Political pendulum swings again in Latin America

Editor's Note: In addition to Venezuela which has been mired in political and economic crises for several years, many other Latin American countries, from Peru and Chile to Ecuador and Bolivia, are also being hit by social crises. Beijing News comments:

The turmoil in Latin America illustrates the region's puzzlement over what kind of development model to adopt. In Latin America, there has long been a "pendulum phenomenon" in which the left and right take turns in power, which reflects the continuous exploration of the development model by people of all walks of life in the region.

Since the 1970s, many Latin American countries that adopted the "import substitution" development model have got stuck in stagflation and desperately need new development ideas to extricate themselves from their predicament. Under the influence of the United States, many Latin American countries have carried out neoliberal reforms to varying degrees, some of which have made achievements, but are also plagued by the widening gap between the rich and the poor and a rising unemployment rate. In particular, the financial crisis in Mexico in 1994 and the debt and financial crisis in Argentina in 2001 have prompted Latin American countries to reflect on the neoliberal model.

At the beginning of the 21st century, Latin America saw a collective rise of the left, and these left-wing governments have used the rising prices of commodities such as raw materials to realize a "golden decade" of economic growth. However, such a single economic structure is highly susceptible to the changing international environment, and with the outbreak of the global financial crisis and the fall in commodity prices, the economies of Brazil, Argentina and other countries successively fell into recession and crisis, affecting the position of their ruling leftist parties. Since 2015, the political wind in Latin America has reversed once again, with the rightist parties successively wining elections in a number of countries. The alternation of the governments between the left and right also demonstrated Latin American countries' efforts to solve their development and governance problems.

Every seed can take root and thrive only in the soil that suits it. Suffering turmoil and conflicts, Latin American countries will have to continue to explore their economic and social development models and political systems to find the ones suited to their national conditions.