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'Ugly heads' and blanket condemnations: protest and populism in Latin America.

Article Excerpt
Over the past week, important public figures from Mexico's President Vicente Fox to Interamerican Development Bank President Enrique Iglesias have joined forces to warn that 'populism' is rearing its ugly head again in Latin America.

The first alarm was sounded by Carlos Slim in the Barcelona Cultural Forum. Slim, Latin America's wealthiest citizen and direct beneficiary of the privatisation of the Mexican telephone system, warned that lack of growth in the region over the past twenty years and extreme concentration of wealth could lead to 'nostalgia for populism' and 'undesirable authoritarian, populist, and protectionist alternatives'.

President Fox took up the cry the following day, urging businessmen to 'demonstrate the viability of a socially responsible market economy to halt populist and demagogic proposals that divert us from the true route to development'. His sentiments were echoed by US Ambassador Tony Garza, who urged more privatisation and greater flexibility in labour protections, warning that without a stronger commitment to the market system investors would lose faith, and 'society would move away from both the free market and democracy and toward the kind of demagoguery that has too often been the plague of other nations'.

'Populism in Latin America has been an enormous problem identified with ex-Argentine president Juan Domingo Peron and Evita, Venezuelan president Hugo...