The electoral result in Colombia is the clearest sign of the end of an era that has lasted 500 years in Latin America. This epoch is that of the medieval order. The people of Colombia have made it very clear that they prefer to be governed by figures other than the elites of the medieval order. Because since the Spaniards set foot in the region, the institutions of the European Middle Ages came with them, whose way of surviving was based on extracting rent and governing in agreements between corporate leaderships (read companies, unions, government institutions and establishments). educational-cultural). These institutions survived the independence traumas, as well as the attempts to create republics. And judging by the results, these attempts only took root in Costa Rica; Uruguay and Barbados, countries with a large and established middle class sector; with the prevalence of the rule of law for all citizens and with success in creating wealth. The rest continue to operate on the basis of medieval logic that imposed the control of citizenship and the creation of wealth by an all-powerful state that is operated by the leadership of modern corporations whose members exploit them for their own benefit to the detriment of what the Christian Democrats call “the common good” or Adam Smith calls “the individual pursuit of happiness.”
This order of things received a strong boost during the 50s to 70s of the last century when Raúl Prebisch thought that the way to achieve development was to create tariff fences to protect nascent industries. His paradigm not only turned out to be catastrophic for small economies, but also created powerful power groups that prevented and impede free trade and thereby stifle innovation and freeze development. These interests supply the internal markets at prices that negatively impact the formation and consolidation of the middle classes.
The system that has been so successful for 25-30% of the population of Latin America was exposed with COVID 19, which was the trigger for the “the emperor is naked” syndrome. The majority of the population was able to see and feel firsthand the denial of quality health services and access to treatments that prevent death. While rulers and business, political, cultural and even religious leaders traveled to the United States to get vaccinated or accessed treatments and vaccines before they were available in local markets, the majority of Latin Americans saw their relatives get sick or die, they lost their jobs and they were vaccinated much later. This led these majorities to the conclusion that the rulers had to be replaced, consolidating an anti-elite sentiment that goes from Mexico to Patagonia. That sentiment does not distinguish between left or right, it is simply against all the ruling elites.
Before COVID 19, this had already happened in El Salvador and Chile and had citizen expression in the wave of protests of 2019. But COVID 19 was the trigger for this new stage of institutional reconstruction that affects the entire region. Today, on the citizen’s agenda of all the nations of Latin America, it is a priority to remove the incumbents from the government and replace them with figures who have achieved success by their own strength in some public or private activity, who lack links with the traditional elites and that puts the state to work in the protection of freedoms and the economic development of the entire society. It is on that wave that Messrs. Petro and Hernández ride.
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