Latin America: Why Democracy Lost Credibility

Institutional collapse in Venezuela and Nicaragua reveals the roots of growing distrust in democracy across the region.

Can Democracy in Latin America Be Trusted? Part Two.
We must insist on this topic.
Because unfortunately today people read very little.
In a previous note we mentioned the electoral twists in Peru and Brazil and the increasingly evident distrust (one only has to read social media) in a system that fails to meet voters’ expectations, who are exactly that—voters—since they ceased to be true electors long ago.
The case of Venezuela must be analyzed, where 21st century socialism—commonly known as Chavismo—was born, and which, be careful, still governs, under supervision perhaps, but governs nonetheless.
In that country, Commander Chávez did not emerge out of nowhere, nor was he delivered to Caracas because Paris airport was foggy, but rather he was the consequence of the disaster and corruption of the two parties on which the political system was based, Social Democracy and Christian Democracy, alternating in power and eventually turning governance into misgovernance.
Of course Chávez and his successor Maduro and company are responsible for having left Venezuela as it is today, a country swimming in oil, but are their predecessors free of responsibility? Of course not. It is more than proven that spontaneous generation does not exist.
This is an aspect that must never be overlooked, because looking at effects without analyzing causes has little or no value.
That is why History as a field of study is so important, and precisely why it is fundamentally distorted as much as possible, particularly by the left.
There is another unfortunate country that no one mentions, no one remembers, perhaps because it is quite poor: Nicaragua.
There, the Sandinistas overthrew Somoza promising freedom, but in turn became a dictatorship. And whatever may be said, thanks to the maneuvers of that great American president Ronald Reagan, who had a very clear understanding of who the enemy was, as well as the charisma of that great woman Violeta Chamorro, it was possible to get out of that situation… only for, some time later, liberals, schemers and the corrupt to allow Ortega’s return, now alongside his wife, both deeply repugnant figures.
Here too there was no spontaneous generation; there was surrender, and that is what the Nicaraguan people are paying for today in one of the poorest countries in Central America, despite the promises of their abusive president—not only abusive in the legal sense. Here as well, History must be studied.
Let us put an end to these soap operas. Democracy exists, even with its human flaws, in civilized societies such as Europe (Spain… well, barely), Japan, Canada, etc.
Enough of these bad farces.
And in Uruguay?
Well… we shall see… but it has been a long time since we were the Switzerland of America.