Reclaiming Latin America: Experiments in Radical Social Democracy, edited by Geraldine Lievesley and Steve Ludlam, Zed Books, 2009, 263 pp., $35.95 (paperback)
After years of neoliberal policies, Latin America’s poverty rate in the 1990s had risen to well over 40%. A new phase of capitalism had spread across the continent, increasing inequality and resulting in what the editors of Reclaiming Latin America call “a double crisis of both political representation and of political economy.” Social movements responded and kicked 11 Latin American leaders out of office in just 15 years. These movements paved the way for the election of progressive presidents across the region.
The electoral rise of the Latin American left has captured the world’s attention. The contributors to this edited volume, largely from British academia, aim to offer “substantial insights into the character and content of the left’s political revival.” The book includes chapters with both regional analysis and case studies from Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. The editors highlight the importance of what they call “a new continentalism,” best exemplified by the derailing of the U.S.-backed Free Trade Area of the Americas and the formation of the Bolivarian Alternative for the People of the Americas. However, the editors write, while “many of these electoral victors have strong majorities . . . electoral tides go out as well as come in.”
Latin America’s Left Turns: Politics, Policies and Trajectories of Change, edited by Maxwell A. Cameron and Eric Hershberg, Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2010, 289 pp., $27.50 (paperback)
According to the editors of Latin America’s Left Turns, the wave of left-leaning electoral victories in Latin American has been over-simplified. “Dichotomizing the left into radical populists and social democrats conveniently reproduces the old cleavage between revolution and reform within the new context of democracy and globalization,” the editors write. The scholars who contribute to this collection of 12 essays attempt to leave the dualities behind and decipher the true inter-workings of the Latin American left turns.
What does unite the Latin American new left? The editors contend that the left turns “are a multiplicity of disparate efforts to reopen or refound the constitutional order or social pact.” Several countries in the region have rewritten their constitutions, but the editors ask, “Will [this] address poverty or social exclusion? Will it take on the task of transforming state institutions?” Venezuela and Bolivia are discussed in-depth, for having “inspired the most heated debate” and for their positions on liberalism, democracy, and constituent power—central issues throughout the book. While the countries of the left turns have effectively worked toward reducing the “region’s intolerably unequal distribution of income,” the editors contend that they still have major challenges in security, accountability, and corruption.
Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State Forces, by Raúl Zibechi, translated by Ramor Ryan, AK Press, 2010, 163 pp, $15.95 (paperback)
Left and progressive governments have taken power across the Americas “and this raises unique problems for grassroots movements,” writes Raúl Zibechi in his first book translated into English, Dispersing Power. “How the movements relate to these governments will be critical in the coming years.” Although Zibechi, a columnist for the Uruguayan newspaper Brecha, makes brief mention of movements in Argentina, Brazil, and elsewhere, he looks almost exclusively to Bolivia—where uprisings a decade ago knocked two leaders from power and helped pave the way for the election of the country’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales.
But this book isn’t about Morales; it’s about the social movements that helped to put him where he is, and that have maintained a sometimes uneasy, though continuing, support for Morales in the years since he was elected and reelected. “Community does not merely exist, it is made,” writes Zibechi, as he carries us to the local councils and describes the community power created by the country’s indigenous Aymara. The book references everyone from Karl Marx to Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, and includes chapters that combine reportage with theoretical musings on “the community as a social machine,” the “self-constructed city,” community justice, and the “difficult coexistence” of state and non-state actors.
