Latin America is at the centre of world news for its football rather than its politics as I write this in June 2014. It is the politics of the Middle East which grabs the headlines and the attention of world leaders and public. So what is going on in Latin America that we might fruitfully reflect on and learn from?
We might start, I suggest, by looking at how football and politics have intertwined so effectively in the Brazil of the 2014 World Cup for people tired of gross inequality, corruption and twisted priorities . A football crazy nation, this nevertheless did not trump the deeply felt sense of injustice and unfairness which Brazilians feel about the millions spent on stadiums rather than people’s welfare. Instead of painting the street green and yellow, as Brazilians normally do, one protestor called on people to ‘paint the street critically’. And they responded in their thousands and from the poorest to the new professionals of Brazil’s emerging middle class. The Director of ‘City of God’ was himself on the streets.This political energy, which even football could not suppress (many companies invest in it partly because they assume it has this effect on the people as well as generating money and prestige), did not come from nowhere.
In the 1970s and 1980s Latin America was in the headlines just like the Middle East today. It was a decade of dictatorships, militarism and state terror, in which mass executions, disappearances and torture were used systematically against social and political activists. It was also a region of grass roots resistances and revolutionary activism. Grass roots movements often emerged through the radicalisation of the Catholic church, particularly at its base, and the so-called ‘option for the poor’. This, arguably as much as left ideology, unleashed a sense of dignity and agency for change amongst peasants and workers. But it was the way ideas of popular education and the organisation of base Christian communities enabled illiterate and impoverished people to challenge the vastly unequal social order of Latin American societies, which ensured that movements in many parts of Latin America had real roots in popular organising. The break down of pacifying world views, unleashed the activism of many others. Certainly this characterised Brazil and its history, which led to mobilisations from peasants in the country’s north east, to the car workers of Sao Paulo, to the indigenous and rubber tappers movements of the Amazon and to many other social movements against dictatorship. Brazil in the post dictatorship period went on to generate some of the most creative participatory experiments since Athens, notably Porto Alegre’s Participatory Budget. And Porto Alegre hosted the World Social Forums, an encounter of global movements and organisations who believed that ‘another world is possible’. The most difficult period for movements has been when the party they coalesced round became government, and in government parties are trapped by political and economic logics of the prevailing power configuration unless they remain connected to movements and encourage grass roots participation.
During most of this history, the United States actively supported the status quo in the region, backing military coups and financing military offensives against popular resistances. Hostility to progressive governments such as the Allende socialist government in Chile and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua had lasting impacts on holding back the chance for substantive transformations of the old orders of Latin America. US policy changed in the 1990s towards support for democratic transitions, but these transitions involved also the opening up to global markets known as neoliberal globalisation. Neoliberalism took root in the region like everywhere else. However, Latin America is also the heartland of many creative resistances to neoliberalism, from indigenous movements in Mexico, Bolivia and Ecuador to the autonomous occupations and neighbourhood organising of Argentina during the collapse of its economy at the beginning of the second millenium and the anti mining movements today in Guatemala, Peru and elsewhere.
Latin America is hailed today for its mostly sustained growth over the last decade or so,with a much lesser dip during the global crisis of 2008 than many parts of the world. While poverty has declined somewhat and a middle class has emerged and leftist governments of various persuasions have taken office in Venezuela, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and El Salvador, the contradictions of neoliberal economics remain apparent. Latin America is today the most unequal and most violent region of the world. The extraction of natural resources drives a great deal of growth, and comes into conflict with indigenous land rights and environmental protection everywhere. A vibrant illegal economy of cocaine and human trafficking provides employment and sometimes services to thousands, leading to a violent class of narco entrepreneurs who challenge and penetrate the state in varied ways. Traditional elites remain powerful in many parts of the region and limit progressive agendas and democratic deepening.
In the midst of these contradictions, new forms of organising gather strength. In Honduras, where I have just been, a history of womens’ organising has enabled women in the riskiest of circumstances to campaign against feminicide - the murder of women because they are women - in a country where a woman is killed every 14 hours. In Colombia, victims movements have struggled for years to claim their right to a voice and reparation in a country where nearly half a million people have been assassinated over the last half a century or so. This movement has finally won some traction in the peace process underway in that country. The students of Chile who have fought for a fair and quality public education system, are finally seeing some breakthrough with the new government of Bachelet in Chile.
While in many countries of the world, elections have ceased to be meaningful, in Latin America politics remains a vital arena of citizen action, even when elections are deemed a domain of corrupt, self seeking politicians. Politics retains its passion, as necessary to the struggle for dignity, rights and social justice. This is what we can learn from Latin America.
Jenny Pearce, Professor of Latin American Politics, Director of International Centre for Participation Studies, University of Bradford.