Global Affairs Expert Webinar: Democratic Backsliding in Latin America and the Caribbean
Frank O. Mora, professor of politics and international relations and senior research scientist at Florida International University, and former U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, leads a conversation on democratic backsliding in Latin America and the Caribbean.
These webinars provide an opportunity for college and university educators and students to discuss global issues with CFR fellows, Foreign Affairs authors, and other leading experts. To register for future invitations, please complete this form or email [email protected] with your name, title, and academic affiliation.
Speaker
Frank O. Mora
Professor of Politics and International Relations and Senior Research Scientist; Former U.S. Ambassador, Organization of American States
Florida International University
Presider
Irina A. Faskianos
Vice President, National Program and Outreach
Council on Foreign Relations
Transcript
FASKIANOS: Welcome to today’s Winter-Spring 2026 Global Affairs Expert Webinar series. I’m Irina Faskianos, vice president of the National Program and Outreach here at CFR.
Today’s discussion is on the record, and the video and transcript will be available on education.CFR.org if you would like to share the materials with your colleagues or classmates. As always, CFR takes no institutional positions on matters of policy.
We’re delighted to have Frank Mora with us to discuss democratic backsliding in Latin America and the Caribbean. Ambassador Mora is the senior research scientist at the Jack D. Gordon Institute of Public Policy, and a professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University. He previously served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Western Hemisphere, U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States, and held academic appointments at the National War College, National Defense University, and Rhodes College. Ambassador Mora is the author or editor of five books including Neighborly Adversaries: U.S.-Latin America Relations, and Paraguay and the United States: Distant Allies, as well as more than thirty scholarly articles on hemispheric security, civil-military relations, and Latin America political economy and integration.
So, Ambassador Mora, thank you for being with us today. I thought we could begin by having you share with us what you see as the most significant drivers of democratic backsliding in Latin America and the Caribbean, and the implications for U.S. foreign policy today.
MORA: Well, thank you, Irina. Thank you very much for the invitation to speak to this group of educators and, of course, students. I always enjoy this opportunity. So let me jump right into this issue of democratic backsliding.
So, I think as many of you know, and I think I feel pretty strongly about this, that democratic backsliding in Latin America and the Caribbean is probably the most consequential developments facing our hemisphere today, or certainly one among many.
Much has been written about it, but I’d like to focus my attention in the few minutes I have on both why this erosion is occurring and, I think, more importantly, perhaps, what it means for U.S. foreign policy, particularly at a moment when democracy and human rights have been visibly deprioritized in Washington.
So, let me begin with the nature of the problem. Democratic backsliding in the Americas is not, in most cases anyway, about tanks in the streets or overt military ruptures as we’ve seen historically in Latin America. It has been more subtle, more durable in many ways.
It is a kind of incremental erosion of institutions, of norms, and, of course, the rule of law. It is democratic stagnation, so kind of a slow-burning crisis of confidence that is hollowing out or has hollowed out accountability while preserving kind of the formal electoral aspects of democracy.
This erosion has multiple drivers, but let me just focus on two. The first is the failure of democratic governments to deliver over the last two decades or so. Across the region, citizens have endured economic stagnation, widening inequality, endemic corruption, impunity, staggering levels of violence and, by the way, Latin America remains one of the most violent regions in the world outside of those in active conflict.
So, growth has been uneven and insufficient to meet expectations raised during democratic transition. Trust in political parties, in legislatures, and courts have declined and have declined significantly per the data we have, the polling data we have done by regional surveys, done by places or outfits like AmericasBarometer and Latinobarómetro, which have shown declining satisfaction—and that’s the key—the satisfaction with the performance, with democratic functions, and the low confidence in institutions.
Yet—and I want to emphasize this because I think it’s an important point—yet, democracy or support for democracy as an ideal remains comparatively resilient. Citizens are not rejecting democracy itself, I think it’s important to say. They are rejecting democracy that fails to deliver, and that is an important and critical distinction to make that I’m happy to discuss in the Q&A.
The second driver of backsliding is the failure of democratic systems and, I would argue, the international community to constrain elected leaders once in office and once they engage in a process of democratic erosion.
Most contemporary liberal illiberal leaders in the hemisphere did not campaign on dismantling democracy. They campaigned on fighting corruption, on restoring order, on delivering results and dealing with issues of insecurity and violence.
What followed in many cases was in fact illiberalism after the fact through executive aggrandizement, attacks on judicial independence, politicization of oversight bodies, constitutional reinterpretation, and, of course, pressure on the press.
This pattern of what some scholars like Javier Corrales has said—this pattern of autocratic legalism uses the formal procedures to weaken democratic constraints from within, all preserving an electoral facade.
