CETRI
Approaching Latin America as a single entity, at the risk of neglecting national singularities, is a challenge. How can one equate seven million Nicaraguans under the sway of a turncoat revolutionary and 220 million Brazilians oscillating between « bolsonarism » and « lulism » ? How to merge Chilean hypermodernity with Haitian collapse, Mexican « 4th transformation » with Peruvian governance entanglements, Central American conservatisms with Southern Cone progressivisms ? Mentioning any one country suffices to grasp the irreducibility of one situation to another or even, through metonymic relation, to the broader traits of the region to which it belongs.
Considering the territorial stretch (El Salvador is 425 times smaller than Brazil), geography (more or less resource-rich), population density (Haiti is 39 times more densely populated than Bolivia), ethnic composition (Guatemala has over 55% indigenous population, Argentina less than 2% ; Mexico counts between 12 and 15 million, Uruguay barely 500), political history (from the Cuban exception to the Panamanian exception), economic structures (from Chilean copper to Mexican tourism), produced wealth (annual GDP per capita of $2000 in Managua, $18000 in Montevideo), cultural references, levels of integration, education, urbanization, emigration, militarization, etc., all is only disproportion and dissimilarity.
However — and this is also obvious — several major common trends, ongoing since the beginning of the 21st century, are in motion through the continent from end to end : from the raw materials boom and extractivist and export-oriented euphoria to current economic and political crises ; from the wave of left-wing powers at the helm of states to the ongoing populist or more classical alternations. Across Latin America, against the backdrop of China-US hegemonic rivalry, democratic instability, and increasing militarization, various movements have emerged. These include protests demanding better jobs or pensions, indigenous movements striving for de jure or de facto autonomy, feminist or decolonial mobilizations seeking recognition and equality, and ecological or peasant organizations defending their territories. However, alongside these movements for change, powerful reactionary and populist forces oppose reform and advocate for maintaining order and security. All of this occurs within a context of widespread inequality across the region.
(NEO-)EXTRACTIVIST PUSH
Economically speaking, a pivotal factor of this early 21st century, common to all countries on the continent, has been the « commodities boom, » given its effects on Latin America’s relationship with the world, its productive structures and political choices, national finances, poverty rates, and new configurations of social conflict, from Tierra del Fuego to Baja California. In short, the phenomenal rise in the prices of the main products extracted from Latin American soils and subsoils on the international market between 2000 and 2015 changed the game. Or rather, it significantly strengthened the region’s externalization towards the global market, as a supplier of non or barely transformed resources.
As we know, this trend was driven by China’s expansion, following its affiliation to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, and the concomitant outburst of its appetite for raw materials, which added to Western demand. In fifteen years, the trade between Latin America and China increased twenty-fivefold. Only Paraguay traded more with China than with the United States in 2000. In 2020, China is the top trading partner for all South American countries, except Colombia and Ecuador. Consequently, this dynamic significantly inflated prices for soybeans, sugarcane, ethanol, meat, nickel, copper, lead, silver, gold, lithium, gas, oil... extracted and exported frenetically by Latin America, based on a certain « re-primarization » of its economic matrix.
Never in history have the region’s soils been so excavated. It is the soaring, even the leap forward, of what we would then call « extractivism, » or « neo-extractivism. » And the emergence of what, later in this Alternatives Sud, Maristella Svampa calls the « commodities consensus, » which has replaced the « Washington consensus » over the past two decades. In just ten years, the vein, among other things, would triple the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Lula’s Brazil, double that of Correa’s Ecuador and Ortega’s Nicaragua. Latin America in its whole frees itself from its debts to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), enriches itself abundantly, while consolidating its subordinate and dependent position in the international division of labour.
« THE WORST CRISIS IN A CENTURY »
But the trend reversal that occurred from 2014-2015 — the « commodities deflation cycle, » followed by price volatility... — caught most countries on the continent off guard and plunged them into a crisis that many Latin American leftist economists had predicted since the 2000s, given the generalized and inconsistent governmental enthusiasms for the high but fragile profitability of the extractive-export boom. From a period of sustained growth, the region then shifted into a period of recession, disinvestment, and state re-indebtedness, with a fall in foreign direct investment, inflation and so on. « The worst period since 1950 » according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America. And this, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, followed by the global effects of the war in Ukraine, further exacerbated the situation.
