~~~~~~~~~~~~~(((( T h e B u l l e t ))))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A Socialist Project e-bulletin .... No. 1281 .... July 15, 2016
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Michael Löwy
Since the beginning of the 21st century, the Left has won elections in most Latin American countries, in a powerful wave of popular rejection of the disastrous neoliberal policies of the previous regimes. One must however distinguish between two quite different sorts of left governments:
1. Social-liberal coalitions, which do not break with the fundamental "Washington Consensus" but implement several progressive social measures. The basic principle of this sort of government is to do what is possible to improve the situation of the poor -- on the condition not to touch the privileges of the rich. The left, or center-left governments of Brazil, Uruguay and Chile are the most obvious examples.
2. Anti-oligarchic, anti-neoliberal and anti-imperialist governments, who set as their historical horizon "Socialism of the 21st Century." Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador belong to this category.
Other leftist governments, in Paraguay, Nicaragua, El Salvador or Argentina, seem to be somewhere in between, or on the margins, of these two types. Substantial gains were made by the popular layers in most of these countries, thanks to the social redistribution of the rent, particularly from oil and gas extraction (Venezuela and Bolivia). But none of these governments effectively confronted the basic structures of the capitalist system, and no real attempt was made toward a transition to socialism. So far, socialist Cuba with all its shortcomings remains the only such experience.
There were also no attempts to move beyond dependency on fossil fuels, except for a short period when the government of Raphael Correa in Ecuador decided to accept the Park Yasuni Project of the ecological and indigenous movements. The proposal was to leave, in this forest area inhabited by peasant communities, the oil in the soil, but require the rich countries of the North to pay half of its value as a compensation to the Ecuadorian people. As one would expect, the rich capitalist governments were not interested, and Correa finally gave up, and opened the Yasuni Park to the oil companies.
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