Populism in Latin America
[1] This has been argued to be because Latin America is a region with a long tradition of democratic governance and free elections, but with high rates of socio-economic inequality, generating widespread resentments that politicians can articulate through populism.
[3] In various countries, politicians took power while emphasising "the people": these included Getúlio Vargas in Brazil, Juan Perón in Argentina, and José María Velasco Ibarra in Ecuador.
[5] Once in power, these individuals pursued neoliberal economic strategies recommended by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), stabilizing the economy and ending hyperinflation.
[7] Like the first wave, the third made heavy use of Americanismo and anti-imperialism, although this time these themes presented alongside an explicitly socialist program that opposed the free market.
[11] Ideologically, Latin American populism, with its emphasis on nation-building under an authoritarian leadership as a prerequisite for technological modernization, betrayed the earlier influence of Comtean positivism.
[20] The fact that Goulart was eventually ousted by the military shows that, in the views of some authors, other populist leaders of the time faced a jeopardy: they were reformists who, in the pursuit of their agenda, had to encourage popular mobilization and class conflict they ultimately abhorred.
[24] In the 1990s and 2000s, with the emergence of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela—albeit Chavez refuses himself to be labelled as "populist"[25]—reformist and nationalism Latin American populism has resurfaced with new patterns, as what is called by some authors socialist populism[26][27] that appeals to masses of poor by promising redistributive policies[27] and state control of the nation's energy resources[28]—a blueprint that had already appeared, however—albeit with no openly "socialist" rhetoric, viz., in the nationalist policies—including the launch of the State-owned oil-company Petrobrás—that were the hallmark of Vargas' second term as Brazil's democratically elected president (1951–1954) and that led to his eventual suicide.
Conversely, in others countries, Populism has been historically associated with countering the relative decline of export agriculture with deficit spending and import-substitution policies aimed at developing an internal market for industrial consumer goods.
[31] Populism in Latin America has been sometimes criticized for the fiscal policies of many of its leaders, but has also been defended for having allowed historically weak states to alleviate disorder and achieve a tolerable degree of stability while initiating large-scale industrialization.
[40] In appealing to the masses of poor people prior to gaining power, populists may promise widely demanded food, housing, employment, basic social services, and income redistribution.
Populism has recently been reappearing on the left with promises of far-reaching socialist changes as seen in Venezuela under Hugo Chávez, in Bolivia under Evo Morales, and Mexico under Andrés Manuel López Obrador—a process, however, seen by some as contradictory as it tries to meld the populist traditional celebration of folk wisdom and charismatic leadership with doctrinaire socialism.
[47] This political shift includes both more developed nations such as Argentina's Front for Victory and Chile's Socialist Party, and smaller income countries like Bolívia with its Movement towards Socialism and Paraguay with the Patriotic Alliance for Change.
[50] Countries in Latin America with high rates of poverty, whose governments maintain and support unpopular privatizations and more orthodox economic policies that do not deliver general societal gains, are under pressure from populist politicians and movements[51] accusing them of benefiting the upper and upper-middle classes[52][53] and of being allied to foreign and business interests.
