América Latina vota, 2017-2019

Between 2017 and 2019, politics in Latin America has continued to be channeled through elections through which citizens have elected or ratified their rulers. It is an exercise that, in addition to validating the electoral component of democracy, has become a common practice in the region like never before in its history. 15 countries have made routine procedures that just three decades ago were infrequent. However, the events that occurred in several countries in the last two years, accentuated in the second half of 2019, in which hundreds of thousands of people flooded the streets displaying an unusual intensity in the protest, seem to overshadow the conventional political participation that usually is channeled through voting. A scenario of fatigued democracy has spread throughout a very heterogeneous region in which the crisis that affects representative institutions joins the signs of the unrest that prevails in societies. This situation in which democracy finds itself may be a transitory stage of imprecise duration or, on the contrary, it may be the prelude to a new way of doing politics in collusion with the strengthening of capitalism and in a social context (and individual) very different from that lived until now.