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Despite its grander name, the initiative launched by Chilean President Gabriel Boric alongside other self-proclaimed progressive leaders under the banner “Democracy Always,” is likely to meet the same fate as the Forum for the Progress of South America (PROSUR), promoted in March 2019 by then-President Sebastián Piñera of Chile.
Both initiatives centered on the defense of democracy, and the reasons why PROSUR no longer exists (and why “Democracy Always” will likely share its destiny) are plain to see. First, heads of state in these democratic countries change, and with them, their respective regional and international alignments. For instance, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia participated in both initiatives, yet it’s entirely possible that in almost all the countries represented at Boric’s summit in Santiago, the next elections will bring candidates of a different political orientation to power. Second, and more importantly, are the contradictions in the defense of democracy and human rights.
PROSUR was launched while Jair Bolsonaro, who openly defended Brazil’s military dictatorship, was president. Just one month into PROSUR’s existence, Piñera traveled to China and declared, “Each country has the political system it chooses,” thus justifying the existence of a dictatorial regime in China.
Now, ironically, while the “Democracy Always” summit was taking place, a Tibetan cultural and spiritual performance scheduled to be held in the Hall of the National Museum of Fine Arts in Santiago from July 30 to August 4 was canceled, due to pressure from the Chinese dictatorship. This act of censorship exposed how both the right and the left often capitulate to repressive regimes like China’s, despite their rhetorical defense of democracy.
In Boric’s case, one must also consider the demagogic nature of the initiative, especially in light of statements like “Defending democracy demands that we be able to condemn authoritarian drift.” Beyond China, where the debate revolves around whether it’s totalitarian or authoritarian, or whether its system is communist or fascist, though no genuine democrat or progressive would deny that it is a dictatorship, there are also Latin American cases of authoritarianism and human rights abuses that were met with complicity by many of Boric’s fellow participants in the “Democracy Always” summit.
Take Venezuela, for example. The country’s authoritarian slide cannot be understood without the complicity of Lula da Silva and Brazil’s Workers’ Party – from Hugo Chávez’s 2006 shutdown of RCTV to Nicolás Maduro’s 2013 election fraud against Henrique Capriles. Chávez’ Venezuela features prominently in the book How Democracies Die. What did Latin America’s progressives do in response to Venezuela’s authoritarian drift? They endorsed it. Later, when Evo Morales, like Chávez before him, lost a referendum that would have allowed him to seek re-election and nonetheless ran again thanks to a compliant judiciary, they remained silent.
But the most glaring example is Cuba, whose military dictatorship doesn’t even need to rig elections like autocrat Nicolás Maduro did so brazenly on July 28, 2024. Cuba is a one-party regime enshrined in its Constitution, where laws criminalize the exercise of human rights, including political participation. Hundreds of innocent people are imprisoned in Cuba simply for holding dissenting views. President Boric, to his credit, has bravely criticized the dictatorships of Nicaragua and Venezuela and once remarked that “Democracy does not fear dissent; democracy recognizes disagreement as essential to political life.” But has anyone heard Boric speak out against the censorship and imprisonment of dissidents in Cuba? Or at least call for the release of artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara, who was welcomed at Chile’s Foreign Ministry in 2018 and performed at a festival in Valparaíso in 2019?
For the next “Democracy Always” gathering in New York, perhaps Uruguay’s President Yamandú Orsi could offer his colleagues a gift: a copy of Cuba, de eso mejor ni hablar (“Cuba, Let’s Better Not Talk About It”), a book by Carlos Liscano. A former Tupamaro militant, political prisoner, and exile in Sweden, Liscano later served in the governments of Tabaré Vázquez and José “Pepe” Mujica.
Liscano’s book challenges the democratic convictions of the progressive left. In this courageous work, the former political prisoner writes: “Cuba influenced the Latin American left in the 1960s and 1970s. The results of that influence were disastrous for the thinking and actions of the region’s democratic left. The blame does not lie with Cuba, but with those who blindly followed the dictator’s delusions.”
It is worth recalling how many times figures like Michelle Bachelet, Lula da Silva, Dilma Rousseff, and Pepe Mujica traveled to Cuba, met with its dictators, and ignored the island’s democratic voices. Today, sectors of the governments of Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Uruguay continue to justify the longest-standing dictatorship in the region, denying the Cuban people their democratic aspirations.
As Liscano stated: “Latin America’s democratic left will never be able to think clearly until it clarifies its position on the Cuban Revolution and explicitly declares that the Castro dictatorship not only violates human rights, but denies their very existence.”
Finally, it’s worth noting the summit’s references to fighting inequality and promoting social justice, bearing in mind that corruption is a violation of economic and social rights and a key factor in democratic erosion. In this regard, more than one of the leaders present in Santiago have been embroiled in scandals that should deeply embarrass the progressivism movement.
