History, like human destiny, is closely linked. Any decision made today may lead to a series of consequences in the future. Therefore, a person who is responsible for himself, the people and the government will always consider comprehensively when faced with a choice. From this point of view, in 1973, when most Latin American right-wing governments tried to continue the industrialization process through large-scale borrowing, they were irresponsible. The subsequent debt crisis and the neoliberal structural adjustment imposed by international creditor groups were all punishments for this irresponsible behavior.
■ Global Magazine Bogota Branch reporter/Ye Shuhong
The pendulum of Latin American history has gone through 30 years, sliding from right to left. By March 2005, 8 of the 65,438+03 countries in South America were led by left-wing representatives. In Mexico, where social contradictions are prominent, although there is still a long time to go before 2006, the election campaign between political parties has begun, among which the poll support rate of olaf Dole, the candidate of the left-wing Revolutionary Institutional Party, is as high as 80%. If nothing happens, it is only a matter of time before he is elected president ... So, what is the root cause of the failure of right-wing politics in Latin American countries? What happened in these 30 years? What enlightenment can right-wing politics leave us when it fades out of the historical stage?
Revelation 1: Sacrificing agriculture to achieve industry may lead to social unrest.
History is an organic whole and cannot be treated separately. It is unfair to blame the social crisis in Latin America on the radical neo-liberal structural adjustment of the right-wing parties in the past 30 years. Looking back at the early days after World War II, we will find that the imbalance between workers and peasants caused by the import substitution model at the expense of agriculture is actually the original sin of debt crisis and social unrest in the future.
After World War II, the demand for raw materials and agricultural products in the international market increased, and the export of agricultural products brought a steady stream of foreign exchange to Latin American countries. However, the money was not used for agricultural reinvestment, but was invested in the priority industrial fields at that time.
This practice of sacrificing agricultural achievements for industrialization caused serious consequences in the 1970s. Due to the long-term lack of investment and technological innovation, agricultural production efficiency is low, and agricultural output is not maintained by improving production efficiency, but by unlimited land reclamation.
A dilemma caused by the unbalanced development of industry and agriculture is that a large number of small and medium-sized agricultural producers go bankrupt and flood into cities, which brings a heavy burden to the urban social security system. In the rural areas of Latin America, colonial history has formed a land ownership structure in which large real estate and small real estate coexist. With abundant land and capital, big landlords gradually evolved into capitalist agricultural enterprises with the development of commodity economy, mainly engaged in the production of export agricultural products; The land area owned by ordinary farmers is very small, which is usually further divided with the increase of family population, and even not enough to accommodate the increased labor force. So they can usually only engage in some ordinary grain production.
In this way, the agricultural sector of Latin American countries has gradually formed the coexistence of modern agriculture and small-scale agriculture. The former is engaged in export production, while the latter is engaged in food-based domestic demand production. For a long time, Latin American industrialization is in urgent need of export of agricultural products to earn foreign exchange, and it has tilted towards export-oriented agriculture in rural infrastructure construction, credit and technological transformation, which has led to the situation of emphasizing export over domestic demand and making the small-scale peasant economy engaged in domestic demand production on the verge of bankruptcy. The situation of small farmers and landless peasants became more and more difficult, the polarization between urban and rural areas became more and more serious, and a large number of refugees poured into cities where it was easier to survive, which led to a surge in urban population and a continuous rise in unemployment rate, laying a hidden danger for the intensification of social contradictions later.
Revelation 2: The wave of lending harms citizens' welfare.
History, like human destiny, is closely linked. Any decision made today may lead to a series of consequences in the future. Therefore, a person who is responsible for himself, the people and the government will always consider comprehensively when faced with a choice. From this point of view, in 1973, when most Latin American right-wing governments tried to continue the industrialization process through large-scale borrowing, they were irresponsible. The subsequent debt crisis and the neoliberal structural adjustment imposed by international creditor groups were all punishments for this irresponsible behavior.
It is worth mentioning that power corruption has played a role in fueling the lending wave throughout the European continent. Due to the lack of government supervision on the scale of credit, some officials use their powers to obtain government guarantees, obtain huge loans from financial institutions, and then lend them to third parties at high interest rates, or simply transfer their assets abroad; Some officials even borrow money directly from private banks without guarantee and then transfer it abroad. After the debt crisis broke out, international creditor groups forced Latin American governments to repay their loans on schedule, and many private banks were on the verge of bankruptcy.
In order to maintain social stability, Latin American governments have implemented state-owned loans to these banks, and private debts have been transferred to the state. Later, these debts were passed on to citizens by cutting social expenditures, and the investors and corrupt officials who really benefited from them were those who made it difficult for the country to make money.
The debt crisis made Latin American countries face great pressure to repay loans, and also triggered a serious financial crisis, and social expenditure was the first to be affected. According to the estimation of the United Nations Development Programme, in the 1980s, the per capita expenditure of Latin American countries on public health, education and basic food subsidies decreased by 30%, and the per capita expenditure on education decreased from 9 1 US$ in 1980 to 66 $ in 1985. Many countries have also generally reduced many infrastructures closely related to people's lives. For example, the Mexican government abandoned the plan to rebuild the tap water supply system in the capital, people's quality of life declined sharply, social unrest intensified, and strikes, street protests and even looting of supermarkets occurred from time to time.
