Frederick Mills review of my
edited book “Latin America’s Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings” reviewed
by Frederick Mill in the Summer issue of New Politics. Mills points out that a
nuanced analysis of the Pink Tide experience needs to take into account the
context in which errors were committed. That context included a veritable war
on Venezuela, nearly from the outset of the Chávez presidency: coup attempts,
street violence, economic sabotage, media misinformation and biased reporting and,
needless to say, it’s only gotten worse in recent years. That said, the errors
need to be recognized and objectively analyzed.
Walking the Tightrope:
Latin America’s Pink Tide
By: Frederick B. Mills
Summer 2020 (New Politics, Vol. XVIII, No. 1, Whole Number 69)
“Latin America’s Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings”
Steve Ellner, editor; Foreword by Boaventura de Sousa Santos
Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2020. 355 pp.
Latin America’s Pink Tide:
Breakthroughs and Shortcomings, edited by economic
historian and prominent Latin Americanist Steve Ellner, offers a critical
ethical theoretical framework for assessing the performance of left and
left-of-center governments in Latin America during the Pink Tide. The “Pink
Tide” refers to the wave of progressive governments beginning with the election
of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela in 1998. These progressive governments provided
alternatives to the neoliberal economic model that had brought growing economic
and social inequality, austerity, privatization of public resources, and
political subordination to Washington to most of the region during the last two
decades of the twentieth century. Pink Tide governments were brought to power
by widespread disillusion with traditional political parties and were buoyed by
social movements that sought economic and social justice and more democratic
participation in the political life of their nations.
The Pink Tide brought a period of economic nationalism, progress
toward regional integration, and the inclusion, in various degrees, of formerly
marginalized constituents in democratic procedures. Millions were lifted out of
poverty through state-sponsored social programs, though without breaking free
of rentier capitalism and therefore without achieving the significant
structural change necessary for sustainable economic development.
By 2015, with the cumulative impact of the world financial
crisis that began in 2008 and the drop in commodity prices upon which many Pink
Tide governments were dependent, one progressive government after another
suffered electoral defeat by right-wing parties seeking the restoration of the
neoliberal regime in partnership with Washington. These setbacks gave rise to a
period of critical reflection on the shortcomings that debilitated left and
center-left governments alike.
Eduardo Gudynas, a
leading Uruguayan scholar on buen vivir,1 has argued that the progressive regimes under
consideration have evolved into a heterodox form of governance. This means that
they have combined progressive and regressive tendencies. They were originally
propelled to power by the popular sectors, as in the cases of Bolivia, Ecuador,
and Venezuela. Having secured leadership positions in the liberal democratic state,
they wrest a degree of power from traditional elites, take more control over
natural resources, redistribute rents, facilitate new forms of participatory
democracy, recognize, to varying degrees, indigenous and Afro-descendent
rights, and are anti-imperialist, insisting on national independence and
regional integration. But over-reliance on hydrocarbon extraction in these
South American nations has led to some regressive tendencies:
This progressive
framework suffered (and suffers) enormous tensions. Progressivism encourages
and protects development based on extractivisms, whose serious environmental
and social impacts increasingly generate conflicts with local communities,
including farmers and indigenous people. Progressive [governments] are unable to
exercise more control over these ventures, since they need part of that
surplus. They are governments that on the one hand try to regulate capital but
on the other hand yield to this [economic model].2
As political scientist
Massimo Modonesi points out, such regressive tendencies within progressive
governments, in combination with a regrouping of conservative forces, can lead
to concessions to capital that undermine the long-term socialist project and
sideline popular participation in governance.3
Are the reversals in the region, starting around 2013, due to an
inevitable cyclic historical movement that alternates between conservative and
progressive institutions and practices? Has the inevitable insertion of rentier
economies in the global capital system prevented the advance toward economic
development? Did progressive governments take full advantage of propitious
moments to advance structural economic reforms? Or did they succumb to
pressures from the right to make regressive concessions that curtailed popular
participation in governance and left them vulnerable to a conservative
restoration?
