El panorama de la izquierda actual en Latinoamérica ha sido descrito muchas veces en los últimos tiempos y seguirá siendo objeto de interpretaciones apasionadas, tal vez que contiene: a) La novedad de un retorno después de largos inviernos militaristas y primaveras democráticas que no llegaron a la base popular de la pirámide, y b) Un verdadero smorgasbord o ensalada de tendencias.
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Fidel Castro es el decano de la izquierda latinoamericana. Casi medio siglo en el poder gracias a dos factores consecutivos. Primero, la agresión de los EE UU. Acostumbrados, desde las épocas de la Enmienda Platt, a dominar la isla, los EE UU se encontraron, en la revolución castrista, con la horma de su zapato”. Increíble juego de equívocos: la hostilidad de diez Administraciones norteamericanas no ha hecho sino afianzar el poder de Castro. Una famosa caricatura muestra a cada mandatario estadounidense a partir de Eisenhower entonando la mantra “Fidel Castro está a punto de caer”. Los intentos de normalización de Carter y Clinton fracasaron: no le convenían a Castro, quien -segundo factor- ha montado un aparato autoritario sobre la base de la defensa contra el imperialismo yanqui. Esto convierte a cualquier opositor, ipso facto, en traidor potencial. La maquinaria totalitaria es aceitada por el enemigo y se lubrica a sí misma.
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Lo que no le funciona a Castro es la economía.
Los intentos de diversificación han fracasado, Cuba ha regresado al monocultivo y a la explotación turística. Una economía gigoló fue sostenida largo tiempo por la hoy extinta URSS artificialmente abandonada al terminar la guerra fría y rescatada de nuevo por la munificencia petrolera de Hugo Chávez. Los méritos de Cuba -educación y salud- deben sobrevivir al régimen. Y la ayuda de Chávez es tan pasajera como el personaje mismo.
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Montado sobre la quinta producción mundial del petróleo, Hugo Chávez se pasea como gobernante de izquierda cuando en verdad es un Mussolini tropical, dispuesto a prodigar con benevolencia la riqueza petrolera, pero sacrificando las fuentes de producción de empleo. Ataca a los EE UU en materia comercial (el ALCA), pero no toca con una pluma la relación petrolera que sufraga el gobierno de Caracas. Como Perón, combina un discurso populista con grandes dosis de filantropía social. Al contrario de Perón, no construye una industria local diversificada. Chávez y sus espejismos se disiparán. Una población desencantada buscará nuevos caminos sin haber aprendido demasiado. La izquierda venezolana debe construir ya su proyecto postchavista.
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En otro extremo de América, como diría Daniel Cosío Villegas, se encuentran las izquierdas.
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Titubeante aún el régimen de Néstor Kirchner en Argentina, indeciso entre un neoperonismo intolerante y un neoperonismo blando.
Sorpresivo el Gobierno de Tabaré Vázquez en Uruguay, ágil en su defensa del interés nacional por encima de los rubros izquierda-derecha; muy especial el caso de Brasil, con un presidente Lula que ha propiciado un enorme éxito económico y comercial, pero que decepciona a su base electoral popular y se mancha con escándalos de corrupción tan melodramáticos como los múltiples rostros de la ex eminencia gris del régimen, José Dirceu.
Excluido el Lord Chaney de la política brasileña, es de desear que el Gobierno de Lula, derrotado de antemano en las venideras elecciones, deje un terreno lo menos destrozado posible a sus sucesores.
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La otra cara de la izquierda en Latinoamérica la representa, por supuesto, Ricardo Lagos. Bajo su mandato, el pinochetismo ha sido enterrado por la autoridad judicial (revelando, de paso, que el atroz tirano era también un siniestro ladrón, jefe de una mafiosa familia de cacos cínicos) y el Ejecutivo se ha dedicado a no condenar el pasado, sino a construir el futuro. Mercado y Estado: el equilibrio entre ambos factores ha asegurado el veloz (e incompleto) desarrollo de Chile bajo el socialismo. La pobreza ha descendido del 40% al 18%. Todavía es mucha pobreza: Michelle Bachelet tiene la mesa puesta. Pero Lagos deja atrás un modelo superado: el Consenso de Washington que no compaginó grado de inversión con crecimiento sostenido, ni mayor crecimiento con mayor equidad. Y llega a Bachelet un modelo en construcción que supone preservar el equilibrio macroeconómico a fin de atender con urgencia el retraso microeconómico: crecimiento con empleo, infraestructura, educación, redistribución y oportunidades.