But domestic institutional weakness is not—is only part of the story and one that I personally saw up close and personal when I was ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS). The international community in the hemisphere has also been reluctant to enforce democratic norms when erosion occurs.
Member states of the Organization of American States have often shied away from invoking instruments of the inter-American system such as the Inter-American Democratic Charter, whose very purpose is to defend and to promote democracy, or from robustly supporting the work of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights when democratic violations occur.
Now, too frequently governments emphasize or have begun to emphasize principles of sovereignty and nonintervention to avoid holding one another accountable. In practice, this reluctance has diluted collective pressures at precisely the moments when early coordinated action might have raised the costs of democratic erosion.
When regional mechanisms fail to act, as they have in recent past—and there are some exceptions like Guatemala—illiberal leaders will interpret that hesitation as permission, for example, as we saw in Venezuela recently, and we must say that the international community—and this is up for discussion I’m sure—the international community is partly to blame for recent events, I think, in Venezuela.
If we look across this region we see variations in terms of democratic backsliding. Some democracies remain robust. Civil society remains active in many countries. Courts continue to push back in some cases in important situations.
Democracy has not collapsed, but we are witnessing a number of—witnessing an increasing number of systems where elections continue while accountability erodes, sort of an epidemic of illiberal or hybrid forms of democracies that are in many ways not the representative democracies that are sustainable.
Perhaps the most striking example, the most striking contemporary example or illustration, is El Salvador under President Nayib Bukele. His security policies have dramatically reduced, no question, the homicide rates and earned extraordinary popularity. For many Salvadorans the results have been, or feel, transformative.
But those have come at a cost. There’s a prolonged state of exception in El Salvador—mass detentions without due process, a weakening of judicial independence, a concentration of executive authority. These are all the classic markers of democratic erosion, and yet public support remains high.
When democratic institutions fail to provide security, many citizens have become willing to trade procedural safeguards and human rights protections for immediate order. This is the profound challenge facing the region I think today—the profound challenge of backsliding in the region.
Citizens are not rejecting democracy—I want to emphasize that—as a principle, but are seeking a kind of renovation when democratic governments fail to deliver.
Now, Irina, if I can turn to sort of the second part of what I want to discuss, which is what’s the implications of all this for U.S. policy—U.S. foreign policy interests, and I think things have changed in the last fourteen months with respect to the impact of democracy or this democratic erosion on the United States.
As we know, for decades U.S. engagement in the hemisphere, though admittedly uneven, incorporated a bipartisan rhetorical and operational commitment to democracy, to human rights, to the rule of law. These principles were understood as foundational to long-term stability and partnership in the region.
Today, that emphasis, that bipartisan consensus that really sort of broke out at the end of the Cold War—I’m sorry—has now I think receded. The current U.S. National Security Strategy, sort of the benchmark document guiding the priorities of all administrations, I think the current one reflects this shift.
Democracy and human rights occupy a much more diminished role compared with migration, criminal organizations, and countering external actors per the National Security Strategy document. The administration—the Trump administration’s rhetoric and actions have emphasized border security over democracy advocacy, have signaled to governments throughout the region that democratic standards are not a core U.S. concern.
Now, this, I think, has real consequences for the region and for the United States. For one thing, it undermines U.S. credibility when criticizing democratic erosion. If Washington prioritizes migration and instability over democratic norms, autocrats and illiberal leaders can exploit this gap to deflect criticism and to consolidate or to concentrate more power.
It reduces leverage over regimes whose democratic commitments are weak when democracy advocacy is subordinated to short-term stability concerns. The United States loses a strategic tool for shaping governance outcomes in the region and, more importantly, I think it alienates civil society actors who depend on U.S. support for accountability mechanisms, independent media, and legal reform efforts.
And it creates a vacuum for—that external actors like China and Russia can exploit to expand their influence, often without regard to democratic governance and human rights, in their cases. Perhaps nowhere is this tension clearer, I think, than in—than in Venezuela.
The U.S. stance, increasingly focused on stability and economic interests rather than democratic restoration, contrasts with earlier policies that foregrounded democratic transitions. This shift risks normalizing authoritarian outcomes and undercuts the West’s moral authority to hemisphere affairs.
Moreover, U.S. migration and security strategies, while necessary and should not be ignored, risk framing the region primarily as a source of problems rather than as partners in democratic renewal. Migration flows, organized crime, and geopolitical competition cannot be effectively addressed in isolation from the underlying legitimacy deficits weakening many democracies.
