Now what? From political innovation to democratic resilience in Latin America

March 27, 2019| SPORTSCARDBLOGS| 0 Comment

Now what? From political innovation to democratic resilience in Latin America

All alarms have
gone off in Latin America’s democracies. Bolsonaro's triumph in Brazil is the
consolidation of an emerging global trend which uses social aversion to
politics to establish authoritarian and often openly anti-democratic
alternatives.

This is now an established
trend in North Atlantic countries and it is slowly but decidedly growing in our
countries both on the right, like in Duque's Colombia, and on the left, like
Ortega's Nicaragua and Maduro's Venezuela.

It is no longer just apathy,
ideological dogmatic fatigue, or the crisis of political parties. It is rather
the positioning of fear and hatred as a means for concentrating power and
exploiting voters, and the use of force to do away with political alternatives.

Given this new
scenario, democratic forces must realign their plan of action, reshape their
strategies and redirect their tools.

When Larry
Diamond was warning us three years ago about the democratic
recession that Western countries were experiencing, we said he was wrong. We
agreed on the symptoms, but we did not share his diagnosis.

In the context of
growing political instability, very low levels of legitimacy of representative
institutions and massive social protests, what we saw was the emergence of a
constellation of democratizing movements which clashed with traditional
politics.

Especially
in countries with progressive Pink Tide governments, we saw that discontent
focused on the exhaustion of traditional politics, particularly on the growing
contradictions that these governments deepened extractivism, allowed outrageous
levels of corruption and behaved intolerantly with dissent.

In surveys
and focus groups which we conducted then, we
found that activists were claiming democratic advances, an expansion of rights
of vulnerable social groups, growing participation of women in politics, and
greater social inclusion.

The scenario today is quite different. The year 2016 marks a new era where anti-politics is consolidated and antidemocratic authoritarianism creeps its way in.

Their demands focused on the "way" in which
traditional politics exercised power. We criticized then that the main
intellectual currents did not account for an emerging political phenomenon
which we called "political innovation".

These movements, closely
related to the use of digital technologies, emerged in the last 10 years and
proposed practices, principles and organizational methods as opposed to political
party-based representative politics.

The
Chilean Penguins, the Mexican #yosoy132,
the Argentine #niunamenos, the
Brazilian #vemprarua were essentially
democratic movements which (despite their respective peculiarities) had in
common the inclusion of non-traditional actors, the defense of open practices, horizontal
structures and distributed communication and action schemes.

Moreover,
we were excited to witness in those years how some of these movements grew and
became electoral alternatives, as in the case of Democratic Revolution in Chile,
Wikipolitica in Mexico, or Muitas in Brazil.

We understood that this was going
in the right direction and that, to the extent that these experiences actually multiplied,
we would be able to qualitatively transform the region’s democracies.

The new paradigm: Black Mirror

The
scenario today is quite different. The year 2016 marks a new era where anti-politics
is consolidated and antidemocratic authoritarianism creeps its way in.

It is
the year in which Donald Trump gets elected president of the United States, it
is the year of Brexit and, closer to us, it is the year of the defeat of the
plebiscite for peace in Colombia, the soft coup against Dilma Rousseff in
Brazil, and the year in which Maduro decided to dissolve the elected Congress
and thereby to throw overboard the last remnant of democracy which was left in
Venezuela.

Two
years later, with the election of Bolsonaro as president of the largest country
in the region, a new political paradigm is consolidated, where politics has
practically lost its mediation capacity before authoritarian forces, where antidemocratic
authoritarianism has lost its shame, and where the decision to participate in
politics has become a life-threatening option.

Digital
technology, which we thought was the main ally of political innovation, because
of its potential to democratize the debate, distribute leadership, open-up governance
and make processes transparent, bears a strong resemblance to some of the bloodiest
episodes of Black Mirror, having transformed
itself into one of the main instruments of control, oppression and manipulation
of the majority in the hands of the powerful.

This
new scenario manifests itself mainly through three perverse mechanisms: the use
of direct violence as a deterrent to activism, the strengthening of a vigilant State,
and the control of the narrative for the purpose of exclusion and hatred.

Political violence

Violence
is the voice with which authoritarianism drowns democratic debate. The attacks
on human rights advocates, social leaders and the free press have reached a
historical peak. In 2017, at least 312
human rights advocates were murdered in the
region.

The vast majority
of cases were registered in 3 countries: Colombia, Mexico and Brazil. The
independent press, on the other hand, is constantly harassed – so much so that
according to Freedom
House it currently finds itself in its worst situation over the last 13
years.

In the past year, 11 reporters were killed in Mexico; in October 2018
that figure had already been exceeded. During 2016, Artículo 19 recorded 426
attacks against the press, a 7% increase from the previous year.

The increase in attacks against female journalists in particular stands out: they rose 15% from 2015 to 2016 – 96 cases in total, 14 of them explicitly for being women.

The increase
in attacks against female journalists in particular stands out: they rose 15%
from 2015 to 2016 – 96 cases in total, 14 of them explicitly for being women.

Social protest
has also once again become a crime. Governments regulate public space, declare
states of siege to justify repression and persecution, and annul the right to
organise and express opinions.

In Venezuela, the
Government has come up with a Law against Hate, which allows
censorship and the persecution of media, journalists and activists for the
content they publish on the Internet.

In Mexico, a
Security Law was passed which allows the use of security forces in public
security matters, raising the alert against potential abuses, considering
recent findings in relation to the disappearance of the Ayotzinapa students (Frontline Defenders, 2018).

