martin elfmann
A few weeks ago, during the presentation of
Feeling it a lot,
the documentary that collects the last fifteen years of his life, Joaquín Sabina made some statements that upset more than one.
The singer-songwriter, who until then had been an icon of the left, said that he no longer felt so comfortable in the ranks of his former comrades.
For various reasons, but above all for one: the drift of the Latin American left.
“I have eyes and ears and a head to see what is happening, and it is very sad what is happening,” he said.
He was referring, of course, to the maddening conversion of the Daniel Ortega regime into a copy of the most pathetic and insane Somozism, to the tedious stagnation of Cuba in a musty corner of the 20th century, and to the criminal stupidity that destroys Venezuela every day.
What would he have answered, however,
That question would have put Sabina in trouble, because it is not even clear that Latin America is turning to the left, as they say.
If you look closely, what the last elections indicate is that voters are punishing the ruling party, rather than the right.
The crisis of political legitimacy unleashed by the pandemic, added to the discontent fueled by inflation, organized crime and the impossibility of the Latin American economies, which are barely growing, to meet the expectations of citizens, make any proposal that promises to cut with the price tempting. past.
More than a pink wave, what seems to be rolling over Latin America is a tsunami of dissatisfaction.
Citizens want change and that is what the politicians who are now in power offered.
It is true that this change has been promoted electorally under the banners of progressivism and the left, but we should not assume that it is a homogeneous movement, led by politicians who share the same objectives and ideals.
Absolutely.
What do they have in common, for example, an environmentalist who tries to lead a global crusade against hydrocarbons and climate change, like Petro, and a developer who wants to strengthen the state oil company, Pemex, and cross the road with a train? Yucatan peninsula, like López Obrador?
Looking at them closely, what we find is a highly varied spectrum of trajectories and proposals.
Petro and AMLO come from the Latin American populist tradition that conceives of the leader as a demiurge who creates and directs the crowd with the power of his word.
The difference is that the Colombian has a pragmatic firewall that allows him to establish alliances with his political adversaries, even with the extreme right, while the Mexican seeks confrontation with his opponents.
Their styles of government are very different.
The first seeks the pact within the institutions;
the second guarantees the stability of his government with direct subsidies.
Another notable difference is that Petro supports women and has a human rights defender at the helm of the defense portfolio, while AMLO is at odds with the feminist movement and has given the military an enormous role in public life. .
The differences are accentuated if these two presidents are compared with Pedro Castillo.
The Peruvian came to power backed by an extremist party, Peru Libre, created by a doctor who was trained in Cuba, and not only in his specialty, neurosurgery, but in contempt for democracy.
The panic generated by his triumph gradually abated as Peru sank into chaos and misrule and Castillo proved not to be a staunch communist, but a consummate incompetent.
His leftism was petrified in bombastic rhetoric and vernacular symbolism, soon fading amid corruption scandals involving his immediate family circle.
The Chilean Boric seems to be the closest politician to Petro;
Like him, he came to power supported by the social movements that participated in the social outbreak, and by a new non-coalitionist left that emphasized the identity agenda and the youth break with the past.
What is new about Boric, beyond his attempts to re-found Chile with a new Constitution, is that he defends an uncomfortable cause for the Latin American left.
While Petro or Lula prefer to tiptoe when talking about the human rights violations committed in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba, Boric treads on calluses.
The Chilean president openly criticizes authoritarian excesses, and for this reason it is easier for him to end up sitting with Sabina drinking tequila than for Ortega, Maduro or Díaz-Canel to offer him the fraternal treatment of a comrade.
Albero Fernández comes from the more traditional wing of Peronism, but at his side, as an uncomfortable dance partner, he has Cristina Kirchner, an expert in the art of symbology and storytelling and representative of the sector most tilted to the left.
In the midst of this difficult coexistence -sometimes she seems to be in charge, sometimes he-, Kirchner faces a trial for corruption and Fernández the economic crisis.
All his government efforts seek to reverse the wave of Latin American dissatisfaction so that it does not also take them in the next elections.
The internal conflict, plus the nationalism that Peronism expires, isolates Argentina from the other Latin American governments.
And the same can be said of Bolivia and its president, Luis Arce.
His militant indigenism, sprinkled with anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist slogans, lost its seductive effect when it became the stone that Boric stumbled upon.
Since then, the paths that could ideologically unite Chile and Bolivia have moved away, and it is unlikely that any other Latin American government will again feel enthusiastic about the Bolivian multinational model.
As can be seen, the arc of the Latin American left is much broader than it seems.
Its representatives do not share the same objective or project and the internal problems they face are so diverse and particular that they end up drawing them in.
So what do they have in common?
Basically, that they all declare themselves enemies of neoliberalism and are concerned about economic inequalities.
Except for Boric, a more or less strong nationalism is intuited in them, and except for AMLO, in all of them there is an interest in social movements and identity politics.
That would also be a good question for Sabina, why is the left ceasing to be libertarian and hedonistic, as it was during the second half of the 20th century, and now, focused on inclusion and equity, rejects the old rockers who challenged authoritarianism and expanded the margins of freedom?
The answer, if any, would explain one of the most notable ideological shifts of our time, and not only in Latin America, but in the entire West.