A Trump return to power would empower return of Latin American autocracy | Opinion

Donald Trump's rally in Hialeah on Wednesday — and a nearby forum on Latin American democracy hours before — are reminders of the toxic effect he has on constitutionalism in the Western Hemisphere.

Let me take you first to the gathering you probably weren’t aware of. In Coral Gables, Florida International University and the Fundación Internacional para la Libertad — a think tank founded by Peruvian Nobel literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa — co-hosted a forum on the democratic challenges facing the Americas.

I was a panelist for the session on democratic backsliding in Latin America. One theme that seemed to emerge from our punditry was that military epaulettes have been replaced by political neckties — or, in the case of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, a backward baseball cap.

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What I mean is, while Latin America has broken its addiction to the military dictatorships of the past century, democracy there faces a new, more civilian and more insidious threat in this century. Namely: populist leader after leader, party after party, left and right, who are trashing democratic constitutionalism so they can rule, sometimes brutally, without limits.

From Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego, the showcases are legion.

There’s leftist Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who spends each day trying to subvert his country’s judicial system to accommodate his power grabs. Or the right-wing Pacto de Corruptos oligarchy next door in Guatemala, which is raping that nation’s judicial integrity to prevent anti-corruption President-elect Bernardo Arévalo from taking office in January.

Or, in Nicaragua, 72-year-old Vice President Rosario Murillo — the sinister power behind her soulless despot-husband Daniel Ortega’s leftist throne — who just put her own country’s Supreme Court under her thumb. Or socialist tyrant Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. Or reactionary former Brazilian President/dictator wannabe Jair Bolsonaro.

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Or 42-year-old Bukele in El Salvador, who uses a hip, Tik-Tok generation image to hide his retro-authoritarian schemes. Such as: getting his lapdog Supreme Court to toss the Constitution like a half-eaten pupusa into the dumpster, so he can run for a second consecutive term in February.

A new Trump presidency would help Latin American populists normalize the contempt for constitutionalism that's leaching into the region's groundwater.

Our panel did see signs of hope — such as the way the Brazilian and Mexican high courts have stood up to the likes of Bolsonaro and López Obrador. But we also recognized another grim problem: the U.S. itself hasn’t exactly been a model of democratic institutionalism in recent years.

Which brings me to former President Trump’s raucous Hialeah rally. It came on the heels of media reports that if Trump wins back the White House next year, he plans to twist the U.S. justice system to unleash vengeance on his opponents, while giving him autocratic reign.

And he leads in the polls, a man who, as President, spurred his unhinged cult into sacking the U.S. Capitol to keep him in power after he lost the 2020 election.

If he regains the presidency, he will be the model for the Bukeles and Murillos and others — he will inspire them to normalize the contempt for constitutionalism that keeps leaching into Latin America’s governmental groundwater.

During our panel I glanced at Vargas Llosa — who has spent his Nobel literary career championing democracy and human rights in Latin America. I remembered how he’d described Trump back in 2016: the U.S., he said, was “too important for the rest of the world to have in the White House a clown, a demagogue and a racist like Mr. Trump.”

Yet Trump won the presidency that year. On Wednesday, Vargas Llosa surely knew the same demagogue he warned about has the White House again within reach — and would soon be howling onstage a few miles away in Hialeah.

And he knew the howling would echo from Tijuana to Tierra del Fuego.

Tim Padgett is the Americas Editor for WLRN, covering Latin America, the Caribbean and their key relationship with South Florida. 

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Trump victory would empower return of Latin American dicatatorships