{"id":57103,"date":"2015-04-27T12:00:13","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T11:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=57103"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:25:49","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:25:49","slug":"somethings-happening-in-latin-america-a-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/04\/somethings-happening-in-latin-america-a-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Something’s Happening in Latin America – A Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"chavez_lula\"<\/a>Steve Ellner, editor. Latin America\u2019s Radical Left: Challenges and Complexities of Political Power in the Twenty-first Century. <\/em>Rowman and Littlefield, 2014. Notes. Index. Paper: $29.95.<\/strong><\/p>\n

George Ciccariello-Maher, We Created Chavez: A People\u2019s History of the Venezuelan Revolution<\/em>. Duke University Press, 2013. 352 pages. Notes. 17 photos and 1 map. Index.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s somethin\u2019 happenin\u2019 here, What it is ain\u2019t exactly clear\u201d <\/em>— Stephen Stills<\/p>\n

Apr 21, 2015 – <\/span><\/em>With the Middle East in flames, NATO trying to start World War III in Ukraine while the European Union\u2019s economy stagnates, Africa torn by low-level wars, and China re-entering the world stage in an assertive manner, there\u2019s one region of the world that is relatively quiet:\u00a0 South America.\u00a0 (Oops\u2014Obama just blew that by declaring Venezuela a \u201cnational security threat\u201d to the US.\u00a0 But, never mind.)\u00a0 Yet some of the most interesting and far-reaching changes in the world are taking place in this region.\u00a0 And these two books are excellent entries into understanding current developments in the region.<\/p>\n

Latin America\u2019s Radical Left,<\/em> edited by Steve Ellner, is a collection of articles that examine developments especially in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela.\u00a0 Is this socialism, is it anti-neo-liberalism, is it social democracy: what is it?\u00a0 According to Roger Burbach, \u201cSomething new is afoot in Latin America.\u00a0 US hegemony is weakening while a new order is struggling to be born.\u201d\u00a0 He argues it is the quest for a socialist utopia.<\/p>\n

This group of very experienced Latin Americanists has the tools and knowledge to provide unusually clear understandings of what is going on, and they convey it well.\u00a0 It is different than efforts to establish socialism in the 20th<\/sup> Century in the Hemisphere, whether in Cuba, Chile or Nicaragua.\u00a0 It is very complex, with no simple answers.\u00a0 It varies considerably from the traditional Marxist view of the necessity for leadership by an industrial proletariat, and is very heterogeneous.\u00a0 It means there are no simple answers.<\/p>\n

One of the things that gets discussed throughout the volume is a rejection of the differentiation among these countries between the \u201cgood left\u201d and \u201cbad left,\u201d an argument put forth by conservative Mexican intellectual, Jorge Casta\u00f1eda.\u00a0 This is an effort to divide the governments of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela from those of Brazil and Chile.\u00a0 First, as shown in numerous articles in this collection, his is much too simplistic to understand what is going on.\u00a0 And, as the various authors show, it is wrong.<\/p>\n

This collection certainly challenges the idea that there is one common approach to creating social change in the region, or that there are simple answers.\u00a0 These authors critically examine their respective countries, and seek to explain the complexities being addressed, while both giving credit to innovative initiatives and pointing out where the process of changes is limited or being short-changed.\u00a0 As Steve Ellner writes in his Introduction, \u201cThe chapters in this book focus on the distinguishing features of, and challenges confronting, the twenty-first-century Latin American radical left in power.\u00a0 The book\u2019s basic thesis is that the obstacles and complexities arising from these experiences are quantitatively and qualitatively different from twentieth-century cases of leftist rule.\u201d<\/p>\n

