 Hi, welcome everyone. Yeah, we'll be starting, we'll be starting momentarily. Right. Thank you everyone. And hello. Thank you for tuning in. Welcome to the top slide in American committees. First live conversation of our speaker series titled decision 2021 elections in Latin America. My name is my turn on the road, and I am this year's vice president. Here at lack, we seek to dissect and scrutinize current events and issues in Latin America. Our mission is centered around creating spaces like these that engage both the top community and the general public to keep the conversation about the region alive. 2021 will prove to be a year of massive structural change in America with nine elections being hosted throughout the continent, five of which will be presidential. Massive influx of political change and continue continually democratic contestation and electoral participation will undoubtedly impact the next decade of Latin America politics. That's it. Thank you for joining us today for the inaugural conversation of this speaker series, where we will explore the region's elections with our invited expert. For this conversation, we will focus on three countries. Ecuador and Brazil. Ecuador and Peru went through elections two weeks ago, and their top candidates represented opposing views. We will analyze what factors came into play for their successes, how their campaigns have echoed the needs of the people and tried to notice regional trends towards certain policies or politicians. In the case of Brazil, a country with heavy influence in the region, we will try to infer what the 2022 elections will look like given the current state of the country and its leaders notorious controversies. With us today is Brian Winder, a journalist and expert in this field. Mr. Winder is the editor-in-chief of America Squadron and the Vice President for Policy at America Society and Council of the Americas. Winder spent a decade living in Latin America as a journalist for readers based in Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and Mexico City. Since 2015, he has been based in New York City. His writings include the accidental president of Brazil, the story of Brazil's former president Fernando Enrique Cardoso, and no lost causes with ex-Colombian president Alvaro Rivera. Winder has been featured in TV, radio and media from NPR and the Wall Street Journal to Latin American media. Thank you for your presence today, Mr. Winder. It is a pleasure to have you here. Thank you, Mateo, for having me and for that introduction and I appreciate the invitation and admire all of you for being here on a Friday afternoon, which I know is always hard and a beautiful Friday afternoon too. So thank you for spending some time with us. It is also my honor and pleasure to introduce today's moderator, Patrick Bellard, who's the president of LAC. Patrick, whenever you're ready, you can take it. Thanks, Mateo. I'm glad it's an honor and pleasure. It's an honor and pleasure for me to be here. Thanks to everyone for tuning in. And thanks to Brian. Thank you so much again for kind of separating time from your day from this beautiful day, as you say, to speak with us a little bit. You know, before we dive into the questions, just two quick comments. If the audience does have any questions and there is a Q&A function, feel free to submit them through there and then we'll hopefully get to them by the end of this. And then I guess the second thing is that, Brian, if you could kind of give us a bit of a primer on what we'll be discussing today and a bit of your background, then that would be great. And we'll dive into the questions afterwards. All right, Patrick, that sounds great. Well, thanks again for the opportunity and just to briefly tell you a little bit about myself and why a gringo from Texas is here to talk to you today about Latin America. My story with Latin America really began right after I graduated undergrad from the University of Texas at Austin back in February of 2000. Six weeks after graduation, I bought myself a one way ticket to Buenos Aires with kind of a big dream of becoming eventually a journalist, but I thought at the time I would just be going to speak English for a while. So I ended up walking into the beginnings of one of the biggest economic meltdowns of the last 80 years, which is, you know, hit Argentina between 2001 and 2002, and that did turn into an internship and then a job with Reuters. Covering that whole crisis that saw five presidents in two weeks and a huge currency devaluation and big debt default unemployment was upwards of 30%. It was in many ways it was my baptism by fire and kind of journalism as well as Latin America. It ended up turning into a career and I've been following Latin American politics for the last 20 years. Half of that time I spent living in the region, the time in Buenos Aires which I already mentioned I did one year in Mexico City and then most recently I was based in Brazil in Brazil from 2010 to 2015. Since then I've been here in New York. I am a political analyst who follows Latin America and I also edit a publication about the region called America's Quarterly, which I hope you're, I hope you're familiar with. And, you know, as we look at the region today. Gosh, things are really tough. 2020 was a very difficult year. Latin America has 8% of the world's population but it had 28% of the world's confirmed COVID-19 related deaths last year. It was also with the Eurozone the part of the world that suffered the most economic damage. It has spiked hunger schools have been closed in far greater numbers than any other region in the world. And unfortunately, you know now that we're into 2021. And I, I, I frankly just on a personal note, I remind myself of this all the time. For most of us who are here in the United States. We've gotten better this year. You know, the, the death, the case loads are down. The pandemic has receded somewhat, although it hasn't totally disappeared. And we're making really extraordinary progress in terms of vaccines, as well as the economic recovery. And so if you're an American, you know, things seem better this year. But for most Latin Americans they're not even in the countries where vaccination has been relatively ahead of the curve and I'm thinking of Chile and Uruguay and a couple other places. Cases have continued to go up and those countries are still in sort of different stages of lockdown. And, you know, lockdown really more severe than we've generally seen here in the US and Chile people are really not leaving their apartments. And that's that's true in some other cases as well so things, things remain really tough and that's the people are tired. They're sick. They've lost loved ones. They're really angry at their governments, almost across the board. And that's really kind of the, the broader context for some of these specific elections that we're going to talk about today. So, Patrick