Latin America’s Pink Tide provides us with the theoretical tools to critically
inform our attempts to answer these questions. Rather than see the dynamics of
the Pink Tide governments in relation to right-wing restorations as the result
of deterministic cycles, each reading takes a more nuanced approach by taking
into account the economic and political context of specific countries and the
balance of forces at critical junctures. Here we will unpack the theoretical
framework used throughout this edited work, with a focus on four exemplary
essays.
Theoretical Framework
Although the essays in this reader cover a variety of left and
center-left governments of the Pink Tide, the authors apply the same basic
theoretical framework to each country. The breakthroughs and shortcomings in
each case are viewed as a function of the pragmatic measures adopted by the
left or left-of-center governments to accommodate an often hostile domestic and
transnational opposition. The pragmatic measures were taken in order to avoid
economic boycotts and destabilization. At the same time, Pink Tide governments
also adopted populist measures to fulfill the governments’ promises of social
investment and political inclusion of the popular sectors. This framework
suggests a correlation between the degree of hostility of the opposition and
the shortcomings of both the pragmatic measures and populist measures. It is
like walking a tightrope. On the one side of the balance, the pragmatic
accommodation of dominant sectors often fails to neutralize an implacable
opposition, and on the other side, populism, without cracking down on
corruption, tends to lend itself to clientelism and bureaucratism in the implementation
of social programs. Both the pragmatic and populist measures, however, give
rise to shortcomings whose corrections are feasible during times when the
government has the upper hand over the opposition. This is what Ellner refers
to as the element of timing.
This theoretical framework of dynamic tension between pragmatic
and populist responses to the opposition is further determined by the inability
of Pink Tide governments to move away from rentier capitalism, which embeds the
economy in the global capital system and subjects these economies to the
contingencies of commodity booms and busts. Rentier capitalism also comes into
conflict with efforts to democratize institutions both inside and outside the
state because it lends itself to top-down management of the economy, what some
of the authors refer to as techno-bureaucratic statism.
Again, context and timing are all-important features of the
theoretical framework employed in this reader. Ellner takes issue with
neoextractivists who fault Pink Tide governments with the failure to diversify
the economy and move toward import substitution but do not recognize the
important differences between neoliberalism and neoextractivism. As Ellner
points out, the Pink Tide governments, as opposed to neoliberal regimes,
strengthened the role of the state in strategic industry sectors, advanced a
more nationalistic foreign policy, and deployed a significant portion of rents
for social programs. So while rentier capitalism does not give rise to
structural change, progressive governments, to varying degrees, promoted
“popular participation in decision making and the incorporation and empowerment
of excluded sectors of the population” (9).
In addition, Ellner’s theoretical framework views the dynamic
between the progressive government and reactionary opposition not only in terms
of the constituted power of the state versus its adversaries on the right, but
also in terms of class struggle. Even when progressives are in the executive
branch of government, elites still occupy “apparatuses” of power and compete
with “power centers” representing popular aspirations. It is the mobilizing
capacity of social movements that can both pressure the state to advance the
process of change and resist challenges from the right to extract more
concessions from, or overthrow, the government. Pink Tide governments,
therefore, alienate the popular sectors and fail to democratize state
institutions at their own peril.
Walking the Tightrope: Doing Too Much Versus Doing Too Little
In “Walking the ‘Tightrope’ of Socialist Governance,” Marcel
Nelson enriches the theoretical framework with a more detailed discussion of
Nicos Poulantzas’ strategic relational theory. Basically, Poulantzas points out
that while a progressive government may attain control over one branch of
government, it may be faced with opposition not only from outside, but also
from “power apparatuses” within the state that represent the interests of the
dominant classes.
“When it comes to the ‘democratic road to socialism,’” says Nelson,
“governing from the left is likened to ‘walking a tightrope’ between pursuing
transformative programs while managing challenges from dominant classes that
retain their structural power” (60). Nelson applies these insights to three
Pink Tide governments: Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela. He uses the image of
the tightrope as an allegory for the balancing act required in each case
between a government doing too much, thereby provoking the dominant classes to
violent reaction, or doing too little, by over-accommodating the dominant
sectors. In the latter case, the government runs the risk of alienating the
very popular sectors who provide the lifeline of potential popular mobilization
by means of which these governments can possibly push back against the
reactionary tide and advance, at propitious moments, the socialist project.
