Protests in Latin America

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Good afternoon, good morning. Thank you for joining us for a webinar on social Protests in Latin America. For many of you who were following events at the end of 2009, a wave of protests broke out in places as diverse as the Dominican Republic, Chile, Colombia, Bolivia. Now, many of those happened for different reasons. In the case of Dominican Republic, it was over questions of corruption; in the case of Bolivia, it was over contested election; and Chile and Colombia, social protests started originally over concerns over poverty and access to social services, grew up, exploded into larger demonstrations and really rocked the political establishment. And in the case of Chile, led to a Constituent Assembly that is currently writing a Constitution.

Of course, in 2020, we all experienced the COVID crisis and everything pretty much was placed on hold. The question is, is what’s going to happen in 2021? With that year of COVID and the resulting contraction of the economy, regionally, and in a regional average of 7%, lead to more social protests, more demands, or will the wave of elections that we’ve already started, that started this year, will go into next year, will those serve as somewhat of a safety valve to release some of the pent-up social pressures?

Now, as I mentioned, all these cases, the reasons vary. We don’t want to draw too close a parallel on all of them. Chile’s protests and the recent protests we saw in Peru over the election results are very different from the protests that we saw in Cuba in June of this year, similar to the protests we saw on September 7th in Brazil of the pro-Bolsonaro protests. But obviously something is at work here. There are some commonalities.

We don’t want to again draw too close a parallel, but clearly there are dimensions of social discontent, people don’t protest if they’re happy, that seems obvious. But there are also elements of lack of trust in political institutions, lack of trust in political elites, and a sense of a need for broader social inclusion, both within the society generally, but also, in terms of politics. And so, there is a sense of change and ferment within Latin America, and unfortunately, in some of these cases, well, the responses have largely been democratic to these protests, we’ve had cases of, in democratic countries, of cases of crackdowns and cases of human rights abuses and have led to charges of police brutality.

So, here we have today to discuss this with us two Scholars,. One is Tamara Taraciuk Broner, she is the Deputy Director of the Americas Division, Human Rights Watch. She’s going to talk about the human rights implications. And, second, is Katrin Hansing, who is a Baruch College Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, and she’s a specialist on Cuba and in particular, a specialist on Afro-Cubans and South African diaspora in Cuba.

Before I have them present a little bit, just a few, sort of, housekeeping details. First is this is on the record and it will be recorded and posted on the Chatham House website, so feel free to share with your friends and family. The second is, I’d like to thank our sponsors for this. The Latin America Initiative is a new initiative in Chatham House, and its 101 year history it had never had a Latin America Programme, proud to say it does now, and that’s thanks to BTG Pactual, Cairn Energy, Equinor, HSBC and Fresnillo, a mining company.

The last I’ll say that when you have questions, and we’ll have plenty of time for a discussion and answer period here. Post them in the Q&A chat box and then we’ll have you unmuted and you can ask your question in viva voce, in live voice, on your own.

So, without further ado, Tamara, give us a sense of what we’re seeing, in terms of the human rights dimensions. Are these different responses varied by states against these public demonstrations, and your sense of what’s driving them and what would be a potential end solution?

Tamara Taraciuk Broner

Thanks, Chris, and thanks to you and Chatham House for the invitation. So, I think just as an overview, as you said, 2019 was a year in which we saw massive protests that were actually the consequence of many years of frustration, frustrated expectations, dissatisfaction with government policies. In 2020, with the pandemic, we saw many governments take responses that forced people to deal with all of these anxieties in many countries at home alone. But the underlying causes of this social unrest have not been resolved in many countries at best, and at times, what we have seen is that these conditions have exacerbated. So, you talked about economic inequality, which has become even more glaring during the pandemic in Latin America, social discontent is another common thread in many of these cases. There are, like, specific reasons.

In Colombia, there’s concern about the killings of human rights defenders. In Chile, there is concern about a deficient pension system. The repression in Cuba has its own longstanding roots, and I leave that to Katrin who will talk more about Cuba, but the truth is that the pandemic has been a wonderful pretext in countries like Cuba, or Nicaragua, or Venezuela, to crack down on opponents. And we have documented, from Human Rights Watch, dozens of cases in which the police, and in some instances, the Armed Forces, have responded to these demonstrations with excessive and with, I would say, reckless force in the region.

We saw this in 2019 in countries like Chile, Colombia, Ecuador. It continued in 2020 when governments started to enforce measures against the spread of COVID and responded to other protests with brutality in countries like El Salvador, Honduras, Argentina, and I think it’s important to note that in some of these instances, we did document as well, cases in which demonstrators have committed acts of violence. These were certainly not always peaceful protests in countries like Ecuador, Chile, or Colombia, but we did find that, you know, of course police can arrest people who are committing crimes, and all these instances have to be investigated by courts. But we did find that during these protests, Officers used often excessive force, including against peaceful protesters, against bystanders, and it was actually the police violence that frequently triggered even more unrest in many of these countries.

