The populist shadow

Seen from Europe, the news from Latin America looks good: economic growth, and political stability, where incumbent governments from Nicaragua to Argentina seldom lose an election. The Cold War is over, and the rise of China has brought unprecedented prices for raw materials and foodstuffs. The deterioration in the terms of trade seen in the 1950s has now been inverted. Less copper is now required to buy a tractor or a computer.

Yet behind the rosy curtain, other realities exist. Countries to the north of the Panama Canal are not under the Chinese umbrella, but are linked to the US economy, imposing other conditions.

In the now-prosperous South, a specter hovers: the threat of populism, that freak of politics characterized by supra-institutional, messianic leadership and forms of mass organization that short-circuit parliamentary representation, and feed on the public budget. Needless to say, these regimes organize conflicts, fight against malignant conspiracies, set themselves up as champions of the threatened rights of the people and, in the name of all this, place ever tighter curbs on liberties. Their first objective is naturally control of the news media, which begin to emit a monotonous, repetitive, message, aimed at drowning plurality.

The situation in Venezuela is well known: the confiscation of Radio Caracas, the main TV channel; the coercion of all the others by various means; the imposition of an authoritarian rule, which, however, will soon have to face an election that will not be easy.

Ecuador, though less often in the news because its president has a higher level of education and common sense than Venezuela, is not far behind. The daily El Universo faces a $40 million fine for a column critical of the president: the principal plaintiff in the case, who was personally present in the courtroom as the obedient judge ruled in his favor. And the editor of Hoy has just been sentenced to three months in prison for several articles written in 2009.

In Argentina, no sooner had the government won the recent election by a landslide than several steps against liberty were taken. The greatest has been the attack on Clarín and La Nación, which have been under harassment for months. Official advertising in them was kept to bare minimums and redirected to pro-government media, but the new offensive is aimed at the availability of paper, which by law will come under government control.

Now La Nación is facing a general embargo on its assets on claims of unpaid taxes. And Clarín, whose premises have been broken into several times, is suffering a takeover of Cablevisión, its principal television channel, an operation with more than three million subscribers and 9,300 workers, which is accused of being monopoly, although it accounts for only 47 percent of the cable TV and 23 percent of the internet markets.

Two adopted sons of Clarín's principal shareholder, the widow of its founder, were hounded following claims that they were the abducted natural children of disappeared persons during the dictatorship. Their mother, too, was accused of complicity in the alleged abductions. Long months of judicial battle dragged by before DNA tests finally relegated the cruel accusation to the waste-paper basket.

The facts speak for themselves. The economic boom has unfortunately given oxygen to the populist phenomenon, which, with money aplenty in hand, is setting up more or less thinly veiled authoritarian systems - a looming shadow behind the dazzle of rising GDPs and budget surpluses. Governments that proclaim themselves to be defenders of human rights are now openly violating the right of freedom of expression, which is the only reliable guarantor of all others.

Julio María Sanguinetti, an ex-president of Uruguay, is a lawyer and journalist.