Latin America has undergone a transformation and there is a new Latin America hidden behind the

stereotyped image of the twentieth century. While the weakness of politics and mistrust dominate

the region’s agenda, progress is taking place silently without attracting attention. In this way, a new region

is emerging, a region that wants to advance more quickly than its countries and to redistribute the fruits of growth, a region that complained loudly in 2011

because the economic deceleration affected it. This is a Latin America that punishes severely.

Eight in ten Latin Americans are connected to the

world through a mobile telephone while the education of four in ten is one level above that of the home in which they were born. This is the emerging middle

class that makes its voice heard.

For the first time since the Asian crisis, satisfaction with democracy drops with the deceleration of economic growth and 2012 does not look set to be

better than 2011. These are the “Discontents of Progress” as The Economist entitled an article on

October 28. Latin Americans are defending what they have achieved and will not allow it to be taken away.

Indicators drop in 2011 in a sign of this protest.

October 28 / Santiago, Chile

2011 Report

2

CONTENTS

LATINOBARÓMETRO CORPORATION .......................................................................................4

INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................................5

POLITICAL AND ELECTORAL OVERVIEW, 2010 - DANIEL ZOVATTO IN

COLLABORATION WITH ROGELIO NÚÑEZ ...........................................................................11

SURVEY RESULTS ...........................................................................................................................22

DEMOCRACY IN LATIN AMERICA ............................................................................................22

SUPPORT FOR DEMOCRACY ................................................................................................................................26

PERCEPTION OF PROGRESS ................................................................................................................................30

SUMMARY OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM ........................................................................................................31

THE COUNTRY’S ECONOMIC SITUATION AND FUTURE EXPECTATIONS ..................................................................................32

JUSTICE IN INCOME DISTRIBUTION ........................................................................................................................34

SATISFACTION WITH LIFE ..................................................................................................................................36

ATTITUDES TOWARDS DEMOCRACY .......................................................................................................................38

DEMOCRACY: BETTER, THE SAME OR WORSE? ..........................................................................................................40

PENDING TASKS FOR DEMOCRACY ........................................................................................................................41

CHURCHILLIAN DEMOCRACY ...............................................................................................................................42

LEGITIMACY OF CONGRESS AND POLITICAL PARTIES .....................................................................................................43

EXERCISING CITIZENSHIP ...................................................................................................................................44

HOW DEMOCRATIC IS THE COUNTRY? ....................................................................................................................45

ATTITUDES TOWARDS MILITARY GOVERNMENTS ........................................................................................................47

TRUST .................................................................................................................................................48

INTERPERSONAL TRUST ....................................................................................................................................48

TRUST IN INSTITUTIONS ....................................................................................................................................49

TRUST IN THE GOVERNMENT ..............................................................................................................................51

CIVIC CULTURE ..............................................................................................................................53

COMPLYING WITH THE LAW ...............................................................................................................................53

DEMANDING RIGHTS .......................................................................................................................................54

DUTIES ......................................................................................................................................................54

DISCRIMINATION AND RACE .....................................................................................................57

WHAT GUARANTEES DEOMOCRACY ......................................................................................59

SOCIAL FRAUD ................................................................................................................................62

FISCAL MORALITY ..........................................................................................................................................62

WORKPLACE MORALITY ...................................................................................................................................63

SOCIAL MORALITY ..........................................................................................................................................64

PIRATED GOODS ............................................................................................................................................64

STATE CORRUPTION ........................................................................................................................................65

LATIN AMERICA’S AGENDA .......................................................................................................67

THE MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM .........................................................................................................................67

CRIME AND VICTIMIZATION ...............................................................................................................................69

3

THE “NI-NI” GENERATION .................................................................................................................................70

The middle class ........................................................................................................................................71

The digital divide .......................................................................................................................................71

EDUCATIONAL MOBILITY ...................................................................................................................................72

THE ENVIRONMENT ........................................................................................................................................74

POLITICS ...........................................................................................................................................76

PRESIDENTIAL RE-ELECTION ...............................................................................................................................76

VOTING FOR POLITICAL PARTIES ...........................................................................................................................76

CLOSENESS TO POLITICAL PARTIES ........................................................................................................................77

EXPECTATIONS ...............................................................................................................................79

FUTURE EXPECTATIONS: PERSONAL SITUATION AND COUNTRY .........................................................................................79

SUBJECTIVE INCOME .......................................................................................................................................81

EXPECTATIONS: FUTURE INCOME .........................................................................................................................81

INDEX OF JOB SECURITY .............................................................................................................82

INDEX OF CONSUMER CONFIDENCE .......................................................................................83

ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE MARKET .....................................................................................85

THE MARKET ECONOMY ...................................................................................................................................85

PRIVATIZATIONS HAVE BEEN BENEFICIAL FOR THE COUNTRY ...........................................................................................86

ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE STATE ..........................................................................................88

PUBLIC POLICIES ...................................................................................................................................…….88

WHAT HAS THE STATE DONE FOR YOU? ..................................................................................................................90

DOES THE STATE HAVE THE MEANS TO SOLVE PROBLEMS? .............................................................................................91

THE STATE AS SOLVING PROBLEMS ........................................................................................................................91

EFFICIENCY OF THE STATE ..................................................................................................................................93

SATISFACTION WITH STATE SERVICES PROVIDED BY THE CENTRAL GOVERNMENT .....................................................................95

SATISFACTION WITH PUBLIC SERVICES PROVIDED BY MUNICIPAL GOVERNMENTS .....................................................................96

INDEX OF SATISFACTION WITH STATE SERVICES ..........................................................................................................97

SATISFACTION WITH DEMOCRACY ........................................................................................98

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS ..................................................................................................101

LEADERSHIP IN LATIN AMERICA .........................................................................................................................101

OPINIONS ABOUT POWERS ..............................................................................................................................104

RELATIONS BETWEEN COUNTRIES .......................................................................................................................106

MODEL COUNTRY ........................................................................................................................................107

EVALUATION OF LEADERS .......................................................................................................108

EVALUATION OF INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS ..........................................................111

CONCLUDING REMARKS ...........................................................................................................113

TECHNICAL DATA BY COUNTRY, 2011 ..................................................................................115

4

LATINOBARÓMETRO 2011

TECHNICAL DATA 2011. 20,204 personal interviews were conducted in 18 countries

between July 15 and August 16.1 In each country, the sample of 1,000-1,200 cases is

representative of 100% of the country’s population, with a margin of error of approximately

3% for each country. (For more details, see Technical Data by Country.)

Organization responsible for the survey: Corporación Latinobarómetro, Santiago, Chile.

LATINOBARÓMETRO CORPORATION The Latinobarómetro survey is produced by Latinobarómetro Corporation, a non-profit NGO

based in Santiago, Chile. Latinobarómetro Corporation is solely responsible for the data.

The fieldwork for the first Latinobarómetro survey was carried out in 1995, covering eight

countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela. As from

1996, the survey was extended to 17 countries and, following the incorporation of the Dominican

Republic in 2004, now covers the 18 Latin American countries, with the exception of Cuba.

To date, 16 annual surveys have been carried out, with a total of 297,610 interviews. The 2011

survey involved 20,204 interviews between July 15 and August 16, constituting representative

samples of 100% of the population of each of the 18 countries. As a result, the survey is

representative of the region‟s 600 million inhabitants.

Online data bank: www.latinobarometro.org. Latinobarómetro‟s opinion data bank is the first in

Spanish as well as the first in Latin America and, indeed, the southern hemisphere. It is online,

can be accessed without statistical software or expert knowledge and, with one million visitors to

date, is the second most-used data bank after that of the World Values Survey. The system is

operated by Madrid-based JDS System.

The 2011 survey received support from a number of international organizations and governments:

the Agencia Española de Cooperación Internacional (AECI), the Inter-American Development

Bank (IDB), the Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF), the Canadian International

Development Agency (CIDA), the governments of Denmark, Norway and the United States, the

Organization of American States (OAS), the Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos para la

Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura (OEI) and the United Nations Development Programme

(UNDP).

1 Except for Venezuela where Datanálisis was 22 days late in delivering the data.

5

INTRODUCTION

Latin America has the world‟s largest reserves of both water and raw materials. It also has 600

million inhabitants and covers an area larger than China and the United States combined. Does

this make it the region of the future?

In films, Latin America is depicted as the land of dictators, violence and drug trafficking, of

siestas beneath a tree and being laid back about actually getting things done. Does the region fit

that image today in the twenty-first century? Who knows? The most important task is not to

change Latin America, which is pretty well on the right road, but to change the world‟s image of

it.

With an average income of US$10,000, Latin America is not poor and there can be no doubt that

it is on the way to development. It is the land of opportunities where the middle class, the

comfortably well-off bourgeoisie, is growing by leaps and bounds, the small oligarchies are being

dismantled, there is a massification of rights and an expansion of education, healthcare and, above

all, the leisure industry. No aspect of the life of society is stagnating in Latin America. With few

exceptions, stagnation is definitively a thing of the past. It was not in idle that the president of the

Inter-American Development Bank coined the phrase, “the decade of Latin America”.

In this Latinobarómetro report, we examine the data from this perspective, looking at the extent to

which, with this new decade, we are entering a different paradigm. Although the world still views

us through the eyes of Hollywood, full of the stereotypes of a bleak twentieth century, many have

already realized that this image changed long ago. Hollywood may be the last to find out but those

who do so first will have been able to take advantage of the opportunities of this developing

region.

The key change is the breaking of the bleak routine, the cyclical time of García Márquez,2 which

meant that, every so often, Latin America started afresh. What the inauguration and re-

inauguration of democracy does, above all, is to break this cyclical time. With this, a new

paradigm is established, the paradigm of continuous, cumulative and increasing development.

In the first decade of this century, Latin America has for the first time in its history experienced

six consecutive years of sustained growth, with democracy in all its countries. Six years is not a

long time but it is much longer than anyone remembers. For the first time, it is possible to

accumulate, sustain, look ahead and plan while employment stabilizes. There is, in other words, a

horizon beyond “tomorrow”. Much of the immediatism and improvisation typical of the region‟s

stereotype was a result of the absence of the day after tomorrow in which everything could go

back to square one and start all over again.

When, in 1992, Latin America commemorated the 500th

anniversary of the arrival of Columbus

with the Seville Fair, European newspapers wrote that, despite its efforts, “the land of come back

tomorrow” had not been able to convince Europe that it had changed. The image of inefficiency

and imperfection is a ghost that may haunt us for generations but, in fact, corresponds to a pre-

modern and static view that is at odds with the poles of development seen in the region today. It is

2 García Márquez, Gabriel. 2000. Cien años de soledad, Madrid: Espasa Calpe.

6

the second ghost so well described by Octavio Paz when he wrote, “they (in the North) want

perfection, we want redemption”.3

Investors, intellectuals, scholars repeatedly ask about these two ghosts - cyclical time and the time

of imperfection. They have a remarkable impact on the agenda of the world‟s leading media and a

procession of negative news confirms their persistence rather than refuting the changes that have

occurred. While the changes occur in total silence and anonymity, the negative events take place

in the world “arena” where observers‟ thumbs are always pointing downwards in the belief that

there is no possibility of success. In some way, the world is conditioned to believe that the

emerging countries will not achieve development, creating an image barrier that cannot be

overcome.

But the reality is different. The facts show how the relative weight of countries has changed a

decade after the attack on the Twin Towers. Brazil has emerged as a world power, the power of

China and India has increased and that of the United States has diminished ostensibly while

Europe embarked on the difficult process of incorporating its new members. The fifty years of

stability enjoyed by Europe after the war are over. Meanwhile, Latin America has completed the

process of changing all its elites, has massively incorporated its indigenous population into

citizenship (with the possible exception of Guatemala4 and the Dominican Republic

5), has

restructured its societies through constitutional reform, as in the case of Bolivia and Ecuador, or

through public policies as in the case of Brazil under Lula. These are two worlds that converge for

different reasons.

What is most difficult for a foreigner to understand is how the region‟s ever more educated

citizens are demanding their rights and how democracy has brought them rights in first, second

and third place. These rights bring development because citizens are pressing for political systems

to become more democratic. Perhaps what is the most alarming in the eyes of many observers is

the massive dismantling of the party system in most of the region‟s countries. Through elections,

Latin Americans have successfully dismantled all the old elites, in many cases replacing them

with new elites that lack experience in the art of governing. That has already happened and Latin

America is now embarking on the process of dismantling the party system, which is far more

complex than replacing one elite with another. Since citizens do not feel represented by the party

system, there is a dispersion of the groups they try to represent. In many cases, this goes far

beyond what is reasonable but far being a symptom of anarchy, it is a symptom of democratic

demands and for change through reform rather than revolution. One has to take apart in order to

rebuild.

Many things will appear disordered and advocates of governability will have many headaches.

Governability, however, is not the goal of these societies, but rather representation and stability.

Governability is nothing other than their successful outcome. Things might get ugly before they

improve. Governability will be the result when those goals have been achieved. The remarkable

disparity between individual intentions and the outcome for society is not so different from at the

time of the French Revolution. The new elites fulfill aspirations inasmuch as they replace the old

3 Paz, Octavio. 1972. El laberinto de la soledad, Mexico D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

4 The peace agreements of a decade ago have not been fulfilled. The state has been captured by the governing elite.

5 30% of the population is illiterate, corresponding mostly to non-whites.

7

elites. At the same time, the force of demands changes in magnitude and speed. The result is

disconcerting since more democracy brings with it the demand for even more democracy or, in

other words, dissatisfaction with the democracy that exists. Parties that do not represent and

presidents as saviors - and, in many cases, substitutes for everything that doesn‟t work - are the

new challenges of the consolidation process. How many times in history has man wanted to do

something and the result has been different?

Three decades ago, the developed countries had to support the elites opposing dictatorships in

order to help their countries return to democracy because there was no way in which citizens

could express their demand for freedom. Those elites were far ahead the demands of the people

whereas today‟s new elites lag behind the people who demand more than these elites can or want

to offer. Today, it is people who would have to be supported in order to produce elites capable of

interpreting their wishes. While, in the past, there were perhaps more than enough leaders, today

they are in short supply. If there is anything that democracy has exhausted, it is elites. The process

of consolidation calls for the formation of new elites that can address the challenges of

development.

The first stage of building democracy has been completed. It consisted in the recovery of civil

liberties which, as shown by Latinobarómetro surveys, are largely guaranteed. Today, Latin

America is demanding equality and social guarantees. It is a consecutive process. In the early

years, the demand was for the consolidation of liberties whereas, today, it is for equality of

opportunity and equality in access to development and growth. Political guarantees came first,

followed by social guarantees and these will dominate the agenda in the coming decades. The

elites were prepared to secure and guarantee civil liberties but it is quite another matter to be

prepared to guarantee social rights. This calls for dismantling not political elites, but rather

centuries-old cultures of domination, power structures and ways of interacting. The transformation

of society that is required in order to provide social guarantees is far deeper than was required for

civil guarantees. Latin America is now at a different stage.

It is a paradox that, in Latin America, economic reform took place during the consolidation of

political guarantees. This put the region on a different economic footing, allowing it to address the

economic crisis of 2007-2009, the second after its return to democracy. in a different way with

counter-cyclical policies. Thanks to these policies, democracy was not affected by this crisis as it

was during the Asian crisis at the end of last century.

All in all, past successes are now history and Latin Americans have new demands. That is why,

today, we see that the success of governments depends on two key aspects: their ability to convey

the “material news”6 that they govern “for the majority” and their ability to improve the

“distribution of wealth”.

This reflects, firstly, the mistrust that increases transaction costs between people and things and,

secondly, the enormous gap between rich and poor. More than the number of poor people, the

brutal problem is that the poor are always the same. Their social immobility is what is most

dangerous for the region in that it represents an infinite source of violation of the basic human

rights of every human being. If the region successfully addresses these two issues in a systematic

6 A financial term used by listed companies.

8

and sustained way, all other issues will be resolved of their own accord. So far, the foundations

for starting to start address the deep issues of inequality have been built but none of these two

defects has been significantly resolved at a regional level.

At the level of individual countries, the case of Bolivia should be noted. Its constitutional reform

marks a turning point with very radical changes in the way in which society is structured that will

have a lasting impact on its development. On the other hand, there is the case of Chile, which is

pointed to by the western world as the region‟s most successful country. However, in the 21 years

since its return to democracy, although it has performed well in so many other areas, it has not

been able to address either the problem of mistrust or that of the distribution of wealth. In 2011,

we saw how hundreds of thousands of Chileans took to the streets in support of a citizen demand,

related first to education but then to so many other issues that add up to a demand for structural

changes that leaves this country‟s supposed success with a large question mark over how success

is defined. Chile confirms, as is evidently the case, that it is not possible to take a shortcut to

development by ignoring the need to dismantle mistrust and injustice in distribution. Chile‟s

sound fiscal performance has done little to convince its population that it is on the right track.

By contrast, Venezuelans take a positive view of the measures taken by the government of

President Hugo Chávez while the world takes a negative view. Clearly, there is a great

contradiction between what people think of their own development and how the world sees a

country‟s evolution. It is no accident that, just a month before the revolution in Tunisia, this

country was considered a model within the Arab world. The world looks at things that are not the

important ones for people when they consider their future and it does not understand what matters

to them.

Part of the problem lies in the western world‟s definition of success which looks at statistics,

rather than the complete picture of the state of affairs from the point of view of people. As

President Sarkozy noted after the Lehman Brothers disaster that unleashed the last economic crisis

whose consequences we are still suffering, the world needs to change the indicators used to

monitor its evolution because they are clearly not providing the information we need in order to

know what is going on. That is precisely the point - the world measures itself with indicators that

do not adequately reflect what is going on. Chile is a case in point; the indicators it presented

suggested that everything was going very well. Other information, however, indicated the

existence of important gaps needing to be addressed but to which no-one gave the proper weight.

The citizen movements of 2011 are a sign of the magnitude of what the indicators did not show.

But Chile isn‟t the only case. In the 2100 presidential elections in Peru, the demands that had

silently built up were reflected in the victory of a candidate from outside the party system who

responded to those demands not reflected in globalized statistics nor taken into account by the

international community. The discrepancy between the western world‟s view of the processes

taking place in Latin American countries and how people see their own lives is reflected in the

Latinobarómetro surveys that, for the past 16 years, have highlighted the important complaints of

Latin American peoples. It is these complaints that are now slowly coming to the surface,

producing political, social and economic changes in the region.

The elites have to move faster to keep up with the population‟s demands. It is no longer

acceptable to offer the solutions that were acceptable a decade ago. Economic growth and the

9

increase in the size of the “pie”, combined with ever better education, mean that there are large

majorities in Latin American countries no longer prepared to tolerate inequality. This is the effect

of prosperity and the “Chilean syndrome” which will be repeated in all those spheres where

inequalities are not tolerable for the modern world of which we want to be part.

What is perhaps most difficult in a region where ideology and its fundamentalisms led to the

desolation of the twentieth century is to understand that this demand is not ideological. This

perhaps also explains why the greater socialization of the new generations is their abandonment of

fundamentalisms and the consequences of ideological intransigence. Left and right-wing

governments have been elected with the votes of the center, which are a majority, resulting in

leaders implementing far more eclectic policies that would have been unthinkable in the old Latin

America. Lula is probably the clearest example of this new Latin America while Hugo Chávez

and Daniel Ortega belong to the old Latin America in which new caudillos “take” power through

the ballot box but without increasing the democratization of their countries as regards equality of

rights and duties. A state subject to non-democratic discretional decisions hampers development.

These are countries in which the leader‟s individual intentionality produces negative results for

society. They will lag behind in the concert of Latin American nations and will take longer to

attain development. History is full of such cases. The French Revolution, for example, ended with

Napoleon as Emperor. Lula broke out of this mold in an exemplary fashion, launching a new kind

of eclectic and pragmatic policies that advance in the direction of demands, producing

fundamental irreversible changes in his country‟s development. Latin America has a world power:

Brazil.

While China will incorporate over 300 million people into the world economy during the coming

decade, Latin America has incorporated 150 million into the middle class in the past ten years,

according to the calculations of the World Bank. These are the emerging countries (regions) that

are the future of the world economy. Today, the digital gap is ever smaller among the new

generations which, in this way, surmount all the discrimination that exists and become part of the

developed world, without being part of their own society. Latin America is to some extent that

silent majority without the statistics to give it visibility in the western agenda.

Latinobarómetro data serves to complement the established world‟s indicators by introducing

nuances into categorical statements such as that Chile is the most successful country or that

Venezuela is simply an authoritarian democracy.7 Both statements need to be qualified in order to

understand better why things happen the way they do. In both Chile and Venezuela, what the

population says directly contradicts how the world sees their development. It is useful to listen to

them in order to understand the social phenomena occurring there. They are nothing surprising or

new. All that is required is to look at the numbers and factor them into the analysis.

Latin America no longer matches the old Hollywood image of a man sleeping a siesta under a tree

with his hat on his head and his bullet belt as a pillow. Women are today the great bearers of

change and the most ignored by this stereotyped view. Machismo is clearly beating a retreat. No

self-respecting man could today boast of being machista without running the risk of becoming

irrelevant. Latin America is no longer “that” Latin America either.

7 A contradictory category in itself that reflects the ambiguity that exists as regards Venezuela.

10

This report will attempt to incorporate these nuances into its analysis of the region, delving

beyond categorical statements and stereotypes. The decade of Latin America is a problem of

definition because it could be said that the decade began in 2003 and is, therefore, about to end.

This is a period in which, from all points of view, there has been more progress in Latin America

than in any other decade in living memory. This start of a new century has been a good start for

the region and, rather than just a decade of Latin America, we could be looking at the century of

Latin America.

Democracy brings with it not only the change of the paradigm of cyclical time but also the tools

of its own consolidation with the opportunity to demand rights. This is the fruit of its infinite

future change, with the message already absorbed by the population and the example of the

globalized world for those most discriminated against who, today, communicate using a mobile

telephone even if they only have one meal a day. Latin America is enjoying its best spring at a

time when the rest of the world is experiencing complex and uncertain times, an uncertainty that

Latin America sees not as a threat but as an opportunity.

ECONOMIC SNAPSHOT OF LATIN AMERICA, 2010-2011

Santiago, Chile, September 2011

After a 2.1% contraction of GDP in 2009, Latin America and the Caribbean grew by 5.9% in 2010

and, as a result, per capita income increased by 4.7%. This performance reflected a consolidation

of the region‟s recovery and was driven by the dynamism of domestic demand, including both

consumption and investment, as well as by an increase in external demand. The growth of private

consumption, in turn, reflected improved labor-market indicators in terms of both jobs and wages

as well as better economic expectations, an increase in lending to the private sector and, in some

countries, a recovery of remittances from migrants. Public-sector consumption expanded at more

moderate rates. Unemployment dropped from 8.1% in 2009 to 7.3% in 2011.

In 2011, these trends persisted, with domestic demand remaining dynamic. At the same time, the

absorption of spare capacity in the face of the sustained strength of domestic demand in a context

of greater access to credit led to an increase in investment which returned to pre-crisis levels.

Sustained growth and the resulting increase in job-creation capacity suggest a further drop in

unemployment which is forecast to reach between 6.7% and 7.0% in 2011, taking it to below its

pre-crisis level. The behavior of formal payroll employment in a number of countries - where, in

the early part of 2011, it increased as a percentage of total employment - is a sign of an

improvement in the quality of the jobs that have been created. This growth, accompanied by

improvements in qualitative and qualitative labor-market indicators, promises further progress in

reducing poverty.

The international economy‟s steady loss of dynamism and the gradual withdrawal of the measures

implemented in the region to mitigate the impact of the crisis help to explain the deceleration of

its growth in 2011, which the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean

expects to reach around 4.7%. However, recent developments in the international economy and,

particularly, the increased complexity of the debt crisis in Europe and the negative outlook for the

US economy in the last quarter of the year suggest a deterioration of external conditions for Latin

America combined with a deceleration of the growth of domestic demand within the region.

11

One of the challenges faced by the region‟s authorities in 2011 has been the increase in the price

of basic products and, particularly, food and fuels which, combined with strong domestic demand,

put upward pressure on inflation rates. This increase in inflation at a time of high international

liquidity, an increase in the inflow of foreign capital in search of higher returns and the

appreciation of the region‟s currencies against the dollar, again faced Latin America‟s central

banks with the dilemma of whether to give priority to price stability or to try to defend export

competitiveness.

Despite the fairly rapid recovery of Latin American economies from the contraction of activity

caused by the 2008-2009 international crisis, there remain a number of important external risks

that could affect the region‟s outlook in 2012 and into the medium term. As well as the slow

recovery of the US economy, they include the crisis of confidence in the European Union which

will affect the foreign trade of Latin American and Caribbean countries. Similarly, the increased

volatility of international markets will have an impact in terms of their access to overseas

financing. As a result, although growth is expected to continue in 2012, it is likely to be at a lower

rate with consequences for job creation and ongoing progress in reducing poverty.

POLITICAL AND ELECTORAL OVERVIEW, 2010 - DANIEL ZOVATTO IN

COLLABORATION WITH ROGELIO NÚÑEZ

Since 2009, Latin America has faced a new “wave” of elections that will last until 2012. During

these three years, all the region‟s countries have held, are holding or will hold parliamentary, local

or presidential elections (except Paraguay which will do so in 2013).

From the political point of view, 2011 can be considered a very intense electoral year for Latin

America where the following elections have taken or will take place:

1- Presidential elections in four countries: first and second rounds in Peru, first and second

rounds in Guatemala, elections in Argentina and Nicaragua;

2- Presidential primary in Argentina: Obligatory and Simultaneous Open Primary Election

(PASO);

3- Referendum in Ecuador;

4- Judicial elections in Bolivia;

5- Governorship and municipal elections in Colombia;

6- Elections in several states in Mexico and Argentina (including the State of Mexico and the

city of Buenos Aires, both of which have great weight and national implications).

At the time of writing this report, elections had been held in Peru, a referendum in Ecuador, the

first round in Guatemala, judicial elections in Bolivia - an event of a type without precedent in

Latin America - and a presidential election in Argentina. Still to be held were elections for

governors and mayors in Colombia (October 30), the second round in Guatemala and the

presidential election in Nicaragua (both on November 6).

12

Table N º1. Election Dates, 2011-2012 2011

Peru April 10

June 4

Presidential 1st round

2nd

round

Guatemala September 11

November 6

Presidential 1st round

2nd

round

Bolivia October 16 Judicial

Argentina October 23 Presidential

Colombia October 30 Governorship and municipal

Nicaragua Presidential

Mexico February

July

September

October

Quintana Roo, Baja California Sur and Hidalgo

State of Mexico, Nayarit and Coahuila

Guerrero

Michoacán

2012

Venezuela February 12 Primary to select opposition candidate

Dominican Rep. May 16 Presidential

Mexico July 1 Presidential

Venezuela October 7 Presidential

Source: Prepared by authors

After the “shift to the center” seen in 2010 (victories of center-right candidates Sebastián Piñera in

Chile and Juan Manuel Santos in Colombia and of center-left candidate Dilma Rousseff in Brazil),

Latin America again demonstrated its political heterogeneity in 2011, with election victories for

politically very different candidates: a left-winger such as Ollanta Humala in Peru (albeit now

more moderate than in 2006), center-right candidates such as Otto Pérez Molina in the first round

of Guatemala‟s presidential election and Mauricio Macri in the election for head of the

government of the city of Buenos Aires, a left-winger such as Cristina Kirchner in Argentina‟s

presidential election or a “twenty-first century socialist” such as Rafael Correa in the referendum

in Ecuador

13

Table Nº 2. Governments by Ideology, 2005-2009 Right Center-right Center-left Left

El Salvador

Elías Antonio Saca

(2004-2009)

Honduras

Ricardo Maduro

(2002-06)

Roberto Micheletti

(2009-10)

Panama

Ricardo Martinelli

(2009- )

Paraguay

Nicanor Duarte Frutos

(2003-2008)

Costa Rica

Óscar Arias

(2006-10)

Guatemala

Óscar Berger

(2004-08)

Mexico

Vicente Fox

(2000-2006)

Felipe Calderón

(2006-2012)

Nicaragua

Enrique Bolaños

(2002-2007)

Peru

Alan García

(2006-11)

Dominican Republic

Leonel Fernández

(2004-2012)

Brazil

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva

(2002-2010)

Chile

Ricardo Lagos

(2000-2006)

Michelle Bachelet

(2006-10)

Ecuador

Alfredo Palacio

(2005)

El Salvador

Mauricio Funes

(2009- )

Guatemala

Álvaro Colom

(2008-2012)

Panama

Martín Torrijos

(2004-09)

Paraguay

Fernando Lugo

(2008-2013)

Uruguay

Tabaré Vázquez

(2005-2010)

Argentina

Néstor Kirchner

(2003-07)

Cristina Kirchner

(2007-2011)

21st-century

socialist left

Evo Morales

(2006- )

Cuba

Fidel Castro

Raúl Castro

Ecuador

Rafael Correa

(2006- )

Honduras

Manuel Zelaya

(2006-09)

Nicaragua

Daniel Ortega

(2007-2012)

Venezuela

Hugo Chávez

(2006-2012)

Table Nº 3. Governments by Ideology, 2009-2013 Right Center-right Center-left Left

Panama

Ricardo Martinelli Chile

Sebastián Piñera

Colombia

Juan Manuel Santos

Costa Rica

Laura Chinchilla

Honduras

Porfirio Lobo

Mexico

Felipe Calderón

Peru

Alan García

Dominican Republic

Leonel Fernández

Brazil

Dilma Rousseff

El Salvador

Mauricio Funes

Guatemala

Álvaro Colom

Paraguay

Fernando Lugo

Peru

Ollanta Humala

Uruguay

José Mujica

Argentina

Cristina Kirchner

21st-century socialist left

Bolivia

Evo Morales

Cuba

Raúl Castro

Ecuador

Rafael Correa

Nicaragua

Daniel Ortega

Venezuela

Hugo Chávez

Results of presidential elections

The presidential election in Peru was the first election of the year. This again demonstrated the

volatility of Peruvian voters and the weakness of the country‟s party system. The former was

apparent in the constant swings seen in the electorate‟s preferences. From 2009 through to the end

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of 2010, the former center-right mayor of Lima, Luis Castañeda Lossio, was the frontrunner but

was then overtaken by an increase in the popularity of former President Alejandro Toledo, who

led the polls until March 2011 when Ollanta Humala, who had not previously achieved more

than 12%, passed the 25% mark.

