Social movements have long
been a fixture on the Latin
American landscape. Indeed,
at the very time that NACLA was
founded in 1967, highland
Peruvians were invading public
lands in Lima to establish their
highly organized squatters’ com-
munities, liberation theologians
were organizing ecclesial base
communities in cities and villages
from El Salvador to Chile, Paulo
Freire and his followers were using
literacy programs to stimulate the
Brazilian poor to engage in collec-
tive struggle for land and social jus-
tice, and impoverished Jamaicans
were joining their neighbors in “share-pot” groups in the country-
side and in Kingston slums. But it
has only been in the last 15 years or
so that the importance and potential
of social movements have been
Judith Adler Hellman is Professor of Political and Social Science at York
University Toronto. She was involved in
the founding of NACLA in 1967 and
worked as a staff member in 1970-71.
She would like to thank Barry Carr and
Steve Hellman for their helpful comments.
appreciated-if sometimes over-
stated-by progressive analysts
and activists who are looking for
grounds for optimism.
Thirty years ago, the focus of our
attention and hope was the Cuban
Revolution. The readers and writers
of the NACLA Newsletter tended to
view the future of Latin America
and the Caribbean as resting on the
possibility of reproducing some-
thing like the Cuban model else-
where in the region. Debates cen-
tered on the viability of the guerrilla
foco as a “road to revolution,” the
feasibility of guerrilla struggle in
countries like Argentina and
Uruguay that lack Sierra Maestra
mountains, the relative advantage
of rural or urban fronts, and the
wisdom of Che’s decision to open a
South America-wide foco in
Bolivia.
The descant in this discussion
were the loud notes sounded by
those asserting that the electoral
road to socialism was still viable or
that the organized urban workers re-
mained the vanguard class.
Arguments raged over the relative
The February 1976 cover of NACLA’s Latin America & Empire Report.
revolutionary potential of agricul-
tural wage workers, small-holding
peasants, tenants, sharecroppers, the
urban industrial working class, and
sometimes, even the “new middle
classes” and the “progressive
national bourgeoisie.” What was
taken as given, however, by almost
all progressives concerned with
Latin America, was that socialist
revolution and the acquisition of
state power were the goals, and the
only open question was what would
prove the most appropriate means
to those ends.
Vol XXX, No 6 MAY/JUNE 199713 Vol XXX, No 6 MAY/JUNE 1997 13ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
The social movements that today
are so central to our discussions and
our hopes for a more humane future
in Latin America were not entirely
ignored, but they tended to be
viewed simply as building blocks in
the more elaborate project of the
total revolutionary transformation
of society. Squatters’ movements,
self-help or literacy groups, cooper-
atives and community organiza-
tions of every sort were seen as
instances of “pre-political” people
taking their first halting steps
toward the kind of consciousness
and the practical participatory skills
that would eventually allow them to
become protagonists in a revolu-
tionary scenario.’
The triumph of the revolutionary
forces in Nicaragua and Grenada
inevitably reinforced this view of
social movements as building
blocks. Grassroots groups, middle-
class business associations, labor
unions and peasant movements
were all key com-
ponents in the
coalition of forces
that brought the
Sandinistas to
power in Nica-
ragua. In Grenada,
the victory of
Maurice Bishop
and the New
Jewel Movement
was made possi-
ble only after the
Joint Endeavor
for Welfare, Edu-
cation and Lib-
eration (JEWEL), The March 1974
a social move- Latin America & Er
ment comprised of community-
level organizations and rural and
urban workers, drew the multiclass
participation of students, nurses,
trade unionists and the Chamber of
Commerce. Typically, when dis-
cussing the social movements that
gave support to the Nicaraguan or
Fithin the short space of several years, mass organizations
V have emerged in El Salvador capable of mobilizing hun-
dreds of thousands thoughout the country; capable of articulat- ing the immediate demands of the people for land, water, jobs, justice; capable of unifying the struggles of many sectors and transforming them into a political movement. These mass orga-
nizations, in combination with the political-military organiza- tions formed in the early 1970s, pose a clear challenge to the hegemony of the bourgeoisie. -March/April 1980, Volt. 14, No. 2
The move to organize has the strongest possible support of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). Yet major questions remain unresolved. What type of relationship should exist between the mass organizations and the FSLN, or the state? How will the newly introduced concept, “Popular Power,” be put into practice? How will the immediate needs of the masses be balanced with the long-term goals of the revolution? How will the working class be unified? The ultimate character of the rev- olution will be determined by the way in which these questions are answered, not just in theory, but as real contradictions emerge that must be dealt with.