And, you know, if we think of the dictatorships in the region, elections won’t be a short-term solution. The extreme cases, you know, in a country like Cuba, which, again, I will leave to Katrin to develop further, that we see the situation in Nicaragua today, where the government is conducting a wave of arrests against opposition Presidential candidates, against critics, that will render the elections in November ridiculous and useless, as a way to express popular will.

Even the situation in Venezuela where, despite political negotiations today, where they’re starting to talk about participation by the opposition in elections in November, you know, there’s no clarity about what real independent oversight there will be in those regional elections to see if that can be a way to address the social needs and discontent. But elections and the central checks and balances I think still continue to play an important role in Latin America in many of our fragile democracies, right, and there are enormous challenges, even when this is the case.

You were talking about Chile, where there was, you know, the protests led to the Constituent Assembly that will rewrite Chile’s Constitution, that comes from the dictatorship, and the composition of the Constituent Assembly indicates that this can be a way, you know, to adopt very progressive measures on issues like women’s rights, or LGBT rights, but, you know, I think we should remember that structural issues like checks and balances, traditional independence, freedom of expression, are also up to be rewritten in a country like Chile.

In a country like Brazil, you have a President who openly defies the Supreme Court, which is investigating his government’s excesses. The government has curtailed freedom of expression of its critics openly, like even blocking, you know, his critics from his Twitter account, and the President is now questioning the electronic ballot system, with unfounded allegations, which is actually putting in question whether or not Brazil will hold Presidential elections in the scheduled period for next year. And that is another big, big issue that has taken people to the streets, supporting Bolsonaro and against Bolsonaro.

Even yesterday, Argentina’s primary legislative elections, with, you know, the official party lost in levels that were not foreseen by any pollsters, show that the Argentines are willing to send a very strong message through the ballot to the current government that they’re upset about the pandemic, about the economy, about different things, but there are still very big questions, like what will authorities do with this message? You know, to what extent will they change course of policies that are being questioned by the electorate? And, you know, will this be enough to satisfy the people?

So, all of this just to say that the – you know, in all these different contexts, the protests will likely continue, you know, particularly as a related – as pandemic-related restrictions lessen, people will take to the streets, and that is why it is critically important. One of the very longstanding debts we have in Latin America is to curb police abuses, because if the people take to the streets again, they will be met with repression, in many of our countries in Latin America. And police abuse in Latin America is the result of three things: of impunity, pervasive impunity in all of our countries, the lack of proper oversight, you know, and an institutional culture that actually permits and sometimes even encourages abuses.

So, you know, one important point I think to put in the agenda when we talk about protests in Latin America is to push for clear reforms that can ensure that the police have clear rules, so they have training to protect human rights during protests, that there’s clarity about the need to end arbitrary detention and the mistreatment of detainees, which is another problem that we’ve seen recurrently in many of these situations. And that when abuses occur, they have to be punished and that is another very important debt.

So, just to close these initial remarks, I would highlight that, you know, the abuses we’ve seen in different countries, although they are different, they are, you know, not the result of a few bad apples. These – there are structural deficiencies that need to be addressed, and Latin Americans will continue to want to express their discontent for all these underlying issues, and to do so safely, we need police forces that have the training, that have the supervision that is necessary, so that they are held accountable for the way they perform, and they’ve performed very badly. So, you know, acknowledging that getting there will take a long time. This is a process that we urgently need and needs to be on the agenda when we talk about these issues. Thank you.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Well, let me just ask a quick follow-up question about your excellent summary. Again, we see protests, again, caused largely by social discontent, but also, the reasons for that discontent vary. In the case of Nicaragua, for example, it’s a President and his wife, who’s the Vice President not coincidentally, who obviously are rounding up protesters, are jailing the political opposition. So, in that case, you have – you know, it’s more of a political protest. In other cases you see social protests of the sort that you noted in Chile, noted in Colombia. Is there a difference, in terms of how the police have responded in those cases? And I guess my second question, if I can exercise or even abuse my role here as a Chair, is that after, you know, decades of talk about police reform, is there one country or a couple of countries that you think are doing this well, or better than others, in terms of the police accountability, the transparency, the addressing the issues of police impunity?

Tamara Taraciuk Broner

I think it’s a very important question and a distinction that we need to make, Chris, in terms of – I would separate in countries where there is no democracy and police forces are part of the repressive machinery, and countries where we have police forces that are ill-prepared to deal with crowd control.