Latin American countries are even more deprived despite promises — such as those enshrined in the new Ecuadorian Constitution of 2008, for example. None has managed to capitalize on the boom period to diversify their economy, plan it democratically and ecologically, reprioritize its redirection towards the domestic market, favor industrialization over extraction, despecialize territories by reshoring activity, prioritize use value over exchange value, etc. Nor, in anticipation of downward movements in external sources of financing, to provide states with proper, strong, and progressive fiscal systems, aimed at making both old oligarchies and new elites contribute (read in this Alternatives Sud, Mariana Heredia). Some did attempt but failed miserably. Latin American tax systems remain among the weakest and most regressive in the world (Duterme, 2018).
SHIFT TO THE LEFT, THEN TO THE RIGHT, THEN TO THE LEFT...
Another trend, political this time, common or nearly so throughout Latin America since the beginning of this century, refers to the astonishing « cycles » or « waves » of left-wing, then right-wing, then left-wing powers that successively took the lead in most states on the continent. With three key dates as paroxysmal snapshots.
* 2008 : Out of the top ten South American countries, nine are governed by « pink » or « red » presidents, claiming to be left-wing. Only Colombia remained right-wing. As well as further north, Mexico and half of Central America.
* 2019 : Turn of events. Mexico stands as the only country, lagging ten years behind the initial ’progressive turn,’ to have a democratically elected left-wing president in power. All the other countries of the region are dominated by more or less conservative regimes (and/or non democratically elected, as it is the case for Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela)
* 2022 : A new widespread about-face. The vast majority of Latin Americans are once again governed by progressive powers. Only Uruguay, Paraguay, Ecuador, and most of the small Central American and Caribbean countries have remained on the right side of the spectrum.
That being said, the magnitude of the first « left turn » - its duration (up to three successive presidential terms in several countries), its strength (absolute majorities in the first round, in congresses, etc.), its unprecedented character (never had the continent seen so many left-wing parties with so much power in so many places) - is incomparable to the populist or more classical alternations of recent years. Of variable intensity depending on the countries, this historical shift was first and foremost the result of popular dissatisfaction – often fuelled by significant social movements – faced by the disastrous outcome of the double process of liberalization - political and economic - that Latin America underwent at the end of the 20th century.
Certainly, the left-wing parties that comprised it displayed their diversity (from Venezuelan Chávez to Chilean Bachelet, passing through the Argentine couple Kirchner, Paraguayan Lugo, Uruguayan Vázquez and Mujica, Bolivian Morales, etc.), but also shared a common family resemblance or, at the very least, a common « post-neoliberal » aspiration : more sovereigntist, statist, Keynesian, redistributive, intercultural, participative policies... and integrationist, on the Latin American scale. As a result, they have experienced significant reductions in poverty rates. But the combined effects of the economic crisis starting in 2015, state power corrosion, the verdict of the ballot box or even one or the other parliamentary or judicial coup, opened the door to a conservative backlash, to a « reactionary moment »... which only lasted a while due to lack of social results.
Today, the new « wave » of left-wing or centre-left presidents, initiated as early as the end of 2018 in Mexico (López Obrador) and in 2019 in Argentina (Fernández), continued in 2020 in Bolivia (Arce), in 2021 in Peru (Pedro Castillo), Honduras (Castro), and Chile (Boric), and in 2022 in Colombia (Petro) and Brazil (Lula), cannot hide its extreme fragility. Firstly, because electoral successes have often been (very) short-lived, either without a majority in parliaments, constrained by unfavourable power dynamics or even disowned by other subsequent polls and elections. Secondly because ongoing investigations and upcoming elections are particularly uncertain, revealing the willingness of public opinion for immediate remedies to their physical, social, and identity insecurity. And confirming, in the same line of thought, the strength and reach of new far-right figures on almost every Latin American political stage (Dacil Lanza, 2023).
INSECURITY, INSTABILITY, VIOLENCE, EMIGRATION, MILITARIZATION...