William I. Robinson, in his Forward, argues the importance of understanding what is currently taking place in Latin America:\u00a0 \u201cAnyone who wants to understand the prospects for, and complexities of, transformational projects in this age of global capitalism will have to look at the experiences of the twenty-first-century Latin America radical left.\u201d\u00a0 He talks about global revolt taking place across the planet, but recognizes that \u201cThe global revolt has yet to address the matter of political power.\u201d\u00a0 This weakness is critical:\u00a0 \u201cThere can be no real emancipatory projects without addressing the matter of political power.\u201d\u00a0 The cases that are looked at in this volume\u2014Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador primarily, but Nicaragua, El Salvador and Cuba as well\u2014\u201cwhile a heterodox group, are precisely those countries where the left exercises political power, or at least attempts to push forward a popular project from within the state.\u201d\u00a0 Robinson\u2014a very experienced and long-term observer in Latin America himself\u2014writes, \u201cWhat becomes clear to me from the politics of the new radical left in Latin America is that vanguardism<\/em> and horizontalism<\/em> are twin pitfalls,\u201d but then clarifies so as to argue against the dichotomous thinking, the either\/or approach being the problem, and that we should approach in an \u201cand\/but\u201d manner.\u00a0 (Ellner, in a previous book, Rethinking Venezuelan Politics,<\/em> has discussed the interactions both vertically\u2014between the state and society\u2014and horizontally between movements, and their interactions.)<\/p>\n

This volume is an excellent place to begin\u2014and has the added advantage of authors knowing of these other cases taking place at the same, so there is a comparative consciousness that makes most of these contributions even more valuable than just the subject immediately at hand.<\/p>\n

The book begins with Roger Burbach\u2019s \u201cThe Radical Left\u2019s Turbulent Transitions,\u201d Diana Raby\u2019s \u201cBrief Hypotheses on the State, Democracy, and Revolution in Latin America Today,\u201d and Marcel Nelson\u2019s \u201cInstitutional Conflict and the Bolivarian Revolution:\u00a0 Venezuela\u2019s Negotiation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas,\u201d in efforts to give a \u201cTheoretical, Historical, and International Background\u201d to the entire volume.<\/p>\n

Raby argues the importance of control of the state, specifically challenging autonomist theories currently in vogue:\u00a0 \u201cthe state\u2014a revolutionized state \u2026 is essential to any genuinely transformative (i.e., socialist) project.\u00a0 Only a revolutionary state, with the strength derived from mass popular support, control of key economic sectors, and revolutionary armed forces, can reclaim the public sphere and combat the global tyranny of unrestrained mercantilization and protecting sphere of social economy, social justice, and popular power.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nelson makes a contribution that is very important, and for much more than Latin America.\u00a0 Building off of Nicos Polantzas\u2019 theoretical work on the state, Nelson argues that the state is not a thing, such as something to be captured, but as a field of struggle, that includes many different relationships and forces.\u00a0 This means that just because one wins the position of head of state, this does not mean that every other part of the state will automatically line up and follow the leader.\u00a0 (This helps us understand differences between progressive mayors in the US with, for examples, the police.)\u00a0 What it means that every part of the state apparatus must be won to the progressive side, and it cannot be assumed that each will change automatically just because someone has won an election.<\/p>\n

From there, the book shifts to discussing \u201cThe Twenty-First-Century Radical Left in Power in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador.\u201d\u00a0 This includes a chapter by Steve Ellner on \u201cSocial and Political Diversity and the Democratic Road to Change in Venezuela,\u201d Federico Fuentes\u2019 \u201c\u2018Bad Left Government\u2019 versus \u2018Good Left Social Movements\u2019?\u00a0 Creative Tensions within Bolivia\u2019s Process of Change,\u201d and Marc Becker\u2019s \u201cRafael Correa and Social Movements in Ecuador.\u201d\u00a0 Besides being excellent discussions of each of these three countries and their current political struggles, one of the most important things presented in these sections is the necessity for elected progressive leaders to not forsake or turn on the left forces that got their into power\u2014should the leaders be attacked by the right, without the left forces, who will defend them?\u00a0 In other words, while it is ridiculous to believe all will be sweetness and light between progressive elected officials and progressive social forces once \u201cthe left\u201d gets into power, this is an important warning to progressive officials of the need to always remember who are their strategic allies.<\/p>\n

