Media, Power, and Democracy in Latin America

Lee Artz

In the last fifteen years, countries in Latin America have elected politically progressive governments. Beginning with the election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998, an unprecedented succession of other populist presidents was elected, including Socialist Ricardo Lagos in Chile (2000); Workers Party (PT) labor leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil (2002); left-leaning Peronist Néstor Kirchner in Argentina (2003); Broad Front (FA) candidate Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay (2004); indigenous union and Movement for Socialism (MAS) leader Evo Morales in Bolivia (2005); FSLN (Sandinista National Liberation Front) leader Daniel Ortega, reelected in Nicaragua (2006); left liberal Manuel Zelaya in Honduras (2006); Citizen's Alliance candidate Rafael Correa in Ecuador (2006); radical priest Fernando Lugo with the Alliance for Change in Paraguay (2008) and former FMLN (Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) guerrilla fighter Mauricio Funes in El Salvador (2009); and Ollana Humala in Peru (2011). Citizens in several countries proceeded to reelect such progressive candidates several times, most consistently in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Brazil. Seven coups, a combination of military and parliamentary (TeleSUR 2016), as well as orchestrated disruption campaigns by elite opposition in most countries, continue to challenge the radical upsurges. In several countries, where social movements faltered — Argentina, Chile, Honduras, Peru, and Brazil — rightist forces have won national elections and regained control of the government.

In the midst of continent-wide turmoil and conflict, the sudden increase in the number of governments espousing varieties of socialism and social democracy and enacting programs to benefit labor, the urban poor, and indigenous groups (with an occasional veneer of anti-U.S.-intervention rhetoric) became widely known as the Pink Tide. "Pink Tide" (Onda Rosa in Spanish) seems to concisely, albeit insufficiently, characterize the appearance of a generally left political trajectory in Latin American. This was "pink" rather than "red," as Larry Rohter of the New York Times first opined. "Pink" indicating a lighter tone — not the "red" of communism, not socialism, but a softer shade of progressive, even radical politics, with considerable variation across nations. While "Pink Tide" cogently labels the leftward trend, more is needed to understand the complexity of what's really taking place in each country and the region as a whole. What is considered "left"? How do progressive governments relate to social movements and vice versa? And what do these changes mean on a regional level? Only a closer look at the social relations and political conditions in each nation can answer these questions because, while all have considerable interconnections, each must work out relations of power within their own polities. Still, while several of the candidates, and their successors, proclaimed socialist platforms, with the exception of Venezuela and Bolivia, most of these new governments did not explicitly advocate socialism; rather, their commitment to "equality, social justice, and popular participation" contributes to openings for radical social transformation (Levitsky and Roberts 2011, 3).

Although three-fourths of Latin American countries have had democratically elected progressive left-leaning presidents and legislatures since 1998, the rise of new social democratic and left-populist governments was poorly reported in the world's commercial media. Presenting disconnected and recurring exposés of one or another populist leader, commercial mass media obscured and misrepresented the remarkable historic changes that have occurred in Latin America in the last fifteen years. Criticisms by liberal academics, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and more radical-left organizations have further discouraged appreciation of the momentous changes occurring.

Undeterred by such dismissals, this writing offers a perspective to help analyze and evaluate "the extent to which the actors on the left today offer alternatives to neoliberalism" and "determin[e] to what extent parallelism," mass mobilizations, and political initiatives by governments and movements "go in the direction of ... decreasing inequality between the classes and countries, economic democracy, and environmental sustainability" (Rodriguez-Garavito, Barrett, and Chavez 2008, 23). The impulse for democracy, social justice, and social change embedded within social-movement actions against privatizations and deregulation of public interest highlight several interrelated conflicts, including: 1) the conditions and operations of power, 2) the meaning and practice of democracy, and 3) the interaction of social relations of power that are instrumental in civil society, the government, and the market. As the primary means of communication, media are implicated in power, democracy, and social movements. Thus, public access to media addresses each of these questions of power — and provides a measure of democracy within each society.

Here, public access does not refer to an anonymous audience to be serviced by media as with Britain's BBC or other public-service broadcasters, but asserts the democratic right of the public to produce and disseminate content. Public-access media affirms the democratic right to communication, including the right to have access to production and distribution technologies without restriction by commercial interests. Public, understood in all its complexities, is the sum of the multiple constituencies of each country, including among others, diverse sections of the working class from industrial, service, agricultural, and informal workers to those unemployed and underemployed, indigenous nations, ethnic groups, women, youth, community-based organizations, religious, environmental, cooperative, and other social, cultural, and political collectivities. In other words, the claim is that public access to media serves as both an indicator of the democratic commitment by a political leadership and a means for organizing the powers necessary to resist neoliberalism and transform the capitalist order. A primary measure of democracy and social justice must be the extent to which those popular forces have direct access and control of the means of communication.

THE PINK TIDE AND MORE

Referring to the election of new left, socialist-leaning, and radical popular governments as the Pink Tide delivers an initial definition that should not short-circuit its historical significance. A more robust description necessarily includes recognition of the entrance of powerful radical social movements of indigenous and working classes organizing beyond industrial worksites — portending rising labor conflicts in China, India, and across Europe. (Worker protests in China reached record proportions in 2015; in 2016, tens of millions protested neoliberal reforms in India, while labor resistance to austerity has spread across Europe [China Labor Bulletin 2015; Khan 2016; Schmidt 2015].)

The political dynamics of these several Latin America countries are globally important because Latin America is no longer part of the periphery in global production or global politics. Latin America is part of the global South, but the entire global South...