I just finished reading The Return of the Idiot (El Regreso del Idiota), by Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza, Carlos Alberto Montaner, and Alvaro Vargas Llosa. This book is the 2007 follow-up to Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot (El Manual del Perfecto Idiota Latinoamericano) written six years earlier. The two volumes examine the reasons for and the results of Latin America’s lurch left over the past several years.
In Return, the authors distinguish between the “carnivorous” left of Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Nestor and Cristina Kirchner, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, and Ollanta Humala, and the “vegetarian” left of Chile’s Michelle Bachelet and Brazil’s Lula da Silva. The authors have nothing but contempt for the former group, and point out the disastrous consequences of the carnivorous left’s economic policies in each country. On the other hand, the authors describe how the governments of the vegetarian left have resisted the urge to run their countries into the ground, adopting broadly pro-market policies that have left their carnivorous counterparts in the dust.
As I’ve mentioned before, the goings-on in Latin America are of interest to me for both personal and professional reasons. My wife is from Bolivia, so I have spent a great deal of time in La Paz with the in-laws over the years. My career has almost always been focused on Latin American operations, so I’ve worked in Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina. And of course, I have friends from virtually every country south of the Rio Grande, so it pains me to see the countries of the carnivorous left (to use the authors’ terminology) shoot themselves in the foot, reload, and keep firing.
Though Mendoza, Montaner, and Llosa certainly do a good job at picking apart their political opponents, their critique strikes me as more standard right-wing than libertarian, so there are a number of points in the book with which I disagree. Nevertheless, I thought it was a good overview of the region’s political landscape. And throughout The Return of the Idiot I discovered passages that apply just as well to the current political climate of the United States as to any of the Latin American countries surveyed, providing almost as much value for North American readers as for those in Mexico, Central, or South America.
Since Return has not yet been translated into English (to my knowledge, at least), I thought I’d share a couple of key passages here (the translation is mine, as are any errors associated with it). The first passage covers the rise and recurrence of populism in Argentina, but the US is certainly no stranger to these same tendencies.
“Aside from the Kirchner case, the nightmarish recurrence of populist cycles in Argentina demands attention. Why would a country that has suffered the consequences of populism and to a large degree owes its decline over the course of the 20th century to this perversion of our political life continually repeat its errors?
The periodic resurgence of populism has provoked instability and uncertainty each time, making it very difficult for economic agents to plan and invest over the medium and long terms. Another consequence has been the difficulty in accumulating first-rate human capital. This is seen not only in terms of education, but also in its effect on republican values, which seem to enjoy less and less consensus among Argentineans – the values through which people understand that tolerance and respect for rules are indispensable for progress and civilization.
One way of understanding the recurrence of populism has to do with that ‘distributive struggle’ – as it is called in some studies from the Rosario Liberty Foundation, headed by Gerardo Bongiovanni – that is born of the parasitic role played by the country’s special interest groups.
At the start of the 20th century, Argentina was one of the twelve leading nations. By 1985, it was relatively poor, with an average income that equated to something less than 70% of that of the rich countries. Where did the ‘distributive struggle’ begin that changed the country’s tendency, placing emphasis on the distribution, rather than the creation, of wealth?
In reality, it started timidly in the 1920s (some would say even before that) and it continued into the 1930s, in part as the result of the movement of the rural population into the cities, which involved the meeting of somewhat different cultures and increased the number of urban actors who were ready to make their political might felt. With Juan Domingo Peron, who was at once the expression of and the impetus for this phenomenon, populism reached its height in the 1940s and 50s. This entire period is marked, for example, by salary increases that were greater than the increases in productivity. More is distributed, but less is produced. Less and less cake with more and more gluttons.”
Another passage that stands out describes the Latin American left’s anti-market mentality, but could just as easily describe the Obama administration’s takeover of certain activities that Americans once believed rightly belonged to the private sector (car manufacturing, banking, health care, etc.):
“The nationalists also propose the ‘nationalization’ of the economy, although, in tune with the euphemistic language of the postmodern left, they assure us that they do not want state control of businesses. With that, what they mean to say is that it’s enough for the State to declare itself owner of the resources, charge confiscatory taxes, determine prices, and control a percentage of the property of the companies that invest in natural resources, especially those in the mining sector. The gringos – a practical people, all in all – have a saying: ‘If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck.’ The same holds true in the political sphere: if he takes over businesses like a statist, he must be a statist.”
These and many other passages in The Return of the Idiot make the book worthwhile. Not only does the reader come away with a better understanding of the political landscape in Latin America today, but US readers also get a cautionary tale for their own country at no additional charge.
