Latin America's Pink Tide Feb 2nd 2007 , by Diana Raby - Red Pepper Blog Socialism!

For most of us it is still the ideal, but with the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the defects of China and other neoStalinist regimes, and the sell-out of the Labour Party, it seems more distant than ever. If there is to be a new model, a real alternative to globalised capitalism, what will it look like and how do we get there? The Left in Power Until recently such musings were confined to Trotskyists, anarchists, anti-globalisation activists and Red Pepper contributors who were easily dismissed by the mainstream (and, lets face it, by most working people) as irrelevant. But with left-wing victories in Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua, social and economic recovery in Cuba and popular advances elsewhere in the region, journalists are talking about Latin Americas pink tide and the region itself has become the forum for passionate debates on Socialism of the 21st Century. The phrase was first coined by Hugo Chavez at an international meeting of intellectuals in Caracas in December 2004, and since then it has been taken up by popular movements across the region and is increasingly discussed by intellectuals and by public officials in those countries which have left-inclined governments. Many commentators dismiss the declarations of Chvez in Venezuela, Lula in Brazil and Evo Morales in Bolivia as mere rhetoric, and point to the absence of real socialist measures and the continuing predominance of international capital in these countries to prove their point. But recent developments provide evidence to question this scepticism. Venezuela has not only in effect re-nationalised its oil company (PDVSA), it has established exchange controls, initiated major state-run infrastructure projects in railways, ports and telecommunications, introduced workers co -management in some of the nationalised industries and promoted thousands of cooperatives and worker-controlled enterprises. Private capital still predominates in wholesale and retail commerce and many other industrial and agricultural sectors and a US-style consumer society continues to flourish in upper- and middle-class areas; but different forms of social enterprise now account for well over half of Venezuelan GDP and a smaller but growing percentage of employment. With Chvez dramatic announcement in January of his intention to nationalise the electricity, water and telecommunications industries and to end Central Bank autonomy, Venezuelan socialism seems to be advancing fast. In Bolivia Evo Morales has been in office for less than a year but has already nationalised the all-important oil and gas industry and (like Venezuela) proclaimed an agrarian reform. In Brazil progress has been much more limited sin ce Lulas government, under heavy international pressure, adopted orthodox financial policies. But a few key social programmes such as the bolsa famlia subsidy for the poorest sectors have sustained hope and made possible Lulas recent massive re-election victory, and there is now talk of a new and more radical direction for his second term. Similar policies directed at social justice and economic sovereignty have also been implemented, at least to some extent, in Argentina and Uruguay, and are now being coordinated at regional level through the ALBA (Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas) promoted by Venezuela and supported by Cuba and the Mercosur (South American Common Market) countries. ALBA is not explicitly socialist but its emphasis on endogenous (self-sufficient) development, equitable exchange and social solidarity represents a major challenge to neo-liberalism and to the US-sponsored Free Trade Area of the Americas (ALCA in Spanish). It provides a protective umbrella under which socialist initiatives at least have a chance to develop. Theory and Practice Is there a coherent ideology, a theoretical foundation for these initiatives? No-one has formulated a comprehensive doctrine, but in any case most Latin American activists and leaders are clear that the last thing they want is a dogmatic formula, a model to be imposed like the fossilised Marxism-Leninism which plagued the international Communist movement for so long. This does not mean, however, that they are devoid of creative ideas.

