written by Félix Pablo Friggeri y Angélica Remache López
The description of the regional situation and its integration process has gone through a series of conceptualizations with diverse political intentions. We propose a characterization based on the concept of “catastrophic tie,” seeking to highlight elements that may be studied prospectively, considering recent events. These include aspects of the electoral processes and popular demonstrations that have taken place in recent times. We raise the question of whether we are moving towards the possibility of a resumption of the predominance of popular governments and regional integration processes.
Regional catastrophic tie
We understand that there are two mistakes in the interpretation of the Latin American-Caribbean regional reality, it is, therefore, important to overcome those in order to understand the current situation and generate an analysis that serves as the source of the political debate oriented to respond the popular needs and popular struggles of our region.
In the face of the relative predominance of popular governments in at least part of the first two decades of this century, the idea that we had entered a “post-neoliberal era” resonated throughout the continent. Some studies used this term, which had accurate elements of the analysis of reality, but its reading in the sense that the neoliberal conformation had been fundamentally overcome was not in line with what was predominating in the economic world and, in a good part, of the social imaginary of our countries. Latin America and the Caribbean was the only region on the planet that, as such, formed a regional bloc to contestation to neoliberal hegemony. The neoliberal hegemony, however, continued to define the fundamentals of the economic dynamics and social imaginary, especially those related to socio-economic mobility. The predominance of popular governments represented a strong and relatively sustained challenge to the hegemony of global capital, but never its definitive defeat. Neoliberalism continued to define the fundamentals of labor relations, capital accumulation processes, the people-nature relationship and the rural and urban property system. This explains why popular governments achieved significant advances in income distribution but did not achieve a considerable modification in the distribution of wealth, which is what modifies the correlation of social forces (Schuldt 2013). The core of the explanation of the regional crisis in the face of emerging progressive governments with popular characteristics suffers, therefore, opens a way to a relative predominance of the forces of the neoliberal right.
The second mistake was to understand the advance of the forces of wild capitalism as the “end of the populist cycle.” An interpretation clearly organized by the right, but which was accompanied by some versions of the intellectual left, generally conditioned by the economic view. The right-wing achieved a relative hegemony based on several coups d’état (Honduras 2009; Paraguay 2013; Brazil 2016; Bolivia 2019), on the pressure and encirclement of governments and peoples (Cuba and Venezuela), on some electoral processes that represented defeats for popular forces, but, above all and fundamentally, by multiple forms of u.s. interventionism. At the internal level, they played in favor of what Álvaro García Linera (2016) called “declassification” processes. Because of this process, part of the same population that benefited by the so-called “inclusion policies” of the popular governments ended up voting against them. This phenomenon has happened in several countries of the region and should be analyzed rigorously: people who were poor and who began to have access to some goods they had never had and who were identified -with more or less reason- as people who came out of poverty and began to be part of what was identified as “middle class,” adopted the discourse and political options of the bosses, stopped voting “as poor” and voted as “middle class” and adopted criteria against the working majorities to which they still belonged. This was a partial phenomenon, perhaps conjunctural, but it influenced the advance of the right wing in the popular spheres. This is what we would call the “mercantilization of social mobility.” Another mercantilizing process that collaborated in this “right-wing” of a part of the popular sectors was that of spirituality, driven, above all, by the so-called “Theology of Prosperity” that orients a good part of what is called the Neo-Pentecostal movement.
We understand that the situation that has been developed in the region for several years may be described as a “catastrophic tie.” The political concept of “tie” arises from the work of Antonio Gramsci, but was developed, especially, by two Latin American authors to describe the conjunctural realities of their countries. One was the Argentine Juan Carlos Portantiero (2003) in the 1970s. He described the reality of his country as a “hegemonic tie” because the groups fighting for power were not strong enough to lead the country, but they did have the strength to veto opposing projects. The other approach, with which Álvaro García Linera (2008) described the reality of Bolivia, opted for the expression “catastrophic tie,” highlighting the existence of two political projects with the capacity to attract and mobilize social forces with an extended scope, but whose confrontation resulted in a “paralysis of the state command.” For him, the way out of this situation was the election of Evo Morales. This theoretical approach, which the authors use to describe the reality of their countries, can also be used to analyze the current regional situation.