In practical terms, deprioritizing democracy undermines other U.S. interests. For example, it weakens economic competitiveness by deterring investments and increasing transaction costs. It compromises supply chain security when institutions, states, are captured by corrupt or criminal networks. It distorts climate finance when accountability is weak.
It undermines efforts to combat organized crime when segments of the state collude with the very networks that seek to dismantle democracies or dismantle states, and it accelerates migration as citizens flee kleptocratic or insecure systems, reinforcing the very pressures U.S. policy seeks to manage.
Now, democracy is not a kind of add-on to hemispheric policy. It’s the infrastructure, right? It’s the hardware, the foundation upon which economic, security, and social cooperation must rest.
So, let me close with this. Democratic backsliding in Latin America and the Caribbean reflects a crisis of performance, a crisis of constraint, both domestically and regionally. Institutions remain contested but not extinguished. Citizens still value rights. Civil society remains active.
The United States cannot determine democratic outcomes, but it can shape incentives in support of some collective or common goods. If democracy, if the rule of law and anti-corruption are integrated operationally and not just rhetorically into trade, into climate, and security partnerships, U.S. policy can reinforce institutional resilience.
If they are sidelined in favor of transactional objectives, we risk undermining not only democratic governance but the very economic, security, and migration goals we seek to advance here in the United States and throughout the region.
So, the choice is not between idealism and realism. It is between short-term transactionalism and long-term strategic coherence with democracy at its core. In a hemisphere currently under democratic stress but not democratic collapse, the strategic case for integrating democracy into U.S. policy is not simply a moral question. It is a practical issue.
Thank you. Back to you, Irina.
FASKIANOS: Thank you, Frank. That was great, a really wonderful overview.
We’re going to go to all of you now for your questions.
(Gives queuing instructions.)
OK. So for—I can’t believe that nobody has a raised hand. You were so thorough.
MORA: (Laughs.) I doubt it.
FASKIANOS: OK. The hands are going up now. Wonderful.
I’m going to go first to Susan Briziarelli.
Q: Hello. I’m Francisco. I’m a student here at Adelphi University.
I wanted to ask, do you think the arrest after judicial process of former presidents in Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Colombia erode or enhance democracy in the region and why specifically? Thank you.
MORA: So it was a little—you came in and out a little bit—I’m sorry, Francisco. But I think the question was whether the legal cases against presidents in the number of countries you mentioned is that a positive thing for democracy. Is that—is that right, Francisco?
Q: Yes, that’s correct.
MORA: OK. Yes, because it deals with the issue of accountability.
Now, some people will say—will counter that by saying, OK, yes, the legal system needs to be no one’s above the law, et cetera, et cetera. Rule of law, sure. But this can be also destabilizing, right? That removing presidents every other week like they seem to be doing in Peru can contribute to the instability, the uncertainty, in Peru.
The problem there is that not every president was removed from office for unjustified reasons, right? Some were, as in the case of Peru and because of the unique constitutional design of Peru, where the congress, which is quite corrupt—and there are a number of legal cases against a majority of members of the congress of Peru—have removed presidents for little or no justification and I think that is destabilizing, and I think the Peruvian case is problematic.
But there are other cases like, just to mention Brazil, in the case of Bolsonaro where he was indicted and tried and has gone to jail. I don’t know if it’s jail or house arrest, but he’s been—his freedoms have been taken away for his participation in the January 8 event against the constitutional order and attempted coup.
That, I think, is a good sign. It shows that powerful people should not be—should not act with impunity, and that is a vote, a contribution, a checkmark for the rule of law in these countries, right?
But, nevertheless, even though the targets tend to be more political or the motivations tend to be more political as in the case of Peru, I think there are a number of others within the political and economic class that are committing all sorts of corruption and crimes and that are not being held to account.
Now, there are exceptions, again, but does it meet the standard of protecting democracy and the rule of law? That’s still, I think, in doubt.
FASKIANOS: Thank you.
I’m going to go next to Mike Nelson.
Q: Thank you very much. Quite a comprehensive overview.
I work on digital policy and my question has to do with how both traditional media and the internet are spreading disinformation, undermining trust in institutions, distorting the electoral process in many, many countries. This isn’t just an American or European problem. Have you done any work in this area? Do you see any hope? Are voters in Latin America and the Caribbean going to be overwhelmed by AI slop, trolls, and sordid presidential campaigns full of—influence campaigns?
MORA: Yeah. I always have hope.
No, I’ve not—I’ve not done a lot of work in this area, but there is no question that the scourge of disinformation and misinformation has spread throughout the region, right, and I’ll give you an anecdote.
So, about two elections ago in Colombia, I was interviewed by a major newspaper in Colombia, and some information had come to my attention that the Russians were trying to influence that election, and I was interviewed in—by Espectador, one of the major newspapers in Colombia.