with that, again, very short intro, kind of hand things over back to you. Brian, yes, I mean, everything you've kind of touched upon will hopefully get to discuss a bit more, you know, as the questions continue to unravel. Just a couple of comments the way we're going to approach it is kind of through through a case study basis we'll be looking at the Brazilian elections that are happening next year in October 2022 if I'm not mistaken. And then we'll take a look at Ecuador's elections which happened earlier this month and the Peruvian elections which are in the process and will be finalizing in June. Right, so I guess we'll just we'll just dive straight into it. First of all, concerning the Brazilian elections. Attention is on the possible polarization between Bolsonaro and Lula in the 2022 elections in Brazil. These observers worry about the prospect of a deeply polarized campaign in 2022 that will contaminate the political environment for coming months and could eliminate the space for other candidacies. It's worth noting that although Lula has not formally confirmed his candidacy, if I'm not mistaken, a recent poll conducted by IPEC or EPIC determined that the former president leads Bolsonaro by 12 points in terms of popularity which I guess is just something interesting to take into consideration. Brian question is, you know, you're one of the analytical figures who has expressed a bit of skepticism for this polarization. So I was wondering if you could explain your reasoning for skepticism on the effects of, you know, this polarization between Bolsonaro and Lula in the 2022 elections and its impact. Yeah, these are great question to start. I can tell you guys are following Brazil really closely just kind of by the way that that was that was phrased. Look, I have expressed skepticism on Twitter and elsewhere that we would end up with a, you know, very polarized Lula versus Bolsonaro election. And less skeptical than I was maybe a month and a half ago meaning that with each passing day it seems more likely to me that we're going to end up with that Lula versus Bolsonaro race and I have to say I mean the word polarization. It gets used a lot in today's politics and sometimes it is a negative thing. And sometimes it's not anything to really be afraid of meaning polarization can mean people with different ideas and kind of different visions for what the future is. For what the future of Brazil is going to be. And I think that's clearly the case with these two candidates. And I'll come back a little bit to kind of what they are standing for and sort of their tactics, but to first just touch a little bit on the Brazilian context and kind of what's been happening over the last couple of months. And I mean the general intro that I gave regarding Latin America as a whole those things hold very true in Brazil. This P1 variant, the so called Manaus variant that was first located or first spotted in Brazil has just wreaked havoc this year and there are heartbreaking ways after you know it was already a difficult year in terms of the number of deaths last year. It's been awful to watch you know scenes of hospitals running out of oxygen and kind of lines out the door of hospitals, and the federal government the Bolsonaro government has received a lot of blame for that and a lot of it is justified. In this scenario, echoing in many cases the rhetoric that was coming out of Washington from his self described idle, his word is idle Donald Trump, you know really spent the initial months of the pandemic, using very similar language talking about how it was just a little flu touting hydroxychloroquine as a quote unquote miracle cure even though it's effects were not proven, which is kind of a diplomatic way of describing, you know, the effects of that that medication. And not really mobilizing Brazil's resources for vaccines in the kind of energetic way that he could have and again I'm maybe I'm being too diplomatic with my language I mean, Brazil is a country that has a long history of being advanced on vaccines. And it kind of frittered that away over the period of several months because again you had a president who, for various reasons was determined not to take it seriously. Now this was attenuated somewhat by and this will sound contradictory but you know sometimes especially in these big countries you can have multiple stories going on. Brazil also had on an economic side, the most rigorous kind of support, given to the most vulnerable amount members of society to help them through the, the pandemic I say the most, the most vigorous in Latin America. Brazil gave monthly payments for most of 2020 of about $100 $115 per month to some of these very vulnerable sectors of society and you know that may not sound to a layman like much but in a place like Brazil for people who are sort of part of the most economically vulnerable portions of society. It was actually a game changer, I mean it really helped a lot of people get through the pandemic. In a much better way than they would have otherwise and as a matter of fact, nationally because they were giving out this aid, the percentage of people living in extreme poverty actually fell compared to prior to the pandemic so this was a big deal that kind of helped sustain both scenarios approval ratings for a while, even as COVID was spreading like wildfire through society and causing a lot of, you know, health care hardship people economically felt okay about what was happening. It also helped support the broader economy in Brazil, Brazil's economy amongst the big ones was the economy that suffered the least destructive recession last year it only shrank about 4 point something percent. So, so you know those that was something that that was able to sustain both scenarios approval ratings for a while. But now sitting here in April 2021. I mean, the problem is you can't a country like Brazil that is has it's a fiscal accounts under pressure even in the best of times. They're able to afford those programs forever. And so that aid has now been substantially reduced and surprise surprise both scenarios approval ratings are now spiraling downward again. And so after the breach then back in March, stepped Lula. And, you know, I, I, I, I'm happy to sort of go into more detail about Lula's past I don't know how people bill how acquainted people are with who he is but this is a guy who's been a central figure, I would argue the central figure in Brazilian politics going all the way back to 1980. I mean he's really been kind of the protagonist. He was back now 40 plus years, and he was somewhat unexpectedly allowed to become a candidate he had been briefly. He was jailed for about a year on corruption charges, but those corruption charges were overturned by first by a one Supreme Court judge and by kind of the court as a whole. And the bottom line is that now to the surprise of some. It looks like Lula is going to be able