A Leftist Surge in Latin America

▪ 2006

by Paul Knox The visit of Venezuelan Pres. Hugo Chávez (Chavez, Hugo ) (see Biographies) to New York City in September 2005 provided a dramatic illustration of the growing power of populist leaders in Latin America. Having positioned himself as a champion of the poor throughout the region, Chávez sought to take the same message to the United States. He proposed to provide cheap home heating oil at a deep discount to poor Americans during the coming winter through the American subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned petroleum company. The gesture turned the tables on the U.S., historically a major contributor of foreign aid to Latin America. With energy prices soaring and Chávez sitting atop some of the world's largest oil reserves, few doubted that he would be able to honour the pledge.

 Though Chávez was the most outspoken of Latin America's left-wing leaders, eclipsing even Cuba's Fidel Castro in political theatrics, he had plenty of company. (See Map—>.) Since Chávez came to power in 1999, leaders with solid left-of-centre credentials had been elected in Brazil (Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2002), Argentina (Néstor Kirchner in 2003) and Uruguay (Tabaré Vázquez (Vazquez Rosas, Tabare Ramon ) [see Biographies] in 2005). Leftist candidates had also mounted strong campaigns in Mexico (Andrés Manuel López Obrador (Lopez Obrador, Andres Manuel ) [see Biographies]) and Bolivia (Evo Morales). All rejected the political and economic formulas of U.S.-supported leaders in the region, and most of them were backed by well-organized social movements demanding greater popular participation in state affairs and policies more favourable to the poor and Indians. In the early years of the 21st century, Latin America was experiencing more grassroots ferment than at any other time since the 1970s, when radical political experiments were snuffed out by military coups d'état.

      The leftist surge was rooted in reaction to the so-called Washington consensus, a set of economic policies adopted in most Latin American countries during the 1990s at the behest of the U.S. government, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and foreign bankers—often as a condition for relief of crippling debts. The prescriptions included tax increases, tight curbs on public spending, trade liberalization, and the sale of state-held assets to private interests. For a time the market-oriented policies provided stability, but delivering sustained increases in prosperity proved difficult. Farmers and small manufacturers found themselves unable to compete with foreign-made goods. Privatized utilities sharply increased rates for services such as electricity, water, and telephones. Some Latin Americans prospered by producing for export markets or selling their skills to foreign firms, but stark income disparities remained and in some countries widened. In the absence of effective judicial reform, corruption often accompanied the market opening. Alarmingly, in a region with a history of shocking abuses under military rule, a poll taken for the United Nations Development Programme found a decline in support for democracy from 61% in 1996 to 57% in 2002.

      It was against this backdrop that Chávez was elected. A former army officer who had led an unsuccessful coup attempt in 1992, he vowed a clean break with a discredited political class that squandered oil wealth as millions languished in poverty. He proclaimed a “Bolivarian revolution,” named after 19th-century independence hero Simón Bolívar, that would include land redistribution and an overhaul of education and welfare policies. After decisively winning a referendum on his rule in 2004, Chávez moved to expand Venezuela's sphere of influence. His chief tool was oil, which he agreed to provide on friendly terms to Cuba, Uruguay, Argentina, and the island countries of the Caribbean. A grateful Castro sent hundreds of Cuban doctors to work in Venezuelan clinics. Chávez also developed Telesur, a continental television network and rival to U.S.-based CNN. He labeled capitalism a “savage” system, called on Venezuelans to support socialism, and, after his referendum victory, moved to confiscate some large landholdings.

       Argentina's Kirchner, a former state governor in Patagonia, had little of Chávez's style, but his roots were in the left wing of the Peronist movement, and he frequently railed against foreign speculators and multinational companies. He suspended dealings with the IMF and pulled off an audacious debt swap, persuading most of the country's bondholders to accept new bonds for defaulted ones at a 70% discount. Kirchner's government repurchased several privatized utilities and forced multinational Royal Dutch Shell to roll back a gasoline price increase. He also successfully allied himself with elements of the piqueteros—movements of unemployed and impoverished Argentines that arose during the 1990s—and his popularity level in mid-2005 remained high. In Bolivia Morales and his allies forced the resignation of Pres. Carlos Mesa in June, and Morales was elected president in December. He observed that Latin leaders who aligned themselves with the World Bank and the IMF were faring poorly, while “those who yield to their people, such as Fidel or Chávez, do well.”

      Elsewhere, evidence of a marked shift to the left was less decisive. Vázquez was installed in March as Uruguay's first socialist president and immediately restored diplomatic relations with Cuba, but he remained within the mainstream in a country renowned for its generous social-welfare policies. The same was true of Chilean Socialists such as Pres. Ricardo Lagos and the front-runner to succeed him, Michelle Bachelet. In Brazil Lula built on two decades of groundwork laid by his Workers' Party in city and state administrations. A former trade union leader with a grade-school education, he played a key role in stalling the U.S.-led push for a Free Trade Area of the Americas, whose original implementation date of Jan. 1, 2005, was postponed indefinitely. Lula also made a war on hunger the first priority of his administration, but its implementation was spotty. In office he proved a moderate, unwilling to challenge conventional economic tenets in the style of Chávez or Kirchner.

       Castro, the 79-year-old Cuban leader, was content to leave much of the political showmanship to Chávez, whose oil-fueled exploits attained prominence in the U.S. American Christian evangelist Pat Robertson went so far as to call for Chávez's assassination (he quickly recanted), and former U.S. Department of State official Otto Reich warned of a Castro-Chávez “axis.” The more common approach was to note that Chávez had been careful not to threaten American firms or oil security directly. “Venezuela's President Pushes Foreign Companies Only So Far,” was The Wall Street Journal's conclusion in late August. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials expressed irritation with Chávez, and Venezuela was deemed to have failed to cooperate with U.S. antinarcotics efforts. Allegations that Venezuela's oil wealth was financing leftist subversion were prevalent but not supported by strong evidence. There were worrying abuses and excesses, such as Chávez's curbs on Venezuela's privately owned media and Kirchner's tolerance of piquetero strong-arm tactics, but nothing the new Latin leaders were doing matched Castro's radical collectivization of Cuba in the 1960s or his support for armed guerrilla movements. Indeed, the range of thought and action on display was so broad that some questioned whether the “left-wing” tag was appropriate. “The ‘leftist' label is by now an artificial construct that should be jettisoned,” wrote Michael Shifter and Vinay Jawahar of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington think tank. “It confuses more than it clarifies.”

      In 2005 Kirchner struggled to realize significant gains against poverty and unemployment. It was an open question whether Chávez's “revolution” would survive a fall in world oil prices. Despite Lula's personal reputation for honesty, his prospects for reelection in 2006 were seriously damaged by a bribery and campaign-spending scandal that tainted key associates. Structural inequality, the boom-and-bust commodity cycle, and dirty politics have historically conspired to thwart many a Latin American visionary. For all the sound and fury over the latest generation of leaders, it was hard to discern in their programs a pathway to sustainable, transformative change.

Paul Knox is Chair of the School of Journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto and a former Latin America correspondent for the Globe and Mail of Toronto.

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