-May/June 1980, Vol. 14, No. 3
Grenadian revolu-
tions, what mattered
to most commenta-
tors was not the
movements them-
selves, but the con-
tribution they made
to the larger revolu-
tionary project.
ut as hopes
for socialist
revolution
began to recede in
the wake of the sav-
age coups in Chile
over of NACLA’s and Grenada, the pire Report. defeat of guerrilla
forces throughout South America
and the electoral rejection of the
Sandinistas, social movements
began to be viewed in a different
light. And once disillusionment
with the Cuban Revolution began to
set in as well, expectations of full-
scale revolutionary transformation
diminished, and interest and hope
increasingly came to focus on
small-scale, localized movements. 2
With the collapse of what could
be called the “grand narratives,”
passions were transferred to a huge
range and variety of activities that
came to be grouped under the ever-
broader heading of “social move-
ments” or “new social movements.”
One form of movement included in
this category is the neighborhood-
based urban popular movement,
which organizes to fight for housing
and public services like electricity,
potable water, sewage lines, paved
streets, public transport and-at a
more developed stage-schools,
clinics and stores. Local self-help
organizations, cooperative soup
kitchens and literacy programs also
figure on virtually everyone’s list,
along with ecclesial base communi-
ties (CEBs) in which nuns, priests
and lay Catholics organize among
the poor to combine popular reli-
gious practices with the struggle for
collective goods.
14 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS
c
nF
14 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
In addition to these initiatives,
any comprehensive list of social
movements would include human
rights groups, environmental and
indigenous peoples’ organizations,
youth, student and women’s move-
ments, gay and lesbian groups,
debtors’ movements and popular
cultural associations. For some, the
definition begins to stretch too wide
when it goes beyond the “social” to
include class-based and partisan
struggles. 3 But increasingly, urban
and rural-based trade unions and
progressive political parties are also
discussed in the context of social
movements or grassroots organiza-
tions. So too are the activities of
cross-border solidarity organiza-
tions, Internet-exchange groups, an
immense array of often highly insti-
tutionalized domestic and interna-
tional nongovernmental organiza-
tions (NGOs), micro-enterprises of
every stripe and, sometimes, the
entire informal economy, which
outstrips the formal economy in size
in many parts of Latin America.
In effect, the definition of social
movements is so loose that it not
only responds to the needs of pro-
gressive people in a post-
Communist world who seek to
invest their hopes and energies in an
appropriate cause; it also serves the
needs of apologists for neoliberal-
ism who borrow World Bank lan-
guage to pose self-financing or
NGO-financed popular organiza-
tions as the principal promoters of
“development with a human face.”
In the neoliberal model, popular
self-help organizations fill the vacu-
um created by the withdrawal of
state funding for social services. 4
Ironically, social movements are
simultaneously acclaimed by enthu-
siasts at opposite ends of the ideo-
logical spectrum as an expression of
popular resistance that may rescue
the world (or at least movement par-
ticipants) from the predations of
neoliberal policies and as a tool
through which neoliberal programs
rEoday’s popular struggles point to practical ways for the
left to embrace democracy and to critique neoliberal ideol-
ogy. In their struggle to broaden participation beyond the act
of voting, people aren’t rejecting elections, but rather making
use of them. Similarly, the broad, autonomous and pluralist
activity of the organizations of civil society have swept aside
the old party structures and the social organizations tradition-
ally linked to them.
