Today is the most important annual holiday for Christians around the world, and it makes sense for me to pause and reflect here on where Latin America stands on this Good Friday.
As anyone who works for clients or with colleagues anywhere in the region knows well, no one is returning calls, emails or WhatsApp messages today or through the weekend. As a Catholic myself who has lived in the region, I know that for the vast majority of people there, today is about sacrifice and the meaning of Jesus Christ’s martyrdom in a broader context. It isn’t about the violence of the social betrayal and death that he suffered, but his ultimate strength in knowing why he was going through it and the faith in what was to come.
For a region so beset by failed regimes, organized crime, violence, endemic corruption and broken promises, it is remarkable how resilient its optimism has been. Latin Americans have good reasons to sink into a kind of deep, all-encompassing cynicism about their place in society and in the larger world, after the horrors of dictatorships both soft and hard, run by both communists and military juntas. They’ve been lied to, stolen from, abused and stifled, held for ransom, forgotten and left for dead. They have fled their homes, their towns and their countries in the millions as part of the biggest modern displacement of people in modern times.
And yet talk to many Latin Americans on this Holy Week and you might be surprised at how hopeful they are right now. The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are concerning, but it also reminds them how their part of the world is not at war. Their farmers, fuel producers, extraction industries, manufacturers and shipping lanes are not on fire or under missile attack. Their soldiers are not heading off to a conflict zone.
What’s more, some of their leaders are disrupting the old, failed models of state power and economic development and going off in a new direction. They are prioritizing basic security against crime as a human right, given how it is essential for freedom and commerce to flourish. They are reforming economic policy to liberate their countries from heavy state intervention and oligarchic protectionism. And they are looking at redefining organized crime cartels as transnational terrorist organizations, which they certainly appear to be given how they use the threat of violence to undermine democratic civil societies.
Nicolas Maduro is in a U.S. prison and Venezuelan opposition leaders are coming out of prisons. The Cuban dictatorship may finally be seeing its end in the coming years. While not a uniform phenomenon, poverty and misery have declined dramatically in the last twenty years across Latin America. Industries are innovating and turning to the global economy with an ambition to enter and compete, leaping over the garden walls of protectionism and kleptocracy.
What’s more — and this is anecdotal for me, not backed up by any data I’ve researched — some of the most talented young people in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico are not leaving. They are staying. I have spoken to so many. They see opportunity and fortunes to be found at home. While this is delighting their parents and grandparents, no doubt, it should also be music to the ears of governments and more modern-thinking employers.
Rebirth and renewal are in the air in Latin America. It’s palpable. On this Easter weekend, I can’t help but cling to the faith I’ve also privately nurtured for most of my adult life that Latin America will not only rise again, but achieve the promise it has always held.
Happy Easter, everyone. Thanks for subscribing, as always, and please have a joyous holiday.