On a regional tie-breaker?
The victories of Andrés López Obrador in Mexico in 2018 and Alfredo Fernández in Argentina in 2019 were key to the advance of a change in the regional landscape. Both countries have a population and economic weight, behind Brazil, among the most important in the region. Their articulation, given in the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), in the Puebla Group and in joint actions among which the action to save the lives of Evo Morales, García Linera and other Bolivian officials at the time of the coup d'etat in that country, highlights the possibility of an “Argentina / Mexico Axis” that can promote policies different from the purely neoliberal ones and a resumption of the process of regional articulation.
Another important reality was the persistent resistance of governments and peoples in Cuba and Venezuela. The enormous effort made by the United States and by all the Latin American governments that strove to serve the wishes of the U.S. to stifle them did not bear much fruit, only that of bringing suffering to their peoples. The bet made on armed mercenaries, on the generalized attack of the mainstream press and on a figure as mediocre as Juan Guaidó, were signs of a remarkable limitation in the capacity of analysis of reality by those sectors.
To this reality, it is crucial to add the protests in Haiti, which began already in 2018, and intensified in 2020 and 2021. Later, in October 2019, the enormous protests that arose in the Chilean neoliberal “oasis” of Sebastian Piñera that made possible, in principle, the opening of a process that could give continuity to the New Latin American Constitutionalism that the right-wing pretended to have buried. In the same month, large mobilizations, also harshly repressed, took place in Ecuador. More recently, in November 2020 in Peru and Guatemala and in March of this year, in Paraguay, this tendency was again evidenced. There is uncertainty about where these processes will lead to in each country, but, as a whole, the “neoliberal consensus” does not display the firmness it pretended to have.
The process lived in Bolivia that culminated with the new and resounding triumph of the Movement Towards Socialism-Instrument for the Sovereignty of the Peoples (MAS-IPSP) contains an enormous significance as a political and symbolic fact for the regional path. It is the first people capable of defeating one of the coups d’états of recent times. None of the other countries have achieved this yet, and Bolivia, which faced the most recent coup, was able to do so in a relatively short time. Secondly, it is important to emphasize what we understand to be the two keys that made this victory possible: one is the powerful reactivation of Bolivia’s historic capacity for popular organization; the other was the ethical and political capacity of its leaders to overcome the fragmentation of the popular camp, relegating egos and arguments that tend to divide the struggle. In addition, the chosen formula enhances two of the prominent elements that give relevance to the process of the Masista government. Luis Arce symbolizes the capacity to face major macroeconomic challenges effectively and solidly. He was able to find answers to problems that are common to several Latin American countries: to achieve remarkable growth with inflation control; to harmonize this growth with a significant redistribution of income that meant a significant reduction in poverty and to strengthen the economy. He managed to place the country’s macroeconomic performance, historically ranked at the bottom of the region, among the economies with the most favorable results. Similarly, the figure of David Choquehuanca represents the proposal - coming from the indigenous movements - to seek ways to make viable the “cultural revolution” that means to operationalize in public policies the Suma Qamaña, the “Good Living” that is presented as critical of capitalist developmentalism. The harmonization of these two paths is not only a Bolivian challenge, but for the whole region. It is in Bolivia where this dilemma (Development and/or Good Living) has been most clearly posed and paths have been sought to try to achieve it. In order to weigh the importance of the Bolivian heroic deed, it is convenient not only to look at the protagonists of its victory but also at those who led historic defeats. Various factions of the political right have been defeated. Both a moderate faction, represented by Meza and a “bolsonarista” faction embodied by the figure of Luis Camacho” have been defeated. Even when added together, they did not represent a danger for the triumph of the MAS. An additional faction has been defeated: a small group of intellectuals who, in the name of a kind of “pure left” or of a supposed “feminism,” made fierce criticisms of the process headed by Evo Morales, at the same time that the forces of the coup were massacring the popular demonstrations. They presented a discourse complementary to that of the right-wing that possibly speaks of the supremacy of the intellectual ego over the commitment to popular struggles. There are other defeated sectors, but the biggest and most important is the US foreign policy that counted on the collaboration of several governments of the region and the proactivity of the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS).
