Latin american criticaL thought

Theory and Practice

Aníbal Quijano 

Álvaro García Linera 

Jaime Antonio Preciado Coronado 

Pablo Uc 

Eduardo Grüner 

Marilena Chaui 

Emir Sader

 Rafael Correa

 Theotonio dos Santos 

José Vicente Tavares dos Santos

Clacso

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LatinAmericanCriticalThought:TheoryandPractice / compiladopor Alberto L. Bialakowsky … [et al.]. – 1a ed. – Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires : CLACSO, 2012.
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1. Ensayo Sociológico. I. Bialakowsky, Alberto L. , comp. CDD 301

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Otros descriptores asignados por la Biblioteca Virtual de CLACSO: Pensamiento crítico / Sociología / Buen vivir / Relaciones internacionales / Colonialidad /Cultura / Democracia / Globalización / Izquierda / América Latina

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Latin American Critical Thought. Theory and Practice

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Introduction

Latin American Critical thought: theory and practice

Si la libertad existiera,

sería un verbo.

Si el puño permaneciera,

sería un mástil.

Si la causa no feneciera,

sería una esperanza…

A. L. B.[1] 

The resurgence of latin American critical thought in the late 1990s and the early twenty-first century has brought about some discoveries that distinguish it from the sociological production of the world. It is a scientific framework that has taken on the features of a new social scientific paradigm. A growing number of authors have aligned themselves with this perspective, with visions that include critical readings geared to contributing to transformative social change, in a Latin American context. Thus, we ask ourselves: What are the characteristics that distinguish Latin American critical thought and give it its identity? What are its germinal features and what are its unresolved matters?

A distinguishing feature of this thought is its belonging to social sciences, particularly sociology and its traditions of critical theory, whose roots, as gramsci said, do not come from fundamentalist opposition but rather from the acquisition of scientific certainty on the basis of critical analysis.

In scientific discussion [...] To understand and to evaluate realistically one’s adversary’s position and his reasons (and sometimes one’s adver-sary is the whole of past thought) means precisely to be liberated from the prison of ideologies in the bad sense of the word — that of blind ideological fanaticism. It means taking up a point of view that is ‘critical’, which for the purpose of scientific research is the only fertile one[2].

Here, scientific convergence is not about repeating, reiterating or translating, but, above all, about re-signifying and reversing the meaning of science on the basis of a new objectification agreed by consensus.

This is also a debate on the consensus about social thought, a debate on the intellectual foundation of hegemony. Latin American critical thought is resurfacing after the long period that followed the impasse, or rather the decline, of the ‘Dependency Theory’ of the 1970s and the emergence of the intellectual and ideological domination of neoliberalism, its political apparatuses and governmental technologies that prevailed from the 1980s on. This new critical thought has called into question the hegemonic forms of understanding the capitalist market, the colonization of power and eurocentric assumptions. It has gained strength in line with the development of democratic political forms. When critical Latin American authors refer to the previous decline in critical scholarship / literature, thought point at the role of the genocidal dictatorships in the region. They also find parallels between their own work and social movements, especially the peasant, the indigenous and the urban unemployed movements of the late twentieth century, as well as the landless workers, the Zapatism and the piqueteros, and class fractions that do not have a central place in classical theory. Beyond this consensus, authors seem to differ on the magnitude of the democratic gains in / for the popular sector and the restitution of rights as sources of expansion / in an expansive fashion (1990-2010). There are also disagreements about the ‘populist’ character of these democratic gains when the fragility of the processes of democratization and the close links between these electoral democratic systems and the transnational capitalist market is considered.

This book, a collection / anthology of critical Latin American thought, aims to present a sample of the knowledge produced in the south, in line with international productions, and takes the second isa forum of sociology Social Justice and Democratization to be held at the university of Buenos Aires (2012) as an initial opportunity for this. It puts together the views and analyses of outstanding authors from Latin America, recognizing that their work represents that of  huge number of authors from the region, and also acknowledging the existing language barriers. This collection does not cover the broad range of topics brought about by the re-emergence of critical thought but its outstanding features. With this, we expect to encourage the fluid and symmetrical exchange between peers throughout the world. We also expect to encourage discussions that cover theoretical contents, empirical references as well as epistemological foci.

This is a necessary and urgent dialogue in the context of the current crises in the core nations, taking into account that the concentration of power and wealth in both the north and the south makes them comparable, not so much in their singular aspects as in the nature of the systemic questions that includes and connects them. Speaking at this particular moment in history, in which the very biological existence on the planet is at risk, a question which concerns us (as the type of questions required by the sociological imagination do) arises. Is sociology an applied science, a social resource for a more just and sustainable society? is the knowledge it produces transferable to society? Which are the adequate instruments for this transfer? is it not the case that we still have many deficiencies and insufficient knowledge to address fundamental questions? We can see that social theories have the greatest difficulty to become instruments for change, and at the same time, we see that critical thought can go through — travel across — the networks of collective intellect. The Latin American social phenomenon has as part of its recent experience (2011-2012), university student mobilizations in Chile, Peru, honduras and Mexico. We intend to read them as elements that converge with critical thought, not only as a critique of the system of exclusion but also as a form of inclusion in critical intellectual activity.

As already noted, the epistemic turn, the paradigm shift is necessary, but what is at stake is not only its denunciation or activist content but the alteration in the ways in which scientific knowledge in the social sciences is produced, as well as the individual collective intellectual praxis. This is why a mutation in the epistemic basis of the scientific paradigm is necessary. The transfer of knowledge (the trickling down from the intellectual elite) seems to have reached its limit. The social actors become authors, we see them taking part in national and international meetings, making their influence felt against institutional barriers, fighting to participate. This is a new intellectual sovereignty and a renewed creative autonomy. Thus, we assume that the subordinated / subaltern subjectivity fades away when the collective self / subject places itself as a form of inclusion, and each subject is able to create as a singular author, both diverse from, and in common with others. This participative sociological  imagination has yet to be achieved. The task ahead is to lay the foundations for a productive force. Critical thought, we think, is taking steps in this gregarious and plebian direction. We still do not know whether it will be able to dissolve the matrix of domination that keeps us from dealing with the crisis as a productive intellectual force, comparable or equivalent to the religious formation of / education in the capitalist system.

Here we can quote Aníbal Quijano’s remarks about the lineage of José carlos mariátegui in the seminal pages of Siete ensayos de interpretación de la realidad peruana [seven interpretative essays on Peruvian reality] (1928) which are still fundamental:

This original theoretical and epistemic subversion can be recognized as a source for the production of the Latin American idea of historical-structural heterogeneity, thus breaking with cartesianism’s radical dualism, which is at the origin of eurocentrism and the positivist propensity to reductionism and evolutionism. And without this new starting point we would be unable to come to terms with the new theoretical and political debate about the nature and history of the current world power, especially the lively debate about the theoretical proposal of coloniality and decoloniality of power in Latin America and beyond[3].

The authors in this book, all of them from Latin America, focus on different topics. However, there is a shared logic that goes through the entire work: the awareness that sociology in Latin America is produced between two types of tensions: internal tensions inherited from coloniality, and external tensions that result from the global reach of Latin American critical thought/the developments of Latin American critical thought at the global level. A. Quijano’s contribution to the critique of development from the point of view of the heterotopy of the buen vivir (live well), built on the basis of the experience and knowledge of the Andean World; garcía Linera’s reflection on the original multinational state that acknowledges the autonomy of the indigenous peoples as a nation within the developmentalist state; and the analysis of Jaime Preciado and Pablo uc on the role of cuba in the context of inter-American relations, and the alliances between it and some countries of the region in undermining the us government’s attempts to isolate it and challenging the long-standing Pan-American power structure are important examples that call attention to the internal changes experienced by Latin American sociology.

Similarly, internal change has effects and is affected by external factors that cannot be neglected. First, there is a tradition that takes in the contributions of some european intellectuals to the critique of coloniality. This sheds light on the existence of a critical thought in the north that aims to challenge colonial domination, and is important to recognize the other in the building of the social world. Thus, in the context of what seems to be the crisis of late capitalism and the concomitant death of the so-called postmodern thought, eduardo grüner offers us a stimulating ‘anachronism’ that keeps the intellectual legacy of two outstanding thinkers: Jean-Paul sartre and Pier Paolo Pasolini, who were able to anticipate current debates in the field of postcolonial theory and subaltern studies.On the other hand, it is necessary to bring up to date the debate on culture and democracy in the context of the changes produced by peripheral globalization. In this regard, marilena chaui’s work is crucial, as she reconstructs the meaning of the word culture on the basis of different intellectual and political contexts, explores the relations between culture and democracy in light of the Brazilian experience and outlines the connections between democracy and socialism.

On the other hand, in the current scenario, and as a part of the theoretical challenge facing the Latin American left, it is worth paying attention to emir sader’s remarks about the absence of strategic thinking in line with the current political challenges for the region, and the ardent call to produce theory out of the practices of the region. regarding this, rafael correa’s speech proposes a balance of social sciences in Latin America, mapping the Latin American intellectual heritage, wondering about the meaning of the scientific and social work, and arguing against influences of the neoliberal hegemonic thought, and in favour of a theory which implies corollaries that enable the improvement of our reality. In order to address the regional challenges, the intrinsic complexity of the world system has also to be taken into account. In this vein, Theotonio dos santos argues that such complexity calls for economic and political coordinated action on global issues, rather than the ‘invisible hand’ of the market and the illusion of the law of comparative advantages in world trade. The search of economic and social justice in the context of globalization needs shared development strategies located within a scientific framework built at the global level. Finally, José Vicente Tavares dos santos presents a typology of the development of Latin American sociology and calls for a deeper dialogue with chinese sociology in the search of a sociology of transformation. His work focuses on the role of sociology in analyzing processes of social transformation in Latin America, in the effects of the globalization  of social conflict and in the possibility of an intellectual dialogue with the Asian giant’s sociology.

The debates presented in this book attempt to contribute to a new way of thinking from the south, that it should also be put in the context of broader south-south relations that also integrate other countries producing original and important reflections in several continents of what we call the south and what we call the north.

If freedom existed, it would be a verb. / if the fist persisted, it would be a flagpole. / if the cause did not expire, it would be a hope. / if fists persisted, they would be flagpoles. / if causes did not expire, they would be hopes. A. L. B↵

Gramsci, Antonio 1971 Selections from the prison notebooks of Antonio Gramsci (London: Lawrence & Wishart) p. 657. It is recommended the translation and edition by hoare, Quintin & nowell-smith, geoffrey (London: electBook, 1999).↵

Mariátegui, José carlos 2010 La tarea americana (Buenos Aires: CLACSO) p. 21.↵

‘Live well’

Between the ‘developmen’ and the descoloniality of power[1]

Aníbal Quijano[2]

What i propose here is to open a crucial question of our crucial historical period: ‘Live Well’[3], to be an effective historical achievement, cannot be but a complex of social practices oriented to the democratic production and reproduction of a democratic society, another form of social existence, with its own and specific historical horizon of meaning, radically alternative to the global coloniality of Power and the coloniality / modernity / eurocentred[4]. This pattern of power still today globally hegemonic, but it is also in its moment of deeper and rooted crisis since its constitution more than five hundred years ago. under these conditions, ‘Live Well’, today, can only make sense as an alternative social existence, as a Descoloniality of Power.

‘Development’, a eurocentric paradox: modernity without descoloniality

Development was, especially in the Latin American debate, the key term of a political discourse associated with an elusive project of relative deconcentration and redistribution of the control of the industrial capital in the new geography that was configured in the global colonial-modern capitalism, at the end of the World War II.

At first, this was a virtually official discourse. However, it soon gave rise to complex and contradictory issues that resulted in a rich and intense debate, with global reverb, as a clear expression of the magnitude and depth of the conflicts of political-social interest implied in all that new geography of power, and in Latin America in particular. Thus, it was produced an extensive family of categories (principally, development, underdevelopment, modernization, marginality and participation, of a side; and imperialism, dependency, marginalization and revolution, in the opposite slope) that was unfolding in close relation with the conflicting and violent movements of society, which led to either non-conducive processes or to relatively important, but unfinished, changes in the distribution of power[5].

In a brief way, it might be said that in Latin America the main result was the removal of the ‘oligarchic state’ and some of its instances in the social existence of the population of these countries. But neither its historical-structural dependence in the global coloniality of Power, nor the ways of exploitation and of domination inherent to this pattern of power were eradicated or altered sufficiently to give place to a democratic production and management of the state, nor the resources of production, distribution and appropriation of the product. Not even the debate, in spite of its intensity, managed to be freed of the hegemony of the eurocentrism. In other words, these changes did not lead to ‘development’.Otherwise, it could not be possible to understand why the term always reappears, now for example, as an unfinished past spectre[6].

The global coloniality of power and the spectre of the nation-state

The hegemony of eurocentrism in the debate was leading, in Latin America, to consider the ‘development’ in relation to the nation-state. But in the context of the global coloniality of Power, that perspective was historically irrelevant. even more is, precisely, after the World War ii that this pattern of power entered on a global scale, in a prolonged period of decisive changes which is useful to summarize:

The industrial capital began to link structurally to what then was named ‘scientific-technological revolution’. That relationship implied the reduced requirements of living and individual labour force and, in consequence, of the wage employment as structurally inherent to the capital in its new period. unemployment ceased to be a juncture or cyclical problem. ‘structural unemployment’ was the term coined later by the conventional economists to mean this process.

These trends of change in the relations between capital and labour involved the margin expansion of speculative accumulation as a structural tendency, and not only cyclical, and led to the progressive domination of ‘structural financiarization’. Thus a new industrial-financial capital was setting up, which soon had a relatively rapid global expansion.

A process of technocratization-instrumentalization of the subjectivity of the imaginary, of the whole specific historical horizon of meaning of the colonial / modernity / eurocentred. Strictly, it is a process of increasing abandonment of the initial promises of the so-called ‘modern rationality’ and, in this regard, of a profound change of the ethical and political perspective of the eurocentric original version of the ‘coloniality / modernity’. This did not cease to be, yet his new character, attractive and persuasive, although becoming more and more paradoxical and ambivalent and, ultimately, historically impossible.

The development and the expansion of the new industrialfinancial capital, along with the defeat of the nazi-fascists groups of the world bourgeoisie, in the dispute over the hegemony of capitalism during the World War ii, facilitated the disintegration of european colonialism in Asia and Africa and, at the same time, the prosperity of the bourgeoisies, of the middle classes, and also of important sectors of the exploited workers of the euro-American countries.

The consolidation of the bureaucratic despotism (re-baptized ‘really existing socialism’) and its rapid expansion in and outside europe happened within this same historical course. This form of domination was affected, more and more profound and irreparably, by this technocratic and instrumental current of the colonial / modern ‘rationality’.

In this context, the hegemony of that version of ‘modernity’ operated as the most powerful mechanism of domination of subjectivity, both on the part of the world bourgeoisie as the despotic bureaucracy of the so-called ‘socialist camp’. Thus, notwithstanding their rivalries, both modes of domination / exploitation / conflict, converged in its repressive antagonism to the new movements of the society, in particular in lathe of social ethics concerning labour, gender, subjectivity and collective authority.

It would be more difficult to explain, otherwise, the successful alliance of both forms of domination to defeat (be in Paris, new York, Berlin, rome, Jakarta, Tlatelolco, or in shanghai and Prague) the movements, youth-led in particular, that between the end of the 60s and early 70s of the twentieth century were fighting, minority but all around the world, not only against the work exploitation, against the colonialism and imperialism and against the colonial-imperial wars (in that period, Viet nam was the emblematic case); but also against social ethics of productivism and consumerism, against the pragmatic bourgeois and bureaucratic authoritarianism, against the dominations of ‘race’ and ‘gender’, against the repression of non-conventional forms of sexuality, against the technocratic reductionism of instrumental rationality and for a new aesthetic / ethical / political tessitura. Fighting, consequently, for a radically different historical horizon of meaning that the implied in the coloniality / modernity / eurocentred.

At the same time, a new pattern of conflict emerged. Firstly, the delegitimizing of any domination system mounted on the axis ‘race’ / ‘gender’ / ‘ethnicity’. The trend started already since the end of World War ii, as a result of the global revulsion with regard to the atrocities of the nazism and of the Japanese military authoritarianism. The racism / sexism /ethnicity of those despotic regimes not only were, therefore, defeated in the war; but also and not less important, turned into an illegitimating reference of the racialization, the patriarchy, the ethnicism and the militaristic authoritarianism in power relations. But it was especially during the decade of the 60s of the twentieth century that the great debate about ‘race’ and ‘gender’ could receive a new and definitive expression, announcing the great current global conflict over the control of the respective fields of social practice.

For all that, notwithstanding the defeat of the anti-bureaucratic and anti-authoritarian movements, and of the sequent imposition of the ‘globalization’ of the new global colonial capitalism, the seed of a new historical horizon could survive between the new historical and structural heterogeneity of the world imaginary, and germinates now as one of the greater signs of the Live Well proposal.

The new historical period: the rooted crisis of the global coloniality of power

The development of those new historical tendencies of the industrialfinancial capital, led to this prolonged period of heyday and changes to culminate with the explosion of a rooted crisis in the very pattern of power as such, the global coloniality of Power, as a whole and in its root elements, since the second half of 1973.

With this crisis, the world has entered a new historical period, whose specific processes have equivalent depth, magnitude and implications, but with an almost inverse sign to those of the period we denominate as ‘industrial-Bourgeois revolution’. The terms ‘neoliberalism’, ‘globalization’ and ‘postmodernity’ (that could not be discussed thoroughly here)[7] presented with reasonable efficiency, nevertheless all their ambivalences and complexities, the character and major trends of the new period.

The first point consists, basically, in the definitive imposition of the new financial capital in the control of the colonial / modern global capitalism. In a precise sense, it is the global imposition of the ‘structural unemployment’, fully hatched with the ‘structural financiarization’. The second, in the imposition of that defined plot on all countries and the entire human population, initially in Latin America, with  the bloody dictatorship of general Pinochet in Chile, and later by the politics of the governments of margaret Thatcher and ronald reagan in england and in the united states, respectively, with the endorsement and / or the submission of all the other countries.

That imposition produced social dispersion of exploited workers and the disintegration of their main political and social institutions (trade unions, especially); the defeat and disintegration of the socalled ‘socialist camp’, and of virtually all regimes, movements and political organizations that were linked to it. China, and later Vietnam, opted to become members of the new ‘actually existing capitalism’, industrial-financial and globalized, under a bureaucratic despotism reconfigured as a partner of the largest global financial corporations and of the global imperial Bloc[8].

