Will there be caudillos in 100 years?

For almost the past 200 years, Latin America has transitioned through democracies, dictatorships and numerous points in between. Yet, the concept of caudillo, the charismatic leader, seems to have remained fairly constant throughout. It's a concept that is taught in every Latin American politics, history and literature course.

Is that still true in 2112? Will the region, or parts of it, still be cycling through charismatic populist leaders? This is, of course, an impossible question to answer, but it's fun to speculate. If you believe that progress on better governance can or will happen, then you probably think it is at least possible for the region to move past the caudillo mindset. If you believe that past trends do a pretty good job of predicting future trends, then there's probably more than a few leaders proclaiming themselves the next Simon Bolivar in the century ahead.

Then again, maybe the analytical concept of caudillismo is too simple to use. Today's populist leader isn't the same as the one in 1950 or 1850, but we throw them under the same broad historical framework of "caudillo" to give the analysis a bit of coherence over time. Historians and political scientists may very well use the term caudillo in 2112 to describe some charismatic leader, but it will look nothing like today, much less Facundo.

Parallel networks to stop censorship

In several countries in the hemisphere, the basic internet architecture is mostly owned by a single state telecom or distributed across a small number of private companies. In many cases, there country's connection to the internet moves through one or two chokepoints, making the potential for censorship or a kill switch by the government quite possible.

Internet censorship has been limited so far in Latin America (at least compared to the Middle East or China), but these potential technical restrictions should be a concern to activists who worry that governments or corporations will censor their speech and activity.

It's quite possible that parallel networks will spring up in the coming five to ten years. Civil society groups and technology companies may look to satellite providers or, more controversially, try to bring internet across other borders outside the chokepoints to which governments have access. Being that telecom regulations are often behind the curve in many countries, governments may be caught off guard by the new internet access routes that citizens find and create.

The censorship battle used to be between big media outlets and governments. With citizens now key producers of their own content, the censorship battle is going to look quite different than it did ten years ago. It's nowhere near as simple for a government to block citizen media as it was to seize a television station or block a newspaper from printing.

UPDATE: To follow up on this, read Alison Powell's blog post on darknets and super-encryption.  The downside to activists creating the tools to escape government action is that it breaks apart some of the open communications of the internet. It also creates and enhances tools for criminals to operate online.

A parallel OAS, but no presidents allowed

One of the common complains about the OAS and the democracy charter is that it is an organization of presidents. They'll jump up and down if a president is threatened, but they generally ignore cases in which legislatures, judiciaries or civil society is threatened by the executive branch.

This has long been an area for potential reform, but never moves forward. Why? Presidents are the ones in charge and don't want to restrict their own power.

Instead of continuing to try and fail to reform, what if legislatures simply decided to create a separate and parallel organization to the OAS. The legislatures around the hemisphere that wanted to participate could send representatives to a big Summit that paralleled the Summit of the Americas. They could agree to hold meetings and to pass resolutions as a group.

There are numerous political and constitutional challenges to creating such an organization. The first challenge is that presidents wouldn't allow it. Across the hemisphere, presidents would veto or otherwise block any potential legislative agreements to join such an organization. In some places, the legislatures may have to join over the president's objection, which could create tensions.

If just a few countries' congresses could get together to begin the group, declaring it the co-equal branch of regionalism to the OAS and working to fill in the gaps where the OAS fails, it could gain some momentum. They could pressure the OAS to reform its policies or they could just start working on their own to improve hemispheric relations in areas where presidents can't.

At its strongest, it's a regional push against the presidentialism that dominates much of the Americas. Some particularly powerful presidents might even call it a type of regional coup or revolution. At its weakest, the organization fails. But it's not a particularly resource intensive initiative. Why not try to form it and fail rather than list reasons why it won't succeed and never try.