to be a candidate next year and Patrick, you know, I do think he will run in fact I'm pretty certain that he will run, and it looks like it's going to be. I mean, I think it's safe to say Lula is a slight favorite at this point I don't I don't know that he's a slam dunk to win and there's a lot of time between now and next October, but he's he's looking strong and I, you know, given the bolster still maintains 25 to 30% of society is kind of with him no matter what, and Lula has about the equivalent. And, you know, maybe there's still a path for some kind of third party candidate who might be more in the center, but it looks very narrow. And some of the candidates who they thought might step into that space have kind of gone. No, you know, I mean they just see that there's so much energy with both of these candidates that that some of these figures appear to be sort of backing off and either pursuing other positions or not getting involved in politics at all. Yeah, I mean, I think you you laid brilliantly, you know, kind of explaining the whole scenario of what we're going into in 2022 and how, you know, this past year and the pandemic has influenced kind of Bolsonaro's, I guess, chances of getting elected. And something that you mentioned obviously consistently in the pandemic kind of presents a brilliant segue for kind of the next question that we wanted to ask you which correlates the pandemic with Bolsonaro's breed of populism. Now a little bit on, I guess for our audience on Bolsonaro's response to the pandemic. You know it's been met with a lot of criticism criticism due to his inability to curtail the threat, it poses to Brazil, you know, his response is mostly characterized by indifference I guess it's not even a matter of you know it's it's failure to acknowledge to a certain extent. And you know responses to the crisis have been slow. So I guess the question is how is his handling of the pandemic, a direct manifestation of his populism and to the guests his brand of populism. No, it's a good question. You know, populism is kind of a word that I, maybe I'm sort of quibbling here that I tend to avoid because I find that it gets misused a lot in the political space that it's kind of one of those words that people use to describe. I'm not suggesting you're doing this but people use to describe somebody who they don't agree with. I mean, I think that in Bolsonaro's case, the more accurate I think he's clearly he's nationalist, but he also he subscribes to he calls it sort of an anti globalist, socially conservative school of thought that, you know, is very influenced by Donald Trump, specifically specifically by Steve Bannon, who has many interlocutors in positions of power in Brazil, including the president's son who they apparently. I mean they I know for a fact they've talked and they've talked they've spoken regularly over the years. But to be fair and to sort of try to paint all kind of sides of this for you, I mean, the way that Bolsonaro has cast this argument such I mean look he was clearly denialist, and has been consistently denialist at intervals since the pandemic started the way you can erase kind of those things that he said what he would say if he was here is that he has also stood up for people's quote unquote right to work and earn a living for them for their families in a country where there's often very little between between like day to day existence and starvation right I mean I, you know, people, most people in Brazil live on a very tenuous income and to not be able to go outside their homes and work for even a couple days puts them in a very difficult way very quickly so you know Bolsonaro has, I think somewhat cynically but also somewhat sincerely presented himself as sort of the defender is the guy who's going to stand up against your governor your mayor who wants to do lockpounds and keep you inside and and and then you know he has said some things in defense of that that I personally find reprehensible. I mean, you know things like. We're all going to die one, we're all going to die someday. Yes, people have died. I'm sorry, what do you want me to do. I mean just some very kind of you know attempts to kind of wash his hands so I think you know I think some of it is clearly world view. I think some of it is also listening to some of the wrong people. And, and I think some of it again to be fair I think some of it is a recognition that while things like mask wearing the efficacy of that is not not open for debate. The efficacy of lockdowns is open to debate and he has positioned himself as very anti lockdown, because they say he says they do more harm than good and I, you know, so that's that's kind of where he's been but what's undeniable as we sit here and again in April 2021 is the public's opinion of his handling of the pandemic is is at the floor. I mean whatever good will was generated by this emergency program that he started is is is gone now, and he's really suffering a lot of political pressure as a result. And one just just just one one note on that. The day Lula was allowed back in the race was sort of officially authorized, you know, to where he had his corruption conviction overturned it became clear that he was probably going to be a candidate again. Bolsonaro shows up for a press conference with a mask on, which was not something that he had done much of and it wasn't the first time but it was definitely everybody kind of went like he realizes that he's under pressure. He's under pressure now. And there have been some other moves that he's made since then that clearly, you know, are kind of in a defensive posture, preparing for, you know, a very strong election challenge next year that he didn't expect when the year began. Right. Um, yeah, I mean I remember that vividly I think it was like March 8 or the week of March 8 that it was, it was kind of a turnaround where, yeah, he was kind of wearing his mask and it was like, Oh, okay, I guess, he feels the pressure definitely. So I guess another area where where, you know, Bolsonaro has has, I guess, received a little bit of controversy is in the climate change sphere specifically especially you know given his kind of vast territory in Brazil and his role in protecting the Amazon. You know many international leaders have criticized his administration's inability to take climate crises in Brazil seriously. And he has said that his recent speech at the climate summit, which, yeah, it was more cognizant of the crisis but he apparently has failed to still put his words into action. So, you know, could his inability to deal with the climate crisis negatively impact his election chances. And one that's kind of playing out before our eyes right now, you know, with this big speech that he gave yesterday at the climate summit. Look, I mean there's no question that Bolsonaro spent the first two plus years of his presidency and frankly his entire career before that