How Social Media and Weak Institutions Fuel Polarization in Latin America
Marian Vidaurri, a political scientist and economist, explains that polarization shows up in public discourse and gains institutional, technological and social presence. From her professional perspective, excessive division between ideological poles acts as a brake on democratic development.
Dr. Vidaurri holds a doctorate in international relations and brings 20 years of experience in democratic governance, public policy and multilateral institutions across Latin America and the Caribbean. Since August 2025 she has served as a Research Associate at the Cornell Center on Democracy at Cornell University, where she develops research projects on democracy along with civic education and participation programs. She also teaches as a Lecturer in Democracy and Public Policy at Cornell’s Washington, DC campus.
Born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico, Vidaurri earned a bachelor’s degree in government and economics from Cornell University in 2003, a master’s degree in Latin American studies from the University of Oxford in 2006 and a Master of Public Administration from the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. She completed her doctoral studies at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS).
She was also the inaugural fellow of the Latin American Studies Initiative (LASI) at SAIS during the 2025/26 academic year, and since 2017 she has volunteered with the nonprofit Centro de Cultura, Arte, Trabajo y Educación (CCATE) in Norristown, Pennsylvania.
In her analysis, current polarization makes full sense only when the structural elements running through Latin America are examined first. Poverty and inequality, she says, create a social cleavage between elites and the people. In the last century that break sharpened after the Cuban Revolution and moved strongly into politics. The Cold War, together with the rise of leftist guerrillas and rightist dictatorships, favored a form of confrontation in which adversaries came to see each other as irreconcilable rivals rather than competitors within the same political framework and institutional mechanisms for resolving conflict.
Marian Vidaurri breaks down the factors that feed polarization
Since the start of the twenty-first century, Vidaurri notes, polarization has deepened for several additional reasons. The widespread use of technology and social media, as in other regions of the world, has helped divide the poles with different ideologies even further and feeds a logic of permanent distrust
Another central element in her analysis is the so-called politics of revenge. She describes intimidation and bullying, online and offline, as the rule rather than the exception. Authoritarian regimes have mastered these mechanisms because they govern and keep control by producing fear among the population. The climate is reinforced by a constant us-versus-them discourse that runs through the political class and broad sectors of the public. Meanwhile the region keeps facing persistent challenges: high inequality, which keeps Latin America among the most unequal areas of the world, large segments of the population living in poverty, the spread of organized crime and forms of corruption that remain without an effective solution.
Social media as an accelerator, according to Marian Vidaurri
Asked whether this polarization is really new or simply more visible today, Marian Vidaurri stresses the specific role of social media as an accelerator of conflict. In her view, these platforms worsen polarization and the demonization of the other, partly because they allow anonymity when attacking. The ability to write and publish hate speech and false information without facing consequences encourages a surge of attacks, disinformation and defamation against political enemies and anyone who thinks differently, at no immediate cost to those who take part in these campaigns.
Digital polarization, Vidaurri adds, is also a key variable for understanding why governments struggle to reach basic agreements. Online dynamics contribute to a toxic environment and to the spread of hate narratives that deepen the tendency to demonize the other. Troll farms and sophisticated systems of online political persecution make it possible to control through fear, discouraging the expression of dissenting opinions and shrinking the space for democratic deliberation.
Institutional checks and balances in the analysis of Marian Vidaurri
Vidaurri’s reflection also reaches the institutional field. She says the quality of democracy in the region has declined over the last two decades. Even countries with a solid and stable democratic tradition, such as Costa Rica, are going through tensions that show wear. Nicaragua and Cuba appear in her assessment as examples where checks and balances have ceased to exist.
In El Salvador, she describes a scenario in which the executive branch dominates the other branches of government and presidential reelection, once considered contrary to the constitutional framework, ended up being enabled. Mexico also figures in her assessment: the judicial reform promoted by the ruling party in 2024 changed the balance between branches of government and sparked a broad debate on the capacity of institutions to withstand political pressure.
Vidaurri sees Latin American polarization as a long-lasting phenomenon, fed by digital technologies and the deterioration of institutional checks and balances. The confrontation that dominates public spaces goes beyond ideology and takes the form of a political and social configuration in which the language of revenge, institutional erosion and persistent structural problems reinforce one another. Understanding that web, in her reading, is an essential step for any effort to rebuild conditions for dialogue and peaceful coexistence in the region.