The weakness of Peru‟s party system was demonstrated when the APRA, an historic party with

deep roots in the country, was unable to present a presidential candidate, despite being in

government. As a result, Alan García became the only incumbent president in South America who

could not support a candidate representing his own ideology. Similarly, this weakness was

reflected in the fact that the center-right presented three candidates - Pedro Pablo Kuczynski

(Alianza por el Gran Cambio), Alejandro Toledo (Perú Posible) and Luis Castañeda - who

competed for the same votes with the result that none went through to the second round. In the

event, Humala led in the first round, with 31.6% of the vote but short of the 50% required to avoid

a second round.

In second place, Keiko Fujimori (Fuerza 2011), supported by loyal hardcore Fujimorist voters,

obtained 23.55%. As indicated above, the great failure in this election was that of the center-right.

Had it fielded a single candidate, it would have won but its vote was split among its three

candidates, Kuczynski (18.51%), Toledo (15.63%) and Castañeda (9.83%).

In the second round, which took place in June, Ollanta Humala with a more moderate, less

radical and less “Chavist” message than in 2006, based on the model of Lula da Silva, competed

with Keiko Fujimori in a race that polarized the country and, particularly, the media. With his

conciliatory stance, Humala was endorsed by figures as different as his old rival, former President

Alejandro Toledo and Nobel literature prize winner Mario Vargas Llosa, while Keiko Fujimori

was more popular with center-right voters but lost to Humala, who was elected with 51% of the

vote.

In Guatemala, the opposition candidate Otto Pérez Molina came first in the first-round

presidential election held on September 11. However, with 36%, he was only 12 points ahead of

Manuel Baldizón and well short of the near first-round majority predicted by the polls, and a

second round will take place on November 6.

This first-round result illustrated some of the trends seen across the region: the continued

attractiveness of populist candidates (Manuel Baldizón‟s campaign was full of promises,

including a 15th

annual bonus), the strength of center-right candidates (Otto Pérez Molina) and the

importance of the issue of public safety (Pérez Molina was the “iron fist” candidate while

Baldizón promised a return of the death penalty).

While these elections, with a 65% turnout, marked a change in traditional voter apathy, they also

confirmed voters‟ volatility and only loose ties with parties and ideologies. This reflects factors

that include the weakness of a loosely structured political system, without parties who rely for

their existence on personalist leadership and clientelism, rather than a strong base of members.

The campaign was marked not only by the frontrunner position of Pérez Molina but also by the

Constitutional Court‟s decision, a month before the election, not to allow former first lady,

Sandra Torres, to compete. This meant that, for the first time since 1986, the government party

15

did not have a candidate. The Court maintained that the divorce of Torres (who was running

second in the polls with 14%) from President Álvaro Colom was a fraud designed to circumvent a

constitutional provision under which Torres, as the President‟s wife, was forbidden to stand. As a

result, Guatemala continues to be the only Latin American country in which the government party

has been unable to obtain a second term since the restoration of democracy in 1986. This is just

one more sign of the weakness of the country‟s party system and the volatility and fickleness of its

electorate.

Polls suggest that Otto Pérez Molina will win the second round on November 6 with 55% of the

vote. However, Baldizón has successfully closed the gap to 11 points.

In the presidential election which took place in Argentina on October 23 (the seventh since the

restoration of democracy in 1983), President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner (CFK) was re-

elected with a large first-round majority. This followed an atypical and lackluster campaign after

the primary of August 14 left little doubt as to the election‟s result. With almost 54% of the vote,

CFK was over 35 points ahead of Hermes Binner, in second place with almost 17%, and obtained

a majority in both houses of Congress. Her re-election was explained by the consolidation of her

leadership, particularly since the death of her husband, Néstor Kirchner, in October 2010, the

country‟s strong economic performance (despite high inflation), increasing consumerism and a

wide range of social programs, combined with a weak and very fragmented opposition trapped in

a labyrinth of personal vanities and individual protagonisms.

Her resounding victory means that Kirchnerism will govern for three consecutive terms (a total of

12 years: four under Néstor Kirchner and eight under Cristina Fernández de Kirchner). Not even

Juan Domingo Perón, the founder of Peronism, the movement of which Kirchnerism forms part,

was able to achieve this feat. The last time that Argentina had three consecutive governments of

the same color was under the Radical Party in the early 1900s with the two terms of Hipólito

Yrigoyen followed by the one term of Marcelo Torcuato de Alvear. CFK‟s overwhelming victory

marks the start in Argentina of an unprecedented cycle of discretional power that she will be able

to use either for national dialogue and to build consensus or to deepen the existing model and

confrontation.

In addition to this presidential election, there were also numerous other elections in Argentina in

2011, including both provincial elections and the primary (PASO) of August 14 in which the

electorate had to choose or ratify the presidential nominees of the different parties. In this “open,

simultaneous and obligatory primary” in which close to 78% of the electorate participated,

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner took over 50% of the votes cast, with a lead of more than 36

points on the candidates in second place (Ricardo Alfonsín of the Unión Cívica Radical with

12.7%) and in third place (Eduardo Duhalde of another branch of Peronism with 12.6%). They

were followed by Hermes Binner, a socialist, with 10.27%, and, in fifth place, Alberto

Rodríguez Sáa, another dissident Peronist, with just over 8%, and Elisa Carrió with just 3.24%.

The presidential election followed a series of defeats for Kirchnerism, which had lost several of

the important provincial elections of the year, including the Federal Capital (where center-right

candidate Mauricio Macri took over 60% in the second round), Santa Fé (where Antonio

Bonfatti, a socialist and Binner‟s heir, was elected) and Córdoba (where José Manuel de la Sota,

a non-Kirchnerist Peronist was elected).

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The electoral year will close in Latin America on November 6 when, as well as the second round

in Guatemala, Nicaragua will hold a presidential election in which five parties or coalitions are

running and the incumbent President Daniel Ortega will be seeking re-election. The opposition

claims that his bid to remain in power for a further five years is a violation of a provision in the

constitution forbidding immediate re-election. Pro-government members of the Supreme Court,

however, ruled that the provision is not applicable. Ortega, who held power for the first time

between 1984 and 1990 and began his second term in 2007, was the only candidate of the Frente

Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) in the presidential elections held in Nicaragua in 1984,

1990, 1996, 2001, 2006 and, now, 2011.

He will be competing with four opposition candidates. They include former President Arnoldo

Alemán (1997-2002), representing the alliance headed by the Partido Liberal Constitucionalista

(PLC), and Fabio Gadea, a radio owner and member of the Central American Parliament

(Parlacen) with family connections to Alemán, representing a coalition chaired by the Partido

Liberal Independiente (PLI) and supported by Eduardo Montealegre, the main figure in the anti-

Sandinista opposition.

Enrique Quiñónez, a dissident Liberal member of Congress and former "Contra" leader, is

running for the Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense (ALN) while Roger Guevara, an academic, is

standing for a coalition of small parties led by the Alianza por la República (APRE). Nicaragua, in

other words, remains trapped in the traditional dynamics of a choice between caudillos (Ortega-

Alemán) who have not been able to vanquish alternatives that seek to strengthen the country‟s

political institutions.

At the time of writing this report, Ortega led the polls with 45.8% and a comfortable lead over

Gadea in second place, with 33.5%, while Alemán was in third place, with 11%, and the other two

candidates were polling less than 1%. If this trend is maintained, Ortega would obtain a first-

round victory for which he requires either over 35% of valid votes and a ten-point lead or 40%.

Local and judicial elections and referendum

The next presidential election in Mexico will take place in 2012 to choose the successor to

President Felipe Calderón but, in 2011, elections were held in a number of states. The PRI, the

favorite for the presidential election with its pre-candidate Enrique Peña Nieto won the most

important election of the year in the State of Mexico, precisely where Peña Nieto previously

served as governor.

The result of this election positioned Peña Nieto in the leadership of the PRI and as a clear

favorite for the presidential election since his heir, Eruviel Ávila, took 62.5% to the 21% of

Alejandro Encinas, the candidate of the PRD, and the 12.5% of Luis Felipe Bravo Mena of the

Partido Acción Nacional (PAN). Peña Nieto will now have to compete with Manlio Fabio

Beltrones for the PRI‟s presidential nomination.

The PRI also won the elections that took place in Coahuila and Nayarit and, as a result, now

governs 19 of the country‟s 32 states. These victories overshadowed those obtained by the PAN

and the PRD in 2011 when Ángel Aguirre, the PRD candidate and a former member of the PRI,

17

defeated Manuel Añorve in Guerrero and Marcos Covarrubias, a member of the coalition led by

the PAN, won the election in Baja California Sur.

In 2011, other types of elections also took place in Latin America: a referendum in Ecuador and

judicial elections in Bolivia.

In the referendum in Ecuador, called by Rafael Correa in May, the government obtained

ratification of its ten proposals including the two that were most controversial, a judicial reform

and regulation of the media. However, the result was narrower than the government had

anticipated since, depending on the question, approval ranged from 44.96% to 50.46% and

rejection from 38.87% to 42.56%, according to the National Electoral Council. On question Nº 8

forbidding the killing of animals at public events, which had cantonal validity, there was a tie.

The election of judicial authorities which took place in Bolivia in 2011 was the first election of its

type not only in Bolivia but also in Latin America. On October 16, voters elected members of the

Constitutional Tribunal, the Supreme Court of Justice, the Agricultural-Environmental Tribunal

and the Judges Council. The campaign was polarized with a high level of government-opposition

antagonism. The opposition campaigned for a blank vote on the grounds that the candidates

selected by Congress were close to the party of President Evo Morales. Rejecting this argument,

Morales accused the opposition of being “confessed criminals” for advocating a “no” vote. In the

event, the results were seen as a defeat for the government since there were over 2.3 million blank

and void votes as compared to 1.7 million valid votes.

In Colombia, the elections for governors and mayors, scheduled for October 30, are seen as a test

for the government of President Juan Manuel Santos - who, in little over a year in office, has

achieved the overwhelming support of the population (between 70% and 80%, according to most

polls) and the backing of 90% of the legislature - and for internal balance within the government

coalition (Unidad Nacional) which includes the Partido Liberal, Partido Conservador, Partido de

la U and Cambio Radical. The key race is for mayor of Bogotá, the second most important post in

the country, for which there are three main contenders - Enrique Peñalosa, supported by Santos,

and two clearly opposition candidates: Gustavo Petro, a left-winger, and Gina Parodi, supported

by Antanas Mockus who withdrew from the race.

Elections in 2012

Three very important presidential elections will take place in 2012. The first, on May 20, will be

in the Dominican Republic where, for the first time since 2004, the contenders will not include

Leonel Fernández who, under the new constitution introduced in January 2010, cannot run for

immediate or consecutive re-election.

The second election will take place in Mexico on July 1. The PRI (with either Enrique Peña Nieto

or Manlio Fabio Beltrones) is the favorite to win this election although candidates still have to be

nominated by the left-wing PRD (Marcelo Ebrard or Andrés Manuel López Obrador) and the

current government party, PAN (Josefina Vázquez Mota, Santiago Creel or Ernesto Cordero).

Finally, in Venezuela on October 7, President Hugo Chávez plans to seek re-election in a

situation that is difficult from several points of view. In addition to his illness and the fact that he

has had to undergo several sessions of chemotherapy, the opposition (Mesa de Unidad

18

Democrática) is regrouping and will hold a primary election in February to select a single

candidate. Some of the contenders for the nomination, such as Henrique Capriles, have a very

strong position in the polls. Economically, Venezuela has started to grow again after several

consecutive years of crisis but inflation remains extremely high while, socially, a poor level of

public safety has emerged as the main problem of the middle and working classes. Moreover, in

the case of foreign policy, the position of Chávez internationally and his leadership within Latin

America have weakened since 2008.

Regional outlook

The return of Honduras to the OAS, Cuba, the health of Chávez, press freedom and the tenth

anniversary of the Inter-American Democratic Charter.

In 2011, Latin America was able to solve some of its pending problems while others remain to be

addressed. The former include the problem of Honduras. In an extraordinary meeting of the

Organization of American States (OAS) on May 31, the member states agreed to re-admit

Honduras which had been expelled in July 2009 as a result of the coup that overthrew then

President Manuel Zelaya.

Venezuela‟s President Hugo Chávez and Colombia‟s President Juan Manuel Santos successfully

mediated between Zelaya and the government of Porfirio Lobo who agreed to establish

mechanisms for dialogue and reconciliation and, under the auspices of Venezuela and Colombia,

signed the agreement of Cartagena de Indias. This confirmed a trend in the region in terms of the

ever greater importance of Unasur not only in South America but also at the Latin America level

since it was two South American countries, Colombia and Venezuela (currently the co-chairs of

Unasur), that sponsored the reconciliation while the Central American countries, Mexico and the

OAS played only a minor role.

For the reforms being undertaken by the government of Raúl Castro, 2011 was a decisive year.

In April, the VI Congress of the Cuban Communist Party debated the country‟s plan of economic

reforms and the report presented by President Castro - the so-called “Project of Guidelines of the

Economic and Social Policy of the Party and the Revolution” - setting out a plan of economic

adjustments to update the socialist model. Its 311 guidelines were discussed for months in over

163,000 popular assemblies.

Serious doubts exist as the ability of the Cuban system to successfully undertake reforms that seek

to update its economic model without abandoning socialism. The measures envisaged include the

opening of areas to private initiative, a reduction in the large number of public-sector employees,

increased autonomy for state enterprises and a cut in social spending, eliminating unnecessary

subsidies. The most difficult test will be the downsizing of the public sector where, in 2011 alone,

some 500,000 people are scheduled to lose their jobs and the expansion of employment in the

private sector where the government has granted over 200,000 new licenses for the exercise of so-

called “self-employment”.

In Venezuela, the illness of Hugo Chávez has dominated that country‟s political agenda since he

underwent surgery in Cuba in June. This has caused an important degree of uncertainty in

Venezuela where presidential elections will take place on October 7, 2012 and Chávez plans to

19

seek re-election. Speculation is rife about the political future of Chávez who has cancer and has

undergone several sessions of chemotherapy. Although he has insisted that he has already been

cured and will run in the election, there is ever more intense speculation that important figures in

his regime such as Diosdado Cabello, a member of the lower house of Congress, the Vice-

President Elías Jaua, Chávez‟s brother Adán or Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro could take on

the leadership of Chavism if Chávez‟s health were to deteriorate further.

His illnesses coincides with an ebbing of twenty-first century socialism in Latin America which,

in recent years, has tended to prefer centrist candidates (both from the center-right such as Piñera

and Santos or the center-left such as Rousseff and Humala) who are more pragmatic.

At the same time, the Venezuelan opposition has started to regroup around the Mesa de Unidad

Democrática (Democratic Unity Roundtable) with its eyes on the primary election of February

2012 in which a single candidate should be selected to compete with Chávez. At present, a large

number of figures are vying to lead the opposition and there is no clear frontrunner. The

contenders include: the governor of Miranda, Henrique Capriles (the poll frontrunner); the

member of the lower house of Congress, María Corina Machado; the former mayor of Chacao,

Leopoldo López; the governor of Zulia, Pablo Pérez; the current mayor of Caracas, Antonio

Ledezma; the former governor of Zulia, Oswaldo Álvarez; and, the current governor of Táchira,

César Pérez Vives.

The opposition was very much strengthened by the ruling of the Inter-American Court of Human

Rights in favor of Leopoldo López in his appeal against the State of Venezuela‟s decision to bar

him from elected office. López, who will be seeking to win the February 2012 primary, was

unable to compete in the 2008 municipal elections. Venezuela‟s Supreme Court of Justice has,

however, declared that the Inter-American Court‟s ruling is not applicable.

Press freedom. Conflicts between governments and the media have become a regular feature of

Latin America in the past few years, particularly in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela and

Nicaragua.

The Inter-American Press Society (SIP) declared 2011 the year of press freedom and, at its 67th

General Assembly, held in Lima on October 14-18, noted that “restrictions and threats to press

freedom have increased in our hemisphere”. The SIP identifies two serious threats to freedom of

expression of which one is posed by the “organized groups of drug traffickers” that have

assassinated 21 journalists. It denounced the “disgraceful impunity” of these crimes as “one of the

most important factors in perpetuating this tragic wave of attacks on members of the media which

has been going on for decades”.

The second threat identified by the SIP arises from “those governments that aim to achieve the

same goal of gagging the press […] by means of illegitimate pressures applied through lawsuits,

arbitrary arrests, verbal attacks, restrictive laws or the simple manipulation of official

advertising”. According to the SIP, the countries where press freedom is under greatest threat are

Ecuador, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Argentina and Panama.

In 2011, the most serious events as regards freedom of expression occurred in Ecuador. This was

firstly the result of one of the questions included in the May referendum and finally approved

20

through which the government sought to prohibit the media, as well as banks, from holding

investments in other sectors of the economy.

The most important deterioration, however, occurred as a result of the lawsuit presented by

President Rafael Correa himself against the El Universo newspaper, seeking compensation of

US$80 million. In an initial ruling on July 20, a judge condemned the newspaper‟s directors and

the journalist Emilio Palacio to pay Correa compensation of US$40 million. The lawsuit was

presented in response to an article in which Palacio accused Correa of having ordered an attack on

a hospital during the police uprising of September 30, 2010.

Palacio was even forced to take refuge in Miami in the face of the risk of being imprisoned for

allegedly libeling the president whom he referred to as “dictator”. The SIP described the situation

as serious since it highlighted the deterioration and precariousness of freedom of the press and

business and freedom of expression in Ecuador

In Venezuela, the government of Hugo Chávez ordered the closure of 6to. Poder, a weekly, and

the arrest of its directors after it published a photoshopped picture showing six high-ranking

officials as cabaret dancers. In October, Globovisión, a television channel critical of Chávez, was

also fined over US$2 million by the National Telecommunications Commission (CNT) which

accused it of infringing broadcasting norms during its coverage of a bloody prison riot earlier in

the year.

In Argentina, there were new incidents of tension between the government of Cristina Fernández

de Kirchner and the country‟s main newspapers (La Nación and Clarín) when Interior Minister

Florencio Randazzo accused them of “lying” and “twisting” information in order to “sully” the

president‟s victory in the primary election of August 14. Randazzo added that the government was

“convinced” of the existence of a supposed effort by the media to “condition” the powers of state.

The telecommunications and information and communications technologies law passed in Bolivia

in 2011 restricts the participation of the private sector in these activities. It places all the media,

including Internet operators, “at the disposal of the state” and permits telephone tapping without a

court order in cases of “internal commotion”, threats to the “state security”, natural disasters or an

attack by another country. In addition, private media may only hold 33% of the radio spectrum

while another 33% will be controlled by the state, 17% will be made available to trade unions and

the remaining 17% will be distributed to indigenous movements which are typically close to the

government. The government of Evo Morales would, in this way, control around 65% of radio

and television licenses. The new law also allows the state to close those media that, according to

its criteria, regularly broadcast opinions it considers racist or discriminatory.

However, in a move in the opposite direction, Brazil‟s President Dilma Rousseff, who had had

serious differences with her country‟s media in 2010, prevented her party, the Partido de los

Trabajadores, from seeking to implement a project for social control of the media that it attempted

to present to the IV National Congress.

Tenth anniversary of the OAS Democratic Charter. In September 2011, an extraordinary

meeting convened by the OAS and the Chilean government took place in Valparaíso, Chile, to

mark the tenth anniversary of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, adopted in Lima, Peru on

21

September 11, 2001. As OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza noted, “democracy in Latin

America and the Caribbean is today more solid and consistent than ten years ago; there is more

democracy in our countries than at any other time in their history”. Over the past ten years, the

institutional framework of democracy strengthened and all the region‟s governments, except for

Cuba, came to power as a result of free and transparent electoral processes whose results were not

questioned.

Summary and Trends: Elections 2011

The consolidation of elections as the only mechanism that provides legitimate access to public

office has continued. According to the reports of the different organizations that sent observers, all

the elections held through to October 2011 took place normally, at the scheduled date and their

results were accepted as legitimate by all sides.

The quality, credibility and legitimacy of electoral processes has, moreover, improved

significantly while turnout has remained at historic averages for the region.

In recent years, the focus of debate about elections has shifted to the need to guarantee a level

playing field for the competing political forces, including the important issue of gender equity.

Key topics on this new agenda include: 1) campaign and party financing; 2) the threat of

penetration of money from drug trafficking and organized crime and the danger of capture of the

state; 3) guaranteeing transparency and accountability in the use of money in politics; 4) abusive

use of fiscal resources and clientelist use of social programs during election campaigns; 5) the

access of parties to the media on equitable conditions and its relation to freedom of expression;

and, 6) the growing use of quota mechanisms to guarantee better conditions of gender equity.

Important (albeit still insufficient) progress has been achieved as regards the participation and

representation of women in political-electoral life (women hold around 20% of parliamentary

seats in Latin America, thanks largely to quota mechanisms). In 2011, three countries were

governed by women: Laura Chinchilla in Costa Rica, Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, and Cristina

Fernández de Kirchner in Argentina.

In contrast to 2009 and 2010, when elections tended clearly towards continuity, the trend seen in

the presidential elections of 2011 was mixed. On the one hand, there were changes of government

Peru and Guatemala and, on the other hand, continuity in Argentina (and very probably

Nicaragua). The government was also the victor in Ecuador (referendum) but suffered a defeat in

Bolivia‟s judicial elections. In the two countries where the government party won (Argentina) or

may win (Nicaragua), continuity took the form of re-election.

Similarly, the trend towards political pragmatism, moderation and center options at the expense of

the extremes of both the left and the right which predominated in 2010 was less clear in 2011.

Pragmatism and moderation were in evidence in Peru with the victory of Ollanta Humala and his

shift to the centre but, at the date of writing this report, the style of the new government in

Guatemala remained to be seen (both candidates are from the center-right and have populist

leanings) and this was also the case of the second term of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner in

Argentina and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua (if he is re-elected).

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Other key electoral trends in 2011 were:

1. Need for a second round. In two of the three presidential elections that had been held by

October 2011 (Peru and Guatemala), a second round was required. In the other case

(Argentina), the incumbent president was re-elected and this also seems likely to be the

case in Nicaragua (November). In other words, in the two cases in which the government

party won or may win in a context of consecutive re-election, the result was decided (or

may be decided) in the first round while, in both cases of a change of government (Peru

and Guatemala), a second round was needed.

2. Position in Congress. In both Peru and Guatemala, the president will lack a majority in

Congress whereas, in Argentina, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner will have a majority in

both houses and the result in Nicaragua is not yet clear.

3. Success in re-election. Out of the two incumbent presidents seeking re-election (Cristina

Fernández de Kirchner and Daniel Ortega), the former was successful and the latter has a

high chance of being so. In the 2009-2011 wave of elections, all the presidents who sought

immediate re-election have so far obtained it. Latin America, therefore, has six re-elected

presidents: four in South America (Chávez, Correa, Morales, and Cristina Fernández de

Kirchner), one in Central America (Daniel Ortega) and one in the Caribbean (Leonel

Fernández).

4. Public safety as a priority. In line with a trend that became apparent in 2010, public

safety has emerged as the key electoral issue in Latin American and was central to the

campaigns for most of the elections held in 2011.

As we also noted in our analysis of election trends in 2010, the positive results of electoral

democracy in Latin America should not blind us to the kaleidoscopic reality of the region and the

important challenges it still faces.

Indeed, although Latin American democracies have shown their resilience, belying forecasts that

they would be short-lived, and have demonstrated unprecedented electoral vitality, it remains true

that their consolidation is a far more complex matter and will take much longer than originally

anticipated.

SURVEY RESULTS

DEMOCRACY IN LATIN AMERICA

From 2003 through to the crisis of 2007, Latin America experienced economic growth that was

unprecedented in democracy. Thanks to this growth and the solidity that the region‟s economies

achieved in the wake of the reforms of the 1990s, the economic crisis that began in September

2007 did not have the negative impact on democracy seen in the Asian crisis. The counter-cyclical

policies implemented by the region‟s governments were very successful.

23

The wave of presidential elections which took place in 2006 brought the last of the changes of

government in Paraguay and the re-election of many very popular leaders, resulting in a sustained

increase in trust in and approval of governments (Table Nº 4). All the figures are above 50% and

serve to map the success of governments in the decade to 2010. In 2010, support for democracy

showed a fourth consecutive annual increase for the first time since measurements began. Growth

and stability, in other words, produce only good news. Whatever the cause-and-effect relationship

may be, this four-year increase coincides with high economic growth. Both presidents and

countries benefit from this positive circle, producing what Enrique Iglesias, executive secretary of

the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB), has termed the “virtuous five years”.

Table Nº 4. Government Approval Q. Do you approve or not of the performance of the government led by President (name)? * Only „Approve‟.

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Difference

2011-2010

Chile 50 54 64 66 67 55 59 85 55 28 -27

Brazil 34 62 53 47 62 58 79 84 86 67 -19

Uruguay 30 16 12 72 63 61 61 74 75 63 -12

Dominican Rep. 21 62 61 46 50 47 45 36 -9

El

Salvador 35 48 57 58 48 54 51 83 71 63 -8

Nicaragua 84 32 30 32 23 54 32 37 58 50 -8

Paraguay 5 8 57 39 33 17 86 69 55 49 -6

Costa Rica 52 37 50 32 56 55 45 75 53 48 -5

Bolivia 42 24 48 60 54 60 53 57 46 41 -5

Guatemala 12 15 36 44 45 28 46 52 47 43 -4

Colombia 13 64 75 69 70 68 75 72 75 75 0

Mexico 47 46 41 41 60 60 58 52 59 59 0

Honduras 57 52 44 39 57 56 35 51 52 1

Venezuela 51 35 43 65 65 61 48 45 47 49 2

Panama 23 14 20 39 57 37 41 80 59 62 3

Ecuador 30 27 20 24 23 74 66 59 58 64 6

Argentina 14 86 73 71 73 52 34 25 40 57 17

Peru 23 10 8 16 57 29 14 26 30 52 22 Source: Latinobarómetro 2002-2011

For the first time, data for 2011 reveals the impact of the economic crisis and of inequality in the

distribution of “success”, with a drop in almost all social and economic indicators across the

majority of countries. It is reflected firstly in a drop in approval of the government in ten of the 18

countries. This is largest precisely in the most “successful” countries like Chile (-27 percentage

points), Brazil (-19 points) and Uruguay (-12 points). There is also a negative impact on other

indicators including satisfaction with democracy, the economy, expectations for the future and the

perception of progress. In 2011, although the region‟s citizens recognize the existence of

economic growth, they are more pessimistic about the future than in 2010.

24

GDP growth accelerated significantly in only two countries (Venezuela and Ecuador) in 2011

while, in nine of the 18 countries, there was a deceleration and, in seven countries, the increase

reached only around one percentage point. This weakening of growth does not fully explain the

drop in perceptions of politics and society but is certainly a contributory factor. In all, Latin

America‟s growth in 2011 was down by 1.2 points on 2010.