Nelson also points to a tension between the statist tendency
toward centralization and the more horizontally organized expressions of
popular power. In each case, rentier capitalism, which embeds governments
over-reliant on extractive industries in the global capital system, requires
democratization of the state and strong links to popular power if they are to
advance a social project. This involves negotiating the tightrope without
falling into techno-bureaucratic statism, on the one hand, or provoking
destabilization by the dominant classes on the other.
Nelson gives a few examples. In the case of Ecuador under Rafael
Correa and the Alianza Pais (AP), Nelson maintains that the government opted
for a statist redistribution of extractive-industry rents and minimized the
inclusion of popular movements within state institutions, missing opportunities
to create democratic “centers of power” within the state. Instead, Correa
forged strategic alliances with the dominant classes (and in particular the
agricultural elites). For this reason there was limited land reform and some
clashes with environmental and indigenous groups, with the most infamous case
being conflict over the expansion of extractive industry in Yasuní National
Park.
Nelson puts the case succinctly: “The difficult relationship
between the government and the social movements highlights the limits of
pursuing an agenda of social transformation in the context of extractivism
guided by a statist outlook” (67).
Nelson maintains that a similar situation took place in Bolivia.
By accommodating the dominant classes of the Eastern Lowland agro-industrial
sector, Evo Morales also succumbed to a largely extractivist agenda. By failing
to expand its base through democratic mechanisms, the Movimiento al Socialismo
(MAS) was unable to fortify its relation with social movements, and the state
took on a techno-bureaucratic form. This led to capitulation on a number of
important features of the constitutional reform process that culminated in
2009. Over the next four years, the government developed a public-private
partnership that was formalized in the 2013 “Agenda Patriótica 2025.” This
agenda ended up favoring the interests of the dominant classes. By failing to
expand indigenous autonomy, Morales missed an opportunity to deepen democracy
within and outside the state.
Nelson argues that the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela did
more to open spaces for organized expressions of popular power, both within and
outside the state, than other Pink Tide governments. For this reason, “Chávez
was able to repel opposition from dominant classes more forcefully than the AP
and MAS” (74). So when the dominant classes tried to overthrow Chávez in
2002-2003 by means of a coup and then an oil strike, Chávez was able to prevail
thanks to the popular mobilization that demanded his return. As a result of
gaining control over the oil industry and security forces after the coup and
oil strike, Chávez was able to launch social missions that brought free
education, health care, and housing to formerly marginalized Venezuelans. Yet despite
the gains brought about by the social missions, rentier capitalism has not been
an optimal motor of socialist transformation. Notwithstanding efforts to
empower democracy from below, Chavista governance has led to top-down statism.
“The projects designed to democratize the Venezuelan state and society were
undermined by the logic of rentierism by encouraging weak oversight by state
personnel, corruption, and inefficiency” (75).
The essays that follow Chapter 3 employ the same theoretical
framework and tightrope analogy to other Pink Tide governments and assess
whether they did too much or too little to advance the socialist project, each
in its own social, economic, and political context, and whether the government
took advantage of propitious moments to make inroads against the dominant
classes in order to bring about a measure of lasting structural change. What
follows is a sampling of this very fruitful approach to the study of the Pink
Tide.
Brazil
In Chapter 4, “The Rise and Fall of the Brazilian Workers Party
(2002-2016),” Pedro Mendes Loureiro and Alfredo Saad-Filho argue that Lula da
Silva was elected president in 2002 in the context of growing disenchantment
with anemic growth, deindustrialization, and inequality imposed by the
neoliberal economic model. Thanks to a boom in demand for primary goods,
especially by China, and devaluation of the real (which gave a boost to
exports) Lula delivered, for a time, an improved standard of living for
millions of formerly marginalized Brazilians. As the authors point out, “Higher
minimum wages and transfers, credit, fiscal activism, and booming exports
sustained a circle of growth and distribution that drove an unprecedented
reduction in poverty and inequality during the PT [Workers Party]
administrations” (95).