In a word, ‘postmodernity’ denominates, not completely inappropriately, the definitive imposition of the technocratization-instrumentalization of the up till then known as the ‘modern rationality’. That is, of the coloniality/ modernity / eurocentred.

We are, therefore, immersed in a process of complete reconfiguration of the global coloniality of Power, of the hegemonic pattern of power of the planet. This is, first of all, the acceleration and deepening of a trend of re-concentration of the control of power.

The central tends of this process consists, in a tight inventory, in:

The re-privatization of public spaces, of the state in first term.

The re-concentration of the control of the work, of the resources of production and of the production-distribution.

The extreme and increasing social polarization of the world’s population.

The exacerbation of the ‘exploitation of nature’.

The hyper-fetichization of the market, rather than of the goods.

The manipulation and control of the technological resources of communication and transport for the global imposition of the technocratization-instrumentalization of the coloniality / modernity.

The commodification of the subjectivity and of the experience of life of the individuals, principally of the women.

The universal exacerbation of the individualistic dispersion of persons and of the egoistic behaviour posed as individual freedom, which in practice is equivalent to the universalization of the ‘American dream’ distorted in the nightmare of brutal individual pursuit of wealth and power against the others.

The ‘fundamentalization’ of the religious ideologies and of its corresponding social ethics, which re-legitimate the control of the main realms of social existence.

The increasing use of the so-called ‘cultural industries’ (especially of images, movies, TV, video, etc.) for the industrial production of an imaginary of terror and mystification of the experience, as a way of legitimizing the ‘fundamentalization’ of the ideologies and the repressive violence.

The ‘exploitation of nature’ and the crisis of the global coloniality of power

Although, in a barely allusive way, it would not be pertinent to stop indicating that one of the founding elements of the coloniality / modernity / eurocentred is the new and radical cartesian dualism that separates ‘reason’ and ‘nature’. So, one of the most characteristic ideas / images of eurocentrism, in any of its slopes: the ‘exploitation of nature’ as something that does not require any justification and that is fully expressed in the productivist ethics engendered along with the ‘industrial revolution’. It is not at all difficult to perceive the inherent presence of the idea of ‘race’ as part of ‘nature’[9], as an explanation and justification of the exploitation of the ‘inferior races’.

It is on the basis of this metaphysical mystification of human relationships with the rest of the universe, that the dominant groups of homo sapiens in the global coloniality of Power, especially since the ‘industrial revolution’, have led the species to impose their exploitative hegemony on the other animal species and a predatory conduct on the other existing elements in this planet. And, on that basis, the global colonial capitalism practises a more and more fierce and predatory conduct, that ends up putting at risk not only the survival of the entire species on the planet, but the continuity and the reproduction of the living conditions of any life on earth. under its imposition, today, we are killing each other and destroying our common home-earth.

From this perspective, the so-called ‘global warming’ of the climate on earth, or ‘climatic crisis’, far from being a ‘natural’ phenomenon, that occurs in something that we call ‘nature’ and is separated from us as members of the animal species homo sapiens, is the result of the exacerbation of that global disorientation of the species on earth, imposed by the predatory tendencies of the new industrialfinancial capitalism within the global coloniality of Power. In other words, is one of the core expressions of the root crisis of this specific pattern of power.

The new resistance: towards the descoloniality of power

Since the end of the twentieth century, an increasing proportion of the victims of this pattern of power has begun to resist to these tendencies in, virtually, all the world. The dominators, the ‘officials of the capital’, either as the owners of the largest financial corporations or as the leaders of despotic-bureaucratic regimes, respond with violent repressions, not only within the conventional borders of their own countries; but going through or crossing over them, developing a tendency to global re-colonization, using the most sophisticated technological resources that allow to kill more people, faster, with less cost.

Given these conditions, in the crisis of the global coloniality of Power and, especially, of the coloniality / modernity / eurocentred, the exacerbation of conflict and violence has been established as a global structural trend.

Such exacerbation of the conflict, of the fundamentalisms, of the violence, related to the growing and extreme social polarization of the world’s population, is leading to the resistance itself to configure a new pattern of conflict. The resistance tends to develop as a mode of production of a new sense of the social existence, of the life itself, precisely because the vast population involved perceives, with increasing intensity, that what is at risk now is not only their poverty, as their everlasting experience; but nothing less than their own survival. Such discovery entrails, necessarily, that it is not possible to defend the human life on earth without defending, at the same time, in the same movement, the conditions of life itself on earth.

Thus, the defence of human life, and of the conditions of life on the planet, is being constituted in the new sense of the resistance struggles of the vast majority of the world’s population. And without subverting and disintegrating the global coloniality of Power and its colonial global capitalism, nowadays at its most predatory period, these struggles could not move towards the production of an alternative historical sense to the coloniality / modernity / eurocentred.

Descoloniality of power as continuous democratic production of social existence

In this new historical horizon of meaning, the defence of the conditions of their own life and of the others in this planet is already raised in the struggles and in the alternative social practices of the species; in consequence, against any form of domination / exploitation of social existence. That is to say Descoloniality of Power as a starting point, and the democratic auto-production and reproduction of the social existence as a continuous axis of orientation of the social practices.

It is in this historical context in which it is necessary to locate any discussion and development on the proposal of Live Well. Therefore, it is, first and foremost, to accept it as an open question, not only in the debate, but in the everyday social practice of populations that decide to concoct and dwell historically in this possible new social existence.

To develop and consolidate, the Descoloniality of Power would imply social practices configured by:

The social equality of heterogeneous and diverse individuals, against the unequal racial / sexual / social classification and identification of the world’s population.

Consequently, neither the differences nor the identities would be more the source or the argument of the social inequality of individuals.

Associations, groupings, memberships or belongings and / or identities would be the product of free and autonomous decisions of free and autonomous individuals.

The reciprocity between groups and / or individuals socially equal, in the organization of the work and the distribution of products.

The egalitarian redistribution of tangible and intangible resources and products of the world, among the world population.

The tendency of communal association of the world population, in local, regional or global scale, as a direct mode of production and administration of collective authority and, in this precise sense, as the most effective mechanism of distribution and redistribution of rights, obligations, responsibilities, resources and products, between groups and individuals, in every field of social existence: sex, work, subjectivity, collective authority and co-responsibility in relations with other living beings and other entities on the planet or the entire universe.

The ‘natives’ of the ‘global south’ and the proposal of live well: pending questions

It is not a historical accident that the discussion about the coloniality of Power and the coloniality / modernity / eurocentred has been produced, initially, in Latin America. As well as it is not so that the proposal of Live Well comes from, firstly, the new movement of the Latin American ‘natives’.

Latin America is the world founded in the ‘Accidental indies’ (an ironic reference to the disclosed idea of ‘West indies’)[10]; and for this reason, as the original space and the inaugural time of a new historical world and of a new pattern of power, that of the global coloniality of Power. And likewise, as the original and inaugural space / time of the first ‘indigenization’ of the survivors of the colonizer genocide, as the first population of the world subjected to the ‘racialization’ of their new identity and place dominated in the new pattern of power.

Latin America and the ‘native’ population occupy, therefore, a basal, foundational place in the constitution and history of the coloniality of Power. Hence, their current place and role in the epistemic / theoretic / historic / aesthetic / ethic / politic subversion of this pattern of power in crisis, involved in the proposals of global Descoloniality of Power and Live Well as an alternative social existence.

However, though America, and particularly Latin America, was the first new historical identity of the coloniality of Power and their colonized populations the first ‘natives’ or ‘indians’ of the world; since the eighteenth century, the remaining territory of the planet, with all their populations, was conquered by Western europe. And such populations, the vast majority of the world’s population, were colonized, racialized and, consequently, ‘indigenized’. Their current emergency is not, therefore, one more ’social movement’. It is a whole movement of society whose development could lead to the global Descoloniality of Power, that is, to another social existence, liberated from domination / exploitation / violence.

The crisis of the global coloniality of Power and debate and the struggle for their Descoloniality have demonstrated, to full light, that the social relation of domination / exploitation, founded around the idea of ‘race’, is a product of the history of power and not of the cartesian ‘nature’. But it also make clear the extreme historical heterogeneity of this population ‘indigenized’, first in their prior history to european colonization; second, in which has been produced by the experiences under the coloniality of Power for almost five hundred years and, finally, for the one that is being produced now in the new movement of the society towards the Descoloniality of Power.

It would have no sense to expect that this historically heterogeneous population, which comprises the overwhelmingly vast majority of the world’s population, has produced or nestled a historical homogeneous and universal imaginary as an alternative to the global coloniality of Power. That could not be conceivable, even taking into account exclusively Latin America, or America as a whole.

In fact, all these populations, without exception, are derived from historical experiences of power. To our knowledge, the power seems to have been, throughout known history, not only a phenomenon present in all social existences of long duration, but, more importantly, the main motivation of the historical collective behaviour of the species. Such experiences of power, no doubt, differ from one another and with regard to the coloniality of Power, despite the possible common experiences of colonization.

However, the ‘indigenized’ populations under the colonial domination, first in ‘America’ under iberia, and later worldwide under ‘Western europe’, not only have shared in common, universally, the perverse forms of domination / exploitation imposed with the global coloniality of Power. But also, paradoxical but effectively, in the resistance against it they have gone so far as to share common historical aspirations against the domination, exploitation and discrimination: the social equality of heterogeneous individuals, freedom of thought and expression, of all individuals, the egalitarian redistribution of resources, as well as the equal egalitarian control of all of them, on all main spheres of social existence.

For these reasons, the historical ‘indigenousness’ of the populations victims of the global coloniality of Power, not only encourages the heritage of the past, but the whole learning of the historical resistance of that long term. We are, therefore, walking in the emergence of a new historical identity, historical-structurally heterogeneous as all the others, but whose development could produce a new social existence liberated from domination / exploitation / violence; which is the very heart of the demand of the World social forum: Another World is Possible.

In other words, the new historical horizon of meaning emerges with all their historical-structural heterogeneity. In that perspective, the proposal of Live Well is, necessarily, an open historical question[11] that requires to be inquired, discussed and practiced continuously.

PhD at the major national university of san marcos (unmsm), Peru. master at fLAcso; unesco and the university of Chile. Doctor Honoris Causa at the university of Buenos Aires (uBA), Argentina; university of guadalajara, Mexico; university r. Palma, Peru; and central university of Venezuela, Venezuela. Director at the social investigation centre (ceis), Peru. Professor and Professor-researcher in the main universities of Latin America, and in several of Asia, europe and the united states. ex Vice-president of the Latin American sociological Association (ALAs). member of the international sociological Association (isA); and the first World social forum. He has published several books on coloniality and descoloniality theory; globalization; the social movements and the democratic system, including: Colonialidad del Poder, Globalización y Democracia (Lima: sociedad y Política, 2001); and ‘Poder y Derechos humanos’ in Pimentel, carmen (ed.) Poder, Salud Mental y Derechos Humanos (Lima: cecosAm, 2001).↵

This is a revised and augmented version of the one that was published in Boletín OXFAM Internacional (oxford, uK), may, 2010. Available in spanish at <http:// www.oxfam.org/es>. Translated by eugenia cervio. reviewed and copy edited by Juan Diego incardona.↵

‘Live Well’ and ‘good living’ are the most widespread terms in the discussion about the new movement of society, especially of the indigenized population in Latin America, towards a different social existence to the one that the coloniality of Power has imposed on us. ‘Live Well’ is, probably, the oldest formulation in the ‘indigenous’ resistance against the coloniality of Power. Notably, it was coined in the Viceroyalty of Peru by nothing less than felipe guamán Poma de Ayala, approximately in 1615, in his nueva crónica y buen gobierno. Carolina ortiz fernández is the first one that attracted attention on this historical fact: ‘felipe guamán Poma de Ayala, clorinda matto, Trinidad henríquez y la teoría crítica. Sus legados a la teoría social contemporánea’ in Yuyaykusun (Lima: universidad ricardo Palma), n° 2, December, 2009. The differences may be not linguistic only, but rather, conceptual. It will be necessary to define the alternatives, both in Latin American spanish and in the main variants of Quechua and Aymara in south America. In the Quechua of the north of Peru and ecuador, it is said Allin Kghaway (good Living) or Allin Kghawana (good Way To Live), and in southern Quechua and Bolivia it is usually said Sumac Kawsay and is translated into spanish as ‘Live Well’. But ‘sumac’ means pretty, nice, beautiful, in the north of Peru and in ecuador. This way, for example, ‘Imma Sumac’ (What Beautiful), is the stage name of a famous Peruvian singer. ‘Sumac Kawsay’ would be translated as ‘Live nice’. Inclusive, some unwary eurocentrists pretend that ‘Sumac’ is the same as ‘Suma’ and propose to say Suma Kawsay. ↵

The theory of the coloniality of Power, or global coloniality of Power, and of eurocentrism or coloniality / modernity / eurocentred as its specific historical horizon of meaning, was originally proposed in my texts since the beginning of the last decade of the twentieth century. For the purposes of the current debate, it may be useful to mention the main ones. ‘colonialidad y modernidad / racionalidad’, originally published in Perú Indígena (Lima), Volume 13, n° 29, 1991; ‘Americanity as a concept or the Americas in the modern World-system’, in coauthorship with Wallerstein, immanuel in International Social Science Journal (Paris, unesco/BLAcKWeL), n° 134: 549-557, november, 1992; ‘América Latina en la economía mundial’ in Problemas del Desarrollo (méxico: unAm), Volume XXiV, n° 95, october-December, 1993. ‘raza, etnia y nación: cuestiones Abiertas’ in José Carlos Mariátegui y Europa (Lima: Amauta, 1993) pp. 167-188. ‘colonialité du Pouvoir et Démocratie en Amérique Latine’ in Future Antérieur: Amérique Latine, Démocratie et Exclusion (Paris: L’harmattan, 1994). ‘colonialidad, Poder, cultura y conocimiento en América Latina’ in Anuario Mariateguiano (Lima), Volume iX, n° 9: 113-122, 1998. ‘¡Qué tal raza!’ in Familia y Cambio Social (Lima: cecosAm, 1998). ‘colonialidad del Poder, eurocentrismo y América Latina’ in Lander, edgardo (comp.) 2000 Colonialidad del Saber, Eurocentrismo y Ciencias Sociales (Buenos Aires: cLAcso/unesco) pp. 201 ss. ‘colonialidad del Poder y clasificación social’ originally in Arrighi, giovanni & goldfrank, Walter L. (eds.) 2000 Journal of World-Systems Research (colorado), Volume Vi, n° 2: 342-388, fall-winter. Special issue: festschrift for immanuel Wallerstein; and a reviewed version in San Marcos (Lima: universidad de san marcos), n° 25: 51-104, July, 2006. A global debate on this theory is currently being developed.↵

The names of raúl Prebisch, celso furtado, Aníbal Pinto, fernando henrique cardoso; enzo faletto, Andrew gunder frank, rui mauro marini, Theotonio dos santos, José nun, among the many who took part in this debate, are probably familiar to the majority of the readers. And there is available to this regard, of course, an extensive literature.↵

See: Quijano, Aníbal 2000 ‘el fantasma del Desarrollo en América Latina’ in Revista Venezolana de Economía y Ciencias Sociales (caracas, universidad central de Venezuela), n° 273-91. And, also of the same author: ‘os fantasmas da America Latina’ in Novais, Adauto Oito Visoes da America Latina (são Paulo: senAc, 2006) pp. 49-87.↵

My contribution to the debate of these questions is, principally in: Modernidad, Identidad y Utopía en América Latina (Lima: sociedad y política, 1988); ‘colonialidad del Poder, globalización y Democracia’, originally in Tendencias básicas de nuestra era (caracas: instituto de estudios internacionales Pedro gual, 2001), and a reviewed version in San Marcos (Lima: universidad de san marcos), n° 25, July, 2006. ‘entre la guerra santa y la cruzada’ originally in América Latina en Movimiento (Quito), n° 341, october, 2001. ‘el trabajo al final del siglo XX’, originally in Pensée Sociale Critique Pour le XXI Siècle. Mélanges en l ́honneur de Samir Amin. Forum du TiersMonde (Paris: L ́harmattan, 2003) pp. 131-149. ‘Paradojas de la colonialidad / modernidad / eurocentrada’ in Hueso húmero (Lima), n° 53: 30-59, April, 2009.↵

On the concept of global imperial Bloc, i refer to: ‘colonialidad del Poder, globalización y Democracia’ (Quijano, 2001), already quoted.↵

A more detailed discussion can be found originally in Arrighi, giovanni & goldfrank, Walter L. (eds.) 2000 ‘colonialidad del Poder y clasificación social’ in Journal of World-Systems Research (colorado), Volume Vi, n° 2: 342-388, fall-winter. Special issue: festschrift for immanuel Wallerstein.↵

Finley, robert 2003 Las Indias Accidentales (Barcelona: Barataria).↵

About that, for example the recent interviews with Aymara leaders in Bolivia, made and broadcast by the cAoi internet e-mail. The journal América Latina en Movimiento, of the Latin American information agency (ALAi), has dedicated the n° 452, february, 2010, entirely to this debate, under the general title of ‘recuperar el sentido de la vida’. regarding the social practices themselves, there is, already, a very important movement of specific research. See: gómez, esperanza et al. 2010 Vivir Bien Frente al Desarrollo. Procesos de planeación participativa en Medellín (medellín: universidad de medellín).↵

Indigenous autonomies and the multinational state[1]

Álvaro García Linera[2]

I. The exclusionary republic

When Bolivia became a republic, it inherited the colonial social structure. Land distribution, social stratification, the tax regime and even part of the civil service and the staff tasked with administrating it did not undergo substantial changes, leaving intact the class structures, powers, institutions and hierarchical staff created during the different stages of the colonial regime. In the process, perhaps the most enduring legacy was also conserved — the system of beliefs, prejudices and dominant values that had determined collective behaviour before the independence process: the racialisation of social differences by means of the state invention of the ‘indian’, not only as a taxpayer category, but above all,  as the ‘negative other’ that organised the symbolic structures with which people, including the indians themselves, made sense of the world.

