The ‘shift to the left’ in Latin America

The following article is adapted from a presentation delivered at a meeting in New Paltz, N.Y., on Feb. 5, 2006.

Many people are watching with great interest what is being called the “shift to the left” in Latin America. Over the past several years, presidential elections have brought populist governments to power that challenge the traditional subservient role in relation to U.S. imperialism. In January 2003, Lula da Silva became president of Brazil; Nestor Kirchner came to power in May of the same year in Argentina; and Tabare Vázquez was inaugurated in Uruguay in March 2005.

Presidents Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, Fidel Castro of Cuba and Evo Morales of Bolivia. Photo: Claudia Daut/Reuters

In recent months, two elections have been constantly in the news. In January 2006, Indigenous peasant leader Evo Morales assumed the presidency of Bolivia. On March 11, Michelle Bachelet will become president of Chile.

There are also elections coming up in Peru, where Ollanta Humala is seen as a possible front-runner, and in Mexico, where the Democratic Revolutionary Party’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador is a strong candidate.

The background to all these elections was the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela.

For those of us who have spent years in solidarity with the Latin American people’s struggles against U.S. domination, these past years have been a period of hope. What a breath of fresh air compared to the usual story of Washington-backed client governments imposing IMF shock therapy to decimate the lives of the people in those countries.

It almost has the feeling, for those who remember, of the excitement generated by the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua in 1979 or the other popular movements that gained strength in Central America in the 1980s.

So it’s important for us, those who want to show our support and solidarity with the people of Latin America, to have a sense of what process is taking place in the continent. We have to prepare ourselves for what the reaction will be by U.S. imperialism, which has always viewed the continent as its “backyard.”

There is actually not just one process underway. What is called a “shift to the left” actually has two repetitive trends that are closely related and yet distinct from one another.

These two trends can be seen by looking in more detail at the two most recent elections of Evo Morales in Bolivia and Michelle Bachelet in Chile. Of course, both elections are very recent and there will be much to watch as these governments develop.

Elections follow mass struggles

Many analysts point to the fact that Evo Morales is Bolivia’s first Indigenous president. That is no small thing, in a country that is at least 55 percent Quechua and Aymara. It is a democratic victory for the majority Indigenous, who are overwhelmingly the most exploited sector of the population, subject to intense racism.

But the scope of the victory has the seeds that go far beyond this democratic gain.

The election of Evo Morales is really much more than an election. It is the culmination of years of massive protests and mobilizations. There were the “water wars” in 2000, when mass protests forced an end to the sell-off of Cochabamba’s water supply to U.S.-based Bechtel. A series of protests beginning in 2003 and continuing through 2005 focused on the government’s plans to privatize natural gas. Bolivia has the second-largest gas reserves in Latin America, after Venezuela. Two presidents were toppled in those mobilizations.

In the course of these protests, popular organizations grew and developed a sense of their power. There was the Movement to Socialism (MAS), led by Morales whose base was the peasant coca growers. There was the Bolivian Workers’ Federation (COB), which has a long and militant tradition.

A number of organizations emerged in the May-June 2005 uprising. They include the MAS, the COB, the Federation of Neighborhood Councils of El Alto, the Regional Workers Federation El Alto, the Confederation of Peasant Workers of Bolivia (CSUTCB), the Confederation of Artesian Workers and Small Traders of Bolivia and the Federation of Mine Workers of Bolivia.

Morales actually played a moderate role in those protests, negotiating an end to the protests with the demand for a constituent assembly being fulfilled. But his position has shifted to the left and he has responded to the militancy of the masses.

While it has only been weeks since his inauguration, Morales has made some important first gestures.

First, Morales has pledged to overhaul the country’s constitution. As part of that, he is insisting on the nationalization of the country’s oil and gas wealth.

That process of changing the constitution might be interpreted as a legalistic maneuver carried out in the halls of congress or the courts—an arena dominated by and built for the country’s elite.

But on Feb. 2, Morales told community leaders in the poor neighborhood of El Alto—a center of the 2005 mobilizations—that he would call for mass protests to win reforms.

The calls for constitutional changes mirror the beginnings of Hugo Chávez’s first acts as president of Venezuela, when he used his popular support to rewrite the constitution, setting the stage for cleaning out the old political establishment.

Another gesture came just over a week after Morales’ inauguration. On Jan. 31, an initial team of 24 Cuban literacy specialists arrived in La Paz to help set up a massive literacy program. “The job is titanic: reduce illiteracy in Bolivia to zero,” said Bolivia’s new education minister, Félix Patzi.

Opening spaces for mass organizing

Venezuelans commemorate Chavez’s 1992 coup attempt. Feb, 4, 2006. Photo: Christian Veron/Reuters

These signs point to one of the two trends taking place in Latin America today. Electoral victories are giving popular movements a space to organize and challenge the exploitative relationships that have defined societies across the continent.

Venezuela is the main pole of this trend. The depth and breadth of the transformation taking place there sets the Bolivarian revolution apart from a mere electoral process.

Chávez’s electoral victory was a result of the inspiration he instilled in the long-suffering population by his February 1992 armed action against the hated presidency of Carlos Andrés Perez.

An unknown military officer when he waged the attack to protest years of Pérez’s sacking of the country, Chávez sparked an overwhelming following by his boldness and the promise to resume the struggle.

