One way to read this result is as a high-society vote of confidence in the results of the 10 presidential elections held across Latin America last year. In Peru and Mexico, voters broadly repudiated the brand of radicalism trumpeted by Hugo Chávez of Venezuela and chose the born-again centrist Alan García and the conservative Felipe Calderón, respectively. In Brazil President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, a former radical trade unionist, was rewarded with a second four-year term for his moderate economic policies. The unrest that was spreading across the region earlier in the decade and brought Chávez ally Evo Morales to power in Bolivia has ebbed of late, and the regional economy has posted three straight years of solid growth. Life is good for the wealthy. Asked whom they would identify as a model leader, the respondents placed Lula and Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet in a statistical dead heat for top honors. Chávez finished a distant fourth.
The elite also showed increasing confidence in Latin America’s ability to compete in international markets. A solid majority of respondents placed “high importance” on trade deals with every region of the world, supporting even the controversial Free Trade of the Americas Agreement promoted by the United States. Nonetheless, hostility to the United States remains intense. While 59 percent place high importance on trade with the United States, 80 percent or more place high importance on trade with Europe, China and even the Arab nations. (The share who place high importance on Arab trade jumped from 32 percent in a 2005 Zogby poll to 81 percent this year, a sign that high oil prices have thrust the Middle East onto the Latin radar.) The national elites were also virtually unanimous in their dim view of how the United States has handled relations with Latin America: 86 percent, including 81 percent who identify themselves as politically right of center, gave the Bush administration a fair or poor grade.
To an extent, the upbeat view of Latin America’s future dovetails with what outside experts are saying. In a report released last month, the World Bank forecast 4.2 percent growth for Latin America and the Caribbean in 2007, down slightly from 2006 but still relatively strong. Of the seven countries targeted in the Zogby International poll at least four–Argentina, Chile, Peru and Venezuela–are expected to surpass the regional average. And those nations are home to some of the most sanguine elites: among those surveyed, Argentines are most positive (by a 67 percent majority) about current conditions in their own economy, and Peruvians are most confident about the direction of their economy over the next two years (95 percent). Venezuelans, despite the controversy swirling around Chávez, are also highly optimistic about the two-year horizon (85 percent). “Peru has sustained high rates of growth over a long time,” notes Peter DeShazo, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington. “Argentina and Venezuela have recovered very smartly from recessions and terrible crises in 2001, 2002 and 2003.”
There is, however, an element of unshakable, even unreasonable, faith underlying this mood. The 2002 poll also showed a wide gap between views on the current reality and its future. The growth of the past three years has been largely fueled by soaring commodity prices and the global surplus of investment dollars, which have helped drive up Latin stock markets. For the most part, governments in the region have tamed inflation and stabilized economic growth, but have yet to attack the red tape, corruption and decaying infrastructure that give the region one of the most difficult business environments on the planet. Economists warn that when commodity prices fall, and they are beginning to, growth could quickly go bust in a region still plagued by a yawning gap between rich and poor, and social unrest. “Yes, inflation is low, exports are still good in the short term and there’s even been some progress in poverty reduction,” notes Latin America scholar Riordan Roett of Johns Hopkins University. “But where do they get their optimism? What about the long term? It makes you wonder what they’re smoking.”
One answer is that powerful Latin Americans are enjoying most of the spoils of a boom time, and are not dwelling on the underlying threats. “The past few years have been the best the region has strung together in a long time,” says Harvard economics professor Kenneth Rogoff. “Thanks to the interaction of globalization and technology, capital and skilled labor have been getting an increasing share of the pie in Latin America. It is hardly surprising that elites in Latin America are feeling relatively optimistic.”
The outlook is not uniformly buoyant. The pessimistic outlier is Mexico, perhaps because the region’s second largest economy after Brazil is also the only one that competes head-to-head with a rising China in export manufacturing. An 83 percent majority of Mexican respondents described economic conditions as fair or poor, and nearly one in three predicted a downturn for the national economy over the next two years. The gloom may be heightened by the fact that, while wealthy voters managed to elect their first choice, Calderón, in the recent presidential elections, his victory sparked a protracted civil-disobedience campaign launched by his left-wing opponent. But the Zogby polls in 2002 and 2005 also uncovered a deep malaise in Mexico, so its worries predate the current troubles. “Mexico’s economy has been declining for several years now,” says Luis Rubio, president of the Center for Development Research think tank in Mexico City. “The contrast with other economies is stark, and it is the result of an overall policy framework that is not conducive to economic growth.”
Brazil, by contrast, is the most surprisingly hopeful nation in the poll. The World Bank expects Brazil to post one of the region’s lowest growth rates in 2006, less than 3 percent, with only a modest improvement this year, but 89 percent of Brazilian respondents see better times ahead. Lula’s reputation as a pragmatic left-of-center leader continues to galvanize both his own nation and the region. More than a quarter of the participants chose Lula as the chief of state who embodies the best model of leadership for the region. Only Chile’s President Michelle Bachelet fared better, and that may reflect more her country’s status as the reigning showcase of Latin America than her shaky first year in office.
Chilean elites are notable for their skepticism about the neighbors: 54 percent say Latin America is on the wrong track, the only pessimistic majority in the survey. As the region’s most prominent economic success story, Chile has always stood aloof, tying itself more to the global than the regional economy. Its left-of-center governments have consistently declined invitations to become a full member of the Mercosur trading bloc. The elite like it that way: they give the government high marks for its handling of trade, and were the respondents most likely to place “high importance” on trade with China and Arab countries.
Peru and Brazil occupy ideological extremes in the Latin elite (at least as defined by this poll): 37.5 percent of Peruvian respondents identify themselves as right of center, and 49 percent of Brazilians identify themselves as left of center. Not surprisingly then, Peruvian respondents gave the highest rating (79 percent) to the importance of trade with the United States, while 57 percent of the Brazilians surveyed felt the same way. Nearly half the Venezuelan respondents also identified themselves as left of center, and they voiced the greatest support for trade within Latin America, a pet project of their regionally ambitious leader. Indeed, Venezuelans gave their leader high marks in the poll for his trade diplomacy, even as respondents from other nations gave him single-digit approval marks. “Chávez is popular only in Venezuela,” says Brazilian political analyst Amaury de Souza. “Bachelet’s popularity, on the other hand, is the incarnation of a Latin American statesman.”
The poll helps outline the issues on which Latin American elites are likely to clash, and to come together. The popularity of free-trade accords in general is on the rise among this select group, and their enthusiasm extends to the U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement, which would reduce or eliminate all trade barriers in the Western Hemisphere. Both Chávez and Lula have opposed the deal in the past, but nearly two thirds of the poll participants support it–including a majority of Brazilian respondents. However, the one issue that really unites Latin America is anger at Washington; only 5 percent of Chileans and 13 percent of Venezuelans gave the United States positive scores for handling Latin relations. With a margin of error of 4 percent, that put the Chileans–most of whom described themselves as centrist or conservative–in fundamental agreement with the left-leaning Venezuelans. The Latin elite sees its cup half full, but its relations with the Bush administration as empty.