The category of indian was initially introduced by representatives of the spanish monarchy as a tax and fiscal category. This classification, in addition to partially diluting other forms of native identification, established a division of labour and a ranking of types of knowledge and means of accessing trades, producing a complex structure of social class formation. But at the same time, and in order for this taxation to work, the colony constructed indianness as a discourse and a prejudice that naturalised the structures of social domination, identifying it with those who are not qualified, who must be ruled, educated, indoctrinated, led, governed and appeased. The stigmatisation of indianness (which in turn has different levels of symbolic measurement) naturalised practices of economic exclusion and legitimated the political and cultural monopolies on defining the rules of social competence, thereby contributing not only to a racialised expression of particular socioeconomic conditions of exclusion and domination, but also to objectively constructing these socioeconomic conditions.

Those who had been born under the territorial jurisdiction of the new republic, and ‘citizens’, who had to know how to read and write the dominant language (spanish) and be free of bonds of servitude, ensuring that right from the start, indians lacked citizenship[3]. In a step backward even with respect to the colony, which had recognised the local validity of indigenous systems of authority, Bolívar, attempting to establish a liberal constitution, had previously declared the authority of the indigenous chiefs to be defunct, replacing them with local officials appointed by the state[4].

The different state forms up to 1952 did not significantly modify this political apartheid. The caudillo state[5] (1825-1880) and the regime of socalled ‘censitary’ democracy (1880-1952)[6] in both its liberal and its conservative periods had modified the state’s political constitution many times (1826, 1831, 1834, 1839, 1843, 1851, 1861, 1868, 1871,1878, 1880, 1938, 1945, 1947); however, politico-cultural exclusion was maintained both in state law and in the people’s daily practices. Indeed, throughout this period, ethnic exclusion became the articulating axis of state cohesion.

In this entire period, the state did not even pretend to incorporate the indians into state decision-making processes, although, incidentally, a large part of governmental expenses were financed with indigenous taxes, even in the early twentieth century[7]. Here, citizenship, like power, legitimate property and culture, are rights not to be deliberated over but to be exercised as categorical imperatives, because they are a type of right of conquest. Citizenship is not so much a production of rights as it is a family inheritance; it was a type of patrimonial citizenship.

The rights to govern would be manifested for more than a hundred years as a display of lineage; one does not become a citizen, one is born either citizen or indian. It is a stigma of ancestry and pedigree.

Patrimonial citizenship in the oligarchic state, more than a culture of public responsibility, is a pledge of loyalty to the perpetuity of the caste. It is, above all, the showing off of family crests, of the purity of the bloodline.Of course, this does not impede the intrusion of social climbers who have been able to whiten their lineage in this inbred political space. This is the case of successful merchants, purchasers of communal lands and the offspring of oligarchic encholamiento[8] who, nonetheless, possess a suspicious citizenship, which must be negotiated by developing clientelist networks, showing off their money and abiding by the lifestyle of the traditional elites.

We can appreciate the extent to which the state’s limited ambition for expanding its constituency was part of its structural logic by comparing the number of residents registered in the country with the number of voters participating in different elections. From 1880 to 1951, the number of voters — ‘citizens’ — varied between two and three percent of the total population inhabiting Bolivia[9].

The processes of democratisation and cultural homogenisation that began in the wake of the 1952 revolution partly transformed the oligarchic state’s regime of ethnic and cultural exclusion. The universal vote extended the right of political citizenship to millions of indigenous people previously deprived of any input into state decision-making. Similarly, as public and free education started to extend into rural areas, the indigenous people, who had constituted the overwhelming majority of ‘illiterates’ excluded from the body of state knowledge, were able to gain more access to this knowledge, and some possibilities for social mobility emerged as academic cultural capital was accumulated. All these measures, along with the creation of a domestic market, the individualisation of agrarian property and the nationalisation of the main centres producing economic surplus, were clearly inscribed within a program of nation-building[10] led by the state.

However, the legitimate cultural knowledge acquired by indigenous groups was limited to the mandatory learning of a foreign language, spanish, and of cultural norms produced and monopolised by mestizourban communities, setting into motion the mechanisms of ethnic exclusion once again, although now in a reformed and euphemistic fashion. Thus, from 1952 to 1976, the 60 to 65% of the Bolivian population that spoke an indigenous language as their mother tongue could only exercise their citizenship rights in a foreign language, as official education, the  university system, the relationship with the public administration and so on could only be conducted in spanish, and not in Quechua or Aymara.

With the 1952 revolution, spanish became the only official language of the state, in effect devaluing the indigenous languages, which had no official recognition that could enable their acknowledgement as a legitimate language for engaging in public affairs, pursuing social mobility or gaining access to bureaucratic-administrative positions. Similarly, granting the universal vote to the indians imposed a single organisational framework for political rights — the liberal one — in a society with other traditional systems of political organisation and of selection of authorities, which were then swept aside, no longer considered to be efficient mechanisms for the exercise of political rights.

This linguistic and organisational homogenisation to which the indigenous peoples, who were bearers of other cultural knowledge and other systems of forming authority, were subjected quickly gave way to the construction of a space of linguistic and organisational competence and accumulation regulated by the state, in which the indigenous people, now ‘fellow peasants’, were once again positioned at the bottom of the struggle to conquer legitimate political and academic knowledge.Obviously, if the only language taken into account by the state for the purpose of communicating about state matters is the mother tongue of the mestizo elites, those with a different mother tongue who have to learn a second language, like the indians, have to make a greater effort to access the privileged sites that those with spanish as a first language occupy automatically. Here, the linguistic combination and the weaknesses in the syntactic construction of spanish, inevitably revealed by those with an indigenous language as their mother tongue, is an easy way to identify, discipline and belittle indigenous efforts to master spanish.

In this linguistic market, the top, with access to decision-making positions in the state, is occupied by long-standing spanish speakers, while the stigmatised group on the opposite end of the hierarchy is made up of those who only speak indigenous languages. In the middle, in a complex system of hierarchical rankings, are those who speak both spanish and an indigenous language, but can not write; immediately following them are those that do know how to write in spanish, but can not pronounce it well; then there are those that can speak only spanish, but do so as the first generation and are therefore still brought down by their family environment that includes an indigenous language; then there are those who have achieved an academic title as a result of their second-generation spanish skills; after them are those who can write and speak with greater skill in spanish; then come those that can also speak and write some other foreign language, even better if it is english, and so on.

In the same way, in terms of cultural practices, it is clear that those like the urban mestizos — who have defined their particular knowledge and skills as socially valued, legitimate cultural practices on the basis of their privileged relationship with the state — have greater chances for accumulating other types of cultural capital. The indigenous, on the other hand, with other practices and customs, have fewer options for social mobility and cultural accumulation, because they have not gained access to the production of these skills within their immediate environments, and in order to develop them, they have to exert a greater effort to understand them, assimilate them and use them efficiently.

With respect to organisational systems in politics, it is similarly clear that those with better chances at entering public office and benefitting from such positions will be those groups of people well-suited to the exercise of liberal rights, who have been educated by those rights and for those rights: once again, educated mestizos in liberal professions. meanwhile, those educated in the logic of corporatist, communalist and traditional behaviours, like the indians, have greater chances of entering subaltern positions. As a result, in the development of the legal political field, the acquisition of political capital is principally concentrated in those people who, being educated in liberal principles and practices, are well-prepared to carry themselves efficiently in accordance with such liberal dictates and in their service. meanwhile, in order for those with a different political culture to have any opportunities in the structure of the field of political competencies, they must necessarily acquire strange skills, usually both belatedly and ambiguously, such that their efforts can only ‘spontaneously’ materialise in subordinated and marginal positions of scant legitimate political capital.

This hierarchical construction of languages in the linguistic field, and of politico-organisational cultures in the political field, creates a new social apparatus for the exclusion of indigenous people. It is no longer implemented by the force of law or of arms, but rather ‘softly’, by means of the procedures and components that in an apparently ‘natural’ way result in the higher ranking posts in the state apparatus, in the administration of culture and in the economy being occupied by groups that have been spanish-speaking for a long time, by the heirs of the old colonial networks of power, marked by processes of individuation. meanwhile, the indigenous, with their communitarian practices, always hold positions of less privilege and power, seemingly as a result of a ‘natural selection of aptitudes’. It is a modernised re-ethnification of the social division of labour, of occupations, of powers and of political hierarchies. The ‘modernist’ aspect here lies in the use of the facade of equality to reproduce inequalities. There is talk of the equality of the individual vote, but only in order to mask an unequal acknowledgement  of politico-organisational cultures and practices, as the representative liberal ones are seen as the only legitimate ones, in opposition to indigenous political practices and systems, which are marked by the importance of the community. There is talk of equality in education, but only in order to conceal an inequality in the recognition of the languages that are publicly valid for social mobility. If we also consider that there is a high probability of associating different social groups in their linguistic, cultural and organisational abilities with specific physical features, then a racialisation of these abilities is not unusual. As a result, an ethnic field is established once again in which a desirable good — legitimate ethnicity based on social and physical whiteness — emerges as the structuring axis of accumulations, wagers and competences that confer recognition, greatness and social position.

All this is what the indianism emerging in the seventies has spoken out against as the existence of a ‘second-class citizenship’[11]. First-class citizenship is for people that bear the symbolic badges of social whiteness (surname, social networks, personal demeanour), which position them as suitable for taking on government positions, institutional or business leadership and social recognition. Second-class citizenship is for those who, as a result of their rural origins, their language or their skin colour, are ‘discouraged’ such that they occupy subaltern positions, roles of obedience and severed opportunities for social mobility.

a. Ethnicity as capital

In very general terms, an ethnicity is a community that constructs a set of shared cultural attributes, as well as a belief in a history rooted in a shared ancestry, in addition to a collective unconscious[12]. These cultural attributes can be of a subjective nature, such as affective, emotive and symbolic criteria with respect to collective affinities; or they can be objective, like language, religion, territory and social organisation. However, the importance of all these attributes lies in their connoted composition; that is, in the form of articulating and understanding them.

There are ethnicities for which the criteria of differentiation are of a racial and biological nature (in guyana, between Africans and indians); linguistic and religious (Tamils and singhalese in sri Lanka); or exclusively based on language (Walloons and flemish in Belgium). In any case, what matters in this repertoire of ethnicity[13] is that it manages to form a collective memory that goes back to an ancestral line, allowing the group to imagine a unique trajectory that differentiates it from others; it allows an appreciation of the language as a live archive of a world view shared by the bearers of this communicational code; it creates frameworks for performing the existence of the group that make its public life visible; and it supports a reclamation of the territories considered to be ‘ancestral’, where the group’s symbolic and identity-based points of reference are presumably anchored.

The evolution of ethnicities may take several trajectories. They can produce nations with a state, like the english; they can form a part of a multinational state that recognises nationalities as components of a confederation (the former Yugoslavia); they can exist as minorities or majorities without an institutional presence in the colonial states; or they can carry on amid a disavowal of their existence, like the Kurdish in Turkey.

Ethnicities can follow several paths of development. There are identities produced by the state, and in fact, there is no modern state that has not invented an ethnic identity in one way or another[14]. In other cases, they might date far back in time, be the product of a recent ethnogenesis, or be the product of colonial politics[15].

In this last case, we can agree with oommen that ethnicities are processes by which certain communities are defined as foreign in their own territories and are stripped of control over the political and economic life in this same territory[16], hence the colony and the republic can be understood as uninterrupted processes of ethnicising indigenous peoples.

The ethnicisation of the indigenous, by dissociating the cultural community from its territorial sovereignty, creates the structural basis for the processes of exclusion, discrimination and social exploitation that characterise regimes of occupation. In this sense, ethnic labels can also be understood as cultural and political artefacts of the complex systems of social class structuring[17] that, by means of the symbolic power of specific class fractions, allows class differences to be naturalised in some cases, and in others, enshrines cultural differences as patterns of fundamental social differentiation[18]. In this latter case, the discourse of ethnicity takes the form of political discourse, in which objective class differences are reduced to cultural differences in an attempt to group together — based on an objective class position (for example, a certain dominated fraction of intellectuals, or segments of urban merchants), as well as on specific projects — those social sectors with different class conditions that share with more or less intensity the same cultural and symbolic matrix. It is an authentic euphemisation of the class condition. It is dangerous in that by cloaking the class condition, it only serves to strengthen, in the market of cultural goods, the cultural value of certain practices that grant greater negotiating power to that fraction (which bases its advancement on the possession of a certain type of cultural capital) in defining legitimate cultural and political capital. meanwhile, it leaves intact the distribution of other objective class conditions, which once again confine the subaltern classes to their traditional class subalternity.

Still, we must investigate the conditions that allow physical indicators, like skin colour, hair colour, and surname, to take on such great importance when it comes to classifying and naturalising the differences between social classes. It is not enough to claim that it is merely a matter of cultural constructions through which class differences are seen as natural differences. The fact that physical classifications play a role as noticeable, desirable or negative assets suggests that they are not just an ‘expression’, a reflection, or the effects of mere discursive ‘deception’. under certain circumstances, such as Bolivia’s colonial and postcolonial periods, ethnic differentiations in general, and racial classifications in particular, can be seen as a type of specific capital[19], a specific social good: ethnic capital, which along with other economic, cultural, social and symbolic capitals, helps to shape the values of class differentiation.

Ethnic capital thus refers to two complementary dimensions: on one hand, to distinctive cultural practices with universal scope, which euphemise and erase the imprints of the objective conditions of their production and control (legitimate language, legitimate tastes and academic knowledge, etc.); and on the other hand, to objective social differences that have taken on the rank of physicalised differences, and which have then erased the history of the objective struggles to impose these  differences. Skin colour and the distinguished surname with which the colonisers initially symbolically made explicit their objective position as victorious conquerors with rights to riches, land and indians convert this physicalised symbolic difference into bodily wealth, the display of which symbolically secures their objective position of strength and control. It is a cultural product that confers value to racial features and ancestry, but whose virtue lies in converting the differences actually conquered in the political, military, organisation and technical victory over the colonised into differences of blood that naturalise the objective balance of forces. In more horizontal terms, this form of constructing ethnic assets, but without the consequences of domination, can also be the symbolic structure through which the solid and somewhat closed family and community ties (which articulate the circulation of the labour force and land ownership) express their social value, their privileged place in the world, to other nearby communal groups.

This kind of ethnic capital, which today is more valuable than the differences that stem from the distribution of legitimate academic assets, is a type of symbolic capital that affects the effectiveness of all other types of capital (economic, social, political, linguistic, etc.), and that has also created its own field of distribution, competition and positioning to control it. The competition for ‘whiteness’[20] in Bolivian society has thus been a form of making real or fictitious class structuring physical, but with all the force of symbolic power to produce practical classing or declassing effects in the ordering of the realm of objective class conditions. This becomes clear when, for example, people from a lower social class want or think they can have an intimate relationship with a partner from a distant social class, because they have the ethnic capital (physical features, surname) of a social class located further up on the social ladder; or the silent pursuit by any family of any social class to find a mate that could culturally or physically ‘whiten’ their descendants.

The objective importance of processes of social class structuring and their possibilities of being converted into other capital (such as economic capital) can be seen in the very structure of economic opportunities in the Bolivian labour market. According to a survey conducted by Jiménez Zamora, indigenous people hold 67% of the most vulnerable and precarious jobs, 28% of semi-skilled jobs, and just 4% of skilled jobs[21]. These data can be taken as evidence that there is open  discrimination against indigenous skilled and semi-skilled workers; or they can be understood to indicate that there are fewer indigenous people that can offer skilled labour than there are spanish-speaking mestizos who can do so; or they can be interpreted to mean that skilled and semi-skilled indigenous workers no longer identify with an indigenous identity; or, lastly, they can suggest that a combination of two or three of these options produces this kind of ethnic segmentation in the labour market. In any of these cases, openly or not, indigenous ethnicity emerges as an object of systematic exclusion and social devaluation.

We can arrive at the same conclusion based on a review of the structure of labour income. Non-indigenous emigrants earn three times more than indigenous emigrants, while the indigenous, in general, earn only 30% of the wage of non-indigenous workers performing the same jobs, and non-indigenous women earn just 60% of men’s wages[22]. To put it bluntly, an indian is ‘worth’ one third of a spanish-speaking mestizo man and one half of a spanish-speaking mestizo woman.

So, the republic and the acquisition of individual political rights, from 1952 to the present, have at least formally dissolved the colonial system of labour division, both economic and political. But what has not disappeared — since more than an administrative measure it is a cognitive structure of embodied reality — is the racialised or ethnicised representation of the world, the naturalisation of social differences and aptitudes according to specific cultural, historical, geographic and physical properties. racially expressed discrimination, at least in Bolivia, is no longer just a state or tax invention; it is, above all, common sense. And to the extent that it is an imagined structuring of the world, with which both the dominant and the dominated see themselves and others in the world, it plays an effective role in the practical structuring of that world.

With the erasure of the memory of the social deed that produced this ethnification of social differences and class structuring, the racial or ethnic ranking of the world takes on a structuring force because it helps to symbolically delimit social differences, increasing the strength of social differentiation. Hence the presence of ethnic capital — that is, of a regime of competences around ethnic assets (contingently attributed to mother tongue, place of origin, skin colour, surname) — which strengthens or devalues each person according to his or her proximity to legitimate or stigmatised ethnicity in an attempt to obtain other social goods of an economic, relational or educational nature. In this way, today, as is clear from the different paths pursued by subjects in their matrimonial strategies, and cultural acquisitions, wage hierarchies, the proportional distribution of prestige conferred  by cultural background and the treatment of the body itself, ‘cultural whiteness’ and indianness are not just stigmatising expressions, but opposite poles that structure the field of legitimate symbolic assets that contribute to the structuring of the social classes.

b. Monocultural state, multinational society

It has been said that a nation is a unit of language, culture, territory and economy. This is partly true, but as a result of the consolidation of the nation, and not as its point of origin or its defining substance.

There are nations that have more than one official language, such as Belgium and Paraguay, and in other cases, the fledgling nation initially included numerous regional and local languages, without this impeding the development of a national spirit that would fight for independence, as in the united states and germany. There are currently more than 400 languages in the world, but the number of nations does not exceed 190, reinforcing the notion that not all languages result in a nation, nor does every nation need just one language in order to develop.

similarly, cultural unity, which can be the outcome of long centuries of social cohesion, is not a prerequisite for the formation of a nation. Indeed, all modern nations initially were, and continue to be, groupings of diverse cultural practices, but with the articulatory capacity of a national identity that enabled and still enables them to compete in the global context. France, for example, was a cultural and linguistic mosaic in the eighteenth century, where entire regions shared more cultural affinities with parts of southern germany or northern italy, but this was not an obstacle for the construction of the french nationality as a republican entity possessing state sovereignty.