dismissing man made climate change as a problem. And I think specific actions that undermined what had been a success a Brazilian success story over the last 25, really 20 years in terms of reducing deforestation levels. The deforestation levels had started to rise again prior to his presidency but they've dramatically gone up there up 40% since he took office on New Year's Day in 2019. And, you know, this is a guy who also for part of his political support base in Congress has the so-called grilleros and, you know, kind of illegal loggers and others as part of his support base so I think it's perfectly fair to be skeptical of him because he has kind of changed his tune somewhat and, you know, his speech yesterday did surprise a lot of people with its tone, as well as some of the specifics. I was speaking to a former US diplomat just earlier today, who told me that his reaction while listening to the speech was one of astonishment he was like, who is this guy. It doesn't even sound like the same Bolsonaro. And apparently there was even some technical language that was in there that was virtually identical to what the Workers Party governments on the left had been saying 10 years ago. And so, you know, it really does show a change in tone. But look, I mean the fair question is so what. So what you gave a speech. So what. And that is, for all the reasons I cited a very fair and I think necessary question and the the answer really is, is now Brazil has to show positive progress in terms of reducing before station levels in 2021. We got some goals yesterday for 2030. It's, it's not gonna be enough, because for two reasons I mean one because I think we all know the urgency of climate change and we know that this government in the United States is attuned to that, but also, you know the diplomats and specifically and Kerry, you know the former Secretary of State whose Biden's climate and boy, they are very attuned to the possibility that Brazil is just bullshitting to use the technical term. And so they want to make sure that there's, you know, real progress in 2021. And so they're going to be watching very closely and as far as the question about the impact on the election. I, it's tough to say I don't think it ultimately impacts many votes because this has not been a big domestic issue in Brazil and as a matter of fact. There's been polling over the years it suggests that resilience mostly approve or better put, it's actually one of Bolsonaro's best issues and polls is handling of the environment because people kind of see it as an us versus them thing. It does make a big difference in certain quarters and particularly the business establishment in Brazil, which is very anti deforestation, because they realize that it poses a risk to their bottom lines basically they fear, you know whether you're Brazilian bank, or I think in a lot of cases with the business companies they realized that, you know, this whole deforestation thing this whole Amazon question and having Leo de Caprio and others kind of tweeting about you all the time. It's bad for business because it affects your reputation it makes people not going to buy your product, and it makes Brazil kind of a toxic brand in the world. So, you know, part of the reason why Bolsonaro is changing his tack on this is because of pressure from the business sector specifically, whose support he need you know he was he had back in 2018 when he got elected and who he needs again in 2022. Okay, well, yeah, this is all incredible and extremely interesting and I guess we could just talk about this the rest of the conversation but considering that we do have a couple of other elections to get to. We can move on to the Ecuadorian election. And I'll give the parole to my day I don't know if you want to go ahead and ask some questions on on Ecuador. Thank you Patrick. Brian, as we were discussing earlier, right. Because there's just just a very peculiar case. You know, having the first round of elections in February, where it was the, where the second place was very contested and there was a lot of controversy on whether a candidate Guillermo lasso. You know, like actually passed to the second round and it was contested by the, by the third runner, Yacu Pérez and by many other blocks. And then finalizing in, in, in, in April and actually having Guillermo lasso beat the Correista candidate, Andrés Arauz, who was a former culture minister and central bank director, you know, representing the ex presidents Rafael Correá legacy of leftist policies in Ecuador. And, and who, who, at least to my eyes was very against, against many odds Guillermo lasso was able to beat in a very narrow, you know, by a very narrow difference to be, be that Andrés Arauz. So my first question would be a, you know, Lasso's chances of winning were slim. Again, in the first round, he was the second runner by 13 by a 13 point difference from a house. You know, there was controversy on whether he was supposed to come in second or Yacu Pérez. And there was even a tendency to request Lasso to step down from the candidacy for the country's sake, you know. And so, so, and you know, there's also the case that the democratic left and the indigenous block later pushed for voting no or submitting an empty ballot in the second, the second round of voting. Brian, out of all these things, what do you think made Lasso win against against so many odds? Well, thank you, Mateo, for those questions. And I, you know, as we were talking a little bit in the pregame, you know, you're Ecuadorian and actually Ecuador is one of only two countries in the region that I've never actually worked in or been to before. So I always always try to make that disclaimer because that, you know, people, people like to give opinions and I think it's tough to really be a credible analyst on some of these places if, if you've never been there. In my case with Ecuador, I've been following it very closely, but it's it's it's not the same if you've been there on the ground. I mean, if I, if I stray it all from the, you know, from the beaten path I trust you'll you'll keep you'll keep me honest and sort of jump in and I'd like to hear your opinion on some of these things too. Look, I think Ecuador had this this election had outsized importance that kind of surpassed Ecuador's actual size which of course it's not not one of the the largest countries or the largest economies on the continent. You know this was a barometer where election where you know we saw kind of a center right candidate in in Guillermo Lasso who you know was a banker or a businessman who had had run for president I think twice before and and fallen short running against this younger figure Andre Saraos who was in his 30s. Actually, I think it was a 30 year difference between an age between these two candidates, but our house was there very much as kind of a, almost a proxy candidate for Rafael Korea who had been the