U.N.: Latin American Democracy in Trouble

[maddezmom]

LIMA, Peru (AP) - Latin American democracies are in trouble and losing the support of their citizens because of inequality and extreme poverty, the United Nations said Wednesday in a sweeping report on the region's political health.

"The good news is that in the last 20 years there has been a great leap in the number of democracies in the region," Mark Malloch Brown, head of the United Nations Development Program, said in comments to reporters before delivering a copy of the study to President Alejandro Toledo.

"But we also know that democracy does not enjoy good health, fundamentally because it has not provided benefits in terms of reduction of poverty and inequality."

Dante Caputo, a former Argentine foreign minister who directed the study, said the failure to treat the ills of continued social injustice and extreme poverty could lead "to the slow death of democracy" in the region and encourage the return of authoritarian governments.

The 250-page study is the result of three years of research involving interviews with 231 opinion leaders, including former and current presidents in Latin America.

~snip~
more: http://www.wjla.com/news/stories/0404/141370.html

[arcos]

1. the most scary part is this:

"Surveys made in 2002 for the study show that 56.3 percent of Latin Americans believe economic development is more important than democracy and that 54.7 percent would support an authoritarian government if it resolved their problems. "

[maddezmom]

2. you're so right

most folks I talk to here, prefer the Fugimori gov't to the present gov't...:(

[Journeyman]

3. Dostoevsky explained this succinctly. . .

in The Brothers Karamazov, chapter five, "The Grand Inquisitor."

Have a read. You'll understand it's an age-old question of the quest for freedom vs. the need for bread.


www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/pol116/grand.htm

[54anickel]

4. Hey USA, take a look at your future. n/t

[SoCalDem]

5. Democracy is a "nice idea", BUT

if it's accompanied by deep chasms of poverty and peaks of flaunted wealth, it cannot survive..

Our own democracy started well, because most people were "landed" buy not overtly wealthy.. People lived within their own strata of society, so they did not have the wealth of others "rubbed in their faces" like we do now..The "bootstrap" theory used to work, but it rarely does anymore.. People who are born poor, usually remain poor...The difference now, is that they KNOW it...and it pisses them off.. The person they see who looks just like them, but has everything is not someone to be admired and emulated.. that person is hated and envied.

Technology has brought TV to even the poorest of people. How must it feel to a poor person living in squalor, to see the opulence presented in the "box". That's how they imagine that ordinary people who are "not them", live..

Seeing the girls on Sex in the City babble about $600 shoes, and watching young kids driving 50K cars, when you live on $500 a year, does little to make a poor person value democracy..

The poor don't really need that much help, to better their lives, but even when the "government" helps, it seems to give "almost" enough, but never that little bit extra, that could get the poor person over the hump ..

We have Sisyphus Democracies.. The rock always wins :(

[phoebe]

6. Couldn't possibly be anything to do with American foreign policy

or IMF loans or plundering of natural resources by greedy corporations and corrupt governments or phony drug wars or any number of things. Of course not. It's all due to the lack of democracy.
How predictable.

[NuttyFluffers]

7. yup a bit of that

honestly i wish they'd just do like malaysia after their economic collapse. reading john ralston saul's account on the death of globalization free trade theory really explains the right path to save these democracies. it requires a touch of nationalist interests, taking themselves from the big pool of predators in the great world market and growing their own wealth and infrastructure first and adequately redistribute it. places like this need labor movements to succeed instead of constantly being ruthlessly squashed by external industrialized nations' interests.