-Ruben Zamora, July/August 1995, Vol. 29, No. 7
The Mexican Student Movement of 1968 was without a doubt
one of the most broad-based and powerful of the similar
movements that shook many countries around the world that
same year…. The past ten years of struggle by students, teachers
and university workers have contributed to the forging of thou-
sands of activists…. These ten years of struggles by campesinos,
workers and students have formed the backbone of the
oppressed classes’ struggle for a new radically different nation.
-SeptemberlOctober 1978, Vol. 12, No. 5
can be made to work more effec-
tively.
Under the circumstances, discern-
ing the definitional boundaries of
what constitutes a progressive
social movement poses some real
difficulties, especially for those
who assume that anything “popular”
is necessarily progressive. In reali-
ty, the Christian right has enjoyed
considerable success organizing at
the grassroots in Latin America.
And other organizations that fit the
definition of “popular movement”
may be as reactionary as the funda-
mentalist evangelicals, while others
with progressive potential may be
turned to conservative purpose
when they are captured by the state
or by personalistic populist leaders.
The concept of civil society is as
difficult to define as social move-
ments. There is general agreement
that social movements arise and
develop somewhere in something
called “civil society.” But at times,
the definition that runs through such
discussions is no more precise than
to label as “civil society” all move-
ments that we admire, and “not civil
society” what we don’t like or don’t
trust.
For example, for most analysts
and activists, autonomous trade
unions are a part of civil society, but
oficialista unions (and independent
unions that have grown corrupt) are
not. If we take Mexico as an exam-
ple, unions affiliated with the offi-
cial Institutional Revolutionary
Party (PRI) would not be consid-
ered part of civil society, but the
“democratic currents” that arise
within them would. Indeed, the
problem of describing all popular
organizations as civil society is
nowhere demonstrated more clearly
than in Mexico. If a union or associ-
ation of some kind is organized
from the top down in order to co-
opt and manipulate people, it seems
reasonable that we would not think
of it as an element of civil society.
But if it is organized from the bot-
tom up, and only later is co-opted
and captured by the state-as so
many popular organizations in
Mexico have been-then it is diffi-
cult to know at what point we
should no longer consider it part of
Vol XXX, No 6 MAY/JUNE 199715 Vol XXX, No 6 MAY/JUNE 1997 15ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
civil society and see it instead as
part of the state apparatus.
In an earlier essay in NACLA’s
thirtieth-anniversary series, Steven
Volk adopts an inclusive definition
stressing that “civil society is that
civic space which lies outside the
direct control of the state and the
market…. Civil society suggests a
complex assortment of nonstate
organizations concerned with a vast
array of issues and operating on
myriad levels: from household life
to trade unions, and from self-help
movements and community associ-
ations to political parties.”5 In more
general terms, NACLA has consis-
tently looked on the widest possible
range of activities as worthy of cov-
erage. Appropriately enough, the
May1992 issue on “The Latin
American Left” included articles on
women’s organizations, environ-
mentalism, autonomous peasant
movements and the Workers Party
in Brazil. Strikingly, the NACLA
Report has devoted a great deal of
attention to new movements of
every kind. But it has also continued
to place emphasis and confidence in
%I 4QZ
the progressive potential of political parties and electoral coalitions, as in the issue entitled “Introduction to Hope: The Left in Local Politics,” which highlighted the Broad Front in Uruguay, the Workers Party in Brazil, the Farabundo Martf National Liberation Front in El Salvador, and the Movement Toward Socialism and Radical Cause in Venezuela. 6
f the image of social movements
as the building blocks of social-
ist revolution has largely been
abandoned, it has been replaced by
other expectations. Movements are
credited with the capacity to trans-
form consciousness and prepare
their members to take a more active,
militant, participatory role in soci-
ety. They are posed as playing a key
role in the process of democratiza-
tion in Latin America. And peasant
and indigenous movements are
often seen as the only forces capa-
ble of promoting appropriate tech-
nology and sustainable develop-
ment in the face of the destructive
onslaught of global capital.
