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Latin America’s Second Wave of Left-Wing Governments Could Be More Powerful Than the First

Skip to main content SUBSCRIBE Portside PortsideHome Material of Interest to People on the Left Toggle navigation Latin America’s Second Wave of Left-Wing Governments Could Be More Powerful Than the First A few years ago, commentators were announcing the demise of the Latin American left. But if Lula wins this autumn’s presidential election in Brazil, the Left will be governing the region’s six largest economies for the first time. July 17, 2022 Kyla Sankey JACOBIN Printer friendly TwitterFacebookMail Former president of Brazil Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva gestures during a Labor Day demonstration on May 1, 2022, in São Paulo, Brazil. ,Rodrigo Paiva / Getty Images Until recently, Latin American commentators were widely reporting on the inevitable “ebbing” of the pink tide. By the mid-2010s, the commodity boom that began in the early 2000s had rapidly gone into decline. The Right had grasped the opportunity to destabilize its opponents through campaigns of sabotage, propaganda, and scandal, and left-wing governments were facing crises on all fronts. Whether through elections (Argentina), “parliamentary coup” (Brazil), “silent coup” (Ecuador), or outright military coup (Bolivia), by the second half of the last decade, the left turn seemed to be giving way to the rise of a new right in the region. For their part, social movements appeared to be in a state of fatigue or, even worse, direct confrontation with left governments, and initially lacked the energy or will to defend them against the right-wing assault. Share this article on Twitter Facebook Mail If Lula wins in Brazil, by the end of the year, Latin America’s six largest economies will for the first time all be under left-wing rule of one kind or another. It is no small feat, then, that today there is no better place for thinking about alternatives to neoliberalism and authoritarianism than Latin America. Gustavo Petro’s historic win in Colombia will likely be joined by Lula’s success in Brazil’s October presidential election to conclude a cycle of electoral victories for the Left. By the end of the year, for the first time in its history, Latin America’s six largest economies — Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru — should all be under left-wing rule of one kind or another. Gaining New Ground The renewal of the pink tide brings with it the prospect of a return to the progressivism and promise of regional integration that accompanied the initial rise of the pink tide two decades ago. But there is also much that is new, both in the socioeconomic context and the character of their political coalitions. Only two governments that were part of the initial pink tide — Nicaragua and Venezuela — remain in power. Other pink tide governments that were previously ousted, like those in Argentina, Bolivia, and potentially Brazil, have returned to power after reconfigurations in their parties and leadership. More significantly, however, several countries that for various reasons had not joined the previous pink tide — Colombia, Honduras, Mexico, Peru, and Chile — have all come under left-wing governance, through very different scenarios than those that gave rise to the initial Pink Tide. These countries had been Washington’s closest allies in the region. All have implemented free-trade agreements with the United States, while Colombia, Peru, and Mexico are key regional nodes in the “war on drugs.” Colombia has long played the role of US proxy in undermining and destabilizing the Left in the region. The electoral victories of the Left in these countries are remarkable not only for overcoming persecution and violence in the name of anti-communism but also in dealing a further blow to already declining US hegemony in Latin America. If you like this article, please sign up for Snapshot, Portside's daily summary. (One summary e-mail a day, you can change anytime, and Portside is always free.) The neoliberal hegemony of the 1990s that was first broken by the pink tide governments was never fully restored by their right-wing successors. The Left’s success is a clear signal that the neoliberal hegemony of the 1990s that was first broken by the pink tide governments was never fully restored by their right-wing successors. Characterized by low popular support, fragmented ruling coalitions, and lack of an economic agenda, these recent right-wing experiments never achieved the dominance or duration of their predecessors, and their failure opened the way for the Left’s return. More important, these electoral victories are testimony to the strength of social mobilizations that have swept the region in recent years, even if most of the new left governments did not emerge directly from them. Whereas the right-wing dictatorships of the 1970s and ’80s wiped out civic, labor, and campesino movements, destroying the Left for at least two decades, the repression unleashed by more recent right-wing governments failed to extinguish the Left. Even before the pandemic hit in 2019 and continuing through to 2022, thousands upon thousands of people across Latin America have engaged in sustained protests as part of the region-wide estallido social against International Monetary Fund (IMF)–backed austerity policies. In Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador, a reconstituted radical movement was able to forge a powerful street presence, weakening