Poll: Latin Americans hopeful
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil – Latin Americans are more optimistic than they’ve been in years about their futures and the state of their democracies, although suspicions about their governments persist, according to a landmark poll released Friday of more than 20,200 people in 18 countries.
People in the region consider themselves right-leaning moderates, the poll found, although they have elected nine leftist governments over the past year. The survey was sponsored by the Chilean nonprofit research firm Corporacion Latinobarometro.
The annual survey, which is widely used to track regional trends and is the broadest study of these countries, captures Latin American opinion at an historic moment. The poll was taken Oct. 3 to Nov. 5 of this year and has an error margin of 3 percent.
High international commodity prices have brought rare economic stability to a region known for tumultuous booms and busts. In addition, this past year’s historic round of a dozen elections, which ended with the Dec. 3 re-election of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, was a notable achievement for a region with a history of authoritarian rule.
“Latin Americans have never experienced stability like this before, and their mood is reflected here,” said Marta Lagos, Latinobarometro`s executive director. “These countries have been through such horrendous ups and downs that just steady economic growth looks good to them.”
Regional economies will expand by an estimated 5 percent this year, marking the fourth straight year of growth. Some 35 percent of Latin Americans said their families’ economic situations had improved over the past year, a 12-point rise over the past four years. More than 50 percent of Venezuelans and Brazilians said they were economically better off, while only 19 percent of people in El Salvador said so.
The poll finds that 48 percent of Latin Americans believe their countries will join the developed world within 20 years or is already developed, compared to 37 percent who said that in 2002.
“Part of the optimism is based on low inflation and relative stability and the fact that many governments have trade supports in place,” said Riordan Roett, director of Western Hemisphere studies at John Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. “These things have been able to make an impact on people’s lives.”
If anything, the poll shows Latin Americans are in a moderate mood and prefer their leaders the same way.
Center-left presidents who have stuck to orthodox economic policies such as Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and Chile’s Michelle Bachelet were the most favorably evaluated, with 37 percent rating Lula da Silva and 32 percent rating Bachelet as “good.”
More extreme figures such as Chavez and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, along with U.S. President George W. Bush, received the highest negative ratings, with about 40 percent of people evaluating them as “bad.”
Chavez, however, remains popular in his own country, the poll found, with 66 percent of Venezuelans giving the leftist president a positive rating. He was least popular in Chile.
Chavez’s aim of unifying Latin America under his confrontational leadership has, in fact, clashed with strongly felt nationalism in many countries, Lagos said. Chavez, a fierce critic of the Bush administration, has sprinkled billions of dollars in discounted oil and bond purchases around the region.
“There is no such thing as a Latin American leader,” Lagos said. “Chileans, for example, don’t like anyone talking about their country who isn’t from here.”
Bush was ranked most favorably in Panama and the Dominican Republic, where he received 61 percent and 53 percent favorable ratings, respectively, while Argentines showed near-universal disapproval.
“If you talk to political elites in Latin America, George Bush is even more disliked,” Roett said. “It’s because of his policy in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
While analysts speak about a leftist wave having swept the region this year, the poll finds that Latin Americans consider themselves political moderates who lean right.
Asked to define themselves on a scale of 0 to 10, with 0 representing the left end and 10 representing the right, Latin Americans came in at 5.4. Eight countries, including Venezuela, however, have moved leftward in that indicator since 1996, while four countries, including Mexico, have moved to the right.
The poll also found that Latin Americans have renewed trust in democracy. The percentage of those who said they preferred democracy to any other system of government rose to 58 percent this year, after dipping to 48 percent in 2001. It was the highest mark registered by the indicator since 1998.
Uruguay and Costa Rica topped the list of countries supporting democratic governance. Venezuela and El Salvador saw the biggest falls in the indicator over the past year.
That doesn’t mean that Latin Americans are happy with the people they elect or believe the system is giving them a fair shake.
While the percentage of people who approved of their country’s ruling government jumped to 54 percent this year, only 29 percent had a favorable opinion of political parties, 38 percent approved of their judiciaries and 41 percent approved of their legislatures.
Nearly 70 percent said that governments ruled on behalf of powerful interests and not for people, and nearly half thought their country’s elections were fraudulent.