We all know that representative democracy is an inadequate policy in Latin America. Why? Baldly stated, because in our continent the capitalist economy has usually been insufficiently dynamic to fully absorb the population. So there have always been multitudes dedicated to work little and be badly represented to the State--peasants [campesinos], those in the informal economy--who experience the State as an institution dedicated to extortion or repression, rather than as a mechanism maintained by their taxes and that, in exchange, represents them. This situation, which today is usually called "exclusion" leads to a representative democracy that represents some sectors better--let's say those in the formal economy--than others. In fact, those in the self-identified middle class have the feeling that the State represents them or, at least, that it should represent them, and that one has a right to demand representation.
Due to this situation of "exclusion" (which, in reality, is actually more a condition of excess in the face of capitalism's mechanisms of inclusion), the Latin American democracies, in order to function, have to combine the mechanisms of representative democracy with a supplement--expressed in the continuous and perpetual negotiation with what could, in short, be called "the street". That is, successful governments find ways to deal with the sectors that occupy the streets and other public spaces. Ideally, the governments seek to develop mechanisms of inclusion and justice for those multitudes: new forms of employment, new strategies of re-distribution, new policies of inclusion by means of education and systems, etc.
Precisely because of this tension that exists in the heart of the Latin American democracies, it is so important that effective strategies for inclusion be developed: zero hunger, the spread of quality education, universal health systems, and outlets for social and political expression. Latin American democracies rely on all this so they might actually be democracies and that they may flourish as they need to flourish, given the complexity of our societies in the twenty-first century ... , and given the leadership as it is destined for Latin America in the near future.
Precisely because of this tension that exists in the heart of the Latin American democracies, it is so important that effective strategies for inclusion be developed: zero hunger, the spread of quality education, universal health systems, and outlets for social and political expression. Latin American democracies rely on all this so they might actually be democracies and that they may flourish as they need to flourish, given the complexity of our societies in the twenty-first century ... , and given the leadership as it is destined for Latin America in the near future.
Now the fact that Latin American societies may require an active, robust supplement ... does not mean, in any way, that the mechanisms of representative democracy cease to be fundamental. Government in the hands of what I here call "the street" is, by necessity, an authoritarian government that acts and reacts while it feverishly negotiates with multitudes whose demands are ever-changing. It learns to calibrate and incorporate itself into an inflated image of the caudillo [strongman]: it is the self-image of the leader who is destined to collapse and to live eternally as a myth.
The 'hyper-inflation' of the image of the strongman matches the instability of the mechanisms of democratic representation. So the strongman always invests in an army and secret police--he knows one has to order repression. Just as he invests in redistribution, he invests in repression. The formula of Porfirio Díaz--bread and stick--or, better, maybe a little Romanized, bread, circus and stick, is the formula for all Latin American Caesarism.
The structural instability of the regimes that have chosen the path of representative democracy in our continent flows from a problem that can be summarized in one sentence: poverty of the economic collective imagination. Movements based on direct representation of "the street" in the body of the leader and in the State that he commands, take the most pressing needs of "the street" for the economic collective imagination and imagine the State as provider or guarantor of those needs. Literally, poverty governs their collective imagination. Then the Republic becomes cornucopia or booty whose redistribution is supposed to support both the people and the State.
In other words, it is about regimes whose political creativity--which is considerable, especially at the level of theatrical forms for representing the justice of the State (forms that supposedly might come to substitute for those of representative democracy)--goes hand-in-hand with the poverty of the collective economic imagination. And all that leads, ultimately, to a rentista [MV Note: System of profits guaranteed by ownership of property] system, which provides spaces for capitalist exploitation of one or another resource, in exchange for taxes that the State redistributes in its own way (and with the urgent goal, of course, of maintaining the State itself, which soon comes to be a means for social justice to be an end in itself).
Because of this terrible risk, the critique of representative democracy--which is, as I said, indispensable--must go hand in hand with a critique of what we might call the "democracy of the street", its warlord-ism, its characteristic mix of negotiation and enforcement, and its collective poverty of imagination regarding economic alternatives.
Because of this terrible risk, the critique of representative democracy--which is, as I said, indispensable--must go hand in hand with a critique of what we might call the "democracy of the street", its warlord-ism, its characteristic mix of negotiation and enforcement, and its collective poverty of imagination regarding economic alternatives.
Today, the Latin American countries should decisively endorse their commitment to representative democracy (including human rights), while in a hardheaded manner they must give priority to the creation of institutions--expensive and well designed--dedicated to a determined policy of inclusion: the construction of a fundamental floor of common well-being. Brazil has practically achieved it. Spanish original