president during the 2000s and part of the reason people were watching this is because one of the kind of macro trends happening in Latin American politics right now is this you know reaching back into the 2000s. You know the 2000s were a great period for Latin America it was in fact you could argue the period from roughly 2003 to 2013 was was probably the best period in the region's modern history. Economically politically you know it was mostly Democratic, you had the commodities boom being driven by all this demand from China. You had economies that grew at very vigorous rates and you also had some 50 million people who came out of poverty, and into the middle class and Ecuador was was a country where one of the countries where this happened and so all across the region I mean in Argentina where they, they, they last year they, they elected, not Christina Kirchner but Christina Kirchner was the vice president and she had somebody in the, in the presidential spot, you know that was at least at some effort for a lot of Argentines that was an ability to kind of recreate the magic of those years. I think similar dynamic clearly in play in Ecuador and by the way I think there's an element of that in the Brazilian election that we were just talking about. Part of the reason that so many people want Lula back is because they remember those years correctly. They remember those years as being really good years. So, and most of these leaders, you know, with the so called pink tide of kind of a grab bag if you will have kind of flavors along the ideological spectrum on the left, meaning you had kind of center leftist figures during those years Lula who were democratic, and then you had kind of the much harder left anti democratic and dictatorial as represented by Chavez in Venezuela which is all to say that's kind of the regional context in which this whole Ecuadorian vote happened. Now, as for the specifics on this one, I, I like you Mateo I mean I was very surprised that Lasso one, and you know you mentioned the result was close but it actually wasn't that close it was, you know also one by five percentage points which in today's politics is is a lot and the concession happened very quickly at what explains a you know 60 something year old banker, winning in a country where I'm here it gets very convoluted but like basically he was representing a kind of continuity from the Lenin Moreno government in terms of economic policies and a government that was extremely unpopular, the Moreno government right. I think that the the easiest answer is that you had that the backlash against Korea, and against that sort of brand of politics was stronger than many of us anticipated, and it was strong kind of throughout society but where it really surprised us was in indigenous movements and indigenous movements. And here just to kind of conclude I mean again all this stuff like when you try to explain the details it can get really complicated but as you referenced they were really there were three main candidates in the first round of this election. And the guy that Lasso edged out was this Yaku Pérez, who's who represents kind of a new left, right like a left that has its roots in the indigenous movement in the Ecuadorian case that is very quote unquote anti extractivist you know really believes that that mining needs to be reduced or eliminated. All together. And, you know they barely missed out on making the second round. And, you know, I think that that Korea and our house made a huge mistake in that once they went to that second round I watched it happen. Today, Korea and our house spent all of their energy trying to annihilate Yaku Pérez with all the sort of force of like their bloggers and you know they're, it's kind of this regional network of people who really seem most focused on destroying Yaku Pérez because they don't know what to do with them as kind of competition in that left of center space and in doing so, they, you know, maybe they failed to focus on Lasso. And they also, you know, really angered Yaku Pérez and his supporters and as a result or as a result but that sort of informed the decision that Yaku Pérez made to tell his supporters to abstain, not to vote in the runoff. And so who might have been under other circumstances like you fit, you know, sort of two different flavors of, you know, left of center politics. They might have been on the issues sort of naturally like naturally inclined to vote for our house and Korea, but the amount of anger was such that that, you know, it may have cost, it may have cost our house and Korea the election. This is very interesting. Yeah, certainly, it's, it's, it was a strategical, I guess, a bad move, you know, from my house and Korea, and on the other side, you know, like, as you mentioned, there's this all these bottled up feelings against the previous government of Korea. You know, could have played a role, certainly. And so, so my second question would also be, as you mentioned that there were like, you know, like, center or center left leaning people who actually abstained because who would have rather vote for, for Korea or or a house but in, and ended up abstaining or voting for lasso. Many of these include young voters, women, members of the LGBTQ plus community. So, so, so my question would be a, like, what are, what are their concerns, why, why did they choose lasso, who represents, you know, a conservative right over a house, and if so, how should lasso after being elected by them as well, move to compromise with the voters that put him into office. Let me try to answer the second part of that first. I mean, there is already, I mean, during the runoff process, lasso showed signs of being willing to compromise on some of his key positions in order to win, in order to win the supports, the support of, you know, kind of segments of society who might not ideologically have been with him to kind of make his candidacy more amenable. One of the challenges he faces is that now that the elections over and the sort of the common enemy is gone. It's going to be really tough for him to govern, because he really has very little support in Congress. And not to sound like an old timer but, you know, prior to Korea, Ecuador was a country that I don't know the exact math on this but where it was very important for leaders and presidents to to suffer sort of popular results and army coups and other things I mean it was it was a perennially unstable country in a, you know, even, I mean, Latin America sort of has that reputation but even by Latin American standards like Ecuador prior to Korea was was very, very unstable and I'm sure you grew up with that and you know what I'm talking about so there's always sort of this question hanging over Ecuador, as well as Bolivia for that matter, which kind of had a similar history prior to Abel Morales you know another kind of 2000s era leader that was indirectly not exactly