neoliberal governments and — with the exception of Ecuador — opening the way for progressive governments to come to power. Renewed Social Mobilization In Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil, the Left might have been weakened, yet it nonetheless demonstrated that it had built sufficient power outside the state to withstand the assault from the Right and return left governments to power. In Bolivia, social movements that had laid the foundations for the Movement for Socialism (MAS)’s initial rise to power in 2006 under Evo Morales were just as crucial in opposing the Jeanine Añez government after the 2019 coup. Sustained protests forced Añez to eventually hold elections in October 2020 after they had been canceled twice. The tensions that had arisen under the MAS government did not prevent even its most ardent left critics from mobilizing in support of the MAS under the new leadership of Luis Arce — as well as rallying in support of the decision to jail Añez for her role in the coup. The vice presidential candidate David Choquehuanca, who identifies as Aymara, was able to regain the support of indigenous groups who had previously been frustrated with the MAS, including leaders who had criticized Morales. In Brazil, ties between the Workers’ Party (PT) and social movements that had been weakened under PT governance were revitalized in the face of the soft coup against Dilma Rousseff and repression from the Jair Bolsonaro government directed against social movements. Lula’s choice of the former conservative governor Geraldo Alckmin as his running mate has not stopped the Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) and other left organizations from supporting his presidential candidacy in the October elections, rejecting other proposals for a broad-based front against Bolsonaro led by a nonleft candidate. The Brazilian PT is still seen as the party where social movements can most effectively push their agendas. This is possible because the PT is still seen as the party where social movements can most effectively push their agendas. The MST has supported the formation of popular committees with the aim of developing an agenda from popular movements to ensure the demands of the working class reach Lula’s presidential agenda. Only in Ecuador did the frictions between the previous Rafael Correa government and social movements prevent the return of Correísmo to power. Andrés Arauz ran for president last year as the candidate of the Union for Hope (UNES). UNES was set up as a reconstituted version of Correa’s previous party after his former vice president Lenín Moreno’s betrayal of Correa and the Citizens’ Revolution. Arauz and UNES continued to enjoy remarkable popularity despite Moreno’s dirty campaign. However, the conservative banker Guillermo Lasso’s victory against Arauz in the 2021 elections was facilitated by long-standing divisions between Ecuador’s powerful indigenous movement and Correa’s Citizens’ Revolution. In the second round of the elections, Pachakutik candidate Yaku Pérez called on supporters to cast a null vote, arguing that neither the extractivism of Correísmo nor Lasso’s neoliberalism represented indigenous communities. The indigenous movement itself was divided on its stance towards Correismo, with Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) president Jaime Vargas dissenting at the last minute to give his support to Arauz. But this did not prevent 1.7 million Ecuadorians from voting blank, ensuring Lasso’s victory. Defenders of the null vote argued that they can bring down Lasso’s government through mass mobilizations, such as those which are currently bringing the country to a standstill. Building New Coalitions In countries where the Left has been elected for the first time, parties have adopted a different strategy toward social movements than initial pink tide parties. Whereas in the 1990s and 2000s, explosive revolts brought neoliberal governments to their knees and directly propelled left governments to power, recent left governments have emerged through more gradual processes of coalition-building against the background of social protest and exhaustion of the neoliberal right. Recent left governments have emerged through more gradual processes of coalition-building against the background of social protest and exhaustion of the neoliberal right. In Chile, student protests, teachers’ strikes, indigenous conflicts, and pensioners’ and feminist movements have been building for over a decade. This revitalized left provided the groundwork for sustained social mobilization when the estallido social broke out in 2019. The estallido also created a space for a new alliance between the student movement’s Frente Amplio (FA), the Communist Party, and other movements, leading to the formation of Apruebo Dignidad. Throughout the 2010s, the FA followed a strategy of building power in state institutions, both national and local. During the 2019 mobilization, the FA spoke out for the protesters, demanding that right-wing president Sebastián Piñera lift a state of siege. It brought the issue of human rights violations before the International Criminal Court and sought to impeach Piñera on those grounds. Similarly in Colombia, a decade of mass mobilizations — including the 2011 and 2018 student protests, the 2013 and 2016 agrarian strikes, and the national strikes of 2019 and 2021 — precipitated a crisis for right-wing Uribismo. Combined with the signing of the 2016 peace agreement between the Colombian government and the FARC