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Rebellions, insurrections and political polarization in South America

Submitted by Ana Cristina C. (Brazil)

This contribution is only part of a more comprehensive document on the world situation and the tasks of revolutionaries, which you can read here from Tuesday October 3rd: www.rupturas.org/blogdaana


Since the beginning of the century, South America has been the scene of a series of struggles, multitudinous demonstrations, popular estallidos (riots), election of reformist governments born out of these struggles and a lot of political polarization – because neo-extractivism, predation of nature, social breakdown, inequality, daily violence, militarization and political crises are growing here, which also feed far right alternatives: Uribismo in Colombia, Bolsonaro and his fanatics in Brazil, Kast and Pinochetistas in Chile, the Bolivian and Guatemalan coup right-wingers, the squalid right in Venezuela, and now Milei in Argentina. We live in a macro-region of extremely high lethal violence of all kinds, with growing socio-economic, racial and gender inequality.

Since 2018, a new cycle of mobilizations has swept through, in a radical way, the Andean countries –  Chile, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, to which the Argentine province of Jujuy has recently been added. In Chile, Bolivia, Colombia, and now in Jujuy, trade union organizations have been present, but they are no longer the vanguard with a class identity as they were 50, 40 years ago. The front line of the explosions and resistance has been the youth with no prospects (who have faced  with their bodies the brutal repression in Chile, Colombia and Peru): young and unemployed people, students, workers in education and health; peasants, who are generally native peoples, as in Bolivia, Ecuador and part of Colombia; women, either through their own movements for the right to abortion and against sexist violence, as in Argentina, Chile (and Mexico), or within the general working-class and popular movements, in which women activists and leaders stand out. The movements of black and indigenous peoples’, women and LGBTQI+ community  must be supported and their demands taken up as part of the general movement.

The indigenous Andean peoples, those who have been dispossessed for 531 years, are at the forefront of movements in countries with an indigenous majority (Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru). The Ecuadorian CONAIE, the Bolivian CSUTSB, colombian Mingas, even Mapuche people in Chile are essential characters in the struggles. Even in a country with 84% of its population urban and only 1% self-declared indigenous, like Brazil, more than 200 indigenous peoples have played a fundamental role for decades in the fight for their territories, for the protection of forests and rivers, in the resistance to Bolsonaro.

The multiplication and radicalism of these confrontations does not generally translate into more lasting self-organization – due to objective difficulties and because there is no left that has the politics and weight to encourage the permanence of embryos of popular power and elevate them to national decision-making bodies. In Chile, after the 2019 estallido, there were neighborhood assemblies all over the country. In the Colombian explosion, cabildos (local popular assemblies) were organized in places of residence, especially on the outskirts. Popular youth are distrustful and don't connect with more traditional organizations, such as unions and parties.
Sometimes the mobilizations are partially successful. In Argentina, the green scarves won legal abortion; in Bolivia, the resistance to the police-military coup of 2019 (which was facilitated by the gross errors of Evo and his entourage) won back elections and returned MAS to power the following year.  In the elections in Ecuador, we had two important popular triumphs, with the "yes" victory in Yasuni, to leave the region's oil underground, and in the Andean Chocó, which rejected mining in the province of La Pichincha, where Quito is located.

In general, the struggles face brutal repression, because the bourgeoisie won't give in, except for very partial gains. That's why the processes tend to repeat themselves in contexts of social upheaval, as in Peru, which experienced a major uprising in December and January 2022, especially in the Southern part of the country, where a majority of Quechua and Aymara live. The demonstrations against the government of Dina Boluarte, imposed by a parliamentary coup against Pedro Castillo, were strongly repressed, but gave rise to the organization of the indigenous regions and a coordinating body called the National Assembly of the Peoples, which includes the CGTP, trade unions and left-wing political groups, with the "programme" of overthrowing Baluarte and calling for a Constituent Assembly.


The left's adaptation to institutionalism

As the capitalist crisis accelerates and invades all spheres of life, the bourgeois states are exerting ever more intense pressure on broad sectors of the left and activism to prevent any possibility of radical opposition, independence and therefore progress towards revolutionary change. There is a combination of objective and subjective causes for this assimilation of social leaders and organizations into bourgeois institutions and their transformation into forces dependent on the capitalist status quo. The absence of another reference for socialism since the collapse of the Eastern states and the capitalist rise of China have contributed decisively to a profound degradation of the ideological horizon of most of the left.

In Latin America, after the great mobilizations of the 2000s and now, after the cycle of explosions of 2019 and 2020, more or less reformist governments have emerged. But today's progressivisms  face a more precarious regional correlation of forces, because they no longer have the revolutionary processes in Venezuela or pre-revolutionary processes like those that overthrew the neoliberal regime in Bolivia, and because the right has polarized a sector of society. Hence the increasingly evident role of the reformist left as the administrator of the capitalist crisis and its more unstable situation than in the previous period. Those who, in their own way, confront institutionalism are the extreme right, with the aim of moving towards totalitarian regimes, and in a much weaker way the forces of the socialist left, who defend the political independence of the exploited and deep changes in social structures.