Within twenty-four hours, the Russian media had responded with a video that started to spread throughout Colombia by a Russian reporter who spoke perfect Spanish, saying—half of it sort of trying to discredit me because of what I had said about Russian disinformation in that election, but then proceeded the other half of that video to attack Colombian democracy and how it was not working and how it was unjust and so forth.
So, they used the opportunity to attack me to undermine and to engage the Colombian public about how terrible democracy was in Colombia. It was extraordinary because they did that within twenty-four hours and the production was excellent.
I say that only because I know the Russians have been quite effective and quite good through their cable channels but also through digital mechanisms to spread disinformation increasingly about us and the United States but also about governments in the region that they feel are not sympathetic to the Russian cause.
So, no doubt, and the way that Latin Americans use WhatsApp and the different—and the way the news is spread through those social platforms is quite extraordinary and is used by not just external actors but even political actors within the region that are trying to undermine one candidate or another in an election.
FASKIANOS: Thank you.
I’m going to take a written question from Bill Harbert, who is a professor of geophysics at the University of Pittsburgh: With respect to energy resources and mineral resources, how do corporations and U.S. policies in these two areas intersect with this ongoing process you have described?
MORA: Yeah. So there is great interest—great, great interest in rare earth, lithium, and other natural resources that Latin America, South America, some countries in South America have in great amounts, in great quantities, and there’s great interest on the part of the Trump administration to make a push to have investments in those areas. The Chinese have made important investments in those industries in the past.
But your question was more how does the erosion of democracy sort of undermine the ability to make those kinds of investments. You know, I don’t have data. I can’t say—I’m not an expert on that. I don’t want to speak out of turn or without the information I need.
But I think that foreign investors—and I’ve been speaking sort of monolithically. I mean, there are important differences within Latin America where investors would be more interested because of a more stable environment than in others to invest in those countries than others.
But, you know, look at the case of Peru. We were talking about the case of Peru. Peru—people often talk about how is it that Peru can have respectable growth levels and respectable amounts of foreign investments in the country, which they have over the last number of years, in the context of just the lack of governance, right—the complete instability, the inability of the political system to function in any serious way.
I’m not an expert in that, but it shows at least one example where investors are willing to make certain risks in investing in a country that is facing some political volatility. So, there’s not necessarily a correlation there between this is a—the country’s a mess, I’m not going to invest, because the Chinese will invest in those areas regardless of whether those countries are democracies, whether they’re stable. But they’ll find a way to invest and we need to be able to compete.
I think the challenge with the Chinese, in my mind, is—and we can go on and on about this—but we need to compete better. We need to do better in competing with the Chinese in Latin America rather than seeing China as a kind of threat and have a threat-based analysis interpretation that I think doesn’t help.
FASKIANOS: Thank you.
I’m going to go next to Tommy Herrera, a raised hand from the City University of New York. If you can unmute yourself.
Q: Great. And also, thank you for that—for the previous gentleman, who shared about illicit information and social media, because my mom and all my tías have a PhD in WhatsApp University on information—(laughter)—and I am trying to—I am trying very, very hard to kind of detox them.
But thank you again, Ambassador Mora, for the work that you’ve done. Definitely inspiring all of us to continue to look at this part of the world that we love, which is Latin America.
But in your time at the OAS and definitely amongst discussion with peers—and also I’m a term member of the CFR. I’m a thirty-year term member. I teach economics and policy and history at Lehman College in the Boogie Down Bronx in New York—side note.
So, during your time at the OAS and currently now amongst your peers in Latin America have you—have you seen any conversations around credit ratings and how they affect the ability for a lot of Latin America and a lot of the Caribbean nations to get cheaper financing? Because what I’ve started to see is that a lot of times the interest rates stagnation and development of infrastructure and development of just agriculture ports depends a lot on loans from banks. I just wanted to see have you seen any movement toward, you know, fair ratings in the system in the Caribbean?
MORA: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Tommy, for your question and comments.
So, you’ve just put your finger on something that I recall very well. I was not directly involved but I was, if you will, in the room when these discussions were being had, which is exactly how do we provide cheaper, more effective financing to countries in the region to help build their infrastructure and make critical investments that we are interested in them doing and investing.
And that—it was—I have to tell you, it always seemed to be a fight. Where is the loan going to come? Is DFC the right instrument? Export—all these different institutions and, of course, using the IDB, the Inter-American Development Bank.
But and this was particularly the complaint or the concern from the Caribbean countries, the English-speaking Caribbean countries. They just couldn’t get the financing they needed because they had public financing—government financing—because they were not considered—they’re—I think it’s called middle range economies, middle class economies.
