Agrarian Elites and Democracy in Contemporary Latin America

Abstract Latin America was born in dispossession, and it remains the world's most unequal region. This inequality, as political analysts have said since Aristotle, endangers open, democratic government. So why is most of Latin America still democratic after more than a generation? Should we expect this to change, or should we radically revise the ancient wisdom? Can we connect the survival of democracy to another remarkable fact: that despite stark inequality, the economic interests of the region's wealthy elites have rarely been threatened and almost never touched by their governments? Various works about Latin American political economy have addressed these questions, among them an impressive new book by Belén Fernández Milmanda. It is the last question—the power of wealth in a democracy—that Fernández Milmanda addresses directly, with reference to agrarian elites in three countries (Chile, Brazil, and Argentina) during and since these countries’ last transition to democracy (1983–1989). Along with answering the question adeptly, her book contributes to broader, global conversations about the political power of agriculture and the quality of democracy.