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Es este punto que, a grandes rasgos, le convierte en una izquierda mexicana renovada, que hoy representa Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Satanizado como heredopopulista y demagogo, López Obrador acaba de dar una señal muy positiva en el discurso inaugural de su campaña en Metlatonoc, Guerrero. “Que se escuche bien y se escuche lejos: sí habrá economía de mercado, pero el Estado promoverá el desarrollo social para combatir las desigualdades”. Y añadió: “Sí habrá orden macroeconómico, disciplina en el manejo de la inflación y el déficit público”. Y, sobre todo, calificó que tanto micro como macroeconomía deberán combatir a la pobreza que es, lo sabemos todos, la lacra más dolorosa y permanente de México desde que Humboldt nos definió, a principios del siglo XIX, como el país de la desigualdad y nuestra debilidad mayor, como lo ilustra la excelente novela de Ignacio Solares sobre la guerra México-norteamericana de 1948, La Invasión.
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Habrá tiempo de regresar sobre las propuestas del candidato López Obrador, expresando la esperanza de que su camino sea más el de Lagos que el de Chávez, y la seguridad de que ni Lagos ni Chávez son, en pureza, repetibles en un país que comparte una frontera de tres mil kilómetros con la primera potencia mundial. Situación que tampoco concierne al último izquierdista en llegar al poder en Latinoamérica, Evo Morales. Electo con una clara mayoría, Morales confirma un giro positivo de la política latinoamericana: la izquierda puede llegar al poder por la vía electoral. No hace mucho, esto era inconcebible. La izquierda no tenía más recurso que la insurrección armada. Sin duda, Evo Morales es consciente de que su elección lo compromete no sólo a él, sino al maltratado pueblo de Bolivia, a mantener con claridad e inteligencia los mismos procesos políticos libres que los llevaron, por primera vez, al poder.”
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Historians have had difficulties in finding precedents for the current situation in Venezuela in Latin America’s past. Perhaps in the 19th century dictators such as Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, Juan Manuel de Rosas and Antonio López de Santa Anna could have fallen ill and delegated their power for a while. In an interview with the American journalist James Creelman, Porfirio Díaz confessed that he’d got sick in 1907 and retired to Cuernavaca for a few weeks. He also said that when he then noticed the price of Mexican stocks falling, he decided to return to the palace at Chapultepec.
And that was in the slow and nautical 19th century, when the only public sphere that existed was in the printed press and news took two days to travel from Havana to Mexico City. How can we understand an absence as long as that of Chávez, which has also occurred with a process of presidential succession in the middle, in this accelerated 21st century? The only way of doing so is based on a non-republican vision of politics in which the presidency is not an office which is conferred on one by the people but rather a mandate from heaven.
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It’s difficult to find precedents for the case of Chavez even in a region with such weak democratic traditions as those of Latin America, because even here it has been regarded as obvious that a gravely ill president should resign, or at the very least not run for a third term. Hard though the official media in Caracas and Havana try to have us do so, it’s impossible to regard as normal that a president should spend two months convalescing in another country without a single public appearance, and sign in one capital decrees dated in another.
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There are no cultural explanations for what is going on in Venezuela. Chavismo is not a spontaneous and inevitable fruit of Venezuela’s national character nor is it a typical product of the Caribbean. As the former vice-president of Nicaragua Sergio Ramírez reminded President José Mujica of Uruguay – who had said that the Caribbean was the land of “real popular caudillos” – populism has been a widespread phenomenon in Latin America and it must also be recalled that Caribbean and Central American societies like Colombia, Costa Rica and Panamá have significant histories of democratic culture and practices
Among the various options available to the National Assembly when Chávez didn’t appear on January 10: to make its own president the interim president of the nation, declare the president to be temporarily absent and, call for new elections, it chose the least democratic and most unconstitutional option, to indefinitely postpone the swearing in (to be carried before the Supreme Court at some unspecified future point) and to install a de facto government in Venezuela to rule in the name of the Comandante Presidente. Chávez’s successors, with the blessing of Fidel and Raúl Castro have set up what is in effect a monarchical or theological regime.
