OPEN FORUM: The Continental Drift of the Left
Carlsen, Laura
ON HIS FIRST TRIP ABROAD AFTER re-election, George W Bush, in Chile for a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC), was greeted by thousands of angry Chileans protesting...
...hegemony in the region...
...ON HIS FIRST TRIP ABROAD AFTER re-election, George W Bush, in Chile for a meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Forum (APEC), was greeted by thousands of angry Chileans protesting his trade and military policies and telling him to go home...
...Vazquez calls his platform the "cautious revolution" or the "agreed-on transition...
...Thus, even the nation that Roger Noriega called "a trendsetter in instituting the types of political and economic reforms so desperately needed here in the Americas" has become fertile soil for protest of those very reforms...
...The Bush Administration can either accept Latin America's bid for greater policy independence or attempt to divide the continent into simplistic categories of "unconditional allies" that it will favor and "dangerous foes" that it will seek to undermine...
...At the same time, in a world where rich countries and transnational companies establish supranational rules, they find themselves severely limited in the range of available policy options...
...programs to impose the FTAA and isolate Cuba...
...government, civil society's evaluations of the Chile-U.S...
...The tools they wield include domestic social policies, mobilization of constituencies in new ways, and coalitionbuilding with other progressive states to resist the worst aspects of corporate-led globalization...
...So far, the look of Bush's new foreign policy team does not bode well for the accommodation route...
...With all eyes focused on the presidential elections in the United States, key elections in Latin American countries went almost unnoticed over the past several months...
...As part of the same massive demonstrations, Bolivians also won an agreement from President Carlos Mesa to backtrack on a major price increase in gas he had decreed several weeks earlier...
...Even the FSLN has left its radical past behind and worked to mend fences within Nicaraguan society, while Lagos' progressive alliance has turned out to be one of the region's most vocal champions of free trade-to the chagrin ofMAY JUNE 2005 UPDATE much of the traditional left...
...After thousands of residents took to the streets in El Alto, the government agreed to cancel a contract with the French utility giant Suez for control of the water system...
...The November protests in Santiago were not just another manifestation of historic anti-U.S...
...But these groups insist that "inclusion" must be based on respect for differences and a pluralist view of society, and that building from the ground up creates a firmer foundation for real change...
...Many factors have converged to push Latin America to the left...
...sentiment in response to an imperial president...
...Despite glowing marks from the U.S...
...Despite these accommodations, Latin America's center-left clearly sets itself off from Washington's plans for the region...
...Another reason is that center-left forces have adopted more conciliatory attitudes toward the market economy, in some cases embracing it enthusiastically...
...On the other hand, some social movements in the hemisphere are determined to fight exclusion through the practice of establishing autonomous spaces and grassroots democracy...
...Most observers viewed the municipal elections as a precursor to the presidential elections in December of this year...
...government can either choose to respect the innovative attempts by southern nations to meet the region's economic and political challenges, or it can force the NorthSouth fault lines to widen...
...The U.S...
...On the one hand, political parties in power have bet they can use state power to fight exclusion...
...The MAS now has more council members than any other party, mostly in rural areas but also in six of the ten largest urban municipalities...
...Bolivia began the year with another cycle of grassroots mobilizations...
...The results in Uruguay, Venezuela, Chile, Nicaragua, Bolivia and to some extent Brazil, showed a shift toward the left in many countries and a consolidation of left-leaning leadership in others...
...Efforts to hold referendums rejecting free trade agreements have gained momentum in Ecuador and Peru...
...The victory of Tabare Vazquez in Uruguay was the first sign...
...The strengthening of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) as an alternative to the FTAA and the recent formation of the Community of South American Nations may not be examples of radical politics, but they do represent an attempt to build a counterweight to U.S...
...The mobilizations follow the historic "Water War" in Cochabamba that resulted in the cancellation of a similar contract with Bechtel in 2000...
...BESIDES VOTING FOR CENTER-LEFT parties and candidates, Latin American societies are also beginning to demonstrate their rejection of the dominant political economy 6 in other ways...
...The Broad Front has governed Montevideo since 1990 and polls showed him in the lead...
...The Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) alliance seeks to consolidate power on the local level with a platform of effective governance, reconciliation and anti-corruption...
...Nicaragua's municipal elections provided yet another sign of a turn in the tide...
...IN CONTRAST TO FORMER TIMES, most of the modern left does not envision storming the palace...
...Among Brazil's landless movement, part of the piquetero movement in Argentina, the Zapatistas in Mexico and indigenous groups in Bolivia and Ecuador, local struggles for autonomy and resource control are mounting...
...Vazquez's Broad Front coalition brought an end to 170 years of political power shifting back and forth between the rural elite in the Blanco Party and the urban elite in the Colorado Party...
...Vazquezs win was not a surprise...
...Foremost is the failure of the neoliberal economic model to improve standards of living...
...But his victory demonstrated the steady accumulation of power and credibility that the left has built up over the past three decades...
...hegemony in the region...
...Among its shared key principles are commitments to social justice, an active role of the state and a rejection of U.S...
