The U.S. is Trending Towards Authoritarianism, Warns Mexican Scholar who comes “from the Future”

By: Oliver Gerharz

Martin Echeverria visited from Mexico to lecture in UW–Madison's Vilas Hall this week, highlighting the similarities between current authoritarian patterns in the United States and the early presidencies of eventual Latin American dictators.

With his foresight based on hindsight for his own country's history, Echeverria pointed out “a combination of circumstances […] that could lead to the normalization of authoritarian practices.” “Latin Americanization” was the name that Echeverria used to describe how Donald Trump's playbook was drawing heavily from Latin America's history. 

Echeverria pointed out similarities between Elon Musk's relationship to President Trump and the decades–long relationship between Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo and Emilio Azcarraga, the president of the powerful broadcaster Grupo Televisa. The similarities were clear, but the differences were more audacious. “I was impressed by how open this was. Musk making decisions, setting policy. It was so cynical,” Echeverria said, “it was unthinkable 20 years ago, but you see it openly.”

Echevarria also drew comparisons between Trump and Latin American populists, especially Jair Bolsanaro and the similarities between the media coverage of attempts on their lives. Argentina, a country led by populist Javier Milei, was among those with trends in media trust that Echeverria compared to current trends in America.

According to Echeverria, America's falling trust in media is hurting its ability to act as a public watchdog, a role which Echeverria's colleague Ruben Gonzalez described as a “marriage of convenience” between journalists and politicians, who “hate each other, but need each other.” Gonzalez said that the populists have a preference for propaganda rather than journalism, and that the use of terms like “fake news” evoked his memories of a former president who used to call journalists who criticized him “traitors”.

Leonor Hidalgo, another scholar given time to speak following Echeverria's lecture, said social media was also growing as a tool for governance. Quoting Colombia's President Gustavo Petro on the recent deportation conflicts between his country and the United States, Hidalgo said “People ask me why I tweet so much. I will continue governing by Twitter because I get better results on social media than I do on the media outlets. Television just tells lies about me.”

The mistrust that Petro appeals to is contributing to what Echeverria calls a disengaged and disinformed population. “You can say the last practices I described are institutional, but there is this concerning thing about the citizenry,” Echeverria said.

Mexico has now pushed out the authoritarian impulse from its government, but Echeverria understands how the tactics that allowed for a rise of populism prevailed. “Some groups [in the United States] are trying to adopt some tactics from Latin America because there are now conditions that allow those conditions to thrive, not because these tactics are good,” Echeverria said. “I come from the future where we had authoritarian dictatorships and populism,” Echeverria said, “please don't go that way.”