Abstract
Latin America since the Left Turn is a book about politics in Latin America, but it is much more than that. It is a large contribution to the open debates about whether the region’s adoption of left-wing politics is either positive or negative. It is also a set of tentative answers from intellectuals that write from and because of their peripheral and situated knowledge about the economic, social, cultural, legal and constitutional strengths and struggles of the territory. Quoting Vega Camacho, this work introduces us to ‘border thinking as a method for negotiating the boundaries and creating or inventing new kinds of unity’ (p. 312).
Editors Tulia Gabriela Falleti and Emilio Alberto Parrado, who are experts in political sciences and Latin American Studies, faced and overcame the challenge of making a collection of papers on a non-homogeneous region that is in constant change. With the objective of going into detail on the many facets of the political reorientation since the Left Turn, they divided the publication into four parts. The first one is about different national and regional models of development, while the second covers the Latin American democratic processes and their limitations. The third part is about citizenship, participation and constitutionalism, and the last one is about race, decolonization and violence.
Throughout its chapters, the authors of Latin America since the Left Turn pose more questions than definite responses. They show us the diversity of the phenomena that has been occurring in countries such as Argentina, Chile, Costa Rica, Bolivia, Mexico, Uruguay, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela. They illustrate the past and present situation of these countries to reflect upon their future: where are their governments taking them? Is it necessary to re-think what we call ‘democracy’ in the face of the populist governments that rule some of these places? How does the left turn of the last decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st explain why some countries are turning their backs on it now?
The essays that make up this edition demonstrate how the fall of the dictatorial and totalitarian processes that endured for decades in Latin America led to the emergence of political parties with a stronger commitment to the defense of human rights and the reinforcement of democratic institutions. This all enabled the legitimization of left-wing parties, especially in societies where there was an increasing distrust towards traditional and conservative parties. Therefore, leftist politics led and embraced the processes of democratization. Moreover, they focused on improving social equality through political inclusion and economic redistribution. According to researcher Thamy Pogrebinschi, reforms were launched to build a more pragmatic, participatory and deliberative democracy in the new millennium, in contrast to the failures that were attributed to the earlier representative and liberal models of democracy.
Authors from the book argue that the economic crises that affected Latin Americans gave rise to a growing shared feeling of rejection against neoliberalism and the threat that some First World countries pose to them. In consequence, local responses emerged and made possible the existence of intraregional institutions like the Latin American Free Trade Association (ALALC), Common Market of the South (Mercosur) and Union of South American Nations (Unasur). Argentine sociologist Maristella Svampa observes that these South–South organizations aimed to create networks of regional international cooperation to gain autonomy from the international finance and markets, such as the United States of America, the International Monetary Fund and, more recently, China. However, local governments allowed the influence of foreign capital through development models likened to an extractivist paradigm that exports primary products as commodities at the expense of the regional economies, labor market and environmental protection. Even though social movements like Buen Vivir have risen in opposition to these changes, some governments were quick to overturn them through different legal mechanisms such as the criminalization of social protests.
But Latin America is as diverse and complex as the political processes that occur in it. While some citizens being targeted for their political demands, others had an increasing participation and civic recognition in the public and political sphere. After several years of military dictatorships, democratic regional governments ensured the protection of their pueblos. As lawyer and sociologist Roberto Gargarella argues, they made reforms to their constitutions focusing on social, economic and political rights. In Colombia, for example, they even made changes in the Judicial Power to make courts more dialogic and open to the people. Eventually, this led to the progressive inclusion of disadvantaged groups, like women, immigrants, homosexuals and the indigenous people.
In some cases, social inclusion was accompanied by fiscal policies, public spending and income redistribution. Specialists in development economics Nora Lustig and Claudiney Pereira found that poverty decreased where public funds were invested in education and health, as has been happening in countries such as Uruguay and Argentina. The latter has also been receptive to intraregional immigrants and recognized their rights by granting them their ability to attain citizenship, but researcher and sociologist Marcela Cerrutti identified that their legal inclusion was just one of the many necessary steps towards their integration in society and in other social spheres, like the housing market, labor, education and health care, adding that one measurement must be accompanied by the others.
Although democracy is not free of conflict and power struggles, the self-determination of social movements can help change the configuration of politics, a process that took place in countries such as Bolivia in the new millennium according to researcher Oscar Vega Camacho. Nonetheless, the improvements in social, economic and political spheres were asymmetrical, especially in the zones where the concentration of powers in the executive branch gave rise to doubts about the legitimacy (and legality) of their presidents: should we then talk about a form of authoritarianism or maybe of a hyper-presidentialism? Indeed, chavismo and more recently, the presidency of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela make visible different models of governance and communal power, as well as the weaknesses of the liberal-representative model, as noted by political scientist George Ciccariello-Maher.
In short, Latin America since the Left Turn is a quest to revisit the historic and the recent transformations that are taking place in such a vast region. It is a set of open questions that force us to keep an eye on the inequalities that persist in the region in the face of a neoliberal revival and a slow but steady return of the right wing.