These developments in Bolivia would appear to point in the direction of a Latin American-Caribbean “tie-breaker” in favor of popular governments and a resumption of the regional integration process. Another recent and important development is the 2021 presidential elections in Ecuador. The elections in this country revealed a great impoverishment of the electoral capacity of the right-wing, whose traditional representative, Guillermo Lasso, did not reach 20% of the votes in the first round. In addition, it meant the definitive annihilation of the neoliberal project that Lenin Moreno tried to build by turning his back on his former allies of Correism. In fact, Ximena Peña, the candidate of the political grouping he presided, the former Alianza País, did her best to detach herself from his figure, but her result was equally poor, hardly reaching 1.54%. The other candidate who appealed to Moreno’s supporters received a mere 0.82% of the votes. If, on the other hand, we add the two consistent expressions of what we could call the Ecuadorian “left,” they add up to more than half of the votes in the first round of the election. Andres Arauz, who was the winner of the first round with over 32% did not reach the percentage necessary to avoid a second round. But even an electoral triumph would not have been enough as it would have been necessary to have faced a very difficult stage both for the country and for the region. In the public mind he is associated with Rafael Correa, who has certainly given him considerable support and votes. In the second round, it had resulted hard to predict the triumph of a candidate with less than 20% in the first round; however, Lasso’s victory resulted with a difference of around 5% against Arauz, and with the largest electoral absence in history. Although the Union for Hope was defeated in the Presidential Elections, it has the largest number of seats in the National Assembly. And a process of reunion and reconciliation with the indigenous movements is fundamental. They were and continue to be the ones that have been able to drive the decisive mobilizations in the recent history of the country and to contribute the most original ideas that were expressed, especially in the pioneering Constitution approved in 2008. Just as Correism has showed greater electoral reach, the indigenous movements have demonstrated greater mobilization power. The two political movements represent the two main benches in the Legislative Power. A dialogue between these two organizations needs to address the debate on what is possibly the greatest dilemma for the popular governments we propose to call: “Development and/or Good Living.” The problem is how to articulate an expansive economic policy that seeks to increase popular consumption, with respect and support for indigenous communities and nature. Ecuador has a precious instrument, whose original meaning must be recovered and clearly put into practice: a Constitution that stands out mainly for two fundamental elements, namely the principle of Sumak Kawsay (Good Living) and the Rights of Nature.
It is precisely in Ecuador where the tendency to this tie-breaker in favor of a predominance of popular governments and the resumption of regional integration was most clearly evidenced. Even though the left was defeated, it is, just as in Bolivia, the country's greatest political force in the face of opposition, which is highly fragmented organization wise.
References
Brieger, Pedro (2020). Celso Amorim, excanciller brasileño, a propósito de la salida de Brasil de la CELAC. “La política de Bolsonaro es una sumisión total a la política de Trump”. Nodal, January 17. https://www.nodal.am/2020/01/celso-amorim-excanciller-brasileno-a-proposito-de-la-salida-de-brasil-de-la-celac-la-politica-de-bolsonaro-es-una-sumision-total-a-la-politica-de-trump/
García Linera, Álvaro (2016). Derrotas y victorias. Vicepresidencia del Estado Plurinacional de Bolivia, www.vicepresidencia.gob.bo.
García Linera, Álvaro (2008). Empate catastrófico y punto de bifurcación. Crítica y emancipación. Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales. 1(1):23-33.
Portantiero, Juan Carlos (2003). Clases dominantes y crisis política en la Argentina actual. Buenos Aires: BVU.
Sader, Emir (2008). Posneoliberalismo en América Latina. Buenos Aires: CLACSO / Instituto de Estudios y Formación CTA.
Schuldt, Jurgen (2013). Distribución del Ingreso versus Distribución de la Riqueza. Economía Peruana, May 13. http://pacasmayo08.blogspot.com/2013/05/distribucion-del-ingreso-versus.html
Footnotes
1. Perhaps the work that most widely used this term was that of Emir Sader (2008), although he (unlike others) did not use it in the sense that, as we point out, is erroneous.
No comments:
Post a Comment