Likewise, economic unity is not a prerequisite for the formation of a nation. Israel, much before it had relatively unified economic institutions, already existed as a national desire in all those that considered themselves fellow nationals and that were scattered throughout different regions of the world. In this case, the unified economy and even the territory were the result, not the precondition, of the strength of national identification. At heart, territory, culture and language are a product of the history of the nation, their historic substantiation and material corroboration, not the beginning of their formation. In fact, there are many peoples who possess territory and cultural, linguistic and economic unity, yet remain mere ethnic fragments, or in other cases, they prefer to dissolve into larger national entities, in which they believe they will find more satisfactory public rights than those they could obtain autonomously. The history of some european, African and Latin American peoples has been precisely this path, while that of others has been one of violent extinction.

What matters about territory, language, culture and even the economy is not their sum, because not even with the sum of these four components are nations achieved. What matters is how these elements are dealt with toward the future; that is, their historical connotation or extent of qualification, which can be used by the social conglomerate that identifies in advance with a shared destiny, with a community of belonging and transcendence.

Language or territory can be understood as specific (folkloric) components of a greater social structure, as devalued belongings from which it is best to disassociate oneself, or as expressions of an uncompromisingly separate and differentiated identity from those that surround and dominate it.Only in this case do language, territory or culture become components of a national identity; therefore, what matters is that they are read, interpreted, signified, desired, or in other words, their form of politicisation.

Nations are, then, political artefacts, political constructions that create a sense of belonging to a type of historical entity that can confer a sense of transcendent collectivity, a sense of historical certainty in the face of the vicissitudes of the future, a sense of a basic familiar bond between people who will surely never see each other, but who supposedly share a form of intimacy, of historical proximity, of possibilities of cohabitation that other people who constitute ‘otherness’, alterity, do not possess. Herein lie the importance and the prominent role that discursive constructions and leaderships play in the development of national identities, due to their capacity to articulate demands, predispositions, expectations and solidarities in symbolic frameworks of aggregation and autonomous political action in the field of dominant cultural, territorial and policy competences[23]. Nations are social, territorial and cultural frontiers that exist first in the heads of fellow nationals, and which have the strength to become objectified in material and institutional structures. In this sense, nations are political communities whose members, those that see themselves as part of the nation, identify in advance with an institutionality that they recognise as their own and within which they constitute their social struggles, their abilities and mentalities[24]. It is precisely the formulation of these symbolic frontiers in the collective imaginary, based on the visualisation and politicisation of the actual frontiers of the existing colonial segregation, that would seem to be one of the rising claims of the Aymara indigenous social movement of recent years[25].

national formations are initially performative discourses[26] with the strength to generate the processes that construct communities of political consent with which people define an ‘us’ distinct from an ‘others’. They do so by means of the reinterpretation, enunciation or invention of one or more social components (for example language, religion, ethnicity, the history of domination), which from that moment on become the components of differentiation and community adherence that guarantee their members a collective security in their shared future. It is a type of communicative interaction that produces, or unearths, or invents, an expanded fraternity, a broadened kinship able to create, first, a gravitational attraction toward certain demographic sectors that will feel drawn in, and second, a complementary effect of repulsion toward those who then feel excluded. Because of all this, it is said that nations are ‘imagined communities’[27]. In this sense, nations do not need a pre-existing ethnic community to become consolidated, although this may favour it, producing a monoethnic nation.

In general, nations are the outcome of a political aggregation of many ethnicities, and the nation is precisely the production of a new (real or fictitious) ethnicity that allows the relevance and the necessity of the current existence of the nation to be projected into the past. But, at the same time, as processes of remaking the collective subjectivity  that creates a sense of ‘us’, nations are also a form of producing the ‘common’, the common good that unites the group and differentiates it from ‘other’ groups, and in this sense they are political communities, as their articulatory strength is precisely the management, distribution and conservation of this common good.

Hence, it is not strange that the state is sometimes confused with the nation, as both deal with the management of the common good. The former, however, is institutionalised from above, and works to produce the illusion of a political community from the top down (marx), while the nation, in contrast, exists from the moment in which a political community is imagined from below and works from the bottom up to create an institutionality that embodies this political desire. In modern societies, when only the ‘illusory community’ (state) works, we encounter forms of authoritarianism and curtailed processes of nationalisation, such as those of Bolivia. When the ‘illusory community’ results from the institutionalised specification of the ‘imagined community’ (the nation), we find the formation of political legitimacy and successful nationalisation.

This identification between nation and institutional concretisation of the political community in the form of the state has led to the affirmation that we can only speak of nations in the strict sense when the political intersubjectification of fellow nationals achieves governmental autonomy through the state, and that until this happens we must speak of nationalities. The virtue of this assertion lies in that it does not assume an essentialist or static vision of national construction; it sees it as a field of forces, as a process, as a political course that reaches maturity when it is institutionalised as a state.

In Bolivia, it is exceedingly evident that, despite the profound processes of cultural mixing, a national community has not yet been made a reality. There are at least thirty regional languages and/or dialects[28], there are two languages that are the mother tongue of 37% of the population (Aymara and Quechua), and close to 62% identify with the indigenous peoples[29]. And, to the extent that every language is a whole understanding of the world, this linguistic diversity is also cultural and symbolic diversity. If we add to this that there are cultural and national identities older than the republic, and that even today they demand political sovereignty over seized territories (the case of the Aymara identity), it is very clear that Bolivia is, at heart, a coexistence of various overlapping or moderately articulated regional nationalities and cultures[30]. However, and despite this, the state is monolingual and monocultural in terms of the spanish-speaking Bolivian cultural identity. This implies that only with the spanish language can people obtain rights and possibilities of social mobility within the country’s different power structures — economic, political, judicial and military ones, as well as cultural ones. Despite the fact that most people hold rural-urban indigenous cultural origins, physical and cultural ‘whiteness’ is an asset pursued by every social stratus, as it symbolises social mobility and becomes a symbolic advantage that contributes to the ability to better position oneself in the processes of social class structuring and destructuring.

What is paradoxical about all this is that this compulsive construction of ethnic identities delegated or attributed (the indigenous) by the state itself, which enables the constitution of whiteness as accruable capital and indianness as devalued stigma, is accompanied by a repudiation of ethnicity as the subject of political rights, in a repeat of the classical schizophrenic attitude of the state that institutionally promotes the inexistence of majority ethnic identities, while at the same time it regulates ethnic exclusion as a means of the racialised monopolisation of social powers.

In Bolivia, there are almost fifty historico-cultural communities with different characteristics and hierarchical positions. The majority of these cultural communities are located in the eastern region of the country, and demographically they range from a few dozen families to almost a hundred thousand people. The two largest indigenous historico-cultural communities are located in the western part of the country: the Quechua and Aymara speakers.

The former, resulting from indigenous migrations and the policies of spanish colonisation, which imposed the Quechua language in the old Aymara ayllus, constitute, in a strict sense, only a linguistic community, and not so much an ethnic identity with unifying levels of politicisation. In general, this linguistic community, despite including almost three and a half million people, features a high degree of permeability that brings its members, in some cases, to quickly merge with other cultural structures, especially urbanmestizo ones, to group together around peasant or union class identities, and in other cases, to become concentrated in ethnic microidentities around ayllus or federations of ayllus (the ayllus located in Potosí and in sucre).

In contrast, the other large linguistic community, Aymara, which includes a little more than two and a half million people, features all the elements of a highly unified and politicised ethnic identity. unlike the rest of the indigenous identities, the Aymara identity has for decades produced cultural elites able to create discursive structures strong enough to reinvent an autonomous history that anchors the pursuit for an autonomous future in the past, a system of mass union mobilisation around these political beliefs, and recently, a leadership able to confer a visible body politic to ethnicity. In historical terms, the Aymara identity is not only the oldest in the Bolivian territory, but above all, it is the one that has most systematically created an architecture of beliefs, of political discourses based on self-government, of projects, and of a mobilising force with respect to these demands[31]. unlike the rest of the indigenous cultural identities, it is the one with an extensive intellectual elite, which has constructed an ethnic discourse that, through the union network, has been appropriated by broad sectors of the population, constituting itself as the only current indigenous nationality-like identity.

Lastly, there is the dominant Bolivian cultural identity, resulting from 179 years of republican life and which, though it initially arose as a state-created political artifice, now has a set of historic-cultural and popular milestones that make it consistently and predominantly urban.

All this should not make us forget that, like any ethnic identity, in Bolivia these are flexible identities, and in extreme cases, they are contingent upon the attributes of the context, which advance or withdraw their borders according to the historical cycles of economic expansion and openness of governmental spaces of power.

These diverse linguistic communities and ethnic identities have different symbolic configurations, world views, organisational forms, cultural knowledge and practices and territorial attachments. Nonetheless, the majority of these cognitive and practical references have never been integrated into the establishment of the legitimate state symbolic and organisational world, because the structures of social power are under the reigning monopoly of the Bolivian ethnic identity. This is why we can say that the republican state is a monoethnic or monocultural state, and in this sense, an exclusive and racist one.

This state monoculturalism is visible daily, when, for example, students with Aymara or Quechua as their home or childhood language  have to incorporate, among the structural conditions for academic success, in addition to the availability of time and cultural resources that flow from their socioeconomic condition, the mastery of new linguistic skills monopolised by spanish-speaking students, as spanish is the legitimate language for acquiring educational goods. In this case, the home language is the point of departure for a visible indianness, and therefore for a stigma that undervalues the body of available skills for different social competences. Something similar occurs in many public domains (military service, administrative positions, the judiciary, banking access, etc.), and not for a minority, but rather for more than half the population. In certain contexts, surname, dress and skin colour can fulfil this same devaluing role in the social trajectory.

it is well known that the state needs to create collective adherences and systems of common objectives and values that allow it to imaginarily unite the different social groups present throughout the range of its territorial influence. The school, the system of birth records, of supplying identity cards, of voting, the public rituals, the suite of civic symbols, etc. Create this base of cultural affiliation that over the long term produces a state-invented ethnicity. The problem with this begins when this state monoethnicisation is made by arbitrarily selecting a set of skills, competences and values monopolised by specific groups, to the detriment of others. This problem becomes complex when these identitybased components are predominantly controlled by limited or minority sectors of the population, and, even worse, when the acquisition of these components of ethnic legitimation is an unsuccessful or mutilated enterprise as a result of the state-endorsed symbolic devaluation to which the people who enter into these processes of de-ethnification and reethnification are subject, which is precisely what happens in Bolivia.

Being a country of approximately eight million inhabitants, in linguistic terms a little more than four million speak Aymara or Quechua as their mother tongue, or they are bilingual with spanish. However, no government office, no institute of higher education, nor any high-ranking economic, political or cultural posts have the Aymara or Quechua languages as an official means of communication. State monolingualism, while it arbitrarily establishes a single language as the language of the state, in practice devalues the other languages as means with which to access public office or as a mechanism of urban social mobility. It also, surreptitiously, coerces the bilingual and monolingual Aymara-Quechua speakers to abandon their languages, as they are not considered legitimate cultural goods.

The fact that there are increasingly more people that speak spanish or combine spanish with another native language is not a ‘choice’ based on the recognition of the virtues of the state’s monoethnic mestizo condition; it is a consequence of the relations of ethnic domination that, with the strength of state power, have prioritised specific cultural goods to the detriment of others. In light of this, the opposition of several indigenous peasant communities to bilingual primary school education (spanish/ Aymara, for example) is easy to understand; it is a rational act based on calculated expectations. What good would it be to learn to read and write in Aymara if it is not going to be of any use for obtaining urban employment, nor for interacting with government agencies or entering into a recognised profession? Thus, nobody should be surprised by the decrease in the number of people that speak only a native language, along with the growth of bilingualism or of the group of people that only speak spanish, as this is the direct outcome of the state’s cultural and symbolic coercion. It is easy to envision that the rates of bilingualism, and even of native monolingualism, would grow markedly if the structures of state power were officially and extensively bilingual or trilingual, as is the case in other modern multicultural and multinational states.

c. Multicivilisational society and schizophrenic state

State monoethnicity or mononationality in a multiethnic or multinational state is, therefore, the first barrier to an efficient and democratic relationship between society and state. Nonetheless, this is not the only problem with structural complexity in what we call Bolivia. The other axis of substantial social disarticulation is what rené Zavaleta called ‘the motley’, a concept that can be summed up as the overlapping coexistence of several modes of production, of several historical periods and political systems[32]. In more operationalisable terms, we could say that Bolivia is a country in which several civilisations coexist in a disarticulated fashion, but where the state structure claims the organisational logic of only one of them — modern market capitalist logic.

Following elias[33], on a general level, the civilisational system can be understood as the social web and behavioural patterns with which people are used to living. This involves the forms of differentiating social roles, the forms of constituting the institutions that monopolise physical and tax violence, the ways of symbolising the long-term forecast of sequences in the relationships between people (technology), and  the dictates and prohibitions that shape the bond between people[34]. There is, then, a coherent set of structures that generate the material, political and symbolic order that differentiates productive functions, technical processes, systems of authority, political organisation, and symbolic frameworks with which large communities give coherence to the world. A civilisational system is much more than a mode of production, as it forms the cognitive matrix and the processes of authority that regulate collective life. Similarly, a civilisation can go through several modes of production, such as the archaic community and the rural community, which, as two different modes of production, shared similar life-organising matrices. Likewise, a civilisation can include several discontinuous territories and several peoples or nations, like the global capitalist civilisation, which includes more than a hundred nation states, or communal civilisation, which includes both Aymara and Quechua speakers living in agricultural communities.

In Bolivia, there are four large civilisational systems[35]. These four civilisations are:

Modern, market-industrial civilisation, which includes people who, possessing an eminently market and accumulative rationality, have gone through processes of individuation and uprooting from traditional communities. They experience the separation of the political with respect to the economic, and they create the basis of the conditions of their existence as dominant or subordinate actors in waged labour such as mining and industrial manufacturing, banking, large-scale trade, public services, transportation, etc., with their respective circuits of accumulation and the direct market exchange of products, goods and labour. In demographic terms, no more than 20 or 30% of the people in the country are directly and technically involved in this social setting.

The second civilisational regime is that with the economy and culture organised around simple market activity of a domestic, artisan or peasant nature. Those belonging to this regime have an occupational or corporatist rationality and a system of political institutions based on the normatised coalition of small business owners. A good part of the so-called informality, which accounts for 68% of urban workers, artisans and smallholder peasants, corresponds to this social segment.

Third, there is communal civilisation, with its technological procedures based on the strength of the masses, the management of family and communal land and the fusion between economic and political activity, with its own authorities and political institutions that favour normative action over elective action[36], and in which individuality is a product of the community and its history.

Lastly, there is the Amazonian civilisation, based on the itinerant nature of its productive activity, on technology based on knowledge and individual hard work, and on the absence of the state.

Altogether, two thirds of the inhabitants of the country[37] find themselves in one of the last three civilisational or societal groups[38]. It is clear that this is a conceptual model that does not exclude complex ties, crosses and hybridisations, produced by colonisation, between these four civilisational blocs, at the same time that it highlights the differences in the current patterns of social organisation in Bolivian social space[39].

Now in general, the norms, functions, institutions and representations with which state life has been constituted in Bolivia have considered the universe of representation, general interpretation and synthesis to be only those liberal practices and political dispositions (party regime, secret and individual vote, division of powers, separation of politics from the economy, etc.) that result from their insertion in modern market life, with its customs of elective affiliation and of individuals partially uprooted from ties of lineage and traditional relationships with their fellow residents — individuals who are wellsuited to forms of partisan aggregation and the formation of public authority through the modern political market[40]. In contrast, the majority of the population — immersed in nonindustrial economic, cognitive and cultural structures, also including other linguistic and cultural identities — have different political customs and technologies, resulting from their own material and technical life. The superposition of collective identity above individuality, of deliberative practices above elective practices, of normative coercion as a mode of rewarding behaviour above free adherence and compliance, of depersonalising power, of its consensual revocability and the rotation of functions, etc. — these are forms of behaviour that tell of political cultures different from liberal and representative partisan ones, deeply rooted in their own objective living conditions, in their own technical systems of social reproduction. Cooperativism, consensual assemblyism, leadership rotation and traditional normative customs tell of types of political action, political organisation and political technologies rooted in the very economic and technical structure of non-modern civilisational systems. They are, therefore, still active as long as these economic, cultural and symbolic systems that organise social life are maintained. In homogenous and politically nationalised cultural societies, there is an ethico-political principle of unifying criteria, which establishes the state as the legitimate substantiation of this historical in tegration, holding the ultimate power over resources and decisions about how to manage these resources. This can occur because the state, despite its hierarchies, presents itself as the imagined synthesis of society, for which ultimate sovereignty is not a matter of dispute but rather one of deliberate fulfilment. In complex societies like the Bolivian one, the state is presented as a monoethnic and monocivilisational relational and political structure, which just as it denies or destroys other cultural terms for interpreting and representing territorial resources, its legitimacy is permanently in doubt and under threat by other cultural and ethnic identities and other practices for understanding responsibility for the common good, excluded from governmental administration. This gives way to the emergence of a strategic uncertainty about the state’s legitimacy, occasionally remedied with top-down pacts of mutual tolerance, vulnerable to being broken by any camp, as soon as any group becomes careless or weakened. This has been precisely the situation of the Bolivian state throughout its 179 years of republican life, converting it into not only an apparent state[41], but also a precarious one, under permanent suspicion due to its inability to structurally articulate the social forces that coexist in its area of geographic influence. In the absence of a nationalising principle of belonging or of extended symbolic kinship between people under state influence, sovereignty becomes a constant stage for high and low-intensity wars, in which different subjects — the state through its laws, business owners with their economic interests, and communities by means of their practices and customs — temporally elucidate kaleidoscopic and fractured forms of territorial sovereignty. The affirmation that in Bolivia each region resembles its own small country merely affirms this situation of state uncertainty, which impedes any pretence of restoring any commonly accepted territorial governmental normativity, respected and endorsed by all members of society. In Bolivia, the state is not a source of hegemony, in the sense that it has not managed to generate long-lasting shared beliefs or behaviours that establish a basic principle of accepted sovereignty. In this absence of a shared illusion of political community, the state and its norms are always seen as a simple instrumental tool, and almost never as an expressive synthesis of society as a whole. This catastrophic discord between these civilisational structures has been a constant in all the political orders of the republic, including the most democratic one, which emerged from the 1952 revolution. Today, when there are attempts to establish the rule of law, this cata strophic discord manifests itself once again, with even greater virulence due to the non-state articulation of these other non-liberal political rationalities and technologies belonging to the indigenous and peasant social movements. The limitation of the current liberal democratic-representative institutionality is not a result of the persistence of an authoritarian culture[42], as if politics depended only on cultural customs that can be corrected with pedagogical actions or political evangelisation. It is a structural feature, rooted in the materiality of the disarticulated or barely articulated coexistence of civilisational regimes that have not changed as a result of simple appeals to the conscience. Indeed, this belief, which attempts to reduce the only legitimate means of doing politics to liberal representative and individualised forms, is not only a form of political intolerance, but also of exacerbated authoritarianism with respect to the cultural plurality of ways of doing and understanding politics, including democracy. Strictly speaking, in order to work successfully, the liberal regime of representative democracy (which the elites desperately pursue) requires a series of indispensible prerequisites or primary conditions of possibility. First, there is what Zavaleta once called the prejudice of equality as being a mass phenomenon[43].Of course, if we are talking about the political market of parties as the site of gathering for individuals with the ability to exchange political goods untouched by ‘extrapolitical’ coercion, in order to guarantee free personal electability and the principle of equality between every option in the constitution of the ‘general will’, then it is people with the same legal rights to trade and the same political prerogative with respect to public authority who must confront each other in the market. This is the sustenance of the economic market, and, with greater reason, of the political market. This is certainly a legal and political illusion; however, it is a well-founded illusion, to the extent that in the electoral act, the people ‘believe’ that they have the same power as everyone else, independently of their economic or cultural position, just as they believe that they have the same rights and options in the market as do their competitors, customers and suppliers. But this then requires:

