A psychopolitical approach to social inequality in Latin America.

Abstract

Half of the world's wealth is in the hands of 1% of the population. Oxfam (2020) data for January 2020 showed that 2,153 billionaires possessed more wealth than 60% of the world's population (i.e., 4.6 billion people). In Latin America, inequality has a structural and historical nature. Thus, despite decreases in inequality observed in recent decades, Latin America remains one of the most unequal regions in the world: At the end of 2016, the five most economically unequal countries worldwide were in Africa, but the next five were in Latin America (Cañete Alonso, 2015). Latin America has the worst Gini coefficient (an index of income inequality) in the world; the richest 10% of the population has 27 times the income of the poorest 10% (Kliksberg, 2015). Land concentration in Latin America reproduces this inequality: 1% of farms occupy more productive land than the remaining 99% (Guereña, 2016). Furthermore, the 32 richest people in the region hold the same wealth as the 300 million poorest people. The region's billionaires increased their fortunes at an average rate of 21% per annum in the period 2002-2015, while the increase in gross national product of the entire region was 6 times lower in the same period (Cañete Alonso, 2015).

Populism in Peru: Populist attitudes and perception of the populist offer and its relationship with political cynicism and attitudes toward democracy

“…The beliefs, attitudes, and political behaviors of individuals regarding how they view and exercise their citizenship, as well as how they relate to a political and social system, will be affected by the social, political, and economic characteristics of their society ( Chaparro, 2018 ; Beramendi et al, 2020 ; Brussino and Alonso, 2021 ; Imhoff, 2021 ). In that sense, any discussion of the stability of a political system should focus on the quality of the exercise of governance and authority, based on compliance with transparency, procedural justice, and distributive justice that allow acceptance and trust toward the system by citizens.…”