The Latin American Righr : Finding a Place in the World
Zibechi, Raúl
NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS report: the right
The New Latin American Right:
Finding a Place in the World
Indignation in the streets of Caracas a day after a national referendum failed to...
...He is a monthly contributor to the CIP Americas Program (www...
...in Bolivia, the Water War of...
...Closely linked to the Heritage Foundation, FAES has some ad noah Friedman-rudovsky JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2008 vantages over its U.S...
...In harmony with the White House racist indigenism, and the Southern Command, the and nationalist new right describes as “populist” all those who want to throw off militarism,” hethe neoliberal model...
...Fundación para el Desarrollo Integral de la Sociedad, Dominican Republic...
...those neoliberal wave...
...Fundación Liberdade e Cidadania, Brazil...
...This is no small matter, since the ideas that Aznar promotes are identical to those of the George W. Bush administration...
...The traditional right has been beaten by social mobilizations of recent years, and its historic bases of support have gone into crisis...
...It is no accident that these three countries have produced the continent’s greatest social insurrections: in Venezuela, the caracazo of 1989 and the 2002 mobilizations against the state coup...
...that have taken a marked turn from the right to the ultra-right...
...fundacionfaes.es), co-authored by Manuel Espino, president of Mexico’s National Action Party (PAN).1 In this text, destined to influence policy makers, Aznar identifies the new “enemies of the West”: the altermundialistas (activists associated with the World Social Forum), indigenous movements, and populism...
...The organization’s declared objective is to “dramatically defeat the project of ‘21st-century socialism.’ ” To this end, the FAES has established cooperation agreements with conservative and Christian democratic parties in Latin America to exchange information and to bring young leaders together for training courses...
...Universidad Peruana de Ciencias Aplicadas, Peru...
...These sectors appear to be linked to the new forms of accumulation they are imposing on the region, including open-pit mining, the forestry-cellulose complex, and soy and sugarcane monocultures...
...In March 2007, Azar presented a report titled “América Latina: una agenda de libertad” (Latin America: An Agenda for Liberty, available at the FAES Web site, www...
...the PAN, Mexico...
...It is in this critical context that a new Latin American right has taken the offensive...
...In Argentina, Aznar’s ally is Rosendo Fraga, an analyst linked to the military dictatorship of Jorge Videla, and in Brazil one of his principal followers is Jorge Bornhausen, tied to the old Brazilian military dictatorship...
...and Universidad Francisco Marroquín, Guatemala...
...Universidad Andrés Bello, Chile...
...In Bolivia, historical parties like the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (Movimiento Nacionalista Revolucionario, or MNR) are on the brink of disappearing, after Evo Morales and the Movement Toward Socialism (Movimiento al Socialismo, or MAS) reached 50% of the vote...
...The two principal Venezuelan parties, the Christian democrat Independent Electoral Political Organizing Committee (Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente, or COPEI) and the social democratic Democratic Action (Acción Democrática, or AD) are marginal groups today before the 60% of the votes that Hugo Chávez has garnered...
...Aznar insists on differentiating between “governments and parties of the left or center-left that operate within the norms of democra cy”—that is, the governments of When aznar Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay—and targets the “populists,” or those who, like “radical indigenists,” suppos“revolutionary edly foment segregation and “depopulism, stroy the concept of equality of neostatism, the individual before the law...
...In fact, in the three countries where a powerful pressure to go beyond the neoliberal model has appeared (Bolivia, Ecuador, Venezuela), it is the inidigenist or progressive report: the right military that has taken the initiative...
...counterparts, since it is part of the Hispanic world—its leaders speak the same language as the Latin Americans and generate less resistance...
...This paradox is at the heart of the profound changes that countries like Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela are undergoing...
...A key example is the Foundation for Analysis and Social Studies (Fundación para el Análisis y los Estudios Sociales, or FAES), chaired by former Spanish president José María Aznar...
...If Aznar’s ideas aren’t new, the open, public way in which he is constructing a network of institutions and political leaders is...
...By the time the report was published, some 200 young people had attended FAES courses in Madrid.2 The following May, Aznar visited São Paulo and Buenos Aires, and announced agreements with a series of institutions: Universidad Católica, Argentina...
...The new right’s ideas are functional and subordinated to these processes, which the multinationals in the region are promoting, and their criticism of social and political actors are in line with the objectives of clearing the land for these investments...
...This is most evident on the ideological front...
...It explains the access that left-wing parties now enjoy to the governments of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay, and is the reason for which traditional forms of domination have gone into crisis in Mexico and Colombia, to mention two U.S.-allied countries where the right looks quite different than it did just a few years ago...
...Universidad Sergio Arboleda, Colombia...
...americaspolicy.org...
...A s much in venezuela as in bolivia, and less evidently in Ecuador, the system of political par ties has collapsed following the application of the neoliberal model in the 1980s...
...U.S.-style think tanks have cropped up all over the region, meant to be factories of analysis, ideas, and policy proposals...
...by raúl Zibechi T he triumph of the neoliberal washington Consensus in Latin America has had a contradictory effect: It has increased the profits of the multinational corporations and improved the situation of elites, but it has eroded many of the old right-wing parties throughout the continent and opened cracks in the region’s political systems...
...In the context of this ideo-political agendas logical offensive, we have three that can hold different scenarios: those coun tries where the right-wing par-back a second ties have gone into crisis...
...When Aznar targets “revolutionary populism, neostatism, racist indigenism, and nationalist militarism,” he is confronting the social and political agendas that can hold back a second neoliberal wave...
...It conflates is confronting populism with the absence of dethe social and mocracy or dictatorship...
...and others, like those in the Southern Cone, where left-wing factions are playing a role that in years past was played by conservative parties...
...NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS report: the right The New Latin American Right: Finding a Place in the World Indignation in the streets of Caracas a day after a national referendum failed to oust Hugo Chávez from power in 2004 Raúl Zibechi is an international analyst for Brecha, a weekly journal in Montevideo, Uruguay, researcher on social movements at the Multiversidad Franciscana de América Latina, and adviser to social groups...
Vol. 41 • January 2008 • No. 1