Additionally, the current prevailing climate in Latin America, against the backdrop of a long and severe socio-economic crisis, is germane to strong democratic instability with a tendency toward multifaceted remilitarization (as explained by Alejandro Frenkel later in this Alternatives Sud). First, it is necessary to recall the highly problematic social balance sheet of the last decade. After the boom of the years 2000-2014 and its sustained growth rates (between 4 and 6%, except in 2009), periods of recession and stagnation – linked to commodity prices, the pandemic, post-COVID inflationary pressures, vicissitudes of the global market and international investments – have followed, placing the continent below the results recorded in the last two decades of the 20th century, which were already considered as « lost decades. »
Poverty, inequality, informal employment, and food insecurity have consequently resurged at varying rates across different countries, following significant declines in the preceding phase. Thus, according to the latest calculations of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (cited by Ventura, 2023), 32% of the region’s population, or 201 million people, are currently living in poverty or extreme poverty, « the worst situation in twenty-five years » ; informal employment now affects more than 53% of the active population ; and severe or moderate food insecurity affects 40% of Latin Americans, a rate more than 10% « higher than the global average. »
The instability of institutions and political organizations (widely discredited in public opinion), the widespread extension of violence, crime, drug trafficking as well as the explosion of emigration – particularly from Central America, the Caribbean, Venezuela, and Ecuador – are undoubtedly linked to this « multidimensional deterioration chain » (Ventura, 2023). The volatility and fragmentation of electoral scenes are matched only by the oscillatory “ideological trajectories” of the region and the high fragility of democratic procedures. Two indicators, among many others : in Guatemala, since the restoration to a civilian regime, the ten successive heads of state have come to power through as many different parties ; and in Peru, by the end of 2022, the president, elected sixteen months earlier, was removed from office and arrested for attempting to dissolve parliament.
If Latin America’s “endemic violence,” such as the « endemic » corruption of the elites – and their collusion with organized crime – have become commonplace, their news and firmness are nonetheless worrying. In terms of intentional homicides per inhabitant, for example, the « Northern Triangle » of Central America remains « the most dangerous region in the world, » according to the UNODC. Moreover, this region is also the one from which the largest number of emigrants to the United States originates, with approximately 500,000 on average annually since the beginning of the century (CETRI, 2022). Meanwhile, according to the UNHCR, more than seven million Venezuelans would have fled their country since 2015, initially towards South America – from Colombia to Chile – creating new chain problems of reception, rejection, as well as various types of trafficking.
To these different phenomena, several states have responded with militarization while societies responded with militarism. For Gilberto López y Rivas, who denounces its progress in Mexico in particular, militarization is primarily « the assignment to the armed forces of missions, tasks, prerogatives, budgets, and competences not provided for by the Constitution and its laws » (2023). Militarism, on the other hand, refers to the spread of a system of representations and values that normalizes the use of violence, naturalizes social order, and justifies security reflexes, and so on. These two tendencies, which make national democratic frameworks even more vulnerable, have been operating throughout the region for about a decade. With, as Frenkel later details in this book, bursts of sporadic visibility in Ecuador, Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, El Salvador, Uruguay, Paraguay, Brazil, etc.
INTEGRATIONIST ATTEMPTS AND HEGEMONIC RIVALRIES
In terms of foreign relations, at least three concurrent processes, which also concern the entire Latin America, are at work : attempts at regional integration, the return of the « Lula’s continent » at the international stage, and overarchingly, the China-US showdown that has been playing out since the beginning of the century. The first no longer possess the strength it once had during the left turn in the 2000s ; a strength already paralyzed or reversed by the return of the right between 2014 and 2020. To ambitious unifying organizations, more or less ideologically marked, launched in 2004 (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America – ALBA, to counter the US project of a Free Trade Area of the Americas), in 2008 (the Union of South American Nations – UNASUR), and in 2010 (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States – CELAC), has succeeded a « cacophonous soup, » made of overlaps and fragmentations.
