• Monthly Review
  • Monthly Review Press
  • MR (Castilian)
  • Climate & Capitalism
  • Money on the Left
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Mastadon
MR Online
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact/Submission
  • Browse
    • Recent Articles Archive
    • by Subject
      • Ecology
      • Education
      • Imperialism
      • Inequality
      • Labor
      • Literature
      • Marxism
      • Movements
      • Philosophy
      • Political Economy
    • by Region
      • Africa
      • Americas
      • Asia
      • Australasia
      • Europe
      • Global
      • Middle East
    • by Category
      • Art
      • Commentary
      • Interview
      • Letter
      • News
      • Newswire
  • Monthly Review Essays
 | Andry León Venezuela José Gregorio Hernández 2023 | MR Online

The weakness of progressive Latin American governments in these precarious times: The Thirty-Fourth Newsletter (2024)

By Vijay Prashad (Posted Aug 23, 2024)

Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on August 22, 2024 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |
Culture, Movements, State Repression, StrategyAmericas, Latin AmericaNewswireTricontinental Newsletter

Dear friends,

Greetings from the desk of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

On 16 August 2024, the Organisation of American States (OAS), whose 1948 formation as a Cold War institution was instigated by the United States, voted on a resolution regarding the Venezuelan presidential elections. The nub of the resolution proposed by the U.S. called upon Venezuela’s election authority, the National Electoral Council (CNE), to publish all the election details as soon as possible (including the actas, or voting records, at the local polling station level). This resolution asks the CNE to go against Venezuela’s Organic Law on Electoral Processes (Ley Orgánica de Procesos Electorales or LOPE): since the law does not call for the publication of these materials, doing so would be a violation of public law. What the law does indicate is that the CNE must announce the results within 48 hours (article 146) and publish them within 30 days (article 155) and that the data from polling places (such as the actas) should be published in a tabular form (article 150).

Andry León

Andry León (Venezuela), José Gregorio Hernández, 2023.

It is pure irony that the resolution was voted upon in the Simón Bolívar room at the OAS headquarters in Washington, DC. Simón Bolívar (1783—1830) liberated Venezuela and neighbouring territories from the Spanish Empire and sought to bring about a process of integration that would strengthen the region’s sovereignty. That is why the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela pays tribute to his legacy in its name. When Hugo Chávez won the presidency in 1998, he centred Bolívar in the country’s political life, seeking to further this legacy through initiatives such as the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our Americas (ALBA) that would continue the journey to establish sovereignty in the country and region. In 1829, Bolívar wrote, ‘The United States appears to be destined by providence to plague [Latin] America with misery in the name of liberty’. This misery, in our time, is exemplified by the U.S. attempt to suffocate Latin American countries through military coups or sanctions. In recent years, Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela have been at the epicentre of this ‘plague’. The OAS resolution is part of that suffocation.

José Chávez Morado Mexico Carnival in Huejotzingo 1939

José Chávez Morado (Mexico), Carnival in Huejotzingo, 1939.

Bolivia, Honduras, Mexico, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines did not come to the vote (nor did Cuba, as it was expelled by the OAS in 1962, leading Castro to dub the organisation the ‘Ministry of Colonies of the United States’, or Nicaragua, which left the OAS in 2023). Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (known as AMLO) described why his country decided not to appear at the OAS meeting and why it disagrees with the U.S.-proposed resolution, quoting from article 89, section X of the Mexican Constitution (1917), which states that the president of Mexico must adhere to the principles of ‘non-intervention; peaceful settlement of disputes; [and] prohibiting the threat or use of force in international relations’. To that end, AMLO said that Mexico will wait for the ‘competent authority of the country’ to settle any disagreement. In Venezuela’s case, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice is the relevant authority, though this has not stopped the opposition from rejecting its legitimacy. This opposition, which we have characterised as the far right of a special type, is committed to using any resource—including U.S. military intervention—to overthrow the Bolivarian process. AMLO’s reasonable position is along the grain of the United Nations Charter (1945).