a. That society has adopted the market logic in the majority of its productive, consumptive, cultural, intellective and ethical activities, which occurs by means of the generalisation and technical command of the capitalist production regime and the extinction of non-capitalist productive structures, such as agro-peasant, communal and artisan ones. This is called real subsumption[44]. With regards to the requirements for the proper working of representative democracy, the absence of real subsumption or the existence of non-capitalist productive structures and of non-market exchange systems is an obstacle for the constitution of equal subjects able to accept the market as the rational underpinning of their social behaviours, including the political. In the case of Bolivia, it is abundantly clear that we find ourselves under the dominion of capitalist rationality, but that it is not generalised. What is more, close to two thirds of economic circuits move with non-industrial parameters. As a result, in terms of mental frameworks, not only is the presence of a sense of social equality scarce with respect to the small size of the fully capitalist economy, but also, there are spaces of fragmented, territorialised equality based on place of residence, kinship, ties to other residents, etc.One of the structural conditions of representative democracy is, therefore, non-existent in the Bolivian social formation.

b. The other component of the constitution of political equality is the breakdown of the modes of differentiating access to political rights based on culture, ethnicity, religion or gender, which would prevent numerical scrutiny from being a form of determining the general will. This means that the constitution of relevant political capital should conform to institutionalised cultural goods issued in a public and undifferentiated fashion, such as with the certification of academic qualifications. Given that colonialisms, among other things, institute inherited ethnicity and culture as hierarchising social goods and as forms of political capital that guarantee or exclude political rights, the logic of representative democracy requires political decolonisation and a certain degree of cultural homogenisation. This has been called the nationalisation of society, and it is an essential feature for the development of citizenship and liberal representative competence.

There can not be liberal representation while colonial regimes exist that impose a minority culture, ethnicity or religion as entrance stamps to political participation. In the case of Bolivia, this is precisely the reality. Above the majority populations with their culture, linguistic uses and specific ethnicity, there is a minority social group, with a language, culture and ethnicity that are different, but are instituted as legitimate and dominant. It thus turns out that the racist and colonial practices of the political elites, supposedly dedicated to processes of political modernisation, are at the same time some of the most important obstacles to their own liberalising political preferences. Second, for this liberal form of political exchange to work, there must be a minimum of what Max Weber called ‘shared goals and values’, which can promote a shared and relatively articulated sense of the public, validating as accepted norms the competition between political proposals, the rules of election and the political equivalencies of electoral proposals.

The possibility of the political market being taken to be the site of constituting public powers depends upon a body of shared beliefs about the best way to constitute society’s intervention in the management of what unites them (the world of social ends), but, in addition, it relies on members of society sharing the certainty that they have, over the long term, something in common: the world of shared values. It is a spiritual, cultural, but also procedural thing, which can establish a narrative of a social body that is, in turn, a way of creating its cohesion and its desire for permanence. For these structures of perception and social action to exist has, in modern times, required a certain state-induced cultural homogeneity (hence nations are partly state artifices), but above all, it has needed the cultural and organisational effects of real subsumption, which is no less than the destruction or weakening of other forms of social affiliation — the extinction or subalternation of other networks for the spiritual constitution of the social body, like the family, the town, the agrarian community, etcetera. The persistence of other mechanisms of social identification, of other mechanisms for obtaining local collective values, has the virtue of making the aggregation of political wills in a party impossible, as the party is based on elective affiliations, voluntary ones, by individuals untied to other forms of collective belonging. The persistence of traditional structures of producing and thinking, in contrast, generates both forms of normative affiliation, in that individuals are the way they are because of the preexistence of and their membership in the group, as well as forms of local political participation and systems of political authority, rooted in the characteristics of these civilisational structures. In this case, the (kinship, communal, work) community, which is the condition for individuality and political practice, is understood as the responsibility and obligation of the individual for the symbolic, economic, ritual and cultural reproduction of the community’s trajectory. In the liberal model, in contrast, individuality is the point of departure for constructing the community, and for this to occur, the concrete collective structures that introduce a different sense of belonging and participation must have previously disappeared. This, in turn, requires that capitalist relations of production be widespread, which in Bolivia occurs in a limited and non-majority, though dominant, fashion.

II. A multinati onal and multicivilisati onal state

How can we modify this incongruence between the country’s state life and its socioeconomic composition? The option that we propose here is to stop simulating political modernity and cultural homogeneity in a predominantly premodern, multicivilisational and pluricultural society. This means breaking with the schizophrenia of a few elites who for centuries have dreamed of being modern and white, who copy modern institutions and laws in order to apply them in a society in which the indigenous are the majority where and market and organisational modernity is nonexistent for more than half the population and will continue to be so in subsequent decades. The actual existence of multiple ethnic identities in the country and the historic substantiation of state precariousness, which permanently threaten social systems weakly integrated into a regime of long-term normative legitimacy, demands that we treat seriously and openly the debate about ethnicities, cultural communities and stateless nations[45] as decisive political and territorial subjects for creating and establishing any long-lasting state order in the country. With the recognition of ethnic, cultural and linguistic identities in most of the territory, which includes the majority of the population, there are various options that can be pursued. The first is to deny or to simulate a recognition of this diversity while developing policies of extinction, either by the coercive exclusion of these identities, or by their symbolic devaluation, leading to strategies of ethnic self-denial. In a strict sense, this is the state policy that has been applied over the last hundred years, with several ‘soft’ variations over the last decade, but whose result is a constant reconstitution of the excluded identities and the rise of secessionist Indianist projects with respect to the Bolivian state. Another option is to strengthen projects of indigenous national autonomy, which could produce the formation of new states of majority indigenous composition. This could be the case, for example, with Aymara-speakers, which is the cultural community that has undertaken the greatest amount of work towards ethnic politicisation in recent decades, producing a nationally based body politic in addition to possessing a demographic density potentially sufficient to make these proposals of political self-determination viable. These kinds of political programs have started to be revitalised in recent years, especially in the Aymara zone, and they indicate a radically different model from the rest of the continent’s indigenous movements. This path should not surprise us, as ultimately, a nationality is a deterritorialised ethnicity, or, we could say, a nation is an ethnicity successfully identified with a territory[46], establishing a political system of state sovereignty based on this ethnicity. The difference between an ethnicity and a nation lies only in that the latter has undertaken a process of structuring an institutionalised political community by means of a state regime. When an ethnicity becomes autonomous from a system of domination, it develops into a nation, and the set of indigenous struggles and demands deployed in recent decades by the Aymara people makes them a potential candidate for the constitution of a nation-state identity. A third option, devoid of cultural trauma, would be to design a new state structure capable of integrating into the entire institutional framework, into the distribution of powers and into normative systems, these two large aspects of the Bolivian social character: ethniccultural diversity and the civilisational plurality of the symbolic and technico-procedural systems that are part of the organisation of the collective world. In terms of a regime of citizenship rights and democratic practices, this would mean the constitution of a multinational and multicivilisational state.

A. The multinational or multicultural dimension of the political community

It is clear that one of the cores of state construction, capable of reconciling the state with society and putting an end to cultural exclusion, is a profound state reform that would enable, in global normative terms, a recognition of social multiculturalism and, as a result, of the need to construct a multinational politico-institutional state framework. To this end, political theory and different international experiences offer a series of experiences and reflections that merit a brief synthesis, in order to articulate them with the logic of the place, in this case with the set of social possibilities and resources present in Bolivian reality.

In the early twentieth century, the debate about the political and territorial rights of cultural identities, peoples, ethnicities and stateless nation-building[47] was approached with respect to the need, or not, for the self-determination of statehood for the peoples or nations that desired it. The greatest contributions in this area came from socialist though[48], although there were also similar contributions from liberal thought. Immanuel Wallerstein has shown that the policy of United States presidents Thomas Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt to support the self-determination of nations in the Balkans and in Russia was applying the liberal principle of individual suffrage to the sphere of state sovereignty in the global political sphere[49]. During the 70s and 80s, the debate in political theory was between liberals and communitarians. During this stage, the liberals were opposed to rights for oppressed nations and/or minorities, because this diverted attention away from individual autonomy, considered to be central when it came to deciding about well-being[50], while the communitarians saw ‘minority’ rights as a way to protect a form of life in common that is over and above individual choices[51].

There has been a proliferation in recent years of discussions about the rights of stateless nations and ethnicities, both in the context of pluralist institutional construction and in that of philosophical reflection about the scope and fairness of these rights[52].

Charles Taylor, questioning the existence of neutral ethnocultural states that could offer the same conditions for development to different cultural perceptions, considers that the recognition of rights for different cultural communities allows a need for social visibility to be satisfied, which, far from opposing the individual freedoms recognised for all, creates a solid and equitable base for exercising these freedom[53]. Will Kymlicka, assuming that these cultural entities do not demand rights that protect them from modernity, but rather assuming quite the opposite, that they demand access to liberal institutions, considers that the collective rights they demand promote the extension of liberal values within these communities, and hence from the point of view of liberal philosophy, there is no reason to oppose these collective rights[54]. Moreover, he considers that those cultural communities that face disadvantages with respect to the preservation of their culture place the individuals that compose it at a disadvantage, breaking the democratic cohabitation principle of equality. In order to preserve this principle of equality, he suggests that it is necessary to recognise special collective rights, which would allow their life skills and possibilities to be balanced with the rest of the people in the society[55].

There are those who think that recognising ‘minority’ cultural and ethnic identities is a reactionary proposal[56], while there are liberals who consider that recognising these collective rights fosters social disintegration, which could give way to a spiral of mutual competition and confrontation between different ‘ethnicities’[57]. However, as Kymlicka has recently shown, there is evidence that, on the contrary, recognising the self-government of national minorities contributes to the stability and cohesion of state[58].

In Latin America, the debate about indigenous peoples’ rights has been extensive, and permanently linked to the action of the states or indigenous social movements and politicians. Leaving aside the integrationist, statist, indigenist interpretation of the 40s and 50s[59],.

The different interpretations proposed since the 70s, in the wake of a resurgence of indigenous social and political movements, have gone from the vindication of ‘anti-occidental’ indian governments, crossing many republican state borders[60], to the recognition of local community rights and the formation of regional autonomies with higher or lower degrees of self-determination[61].

In the wake of the indigenous uprising in chiapas, the political and theoretical discussion with respect to systems of autonomy has acquired considerable maturity. Due to the complexity of ethnic diversity in Mexico, but also because of its already reduced proportion of indigenous people with respect to the whole of the mexican population, these interpretations have placed greater emphasis on the rights of ethnic minorities[62] than on the rights of stateless national majorities. We will return to part of this debate and its contributions later.

In general terms, the political recognition of different cultural or national identities within the state can exhibit different degrees with respect to institutional ‘density’ and ‘hierarchy’. In the case of institutional ‘hierarchy’, political rights can simply remain in the local, community sphere, or they can include meso or regional factors or, ultimately, extend to the macro or largest structure in the state administration, such as the executive, the parliament or the highest court. How far recognising the rights of nationalities goes will depend on the strength of their internal political cohesion, the openness of the state and the democratic expectations of the rest of the social communities that exist within it.

With respect to the density of rights, these can range from the recognition of property rights for land and natural resources to territorial rights and negotiated political sovereignties over certain resources. Similarly, they can range from the contingent recognition of the presence of members of excluded cultures at some level of the state apparatus, to the construction of a ‘societary culture’ understood as a territorially concentrated culture, based on a shared language that is used in political and social institutions, in public life as well as private life — government, schools, law, economy,  public employment and the media[63]. In general terms, citizenship is the inclusion of a person as a competent member of a political community with a set of practical, legal, economic and political practices defined as rights[64]. This assumes the existence of a set of common ends and values that can constitute a lasting political community that is in general the fruit of economic homogenisation processes with respect to solid industrial and market economies, in addition to extensive processes of cultural integration. In multiethnic or multinational societies, the political community can only be constructed with mechanisms that, without eliminating people’s cultural particularity, can ensure that they have the same opportunities and rights to constitute a part of the political institutionality. In order to allow this, some authors have proposed a differentiated citizenship[65], which allows the exercise of full political rights for those that belong to a specific ethnic-cultural or national community within the state itself. In this way, excluded ethnic-national identities would have institutional means that would guarantee their representation as cultural identities in political institutions, including the capacity to issue a collective veto to any decision that could affect the ethnic community.

The political community, as a site of citizenship, would therefore be a process of collective construction, in which different excluded ethnic identities would be seen as communities and have their community rights and power recognised. This differentiated citizenship could take on several forms, such as the autonomous state or the multinational state.

Some local authors have considered that a multicultural or multinational state would go against the ‘idea’ of the democratic foundation of the state, based on universal citizenship or ‘demos’. In this case, one can not help but be concerned about the ignorance of these ‘critics’ with respect to the abundant academic debate in political science about this issue. Intellectual currents that have never been suspected of any type of antidemocratic position, such as the communitarian liberals or the multiculturalist liberals, have been developing the topic of ‘multinational democracy’ for over a decade as part of efforts to extend the democratic basis for modern states in multicultural societies. Indeed, reality demonstrates that not only have recently decolonised societies advanced in the formation of a democratic state with multinational institutions (india, malaysia, nigeria, south Africa), but so have highly industrialised societies with longlasting democratic traditions (Belgium, switzerland and canada). With close to eight thousand ethnocultural groups in the world, and only close to two hundred states, it is clear that more than 90% of modern states must deal with some type of majority or minority multiculturalism in their territories.

It is incoherent, therefore, to separate ethnos and demos, because strictly speaking, any demos is also an ethnos. When it comes down to it, the exercise of ‘universal citizenship’ implies a language for public education, for accessing higher state functions and public services, and it implies history, heroes, festivities and commemorations adapted to the historical narrative of a particular culture, which inevitably promotes a particular cultural identity above and beyond other identities. This is precisely what occurs in Bolivia, where even though close to 45% of the people speak an indigenous language as their mother tongue and 62% self-identify as indigenous, there is a hierarchical linguistic market that favours spanish, there is an ethnically stratified labour market, public office is monocultural and spanish-speaking mestizo ethnicity plays the role of a capital that helps to produce social class structuring. In multicultural societies, no state is neutral, and no demos results from the procedural rules of liberal democracy. It has always been the result of cultural impositions, dominations and ethnic exclusions.

The debate about multinational democracy seeks to understand demos not as a ‘political nation’, but rather as a ‘political community’, and one that can therefore be produced as the multicultural or multinational articulation of a culturally plural society. When demos is confused with ‘political nation’, we have a type of ethnocentrism that attributes universal values to what are simply the particular values, knowledge and practices of a dominant culture that is the result of colonisation and war.

Hiding this fact inside the assumptions of an ethnocentric universalism[66], refusing to seek better democratic alternatives, is the precise expression of a type of mental colonisation that reinforces the continuity of ethnified and racialised colonial state institutions such as those of the Bolivian state. And this, far from encouraging the internal ‘unification’ of a society that has never been united, despite all the monocultural state’s liberalising and modernising tricks, reinforces the structures of cultural and ethnic domination, thus provoking greater possibilities of ethno-national rebellions over the long term. In this sense, the multinationalisation or multiculturalisation of the state does not ethnify the state, as the state is always ethnified, as much as it might cloak itself in its respect for ‘universal rights’. What state multinationality does is demonopolise the ethnicity of the state, allowing other dominated and excluded ethnicities to share the structures of social recognition and political power.

In the Bolivian case, the existence of two large linguistic communities (Aymara and Quechua), one of them with a high degree of nationality-based politicisation (Aymara), in addition to the existence of several dozen smaller linguistic and cultural communities, tells of the existence of a multiplicity of cultural communities with goals and values that are different from the dominant and majority national identity — the Bolivian identity. However, the country’s multicultural complexity is not included in the administrative structures of the state, which remain monocultural, monolinguistic and monoethnic, radically limiting the exercise of citizenship and of democratic rights.

One way to begin to solve this conflict between the cultural plurality of society and the ethnic monopolisation of the state, which reproduces discrimination and colonial rule, lies precisely in undertaking processes of asymmetric and differentiated recognition of national and ethnic identities, at the macro and regional scales.Of course, in the case of Bolivia, not every cultural community distinct from the Bolivian one is national; there are smaller and less politicised cultural identities, especially in the eastern region of the country, whose political state recognition requires different organisational procedures than those of the national cultural communities, like the Aymara community, which requires a substantial modification to the general organisational structure of the state.