rebel movement, this opened the way for a major shake-up of the political scene. The country’s new president, Gustavo Petro, was not a protagonist of these mobilizations, and after his two decades in public office many Colombians would see him as part of the political establishment. Nonetheless, it was these mobilizations that made possible the building of Petro’s Pacto Historico political alliance, composed of a variety of movements including the Communist Party, Unión Patriotica, Congreso de los Pueblos, and indigenous and environmental movements. During his time as mayor of Bogotá, Petro became the figurehead for popular protests when the attorney general, Alejandro Ordoñez, attempted to remove him from office for his attempt to reverse the privatization of the city’s waste disposal. In 2013, Petro led a mass occupation of Bogotá’s central Plaza Bolívar, which was renamed “Plaza de los Indignados.” The movement behind Petro brought together an array of groups affected by the hard-right attorney general: feminist pro-choice activists, LGBTQ movements, and the anti-bullfighting campaign. Although Petro himself was not a leader of the national strikes of 2019 or 2021, his running mate, Francia Márquez, an Afro-Colombian environmental and feminist activist and human rights lawyer, spoke out regularly in defense of the human rights of the protesters. In his 2022 election campaign, Petro amplified the demands of the protesters, promising to dismantle the ESMAD riot police, revoke the military service requirement for young men, and transfer the police force to the control of the Ministry of Justice. In Honduras, Xiomara Castro’s party (Libre) emerged out of the massive grassroots opposition that developed after the coup against Manuel Zelaya in 2009. The National Front of Popular Resistance united women’s, labor, campesino, LGBTQ, and indigenous movements. Over the course of several years, they built a potent street presence, combining mass mobilizations with international pressure on the regime. Economic Storm Clouds Another feature distinguishing the renewed pink tide is that it has emerged in a very different economic moment. Latin America was the continent most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. GDP growth might have reached over 6 percent last year, but this was insufficient to compensate for the 6 percent contraction of 2020. Already in the five years prior to the pandemic, the region had experienced a “lost half decade” of low growth. With economic collapse in 2020, modest recovery in 2021, and weak growth forecast in 2022, the region faces another “lost decade” of development. Twenty-five million people lost their jobs during the pandemic, and those who have found new employment since then face lower-quality, more precarious work. With economic collapse in 2020, modest recovery in 2021, and weak growth forecast in 2022, Latin America faces another ‘lost decade’ of development. Global commodity prices have risen, but this trend does not offer the same opportunity for Latin American countries as it did in the 2000s. The previous commodities boom was primarily driven by sustained growth from China and other emerging markets, which created a high demand for raw materials. The current price hike has been driven by COVID-induced supply chain disruptions and the war in Ukraine rather than an economic boom. With China facing economic difficulties, commodity prices are unlikely to experience prolonged growth, instead becoming more volatile. Any rise in prices will equally be offset by shortages and higher prices for imports. While the previous pink tide had presided over a boom, current left governments are faced with the prospect of presiding over a bust. Forging a New Model The US Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates will see investors flee developing economies for “safe havens” like the United States. In response, Latin American central banks are raising their interest rates in the hope of appeasing flighty foreign investors — but this comes at the cost of workers at home. Latin America entered the pandemic with high levels of public debt, and from 2019 to 2020 debt levels rose from 69 to 79 percent of GDP. Despite the IMF’s changing rhetoric since the 2008 crisis, in practice, the fund has not backed down on its commitment to austerity. Major battles over the cost-of-living crisis and public spending such as that currently being fought on the streets of Ecuador are likely to spread. Without the magic bullet of a commodities boom to fund social programs, new left governments will have to start by reducing inequality through structural reforms, with a more redistributive tax system and increased social spending. With the institutions of state power divided under most left presidents, attempts to do so will face conflict. In the course of such battles, governments can build bases of popular support. Without the magic bullet of a commodities boom to fund social programs, new left governments will have to start by reducing inequality through structural reforms. Dim economic times can also present opportunities. The end of the commodities boom has reduced the prospects for economic growth but also opens the door for a more radical agenda going beyond the previous pink tide’s economic strategy based on national resource extraction. Colombia’s Petro and Chile’s Gabriel Boric have promised to put environmentalism at the top of their agendas. Petro has vowed not only to end new oil exploration in Colombia but also to work with other