Indigenous movements are grappling with a cen- tral question faced by “modern” society every- where: If we are to have democratic, multi-ethnic and multi-class societies, what sort of social and political organization can ensure equality and mutu- al respect? The answers they propose eschew both the separatist nationalism now ascendant in Europe and the seizure of state power that until recently inspired Latin America’s revolutionaries.
-NovemberlDecember 1991, Vol. 25, No. 3
The majority of homeless activists are women, and women’s struggle has been at the core of the transition from local activism to politics on a grander scale…. Neighborhood activists have concluded that only national political change can resolve their prob- lems. As the drama of each country’s crisis draws the movements into “politics,” they face a dilemma: Will working with the government or various opposition parties compromise their autonomy, and their ability to work for fundamental change?”
-November/December 1989, Vol. 23, No. 4
But these are tall orders to fill.
While they have enormous transfor-
mative potential, in practice, the
outcomes of social movements are
not always positive. For example,
the process of “empowerment” that
so many analysts celebrate is almost
always confined to the realm of sub-
jective feelings. To be sure,
increased self-confidence and the
development of organizational
skills and practical knowledge (the
elements that for most observers
constitute the “power” in empower-
ment) undoubtedly represent sub-
stantial gains for a powerless per-
son. Yet, rarely does empowerment
involve the actual acquisition of
economic or political power. What
is more, with all the talk of empow-
erment, there is little recognition
that people may not only become
empowered with the sense of their
own expanded capabilities, but also
“disempowered” and ultimately
demobilized.
This kind of disempowerment
may occur when a movement is co-
opted or repressed. But it may also
occur when participants grow dis-
couraged and disillusioned with the
dynamics of group participation,
the behavior of their co-activists
who rise to leadership positions, or
the bossiness of foreign or middle-
and upper-class NGO workers-to
cite but a few negative possibilities.
Oddly, many analysts of Latin
American social movements who
have themselves experienced many
periods of disillusionment in the
course of their own lives of political
struggle fail to acknowledge, or per-
haps even to consider, that a neigh-
borhood activist can get pretty fed
up with her neighbors, or that such
movements decline not only in
response to repression or co-opta-
tion, but to loss of enthusiasm for
collective activity itself on the part
of burnt-out social activists. In real-
ity, women may not only emerge
from the isolation of the patriarchal
family to work together with others
NACI6A REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 16ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
November/December 1989 cover of NAC LA
Report on the Americas.
in a soup kitchen; they may also
retreat back into the private sphere
of the family-however oppres-
sive-when relationships with co-
activists become too difficult and
complex to manage or even bear.
, If the claims surrounding empow-
erment as a one-way journey are
sometimes exaggerated, so too is
the confidence in the democratizing
potential of social movements.
While social movements played a
direct role in the consolidation of
democracy in Brazil, Chile and
Argentina, elsewhere in Latin
America the connection is not near-
ly so strong. In Mexico, for exam-
ple, the social-movement sector has
been in constant and rapid expan-
sion since 1968, while only painful-
ly slow-and in some periods-no
progress has been made toward
institutionalizing a more democratic
political system.
