As crowds stormed the building at the center of American democracy on Wednesday, perplexed American officials, including a former president, sought the same phrase to make comparisons: “banana republic”.
“This is how election results are disputed in a banana republic – not in our democratic republic,” former President George W. Bush said in a statement.
Your feeling is more colorful echoed on Twitter from MP Mike Gallagher, R-Wis.: “We are witnessing the shit of the banana republic on the United States Capitol right now.”
While Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a former presidential candidate tweeted, “This is anti-American anarchy in the style of the third world.”
But American comparisons of the violent and frantic pro-Trump mobs that plunged the Capitol into chaos, leaving at least five dead, with events in so-called Third World countries, were met with derision and offense by many who live and work in developing countries. .
The phrase “banana republic” is widely considered to have been coined in the early 1900s by the American author O. Henry in his collection of stories “Couves e Reis”. It is often used as an abbreviation for Latin American nations characterized by political instability and crop economies dominated by foreign capital.
The analogy, largely derived from the monopoly that United Fruit Co. held over the banana industry in South America in the early 20th century, is a “tired and useless troop,” said Lisa Munro, a Latin American historian.
Thinking of the United States as a “banana republic” does not help people understand that the events in Washington were “entirely US-created,” she added.
As events unfolded in Washington, Andrei Gómez-Suárez, a former Colombian government official, said the “banana republic” was used repeatedly on social media and that comparisons were being made between President Donald Trump and populist leaders like Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.
For “people who always thought that these things happen outside America, not inside America, this was a turning point,” said Gómez-Suárez, who co-founded the think tank Rodeemos el Diálogo, or Abraço Diálogo, and works as academic specializing in peacebuilding in Colombia.
The events set “a really bad precedent from the United States,” he said.
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The social divisions that led to the Black Lives Matter protests, the way the United States handled the coronavirus pandemic and the Capitol riots were together challenging the idea of American exceptionalism and the United States’ position on the world stage, he said, making -the most likely that the US would soon be “replaced” by other actors.
“Many now say that the United States will not be ‘the’ world power,” said Gómez-Suárez, adding that events on Capitol Hill were “a part of America’s decline”.
Comparisons with “Third World” nations were “insulting” and based “on the claim that the so-called First World is superior,” said Carlos Lopes, professor at the Mandela School of Public Governance at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. South.
However, many Africans have become accustomed to “denigrating” US and Trump language in particular, he said, citing reports that Trump referred to Haiti and African nations as “shitty countries” in 2018. Trump denied having used the phrase.
Gautam Bhatia, an Indian author and constitutional lawyer, told NBC News that comparisons with the “Third World” “were not as offensive as they were ironic”.
From slavery to protracted wars and foreign interventions, Bhatia said, American violence was neither new nor surprising.
The United States has long suffered from a “democratic deficit,” he said, “but because of American hegemony it is not defined that way.”