And so they didn’t qualify sometimes for the kind of financing that these organizations could provide. So, we battled with that and, as I said, I wasn’t directly fully involved in this, but it was a priority and I have to say that I’m not sure we were very successful at that.
Q: Thank you.
FASKIANOS: Thank you.
I’m going to go next to Bill Jong-Ebot—excuse my pronunciation—who’s an associate professor at Florida Memorial University: What are the implications of this erosion of democracy for educators planning collaborations such as study abroad or faculty research? Example—I believe that the Center for International Business Education Research cyber program was canceled. There’s no funding and not sure if the funding has been restored.
MORA: Yeah. So, the—and shout out to Florida Memorial for my hometown in south Florida.
So, I think those are two different things, frankly. So democratic erosion does not in and of itself have a direct impact on the funding available for study abroad programs, whether in Latin America or in the United States.
I think in the United States, there’s a different problem, whether the states or the governments or the private sectors are able or willing to provide funding for these critical programs of which I was much—very much a beneficiary when I was an undergraduate student.
And, unfortunately, our students are not—my view is that they’re not traveling to Latin America. They’re not studying abroad in Latin America as much as they should or used to back in the day, in part because the federal government has cut funding through Fulbright and a number of other programs that were sort of a demonstration of our soft power that we’ve decided to give up over the last few years.
So—but I think that’s a different problem and I don’t think it’s affected by democratic erosion in the region. It is a funding problem. It is a question of whether Latin American students have the funding and the resources to come to the United States and study or work, and the current climate in addition to the funding issue, the issue of visas and students coming here, is becoming even more complicated than that.
So, it is definitely a serious problem that I’m sure you’re feeling and understand, but I think it’s separate from these questions of democratic erosion in the region.
FASKIANOS: Great. Thank you.
I’m going to take the next question from Gary Prevost.
MORA: Gary Prevost.
Q: Ambassador—
MORA: Gary, how are you?
Q: Good. Always appreciate your work.
MORA: Thank you, sir.
Q: I’m very concerned about some very specific cases of democratic backsliding like in El Salvador.
MORA: Yeah.
Q: Just your observation about one of the positives that we’ve seen almost across the hemisphere in the last decade where we actually have alternation of political power—Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil—between the left and the right, and then back from—
MORA: Correct.
Q: —the right to the left. Doesn’t that speak in some sense to some of the political maturity of Latin America that we’re able to have those alternations of power that in the region, which I’m currently in right now in Africa, seems almost impossible to achieve?
MORA: That’s a great point, Gary, and as I said in my remarks, I think democracy remains resilient in many ways.
But the pendulum is constantly shifting with elections between left and right. Incumbency used to be an advantage. It is no longer an advantage; it’s a disadvantage, because people grow pretty disillusioned early and begin to think of the alternative. Not always, not in every case, but certainly as I see in most cases.
And you’re right, the alternation is important for democracies and, certainly, you know, again, Chile, and you mentioned in Brazil. But I think that these are more exceptions than the rule. I don’t want to underestimate or devalue the resiliency of democracies in some ways because, as I said, people still believe in democracy, people still want to go vote, and that’s an important thing. It’s an important caveat to all this discussion of democratic backsliding.
But what’s clear is that people’s level of dissatisfaction and discontent seems to be rising and not declining, and my fear is that even in those cases where there have been an alternation of power that something will stop that process. I’m not expecting that in Uruguay. I’m not expecting that in Chile any time soon.
But in most—or Brazil, for that matter—but in most—many places and particularly in Central America, et cetera, I think it’s an issue. But you’re absolutely right, and I’ve never—as I said in my remarks, I don’t want to come across as saying that democratic erosion has been the end of democracy or pluralism in the region. It is not. But it has been a process that’s been ongoing for about twenty years.
FASKIANOS: Thank you.
I’m going to take the next written question from Tom Trebat, who is the director of Columbia Global Centers Latin America at Columbia University: Can you comment on the current and possible future of the relevance of the Organization of American States itself? Can it ever become an effective multilateral governance structure in Latin America? For example, has it acted in the case of Venezuela or might it be effective at heading off conflict with Cuba?
MORA: How much time do we have, Irina? (Laughter.)
FASKIANOS: You’ve got a little bit of time here. We have other questions but—
MORA: Yeah, thank you. Thank you for that question.
So yeah, I lived that and there’s a lot of questions in that question. So, in the interest of time, I’m going to use two examples of when I was there, one in which the OAS worked very well and another where the OAS did not work very well.