In a country like Nicaragua or Venezuela, we’ve seen systematic abuses by security forces. It’s – you know, which are not the consequence of rogue agents that commit abuses. We’ve seen a pattern of similar abuse by different police forces, in different parts of the country, at different times. This is – you know, and it’s not just a structural issue, this is a problem that is part of a systemic pattern that in the case of Venezuela, has taken this up to the International Criminal Court, right, which is evaluating whether in Venezuela crimes against humanity are being committed.

That is a whole other level from what we’ve seen in countries like Chile and Colombia, where we have security forces that are – that act – there are structural deficiencies that allow them to commit these sorts of abuses. And although we do think this is not the case of a bad apple, you know, a couple of Officers who just, like, went ahead and committed abuses, it is very different from saying that there are systematic abuses, and I think that’s a very, very important restrict – distinction.

In terms of good practices, I don’t think you can find a country where things are wonderful in Latin America. I do think, you know, there are instances in which, you know, we can look at examples. Chile started a police reform after the protests of 2019. They are starting to address the issue. It’s very slow, but they’re doing – starting to do something about it.

In cases like Brazil, for example, the police in Rio has committed executions at alarming levels, and it’s been Prosecutors or the justice system that have attempted to put a stop on this and tried to address the issues. So, I don’t think we can find a police force that is doing well. I do think we can look at specific attempts to address this, from which we can learn, you know, what is starting to be done and also, why is it so difficult? And I would like to highlight there that a key issue here is accountability, and when you look at accountability, the level of judicial independence that you have in a country to investigate these sorts of abuses is essential. So, in a country like Nicaragua or Venezuela or Cuba, you’re not going to find Police Officers who are being subject to independent thorough investigations into human rights abuses. You may find that in other countries where the democracy is fragile, but the judiciary is acting as a check on executive power and abuse.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Excellent, thank you very much. That is my Amazon package, which has just arrived, so Katrin, I’m going to turn it over to you and I’ll be back in a second with hopefully my Amazon package, but please start. I’m sorry to miss this.

Dr Katrin Hansing

Okay, thank you so much. First of all, thank you to Chatham House and to Chris for inviting me to be part of this conversation, and also Tamara for this great overview. I’m going to do something a little different, I’m going to just focus on one country, namely Cuba, which I spent most of the past year in, so during the pandemic and some of the protests. So, in the case of Cuba, the protests, nationwide protests, broke out on July 11th of this past summer and what began as a smallish demonstration in a town not far from Havana quickly spread via social media, inspiring dozens of other protests, and by the end of that day in July, thousands of Cubans had come out, calling for freedom and change.

Now, in Cuba, this is a relatively unusual situation. As you probably know, public dissent is highly restricted on the island, and in the past most critics of the government have tended to protest with their feet, i.e. by emigrating. But over this past year we have seen a number of growing protests, but this last one in July was the largest by far in both size and scale.

So, what happened, who came out, and what are people demanding? So, unlike in the rest of Latin America, or most of Latin America, as Tamara just spoke about, we can’t really speak of a strong, more independent civil society in Cuba, and we can’t also either see a culture of grassroots organising in socialist Cuba, yet at least. As such, Cubans did not come out that day with a clear agenda or a set of policy demands. Instead what we witnessed was a spontaneous, sort of, unfolding events at which a diverse group of people gave voice to their really accumulated anger at the government, and through slogans and chants, such as, you know, “Libertad” [mother tongue – 21:21] and, interestingly enough, [mother tongue – 21:24].

Another popular chant, which many of you might have heard of, called “Patria y Vida,” homeland and life, which has been taken from a very popular hip-hop song, and is a clear play on the Revolution’s infamous slogan, “patria o muerte,” homeland or death. Now, behind these calls, lie a series of acute popular frustrations, caused by the island’s current economic situation, but which has been obviously exasperated by the pandemic. A

As we speak, Cuba’s going through its worst humanitarian crisis since the 1990s. There is very little food and medicine, a public health crisis, power outages, etc., and although this is largely due to decades of economic inefficiencies, obviously, also, the US sanctions, which have been tightened lately, but also the pandemic has basically put tourism to death and slowed down other forms of foreign revenue, which the island desperately needs to buy food and fuel. And so, this is basically the situation and it’s created a perfect storm, which no doubt has led to these protests, but I would argue that beneath this current situation lie a number of, largely unaddressed by the government, socioeconomic structural issues, which have been simmering for decades.