Table Nº 5. GDP Growth

2008 2009 2010 2011 Diff. 2010-2011

Venezuela 4.2 -3.3 -1.4 4.5 5.9

Ecuador 7.2 0.4 3.6 6.4 2.8

Guatemala 3.3 0.5 2.8 4.0 1.2

Bolivia 6.1 3.4 4.1 5.3 1.2

Chile 3.7 -1.7 5.2 6.3 1.1

El Salvador 1.3 -3.1 1.4 2.5 1.1

Panama 10.1 3.2 7.5 8.5 1.0

Cuba 4.1 1.4 2.1 3.1 1.0

Colombia 3.5 1.5 4.3 5.3 1.0

Honduras 4.2 -2.1 2.8 3.0 0.2

Nicaragua 2.8 -1.5 4.5 4.0 -0.5

Argentina 6.8 0.9 9.2 8.3 -0.9

Costa Rica 2.7 -1.3 4.2 3.2 -1.0

Mexico 1.5 -6.1 5.4 4.0 -1.4

Peru 9.8 0.9 8.8 7.1 -1.7

Uruguay 8.6 2.6 8.5 6.8 -1.7

Dominican Rep. 5.3 3.5 7.8 5.0 -2.8

Brazil 5.2 -0.6 7.5 4.0 -3.5

Paraguay 5.8 -3.8 15.0 5.7 -9.3

Latin America 4.1 -2.1 5.9 4.7 -1.2 Rates of variation (Millions of constant 2005 dollars) Source: Own calculations based on ECLAC statistics

The problem lies not in economic indicators where Latin Americans recognize their region‟s

continued growth. What appears to matter, however, is not the speed at which the economy grows

but how it impacts different groups within society. There is a Hirschman effect under which

people see themselves in a tunnel in which the track on which they are located advances too

slowly compared to the track of the “others”. They perceive inequality in the way in which they

are progressing as compared to “others” in the same society. It is not, therefore, the speed at

which the country and society as a whole progress that determines the perception of progress but

rather people‟s share in this progress or, in other words, the distribution of prosperity and growth.

This is a new source of inequality - inequality in opportunities and the speed of growth. This is the

inequality in the speed of formation of the middle classes and their consolidation. Indeed, we see

that even as unemployment drops, further reducing the number of people who experience serious

difficulties in getting to the end of the month, this does not placate discontent which has its root in

the ever more widely-held belief that the benefits of development are not being properly

distributed and that power and money remain concentrated in the hands of the few. People are

better off but there are too many differences in what they receive.

25

This problem of how growth is distributed is, in the end, a political one that appears to be related

to leadership. As we saw above (Table Nº 4), the wave of presidential elections that began in 2006

brought to power governments that obtain high approval ratings.

If we compare continuity and changes of power among presidents since 2004 (Table Nº 6), we

find that the 2009 wave of elections resulted in a high rate of re-election of governments of both

the left and the right, whether under the same or a different president. In five countries, left-wing

governments are re-elected and three re-elect right-wing governments while three countries

change from a left-wing to a right-wing government (Honduras, Chile and Guatemala) and only

one from a right-wing to a left-wing government (Peru).

Changes of power appear to bear some relation to variations in support for democracy. As shown

below, it is precisely those countries that have experienced the greatest difficulties, although for

different reasons, in which the latest election brought a change of government.

26

Table Nº 6. Ideology of Governments and Changes of Power

Presidential elections

2004-2008: Left

Countries without

change of government

Presidential elections

2009-2011

Countries with change of

government

Presidential elections

2009 -2011

Pending elections

2012

Year President Political

allegiance Year President

Political

allegiance Year President

Political

allegiance President

Political

allegiance

Uruguay 2004 Tabaré

Vázquez Center-left 2009

José

Mujica Center-left

Honduras 2005 Manuel

Zelaya

“21st-century

socialism” left 2009

Porfirio

Lobo Center-right

Porfirio

Lobo (a) Center-right

Brazil 2005

Re-election

of Lula da

Silva

Center-left 2010 Dilma

Rousseff Center-left

Bolivia 2005 Evo

Morales

“21st-century

socialism” left 2009

Re-

election

of Evo

Morales

“21st-century

socialism” left

Chile 2006 Michelle

Bachelet Center-left 2010

Sebastián

Piñera Center-right

Nicaragua 2006 Daniel

Ortega

“21st-century

socialism” left 2011

Daniel

Ortega

“21st-century

socialism” left

Ecuador 2006 Rafael

Correa

“21st-century

socialism” left 2009

Re-

election

of Rafael

Correa

“21st-century

socialism” left

Venezuela 2006

Re-election

of Hugo

Chávez

“21st-century

socialism” left

Re-

election

of Hugo

Chávez

“21st-century

socialism” left

Argentina 2007 Cristina

Kirchner Left 2011

Cristina

Kirchner Left

Paraguay 2008 Fernando

Lugo Center-left

Fernando

Lugo (a) Center-left

Guatemala 2007 Álvaro

Colom Center-left 2011

Otto

Pérez

Molina

Center-right

2004-2008: Center-right

Costa Rica 2006 Óscar

Arias Center-right 2010

Laura

Chinchilla Center-right

Dominican

Rep. 2008

Leonel

Fernánde

z

Center-right Leonel

Fernández Center-right

Peru 2006 Alan

García Center-right 2011

Ollanta

Humala Center-left

Colombia 2006 Álvaro

Uribe Right 2010

Juan

Manuel

Santos

Center-right

Mexico 2006 Felipe

Calderón Center-right

El

Salvador 2009

Mauricio

Funes Center-left

Mauricio

Funes Center-left

Panama 2009 Ricardo

Martinelli Right

Ricardo

Martinelli Right

(a) Election to be held in 2013. Source: Prepared by authors

Support for democracy

In 2011, average support for democracy in Latin America drops to 61% down from 58% in 2010,

after four consecutive years of increases. This reflects both economic and political factors. More

important than the drop in the average for the region, however, is the fact that, between 2010 and

27

2011, support for democracy weakens in 14 of the 18 countries. The decline reaches ten points in

Guatemala and Honduras, nine points in Brazil and Mexico, eight points in Nicaragua, seven

points in Costa Rica and Venezuela and five points or less in the other countries (Table Nº 7).

In Guatemala and Honduras, this coincides with a change from a left-wing to a right-wing

government. In Guatemala, this occurs with the first-round victory of center-right Otto Pérez

Molina, which will be confirmed on November 6, putting an end to the center-left government of

Álvaro Colom in the midst of considerable debate about re-election and a bid to replace him with

his wife. This change of government reflects demand for a solution to problems not addressed by

previous governments in a context of intense criticism of politics. Although the country‟s growth

accelerates from 2.8% in 2010 to 4% in 2011, the government‟s approval rating drops from 47%

to 43% in the same period. Guatemala suffers from political conflict and, despite economic

growth, its consumer confidence index is one of the lowest in the region (39 points) and the

perception of progress in 2011 was six points down on 2010. In an example of political conflict

dominating expectations, economic growth does not, in other words, have a positive impact on

perceptions of the evolution of this society.

In the case of Honduras, it is also political, rather than economic, factors that trigger the drop in

support for democracy. Support for democracy in Honduras rose quickly in the wake of the 2009

coup, reaching 54%, up from 44% in 2008, and then remained at 53% in 2010. However, in 2011,

it dropped to 43%, returning to its pre-coup level. In Honduras, the economy grew in 2011,

accelerating slightly on 2010, but the perception of progress drops by three percentage points

and, like Guatemala, it has one of the region‟s lowest indices of consumer confidence (38 points).

Again, economic growth does not outweigh the political problems revealed in this case by the

coup in 2009.

The reasons for Brazil‟s nine-point decline in support for democracy in 2011 are different. A drop

of 3.5 percentage points in its economic growth in 2011 coincides with the end of the most

successful presidency of recent decades. At 67%, approval of the government of Dilma Rousseff

is far from low but still well below the 86% of her predecessor in 2010. As a result, the perception

of progress falls by 16 percentage points, although the index of consumer confidence, at 61 points,

continues to be one of the highest in the region. In other words, the weakening of support for

democracy in Brazil reflects both political and economic factors.

In Mexico, where we also find a nine-point drop in support for democracy, this has its roots in the

wave of violence and a drop of 1.4 percentage points in the country‟s GDP growth in 2011. The

perception of progress drops by two percentage points while the country‟s consumer confidence

index, at 44 points, is close to the average for the region

Nicaragua‟s eight-point drop in support for democracy is related to the state‟s capture by the

president or, in other words, a political issue while 75% of the population has economic problems.

The country‟s economic growth of close to 4% does not suffice to solve these problems.

Nicaragua has both political and economic problems

In both Costa Rica and Venezuela, we find a seven-point drop in support for democracy in 2011 -

although for very different reasons and with diametrically opposite trends in economic growth - as

well as a drop in the perception of progress that is not correlated with economic performance.

28

Without analyzing every country in detail, we can, therefore, conclude that, in the five countries

with the largest drop in support for democracy, the reasons are specific to each particular country.

There are, in general, no two cases that are the same but political, rather than economic, factors

predominate and, in no case, does mere growth have a positive impact. In Brazil, moreover, the

impact of weaker growth is intertwined with political factors. We cannot, therefore, talk about

“Latin America” as a whole but have to look at each country individually to find an explanation

with historical and political roots that makes sense. The development of democracy appears to

have moved on from the broad area of guaranteeing civil liberties into the area of social

guarantees where each country is at its own particular stage. In future, in analyzing the

consolidation of democracy, we will have to look at countries more than the region in order to

understand what is happening in Latin America.

In countries where support for democracy increased, we also find very specific causes related to

their political and economic evolution. The case of Argentina is particularly interesting because

the death of Néstor Kirchner in November 2010 put the leadership of Cristina Kirchner to the test

and her performance resulted in one of the largest increases in approval of the government from

40% in 2010 to 57% in el 2011.8 Support for democracy in Argentina also increases by four

percentage points in 2011 as compared to 2010, despite a 0.9-point deceleration of economic

growth. The leadership of Cristina Kirchner is, moreover, reflected in a 12-point increase in the

perception of progress and the region‟s highest consumer confidence index (62 points). She has,

in other words, created a climate of opinion in which Argentines feel they are on the path of

progress.

Two special cases - Chile and Peru - should be mentioned. In Chile, approval of the government

fell by 27 percentage points and the perception of progress by 26 points while economic growth

showed an increase of 1.1 percentage points and the drop in support for democracy (two points)

was not significant. In 2010, Chile changed from a center-left to a center-right government and, in

this case, the president‟s leadership has a negative impact despite a strong economic performance.

The crisis in education has not been resolved and student demonstrations lead to a sharp drop in

the perception of progress. This is the country that has been held up as an example of

development in Latin America. The 2010 Latinobarómetro report included a special section

analyzing the increase in support for democracy produced by the change of government through

which Chileans were, it seems, seeking changes that they have not obtained under the new

government, including a redistribution of the benefits of the economic growth that no-one denies.

In Peru, the election of Ollanta Humala brought a change from a right-wing to a left-wing

government in 2011, exactly the opposite of Chile in 2010. However, in their change of

government, Peruvians were also seeking a redistribution of the fruits of development. This

election produces the largest increase in government approval between 2010 and 2011 (22

percentage points) and a nine-point increase in the perception of progress while the two-point

drop in support for democracy is not significant.

8 The case of Peru is different because, given the intervening election, the increase is not for the same government but

refers to Alan García in 2010 and Ollanta Humala in 2011. The survey was carried out when Humala had been elected

but before he took office on July 28, 2011.

29

Table Nº 7. Democracy, Progress and the Economy, Variations 2010-2011

2010

2011

Difference

Support

2010-2011

Difference

GDP

2010-2011

Difference

Perception of

Progress

2010-2011

Consumer

Confidence

Index

2011

Countries where support for democracy increases

Paraguay 49 54 5 -9.3 -4 55

Argentina 66 70 4 -0.9 12 62

Dominican Rep. 63 65 2 -2.8 -13 27

Uruguay 75 75 0 -1.7 12 64

Countries where support for democracy decreases

Guatemala 46 36 -10 1.2 -6 39

Honduras 53 43 -10 0.2 -3 38

Brazil 54 45 -9 -3.5 -16 61

Mexico 49 40 -9 -1.4 -2 44

Nicaragua 58 50 -8 -0.5 -3 45

Costa Rica 72 65 -7 -1 -13 45

Venezuela 84 77 -7 5.8 -3 53

Colombia 60 55 -5 1 -1 61

El Salvador 59 55 -4 1.1 -3 34

Bolivia 68 64 -4 1.2 -11 44

Ecuador 64 61 -3 2.8 2 48

Peru 61 59 -2 -1.7 9 56

Chile 63 61 -2 1.1 -26 50

Panama 61 60 -1 1 -3 57

Latin America 61 58 -3 -1.3 -4 49 Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

Voters in Chile and Peru seek change through a change of government and economic growth does

not serve as an argument for satisfying their demands. These are two countries where growth is

not the problem and success is defined differently by their citizens and by the outside world.

Without doubt, economic growth has an effect on support for democracy. This can be positive if

the benefits are distributed in the hoped-for way but negative if they are concentrated in the hands

of the few. In order to identify the direction of the effect, we must look at the way in which

growth is distributed within a society. Latinobarómetro data indicates that it is a poor distribution

of growth that produces a negative impact.

30

Source: Latinobarómetro 1995-2011

5861

63 62

57

48

5653 53 53

5854

5759

6158

3,8

0,9

2,3

-1,3

-2,3

0,4

4,4

3

4

5,54,7

3,1

5,9

4,7

-4

-2

0

2

4

6

8

10

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

1995 1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Democracy is preferable PIB PER CAPITA

SUPPORT FOR DEMOCRACY AND PIB PER CAPITA1995 – 2011 TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1995 - 2011Q. With which of the following statements do you agree most? Democracy is preferable to any other kind of

government; Under some circumstances, an authoritarian government can be preferable to a democratic one; For

people like me, it doesn‟t matter whether we have a democratic or non-democratic regime; DNK/DNA. *Here only

„Democracy is preferable to any other kind of government‟

Perception of progress

In 2011, there was an average four-point drop in the perception of progress but with wide

variations between countries. In Chile and Brazil, the two Latin American countries considered

most successful, the drop reached 26 points and 16 points, respectively, while, in Costa Rica, the

Dominican Republic and Bolivia, there was a drop of more than ten points. The change is

particularly marked in Brazil where, in 2010, the perception of progress, at 68%, was the highest

in the region while the government of President Lula had the region‟s highest approval rating.

In Argentina and Uruguay, the perception of progress increases significantly, rising in both cases

by 12 points, while, in Peru, there is an increase of nine points but these are the only countries that

stand out positively. The perception of progress is related not only to growth but also to leaders,

politics, opportunities and fairness in distribution.

In the eyes of Latin Americans, in other words, the region did not progress in 2011, helping to

explain the skepticism reflected in many of the other variables discussed in this report. Over the

previous six years, despite the crisis, there was a perception of progress but its speed could not be

sustained and it ran into difficulties in 2011.

31

29

52

1815

23

8

35 34 36

21

37

64

7

22

38

5149

62

45

55

68

3128

34

14

39 38 39

24

40

67

10

24

39

49

40

50

33

-26

-16-13 -13 -11

-6 -4 -4 -3 -3 -3 -3 -3 -2 -1

2

912 12

-40

-20

0

20

40

60

80

Ch

ile

Bra

sil

Co

sta

Ric

a

Re

pú

blic

a D

om

inic

ana

Bo

livia

Gu

ate

ma

la

La

tino

am

érica

Pa

ragu

ay

Nic

ara

gu

a

El S

alv

ad

or

Ve

ne

zu

ela

Pa

na

má

Ho

nd

ura

s

Méxic

o

Co

lom

bia

Ecu

ad

or

Pe

rú

Uru

gu

ay

Arg

entin

a

2011 2010 Diferencia

The progress image

falls back in 14 of the 18

countries.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2010 – 2011

IMAGE OF PROGRESS IN THE COUNTRY TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011Q. Would you say that this country....? Is progressing, Is at a standstill , is in decline. * Here only 'progress'.

Since 1996, the perception of progress had shown a sustained increase, rising from 26% to 27% in

2000 and then to a peak of 39% in 2010 before dropping to 35% in 2011.

Source: Latinobarómetro 1995 – 2011

38

26 27 27

3133

3639

35

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

1995 1996 1997 2000 2005 2008 2009 2010 201135

7

8

15

18

21

22

23

29

34

36

37

38

45

49

51

52

62

64

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Latinoamérica

Honduras

Guatemala

República Dominicana

Costa Rica

El Salvador

México

Bolivia

Chile

Paraguay

Nicaragua

Venezuela

Colombia

Argentina

Perú

Ecuador

Brasil

Uruguay

Panamá

IMAGE OF PROGRESS IN THE COUNTRY TOTAL LATIN AMERICA1995 – 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011Q. Would you say that this country....? Is progressing, Is at a standstill , is in decline. * Here only 'progress'.

In 2011, the perception of progress was highest in Panama (64%) and lowest in Honduras (7%).

32

Summary of the most important problem

Economic problems continue to predominate as Latin America‟s most important problem.

However, they lose importance in 2011 while the importance of crime increases, narrowing the

difference between the two problems to nine percentage points, down from 11 points in 2010.

There is, however, little change in the countries experiencing the most serious economic problems

which have the greatest importance in Nicaragua and the least importance in Brazil.

38

34

44

3837

1715

19

27 28

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Economic Problems Crime

Source: Latinobarómetro 2007 - 2011

2011 ECONOMIC PROBLEMS

37151819

2426

32343435

424243454748

5253

75

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

LatinoaméricaBrasil

VenezuelaChile

Costa RicaUruguay

GuatemalaColombiaArgentina

MéxicoEl Salvador

PanamáParaguay

BoliviaHonduras

EcuadorPerú

República DominicanaNicaragua

SUMMARY: MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM IN THE COUNTRY

ECONOMIC PROBLEMS & CRIME TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2007-2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011Q. In your Opinion, which one is the most important problem in the country? * Here only „Unemployment‟ and „The

economy/economics problems/financial‟ and „Poverty‟ and Crime

The country’s economic situation and future expectations

In a recognition of growth, the percentage of Latin Americans who consider the economic

situation to be “good” increases from 17% in 2010 to 18% in 2011 while the percentage

considering it “bad” drops from 35% to 34%. This latter one-point drop, however, compares

unfavorably with the five-point drop seen between 2009 and 2010, indicating an important decline

in the speed of improvement.

33

Source: Latinobarómetro 1996-2011

8 10 8 8 7 8 7 811

18

21

18 16 17 18

36

41

38 3732

3633

38

42

4750

4743

47 47

57

47

53 54

6156

5954

47

35

28

3540

35 34

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Very good and good Regular Bad and Very Bad

CURRENT ECONOMIC SITUATION OF THE COUNTRY TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1996 - 2011Q. In general, how would you describe the country‟s present economic situation? Would you say it is...? very

good, good, About average , bad or very bad ? * Here 'Very good' and 'Good' / „about average' / 'Bad' and 'very

bad'.

Despite this recognition of improvement in the country‟s economic situation, interviewees‟

expectations as to their future personal situation have been weakening gradually. The deceleration

of progress is reflected in a drop to 42%, down from 49% in 2006, in those who anticipate an

improvement in their personal situation. The nature of this adjustment varies, however, depending

on the country.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2001-2011

35 37 3641 43

4946 46 44 44 42

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 201142

23

23

30

33

34

35

36

39

41

43

45

45

46

46

52

52

61

64

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Latinoamérica

República Dominicana

El Salvador

Chile

Bolivia

Guatemala

Nicaragua

Honduras

México

Uruguay

Ecuador

Perú

Costa Rica

Venezuela

Argentina

Panamá

Paraguay

Colombia

Brasil

FUTURE PERSONAL ECONOMIC SITUATION TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2001- 2011

Q. In the next 12 months, do you think your economic situation and that of your family will be much better, a little

better, about the same, a little worse or much worse than now? * Here only 'Much better' more 'A little better'.

In Brazil, the percentage anticipating a better future dropped to 64%, down from 70% in 2010, but

was still the highest in the region. This was in line with the high level of the consumer confidence

index for Brazil. In Chile, on the other hand, we find not only an increase in skepticism about the

country‟s progress but also a drop from 48% in 2010 to 30% in 2011 in the percentage of the

population anticipating a better future, which is the lowest in the region.

34

Source: Latinobarómetro 2001-2011

58 6063 62 60

70

60

76

68 7064

32

4440

46 4449

34 34

50 48

30

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Brasil Chile

BETTER

FUTURE PERSONAL ECONOMIC SITUATION TOTAL FOR BRASIL AND CHILE 2001 - 2011

Q. In the next 12 months, do you think your economic situation and that of your family will be much better, a little

better, about the same, a little worse or much worse than now? * Here only 'Much better' more 'A little better'.

Justice in income distribution

In 2011, the perception that income distribution is unfair increased in eight countries. Except in

the case of Ecuador, these are precisely the countries in which support for democracy dropped.

Source: Latinobarómetro 1997-2011

20

38

21

12

26

12

15

26

21

1614 15

32

26

22

16

19

12

33

12

31

15

6

21

8

12

24

20

1614

15

33

27

23

17

22

16

43

-8 -7 -6 -6 -5 -4 -3 -2 -1

0 0 0 1 1 1 13 4

10

-20

-10

0

10

20

30

40

50

Ho

ndu

ras

Ven

ezu

ela

Bra

sil

Ch

ile

Boliv

ia

Re

púb

lica D

om

inic

ana

Co

lom

bia

Co

sta

Ric

a

La

tino

am

éri

ca

Gu

ate

ma

la

Perú

Méxic

o

Pan

am

á

Uru

gu

ay

Nic

ara

gua

El S

alv

ado

r

Para

gua

y

Arg

en

tina

Ecu

ado

r

2010 2011 Difference

Regional variation is low.

Honduras falls in 8 points

and Ecuador increases in

10 points.

HOW FAIR IS INCOME DISTRIBUTIONTOTALS BY COUNTRY 2010-2011

Q. How fair you think that income distribution is In (country)? *Here only „Very fair‟ and „fair‟

The problem is precisely that the perception that income distribution is unfair has shown almost

no change since 2007, dropping by only one point in 2011 after holding steady for the previous

three years and, when compared to economic growth, reveals the reasons for Latin Americans‟

dissatisfaction. Figures range from just 6% in Chile who consider distribution is fair to the 43% in

Ecuador who take this view. In general, countries with left-wing governments tend to perform

better on this indicator.

35

Source: Latinobarómetro 1997-2011

19

1112

21 21 2120

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

1997 2001 2002 2007 2009 2010 201120

6

8

12

12

14

15

15

16

16

17

21

22

23

24

27

31

33

43

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Latinoamérica

Chile

República Dominicana

Colombia

Honduras

Perú

Brasil

México

Guatemala

Argentina

El Salvador

Bolivia

Paraguay

Nicaragua

Costa Rica

Uruguay

Venezuela

Panamá

Ecuador

HOW FAIR IS INCOME DISTRIBUTIONTOTAL LATIN AMERICA1997-2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. How fair you think that income distribution is In (country)? *Here only „Very fair‟ and „fair‟

Government on behalf of the majority?

Perceptions of who governments govern for is another indicator that helps to explain the changes

observed in 2011. In 14 of the 18 countries, there is a reduction in the percentage of the

population who considers that the government governs for the good of all or, in other words, an

increase in the perception that democracy is working only for some, not for all.

29

52

1815

23

8

35 34 36

21

37

64

7

22

38

5149

62

45

55

68

3128

34

14

39 38 39

24

40

67

10

24

39

49

40

50

33

-26

-16-13 -13 -11

-6 -4 -4 -3 -3 -3 -3 -3 -2 -1

2

912 12

-40

-20

0

20

40

60

80

Ch

ile

Bra

sil

Co

sta

Ric

a

Re

pú

blic

a D

om

inic

ana

Bo

livia

Gu

ate

ma

la

La

tino

am

érica

Pa

ragu

ay

Nic

ara

gu

a

El S

alv

ad

or

Ve

ne

zu

ela

Pa

na

má

Ho

nd

ura

s

Méxic

o

Co

lom

bia

Ecu

ad

or

Pe

rú

Uru

gu

ay

Arg

entin

a

2011 2010 Diferencia

Source: Latinobarómetro 2010 – 2011

Chile falls in 26 points,

which represents the most

significant decrease in this

variable.

COUNTRY GOVERNED FOR THE COMMON WELL OF ALLTOTALS BY COUNTRY 2010 - 2011

Q. Generally speaking, will you say that (country) is governed for a few powerful groups in their own benefit, or

is governed for the common well of all? *Here only „Governed for the common well of all‟.

This problem is most acute in Chile with a drop of 26 percentage points in 2011 while, in

Argentina, we find an increase of 12 points. This illustrates the impact of different types of

36

leadership, one with a positive impact and the other a negative impact, independently of a

country‟s economic situation and its growth. The perception that a government governs on behalf

of the majority is central to democracy and its drop, combined with the poor distribution of

income, explains a large part of the drop seen in other indicators in 2011.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2004 - 2011

24 2426 25 25

3330

26

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 201126

9

15

15

17

18

19

22

23

25

25

27

30

30

30

34

39

42

54

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Latinoamérica

República Dominicana

Perú

Honduras

México

Paraguay

Costa Rica

Chile

Guatemala

Colombia

El Salvador

Brasil

Panamá

Bolivia

Argentina

Ecuador

Venezuela

Nicaragua

Uruguay

COUNTRY GOVERNED FOR THE COMMON WELL OF ALLTOTALS BY COUNTRY 2004 - 2011

Q. Generally speaking, will you say that (country) is governed for a few powerful groups in their own benefit, or

is governed for the common well of all? *Here only „Governed for the common well of all‟.

This indicator, in fact, falls for the second consecutive year and, at 26%, was back at its level in

2006. This tends to confirm the hypothesis that the governments elected during the last wave of

elections are not satisfying demands as quickly as their citizens would like.

The perception that the government governs for the good of all is highest in Uruguay, with 54%,

and lowest in the Dominican Republic, with 9%.

Satisfaction with life

In previous surveys, Latinobarómetro found that satisfaction with life does not change over time

in Latin America and is, indeed, inelastic to events.

37

41 41

68

76

6670 72 71

6671 71 72

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1997 2000 2001 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 1997 - 2011

72

51

51

57

62

63

67

68

74

75

76

77

78

79

80

82

83

87

88

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Latinoamérica

El Salvador

Bolivia

Perú

Chile

República Dominicana

Honduras

Ecuador

Guatemala

Paraguay

México

Nicaragua

Argentina

Uruguay

Venezuela

Brasil

Colombia

Panamá

Costa Rica

SATISFACTION WITH LIFETOTAL LATIN AMERICA1997-2011 – TOTALS BT COUNTRY 2011Generally speaking, Would you say that you are satisfied with your life? Would you say that you are....? *Here

only „Very satisfied‟ and „Quite satisfied‟

We can compare satisfaction with life across different regions of the world and, in this case, do so

with the 27 European countries covered by Eurobarometer. This clearly shows that satifaction

with life is not a function of income since the differences in satisfaction between Europe and Latin

America are minimal in relation to the enormous difference in income level. In 2011, satisfaction

with life reached an average of 72% in Latin America as compared to 79% in Europe, a difference

of only seven percentage points.

The two indicators have moved approximaely in tandem since 2005 with a difference of no more

than ten percentage points.

Source: Latinobarómetro and Eurobarómetro 2000-2011

77

8379

81 80 82 8076 78 78 79

41

68

76

6670 72 70

6671 71 72

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2000 2001 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Eurobarometer Latinobarómetro

Since 2005 there is a similar evolution

between both regions of the world.

The differences in satisfaction with life are

much lower than differences in the GDP.

There is no high relation between Life

Satisfaction and GDP.

SATISFACTION WITH LIFETOTAL LATIN AMERICA AND EUROPE 2000-2011Generally speaking, Would you say that you are satisfied with your life? Would you say that you are....? *Here

only „Very satisfied‟ and „Quite satisfied‟

38

The drop seen in political and social indicators in 2011 is the result of two factors - the

deceleration of growth that occurred in half the countries surveyed, and political conflicts. The

latter take two forms - firstly, new governments face demands that are a consequence of success

as in Chile and Brazil and, secondly, election and re-election processes give rise to succession

tensions as in Guatemala and Nicaragua.

Latin Americans have clearly learned that elections and changes of government represent an

opportunity for change and are increasingly seeking to take advantage of these opportunities. It is

in countries where there was a change of government that we see an important part of the change

in indicators between 2010 and 2011.

In Latin America, governments are changed in a bid to deepen democracy and leaders have a great

influence in the success of this process. Institutions have less weight than leaders in the

consolidation of democracy. Is this a consolidation through leadership which may be more

volatile than consolidation of the institutions of democracy? Is it also consolidation through direct

demands placed on leaders in the absence of trust in the institutions of democracy? What is clear

from the results of this survey is that progress brings with it new demands that serve to deepen

democracy.

The downturn in the performance of governments should not be interpreted as a downturn in the

consolidation of democracy but rather as a positive effect of demands for a further deepening of

democracy. If demands are greater, performance cannot remain unchanged. The success of the

virtuous five-year cycle has raised the level of demands.

Attitudes towards democracy

In this report, we take two countries - Venezuela and Chile - to illustrate the evolution of support

for democracy and its implications. Venezuela was chosen because the democracy of Chávez is

questioned by democrats around the world and Chile because recent events there have shown that

the data used by the developed world to identify it as a model country did not reflect what its

citizens were feeling about their own situation. Is Chile Latin America‟s most successful country?

Why then does support for democracy not reach even the levels of Venezuela or Uruguay? There

is some part of the story that is not being told and, clearly, analysis is not the same as explanation.

