The past year in Latin America and the Caribbean is hardly an easy one. Nor does it allow for a definitive equation to be drawn, given the dynamics of the situation.
From the perspective of the sovereignty of the peoples, the resistance of the Venezuelan people and government in the face of the fierce economic, diplomatic and media siege by the United States and its satellites is of great merit. The Bolivarian victory obtained, despite the objective adversity it faces due to the blockade and other unilateral coercive measures by Washington, revealed the strength of revolutionary subjects, their vocation for sovereignty and the amazing organicity of a people that are loving, joyful and proud of their collective membership.
In contrast, the White House’s digitalized and funded opposition is weakened by internal divisions and corruption scandals, rendering it incapable of fulfilling the local benchmark role assigned by the State Department.
Cuba’s resilience in the face of similar pressure from the ultra-right-wing Republicans, now a decisive factor in the Trump administration, deserves mention. The counter-revolutionary attack, which has spanned six decades, focused on tightening the blockade and attacking the Cuban medical brigades involved in international solidarity. One of the first measures taken by the right-wing governments has been the expulsion of Cuban doctors, harming the most vulnerable sectors of the population, which are primarily served by these missions.
Cuba has managed to complete a fundamental constitutional reform with the insertion of new rights and has effected a generational change in its leadership with the election of Miguel Díaz-Canel as the new president.
Nicaragua is also among the regional left-wing bloc attacked by Washington, which resisted the onslaught of unilateral sanctions by the legislative body of the United States (Nica-Act), the OAS and the European Union, in the wake of the uprising promoted in 2018 by NGOs, student and business organizations and the clergy with the aim of overthrowing the government of Daniel Ortega.
Attempts at dialogue between the government and the opposition have been stalled but have resulted in the release of detainees from the 2018 protests and the establishment of a Truth, Justice and Peace Commission to investigate the events.
In the field of popular victories, the electoral victory of the Frente de Todos in Argentina deserves special mention. The resounding result shattered the aspirations of continuity of Mauricio Macri, one of the main personages of the neocolonial subjugation at regional level and opened the doors to the configuration of a new progressive axis together with the current government of Mexico.
On December 1st, Andrés Manuel López Obrador celebrated before a crowd in the legendary Zócalo of Mexico City “the first year of democratic, honest and humanist government”. The beginning of the six-year term of government meets with very high popular approval, despite permanent attacks by political adversaries and the media, in an attempt to undermine the course of the Fourth Transformation. The Juarista motto “With the people everything, without the people nothing” will be of crucial importance in the framework of the geopolitical attacks that this government will have to continually confront in 2020.
Likewise, a positive balance for 2019 is the consistency of the integration process of the Caribbean nations, which, despite the defections of Haiti and Saint Lucia, prevented the closing of the diplomatic chokehold against Venezuela in the OAS.
People who have woken up
Massive popular demonstrations against neoliberal impositions in Ecuador, Colombia, Chile, Puerto Rico and Haiti have also been of enormous value this year. In all cases, the policies of adjustment and submission to the dictates of the International Monetary Fund have been checked and the governments discredited and questioned for the violations of human rights due to unleashed repression. In Puerto Rico, the colonial governor had to resign, with no further changes. However, the people’s success left a trail of insurrection that has not yet been extinguished.
The Ecuadorian government, in view of its absolute weakness, has taken refuge under the wings of the Eagle and launched a judicial persecution, without any support, against leaders of the Citizen’s Revolution. After a brief “honeymoon” with the government, the militant opposition of the indigenous movement has been strengthened, emerging as a fundamental factor in an equation of forces capable of overcoming the current right-wing shift.
Colombia and Chile, valued partners of the United States in the region, models of economic and political dictatorship scarcely veneered by periodic votes, are going through a fierce crisis. The Chilean and Colombian peoples emerged this year as the main protagonists in demands for profound transformations in the social and political system. In the former case, despite the fierce efforts of the representatives of the Old Regime to prevent the emergence of a Constituent Assembly, progress indicates that in 2020, Chile will experience an intense process of democratization, closing the tragic chapter of Pinochetism and its substitutes in that country.
In Colombia, the generalised popular rejection of the economic plans of Iván Duque, the infamous series of assassinations of peasant leaders and demobilised ex-combatants, the betrayal of the Peace Accords, the painful discovery of common graves of false positives, the prosecution of Uribe before the Supreme Court of Justice and the results of the regional and municipal elections held in October, show the early exhaustion of a weak government.
The situation is similar in Haiti, where the government of Jovenel Moise is sustained only by the support of foreign governments concentrated in the so-called Core Group. In addition to the chaotic and inhumane social situation of the majority and the denunciation of the corruption of the elite in power, there is the outrageous confirmation of hundreds of cases of rape, abuse and sexual coercion by the occupying forces of the Minustah against girls and adolescents who became pregnant and had to raise their children in situations of extreme poverty.
The popular mobilizations throughout the country, led by the opposition coordinated in the Patriotic Forum, demand structural and systemic changes within the framework of a new Constitution. Transformations that must guarantee the end of neo-colonial tutelage and the enormous social inequality of a nation ravaged by hunger, misery and lack of minimum living conditions.
The cone of shadows
Nevertheless, popular advances in the region have been overshadowed this year by hard setbacks such as the coup d’état suffered by the Process of Change in Bolivia. After a first-round victory, with just over 10 points over the main contender, Evo Morales was forced to resign due to a coup engineered from the United States, whose main players were the OAS, police and military forces, fascist civic factions and corporate media.
Within the framework of a crusade of obscurantist characteristics, the de facto government, lacking any semblance of legitimacy, has assassinated, intimidated and launched a witch-hunt against the country’s social movements and MAS-IPSP supporters, also using the supposed “interim” government to undertake the complete reversal of the country’s foreign policy, aligning it under the US orbit.
