The class-based turnaround in Latin America was short-lived. The often cited “healthy alternation” – in reality an unhealthy custom of political control by oligarchic power –, and the widely-publicized “end of the progressive cycle” that appeared to be overrunning the political panorama with successive right-wing victories, failed to achieve the desired continuity.

The adverse situation, after the narrow triumph of Macri (Argentina), the forced election of Kuczynski (Peru) and the coup against Dilma Rousseff in Brazil–preceded by coups in Paraguay and Honduras–far from detaining popular mobilization, has rekindled it. This heralds a cycle of active civilian political engagement that might resolve one of the principal weaknesses of the processes of change: the distancing of government officials from the social grassroots.

In a closer analysis, the movements or governments considered “progressive” were momentarily replaced, but not so those that are clearly revolutionary or leftist. In some places, such as Argentina or Peru, the representatives of big business have taken direct command of political power. In others, such as Chile, Uruguay, Brazil and now even Ecuador, the concession to the demands of economic power distorted the transformative profile of those governments, thus reducing their popular support and the capacity to further extend these processes.

Perhaps due to the mainly middle-class composition of their population, reticent to pursue in depth transformations, perhaps due to their own ideological limits, progressivism has not questioned the limits of capitalism as a social system, nor individualism as an existential scheme. Nevertheless, the popular demand for a better life for the majorities continues apace.

Different latitudes, the same attitude 

The courage of the Honduran people, whose will they are trying to silence through fraud, repression and a new coup d’état was expressed at the ballot boxes in favor of the Alliance for Opposition to Dictatorship and its candidate Salvador Nasralla. An almost impossible vote in the face of such a ferocious power arrangement. In extreme inferiority of conditions, battered by poverty and violence, against all the powers of the State, the Army, the drug-trafficking networks, the US State Department, the servile media and the economic groups, the Honduran people knew who to place their hopes on.

Venezuela, cornered by a putschist strategy of economic warfare, reviled by western media, attacked by the appendix of the US in the region, the OAS, with the complicity of vassal governments, emerged strengthened and victorious from the pounding whose goal was to overthrow President Maduro and put an end to the Bolivarian Revolution. The Venezuelan people voted with a Yes majority for the Constituent Assembly, forcefully rejecting force the violence of the opposition. The YES for peace, the popular support for the repeated attempts of the government to install a dialogue with the opposition, led to victory in the regional elections, with the result, that had seemed scarcely probable, of the revolutionary forces obtaining 18 of the 23 governorships in the contest. Thus, Chavism had the wind in its favor for the municipal elections of December 10, under the impulse of a long awaited victory: the official beginning of dialogues between the government and the opposition, in the Dominican Republic – another brave government.

The interference, the tactics of conspiring and the hatred with which a sector of the opposition aimed to provoke a popular uprising and an armed rebellion, failed completely. The Bolivarian government remains strong, shattering the imperial expectations of overthrowing the principal bastion of regional sovereignty. The Revolution – once the political front is relatively resolved – can now turn to the urgent task of resolving the problems posed by financial and commercial sanctions, internal corruption, contraband, exorbitant prices, the need to stimulate production and extend the communal model.

Chile, a country fire-branded by dictatorship and neoliberalism, has not yet been able to achieve the tranquil alternation of government towards the business right and their antiquated partners. Going against the current of what appeared to be an electoral formality for Sebastián Piñera, a conglomerate of parties and movements grouped as the Frente Amplio won 20% of the votes with the candidacy of Beatriz Sánchez and managed to end the duopoly logic of the Chilean Parliament. The new force points to the popular construction of majorities, rejecting partisan arrangements and, above all, the traffic of influences with which corporations have dominated the laws and the social life of this trans-Andean country.

Speaking of Parliamentary corruption, things are not easy either for the right-wing, in putchist Brazil. The business sector has achieved their short term objectives – pulverizing the social achievements of the Brazilian people and inaugurating a landscape of neo-slavery. Nevertheless, even counting on the complicity of the judicial system, the media monopoly and a parliamentary majority free from any moral considerations, the right fears the popular reaction and has not been able to raise one or more candidates that can compete with or undermine an electoral victory of Lula in 2018. An enormous portion of the Brazilian people understands this very well: if the establishment proscribes Lula with imprisonment, popular mobilization will shut down the country. 

The same popular movements have pressed to obtain a new candidacy of Evo Morales in Bolivia, overcoming the media manipulation that distorted the results of the referendum of February 2016. On that occasion, the principal private media outlets invented a farfetched scandal that affected the credibility of the President and influenced an unfavorable result. But the majorities will not easily renounce their social conquests and the sovereignty they have gained. With this popular power lies the possible reelection of Morales.

Another Morales, but of an opposite political tendency, is still President of Guatemala. Sustained by the most conservative sectors, the former actor was elected following the scandalous termination of the government of Otto Pérez Molina, an ex-military officer who, along with his ex-vice-president, was involved in a criminal contraband association. The corrupt characteristics of Guatemalan politics have earned the rejection of the middle classes who, as never before, have come out to stage huge marches. 

The right was also unable to win in Ecuador, even though dark clouds foreshadowed the victory of a banking representative. The people finally said no and elected Lenin Moreno President, so as to give continuity to the route traced by the Citizens’ Revolution headed by Rafael Correa. Now an important sector of the militancy of Alianza País has returned to the streets to show support for Correa, demanding respect for the programme for which Moreno was elected.

Nor could the right displace Sandinismo in Nicaragua, which, after achieving the reelection of Daniel Ortega in 2016, won the recent municipal elections with more than 70% of the votes.

And the people have begun to organize resistance in Argentina, against the cutting of social rights imposed by the government through retirement-fund, tax and labour reforms.

It is also the people who are demanding, in Paraguay, that (President) Cartes fulfill the agreements with the peasantry, which has ever less land and ever more debts, and is abandoned to the logic of agribusiness that exterminates the soil and the possibilities of an autonomous and decent subsistence.

It is also the lack of land that gave rise to the insurrection in Colombia, and which continues to be the cornerstone of the peace process and of the unfulfilled commitments of the conservative State with respect to the Havana Agreements. There the vile practice of assassinating campesino leaders continues, and there is an attempt, as happened in the beginnings of the fifty-year-old conflict, to eliminate any possibility that a left-wing leadership could open the doors to a more generous destiny for the violence-stricken Colombian people.

Extreme violence in all of its forms is massacring the people of Mexico. A people that is mobilizing and pushing for the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the coming elections, but that also, from the most combative and oppressed sectors, is raising the candidacy of María de Jesús Patricio Martínez – or simply Marichuy – to visibilize the marginalization of the indigenous peoples.

All this popular tide in Latin America and the Caribbean presents several new characteristics. It is not entirely spontaneous, nor is it totally organic.  It puts its faith in personal leaderships, but it is conscious that its strength is in the collectivity. It supports transformative governments, but conserves a critical view, demanding increasing democracy.

The signs of the rejection of social exclusion, of the loss of rights, of violence, of foreign domination, of media lies and the patriarchy mark the route. The peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, after centuries of extermination, spoilage and discrimination, are demanding their full and definitive independence.

04/12/2017

(Translated for ALAI by Jordan Bishop)