Now, I’m mindful of the time, so I’m only going to address two of them. One of them is Cuba’s social inequality, particularly racial inequality, and if I have time, also I’d like to talk a bit about Cuba’s youth. So, poverty and social inequality are issues the Revolution obviously has fought very hard to eliminate. But, since the 1990s, this island celebrated social achievements, particularly with regards to equality, have been seriously affected. Moreover, in the context of a changing economy defined by the declining role of the state and the introduction of market mechanisms, new social stratifications have occurred and are strongly, very strongly, and now visibly along racial lines.

So, what’s basically happened here, over the last two decades, is that amid depressed wages in the state sector, access to hard currency, particularly in the form of remittances, has become essential for people to survive. But because the history of migration, outward migration from Cuba, has been predominantly ethnically White, remittance sending practices back to Cuba have mainly favoured White families on the island.

Just to give you an example, according to the US Census, 85% of Cuban-Americans in the US are ethnically White. So, the money they send back to the island, which before the pandemic was about $3.5 billion a year, largely has reached White families. And with the expansion of the private sector in Cuba over the last couple of years, these remittances have really turned into social – I mean, start-up capital and that’s also mainly benefitted White families on the island.

Now, Afro-Cubans, which arguably are now more than 50% of the Cuban population, are far less likely to have a relative in Miami or Madrid or elsewhere, and thus, have far less access to this financial capital and have really been left out of these economic opportunities. And so, once upon a time, Afro-Cubans used to be the backbone of the Cuban Revolution, and now, in this new economy, they have now become the have-nots. And in a tragic, truly tragic twist of history, Cuba’s social structure now is really visually becoming or looking like what it did before the Revolution again, and in this, Afro-Cubans are becoming extremely angry and bitter and, as a result, are one of the main groups that we saw at these protests.

The other group that I want to quickly mention is Cuban youth. By that I mean young Cubans under the age of 30, who, unlike their grandparents, many of whom fought for the ideals of the Revolution, and their parents, who lived in its better days, have mainly witnessed its demise. Young Cubans have mainly grown up with scarcities, with inequalities, with social contradictions, and with continued social control.

This generation, however, has had much more access to information through tourism, through travel, through now the internet and social media, so they’re much more informed and they have many more points of comparison to their own reality. And, as a result, it’s a generation I would argue that is largely looking for opportunities, for choices, they’re tired of waiting for change to come from above, and they’re also tired of having to leave, to emigrate, to have a future. More and more Cubans want to stay – young Cubans want to stay on the island and be able to build a life there.

Now, the Cuban Government really has, which I should add is quite elderly in comparison, has failed to address this generation’s concerns completely and really lost their support. And so, I think it’s not a coincidence that the two main groups we saw come out on July 11th, and in the protests before that by the way, have largely been young Cubans and Afro-Cubans. And this brings me quickly to the question of leadership. So, I think, at the moment, it’s still too early to speak of, in Cuba, oppositional leaders, although some key actors have emerged, over the past years, such as people like Luis Manuel Otero Alcantara from the San Isidro Movement, Tania Bruguera, and Yunior Garcia Aguilera from the 27th of November Movement, and others. But precisely because this situation is so fluid and dynamic, I think at this stage, it’s much more helpful to look at what groups and spaces of opposition are emerging, and in that what’s happening is that Artists particularly, and independent Journalists have taken on a very, very strong role, both in Cuba, but also online. And what’s particularly striking here, apart from the fact, again, that most of these people are young and Afro-Cuban, is how well-connected they are to the outside world and how social media savvy. But at this point I would argue that we cannot really speak of an oppositional leadership yet, but more maybe seeds of an emerging civil society, right?

I think I’m going to leave it at that, and then, you know, answer any questions that people might have.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

So, to the audience, please type in your questions in the Q&A box, and I’ll read them out loud. But before I do, let me just ask, and I have a few already, let me just ask one quick question, Katrin. It’s an interesting point, you have an underrepresented segment of the society that is responding to economic conditions, what does this mean, in terms of a government that has always been very closed, has not been receptive to, let’s say, social movements? What does it mean about the potential for that change to occur? I mean, how are they responding to this? The government has seen off and Afro-Cubans as being really one of their major supporters because of the gains of the Revolution after 1959, are they likely to try to build in some response, or are they too hamstrung because of the economic conditions?

Dr Katrin Hansing

Well, as you no doubt know, the Cuban Government responded, you know, with very harsh repression, sending out their security forces, arresting a lot of people, many of who remain in jail as we speak. So, the messaging has been “mano dura,” I mean, really just coming down hard, and no interest and no real willingness to really listen to people’s very legitimate concerns and reasons for coming out to protest. So, until now, we’ve seen very little whatever you want to call it, interest or dialogue on the part of the government.

