The election of Gabriel Boric in Chile in December 2021, associated with what will happen in the elections in Colombia and Brazil throughout 2022, can confirm the rise of a new “pink wave” in Latin America.
This wave, however, must be understood as a new moment and not as a second phase of the first, the cycle of leftist governments in the region during the 2000s and first half of 2010. Or worse, as the continuation of something that would have come to an end, which would have only been momentarily blocked.
Pink wave 2.0 or more of the same?
This possible second pink wave will struggle between the new and the old: the new that is being born, the old that refuses to die. It will be presented in a context of long transition, towards a different historical moment from the one we had at the turn of the 20th to the 21st century.
In a context of organic crisis and several overlapping transitions, projecting a pink wave that resumes the previous one without greater self-criticism and adaptations will lead to inferior results compared to the first wave, and a shorter survival. It would be proposing more of the same, in a worse context and starting from societies that have changed considerably.
Some new elements could assume centrality in this second cycle. Exclusivist nationalisms could be partly circumvented by a resumption of regional integration and activation of regional identities.
Integration institutions that are dormant can be refounded, and joint strategies can be sought to face decisive issues such as the climate crisis, the definitive overcoming of the pandemic, the movement of people and the promotion of regional citizenship, the expansion of rights, the confrontation of extractivism and reduction of epistemic and technological dependence.
Exclusivist statisms could also be circumvented, considering the State as an articulating nucleus of complex issues, and the axis of effective alliances between political forces and social movements.
This condensation of demands through the State can become a strategy to produce hegemony, synthesizing fragmented demands derived from multiple forms of oppression.
The State is also important for projecting investments in science, technology, innovation and education. However, one should bet on radical versions of democratization, co-government and power-sharing, involving this State in new articulations with collective subjects.
“Modernists” versus “Pachamamics”?
One can think of syntheses that overcome the dilemma translated as “modern” versus “pachamamic”, which seems to cross the regional left. This dilemma was translated into the division between coristas (Andrés Arauz) and indigenists (Yaku Pérez) in the 2021 Ecuadorian elections, which led to the defeat of the left and the election of Guillermo Lasso.
Despite expressing a simplifying dichotomy, the Ecuadorian example, associated with the debates unleashed within the critical intelligentsia, suggest that such tension between neo-developmentalist (or neo-extractivist) and ecologists-indigenist projects actually exists at some level.
But this contradiction should not be understood as insurmountable. It is possible to extend bridges, in order to allow dialogues and syntheses. On the one hand, it is no longer possible to remain within the limits of classical western economic development, which is leading humanity to a dead end. Alternative developments can be thought of, avoiding re-editing strategies that depredation of nature until exhaustion.
However, these alternatives cannot do without a post-capitalist horizon; nor abandon the class struggle as a fundamental element; nor ignore the essential role of the State as an inducer and organizer of transformative projects.
More of the same and the Boric factor
In this sense, the Chilean refounding process would have something to contribute, adding new elements and perspectives on topics such as development, ecology, climate crisis, conceptions of progress, indigenous, reproductive and immigrant rights, feminism, among other topics.
The Boric government will likely differ from other regional experiences, largely reissues of the progressive cycle in a downgraded version.
Governments such as those of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, Alberto Fernández in Argentina, and the possible return of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil, point to attempts to resume projects already taken to the limit of their possibilities of change without rupture, losing mobilizing capacity. .
Other governments, such as those of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, the first survivor of the first pink wave, the second coming from a previous disruptive stage and reincarnated in the pink wave, present themselves as authoritarian degenerations of themselves.
Let us consider the Brazilian case to reinforce this point. The hope for a return of Lula does not translate into expectations for structural transformations, but simply to block the authoritarianism, violence and social dismantling of the right-wing government of Jair Bolsonaro.
Therefore, lowered expectations in relation to the first governments of Lula, who never got around to proposing structural changes. If before it was possible to expect reforms and social investments, now the expectation is that elections will take place, that they will be clean, that Lula will take office, manage to govern and conclude his term.
Great expectations
From Boric, more can be expected. His government should inaugurate a new stage, to be consolidated by the burial of the Pinochet Constitution of 1980. It should govern in dialogue with social movements, minorities, youth, feminism. Recognize the struggles of the Mapuche Indians in the south of the country, deal humanely with the issue of irregular immigrants, seek memory and justice for the crimes of the military dictatorship and the repression of social upheaval.
It is an inclusive project, with the expansion of rights for minorities and expansion of access to health, education and social security. A project that could begin to break with liberalism as a “way of life”, established hegemonically in the region beyond the presence or not of “progressismos” in power.
Chile is exemplary in this regard. Authoritarian neoliberal sociability crossed the different levels of social life, following its development that began in Pinochetism, even with formal democratization and during the governments of the Concertation.
But the decisive factor is that the new government is the institutional translation of a popular revolt, complements the constituent refounding process underway and will support the regulation and institutionalization of the changes that will be inscribed in the new Charter.
It also represents a new emerging generation. The generation of “1968”, of the young cadres of Salvador Allende’s government, is out, not so young during the agreed transition and the repairist governments. Enter the boys of the “penguin revolution” of 2006 and the student revolt of 2011 and 2012.
Boric’s government may then present itself as a novelty, amid lowered resumptions in deteriorated contexts of projects from two decades ago. It is not an alternative to capitalism. But it involves high expectations.