Instead of progressive integration, conservative governments have opted for liberalization in terms of trade (reactivation of Mercosur, launch of the Pacific Alliance, etc.) and for a reactionary integration in terms of politics (PROSUR on the ashes of UNASUR, Lima Group, etc.). Today, the new left-leaning powers are either hesitant or divergent. Faced with the proliferation of regional organizations, signs of national frictions and rivalries, the heterogeneity of orientations and weights of their members, and the competitive dependence on major powers, these actors tend to prioritize their own domestic agenda “in crisis.” With many of which being strongly reluctant to march under the same united banner amidst the assertive and voluntarist leadership of post-Bolsonaro Brazil.
The return of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (third presidential term) to the international stage is indeed the second process at work. With him, after the Bolsonaro years, a multilateral « protagonism » resumes its course, on behalf of his country (1/3 of the Latin American GDP) and the rest of the region, of which he has become the spokesperson. Within the G20, the G77, climate COPs, BRICS+ (CETRI, 2024), etc., the initiatives and reaffirmed goals of Lula and his friends consist of weighing in international forums, reforming global governance, negotiating peace between Russia and Ukraine..., as well as revitalizing Latin American integration by promoting « a ’non-aligned’ collective action in favor of a reindustrialization of the region’s countries and a progressive transition to more diversified and higher value-added models » (Ventura, 2023).
Nevertheless, the competition that continues to unfold in Latin America between the United States, even in relative decline, and an ever-ascending China – not to mention the European Union, the main investor in the region (693 billion euros in 2022, www.ec.europa.eu) – may well hinder this integration and strategic autonomy dear to Lula. The appetite of major powers for natural and agricultural resources necessary for the greening of their economies (CETRI, 2023), as well as the aggressiveness of their commercial, credit, and investment policies, more or less marked by conditionality, offer few opportunities for a redefinition of political relations and trade exchanges on less asymmetrical and more sovereign bases for all small, medium, and large Latin American countries.
OLD AND NEW SOCIAL CONFLICTS
With regards to social conflict and popular protests, there too can be seen a deep and multidimensional undertow working through Latin America from end to end. Even if the rhythm and intensity of these mobilizations experience peaks and troughs, flows and ebbs, depending on both their internal dynamics and contextual constraints, the Latin-American « street » does not cease to confront as much as possible, the established orders. « The street, » being the one of « active minorities, » sometimes out of balance with their own social environment, with these more or less indifferent « silent majorities ». This tendency is further reinforced, as we know, by the anomic effects of consumer societies, the atomizing attractions of urban environments and the disintegration of collectives in individuation mechanisms, as mentioned by several authors of this collective book.
That being said, even if it is not all the women of Chile who revolt against the culture of rape, nor all the indigenous people of Guatemala who denounce mining, in the autumn of 2019, for example, about ten countries on the continent were indeed shaken in a deep and simultaneous way by a new and strong rebellious surge. The reduction of public subsidies in transportation, education, or retirement, water privatization, application of the IMF recommendations, corruption scandals, conservative reforms, labour flexibilization, state violence, etc., being the causes and jumbles of this insurrectional spirit. And this, from Ecuador to Honduras, from Panama to Chile, from Bolivia to Haiti, from Puerto Rico to Colombia...
Of course, repression or consultation, criminalization or institutionalization, and then crises, the pandemic, and the closure of protest spaces have had their demobilizing effects. But the effervescence and social raging of Latin America remain, today, prevalent realities. Prevalent and two-faced. Grass-roots movements can be emancipatory, progressive, egalitarian, anti-discriminatory, feminist, ecological, anti- or decolonial in purpose..., but can also, conversely, call for the restoration of order, security protection, border closure, identity preservation... And the former being not necessarily more popular than the latter.
Firstly, on the side of emancipatory struggles, the newest ones of this century, as opposed to reactionary mobilizations, undoubtedly the most widespread across the continent, relate to this socio-environmental conflictuality that flourished, or at the very least, has greatly increased, with the (neo-)extractivist push. On one side are large external private or public investors and on the other are local, often indigenous, peasant communities, met by environmental organizations. Several of the authors of this Alternatives Sud speak extensively about these conflicts, which undermine dozens of Latin American countries (see notably the Environmental Justice Atlas, which catalogs them : www.ejatlas.org).