voted back in but his party was voted back in last year. Now, is, are they going to be, are they going to be able to hold it together is also going to be able to hold it together. As far as you know the insecurities of the rest of society that's kind of that's that is exactly the kind of question that's hard to address. If you're not spending time on the ground or if you're not from a place I'd be curious to hear your answer to the question that to that part of the question that you asked me I mean what, what do you what do you think that Lasso was able to tap into as far as that the insecurities of those groups of society that mentioned. Wow that's, that's, that's a good question. Certainly. Well, it's quite interesting. He followed, I don't know, I don't know if you're familiar but there were three main candidates as you mentioned, you know, arouse lasso, and then Yaku Pérez who came in a closer against lasso. But there was also a fourth candidate and a fourth candidate who gathered 14% of the votes in the first round, and he was unknown before the elections. And, you know, through social media through through ticked up he became very viral on ticked up and other social media. And he was able to you know, spread his vision and also connect with the youth connect with with other groups of people. He also hired this, the campaign manager for this for this guy right after the first round, which I think really helped him, you know, connect with these other groups of people. The campaign's although many people can argue that it is very outdated in the way he addresses them. He's also open, you know, to, to respect other people's differences, allegedly, by his, you know, by his speeches. And many people are also very, very worried that he might impose that he might not keep his word and impose, you know, he's very conservative vision, not only of what he represents but what he follows he belongs to the Opus Dei very conservative religious branch. So certainly it's more than anything something to keep an eye out for. But, but yeah, like he, as we discussed, he was able to connect and gather other votes from people that, you know, many including me wouldn't wouldn't think that he was going to be able to get. And, and also, you mentioned governability and I think that's my final, my final point my final question regarding Ecuador. And it's, as you said he has a minority in Congress. And interestingly enough, the day after he was elected, the country's risk rate dropped massively, meaning that there was going to be, you know, a better opportunity for trade and economic deals for Ecuador in the international community. But at the same time, what does this mean if he has a minority in Congress, and more importantly, and you know the country is undergoing a huge health care and economic crisis in the last week, death rates spiked to over 900% due to the pandemic. All these things against him. How can he impose his vision for the country, and perhaps prevent this from becoming, you know, a Macri example where where Macri the rightist liberal economist came in and four years after he left Argentina in one of the greatest crisis they've had. They immediately proceeded to, to elect a Fernandez who represents you know, the left, which is be analogous to Correa or a house. And, you know, so so failure of imposing his vision for lasso would most likely mean a huge comeback for Correa. How can he circumvent all these odds. No, you can't. And I, you know, the comparison that you just made between Macri and lasso is one that a lot of people are making and I, you know, Argentina and Ecuador are very different countries. And, you know, Argentina's problems. Thank God for Ecuador. They are very different and often sort of seem intractable. Lots of also may have an easier time I don't know who sort of has the harder task before them but it's, I think it's, I think it's gonna be really difficult and I nothing, you know this is a story that we see repeating itself again and again throughout the region right now you don't see like the political alignment happening that makes you sort of say, that's going to like sort of establish the path that gets us out of this crisis. A lot of these places Argentina is one of them. Colombia is one of them. Chile is one of them. There's just so much. You know this is and this is where I think it is fair to use the term polarization and kind of with the negative connotation. It's it's there's no, there's no consensus around sort of the basic steps necessary to get us out of this really terrible situation because you know kind of looking at the region as a whole. It's true that Latin America was ground zero for the pandemic in terms of both its health and its economic effects, and people are now talking about the 2020s being potentially a lost decade for Latin America. But the truth is the 2010s were kind of a lost decade to like it was, it was a crappy decade it was, it was actually, it was the region in the world that grew the least in the Latin America was in the 2010s. And so we're talking about really, you know, since 2013 2014 when the, you know, the Brazilian story took a turn for the worse and Venezuela took it way more dramatic turn for the worse and Argentina started its sort of tailspin that you referenced under the country. You know, things are bad and the political consensus is just not there. We don't see and I've said this publicly and it gets me in trouble every once in a while when I say it but I really do believe it's true. And this is, this is the lowest quality group of Latin American presidents that we've had since I've been following the region, 20 years ago, kind of regardless of your ideological predilection whether you like somebody you know who's sort of center left center center right. There's just not that many and a couple leaders that are okay but like, there's not anybody who just makes you go like wow like that's an example of a country that in tough times is kind of putting things together and, and taking things forward. So yeah, I think that consensus is going to my senses it's going to continue to be elusive in Ecuador and, and in some other countries as well and that's one reason why, you know, the, the World Bank, for example, has said that they don't expect Latin American economies to recover on a per capita basis to where they were back before the pandemic started until 2025. And that's that's later than any other region in the world. I did not know, I mean sorry to be a drag, you know, and you know the thing is the irony of this is like, Latin America is cyclical it's always had ups and downs and I keep trying to remind myself of that as I, you know, as I talk and right and kind of do all the things I do but it's just it's really hard to see right now where that cyclical recovery kind of that takes things back in a positive direction, where it's going to come from. And there's a pendulum to watch