Sylvia Colombo: How many lefts are there in Latin America?

With such passion, this sport of trying to predict whether Latin America will go left or right with each election seems to only happen here. I don’t see analysts spending so much time and ink to conclude, disagree or seal that Europe will go further to the right with Rishi Sunak’s arrival on Downing Street, or whether North America is more or less progressive with Trudeau/Biden/AMLO, a triad so varied that it could be spread across the world, or that Oceania or Scandinavia experience waves of conservative or progressive with each change of government in their countries.

Deep down, I find it funny. And, of course, I’m not the only one who is bothered by country analyzes made like this, “in basin”. The map that illustrates this anonymous text, which went viral on the networks after Lula’s victory in Brazil, on the 30th, was probably also made by someone tired of the clichés about “changes of tides” and “turns of the region’s political chess”. , which spread in times of change of government. Not that this type of approach is not useful, on the contrary, drawing parallels, seeing commonalities related to the regional and global context are important intellectual exercises to do. Taken really seriously, they can even lead to an exchange of successful public policies from one country to another. But what is certain is that, in recent times, it only seems to feed the great reductionisms that are later used to set up shallow electoral campaigns, in the form of those choruses we hear around in those times, that one country will become Venezuela, that the other will turn Argentina, that such a politician should move to Cuba or Afghanistan.

But let’s go to the map which, amusingly, shows us that pears are definitely not the same as apples. It circulated before on the networks, but was published and analyzed by the excellent newsletter Latin American Risk Report, signed daily by James Bosworth. Anyone who enjoys Latin America should follow him. It is a paid service, but essential for Latin Americanists, which brings excellent daily analysis of the region, as well as reading tips every Friday.

First, let’s get to the fun part. We have the pink left, that is, not so extreme, where, as of the 30th, Brazil and Colombia are. Chile is also a pink left, but with one detail, it would be a Taylor Swift fan left, young and modern. Another one that is rosy, but in which there is a latent conflict between the government itself is that of Bolivia, in which “a bad and old left is persecuting the current government behind the scenes” _there is talk of the rift and the eternal need to intervene in the government of President Luis Arce by the former president, Evo Morales.

Peru also appears there, with its conservative left, almost by a thread, but for more than a year in this condition, Mexico, also conservative and with a unique populist style of authoritarian left and, finally, pure-blood dictatorships such as Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua. Ah, yes, the “boring and center-right” Paraguay and Ecuador.

The icing on the cake is having a category just for Uruguay. Although the country is currently governed by the center-right, it is still a beacon of egalitarianism, institutionalism, and the guarantee of civil and identity rights.

Everything described above is an open topic for debate and discussion. But the heart of the message seems clear and right to me. Each country is a country, each context is a context. If Petro feels that he must prioritize solutions to an end to the conflict that are different from his predecessors, it is because the historic violence that Colombia is experiencing is the result of his own trajectory. If the Peruvian indigenous people represented by Pedro Castillo have these values ​​and this way of acting, it is because only Peru has lived an experience of indigenist nationalism with clashes and even fratricidal wars. If Venezuela is experiencing a humanitarian crisis due to the Chavista dictatorship, this is also the result of a particular historical development, of a rich and unequal country, in which figures with very little social concern and great alliances with the organized crime, unlike what Hugo Chávez represented in his beginnings.

Want to see something more country-specific than the eternal Argentine crisis? In fact, it is out of place to put it on a map of leftist countries. And the map is very accurate in its description: “it describes itself as left-wing, but in fact it is a kind of theory of economic chaos”. Nothing to oppose.

And Uruguay, well, Uruguay has a history to be proud of, and leaders of the past that we should be grateful for to this day, like Battle & Ordóñez. It would not be possible, either, to put it in association with any other in terms of the State model.

The map is a joke, but it laughs at ourselves and our explanations about the world and the region we live in, but which we barely know. In fact, taken seriously, it is an invitation to further reflection on what it means to be all in the same region, which contacts and exchanges are valid, which are undesirable, and why, whatever changes in terms of management, certain idiosyncracies are not export.