In Cuba - which, without being a model to copy, remains an inspiration for its defence of socialism and resistance and its assistance in health and education programmes - the leadership has insisted that socialism will not be abandoned but maintained and perfected, despite Fidels illness and US speculation about transition. The recent 19th Congress of the Cuban trade-union federation (the CTC) declared that in Cuba, the only transition will be toward more revolution, social justice and socialism. Significantly, a leading Cuban official recently affirmed that Cuba would not adopt the Chinese model of rampant capitalist enterprise within a state-supervised system, but would continue to limit the private sector to small-scale self-employment and joint ventures between multinationals and the state. But Cuba has not yet formulated any new approaches for 21st -Century Socialism. It is in Venezuela and elsewhere that, in Maos phrase, a thousand schools of thought contend. Roland Denis, a former guerrilla leader who was briefly a minister under Chvez, declared that the goal of Venezuelan popular movements is to construct a new democracy, a new order, a new hope in which the people would control natural resources, water, industry, education and social services, and everything would be articulated by the collective assembly, the assembly of all, through councils, delegates subject to recall and spokespersons subject to the power *of the assembly+; and he insists that It is necessary to go beyond the existing Bolivarian Constitution. Following Chvez dramatic re-election victory in December (63%, with reduced abstention and an expanded electoral register) there is increasing talk of the need to revise the Constitution to reflect the goal of socialism. Chvez himself has spoken of the need for a single party (not a one-party state, but a single party of the Left or the chavistas), and has insisted that this new party must not be cobbled together by existing politicians but must be built by the people from the bottom up. Social Production Enterprises Perhaps the most coherent vision of a new socialist alternative was formulated by another former guerrilla leader who has also held various positions under Chvez, Carlos Lanz. For a time Lanz was in charge of the Vuelvan CarasMission, described by many observers as the employment mission. But the real aim of this programme goes far beyond generating employment; it is intended to support alternative development projects of all kinds, to change the socio economic, politico-cultural model on the basis of education and employment, de-bureaucratisation of the state and democratic planning. The goal, says Lanz, is to create a new productive structure in which the profit motive is replaced by the satisfaction of collective needs, but within a transitional, mixed economy combining state, mixed and private property and collective self-managed property; this requires social control and regulation, including price and exchange controls. For Lanz this new strategy will necessitate a strategic alliance between State enterprises, the associative economy, the non-monopolistic sector of national capital, and small and medium enterprises in both the countryside and the city, and in socio-political terms the construction of a Social Revolutionary Bloc. That this is not just rhetoric has been demonstrated by the governments actions in the last eighteen months. As the government expropriated a number of abandoned factories and turned them over to the workers, it also accelerated the agrarian reform and the creation of cooperatives of all kinds. In July 2005, as Chvez inaugurated the United Agro Industrial Cacao Cooperative in the poor eastern state of Sucre, he declared it to be an example of a new productive structure, the Empresas de Produccin Social, (EPSs or Social Production Enterprises), which are at the centre of an economic turning-point towards the socialism of the 21st century. Chvez went on to explain that the EPSs are not meant to be just cooperative production units but should be completely integrated into local society, providing social services and responding to community needs and not just those of the actual cooperative workers. Thus the Cacao Cooperative already had a canteen which provided meals for local children, and financed an Into the Neighbourhoods medical clinic for the local community. The workers productive functions should be integrated into community life, said Chvez, and he suggested creating a common labour fund, communal services and distribution networks, and a micro-bank financed by enterprise profits.

Let no-one think that we are improvising, concluded Chvez, We have had a strategic plan for some time past and we are developing, promoting and consolidating it. Community Self-Government In Venezuela the institutional expression of popular participation and protagonism (decision-making) is often very confusing: whenever one type of organisation fails, Chvez and his advisors try something else, and indeed the people themselves create new structures which are later accepted and made official. First there were the Bolivarian Circles, then the Local Public Planning Councils, and now the Community Councils. This in addition to a variety of bodies with more specific functions: the Units of Electoral Battle (which then turned into Units of Endogenous Development), the Community Water Boards, the Electricity Committees and the Urban Land Committees, which continue to function alongside the more global institutions of communal self-government. The Venezuelans have also begun to adopt the Brazilian PTs model of the Participatory Budget and have tried to extend its principles of popular decision-making to other aspects of local government. This is reflected in the Community Councils which set local priorities and implement the Missions at local level; they represent small neighbourhoods of about 1,000 - 2,000 inhabitants, making direct participatory democracy a reality. On a recent visit to Caracas I attended a Community Council meeting in Antmano, a vast hillside barrio on the outskirts of the city. Here we run our own affairs, said Eluz. We want nothing to do with the professional politicians. Her partner Francisco added that this was the basis for the new socialism, as the people at grass-roots level take control of all aspects of social and economic life. In Bolivia too, grass-roots social movements are taking control of everything from land to water distribution and local commerce, at the same time that Evo Morales government nationalises oil and gas and invites Cuban and Venezuelan assistance to promote free health care and education programmes. Also at the Mercosur summit last July, when Venezuelas full membership of the bloc was confirmed and Cuba for the first time expressed a desire to j oin, it was agreed to seek coordination of social programmes and economic equalisation between the members, so that Mercosur will no longer be just a customs union but will promote real regional integration. Rafael Correas victory in Ecuador promises to consolidate the new trend. He immediately rejected the idea of a freetrade agreement with the US, visited Venezuela to talk with Chvez and suggested that Ecuador may follow the Venezuelan initiative of withdrawing from the Andean Pact and joining the Mercosur. He has also promised to convene a Constituent Assembly. It is still too early to judge the results, but these initiatives which seek to coordinate an anti-neoliberal strategy regionally, combined with efforts in Venezuela and Bolivia to undermine capitalism from above and below simultaneously, may yet prove more effective than either the old bureaucratic and top-down methods of imposing socialism or the anarchist reliance on grass-roots autonomy and spontaneity alone. 21st-Century Socialism may really be on the agenda in Uncle Sams backyard!

