The Left in Latin America: Trends and Perspectives (2nd and final part)

By Sergio Rodriguez Gelfenstein

During the first 15 years of this century, Latin America and the Caribbean witnessed a series of democratic and popular processes that placed different versions of the left at the center of events. However, the leading role of Cuba and Venezuela and the overwhelming influence that commanders Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez in that period generated a unique process in the history of the region. For the first time, it was the left that played the fundamental role in shaping events.

As always, in victory the bad seams are hidden, but in defeat they are all exposed. The ebb and flow that began in 2015 had a profound impact on the left. This time, the imperial media effort, supported by its powerful information-cultural and media apparatus, became a main instrument to accentuate the regression, stimulating negative perceptions that this time the regression was definitive and total. It was, in essence, a kind of “end of Latin American history.” The weakness and lukewarmness of some emerged, stimulating defeat on the one hand and accommodating and intermediate positions that postulated “yes, but no,” on the other.

The Sao Paulo Forum (convened by Fidel and Lula in 1990 to confront the decline and crisis of the left resulting from the collapse of real socialism and Fukuyama’s proclaimed end of history) is to this day the main and largest instance of articulation of leftist, socialist, communist, revolutionary and popular parties and movements in Latin America and the Caribbean, a space for coupling which, despite having not a few contradictions and weaknesses, has continued to express an anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist and internationalist dimension and a constant solidarity with Bolivarian Venezuela, the Cuban revolution, Sandinista Nicaragua and with the member countries of ALBA-TCP in the face of sanctions and imperialist aggression, seeking to promote, with popular and social movements, social mobilization and alternatives to savage capitalism and neoliberalism in the region.

In the United States, led by the “left-wing imperialist” sector embedded in the Democratic Party and in some European politicians and intellectuals,the “Progressive International” emerged, an instrument that brings together individuals and some organizations that mediate the anti-imperialist and anti-neoliberal struggles.

In Latin America, a Chilean figure who has made political media coverage a flourishing business convinced a troubled governor of a Mexican state to launch a sort of “Latin American” version of this “progressive international.” Thus, the “Puebla Group” emerged as a media instrument of reference for “progressivism,” made up (on an individual basis) of left-wing people and liberal social democrats, the latter being what President Maduro has called the “cowardly left“.  I write “Latin American” in quotation marks because even a former Spanish president, a well-known lobbyist for Spanish transnationals and the corrupt Moroccan monarchy, is part of this motley crew that is one of the expressions of the ideological decline of the Latin American left.

All this has become evident and has been brought to the fore after the last elections in Venezuela. The dilemma of imperialism and subordination vs. sovereignty and independence that should mark the watershed between left and right in today’s world has given way to a series of interpretations that account for the imperial success in the co-optation of sectors that seek to adopt the categories and concepts of the right to engage in left-wing politics, knowing that this is impossible.

I have already said that the proposals of the French Revolution are instruments of the past. Finally, concepts such as separation of powers, alternation in government, freedom of the press, freedom of expression, representative democracy and others are non-existent categories and fallacies invented by the bourgeoisie (when it made its revolution) to guarantee its dominance, control and hegemony.on society and the State. The left cannot assume that, by making use of them, it will be possible to produce the changes that society needs.

The aim is to construct a new theoretical and conceptual framework that takes into account the changes that have taken place over the last 230 years, taking into account the “tsunamis” generated by the triumph of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917, the Second World War, the end of the Cold War and the emergence of China to the ranks of global power under the leadership of its Communist Party.

Within this framework and in an accommodating manner, certain sectors of the former Latin American left try to understand the Bolivarian process as a break, not as continuity. Thus, they try to justify their weaknesses and their abject and subordinate attitude to imperialism, under the argument that “Chávez was one thing and Maduro, another.” Who can deny it? Of course each one has been “himself and his circumstances”, as Ortega y Gasset pointed out. The most basic dialectic exposes the need to respond to what each one had to live through. And I do not believe that President Maduro wants to imitate Commander Chávez simply because they are two different people. But trying to use that to justify one’s weaknesses and one’s own conveniences is nothing less than a despicable and cowardly attitude.

