By Miguel Angel Hernandez, a leader of the PSL of Venezuela and the IWU-FI
2 September 2022. A new electoral shift to the left is taking place in several Latin American countries. It is a massive vote for reformist left sectors. Leaders and parties of the so-called centre-left are winning in Chile (Gabriel Boric), Peru (Pedro Castillo), Colombia (Gustavo Petro), and Honduras with Xiomara Castro. Previously, in Bolivia in 2020, Evo Morales’ MAS returned to the government through Luis Arce. And it is likely that in the
October elections in Brazil, Lula will win.
This electoral turn expresses in a distorted way the rise in struggles and the failure of liberal and right-wing governments and their austerity plans, as with Piñera, Ivan Duque, or Bolsonaro. In Chile, there has not been a centre-left government since Salvador Allende (1970-73). In Colombia, this is the first time in history.
What is significant is that the workers and peoples of Latin America, faced with the deterioration of their standard of living and the rejection of the traditional bosses’ politicians, are looking for an alternative to the left, even if they are still reformist variants.
The victory in Chile of Gabriel Boric, in the second round of elections in December last year, reflects the great rebellion of October 2019. Gustavo Petro’s recent victory is a direct consequence of the popular rebellion of April last year in Colombia. Meanwhile, the victory of Xiomara Castro in Honduras, wife of ousted president Manuel Zelaya, is also an expression of the protests that took place in August last year against corruption in the management of resources to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. With Peru, where Pedro Castillo’s triumph (2021) was also preceded by a popular rebellion in which the slogan “they’re all out” was put on the table, and which culminated in the fall of the Vizcarra government.
Undoubtedly, this recent shift to the left in all these electoral processes brings to mind the first wave of centre-left governments in Latin America, which took place at the beginning of the current millennium and draws comparisons.
Those governments had great political weight among the masses. Chavez had become a regional political reference, closely linked to Cuba and Fidel Castro. Lula and the PT, winning the elections for the first time, and in his prime; with the halo surrounding Evo Morales as the first indigenous president in Bolivia; Néstor Kirchner in Argentina, where the Mar del Plata meeting against the FTAA was held; Correa in Ecuador; the Frente Amplio with José Mujica in Uruguay. If we compare Chávez, the first Lula or Evo Morales, with Pedro Castillo, Gustavo Petro or Boric in Chile, the difference is abysmal.
The governments of double talk have already failed
But they all failed and went into crisis. They lost workers’ and popular support. They were governments of class conciliation that ended up making pacts with the transnationals and applying adjustments against their peoples. One of the monumental failures was Chavismo, which led to the authoritarian and starving regime of Nicolás Maduro. The other failure was that of the Lula-Dilma governments in Brazil, which led to millions of workers mistakenly voting for Bolsonaro.
The new centre-left governments will be weaker than the previous ones if today, over 20 years after those governments, the crisis of global imperialist capitalism is much deeper, aggravated by the consequences of the pandemic and by the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on the world economy. These are governments that come to power amidst an environment of political crises and rebellions in many other countries, for example Sri Lanka, Panama, Argentina, Iran, strikes in Britain and the fall of Boris Johnson’s government. The room for manoeuvre to grant any reforms or concessions to the people is much more restricted.
In the first stage of all these new centre-left governments, there will be high expectations from the mass movement that voted for them, marked by the desire for change in their standard of living after years of austerity measures. But these desires for change can quickly enter crisis if the governments do not respond to the needs of the people. At first, they may be seen as “their governments”, but this honeymoon may end more quickly than expected, given the grave social and economic situation that the Latin American peoples are going through, and the depth of the crisis of world capitalism, which will lead all these centre-left governments to apply new adjustments against the peoples.
No substantive changes
This can already be seen with Pedro Castillo in Peru and Boric in Chile. In the first case, the capitalist austerity continues with a budget for 2022 that perpetuates the disfinancing of health and education to pay the foreign debt. With Boric, no measure touches or even touches the interests of the big economic groups, while the repression of the Mapuches is maintained. Petro already announced in his first address as president-elect of Colombia that: “we are going to develop capitalism”. Ratifying that it will protect the private property of the means of production. It will keep the economy in the hands of landowners, large capitalists, financial groups, and large transnational corporations, reproducing exploitation in Colombia, one of the most unequal countries on the continent.
In the event of an eventual triumph of Lula in Brazil, the elections of October this year would undoubtedly reflect the erosion of the right-wing government of Bolsonaro, but it would be the historic reformism of the PT but now more run to the right, allied with Geraldo Alckim, a politician of the traditional Brazilian bourgeoisie, who has been linked to former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
We understand the expectations of the workers, women, and young people of all these countries, but we must be very clear about this. They are all governments of conciliation with the bourgeoisie, imperialism, and the bosses. Double-talk capitalist governments that, while using “left” or supposedly “progressive” phrases, agree with the bosses and imperialism, and apply austerity plans to make workers and the people pay for the crisis.
That is why we say that these governments cannot be expected to meet the needs of the exploited people. They must continue to be mobilised. Keep alive the spirit of the rebellions of Peru, Chile, and Colombia. With Brazil, where Lula will eventually win in October of this year, prepare for the mobilisation and the fight for all pending claims. We have no expectations of these reformist and class-conciliation governments, which will continue to adjust the people in the crisis’s context of capitalism. We must continue to mobilise for the claims that inspired all those rebellions in recent years. And fighting for class political independence, building revolutionary socialist parties.