The key issue at stake is the territory, its sovereignty and use. Is it the natural recipient for « megaprojects » – mining, airport, energy, highway, agro-industrial, railway, tourist, commercial... – for the « modernization » or « development » of national infrastructures, or is it primarily the living and agricultural production environment for the local populations that live within it ? Is it a resource that can be appropriated and exploited at will by powerful economic operators, politely invited to minimize the collateral damage – environmental and social – of their polluting activities ? Or, above all, is it the subject of essential democratic consultations aimed at obtaining (or not) the « free, prior, and informed consent » of the indigenous peoples who inhabit it regarding its future destiny ? Or is it primarily the subject of indispensable democratic consultations aimed at obtaining (or not) the ’free, prior, and informed consent’ of the indigenous people who inhabit it, regarding its future destiny ?
In the meantime, the two sides come into conflict, through power relations, often unbalanced. Among the hundreds of environmental defenders victimized by deadly violence in 2022, identified by the international organization Global Witness (Le Monde, September 13, 2023), 90% were in Latin America. The most affected countries : Colombia in the lead, followed by Brazil, Mexico, Honduras, Venezuela, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Guatemala...
Indigenous movements – Maya, Aymara, Quechua, Mapuche, etc. – constitute a considerable proportion of the collective actors mobilized in these socio-environmental struggles. They have emerged from the 1990s onwards, in the enclaves created by political and economic liberalization of the continent and by the deeper embedding of « dispossession capitalism. » Today, within the regimes of « de jure autonomies » granted to them or « de facto autonomies » they have managed to achieve, they now endeavor to create, on a daily basis, the conditions for reconciling of the principles of equality and diversity in a new « decolonial » and « plurinational » relationship with modernity. The triple democratic, ecological, and multiculturalist challenge constitutes the nexus of their approach. This is certainly a plural and fragile approach, but whose different registers of action aim, as Martínez and Stahler-Sholk explain in this Alternatives Sud, to stand firm against the political and economic adversaries who attack them and the criminal cartels that surround them.
The feminist movement, or rather, the Latin American feminist movements, also regularly make headlines. During a recent conference, Lissell Quiroz (2023), a specialist in this field, highlighted both the historical background (from the 16th to the 20th century), the current « remarkable dynamism » (which serves as a source of inspiration for Europe), and the « plurality » of expressions, representative of the multiplicity of situations of women on the continent. She identifies four contemporary currents, which may happen to converge. First, the « majority feminism, » at least the most visible, original, and publicized. This category is composed of educated women (often also linked to student demonstrations), of Western culture, who have rallied for sexual and reproductive rights, as well as against gender-based violence (such as the campaigns « Ni Una Menos, » « Las Tesis, » etc.).
The « community feminism » then, that of indigenous women who, as members of a community more than as individuals, emphasize their place within the community, the connection with the land and with the environment. Then, the « afro-feminisms » which, in Brazil, Colombia, Haiti, etc., denounce the « subalternization » of Afro-descendants, precarious employment, lack of rights, and advocate for « blacking feminism. » Finally, the « decolonial feminism, » which insists on the necessary overcoming of the interconnection of several systems of domination – gender, class, « race » – and mobilizes among racialized domestic workers... Further in this book, Luciana Peker and Jessica Visotsky detail their different expressions and their ways of « bringing democracy to life. »
To complete this overview of the main social, progressive, or emancipatory contestations at work in Latin America, we must also mention, of course, the more classic workers’ movement or the broader movement of men and woman workers, as well as the trade unions carrying their causes. The whole can be characterized both on the one hand, by its historical centrality in collective mobilizations related to living conditions, wages, decent work, pensions, etc., and, on the other hand, by its (very) relative socio-political weight, which varies significantly from one country to another.
Obviously, several factors remain determinant : the unequal levels of industrialization and the extension of the service sector, the proportion of informal work – beyond 75% of the active population in several economies –, the political history of repressions suffered by the population, labour market reforms offering some room for collective negotiations... And to these « external » factors, we must add the variable politicization or radicalism of the unions, their fragmentation, their articulations with other struggles, as well as their relationships with the powers and parties of the left or right, relationships that have de facto oscillated in recent years between empowerment, instrumentalization, co-optation, institutionalization, and confrontation (Gaudichaud and Posado, 2017).