These gains, however, were not structural in nature. Without a
majority in Congress, the PT accommodated the dominant classes, and Lula, at
the height of public approval, missed an opportunity to advance a socialist
project. His pragmatic concessions to the dominant classes included allowing
the exchange rate to float and making cuts in government spending. While
raising the minimum wage, and social programs such as Bolsa Familia, did indeed
improve the lot of the poor, the lion’s share of growth went to the top 1
percent, who held 25 percent of the national income.
The decline that began around 2010 coincided with the election
of Dilma Rousseff, and by the time of her re-election in 2014, Brazil was
facing a US$100 billion deficit. After Rousseff was re-elected in 2014, as
Loureiro and Saad-Filho argue, the government responded to the economic crisis
by adopting the very neoliberal measures she ran against: imposing austerity,
cutting unemployment benefits, and cutting pensions. Yet all of this accommodation
of the dominant classes did not bring about capital investment. Because of
these pragmatic accommodations of the dominant classes, Rousseff and the PT
were unable to mobilize in opposition to her impeachment. Loureiro and
Saad-Filho conclude, “Instead of recognizing the limits of pragmatism, the PT
chose to ignore them and stick to the path of least resistance in the economic,
social, and political domains” (105). In 2016 Rousseff was removed from office
in what the PT viewed as a parliamentary coup. On the tightrope of pragmatic
accommodation versus advancing structural change, Loureiro and Saad-Filho
conclude that Lula and then Rousseff did not do enough to promote change.
Uruguay
In “The Frente Amplio Governments in Uruguay: Policy Strategies
and Results,” Nicolás Bentancur and José Miguel Busquets argue that the leftist
party, Frente Amplio (FA), which ruled for three terms starting in 2005,
advanced a hybrid form of governance that combined liberal democracy with a
significant measure of participatory democracy. During the period of economic
growth from 2005 to 2017, the governments of President Tabaré Vázquez and later
José “Pepe” Mujica were able to achieve impressive reductions in poverty and
economic inequality and progressive reform of social welfare programs.
Beginning with the economic slowdown in 2016, however, the FA faced an erosion
of popular support and serious challenges from the right. What, according to
Bentancur and Busquets, went wrong?
The democratic participation of broad sectors of civil society
in deliberations that impacted legislation on important social issues
constituted what the authors call a “hybrid” form of governance. The authors
give a detailed account of the education policy debate in 2006. This debate led
to a national conference during which consensus recommendations were hammered
out for consideration by the legislature. Although the recommendations were
only partially adopted, the input of various stakeholders gave the education
reform a degree of legitimacy.
On the labor front, the wage councils included representatives
from labor, business, and government. The councils played a key role in
negotiating wages and other labor issues. Once again, such deliberations led to
recommendations that were promulgated into collective bargaining laws in 2009.
The authors indicate that “wage councils fostered an increase in real wages by
52 percent between 2005 and 2014” (118).
And in still another area of public concern, the reforms in
social security policy had the benefit of a broad-based national dialogue, and
agreements reached by the dialogue were reflected in legislation impacting the
social security system. An advisory council for change was set up, and
participants included labor, business, civil society, and public sector representation.
The council had input on reforms of the Health Care Services Administration.
In each of these cases, broad-based deliberation had an impact
on legislation. Bentancur and Busquets point out that although the civic-state
partnerships were forms of democratic inclusion of civil society in determining
public policy, they did not include macroeconomic and tax policy deliberations,
which remained largely at higher levels of governance.
Here is where the tightrope analogy becomes useful. “On several
occasions the Frente Amplio had to choose between making commitments to civil
society actors and reaching political agreements with opposition politicians”
(125). The authors maintain that during the first two FA terms (2005-2015), the
government, to a large degree, opted for the former, but without provoking
destabilization efforts by the opposition. But beginning with the third FA term
in 2015, a conservative offensive brought charges of corruption and
mismanagement against the government. An economic downturn in 2016 brought
pressure on the government to reduce public spending as well as taxes. By 2018
the opposition had formed a coalition, Un Solo Uruguay, that would soon pose a
challenge to FA governance in the next election.