By contrast, discussion about Venezuela in the decade since Hugo Chávez came to power has

been about why it takes first place in so many indicators related to democracy when the rest of the

world thinks its democracy is of poor quality. While Venezuelans have a good opinion of their

democracy, the rest of the world has a poor view of it. These are, in other words, both countries in

which the views of their citizens differ from what the world thinks about them. By “world”, we

mean mainstream opinion in the west, a view formed by opinion leaders that include international

institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, etc.

39

Table Nº 8. Support for Democracy in Latin America, 2011 Q. With which of the following statements do you agree most? Democracy is preferable to any other kind of

government; Under some circumstances, an authoritarian government can be preferable to a democratic one; For

people like me, it doesn‟t matter whether we have a democratic or non-democratic regime.

Democracy is

preferable

Authoritarian

government

Doesn’t

matter DNK/DNA

Venezuela 77 14 6 3

Uruguay 75 11 9 5

Argentina 70 14 15 2

Dominican Rep. 65 22 9 4

Costa Rica 65 14 15 7

Bolivia 64 11 16 10

Chile 61 14 22 3

Ecuador 61 23 12 4

Panama 60 19 11 9

Peru 59 16 18 7

Latin America 58 17 18 7

Colombia 55 11 27 7

El Salvador 54 16 23 6

Paraguay 54 25 17 4

Nicaragua 50 15 19 16

Brazil 45 19 22 13

Honduras 43 27 23 7

Mexico 40 14 36 10

Guatemala 36 22 31 11 Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

From 2004 - or, in other words, four years after Hugo Chávez came to power - through to 2011,

support for democracy in Venezuela remains well over 70% (except for a drop to 67% in 2007)

and, in 2008 and 2010, reaches over 80%.

Table Nº 9. Support for Democracy in Chile and Venezuela, 1995-2011 Q. With which of the following statements do you agree most? Democracy is preferable to any other kind of

government; Under some circumstances, an authoritarian government can be preferable to a democratic one; For

people like me, it doesn‟t matter whether we have a democratic or non-democratic regime.

Chile 1995 1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Democracy is

preferable 52 54 61 53 54 45 50 51 57 59 56 46 51 59 63 61

Authoritarian

government 18 19 16 16 17 19 14 14 14 11 13 21 14 10 11 14

Doesn‟t matter 25 23 20 29 26 28 30 32 27 25 26 29 30 25 22 22

DNK/DNA 4 3 2 2 3 8 5 4 3 6 5 5 6 6 4 3

Venezuela 1995 1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Democracy is

preferable 60 62 64 60 61 57 73 68 74 76 70 67 82 84 84 77

Authoritarian government

21 19 17 25 24 20 12 16 11 11 11 14 9 7 9 14

Doesn‟t matter 13 13 15 13 10 17 9 13 12 8 11 13 7 7 5 6

DNK/DNA 6 5 4 2 5 6 6 4 3 5 8 7 2 2 3 3

Source: Latinobarómetro 1995-2011

40

In Chile, on the other hand, support for democracy has ranged from a low of 45% in 2001 to a

peak of 63% in 2010 which, as discussed in our previous report, reflected the change of

government.

In neither case do the results show a correlation with economic performance nor, in the case of

Venezuela, the price of oil or monetary policy and its progress, which are important factors in

forming opinions about the success of countries.

Support for democracy is much more closely related to the production of political goods, such as

the change of government that occurred in Chile with the election of the right for the first time in

50 years, or Chávez‟s political inclusion of the population, rather than with economic goods.

We discussed above what people understand by democracy. They want to see their governments

working on behalf of the majority, not the few, and improving distribution of income and the

fruits of progress. People do not define democracy in terms of institutions and norms, but

outcomes. This important difference is what separates theoretical analysis from people‟s on-the-

ground perceptions and is at the root of the contradictions we see in evaluations of Chile and

Venezuela. The same also happens in the case of Latin America as a whole and the way the world

sees it does not exactly match the reality. Its evolution and development is not fully reflected in

indicators that were developed with the western world in mind.

Ideology also plays a role in the evaluation of democracies and, as discussed later in this report,

those Latin Americans who consider that Venezuela is not democratic tend to be from countries

with right-wing governments. By the same token, the rest of the world‟s evaluation of Latin

America also tends to be ideological, reflecting the position of the person or institution making the

assessment. This is not insignificant when attempting to make a cold and non-ideological

assessment because there is an instinctive tendency to classify and label and, over the course of its

transition and consolidation, Latin American democracy has had many labels attached to it.

Is it that Latin Americans “don‟t know” what democracy really is and this is the reason for the

contradictions we see in the cases of Chile and Venezuela? Are we, to use Plato‟s words, the

“guardians of democracy”? Do “we” know and “they” don‟t know? These results show that

people do not attach much importance to institutions working “very well” as in the case of Chile

if, at the end of the day, they do not see them as working for their welfare and the common good.

If the speed and scope of progress do not deliver sufficient results, institutions are undermined.

Democracy: Better, the same or worse?

According to 47% of Latin Americans, democracy showed no change in 2011 while 27% say that

it worsened and 21% that it improved. With a six-point difference between those who consider it

worsened and those who say it improved, the balance is clearly negative.

This is a new question that was included for the first time in 2011 and we find that only 5% of

Hondurans and 7% of Guatemalans consider that democracy has improved while, in Panama and

Uruguay, the figure reaches 35%. The differences in the progress of democracy are every day

more evident.

41

DEMOCRACY: ¿IMPROVED, THE SAME OR WORSE?TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011Q. Do you think that democracy in (country) has...? *Here only „Improved‟.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

21

27

47

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Improved

Worsened

Has remained thesame

IMPROVED

21

5

7

12

12

14

16

19

19

20

20

22

25

28

29

29

31

35

35

0 10 20 30 40 50

Latinoamérica

Honduras

Guatemala

El Salvador

Chile

Costa Rica

México

República Dominicana

Bolivia

Nicaragua

Perú

Colombia

Paraguay

Venezuela

Brasil

Ecuador

Argentina

Uruguay

Panamá

Pending tasks for democracy

The pending tasks for democracy include reducing corruption (48%), guaranteeing social justice

(33%), increasing citizen participation (31%) and increasing the transparency of the state (31%).

Only 13% say that it has no pending tasks and is alright as it is.

In Colombia, Argentina, Peru and Paraguay, around 60% identify the reduction of corruption as a

pending task whereas, in El Salvador, this figure reaches only 29%.

WHAT IS LACKING TO DEMOCRACY IN COUNTRYTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

13

21

31

31

33

48

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

It is fine as it is

Consolidate Political Parties

Citizen Participation

Increase transparency of theState

Ensure Social Justice

Reduce corruption

Q. What do you think is lacking to democracy in your country or democracy in your country is good as this?

*Multiple choice question, totals are higher than 100%

48

29

36

38

39

39

40

41

45

46

49

49

55

55

58

59

59

61

63

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Latinoamérica

El Salvador

Nicaragua

Panamá

Uruguay

Honduras

Ecuador

Guatemala

República Dominicana

Bolivia

Chile

Venezuela

Costa Rica

México

Brasil

Paraguay

Perú

Argentina

Colombia

REDUCE CORRUPTION

42

Table Nº 10. Democracy’s Pending Tasks Q. What does democracy still need to do in your country or is democracy in your country alright as it is? * Multiple

answers; totals of more than 100%.

Reduce

corruption

Guarantee

social justice

Increase

transparency

of the state

Increase

citizen

participation

Consolidate

political

parties

Alright

as it is

DNK/D

NA

Colombia 63 42 54 40 17 4 2

Argentina 61 43 46 35 21 10 1

Peru 59 37 28 31 20 7 6

Paraguay 59 28 42 35 21 7 9

Brazil 58 45 20 33 21 10 4

Mexico 55 27 36 32 21 5 5

Costa Rica 55 34 31 32 18 11 4

Venezuela 49 30 20 25 21 20 2

Chile 49 53 44 39 14 7 6

Bolivia 46 28 29 36 16 12 7

Dominican Rep. 45 37 36 37 30 14 1

Guatemala 41 25 27 26 14 8 15

Ecuador 40 32 17 25 28 15 3

Honduras 39 28 28 27 31 21 4

Uruguay 39 33 27 25 14 25 7

Panama 38 25 24 28 28 22 6

Nicaragua 36 20 27 29 15 23 12

El Salvador 29 27 22 28 25 19 5

Latin America 48 33 31 31 21 13 5 Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

Churchillian democracy

As in previous surveys, other indicators of democracy such as that based on Churchill‟s famous

definition show a much higher level of support. In 2011, this particular indicator reached 76%,

with only a one-point drop from 77% in 2010, and was lowest in Guatemala, with 49%. In other

words, although democracy may not have a high level of explicit support as seen in the direct

question above, there is broader consensus that it is the least bad system.

43

Source: Latinobarómetro 2002-2011

6864

71 7074 72 73

76 77 76

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

76

49

55

69

72

73

73

74

76

78

79

79

80

81

82

84

86

88

90

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Latinoamérica

Guatemala

México

Bolivia

Honduras

El Salvador

Perú

Nicaragua

Paraguay

Brasil

Costa Rica

Colombia

República Dominicana

Chile

Panamá

Ecuador

Venezuela

Argentina

Uruguay

CHURCHILLIAN DEMOCRACYTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2002 – 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree with the following statements? ? Democracy may

have problems, but it is the best system of government * Here only 'Strongly agree' and „agree‟.

Legitimacy of Congress and political parties

More specific indicators of democracy such as the legitimacy of Congress do not show a

deterioration in 2011 and maintain their level.

Source: Latinobarómetro 1997 - 2011

6257

4952 54 55 57 57 59 59

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1997 2000 2001 2002 2005 2006 2008 2009 2010 2011 59

40

45

49

50

53

53

55

59

59

60

62

63

63

65

68

69

73

80

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Latinoamérica

Ecuador

Brasil

Guatemala

Bolivia

Colombia

México

Panamá

Costa Rica

El Salvador

Perú

Paraguay

Nicaragua

Honduras

Chile

Venezuela

República Dominicana

Uruguay

Argentina

WITHOUT CONGRESS THERE CAN BE NO DEMOCRACYTOTAL LATINA AMERICA 1997 - 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. Some people say that without a National Congress there can be no democracy, while others say that

democracy can work without a National Congress. Which is closer to your view? *Here only „Without a National

Congress, there can be no democracy‟

In the case of political parties, a one-point drop in 2010 was followed by a further one-point drop

in 2011 when 58% of Latin Americans said that democracy cannot exist without political parties.

It is a paradox that they have most legitimacy in Argentina (74%), a country that, over recent

decades, has been dominated by Peronism and its different factions. Indeed, in Argentina, it can

be said that the factions of Peronism are the party system. This case is important in showing the

extent to which political leaders can affect perceptions of how systems work. Since the death of

44

Néstor Kirchner, his wife has shown an unexpected level of leadership, leading to her re-election

which, a year earlier, no-one had thought possible.

Source: Latinobarómetro 1997 - 2011

6257

4952 54 55 56

60 59 58

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1997 2000 2001 2002 2005 2006 2008 2009 2010 201158

40

43

46

47

47

50

54

56

57

59

60

62

63

64

71

73

74

74

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Latinoamérica

Ecuador

Brasil

Panamá

Bolivia

Colombia

México

Guatemala

Perú

Paraguay

Nicaragua

Chile

Honduras

El Salvador

Costa Rica

Venezuela

República Dominicana

Uruguay

Argentina

WITHOUT POLITICAL PARTIES THERE CAN BE NO DEMOCRACYTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1997 - 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. Some people say that without political parties there can be no democracy, while others say that democracy can

work without parties. Which is closer to your view? * Here only 'Without political parties there can be no

democracy’.

Exercising citizenship

A more complex insight into how Latin Americans see democracy can be obtained through their

understanding of a citizen‟s duties. In 2011, there is a drop in all indicators of what is required in

order to be a citizen. Are these views a cause or a consequence of the level of democracy that

exists? This is a question that the empirical sciences have yet to answer.

THINGS A PERSON CAN NOT STOP DOING IF IT WANTS TO BE CONSIDERED A CITIZEN TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2007 - 2011

P. Which of the following do you think a person can not stop doing if it wants be considered a citizen? * Multiple

choice question, totals are higher than 100%

Source: Latinobarómetro 2007 - 2011

6

20

15

21

19

37

48

52

71

10

19

13

20

18

38

45

49

72

6

20

13

18

22

41

45

50

75

3

16

12

18

22

44

46

50

72

3

13

14

18

18

37

42

47

66

0 20 40 60 80 100

DNK/DNA

Serve in the military

Participate in political organizations

Participate in social organizations

Choose products that are environmentallyresponsible

Help people that are worse than yourself

Always obey laws

Pay taxes

Vote

2011 2010 2009 2008 2007

45

How democratic is the country?

Although Latinobarómetro includes a series of indicators about the different dimensions of

democracy, none of them, either individually or as a group, provide a very detailed account of

what each person has in mind when talking about democracy.

The indicator below looks at the perceived level of democracy in both the interviewee‟s own

country and other countries. Through comparison, this provides us with an overview of where

interviewees rank their country in terms of the level of democracy, with the results revealing that

they have a very positive view of democracy in their own country but are very critical of

democracy in other countries.

On a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 means “not democratic at all” and 10 means “totally democratic”,

the average for region in 2011 was 6.4. The countries with the highest scores for their own

democracy - Uruguay (7.7), Costa Rica (7.5) and Venezuela (7.3) - also give it a higher score than

for the democracies of the United States, Spain and Canada.

Guatemala, Bolivia and Honduras are the countries with the most critical view of their own

democracies, with scores of 5.3, 5.2 and 5.2, respectively. They give democracy in the United

States, Spain and Canada a much higher score than that of their own country.

Table Nº 11. Degree of Democracy Q. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 means “not democratic at all” and 10 means “totally democratic” please assess

how democratic (country) is? Where would you put (country)? Country United States Spain Canada Venezuela Cuba

Uruguay 7.7 6.3 6.8 7.3 5.1 4.1

Costa Rica 7.5 7.3 6.9 7.0 3.5 2.7

Venezuela 7.3 7.1 7.1 7.1 N.A 3.5

Panama 7.1 7.6 7.0 6.6 4.2 3.2

Chile 6.9 7.2 6.9 7.0 4.2 3.1

Argentina 6.8 6.5 6.5 7.1 5.3 3.7

Ecuador 6.5 7.5 7.1 6.9 5.7 4.5

Nicaragua 6.4 6.7 7.1 7.0 6.2 5.6

Colombia 6.4 7.2 6.5 6.8 4.3 3.4

Brazil 6.4 6.7 5.7 6.0 5.1 4.3

El Salvador 6.3 7.0 6.8 6.8 5.1 4.6

Dominican Rep. 6.3 7.5 6.7 6.2 5.3 2.9

Peru 6.1 7.1 6.5 6.6 3.7 3.3

Mexico 5.9 6.8 6.2 6.6 4.6 3.7

Paraguay 5.8 7.0 6.7 6.5 4.6 3.8

Guatemala 5.3 6.6 6.1 6.0 5.0 4.1

Bolivia 5.2 6.4 6.5 6.2 4.8 4.1

Honduras 5.2 7.2 6.7 6.4 3.9 3.7

Latin America 6.4 7.0 6.7 6.7 4.7 3.8 Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

The average score given to democracy in the United States was 7.0 while, for Spain and Canada,

it was 6.7.

46

Venezuela and Cuba, which were also included in the list of countries, received scores of 4.7 and

3.8, respectively. Nicaragua is the country where these democracies receive the best evaluation,

with 6.2 for Venezuela and 5.6 for Cuba, while Costa Rica is the country where they are most

negatively evaluated, with 3.5 and 2.7, respectively. There is clearly an ideological element in the

evaluation of democracies since Venezuela and Cuba tend to be better evaluated in countries with

left-wing governments and more critically in countries with right-wing governments.

Venezuela‟s average score increased by four points in 2011 to 4.7. This is in line with other

indicators presented in this report and, in our view, can be partly attributed to the illness of Hugo

Chávez. In previous years, the evaluation of Latin Americans of both Chávez and Venezuela had

tended to drop and, in 2011, Venezuela recovers part of this ground.

5

4.34.7

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

2009 2010 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2009-2011

18

9

9

11

12

12

12

12

13

14

15

18

20

27

29

30

31

33

0 10 20 30 40

Latinoamérica

Brasil

Guatemala

Argentina

Nicaragua

Uruguay

República Dominicana

Paraguay

Ecuador

México

Bolivia

Chile

El Salvador

Panamá

Honduras

Colombia

Perú

Costa Rica

It is not democratic

HOW DEMOCRATIC IS VENEZUELA?TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1997-2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011Q. With a scale of 1 to 10, please assess how democratic is (country). The "1" means "(country) is not democratic"

and "10" means "(country) is totally democratic" Where would you put…? *Here only „It‟s not democratic‟,

categories 1 and 2 of the scale.

Not only the western world but also Latin Americans are critical of democracy in Venezuela.

According to 18% of Latin Americans, it is not democratic (1 and 2 points on the scale of 1 to 10)

and, in Costa Rica, this reaches 33%, followed by Peru (31%) and Colombia (30%). At the other

extreme, only 9% of Brazilians and Guatemalans consider it not to be democratic.

This evaluation of the level of democracy in different countries reveals the contrast that exists

between how the first world sees itself and how it sees Latin America. In the eyes of the former,

no Latin American country reaches its level while Latin Americans consider that they do.

We believe that this contrast between how the world sees countries and how countries see

themselves is what was brought to the fore by the Arab spring. These are two worlds that do not

meet. This is why Latin America lags behind more in its image than in any other area because,

while it progresses, its image stagnates with the same components as in the past.

Latin Americans evaluate the level of democracy in their countries with reference to its starting

point a mere three decades ago, rather than in terms of the pending tasks to which they, however,

also refer in great detail.

47

Attitudes towards military governments

The indicators above show that support for democracy shows a significant drop in several Latin

American countries while, at the same time, there is a consolidation of the legitimacy of Congress

and a drop in the legitimacy of political parties. Democracy is both criticized and desired and, as

the growing support for Churchill‟s definition shows, there is demand for more and better

democracy.

This is also reflected in attitudes towards military governments where, in 2011, we find an

increase from 63% to 66% in those who would, under no circumstance, support a military

government. Rejection is lowest in Guatemala where it reaches only 40% and, in other words,

60% would not rule out a military regime. This is currently Latin America‟s most fragile country.

In all other countries, at least a majority of the population rejects military governments, although

there are three countries - Paraguay (52%), Mexico (53%) and Peru (54%) - where opinions are

almost equally divided. In Honduras, where there was a coup in 2009, 60% of the population

rejects military governments.

Although rejection of military governments is overwhelming in at least 13 of the 18 countries,

willingness to tolerate authoritarian regimes persists. Democracy is gaining ground, but slowly.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2004 - 2011

63 6265 63

66

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2004 2005 2009 2010 201166

40

52

53

54

59

60

64

67

67

70

71

71

71

73

73

75

75

90

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Latinoamérica

Guatemala

Paraguay

México

Perú

El Salvador

Honduras

Colombia

Nicaragua

Brasil

Venezuela

Ecuador

Panamá

Bolivia

Argentina

Chile

República Dominicana

Uruguay

Costa Rica

UNDER NO CIRCUMSTANCES I WOULD SUPPORT A MILITARY

GOVERNMENT TOTALS LATIN AMERICA 2004 - 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. Would you support a military government if things get very difficult, or would you never, under any

circumstances support a military government? * Here only „never would support‟.

These indicators of opinion still do not cover a sufficient period of time to allow them to serve as

a warning about possible future events. We do not yet know what is the threshold of willingness

to tolerate an authoritarian regime that a country “needs” in order to justify a military coup as in

the case of Honduras, the only coup to have occurred since Latinobarómetro measurements began

in 1995. In Honduras, around a third of the population was willing to tolerate an authoritarian

regime. Clearly, these indicators do not serve to estimate the probability of a coup but only the

possible level of rejection if one were to be attempted. In a country with a lower level of rejection

of military governments, a coup is obviously more likely but we also see how, in these countries,

there is an increase in support for democracy by default as the least bad system (Churchill‟s

definition).

48

The change in attitudes towards authoritarian government in Honduras is one of the most marked

in the region. In 2011, rejection of military governments reaches its highest level (60%), up by

two points on 2009 (58%) when the survey was carried out a couple of months after the coup.

Despite the critical events it lived through, Honduras remains below the regional average for

rejection of military governments.

Table Nº 12. Rejection of Authoritarian Government Q. Would you support a military government in replacement of a democratic one if things get very bad? Or would you

not support a military government under any circumstance?

2004 2005 2009 2010 2011

DNA 7 7 9 17 5

Would support a military government in replacement of a

democratic one 45 46 34 36 35

Would not support a military government under any

circumstance 47 48 58 47 60 Source: Latinobarómetro 2004-2011

TRUST

Interpersonal trust

In 2011, interpersonal trust increased by two points to 22%, returning to its level in 2006. Over

the years, this indicator has fluctuated upwards and downwards but without showing any real

change. Within individual countries, there are also fluctuations but no significant change in the

way in which society interacts.

It is important to remember that, in European countries, this indicator reaches around 70%,

marking one of the most important differences between these countries and Latin American

societies.

Source: Latinobarómetro 1996-2011

2023

21

16 1719

17 1619

22

17

21 21 2022

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 201122

9

15

17

18

18

19

20

20

21

22

22

23

24

25

28

28

33

35

0 10 20 30 40 50

Latinoamérica

Brasil

Nicaragua

Chile

Perú

Costa Rica

Colombia

Bolivia

Guatemala

Panamá

Paraguay

Uruguay

México

Ecuador

Venezuela

El Salvador

Argentina

Honduras

República Dominicana

INTERPERSONAL TRUST TOTAL LATIN AMERICA1996 – 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. Generally speaking, would you say that you can trust most people, or that you can never be too careful when

dealing with others? * Here only „One can trust most people „.

49

Trust in institutions

Trust in institutions is an issue that Latinobarómetro has studied extensively and is closely related

to the level of interpersonal trust discussed in the previous section.

In 2011, there were no significant changes on previous years except for a growing decline in trust

in churches, particularly in those countries such as Chile where there have been scandals

involving priests.

Q. Please look at this card and tell me, how much trust do you have in each of the following groups/institutions.

Would you say you have a lot, some, a little or no trust? *Here only „A lot‟ plus „Some‟.

22

28

29

31

32

33

37

38

38

39

40

43

45

48

49

64

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Political Parties

Trade Unions

Judiciary

Public Administration

National Congress /…

Police

Local government

State

Private Companies

Armed Forces

Government

Banks

Newspapers

TV

Radios

Church

TRUST IN…TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

AVERAGES 1996 - 2010

20

28

28

31

31

35

36

37

39

39

43

45

48

55

71

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Political Parties

Trade Unions

Congress / Parliament

Judiciary

Public Administration

Police

Local Government

Government

Private companies

Banks

Armed Forces

Newspapers

TV

Radios

Church

It is, in fact, the Church that has suffered the most systematic drop in trust over the years. In 2011,

with a drop of three points on 2010, it reached 64%, down from 76% in 1996. The largest drops

occurred in 2008 (to 66% down from 74% in 2007) and in 2005 (to 62% down from 71% in

2004).

Since 2008, trust in the Church has consistently been at its lowest level since 1995, with the

exception of 2005.

50

Source: Latinobarómetro 1996 – 2011

76 7478 77

72 71

62

71 71 7174

66 68 6764

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 64

38

49

56

57

62

62

62

63

64

64

69

69

70

72

73

74

76

78

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Latinoamérica

Chile

Uruguay

Nicaragua

Argentina

Venezuela

Honduras

República Dominicana

México

El Salvador

Costa Rica

Ecuador

Perú

Colombia

Panamá

Guatemala

Bolivia

Brasil

Paraguay

Q. Please look at this card and tell me, how much trust do you have in each of the following groups/institutions.

Would you say you have a lot, some, a little or no trust in the Church? *Here only „A lot‟ plus „Some‟.

TRUST IN THE CHURCHTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1996 – 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

However, in order to analyze the evolution of trust in the Church, it is necessary to look at

countries individually. Chile is the only country in which it falls so abruptly (from 62% in 2010 to

38% in 2011). This is related to a scandal caused by allegations against a priest close to hierarchy

of the Chilean Church. Negative events, in other words, have a large impact but we do not have

evidence from other institutions or cases in which the reverse is true and a single event has a

positive impact. In the case of trust in governments, for example, we will see below that this

occurs gradually over time in response to presidents‟ good performance.

Table Nº 13. Trust in the Church - Chile 1995 2000 2009 2010 2011

Trust in the Church 80 79 67 62 38 Source: Latinobarómetro 1995-2011

In 2011, the most interesting change in trust in institutions is the general drop seen across all the

institutions measured. This indicates a generalized disenchantment of the population as a whole

with the main institutions of society.

This is in line with other indicators which, in 2011, also drop in a sign of dissatisfaction with the

inequality of development which adds yet another dimension of inequality to those that already

existed.

51

Table Nº 14. Summary: Trust in Institutions - Average Latin America, 1996-2011 Q. Please look at this card and tell me how much trust you have in each of the following groups/institutions. Would

you say you have a lot, some, a little or no trust? * Only „a lot‟ and „some‟.

1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Church 76 74 78 77 72 71 62 71 71 71 74 66 68 67 64

Radios 51 41 55 69 55 55 56 58 49

Television 50 46 45 42 49 45 36 38 44 64 47 51 54 56 48

Newspapers 46 36 40 47 44 45 48 49 51 45

Banks 27 44 44 44 43

Government 28 25 24 30 36 43 39 44 45 45 40

Armed forces 41 42 38 43 38 38 30 40 42 44 51 45 45 45 39

Private companies 36 32 41 34 42 41 41 42 42 38

State 41 38

Municipal/local

government 31 32 34 37 36 39 41 37

Police 30 36 32 29 30 33 29 37 37 37 39 37 34 35 33

Congress/parliament 27 36 27 28 24 23 17 24 28 27 29 32 34 34 32

Public

administration 27 28 30 31 34 35 31

Judiciary 33 36 32 34 27 25 20 32 31 36 30 28 32 32 29

Trade unions 28 23 23 31 30 30 28

Political parties 20 28 21 20 19 14 11 18 19 22 20 21 24 23 22 Source Latinobarómetro 1996-2011

Trust in the government

Governments are one of the institutions in which trust has increased most since 1995. It is

governments that are successful in giving legitimacy to the region‟s democracies. As we saw

earlier in this report, governments have enjoyed very high approval ratings, particularly since the

middle of the last decade (Table Nº 4). Similarly, trust in governments more than doubles from

19% in 2003 to 40% in 2011 despite a five-point drop in 2011. In 2011, Latin Americans punished

their governments with a decline in trust, in line with a drop in the perception of progress and of

an increase in distributive injustice and the perception that they are working less on behalf of the

majority.

52

TRUST IN THE GOVERNMENTTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1996 – 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY

Source: Latinobarómetro 1996 – 2011

2825

19

30

36

43

39

44 45 45

40

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

1996 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 201140

18

25

29

31

34

34

36

36

37

37

39

40

48

51

51

52

62

62

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Latinoamérica

Guatemala

República Dominicana

Honduras

México

Perú

Chile

Nicaragua

Colombia

Bolivia

Paraguay

Brasil

Costa Rica

Argentina

El Salvador

Venezuela

Panamá

Ecuador

Uruguay

Q. Please look at this card and tell me, how much trust do you have in each of the following groups/institutions.

Would you say you have a lot, some, a little or no trust in the Government? *Here only „A lot‟ plus „Some‟.

According to Eurobarometer, trust in governments is lower in Europe than in Latin America. As

mentioned above, Eurobarometer covers 27 European countries, with representative samples of

the population of each country surveyed through personal interviews. Applied for the European

Union, it is one of the most important sources of information for this institution and

Latinobarómetro is its sister study in Latin America. In Europe, trust in the governmernt reaches

an average 29% while, in Latin America, it averages 45%.

EUROBAROMETER - LATINOBARÓMETRO: TRUST IN THE GOVERNMENT TOTAL LATIN AMERICA AND EUROPE 2003 - 2010

Source: Latinobarómetro and Eurobarómetro 2003-2010

3134

31 30

34 34

29 2919

30

36

43

39

44 45 45

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Eurobarómetro Latinobarómetro

There is more trust in the

governments in Latin

America than in Europe

Q. Please look at this card and tell me, how much trust do you have in each of the following groups/institutions.

Would you say you have a lot, some, a little or no trust in the Government? *Here only „A lot‟ plus „Some‟.

The Lehman Brothers crisis in 2007 did not have the impact on trust in banks in Latin America

that could have been expected and they are one of the private institutions in which trust has shown

53

a sustained increase. Since 2003, trust in banks has increased from 29% to 43% in 2011 despite a

one-point drop on 2010 (which, given the sample size of 20,000 cases. is statistically significant).

