US Policy and Democracy in Latin America: The Latinobarómetro Poll

[Does the US government really craft its policy toward specific regimes based on those regimes' respect for democracy? The general trend is one of US support for the more undemocratic regimes in the region, and US antagonism of varying sorts and degrees toward the more democratic ones.]

US Policy and Democracy in Latin America: The Latinobarómetro Poll

May 29th 2009, by Kevin Young - ZNet

Each fall the Chilean non-profit polling organization Latinobarómetro publishes a detailed Spanish-language report on public opinion in Latin America. The 2008 report, released this past November, offers a broad synoptic view of popular opinion in the seventeen major countries of mainland Latin America plus the Dominican Republic, focusing on Latin American citizens' political opinions and their satisfaction with their governments. Though November's report went entirely unreported in almost all of the world's major media outlets—and only small snippets selectively analyzed by writers at the Economist, Christian Science Monitor, and Washington Times—it constitutes perhaps the most thorough source available of the broad contours of public opinion in Latin America, and thus deserves careful consideration [1].

The poll's results are particularly relevant for those whose government has been the most active foreign power in Latin America, in economic, political, and military terms, for much of the past two centuries. For US citizens the key question should be the extent to which their government is supporting democracy and human rights through its foreign policy; in other words, does the US government really craft its policy toward specific regimes based on those regimes' respect for democracy and citizens' rights, as the rhetoric of policymakers and pundits assures us? Answering this question requires three steps: identifying US friends and enemies in the region; measuring the level of democracy in each of those countries; and determining the extent to which US policy favors the more democratic governments in the region. After identifying the major US friends and antagonists, I examine the recent Latinobarómetro report as well as its 2006 and 2007 predecessors to measure the level of democracy in those countries based on their citizens' own appraisals. The general trend, though not uniformly apparent in all categories, is one of US support for the more undemocratic regimes in the region, and US antagonism of varying sorts and degrees toward the more democratic ones. The final section of this essay ventures an explanation for this pattern, locating it in the history of US policy toward Latin America.

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