By Julio C. Gambina on April 14, 2021
Photo: Bill Hackwell
There were elections in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru, for governorships in the first case and presidential elections in the others. The results, still under analysis, with multiple considerations according to the ideological and political orientation of the commentator, will give much to talk about. What is certain is that everything is in motion, on the left and on the right of the political spectrum, and considerations from the point of view of emotion are not useful, but from the point of view of complexity and criticism.
Bolivia: it is a fact that the discredit of a government that emerged from a coup grew between the end of 2019 and 2020, but it is worth discussing what is the common sense installed among the voters of that country, beyond 2020. The immense electoral support to Luis Arce’s government is far from the local results of two subsequent elections. It is a subject for in-depth studies on social conscience, electoral consensus, and the economic, political and social projects under debate.
Peru: in the second round the voting options have been narrowed and offers in the first place a candidate of the left with a recent background in the social struggle of teachers in 2017 and on the other hand, an imaginary right-wing candidate; an heiress of a coup leader associated with corruption, this in the midst of a pandemic of serious social consequences.
Ecuador: it was a surprise and calls for dispassionate examinations on the valuations of society in the exercise of the vote. The current and outgoing government has its origin in the supposed continuity of the process initiated by Rafael Correa and, however, exercised the government with the policy closest to the liberal program of the new winner, clearly identified with the right and neoliberalism. The notions of right and left appeared without clarity in a debate that exacerbates passions about the content of the country’s projects of this time.
It is true that each case has its own specificity, but these are three countries with a strong presence of native populations, and beyond long and centenary indigenous struggles, it is in recent years that the claims of native peoples have become visible to society as a whole. In all cases, media and network manipulation plays a role, challenging critical politics and the deep transformations of production relations.
The 2009 Constitutions of Bolivia and Ecuador recovered historical visions related to Living Well or Good Living. They are worldviews that discuss the contemporary social order and recover a debate, often hidden, on structural problems of the social relations of production and between human beings and nature.
In fact, the native peoples have an identity prior to the “nationalities” built in the last two hundred years, commemorated at this time as independent heroic deeds. The indigenous tradition precedes the current nationalities, that is why “plurinational” is a constituent part of a debate of the present, questioning a conservative conception about the modes of organization and representation in the future.
Our constitutions recognize the presence of native peoples, but they are subordinated to a civilizing logic dominated by capitalist property relations. Possession, not ownership, was the organizational form of pre-Columbian and independence struggles.
For this reason, along with the “plurinational” emerges the debate for the communitarian forms of economic organization of society, precisely at a time when the pandemic reality returns the regressive result of liberalization and privatization policies exacerbated in the last half-century.
Recreating transformation proposals
These five decades are the ones we are evaluating at present, since the presentation of neoliberalism under the Chilean dictatorship, and its worldwide projection, with Reagan and Thatcher, the reality of crisis makes evident the recreation of order.
It was the world recession of 2007-09 and the subsequent slowdown in economic growth, aggravated now by the pandemic, which brought into discussion how to reorganize the system of relations, the economy and politics. Thus, in recent years, we have the new right and the search for a left that had been shaken by the breakdown of global bipolarity.
Not only is the pace of economic growth slow, the installed objective of “capitalist normality”, but also the worsening of all social indicators is visible, especially inequality, in terms of the relative impoverishment of the social majority.
This is a major issue in Latin America and the Caribbean, which is currently being manifested by the impact of COVID19 , now in a second wave that affects countries that until recently seemed to be far from the scourge that plagues humanity.
The Latin American and Caribbean region is not the poorest in the world, but it is the most unequal. It is an issue derived from its strong colonial insertion first and then its dependence on capitalism hegemonized by Europe and the USA in the last two centuries, the years of “independence” that we commemorate in our time.
If the region was substantial at the origin of capitalism, through discovery and conquest, it is now playing a more important role as a supplier of resources and strategic inputs for production dominated by transnational corporations.
Current political tensions in the region are associated with the search for a strategic direction, which for some refers to the subordination to the hegemonic tendencies for liberalization supported by the right, while for others, it is associated with the imaginary of another possible world from the left. A challenge that Cuba, as the main experiment, for a decade has been working on updating their economic model.
In short, the material, economic basis for the production and circulation of goods and services that satisfy social needs, while contemplating the defense of the commons and nature, is discussed.
The continental struggles in our territories had an anti-colonial and then anti-imperialist tradition, with a moment of relative improvement in living conditions in times of industrialization, between the 50s/70s of the twentieth century, exhausted with the neoliberal model that advanced throughout the continent and that today is in crisis.
It is the strategic limits of a new integral project for our society and for humanity that generate the surprises, tensions and debates of our time, and that summons us to the deployment of critical thinking that recreates a civilizing objective to solve the current dissatisfactions and inequalities.
Source: Red in Defense of Humanity, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English