The last years of the last decade, in Latin America, were characterized by a succession of social outbursts that evidenced the exhaustion of two models that, although characterized by important internal differences, disputed the hegemony of the region since the beginning of the century: the neoliberal one and the progressive. The outbreaks had begun by locating governments located at the left pole (Brazil, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Bolivia) and quickly spread to governments that promoted right-wing projects (Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, Puerto Rico).
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Over the last few months, the series Encrucijadas has attempted to offer analytical threads that allow the understanding of these crises to be ordered, in a political, economic and social space, such as Latin American, mobile, restless and, due to its complexity, traditionally difficult to observe as a whole. The challenge was to fix an image capable of looking beyond the obvious and the superficial or to cover the distance between the complex reality and its analytical representation, through a deeper visual field than the one that prevails in opinion debates.
The articles published in "The Crossroads of Latin America" have covered some of these crises and have drawn attention to transversal phenomena, which impact the entire political spectrum of the region, such as dependence on international financial institutions, increasing inequality and violence, the reordering of global geopolitics, the erosion of US hegemony, the rise of China's power and the recovery of that of Russia, and, finally, the stagnation of continental or hemispheric integration forums.
The resulting image is that of a region where the breakdown of the two ideological poles that had shaped Latin American politics, after the Cold War, still does not find a crack, but only sketches of possible solutions. A region where the international relocation of Latin America in a poorly defined context has not yet settled. From this review some conclusions emerge that will have to be preserved as possible keys for Latin American studies in the coming years.
The series shows, in all its seriousness, the social cost of neoliberal economic policies that, in terms of income, education, health, housing and work, have taken their toll through discontent with democracy and popular mobilizations. It is significant that it is precisely in Chile, the country that began the Latin American neoliberal experimentation in the 1970s, where criticism of such a model has met with its most radical opposition. As Raúl Letelier explains, the Chilean revolt makes it possible to visualize all the limits of a model that has favored the empowerment of meager economic elites, without offering the majority a credible response to their problems of decent livelihood. An important part of the tensions, social violence and state of unease that the region is going through comes precisely from the ravages generated by deregulatory prescriptions and the impact they have had on democratic institutions and norms. The coronavirus health crisis is most likely to dramatically enhance those limitations. The cuts to social programs, typical of the neoliberal agenda, leave a region with a public health system whose capacities to face the current emergency, protecting the most vulnerable sectors, have collapsed.
The series also shows the problematic way in which Latin American progressives tried to correct the structural deficiencies of the neoliberal model, through development and extractive strategies. These, in many cases, led them to neglect or abandon social policies in favor of indigenous peoples, rural communities, the environment, and gender rights. Progressive governments, more than a radical transformation of societies and political-economic systems, produced a containment, in many cases moderate, of historical deficits. The progressive experiences of Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina and Chile had a positive impact on the redistribution of wealth, but did not push those transformation processes towards more ambitious horizons. The current challenge, point out several authors of the series, is, precisely, to rework a transformative agenda, capable of integrating strategic axes, such as feminism and environmentalism, in the new leftist agendas. In other words, Latin American progressivists face the crossroads of completing their transition to a democratic left, with an agenda for radical transformation of society.
Faced with the exhaustion of the models outlined in the first two decades of the 21st century, an experimental flank was opened that attempted to cover the latest left-wing projects in the region, especially those of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico and Alberto Fernández in Argentina. Although with the advantage offered by the diagnoses of previous crises, these governments, as authors such as Maristella Svampa and Humberto Beck point out, are not totally free of some ideological inertias of the previous left.
Another lesson that emerges from the latest outbreaks in Latin America is that the universe of social movements, so important in the 90s, is not paralyzed and is revitalized with increasingly plural actors: students, women, indigenous communities, LGTBIQ groups, unions. The repression of the revolts has been brutal in some countries, such as Chile, Bolivia and Venezuela, confirming how little ideologies count when applying doctrines of national security and states of exception in Latin America. Although it is evident that there was a clear tendency towards authoritarianism in the Bolivarian branch of the heterogeneous leftist bloc (indefinite re-election, concentration of power, hegemonic parties, criminalization of independent media ...), it is no less true that the new ruling rights also They appeal to the polarization of society, the militarization of national security and various forms of political exclusion, as illustrated by the cases of Sebastián Piñera in Chile, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Iván Duque in Colombia, studied by Marisa von Büllow, Mariana Llanos and Luciana Cadahia.
These multiple crises occur in an international context where a slow, but sensitive transition towards an order or, rather, a multipolar disorder generates significant uncertainties. The erosion of US hegemony and the debacle of the Bolivarian bloc produce an evident vacuum of regional leadership. However, the re-emergence of China and Russia as possible counterweights to US hegemony does not seem to have sufficient strength or acceptance to represent tangible alternatives.
The region also faces this transit, in the midst of the conclusion of the commodity super cycle, which had allowed it to enjoy extremely important economic and financial resources, thus adding uncertainty to uncertainty. The international situation would be favorable to the rearticulation of new Latin American integration projects, not only commercial, like those that occurred in the neoliberal stage, but political ones. These could serve to reinforce the margin of governance in the face of the dilemmas that interdependence poses and reinforce the capacity for initiative in the face of an uncertain international order. However, as the articles in this series show, with the possible exception of Argentina, no government seems to have the legitimacy and conviction to reactivate any of the already existing Latin American integration forums.
At the start of 2020, these Latin American crossroads are overwhelmed by the health emergency imposed by the coronavirus pandemic. In some countries -the least-, the threat of Covid-19 causes the unification of the political class in the drawing up of a State strategy. In others, such as Brazil or Mexico, the ambivalent government attitude has caused a shift from polarization to the debate on the best public policy options to face the spread of the virus.
The pandemic seems to relegate regional problems to the background, such as the coup d'état in Bolivia and the upcoming elections in that Andean country, the authoritarian drifts in Venezuela and Nicaragua or the crisis of legitimacy in Chile and the constitutional process in that nation in the Southern Cone. . It also differs in the medium term realities from the international context, such as the possible reelection of Donald Trump or the advance of the new right in Europe, which will have a negative effect in a Latin America facing the coronavirus with fragile economies and societies prey to insecurity .
Latin America enters the third decade of the 21st century in the midst of a health contingency, which no one knows, with certainty, how long it will last or what the final volume of its damage to health and the economy will be. This is not the time to forget or consider that the demands of social outbursts and the crisis of governance in so many countries in the region have been overcome. Those demands will not only not disappear, but will deepen if governments persist in the same mistakes of the past two decades.
Vanni Pettinà and Rafael Rojas are teachers at El Colegio de México.
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