Understanding the Politics of Latin America's Plural Lefts (Chávez/Lula): social democracy, populism and convergence on the path to a post-neoliberal world

Abstract

This article explores the academic and public debate on the politics of Latin America's twenty-first century turn towards the left. It rejects dichotomous categorisations of ‘social democratic’ and ‘populist’ lefts as a disciplinary move by neoliberals that appeals to entrenched liberal predispositions. It suggests that such classificatory taxonomies are directly linked to an impoverished notion of the political, in which a politics of exalted expertise and enlightenment, based on reason, rationality and objectivity is juxtaposed against a lesser sphere of emotion, passion and ‘personalism’. This underlying dualism, which permeates academic disciplines and crosses lines of ideology, tracks established markers of hierarchical distinction in societies profoundly divided along multiple lines of class and cultural capital. This is explored through an analysis of the discourse of Chávez vis-a-vis Lula, while offering an appreciation of the subaltern origin of Lula's distinctive style of political leadership, from trade unionism to the presidency, based upon the creation of spaces of convergence.

Notes

1 H Chavez, ‘Act for the people's anti-imperialist struggle, VI World Social Forum, Poliedro, Caracas, Friday January 27, 2006’, at http://www.chavezinenglish.org/2006/WSF2006.html, accessed 15 March 2008; and Chavez, ‘Rise up against the Empire: address to the United Nations’, Counterpunch, 20 September 2006, at http://www.counterpunch.org/, accessed 15 March 2008.

2 J Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War, New York: Alfred Knopf, 1993. See also my appreciation of the book: JD French, ‘The Latin American labour studies boom’, International Review of Social History, 45 (2), 2000, p 289.

3 J Castañeda, ‘Latin America's left turn’, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006.

4 Ibid. For Castañeda on populism, see Utopia Unarmed, pp 39–40, 43–45.

5 Castañeda, ‘Latin America's left turn’.

6 Ibid.

7 Ibid.

8 Castañeda, ‘Latin America's Left Turn’, emphasis added.

9 For a fascinating personal account of the relationship between Fidel Castro and Lula since their first meeting in 1980, see the recollections in four parts by Fidel Castro, ‘Lula’, La Jornada, 25 and 30 January 2008, 6 February 2008.

10 Castañeda, ‘Latin America's left turn’, emphasis added.

11 Those writing about Latin America routinely use ‘social democratic’ as if it were a known and unchanging category, when this very issue has been the subject of immense debate within western Europe since the 1980s. See D Sassoon, One Hundred Years of Socialism: The West European Left in the Twentieth Century, New York: New Press, 1996; G Moschonas, In the Name of Social Democracy: The Great Transformation, 1945 to the Present, London: Verso, 2002; and G Eley, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850–2000, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.

12 K Roberts, ‘Repoliticizing Latin America: the revival of populist and leftist alternatives’, Woodrow Wilson Center Update on the Americas, Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2007, p 5.

13 E Zedillo, ‘Lula: the end of Latin American populism?’, Forbes, 170 (13), 2002, p 55.

14 Zedillo, ‘Lula’.

15 J Beasley-Murray, M Cameron & E Hershberg, ‘Left turns: an introduction’, in this issue.

16 F Panizza, ‘The social democratization of the Latin American left’, Revista Europea de Estudios Latinoamericanos y del Caribe, 79, 2005, pp 100–101, emphasis added; and Beasley-Murray et al, ‘Left turns’.

17 M Reid, Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America's Soul, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007, pp xiv, 13, 12, 79–80.

18 CT Torre, ‘The resurgence of radical populism in Latin America’, Constellations, 14 (3), 2007, p 385.

19 M Mackinnon & Mario Petrone, Populismo y Neopopulismo en America Latina: El Problema de La Cenicienta, Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria de Buenos Aires, 1998.

20 P Cammack, ‘Cardoso's political project in Brazil: the limits of social democracy’, Socialist Register 1997, London: Merlin Press, 1997, p 241.

21 M Vellinga, ‘The internationalization of politics and local response: social democracy in Latin America’, in M Vellinga (ed), Social Democracy in Latin America: Prospects for Change, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1993, p 3; and A Touraine, ‘Latin America: from populism toward social democracy’, in Vellinga, Social Democracy in Latin America, p 297.

22 FH Cardoso, ‘The challenges of social democracy in Latin America’, in Vellinga, Social Democracy in Latin America, pp 274–275.

23 M Vellinga, ‘The internationalization of politics and local response’, pp 4, 12; and Touraine, ‘Latin America’, p 304.

24 Cardoso, ‘The challenges of social democracy in Latin America’, pp 284–286, 289.

25 Ibid, pp 284–285.

26 M Cavarozzi, ‘The left in South America: politics as the only option’, in Vellinga, Social Democracy in Latin America, pp 154–5.

