Question

How does culture influence politics and security issues in Latin America? Please provide specific examples?

 

Answer 1

 

• A serious concern is the degree of inequality in the region.It is true there have been impressive positive outcomes from poverty alleviation programmes, which have allowed for the emergence of a larger middle class and has created models for worldwide practice. But much progress still needs to be made in terms of equal opportunities, gender parity and inclusive growth. No region of the world has more inequality than Latin America and the Caribbean nor does any have a higher level of criminal violence. These are two unfortunate records, which most surely impact on threats to human security.
• The issue of public insecurity and drug trafficking is another important defy.Threats to personal security include, inter alia, physical violence, crime, terrorism, domestic violence, child labor.
• Personal insecurity is first on the list of concerns of most of the people in Latin America and the Caribbean. The magnitude of the problem may be seen in the high and growing rate of homicides in the region.
• A legacy of armed conflicts –the great availability of firearms- contributes to this epidemic. Juvenile gangs, another indirect legacy of the armed conflicts in Central America, have also led to the very high rates of homicides in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. Increasingly, the international drug production and trade have generated a new phenomenon, narco-violence, that has shaken Colombia, Mexico and several countries of Central America.
• In short, the problem of violence is proof of the weakness of the States of Latin America, which have often been unable to respect the most fundamental right of the people, the right to life
• The levels of insecurity in the region and their social, economic and political implications cannot be understood without reference to the extended penetration of organized crime, especially drugtrafficking.
• The region is the main producer of cocaine in the world and its participation in the production of opiates and synthetic drugs is increasing. As producers, transit and storage locations and money launderers, points of access to the US market or consumer markets, the Latin American countries participate in an illicit commerce that mobilizes tens of thousands of millions of dollars each year.
• This immense flow of resources has transformed the reality of the security of the region, exposing police, military, judicial and political institutions to unprecedented risks of corruption with a dramatic increase in violent criminality.
• Hunger is the result of food and nutritional insecurity, which is expressed, on the one hand, in an insufficient consumption of food to satisfy energy requirements and, on the other, in undernutrition.
• The fact that there are people in Latin America and the Caribbean who do not have sufficient and timely access to adequate food and suffer, therefore, food insecurity is not due to the lack of a global availability of food in relation to nutritional requirements, but rather in the inability to satisfy dietary needs through the marketplace, which results in large part from an inequality in the distribution of income.
• This results in chronic undernutrition, especially in children practically from birth, with the consequent inequalities in education, which in turn tend to reproduce the distributive inequality.
• The threats that exist in the area of political security are related to the capacity of democracy to survive and become stronger.
• A problem that has arisen in some elections has been the inability of many citizens to vote because they lack the necessary papers. In other regions, the presence of illicit armed groups, as in Colombia, continues to impose restrictions on the electoral process, affecting the freedom of the voters and the candidates.
• This also occurs in countries such as Guatemala where criminal violence, insecurity and the failures or weaknesses of the State limit full and open political participation. The improper use of public resources and funds in electoral campaigns as well as political proscriptions continue to affect the quality of elections and democracy.
• Another challenge to political security is the manner in which a government takes decisions and how it responds to society. Today in Latin America the legitimacy of the exercise of power is used to refer to the manner in which a government takes decisions an how it responds to society, whether it does so within the framework of a domocratic State, the citizens not only have the right to demand a government that is the result of free and fair elections but also democratic in adopting and implementing decisions. In other words, governments not only should be constituted democratically but should govern democratically