First thing, before I say that I have to say that people often focus on what the permanent council of the OAS where all the ambassadors sit and make decisions, but don’t seem to focus on the other—the other OAS, which is the secretariat, and the work that the secretariat does on democracy and human rights and a number of issues, for example, electoral observations. That’s the gold standard of electoral observation in the world is what the OAS does in the region, and that is in defense of democracy—what the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights does, that’s another gold standard about how you monitor and call out human rights violations.
And I can go on and on about all the great work that the secretariat does that, unfortunately, we, and I mean the collective we, have not been good at publicizing, at showing, at demonstrating the great work that the secretariat does because everything focuses on what this permanent council does or does not do.
OK. Having said that, let me jump. In Guatemala, it was, I think, an extraordinary successful case in which the organization played a pivotal role in defending that democracy after an election where there were some real dark forces that were trying to undermine and prevent Bernardo Arévalo from coming to office.
Arévalo came to the OAS after he was inaugurated and spoke to us and was very clear, and he said, I would not be basically standing here before you if not for the work you did at using the Inter-American Democratic Charter and other inter-American instruments to ensure that the will of the people of Guatemala was respected. That was a great, successful story of working together to implement or to ensure, as the charter, the second article—the first article of the charter says, of defending and promoting democracy in the region.
Venezuela. This was not a successful case. After the election of July of 2024, where it was clear that the opposition had won the election, that the actas, right, the ballots, were—not the ballots, but the record of the ballots were shown that, in fact, Edmundo González had won by about 70 percent of the vote, and Nicolás Maduro decided not to respect it and declare himself president, there was an opportunity there for the OAS to act and to hold not only Maduro accountable, but to continue putting the kind of pressure that we put on Guatemala. Different circumstances. The Guatemalans were more responsive to us. They were a member of the OAS. The Venezuelans had not been a member or not participating in the OAS. But there was more—there was an opportunity for the international community, like I said in my remarks, to hold this country more accountable, to use everything we could externally to support what the opposition within the country was trying to achieve in the days and weeks after the election.
We balked, right? There were countries, frankly, Brazil and Mexico, who decided that the OAS was not the platform to do this, which doesn’t make sense, because why is it the platform to achieve those objectives in Guatemala but not in Venezuela?
And they hid behind the principle of nonintervention and sovereignty, skirting, I think, their responsibility obligations under the Inter-American Democratic Charter to act in support of democracy and human rights in Venezuela, and we did not because at the OAS, the permanent council must act on the basis of consensus—consensus—and the OAS is not a separate body that acts independently of states.
The OAS is nothing more than a reflection of the will of the member states, and if there are member states, in this case, a few member states, who did not want to act in support of that, then the OAS doesn’t act, and that’s just the structure and the way that the OAS responds or acts to—in these situations.
That’s a long answer, but I hope it was helpful.
FASKIANOS: Thank you. That was great.
I’m going next to John Mathiason, raised hand. If you could give us your affiliation.
Q: Very good. I’m from the Brooks School at Cornell.
Let me ask a question, going backwards in time and then forward. In 1968, I finished my doctoral dissertation on political participation of Venezuelan campesinos, which found that this was happening and this was making democracy happen.
Also, in 1968 you had the first issue of Paulo Freire’s book Pedagogy of the Oppressed, which was a way of looking at how that had happened in Brazil, and I have to say that a few years later I was part of that secret secretariat of the United Nations dealing with —(inaudible)—participation in Latin America.
My question is, what has happened? This was happening and it was a case democracy is moving ahead. We’re getting the people involved. The peasants are there; they’re getting organized. What’s happened and what can be done to bring it back?
MORA: Well, this is a good and complicated question.
So, when you wrote your dissertation in 1968, it was about ten years after what was known as the Pacto de Puntofijo, right, where basically the elites, after a ten-year dictatorship, agreed that we’re not going to keep fighting; we need to institute and write the rules for a new democracy, and a democracy took hold.
And you’re right, peasants and other peoples were organized usually under one political party or another. It was an arrangement among gentlemen, if you will, and it was an imperfect democracy but one that continued, thanks in part to oil rents and other things, that sustained itself for about thirty years after you wrote your dissertation, and that system, like other democracies in the region over a period of time at different times or sequence, sort of ran its course.
As I said in my remarks, they began to, in the case of Venezuela, increasingly ossify democracies or political systems, incredibly corrupt political systems, and increasingly marginalizing those groups that had been initially incorporated into.
And so comes or emerges Hugo Chavez, who promises to clean slate, to bring the peasants and everyone into the system in ways that the previous system had unjustly and corruptly relegated them to the margins once again.