I think what’s interesting really, and what’s happening on a, sort of, more broader, larger scale here, is that this social contract, if you want to call it that, that has been in existence for 60 years now between the government and the Cuban people, albeit in silence, in which basically the Cuban Government gave the population this, you know, cradle to grave social – set of social programmes or social welfare state in exchange for political loyalty, right? And with the erosion of the economy, equality and these social programmes, more and more Cubans, and particularly now the people who have been, as you rightly say, sort of, the backbone of the Cuban Revolution, Afro-Cubans are now starting to have their loyalty erode as well. And there, you know, time will only tell what this means, but I think that is where the crux of the problem really lies.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Great, thank you. Okay, we have a few questions, I’m going to ask, there’s one presenter, Sam Wilkin, who says I can read it, but let me ask the two other questioners right now if they can unmute themselves, or they’ll be unmuted, and can ask their question in person. The first is Saleh Kamil, Saleh?

Saleh Kamil

Hi, yes, can you hear me?

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Yes.

Saleh Kamil

Yes, thank you for the presentation. My question is really, sort of, second-guessing the future or the trends, because historically, the Cold War was used as an excuse for, you know, the existence of repressive regimes in Latin America, and then there was this period of relative democratisation and relative good governance, and then now you see a regression. So, what’s the reasoning or the rationale behind this? What kind of model are the authoritarians wanting to emulate? Is it, you know, a failure of the Washington consensus, is it, you know, Trump? So, yeah, I just – your thoughts on these issues would be appreciated. Thank you.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Great question, Saleh. Let’s go to you first, Katrin, and what – you know, when you think of the Government of Cuba, what is the model it’s trying to emulate? And then, Tamara, obviously with the Venezuela and Nicaragua and other cases that you know.

Dr Katrin Hansing

Thank you for that question. So, I mean, kind of predictably the Cuban Government is, you know, blaming the United States for the protests, partly the sanctions, which, you know, have been enforced under Trump and there is some, I guess, some truth to that. But the fact of the matter is they were also blaming many of the protesters on having some kind of relationship to the CIA, or the US more generally speaking. And so, the classic handbook of the Cold War is being used to justify also the repressive mechanisms they have used against their own population. So, they’re actually just repeating a very classic Cold War handbook unfortunately, and – but having been there, I – and I was speaking to a lot of people, I haven’t really found that people are buying into that on the ground.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Tamara, the question is, what comes post-neoliberalism, post-democracy, if you will?

Tamara Taraciuk Broner

I have so many different thoughts to answer that question, so I’ll just try to express a few. Look, I think Latin America is in a very difficult moment right now, generally speaking. You know, an easy answer could be to talk about, like, you know, many governments moving to the left with left-leaning Presidents rising in countries or, you know, where they have won elections or will likely win elections in the next few months. But the truth is that this tendency towards autocratic or populist rule, you know, we’ve seen it in so many different formats. If you look at Bukele in El Salvador, you know, he’s just done in a few months what Carias did in many, many years, you know, take over the Supreme Court and take over the National Assembly and ensure he can be re-elected. So, you know, I think it’s a very difficult moment for Latin America, but it doesn’t necessarily have to do with ideology. We have leaders with different ideologies that just, like, openly ignore the most basic democratic institutions and principles that, you know, we fought for very hard after the dictatorships at the end of the 70s and beginning of the 80s. So, I think it’s a complex scenario.

And then, the other thing, just talking about, like, the Cold War and geopolitics, the first thing that came to mind, to me, was like the geopolitics of vaccines in Latin America. You know, since the beginning of the pandemic and the vaccines became available, you know, in many countries in Latin America the only vaccines that were available for most of the population were the Chinese and the Russian vaccines. So, it’s certainly still an issue and a way to look at the world, in terms of access to, you know, what today is an essential tool, which is vaccinating your population. But in terms of the structural dimensions, I think we are beyond the Cold War and the left and the right. We are at a very critical moment in Latin America, in countries with a lot of different ideologies and inclinations.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

I’ll just weigh in a little bit on this too. It’s a good point, I mean, I think the – what Tamara was just describing, the pitched battles between different ideological models that marked the Cold War is very different now, and it’s difficult to say that populism, given obviously there’s – it’s varieties, there’s populism in the left and there’s populism in the right, it’s not a coherent ideology in the sense that it creates those, sort of, pitched battles.

