The New Latin America. Manuel Castells

The New Latin America - Manuel  Castells


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psycho-social and cultural characteristics of various Latin American societies. Their “daring” is born from their own political mystique, but it is not unrelated to the possibilities and problems in these countries.

      Around 2000, a historical turning point began, one that marked a shift in both democracy and development. This was a moment in which the political stage was reconstituted, neoliberal projects broke down, and neo-developmentalist projects with populist characteristics became widespread throughout the region. This led to the taking of power by more than fifteen neo-developmentalist governments in Latin America and the Caribbean. Each of these governments had different traits and confronted different national problems and challenges that varied in intensity.

      At the center of these changes, charismatic leaders stood out, even in their absence. These leaders oversaw the processes of change, and their behavior decisively informed the crises that these countries experienced and are experiencing. As we have mentioned, the Chilean case was exceptional in that it combined the application of a relatively heterodox model of neoliberalism with political reforms overseen by the Concertación. Nevertheless, the parties involved in the Concertación dealt with clientelist practices every day.

      Neoliberalism was associated with meager economic outcomes, with increases in social inequality, and especially with rising levels of poverty. Thus the result of neoliberal policies was a severe crisis of legitimacy for neoliberal institutions and political projects. Neo-developmentalist projects were more porous and variable than neoliberal ones. Notably, these projects resulted from looking back and reflecting on past national popular movements, especially those led by the first generation of populist social and political leaders after the Mexican Revolution. The ghosts of Emiliano Zapata, Juan Lechín, Juan Perón, Getúlio Vargas, Fidel Castro, and even indigenous leaders like Túpac Katari, among others, presided over the construction of charismatic neo-developmentalist forms of leadership.

      Figure 1.2: Average Levels of Support for Statism: Selected Latin American Countries, 2010

      In this context, para-institutional mechanisms come to the fore, with their ability to mediate between society and the state, thus helping to enhance leaders’ charisma. Given the weakness of institutions, the relation between the state and social organizations becomes informal rather than formal, and it acquires clientelist and charismatic traits, which then inform everyday relationships and introduce anomalies into formal institutions, further enabling corruption. The availability of informal alternatives, caused by failed socioeconomic policies in the past, favors the emergence of a fertile but limited relationship between charismatic leaders and society. In this way, an inability to generate satisfactory living conditions for the people decisively contributes to the demand for, and the installation of, charismatic leaders with populist traits.

      We can conclude that, in this context, these kinds of processes make the presence of charismatic domination possible. The leader’s identification with the people is a key feature in the phenomenon of Latin American charismatic politics. In his origins as well as his image and his dramatic and complicated trajectory, the leader must identify as one more member of the people in order to recast himself as a symbol of the people. In this way, an affective unity is created, one that is inseparable from the idea of “the people.” The leader is one with the people because he is part of the people; he himself is the people. He lives for, and can sacrifice himself for, the people. In this sense, the people are reified, materialized in the image of the leader. The process of political change is motivating, a reason for living. But charismatic reason, as Weber said, is an epiphany in and of itself.

      On the other hand, today’s society of information and communication has transformed the kinds of action in which charismatic leaders engage. The new demands made by communities, like the new forms of action taken by leaders, are increasingly expressed through the internet and through the multiple forms of communication that tend to proliferate online. The leader is no longer on his own in the public square, but rather in a mediated public sphere, in multiple and diverse public spaces of communication.

      It is worth mentioning that the crisis of neo-developmentalism is inseparable not only from national and global socioeconomic conditions, but also, more specifically, from the fate of charismatic leaders, from what they have experienced and are experiencing. They disappeared for various reasons (the deaths of Chávez and Néstor Kirchner, the electoral defeats of others like Correa or Lula, and illnesses, among others), and their disappearance affected the unfolding of neo-developmentalist processes. They are among the fundamental factors that explain the current crisis of these political orientations toward development and democracy (Calderón and Moreno, 2017 [2013]).


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