It is necessary, therefore, to guarantee cohabitation with a pactist conception of power by articulating plurality in a shared political unity within a differentiated society; that is, some communities are national and others are not. The first step toward this is to grant regional autonomies by linguistic and cultural community with different levels of political self-government, depending on the political density and territorial scope of the cultural identities making demands. Following Donald rothchild and caroline hartzell, we understand autonomy to be an institutional arrangement that,

[...] delimits a regionally-based, self-administering entity or entities within a state as having explicit policy-making responsibilities in one or more political, economic and cultural spheres [...] The aim of territorial autonomy is to cede responsibilities over specified subjects, and in some cases, a certain degree of self-determination, to a group that constitutes the majority in a specific region[67].

Only with different forms of self-government can different cultures find a space for recognition, validation and development, as self-government allows the structuring of a system of political institutions capable of positively awarding and disciplining the cultural practices of the community (language, dress, customs, etc.) and creating a field of administrative, economic and cultural competencies based on linguistic homogeneity.

In peasant indigenous regions in the altiplano, the valleys and the tropics, these structures of certain forms of local self-government have existed de facto, at the level of communities, agricultural unions and groups of communities[68], since much before Bolivia was a republic. But there is no high-level structure of self-government connecting various communities or the hundreds or thousands of communities and urban neighbourhoods that are members of a large linguistic and cultural community, such that when the members of these cultural communities join the different governmental systems of economic, educational, bureaucratic, police or military administration, they must do so by abandoning their cultural knowledge (linguistic, oral, etc.) and forcibly using the ambiguously learned language, knowledge and customs of the dominant cultural identity that regulates state administration. This is the case of any communard or resident in an Aymara — or Quechua — speaking neighbourhood, who to register title to a property has to use exclusively spanish to submit the request, complete the paperwork and to obtain the property rights. All those with an indigenous language as their mother tongue have to experience the same linguistic and cultural schizophrenia; the parent dealing with the director or a teacher at the school, the urban merchant at the town hall, the union leader dealing with road services, the business person at customs, the student dealing with a university professor, the resident having to pay for electricity and water services.

Popular Participation, it must be recognised, not so much intentionally as because of the communities themselves, has enabled several town councils to partially modify linguistic practices in the bureaucratic administration. Because of the political organising by peasant unions, some mayors and administrative staff speak indigenous languages in their relationships with voters in the regions, and in some cases they are subject to forms of social control practiced by the indigenous communities[69]. However, in all these cases, we can only talk about low intensity forms of municipal self-government, to the extent that these authorities only have municipal competencies, while the decisive ones, demarcated and decided upon by the central government, are monopolised by dominant monoethnic communities. This would help to explain why, despite the accomplishments achieved with the municipalisation of Bolivian territory, the occupation of some town councils by indigenous communities and the very formation of indigenous municipalities[70], they have not been able to create a field of cultural and political competencies around an indigenous linguistic homogeneity.Of course, if it is just a matter of executing the normative directives decided upon by spanish-speaking mestizo communities, and the rest of the governmental functions at the local, regional and higher levels are based on the use of the spanish language, then the indigenous language does not cease to be a merely local and private language, without possibilities for making social mobility and full citizenship viable. The introduction of indigenous languages into some governmental offices and services would not solve the problem, as it would continue to be an officially marginal language that would continue to lack the rank of an officially practiced language; that is, a language for the full exercise of citizenship, social mobility and competition for high-ranking legitimate public posts.

The recognition of forms of self-government in territories demarcated by language communities would be a type of jura singularia that would immediately permit the creation of a field of competences and the accumulation of political, cultural, economic, educational and bureaucratic capital, based on a linguistic homogeneity that, from the state, would revalue and legitimate the different indigenous languages. In the process, a ‘societary culture’ would be created; that is, a territorially concentrated culture, based on a shared language, used in a broad range of social institutions of both public and private life (education, government, economy, media, taxation, etc.). The importance of constructing these societary cultures lies in that, without promoting secession[71], it would offer recognition for other cultural communities of the same right that the currently dominant cultural community practiced in its process of nation-building, because in a strict sense, every nation state is a societary culture[72].

Now, the characteristics of the self-government of cultural and/ or linguistic communities can vary according to territorial scope, cultural identity, demographic identity and the degrees of ethnic and nationality-based pollination that run through the different communities. In the case of small ethnic identities, a minimum level of regional self-government that can guarantee the development of the culture, multicultural citizenship and the democratic exercise of different political rights likely to put an end to current exclusion would have to recognise:

The right of the indigenous peoples, and not only of the communities, to self-determination, and therefore, to political autonomy as part of the Bolivian state[73]. This entails the possibility that various indigenous communities, ayllus or larger ethnic identities, such as the Laymes and Qakachacas, could join together to produce an autonomous region with regional monoethnic or pluriethnic indigenous self-government.

The election of executive authorities and the formation of structures of regional deliberation by the cultural communities that result from the federation of indigenous peoples and ethnicities. The provincial federations and the federations of ayllus, with their cabildo systems or their alternative systems for the individual election of representatives, could fulfil this role of minimal regional government.

The preservation of the principle of balanced ethnic proportionality and representation in the formation of autonomous regional governments, in order to prevent one ethnic group or linguistic community from imposing itself on another.

The integration of non-indigenous inhabitants of cities or neighbourhoods included within the autonomous territory as subjects of the same individual and collective rights in the shaping of regional systems of authority.

Autonomous territorial jurisdiction, with administrative responsibilities negotiated with and differentiated from the state in the educational and legal spheres, in agrarian property ownership and in the management and protection of natural resources (water, forests, flora, fauna, and mineral resources). This implies a redefinition of territoriality, in order to articulate state sovereignty with the property rights and indigenous sovereignty that existed prior to the republican state.

Access to state funds under the principles of equity and solidarity, so that the most impoverished regions due to previous extractions and exclusions can participate in the state-regulated common good.

The participation of autonomous regions based on cultural and/or linguistic communities in general and higher-level decision-making. The redistribution of uninominal seats to allow the creation of districts related to autonomous regions and ethnocultural communities could allow precisely this articulation between the micro and macro levels of the state’s multicultural organisation[74].

This form of regional autonomy could be implemented among relatively small cultural and linguistic communities such as those in the oriente, with different linguistic or ethnic communities that together could build a more solid autonomous region; but also between more or less compact ethnic identities, such as those in northern Potosí and sucre; or between several different ethnic identities that have the same language, such as the Quechua-speaking cultural communities, which despite a shared linguistic base, display an often insurmountable diversity of identities.

But, simultaneously, there is at least one linguistic and cultural community of national size and quality — Aymara — whose process of internal politicisation and nationality-based cohesion demands a more complex structure of autonomous self-government.

Because of the history of Aymara national construction[75]; the formation of an enduring political autonomist narrative; the consolidation of a nationalist elite with a large capacity for discursive reach; the persistence and expansion of its cultural repertoires; and its demographic importance, highly politicised through structures of collective action such as the sole union confederation of Campesino Workers of Bolivia (CSUTCB) and the indianist parties [indian Party, Tupac Katari indian movement (MITKA), and Tupac Katari revolutionary movement (MTRK)], along with their subsequent offshoots, and, the most successful, the Pachacuti indigenous movement (MIP), the demand for the political recognition of this national community would require at least the following characteristics of regional autonomous self-government:

The right of the Aymara nationality, not just the right of the communities, to self-determination, and therefore, to political autonomy as part of the Bolivian state.

Constitutional recognition of regional autonomy for linguistic communities, in order to guarantee state recognition of the equality of cultures beyond the current conjuncture. Any reform to the constitution would necessarily require majority participation and approval by the autonomous region. At the same time, the autonomous region would have its own constitutional normative regime, considered to be the basic law of the autonomous region, although with a rank just below that of the constitution of the political community of the Bolivian state.

An Aymara executive and national legislative chamber, from where the executive of the autonomous regime would be elected. This assembly, which would carry out its roles in the continuous territorial jurisdiction of the (urban-rural) Aymaraspeaking region, would be directly elected by the members of the cultural community itself, and would be responsible only to this community.

An autonomous government with total political responsibility for the primary and higher educational system, public administration, land registration, the media, taxes, public works, tourism, commerce, industry, transportation, housing, internal Trade, the environment, civil law, the police[76], and natural resources such as water, forests, flora, fauna, mining resources, etc. Issues like labour legislation, intellectual and industrial property, ownership of hydrocarbon resources and market legislation could be shared responsibilities between the autonomous community and the state[77]. As in the previous case, this implies redefining the meaning of territoriality, in order to articulate state sovereignty with the property rights and indigenous sovereignty that existed prior to the republican state.

Stable and predictable funding for the functioning of the autonomous regime. This could be achieved by committing the income from certain taxes to the domain of the autonomous region, as well as by applying the principle of equity and state solidarity by means of the conditional and unconditional transfer of resources from the state for the regular functioning of the autonomous administration[78].

The integration of non-indigenous minorities from cities and neighbourhoods included within the autonomous Aymara territory as subject to the same individual and collective rights in the shaping of regional authority systems. recognition of the rights of cultural minorities for non-Aymara-speaking cultural communities, with the possibility of accessing educational systems that preserve their cultural identity. The metropolitan area of La Paz, which is an enclave in the middle of an Aymara-speaking cultural territory, could be dealt with in one of two ways.

On one hand, the recognition of a special statute establishing it as an autonomous territorial region, like the city of Brussels in Belgium[79], with bilingual status in the construction of self-government such that the legislative chamber proportionally represents the number of members of society who belong to the Aymara linguistic community and to the spanish-speaking linguistic community. This proportion should also be maintained in the regional executive, with the exception of the regional president. This would permit a local distribution of the administration of regional responsibilities in the city based on cultural and linguistic affinity. Another option would be for the city of La Paz and members of neighbouring areas, if they wish to be included because of their cultural affinity, to remain as a discontinuous part of the spanish-speaking cultural community, with the status of a municipal regime similar to the current one, as with the rest of the cities and agricultural areas that do not see themselves as having indigenous cultural identities.

This set of minimal rules would permit an immediate revaluation of indigenous cultures, a democratic extension of social participation in the structures of state power, and most substantially, the political equality of cultures, with a positive, fair ethnification of specific state structures. In this way, the Aymara language and culture would have a system of public institutions that would ensure their development and positively sanction their public and private use, and a regionalnational framework would be formed that would provide economicadministrative legitimation for their knowledge and use.

In a strict sense, this would be the establishment of a large-scale social space that would ensure a regime of aptitude, competence and accumulation of different types of capital[80] (economic, political, cultural, social, state, union, etc.), based on linguistic and cultural homogeneity. In other terms, the development of an Aymara societary culture would be based on conditions of normative political development equal to those of the spanish-speaking mestizo societary culture[81].

Depending on the extent of ethnic integration and politicisation of the Quechua-speaking cultural identities, it is theoretically possible to think about the formation of a second large-scale autonomous government, based on the most prevalent linguistic community in the country —Quechua.

But for these forms of indigenous self-government at the local, regional or national level to not create centrifugal processes that enable separatist tendencies in the Bolivian state, and furthermore, to complete the ethnic demonopolisation of the macro or general structure of the Bolivian state in order to consolidate high-level recognition of the indigenous cultural communities and linguistic regions, these processes of autonomous construction must simultaneously include a re-distribution of responsibilities between the state and the autonomous government, and a real and proportional presence of the indigenous cultural communities in the composition of the institutions and powers that regulate the highest political community of the Bolivian state.

In the case of the Aymara national community, this could be fulfilled by:

Reforming the Bolivian state in order to democratically establish its unity, and preserve politico-cultural diversity by constitutionally integrating regional politico-indigenous communities in a new higher political community, in which power is shared and divided between a general government with national responsibilities and constituent governments with regional or sub-national responsibilities. This therefore implies two spheres of vertically articulated government: state government and autonomous governments. In the event that departmental autonomies are established in spanish-speaking areas, in line with the territorial reconfiguration of the state produced by the indigenous autonomies, these regimes of departmental governments could also be included in this new vertical ordering of Bolivian state powers.

The representation and participation of the autonomous community in the organisations of the general state government, in the upper and lower chambers as well as in the ministries.

In the case of the lower chamber, made up of representatives of the entire nation and with responsibility for state administration, a numeric presence of Aymara representatives according to the percentage of Aymaras with respect to the total number of Bolivia’s inhabitants — approximately 25-30% — implying control of a total of 25-30% of the seats in the general parliament. With respect to the other indigenous autonomous communities such as those in the oriente, the principle of overrepresentation could be established in order to favour the presence of small cultural communities[82].

In the case of the upper chamber that represents the departments, an equal proportional presence of the autonomous governments following the principles of equality and institutional symmetry. In both the lower and the upper chambers, the principle of ‘double mandate’[83] could be established, such that some parliamentarians elected for the autonomous parliament would also be directly present in the state parliament.

In the case of the state executive, proportional presence of the main linguistic communities (spanish, Aymara, Quechua) in the composition of the cabinet, in order to bring the country’s linguistic diversity and the balance of rights of the most important linguistic communities to the very forefront of the executive. This, of course, does not rule out party competition, but it forces the party system itself to become multicultural, or to establish multicultural party alliances in order to be able to govern.

Ultimately, this is about culturally constituting a consociational government (consociation with consensus)[84], or a responsive plurinational federative government[85] able to articulate a balanced representation of all the linguistic cultures and communities in the institutional structure, both in the state core and in local and regional government spaces. This would thus extend the official radius of the space of recognition, valuation and social legitimacy of the most important indigenous languages, and, consequently, it would enhance their capacity to be used as legitimate languages in the context of the state; that is, as linguistic capital suitable for obtaining posts in public administration, in the administration of the central government, in the economic leadership of the country, and so on.

The possibility of structuring systems of general government based on the proportional distribution of positions according to linguistic community would break with the monoculturalism of the current Bolivian state and extend the validity of the principal indigenous languages to the level of the highest state structure, thus making possible the political equality of cultures and languages as parallel and balanced mechanisms for social advancement and citizenship.

Finally, this administrative political equality of the spanish language and the Aymara and Quechua languages would initiate the structural process of dissolving the colonial legacy, which made ethnicity a capital such that social class structuring, access to goods, labour supply and the possibilities of gaining access to positions of general power would cease having (mestizo spanish-speaking) language or culture as a bonus that increases the efficacy and volume of the other types of capital.

b. The multicivilisational dimension of the political community

But the problem that needs solving in the country is not only that of the multiculturalism or multinationality of its members. It is also that of the diversity of political systems and technologies with which people take on the exercise and broadening of their public rights. Citizenship is a state of society’s political self-awareness and self-organisation that is recognised as legitimate by the laws of the state. The problem arises when the state prescribes a set of norms, of exclusive ways in which citizens can express and practice this production of the political dictates of public effectiveness, and revokes, denies or represses other ways, other institutional forms, other practices, political cultures and systems of authority.

There is not one single way to exercise political rights or to intervene in the management of the common good. Liberal democracy, by means of the individual vote, electoral competition, the formation of political elective communities and the political market[86], is a form of democratically constituting citizenship, corresponding to societies that have undergone modern processes of individuation and that have eroded normative loyalties and systems of traditional aggregation (kinship, shared geographical origins, etc.). In general, this occurs in countries that have, in a majority and dominant fashion, participated in industrial economic processes that replace the peasant, artisan and communitarian economies that materially sustained the existence of normative forms of constituting the social group. In Bolivia, the economy displays such heterogeneity that scarcely 20% can be considered to be a modern market-industrial economy, while the rest is made up of traditional technico-procedural, semi-market-oriented systems, anchored in a strong presence of occupational and community systems in the organisation of productive processes. Hence, the forms of corporatist, occupational and community affiliation are systems that constitute collective subjects, mainly practiced in cities and agrarian areas as modes of social affiliation, of conflict resolution, of mediation and of political self-representation.

Now, it is true that these techniques of deliberative democracy, ethnic democracy and traditional corporatist citizenship, governed by moral and political parameters distinct from the liberal ones and made effective through associative and assembly-style, non-party institutions, have a predominantly local and regional existence. However, different moments in history have shown that these systems can be articulated into networks, into macro systems of democracy that include thousands of communities and numerous occupational associations, engaging in large-scale democratic practices (provincial union federations, federations or confederations of ayllus, roadblocks, electoral participation, etc.). With a little bit of effort and support, such as that given by the state to the parties so that they will not disappear, these non-liberal democratic practices could easily have a regular existence at the macro-state level.

Believing that liberal-style representative democracy is the only way to exercise political responsibility is to mistakenly suppose that Bolivia is an economically modern country in its technico-organisational structure, and that individuation is a majority phenomenon, as these are prerequisites for implementing models of representative democracy.

In Bolivia, the normative collective identities of the neighbourhood, ayllu, community and occupational association largely precede any manifestation of individuality, and they are used daily to exercise social control, to make claims, to elect representatives, to present demands for equal rights, to form a civic moral code of citizen responsibility. However, these democratic institutions[87], which have their own practices for deliberation, for accountability, for choosing authorities, for presenting demands, for shaping public opinion, for dissenting and consenting, for the political equality of its members — that is, for exercising democratic rights in a substantive sense — are not currently taken into consideration by the state, which on the contrary, makes systematic, authoritarian efforts to discipline all of these other expressions of social democratisation so that they will fit the demo-liberal moulds.

These different political techniques, these systems of peasant-indigenous[88] and urban-plebeian[89] authority, form part of the complex, multicivilisational fabric of Bolivian reality. They are also visible in  other social practices, such as those revealed in the understanding and exercise of ayllu justice[90], in Andean (textile and trenzado)[91]writing, in the predominance of textual repertoires (orality, visualisation, tactile, etc.)[92], in the management of collective resources[93], in the management of family rights tied to political responsibilities[94], and so on.

The possibility of real political equality in society therefore depends on a suppression of the mono-organisational structure of the current Bolivian state, which has simply recognised and instituted those institutions that come from the dominant and minority (mercantile-industrial) civilisation as the only legitimate institutions for the political exercise of (citizenship and liberal democracy) rights. Substantial political equality between cultures and identities requires equality in the forms of producing policy at all levels of governmental administration (general, regional and local); that is, the equality of political practices, of political institutions and of different systems of political authority belonging to the different cultural communities and civilisational regimes that coexist in Bolivian territory.

This composition of political institutions and forms coming from different civilisational or societal matrices, which coexist in conditions of equality, has been termed mestizo politics by Luis Tapia[95], and is capable of creating solid and extensive processes of democratisation and citizenship formation.