Also, among the negative events of the year, the defeat of the Frente Amplio in Uruguay at the hands of a conservative coalition with a strong presence of military elements in its interior should be noted. The victory of a representative of the hard right in Guatemala, the former director of the penitentiary system Alejandro Gianmattei, represents the continuity of the prevailing structural corruption in the country, the violence against the poor, and the strong alignment with the wishes of the U.S. administration.
This pattern of subjugation has been reinforced in El Salvador, as was predicted, by Nayib Bukele, who has broken with Venezuela and strengthened ties with imperial domination. In the Central American region, the election of the Social Democrat Cortizo in Panama and the continued sectoral and trade union demands in Costa Rica do not mean, for the moment, perspectives of real change in the forced alignment of both countries with the purposes of the United States.
The corruption scheme at the heart of Peru has also aroused popular indignation and generated multiple mobilizations. Driven by the massive demand, President Vizcarra – himself the substitute of the resigned Pedro Pablo Kuczynski – dissolved the Congress and called for early elections of congressmen for January 2020. The recent release of Keiko, the visible leader of the Fujimori clan, indicates that, far from approaching a stage of regeneration, Peru in the short term will continue to be submerged in the rottenness of its institutional system, functional to the concentration of power and social inequality.
Mario Abdo Benítez, who has just signed agreements with the FBI and the State Department to make Paraguay the main base for U.S. spying and “intelligence” activities, is another similar case. He had to pay the price for the efforts of the Paraguayan embassy, which managed to keep him in the presidency despite popular protests against the surrender of sovereignty in energy negotiations with Brazil over the Itaipu dam.
In turn, Brazil, the Latin American giant, a potential world power in the framework of the BRICS, has been degraded to a subordinate player in U.S. foreign policy. With a government that has no real political existence, subject to the will of the White House, military commanders, and a congress controlled by backward, violent, and corrupt individuals, Brazil has embarked on a path of neoliberal reforms that threaten not only to reverse the advances made by the governments of Lula and Dilma, but also to hand over a large part of the state’s business sector to foreign multinationals.
Here, the neo-Pentecostal nightmare, the manipulation of the conventional media and digital networks, and legal warfare have been the instruments with which the oligarchy and the empire operated to prevent the redistribution of wealth and the beginning of a new, more just social order. Only Lula’s provisional freedom was a balm among so much aggression, hatred and retreat.
The full picture
All these events are connected and explained in the context of a multidimensional war unleashed by the once undisputed Western hegemon, the United States, in which the peoples are held hostage to a struggle for economic and geopolitical dominance.
At a disadvantage in the inter-capitalist struggle against emerging powers such as China and India and re-emerging ones -especially in the military and energy fields- such as Russia, the United States seeks to recover total domination over Latin America and the Caribbean. The war is being waged at all levels. It is a war of trade, finance, technology, media, judicial and armed violence, of the seizure of material and intellectual resources, of communication channels and infrastructures, but also of cultural and geopolitical predominance.
Given the characteristics of globalization achieved, it is a planetary war, whose objective is not only to avoid geopolitical multipolarity and the reformulation of the institutional status quo that emerged after the Second World War. It is a war to preserve Western pre-eminence in the face of the obvious rebellion against the cultural imposition that nestles in this competition.
Challenges ahead
Because of the project of anti-popular aggression undertaken by imperialism, transnational financial power and local oligarchies, it is clear that the most progressive elements in Latin America and the Caribbean will have to generate strategic unity. A unity in diversity, which in the current situation will be a unity in adversity.
Of primary importance for this alliance will be to connect with the revolutionary thrust of the new consciousness, embodied in the feminist movement, in anti-capitalist environmentalism and in the youth who are demanding a new world, but also a different, participatory and horizontal way of attaining it.
Among the challenges to be faced by the transformative field will be, first of all, the need to democratize the exercise of communication to counteract the manipulation of the common sense of the majority. Likewise, a way will have to be found to neutralize defamation and lies whose rapid and segmented circulation is multiplied through the digital networks managed by corporations.
At a political level, the system will attempt to repress or channel into the traditional mould the transformative drive of the mobilised peoples, in order to dilute its systemic character. It will be important to call things by their name again and the word “revolution” – in its meaning of deep and radical change of structures, not necessarily violent – must be articulated without fear in the face of a worn-out capitalist scheme with no way out for the majority.
It is also obvious that the reaction of the collapsing system will continue to appeal to violence, so a major issue will be to evaluate the relationship and possible action of the armed forces in defense of the changes undertaken.
Another essential point, perhaps the most complex challenge, will be to understand the meaning of the reaction structure represented by the advance of obscurantist currents in the region and the world. Fundamentalist currents that give the right wing the social base that they would not be able to build through their own postulates of anti-popular neoliberalism.
Undoubtedly it will be advisable to realize that social abandonment, but also loneliness, the breaking of ties, ethical degradation, systemic fraud, and existential meaninglessness and uncertainty regarding the individual and collective future have created a favourable field for the growth of irrational currents and to consider whether or not we are in the presence of a failure of materialistic absolutism.
In order to recover an indispensable revolutionary social mysticism, which goes beyond the mere improvement of objective living conditions, perhaps the evolutionary forces must creatively take up again the myth of the new “man” and “woman”. This “new human being” will not be the product of specific future conditions, but rather the simultaneous prerequisite for their eventual realization.
Yes, it is time to take up again, with strength and unity, the path of humanizing the world. Perhaps the darkest moments are only the prelude to the longed-for new world.
Javier Tolcachier is a researcher at the Centre of Humanist Studies in Cordoba, Argentina and a communicator with the international news agency Pressenza.
Translation by Internationalist 360°
