A Populist International?: ALBA's Democratic and Autocratic Promotion

Carlos de la Torre
2017 The SAIS review of international affairs  
This article analyzes the ambiguities of Bolivarianism on democracy. Led by Hugo Chávez, Bolivarianism was an ideology and a strategy of regime transformation and democratization. Its populist language identified internal and external enemies such as US imperialism and elites that served US interests. This meant that the complexity of national and international politics was simplified in these countries to a struggle between two antagonistic camps: neoliberalism vs. the socialism of the
more » ... irst century; bourgeois-liberal democracy against real democracy; and US led Pan-Americanism vs. Latin Americanism. Bolivarian leaders made clear that clean elections were the only source of democratic legitimacy, and they were at the forefront of the opposition to the military coup d'état of 2009 in Honduras for example. While promoting elections as the only tool to elect and remove leaders, Bolivarian leaders simultaneously undermined democracy from within by concentrating power in the hands of the president, packing the courts with cronies, and using the legal system to punish critics. The paper unravels how Chávez diffused his model of regime transformation, and how Bolivarian leaders learned from his successes. H ugo Chávez was not the first Latin American populist leader who conceived of his movement as international and who aimed to promote his ideology globally. In the 1940s and 1950s, Juan Perón envisioned his ideology, Justicialismo, as an alternative to communism and capitalism. Although Perón aimed to export his ideology first to Latin America and then the world, Justicialismo did not expand because the left branded it as fascist and the right did not approve of its labor and social policies. In contrast, Chávez was successful in promoting his ideology of Bolivarianism.
doi:10.1353/sais.2017.0007 fatcat:honfj2kx7ndi3cyacmmq3d55nq