POLITICAL CLEAVAGES AND « CULTURAL WAR »
The last underlying double trend that, in our view, runs through Latin America refers on the one hand, to the intersecting tensions that divide both social and political lefts and, on the other hand, to the « cultural war » which, in the U.S. fashion, pits progressive ideals against conservative reflexes, especially in working-class neighbourhoods.
Firstly, on the left, the fault lines are multiple but tend to overlap. A first one has opposed, during the 2000-2015 wave of socialist governments, a pole qualified as « neo-developmental » against another labelled as « indigenist, » « ecosocialist, » or even « pachamamist » (from Pachamama, the « Mother Earth » in Andean cosmology). In the name of national sovereignty, the reappropriation of natural resources (through nationalization or renegotiation of exploitation contracts with multinational companies), and subsequently, the redistribution of benefits through social policies, the neo-developmental left advocated for the expansion of extractive and agro-export activities. In the name of local sovereignties, environmental preservation, and an autonomous model of « buen vivir » (good living), the indigenist left has vehemently opposed it.
In this Alternatives Sud, Alexis Cortés convincingly argues for an articulation of these two seemingly incompatible projects, namely the unquestionable protection of biodiversity and the imperative of redistributive industrial development. He will then have to try to mediate on other political or more conceptual fault lines, new or old, which, when added together, contribute to the polarization of both Latin American left movements and parties. Fractures that confront not only the « statists » with the « communalists, » the « jacobinists » with the « libertarians, » the « verticalists » with the « horizontalists, » but also the « egalitarians » with the « differentialists, » the « materialists » with the « post-materialists, » the « universalists » with the « identitarians » and so on. Thus, was the (very) progressive Constitution project, rejected in 2022 by 62% of Chileans, not accused of being « woke » and « dangerous » by several socialist figures in Santiago ?
Some even see, in this Chilean Constitution project as in other « ideological rigidities, » « decolonial exaggerations, » or « pro-LGBTQ+ » excesses at work « in Brazil, Colombia, or elsewhere, » a red carpet laid out under the feet of reactionary opinions and far-right forces (Confidential, 2022) which, in fact, are gaining ground all over Latin America. « Wokeness manages to tense up Latin American citizens and pave the way for authoritarian right-wing populists, » declares a former minister of Bachelet, the former socialist president of Chile (Velasco, 2022). What, in any case, corresponds to a real groundswell, are these popular conservatisms, flattered by sensationalist media and by ultra-conservative political or religious tribunes (the audience of evangelical churches has increased tenfold since the last century), which express in the street as well as in the ballot box, their phobia of difference and their need for security.
« The rise of the extreme right is a major fact of the continent’s current events, » confirm in this collective book, Katz, Tolcachier, and León. Although it reflects, in their view, the attempt by conservative forces to counter the social advances achieved by progressive governments, it has conquered a significant part of the popular sectors, through an anti-system discourse against the political class, criminals, and societal changes. Internationalized, the far right enjoys the support of a specific economic elite and openly draws inspiration from the Trumpian « model. » Pablo Stefanoni (2021) distinguishes various currents, more or less compatible – from alt-right to neo-reaction (NRx), through paleo-libertarianism, etc. –, constituting an « antiprogressive revolution » led by « anti-state nationalists, xenophobes, racists, and misogynists, » with « innovative and provocative » communication methods.
CONCLUSION
This is where we are, at the end of this all-too-rapid overview of the trends shaping contemporary Latin America. It is not impossible, given the numerous upcoming electoral deadlines, that the fragile « pink wave » that culminated in 2022 will give way to a « brown tide » or, more likely, to new more or less populist alternations, composed of clones of the Brazilian Bolsonaro or the authoritarian and popular president of El Salvador, Bukele, self-proclaimed « coolest dictator in the world. » Nothing on the horizon, in any case, would enable to foresee an exit from the ongoing economic slump and a significant reduction in poverty, inequality, violence, and biodiversity destruction. Nor does it augur a deep transformation of the development model, in the direction – more equitable, sustainable, less dependent... – as advocated by the social movements with emancipatory aims, unless, of course, these movements manage to reverse power relations and achieve new victories.
Translation from French : Maxime De Crop.