To the extent that these different forms of technical and organisational political production belong to different civilisational regimes, their historical rhythms and time are heterogeneous, hence it is necessary to think about a specific synchrony for short periods, such that ‘their presence, strength, opinion and decision can be included in the deliberation and overall action’[96].One example of these specific synchronies of civilisational political regimes is that, at the regional scale, in the towns of chapare and northern Potosí, when choosing  municipal authorities through parties and the individual vote (liberal regime), the decision to choose people for the council is made with agrarian union and ayllu forms of deliberation and lobbying (corporatist or communal regime).

In this case, traditional institutional systems are articulated with ‘modern’ ones. In some cases, this de facto composition of political institutions also occurs during elections for representatives to parliament, though this is an occasional occurrence that is upheld in exceptional circumstances of community and ayllu politicisation and self-organisation. A democratic composition of different political institutions and forms would imply the regulation, expansion and institutionalisation of these local and ephemeral experiences of civilisational articulation. This could be regulated by means of the following points:

Constitutional recognition of political systems and systems of constituting authority practiced by peasant communities, ayllus, neighbourhoods and unions (federations, confederations, associations), as legitimate systems for election and decisionmaking in specific spheres of the government system at the general, regional and local levels.

Legitimate spheres for electing representatives where these other systems of deliberation would be applied would be: 1) representatives to parliament at the top level of the state (or the general political community) in regions where these forms of political organisation are predominant or have a partial presence; 2) the parliaments of the autonomous regions of indigenous self-government. The proportional combination of elected representatives through parties or through corporatist structures would be negotiated, depending on the magnitude, history and presence of each one of these organisational forms, in each autonomous region and departmental constituency.

Obligatory recognition, in the form of sanction or veto, of their deliberation on central issues of state management (state ownership of resources, overall public investment, constitutional reform, etc.).

Institutional recognition, carrying the force of state law, for the forms of communal administration of justice, of controlling collective resources and of medical knowledge practiced regularly by indigenous cultural communities. extending those institutions that enable social legitimacy, regular learning and the acquisition of resources for these practices to the regional and state level of bureaucratic and political administration.

Constitutional recognition of authority rotation systems, of systems of accountability that report to collective organisations (not only to individuals, as in the liberal regime) on the political authorities that make up the different levels of the state hierarchy (municipalities, autonomous regions, departmental governments, general state).

A multicivilisational state would mean precisely the recognition of multiple mechanisms, multiple techniques and forms of understanding, practising and regulating society’s democratic impulses, in accordance with the multiple forms of exercising citizenship as a result of the plurality of society’s civilisational matrices.

As a result of the characteristics of its historical formation, Bolivia’s complex social reality has produced various practices of democratic political behaviour. Thus, an effectively democratic state would require large-scale recognition, in the sphere of fundamental public policy decision-making, of the institutionalised legitimacy of the different ways of practicing and understanding democracy. Such legitimacy would enhance awareness of the democratisation of political power. This is precisely the multi-institutional nature of the state structure that, along with redefining legitimate ethnicities and the norms of territorial administration in accordance with ethnic practices and sovereignties, could produce a type of multinational and multicivilisational state.

If Bolivia is an overlapping of several cultures and several civilisations, then the state, as a synthesis, should be an institutionality capable of articulating and forming a political design developed with a proportional presence of linguistic cultures and identities, as well as with modern and traditional, deliberative, representative and assembly-type institutions in broad-scale, ‘national’ decision-making.

Administrative complexity

Given that overcoming the exclusion of indigenous cultural communities and their systems of authority will inevitably require state reform, which would multiculturalise all public institutions and combine multiple organisational logics for political action in the different levels of government, it is clear that the training of administrative staff, in order to adapt to these complex tasks, would have to incorporate equally complex forms of training, of ethnic composition and of organisational abilities. In this respect, we can at least note the need for the following changes in the training of administrative staff, which would prepare them for the implementation of a multicultural and multicivilisational state:

Processes of recruiting public officials in similar proportions to the number of public posts that every linguistic community has with respect to all state administrative positions, at the micro and regional levels as well as at the macro level.

Selection and ranking of staff according to merit-based competition within each of the administrative segments chosen because of their relevance to a linguistic community.

Design of merit-based promotional tiers based not only on formal knowledge and bureaucratic rationalisation[97], but also on knowledge of the organisational logic of indigenous cultures and the textual repertoires of non-market-industrial civilisations. To the extent that bureaucratic rationality is a product of the social internalisation of modern market and factory logic[98] in the regulation of legitimate state administrative knowledge, the acceptance of a plurality of forms of recognising administrative merits would introduce the plurality of systems of authority and of knowledge of public administration into the workings of the state. This would mean the alternation or coexistence of several types of merit-based capital in the administrative profession and in governmental administration.

Training, in preparation for administrative careers in government, in the country’s three majority languages.

This democratisation of bureaucratic-administrative training recognises indigenous languages as a legitimate means for gaining access to public roles and advancing within this sphere, and recognises a plurality of administrative practices and knowledge as valid routes for gaining merit.

Given that the extinction of ethnic discrimination will be a gradual process of structural state reform, there are several ways to initiate this process.One possibility would be a reform ‘from below’, establishing indigenous forms of self-government in special territories at intermediate levels, which would then serve as experience for other regions. This would entail local initiative as well as state tolerance and support from the highest levels of leadership.

Another form of reform is ‘top down’, such that the decision to modify principal parts of the organisational architecture of the system of self-government would be made at the highest levels of the state, for this to then flow down to (autonomous) intermediate and micro (local indigenous self-government) levels. This would require immediate constitutional reforms that would, for example, make the composition of congress multicultural in the short term, as well as the working of some governmental agencies.

If, as we have seen above, the key to eroding processes of ethnic exclusion in multicultural societies lies in the equality of languages and cultural practices in the spheres of public administration, then in order to officially legitimate all cultures by using them within these spheres and by creating conditions for the social mobility of the members of these cultures, it is necessary for the state, from the highest and broadest levels of self-government possible, to validate the majority cultures, identified in this case as linguistic communities. For example, the normatised and regularised leadership of ministries by indigenous people and a gradual indigenous majority, and/or proportional distribution in the parliament according to linguistic affiliation. These measures would issue a state signal that indigenous languages are recognised as linguistic capital for holding public office, for real citizenship and for social mobility.

Together, all these transformations would mean that in the sphere of legislative, judicial and executive powers, in addition to proportionally distributing general and territorial unitarian administration according to ethnic and linguistic origins, the forms of management, representation and social intervention would have to incorporate multiple composite political mechanisms, such as representative democracy, through parties; deliberative democracy, through assemblies; communal democracy, through the normative action of communities and ayllus, and so on. This is, then, about combining at a macro, general scale, modern institutions with traditional ones, multicultural representation with general representation, in accordance with the multicultural and multicivilisational reality of Bolivian society. In other words, it is about seeking a political modernity based on what we really are, and not simulating what we can never be.

All this certainly points to a radical extension of democracy to the extent that it creates real, equal possibilities of citizenship, both in the context of the collective rights of cultural identities and in the exercise of organisational practices for gaining access to public recognition. In turn, the radical nature of this process stems from the fact that it entails the dismantling of colonial and civilisational structures of domination that have persisted to the present day, not only since the birth of the republic, but going all the way back to the very beginning of indigenous colonisation in the sixteenth century — structures which have been dressed up over the centuries in different forms of imposed economic and political pseudo-modernisation.

Text extracted from: garcía Linera, Álvaro ‘Autonomía indígena y estado multinacional. estado plurinacional y multicivilizatorio: una propuesta democrática y pluralista para la extinción de la exclusión de las naciones indias’ in AA.VV. 2004 La descentralización que se viene (La Paz: iLDis/Plural). Translated by shana Yael shubs and ruth felder. reviewed and copy edited by eugenia cervio.↵

Vice-president of Bolivia since 2006. mathematician and self-taught social and political scientist. He has published several books on political theory, the economic regime, social movements and the democratic system, including, Plebeian Power: Collective action and indigenous, working-class and popular identities in Bolivia (Bogotá: cLAcso/siglo del hombre, 2009). In 2004, he received the ‘Agustín cueva’ award in social sciences granted by several universities in ecuador.↵

grüner, Wolf 2000 ‘un mito enterrado: la fundación de la república de Bolivia y la liberación de los indígenas’ in Historias: Revista de la Coordinadora de Historia (La Paz), n° 4.↵

Bolívar, simón 1991 (1825) ‘Decreto del 4 de julio de 1825, cuzco’, cited in sandoval rodríguez, isaac Nación y estado en Bolivia (La Paz: mundy color).↵

irurozqui, marta 1994 La armonía de las desigualdades. Elites y conflictos de poder en Bolivia, 1880-1920 (Lima: consejo superior de investigaciones científicas/centro de estudios regionales Andinos/Bartolomé de las casas)↵

mayorga, rené A. 1999 ‘La democracia o el desafío de la modernidad política’ in campero Prudencio, fernando (ed.) Bolivia en el siglo XX (La Paz: harvard club Bolivia).↵

Viaña, Jorge 2002 ‘La llamada ‘acumulación originaria’ del capital en Bolivia’ (La Paz: Postgrado en ciencias del Desarrollo/universidad mayor de san Andrés/muela del Diablo); rodríguez, gustavo 1979 La acumulación originaria de capital en Bolivia 1825-1885 (cochabamba: universidad mayor de san simón/instituto de estudios sociales y económicos).↵

The union of white, oligarchic men and mestizo women (Translators’ note).↵

Percentages calculated based on data provided by irurozqui (1994) and contreras, manuel ‘reformas y desafíos de la educación’ in campero Prudencio (1999).↵

Original in english (Translators’ note).↵

Hurtado, Javier 1985 El katarismo (La Paz: instituto de historia social Boliviana).↵

Hechter, michael 1987 Principles of group solidarity (Berkeley: university of california Press); epstein, Arnold 1978 Ethos and identity (London: Tavistock).↵

Balibar, Étienne & Wallerstein, immanuel 1991 Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous identities (London/new York: Verso).↵

Balibar & Wallerstein (1991).↵

stavenhagen, rodolfo 1996 Ethnic conflicts and the nation-state (new York: st. martin’s Press); clavero, Bartolomé 1994 Derecho indígena y cultura constitucional en América (Mexico: siglo XXi).↵

Oommen, T. K. 1997 Citizenship, Nationality and Ethnicity (cambridge: Polity Press and Blackwell).↵

Balibar, Étienne ‘racism and nationalism’ in Balibar & Wallerstein (1991). For a discussion between ‘primordialists’ and ‘instrumentalists’ about the bases of ethnicity, see geertz, clifford 1993 The interpretation of cultures (new York: fontana); cohen, Abner 1974 Two-dimensional man: An essay on the anthropology of power and symbolism in complex society (London: routledge); Barth, fredrik (ed.) 1969 Ethnic groups and boundaries the social organization of culture difference (Boston: Little Brown).↵

A similar way of understanding the development of social classes in an Andean region can be found in gose, Peter 1994 Deathly waters and hungry mountains: Agrarian ritual and class formation in an Andean town (Toronto: university of Toronto Press).↵

Bourdieu, Pierre 1984 Distinction: A social critique of the judgment of taste (cambridge: harvard university Press).↵

frankenberg, ruth 1989 ‘The social construction of whiteness’ in Annual Review of Anthropology (Palo Alto), n° 18.↵

Jiménez Zamora, elizabeth 2000 ‘el costo de ser indígena en Bolivia: discriminación salarial versus segregación laboral’ in Revista de la Sociedad Boliviana de Economía Política (La Paz), Volume 1.↵

Jiménez Zamora (2000).↵

miller, David 1995 On nationality (new York/oxford: clarendon Press/oxford university Press); eagleton, Terry 1999 ‘nationalism and the case of ireland’ in New Left Review (London), Volume 1, n° 234.↵

Balibar,Étienne‘Thenationform:historyandideology’inBalibar&Wallerstein(1991).↵

‘struggles over ethnic or regional identity — in other words, over the properties (stigmata or emblems) linked with the origin through the place of origin and its associated durable marks, such as accent — are a particular case of the different struggles over classifications, struggles over the monopoly of the power to make people see and believe, to get them to know and recognize, to impose the legitimate definition of the divisions of the social world and, thereby, to make and unmake groups. What is at stake here is the power of imposing a vision of the social world through principles of division which, when they are imposed on a whole group, establish meaning and a consensus about meaning, and in particular about the identity and unity of the group, which creates the reality of the unity and the identity of the group’ in Bourdieu, Pierre 1991 Language and symbolic power (cambridge: harvard university Press) p. 221.↵

Ethnic or regionalist discourse ‘is a performative discourse which aims to impose as legitimate a new definition of the frontiers and to get people to know and recognize the region that is thus delimited in opposition to the dominant definition, which is misrecognized as such [...] The act of categorization, when it manages to achieve recognition or when it is exercised by a recognized authority, exercises by itself a certain power: ‘ethnic’ or ‘regional’ categories, like categories of kinship, institute a reality by using the power of revelation and construction exercised by objectification in discourse’ Bourdieu (1991: 223).↵

Gellner, ernest 1983 Nations and nationalism (ithaca: cornell university Press); Anderson, Benedict 1983 Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (London: Verso); guibernau, montserrat 1996 Nationalisms: The nationstate and nationalism in the twentieth century (cambridge/cambridge: Polity Press).↵

Albó, Xavier ‘etnias y pueblos originarios’ in campero Prudencio (1991).↵

Instituto nacional de estadística (ine) 2002 Censo nacional de población y vivienda 2001 (La Paz: ine).↵

All identities are always the fruit of deliberate work in the discursive, symbolic and organisational field, which produces a state of self-reflexivity in subjects in order to demarcate imagined borders (real or believed) that differentiate them from other subjects. This distinctive will is always the fruit of an activity specifically intended to achieve an objective, and therefore it is always fabricated, produced. In this sense, all identities are cultural inventions that, either externally to the group (as with the colony’s ‘indians’, for example), or as a result of the presence of internal political elites (the contemporary Aymara identity), make visible and resignify some shared element (language, history, ancestors, culture, religion, etc.), with which boundaries are set down to distinguish them from other people, and substantive loyalties (a kind of extended kinship) are instilled amongst the ‘identified’. Now, of course this production of identities can not be made out of nothing; there are greater chances of success when there are similar conditions of objective existence between people, but it is also possible that, even when these similar objective conditions exist, a cultural identity or differentiated politics will never be produced. All identities are historically contingent and relational, thus any speculation about ‘originary’ and ‘fabricated’ identities is reprehensible. The only rigorous approach in any case, is to inquire into the conditions of production of this or that identity and its capacity for mobilisation, and not about its artificiality, as all identities are, ultimately, social inventions. A common error about the concept of identity, that of Jorge Lazarte for example, is to confound ethnic identity, based on cultural practices, with socioeconomic regime or technical acquisition, as it regards identifying oneself as Aymara or indigenous as antagonistic to demanding internet or tractors. While the former has to do with the cultural system of signification with which subjects know and act in the world, the latter refers to the economic organisation and access to resources upon which this signification of the world acts. A german person and an english person can have a car, a cell phone and an industry in common, but that does not make them participants in the same cultural identity, nor is their attachment to the language or the cultural tradition of their respective cultural communities a return to the technology of the middle Ages. Similarly, that the Aymara people demand modern roads, telephone systems and technology does not mean that they have renounced their language, their tradition, or that they joyfully demand their rapid conversion to the spanish language and their immediate cultural mixing. unlike what Lazarte believes, indigenous cultural identity is not associated with a return to the takit’aclla plough, as if identity were associated with a specific technological level of society and a single activity (agricultural work). The Aymaras, for example, have shown that it is possible to culturally be Aymaras when cultivating in precolonial suka kollos times, as well as in times of the colonial mita, the republican hacienda and the modern factory. The confusion between ethnic identity and socioeconomic regime leads to a petrified interpretation, and therefore a useless one for the purpose of accounting for the complicated processes of modern ethnic identity construction. Like in other parts of the world, indigenous identity claims are not incompatible with, for example, industrial or technical modernity. Indeed, this is when the very vitality and regenerative capacity of cultural identities are put to the test. That the Aymaras demand tractors, but with discourses in their own language and as part of an indigenous project of political autonomy, far from debilitating the process of identity construction, inserts it into modernity itself, or in other words, fights for a modernity articulated with tradition and based on the repertoires of indigenous cultural signification.Is it not at all possible to be culturally or nationality-wise Aymara and at the same time be an engineer, a worker, a manufacturer or a farmer? The peasant and archaistic reductionism with which some conservative ideologues attempt to interpret indigenous cultural identity formation not only suffers from a lack of knowledge about history and social theory, but it is also strongly marked by an ethnocentric mental framework, which tends to associate the indigenous with the backward, the rural and the opposite of the ‘development’ and ‘modernity’ that would naturally be part of the mestizo and spanish-speaking world. ↵

Hurtado(1985);garcíaLinera,Álvaro2003‘Laformacióndelaidentidadnacional en el movimiento indígena-campesino aymara’ in Fe y pueblo (La Paz), Year 1, n° 2.↵

Zavaleta, rené 1986 Lo nacional popular en Bolivia (Mexico: siglo XXi); Tapia, Luis 2002 La producción del conocimiento local. Historia y política en la obra de René Zavaleta (La Paz: Postgrado en ciencias del Desarrollo/universidad mayor de san Andrés/muela del Diablo).↵

Elias, norbert 1978 The civilizing process (new York: urizen); see also: Braudel, fernand 1979 Civilisation matérielle, économie et capitalisme, XVe-XVIII siècles (Paris: A. Colin).↵

Guillermo Bonfil employed a pioneering use of the concept of civilisation to study indigenous peoples, although in a form directly associated with the social characteristics of the peasant (centred around self-sufficient production, family solidarity, reciprocity, communal land ownership, nature as a live, dialoguing body, etc.).↵

