In the last 30 years, there have been repeated peaceful and democratic transfers of power in countries once dominated by rulers who seized power by force. These dictators often claimed absolute authority, governing with little respect for the law or the rights of their citizens. Their authority was based on alliances between the military, wealthy rural landowners, wealthy urban entrepreneurs, foreign corporations, and even foreign governments such as the United States.

Although a slow expansion of political freedoms has transformed the politics of the region, problems remain (as seen in Figure 3.19). Elections are sometimes poorly or unfairly run and their results are frequently contested. Elected governments are sometimes challenged by citizen protests or threatened with a coup d’état, in which the military takes control of the government by force. Such coups are usually a response to policies that are unpopular with large segments of the population, powerful elites, the military, or the United States. In the last decade, coups have been threatened in Honduras, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia; but more recently, peaceful democratic elections have become the norm in this region.

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Hugo Chávez and Venezuelan Politics In Venezuela, the landslide election of Hugo Chávez as president in 1998 brought profound change to the country. Elites had long dominated Venezuelan politics, and profits from the country’s rich oil deposits had not reached the poor. One-third of the population lived on U.S.$2 (PPP) a day, and per capita GNI (PPP) was lower in 1997 than it had been in 1977. Chávez campaigned as a champion of the poor, calling for the government to subsidize job creation, community health care, and food for the large underclass. He also redirected the profits of the largely foreign-managed oil industry to support government social programs. These policies, all of which were enacted soon after he was elected, eroded Chávez’s original support from the small middle class and elites, who began to fear a turn toward broad government control. When the U.S. government expressed alarm, Chávez became a major critic of U.S. and other foreign influence in the region. Chávez helped lead the region-wide backlash against SAPs and condemned the United States’ history of intervention in the internal affairs of countries across the region. 66. SOCIAL PROGRAMS AT ROOT OF CHÁVEZ’S POPULARITY

Chávez was reelected in 2000, and then briefly deposed in a coup d’état in 2001 in which the United States participated covertly. He was quickly reinstated, however, by a groundswell of popular support among the large underclass who stood to benefit from his policies. His presidency was sustained in a referendum in 2004 and again in the landslide election of 2006. In 2009, voters approved a constitutional amendment removing presidential term limits, thereby allowing Chávez to run for president indefinitely. Some saw this as a triumph of the populist movement, others as a loss for democracy and a drift back toward dictatorship (see the Figure 3.19 map). Hugo Chávez died in March of 2013 from cancer after having been treated numerous times by specialists in Cuba.

68. WILL CHÁVEZ INHERIT CASTRO’S REVOLUTIONARY MANTLE?

69. VENEZUELANS REJECT CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES

The international illegal drug trade is a major source of violence and corruption throughout the region. The primary drugs being traded are cocaine, heroin, and marijuana. Most drugs are produced in or pass through northwestern South America, Central America, and Mexico. Figure 3.20 illustrates the geographic distribution of cocaine seizures in 2008. (Note: Such seizures may not reveal activity in areas where law enforcement is lax or entirely co-opted by drug traders.)

Production of cocaine and heroin is illegal in all of Middle and South America. However, public figures, from the local police on up to high officials, are paid to turn a blind eye to the industry. Most coca growers are small-scale farmers of indigenous or mestizo origin, working in remote locations where they can make a better income for their families from these plants than from other cash crops. Many rent land from the drug cartels that get the drugs to global markets. The cartels are monopolistic and violent, and those who oppose them—whether farmers, journalists, or law enforcement officials—often end up kidnapped, tortured, and brutally murdered.

In Colombia, the illegal drug trade has financed all sides of a continuing civil war that has threatened the country’s democratic traditions and displaced more than 1.5 million people over the past several decades (see Figure 3.19B). Mexico also has faced increasing threats to its political stability from drug cartels that control a hugely profitable U.S.-oriented drug trade (see Figure 3.19A). 72. THOUSANDS KIDNAPPED IN COLOMBIA IN LAST DECADE

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U.S. policy has emphasized stopping the production of illegal drugs in Middle and South America and interrupting trade flows rather than curtailing the demand for drugs in the United States. As a result, the U.S. war on drugs has led to a major U.S. presence in the region that is focused on supplying intelligence, herbicides used to destroy drug crops, military equipment, and training to military forces in the region. One consequence of this is that U.S. military aid to Middle and South America is now about equal to U.S. aid for education and other social programs in the region. Drug production levels in Middle and South America, though, are higher than ever, exceeding demand in the U.S. market, where street prices for many drugs have fallen in recent years.

Concerned and informed citizens of Middle and South America have been calling for radical changes in international drug policies, including the legalization of drug use in the main (U.S.) market, which they assert would cause criminals to lose interest in the drug trade. In 2013, Uruguay legalized and regulated marijuana use, cultivation, sale, and distribution in an effort to reduce drug-related violence and deprive criminals of a major source of income.

Interventions in the region’s politics by outside powers have frequently compromised political freedoms and human rights. Although the former Soviet Union, Britain, France, and other European countries have wielded much influence, by far the most active foreign power in this region has been the United States.

