Criticism
Critics claim that democratic socialism in Latin America acts as a facade for authoritarianism. The charisma of figures like Hugo Chávez and mottoes like "Country, Socialism, or Death!" have drawn comparisons to the Latin American dictators and Caudillos of the past. Media coverage of Chávez and Latin American Socialism of the 21st Century has been criticized as unfair, especially in US media outlets.
The sustainability and stability of economic reforms associated with Socialism of the 21st Century have been questioned. Latin American countries have primarily financed their socialist programs with extractive exports like petroleum, natural gas, minerals, coffee, and soybeans, creating a dependency that some economists claim has caused inflation and slowed growth.
Read more about this topic: Socialism Of The 21st Century
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“It is the will of God that we must have critics, and missionaries, and Congressmen, and humorists, and we must bear the burden. Meantime, I seem to have been drifting into criticism myself. But that is nothing. At the worst, criticism is nothing more than a crime, and I am not unused to that.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The greater the decrease in the social significance of an art form, the sharper the distinction between criticism and enjoyment by the public. The conventional is uncritically enjoyed, and the truly new is criticized with aversion.”
—Walter Benjamin (1892–1940)