Source: Latinobarómetro 2002 - 2011

37

29

4139

44 44 44 43

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

2002 2003 2004 2005 2008 2009 2010 2011

43

30

31

33

34

34

35

39

40

41

44

44

46

47

49

54

54

55

58

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Latinoamérica

Honduras

Guatemala

Chile

México

Nicaragua

Colombia

Perú

El Salvador

Brasil

Bolivia

Argentina

Ecuador

Paraguay

República Dominicana

Costa Rica

Venezuela

Uruguay

Panamá

TRUST IN THE BANKSTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1996 – 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRYQ. Please look at this card and tell me, how much trust do you have in each of the following groups/institutions.

Would you say you have a lot, some, a little or no trust in the Banks? *Here only „A lot‟ plus „Some‟.

In other words, the international crisis of banks did not have repercussions for their image in Latin

America. This probably reflects the low penetration of banking services in the region as a result of

which the mass of people do not have any relationship with banks. They are seen aspirationally as

a place where people would like to be because having a bank account implies having achieved

social mobility.

The case of banks is interesting as a contrast with the direct impact on trust of negative events as

in the example of the Chilean Church. In this case, the difficulties of banks internationally were

not reflected in trust in the local banks to which this indicator refers. Had the survey asked about

international banks, the answer would have been different. This is a sign of Latin America‟s

independence or isolation, depending on how it is viewed.

CIVIC CULTURE

Complying with the law

Not all the findings of the 2011 survey were bad news. Along with greater criticism of

governments and democracy, there was also an increase in the perception that Latin Americans

obey the law. This increases from 27% in 2010 to 31% in 2011. There are, however, countries like

Peru where only 12% say that its citizens obey the law, the lowest figure in the region.

The validity of the state and its ability to enforce the rule of law are related to perceptions of the

fairness of distribution and equality before the law, two issues that are put in doubt in Latin

American societies. In all, only a third of Latin Americans say that the region‟s citizens obey the

law.

54

CITIZENS OBEY THE LAWTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1996 – 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 1996 – 2011

Q. Would you say that (nationality) obey the law? Here only „A lot‟ and „Some‟.

25

30

27

22 21 22 21 20

24

2927

31

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2005 2008 2009 2010 201131

12

16

19

19

19

21

28

30

32

32

34

37

39

39

42

44

44

54

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Latinoamérica

Perú

Bolivia

México

Guatemala

Colombia

Paraguay

Argentina

Nicaragua

Venezuela

Costa Rica

Honduras

Brasil

Ecuador

República Dominicana

Chile

Panamá

El Salvador

Uruguay

Demanding rights

Far more Latin Americans are willing to demand their rights than to obey the law. Indeed, half the

region‟s citizens are disposed to demand their rights, with figures ranging from 70% in countries

such as El Salvador, Argentina and Costa Rica to 36% in Brazil.

Source: Latinobarómetro 1996 – 2011

5356 56 54 52 51 51 51 53

5854 54

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2005 2008 2009 2010 2011

54

36

37

38

39

44

49

50

53

54

54

55

63

64

65

68

69

70

71

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Latinoamérica

Brasil

Nicaragua

Perú

Paraguay

Bolivia

Chile

Guatemala

México

Colombia

Honduras

Ecuador

República Dominicana

Panamá

Venezuela

Uruguay

Costa Rica

Argentina

El Salvador

CITIZENS DEMAND THEIR RIGHTSTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1996 – 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. Would you say that (nationality) are demanding with their rights? Here only „A lot‟ and „Some‟.

Duties

A third dimension of civic culture is the willingness of people to fulfill their duties as citizens.

Over the past 15 years, this has held steady at around 40%, showing little change. There are,

however, also large differences between countries with figures ranging from 55% in Uruguay to

17% in Peru.

55

Source: Latinobarómetro 1996 – 2011

3740 40 40

34 36 35 34 3540

37 38

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2005 2008 2009 2010 2011

38

17

18

28

34

34

34

35

36

41

41

41

41

42

43

46

49

51

55

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Latinoamérica

Perú

Bolivia

México

Guatemala

Nicaragua

Colombia

Paraguay

Chile

Brasil

Honduras

Argentina

Ecuador

Panamá

Costa Rica

Venezuela

República Dominicana

El Salvador

Uruguay

CITIZENS ARE CONSCIOUS OF THEIR OBLIGATIONS AND

DUTIES TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1996 – 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. Would you say that (nationality) are conscious of their obligations and duties? Here only „A lot‟ and „Some‟.

Viewed from a critical perspective of the groups in which compliance with the law is perceived to

be lowest, we find a clear pattern across the region. According to 63% of the region‟s citizens, it is

the rich who show least compliance. They are followed by politicians (47%), millionaires (44%)

and public officials (34%). There is, in other words, an ingrained belief that, in general, it is those

who have most power in society who comply least with the law. The poor, the middle class,

women, pensioners and payroll employees are not among the groups seen as flouting the law.

The view that the rich are those who least comply with the law is most prevalent in Honduras

(76%) and least prevalent in Venezuela (48%). The rich are a diffuse category since their

condition is always relative but there can be doubt that, in Latin America, they have a very poor

image.

Q. Which of the following groups do you think that complies less the law? *Multiple choice question, totals are

higher than 100% **Here only answers with more than 3%

GROUPS THAT COMPLIES LESS THE LAWTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRIES 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

3

3

4

4

4

7

8

9

11

23

23

25

34

44

47

63

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Women

Employees

Retired

Students

Don't Know

Priests

Middle Class

Poor

The Media

The Companies

Authorities

Congressmen

Public Officials

Millionaires

Politicians

Richs

63

48

54

55

60

61

61

62

63

64

64

64

65

66

67

69

72

73

76

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Latinoamérica

Venezuela

Uruguay

Brasil

Panamá

México

Chile

Argentina

República Dominicana

Perú

Bolivia

Paraguay

Colombia

El Salvador

Guatemala

Ecuador

Costa Rica

Nicaragua

Honduras

The Richs

56

It is significant that these four indicators reveal a low willingness to fulfill civic duties

accompanied by a great willingness to believe that there are privileged people who also fail to

obey the law. The increase in crime seen in Latin America is also related to perceptions of the

validity of the rule of law. To what extent are states able to enforce the law and who escapes this

control?

The difference between willingness to demand rights and obey the law reaches 16% of the

region‟s citizens. In other words, 16% of Latin Americans are disposed to demand their rights but

not to comply with their obligations. This central problem of civic culture is a result of the

perception of injustice in the distribution of power and income.

In Bolivia and Argentina, the difference reaches almost a third (29%). They are followed by Costa

Rica (26%) and Mexico (25%). There is only one country, Brazil, in which more citizens are

willing to fulfill their obligations than to demand their rights.

Table Nº 15. Summary: Attitudes to Civic Culture, 2011

Citizens

comply with

the law

Citizens

demand their

rights

Citizens are aware

of their obligations

and duties

Difference

between

demanding

rights and

fulfilling

obligations

Groups that least

comply with the

law * Group

shown „The rich‟

Uruguay 54 68 55 13 54

El Salvador 44 71 51 20 66

Panama 44 64 42 22 60

Chile 42 49 36 13 61

Ecuador 39 55 41 14 69

Dominican Rep. 39 63 49 14 63

Brazil 37 36 41 -5 55

Honduras 34 54 41 13 76

Costa Rica 32 69 43 26 72

Venezuela 32 65 46 19 48

Nicaragua 30 37 34 3 73

Argentina 28 70 41 29 62

Paraguay 21 39 35 4 64

Colombia 19 54 34 20 65

Guatemala 19 50 34 16 67

Mexico 19 53 28 25 61

Bolivia 16 44 18 29 64

Peru 12 38 17 21 64

Latin America 31 54 38 16 63 Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

This is reinforced by the perception of discrimination on the grounds of race which is also very

high in Latin America and is one of the problems that has not been solved.

57

DISCRIMINATION AND RACE

In answer to a direct question, 20% of Latin Americans say they feel discriminated against for

some reason, ranging from 34% in Brazil to 7% in El Salvador.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2009 - 2011

1720 20

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2009 2010 2011

Q. Would you describe you as part of a group that is discriminated in (country) or not? * Here only „yes‟.

WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF AS PART OF A DISCRIMINATED GROUP TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2009 – 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

20

7

12

12

14

15

16

16

17

17

17

19

20

21

21

28

32

33

34

0 10 20 30 40

Latinoamérica

El Salvador

Panamá

Venezuela

Paraguay

Uruguay

Nicaragua

Ecuador

Costa Rica

República Dominicana

Argentina

Colombia

Honduras

México

Chile

Perú

Guatemala

Bolivia

Brasil

However, when the question is asked indirectly, the figure reaches 45%.

Perceived discrimination is greater than the direct discrimination experienced by individuals,

indicating that stereotypes and prejudices abound in Latin American societies.

DISCRIMINATION SCALETOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2009 – 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. Imagine that the totals of (nationality) are 100. How many of those 100 do you think are discriminated or

nobody is discriminated? *Here only „averages‟.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2009-2011

45

34

34

36

37

39

40

42

45

45

47

47

48

48

49

51

52

57

59

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Latinoamérica

Chile

Uruguay

Panamá

Ecuador

Venezuela

Costa Rica

Paraguay

Argentina

El Salvador

Honduras

Perú

República Dominicana

Nicaragua

Colombia

México

Bolivia

Guatemala

Brasil

44 46 45

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2009 2010 2011

By gender, we find a greater perception of discrimination among women than among men.

58

DISCRIMINATION SCALE BY GENDERTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2011

44

47

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Men

Women

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

Q. Imagine that the totals of (nationality) are 100. How many of those 100 do you think are discriminated or

nobody is discriminated? *Here only „averages‟.

Finally, we asked what percentage of each country‟s population interviewees believe to be

discriminated against on the grounds of race.

DISCRIMINATION SCALE BY RACETOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

P. Imagínese que el total de (nacionalidad) son 100 ¿AHow many of those 100 are being discriminated

because of their race? ? *Here only „Average‟.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2009-2011

36

23

25

27

29

30

31

32

32

34

34

35

39

42

42

43

43

46

51

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Latinoamérica

Chile

Uruguay

Venezuela

Paraguay

Ecuador

Argentina

El Salvador

Honduras

Costa Rica

Panamá

Colombia

Perú

Nicaragua

República Dominicana

México

Bolivia

Brasil

Guatemala

In addition to the general dissatisfaction with politics and the economy seen in Guatemala, half

the country‟s inhabitants (51%) believe they are discriminated against on the grounds of race.

Racial discrimination is also an important problem in Brazil where this indicator reaches 46%, in

Bolivia and Mexico (both with 43%) and the Dominican Republic (42%) while Peru takes 7th

place with 39%. In these seven countries, with the region‟s largest number of indigenous people,

there are still important complaints about racial discrimination, 30 years after the return of

democracy. The implications for the region do not need to be spelled out - the consolidation of

59

democracy is not possible while this basic discrimination persists. Chile, the country where racial

discrimination is lowest (23%), is also the country where indigenous peoples are a very small

minority (around 5%) and the discrimination about which people complain is based mainly on

skin color and is, in other words, against mestizos (people of mixed race).

When analyzing racial discrimination, it is important to bear in mind interviewees‟ own

classification of themselves by race, which makes a very interesting cross-reference.

Table Nº 16. Identification of Race by Country, 2011 Q. To what race do you consider you belong?

Mestizo White Indigenous Mulatto Black

Other

race Asian

Ecuador 81 4 7 3 3 0 1

Peru 76 6 7 1 1 1 1

El Salvador 68 10 5 4 4 0 2

Nicaragua 67 6 8 2 3 0 1

Honduras 62 9 13 5 2 1 1

Bolivia 57 4 27 1 1 1 0

Paraguay 55 29 3 1 1 2 0

Panama 53 16 7 5 10 1 1

Mexico 52 6 19 2 0 3 1

Colombia 47 26 5 5 6 2 0

Venezuela 33 32 4 21 8 0 0

Costa Rica 31 40 4 17 3 1 1

Dominican Rep. 29 11 4 24 26 0 3

Argentina 26 61 1 1 1 3 0

Chile 25 59 8 1 0 2 0

Brazil 17 49 1 13 17 1 0

Guatemala 15 29 45 1 1 1 0

Uruguay 7 74 1 4 3 3 0

Latin America 44 27 9 6 5 1 1 Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

The largest percentage of the region‟s citizens (44%) declare themselves “mestizo” which is not,

in fact, a race. This is followed by the 27% who define themselves as “white” and by

“indigenous” (9%) and “mulatto” (6%). In countries such as Ecuador and Peru, mestizos

predominate, accounting for 81% and 76%, respectively, while, in others such as Uruguay and

Argentina “whites” predominate, with 74% and 61%, respectively. In Guatemala, 45% define

themselves as “indigenous” and only 15% as “mestizo” while, in Bolivia, 27% declare themselves

“indigenous” and 57% “mestizo”. There are, in other words, countries where the perception of

discrimination by race exceeds identification by race and, in general, it can be concluded that

perceptions of discrimination refer mainly to discrimination against mestizos rather than

indigenous people as such. This is, therefore, a clear case of discrimination by skin color.

WHAT GUARANTEES DEMOCRACY

In previous years, we found that Latin American democracy had been successful in establishing

some guarantees but not others. In the early decades of the consolidation of democracy, civil and

60

political liberties were established and, in fact, six in ten Latin Americans perceive that these

liberties are guaranteed.

It is social and economic guarantees that remain weak and to which the region‟s governments are

paying ever more attention in a bid to satisfy the demands of their citizens. The areas in which

Latin America offers the least guarantees are protection against crime (30%) and justice in the

distribution of wealth (31%).

DEMOCRACY GUARANTEES … TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2011

To what extent do the following freedoms, rights, life-chances and guarantees apply in (country)? * Here only

„Fully Guaranteed‟ plus „Fairly-generally guaranteed‟.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

30

31

36

36

40

48

49

50

58

59

66

70

76

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90100

Protection against crime

Just and fair distribution of wealth

Chance to get a job

Social security

Solidarity with the poor and needy

Protection of the environment

Protection of private property

Equality of life chances regardless of origin

Equality of men and women

Freedom of speech always and everywhere

Freedom of political participation

Freedom to choose one’s occupation

Freedom of religion/faith

CIVIC AND POLITIC

GUARANTEES

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL

GUARANTEES

Although both guarantees - protection against crime and justice in the distribution of wealth - have

been increasing with time as shown by this data, they remain the weakest. The country where

perception of protection against crime is lowest is Argentina (16%) while it is highest in

Nicaragua (53%).

61

DEMOCRACY GUARANTEES PROTECTION AGAINST CRIMETOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2007 – 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2007 – 2011

23 24 2530

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2007 2008 2009 2011

30

16

17

18

23

24

24

25

26

29

31

32

32

35

35

36

37

44

53

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Latinoamérica

Argentina

Guatemala

Paraguay

Honduras

Brasil

Perú

Colombia

Bolivia

México

República Dominicana

Chile

Venezuela

Costa Rica

Ecuador

El Salvador

Uruguay

Panamá

Nicaragua

To what extent do the following freedoms, rights, life-chances and guarantees apply in (country)? Protection

against crime.*Here only „Fully Guaranteed‟ plus „Fairly-generally guaranteed‟.

The perception of justice in the distribution of wealth is lowest in Chile (16%) and highest in

Ecuador (49%).

Source: Latinobarómetro 2007 – 2011

24 25 2731

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2007 2008 2009 2011 31

16

20

20

20

21

23

24

27

30

32

33

35

37

39

40

46

49

49

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Latinoamérica

Chile

Paraguay

Brasil

Guatemala

Colombia

México

Argentina

Perú

República Dominicana

Bolivia

Costa Rica

Honduras

Uruguay

El Salvador

Panamá

Venezuela

Nicaragua

Ecuador

DEMOCRACY GUARANTEES JUST AND FAIR DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2007 – 2011 –TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

To what extent do the following freedoms, rights, life-chances and guarantees apply in (country)? Just and fair

distribution of wealth.*Here only „Fully Guaranteed‟ plus „Fairly-generally guaranteed‟.

62

SOCIAL FRAUD

The issues analyzed above - perceptions of discrimination, equality before the law, demand for

rights and the distribution of wealth - affect the way in which citizens seek “compensation” for

these inequalities through what we have termed “social fraud”.

On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 means “not at all justifiable” and 10 "totally justifiable", Latin

America scores 2.4 points or tax evasion, 2.3 points for knowingly purchasing “pirated” goods,

2.1 points for feigning illnesses to miss work and 1.8 points for knowingly buying stolen goods.

Curiously, the word “pirated” increases the perception of justification while “stolen” reduces it.

SOCIAL FRAUD JUSTIFICATIONTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2011

Q. On a scale of 1 to 10, where “1” means "not at all justifiable" and “10” means "totally justifiable", how

justifiable do you believe it is …? *Here only „Averages‟.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

1.8

2.1

2.3

2.4

0 1 2 3 4 5

Buying something youknow is stolen

Pretend to be ill in ordernot to work

Buying something youknow is a copyright

violation

Evade paying taxes

EVADE PAYING TAXES

2.41.91.92.02.02.12.32.32.32.32.42.42.42.52.72.72.72.82.93.0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Latinoamérica

Uruguay

Chile

Paraguay

Argentina

Brasil

Guatemala

Total

Colombia

Venezuela

El Salvador

Costa Rica

Perú

Ecuador

Honduras

Panamá

Bolivia

República Dominicana

Nicaragua

México

Fiscal morality

Tax evasion is a key issue for states and we know that not all Latin Americans pay their taxes.

Justification of tax evasion is highest in Mexico (3.0 points) and lowest in Uruguay and Chile

(both with 1.9 points). In 2008, the average regional justification for not paying taxes peaked at

3.5 points but has since been dropping.

63

FISCAL MORALITYTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1998 - 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 1998 – 2011

2.21.9

3.3 3.53.2

2.5 2.4

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

1998 2003 2005 2008 2009 2010 2011

2.4

1.9

1.9

2.0

2.0

2.1

2.3

2.3

2.3

2.3

2.4

2.4

2.4

2.5

2.7

2.7

2.7

2.8

2.9

3.0

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Latinoamérica

Uruguay

Chile

Paraguay

Argentina

Brasil

Guatemala

Total

Colombia

Venezuela

El Salvador

Costa Rica

Perú

Ecuador

Honduras

Panamá

Bolivia

República Dominicana

Nicaragua

México

Q. On a scale of 1 to 10, where “1” means "not at all justifiable" and “10” means "totally justifiable", how

justifiable do you believe it is to evade paying taxes? *Here only „Averages‟.

Workplace morality

Workplace morality has held steady over time, ranging from a maximum of 2.5 points in Panama

to a minimum of 1.6 points in Nicaragua.

Source: Latinobarómetro 1998 - 2011

2.21.8

2.1 2.1

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

1998 2003 2010 2011

2.11.61.71.81.81.81.91.91.92.02.02.12.12.32.32.32.42.42.42.5

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Latinoamérica

Nicaragua

Colombia

Guatemala

Brasil

Uruguay

Paraguay

Argentina

Costa Rica

México

Total

El Salvador

Perú

Venezuela

Ecuador

Chile

República Dominicana

Honduras

Bolivia

Panamá

WORK ETHICSTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1998 - 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. On a scale of 1 to 10, where “1” means "not at all justifiable" and “10” means "totally justifiable", how

justifiable do you believe is to pretend to be ill in order not to go to work? *Here only „Averages‟.

64

Social morality

It is on social morality that Latin America is most politically correct, with scores ranging from 2.3

points in Ecuador to 1.3 points in Nicaragua.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2002 - 2011

1.8 1.6 1.8 1.8

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

2002 2003 2010 2011

1.81.31.51.61.61.61.61.61.71.71.81.81.92.02.12.12.12.12.22.3

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Latinoamérica

Nicaragua

Colombia

Brasil

Uruguay

Argentina

Paraguay

Guatemala

Costa Rica

México

Chile

Total

Perú

República Dominicana

Venezuela

El Salvador

Panamá

Honduras

Bolivia

Ecuador

SOCIAL MORALTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2002 - 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. On a scale of 1 to 10, where “1” means "not at all justifiable" and “10” means "totally justifiable", how

justifiable do you believe is to pretend to buy something you know is stolen? *Here only „Averages‟.

Pirated goods

In 2011, we measured attitudes towards pirated goods explicitly for the first time and,

interestingly, found that their purchase is more acceptable than that of stolen goods. Pirated goods

are not, in other words, necessarily perceived as stolen. Ecuador, with 2.8 points, is the country

where justification of their purchase is highest while, at 1.5 points, it is lowest in Nicaragua.

PIRACYTOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

2.3

1.5

1.7

1.7

2.0

2.1

2.1

2.1

2.3

2.3

2.4

2.4

2.4

2.5

2.6

2.6

2.7

2.8

2.8

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Latinoamérica

Nicaragua

Paraguay

Guatemala

Costa Rica

Colombia

República…

Argentina

Uruguay

Panamá

El Salvador

Perú

Venezuela

México

Chile

Honduras

Brasil

Bolivia

Ecuador

Q. On a scale of 1 to 10, where “1” means "not at all justifiable" and “10” means "totally justifiable", how

justifiable do you believe is to pretend to buy something you know is a copyright violation? *Here only

„Averages‟.

65

In eight of the 18 countries surveyed - Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Venezuela, Honduras,

Mexico and Uruguay - a fifth of the population accepts counterfeiting while, in Nicaragua,

Guatemala and Paraguay, it is widely rejected.

ACCEPTANCE OF PIRACY IN LATIN AMERICATOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

Q. On a scale of 1 to 10, where “1” means "not at all justifiable" and “10” means "totally justifiable", how

justifiable do you believe is to pretend to buy something you know is a copyright violation? *Here only

percentage of mentions between 5 and 10

15

3

5

6

9

10

12

15

15

15

15

18

18

19

19

20

20

22

22

0 10 20 30 40

Latinoamérica

Nicaragua

Guatemala

Paraguay

República Dominicana

Colombia

Costa Rica

Perú

Argentina

Panamá

El Salvador

Uruguay

México

Honduras

Venezuela

Chile

Bolivia

Brasil

Ecuador

PIRACY IS ACCEPTABLE

State corruption

We have seen that there is a widespread perception of the dismantling of corruption as a pending

task for democracy. The question below shows the other side of this coin or, in other words, the

attitudes of individuals in the face of an act of corruption. This new question is phrased gently

without using the word “corruption” so as not to inflate results. The aim is to see how many

people consider that “bypassing” regular channels for official procedures is damaging to

democracy.

In Argentina and Uruguay, the figure reaches 76% and 69%, respectively, but drops to 34% in

Mexico and 31% in Guatemala.

In other words, there are countries where a large percentage of people are aware of the damaging

impact but others in which morality is much more lax and only a minority sees such behavior as

negative for democracy. According to this data, combating corruption is, above all, a cultural

matter.

66

SKIP REGULAR PROCEDURESTOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011Q. Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree with the following statements? Is not good for

democracy that people jump procedures* Here only 'Strongly agree' and „agree‟.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

51

31

34

35

40

40

43

43

46

46

52

53

54

59

60

65

67

69

76

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Latinoamérica

Guatemala

México

Honduras

Nicaragua

República Dominicana

El Salvador

Perú

Bolivia

Costa Rica

Panamá

Ecuador

Colombia

Brasil

Paraguay

Chile

Venezuela

Uruguay

Argentina

The situation is similar for the payment of “bribes”. In Argentina, only 12% say they agree with

payment of a “bribe” in order to obtain something while, in the Dominican Republic and Panama,

the figure reaches 42% and 40%, respectively.

PAY BRIBES / “COIMA” TO OBTAIN THINGSTOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

24

12

13

15

16

18

18

20

20

22

23

23

31

32

33

34

35

40

42

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Latinoamérica

Argentina

Colombia

Perú

México

Guatemala

Uruguay

Nicaragua

Chile

Bolivia

Venezuela

Brasil

Paraguay

Honduras

Costa Rica

El Salvador

Ecuador

Panamá

República Dominicana

Q. Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree with the following statements? Pay "bribes" to a

public official if this is the only way to get things* Here only 'Strongly agree' and „agree‟.

Social fraud is a consequence of the perception of discrimination and inequality and calls not only

for states with a greater capacity to enforce the law but also for transformations that make for a

fairer society. The structural transformation required by Latin American societies in order to

dismantle social fraud is part of the process we are beginning to see.

67

LATIN AMERICA’S AGENDA

The most important problem

A summary of the region‟s principal problems is presented above (page 30). When taken together,

they show that the region continues to have a primarily economic agenda. However, from the

perspective of its citizens‟ perceptions, these economic concerns are expressed verbally in many

different ways and the problem on which there is most verbal consensus is “crime”.

In response to the open-ended question about the region‟s most important problem, crime and

public safety, therefore, take first place. In 2011, 28% of Latin Americans identify this as their

country‟s most important problem. This is most marked in Venezuela, where three in five (61%)

consider it the most important problem, followed by Costa Rica (45%). The perception of crime as

the most important problem is lowest in Nicaragua and Brazil with 3% and 7%, respectively.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

3

4

4

5

5

6

12

16

28

0 50

Health problems

Inflation

Violence/Gangs

Corruption

Education

Poverty

Economy / Economic problems /Financial Problems

Unemployment

Crime / Public Security

28

3

7

11

11

15

20

21

28

30

30

33

33

34

39

39

40

45

61

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Latinoamérica

Nicaragua

Brasil

República Dominicana

Bolivia

Colombia

Perú

Chile

Paraguay

Honduras

Guatemala

Ecuador

Panamá

Argentina

México

Uruguay

El Salvador

Costa Rica

Venezuela

Crime

37% of citizens in

Latin America

claim for

economic

problems,

poverty and

unemployment

MOST IMPORTANT PROBLEM IN THE COUNTRY LATIN AMERICA TOTALS 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011 FOR CRIME

Q. In your opinion, which is the most important problem in the country? Open-ended question, here only more

than 3%

Unemployment takes second place in the regional agenda with 16%, followed by the economy

and economic problems (12%). If all the problems related to each country‟s economy are added

together, they total of 37%, one percentage point down on 2010, as shown in the summary of the

most important problem presented earlier.

By country, problems differ not only in type but also in their perceived extent (Table Nº 17).

Crime is identified as the principal problem in 11 of the 18 countries analyzed. In three countries,

the principal problem is economic: Nicaragua (33%), the Dominican Republic (27%) and Bolivia

(19%). In Chile, education is seen as the principal problem (27%) while, in Brazil, it is healthcare

(26%).

Chile‟s case shows how the principal problem is a function of the agenda since, in 2010, it was

crime but this has been pushed into second place by the student marches which, since May, have

put education at the top of the news agenda.

68

Table Nº 17. The Most Important Problem by Country Q. In your view, what is the country‟s most important problem?* Open-ended question

The country’s most important problem 2011

Lack of work/unemployment Paraguay Lack of work/unemployment 30

Colombia Lack of work/unemployment 23

Crime/public safety

Venezuela Crime/public safety 61

Costa Rica Crime/public safety 45

El Salvador Crime/public safety 40

Mexico Crime/public safety 39

Uruguay Crime/public safety 39

Argentina Crime/public safety 34

Panama Crime/public safety 33

Ecuador Crime/public safety 33

Guatemala Crime/public safety 30

Honduras Crime/public safety 30

Peru Crime/public safety 20

Economic problems

Nicaragua Economic problems 33

Dominican Rep. Economic problems 27

Bolivia Economic problems 19

Problems in education

Chile Problems in education 27

Problems in healthcare

Brazil Problems in healthcare 26 Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

Crime and unemployment have dominated the agenda in Latin American countries for the past

decade but have changed places in importance. The importance of crime has shown a sustained

increase, reaching its highest level in 2011 at 28% (one point up on 2010) while that of

unemployment has tended to diminish. In 2011, it dropped to 16%, three points down on 2010.

Economic growth has a concrete impact in reducing unemployment but not enough to increase the

perception of progress. This is important in showing that progress is being achieved but that Latin

Americans expect even greater results from development.

69

5 7 7 8 8 9 7 8 914

16 17

17

19

27 2823 21 19 20 21 23 25

29 29 3024

18

15

21

19 16

0

10

20

30

40

50

1995 1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Crime Unemployment

Source: Latinobarómetro 1995-2011

283

71111

152021

283030

333334

393940

4561

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

LatinoaméricaNicaragua

BrasilRepública…

BoliviaColombia

PerúChile

ParaguayHonduras

GuatemalaEcuadorPanamá

ArgentinaMéxico

UruguayEl SalvadorCosta RicaVenezuela

Crime

1689991010101112

1415

1819

232324

3032

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

LatinoaméricaRepública…

BrasilPanamá

Costa RicaGuatemala

ChileVenezuela

El SalvadorUruguay

BoliviaMéxico

ArgentinaPerú

EcuadorColombiaHondurasParaguay

Nicaragua

Unemploym…

Q. In your Opinion, which one is the most important problem in the country? * Here only 'Unemployment' and

„Crime‟.

MAJOR PROBLEMS: CRIME AND UNEMPLOYMENT TOTAL LATIN AMERICA1995-2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 20111 FOR

CRIME AND UNEMPLOYMENT

Crime and victimization

Incongruencies in Latin Americans‟ perceptions are not confined to democracy and also extend to

areas such as crime and victimization. As shown in América Latina frente al Espejo (Latin

America in the Mirror), a book published with ECLAC in 2010, perceptions of crime are not

aligned with the number of victims of crime that exist in each country. Although these two

indicators have tended to converge over time, an enormous gap persists in many countries.

