The Los Angeles riots reveal that major U.S. cities are increasingly taking on the aspects of Latin American urban societies. It`s not just the racial mix of the rioters; the riots themselves fit the pattern of a string of urban upheavals that have rocked Latin America`s largest cities in recent years.
Cities as divergent as Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Santo Domingo, Caracas and Guatemala City have all experienced major urban rebellions and riots in the last decade. Common factors have fomented urban unrest in at least a dozen major urban centers from Buenos Aires in the south to Los Angeles in the north.
These urban uprisings are overwhelmingly a reaction to neo-liberal economic policies and social spending cutbacks that have worsened the lot of virtually all the hemisphere`s major cities. Recently released U.S. census data show that between 1980 and 1990 the plight of U.S. cities worsened dramatically. While Reaganomics and supply-side economics increased the wealth of the upper classes living in the suburbs, the budgets of the cities were slashed and the standard of living of the people living in those cities dropped precipitously.
This same growth in poverty and income disparities has occurred in the major Latin American cities. In the early 1980s the Reagan administration began imposing neo-liberal austerity policies internationally, particularly through the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Hardly a country in Latin America was untouched as governments slashed social spending programs in education and health care, and state spending on public transportation as well as basic food subsidies was ended or curtailed. The IMF often insisted that inefficient industries be shut down-in particularly those that could not compete with multinational corporations-thereby increasing unemployment in urban areas.
One of the earliest urban upheavals occurred in Santo Domingo in 1984 when the government doubled prices on imports as well as domestic foodstuffs and people took to the streets in protest. Gangs of youth set up barricades of burning tires and pelted police with stones. Stores were looted, and even though the military was sent in, the riots continued for almost a week. The riots claimed 60 lives, hundreds injured, thousands arrested.
In 1985 Guatemala City erupted due to hikes in bus fares and the prices of bread and milk. Riots in Buenos Aires shut down the city several times between 1983 and 1985. While trade unions, leftist political parties and even churches often initiated the protests against austerity policies, these organizations quickly lost control as people rampaged through the streets and stores were sacked and burned.
This dynamic was also apparent in urban disorders in cities like Sao Paulo and Rio de Janiero which began as political protests but grew violent as people from the slums moved in to loot food stores and to confront the police and military. Protests in the mid-1980s in Santiago, Chile and Port au Prince, Haiti similarly turned violent as people from the most marginalized barrios vented their anger and despair. The disorders led to the eventual downfall of Augusto Pinochet in Chile and ``Baby Doc`` Duvalier in Haiti.
While dramatically worsened economic conditions provided fuel for these urban upheavals, the spark was often a furious response to repressive authority. In Los Angeles, that authority was the local police; elsewhere it was the military.
Moreover, in the early stages of the uprisings, the police and military authorities were often momentarily stunned, paralyzed and forced to withdraw by the hatred, anger and fury of the demonstrators.
These urban rebellions also display a growing popular alienation from all established authority, be it elected or militarily imposed. The urban riots in Caracas in February 1989 were particularly revealing in this regard. A month earlier, Carlos Andres Perez, a Social Democrat, had won office on a platform of opposition to IMF policies. Once in power, however, he imposed cutbacks in state and social spending and raised prices on basic foods. The result was an upheaval in Caracas as tens of thousands took to the streets. Five days of looting and clashes ensued in which at least 247 people were killed.
This sense of betrayal by the established politicians explains why large sectors of the populace of Venezuela have been generally supportive of the military coup attempt earlier this year by a group of young officers. Although Venezuela has the longest uninterrupted democratic rule of any country in South America, the Venezuelan people have had enough of civilian politicians who make election promises and then abandon them while enriching themselves at the expense of the rest of the country.
Upheavals such as those in Los Angeles and Caracas are the most recent and dramatic signs of a growing discontent by urban peoples in both hemispheres with the politicians and political systems that are impoverishing and repressing large sectors of their populations. In the process a new and rebellious urban underclass is emerging throughout the Americas.