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In his 2008 biography of Chávez (El poder y el delirio) the Mexican historian Enrique Krauze was already talking about a discernible “revolutionary theology” in chavista discourse. This is not just the normal messianism of any 20th century caudillo whether of the left or right nor the everyday demagogy of Latin American politics. No, what has occurred in Venezuela is that a new profane religion has been founded, a political religion which has replaced the old Marxist ideology with a mechanical and exalted list of allusions to Christ, Che Guevara and Bolívar.
In spite his strong personal links with Fidel Castro, the language of Hugo Chávez – and that of his successors – is different from that of the communists in that it has a strong Christian element. What’s curious about this is that it didn’t appear in the 1990s or during the first phase of his rule but rather in the middle of the previous decade when he set out on his project of transition to “21st century socialism” after his victory in the 2006 presidential election.
The chavista religion has, obviously, a real popular basis derived from the misiones and other social programs directed at the poor. However, it also includes an artificial dimension consisting of symbolic engineering done from above and put in place by a new political elite intent on extending its hegemony. Perhaps it’s this instrumental use of Christianity which has produced the break in relations between thechavistas and the Roman Catholic Church, an institution which enjoys splendid relations with Raúl Castro and the Cuban Communist Party.
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The theology of the new religion helps us understand why Chávez decided to be treated in Cuba and not in his own country. Cuba is the perfect place to hide the body of the caudillo, to make it disappear from the media at the same time as it is being symbolically invoked. The absence of Chávez is a necessary condition for his apotheosis in the personality cult visible on the streets of Caracas and for the production of a sense of waiting for the return of the Messiah, saved by the miracles of Cuban medicine.
While the Venezuela opposition appeals to constitutional rationality, chavismo hides behind miracle politics. Although there’s no evidence that he himself has signed a single decree, Chávez is “acting president”. His swearing in can be postponed indefinitely because the office of president is his on a transcendental level, regardless of the “formalities” of periods in office and other democratic norms.
In the chavista approach to politics, the presidency is not a position or a public service to which one accedes on the basis of winning elections, it is rather a throne. What is going on now in Venezuela is one of the negative effects of the 2009 constitutional amendment which put an end to presidential term limits, an amendment that was passed with the support of 54% of the electorate, more or less the same percentage of electors who would re-elect Chávez in 2012.
The “popular will” to which chavistas appeal to justify re-election with no limits and now the indefinite exercise of power by Chávez as “acting president” represents a little more than half of the electorate of Venezuela. This majority has sufficed to implement an authoritarian succession. With full control of the three branches of state power the chavistas are able to reaffirm Chávez as perpetual president; as long as there’s life in his body he’ll be president, even if he’s unable to effectively govern.
The construction of hegemony is a normal phenomenon in democracies. What is authoritarian in this case is the specific way that hegemony is being exercised, turning a blind eye to the Constitution and the basic rules not only of democracy but of republican government. Whether or not Chávez recovers, whether or not he returns, the imposition of an interim de facto government, not based on the legal norms of the state, is one of the clearest examples of the new despotism of 21st century Latin America.
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In this Jan. 22, 2013 photo, a street artist's painting of Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez sits for sale in Caracas, Venezuela. While Venezuela's sick president recuperates from surgery in Cuba, in Venezuela he is alive and well, at least in spirit
Martyr and messiah are also words that can be bandied about fairly loosely — so a simple word-search on “messiah” will reveal references to a third-person platform game with some gunplay and the white messiah fable in Avatar, while a search on “martyr” might tell you how to become a martyr for affiliate networks, just as a search on “crusade” will turn up crusades for justice or mental health – my search today even pointed me to a crusade for cloth diapers.
Unsurprisingly, perhaps, both terms crop up occasionally in WikiLeaks, with the Government of Iraq, for instance, banning use of the word “martyr” for soldiers who died in the war with Iran, and US diplomats wiring home a report by an opposition psychiatrist to the effect that “Morally, Chavez [of Venezuela] combines a sense of tragedy and romanticism (a desire for an idyllic world) to project a messianic image.”
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