Toxic Democracy In Latin America

Most parts of Latin America have been struggling to implement or enforce democracy for the past century. The most notable examples are Argentina and Chile. Many political scientists have argued that this is mostly due to internal factors such as the corporatist culture and lack of proper structural reforms, but they do not include external pressures from the international sphere to curb communist influence in Latin America. In this paper, I will argue that from the coup in Chile in 1973 to the Dirty War in Argentina, the United States has enacted interventions that have been detrimental to the weak Latin American nations in order to quash communism. Using the term ‘toxic democracy’ by Torres Ruiz and Ravecca, I will state that the United States has been a toxic democracy to both Chile and Argentina by destabilizing weak democracies and installing puppet governments to try to control the rise of leftist thought in both countries. The analysis of the lack of democracy in both countries is not complete without analyzing both the internal and external forces that …show more content…
This term can be applied to the United States, as they deliberately impeded on the democratic process in both Chile and Argentina in order to stifle communist influence and promote liberalism. They maintained the military coups of Pinochet and The Process of National Reorganization and made sure that they were supported through economic and military aid. Opposition to the regimes were stifled and often eliminated in secret and not so secret operations, and the American government made sure that the citizens in Latin America were kept in a state of fear of speaking out against enforced neoliberal