Latin America and the New Left

Marcelo Colossi, Contributor to Prensa Latina

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 and Che Guevara’s inspiring heroism with guerrilla magic served as a beacon to the great popular masses, or even more, to the self-proclaimed militant vanguard groups, trying to drive the discontent of those protests. In this climate, many popular, union, peasant, youth and neighborhood movements, and even Catholics of liberation theology, sought new post-capitalist paths. There was a strong anti-establishment stance.

After Cuba came the Nicaraguan revolution, while Central America was burning with revolutionary wars, and in different countries of the region a climate of change prevailed. A similar phenomenon occurred in other latitudes of the planet, with the liberation of the colonial yoke in Africa, the expanding Arab socialism, the inspiration of France in May 1968, and the Cultural Revolution in China, which meant the rejection of heavy handicaps. from antiquity. Socialism seemed close. Many Vietnamese were asked to set the world on fire and get rid of the imperialist chains. Then came the brutal repression of the right.

The ruling classes of each country, through their armies and with the support of Washington, the undisputed ruler of the Latin American region, conducted vigorous counter-revolutionary campaigns in the 1970s and 1980s to silence that transformative spirit that prevailed throughout the region. The suppression was enormous, without leaving a single area of ​​the area unshakable. The national security doctrine, centered on fighting to the death of the “enemy within,” was the dominant component of this counterinsurgency strategy, as Washington trained Latin American soldiers at its infamous School of the Americas.

After the last socialist revolution in the lands of Latin America, the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua in 1979, the Continental Right tightened the noose. The mountains of countless corpses and rivers of blood that had been recorded were terrifying for a long time. Torture and secret prisons were not the whims of psychopathic, bloodthirsty soldiers: they were part of a well-thought-out policy of containing communism. It is called terrorism education.

In other words: a strategy so that nothing changes in social architecture: the rich with their possessions and their luxuries, the armies defending them, the Catholic Church blesses the position, and the great popular majorities work to preserve the splendor of the former. . Let nothing change: if some “excess” of oppression is necessary for it, God will know how to forgive him.

These repressive operations, somewhat similar across the continent, guided by American operating manuals, marked history: the grassroots organization that sought the changes was deactivated. The left was badly damaged, decimated, and disintegrated, and although the social protests continued – because the causes that generated them did not disappear – there was no longer any possibility of any government collapsing, as was the case with the Somocista dictatorship in Nicaragua. . The proof of this is that mobilization continues today, but there is no possibility of turning it into a process of revolutionary change. What happened recently in Chile with the disapproval of the new constitution makes clear: we can protest, even a lot, but there is no power to change things at its foundations. Terror education has done its job well, supplemented by the incessant anti-communist media bombardment that pervades everything. “We don’t want another Venezuela,” is the endless slogan. The queues of Venezuelans leaving the country (by the way: blocked and attacked) are a clear “demonstration” of the failure of these “Castro-communist” proposals.

In this sea of ​​demobilization that began in the last decades of the twentieth century, already in the twenty-first century, a series of progressive proposals arrived, always within the framework of capitalist institutions, largely inspired by the emblematic figure of Hugo Chávez, who for years once again spoke of “socialism” , and flick off a term that seemed to be banished forever. Undoubtedly, the Venezuelan operation raised hopes: Have the revolutions returned?

Thus, in practically all countries in the region, at the time we are witnessing these processes of the center-left or the moderate left. Starting with the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, in the early years of this century, all Latin American countries experienced an economic recovery by selling their primary products (food and minerals) to China, whose prosperity was increasing. This economic prosperity allowed all those progressive governments (Kirchner/Fernandez in Argentina, Lula/Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, Correa in Ecuador, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Chavez/Maduro in Venezuela) to be able to grant a large number of improvements to their people. Without being Marxist measures in the strict sense of the word, there were benefits for poor and historically excluded peoples. People stopped feeling like a thing and became, by and large, the protagonist of their lives.

The fact is that all these departments are making important changes, but without affecting the foundation of the system: the private ownership of large capitals, both national and international, has not been compromised. Even the neoliberal ideas of reducing the state and the outrageous attack on the working class (through garbage contracts) have not fundamentally changed. Sometimes, let’s be honest when we say, these popular developments have been creating a calculated, sometimes opportunistic attitude. Of course, these operations are a step forward in relation to previous military dictatorships, but the proposals of the People’s Monetary Fund were never abandoned.

What is better for the popular camp in Brazil, for example: Bolsonaro, the fascist or the popular Lula? Or in Colombia: a left-leaning Pietro or a rebellious conservative like Ivan Duque? With the benefit of skepticism, a “progressive” government like Borek in Chile is better than a new Pinochet government like Pinera, or Xiumara Castro in Honduras than a government run by drug dealers. Having a “good” president, perhaps honest and transparent (Pepe Mujica in Uruguay, Lopez Obrador in Mexico) is good news. But beware, this is not the change that the great popular majority, always excluded, marginalized, defeated, needs.

“Socialism” is not a gift from the government, a welfare plan, a demagogic measure. Socialism is a real and effective popular power and state that directs the economy with a post-capitalist standard, with expropriation, with agrarian reform, with a deep anti-racist and anti-patriarchal policy. Experience shows, painfully, that these “tepid” projects, commendable in their intentions, if not deepened, end up being dropped. And capitalism continues. Why Cuba remained despite all the attacks? Because it’s my subscription! (“There are 200 million street children in the world. None of them are in Cuba,” Fidel Castro said. Don’t forget it! Cuba, the only third world country that has managed to produce its own vaccine against Covid-19).

Regarding tepid operations, it is worth recalling what the Polish-German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg said: “You cannot maintain the ‘average’ in any revolution. The law of its nature requires a quick decision: either the locomotive advances with all its might to the top of the mountain of history, or it falls From its weight to its starting point.And in its fall it will overwhelm those who, with their weak forces, want to keep it in the middle of the road, and throw them into the abyss.

“In my country there is no class struggle,” or “We will encourage serious capitalism,” are some of the slogans launched at the time by some of these progressive leaders. Should we stay with that, or can we go further?

rmh / mk

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