With formulations that influence several Latin American leaders, from his countryman Luis Arce to the Chilean Gabriel Boric, the former vice president of Bolivia Álvaro García Linera says that the current wave of the left in the region is very different from what he was part of at the beginning. of the century alongside Evo Morales.
If, on the one hand, he says that today there is a tendency to act more as a participant in a political system than as a builder of a new system, on the other hand, the Ukrainian War only reinforced an ignored lesson: without acting as a bloc, there is no chance. of Latin America to carve a place in the geopolitical chess.
he spoke to Sheet by video call from Mexico. This Monday (20), he will be in Brazil to participate in a debate at the Salão do Livro Político, at 7 pm, at the Tucarena Theater, at PUC in São Paulo.
A week ago, Jeanine Áñez was sentenced to ten years in prison on the accusation that she plotted a coup. How did you see this chapter of Bolivia’s history? A sentence necessary to protect democracy. A group of people without social support and electoral legitimacy cannot rely on the Armed Forces to invalidate the Constitution and seize power. We thought these stories stayed in the 1960s and 1970s, but no. There was a threat to democracy and a strong response is important to ensure that no one usurps the popular will by seizing power in undemocratic ways.
International organizations say that the Bolivian justice system has been the target of interference from power. The judiciary needs reforms? This is a problem all over the world. There is the same type of complaint in the US, where members of the Supreme Court are appointed by a president. There is no more political intervention than that. In Bolivia we made a series of reforms, and judges are elected by universal vote, but it was not enough. It is a pending task for contemporary democracies.
What is your assessment of the pink tide 2.0 in Latin America? It is very different from the first, as it does not come from large uprisings or collective actions. It comes from the hands of moderate rulers, perhaps with the exception of [Gustavo] Petro. They are administrative rulers, less prone to major radical changes. And this is not a defect, but a sign of the times. They tend to act more as participants in a political system than builders of a new system. Thus, they do not have a long-term horizon, they are the expression of a moment of transition in which there will possibly be a continuous alternation between conservative and progressive governments.
Is there an anti-system crisis in the region? It is a global problem, but one that is expressed most intensely here. We were told that the free market was a natural determination of humanity, that the State was a bad administrator and that the market solved its problems: in 2020, without a doubt, the economy would have fallen if it weren’t for the State. The old is increasingly obsolete, but no one defines what the new will be, and thus time is suspended. What predominates is a stupor, a collective malaise.
How do you define the Latin American role in geopolitical chess today? Irrelevant. Which I’m very sorry to say. And it will be much more irrelevant if we don’t make desperate efforts to act as a bloc. It is a time in which we are experiencing tensions, political readjustments and a redefinition of influences. Latin America exists as a passive place for disputes by others, which will be more intense if we do not take joint action. I don’t even say to influence, but to protect us from this planetary dismemberment. And these are minimum specific agreements, in terms of legal certainty, security and energy transition.
As Do you see the possibility of a coup in Brazil? Brazil is the largest and economically strongest country. Although Brazil does not look much to Latin America, the region is attentive to what is happening in the country. The risks of a democratic interruption would be catastrophic for the continent and for the world, because it could free the reins so that in other places the anti-democratic forces feel encouraged.
What is your assessment of the Summit of the Americas led by Joe Biden? It was a double failure. First, an initial failure: what proposals were launched before the meeting? None. The second failure is that six presidents of Latin America did not attend. This is a measure of a region that recognizes that the US is no longer the great helmsman of its destiny.
And what are the consequences of the Ukrainian War for Latin Americans? Ambivalent. For countries that produce energy and food, the war is causing export prices to rise, so they will have more income and foreign exchange. It will be a long-running cycle of high commodity prices.
For countries that import food, energy or fertilizers, these are problems, precisely because prices are rising, and States will have to allocate more resources to ensure supply. Just as they globalize you, they de-globalize you the next day. The rules of the world have changed drastically, and this must lead Latin Americans to think that continental development has to emerge from their own reflections, not from the obtuse and orthodox imitation of models that launch us from the North.
To defeat authoritarian candidates, different alliances have been built between traditional sectors of the left and other moderates, or even conservatives. We had that with Lula and Alckmin in Brazil. How do you see these alliances? There is a growing divergence of political elites. Years ago, there was a general consensus: everyone agreed that the world was moving towards a free trade economy and that it was necessary to reduce the State and serve the poor, so that there would be no uprisings. It broke.
A kind of tiredness emerged. When something declines, there are sectors and elites that look for other options. Some seek leftist projects, of social justice, and others say that authoritarian measures are needed. And in these quests different types of alliances are rehearsed, unbelievably long ago.
x-ray | Alvaro Garcia Linera, 59
Mathematician and social scientist, he was vice president of Bolivia (2006-2019). He wrote, among other books, “A Potência Plebeia” (ed. Boitempo) and “What is a Revolution?” (ed. Expressão Popular) and is co-author of the recently released “Qual Horizonte: Hegemony, State and Democratic Revolution” (ed. Autonomia Literária).