Many countries with apparently centre-left or left governments joined the U.S. in voting for this OAS resolution. Among them are Brazil, Chile, and Colombia. Chile, even though it has a president who admires Salvador Allende (killed in a U.S.-imposed coup in 1973), has displayed a foreign policy orientation on many issues (including both Venezuela and Ukraine) that aligns with the U.S. State Department. Since 2016, at the invitation of the Chilean government, the country welcomed nearly half a million Venezuelan migrants, many of whom are undocumented and now face the threat of expulsion from an increasingly hostile environment in Chile. It is almost as if the country’s president, Gabriel Boric, wants to see the situation in Venezuela change so that he can order the return of Venezuelans to their home country. This cynical attitude towards Chile’s enthusiasm for U.S. policy on Venezuela, however, does not explain the situation of Brazil and Colombia.

Pablo Kalaka Chile Untitled 2022 sourced from Lendemains solidaires no 2

Pablo Kalaka (Chile), Untitled, 2022, sourced from Lendemains solidaires no. 2.

Our latest dossier, To Confront Rising Neofascism, the Latin American Left Must Rediscover Itself, analyses the current political landscape on the continent, beginning by interrogating the assumption that there has been a second ‘pink tide’ or cycle of progressive governments in Latin America. The first cycle, which was inaugurated with the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and came to an end following the 2008 financial crisis and U.S. counter-offensive against the continent, ‘frontally challenged U.S. imperialism by advancing Latin American integration and geopolitical sovereignty’, while the second cycle, defined by a more centre-left orientation, ‘seems more fragile’. This fragility is emblematic of the situation in both Brazil and Colombia, where the governments of Luiz Inácio ‘Lula’ da Silva and Gustavo Petro, respectively, have not been able to exercise their full control over the permanent bureaucracies in the foreign ministries. Neither the foreign minister of Brazil (Mauro Vieira) nor Colombia (Luis Gilberto Murillo) are men of the left or even of the centre left, and both have close ties to the U.S. as former ambassadors to the country. It bears reflection that there are still over ten U.S. military bases in Colombia, though this is not sufficient reason for the fragility of this second cycle.

In the dossier, we offer seven explanations for this fragility:

  1. the worldwide financial and environmental crises, which have created divisions between countries in the region about which path to follow;
  2. the U.S. reassertion of control over the region, which it had lost during the first progressive wave, in particular to challenge what the U.S. sees as China’s entry into Latin American markets. This includes the region’s natural and labour resources;
  3. the increasing uberisation of labour markets, which has created far more precarity for the working class and negatively impacted its capacity for mass organisation. This has resulted in a significant rolling back of workers’ rights and weakened working-class power;
  4. the reconfiguration of social reproduction, which has become centred around public disinvestment in social welfare policies, thereby placing the responsibility for care in the private sphere and primarily overburdening women;
  5. the US’s increased military power in the region as its main instrument of domination in response to its declining economic power;
  6. the fact that the region’s governments have been unable to take advantage of China’s economic influence and the opportunities it presents to drive a sovereign agenda and that China, which has emerged as Latin America’s primary trading partner, has not sought to directly challenge the U.S. agenda to secure hegemony over the continent;
  7. divisions between progressive governments, which, alongside the ascension of neofascism in the Americas, impede the growth of a progressive regional agenda, including policies for continental integration akin to those proposed during the first progressive wave.

These factors, and others, have weakened the assertiveness of these governments and their ability to enact the shared Bolivarian dream of hemispheric sovereignty and partnership.

Antonia Caro Colombia Colombia 1977

Antonia Caro (Colombia), Colombia, 1977.

One additional, but crucial, point is that the balance of class forces in societies such as Brazil and Colombia are not in favour of genuinely anti-imperialist politics. Celebrated electoral occasions, such as the victories of Lula and Petro in 2022, are not built on a broad base of organised working-class support that then forces society to advance a genuinely transformative agenda for the people. The coalitions that triumphed included centre-right forces that continue to wield social power and prevent these leaders, regardless of their own impeccable credentials, from exercising a free hand in governance. The weakness of these governments is one of the elements that allows for the growth of the far right of a special type.

