514 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies N. 4 / 2014 The countries least likely to reject a military government are El Salvador (59%), Peru (54%), Mexico (53%), Paraguay (46%)42 and Guatemala (40%). Amongst these five countries are two of the three cases of elected military presidents (Humala and Pérez Molina). At the same time, they include two of the countries that top the list in a global insecurity ranking due to their high rates of homicides per 100,000 inhabitants and in which the armed forces are involved in the fight against crime. The other country, Mexico, is experiencing an era of extreme violence at the hands of the drug-trafficking cartels, which has lead to active participation of the armed forces in the struggle to confront them. Younger people have more of a tendency to believe that a coup is possible compared with older people. Thus, 30% of young people between 18 and 24 years of age believe that such an act is possible, in comparison to 15% of adults over 55. This trend is particularly apparent in Uruguay, one of the countries where respondents believe that a coup d’état is less likely,43 Corruption is the reason cited by Latin Americans for considering that the president should be removed from office before finishing his or her term in government, the view expressed by 66% of citizens consulted. If the actions of a president are detrimental to the country, 57% of Latin American women believe that he or she could and should be removed from office. This trend becomes more prominent in the case of Argentina where in the age groups spanning 25 to 40 years of age, nine in every ten people tend to believe that if certain circumstances arise that worsen the country’s situation then a coup d’état should occur. In Argentina, 66% of the population even say that a coup d’état is the solution they envisage to tackle problems with crime. By way of conclusion, confidence in the armed forces in Latin America is relatively high, yet two out of every three people questioned would not accept a military government under any circumstance. 42 These data seem to pre-empt the political crisis that emerged in 2012 when the Paraguayan Congress chose to impeach Lugo following violence that occurred during the eviction of farmers in the town of Curuguaty in the southeast of the country. This decision was viewed within the region as an institutional coup d’état, which brought Federico Franco to power, and which resulted in the suspension of Paraguay from Mercosur and Unasur. 43 FLACSO (2010), op. cit., p. 51.
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