Having said that, what we’re seeing, I think, is in many ways, waves of disgust that these populists are rising, you know, writing, to get into power and using it to consolidate power in El Salvador, Bukele, it’s corruption of course. In Nicaragua, the same thing, but of course that’s a more personalised element, and Hugo Chávez claimed famously about corruption when he was running for office that he was going to fry the opposition heads in oil as a punishment for their corruption. Same thing with Bolsonaro coming on the heels of the corruption scandals that occurred during the government – the preceding government of PT. So, there’s no real proactive ideology, it’s mostly a reaction that’s tapping into people’s deep-seated distrust of democratic institutions, their well-founded lack of confidence in political leaders to be able to respond to their demands, and a real sense, and there’s one of the questions here about the Chilean, and I’ll talk about that, a real sense that, sort of, democracy simply hasn’t worked. The market has not really equitably distributed goods or even opportunities in ways, so that people are responding to outsider candidates, someone who represents something new, but it’s not a coherent ideological battle, for better or worse.

Melanie Obula, I notice you have a question, Melanie, do you want to unmute yourself and ask, please? Then we have the awkward silence until she unmutes herself. No? Okay, if you – I’ll go ahead and read it and then – but feel free to interrupt me. “To what extent does the systemic socioeconomic inequality within countries like Chile or Brazil prevent the pursuit of structural change? What role does international media play on government’s accountability and on the amplification of national protests and human rights?” Anyone?

Tamara Taraciuk Broner

I can try. I think in – so, it plays several roles. In Brazil, the independent media has been a very important check on executive abuses, and not surprisingly, you know, the response by the Bolsonaro Government has been to openly harass, prosecute and block from social media, you know, critics and people who express concern about his government policies. So, I think one role of the media, in these fragile democracies, is to actually act as a check on executive abuses by exposing what they learn through independent and reliable reporting. I think that is something that is very important.

As a human rights activist, the independent media can play an extremely important role, giving visibility to what has actually happened. The big challenge is obviously, you know, how to ensure that reporting is reliable and, you know, if it’s reliable reporting, it’s extremely helpful to put on the agenda issues that otherwise would go unnoticed. If it’s not reliable, it’s very complicated, right, because it can help present a picture that doesn’t necessarily reflect what is happening on the ground, and that can exacerbate the underlying problems in the country.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Katrin, do you want to talk about this, ‘cause Cuba, it’s been interesting, for the first time, in comparison to, say, past protests in the 1990s, you actually have a pretty active international media presence within Cuba, as well as an independent media presence.

Dr Katrin Hansing

Right, well, I think, I mean, the international media has been around for a while. They don’t have as much access and mobility right now, especially during the pandemic, as a lot of independent Cuban Journalists do, right? And, you know, the big difference, of course, not just in Cuba, but particularly in a place like Cuba right now, is the fact that many more people have access to the internet. I mean, this has been a gamechanger in a place like Cuba.

Now, the government can shut it down and it did after the protests, but the fact that more and more people have access to social media on their smartphones, and not just in the capital, is really changing the speed at which people are getting alternative forms of information from within the island and from outside. And I think what’s really interesting is that there’s a lot of connection, not just amongst the independent Journalists, but also some of these Artists I mentioned, and just normal folks to the Cuban diaspora, right? So, there’s a real transnational element in all of this, which is incredibly dynamic and powerful and is, I think, a force we really need to reckon with. So, when we think about Cuba, we should think about it beyond the island, because I think it’s very, very important, not just in this moment, but in general, to think about, you know, what are people being encouraged by, what kind of sources, etc., and there the diaspora has a huge role to play.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Can I ask a follow-up question on this, is my impression, having followed Cuba for a long time, is really before the internet came to Cuba, which is obviously much later than it came to the rest of the world, a lot of the communication was very much focused between the island and Southern Florida and the diaspora, it was – oftentimes it became more performative than it was actually, sort of, conveying the whole demands and creating horizontal links, has this changed with the internet? I mean, is there now a broader network of people that are communicating with both within the island as well as outside, so it – and has that changed the discourse at all?

Dr Katrin Hansing

Yes, although I think South Florida is still very important, but obviously the Cuban diaspora is a global diaspora, and many Cubans have left to other countries to start over and are, you know, influencing their families and friends on the island from wherever they are at. Also, you know, Cubans now are much more mobile. They have become, you know, since there’s no more exit visa, they can travel, not easily but more easily. So, you know, people have travelled, have friends elsewhere, so I would say that it’s not this binary between Miami and Havana anymore. Cubans are more connected in general to the outside world, but also are reading, you know, alternative forms of information online, whether they’re Cuban or Cuban diasporic, you know, or international media outlets. So, that’s what I meant, you know, not just, but particularly young people are much more informed and they have different forms of – forming their own opinion through different points of reference really, and it’s not just, you know, a Cuba/Miami thing.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Thank you. I actually pre-empted a bit the next question by Sam Wilkin, who asked me to read it, but I’m going to ask it again ‘cause I think maybe you can still elaborate on your comment, Katrin. “Speculatively, would the protests be taking place at this scale if social media were not so widespread?” And, of course, you know, ‘cause we saw this occurring nationally, not just in Havana and the capital city.

