Por que caem os presidentes? : contestação e permanência na América Latina.

Abstract

The main objective of this work is to answer the following question: why Latin American Presidents fall? In order to conduct this research, political crises and falls of representatives that occurred between 1990 and 2012 were analyzed, which was a period after the re-democratization and the beginning of political and economic reforms of neoliberal nature, adopting two main explanatory dimensions: the variables connected to political institutions, as well as the civil society and social movement actions. Besides the debate regarding the causes for the presidential instability, I focused on describing and explaining all the cases of presidential fall in the last 30 years, as well as debating the current status of democracy and the quality of political representation in this region. Aiming to avoid generalizations, the cases were analyzed in two distinct and consecutive scenarios: 1) the moments of political crisis with a real possibility for presidential fall, and 2) the actual presidential falls. Despite the region observing huge instability in the last decades, one event draws attention and differentiates the current momentum from the episodes occurred in the past: Presidents fall but democracy lives on. The conservative forces might have learned about the high costs for the fulfillment of a military coup in the same molds performed in the past. In this manner, the new pattern for the removal of representatives in this region would occur mainly in face of the conflicts between the Head of the Executive and the other institutions in the country (primarily the Legislative power) within a context of high pressure from the streets in favor of the Presidents' exits, usually identified by the majority of population as the main culprits for the political and economic crisis. Such events happened in most part within constitutional norms in force and represented the institutional solutions that were found, allowing the solution for the conflict and pressure originated from several sectors of the society, or with the stabilization of the crisis and consequential permanence of the Presidents in their positions, or even with the removal of them from power. Therefore, we can conclude that the political and presidential instability is one of the main consequences of the democracy development in Latin America. However, the last three cases of presidential crisis Honduras (2009), Ecuador (2010) and Paraguay (2012) can be deemed as a new model of political action from conservative and antidemocratic elites in this region, which adopted a strategy of illegal coups against the representatives identified as being from the left party. This new tactic would be fast and objective, without the use of social mobilizations but with the support of opposition sectors from the respective Congresses and Military Forces in order to fulfill their activities, performed in an eminently unconstitutional manner.