Bentancur and Busquets conclude that the hybrid liberal
democratic model that combines participation from below on social welfare
matters with a more vertical form of decision making from above on
macroeconomic issues brought significant gains in poverty reduction and reform
of public services, but it fell short in challenging macroeconomic policy. In
order to bring about more income equality, “it would be necessary to apply
participatory mechanisms to other policy areas, such as macroeconomics and tax
legislation, and to broaden the scope of debate to include objectives and
priorities” (130). On the tightrope of pragmatism versus structural change, the
authors suggest that while FA made great strides in democratic participation,
by limiting the field of deliberation to social welfare policy, FA did not do
enough.
Venezuela
Part III of the reader includes an introduction and three essays
on the more radical Pink Tide governments. Steve Ellner, in “Class Strategies
in Chavista Venezuela: Pragmatic and Populist Policies in a Broader Context,”
gives a clear illustration of the theoretical framework employed by other
essays in this part. Hugo Chávez was elected president of Venezuela on the
heels of widespread disillusionment with the neoliberal regime and the
domination of elite parties (PuntoFijismo), which had relegated the majority of
Venezuelans to poverty for four decades. Chávez ran on a platform that promised
to “pay the social debt,” assert control over the nation’s natural resources,
and promote national independence.
Ellner provides a detailed account of challenges to Chávez’s
social project by the business sector and the pressure to deliver on paying the
social debt by the popular sectors. In December 2001, in response to reforms
derived from the new constitution of 1999 and Chávez’s plans to reform the oil
sector, Fedecámaras (the Venezuelan Chambers of Commerce) organized protests
that led to a short-lived coup in April 2002, followed by a strike against the
oil sector later that year and into early 2003. In the aftermath of these
attempts at regime change, Chávez took pragmatic measures to accommodate
certain “productive” business sectors while shunning those that had
participated in the Fedecámaras protests and strike. He also began the
missions—social programs in health, education, and housing—to meet popular
demands for a better quality of life.
Ellner points out that some critics of Chávez’s pragmatism
charge that favor given to certain business sectors over others led to the
creation of a corrupt class that took advantage of government contracts and
favorable exchange rates to enrich themselves. And other critics, this time of
the social missions, took issue with the clientelism, corruption, inefficiency,
and bureaucratism that afflicted the programs.
A more nuanced approach, argues Ellner, would consider the
pragmatic and populist measures in their political context. In order to counter
the attempts by the opposition to bring about regime change, it was necessary
to bring some of the business sector, if not to the side of Chavismo, then at
least to some form of coexistence. In the case of the missions and government
support for communes and cooperatives, the government was able to mobilize the
popular sectors to its defense when under attack by the opposition.
Ellner defends, to a certain degree, the pragmatic approach to
business because it allowed the Chavista project to blunt the attacks by the
opposition bent on regime change. And he also rejects characterizing the
missions and government support for organized expressions of popular power as
crass populism because, he argues, they had a lasting impact on building
democratic participation and alleviating poverty.
Ellner maintains that timing, that is, seizing moments when the
balance of forces are favorable to the government, provided opportunities to
address the shortcomings in both pragmatic accommodation of the business sector
and populist measures directed at the working class. Chávez had such
opportunities in the 2000s and took advantage of them by nationalizing basic industries,
expropriating companies that ceased operations, and prosecuting some corrupt
businesspeople. He could have done more, however, to go beyond social programs
and take measures to reform the exchange system and stimulate productivity.
Maduro also had
opportune moments in 2013 (with Chavista victories in the municipal elections),
after the defeat of the guarimbas4 in 2014, after
the elections for a National Constituent Assembly in 2017, and again in May
2018 with his re-election. During each of these opportunities to address the
shortcoming of pragmatism and populism, Maduro failed to take decisive action.
