Polarization and its Aftermath...Shared Prosperity or Renewed Conflict?

On March 5, 2013, leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez died after a long battle with cancer.  Chavez was a much more significant figure than just a president of a country in Latin America.  Hailed as a champion of the poor and reviled as the man who single-handedly drove Venezuela's economy and security situation into the ground, Hugo Chavez and his ideology, like that of Juan Peron, Fidel Castro and Augusto Pinochet before him, spread across Latin America, to the point where at his death, his views had influenced elections, helped depose governments, and helped create such opposition to foreign governments aligned with him that these were overthrown.  With Chavez's death, the end of the terms of US President George W. Bush and Brazilian President Lula da Silva, and the "resignation" of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, Latin America has been left without its most polarizing political figures.  This has occurred at the same time as the region has risen economically to be one of the most important in the world.  For the past five years, economists, journalists, politicians and pundits around the world have hailed Latin America's "economic miracle" in contrast to the global recession followed by anemic economic performance in the U.S. and Europe during the same period.  This has been particularly the case in South America, where income inequality has fallen and GDP has risen in many countries.  But is this the whole story?  Latin America has a modern history of ideological polarization, class conflict, repression and pervasive inequality.  Is this history really being left behind by a region that is now inserting itself forcefully into the global marketplace while improving the lives of its citizens?  Or is the polarization that led figures like Hugo Chavez to power still present in Latin America?  As I write, hundreds of thousands of people have been taking to the streets in cities across Brazil, including Sao Paulo, Latin America's financial capital, largest city and the center of globalization and wealth in South America.  Protests which began based on a rise in bus fare have morphed into serious challenges to the priorities of Brazil's government and corporations, including lack of social spending on health and education, insecurity and high crime, and overspending in anticipation of the 2014 World Cup.  Last night, I watched on Globo TV news (Brazilian television) as protesters mounted the roof of the Brazilian Congress.  As a Venezuelan, I can't help but think to my country's own history and the Caracazo of 1989.  That protest, too, began with an increase in bus fares, and ended up being the country's bloodiest political affair.  Its aftermath, analysts all agree, led directly to the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998.  The economy in Brazil, while performing remarkably well from 2007 - 2011, has clearly hit a rough spot in 2012-2013, and inflation is the highest it has been in years.  The protests are a clear reaction to this, as well as the rise in crime.  What is amazing is how the protests are being coordinated.  In the past, political leaders called for political protests on television or in the newspaper.  Today, it is all coordinated through social media.  As has occurred in the Middle East in countries like Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Syria (before the war), social media has been principally behind the organization of Brazil's protests.  What comes next is anyone's guess, as there is no clear leadership behind this movement.  The demands are clearly legitimate.  At the same time as such protests occur, we have countries in Central America being overrun by drug cartels and transnational criminal gangs.  These groups are fueling an exodus of migrants to the United States, while from Mexico, the tide has slowed considerably.  Latin America is a complex place in the era after polarization.  Economic miracle or not, the ghosts of the past remain.  The actors are different, but some of the problems are the same.  This blog will be used to voice some of my impressions as to the changes taking place across Latin America.  I hope you enjoy.