Why are so many Latin American and Caribbean politicians assassination targets?

A presidential candidate in Ecuador is gunned down days before the election. The president of Haiti is shot to death and his wife is seriously wounded when assassins storm their home.

High-ranking political leaders survive violent attacks in Argentina, Colombia, Brazil and Venezuela.

Running for public office in much of Latin America and the Caribbean can literally be a matter of life and death.

“Latin America’s democracies are quite new and fragile, and political violence represents an enormous threat,” said Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America Program at the Wilson Center, a Washington-based think tank.

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Why is there so much political violence in Latin America?
Political violence in Mexico and other Latin American countries can often be traced to high levels of polarization, extreme insecurity and organized crime, Gedan said.

Organized criminal groups typically exert control through corruption. “They are able to call up state institutions by buying off police chiefs and general and even the president,” Gedan said. “But they also resort to violence when necessary.”

Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated after gunmen stormed into his bedroom in Port-au-Prince in 2021. Authorities said dozens of people were involved in the killing, which they have described as a conspiracy involving Haitian officials and Colombian mercenaries.

Given the fragile nature of many Latin America’s democracies, any act of political violence rightfully provokes anxiety because it discourages potential leaders from getting involved in politics and undermines the authority of those who are elected, Gedan said.

“There’s a crisis of representation in Latin America, a sense that political elites simply don’t represent the majority of voters,” Gedan said. “Anytime an election process is not in the hands of voters, it undermines the legitimacy of a leader.”

There’s also the risk that political violence will become so normalized that it will be used not only by organized crime figures but by politicians against their rivals, Gedan said.

“It really is corrosive to democracy in this region,” he said.

Michael Collins covers the White House. Follow him on Twitter @mcollinsNEWS.

Contributing: The Associated Press

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