In Nicaragua, the requirement
of a permit for using public spaces has been decreed, which allowed the arrest
of 30 people during a march in early October.

A vigilant State

The
States of the region are increasingly functioning according to the interests of
powers such as transnational corporations, illegal trafficking, and the
mainstream concentrated media.

They focus less on guaranteeing rights and providing
social policies, and more on monitoring and control.

Argentina,
for example, is currently shaken by a deep economic crisis and has eliminated this
year several ministries (such as Health, Labour and Science and Technology) in
its determination to deepen public spending cuts (which are expected to increase
in 2019).

Despite the adjustment in key social sectors, the national
government has nevertheless increased the responsibilities of the Armed Forces
and their corresponding budget allowance to enable their intervention in
internal security matters.

Similarly,
we are witnessing an alarming tendency to use the Judicial Power to discipline political
voices. This judicialisation of politics – Lawfare
in English – operates suspiciously in tune with both the mainstream concentrated
media and the social media to create a mood opposed to certain political
tendencies.

An emblematic case is the imprisonment of the most popular
political figure in Brazil, Lula da Silva, six months before the presidential
elections.

Although
governments’ tendency to access information on their citizens is nothing new,
the possibilities of doing so on a massive scale certainly are more apparent.

Surveillance technology is becoming cheaper and more readily available, as well
as the ways in which citizens expose themselves due to lack of awareness or
knowledge (Freedom House, 2017).

The
hacking of the
Italian firm HackingTeam
unveiled the purchase of its surveillance software (Galileo, Davinci and Remote
Control System) by several governments in Latin America, including those of Brazil,
Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, Panama and Mexico, and ongoing negotiations
with several others. Pegasus, the surveillance software for mobile devices developed
by the NSO group, was also recently detected in Mexico and Brazil. This latter
software allows the spoofing and control of media accounts.

Surveillance
is not only facilitated by technological advances, but also by more permissive
legislation. In Mexico, a
law was passed that allows expanded legal capacity to carry out surveillance
measures, for example by establishing the obligation for telecommunication
service operators to keep their users' metadata for a period of 24 months, or authorizing
their geo-localization in real time.

The narrative of exclusion and hate

Surrounded by political
apathy, the regression of social advances, increasing unemployment and the
massive arrival of Venezuelan migrants – who have become scapegoats of the far-right
governments -, the region has become a breeding ground for political
expressions bent on exploiting these frustrations.

They do so through messages
of hatred, exclusion and the recovery of values considered to be of a higher
order, such as the fatherland, religion and the family. Technology plays an
important role here, especially through the use
of the data industry.

According to Tactical
Tech, some 40 methods have been detected by which political organizations
and governments can use digital technologies to generate distortions in public
opinion.

These methods include, among others, the micro segmentation of
profiles through Facebook data and other social media services, fake news,
troll and bot farms, and the massive use of WhatsApp groups.

The problem with
these methods is not only an ethical question, since they involve manipulation
and the violation of the right to privacy, but their instrumental use to
promote hatred and violence towards others.

There is sufficient
evidence showing that these mechanisms were used by far-right, xenophobic and
anti-human rights organizations during the last presidential campaign in the United
States, the Brexit referendum, the plebiscite for peace in Colombia and the
last elections in Brazil.

Candidate Jair
Bolsonaro, for example, ran most of his campaign through WhatsApp groups where
he planted a huge amount of false information on his opponents. In the same
vein, political organizations are currently channeling verbal violence directed
towards certain social groups to discredit them and promote hatred against
them.

Direct censorship
is the most damaging method of narrative control. Governments possess the
technology to interfere and block contents and avoid both access to information
and communication between citizens.

There is evidence
of censorship of the media in Venezuela and Nicaragua, but also in countries
with democracies which are not in crisis, such as Chile, through
restrictions on the use of services such as instant messaging by activists.

However, this is only one form of censorship. The large media monopolies, as
denounced by several Latin
American organizations, are accusing independent media of being
“fake news” so as to promote actions against them and silence them.

Towards resilience strategies

New
times require new remedies. With the election of Bolsonaro, and the
consolidation of the new paradigm, political action needs new strategies and
perspectives focusing on democratic resilience.

Strategies
paying particular attention to open access to information, co-creation and
participation mechanisms, and transparency have now become insufficient
initiatives which only go halfway and do not solve the underlying problems of
this new scenario.

The
first strategy must be embracing knowledge and the defense of the fundamental
rights. Before a vigilant State and its repressive practices, we must improve
the defense channels in judicial processes, the capacity to generate campaigns
in defense of fundamental rights, the strengthening of international networks,
and making better use of the existing international human rights protection
instruments.

However,
it is necessary that we raise awareness of legal matters and socialize litigation
strategies with the majority of the population, making the concept of "the
law" accessible through "strategic litigation" forms, so that they
can be spread from grassroots movements, street activists and public debate.

In
the face of violence, we must develop security tactics (analog and digital) and
decrease the risks for public figures. The security perspective must be
complete, including mobility, communication, information protection and even
psycho-emotional aspects.

Likewise,
we must regain our initiative regarding the narrative. We must recover a message
through which democratic processes can reconnect with the majority and respond
to their needs, and not feel frustrated because they do not.

And as far as the
media is concerned, we must understand communication channels better and create
incentives for the creation of a responsible and professionalized media.

Nothing
will be possible, however, if we do not recover politics, especially the
legitimacy of political parties and institutions. Without them, there will not
be any possible containing the advancing tide.

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