In addition, in order to repay foreign debts, Latin American governments drastically reduced their imports, which led to a shortage of internal supply, a rapid rise in prices, an intensification of inflation, an increasingly difficult life for middle and lower class residents, an intensification of social polarization between the rich and the poor, and a further deepening of social contradictions.
Enlightenment 3: Economic reform should not be at the expense of justice and polarization between the rich and the poor.
The financial crisis has brought Latin American society to the brink of social unrest. International financial groups have gradually discovered that this way of fishing in dry land may lead to the permanent decline of Latin American economy, so by exchanging "creditor's rights" for "economic sovereignty", they have forced Latin American countries to accept neoliberal economic restructuring characterized by economic liberalization, privatization, marketization and elimination of government intervention. Most right-wing governments are also happy to accept this.
However, this neo-liberal economic model, which ignored social costs and sacrificed social justice, aggravated the polarization between the rich and the poor in Latin American society, harmed the interests of the middle and lower classes, increased social hostility, and finally led to the end of the right-wing political life.
After the implementation of the "structural adjustment plan", the Latin American right-wing government hastily promoted privatization and auctioned all state-owned enterprises during this period, causing a large number of unemployment and increasing social unrest; In addition, after some enterprises with monopoly position in the industry were sold to foreign companies, the related prices or expenses rose sharply, which directly harmed the interests of consumers, especially the middle and lower class consumers. After the telecom enterprises and state-owned waterworks in some countries were auctioned, the telephone and water charges doubled, which triggered public protests.
In terms of trade liberalization and reform, some Latin American countries have implemented neo-liberal structural adjustment, and tariffs have fallen sharply, which has caused a group of domestic enterprises with poor competitiveness to get into trouble because of hasty opening up, and unemployment has increased greatly.
In addition, the "structural adjustment plan" also includes reducing government expenditures, especially social welfare expenditures, such as subsidies for food, public transportation and water and electricity, public medical care, public schools and pensions; Reduce workers' wages, tighten monetary policy, raise interest rates and curb inflation; Open up foreign investment and remove all restrictions on foreign investment; Cancel foreign exchange control and import restrictions, and let goods and capital enter and leave freely.
If we compare the import substitution model with the neo-liberal model, we can easily find that the measures taken by the latter are conducive to the expansion of international monopoly capital. From the perspective of Latin America as a whole, the poverty and polarization between the rich and the poor brought about by the structural adjustment of neoliberalism are intensifying.
According to the report released by the Latin American Economic System this year, the number of poor people in Latin America has reached 227 million, accounting for 44% of the total population in the region, the number of extremely poor people accounts for 20%, and the unemployment rate is as high as 1 1%. According to the report, in addition to the slow economic growth, the uneven distribution of social wealth is also an important reason for the increase in poverty in Latin America.
At present, the average unemployment rate in Latin America rose from 6.9% in 1990 to 10.6% in 2003, and the proportion of poor people rose from 40% in 1980 to 44.4% at present. More than 220 million people in the whole region live below the poverty line and are controlled by the rich, accounting for 1% of the population in Latin America. According to the report released by the World Bank this year, Latin America is the region with the most serious gap between the rich and the poor in the world. At present, the average Gini coefficient in Latin America has reached 0.522. Once the Gini coefficient exceeds 0.6, it indicates that the society will be in a "dangerous" state of possible turmoil. Since 2002, social unrest in Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Haiti has confirmed this.
Revelation 4: Corruption is the catalyst of social crisis.
Corruption has a long tradition in Latin America, which existed in colonial times. In recent 30 years, with the acceleration of market opening and privatization, power rent-seeking is particularly rampant. Bureaucrats, businessmen and international capital form a monopoly profit-sharing group. They monopolize economic resources, manipulate public opinion, influence policy making, and make huge profits from it.
Behind the debt crisis in Latin America in the 1980s was amazing corruption. In addition, in some countries, corrupt officials secretly promote costly government projects in order to collect high commissions from public projects or let their relatives undertake these projects, which is why some countries still launch a large number of huge projects when faced with the pressure of repaying foreign debts. For example, in Mexico, Argentina and other countries, despite the serious surplus of equipment in the water conservancy sector, the government has started a number of expensive water conservancy projects, and so on.
In the process of privatization of state-owned assets, corrupt officials colluded with international capital to sell state-owned assets at a price dozens of times lower than the actual value through black-box operation, and received high commissions from them. Some officials even set up their own "leather bag" investment companies to buy state-owned assets at a price that is almost a fraction of the value of the assets, and then sell them to investors to obtain a high price difference. This phenomenon is endless.
In some Latin American countries, politics has become a shortcut for corrupt officials to accumulate huge wealth in a short time. The responsibility of political parties to the country has gradually disappeared and the credibility of the government has declined. The legitimacy of the ruling party was questioned by the public, which eventually led to the collapse of corrupt parties.
If the debt crisis in 1980s brought Latin America to the brink of social collapse, then corruption was the lubricating oil smeared on this decline, which accelerated the arrival of this ending. Vargas Lue Sa, a famous Latin American writer, once described the corruption in Latin America: "If we want to sum up the whole Latin America with one word, that word is not freedom, but corruption, and corruption has become the most dazzling role in Latin American politics."
Generally speaking, apart from historical and external accidental factors, the fundamental reason for the loss of power of Latin American right-wing parties is the problems of Latin American countries and the ruling party itself. If we sum up one thing, it is that there is no good coordination between economic and social development, market and government regulation, equality and efficiency, opening up and protection, and interest distribution of all social strata. This may also be the inspiration from the Latin American crisis.