Ellner sums up the crucial issue of timing and context:
Timing as a strategic tool was the key to overcoming the
negative effects of pragmatic and populist measures. Victories provided the
government opportunities to advance in the achievement of five basic
objectives: deepening of the process of change (objective one); weakening of
the disloyal opposition (objective two); renovation of the Chavista movement
and government through measures in favor of internal democratization and
against bureaucratization and corruption (objective three); prioritization of
economic goals … (objective four); and implementing unpopular policies (such as
gasoline price hikes) in order to eliminate or minimize the negative effects of
certain practices associated with populism (objective five). (181-82)
Ellner provides us with the theoretical tools to make a
fair-minded assessment of Chavismo in Venezuela. Chávez had gone further than
other Pink Tide governments in promoting the political participation of
marginalized sectors in both the government missions and the more autonomous community
councils and other organized expressions of popular power. By building
alliances with the business sector and building popular support, the government
has been able to ward off the relentless attack by the U.S.-backed hard-line
opposition. But by not doing enough in favorable moments to crack down on
corruption, address economic problems, and democratize government institutions,
Maduro makes it more difficult to face these issues in times when the
government is under frontal attack.
Nicaragua
In a reader that is critical, nuanced, and fair-minded, the
essay on Nicaragua stands out, in my opinion, as somewhat one-sided. In “The
Rise and Fall of Sandinista Alliances as a Means of Sociopolitical Change in
Nicaragua,” Héctor M. Cruz-Feliciano employs the same theoretical framework,
examining the use of pragmatic alliances as well as populist social projects by
the Sandinistas after their electoral defeat in 1990 and in particular in the
years leading up to the presidential elections of April 2018.
Cruz-Feliciano focuses on three important alliances. First, the
FSLN (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional) reconciled with the Catholic
Church. The new, pragmatic alliance with the church began in 2004 and led to
“the passage of legislation criminalizing therapeutic abortion, [Cardinal
Miguel] Obando’s designation as head of the Peace and Reconciliation
Commission, and his recognition as National Hero of Peace and Reconciliation by
the Sandinista-dominated National Assembly” (277). Ortega also forged an alliance
with former contras, inviting former contra leader Jaime Morales Carazo to be
his vice presidential candidate on the FSLN ticket, and assured the business
sector of his belief in the market economy. The third alliance was with the
business sector. Ortega’s vice presidential candidate helped the FSLN gain the
support of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise. The proposed alliance,
Cruz-Feliciano points out, was based on Ortega’s promise that poverty would be
alleviated through policies that include private sector initiatives.
These pragmatic alliances, argues Cruz-Feliciano, were important
to the FSLN electoral victories of 2006, 2011, and 2016 and were conducive to
economic development:
Until April 2018, Ortega’s tenure was characterized by an
increase in economic cooperation, growth in the number of state-supported
social programs, and a sustained decrease in poverty levels. For a country that
has for decades been one of the poorest in the hemisphere, these
accomplishments are not to be taken lightly, since they help to explain the
immense popularity of the FSLN and its growth with each election. (280)
Cruz-Feliciano maintains that these pragmatic alliances came
into conflict with the FSLN’s expressed progressive agenda and curtailed
participatory democracy. In some cases, the government used repression against
dissent, such as the case of clashes between the Sandinistas and indigenous
communities over the construction of the Grand Nicaraguan Interoceanic Canal
project.
With regard to the attempted coup of April 2018, Cruz-Feliciano
exceeds legitimate criticism of Ortega’s centralizing tendencies with a
one-sided account of the events of that month. Claiming to be on “leftist”
ground, he describes the anti-government protests as a legitimate response to the
government’s brutal repression of peaceful demonstrators and suggests that as a
result of this betrayal of constituents, the FSLN ought to find a new leader to
replace Ortega to move forward.
Cruz-Feliciano further suggests that by 2018, the FSLN had lost
its leftist way and was being challenged from the left. What he calls “most
accounts” of the events that took place in April of that year are limited to
anti-government perspectives; his own account conspicuously makes no mention of
the U.S.-backed attempt to overthrow the elected government of President
Ortega, the significant pro-government reaction, and the use of violence and
murder by some sectors of the opposition.