As we argue in the dossier, ‘The difficulty of building a political project of the left that can overcome the day-to-day problems of working-class existence has unmoored many of these progressive electoral projects from mass needs’. The working classes, trapped in precarious occupations, need massive productive investments (driven by the state), premised on the exercise of sovereignty over each country and the region as a whole. The fact that a number of countries in the region have aligned with the U.S. to diminish Venezuela’s sovereignty shows that these fragile electoral projects possess little capacity to defend sovereignty.

Daniel Lezama Mexico El sueño del 16 de septiembre The Dream of September 16th 2001

Daniel Lezama (Mexico), El sueño del 16 de septiembre (The Dream of September 16th), 2001.

In her poem ‘Quo Vadis’, the Mexican poet Carmen Boullosa reflects on the problematic nature of pledging allegiance to the U.S. government’s agenda. Las balas que vuelan no tienen convicciones (‘flying bullets have no convictions’), she writes. These ‘progressive’ governments have no conviction regarding regime change operations or destabilisation efforts in other countries in the region. Much should be expected of them, but at the same time too much disappointment is unwarranted.

Warmly,

Vijay

Monthly Review does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished at MR Online. Our goal is to share a variety of left perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful. —Eds.

About Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.
Tricontinental Newsletter
From Pan Africanism to Afropessimism: Palestine and the degeneration of Black politics
From fight the power to work for it: Chuck D, Public Enemy and how the CIA neutralized rap
  • Also by Vijay Prashad

    • They are making Venezuela’s economy scream: The Eighteenth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad May 02, 2025
    • Two hundred years ago, France strangled the Haitian Revolution with an inhumane debt: The Seventeenth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad April 28, 2025
    • Waiting for a new Bandung spirit: The Sixteenth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad April 18, 2025
    • The Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated by Communist prisoners: The Fifteenth Newsletter (2025) by Vijay Prashad April 11, 2025
  • Also By Vijay Prashad in Monthly Review Magazine

    • The Actuality of Red Africa June 01, 2024
    • Africa Is on the Move May 01, 2022
    • Preface January 01, 2022
    • Introduction January 01, 2022
    • Quid Pro Quo? October 01, 2011
    • Reclaim the Neighborhood, Change the World December 01, 2007
    • Kathy Kelly’s Chispa December 01, 2005

    Books By Vijay Prashad

    • Washington’s New Cold War: A Socialist Perspective November 15, 2022
    • Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations September 16, 2020

    Monthly Review Essays

    • US Imperialism in Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges to a Global Community with a Shared Future
      Sam-Kee Cheng  | A late 1940s Soviet poster showing a US military service member lounging on top of a German factory smoking a cigar The text beneath reads DER DOLLARIMPERIALISMUS dollar imperialism | MR Online

      1. Introduction The predominance of US economic, political and military power in the world was established at the end of the Second World War.1 With just 6.3 percent of global population, the United States held about 50 percent of the world wealth in 1948. As the only power which had used nuclear weapons on civilian […]

    Lost & Found

    • Journalism, democracy, … and class struggle
      Robert W. McChesney  | Bob McChesney on Saving Journalism | MR Online

      Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.