In combination, the advance of far right forces is confusing broad sectors of the vanguard. The reformist leaderships use the indisputable need to broaden unity in the fight against the new fascisms to push even harder for open support for “progressive” governments (which are becoming less and less progressive) as a possible alternative. Objectivist and pragmatic thinking that, in practice, suppresses the horizons of radical change. Policies of unity (units of action and unique fronts to mobilize or eventually to vote) are necessary to combat neofascist far right. The problem is that the current "progressivism" transforms the necessary unity policitcs into permanent strategies of support for any government that is not from far-right. Thus, the defense of the democratic freedoms that are preserved (albeit less and less) in bourgeois democratic regimes is confused with the defense of the regime itself.

The participation of socialists in periodic elections at all levels is an important and necessary tactic, not only because through them we make propaganda, but because we can get those elected to become political personalities, popular tribunes for our agitation and intervention in the class struggle. But electoral and parliamentary participation must be complemented by a mobilization strategy. The reformist left increasingly sees elections, positions and public policies "within the institutional framework" as the only way to win improvements for workers and the people, when we know that only within the institutional framework, without mobilization, substantive changes will not come.

Corporate and state money corrodes and corrupts electoral and parliamentary processes and almost all political parties. Speeches about "left-wing populism" mask adaptation to the status quo. From Latin American progressivism to European social democracy, from the proponents of the Green New Deal to the recent parties that have proposed themselves as counter-systemic alternatives (Syriza, Podemos), we are witnessing a total naturalization of the bourgeois state’ institutions as the main, if not the only way to achieve conquests.


Latin American "progressivism" today

In Latin America, we are experiencing a second wave of reformist governments, now polarized with both the traditional right and the extreme right. These are not all the same political processes or governments. In the first wave, in the first decade of the century, the vanguards of the region were the revolutionary or pre-revolutionary processes that resulted in the governments of Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales, who confronted imperialism and the traditional political elites of their countries, breaking with the previous regimes: they convened constituencies, mobilized against coups d'état, re-statized economic sectors. In the case of Bolivia, they set up an unprecedented Plurinational State, with an indigenous majority in government. Lula and the PT, Kirchnerism, the Uruguayan Broad Front and even the initially transformative Rafael Correa remained within the framework of the neo-extractivist development model and state administration. In Brazilian case, PT, Lula and Dilma continued the primary-export, deindustrializing and neo-colonial regression of the economy.

Unlike the first wave, this second wave is less radical. In Mexico, López Obrador came to power by defeating fraud and the historic one-party regime built by the PRI. Lula 3.0 emerged from a broad and necessary electoral democratic unity against Bolsonaro, which ranged from conservative sectors of the bourgeoisie to left-wing forces, without major mobilizations – because it is a point of honour for today's PT not to mobilize. The governments of Boric in Chile, Arce in Bolivia, Petro in Colombia, even that of the deposed Castillo in Peru, emerged after strong mobilizations. But all these governments operate their policies within the framework of the institutions of the bourgeois state, although with many differences between them.

This Marxist assessment of the so-called “progressive governments” does not imply tha we should have a policy of opposing them head-on. It does imply, if we agree that they are not governments of the workers and the people, a policy of maintaining and fighting for the independence and autonomy of the social movements and parties in which we operate vis-à-vis them. The concrete tactics in parliament and in action in the face of progressives governments vary from case to case, combining demands and, where appropriate, some denunciation. Let's compare Lula and Petro. The first is a government of national unity –  Lula, Alckmin, with the ex-bolsonarista Lira and sectors of the most venal right wing oligarchy, the “Centrão”. It is implementing neoliberal adjustment measures that take money away from health and education, voted through by a right-wing parliament. With a minority presence of independent figures in human rights, indigenous peoples and the environment, Brazilian government has a large number of bourgeois ministers, including the vice-president, another number of PT ministers, proven managers of the interests of the bourgeoisie in previous governments, and now another number of ministers coming from Centrão and even from Bolsonaro’s field.

Petro initially tried to form a government with the leading bourgeois sector of the Liberal Party. In nine months of experience, he only managed to pass a tax law that taxed large fortunes. Faced with obstacles to health reform, labour and pension laws, he decided to change the cabinet and called for mobilization. On two occasions, he filled the streets with demonstrators, to whom he said, in a nutshell, that only with mobilization could those reforms be won. Lula and Petro now represent two opposing paths. In relation to oil exploration, Petro said that Lula's choice to explore for oil at the mouth of the Amazon River would represent a "progressive denialism" of the climate crisis.

If Lula and PT have for two decades been historically committed to not mobilizing the population or encouraging people to organize, Petro is now saying the opposite. It's clear that the tactics towards one and the other will have to be different. Petro is calling on the people to organize. The course of his government will depend on what the Colombian workers, indigenous people and peasants do to follow this path. The left that comes to power and doesn't systematically call for mobilization ends up reproducing the path of “Lulism”: limiting itself to be good manangers of the capitalist state. Those who call for mobilization can open up space for policies of rupture with neoliberalism and capital.

The crisis leaves little room for maneuver. Only with autonomy of the movements, political independence of the socialist parties and, above all, large mobilizations and self-organization of the exploited and oppressed, it is possible to get more than crumbs and move towards ecological and socialist solutions.

September, 2023

Ana Cristina, Israel, José Correa and Pedro Fuentes