In 1823, the United States introduced the Monroe Doctrine to warn Europeans that no further colonization would be tolerated in the Americas. Subsequent U.S. administrations interpreted this policy more broadly to mean that the United States itself had the sole right to intervene in the affairs of the countries of Middle and South America, and it has done so many times. The official goal for such interventions was usually to make countries safe for democracy, but in most cases the driving motive was to protect U.S. political and economic interests.

At various times during the past 150 years, U.S.-backed unelected political leaders, many of them military dictators, have been installed in many countries in the region. After World War II, worried that Communism would infiltrate Middle and South America, the United States focused special military scrutiny on a number of countries. Since the 1960s, the United States has funded armed interventions in Cuba (1961), the Dominican Republic (1965), Nicaragua (1980s), Grenada (1983), and Panama (1989). Perhaps the most infamous intervention took place in Chile in 1973. With U.S. aid, the elected socialist-oriented government of Salvador Allende was overthrown. Allende was killed, and a military dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, was installed in his place. Over the next 17 years, the Pinochet regime imprisoned and killed thousands of Chileans who protested the loss of their political freedoms. In 1998, while recuperating from surgery in England, Pinochet was arrested under a Spanish judicial order and would have stood trial in Spain but was judged too mentally and physically impaired to be tried and was sent home to die.

The Cold War and Post–Cold War Eras Since 1959, the Caribbean island of Cuba has been governed by a radically socialist government led first by Fidel Castro and then, starting in 2006, by Fidel’s brother Raúl. The revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power transformed a plantation and tourist economy once known for its extreme income disparities into one of the most egalitarian in the region. However, because Castro adopted socialism and allied Cuba with the Soviet Union, Cuba’s relations with the United States became extremely hostile. The United States has funded many efforts to destabilize Cuba’s government, and it actively discourages other countries from trading with Cuba. Since 1960, the United States has maintained an embargo against Cuba, and so far international efforts to lift the embargo have failed. 73. EU SPLIT OVER DEVELOPMENT COMMISSIONER’S PROPOSAL TO NORMALIZE RELATIONS WITH CUBA

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With help from the Soviet Union, Castro managed to dramatically improve the country’s literacy and infant mortality rates and the life expectancy of its population. Unfortunately, he also imprisoned or executed thousands of Cubans who disagreed with his policies, many of whom fled to southern Florida. Following the demise of the Soviet Union, Castro opened the country to foreign investment. Many countries responded, and Cuba is now a major European tourist destination. However, political repression in Cuba persists, and relations with the United States remain distant.

In response to continued poverty and inequality, and building on Middle and South America’s long history of revolutionary politics, two major broad-based rural political movements have arisen in recent years. While neither poses any direct threat to national governments, they are building a strong network of support for political and economic change at the local level. The areas in which these movements take place are examples of what geographers call contested space, where various groups are in conflict over the right to use a specific territory as each sees fit.

The Zapatista Rebellion In the southern Mexican state of Chiapas, indigenous farmers have mobilized against the economic and political systems that have left them poor and powerless. The Mexican government redistributed some hacienda lands to poor farmers early in the twentieth century, but most fertile land in Chiapas is still held by a wealthy few who use green revolution agriculture to grow cash crops for export. The poor majority farm tiny plots on infertile hillsides. In 2000, about three-fourths of the rural population was malnourished, and one-third of the children did not attend school.

The Zapatista rebellion (named for the hero of the 1910 Mexican revolution, Emiliano Zapata) began on the day the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect in 1994. The Zapatistas view NAFTA as a threat because it diverts the support of the Mexican federal government from land reform to large-scale, export-oriented green revolution agriculture. Starting as an armed rebellion in Chiapas, the movement was largely suppressed by the Mexican national army. However, the Zapatistas’ support in local communities allowed them to continue on in many parts of Chiapas. Their extensive use of the Internet to promote their cause earned the Zapatistas a worldwide following of supporters.

In 2003, after 9 years of armed resistance and largely unsuccessful negotiations with the Mexican government, the Zapatista movement redirected its energies toward local nonviolent political campaigns, mainly in Chiapas, to set up people’s governing bodies parallel to local official governments. More than a decade into this process, the Zapatistas have made significant improvements in education, women’s rights, and poverty reduction, thus deepening their support base in the areas they control. While the Zapatistas continue to focus more locally, the movement still has a national voice via campaigns against the political establishment during election years, and has a global reach through the Internet and numerous training programs for supporters of the movement from around the world.

Brazil’s Landless Movement Sixty-five percent of Brazil’s arable and pasture land is owned by wealthy farmers who make up just 2 percent of the population. Since 1985, more than 2 million small-scale farmers have been forced to sell their land to larger farms that practice green revolution agriculture. Because the larger farms specialize in major export items, such as cattle and soybeans, they have been favored by governments wishing to increase exports. As a result, many poor farmers have been forced to migrate.

To help these farmers, organizations such as the Movement of Landless Rural Workers (MST) began taking over unused portions of some large farms. Since the mid-1980s, the MST has coordinated the occupation of more than 51 million acres of Brazilian land (an area about the size of Kansas). Some 250,000 families have gained land titles, while the elite owners have been paid off by the Brazilian government and have moved elsewhere. There are now 1.5 million members of the MST spread across 23 of Brazil’s 26 states, and movements with similar goals have been launched in Ecuador, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Paraguay, Mexico, and Bolivia.

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