Dr Katrin Hansing

No.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

There we go.

Dr Katrin Hansing

No, because, I mean, these – the protests really broke out in isolated ways and it was only through social media that other people heard about it, and really then had the courage to also go out, right? It was really this momentum that just picked up and one thing that – I mean, I think I just actually need to say it, is that, you know, in the case of Cuba, the state security apparatus is still very sophisticated and people are scared. I mean, there is a lot of culture of fear in Cuba to this day, and the fact that people went out and then more people and more people and then suddenly people saw footage of dozens of protests made people lose part of that fear in that moment. So, without social media, that would not have happened.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Yeah.

Tamara Taraciuk Broner

If I can add to that, I think social media has also been incredibly important to document what actually happened in Cuba once people went out, right? It allowed the world to know that people were going out and that they were being subject to repression. There were instances in which, you know, some people got detained while they were on live broadcasts. So it actually has been an incredibly rich way to get to know what was happening in Cuba, not just to mobilise people.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

To what extent have you seen that in other protests as well, Tamara? I mean, obviously, the repression in Cali, for example, in Colombia, have you seen the use of social media in other ways?

Tamara Taraciuk Broner

Yeah, so social media has become a very important source of information to document police abuse. It’s also a risk, right, because you have to be sure that you can properly document what you’re getting through social media. When a video circulates via WhatsApp, you lose its metadata, so you actually don’t know, from the actual video, who filmed it, when and where, which you would know if you actually got the original file. So, it requires a work, you know, a work of documenting and verifying the images, but these are, like, first-hand accounts of what is actually happening. So, if you can actually complement those images with talking to the person who filmed it, or to White witnesses who were there, the combination is extremely powerful to be able to document abuses. Both in cases where this is happening and it’s widespread and it’s impossible to be in every city at the same time, but also, in closed or semi-closed countries, like Nicaragua or Venezuela or Cuba, where it is actually difficult to be in the country doing this sort of reporting. So, that goes for Reporters and for organisations like us.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Thank you. Bill Hayden has a question directed to you, Tamara, and I’m supposed to ask and I’m not pre-empting him here, “Is there a more significant cause of the 2019 Chilean protest?” What is the cause of this?

Tamara Taraciuk Broner

So, the short answer is, like, that the protest began over an increase in the price of public transportation, and they continued based on that, which sparked the protests and they broadened to reflect, like, a lot of anger over serious deficiencies in social services and economic equality – inequality more broadly.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Let me just add a little bit too. Having travelled and worked in Chile for a long time, what is – people often talked about the protests expanding to be about inequality, and there has been dramatic improvements in inequality in Chile since the democratic transition when inequality and the levels of poverty were about 40%. I would personally argue that more of what was at work, in the case of Chile, were several things, one was just the lack of social mobility. There is – it still remained, even though poverty had been reduced in ways that were really quite exemplary for Latin America, but the social structures remained very rigid and the opportunities were not evenly distributed.

So, for example, school access was dramatically improved, healthcare access, but it was very, very bifurcated by where you were, in terms of the social ladder, and that’s really what people wanted better services that reflected, if you will, those gains and poverty reduction, and that was really, in many cases, driving it, alongside a real, sort of, rigid and not very representative political system, and I think those two things collided into what we see now with this Constituent Assembly. But, you know, it sort of, had a broader, deeper meaning and it kind of gave an opportunity for venting by Chileans for longstanding rigidity in the system.

Marianna Vega has also another question, she’s asking me to read it, and I swear this is not me making them up or seizing the spotlight, “Can elections in the region bring about the change being demanded? The speakers have expressed some scepticism in this regard in general, but are there more helpful case studies on a country-by-country basis, and, if not, what are other avenues for change in the short-term and long-term?” And this is really the key question to end on, you know, can elections bring about this change? Tamara, I’m going to ask you first.

Tamara Taraciuk Broner

Yeah, so a few thoughts on that. I think, you know, one thing we’ve seen in Latin America, over the past few years, is that several leaders who got to power through free elections, then abused the way they exercised power, and they did so in an undemocratic way. So, the first thing is, elections are certainly not a guarantee that things will get resolved. However, I do think that calling for and pushing for free and fair elections is essential to try to address a lot of the longstanding protests in countries where we haven’t seen free and fair elections recently, and others where we have, and there are a lot of these underlying problems that need to be resolved, like the people need to be able to express their will through elections, but I would say that there are two very important things to bear in mind.

One is, how will these elections be carried out? So, can we ensure that these are actually free and fair elections, that they have, where necessary, independent oversight, that people can trust the system that if they vote they won’t – you know, their vote will count and that they will be able to push for change through that? And then, second, what happens after the elections, right? We do have free and fair elections, you know, how is this leader going to govern?