Then you—and that’s something like that but not with the Chavez, but a pattern like that occurred in many other countries. Democracy had kind of run its course in terms of legitimacy and credibility but not, as I said, people still believe—still believe in democracies.
Now, how do you—how do we come back from the current moment? That is the $64,000 question. One, I would argue and wish that the United States government would be, one, more committed to the issue of democracy and human rights and the rule of law, as a—not as a matter of morality, as a matter of practical interests.
If the United States, which without a doubt is the leader of the hemisphere—it sets a certain standard—no longer cares about democracy, then, as I said in my remarks, countries in the region will feel no need to sort of return to or try to redress or correct course from the path that some have taken.
Now, again, that does not apply to all countries, right? You still have the Uruguays and the Chiles who are still very committed to this. So, I don’t want to speak in generalities. But there is at the moment no incentive structure to reverse backsliding because people remain disillusioned and believe that populist leaders better—can better deliver or at least give the perception that they can deliver.
Let me give you—and my answer to your question was I visited while I was ambassador El Salvador and I mentioned Nayib Bukele. I went to a community in El Salvador—in San Salvador, in the capital, that had been a no man’s land. There was no—there had been no police there and there was just fighting among the gangs.
And now, I was able to walk in the streets of this community without fear of violence of any kind and, in fact, I went to a park where there were children playing, and that park had been sort of the buffer between one gang and another, and now there were kids playing. So that has an important impact.
And I went to a grandmother who was playing with his—with her granddaughter, and I sat down with her and I spoke to her and I told her and asked her, what do you think about Bukele’s policies?
And she says that she’s—you know, it’s wonderful. You can’t imagine how terrible it is. I was a hostage in my house. I couldn’t leave my house. I couldn’t raise my granddaughter, et cetera.
But then she proceeded to express concern that her nephews—two of her nephews, who were not gang members, had been picked up by the government and thrown into one of these detention centers without due process, without a lawyer.
She didn’t know how they were doing. She was very concerned. She started to cry at that point, and I was thinking maybe that she was regretting somehow supporting Bukele. But at the end of the conversation, she said, “But thank God for Nayib Bukele,” right, who was responsible in many ways for the condition of her nephews.
And that says something about how people—how far people are willing to go if they feel that the government can solve a key issue in their lives, which was violence, even at the cost of seeing her two nephews unjustly thrown into one of these detention centers in El Salvador.
FASKIANOS: Thank you.
I’m going to take the next written question from Andrea Walther-Puri, a postdoctoral fellow at Tufts University: Are there any specific institutions that have proven resilient to democratic backsliding in Latin America, and what conditions allowed them to resist?
MORA: Excellent questions.
So, again, I want to emphasize there are some countries where I think institutions are working relatively well and have been resilient and have protected themselves, shielded themselves from the virus that has caused democratic backsliding, which is that they have been, for the most part, able to deliver, right; that the performance and the quality of those institutions are perceived to be effective.
Now, in places where that is not true, where you see significant democratic backsliding, the institutions that I see that work best are those in civil society. I don’t know if I can say that in countries the courts are working well, particularly in those countries where there’s been backsliding or erosion, or the legislatures, and in fact, if you look at the polling data, many of these are polling in single digits.
But if you look closer also when they’re asked about civil society, there’s some organizations in civil society that are viewed because they’re involved in health care. They’re involved in, in fact, sort of replacing the state in delivering public services, and these are funded—increasingly less so, I should say, but certainly in the recent past—have been funded by outside donors, and they have been able to provide educational opportunities or vocational opportunities. They’ve been able to provide health care, even transportation, and those, therefore, as a result, are viewed in a very positive way.
But it’s not a good thing for civil society organizations to be replacing and doing the job of the states, right, because—and so—and it’s interesting to see that governments, not all governments, are allowing these institutions to do their work without any repression or retribution because they’re so focused on delivering certain public goods that the state is not willing.
I am still impressed and, I think, very encouraged by the role that the press is playing. There’s exceptions and there are scandals here and there, but the press has been pretty resilient in the region, particularly digital press, right?
Now, some of them are under attack. In Mexico criminal violence is—you know, it’s dangerous to be a journalist in Mexico and in some of these places that are immersed in criminal violence.
But I remain impressed and pleased by the resiliency, the effectiveness, and the commitment of journalists in the region to do their—to do the valuable work that needs to be done in investigating corruption and other things.
FASKIANOS: Thank you.
I’m going to take the next question from John Chapman, who’s a student at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga studying political science and philosophy: Why should the U.S. focus on restoring democracy throughout Latin America when they have a history of bringing to power authoritarian regimes? He cites the 1973 coup bringing Pinochet to power. How can we trust that the United States will bring back democracy instead of just implementing a puppet state?