The graph below shows the difference between perception of crime as the principal problem and

the victimization rate. This was very large between 1995 and 2010, reaching 32 percentage points

in 2005, but narrowed to four points in 2010 before widening again slightly to five points in 2011.

In a situation seen throughout the 16 years in which the Latinobarómetro survey has been carried

out, the victimization rate is higher than the perception of crime. Since 2006, the former has

shown greater stability, with changes not exceeding five percentage points and, in 2011, reached

33%, up by two points on 2010.

Details for individual countries are available online at www.latinobarometro.org and a special

report on crime is being prepared.

70

Source: Latinobarómetro 1995-2011

5

28

33

0 70

Difference

Crime

Crime Victim

2011

29

3640 42 43

3935 33

41

32

3833

38

31 33

5 7 7 8 8 9 7 8 914 16 17 19

2728

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1995 1996 1997 1998 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Crime Victim Crime

Q. In your Opinion, which one is the most important problem in the country? * Here only 'crime'.

Q. Have you been or relative assaulted, attacked, or victim of a crime in the last twelve months? * Here only

'Yes'.

PROBLEM OF CRIME AND VICTIMIZATION RATE TOTAL LATIN AMERICA1995-2011

The “ni-ni” generation

Among Latin American young people, 21% neither work nor study. In South America and

Mexico, the figure reaches 17% but rises to 27% in Central America. It is lowest in Uruguay

(12%) and Bolivia (13%) and highest in the Dominican Republic (34%) and Honduras (33%).

“NI-NI”, YOUNGSTERS THAT DON’T STUDY AND DON’T

WORK TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

Q. Are there any youngsters (under 30) in your family who does not study or work? *Here only „yes‟.

2717

21121313

161818181819

2021

2223

2728

3233

34

0 10 20 30 40

CentroamericaSudamérica y México

LatinoaméricaUruguay

BoliviaArgentinaParaguay

PerúEcuador

BrasilGuatemala

MéxicoCosta Rica

ChileVenezuelaColombia

El SalvadorNicaragua

PanamáHonduras

República Dominicana

These “ni-ni” (neither one nor the other) young people include more females (54%) than males

(46%) while, in terms of social class, it is interesting to note that the proportion of “ni-nis”

increases as this drops. In the upper-middle class, 6% of young people neither work nor study but

71

this rises to 31% in the middle class and, at 61%, is highest in the lower-middle class. Households

with only primary education account for 74% of this “ni-ni” generation.

Table Nº 18. Sociodemographic Characteristics of the “ni-ni” Generation Q. Is there a young person (less than 30 years of age) in your family who neither studies nor works? * Only „yes‟.

GENDER EDUCATIÓN OF THE FATHER SUBJECTIVE SOCIAL CLASS

Male Female Primary or

less

Secondary

or less

Higher Upper-

middle

Middle Lower-

middle

Yes 46 54 74 20 6 6 31 61 Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

As regards the economic situation of their families, we find that 54% have difficulties getting to

the end of the month while 46% do not have this problem. There are more young people who

neither study nor work in rural areas (23%) than in urban areas (17%).

The middle class

Latin America‟s agenda would be incomplete without mentioning the middle classes. Given the

region‟s sustained progress in reducing poverty, it is the middle classes that will determine

demands from now on. As we noted in the introduction to this report, 150 million Latin

Americans have joined the middle class over the past decade. This process has taken a totally non-

conventional form and the opportunities it offers are enormous.

The digital divide

We look first at the digital divide as an illustration of the completely unconventional way in which

the region‟s emerging socioeconomic groups are formed. We know that, as a region, Latin

America has important lags with respect to the first world as regards conventional access to

Internet (in terms of number of connections, number of computers, etc.) Mobile telephones - a

tool unrivalled in its ability to cut across social classes - has, however, served as a substitute,

narrowing the gap and permitting access to globalization.

Almost eight in ten (78%) of Latin Americans have a mobile telephone and 89% of those who do

not have one come from a household in which the father has only primary schooling or less. In

other words, poverty is longer an obstacle to being globally connected despite the fact that poverty

remains the main obstacle to inclusion. The greatest democratization occurs through mobile

phones which, today, serve as mini-computers, providing access to all sorts of social networks.

The digital divide is closing, cutting through discrimination and putting poor Latin Americans on

a par with those who come from households with greater education and access. More equality is

being created in access to information than in any other sphere of the life of our societies and, as

mobile telephones converge with access to networks and other tools, this process will accelerate.

The digital divide, therefore, affects only the 22% of the population that does not have a mobile

phone and is excluded from technology. Moreover, the poor are not excluded since 22% of those

who have a mobile telephone have only one meal a day. In other words, the economic obstacle is

of limited importance and Latin Americans prefer to be connected to the world and have only one

meal a day, rather than spending everything on food. This is an example of the pressure that

72

governments are under to generate social mobility and create middle classes. This is a concrete

demand backed by concrete evidence.

Access to the world and the desire to participate in it also help to explain the increase in

expectations. The new knowledge which people access through their mobile telephones produces

new demands. Something as tiny as a mobile phone has, in words, triggered a virtuous circle of

increased demand for greater social and political inclusion.

There are only three countries in which more than a third of the population still lacks a mobile

telephone: Nicaragua (38%), Mexico (37%) and El Salvador (30%). In Central America, the

figure reaches 26% and, in South America and Mexico, drops to 18% while, in nine countries, less

than a fifth of the population is without a mobile telephone.

Table Nº 19. Population without Mobile Telephone by Country and Subregion Q. Do you or any member of your household have the following goods? Mobile telephone. * Only „no”. „

No

Nicaragua 38

Mexico 37

El Salvador 30

Dominican Rep. 27

Honduras 26

Bolivia 26

Peru 25

Guatemala 25

Ecuador 22

Brazil 19

Costa Rica 18

Chile 15

Panama 15

Uruguay 14

Paraguay 13

Argentina 11

Venezuela 11

Colombia 9

Latin America 21

South America and

Mexico 18

Central America 26

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

Educational mobility9

A second issue that is at the heart of the problems of the middle class is social mobility or, in other

words, the ability of citizens to advance socioeconomically from the origins of their birth. One of

the aspects we can measure is educational mobility over the last two generations (that of the

parents of interviewees and of interviewees themselves). In Latin America, this has been

enormous.

9 Calculated comparing father‟s education with that of the interviewee.

73

The composition of education shows an important change over the last two generations from 73%

of households in which the father has only primary education to 47% in the case of his children.

At the same time, secondary education has increased from 20% to 35% while higher education

has more than doubled from 7% to 18% in just one generation.

Democracy reflects this important increase in the educational mobility of the region‟s population

and shows the achievement of the past 20 years. One in two Latin Americans still has only

primary education and only 18% have university education but this has more than doubled in the

space of a generation.

EDUCATIONAL MOVILITYTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

26

47

73

15

35

20

11

18

7

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Social Movility

Children

Parents

Superior Secondary Basic

Q. What level of education did your parents receive? What studies did they undertake?

In all, 41% of Latin Americans have experienced educational mobility and are, in other words, at

least one educational level ahead of that of the household in which they were born. There are,

however, still 59% who have not achieved educational mobility during the last generation.

EDUCATIONAL MOVILITY BETWEEN THE LAST TWO

GENERATIONS TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRIES 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

59%

41%

Without educational movility

With educational movility

Q1. What level of education do you have? What was the last year you completed?

Q2. What level of education did your parents receive? What studies did they undertake?

74

The digital divide and educational mobility are two important indicators of the way in which Latin

America has progressed in narrowing its gaps as regards development. While the news headlines

focus on povery reduction, these numbers explain why the region‟s citizens are protesting in the

streets in demand for more democracy. They received the education required to demand their

rights. Democracy is dangerous in that what is given cannot be taken back. This is another sign of

how today‟s problems are the result of the progress and achievements of the past. The emerging

middle class will, without doubt, be the region‟s largest new headache because it will demand

stability and greater levels of inclusion. This is, at the same time, the best evidence of progress.

The environment

The environment has an increasingly important place in the agenda of emerging countries and in

people‟s minds.

As compared to 1998 when we also asked about the trade-off between economic development and

the environment, we find a drop from 37% to 17% in those who favor giving priority to the

economy over the environment. This sharp drop is a direct reflection of the importance that care

for the environment has acquired in recent years.

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT V/S ENVIRONMENTAL

PROTECTION LATIN AMERICA 1995-2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011Q. With which of the following statements do you agree the most? It should give priority to developing the

economy even if it means harming the environment; Priority should be given to the protection of the environment

even if it means a slower development of the economy. *Here only „Priority should be given to the protection of the

environment even if it means a slower development of the economy‟.

32

23 23

37

17

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

1995 1996 1997 1998 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 1995 - 2011

1778101010111212141517

202021

2425

3342

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Latinoamérica

Chile

Costa Rica

Colombia

Paraguay

Perú

México

Nicaragua

Bolivia

Guatemala

Argentina

Uruguay

Ecuador

El Salvador

Brasil

Panamá

Venezuela

República Dominicana

Honduras

The most “green” country is Chile where the figure reaches 7% and the least green is Honduras

with 42%. However, between these extremes, we can say that 14 of the 18 countries surveyed are

green.

Over four in ten Latin Americans (43%) take the view that the cost of pollution should be paid by

those who pollute. This view is most prevalent in Uruguay and Chile where it is held by 43% and

41%, respectively, and least widespread in Nicaragua (19%) and Guatemala (23%).

75

ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY COSTTOTALS BY COUNTRIES 2011Q. Who should bear the cost of policies that prevent further deterioration of the environment? Here only ‘Each

one as polluter’.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

3219

23232324

2728

313232

3434

3738

394041

43

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

LatinoaméricaNicaragua

GuatemalaBolivia

HondurasParaguay

Costa RicaMéxico

ColombiaPanamá

BrasilEcuador

República DominicanaVenezuela

PerúEl Salvador

ArgentinaChile

Uruguay

EACH ONE TO THE EXTENT THEY POLLUTE

A second environmental issue included in the survey is climate change of which two aspects were

examined: the perceived impact on the country and on the family.

The view that climate change affects the country reaches 88%, up from 84% in 2010, while 79%,

up from 78%, perceive an impact on their personal situation.

CLIMATE CHANGE AFFECTS THE COUNTRY AND YOUR FAMILY TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2010 - 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRIES 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2010 - 2011

84

88

7879

50

55

60

65

70

75

80

85

90

95

100

2010 2011

Country You and your family

88

80

81

82

83

83

83

88

88

88

89

90

90

92

93

93

94

94

95

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100110

Latinoamérica

República Dominicana

Honduras

El Salvador

Nicaragua

Uruguay

Guatemala

Brasil

Bolivia

Panamá

Paraguay

Perú

Ecuador

México

Venezuela

Chile

Colombia

Costa Rica

Argentina

Country

Q1. How much do you think climate change affects (country)? Here only „A lot‟ and „some‟.

Q2. And how much do you think it affects you and your family? Here only „A lot‟ and „some‟.

76

POLITICS

The political part of the region‟s agenda comprises two main issues - the matter of re-election and

the evolution of political parties - which are examined in this section.

Presidential re-election

According to 53% of Latin Americans, presidents should be able to be re-elected. This ranges

from 77% in Argentina, which recently re-elected its president in a first round (October 23, 2011)

to 27% in Mexico. In Guatemala, where the possible election of the president‟s wife was a cause

of political conflict, only 33% support presidential re-election, 20 percentage points below the

average for the region.

In Nicaragua, another country where the president has been re-elected, support, at 45%, is also

below the regional average. In other countries where re-election is not permitted, it is favored by a

large majority of the population.

Q. Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree with the following statements? Presidents to be

able to be re-elected. *Here only „Strongly Agree‟ and „Agree‟.

PRESIDENTS CAN BE RE-ELECTEDTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2010 – 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRIES 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2010 - 2011

52 53

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2010 2011

53

27

33

33

38

38

41

45

48

52

56

56

60

61

66

66

69

72

77

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Latinoamérica

México

Honduras

Guatemala

Perú

Nicaragua

Paraguay

República Dominicana

El Salvador

Panamá

Bolivia

Costa Rica

Colombia

Venezuela

Chile

Ecuador

Uruguay

Brasil

Argentina

Households in which the parents have only primary education account for 73% of those who

support re-election. It is, therefore, a rather populist option that appeals to the less educated

masses of the population.

Voting for political parties

The percentage of Latin Americans who say they would not vote for any political party increased

from 50% in 2008 to 54% in 2010, widening the gap with those who indicate they are in favor of

voting for a political party (in a minority of 46% in 2010). In 2011, a number of presidential

elections took place, giving the parties renewed vitality, and the percentage who say they would

vote for a party increases to 52% while those who say they would not drops to 48%. This is the

first time since the 2006-2007 wave of elections that a majority of Latin Americans indicate that

they would vote for a political party.

77

Source: Latinobarómetro 1996-2011

49

53 52 54

45 4642

49

56

49

50

48 46

5251

47 48 46

55 5458

51

44

51

50

52 54

48

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Votes for a party Does not vote for a party

VOTE FOR A POLITICAL PARTYTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1996 - 2011Q. If elections were held this Sunday, which party would you vote for?

Willingness to vote for a party appears to be cyclical, dropping in periods without presidential

elections and increasing again when they take place.

Closeness to political parties

When we ask about closeness to political parties as distinct to voting for them, we find that,

despite an increase in the number of people who actually vote for a party, less people say they feel

“close to a party”. This drops from 46% in 2010 to 44% in 2011 and ranges from just 24% in

Bolivia to 69% in the Dominican Republic. In five countries, a third or less of the population feels

close to a political party. This is higher in Central America (48%) than in South America (42%).

CLOSENESS TO POLITICAL PARTIESTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2010 – 2011- TOTALS BY COUNTRIES 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2010 - 2011

Q. Is there any Political Party to which you feel closer to than the rest of the parties? *Here only „yes‟.

46 44

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2010 2011

48

42

44

24

28

29

33

35

39

39

39

40

42

46

50

51

53

58

61

63

69

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

CentroaméricaSudamérica

LatinoaméricaBolivia

BrasilEcuador

PerúChile

ArgentinaCosta Rica

El SalvadorMéxico

PanamáGuatemala

HondurasColombia

NicaraguaVenezuela

ParaguayUruguay

República Dominicana

By age, we find that most of the Latin Americans who feel close to a political party are between

26 and 40 years old (34%) while young people account for 24%.

78

CLOSENESS TO POLITICAL PARTIES BY AGETOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

15

24

28

34

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

61 and more

16-25

41-60

26-40

Q. How strongly do you support that political party, would you say that is very supportive, some supportive or

not very supportive? * Here only „very supportive‟ and „supportive‟.

Analysis of the degree of closeness to political parties reveals that, in a third of cases, it

corresponds to “very close” with this ranging from 15% in Honduras to 48% in Panama.

CLOSENESS TO POLITICAL PARTIES TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2010 – 2011- TOTALS BY COUNTRIES 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2010 - 2011

3

21

28

48

2

22

30

47

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

DNK/DNA

Notsupportive

VerySupportive

SomeSupportive

2011 2010

30

15

16

17

20

22

25

26

27

27

30

32

32

33

33

33

36

46

48

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Latinoamérica

Honduras

Brasil

Bolivia

Argentina

Ecuador

Venezuela

Perú

Chile

Guatemala

Colombia

El Salvador

Nicaragua

Costa Rica

Paraguay

Uruguay

México

República Dominicana

Panamá

Q. How strongly do you support that political party, would you say that is very supportive, some supportive or

not very supportive? * Here only „very supportive‟.

In this case, we also find a very marked difference between Central America and South America

and Mexico. In Central America, not only is the percentage of the population that feels close to

political parties larger but also the degree of this closeness.

79

CLOSENESS TO POLITICAL PARTIES BY SUB REGION TOTAL SOUTH AMERICA AND MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

12

16

20

9

12

21

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Not supportive

Very suppotive

Somesupportive

South America and Mexico Central America

Q. How strongly do you support that political party, would you say that is very supportive, some supportive or

not very supportive?.

This illustrates the importance of disaggregated analysis by country and subregion in attempting

to explain the social and political phenomena that are clearly occurring.

EXPECTATIONS

Expectations have played a central role in the consolidation of Latin American democracies and

the leaders who have been successful in guiding expectations have performed best. The clearest

example is President Lula in Brazil whose success consisted basically in being able to give

Brazilians what they expected.

Expectations have, however, been declining since 2006 while per capita income has increased. In

2011, there were less Latin Americans with economic difficulties (10%) than at any other time in

the previous 16 years of surveys and the greatest level of job stability. This is the effect of growth.

Future expectations: personal situation and country

People‟s expectations for their personal future weakened slightly in 2011 when 42% anticipated

an improvement as compared to 44% in 2010. Given that the figure reached 46% in 2008 and

49% in 2006, we can conclude that people‟s optimism about their future economic situation has

declined. The perception that the situation will remained unchanged over the next 12 months has,

however, increased from 32% in 2009 to 36% in 2010 and 38% in 2011. In other words, public

opinion in Latin America can be described as shifting towards expectations of stability. This is

good news.

80

PERSONAL FUTURE EXPECTATIVETOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2001-2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2001-2011

Q. In the next 12 months, do you think your economic situation and that of your family will be much better, a little

better, about the same, a little worse or much worse than now? * Here only 'Much better' more 'A little better'.

34

37 37

4143 49

46 4644 44

42

36

36 3533 34

32

38

35

32

3638

2018 18 17

14

11 12 13

16

12 13

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Much better and better The Same Worse and much worse

Optimism about the future is greatest in Brazil where 64% of interviewees anticipate that their

economic situation will improve over the next 12 months. It is followed by Colombia, with 61%,

and by Paraguay and Panama, both with 52%. At the other extreme, optimism is lowest in Chile

(30%) and in El Salvador and the Dominican Republic (both with 23%).

ECONOMIC EXPECTATIVE: COUNTRY AND PERSONALTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2001- 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2001-2011

PERSONAL

35 37 3641 43

4946 46 44 44 42

23 2528 30 31

39

31

3833 34 32

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Personal Country

42

23

23

30

33

34

35

36

39

41

43

45

45

46

46

52

52

61

64

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Latinoamérica

República Dominicana

El Salvador

Chile

Bolivia

Guatemala

Nicaragua

Honduras

México

Uruguay

Ecuador

Perú

Costa Rica

Venezuela

Argentina

Panamá

Paraguay

Colombia

Brasil

Q1. And over the next 12 months do you think that, in general, the country‟s economic situation will be much

better, a little better, about the same, a little worse or much worse than now?

Q2. In the next 12 months, do you think your economic situation and that of your family will be much better, a little

better, about the same, a little worse or much worse than now? * Here only 'Much better' more 'A little better'.

Expectations as to the country‟s economic future lag ten percentage points below those for

interviewees‟ personal situation. This gap has held steady since 2001.

In summary, four in ten Latin Americans expect their personal economic situation to improve over

the next 12 months while three in ten expect it will improve for the country. This difference

reflects the desire of individuals to achieve progress ahead of that of their country and is, in turn, a

81

reflection of the demand for redistribution of goods seen in answers to many other questions in

this study.

Subjective income

The indicator of subjective income shows that the percentage of Latin Americans who have “great

difficulty in getting to the end of the month” has dropped gradually. After falling to 13% in 2007,

down from 24% in 2003, it showed a small increase to 15% during the economic crisis but then

dropped again to 10% in 2011, its lowest level since 1995. Today, Latin America has its lowest

number of people with economic difficulties. This type of indicator reveals the impact of growth

and improved economic management but does not reflect the way in which wealth is distributed.

This is why the reduction in expectations of the future and the perception of greater stability are

good news.

The percentage of people reporting great economic difficulties is highest in the Dominican

Republic, where it reaches 23%, followed by Honduras (19%) and Nicaragua (18%), and is lowest

in Paraguay (2%), Brazil (5%) and Argentina (5%).

Source: Latinobarómetro 1995-2011

1413

12

14 14

18

20

2423

18

1413

1415

13

10

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

1995 1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 10

2

5

5

6

7

7

7

8

8

9

10

11

12

13

17

18

19

23

0 10 20 30

Latinoamérica

Paraguay

Brasil

Argentina

Uruguay

Bolivia

Costa Rica

Chile

Panamá

Ecuador

Perú

Venezuela

Guatemala

México

El Salvador

Colombia

Nicaragua

Honduras

República Dominicana

SUBJECTIVE INCOMETOTAL LATIN AMERICA1995-2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY2011Q. Does the salary you receive and your total family income allow you to cover your needs in a satisfactory

manner? Which of the following statements describes your situation?*Here only „It‟s not sufficient and we have

major problems‟.

Expectations: future income

In response to the question of whether they expect their personal income will increase, decrease or

remain unchanged during the next 12 months, 32% of Latin Americans indicate that they

anticipate an increase and 17% a reduction while 44% expect no change. The fact that one in three

Latin Americans expects an increase in income in 2012 is significant and, although apparently

contradictory with the drop in expectations in other indicators, identifies those who do have

positive expectations.

82

I FUTURE INCOME EXPECTATIONTOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. Speaking of the total income of your family do you think in the next 12 months these will increase, decrease

or remain the same?

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

32

18

18

20

24

24

26

28

29

32

33

35

36

38

39

40

40

44

54

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Latinoamérica

Nicaragua

Chile

México

Bolivia

Guatemala

El Salvador

Honduras

Perú

Argentina

Ecuador

Costa Rica

Uruguay

República Dominicana

Venezuela

Panamá

Colombia

Paraguay

Brasil

17

32

44

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Decrease

Increase

Remain the same

INCREASE

The optimism of Brazil stands out - it is the only country in which a majority of interviewees

(54%) expect their family income to increase in the next 12 months - as well as the pessimism of

Chile and Nicaragua where the figure reaches only 18%.

INDEX OF JOB SECURITY

In line with the reduction in unemployment seen this year, the survey found a drop to 35%, down

from 38% in 2010, in the percentage of interviewees who are “very concerned or concerned”

about the possibility of becoming unemployed. This is the indicator‟s lowest level since 2002

(when it reached 76%).

Concern about job security is highest in Ecuador (57%), Bolivia (48%), Guatemala (43%) and the

Dominican Republic (42%) and is lowest in Uruguay (17%).

Source: Latinobarómetro 2002-2011

7672

76 75

6764

40 4138

35

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

35

17

23

23

28

28

30

32

33

33

34

34

37

38

39

42

43

48

57

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Latinoamérica

Uruguay

Argentina

Nicaragua

Costa Rica

Panamá

Perú

Venezuela

El Salvador

Colombia

Paraguay

Honduras

Brasil

México

Chile

República Dominicana

Guatemala

Bolivia

Ecuador

REDUNDANCY INDEXTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2002-2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. How concerned would you say you are that you will be left without work or unemployed during the next 12

months or you don´t have job? *Here only „Very concerned‟ and „concerned‟.

83

INDEX OF CONSUMER CONFIDENCE

For the first time this year, Latinobarómetro includes the index of consumer confidence developed

in the United States by the University of Michigan. This index uses a battery of questions10

with a

standard calculation mechanism and can be compared across many countries. We would like to

thank our Uruguayan colleague, César Aguiar, for providing us with the Spanish version of the

index and its methodology.

For Latin America, the index reaches 49 points, ranging from 64 points in Uruguay to 27 points in

the Dominican Republic.

CONSUMER SENTIMENT INDEXTOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

This index goes from 0 to 100, “0” represents none trust from part of consumers towards the economic

situation and the market, and “100” represents complete trust.

49

27

34

38

39

44

44

45

45

48

50

53

55

56

57

61

61

62

64

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

América Latina

República Dominicana

El Salvador

Honduras

Guatemala

Bolivia

México

Costa Rica

Nicaragua

Ecuador

Chile

Venezuela

Paraguay

Perú

Panamá

Colombia

Brasil

Argentina

Uruguay

Almost half the region‟s consumers (49%) have confidence in their country‟s economy. Uruguay,

Argentina, Brazil and Colombia are the countries where this is highest, with 64, 62 and 61 points,

respectively.

Consumer confidence is lowest in Central America where Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and

the Dominican Republic have 39, 38, 34 and 27 points, respectively.

This index is calculated using three individual indices: personal situation, the country‟s situation

and the purchase of goods. In 2011, the first of these indices averaged 60 points for the region, the

second 54 points and the third 34 points. It is, in other words, the index for the purchase of goods

10

This is a composite index calculated on the basis of three individual indices: personal situation and country‟s situation (both as regards

perceptions) and purchases of goods (reflecting attitudes). It is calculated on a scale of 0 to 100 where 0 represents nil consumer confidence and

100 total consumer confidence.

The index comprises the following questions: 1) Do you consider your economic situation and that of your family is much better, a little better, the same, a little worse or much worse than 12 months ago? 2) Do you think that, in the next 12 months, your economic situation and that of your

family will be much better, a little better, the same, a little worse or much worse than it is today? 3) In general, do you think that, in the next 12

months, the country‟s economic situation will be much better, a little better, the same, a little worse or much worse than it is today? 4) What do you think will be the country‟s economic situation in three years‟ time? 5) Do you think this is a good time for purchases of, for example, household

appliances? 6) Do you think this is a good time for more important purchases such as cars or to buy a house?

84

that pulls down the other two. It reflects answers to two questions designed to find out whether

consumers will be willing to acquire consumer or investment goods in the coming months.

As well as being the country with the highest level of consumer confidence (64%), Uruguay is

also the only country in which all three individual indices are at a similar level, with 65 points for

personal and the country‟s situation and 61 points for the purchase of goods.

As shown in Table Nº 20, there are five countries with a large discrepancy between personal and

the country‟s situation: Brazil and Costa Rica with a gap of 16 points, Colombia and Guatemala

(10 points) and Bolivia (11 points). These are countries in which the urge to progress more rapidly

than the country will certainly have political consequences. Chile, at the other extreme, is the only

country where confidence in the country exceeds confidence in personal situation (albeit only by

one point) and it is, in other words, a country where people do not expect to progress more

quickly than the country as a whole.

Except for this one case, confidence in the country falls short of confidence in interviewees‟

personal situation, implying that they not only want to progress faster than their country but also

perceive that they are doing so. This is a pressure to progress ahead of the average and is an

attitude that is confirmed by numerous economic and political indicators such as demand for fairer

distribution and government on behalf of the majority. In other words, in wanting to progress

ahead of their country, Latin Americans are simply expressing a demand for internal redistribution

of the available resources.

Table Nº 20. Index of Consumer Confidence

Personal

situation

Country‟s

situation

Purchase of

goods Index of Consumer

Confidence

Difference

Personal-Country

Situation

Uruguay 65 65 61 64 0

Argentina 67 65 56 62 2

Brazil 75 59 49 61 16

Colombia 68 58 56 61 10

Panama 69 63 38 57 6

Peru 65 65 37 56 0

Paraguay 70 64 32 55 6

Venezuela 59 57 42 53 2

Chile 52 53 45 50 -1

Ecuador 62 56 25 48 6

Nicaragua 58 56 22 45 2

Costa Rica 63 47 25 45 16

Mexico 56 49 27 44 7

Bolivia 57 46 28 44 11

Guatemala 54 44 19 39 10

Honduras 53 45 16 38 8

El Salvador 46 42 14 34 4

Dominican Rep. 33 31 16 27 2

Latin America 60 54 34 49 6 Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

85

ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE MARKET

The market economy

Despite the enormous negative impact on the perception of progress seen in 2011, a majority of

Latin Americans maintain their trust in the market economy as a vehicle for development. This

drops by only two points to 56%, down from 58% in 2010. In 2010, Latinobarómetro found an

important increase in the belief that the market economy is “the only system through which the

country can become developed” which, at 58%, was an increase from 47% in 2009.

In 15 of the 18 countries surveyed by Latinobarómetro, there is majority support for the free

market and it reaches less than 50% only in the Dominican Republic (46%), Guatemala (45%) and

Chile (43%). It is paradoxical that trust in the market economy is lowest in Chile, the country

regarded by the western world as having Latin America‟s best macroeconomic management. The

protests seen in Chile show that economic success does not suffice to satisfy demands. Chileans

have, in some way, come to doubt that, as individuals, they can progress faster than the average

for the country. This is reflected in the consumer confidence index in which Chile is an exception

in the region. There can be no question that the “market” stands accused as one of the mechanisms

for allocating resources that is not doing its job satisfactorily.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2003- 2011

5760

63

47

56

47

58 56

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2003 2004 2005 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

5643

4546

51535555565658585959

6363636365

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Latinoamérica

Chile

Guatemala

República Dominicana

Honduras

Bolivia

Argentina

Perú

México

Venezuela

Uruguay

Brasil

El Salvador

Costa Rica

Ecuador

Panamá

Paraguay

Colombia

Nicaragua

MARKET ECONOMY IS THE ONLY SYSTEM TO BE

DEVELOPED TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2003 -2011 -TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree with each of the phrases that I will read. The

market economy is the single system in which (country) can become developed. * Here only 'Strongly agree' and

„agree'.