Although the constitutional, parliamentary and other reforms were passed through popular referenda, it was the people’s massive intervention to restore Chávez to office after the attempted April 2002 right-wing coup that showed the masses their power to detain U.S. imperialist designs.

The Bolivarian revolution is being defined by new kinds of organization—like the Bolivarian circles and the new labor formations that are taking place. It is being defined by new social priorities like the “Missions”—the projects to spread health and literacy that go far beyond just social programs.

What is happening in Venezuela is increasingly being looked to by forces across Latin America as an alternative to the traditional political processes that have existed in the region for decades, even for centuries.

Can elections dampen the struggle?

The election of Michelle Bachelet in Chile is also highly symbolic. She is the first woman president to be elected in Latin America, although women have served as president in Bolivia, Argentina and Ecuador. Remember that due to the dominance of the Catholic Church in Chile, divorce has only been legal in Chile since 2004.

But without minimizing the importance of Bachelet’s victory as a democratic advance for women, the reality underneath the symbolism is much different than what took place in Bolivia.

Unlike the Morales election, Bachelet’s victory is not a break with the traditional political establishment in Chile. She heads a coalition of parties called Concertación, loosely translated as “working together.” Concertación has been the ruling party since 1990 and is the party of outgoing president Ricardo Lagos.

It’s worth reviewing for a moment the coalition’s 15-plus-year record. The coalition emerged from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, which through brutal repression had decimated much of the left and working-class parties.

After the 1988 plebiscite that resulted in a rejection of the dictatorship, Pinochet’s regime organized the transition to “democratic” rule with safeguards for the ruling elite. So while the extreme brutality of the Chilean political system was lessened, the economic priorities remained largely the same.

In many ways, the phenomenon known as neoliberalism in Latin America began in Chile. Pinochet imposed privatizations and cuts in social spending with an iron fist.

The Concertación governments did not break with the reliance on IMF-oriented reforms. They softened some of the worst impacts with an increase in social spending.

Bachelet’s election represents a continuation of these policies. It is not a reflection of increased mobilization or organization of the Chilean masses.

This is a somewhat extreme version of the second trend in Latin American today: a shift away from the most severe implementation of U.S.-backed economic neo-liberal policies in order to stabilize “normal” political rule by the traditional elites in those countries.

It is the most extreme version because of its continuation of previous regimes. Other cases of this same trend include the Lula da Silva government in Brazil, the Nestor Kirchner government in Argentina and the Tabare Vázquez government in Uruguay.

All these regimes reject, to greater or lesser degrees, the most drastic economic policies of prior governments. The trend toward privatization has slowed. There is more of an emphasis on social spending.

But these governments have also presided over a demobilization of the popular sectors. They have successfully stabilized the political rule of the traditional elites in those countries from real threats against their privileges and dominance.

Nevertheless, the changes that they have made are significant, especially in terms of building greater unity among the Latin American nations, separate and apart from the traditional subservience to U.S. imperialism.

Greater unity

This growing unity is an important factor that impacts the relationship between these two trends.

To the extent that the new governments in Latin America are building a greater unity and independence, this corresponds to one of the historic tasks facing Latin America—a genuine independent development for these traditionally exploited nations.

In this way, the two trends—the creation of new social orders and the maintenance of the old social orders—are in fact complementary. Both are moving away from the traditional dominance of U.S. imperialism with concessions to popular demands against neoliberalism.

The complementary relationship can be seen in the new trade relationships that are developing among Brazil, Venezuela, Cuba, Argentina and other nations. There is the ALBA. There is PetroSur. There are also such co-operations as TeleSur.

At the same time, it is important to distinguish between the two historic projects. It is the reason why the U.S. government’s approach to the two kinds of governments is somewhat different.

What the U.S. government is most concerned about is the stability of the traditional regimes and the basic exploitative relationships that exist—and which they dominate. Beginning in 2000 and 2001, government after government was collapsing under the strains of implementing the neo-liberal model. A consensus emerged that it was better to bend than to break.

The main threat to U.S. imperialism is that in some countries—especially in Venezuela—the traditional regimes are threatened. Look at a recent statement by U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld:

“I mean, we’ve got Chavez in Venezuela with a lot of oil money. He’s a person who was elected legally—just as Adolf Hitler was elected legally—and then consolidated power and now is, of course, working closely with Fidel Castro and Mr. Morales and others.” (Associated Press, Feb. 3, 2006)

This is not just name-calling. Rumsfeld is calling for expanding the network of U.S. military bases in the region, what are called euphemistically “Cooperative Security Locations.” The U.S. Southern Command is planning to carry out military exercises in Paraguay this year called “Commando Forces 06.”

In addition, the United States is using its diplomatic efforts to divide the progressive forces.

“The crazies are Fidel, Chávez, and now they include Evo,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez told over 10,000 people at the World Social Forum. Chávez noted that Washington refers to Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Chile’s Ricardo Lagos and Argentina’s Nestor Kirchner as “statesmen.” (Associated Press, Jan. 28)

“But the important thing is we are going, following the same path,” Chavez said.

As the process of Latin American unity moves forward, the ongoing relationship between the two processes underway in Latin America—the greater unity and independence from U.S. imperialism on the one hand, and the push by the dispossessed masses for new societies based on equality and social justice on the other—will continue to evolve.

The growing unity will be an important factor in how the masses of working people in Latin America are able to confront the growing U.S. intervention and attempts to roll back the gains of the people.