Civil Society, Development & Aid, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, Human Rights, Indigenous Rights, Latin America & the Caribbean, World Social Forum

WORLD SOCIAL FORUM: The Varied Leftisms of South America

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Jan 24 2005 (IPS) - On its return to Brazil this year, the World Social Forum will encounter a wide spectrum of progressive and leftist South American governments, determined to promote regional integration while striving, through trial and error, to respond to the demands of their increasingly vocal societies.

Alberto Müller, a geopolitical expert and retired general from the Venezuelan army, told IPS that left-leaning governments like those of presidents Néstor Kirchner in Argentina, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil and Hugo Chávez in Venezuela have been forced to contend with the small enclaves of wealth on the one hand and large masses of poverty and exclusion on the other.

These governments, as well as the political and social movements that back them, and others that remain opposition forces in other countries, are “capitalising on a sort of cyclical process in the region, in which the pendulum has swung towards the left and towards integration,” says Carlos Romero, professor of international relations at a number of Venezuelan universities.

The two specialists maintain that the advances made by the left have taken place in the context of the collapse of some of the region’s traditional political parties, while social movements and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) offer only partial or sector-specific visions and solutions.

Müller attributed the region’s new political landscape to “the extraordinary rise in poverty, as a result of the neoliberal policies implemented in the 1980s and particularly in the 1990s, leading to a crisis of governability.”

“This climate of ingovernability will persist until the swollen ranks of the poor and excluded have been successfully incorporated into the more advanced sectors of economic and social life in these countries,” Müller said.

“This reality is the basis for the struggles of the ‘piqueteros’ (the organised protest movement created and led by unemployed workers) in Argentina, the ‘cocaleros’ (coca farmers led by indigenous lawmaker Evo Morales) in Bolivia, the indigenous movement in Ecuador and the guerrilla groups in Colombia,” he added.

Müller described the policies adopted by the governments of Lula, Kirchner and Chávez as “contradictory”. “They cannot ignore the established elements of power who have money, know-how and skills, as well as the potential to act independently and even to destabilise governments, if they ally themselves with the elites of the industrialised countries.”

“Lula (a former union leader and founder of the leftist Brazilian Workers Party), to a greater extent than Kirchner or Chávez, has sought to reconcile the demands of these elements with the needs of the marginalized sectors, who represent the vast majority,” Müller said.

“There is clearly a clash of interests,” he added.

Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, while a member of the Socialist Party – and thus the country’s first socialist head of state since Salvador Allende (1970-1973) – was elected by the same centre-left coalition in power since the return to democracy in 1990, following the Pinochet dictatorship, and has largely continued to follow the same moderate policies as his more politically centrist predecessors.

For his part, Romero views the current political map of Latin America as “highly varied”.

It ranges “from the moderate tendencies of presidents Martín Torrijos of Panama and Nicanor Duarte Frutos of Paraguay to the radical leftist stances of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil, the ruling Fifth Republic Movement (MVR) in Venezuela, the Independent Democratic Pole (PDI) in Colombia and the Movement Towards Socialism led by Evo Morales in Bolivia,” Romero said.

Another more clearly defined division is that some leftist movements have reached power, while others have not.

Romero noted that there are basically two general tendencies in the region’s progressive or leftist parties and movements. “One is the radical tendency, which believes that the time has come to launch the Latin American revolution, to integrate and break away, while the other is reformist, and believes in moderate governments that pursue leftist policies but without sacrificing their relations with the United States.”

In the “radical” category, Romero includes Venezuela’s Chávez; the Independent Democratic Pole, which is the main opposition coalition in Colombia, and currently heads the municipal government of the country’s capital, Bogotá; the Landless Workers Movement and other socialist groups in Brazil; the indigenous movements in Bolivia and Ecuador; the Marxist left-wing parties in Chile that do not form part of the ruling coalition; and the ‘piqueteros’ and leftist sectors within the ruling Justicialista (Peronist) Party in Argentina.

The “moderates”, in his opinion, are Lula, Kirchner, Torrijos and the main parties that support them. Uruguayan president-elect Tabaré Vázquez and his Progressive Encounter-Broad Front coalition will likely join this group after he takes office on March 1, Romero added.

For his part, Müller commented that “the majority of these causes are headed up by charismatic leaders, who place priority on political matters, giving administrative affairs only secondary importance, and this could pose problems in terms of efficient leadership.”

Romero maintained that these progressive forces “are benefiting from the crisis facing centrist and reformist governments and movements,” referring to the parties and leaders that ruled South America in the 1980s and 1990s, in the aftermath of the dictatorships of the 1970s, and largely promoted neoliberal economic policies.

A survey released in 2004 by the Chile-based polling firm Latinobarómetro, based on interviews with 18,000 people throughout the region, revealed that only 53 percent of respondents said they supported democracy, while 15 percent said they would prefer a dictatorship, 21 percent claimed they had no preference either way, as long as their needs were addressed, and the remainder did not even respond to the question.

Faced with this political climate, the Latin American participants in the World Social Forum, taking place Jan. 26-31 in Porto Alegre, Brazil, will undoubtedly devote a good deal of discussion to the relative merits of the radical stance adopted by some and the mix of leftist and moderate positions implemented by Lula and others like him.

“The civil society groups will tend to adopt one stance or another in terms of their particular sphere of action,” said Romero.

Müller took a harsher line, claiming that “social movements very often lack a holistic view of the problems facing the world as a whole or this region in particular, and are largely spontaneous, ad hoc groupings, without the capacity to respond to the new, information-based forms of production that are replacing industrial society.”

Nevertheless, Müller said, both these civil society movements and the “charismatic” leaders ruling a number of the region’s countries can make an important contribution if they pursue the path of integration, “which genuinely is an alternative that can help define a distinct model of civilisation or society, as is the case with the U.S. model, the Chinese model, and to a certain extent, the European model,” he said.

“On an international level, these movements may seem fragile, but if they succeed in forging an ideology in the form of a cultural proposal, grounded in a set of common values shared by Latin America and the Caribbean, they could become a more permanent influence, and offer real solutions,” Müller concluded.