progressive leaders on a regionwide just transition. Boric participated in Our Green America, a movement proposing a blueprint for a post-pandemic Green New Deal, and he has signed the Escazu Agreement on environmental justice. Although the relationship between these new left governments and social movements is yet to be defined, this fresh direction opens the door to novel alliances with environmental and social movements that had been strained under previous left governments. This in turn creates possibilities for the Left to build power outside the state to push for a more radical agenda under the renewed pink tide. Kyla Sankey teaches in the School of Business and Management at Queen Mary University of London. Subscribe to Jacobin today, get four beautiful editions a year, and help us build a real, socialist alternative to billionaire media. 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The Move Toward a Four-Day Workweek Obscures Low Pay

counterpunch logo ☰ MAY 30, 2023 The Move Toward a Four-Day Workweek Obscures Low Pay BY SONALI KOLHATKAR Photo by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona Dolly Parton’s signature song “9 to 5,” and the 1980s sitcom of the same name reflect a quintessentially American hustle culture of working 40 hours a week in thankless jobs. Even though many people work even more than that—earning the U.S. the title of “the Most Overworked Developed Nation in the World”—our expectations of the ideal work scenario are built on a hard-fought labor victory, one that was still not nearly enough to curb worker exploitation. In 1926, Henry Ford instituted a 40-hour workweek for his auto factory employees, perhaps because he truly believed workers needed more time for rest and leisure, but also because he expected they would be more productive if they worked less. The move paid off for Ford’s bottom line and also helped shift national culture toward working fewer hours. A decade later, auto workers at General Motors in Flint, Michigan, went on strike protesting terrible working conditions. The 1936 labor action came to be known as “the strike heard around the world,” and in February 1937, General Motors conceded to worker demands, sending a powerful message across the nation that worker-led strikes can win. In 1937, about 1.9 million Americans participated in nearly 5,000 strikes—considered the most seminal year in U.S. labor history. It’s no wonder then that a year later, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 imposing a minimum wage of 25 cents an hour and a 44-hour workweek, as well as overtime pay. Two years later, in 1940, that act was amended to further reduce work hours to 40 per week. That should have been the beginning, not the end of improved labor conditions. The biggest failure of the Fair Labor Standards Act was that it did not link the minimum wage to inflation. Now, more than 80 years later, Congress is considering a 32-hour workweek. Representative Mark Takano (D-CA), with the support of major labor unions like SEIU, introduced a bill in the House of Representatives to reduce the workweek to four days. While on the surface a welcome move for labor rights, the problem is that unless corporate employers are forced to give people the same (or greater) annual take-home pay and preserve benefits, moving to a four-day workweek may not amount to much. According to a 2018 Economic Policy Institute report, because wage growth remained stagnant, “For most workers… annual earnings growth has been driven by their ability to work more hours.” Why would workers desire a reduction in work hours if it meant taking home less pay? A recent Washington Post-Ipsos survey found that three-quarters of those polled preferred working 40 hours over four days—that is 10-hour days—to working 40 hours over five days. And, nearly as many said they would prefer working 40 hours over five days rather than lose a fifth of their salary. This is hardly surprising. Strangely the poll did not ask whether workers would prefer working 32 hours over four days with no reduction in pay. Is it because the pollsters knew that reducing work hours without reducing pay would be so popular that it wasn’t worth asking? Or was it that corporate employers would consider such a question to be the height of worker hubris? By leaving out the question the pollsters tacitly embraced corporate profit-driven values. Casting the idea of reducing work for the same pay as a novel notion, the Washington Post said, “[S]ome advocacy groups are pushing through pilots for a 32-hour, four-day workweek without decreasing pay.” The paper immediately followed that with corporate talking points: “Hurdles including concerns about staffing, lower productivity, increased costs, and complex changes to operations are keeping the shortened workweek from being widely adopted.” There was no mention of who views increased costs as “hurdles.” The U.S. economy, valuing worker productivity in service of corporate profits over all else, has continued to push cultural attitudes toward morework, not less, with papers like the Washington Post doing their part. While 40 hours a week may be part of the cultural fabric, an unwritten rule of corporate America is that in exchange for job security, one is expected to work 60 or more hours a week. Indeed.com’s pros-and-cons list of a 60-hour workweek opens with the sentence, “Working 60 hours a week can be one way to earn a higher salary, while also proving your dedication to your job and the company.” Further, with the rise of the