Just as misleading is the tendency
of some analysts to conflate the
internal dynamics of movements
with their impact on the political
system as a whole. In fact, there is
an important distinction to be drawn
between a movement’s internal
practices (which may or may not
be more open, less hierarchical
and more participatory than
those of traditional political for-
mations) and its capacity to push
the whole political system in
that direction. As one author has
noted, while the movements
may “allow for some degree of
internal democracy at some
point of their trajectory…the
democratization of social rela-
tions does not necessarily entail
democratization at the institu-
tional level of politics.”‘
Furthermore, at times the inter-
nal structures of movements are
not even very democratic. In-
stead they may reflect the
broader political culture and
social relations in which they
are embedded. For example,
women and illiterate peasants
often form the base of social move-
ments in which leadership is exer-
cized by men or middle-class intel-
lectuals, and decision making may
even reside in the hands of foreign
NGO workers. In movements like
those that have developed in
Mexico-a political system domi-
nated and shaped by patronage pol-
itics-new organizations may chal-
lenge the personalism of the old
PRI-linked system of corruption
and political control. But they often
end up replacing the old networks
with alternative channels that are
clientelistic, rather than democratic,
in their mode of operation. 8
Often, along with the belief in the
potential of social movements to
“empower” poor people and to
democratize authoritarian systems
comes the expectation that rural
activists can point the way to a better
future for all humankind. As such,
hopes for the development of envi-
ronmentally sustainable practices
have come to rest on the shoulders of
indigenous and peasant activists who
have combined ongoing struggles
for the recognition of their identity,
autonomy and land rights with the
revival or retention of traditional
resource use. Although comprised of
the poorest and most marginalized
members of their societies, these
rural movements have sprung to life
throughout Latin America, reconfig-
uring the ways in which we think
about development and the environ-
ment and capturing the imagination
of people around the world.
Not surprisingly, however, even
when they are not repressed outright
or demobilized by co-optation,
indigenous and peasant movements
may fail to live up to the expecta-
tions others have of them as natural-
resource managers or the guardians
of the environment. Often it is the
poorest, most isolated peasants who
engage in traditional practices. Far
from pointing a way toward a sus-
tainable alternative to modem and
destructive technologies, these
practices are regarded by other cul-
tivators, and sometimes even by
those who engage in them, not as a
viable alternative but as a form of
backwardness to be abandoned at
the first opportunity. 9
Still, notwithstanding this funda-
mental contradiction, indigenous
movements have emerged, both lit-
erally and figuratively, at the fore-
front of struggle in the Americas.’ 0
In the face of the inability of politi-
cal parties to develop a coherent
alternative to neoliberalism, pro-
gressive people around the world
have looked to the most marginal-
ized women and men in the poorest
regions of Latin America to articu-
late an alternative and spearhead the
resistance. And, in a remarkable and
largely unexpected development, it
is precisely this that occurred with
the New Year’s Day uprising of the
Zapatista Army of National
Liberation (EZLN) in Chiapas in
1994. From the day they said “no”
to NAFTA, the Zapatistas assumed
leadership of an international resis-
tance to global capitalism, drawing
activists from around the world to
the Lancandon forest to formulate a
Vol XXX, No 6 MAY/JuNE 1997 17ANNIVERSARY ESSAY/ SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
program to oppose the neoliberal
project in all its manifestations.
he vast array of activities that
come under the heading of
social or grassroots move-
ments presents a full range of mixed
and often contradictory possibilities.
For example, the ecclesial base com-
munities that emerged in Brazil gen-
erally radicalized slum dwellers
there while in Colombia, the CEBs
evolved into a tool of the conserva-
tive Catholic hierarchy and exerted a
fundamentally conservative influ-
ence over the poor people they orga-
nized. 1 ‘ Or, to take another example,
micro-enterprises, a favorite project
of international-aid givers, may
develop into democratically man-
aged cooperative projects, or they
may become a further source of
inequality and stratification-not to
mention tension and even
violence-in poor communities.
This variety of possible outcomes
for movements makes the invest-
ment of hope, energy and solidarity
in grassroots activities a more com-
plicated matter than was support for
socialist revolution 30 years ago.
Compared with our situation today,
confidence in the outcome of social-
ist revolution was straightforward
and clear. In 1967, people on the left
shared a considerable level of
agreement on what a socialist revo-
lution was bound to do once it came
to power. It remained only for us to
support revolution in Latin America
anu Lto try to bring
about the same at
home.
Today we are
mostly focusing our
hopes on more lim-
ited endeavors. This
was made clear by
two former revolu-
tionary militants
who spoke to
NACLA reporters
about their transition
from the comnrehen- OT VVorKers frowE sive political strug-
gles of the past to the new politics of
grassroots movements. These
activists said they found it neces-
sary to develop “a new discourse,
one that was a good deal narrower
and more concrete and with more
opportunities for small success-
es.”‘ 2 The activists “brought certain
agendas to communities which had
agendas of their own,” they said. In
the course of the interactions, “new
forms of political action emerged.”