out for, you know, it's always always always keeping us, you know, active and wondering where it's going to go. And speaking of that just for a final, for some final, you know, a quick topic, I'll pass it on to Patrick. Yeah, we can, you know, briefly discuss about about another country that is going into a very boring time period. So, thank you, Patrick. Yeah, I mean, great. I wish we could have kind of a panel to discuss each of these case studies because they're obviously so, you know, rich in debate that we need to have. You know, just to give a little bit of attention to Peru, given it's, it's kind of centrality, you know, in June, I think are the final elections if I'm not mistaken. And, you know, you kind of have Castillo and fully money apparently is is kind of going to be the final running and it's extremely interesting kind of what they represent and what's going to happen in June, could potentially be an indicator of what happens in the rest of Now, concerning the Peruvian case, you know, the stressors imposed by the pandemic have led to strife throughout all of Peru, you know, it's been particularly hit, you know, it's a rather salient case in the study of the pandemic in Latin America. Those stressors have also made it more difficult than ever for political parties to fulfill their promises and satiate the needs of their constituents. And due to this phenomenon, outsider politics have arisen in Peru and in other parts of Latin America to challenge conventional mainstream political parties, which you know happens often but I guess now, you know, looking at the pandemic is you could see it see it as a direct consequence. Let's move to candidate profiles and talking about Pedro Castillo being a school teacher that attained prominence as a leading figure in the 2017 teacher strike in Peru. What does Castillo's candidacy say about the changing image of the typical presidential candidate in Peru. And how does, how does his story fit into the outsider politics narrative, if, if at all. That's the question I mean Castillo is like, has, you know, came rocketing out of nowhere in this election. And one just kind of funny story at America's quarterly we put together these election guides, where we kind of do these little thumbnail profiles of each candidate and kind of brief into the point. And over the course of the Peruvian race we decided, you know, we always kind of establish a threshold for when we're going to profile a candidate or not because in these elections where there's like 1020 candidates like we just, we can't. I mean we don't have enough people like we have to draw the line somewhere and, and so in the Peruvian race we decided to draw that. This is the same threshold we use elsewhere but at the 5% support level so any candidate who's above 5% at some point in the race we profiled so we profiled eight candidates in this race. Castillo was the ninth Castillo came rocketing out of nowhere during literally the last like two weeks of the campaign and ended up in the runoff and I mentioned that because he is like the classic blow it all up candidate. And that's why people voted for him was because he's an outsider, but also I mean, more than that. This is a guy who, you know, has been very critical of kind of the Peruvian economic model of the last 2030 years. You know, he has his party said that he was going to nationalize key industries now he's sort of backed away from that and said that that's not what he intends to do. I mean, there's no better context on Peru, like he has a fascinating story because over the last 1520 years you can actually make a case that Peru has been at least among the big countries, Latin America's biggest economic success story. It had the fastest GDP growth. It also, particularly in my mind it was the country that had some of the biggest declines if not the biggest declines in poverty and inequality also got better, which was unusual during that period. But the politics were always a mess. And, you know, as we got into 2020, it was tragically the country. So just to pause for a second. That has been kind of the framework that a lot of people, particularly in the United States and particularly here in New York have looked at Peru and they'd be like, oh my God, like how can they do that peruse been like the greatest success story and they're not wrong what they're missing in some cases is that the pandemic was especially cruel with Peru and there's a reason why. Or there's many reasons why we think that that was the case it was the country that are per capita basis had the most deaths from COVID not only in Latin America but possibly in the world. And some of the numbers, you know, you can't take those things as if they're these numbers as if they're gospel but it's very clear that in Peru, the devastation was terrible, and it also had one of the world's deepest economic recessions as a result because in part because they did a very, very strict lockdown that didn't work that didn't didn't didn't work and part of the reason why was because even as Peru made all this progress over the last 1520 years they did not really build out the Peruvian state and particularly the healthcare system but also the banking system, the school system kind of other, you know, kind of state capacity, what some people call that was just not there, even compared to places like Brazil. So, for example, when Peru tried to pass an aid program and try to try to sort of help out people so that they could stay at home what they discovered was, they weren't able to get money to a lot of these people, because they didn't, they didn't have. They weren't part of the formal economy that the Peruvian government just didn't know how to get to them. You could almost think of COVID-19 as being sort of like this heat seeking missile that was perfectly designed to reveal the shortcomings of that Peruvian model of the last 15 to 20 years. And then, you know, these elections, maybe, maybe, I don't know, maybe had the you could say the the misfortune of being timed just as, you know, Peru was expected and I think to some extent, it still is expected to have a very vigorous economic recovery this year from that huge kind of dive they were in 2020, but it's not enough. It's not enough to get them back to where they were before, and people were and still not are not feeling that recovery in a way that eased their anger so all that adds up to a very angry populace that voted for one candidate is Castillo, who very anti-establishment, perhaps anti-democratic, and then another candidate and Keiko Fujimori, whose democratic credentials are just as dubious, if not more so than Castillos, and who kind of represents a different phenomenon. So a lot of people now in Peru are like, God, who do I vote for? And that's actually kind of something that segues into the next question, which has to do with, yeah, that whole controversy on the, I think, the filing