Questions to the new progressive cycle

Like ten years ago, there is once again talk of a progressive cycle in Latin America.

The recent triumphs of Xiomara Castro, in Honduras, and Gabriel Boric, in Chile, would make it possible to identify nine governments in the region leaning to the left, compared to a dozen positioned to the right or center.

The differences between those governments could not be more remarkable and the very identity of the left of some would be doubtful.

But it is clear that the ideological spectrum is swinging again.

The differences are not only manifested within the new progressive pole but with respect to the previous cycle. As much as it is insisted that the Puebla Group is a mere continuation of the São Paulo Forum or that it has been the same since the times of Lula da Silva or Hugo Chávez, the current ruling lefts distance themselves from the previous ones in several aspects. In general, they do not tend towards indefinite reelection, they do not link their geopolitical agendas to the Bolivarian bloc, nor do they make the tension with the United States the axis of their diplomatic strategies.

The governments of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in Mexico; Alberto Fernández, in Argentina, and Pedro Castillo, in Peru, are emblematic experiences of the new cycle. In all three cases there has been a moderation effect of the Chavista currents, which is manifested in a recovery of the State's role in social spending without repeating nationalizing offensives or too dependent on the rise in prices of raw materials.

In foreign policy, these governments have maintained good relations with the United States —the Mexican, in fact, has taken the understanding with Washington to unprecedented levels of bilateral intimacy—, and have not opted for adversarial geopolitics through rapprochement with Russia, China or other emerging powers. Beyond specific disagreements with Luis Almagro and the Organization of American States (OAS), these governments have preserved the inter-American framework of their global relations, thus, in practice, they have distanced themselves from the Bolivarian bloc.

The distances of Mexico, Argentina and Peru with that alliance, which protects authoritarian regimes such as Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, are subtle, as could be seen in the last meeting of foreign ministers of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) and the snub to the inauguration of Daniel Ortega. With Nicaragua they have become so explicit as to produce calls or withdrawals of ambassadors and harsh diplomatic notes. With Venezuela and Cuba they are not non-existent either, but they are hidden or sublimated, rigorously, by the generalized rejection that the United States' policy towards those countries in Latin America and the Caribbean arouses.

The discontinuity between the first cycle and the second could be summarized with the events of the CELAC summit in Mexico. There, President López Obrador proposed, against the Chavista line, to create a free trade area with the United States and Canada, taking the European Union as a model. Despite the anti-OAS accent that the governments of Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela imprinted on that forum, many administrations in the region, including Bolivia and Peru, remain within the inter-American organization and accept its Democratic Charter.

The triumphs of Castro in Honduras and Boric in Chile could add greater heterogeneity to the regional ideological fabric. By now there would be more questions than answers about the impact of those victories on the evolution of the left. If the new Honduran government follows the line of Manuel Zelaya's overthrown project in 2009, we will probably see an approximation of that Central American country to the Bolivarian pole. It will be more difficult for a similar shift to take place in Chile, where the president-elect has made no secret of criticizing the lack of democracy in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba.

Boric's victory is of singular relevance, since, on the one hand, it puts a stop to the advance of the extreme right such as Jair Bolsonaro and José Antonio Kast in South America, and, on the other, it reinforces the democratic component within the Latin American leftist pole . In domestic and international politics, Boric has many more coincidences with López Obrador, Fernández or Luis Arce than with Nicolás Maduro, Daniel Ortega or Miguel Díaz-Canel. His commitment to economic growth without social inequality and the deepening of democracy without limiting human rights and public liberties reaffirms that the democratic left is once again raising its profile in the region.

The new Constitution that is currently being drafted in Chile introduces obvious changes in the latest Latin American constitutionalism, promoted by the Chavista hegemony. Like that constitutionalism, this one is interested in the rights of indigenous communities and low-income sectors, in older adults and the environment, but gives greater centrality to women and student and working youth. In Chile, the new Constitution and the project of Gabriel Boric and I Approve Dignity move away from the concentration of power, permanent re-election, the deterioration of the rule of law, the criminalization of protests and the systematic repression exerted by Bolivarian authoritarianism.

Rafael Rojas

is a historian and essayist, author among other titles of

and

, both in Turner.

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