In the extreme case of a country like Venezuela, if there were free and fair elections with proper independent oversight, you know, the mess that that leader is going to be dealing with, once they take office is huge and it will require a lot of reforms to be able to actually rule democratically.

In other countries where you’re not in that extreme situation, you still need to look at what will the consequence of elections mean. And, you know, and I gave the example of the Argentine elections yesterday, right? You know, there was an open exam – this was an example of people expressing, you know, their views and challenging the way policies were adopted, over the past couple of years. What will that mean today and the next month after the formal legislative elections in November? So, I think they certain – elections are a key element to any democracy in Latin America, but I think we need to think of, like, how will they take place and what will happen afterwards?

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Well, before I turn to you, Katrin, on this, we have a question from Baroness Hooper, directed at you, Tamara, so let me just go to you on this one, is, “Could you please,” ‘cause you already mentioned this, “comment on the results of the Argentine elections yesterday? Did they impact at all on, of course, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner’s popularity and how has she reacted to the protests?

Tamara Taraciuk Broner

So, the election – yesterday, Argentina had primary legislative elections. The system requires the primaries first, so that each party creates their final lists for legislative elections that will take place in November. And if you add up the votes of people who voted for the government official party, and for all the other options, the opposition won by a margin that no-one expected. It was much higher, you know, there were provinces that the official government had never lost, in recent years.

In a place like the province of Buenos Aires, it has the largest number of voters in the country, the opposition won by a margin of five or six points, when no-one expected that to happen. The city of Buenos Aires is traditionally more favourable to the opposition, but only 25% of the electorate voted in favour of the government. So, it was like a surprising electoral defeat for the government. Cristina Fernández flew to Buenos Aires, after voting in her province in Santa Cruz, and didn’t speak at the event, the event by the official – by the government’s party was just a statement by the President, acknowledging that they had lost by a margin that they didn’t expect it, and that they would take note of that and, you know, address it in the coming weeks. So, it’s not really clear what that means in practice, but it was a message of recognition that the electorate had sent a message given by President Fernández and not by Cristina Fernández.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Thank you. Katrin, to the question of elections, obviously not all that relevant to Cuba directly, but I think let’s broaden it a little bit, to what extent can political reform, more inclusive politics, perhaps give some, sort of, momentum to change that these protesters are demanding?

Dr Katrin Hansing

Yeah, I mean, obviously elections are not free and fair in Cuba, so I don’t think there’s a lot of expectation there that that will bring about any change. I think it’s going to be interesting to see how things develop, particularly economically on the island, and also, whether the government makes, you know, any signs of unwillingness to listen to some of the messages that these protesters, and some of these groups that I talked about have been continuing to talk about, right, which is that they want dialogue and they want some real structural change.

What I find so striking about particularly what both of you and Tamara have said is that, you know, in all of these countries we’re talking about, whether they’re democratic or not, really, the issues are very, very similar, right? I mean, they really, really are, particularly in this moment of the pandemic, and, you know, how we move on into the future, with or without the elections, really will depend, you know, on these countries’ leaderships really.

Dr Christopher Sabatini

Excellent, thank you very much, Katrin. On that point, we’ll close, except for me to just say one last thing, which is, answer to one of the questions, elections are probably necessary, but not sufficient. They are important in giving people a say in their leaders, who their leaders are, for them to exercise and express their views. But, obviously, first of all, the conditions have to be there to make sure that those options are clear, presented openly, fairly, that they get a chance to elect their leaders in ways that are free of intimidation. But obviously these are deeper structural issues, as Katrin was just saying, that cannot be resolved only by elections, and they’re very – it’s a different set of issues than the region confronted us in the 1990s, which were largely technocratic issues: hyperinflation, monetary policy, restarting economies, establishing freer and more independent traditional systems and electoral systems.

This is very different and I don’t think we really have any answers, and I don’t think there are any cases, you know, if I can sound a little bit dryly scholarly, we’re watching an experiment in real time. Chile is one of those cases where they’re redrafting Constitution that they hope will embody all those notions of inclusion and mobility into their Magna Carta. And we don’t know whether that alone will be sufficient to move very difficult structural embedded issues in the society and the politics. And so, obviously, stay tuned.

Thank you both for a very stimulating discussion. We will continue. I don’t think, unfortunately, this – these issues will go away any time soon, as I was just indicating. And, again, in conclusion, I just want to thank our supporters, BTG Pactual, HSBC, Equinor, Fresnillo, and Cairn Energy, and stay tuned, we will have more of these events in – on Latin America in the future. Thank you both very, very much.