The following section is \u201cInfluences of the Twenty-First-Century Radical Left in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Cuba.\u201d\u00a0 This includes an article by H\u00e9ctor Perla, Jr., and H\u00e9ctor M. Cruz-Feliciano titled \u201cThe Twenty-First-Century Road to Socialism in El Salvador and Nicaragua:\u00a0 Making Sense of Apparent Paradoxes.\u201d\u00a0 This is followed by a very interesting chapter on \u201cCuba\u2019s New Socialism:\u00a0 Different Visions Shaping Current Changes\u201d by Camila Pi\u00f1eiro Harnecker.\u201d The latter is particularly interesting in light of changes currently taking place in Cuba, and Pi\u00f1eiro Harnecker knowledgeably discusses different aspects of the range of thinking going on among the Cuban people.<\/p>\n

The final section is on \u201cEconomy, Society and Media.\u201d\u00a0 Thomas Purcell writes on \u201cThe Political Economy of Social Production Companies in Venezuela,\u201d which discusses efforts to make the Venezuelan economy less dependent on oil.\u00a0 George Ciccariello-Maher writes on \u201cConstituent Moments, Constitutional Processes:\u00a0 Social Movements and the New Latin American Left,\u201d and seeks \u201cto avoid fetishizing either constituent power from below or the constituted power of the state, focusing instead on the dynamic interplay between the two.\u201d \u00a0And this is followed by Kevin Young\u2019s article \u201cThe Good, the Bad, and the Benevolent Interventionist:\u00a0 US Press and Intellectual Distortions of the Latin American Left.\u201d<\/p>\n

This is followed by editor Steve Ellner\u2019s \u201cConcluding Observations:\u00a0 The Twenty-First-Century Radical Left and the Latin American Road to Change.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 In this, Ellner summarizes the changes going on\u2014particularly in Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela\u2014noting they are influenced by \u201cidentification with Latin American tradition and nationalism, even while the thinking of its leaders is also rooted in Marxism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having this broader context provided by the Latin America\u2019s Radical Left <\/em>collection allows us to delve into one case in detail, that of Venezuela.\u00a0 In We Created Ch\u00e1vez:\u00a0 A People\u2019s History of the Venezuelan Revolution,<\/em> George Ciccariello-Maher gets behind the rhetoric\u2014of both the left and the right\u2014to try to understand the developments in Venezuela.<\/p>\n

So much of recent Venezuelan history has been viewed through the lens of the late president, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez.\u00a0 Ch\u00e1vez, a progressive, former military leader was democratically elected into the presidency in 1998, taking office the next year.\u00a0 But the coup attempt in April 2002\u2014where Ch\u00e1vez was removed from office and detained by right wing putschists until he was freed through a revolt of the people of Caracas and military forces that remained loyal\u2014and an amazing film by an Irish film company of the coup, \u201cThe Revolution Will Not be Televised,\u201d brought Ch\u00e1vez to world attention.<\/p>\n

The film company was in Venezuela to try to understand Ch\u00e1vez and what was happening in the country, and found itself inside the National Palace \u201cMiraflores\u201d during the coup and, despite not knowing whether they would even survive, kept the cameras rolling.\u00a0 Showing Chavez as a very charismatic and popular president, strongly supported by the poor and traditionally disenfranchised of the country before the coup, and then showing the coup from the inside Miraflores\u2014as well as presenting the arrogance of the coup leaders during their brief \u201cmoment in the sun\u201d\u2014and then Ch\u00e1vez\u2019 return to Miraflores, the film introduced this revolutionary to the world.<\/p>\n

And Ch\u00e1vez kept progressing, moving from a limited to more a radical vision of what could be done in Venezuela\u2014based on radical ideas of popular, grassroots democracy\u2014eventually putting forth the concept of \u201csocialism for the 21st<\/sup> century\u201d in the mid-2000s.\u00a0 And his willingness to challenge the US Empire brought him many followers from outside and well as inside the country.<\/p>\n

Ciccariello-Maher seeks to understand what is behind Ch\u00e1vez:\u00a0 as he explained to one interlocutor, who asked why he was there, \u201cWe had come to understand the revolutionary collectives that constitute Venezuelan Hugo Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s most radical support base, to grasp their political vision and their often tense relationship with the processes of political transformation known as the Bolivarian Revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

