Latin America: between formal democracy and social mobilization

In his program “Notables” on May 23 on Telesur, journalist Jorge Gestoso interviewed Karina Batthyány, Executive Secretary of CLACSO, with whom he reviewed the pandemic, care and the political and social situation in our region.

Among other concepts, Karina Batthyány raised: “If we had to choose an image that summarizes or represents the current political situation in Latin America, we would speak of a crossroads, a situation of return or, in some cases, emergence of right-wing, far-right, neoconservative, and neoliberal governments, which come hand in hand with regressive social policies and the erosion of rights. But this is also happening in a context where, in other countries, such as Argentina and Mexico, among others in Latin America and the Caribbean, more populist, progressive governments are also returning to the scene. Thus, all these tensions related to democracy arise. And if one asks what the ultimate challenges to democracy in Latin America are, one of the first challenges identified in research is the loss of independence of the judiciary and what have been called the processes of lawfare throughout our region, with limited access to justice, restrictions on freedom of expression, and low representativeness of elected governments. In general, these are the causes being identified as risks, which also come hand in hand with a level of…” Unprecedented social mobilization in our region. Let's think about what was happening before the pandemic in countries like Colombia, Chile, and Argentina, with truly significant levels of social mobilization, where people are protesting precisely this handling of the situation in Latin American formal democracies, this loss of independence of the judiciary, and this politicization of the judiciary that we are witnessing.”