As far as I have seen, libertarianism doesn't seem to have much of a following here in Mexico. Over the course of the nation's two centuries, the federal government has had a hard enough time getting the government to control the whole of its territory; the concern that it could turn into an all-powerful big brother doesn't keep a lot of people up at night. Nonetheless, the plan to have all Mexicans submit "physical characteristics" to a national database in order to create a national ID card might awaken some fears of government.Now that the Senate has approved the creation of a national database of cell phone numbers, I'd like to repeat those sentiments, though today with even less expectation of any groundswell of libertarian hostility to government.
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, for a country with a long authoritarian past, Mexicans seem really comfortable handing the federal government the keys to their private lives. With a less divided government and a less democratically minded president, this tendency could be really dangerous.
On the other hand, crime is a much bigger problem than government intrusion, and cell phone extortion is an unusually dangerous nuisance. (I know maybe a half dozen people who have been the targets of an attempted extortion via their cell phones, including one 14-year-old kid.) As I said in the October post, despite the regular bouts of authoritarianism, Mexico's political history has been two centuries of governments struggling to maintain control over the country, not exercising too much of it.
2 comments:
Seems to me those whose ideology might develop into lucid expressions of libertarianism in developed countries may just get stuck fighting for the "liberal" (in the classical sense) part in most Latin American countries. Libertarianism seems like sort of a second-phase ideology, dependent on at least some level of institutional functionality. Otherwise, it's just anarchy. Maybe Chile and Uruguay are ready for a bit of Hayek to spice up the intellectual mix, but most Latin American less-government critics would just like to be rid of the predatory state. I'd put Alvaro Vargas Llosa in this category: he's a libertarian in the US, but the things he says (at least, once you take away the prissiness) is more along classical liberal lines. Obviously there's no clear dividing line between liberalism and libertarianism, but I think you understand what I'm saying, since it's basically a long way of saying I agree.
I'm pretty sure that Vargas Llosa does define himself as a classical liberal. But yeah, people wih an instinctive suspician of government like him would be logical candidates for a Latin American libertarianism, but because of the circumstances in the region, they don't quite get there. Even in northern Mexico, whose the emphasis on individuality and distance from the capital make it comparable to the American West, people want a stronger federal government. Not so much in terms of statutes, but rather in its capacity to act and be the final authority. Libertarianism just doesn't have much applicability in countries where the State and its institutions are relatively weak.
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