The Value of Liberty: Transitions to Democracy in a Post-Cold War World
When Americans turned on their televisions on the 9th of November, 1989 and watched the collapse of the Berlin Wall many correctly saw that a new era in world politics was about to begin. The world watched as Germans ripped down the Berlin Wall while GDR soldiers looked on not firing or interfering with the crowd standing idly by perhaps waiting for some sort of order. People around the world watches as the guards of an authoritarian regime known for its oppression simply stood by and did nothing to stop the mob smashing a symbol of oppression with their bare hands, clawing for liberty on the other side. It was in that act or non-action by the GDR guards that the change was more apparent than an idealistic and frustrated mob ripping down a symbol of repression. While people saw a change in Europe in this one event, Latin America had been going through a massive wave of democratization since 1978 with much less public awareness in the United States. While America watched Germans with bloody hands tear down a hated concrete wall some may have remembered the images of the mothers of Plaza de Mayo with their sore and swelled feet as they ambled slowly in the central district of Buenos Ares a few years prior. Europe and Latin American are politically and socially different, but despite these differences and the complex variables at play the human desire for liberty remained the same for both the peoples of Europe and Latin American during the end of the Cold War.
The regional transition to democracy in Latin America was progressive and took a much longer period than the European transition in the late Cold War era. Unlike Europe whose democratic transition was motivated by a move away from communism as a political and economic model the transition in Latin America was not defined by a single set of variables. Those variables that determined in the transition to democracy in Latin America are as diverse as the countries and peoples that populate Latin America. While Mainwaring and Perez-Linan list these variables: level of development, class structure, regime economic performance, regional political development, U.S. foreign policy and party fragmentation and polarization. If one were to assume that Latin American democratic movements in this era were for greater economic freedom and political franchise as in Europe, they would be gravely mistaken. While for some this was a goal Mainwaring and Perez-Linan demonstrate that economic development and success are not always synonymous democratic regimes in Latin America, nor do they guarantee democratic stability. Furthermore, they state that multiparty systems in Latin America were more prone to breakdown if they had three or more parties involved. Both of these variables are indicators of successful democratic regimes in Europe with developed economies performing well under democratic regimes and a multitude of parties existing in most European Parliaments.
With political and economic factors not indicators or foundations of democratic success in Latin America as they are in Europe there must be another factor in this overwhelming move to democratic governments in Latin America starting in 1978. The most important factor as pointed out by Mainwaring and Perez-Linan was the regional political and international actors. The removal of the Soviet Union off the international scene in 1991 caused international political havoc and leaving the United States as a clear global hegemon. In Europe this led to a clear break for various socialist and communist parties with having an outside influence on their parliamentary actions. Those same socialist and communist organizations in Latin America found that outside support for revolutionary causes suddenly disappeared and had to reorient of to traditional political parties rather that revolutionaries. While Mainwarning and Perez-Linian see the transformation of these groups to political as a matter of transition it was instead likely for survival. With the new order of American hegemony without an outside balance or support they were forced to reorient rather than because of a desire do so in at least some cases. While not always voluntary the reorientation of these communist parties did create a regional culture where military and bureaucratic authoritarian regimes simply no longer had the specter of communist revolutionaries to haunt the populace with to justify their actions. Public and international perception changed almost overnight where “justified police actions” against communist revolutionaries to “criminal activities” against their own population in every international news outlet.
International perception is probably the most important factor in the destruction of authoritarian regimes in Latin America than anything mentioned by Mainwaring and Perez-Linan. Television fundamentally changed the political landscape and later the internet connectivity in the 1990’s forward made it even more difficult for authoritarian regimes to keep their oppressive activities secret. When people act out and create televised or news events in an act of defiance authoritarian governments are powerless to act because of international perception. Advanced near instantaneous communications doomed the Soviet Union with televised images of Western products and lifestyle as much as the images of women marching around the Plaza de Mayo looking for their lost children did the Argentine military triumvirate. Liberty is as much about freedom to act as much as it a freedom from denial of what is inherent in human desires. People do not fight for ideological concepts as much as they fight for what they are denied, whether that be for those young Germans Levi jeans and Coca-Cola or for the mothers of Plaza de Mayo the children denied them by the military. Those young Germans in 1989 tore down the Berlin Wall in full view of GDR guards in much the same way that the women Plazo de Mayo walked in the government center in front of powerless soldiers because of the cameras pointed at them. This begs the question: If cameras and newspapers can make authoritarian governments powerless from exposure, what will exposure on real time outlets such as Twitter and Facebook have on questionable actions of the current democratic Latin American governments?