This connection with popular strug-
gles “has narrowed the organizers’
agenda.”13
Increasingly, then, the small-scale
victories of social movements can
be seen for what they are: the cul-
mination of the courageous, ener-
getic drive of powerless people to
gain more control over
their lives and immedi-
ate circumstances. As
long as they limit their
efforts to the struggle for
relatively narrow, con-
crete goals, they are eas-
ier to get off the ground
and easier to sustain. As
such, however, they risk
political insignificance.
The danger is that the
movements “are local
and small and fighting
for the same small
things,” as a social movement
leader himself explained. “These
small organizations, if not linked to
some larger project, lack political
impact. They become competitive
and parochial.” 1 4 In short, these
movements have the potential to
evolve into more thoroughgoing,
more radically transformative
forces. But this potential can only
be realized when their vision and
goals are broadened, and when they
manage to ally with others in a
wider political organization-or
even, a political party.E
1. Eric Hobsbawm describes as “pre-political” those “who have not
yet found, or only begun to find, a specific language in which to
express their aspirations about the world. Though their move-
ments are thus in many respects blind and groping, by the stan-
dards of modern ones, they are neither unimportant nor marginal.”
Primitive Rebels (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1959), p. 2.
2. See Fernando Calderon, Alejandro Piscitelli and Jose Luis Reyna, “Social Movements: Actors, Theories, Expectations,” in Arturo
Escobar and Sonia E. Alvarez, eds., New Social Movements in Latin
America: Identity Strategy and Democracy (Boulder, Colorado:
Westview Press, 1992), p. 19.
3. See Judith Adler Hellman, “The Riddle of New Social Movements:
Who They Are and What They Do,” in Sandor Halebsky and
Richard L. Harris, eds., Capital, Power and Inequality in Latin
America (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), pp. 165-83.
4. See Laura Macdonald, “A Mixed Blessing: The NGO Boom in Latin
America,” NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. 28, No. 5, March/April 1995, pp. 30-5.
5. Steven Volk, ” ‘Democracy’ Versus ‘Democracy,’ ” NACLA Report
on the Americas, Vol. 30, No. 4, January/February 1997, p. 8.
6. “Introduction to Hope: The Left in Local Politics,” NACLA Report
on the Americas, Vol. 29, No. 1, July/August 1995.
7. Renato Boschi, “On Social Movements and Democratization:
Theoretical Issues,” Stanford-Berkeley Occasional Papers in Latin
American Studies, No. 9 (Spring 1984), p. 8.
8. See Judith Adler Hellman, “Mexican Popular Movements,
Clientelism, and the Process of Democratization,” Latin American
Perspectives, Vol. 21, No. 2, Spring 1994, pp. 124-142.
9. Julia E. Murphy, “Rainforest Crunch: Anthropology, Environment-
alism, Forestry and Maya in Central Quintana Roo, Mexico,”
Masters Thesis, York University, 1993.
10. In Canada as well, First-Nations people are often called upon to
lead protests, as in the massive October 1996 “Days of Action”
against the neoliberal program of Ontario’s Conservative govern-
ment.
11. Daniel H. Levine and Scott Mainwaring, “Religion and Popular
Protest in Latin America: Contrasting Experiences,” in Susan
Eckstein, ed., Power and Popular Protest: Latin American Social
Movements (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp.
203-40.
12. David Barkin, Irene Ortiz and Fred Rosen, “Globalization and
Resistance: The Remaking of Mexico,” NACLA Report on the
Americas, Vol. 30, No. 4, January/February 1997, p. 20.
13. Barkin, Ortiz and Rosen, “Globalization and Resistance,” p. 19.
14. Francisco Saucedo, a leader of the Assamblea de Barrios in Mexico
City, cited in Barkin, Ortiz and Rosen, “Globalization and
Resistance,” p. 26.
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