallel to the democratic decline in Latin America: weak governments. Since 2018, 18 of 19 presidential elections have been alternations (the ruling party lost), with the exception of Paraguay. And in some of these countries there were many candidates who, emulating Bukele, ran relatively successful campaigns with proposals typical of authoritarian regimes.

“Institutional degradation and the failure of democratic countries to solve problems have led to calls for more ‘effective’ alternatives, which obviously imply democratic constraints,” he analyzes. José Francisco Lagos, director of the Chilean Institute of Res Pública. According to this expert, since democracy in Latin America has proven “ineffective” in solving social problems, “citizens are often willing to give up some of their political freedoms in order to solve specific problems.” The result, concludes Lagos in a conversation with CONNECTAS, is a type of “leadership that is dissatisfied with institutions that often even promote populism.” And they are not exclusive to this part of the world: there are examples of Putin (Russia), Erdogan (Turkey), Orban (Hungary) or Trump himself (USA).

Marta Lagos, founder of Latinobarómetro, admitted in an interview with El País de España that in Latin America, “authoritarianism has begun to be seen as a variant of democracy.” And he cited the example of his own country, Chile, where “some say the coup took place to ‘save’ Salvador Allende’s democracy. Concepts are reversed.”

In this context of social confusion, someone like Miley declares that those who profess socialism are “scum, human excrement.” And someone like Colombian President Gustavo Petro responds that “Hitler said so.” The debate is of very poor quality, confirming the crisis of political representation that plagues our democracy. And this led to more than half of Latinos are indifferent against the type of regime that governs them, even if it is authoritarian.

“I think there is a general acceptance and acceptance in society of the gifts that entitlement gives us.” Who speaks again Dionisio Salas Astorga, exiled Chilean poet of the beginning. He realizes that history is repeating itself cyclically: today his Argentine children had to leave the country. They went to Europe in search of a destiny not guaranteed by democracy, as he did 40 years ago to escape Pinochet and the lack of political and economic opportunity that plagued his generation.

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* Member of the editorial board of CONNECTAS.