by Peruliure to kind of nationalize certain key industries, you know, that has obviously created a bit of unrest, especially in rural areas that rely on, you know, the copper mining industry, for example, which I think was specifically mentioned in the filing, if I'm not mistaken. You know, how do you think that Castillo could potentially, I guess, get back from that? Do you think he'll be able to rally enough support and I guess appeal to rural populations who feel maybe excluded and I guess afraid of his political ideology to a certain extent? I think Castillo's leading in the polls right now. He, at present, it looks like he might win. And actually a lot of his support has come from these rural areas. It's kind of this rural, very indigenous, you know, part of Peru that he, you know, he represents. And, you know, as far as what he's going to do, I mean, it's amazing to kind of be here again and Latin American politics, so often a politics in general, but particularly Latin American politics. But so much depends on like what one person does. And like who is, who is this person? What do they believe? What are their plans? Those questions end up making, you know, really determining kind of the fate of nations, right? Like is Castillo, if he's elected, is he going to be more, especially after the comments that he made this week trying to distance himself from, you know, what he describes as his more radical base? Is he telling the truth? Is he like a Lula figure where he's like, no, no, no, no, I've changed. Like, I swear I'll, you know, I'm not going to blow everything up. Or is he more like a Chavez who, you know, Chavez also swore up and down at various points over the years, particularly early in his presidency that he was a Democrat and a moderate and that he didn't want to expropriate kind of all these things and then he ended up doing what he did. You know, sometimes even, even these people and they're in their heart of hearts, they don't, they don't know what they're going to do. And it depends on circumstances and kind of how things go. So, you know, I often say that kind of one of the lines I've maybe used too much is that to really follow Latin American politics, it's better to have a psychoanalyst than a political analyst. Because so much of it depends on trying to like understand like these, these individuals who, and, and, and what they're going to do. Right. Yeah, I guess I'll definitely be that phrase will definitely stick with me for a while. So that said, obviously there's so much more we could discuss about Peru. But I do want to turn to the Q&A because I see that we have some questions there and that we are a bit over time. There is kind of one interesting one that says are the protests of 20 I mean both of them are very interesting but kind of looking at what we haven't discussed. Are the protests of 2019 a sign of strong democratic participation or could they pose a threat to democratic institutions. I guess that's a pretty interesting perspective to look at. That is yeah I mean there's a lot that's a short question but there's sort of a lot, a lot in that question. You know, well for those who I know that everybody here kind of follows the region but in late 2019 October 2019 we had these huge protests break out in Chile and Ecuador kind of Bolivia as well, and Columbia also. You know they kind of went away because of the pandemic and it faded a little bit before that but it was you know the pandemic kind of the obvious inability to kind of be out there on the street. Chased a lot of people off and one of the questions that's kind of hanging over everything right now is, is that just like a fire that's getting ready to kind of, you know flare back up again. Once the pandemic is not that it's over but once people are kind of able to be back out on the streets and I don't know the answer to that. As far as whether it's a threat to democracy or not. I think it depends on the country I would say no, in most cases I'm sort of thinking case by case, like in the Chilean case which was kind of the most dramatic and the one that people still talk about the most. I think Chile showed its maturity and ended up channeling the energy from those protests into a constitutional convention that's going to produce a new charter. It's going to be written under democracy as opposed to the one that was written under the Pinochet dictatorship back in 1980 and you know I obviously think that's a good thing. So, you know I would prefer at least for now to. I mean I think look in the Chilean case they were there were there people who were involved in those protests who were anti democratic. Yeah. But but not the majority I mean you had, you know you had 1.3 million people in the streets I think these were people who are mostly responding to what they saw as the shortcomings of their government and exercising their democratic right to protest so if anything I think that most of these protests were a celebration of democracy rather than a threat to it. Right, yeah I think that's. That's brilliant I think that's that's very well put I often talk about the Chilean case as well just because of how you know how peculiar it is and how one can directly tie that to the constitutional amendments that you know the delegates that will be chosen I guess this is one of which is also one of I guess the democratic participation that we're looking at. I think that that marks the amount of time that we have unfortunately. I guess I'll let my they'll give give the official conclusion but Brian it's been an absolute pleasure talking with you. Thank you so much. Thank you and I was a pleasure to be here. Once again on behalf of lack and of myself. Thank you very much Mr. for coming to our speaker series and just, you know, providing so much context and just you know like like a very, very well thought out and put out analysis of you know what what the region is undergoing with a pandemic with elections what this might mean for the future. And how the past connects to this I think it was very, very, very clear for everyone so thank you very much. I also want to thank our eboard, who just put a lot of work into the research into the outreach for this and the design and development of this project and speaker series so thank you so much and to our audience as well thank you for for tuning in and for always being there with us. We understand there are many topics we could not get to. Therefore, if you would like to continue the conversation with Brian, please refer to our Facebook page at top slack, or his social media handles like his Twitter at Brazil Brian. Or if you want to learn more about our organization or upcoming events. And also post a follow up to this meeting with information about it so keep tuned. Again, thank you very much for your attendance and have a great rest of your day. All right, thank you so much. Take care. Thanks Brian thanks everyone. Thank you.