For this week’s blog “Towards an Uncertain Future”, instead of writing about and analyzing the readings from Alexander Dawson’s texts, I’m choosing to focus on a conversation with Max Cameron, a Political Science professor at UBC, from a clip called The Left Turns. In this video, Cameron touches base on many issues (his examples particularly concerning countries Bolivia and Brazil), however I would like to focus on the aspect of international context when it comes to autonomy in Latin America, particularly in recent years.
In this video, Cameron speaks on the fact that historically, Latin American nations, governments, and institutions have been arguably quite weak, leaving them very vulnerable to external forces, one of the most commonly-known forces being the United States government. However, many things have changed in the past couple of decades that have allowed Latin America to have a little bit of a breather in order to finally have a bit of space to act on its own without too much external influence, or at least without being almost entirely controlled by said external forces. For the first time in its history, Latin American nations have the opportunity to be autonomous and function on their own. One reason for this, is the fact that the Unites States are distracted by other issues, mainly those in the Middle East. Another reason, which ties into certain lessons from the beginning of the semester which asked questions such as “what and where exactly is Latin America?”, is that there is currently a debate regarding this very issue. According to Cameron “it has to do with the fact that there has emerged this big gap in terms of the understanding of what the region is in Latin America in relation to the United States and Canada. The United States just has far less influence in the region today than it did in the past”. This, however, is not a simple concept. As explained by Cameron, depending on the country and its institutions, autonomy may be more effective in certain areas than others. Regardless, for the first time, Latin America has the opportunity to at least experiment with this newfound autonomy, as well as with this new form of democracy, something that is nearly unprecedented in the region. For the longest time, democracy was mostly centered around the elites in Latin America and those in power getting together and bargaining over certain issues, mostly to their own personal benefit, and today, we see that this system and these “pacts” as they were referred to by Cameron have now largely fallen apart, making way for new opportunities for new systems and leadership.
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