________________________________ December 19, 2006 Leaders, Parties and Movements Latin America's Pink Tide? By LAURA CARLSEN

The South American Summit of Nations and the Social Forum for the Integration of Peoples took place last week, stirring visions of continental unity. Both events-one of government leaders and one of civil society-showed there are new winds of change on the continent. Talk of alternatives for regional integration and the state's role in development, which used to take place on the margins of the dominant discourse of neoliberalism, has now moved to the center of public debate. Although comprehensive and viable alternatives are still a ways off, the discussion has moved from the podium to the streets. In the end, the official summit failed to resolve the split between leaders who see regional integration as a springboard into the current system of corporate-led integration, and those who envision something different. However, debate continues both between nations and within them. Elections in the region continue to be an important gauge of change. With the exception of Mexico, which on closer examination is not so much of an exception, the balance continues to shift to the left. But a deeper analysis of elections in Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Mexico indicates that the "pink tide" interpretation-that a diluted trend leftward is sweeping the continent-may be insufficient to understand the complexity of what's really taking place in each country and the region as a whole. What is considered "left"? How much leeway do self-professed leftist governments really have for making change in a globalized world? How do progressive governments relate to social movements and vice versa? And what do these changes mean on a regional level? These questions, still unanswerable, obstruct any attempt to color in Latin American states according to dominant political tendencies, like a red-blue post-electoral map of the United States. The challenge is to respect the specificity of each political process while drawing out ways to characterize the obvious regional shift taking place.

The New Leaders The re-election of Hugo Chvez in Venezuela by an overwhelming margin and the triumph of center-left candidate Rafael Correa in Ecuador both mark breakthroughs in Andean politics dominated by narrow political and economic elites. Chavez, always quick with a provocative phrase, has announced that the next step of the Bolivarian Revolution is to construct "socialism of the XXI Century," without providing many details as to what that would look like. In practice, his government continues to combine radical anti-U.S. rhetoric, Latin American solidarity, and an active state role in redistribution of wealth, with significant private sector involvement and export-oriented concepts of integration. Ecuador's Correa now joins the growing list of Latin American leaders who are looking south, instead of north to the United States, for opportunities in trade, development, and international alliances. He plans to strike a blow against U.S. hegemony through his opposition to a Free Trade Agreement and the continued presence of the U.S. military at the Manta Base. Daniel Ortega's return to power in Nicaragua and the re-election of Lula in Brazil send slightly more cryptic geopolitical messages. Ortega has maintained his leftist credentials largely on the basis of the animosity he instills among U.S. government officials. In domestic politics, however, he supported the nation's incredibly restrictive anti-abortion law. Although his party voted against the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), Ortega became increasingly pro-free-market policies during the campaign and, soon after being sworn in, pledged to uphold and strengthen CAFTA despite popular protest.

Lula enters his second term with debts to the powers-that-be on the one hand and social debts to the poor on the other. His second term signals the end of an increasingly acrimonious honeymoon with the grassroots organizations that make up his constituency base. At the same time, Lula doesn't seem willing to risk the loss of the economic elite's support. Pleasing both will be impossible. Finally, Mexico's disputed elections last July seemed to buck the regional trend by sending a rightwing party government back to power. Yet subsequent events make it very difficult to state that Mexican society reaffirmed the course. Accusations of electoral fraud persist, the one-half of the population that voted against the right remains mobilized and unconvinced, and one state-Oaxaca-is in open rebellion.