To understand this book, then, we have to recognize it is not<\/em> about Ch\u00e1vez.<\/p>\n

Then who is the book about?\u00a0 The book is about \u201cthe people,\u201d but that is not just anyone.\u00a0 Building off of the writings of Argentine-Mexican philosopher of liberation, Enrique Dussel, \u201cthe Latin American pueblo<\/em> is instead a category of both rupture and struggle,<\/em> a moment of combat in which those oppressed within<\/em> the prevailing social order and those excluded from<\/em> it intervene to transform the system, in which a victimized part<\/em> of the community speaks for and attempts to radically change the whole\u201d<\/em> (emphasis in original).\u00a0 In other words, whether included within the system or excluded from it, the author focuses on those who have been oppressed and<\/em> who have stood up to transform the system:\u00a0 it honors not those oppressed, but the oppressed who have chosen to fight.<\/p>\n

To understand this, however, Ciccariello-Maher presents a very sophisticated understanding of the Venezuelan \u201cprocess\u201d:\u00a0 \u201cthe goal here is to avoid the twin dangers that plague contemporary discussions of revolutionary change in Latin America in particular:\u00a0 the tendency to fetishize the state, official power, and its institutions, and the opposing tendency to fetishize antipower.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ciccariello-Maher tells the story\u2014actually, it\u2019s many stories\u2014of people\u2019s struggles against oppression, going back to 1958 and the end of the last dictatorship in Venezuela.\u00a0 He talks about the guerrilla struggle, when people took to the hills and alleys of the cities to fight.\u00a0 While that failed, people learned from those experiences, and then went back into the barrios and reconnected with the people therein, although some continued military operations.\u00a0 They survived tremendous police repression over the years\u2014repression is just limited to dictatorships.\u00a0 He talks of a barrio, 23 de Enero (January 23), on the west side of Caracas, and a center of organizing.<\/p>\n

The author talks about the economic devaluation of the bolivar in 1983.\u00a0 The government turned to the International Monetary Fund for relief:\u00a0 \u201cAs the macroeconomic crisis deepened, the Venezuelan government would respond in the increasingly strict neoliberal terms of the International Monetary Fund, and with both its capacity and willingness to provide for the population in free fall, the country became a veritable tinderbox of resistance.\u201d\u00a0 And the government responded to this resistance by widespread repression as compared to the targeted repression it had used against the guerrillas.\u00a0 Ultimately, however, \u201cthis broad offensive against the masses pushed barrio residents toward the new organizational forms oriented around self-government, the elimination of the drug trade, and armed self-defense \u2026 which remains central to the Bolivarian Revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

This gets one to the heart of the Venezuelan revolutionary process as it has developed, the \u201cproceso.\u201d\u00a0 The fact is that the revolutionaries, and probably most activists, do not trust the state, yet they support Ch\u00e1vez.\u00a0 How can that be explained? There is a difference, too, between the present and the future:\u00a0 the distinction between Ch\u00e1vez, as head of state, and the proceso. <\/em>In the first case, Ch\u00e1vez has won their personal support, although that\u2019s not necessarily true for those around him.\u00a0 However, that trust is not a blank check:\u00a0 the proceso is more important than the individual.\u00a0 So, in other words, when Ch\u00e1vez acts progressively, they support him; when he acts in reactionary manner, they challenge him and the state apparatus in general:\u00a0 the second position \u201cmaintains the possibility of moving decisively beyond the president if conditions warrant it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet in trying to understand the development of the proceso<\/em>, Ciccariello-Maher disorients the \u201ctraditional\u201d story of Ch\u00e1vez and his rise to power: instead of focusing on Ch\u00e1vez\u2019 attempted coup attempt in 1992 and then jumping forward to his election to the presidency in 1998, this account focuses first on the \u201cCaracazo,\u201d an urban uprising centered in Caracas that exploded in February 1989. This was the time, \u201cone of the rare and explosive instance in which the force of the people appears as the decisive actor,\u201d and he argues that 1992 and 1998 grew out of events in 1989.\u00a0 Further, he sees the next crucial moment when the masses of people of Caracas streamed out of their shacks to converge on Miraflores to demand Ch\u00e1vez\u2019 return, overturning the coup attempt, on April 13, 2002.<\/p>\n