Along with the weakening of the belief that the market economy is necessary for development, we

also find a drop from 71% in 2010 to 65% in 2011 in the view that private companies are

indispensable if a country is to attain development, although support remains widespread.

86

Source: Latinobarómetro 2004 - 2011

6459

5661

7165

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2004 2005 2007 2009 2010 2011

6551

555658

626263636565676868

7273757777

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Latinoamérica

Guatemala

México

Bolivia

Argentina

Perú

Nicaragua

Brasil

Chile

República Dominicana

Colombia

Paraguay

Honduras

Costa Rica

El Salvador

Uruguay

Ecuador

Venezuela

Panamá

PRIVATE COMPANY IS NECESSARY FOR DEVELOPMENT OF

THE COUNTRY TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2004-2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. Do you strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree with each of the phrases that I will read.

Private enterprise is indispensable to the development of the country * Here only 'Strongly agree„ and „agree'

Support for private companies is highest in Panama and Venezuela (both with 77%), followed by

Ecuador (75%), Uruguay (73%) and El Salvador (72%), and is lowest in Guatemala (51%),

Mexico (55%) and Bolivia (56%).

Privatizations have been beneficial for the country11

The perception that privatizations have been beneficial, at 36%, showed no change on 2010. It is

highest in Ecuador, with 50%, and lowest in Chile at just 20%. This is another facet of Chile‟s

position as the country that is most critical of the market.

This is where we find a dichotomy between the opinion of experts and a country‟s citizens as to

whether it has been successful. Chile is an example of the incongruence between these two

worlds. While experts praise Chile as the region‟s best-performing country, its citizens give it the

region‟s worst evaluation. Clearly, if these results bear any relation to reality and mean anything

at all, there is something that is not being understood. As noted at the beginning of this report,

Tunisia was considered the Arab world‟s best performer until just a month before the revolution

that took place there. This raises the question of the standards of success by which countries

should be judged and what are the aspects that need to be considered in order for this evaluation to

reflect reality as closely as possible. The way in which we measure our societies and the indicators

we use to evaluate them are being called into question by events such as the protests in Chile and

this survey clearly shows a critical view on the part of citizens that is not taken into account when

evaluating the country.

11

Only those countries in which privatizations have taken place.

87

Source: Latinobarómetro 1998 - 2011

46

35

29 28

22

31

35 3436 36

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2005 2007 2009 2010 2011

36

20

23

32

34

34

37

38

38

39

40

42

43

44

45

45

50

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Latinoamérica

Chile

Guatemala

Argentina

Honduras

República Dominicana

Colombia

Nicaragua

México

Perú

Paraguay

Bolivia

Panamá

El Salvador

Venezuela

Brasil

Ecuador

PRIVATIZATION HAS BEEN BENEFICIAL FOR THE COUNTRY TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1998-2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. Are you strongly agree, agree, disagree or strongly disagree with each of the phrases that I will read.

Privatization of State enterprise has been beneficial for the country Here 'Strongly Agree' and „agree‟.

Satisfaction with privatized services reached 31% in 2011, up by one percentage point on 2010.

For the past five years, this indicator has held fairly steady at around a third after reaching a low

of 19% in 2004.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2003 - 2011

21 19

2732

35 3430 31

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2003 2004 2005 2006 2008 2009 2010 2011

31

4

18

21

21

28

29

29

32

33

36

41

44

44

45

47

48

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Latinoamérica

Honduras

Chile

República Dominicana

Guatemala

México

Nicaragua

El Salvador

Colombia

Perú

Argentina

Panamá

Paraguay

Venezuela

Bolivia

Brasil

Ecuador

SATISFACTION WITH PRIVATIZED SERVICESTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2003–2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. Now that we have privatized state-owned services, water, electricity, etc.. Taking into account price and quality

are you now “very more satisfied, satisfied, less satisfied or much less satisfied with the privatized services ? Here

only „A lot more satisfied' and „More satisfied'.

Satisfaction with privatized public services is highest in Ecuador (48%), Brazil (47%) and Bolivia

(45%) and lowest in Chile (18%) and Honduras (4%).

88

ATTITUDES TOWARDS THE STATE

Attitudes towards the state have acquired an increasingly important role in analysis of the

consolidation of democracies. The success or failure of public policies is not only related to the

performance of the incumbent government but also to the way in which citizens perceive the

capacities of the state. The form in which the state provides services has a direct bearing on

perceptions of equality before the law or, in other words, the ability of democracy to deliver

political goods. Governments that have provided political goods, such as the increase in equality

before the law seen in Brazil under President Lula, have achieved significant improvements in the

perception of democracy.

It is, therefore, ever more important to be able to examine in detail the impact of the state‟s

actions on the citizens‟ lives. As a result, we introduced new questions this year about the impact

of public policies on individuals and their perception of the state‟s ability to solve problems.

Public policies

In the question about public policies, interviewees were asked to identify their country‟s best

public policy. According to a third of the region‟s inhabitants, this is education, which was

mentioned by 57% in El Salvador, 54% in Nicaragua and 51% in Costa Rica. At the other

extreme, only 1% of Chileans consider their country‟s education policy to be good. Low figures

are also seen Brazil and Argentina, with 17% and 20%, respectively. In Chile, the student

movement of 2011 triggered debate about the problems of education, leading the country‟s

citizens to take a more critical attitude.

In second place after education, we find 24% who say that no public policy is “best” and, in third

place, healthcare, with 19%. Education and healthcare are, in other words, the only two public

policies that stand out as the best in this question asked for the first time by Latinobarómetro.

THE BEST PUBLIC POLICY IN COUNTRYTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011Q. As far as you know or have heard, from the list on the card what would you say is best in your country?

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

2

3

3

4

5

8

19

24

33

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Security policy

Justice

DNK/DNA

Social policy

Economic policy

Defense

Health

None

Education

33

1

17

20

20

22

23

32

32

32

34

35

37

42

43

50

51

54

57

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Latinoamérica

Chile

Brasil

Argentina

Perú

Uruguay

Honduras

Bolivia

República Dominicana

México

Paraguay

Colombia

Panamá

Guatemala

Venezuela

Ecuador

Costa Rica

Nicaragua

El Salvador

EDUCATION

89

A second question on the same topic enquired about the public policy from which interviewees

had personally derived most benefit. In this case, healthcare took first place (37%), followed by

education (32%) and housing (14%).

The percentage of interviewees who indicate they have benefitted most from health policy ranged

from 51% in Mexico to 20% in Chile.

PUBLIC POLICY THAT HAS BENEFITED YOUTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

37

20

22

25

26

27

27

30

34

36

40

42

45

46

46

47

49

49

51

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Latinoamérica

Chile

Honduras

República Dominicana

Brasil

Perú

Argentina

Bolivia

Guatemala

Paraguay

Venezuela

Colombia

Panamá

Uruguay

Ecuador

Costa Rica

Nicaragua

El Salvador

México

HEALTH POLICY

3

3

3

4

5

5

14

32

37

0 10 20 30 40 50

DNK/DNA

Policy against drug adiction

Policy against drug traffic

Policy against corruption

Justice

Crime policy

Housing policy

Education policy

Health policy

Q. Which of the following public policies have benefited you and your family improving your situation? *Multiple

choices answer, totals are more than 100%

The countries where housing policy receives the highest percentage of mentions are Brazil (24%)

and Chile (21%) while, in Paraguay and Honduras, the figure drops to 6% and 7%, respectively.

The countries where the largest number of interviewees perceive education as having benefitted

them most are El Salvador, with 54%, and Ecuador, with 45%. Again, Chile takes last place with

9%.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

EDUCATION

32

9

21

24

24

25

26

26

27

30

32

33

36

38

39

43

44

45

54

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Latinoamérica

Chile

Perú

República Dominicana

Honduras

Uruguay

Brasil

Argentina

Paraguay

Bolivia

Colombia

México

Nicaragua

Venezuela

Guatemala

Panamá

Costa Rica

Ecuador

El Salvador

14

6

7

7

8

8

9

11

12

13

13

13

15

16

18

20

20

21

24

0 10 20 30 40

Latinoamérica

Paraguay

Honduras

Bolivia

Venezuela

República Dominicana

Guatemala

Perú

Uruguay

El Salvador

Argentina

Nicaragua

Colombia

México

Ecuador

Costa Rica

Panamá

Chile

Brasil

HOUSING

PUBLIC POLICY THAT HAS BENEFITED YOU:HOUSING AND EDUCATION TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011Q. Which of the following public policies have benefited you and your family improving your situation? *Multiple

choices answer, totals are more than 100%

90

What has the state done for you?

As part of this new battery of questions about the state, Latinobarómetro asked about perceptions

of how much the state does for people individually and for the country. We find that 46% of Latin

Americans perceive the state as working for their country‟s development while only 35% consider

that it does something for them as individuals and their family. To what extent do governments

seek to communicate the idea that the state is at the service of people? Are these results not

perhaps a consequence of the way in which politics are practiced with each leader, member of

Congress or minister putting himself or herself in first place above institutions? What do we

usually see in announcements by the state? Don‟t they tend to be about something done “by

someone” rather than “for someone”?

Does politics not revolve more around the individual fate of its participants than around what the

state does for the common good? The emphasis of political communication is central to this

discussion about citizens‟ perceptions of what the state does for them. At the end of the day, the

region‟s states are a predominant factor in economic activity and their citizens are barely aware of

this.

However, independently of the difference between perceptions of what the state does for the

country and what it does for individuals, we find that both indicators are at a similar level.

Guatemala is the country where perceptions of what the state does both for the country and for

individuals are lowest (20% and 21%, respectively) while in Honduras the two indicators reach

25% and 27%, respectively. In the Dominican Republic, 33% think that the state has done a great

deal for the country and 24% that it has done a great deal for individuals and their families. At the

other extreme, 72% of Uruguayans consider that the state does a great deal for the country and

51% that it does a great deal for individuals and their families.

HOW MUCH HAS THE STATE DONE FOR YOU AND

FOR THE COUNTRY TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011Q1. How much the state has done for you and your family in the last three years? *Here only „A lot‟ plus „some‟.

Q2. And how much the state has done for the country's development? *Here only „A lot‟ plus „some‟.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

YOU AND YOUR FAMILY COUNTRY

35

21

23

24

27

28

28

28

32

34

35

37

37

40

42

44

50

50

51

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Latinoamérica

Guatemala

Perú

República Dominicana

Honduras

Bolivia

Paraguay

Chile

Brasil

México

Costa Rica

Colombia

Nicaragua

El Salvador

Venezuela

Argentina

Ecuador

Panamá

Uruguay

46

20

25

33

37

40

40

40

42

43

44

45

45

50

55

58

60

63

72

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Latinoamérica

Guatemala

Honduras

República Dominicana

México

Paraguay

Costa Rica

Bolivia

El Salvador

Perú

Brasil

Nicaragua

Chile

Venezuela

Colombia

Argentina

Ecuador

Panamá

Uruguay

The state is, therefore, not perceived as working mainly for people but rather for the country. This

state is, moreover, seen as implementing public policies that, in general, do not benefit

individuals. This is, without doubt, an area where further research would be useful in order to

91

examine what people understand as the benefit provided by the state. What, after all, is the

“country” if not its citizens? What impact does the personalization of politics have in this

distortion? And what is the impact of communications and the population‟s level of information in

this perception?

Does the state have the means to solve problems?

Latin Americans increasingly believe that the state has the means to solve problems. The

percentage holding this view increased from 71% in 2010 to 74% in 2011 and ranges from 87% in

the Dominican Republic to its lowest level of 53% in Guatemala.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2010 - 2011

7174

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2010 2011

74

53

54

56

60

65

72

73

73

77

78

78

80

80

82

83

86

86

87

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Latinoamérica

Guatemala

Bolivia

El Salvador

Honduras

Costa Rica

Nicaragua

México

Ecuador

Uruguay

Panamá

Brasil

Colombia

Perú

Chile

Argentina

Venezuela

Paraguay

República Dominicana

RESOURCES OF STATE TO SOLVE PROBLEMS TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2010 – 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. Do you think the State has the resources to solve the problems of our society, or you think the State do

not have the resources to solve them? *Here only „Has the resources‟.

The state as solving problems

Do people see the state as being able to solve a society‟s pending problems? In the case of crime,

61% believe it is able to do so while, for drug trafficking, poverty and corruption, the figures

reach 57%, 55% and 54%, respectively.

92

CAN THE STATE SOLVE THE FOLLOWING

PROBLEMS? TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011Q. To what extent do you think the state can solve the (item) problem? The state can solve the whole problem,

much of the problem, a small part of the problem, or can not solve the problem. *Here only „the whole problem‟

plus „much of the problem‟.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

54

55

57

61

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Corruption

Poverty

Drug Traffic

Crime

61

27

39

40

46

48

53

60

64

64

65

65

69

72

74

74

77

78

78

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Latinoamérica

Guatemala

México

Honduras

Bolivia

Nicaragua

El Salvador

República Dominicana

Costa Rica

Colombia

Perú

Chile

Panamá

Ecuador

Venezuela

Brasil

Argentina

Paraguay

Uruguay

CRIME

Perceptions of problems, their seriousness and the capacity of the state to solve them vary widely

by country. Whereas only 27% of Guatemalans believe that the state can solve the problem of

crime, 78% of Uruguayans believe this to be the case.

In the case of drug trafficking, 72% of Venezuelans believe the state can solve the problem but

only 22% of Guatemalans.

Similarly, 75% of Uruguayans believe the state can solve the problem of corruption but, in

Guatemala, the figure drops to 18%.

In the case of poverty, 79% of Argentines but only 17% of Guatemalans see the state as being able

to solve the problem.

Guatemalans have little faith in their state‟s capacity to solve problems given that eight in ten do

not believe it can solve the problems of crime, drug trafficking, poverty or corruption. In

Guatemala, there is, in other words, a negative consensus about the state‟s problem-solving

capacity. Confidence in the state‟s capacity to solve problems is highest in Argentina where it

reaches an average of 75%.

93

Table Nº 21. Can the State Solve Problems? Q. To what extent do you think the state can solve the problem of (item)? * Only „all the problem‟ and „a large part of

the problem‟.

Crime

Drug

trafficking Poverty Corruption Average

Argentina 77 70 79 73 75

Uruguay 78 69 75 75 74

Paraguay 78 71 69 71 72

Brazil 74 68 75 71 72

Venezuela 74 72 62 62 68

Chile 65 64 70 65 66

Ecuador 72 66 63 63 66

Colombia 64 58 60 63 62

Dominican Rep. 60 69 59 58 61

Costa Rica 64 62 58 60 61

Peru 65 58 61 58 60

Panama 69 62 48 49 57

El Salvador 53 48 35 37 43

Bolivia 46 42 39 41 42

Nicaragua 48 36 37 35 39

Mexico 39 35 38 34 36

Honduras 40 37 22 23 30

Guatemala 27 22 17 18 21

Latin America 61 57 55 54 57

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

There are six countries in which less than half the population believes that the state can solve the

problems of crime, drug trafficking, poverty and corruption. Four of these countries are in

Central America while the other two are Bolivia and Mexico. In the other 12 countries, a majority

of the population believes that the state can solve these problems.

Efficiency of the state

In order to analyze perceptions of the state‟s efficiency, different aspects of its performance in this

area were measured on a scale of 1 to 10, looking first at its overall efficiency, then at the

efficiency of the official procedures required of its citizens and, finally, the efficiency of public-

sector employees.

94

EFFICIENCY OF THE STATETOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011Q1. On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is no efficient and 10 is fully efficient, how efficient is the state? *Here Average

Q2. And public officials? *Here Average

Q3. And the paperwork that make citizens in the state? *Here Average

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

4.7

4.9

5.3

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Publicofficials

Paperworksin the state

Efficiency ofthe state

EFFICIENCY OF THE STATE

5.3

3.9

4.3

4.4

4.9

4.9

5.0

5.2

5.2

5.3

5.4

5.4

5.5

5.5

5.7

5.7

6.0

6.0

6.3

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Latinoamérica

República Dominicana

Guatemala

Honduras

Perú

Paraguay

Bolivia

Chile

Argentina

Colombia

Venezuela

Brasil

El Salvador

Costa Rica

Panamá

México

Ecuador

Uruguay

Nicaragua

On overall efficiency, Latin Americans give the state 5.3 points on the scale from 1 to 10 while,

for the efficiency of procedures, they give it 4.9 points and, for the efficiency of public-sector

employees, 4.7 points. Nicaragua, with 6.3, is the country with the greatest perceived efficiency

while this is lowest in the Dominican Republic with 3.9.

Table Nº 22. Summary of Efficiency and Transparency of the State Q1. On a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is “not efficient at all” and 10 is “totally efficient”, how efficient do you consider

the state of (country) is? * Averages and % of positive answers (between 7 and 10).

Q2.And on a scale of 1 to 10 where 1 is “not transparent at all” and 10 is “totally transparent”, how transparent do

you consider the state of (country) is? ** Averages and % of positive answers (between 7 and 10).

Efficiency of the state Efficiency of public-

sector employees

Efficiency of official

procedures

Transparency of the

state

Country Average % of positive

answers Average

% of

positive

answers

Average

% of

positive

answers

Average

% of

positive

answers

Nicaragua 6.3 40 5.6 32 5.9 35 56.3 35

Ecuador 6.0 42 5.3 29 5.5 33 51.0 28

Uruguay 6.0 38 5.1 20 5.1 21 59.8 40

Mexico 5.7 37 4.9 23 5.2 31 45.1 26

Panama 5.7 37 5.4 29 5.6 30 55.8 30

Costa Rica 5.5 32 5.0 22 5.1 24 44.3 17

Brazil 5.4 30 5.3 29 6.2 44 47.8 25

Venezuela 5.4 29 4.5 16 4.8 18 52.2 29

Colombia 5.3 27 4.4 14 4.7 19 39.3 15

Argentina 5.2 25 4.4 11 4.9 18 44.6 20

Chile 5.2 23 4.7 14 5.0 17 57.4 35

Bolivia 5.0 18 4.2 8 4.1 8 41.5 15

Paraguay 4.9 23 4.6 14 4.7 14 41.4 14

Peru 4.9 16 4.2 8 4.4 12 43.4 15

Honduras 4.4 13 3.9 9 4 10 38.4 12

El Salvador 4.3 32 4.9 23 5.2 26 48.9 23

Guatemala 4.3 13 3.9 8 4.2 11 38.1 11

Dominican

Rep. 3.9 13 3.5 10 4.2 14 37.2 15

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

95

Finally, we measure the state‟s perceived transparency on a scale of 1 to 100. The average for the

region is 47 points and the result is highest in Uruguay (60 points) and lowest in the Dominican

Republic (37 points).

TRANSPARENCY IN THE STATETOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

47

37

38

38

39

41

42

43

44

45

45

48

49

51

52

56

56

57

60

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Latinoamérica

República Dominicana

Guatemala

Honduras

Colombia

Paraguay

Bolivia

Perú

Costa Rica

Argentina

México

Brasil

El Salvador

Ecuador

Venezuela

Panamá

Nicaragua

Chile

Uruguay

Q. As you know or have heard, on a scale of 1 to 100, where 1 is "not transparent" and 100 is "fully

transparent", How transparent do you think is the state of (country)? *Here only average

This data provides a complex and fairly comprehensive picture of the perception that Latin

Americans have of the state and its capacities. In future surveys, we will continue to measure

these indicators in order to build a time series. Independently of each country‟s starting point, it is

the direction and speed of change that is interesting.

Satisfaction with state services provided by the central government

In this section, we present an evaluation of the public services provided by the central government

and by municipal governments.

Satisfaction is highest for the public service issuing identity documents (57%) and this is followed

by education (55%) and public hospitals (48%). In the case of the police service and the judicial

system, satisfaction reaches 34% and 30%, respectively.

96

Source: Latinobarómetro 2009 - 2011

30

34

48

55

57

0 20 40 60 80

Judiciary

Police

Public Hospitals

Public Education

The place where youget the ID card

5454 55

46 47 48

34 34 34

3331

30

57 58 57

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

2009 2010 2011

Public education

Public Hospitals

Police

Judiciary

The place whereyou get the ID card

SATISFACTION WITH CENTRAL PUBLIC SERVICES TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2009-2011Q. Would you say that you are very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied or not at all satisfied, with the way

(ITEM) works...? *Here only „very satisfied‟ and „fairly satisfied‟.

The judicial system is the only public service where satisfaction has dropped. This reached 30% in

2011, down from 33% in 2009, and, given that it reflects 20,000 cases, this change is statistically

significant.

Satisfaction with the judicial system is highest in El Salvador (46%) and Costa Rica (43%) and

lowest in Chile (20%) and Peru (11%).

SATISFACTION WITH THE JUDICIARYTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2009 – 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

33 31 30

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2009 2010 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2009-2011

30

11

20

21

22

25

27

28

29

30

30

32

33

38

40

40

41

43

46

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Latinoamérica

Perú

Chile

Bolivia

México

Paraguay

Argentina

Brasil

Guatemala

Venezuela

República Dominicana

Colombia

Honduras

Ecuador

Uruguay

Panamá

Nicaragua

Costa Rica

El Salvador

Q. Would you say that you are very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied or not at all satisfied, with the way the

judiciary works? *Here only „very satisfied‟ and „fairly satisfied‟.

Satisfaction with public services provided by municipal governments

Satisfaction with the public services provided by municipal governments has not changed

significantly over time. On average between 2006 and 2011, it was highest for refuse collection

97

(52%) and the availability of green areas (51%) while less than half of Latin Americans are

satisfied with sewage collection, other municipal services, public transport and roads and paving.

In the specific case of 2011, the availability of green areas takes first place, with a 53%

satisfaction level, up by one percentage point on 2010. Satisfaction with refuse collection also

increases from 50% in 2010 to 52% in 2011, satisfaction with sewage collection from 44% to 45%

and satisfaction with public transport from 40% to 44% while other municipal services and roads

and paving show no change on 2010.

Satisfaction with municipal services is practically the same as in 2006 and this is an area in which

the state needs to achieve faster progress.

Table Nº 23. Satisfaction with public services provided by municipal governments, 2006-

2011 Q. Would you say you are very satisfied, fairly satisfied, not very satisfied or not satisfied with municipal services in

general? * Only „very satisfied‟ and „rather satisfied‟.

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 Average

Refuse collection 51 51 52 53 50 52 52

Green areas and public spaces 51 48 50 52 52 53 51

Sewage collection 45 45 44 47 44 45 45

Other municipal services 44 42 44 47 46 46 45

Public transport 45 43 45 48 40 44 44

Roads and paving 41 38 40 45 41 41 41 Source: Latinobarómetro 2006-2011

Index of satisfaction with state services

In order to better understand satisfaction with state services, we have devised a composite index

for services provided by both central and municipal governments. According to this index,

average satisfaction reached 5.1 points in 2011 as compared to 5.0 points in 2010 and 5.2 points in

2009.

The index is highest in Ecuador (6.7) and lowest in Peru (3.9)

Changes in the level of satisfaction by country and year call for a detailed analysis that is not part

of the purpose of this report. In 2011, there were widely varying increases in around ten countries,

with El Salvador showing the largest increase from 5.6 points in 2010 to 6.2 points in 2011.

98

Table Nº 24. Index of Satisfaction with State Services12

TOTAL

2009

TOTAL

2010

TOTAL

2011

Ecuador 5.0 6.1 6.7

Uruguay 7.3 6.4 6.4

El Salvador 5.9 5.6 6.2

Costa Rica 5.9 5.9 5.9

Argentina 4.5 5.6 5.9

Panama 5.2 5.1 5.6

Nicaragua 5.1 5.4 5.5

Colombia 5.9 5.1 5.2

Mexico 5.0 5.0 4.9

Guatemala 5.4 4.3 4.7

Venezuela 4.6 4.8 4.7

Dominican

Rep. 5.5 4.9 4.5

Paraguay 4.5 4.3 4.4

Chile 5.5 5.3 4.3

Honduras 5.3 4.0 4.3

Brazil 4.3 5.0 4.2

Bolivia 4.7 3.9 4.1

Peru 3.9 3.7 3.9

Latin America 5.2 5.0 5.1 Source: Latinobarómetro 2009-2011

SATISFACTION WITH DEMOCRACY

Satisfaction with democracy is an indicator of performance and is related to how citizens perceive

the state and the performance of the government. We saw above that their perception of the state

is less positive than of the government. Over the past five years, the perception of governments

has been positive but the same cannot be said for states and, in Latin America, neither public

policies nor satisfaction with state services nor their perceived efficiency are particularly well

evaluated.

Satisfaction with democracy is correlated with these factors and we find that the percentage of

Latin Americans who are dissatisfied with democracy increases from 52% in 2010 to 57% in

2011.

12

The total for the index ranges from 0 to 11 where 0 is “not satisfied at all” and 11 is “completely satisfied”. This

index is calculated using results for the question about satisfaction with public services provided by central and

municipal governments.

99

Source: Latinobarómetro 1995-2011

5 4 3 4 4

10 8 6 7 84 4 4 4 4 4

38

27

4137 36

25

3228 29 31

38 37 37 44 44

39

56

69

5660 60

6560

66 6561

58 59 59

51 5257

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999-2000

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

DNK/DNA Satisfied Not Satisfied

SATISFACTION WITH DEMOCRACYTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1995 – 2011

Q. In general, would you say that you are very satisfied, quite satisfied, not very satisfied or not at all satisfied

with the working of the democracy in (country)?

The growth of per capita income increased from 3.1% in 2009 to 5.9% in 2010 but satisfaction

with democracy did not increase while, between 2010 and 2011, when the growth of per capita

income slowed from 5.9% to 4.7%, satisfaction with democracy declined by five percentage

points.

Source: Latinobarómetro 1995-2011

38

27

41

37 36

25

33

29 2931

38 37 37

44 44

39

3.8

0.9

2.3

-1.3

-2.3

0.4

4.4

3

4

5.5

4.7

3.1

5.9

4.7

-4

-2

0

2

4

6

8

10

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

1995 1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Satisfied GDP per capita

SATISFACTION WITH DEMOCRACY AND PER CAPITA GDP GROWTH LATIN AMERICA1995 – 2011

Q. In general, would you say that you are very satisfied, quite satisfied, not very satisfied or not at all satisfied

with the working of the democracy in (country)? * Here only 'Very satisfied' and „quite satisfied„.

Satisfaction with democracy is highest in Uruguay (72%) and Argentina (58%) and lowest in

Guatemala and Mexico (both with 23%).

By comparing the evolution of satisfaction with democracy and per capita income, we can see the

impact of political goods as a result of government measures. During the Asian financial crisis,

both satisfaction with democracy and GDP dropped whereas, in the 2007-2009 crisis, the counter-

cyclical policies implemented by the region‟s governments were reflected in an absence of change

100

in satisfaction with democracy despite a drop in GDP growth. This trend was broken in 2011, a

year that brought not only presidential elections but also a decline in expectations. As yet, we do

not know the reasons for this decline which implies a change of trend but, without doubt, the

factors that had an impact include an increase in complaints against governments and the

perception of less fairness in distribution and in equality before the law.

38

27

41

3736

25

33

29 2931

3837 37

44 44

39

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

1995 1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 1995-2011

39

23

23

26

28

29

31

32

33

35

37

38

39

44

45

49

54

58

72

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Latinoamérica

Guatemala

México

Colombia

Bolivia

Honduras

Perú

Chile

República Dominicana

El Salvador

Brasil

Nicaragua

Paraguay

Costa Rica

Venezuela

Ecuador

Panamá

Argentina

Uruguay

SATISFACTION WITH DEMOCRACYTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1995 – 2011 Q. In general, would you say that you are very satisfied, quite satisfied, not very satisfied or not at all satisfied

with the working of the democracy in (country)? * Here only 'Very satisfied' and „quite satisfied„.

Using data from Eurobarometer between 1995 and 2009,13

we can compare these trends with the

evolution of satisfaction of democracy in Europe where, as in the case of satisfaction with life

discussed above, we also find that it is not related to countries‟ level of development.

In 2009, satisfaction with democracy reached 54% in Europe as compared to 44% in Latin

America. There was, in other words, a difference of ten percentage points, representing an

improvement in Latin America‟s position as compared to 2000 when it reached 20 percentage

points (56% and 36%, respectively). The difference in satisfaction with democracy is, in other

words, are much smaller than the difference in their respective levels of per capita income.

13

The last year in which the question about “satisfaction with democracy” was included in Eurobarometer was 2009.

101

SATISFACTION WITH DEMOCRACYTOTAL LATIN AMERICA AND EUROPE 1995-2009

There are only 10 points of

difference in satisfaction with

democracy between Europe and

Latin America

Source: Latinobarómetro and Eurobarómetro 1995-2009

Q. In general, would you say that you are very satisfied, quite satisfied, not very satisfied or not at all satisfied

with the working of the democracy in (country)? * Here only 'Very satisfied' and „quite satisfied„.