Yorlis Gabriela Luna,
in “The Other Nicaragua, Empire and Resistance,”5 gives a detailed
alternative account of the demonstrations of April 2018, pointing out that not
all anti-government violence was counter violence, but a significant dimension
of those protests were motivated by a U.S.-backed right-wing attempt at regime
change.
Cruz-Feliciano argues,
While by most accounts what ignited the popular uprising was the
repression itself, many have observed that the repression served as a means of
legitimating a massive demonstration of discontent with the government’s lack
of policy coherence and the imposition of a governance model that gives the
impression of being inclusive but does not actually provide the means for
effective participation. (282)
Overreaction to protest is never excusable. But a balanced view
would also take into account that during the protests and road blocks—in
response to the fact that some Sandinistas or persons associated with
Sandinismo were attacked and in some cases killed—there was also a “massive
demonstration of discontent” by Nicaraguans who were determined to defend their
neighborhoods from anti-government violence. Unfortunately, such demonstrations
are not mentioned by Cruz-Feliciano.
It is interesting that Cruz-Feliciano argues that the Sandinstas
did not do enough to advance structural changes, which would have involved
policies “unsettling to the church, political associates, and business elites”
(287). The Sandinistas, according to this argument, missed an opportunity prior
to April 2018 to advance popular democratic participation at all levels of government.
Cruz-Feliciano dismisses claims by the Sandinistas that some government critics
of these very forces were involved in a coup attempt. “In much the same way
that the government overreacted toward the civic protests, it attacked the
business sector and the Catholic Church for allegedly being part of a plot to
stage a ‘soft coup’” (286). For this reason, says Cruz-Feliciano, the FSLN
ought to disassociate itself from Ortega and Murillo and return to its roots in
order to recuperate its legitimacy. It is not clear, however, that the elected
government has lost democratic legitimacy, though the events of April 2018 have
indeed set the stage for a vigorous political contest, by means of democratic
procedures, in the next presidential election scheduled for 2021.
The theoretical
framework employed in Latin America’s Pink Tide is a valuable tool for understanding politics in the
region. It provides lessons for future governance and helps us ask the right
questions. For example, in Mexico, will Morena degenerate into an electoral
machine or retain its roots in grassroots organizing? Is Lopez Obrador doing
what is feasible, or is he failing to take advantage of his enormous popularity
to bring about structural reforms? Can the FMLN in El Salvador renovate the party,
reconnect with its base, and avoid the centralization that led, in part, to its
electoral defeat? Can Alberto Fernandez avoid excessive pacts with the right?
And will Nicolas Maduro be able to balance pragmatic negotiation with the
moderate opposition with protecting the working class from the brutal and
relentless assault by U.S. Monroeism? Each of these cases involves walking a
tightrope, but one on which successful leaders will find the right balance
between pragmatism and populism to continue advancing a progressive agenda.
Notes
1. A social philosophy of collective wellbeing that stresses
harmonious community development and ecological balance.
2
Eduardo Gudynas, “Los progresismos sudamericanos: Ideas y prácticas, avances y
límites,” in Rescatar
la esperanza. Más allá del neoliberalismo y el progresismo (Barcelona:
EntrePueblos, 2016), 40. Translation into English by Frederick Mills.
3.
Massimo Modonesi, “Fin de la hegemonía progresista y giro regresivo en América
Latina. Una contribución gramsciana al debate sobre el fin de ciclo,” in Viento Sur (Number 142, October 2015), 23-30.
4. Violent street barricades.
5. Council on
Hemispheric Affairs, “The Other Nicaragua, Empire and
Resistance,” Oct. 2, 2019.
Posted Bolivia, Brazil, Culture & History, Ecuador, Electoral Politics, Latin America, Nicaragua, Political Economy, Socialism, Uruguay, Venezuela
About Author
Frederick B. Mills, PhD, is professor of philosophy at Bowie State University and
co-director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs (Washington DC). He is author
of Enrique Dussel’s
Ethics of Liberation: An Introduction (Palgrave,
2018).
https://newpol.org/issue_post/walking-the-tightrope-%e2%80%a8latin-americas-pink-tide/