27 JD French, ‘The labouring and middle-class peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean: historical trajectories and new research directions’, in Jan Lucassen (ed), Global Labour History: A State of the Art, Bern: Peter Lang, 2006, pp 304, 306.

28 Touraine, ‘Latin America’, p 303.

29 Vellinga, ‘The internationalization of politics and local response’, p 13.

30 Reid, Forgotten Continent, p 12.

31 M Centeno & F Lopez-Alves, The Other Mirror: Grand Theory through the Lens of Latin America, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001, pp 5–6.

32 Reid, Forgotten Continent, pp 79–80.

33 Touraine, ‘Latin America’, p 304.

34 Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed, pp 43, 39–40, 44, 42.

35 Torre, ‘The resurgence of radical populism in Latin America’, p 392.

36 L Reygadas, ‘Imagined inequalities: representations of discrimination and exclusion in Latin America’, Social Identities, 11 (5), 2005, p 504.

37 Chávez, ‘Act for the people's anti-imperialist struggle’.

38 Castañeda, ‘ Latin America's left turn’.

39 Chávez, ‘Act for the people's anti-imperialist struggle’, emphasis added.

40 See Lula's adept handling of this challenge in a 24 February 2006 interview: LI da Silva, ‘The working man's statesman gives a rare interview to the Economist’, The Economist, 5 March 2006, pp 2–3.

41 Chávez, ‘Act for the people's anti-imperialist struggle’.

42 Ibid.

43 H Chávez, ‘Foro Social Mundial: el sur, norte de nuestros pueblos desde el gimnasio gigantinho. Porto Alegre Brasil 30 de Enero de 2005’, at http://www.mre.gov.ve/Noticias/Presidente-Chavez/A2005/Discurso-030.htm, accessed 15 March 2008.

44 LI Silva, Discurso do Presidente da República, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, no Ato Político de Celebração aos 15 Anos Do Foro de São Paulo, Brasília: Presidência da República Secretaría de Imprensa e Divulgação, 2005, pp 2, 4–5.

45 R Regalado, Latin America at the Crossroads: Domination, Crisis, Popular Movements and Political Alternatives, Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2007, p 249. The author is a member of the Cuban Communist Party Central Committee.

46 M Keck, The Workers Party and Democratization in Brazil, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992; and Cavarozzi, ‘The left in South America’.

47 J Nêumanne, Atrás do Palanque: Bastidores da Eleição 1989, São Paulo: Siciliano, 1989.

48 JD French & A Fortes, ‘Another world is possible: the rise of the Brazilian Workers’ Party and the prospects for Lula's government’, Labour: Studies in Working Class History of the Americas, 2 (3), 2005, pp 14, 18.

49 E Sader, ‘The Workers Party in Brazil’, New Left Review, 126, 1987, pp 100, 97–98.

50 ‘XIII Foro de São Paulo: something to celebrate in El Salvador’, NotiCen: Central American and Caribbean Affairs, 8, February 2007.

51 Reid, Forgotten Continent, pp 10–22.

WSF, ‘Revised World Social Forum Charter of Principles, June 2001 Version’, in Jai Sen et al (eds), World Social Forum: Challenging Empires, New Delhi: Viveka Foundation, 2004, p 70, emphasis added.

53 For a contemporary Cuban communist perspective that emphasises revolution and armed struggle, see R Regalado, Latin America at the Crossroads, pp 222, 232.

54 WSF, ‘Revised World Social Forum Charter of Principles’, p 70.

55 Chávez, ‘Act for the people's anti-imperialist struggle’, emphasis added.

56 J Holston, Insurgent Citizenship: Disjunctions of Democracy and Modernity in Brazil, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008, pp 5–6.

57 See Naim's account of the impact of ‘unfortunately, for now’ in K Hawkins, ‘Populism in Venezuela: the rise of Chavismo’, Third World Quarterly, 24 (6), 2003, p 1148.

58 R Rivas Rojas & Y Salas, ‘On Chavismo: interview with Yolanda Salas (Caracas, 7 September 2004)’, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 14 (3), 2004, p 328.

59 Ibid, pp 328–329.

60 Hawkins, ‘Populism in Venezuela’, p 1147.

61 L Reygadas, ‘Imagined inequalities’, pp 502–504.

62 Ibid.

63 Hawkins, ‘Populism in Venezuela’, p 1154.

64 A Zago, La Rebelión de Los Ángeles, Caracas: Fuentes Editores, 1992, p 25, cited and translated in Hawkins, ‘Populism in Venezuela’, p 1147.