I remember the dictator’s plane taking off at 3am as fireworks illuminated the valley of Caracas and the tracer rounds cut through the sky. The mob had already climbed the streets towards our upper class neighbourhood, preparing to climb the mansion. It was in the late 1950s that Venezuela’s Marcos Perez Zimenez first fled to the Dominican Republic, settled in Miami, and eventually settled in Spain.
Tragically, the subsequent government proved just as dictatorial as it was with the rise of Fidel Castro in Cuba.
Latin America is paradoxical in US foreign policy. It has been consistently misused but mostly on the sidelines as attention remains fixed in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The region has endured externally supported coups and dictatorships, and has endured unrelenting extraction of oil and natural resources – often to meet our needs, and is currently facing pressures such as restrictive tariffs and deportation.
But because of all strong people and uprisings, Latin America has long resisted authoritarianism. 1824, Elle Rivata Doll Simon Bolivar convened Congress in Panama City, inviting representatives from the new regional republic and US observers. He proposed a federation of “liberal countries” (probably the first recorded term) bound by laws that abolish slavery, guarantee equal rights, and render “differences in origin and color” politically unrelated. He argued that the state would not rule or rule.
The plan failed. But Bolivar’s vision helped shape global thinking. Latin American jurists have contributed to the foundations of international norms, from non-intervention to human rights. People like Chile’s Alejandro Alvarez, the founder of modern international law, remained legacy today. Institutions like the American Human Rights Court continue to seek accountability. This often resists the very standards that once helped to define.
In the 1980s, after years of military rule, the region saw the most determined driving force from below for the Democratic government. Voters returned to the polls. Grassroots organizers traded union members, feminists and indigenous activists. Leaders of these movements, including peasant organizers and liberation theologians, began to build institutions rooted in equality and rights.
More recently, military leaders, judges, elected officials and the public have united in order to halt the attempted coup in Brazil on January 8, 2023. Deep economic challenges ease democratic missions, but they are breakwaters against authoritarian threats.
Without exception, right-leaning populists like Javier Mairei of Venezuela and Argentina and Naive Buquere of El Salvador have maintained full-scale authoritarianism by Latin America. Basic freedom is tense, but remains as it is. As one columnist observed, in recent years, no region has “experienced to beat fascists as much as Latin America.”
Today, about three-quarters of Latinos live under social democratic governments. These democracies expanded labor protection, healthcare, education and civic liberties, including women and LGBT rights. Argentina, Mexico and Colombia have recently decriminalized abortion. Most countries now recognize same-sex unions. Although there are traces of tyranny left, the region’s continued struggle for equal rights underscores its democratic vitality.
Despite its reputation for instability, Latin America is the proven foundation of democratic resilience. We provide timely lessons to American democracy. Citizens across the region show how large-scale mobilization can promote reform without the illusion of exceptionalism and despite the real risk of retaliation. The peaceful transfer of power, legal accountability, and public calculations with the past came from struggle rather than stability. Democracy has always been a debate, not a deal that has never been done, but a rejection of “destinyism” that maintains the unsustainable.
Neither democracy nor dictatorship can advance without considering the persistence of their rivalry. It’s a power shift, but the pattern can withstand. The day after the revolution, the revolutionary becomes conservative, preventing victory and restraining new opposition. Like the French Revolution, liberation could become another form of tyranny that it overthrew. But there is probably nothing inevitable.
The US and Latin America have shaped each other. The exchange has not finished. The results are certain. What comes next will form democracy itself, awakening hope for ourselves.
Notes and reading
Simon Bolivar He outlined his vision for the invitation to the Panama Parliament and his alliance of “liberal states” to related documents. This is widely discussed in historical analysis of Parliament and Bolivar’s political thought. For example, see the related section Simon Bolivar: Life – John Lynch (2006).
“Defence of Democracy: The Battle against Extremism” – The title of speech by Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva was distributed in New York on October 3, 2024 and released by the Brasilian Presidential Office.
America, America: A new history of a new world – Greg Grandin (2025). Historical struggles for social democracy across Latin America may serve as a model for future social democratic movements.
“Fateism”– “The savvy knowledge ready to pipe about how we saw all the horrors of today a few years into the future dismissal of the 2026 election as a simple distraction from the religious integration of authoritarian rules.” – See Hannah Allend’s lecture. “Personal responsibility under a dictatorship” (1964), quote “The banality of accomplice“Liberal flow (May 5, 2025).
Democracy Playbook 2025: Seven Pillars to Protect Democracy After 2025 – Norman Eisen and Jonathan Katz (January 2025, Brookings Institute): Provide strategies to counter and resist democratic reversals and dictatorial forces. Available online on the Brookings Institution website.
Spin Dictator: The Changing Face of 21st Century Despotism -Sergei Guriev and Daniel Treisman (2022). Simulation of democracy in electoral dictatorship. “Fake it to make it,” appeals to keep political extremism even to those who are thought to be victims.
Tip #201 – True Comedy
Tip #200 – Drift towards Iliberalism
Approx. 2 + 2 = 5
Source: 2 + 2 = 5 – williamgreen.substack.com