Parties vs. Movements? Latin America is a mixed bag, to say the least. With ideological differences blurred, pragmatism competing on a daily basis with principle, and grassroots movements seeking to avoid the opposing poles of marginalization and cooptation, it's difficult to make neat pronouncements. A few basic premises can, however, be surmised. First, the poor continue to be the majority despite over a decade of neoliberal promises. In most Latin American countries over half the population lives below the poverty line. This is the natural constituency of the new left. Second, this majority has reached the limits of its patience with the promises of the economic model. The hope-killing combination of poverty inherited from generation to generation, growing unemployment and under-employment, and an in-your-face concentration of wealth has led inevitably to opposition. In some countries this opposition has been expressed at the ballot box, in others there has been an outpouring in the streets, and in most it's a combination of the two. Third, leftist parties in many cases have little to offer that really addresses the demands and the discontent of the poor majority. Whether it's the corruption scandals of the Lula administration, the social conservatism of Tabar Vzquez's Uruguay, or the unprincipled opportunism of Ortega in Nicaragua, leftist "populists" have reproduced politics-as-usual with disappointing frequency once in government. The right and the left are not identical twins, but acquisition of power usually reveals some family traits. Despite progressive governments that refuse to form part of a U.S. Backyard Club, the region has not managed to become an alternative pole in a multipolar world. The great hope of Latin America-and what it has to offer to the world-is a vast collection of vibrant social movements that dare to question everything from their own governments to the way corporations pollute their lands. Sometimes they express themselves in the polls, sometimes they don't. Sometimes they call themselves the "left," and sometimes they call themselves the people or nothing at all. Labels don't matter. What matters is the search for new ways of governing that reduce the inequality, increase real democracy, and end the hunger and poverty. Call it pink, red, blue, purple, or chartreuse: to get anywhere, social movements will have to display all these colors and more. Whatever its hue though, the tide in Latin America seems to be rising. _______________________________

The pink tide flows In Ecuador, just as in Venezuela and Bolivia, a new government is breaking away from the neo-liberal policies that have definied relations with the US.

The United States is suffering yet another setback in Latin America as the Ecuadorian "pink tide" grows. While President Rafael Correa is locked in battle with the Ecuadorian Congress over a plebiscite calling for a new constitution to "refound" the country, the new leftist government has moved assertively in its relations with the United States. The minister of moreign relations, Maria Fernanda Espinosa, has announced that Ecuador intends to shut down an important US military base located at Manta on the coast. "Ecuador is a sovereign nation, we do not need any foreign troops in our country," she said. The treaty for the base expires in 2009 and will not be renewed. The base, the largest US facility on South America's Pacific coast, was ostensibly set up to help monitor narco-trafficking over the ocean and in the nearby Amazon basin. But it has become a major operations center for US intelligence gathering and counterinsurgency efforts against the leftist guerrillas in neighboring Colombia. The base's air runway, built at a cost of $80m, is capable of accommodating the largest and most sophisticated intelligence-gathering aircraft. Manta is also used as a port for US naval operations in the Pacific. Upwards of 475 US military personnel are continually rotated between Manta and the US Southern Command headquarters in Florida. Popular sentiment in Ecuador overwhelmingly supports the closure of the Manta base. Since it started in 1999, the civil war in Colombia has spread to Ecuador, bringing refugees, violence and social conflict, particularly in the Amazon region. Aerial herbicides sprayed by planes originating in Colombia eradicate Ecuadorian crops and have deleterious health effects on Ecuadorian children and adults. The Colombian and US governments claim that the defoliants are only sprayed on the Colombian side of the border. But President Correa vehemently disagrees: "We will not permit the continual violation of Ecuadorian air space by planes, that are not even Colombian, but from the United States. They enter our country, and then fly back to Colombia." Correa has ordered the Ecuadorian air force "to intercept any planes that violate our air space". The Correa government is preparing a case at the World Court against the Colombian government for the conflict and damages in northern Ecuador. Foreign Minister Espinosa is emphatic in saying that this is a "violation of human rights. It is not only a question of the health effects, but also of the psychological traumas caused by the constant over flights and the terrorization of the local population, particularly among the children who hear planes flying overhead and are subjected to war-like conditions." Special teams comprised of international health and human rights representatives are being formed to investigate the conditions on the border. "We want to replace the conflictive conditions with a Plan for Peace and Development in the region," says Espinosa. The Correa government is also moving adroitly to break with the neo-liberal trade and commercial policies that have been imposed on Ecuador by Washington and international lending agencies. In line with his campaign platform, Rafael Correa has made it clear that he will never sign the free trade agreement with the United States that was being discussed with previous governments. At the same time, Ecuador is negotiating special bilateral trade and economic agreements with Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia. Venezuela has agreed to refine Ecuadorian oil and provide financial assistance for social programs in Ecuador, while the Bolivian government has just agreed to import food commodities from small- and medium-sized producers in Ecuador. For the moment Correa has not opted to join the People's Trade Treaty signed last year between Cuba, Bolivia, and Venezuela. But the treaty is really a series of special accords and financial agreements, and in that sense Ecuador is already an informal member of this alternative bloc. Ecuador is clearly joining the ranks of Latin American nations opposed to US militarism and its neo-liberal policies.