Democracy in Latin America: Between Hope and Despair

Prologue

PROLOGUE This book is a dialogue between academia and politics. My life has traveled paths between both. After a decade dedicated to law, first as a student and later as a human rights lawyer during the Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1990), my life turned to political science and active politics with a single fixation: the consolidation of democracy and respect for human rights in Chile and in Latin America. I belong to a political generation marked by two vital dates: September 11, 1973, with the military coup that interrupted one of the oldest democracies in Latin America, and October 5, 1988, with the plebiscite that put an end to Pinochet’s dictatorship and opened up the way to democracy . Both processes—the breakdown and the transition to democracy— instilled in many of us the need to think deeply about the past, present, and future of democracy in the region. In the 1980s, I dedicated myself to a systematic reflection on the processes of the breakdown of democracy and the initial processes of transition to democracy. I did this first as a graduate student at Princeton University, where I received a Ph.D. in political science, and later as part of an outstanding team at the Center for Latin American Studies (CIEPLAN) in Santiago, Chile, under the leadership of Alejandro Foxley. In the 1990s and in the first decade of the 2000s, we put into action all that we had learned, suffered, and above all, longed for and dreamed ix based on certain fundamental values and academic rigor. Given the past experience of great political failure, this time we felt we could not fail— for our own sake and for the tremendous expectations placed on the processes of democratization by the people of Latin America. Victims of so much deception and frustration throughout history, they maintained hope for a future of economic and social progress, where the dignity and rights of all people would be respected. I was appointed director of political relations at the Secretariat General of the Presidency (1990–1994), under the leadership of Edgardo Boeninger, in the transitional government to democracy headed by Patricio Aylwin. It was like getting a second Ph.D., this time in political action , within a transition to democracy that I consider to have been successful . Subsequently, I was elected as member of the National Congress for two consecutive terms (1994–1998 and 1998–2002) coinciding with the government of President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (1994–2000). From 2004 to 2006 I served as minister of foreign affairs under President Ricardo Lagos, and in 2009 I was elected senator for an eight-year term from 2010 to 2018. In 2010, I was also elected president of the Christian Democratic Party through 2012. I emphasize my political trajectory because this book goes beyond the academic. Without forgoing the rigor and systematic analyses that stem from my academic formation, I wanted to leave space for experience itself, both personal and collective, in order to attain a fuller understanding of politics and democracy in Latin America. The following reflections attempt to give an account of the abundant available literature about democracy in the region, especially in recent decades, organizing it in a systematic manner, but with the support of a political trajectory that follows other paths. I believe that this combination of academic perspective and real-world experience enhances the understanding of political and economic development in this part of the world. My own life, both political and academic, and the lives of others of my generation bear witness to the dilemmas that we faced between the waves of democracy and authoritarianism in the past decades, both in Chile and throughout Latin America. It is no accident that most political leaders in Chile today are between the ages of fifty-three and fifty-seven: x Prologue at the time of the 1973 military coup we were between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. The political tragedy that we lived, from the breakdown of democracies in the late 1960s and early 1970s through the transitions to democracy that began in the late 1970s, inspired in us, more than in any other generation, a determined commitment to systematic reflection. After I completed my law degree at the University of Chile in 1978, when Pinochet’s dictatorship was in full swing, I had the chance to enter one of the best law firms in the country. I...