    Trending

    • Langley/Burkina Faso
      The U.S./EU/NATO’s Regime change playbook for Burkina Faso and Captain Ibrahim Traoré
    • Tump and Putin
      Russia rejects Trump’s freeze of the war in Ukraine
    • Trump's Tariffs: Economic Warfare or Winning Strategy?
      The Trump Tariffs and the U.S. Labor Movement
    • Karl Marx
      Marx’s ontology: A clarification
    • Front page of Melbourne’s Age, 30 April 1975 CREDIT: The Age archives
      Vietnam: A victory never to be forgotten
    • An aerial view showing destruction in Rafah, Gaza, January 2025.
      The Genocide in Palestine Is Powered by Zionism, Not “AI”
    • Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), Washington, DC
      Cuts to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau aren’t about ‘efficiency,’ they are an assault on workers’ protections
    • Iroquois helicopter pushed overboard from the USS Blue Ridge during the evacuation of Saigon, April 29, 1975.
      The Fall of Saigon, 1975: Fifty Years of Repeating What Was Forgotten
    • Jean-Claude Sévère (Haiti), L’ennemi attaqué chacun de sa propre volonté se tient debout pour défendre sa patrie (When the Enemy Attacks, Everyone Stands up of Their Own Free Will to Defend Their Homeland), 1970.
      Two hundred years ago, France strangled the Haitian Revolution with an inhumane debt: The Seventeenth Newsletter (2025)
    • Of Presidential Crooks, Bigots, and Incompetents: Trump Combines All Three
      Trump is the symptom, U.S. imperialism is the disease

    Popular (last 30 days)

    • Langley/Burkina Faso
      The U.S./EU/NATO’s Regime change playbook for Burkina Faso and Captain Ibrahim Traoré
    • Def. Ministry delivers Nasir cruise missiles to IRGC Navy. Source: Mehd News Agency - wikicommons / cropped form original / CC BY 4.0
      Trump’s war plans for Iran: opening the other gates of hell
    • Tump and Putin
      Russia rejects Trump’s freeze of the war in Ukraine
    • National Museum of African American History and Culture
      Trump orders purge of Black History from Smithsonian, targets African American Museum
    • Refugees walk down a road in Gaza, surrounded by ruined buildings.
      War Above, War Below
    • A late 1940s Soviet poster showing a US military service member lounging on top of a German factory, smoking a cigar. The text beneath reads DER DOLLARIMPERIALISMUS [dollar imperialism].
      US Imperialism in Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges to a Global Community with a Shared Future
    • Trump's Tariffs: Economic Warfare or Winning Strategy?
      The Trump Tariffs and the U.S. Labor Movement
    • Image of President Donald Trump and Brad Karp, Chairman of Paul Weiss. Steven Ferdman/Getty Images; Business Insider
      Trump exposes the elite classes
    • Illustration by MintPress News
      Wiz acquisition puts Israeli Intelligence in charge of your Google data
    • President Donald Trump / PM Benjamin Netanyahu
      ‘Let all Hell break loose’: The Gaza ceasefire and how we all got played

    RSS MR Press News

    • JOIN US MAY 17: The Marxist Education Project to host the author of Roses for Gramsci April 22, 2025
    • On the brilliant Bob McChesney April 21, 2025
    • NEW! ROSES FOR GRAMSCI by Andy Merrifield (EXCERPT) April 7, 2025
    • EXCERPT: Colonial dreams, racist nightmares, liberated futures (from the introduction to A Land With A People) April 4, 2025
    • Towards inclusive science and technology (Knowledge as Commons reviewed in ‘Counterfire’) April 1, 2025

    RSS Climate & Capitalism

    • Ecosocialist Bookshelf, April 2025 April 10, 2025
    • Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World April 2, 2025
    • Will Mpox be the next global threat to human health? April 2, 2025
    • Under Trump, climate denial is official US policy March 26, 2025
    • Growth or Degrowth? Ecosocialism confronts a false dichotomy March 26, 2025

     

    RSS Monthly Review

    • May 2025 (Volume 77, Number 1) May 1, 2025 The Editors
    • The MAGA Ideology and the Trump Regime May 1, 2025 John Bellamy Foster
    • Neoliberalism and Neofascism May 1, 2025 Robert W. McChesney
    • Decolonization and Its Discontents May 1, 2025 Pranay Somayajula
    • China’s “Triple Revolution Theory” and Marxist Analysis May 1, 2025 Cheng Enfu

    This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
    Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

    Creative Commons License

    Monthly Review Foundation
    134 W 29TH ST STE 706
    New York NY 10001-5304

    Tel: 212-691-2555