MORA: So, it’s not about bringing back. We cannot bring back democracy to Latin America. That’s the responsibility of Latin Americans. But we do have, I think, a responsibility. It’s in our interest to promote and defend democracy in the region.
As I said, at the end of the Cold War, there was a pretty strong consensus within the United States but also in the region that the defense of democracy was critical to the prosperity, the stability of their countries, and we did a number of programs. We committed ourselves to the Inter-American Democratic Charter, all of it in a collective consensus way, working collaboratively with countries in the region and I think that, you know, we were to some extent successful.
But no one, certainly, I am not talking about how we can impose democracy or how should we, you know, try to impose anything of that nature today. But, you know, setting aside the moments in which we did support during the Cold War authoritarian governments and sometimes pushed authoritarian governments, that has not been our policy since the end of the Cold War.
I think our commitment has been not just rhetorical, but operational since the end of the Cold War. Unfortunately, I think in the last year or so we have lost that north.
FASKIANOS: Thank you.
I’m going to take the next question from Elsa Dias, who’s at Pikes Peak State College: Can you comment on the EU and Mercosur trade agreement? What are the implications? Is this trade agreement a demonstration of economic power that leaves the United States out?
MORA: Good question. Yeah, I think you’re onto something there.
You know, EU and Mercosur have been negotiating this agreement since—well, for a long time. I don’t know exactly, but for a very long time. And it’s back and forth, and there’s all—there were always these issues having to do with the environment, conditions, et cetera, et cetera.
I, frankly, and I was wrong, didn’t think it was going to happen. I didn’t think it was going to happen at all, and I think many people thought that. But then suddenly things changed, and one of the reasons—not the only reason, but one of the reasons is what you allude to, which is the geopolitical changes that we’re seeing over the last year, right.
The Europeans realized that the dynamic has changed. They need to start taking allowance and signing free trade agreements with more countries. They can’t rely on the United States. These countries, the European—the European Union has signed agreements with India. They’re negotiating a number of other things with other countries around the world, and that was enough of an incentive I think for them to try to get across the finish line with the Mercosur agreement.
So it’s a major accomplishment, I should argue, that—the free trade agreement. But I have to say—and here I’m speculating, of course—I don’t think that would have happened if not for sort of the—some of the geopolitical changes that we’ve seen and how the European Union has decided to diversify and expand its engagements more so than it had done in the past.
FASKIANOS: Well, we are at the end of our time. I don’t know if we have time for one more.
I’ll take the last question from Cindy Peters, Clark Atlanta University: In terms of violence in the region, what parameters are being used to determine the ranking globally as being the most violent?
MORA: Yeah. So the way we usually measure that is homicides, homicides per 100,000, and if you look at the top ten most violent cities or the top ten most violent countries in the world, it fluctuates over time. But you’ll find that six or seven of the top ten are cities or countries in the region, right, and it’s done by per 100,000.
The other indicator that is increasing—so homicides have actually improved over the last few years in Latin America as a result of what we saw in El Salvador, Honduras, and a few other places. Still high.
But one thing that we have seen a spike in is in extortion, particularly in Central America and a few other places, where that level of insecurity from businesses particularly and the impact that it’s having on business, the extortion by criminal gangs of one kind or another has really shot up and it’s created this insecurity, not necessarily the violence, but certainly the criminality and the insecurity that undermines democracy. It undermines business opportunities.
So, that’s another interesting indicator to look at beyond the issue of violence or homicide rates.
FASKIANOS: Wonderful. Well, I’m sorry that we did not get to all the questions in the chat, but this has been a really great hour.
So, Ambassador Mora, thank you very much for doing this. We really appreciate and in your public service and the research that you’re doing. So, thank you.
MORA: Thank you, Irina. My pleasure.
FASKIANOS: And to all of you, we appreciated your comments and questions. The next Global Affairs Expert Webinar will be on Wednesday, March 18 at 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Matthew Waxman, who’s an adjunct senior fellow for law and foreign policy at CFR and is at Columbia Law School, and Saira Mohamed, who is a professor of law at the University of California Berkeley, will colead a conversation on the laws of warfare.
In the meantime, I encourage you to learn about CFR paid internships for students and fellowships for professors at CFR.org/careers, and visit CFR.org, ForeignAffairs.com and ThinkGlobalHealth.org for research and analysis on global issues, and education.CFR.org for free expert-informed teaching and learning resources.
And as you probably noticed, we have rolled out a new website, so I encourage you to go there to see the new bells and whistles.
So, again, thank you to Ambassador Frank Mora and to all of you for your participation today.
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