The Latin American Left and State Power

Jeffrey Webber in Report on the Americas outlines fortunes of the political left in Latin America through a series of comparisons between different Latin American states that are pursuing similar developmental trajectories.  Today, the left appears to be resurgent if one is counting the number of avowedly left wing governments in power.  It appears that the political pendulum is swinging to the left once again after the rightwing victories that brought down the rejection of neoliberalism associated with the pink tide.  This is a rather superficial reckoning, however, which Webber's comparative analysis moves beyond.  Webber distinguishes between social movements and the political left.  Social movements are associated with national popular elements rebelling against governmental oppression and neoliberal economic extraction.  These movements translate into a typically partial conquest of power for parties of the left, but these parties are then left to reckon with the deeply entrenched powers of the right within the media, the judiciary, the security forces, international finance, foreign corporations, and various regions controlled by conservative power brokers.  The irruption of the left into the political system is sufficient to derail the hegemony of neoliberalism. Note, incidentally, that one expression of this neoliberal hegemony is to be found in Forrest Colburn’s Latin American at the End of Politics.  Another, which I am certainly familiar with, is John Sherman’s Latin America in Crisis, which likewise  argued for the hyper-stability of neoliberalism.  For Webber, the formula is no neoliberal hegemony, but morbid symptoms of crisis everywhere, manifesting themselves in structurally different ways.  

And a comparative analysis can identify those differences.  This could serve as a framework for how to teach Latin American politics the next time around, which will not be until Fall 2023.  So, here they are. 

1. Old pink tide: Brazil and Ecuador.  These are states where the old pink tide was defeated and there has been no progressive restoration yet.  In the case of Brazil, Lula appears poised to make a comeback and defeat Bolsonaro, but Lula is also building a centrist coalition that includes neoliberals (Geraldo Alckmin, his vice-presidential candidate, is from the center right Brazilian Social Democratic Party that pushed through the impeachment of Rousseff.  The political left, the PSOL (for discussion of PSOL’s grassroots organizing, see the interview with Guilherme Boulos in New Left Review), will not be a part of Lula’s government.  Instead, it concentrated on opposing the soft neoliberalism likely to emanate from the Brazilian center, a far cry from a more oppositional left envisioned by PSOL. In Ecuador, the Pink Tide inexorably moved right under Moreno Lenin until it was drained of all popular support.  The Civic Alliance became uncoupled from social movements such as CONAIE and Pachakutic - its political arm.  Indeed, in the 2019 CONAIE led demonstrations and strikes against Moreno’s new accords with the International Monetary Fund. In both Brazil and Ecuador, as the pink tide has retreated to the political center and become increasingly indistinguishable from neoliberalism, a gap has accordingly opened between the left on the streets and the political forces associated with the old pink tide. 

2. Argentina and Bolivia - another old pink tide pairing:  governments of the pink tide have returned to power - in the cases of Brazil and Ecuador, they are currently out of power. In Argentina, the Peronistas have once again emerged as the party of the order as they did following the hyperinflationary tumult of 1989 and economic meltdown of 2001 - both of which engendered a partial collapse of the social order.  This is similar to the return of Lulu in Brazil where the PT becomes concerned with maintaining the cohesion of the nation rather than the political struggles of the left.  The Peronistas have managed to secure somewhat more favorable terms from the IMF, but this is not enough to compensate for the scope of the economic contraction that occurred in Argentina over the course of the Pandemic.  In Bolivia, the MAS regained power following elections that ended the rule of the interim right wing government.  MAS failed to transform the productive structure of the Bolivian economy before  Morales’ ouster - and was, in fact, very indisposed to do so.  The governing strategy was how to strike a balance between the neoliberal extractive economy and the demands of popular forces. Now MAS must try to do this within a far bleeker economic climate. 

3. Venezuela and Nicaragua - two pink tide governments that remained in power by reconstituting themselves authoritarian states. There is nothing salvageable from the Maduro government, which implies that the Bolivarian revolution has been a total failure and that the political left must regenerate itself outside of the framework of Chavez and Maduro.  In Nicaragua, the Ortega dictatorship has forcefully repressed protests against austerity policies and continued dictatorship.  Otega’s regime is increasingly indistinguishable from the Somoza regime that it replaced in 1979. 

4. Colombia and Chile - Two countries that never experienced pink tide governments, but which in 2019 experienced a popular uprising from the below which destabilized the current incumbent conservative regimes and opened the door for the left to acquire political power.  In Chile, the leftist Gabriel Boric won the presidency and the popular movement won a constitutional convention, although Boric, now in power, is being pulled to the right by the continuing power of both the center (Concertacion) and the right in the Chilean Congress. Again, the question becomes whether the left can win not only political power but control of the state.  In Colombia, the prospect of the left winning the presidency is still in doubt. In 2021, the incumbent conservative president Ivan Duque experienced a collapse in his political support following the civil disturbances that accompanied the attempt of the government to resolve the fiscal crisis of state.  But it is doubtful that Gustav Petro, the candidate of the left, has enough political support to win a runoff election in Colombia on Sunday.  Petro’s political opponent is a rather undefined populist, Rodolfo Hernandez, an engineer who promises to cut the government budget if elected.  Even if Petro wins, he will face a divided Congress, limiting his ability to pass his agenda.  Addendum: Petro won the presidency in Colombia.  So the left has broken into power in both Colombia and Chile. 

5. Peru and Honduras - Peru and Honduras have experienced neoliberal rule. In the case of Honduras, the election of Manuel Zelaya provided a brief respite from oligarchic rule, from 2006 to 2009, but then Zelaya was removed from power by the conservative coup, encouraged by the Obama administration in the United States.  This led the Nationalist Party back into power where they developed a kind of hybrid narco-kleptocratic-neoliberal state - neoliberalism operating within whatever institutional framework that existed.   The excesses of the Natiionalist party were too much for even the United States. U.S. diplomats ruled out another corrupt election that might have kept the nationalists in power.  Out of office, the former two-term president Juan Orlando Hernandez has been extradited to the United States and is facing drugs.  Xiomara Castro, candidate of the Democratic Socialist Party and the spouse of Zelaya, has won the presidency but still confronts extensive consdervative control over other key institutions in Honduras. She mobilized popular movements but will have only limited control of the state. A similar story can be told of the election of Pedro Castillo, a former school teacher from the impoverished region of Caramarca.  The election results that put Castillo into power were contested by the right, alleging, without foundation, that the election was stolen. The conflict between inland and coastal Peru has generated a wave of organized right wing street violence on basis of racism and ant-communist hysteria - much of this tied to the political violence associated with the Shining Path in the 1980s. Castillo, similar to Castro, faces a divided government.  Trying to negotiate this terrain, Castillo has already sacked dozens of ministers and back pedaled from his campaign agenda. 

6. Once again, when the left wins presidential elections, it faces huge obstacles to its control of the state.  This raises the question of what the left would have to do in order consolidate state power and because of the extent to which the state remains the terrain of the dominant classes in Latin American society.