And because of the support of the people\u2014as I quickly came to understand during a short trip to Venezuela in 2006 that Ch\u00e1vez didn\u2019t have the organization to get these people out to support the president\u2014Ch\u00e1vez not only became more radical himself personally and escalated the proceso, but the proceso was able to withstand the economic sabotage by the elite in late 2002-early 2003 that threatened to undermine all that had been done.\u00a0 And that the proceso has continued to advance to this date.<\/p>\n

It is this recognition\u2014that it is el pueblo<\/em> that is the heart of the revolutionary process, not an elected leader, not even as one as charismatic as Hugo Chavez\u2014that makes Ciccariello-Maher\u2019s account so important.\u00a0 And this is a tremendously inspiring account, which became even more important upon the death of Ch\u00e1vez in March 2013:\u00a0 by understanding the role of the mobilized people in the proceso, one would know that the proceso was not dependent on Ch\u00e1vez and would continue, although obviously whoever succeed Ch\u00e1vez would propel or hinder the process.<\/p>\n

There is a limitation that must be commented upon:\u00a0 despite the excellent account developed by the author, and it seems to be fairly applicable throughout many of the barrios surrounding Caracas, there is simply no way to tell how widespread this phenomena is across the country.\u00a0 That might be considered \u201csmall potatoes\u201d by some, but Venezuela is more than just Caracas, the capital, although it is the largest urban concentration.\u00a0 Are these projects, so well explicated by Ciccariello-Maher, common throughout the rest of the country, and especially in other major cities?<\/p>\n

It is important to raise this issue, as the opposition in Venezuela has opposed and challenged \u201cChavismo,\u201d the ideology officially established by Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, sometimes more effectively and sometimes less, but still fairly consistently.\u00a0 This opposition is led by members of the elites, but it extends at least somewhat into the higher echelons of the military, and it certainly includes students who have stayed within the traditional, private higher educational system\u2014and as the government has not been able to overcome crime, or the subversion of commercial interests who often limited goods on shelves in the stores, it has won some support among working people and the poor.\u00a0 Additionally, we know the US Government has long acted to support the opposition, giving them much more power and potential than could be won on their own.<\/p>\n

One of the things learned by Ch\u00e1vez and his allies is the need to use the state apparatus to devolve<\/em> power downward into the masses.\u00a0 The project of communal councils and support for radical trade unionism\u2014training \u201cordinary\u201d people to make decisions and take power over their collective lives\u2014is an extension of the proceso.\u00a0 Based on what\u2019s been done previously, it is what gives me hope that the opposition can be kept to the margins, and the Eagle from landing in Venezuela.<\/p>\n

In short, two excellent volumes to help us understand what is going on in Latin America, with most attention being paid to South America.\u00a0 I think they are essential resources, and I think they provide much food for thought for those of us who are politically active\u2014not only about developments \u201cthere,\u201d but also \u201chere.\u201d<\/p>\n

_________________________<\/p>\n

Kim Scipes, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Purdue University North Central in Westville, IN, and a long-time political activist.\u00a0 He is also is the author of <\/em>KMU: Building Genuine Trade Unionism in the Philippines, 1980-1994,<\/em> and <\/em>AFL-CIO\u2019s Secret War against Developing Country Workers:\u00a0 Solidarity or Sabotage? He is currently circulating a proposal to publishers for a book tentatively titled <\/em>Class Struggle, White Supremacy and Chicago Proletarians in Steel and Meatpacking, 1933-1955. <\/em>He can be reached through his web site:\u00a0 http:\/\/faculty.pnc.edu\/kscipes<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 newpol.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Apr 21, 2015 – With the Middle East in flames, NATO trying to start World War III in Ukraine while the European Union\u2019s economy stagnates, Africa torn by low-level wars, and China re-entering the world stage in an assertive manner, there\u2019s one region of the world that is relatively quiet: South America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-57103","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57103","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=57103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=57103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=57103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=57103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}