...The equally impressive failure of the two conservative parties to solve growing problems of poverty, inequality and corruption also contributed significantly to the Broad Front's win...
...In Brazil's first-round elections on October 3, Lula's Workers' Party (PT) garnered the most votes and now governs in more cities than any other party, including nine state capitals...
...In Uruguay, voters rejected privatization of the water system...
...This is the second time Bolivians have turned back water privatization plans...
...The gains of Chilean President Ricardo Lagos' progressive coalition in the municipal elections of October 31 was yet another sign of the problems that the Latin American right has had in maintaining or building political force...
...Popular demonstrations against privatizations, price increases, free trade and military intervention have increased...
...The two main contenders for the coalition candidacy, former Defense Minister Michelle Bachelet and former Foreign Relations Minister Soledad Alvear, now seem well positioned for a successful presidential bid...
...With the right winning only 39% of the mayoral races to the progressive alliance's 45%, the prospects for a centerleft victory in 2005 look increasingly favorable...
...In the name of defending national sovereignty, center-left forces are seeking greater control over natural resources, and in many countries they are confronting corporations that have gained unprecedented ground through the investment-protection clauses and increased access that resulted from neoliberal economic restructuring...
...Rice's condemnation of Chavez during the short-lived coup attempt and the Administration's undermining of the Aristide government in Haiti, show a willingness to place conservative interests above the rule of law...
...They also constituted a show of strength in opposition to the Mesa government...
...Finally, in Venezuela, a somewhat vote-weary nation gave President Hugo Chavez a mandate with a sweep of provincial governorships-a fact that no doubt galls key figures on the Bush team who consider Chavez a major threat in the region...
...The new Uruguayan government, for example, immediately announced its intention to re-establish ties with Cuba and to stick to its principles of non-intervention' and regional solidarity...
...Chavez has used the mandate to consolidate his government and its "Bolivarian Revolution" and to embark on a campaign to unify Latin American countries in an alternative to the U.S.-led Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA...
...The latter course could be cataclysmic...
...The Brazilian Workers' Party government, meanwhile, is walking a tightrope between conservative economic policies and commitments to its grassroots constituencies and leftist origins...
...The economic crisis in Uruguay in 2002, precipitated by the financial free-fall in neighboring Argentina, played a big role in Vazquez's triumph...
...Although a clear majority supports the center-left over the right, the nation continues to be living a political experiment with contradictory and unpredictable results...
...But the urns are not the only focal point for dissent, and in many countries not even the principal one...
...Free Trade Agreement after its first year are negative, with resilient unemployment and growing inequality within the country...
...As a Russia-focused scholar, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was intellectually raised on the Cold War and has insisted on recovering the ideological offensive of that era...
...Traditional ideological differences have blurred in the new context of economic integration, which now seems inevitable to many Latin Americans, even many on the left...
...Rather, the anti-Bush demonstrations highlighted a new political trend in Latin America: many countries are moving to the center-left, just as the United States is taking a sharp turn to the right...
...But the October 31 second-round loss of Sao Paulo to the social-democratic candidate, and the loss of Porto Alegre--after 16 years of being a PT showcase and center of the World Social Forum-dampened any conclusion that the PT had received a resounding vote of confidence...
...The demonstration of over 60,000 people in Chile was, according to organizers, the largest since the transition...
...to widening citizen movements against free trade...
...The 2004 municipal elections showed a huge increase in MAS strength from its ninth place showing in 1999, when it received only 3% of the vote...
...This cumulative process is generally less visible, slower and certainly further from the daily headlines...
...A new kind of continental drift, one born on political currents, appears to be distancing the North and South in the Americas...
...Chavez's strength in Venezuela and Uruguay's new administration have thrown monkey wrenches into U.S...
...Although the left's accommodations to market forces have caused frictions with its traditional constituencies, especially social movements, it has allowed left-of-center parties to rejoin the mainstream of national politics previously dominated by strict adherence to the neoliberal model...
...The primary objective for the left-the overriding importance of which few would deny-is to fight the exclusion that has marginalized their nations from the benefits of economic integration and plunged an ever-growing proportion of the population into poverty How to do that remains a subject of debate...
...Bolivia's municipal elections in December converted the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) party led by Evo Morales into the nation's strongest electoral force with 18% of Laura Carlsen directs the Americas Program <www.americaspol icyorg> for the International Relations Center (RC), online at <wwwirc-online.org> 5NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS UPDATE the vote...
...The demonstrations showed the people's capacity to defend the family economy and local control of resources...
...Signs that patience has run out have become commonplace-from the street chants of angry Argentines that "they've all got to go...
...The Sandinistas, who were voted out of government in 1990 and have repeatedly lost to the right since then, swept municipal elections against a divided right with over 45% of the vote and easily maintained control of the nation's capital...
...The "Defense of Humanity" meeting of leftist intellectuals in Caracas last November sought to rethink the left throughout the region and develop mechanisms to regain ground in the cultural and political arenas...
Vol. 38 • May 2005 • No. 6
