It seems that the war in Eastern Europe, except for the impact of the accompanying economic crisis and the expectations of a “new world order”, is a foreign matter for Latin America. However, certain characteristics in the configuration of the political regime of the aggressor country are not strange to the region. Indeed, the authoritarian drift of what was initially an illiberal democracy with a popularly elected president and a distorted separation of powers is associated with a sadly familiar pattern.
Vitaly Mansky is a Russian filmmaker, although born in Lviv (Ukraine) in 1963, whose work “Putin’s Witnesses” released in 2018 is an exceptional documentary to get to know Vladimir Putin in his first year of government during the year 2000. Shot under the direction of premise that it was supposed to be a laudatory exercise in the transition process from Yeltsin to Putin, today is an exceptional testament to how a seemingly virginal moment is already rigged with the seeds of rupture. It features images of both politicians that show their daily lives and provides the basis for spontaneous and memorable confessions that anticipate a stormy future.
It surprises a young Putin, apparently a firm convert to the values of democracy, who is torn between the appreciation of love for the country, which must be above any individual interest, to be tirelessly served, and his awareness that the presidency is something temporary, a unmistakable prelude to a later stage, when he returns to being an ordinary citizen. If Putin teases Manzky, who he calls ironic, he does not fail to convey a tenuous distrust of the president whose ambition is beginning to become apparent.
The filmmaker, who has lived in Riga since 2014, is aware at a point in his life that his initial position as a cameraman bears witness to the president’s most private movements, making him a hostage to a regime in which he will go from being an opponent to an exile. The unbridled greed for power in an environment where the institutional mechanisms of control are weak, the scenario of insecurity on the streets caused by the Chechen conflict that precipitates the popular demand for a redeemer and a past that configures an almost broken national identity establish the structure on the which part of the drama experienced by Eastern Europe arises.
What has happened in Russia since the beginning of the present century has its correlation in the context of some Latin American countries, where some of the aspects mentioned above come together. The combination of personal ambition, the handling of institutions to satisfy it, the relevant initial social support from populations affected by trauma such as ominous insecurity, corruption or economic deterioration, or even alienated by the lack of recognition of certain groups, constitute a well-known scenario. Added to this is the common denominator that makes alternation a practice in disuse.
Here, the initial support in the presidential elections of a plebiscitary character, sustained according to the public opinion polls of the populations that give testimony in silence, is something that, as in the Russian case, invariably turns into a situation in which the people end up being kept held hostage by the autocrat’s performance in office. Encouraged by its messianic character of unlimited ambition, it is also accompanied by a faithful and interested environment that surrounds it.
The armed forces and the security apparatus, the weak administration of the co-opted state –including the Judiciary–, a sector of the business community and a skilful policy of communication in the form of advertising form the basic instruments of domination. The result of all this is the perpetuation of power at any price.
Nicolás Maduro, following in the footsteps of his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, and Daniel Ortega are clear examples of this. The evidence is in the way they remain in power, restricting opposition and making elections a truculent game. Thus, the Venezuelan and Nicaraguan population ceased to be spectators to be kidnapped in a framework of personalization of power and persecution of anyone who does not support the Bonapartist leader. But the risks of something similar happening in other countries in the region are present.
If Vladimir Putin in Vitaly Mansky’s documentary did not doubt 22 years ago that leaving the presidency was his natural destiny because he found himself under the golden rule of democracy of the temporary and limited usufruct of power, what guarantee exists today that Nayib Bukele in El Salvador or Will Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico step down when their terms end in 2024?
The steps taken by both to subjugate institutions that carry out independent actions of control, or to change the rules of the game, represent a milestone in the conversion of their respective citizens from witnesses to hostages.
If Bukele twisted the arm of the Judiciary by dismissing judges and prosecutors and appointing a Supreme Court to suit him, López Obrador surprises with an electoral reform initiative in which he proposes to undermine independence and dismantle the National Electoral Institute, whose performance in recent years has exemplary, to help make his prediction to “continue winning games with blows” true, increasing the number of hostages at his whim.
