The return of the left in Latin America… But what left?

Is the left that is emerging in the region a déjà vu of the beginning of the XXI century or is it another left? Neither similar, nor different. The political columns of the media are once again finding a political change in the region. The triumph of Gabriel Boric in Chile, the still indefinite proposal of Pedro Castillo in Peru and the victories of Xiomara Castro in Honduras, Laurentino Cortizo Cohen in Panama, the return of the MAS in Bolivia and the already established governments of AMLO in Mexico and Alberto Fernández in Argentina, in addition to the possible victories of Gustavo Petro in Colombia and Lula da Silva in Brazil, that some already take for granted, have marked the turn. That is, a broad and generous definition of left-wing governments.
The beginning of the twenty-first century stained the new governments of the region with a left. Hugo Chávez, Lula, Néstor Kirchner, Michelle Bachelet, Tabaré Vázquez, José Mujica, Fernando Lugo, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa and someone else reconfigured the political map of Latin America. But there was a novelty: they converged on a different left with respect to the leftist ideologies that were proposed as alternatives in the sixties and nineties.
Those new lefts were not Marxists, so they were given different names to characterize them: new left, progressivism, neo-populism. Libraries have been written to understand the nature of these lefts.
A new left
Currently, after the “light” shift to the right, a new wave of left-wing governments of different nature emerges, with different programs, objectives and visions, although depending on the reality of the countries. This, not to mention his vision of the globalized and economically and geopolitically interconnected world.
The first axis to analyze this new left is the evident heterogeneity of its nature and its programmatic objectives. Beyond the nickname “left”, a first glance notices quite dissimilar tones between what embodies a left represented by Boric and Petro with respect to the left of Castillo and, all of them with the very possible turn of a Lulist left, always considered iconic on the map of the Latin American left.
Boric and Petro could be defined as a left with social democratic overtones, but strongly interspersed with post-material demands that come from new social subjectivities. Meanwhile, the Peruvian left has a discourse, at least electoralist, marxist, mixed with worldviews typical of mountain and indigenist traditions, many of them very culturally conservative.
The second axis of analysis would be to notice the structural frameworks in which this new left would be deployed. It seems clear that Boric and Petro collect the social demands product of economically thriving societies, but champions of the social inequities that delineate the region. They are spokespersons for a very dynamic generational change in their respective countries that went out into the public space to demand a new “order of things”.
These new generations demand public policy regarding what a just life should be: environment, gender, sexualities, minorities, control of one’s own lives. That is, they ask for freedoms. And that’s new in the history of the region’s left. They are liberal freedoms and have all the burden that the political concept of liberalism always had on the Latin American left.
The third axis of analysis is the positioning of these lefts in relation to the global economic order, an order that, after almost twenty years of the dominance of the Latin American left in the twenty-first century, has been consolidated in its enclave of global market and capitalism.
If the first left-wing governments of the twenty-first century generated resistance to the economic order through organizations such as ALBA or concepts such as “Bolivarian socialism” or “buen vivir”, these new lefts emerge in an economic world system absolutely corseted in the frameworks of global financial capitalism. Perhaps that is why their political programs “dodge” economic definitions, beyond the proclamations regarding a better and fairer distribution of surpluses.
There is something new in Latin American politics that arouses hope if it comes to replace the ultra-right of Jair Bolsonaro, Iván Duque or Nayib Bukele, neoliberals in the economic and authoritarian-repressive in the political. As a political phenomenon nIt is necessary to understand and define it in its vision of the new subjectivities that constitute social life.
Does this new left bring with it novelties? No doubt. Starting with the fact that they have forgotten the old myths and have moved away from Nicolás Maduro and Daniel Ortega, the hangover of the left of the XXI century.

The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.

Original source in Spanish

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