gig economy, a significant number of workers in low-wage jobs have had to rely on unreliable work hours, low pay, and no benefits. They might work 9 to 5, or 5 to 9. This economic status quo also fuels a stubborn gender pay gap. This year Equal Pay Day fell on March 14, which means that women would have had to work an extra three and a half months to make as much money as men did in 2022. For Black women, it falls far later, on September 21, 2023. A new study published by the American Sociological Association concluded that men’s overwork is contributing significantly to this gap. “The overwork effect on trends in the gender gap in wages was most pronounced in professional and managerial occupations,” said the study’s authors, “where long work hours are especially common and the norm of overwork is deeply embedded in organizational practices and occupational cultures.” Merely reducing work hours will not close the gender wage gap. It might even increase if women take on extra housework on their day off while men work extra jobs. In her new book The Good Enough Job, author Simone Stolzoff pointed out that, “Despite gains in wealth and productivity, many college-educated Americans—and especially college-educated men—have worked more than ever. Instead of trading wealth for leisure, American professionals began to trade leisure for more work.” There’s a move to change U.S. culture to relinquish our attachment to work. Stolzoff’s book is one of several urging Americans to work less. In her new book Saving Time: Discovering a Life Beyond the Clock, best-selling author Jenny Odell views the current economic structures that we operate in as having arisen from European colonial culture. She urges people to reimagine our relationship with our time. But is it that we are all trained to want to work, or that we don’t have the luxury to choose leisure? The problem is that overall pay is still so low compared to the cost of living that those who can work more—perhaps because they have partners willing to do more child care and housework—do so, earning overtime pay to ensure that their household’s needs are met. A four-day workweek is likely to do the same, freeing up an extra day merely to work more in a second job or take on more childcare or housework. Trials of a four-day workweek by some companies have shown this is precisely what is happening. Some corporate heads love the idea of reducing work hours and salaries and are happy to have their workers take on side jobs to make up for the loss in salary on their day off. “[W]e believe that we’re providing value through flexibility,” said one startup CEO to Business Insider as justification for lower salaries. Another CEO touted how one of her employees now has the free time to work side jobs like Spanish translation and bartending. If a four-day workweek comes with pay that’s still not enough to live well, then it is merely offering workers the freedom to work less in order for them to work more elsewhere. What is the point? The federal minimum wage remains stuck at an appallingly low $7.25 an hour, with tipped workers surviving in serfdom at $2.13 an hour. I am writing this weekly column on my day off from a four-day job that pays a decent wage but is still not enough to provide for all my household expenses, and it is certainly not as much as my male spouse earns. To be fair, my main employer reduced work hours without reducing my salary—a wonderful step in the right direction. But the problem, again and again, is low pay. While I love writing a weekly column, I do it for the meaningful joy it brings and for the compensation. It’s a side hustle. When Representative Takano was asked about the barriers to realizing his bill for a 32-hour workweek, he addressed the potential loss of pay by saying that, “We also have to pay attention to the ability of workers to unionize to bargain for higher wages.” In other words, workers and their unions (that is, if they are lucky enough to be among the minority of Americans represented by labor unions) have to fend for themselves in ensuring a living wage. Senator Bernie Sanders has joined the call for a 32-hour workweek, emphasizing that such a move should come with “no loss of pay.” But even if that happened, wages still remain too low to live on and most workers might spend their free time on side hustles, like I do. If workers were paid a minimum of $100 an hour (not unlike what most corporate executives get paid) and had the choice to work a 32-hour week versus a 40-hour week, I believe most would choose the former. “It’s a rich man’s game no matter what they call it,” sang Dolly Parton. The real problem of overwork is underpay. This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute. Sonali Kolhatkar is the founder, host and executive producer of “Rising Up With Sonali,” a television and radio show that airs on Free Speech TV (Dish Network, DirecTV, Roku) and Pacifica stations KPFK, KPFA, and affiliates. CounterPunch Tells the Facts and Names the Names Published since 1996 Copyright © CounterPunch All rights reserved. counterpunch@counterpunch.org Administration Becky Grant CEO/Administrator Deva Wheeler Subscriber and Order Support counterpunchbiz@gmail.com Editorial Jeffrey St. Clair, Editor Joshua Frank, Managing Editor Nathaniel St. Clair, Social Media Alexander Cockburn, 1941—2012 Mailing Address CounterPunch PO Box 228 Petrolia, CA 95558 Telephone Nichole Stephens, Administrative Assistant 1(707) 629-3683 graphic button for joining counterpunch news updates mailing list>