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Leadership in Latin America

Since 2009, Latinobarómetro surveys have included the question, “Which Latin American country

has most leadership in the region?” (open-ended question). Although it specifically says “Latin

American country”, one of the answers is the United States. This is a good example of the fact

that people do not necessarily answer the question. In this case, they simply answer with respect

to the leadership of countries in general.

Brazil is the country perceived to have most leadership in the region. In 2011, 20% of Latin

Americans, up from 19% in 2010, took this view. It was followed by the United States and

Venezuela, both with 10%, up from 9% in 2010.

102

Source: Latinobarómetro 2009 - 2011

20

2

2

3

4

4

6

6

15

15

15

20

26

26

27

27

46

52

54

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Latinoamérica

Nicaragua

Honduras

República Dominicana

Panamá

Guatemala

Costa Rica

México

El Salvador

Ecuador

Venezuela

Bolivia

Chile

Perú

Colombia

Brasil

Paraguay

Argentina

Uruguay

Brasil 2011

10

10

20

9

9

19

11

9

18

0 5 10 15 20 25

Venezuela

USA

Brasil

2009 2010 2011

19

2

3

4

5

5

6

6

12

15

19

19

21

23

23

30

32

48

50

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Latinoamérica

Panamá

Nicaragua

Honduras

Costa Rica

México

República…

Guatemala

Ecuador

Venezuela

El Salvador

Perú

Bolivia

Colombia

Chile

Paraguay

Brasil

Uruguay

Argentina

Brasil 2010

COUNTRY WITH MORE LEADERSHIP IN THE REGIONTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2009 – 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2009 - 2011

Q. Which is the country in Latin America has more leadership in the region? *Open-ended question.

Over half of Uruguayans and Argentines (54% and 52%, respectively) view Brazil as the region‟s

leader while, both in 2010 and 2011, this perception was least widespread in Central America,

with figures of 6% in Costa Rica, 4% in Guatemala and Panama, 3% in the Dominican Republic

and 2% in Honduras and Nicaragua. Brazil is, in other words, not perceived as a leader in Central

America but rather in Southern Cone and Andean countries.

In Central America and Mexico, it is the United States that is perceived as having the greatest

leadership in Latin America. In Mexico, 38% take this view, followed by the Dominican Republic

and Honduras (both with 21%), Guatemala, Panama and Costa Rica (all with 15%).

Table Nº 25. United States as the Country with the Greatest Leadership in Latin America Q. Which is the Latin American country with the greatest leadership in the region? * Only „United States‟.

2011

Mexico 38

Dominican Rep. 21

Honduras 21

Guatemala 15

Panama 15

Costa Rica 15

Brazil 11

El Salvador 11

Peru 6

Bolivia 6

Venezuela 5

Colombia 4

Nicaragua 3

Ecuador 3

Uruguay 3

Argentina 2

Chile 1

Paraguay 1

Latin America 10 Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

103

In addition to the question about the country with the greatest leadership, Latinobarómetro also

includes a question about the friendliest country. In general, we find that this is not an immediate

neighbor but rather one with which the country in question does not have a border. Brazil again

takes first place, accounting for 13% of answers, up from just 8% in 2006 when the question was

last asked. It is followed by Venezuela with 11%, up from 8% in 2006, and Argentina, with 6% in

2011 as compared to 4% in 2006 (but 12% in 1998).

Q. Which country do you think is our best friend in Latin America? *Open ended question

2

12

4

14

3

8

2

8

4

4

8

8

3

6

11

13

0 10 20

Cuba

Argentina

Venezuela

Brasil

2011 2006 2001 1998

Source: Latinobarómetro 1998 - 2011

BEST FRIEND IN THE REGIONTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 1998 – 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

13

1

1

1

1

2

2

5

6

9

10

19

20

24

24

27

30

34

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Latinoamérica

Honduras

República Dominicana

Nicaragua

Guatemala

Costa Rica

Panamá

Ecuador

México

Bolivia

Venezuela

Colombia

El Salvador

Chile

Perú

Argentina

Paraguay

Uruguay

BRASIL

The three countries where identification of Brazil as the friendliest country is highest are also the

three countries where the largest percentage identify it as the region‟s leader: Uruguay (34%),

Paraguay (30%) and Argentina (27%). We also find that identification of Brazil as the friendliest

country is lowest in Central America where it receives only 1% of mentions in Honduras, the

Dominican Republic, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

Although identifying the United States as the country with the greatest leadership, the Central

American countries do not perceive it as the friendliest country. Around Latin America, only three

countries identify it as friendly towards their country - Brazil (10%), Peru (6%) and Ecuador (4%)

- and, in all other countries, it drops below 3%. In other words, Central America sees the United

States as the country with most leadership but not as the friendliest country. Is it, therefore, an

unavoidable partner of which they are not very fond?

Table Nº 26. United States as the Friendliest Country in the Region Q. What Latin American country do you consider as the best friend of (country)? * Only United States.

2011

Brazil 10

Peru 6

Ecuador 4 Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

104

Opinions about powers

Opinions of world powers and other countries show an improvement in 2011, except in the case of

the United States.

Positive opinions of Spain increase from 67% in 2010 to 71% in 2011, almost equaling the United

States which drops from 73% to 72%. Increases are also seen in the case of the European Union

(65% to 66%), China (60% to 65%), Canada (60% to 62%), Venezuela (41% to 47%) and Cuba

(39% to 44%). Israel and Iran, which were included for the first time in 2011, reach 28% and

25%, respectively.

OPINION ABOUT COUNTRIESTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2010-2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2010 - 2011

72

53

53

56

63

65

68

69

71

74

76

76

78

79

82

82

87

89

89

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Latinoamérica

Uruguay

Argentina

Venezuela

Bolivia

Nicaragua

Chile

México

Guatemala

Brasil

Perú

Panamá

Paraguay

Ecuador

Costa Rica

Colombia

República Dominicana

Honduras

El Salvador

United States

25

28

44

47

62

65

66

71

72

39

41

60

60

65

67

73

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Iran

Israel

Cuba

Venezuela

Canada

China

European Union

Spain

United States

2010 2011

Q. I would like to know your opinion about the following countries and potencies that I‟m going to read. Do you

have a very good, good, bad or very bad opinion of (country)? *Here only „very good‟ and „good‟.

It has not been easy for the United States to maintain a positive opinion in Latin America. As

discussed in “The Obama Era?”, a report published by Latinobarómetro in March 2011 (available

online), the high expectations created by President Barack Obama‟s election meant a significant

increase in favorable opinions of the United States (from 58% in 2008 to 74% in 2009) but these

slowly dropped back again to 73% in 2010 and 72% in the latest survey.

105

OPINION TOWARDS THE UNITED STATESTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2000 – 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2000-2011

6873 71

6064

61 63 6458

74 73 72

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 201172

53

53

56

63

65

68

69

71

74

76

76

78

79

82

82

87

89

89

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Latinoamérica

Uruguay

Argentina

Venezuela

Bolivia

Nicaragua

Chile

México

Guatemala

Brasil

Perú

Panamá

Paraguay

Ecuador

Costa Rica

Colombia

República Dominicana

Honduras

El Salvador

Q. I would like to know your opinion about the following countries and potencies that I‟m going to read. Do you

have a very good, good, bad or very bad opinion of (country)? *Here only „very good‟ and „good‟.

El Salvador and Honduras are the countries where the largest percentage of people have a

favorable opinion of the United States, both with 89%. They are followed by the Dominican

Republic (87%) and Colombia (82%). The figure is lowest in Venezuela (56%) and Argentina and

Uruguay (both with 53%). It is in Southern Cone countries that opinions of the United States are

least favorable as well as in those with left-wing governments such as Nicaragua, Venezuela and

Bolivia.

In 2011, opinions about Cuba show a change of trend and, after dropping steadily from 52% in

2006 to 39% in 2010, favorable opinions increase by five points to 44%.

OPINION TOWARDS CUBATOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2000 – 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2000-2011

44

5246

43 41 3944

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2000 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

44

23

29

36

36

36

39

42

42

43

45

46

46

48

49

51

52

58

67

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Latinoamérica

Costa Rica

México

Panamá

Colombia

Guatemala

Perú

Chile

Brasil

Argentina

Honduras

Paraguay

República Dominicana

Bolivia

Uruguay

Ecuador

Venezuela

El Salvador

Nicaragua

Q. I would like to know your opinion about the following countries and potencies that I‟m going to read. Do you

have a very good, good, bad or very bad opinion of (country)? *Here only „very good‟ and „good‟.

106

A favorable opinion of Cuba is most prevalent in Nicaragua (67%), followed by El Salvador

(58%) and Venezuela (52%). At the other extreme, only one in five Costa Ricans have a favorable

view (23%) while, in Mexico, the figure reaches 29%. Opinions about Cuba are clearly

ideological and are more favorable in countries with left-wing governments than in those with

right-wing governments.

In 2011, we added two new countries - Iran and Israel - to this battery of questions. In the case of

Iran, 25% of Latin Americans have a favorable opinion, ranging from 42% in Nicaragua to 12%

in Costa Rica, while, for Israel, the average reaches 28%, with a maximum of 43% in El Salvador

and a minimum of 18% in Mexico.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

28182021212223232426282831

343637

404043

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

LatinoaméricaMéxico

Costa RicaArgentina

UruguayPerú

BrasilColombia

República DominicanaGuatemala

BoliviaParaguay

ChileVenezuela

EcuadorHonduras

PanamáNicaragua

El Salvador

Israel

OPINION TOWARDS IRAN AND ISREALTOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. I would like to know your opinion about the following countries and potencies that I‟m going to read. Do you

have a very good, good, bad or very bad opinion of (country)? *Here only „very good‟ and „good‟.

251214151516

202020

24262728

3132353537

42

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

LatinoaméricaCosta RicaArgentina

MéxicoUruguay

ColombiaPerú

BrasilGuatemala

República DominicanaParaguay

BoliviaChile

PanamáEl Salvador

HondurasEcuador

VenezuelaNicaragua

Irán

Relations between countries

As in the case of favorable opinions about countries, opinions about relations between a country

and a power improve slightly or show no change.

The United States remains in first place, with the same 72% of “good” relations it achieved in

2010. It is followed by Spain, with 71% up from 69% in 2010, and the European Union, with 68%

up from 67%.

107

Q. How do you qualify relations between (country) and (Item)? Will you say that they are...? *Here only „Very good‟

and „quite good‟.

OPINION OF RELATION BETWEEN COUNTRY AND…TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2010 - 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

68

71

72

67

69

72

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

European Union

Spain

United States

2010 2011

United States

72

19

28

54

63

68

70

75

79

80

81

84

84

86

88

89

90

90

90

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100

Latinoamérica

Venezuela

Bolivia

Argentina

Nicaragua

Ecuador

México

Guatemala

Paraguay

Perú

Brasil

Uruguay

Chile

Panamá

Costa Rica

Colombia

El Salvador

Honduras

República Dominicana

The three countries with the most favorable opinion of the United States - the Dominican

Republic, Honduras and El Salvador - are also the countries with the most positive perception of

relations between their country and the United States, all with 90%. The pattern is also the same in

that it is the Southern Cone countries and those with left-wing governments where perceptions of

good relations with the United States are weakest. These are particularly low in Bolivia and

Venezuela where they reach 28% and 19%, respectively.

Model country

For the first time in 2011, Latinobarómetro included the question: “Which country would you like

(country) to be most like?” (We added to this question a set of elements such as life style, values,

customs, political and economic situation, etc.)

One in four Latin Americans (26%) would like their country to be like the United States. It is

followed by Spain (19%), Brazil (11%), China (8%), France (6%) and Venezuela (4%). In Central

America, four in ten people would like their country to be like the United States while, in Uruguay

and Argentina, the figure is less than one in ten.

These results are interesting because they confirm that at least for half of Latin American

countries the United States is not a model of society to be imitated. This is not implicit in

friendship, a favorable opinion and good relations and it is mainly in Central America that the

United States is seen as a model to follow.

Interestingly, however, despite these numbers, Central America does not overwhelmingly

consider the United States its “best friend”. Is it, in other words, a country that is envied and seen

as an ideal but not loved?

108

COUNTRY YOU WOULD LIKE YOURS TO BE ALIKETOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Q. Thinking of the countries on this list, what one country would you like (country) to most be like? Think of a

country in a general sense – its lifestyle, values, customs, economy, and politics. *Here only answers with more

than 3%

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

4

6

8

11

19

26

0 10 20 30 40 50

Venezuela

France

China

Brazil

Spain

United States

United States

26

8

8

12

14

15

21

23

25

26

31

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

42

0 10 20 30 40 50 60

Latinoamérica

Argentina

Uruguay

Paraguay

Bolivia

Venezuela

Nicaragua

Chile

Perú

Colombia

Costa Rica

Honduras

Ecuador

Panamá

México

Brasil

Guatemala

República Dominicana

El Salvador

EVALUATION OF LEADERS

Latinobarómetro asks Latin Americans to evaluate leaders from the region and other parts of the

world on a scale of 0 to 10 where 0 means “very bad” and 10 means “very good”. This question is

different from that about approval of the government in which we ask each country about its own

leader. In this case, all the region‟s inhabitants are asked about all the leaders included in the list.

President Barack Obama takes first place with 6.3 points and is followed by Brazil‟s President

Dilma Rousseff (6 points) while third place is shared by King Juan Carlos and Colombia‟s

President Juan Manuel Santos (5.9 points). The lowest scores are for Hugo Chávez and Daniel

Ortega (both with 4.4 points) and Fidel Castro (4.1 points).

Source: Latinobarómetro 2011

4,1

4,4

4,4

4,9

5,1

5,2

5,2

5,3

5,3

5,5

5,6

5,7

5,7

5,8

5,9

5,9

6

6,3

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Fidel Castro

Hugo Chávez

Daniel Ortega

Evo Morales

Sebastián Piñera

Ollanta Humala

Fernando Lugo

Rafael Correa

Laura Chinchilla

Mauricio Funes

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero

José Mujica

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner

Felipe Calderón

Juan Manuel Santos

Rey Juan Carlos

Dilma Roussef

Barack Obama

Average

17

18

18

40

52

56

60

60

62

63

66

66

67

69

73

74

76

79

0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

Hugo Chávez

Fidel Castro

Barack Obama

Evo Morales

Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner

Rey Juan Carlos

Felipe Calderón

Rafael Correa

José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero

Sebastián Piñera

Fernando Lugo

Daniel Ortega

Ollanta Humala

Dilma Roussef

José Mujica

Juan Manuel Santos

Laura Chinchilla

Mauricio Funes

Don't Know

EVALUATION OF LEADERSTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2011

Q. I am going to list a number of leaders of foreign countries. I want you to evaluate them on a scale from 0 to 10,

in which 0 means "very bad" and 10 is very good, or do you not know the person well enough to respond? * Here

only 'average„; DNA/DNK

109

Only three of the 18 leaders included in the survey - Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and Barack

Obama - have a high level of recognition and over half of Latin Americans do not recognize the

other names. In the case of Costa Rica‟s President Laura Chinchilla, this reaches 76% while the

least known is El Salvador‟s President Mauricio Funes (79%). When we talk about Latin

American integration, this is the first type of integration that is required or, in other words, that of

information and knowledge.

Table Nº 27. Evaluation of Leaders Q. I‟m going to name some leaders of other countries and I‟d like you to evaluate them of a scale of 0 to 10 where 0 is

“very bad” and 10 is “very good”. * Averages shown.

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

Barack Obama 7 6.3 6.3

Dilma Rousseff 6

King Juan Carlos I 5.9 5.9 5.7 5.9 5.8 5.9

Juan Manuel Santos 5.5 5.9

Felipe Calderón 5 5 5.7 5.6 5.8

José Mujica 5.4 5.7

Cristina Fernández de Kirchner 4.7 4.8 5.1 5.7

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero 5.6 5.6 5.5 5.8 5.6 5.6

Mauricio Funes 5.6 5.5

Laura Chinchilla 5.3 5.3

Rafael Correa 4.7 5 5 5.2 5.3

Fernando Lugo 5.5 5 4.9 5.2

Ollanta Humala 5.2

Sebastián Piñera 5 5.1

Evo Morales 4.9 4.9 4.8 4.8 4.7 4.9

Hugo Chávez 4.5 4.5 4.3 3.9 3.9 4.4

Daniel Ortega 4 4.3 4.3 4.1

Fidel Castro 4.3 4.3 4.2 4 3.8 4.1 Source: Latinobarómetro 2006-2011

In an interesting change, the scores of Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales show an

increase in 2011. In the case of Chávez, his score increases to 4.4, up from 3.9 in 2010, and,

without doubt, sympathy for him has increased as a result of his illness.

110

Source: Latinobarómetro 2005-2011

54,6 4,5 4,3 4,2

3,94,4

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 20114,4

2,4

3,4

3,4

3,5

3,5

3,6

3,6

4,3

4,4

4,4

4,5

4,6

4,7

5,0

5,2

5,9

6,1

6,3

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Latinoamérica

Costa Rica

Colombia

Chile

Panamá

Perú

México

Honduras

Paraguay

Brasil

Bolivia

Uruguay

El Salvador

Argentina

Guatemala

Ecuador

República Dominicana

Venezuela

Nicaragua

EVALUATION OF LEADERS: HUGO CHÁVEZTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2005 – 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011Q. I am going to list a number of leaders of foreign countries. I want you to evaluate them on a scale from 0 to 10,

in which 0 means "very bad" and 10 is very good, or do you not know the person well enough to respond? * Here

only 'average‟.

Source: Latinobarómetro 2005-2011

4,4 4,4 4,3 4,2 4 3,84,1

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 20114,1

2,5

3,1

3,4

3,5

3,5

3,6

3,8

4,1

4,1

4,1

4,3

4,5

4,6

4,6

4,7

4,9

4,9

5,6

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Latinoamérica

Costa Rica

Panamá

Colombia

Honduras

Chile

México

Perú

Venezuela

República Dominicana

Paraguay

Uruguay

Brasil

Bolivia

Argentina

El Salvador

Ecuador

Guatemala

Nicaragua

EVALUATION OF LEADERS: FIDEL CASTROTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2005 – 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011Q. I am going to list a number of leaders of foreign countries. I want you to evaluate them on a scale from 0 to 10,

in which 0 means "very bad" and 10 is very good, or do you not know the person well enough to respond? * Here

only 'average‟.

.

111

Source: Latinobarómetro 2006-2011

5 5 4,8 4,8 4,7 4,9

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 4,9

3,7

3,9

4,0

4,1

4,2

4,3

4,8

4,9

5,0

5,0

5,1

5,2

5,2

5,3

5,5

5,6

5,7

6,2

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Latinoamérica

Honduras

Chile

Colombia

Perú

Brasil

Costa Rica

México

Panamá

República Dominicana

Venezuela

Bolivia

Paraguay

Guatemala

El Salvador

Ecuador

Uruguay

Argentina

Nicaragua

EVALUATION OF LEADERS: EVO MORALESTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2005 – 2011 - TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011Q. I am going to list a number of leaders of foreign countries. I want you to evaluate them on a scale from 0 to 10,

in which 0 means "very bad" and 10 is very good, or do you not know the person well enough to respond? * Here

only 'average‟.

Comparison with governments‟ approval ratings reveals that there are leaders who are better

evaluated in the region than in their own countries.

EVALUATION OF INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS

The evaluation of international institutions shows little change. The order of the ranking is the

same as in 2010 and the Corporación Andina de Fomento (CAF) is also the only institution with

an increase in its score which rises from 5.6 to 5.7 on a scale of 1 to 10.

EVALUATION OF INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2009- 2011

Q. From the list of institutions that are on the card, mention all you know and give your note from 1 to 10, with

1 being very bad and 10 very good. *Here only averages

Source: Latinobarómetro 2009- 2011

5,8

5,9

6,2

6,5

5,8

5,6

6,0

6,1

6,3

6,6

5,7

5,7

6,0

6,1

6,2

6,6

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Fondo Monetario Internacional

Corporación Andina de Fomento

Banco Mundial

Banco Interamericano de Desarrollo

Organizaciones Estados Americanos

Organización de Naciones Unidas

2011 2010 2009

112

The two best evaluated institutions are the United Nations (UN), with 6.6 points, and the

Organization of American States (OAS), with 6.2 points. Close to half the region‟s inhabitants

are, however, not familiar with these institutions.

Evaluation of the UN has shown practically no change since it was first measured in 2002.

Similarly, we find only very slight changes in its recognition level, with the percentage of Latin

Americans not familiar with it reaching 47% in 2009, dropping to 43% in 2010 and rising again to

45% in 2011.

EVALUATION OF THE UNTOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2002 – 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011

Source: Latinobarómetro 2002-2011

6.9 6.1 6.5 6.5 6.6

4037

4743 45

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2002 2003 2009 2010 2011

Average Don't Know

6.6

5.5

5.7

5.7

6.1

6.2

6.3

6.3

6.4

6.4

6.6

6.7

6.9

6.9

7.0

7.1

7.2

7.4

7.5

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Latinoamérica

Honduras

Venezuela

República Dominicana

Bolivia

Uruguay

El Salvador

Chile

Guatemala

Perú

Nicaragua

Ecuador

Paraguay

Colombia

Argentina

Panamá

Brasil

Costa Rica

México

Q. From the list of institutions that are on the card, mention all you know and give your note from 1 to 10, with

1 being very bad and 10 very good. *Here only averages

As in the case of the UN, evaluation of the OAS has varied little and, after peaking at 6.7 points in

2001, has held steady at 6.2 points since 2009. The percentage of Latin Americans unfamiliar with

it, which was running at 53% in 2011, has also held steady, with annual variations of only two or

three decimal points.

113

Source: Latinobarómetro 2001 – 2011

6,7 6,2 6,2 6,2

5255

52 53

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

2001 2009 2010 2011

Average Don't know 6,2

5,0

5,4

5,5

5,8

5,8

5,8

6,2

6,2

6,2

6,4

6,5

6,5

6,6

6,6

6,7

6,8

7,0

7,1

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Latinoamérica

Honduras

Argentina

Venezuela

Uruguay

Bolivia

República Dominicana

Brasil

Chile

Nicaragua

Perú

Guatemala

Colombia

México

Ecuador

El Salvador

Paraguay

Panamá

Costa Rica

EVALUATION OF THE ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN

STATES TOTAL LATIN AMERICA 2001 – 2011 – TOTALS BY COUNTRY 2011Q. From the list of institutions that are on the card, mention all you know and give your note from 1 to 10, with

1 being very bad and 10 very good. *Here only averages

CONCLUDING REMARKS

Behind the stereotype born of the desolation of the twentieth century, there is a different Latin

America. A transformation has taken place but the world has yet to be convinced of it.

There has been a slow consolidation of the core values of democracy such as compliance with the

law. Governments are the institutions in which trust has increased most, although there is a

reversal of this trend in 2011, and the legitimacy of parliament increases slowly. An important

part of the region‟s inhabitants say they expect the future to show no change and, in other words,

anticipate stability. Economic stability is a new and fascinating phenomenon for Latin America

and job stability has more than doubled over the past decade, reaching a new record in 2011.

Never before have so few people reported serious economic difficulties (10%) and the education

of four in ten Latin Americans today is one level above that of the home in which were they born.

Eight in ten Latin Americans are connected to the world through a mobile telephone. The region

has moved away from the United States and it is regarded as a model mainly in Central America

whereas South America looks increasingly to other parts of the world and, principally, Europe.

Above all, satisfaction with life has increased, independently of the variations that can occur.

Nothing alters the region‟s growing happiness. Over the past decade, 150 million Latin Americans

have achieved access to consumption.

At the same time, however, there are enormous pending challenges, starting with the economic

problems still experienced by a very significant part of the population, with low wages, precarious

housing, limited access to healthcare and poor-quality education, despite the fact that

unemployment is running at one of its lowest levels. Inequality remains the largest threat, with

discrimination as its most immediate cultural consequence. Levels of tolerance and trust remain

low and Latin Americans trust neither political parties nor their fellows. Democracy has not been

able to change these key features of the region‟s civic culture and, in 2011, Latin Americans

punish principally their governments, especially those which had performed well during the

114

previous year. A change of leader is one of the reasons for demanding more but there is also

dissatisfaction because the increase in wealth is not accompanied by the expected distribution.

Governments fail to increase the perception that they govern for the majority. There is a sensation

of abuse and undue privileges.

Satisfaction with the state is low and falls short of satisfaction with governments. The main threats

are posed by crime, including organized crime and drug trafficking, and by violence in general

which trigger anger against those who have too much. We have seen an explosion of social

demands in Chile which, with its economic success, shows that growth alone does not serve to

satisfy demands. It is rather the way in which this growth is distributed within each society that is

important in understanding this discontent. In 2011, there is an increase in the perception that

income is unfairly distributed. The better-educated emerging middle classes want a larger piece of

the pie and perceptions of the benefits of growth weaken. The downturn in growth finally

convinced the region‟s citizens that it is not well distributed and this is reflected across many

indicators, ranging from the perception of progress to trust in institutions. In 2011, governments

do less well than in 2010 Satisfaction with democracy drops by five points along with GDP

growth for the first time since the Asian crisis while support for democracy declines by three

points.

The state is under the scrutiny of Latin Americans, satisfaction with its services is low and

demands are increasing as seen in Chile in demand for more and better education. In the last

generation, four in ten Latin Americans have achieved social mobility through education and their

demands, therefore, increase. Education is followed by healthcare in the demands of the middle

classes. These are the demands of a prosperity that has incorporated 150 million Latin Americans

into the market.

Between 2007 and 2009, Latin America was able to mitigate the impact of the crisis with counter-

cyclical measures but this did not happen in 2011 when, in the face of a deceleration of growth,

the region‟s governments do not take measures to alleviate the impact on their most vulnerable

citizens. In 2007-2009, the positive effect on democracy was historic with governments

successfully decoupling its evaluation from the economy, producing a change in the right

direction despite the crisis. In 2011, this effect disappears. Latin America still needs to learn that

the swings of the economy have a very different impact on different sectors of society. Higher

growth does not lead to better distribution while lower growth affects those who are most

vulnerable. In other words, those who have least do not benefit from growth and suffer in a

deceleration.

The hidden Latin America, that which has emerged from thirty years of social policies and

reforms, is a different region. It is no longer the land of “come back tomorrow” nor that of

stereotyped Hollywood films. It is a region on the march with great demands that is striding

towards more open and democratic societies along a non-conventional road and with important

lags.

115

TECHNICAL DATA BY COUNTRY, 2011

Country Company Methodology Sample (Nº of

cases)

Sampling Error

(95% intervals of

confidence)

Representation (%

of total population)

Argentina MBC MORI Consultores Three-stage modified probabilistic sample, with quotas in final stage

1,200 +/- 2.8% 100%

Bolivia IPSOS Apoyo, Opinión y

Mercado S.A.

Three-stage modified probabilistic

sample, with quotas in final stage

1,200 +/- 2.8% 100%

Brazil IBOPE Inteligencia Brazil Three-stage modified probabilistic

sample, with quotas in final stage

1,204 +/- 2.8% 100%

Chile MORI Chile S.A. Three-stage probabilistic sample 1,200 +/- 2.8% 100%

Colombia Centro Nacional de Consultoría

Modified probabilistic sample: conglomerates, stratified and multi-stage

1,200 +/- 3.5% 100%

Costa Rica CID-GALLUP Three-stage modified probabilistic

sample, with quotas in final stage

1,000 +/- 3.1% 100%

Dominican

Republic

CID-GALLUP Three-stage modified probabilistic

sample, with quotas in final stage

1,000 +/- 3.1% 100%

Ecuador IPSOS Apoyo, Opinión y Mercado S.A.

Three-stage modified probabilistic sample, with quotas in final stage

1,200 +/- 2.8% 100%

El

Salvador

CID-GALLUP Three-stage modified probabilistic

sample, with quotas in final stage

1,000 +/- 3.1% 100%

Guatemala CID-GALLUP Three-stage modified probabilistic

sample, with quotas in final stage

1,000 +/- 3.1% 100%

Honduras CID-GALLUP Three-stage modified probabilistic

sample, with quotas in final stage

1,000 +/- 3.1% 100%

Mexico Olivares

Plata Consultores S.A.

Three-stage modified probabilistic

sample, with quotas in final stage

1,200 +/- 2.8% 100%

Nicaragua CID-GALLUP Three-stage modified probabilistic

sample, with quotas in final stage

1,000 +/- 3.1% 100%

Panama CID-GALLUP Three-stage modified probabilistic

sample, with quotas in final stage

1,000 +/- 3.1% 100%

Paraguay Equipos MORI Consultores

Four-stage modified probabilistic

sample in urban areas and three stages in

rural areas, with quotas in final stage

1,200 +/- 2.8% 100%

Peru

IPSOS Apoyo, Opinión y

Mercado S.A.

Three-stage modified probabilistic

sample, with quotas in final stage

1,200 +/- 2.8% 100%

Uruguay Equipos MORI Consultores Three-stage modified probabilistic

sample in urban areas and four stages in

rural areas, with quotas in final stage

1,200 +/- 2.8% 100%

Venezuela DATANALISIS Four-stage probabilistic sample 1,200 +/- 2.8% 100%