On another level, the enemy’s think tanks have managed to divert the attention of important sectors of the left towards abandoning anti-imperialist and anti-neoliberal struggles under the argument that in the 21st century sectoral disputes prevail, thereby achieving the demobilization and paralysis of important contingents of the left that are now limited to the controversies of minorities that do not represent the general interest of society. Without undermining the imperative need to polemicize and confront misogyny, racism, homophobia, the depredation of nature and other plagues, it must be understood that all of these and others derive from class society. It has been capitalism, in its devastating imprint, that has taken with it values and principles of the left, but the class struggle continues to be at the center of the fighting. It is the struggle that must drag with it all the sectoral battles that matter and occupy advanced sectors of society.

The whole situation leads us to conclude that in light of the recent victory of Chavismo in the presidential elections and the new rearrangements that this has produced in the Latin American left, today we can identify six left-wing groups in the region:

1. Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Bolivia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Dominica, which express the strength of principles and resistance to imperialism.
2. Important social sectors, political organizations and popular movements in the region that fight for their rights and organize to maintain a clear anti-imperialist and anti-neoliberal position in their national and sectoral struggles.
3. A well-intentioned but hesitant, pusillanimous and changeable left that today is exposed by Lula, Gustavo Petro and Peronist leaders of Argentina such as Cristina Fernández among others. Here, the vociferous former president of Uruguay José Mujica is included. Almost all of them assume the position of “God” who when they speak, assuming they are having the last word. In short, they act in international politics, thinking about the management of their internal correlations of forces, exposing the weaknesses of their leadership.
4. The pro-imperialist social liberal left embodied in the former Democratic Concertation of Chile, its main leader Michelle Bachelet and Gabriel Boric, current president of that country, who have stood out for being the preferred instrument of the empire to expose a “civilized and decent” left that correctly administers the neoliberal model for the benefit of transnational corporations and big business and is fully subordinated to the United States. They are part of the process of “Israelization” of politics, which has recently been “Hispanicized” in such a way that the axis is increasingly shifting to the right until the left almost disappears.
5. Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the coalition that governs Mexico, maintaining an unrestricted nationalist position and defense of sovereignty. In international politics, by not interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, unless there are aberrant violations of human rights, democracy and sovereignty, the Mexican left has generated a positive influence on the development of social struggles in the region.
6. Small countries whose popular forces and governments have emerged from the neoliberal hell in conditions of extreme weakness and which must make great efforts to overcome the resistance of the oligarchies, such as Honduras, Antigua and Barbuda and other Caribbean countries. Probably, if the left were to win the next elections in Uruguay and Ecuador, they could be considered part of this group.

In this diverse context, we will have to learn to work. The heterogeneity characteristic of the left of the time is typical of the transformations that have occurred in recent politics. It is worth saying that when we live in moments of crisis of Western hegemony, one way for the empire to cling to power is to expand and strengthen its ideological apparatus in order to create confusion and divide the popular movement. Its successes are notable. In the 21st century, a diffuse social and popular movement has emerged in which certain sectors that self-identify as left-wing do not necessarily play the role of driving the necessary economic, social, political and cultural transformations.

In this sense, an uncertain perspective is emerging in the process of transformation of the role of the political subject and social subjects. The confrontation in this aspect – as always – will be hard and difficult. It will be necessary to confront all the technological, financial and media power of the empire.

The moment is one of doubt and uncertainty. To the extent that certain left-wing parties of socialist, nationalist and popular inspiration have emerged, as well as communist parties that are actually located to the right of the political spectrum to the point of becoming allies of imperialism, supporters of the instruments of control of capital and defenders of neoliberalism, the strategic confrontation becomes more complex and difficult because the categories of analysis of the past, particularly those of the Cold War, no longer serve as instruments of evaluation of the role of the left-wing forces in Latin America. The challenge will then be to build new tools that lead us to more accurate analysis and decisions in this matter, especially because this is necessary to define the main enemy, build the correlation of forces necessary to continue advancing and develop a correct policy of alliances in the current political moment.