In a recent text (‘el país está dividido: ¿habrá que dividirlo mejor?’ in T’inkazos (La Paz), n° 17, 2004), rafael Archondo tries to make a number of observations about our proposal regarding the multinationalisation of the state. unfortunately, his attention to the aesthetics of irony has been to the detriment of argumentative reason and knowledge. He indicates that the state can not be the (connoted) ‘synthesis’ of society, but only ‘of the political’ (?), as if the authority that guarantees the citizenship rights of the members of a territory, the taxes that sustain the bureaucratic administration or the property system that prioritises access to collectively generated assets only affected the small elites ‘thirsty for power’, while the rest, the majority, lived in a type of non-state so coveted by primitive anarchism. The naivety of the concept of a society outside the state would be no more than innocent speculation if it were not because it ‘forgets’ or hides the fact that the state ‘lives’ off of the resources of all of society, it hierarchically allocates these assets according to the strength of all social fractions, and it establishes access to these powers by means of coercion and the legitimacy it obtains from all of society’s members. The state is therefore a total social relation, not just the aspiration of the ‘capable’ or of those ‘thirsty’ for power; the state runs through all of us in some way, hence its public nature. If the state only affected ‘ideologically active elites’, then Archondo should wonder about the reason for the phantasmal income tax he pays every month, about the unreality of property deeds and about the fiction of the vote. In part, this whole illusion is related to the dream of state bureaucrats, who think that they owe nothing to society and that the public is solely for the virtuous. Archondo confuses the administration of the state with the state itself. The former is indeed a thing of elites, who administer state power, while the latter is a relational and mechanical thing that, in one way or another, runs through all of society. The solidity of a modern state lies in that it is able to produce a political relationship with allof society by means of an active legitimacy, such that the interests of different politically active social blocs are hierarchically articulated in state functions, and the elites of these blocs can competitively gain access to the different mechanisms of power. This is precisely what does not happen in this country. Here, not even the state is a social relational thing (evidenced by the percentage of people that do not pay taxes or have access to political or social citizenship), nor are the collective rights of a demographic majority (the indigenous as a historico-political identity) included in full citizenship rights. Archondo’s pre-reflexive simplicity becomes clear political militancy as soon as he criticises the proposal of a multiculturalisation or multinationalisation of the state’s decision-making structures. It is understandable that he may not be familiar with the institutional adaptations that other multicultural democratic states have implemented (Belgium, switzerland, india, canada, etc.). In this case, we can simply recommend that he review the relevant literature before venturing to weigh in on things that he does not understand. But what does merit comment is the principle that a proportional presence of cultural identities in the state would be a form of ‘apartheid’. If Archondo had had the grace to review the meaning of the words he uses with such notable levity, he would have discovered that apartheid means society’s exclusion from power structures based precisely upon its membership in a cultural community, and that this is legally regulated. This is what happens in Bolivia, not in a legal fashion, but rather in practice, just as we are demonstrating here, and it does so with the practical consequences of segregated access to public resources and social mobility. This hypocritical apartheid, to which Archondo is attached, is exactly what should be dismantled and not legitimised with little phrases about a de-ethnicised ‘democracy’ that enshrine the monoethnicity of the state structure. In multicultural societies, the demos of democracy must be culturally plural, because otherwise, it leaves the mechanisms of political exclusion intact, with the imposition of a single parameter of demos that will never be either impartial or universal. In this respect, Archondo’s attachment to the illusion that identity is a matter of individual choice is symptomatic, as are liberalism’s claims about culturally homogenous societies. What we should not lose sight of is that identity is a product of collective struggles around access to resources based on the politicisation of certain components (language, religion, history, tradition, etc.), and that the state also produces identities, both dominant and dominated. It is a context of powers from which individuals can not remove themselves in order to choose freely, and, even less so, when these powers regulate access to a society’s economic and political goods, as in Bolivia. The immaculate individuality to which Archondo is attached is a fiction that legitimates, with universalist clothing, the dominant state identity (as the state monopolises legitimate education, legitimate language, legitimate culture, legitimate history) and reproduces de facto the dominated identities. ultimately, the dismantling of this actually existing domination is the uncrossable boundary of all this pseudoliberalism, which verges on frivolity. Archondo should ask himself about what ‘freedom’ the indians have to successfully ‘whiten themselves’ or ‘gringify themselves’ when seeking matrimonial exchanges, employment or public recognition. With respect to our critic’s anxiety about how to identify the cultural communities, this is a political act of self-identification whose jurisdiction is the territoriality of the state. In multicultural democracies, all citizens can exercise their citizenship rights based on their cultural membership, wherever they might be located, or choose representatives of their cultural community from any place, as the state is multicultural in its centralstructure. With the difference that in places where a cultural identity is territorially the majority, the decision-making structures of sub-national (regional) power are culturally predominant, but recognise the rights of other cultural minorities within them. With respect to considering identities and different civilisations as watertight spaces, as Archondo suggests, we can refer in our responses in this text to more solid and coherent critical arguments. In any case, not because Bush uses the words ‘democracy’ and ‘freedom’ to legitimise his wars are democracy and freedom warlike concepts. The same thing happens with the concept of ‘civilisation’ employed by samuel huntington. If Archondo had read the author before using him with comparative and disparaging purposes, he would have realised that for huntington, civilisation is synonymous with culture, and that culture is reduced to language and in some cases to religion. And it is with this concept that he puts together his conservative interpretation of the ‘clash of civilisations’. In our case, and revisiting the sociological use by norbert elias and other Latin American researchers that Archondo would do well to review, with the concept of civilisation we seek to articulate the concept of mode of production, in its hard technical and organisational core, and the system of political authority and the form of structurally signifying the world. Like any concept, it is not reality, but rather a way of mentally ordering information about reality; thus it is epistemologically abusive to want to ‘map out’ and geographically demarcate ‘civilisations’ with a pencil and ruler. This concept is a category that allows us to understand how it can be that in people’s behaviours, the logics and organisational practices they use to materially and symbolically produce and reproduce their lives are overlapping, or sometimes hierarchically fused. Disqualifying a category as a result of the use given to it by a different author who defines it differently is an ideological juggling act that easily wins applause, although intellectually, it is a sham.↵

Abermas, Jürgen 1984 The theory of communicative action (Boston: Beacon Press).↵

Agriculture is comprised of 550,000 domestic units, which include 90% of the agrarian population, while in urban labour, 700,000 semi-businesses and family units predominate, accounting for 65% of urban employment. In this respect, see: Grebe, Horst 2002 ‘El crecimiento y la exclusión’ in AA.VV. La fuerza de las ideas (La Paz: World Bank/Instituto Prisma/ILDIS/Maestrías para el Desarrollo); Arze, Carlos 1999 ‘Empleo y relaciones laborales’ in AA.VV. Bolivia hacia el siglo XXI (La Paz: UMSA/Coordinadora Nacional de Redes/Centro de Estudios para el Desarrollo Laboral y Agrario/PNUD/ CIDES).↵

Guillermo Bonfil proposed using the category of civilisation to understand the organising structure of indigenous peoples. For him, civilisation was ‘a sufficiently high and complex level of cultural development (in the broadest and most inclusive sense of the term ‘cultural’) to act as a common base and essential orientation for the historical projects of all the peoples that share that civilisation’. See: Bonfil Batalla, Guillermo 1987 México profundo, una civilización negada (Mexico: CIESAS/SEP). A similar concept to the one we use here is that proposed by Luis Tapia with the category ‘societal’. See: Tapia, Luis 2002 La condición multisocietal. Multiculturalidad, pluralismo, modernidad (La Paz: CIDES/UMSA/Muela del Diablo).↵

The proposal to differentiate Bolivia’s structural heterogeneity into three or four blocs was developed by Luis Tapia (2002); and Álvaro García Linera in ‘Estado y sociedad: en busca de una modernidad no esquizofrénica’ in AA.VV (2002). Later, Roberto Laserna, in the article ‘Bolivia: la crisis de octubre y el fracaso del Chenko’ (La Paz: Muller y Asociados, 2004), proposed the ‘concept’ of ‘different economies’ to refer to this Bolivian social complexity. Leaving aside this sudden change in theoretical approach by one who just a few months earlier had enthusiastically evaluated the economy as being immersed in the unstoppable process of globalisation (see Laserna, Roberto ‘Bolivia en la Globalización. Estado y sociedad. Temas del presente’ in AA.VV. (2002); and my critique of this type of ideological schizophrenia), the only innovation in Laserna’s text is the fact that he attributes the failure of the inapplication of liberal reforms to the existence of these ‘distinct economies’. If it is all about failures, perhaps it would be more honest to think about the social failure and the ignorance of the free market ideologues who rushed into applying modernising formulas to a country that they did not know or understand. Nonetheless, unlike the concept ‘different economies’ proposed by Laserna, that of multisocietal or multicivilisational not only incorporates the ‘modes of production’ or differentiated economies, but it also refers to the existence of multiple systems of authority and multiple symbolic structures for defining the world that coexist in a hierarchical fashion in Bolivia. ↵

Bobbio, Norbert 1987 The future of democracy: A defense of the rules of the game (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).↵

Zavaleta (1987).↵

M ansilla, H. C. F. 1994 Autonomía e imitación en el desarrollo (La Paz: Centro Boliviano de Estudios Multidisciplinarios); Lazarte, Jorge 2001 ‘Entre dos mundos: la cultura democrática en Bolivia’ in Toranzo, Carlos et al. Democracia y cultura política en Bolivia (La Paz: BID/CNE/PNUD).↵

Zavaleta, René 1983 Las masas en noviembre (La Paz: Juventud).↵

M arx, Karl 1976 (1867) ‘Results of the immediate process of production’ in Appendix to Capital (London: Penguin) Volume 1.↵

G uibernau (1996).↵

O ommen (1997).↵

Keating, Michael 2001 ‘Nations without states. Minority nationalism in a global era’ in Ferran Requejo (ed.) Democracy and national pluralism (London: Routledge).↵

Bauer, Otto 2000 The question of nationalities and social democracy (Minneapolis/ London: University of Minnesota Press); Lenin, Vladimir Illich 1972 ‘The right of nations to self determination’ in Lenin, Vladimir Illich Collected works (Moscow: Progress Publishers) Volume XX; Luxemburg, Rosa 1976 The national question: Selected writings (New York: Monthly Review Press).↵

Wallerstein, Immanuel 1995 After liberalism (New York: New Press).↵

Narveson, Jan 1991 ‘Collective rights’ in Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence (London, Ontario), Volume 4, N° 2.↵

Johnston, Darlene 1989 ‘Native rights as collective rights’ in Canadian Journal of Law and Jurisprudence (London, Ontario), Volume 2, N° 1.↵

Pfaff, William 1993 The wrath of nations: Civilization and the furies of nationalism (New York: Simon and Schuster).↵

Taylor, Charles 1992 Multiculturalism and ‘the politics of recognition’: an essay (Princeton: Princeton University Press); also, by the same author: ‘Shared and divergent values’ in Watts, Donald and Brown, Douglas (eds.) Options for a new Canada (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991).↵

Kymlicka, Will 2001 Politics in the vernacular: Nationalism, multiculturalism and citizenship. (New York: Oxford University Press); also, by the same author: Multicultural citizenship: a liberal theory of minority rights (Oxford/New York: Clarendon Press, 1995).↵

Kymlicka, Will 1995 Liberalism, community and culture (Oxford: Clarendon); and also: Kymlicka (1995).↵

Dahrendorf, Ralf 1995 ‘Preserving prosperity’ in New Statesman and Society (London), Volume 8, N° 383.↵

Ward, Cynthia 1991 ‘The limits of liberal republicanism’ in Columbia Law Review (New York), Volume 91, N° 3. ↵

Kymlicka, Will 1998 The new debate over minority rights (Toronto: University of Toronto).↵

Aguirre Beltrán, Gonzalo 1991 Formas de gobierno indígena (Mexico: FCE).↵

Reinaga, fausto 1969 La revolución india (La Paz: Partido indio de Bolivia); Alcina, José (ed.) 1990 Indianismo e indigenismo en América (madrid: Alianza).↵

Díaz Polanco, héctor 1985 La cuestión étnico-nacional (Mexico: Línea); also, by the same author: Autonomía regional, la autodeterminación de los pueblos (Mexico: siglo XXi, 1991); Bate, Luis 1984 Cultura, clases y cuestión étnico-nacional (Mexico: Juan Pablos); Díaz Polanco héctor & sánchez, consuelo 2003 México diverso. El debate por la autonomía (Mexico: siglo XXi).↵

Díaz Polanco & sánchez (2003); Revista Chiapas (méxico: erA-iiec), n° 11, 2001.↵

Kymlicka (1998).↵

On citizenship, see marshall, Thomas and Bottomore, Tom 1992 Citizenship and social class (London/concord: Pluto Press); habermas, Jürgen 1996 ‘citizenship and national identity’ in habermas, Jürgen Between facts and norms: contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy (cambridge: miT Press); Tilly charles (ed.) 1996 ‘citizenship, identity and social history’ in International Review of Social History Supplements (cambridge/new York/melbourne: cuP), n° 3; held, David 1995 ‘Between state and civil society: citizenship’ in Andrews, geoff 1995 Citizenship (London: Lawrence & Wishart); ‘ciudadanía: el debate contemporáneo’ 1997 in La política: revista de estudios sobre el Estado y la Sociedad (Barcelona), n° 3: 5-39, october; Revista Metapolítica (Mexico), n° 15, 2000.↵

Young, iris marion 1990 Justice and the politics of difference (Princeton: university of Princeton Press); Taylor, charles 1994 Multiculturalism: Examining the politics of recognition (Princeton: Princeton university Press); Kymlicka (1996); Baumann, gerd 1999 The multicultural riddle: Rethinking national, ethnic, and religious identities (new York: routledge); Villoro, Luis 1998 Estado plural, pluralidad de culturas (méxico: Paidós). For a mild critique of these interpretations, see: sartori, giovanni 2001 La sociedad multiétnica (madrid: Taurus).↵

We must remember that the social sciences clarified a long time ago that many of the so-called modern ‘universal values’ are historical arbitrarities, the result of specific balances of material and discursive forces that transformed local and partial values and interests into general values — first ‘local’ ones and then ‘universal’ ones. As richard rorty reminds us, the fact that out of an attachment to one’s capacity for reasoning and argument one can have a moral commitment to these values does not elude an understanding of their contingency and temporality. See: rorty, richard 1991 Objectivity, relativism, and truth. (cambridge: cambridge university Press). The mystification of ‘universalisms’ as the norm, beyond society and its capacity for argumentative reflection, is not only intellectually untenable; it is also an ideological sham behind which old and new authoritarianisms lurk (yesterday’s ‘real socialism’, today’s ‘free market economy’). even so, multicultural democracies and ethnocultural assertions do not necessarily contradict the exercise of the currently predominant ‘universal’ values of equality, tolerance and individual liberty. As the liberal Kymlicka has already pointed out, the collective rights to self-government of dominated or colonised peoples and nationalities are the best way to defend the ‘societary culture of each people’, as these provide the ‘context of individual choice’ for the options and evaluations of equality and freedom, which are precisely the foundation of modern citizenship.↵

Rotchchild, Donald & hartzell, caroline ‘security in deeply divided societies: The role of territorial autonomy’ in safran, William & maíz suárez, ramón (eds.) 2000 Identity and territorial autonomy in plural societies (London/Portland: frank cass) pp. 259-260.↵

Carter, William & mamani, mauricio 1982 Irpa Chico: individuo y comunidad en la cultura aimara (La Paz: Juventud); rivera, silvia 1993 Ayllus y proyectos de desarrollo en el Norte de Potosí (La Paz: Aruwiyiri).↵

Blanes, José 2000 Mallkus y alcaldes (La Paz: Programa de investigación estratégica en Bolivia/ceBem); Albó, Xavier 1999 Ojotas en el poder local (La Paz: centro de investigación y Promoción del campesinado/hisBoL).↵

Pacheco, Diego 2002 ‘Tierra, territorio y productividad’ in AA.VV. Visiones y contextos para un nuevo desarrollo rural (La Paz: Agencia suiza para el Desarrollo y la cooperación/Asociación de instituciones de Promoción y educación/grupo de Desarrollo rural).↵

On the right to secession, see norman, Wayne 2001 ‘secession and (constitutional) democracy’ in requejo coll, ferrán (ed.) 2001 Democracy and national pluralism (London/new York: routledge).↵

Examples of these forms of autonomy for cultural communities in special territories exist in finland in the Åland region, in catalonia and the Basque country in spain, in the Azores and madeira islands in Portugal, and soon in england with the territories of northern island and scotland.On this, see: Aja, eliseo 1999 El Estado autonómico (madrid: Alianza). A study about the limits to applying this model of state organisation is presented in mozaffar, shaheen & scarritt, James ‘Why territorial autonomy is not a viable option for managing ethnic conflict in African plural societies’ in safran & maíz suárez (2000).↵

For organisation (iLo) and the united nations Working group declaration with respect to the recognition of the right of ‘peoples’ to self-determination, see clavero (1994).↵

On the origin of some of these points, see the extensive debate about indigenous autonomies that arose in Mexico as a result of the Zapatista uprising. In particular, see: ‘Postura del eZLn para la plenaria resolutiva de las partes. Tema i: Derechos y cultura indígena’ (san Andrés, Mexico: manuscript), January, 1996; ‘resultados de la consulta a las bases zapatistas sobre la mesa i de derechos y cultura indígena’ in Convergencia Socialista, Year 1, n° 1, July-August, 1997 (communiqué, february, 1996); ‘Pronunciamiento conjunto que el gobierno federal y el eZLn enviarán a las instancias de debate y decisión nacional, correspondiente al punto 1.5 de las reglas de procedimiento’ (san Andrés, Mexico: manuscript), february 16, 1996; ‘La autonomía como nueva relación entre los pueblos indios y la sociedad nacional’ in Ojarasca (Mexico) n° 38-39, 1994; ‘comparación entre la iniciativa de ley elaborada por la cocopa y presentada por el ejecutivo y las reformas aprobadas por el congreso de la unión’ in Chiapas (Mexico), n° 11, 2001; Díaz Polanco & sánchez (2003).↵

Albó, Xavier (ed.) 1988 Raíces de América: el mundo aimara (madrid: Alianza/ unesco); garcía Linera (2003).↵

In germany’s case, 80% of police staff depends on the Länders or autonomous regions, while only 20% are under the purview of the federal state. In catalonia and the Basque country in spain, the autonomous police tend to become the only police with responsibility for the security of citizens in the autonomous region, with the exception of control over supracommunity services such as borders, airports and so on, where there are state police with special powers. In this respect, see: Aja (1999).↵

Aja (1999).↵

On the different ways to finance the system of autonomies, see: seijas, esther 2003 Configuración asimétrica del sistema de comunidades autónomas (León: universidad de León) 2 Volumes.↵

Caminal, miquel 2002 El federalismo pluralista. Del federalismo nacional al federalismo plurinacional (Barcelona: Paidós); see also: Peeters, Patrick 1994 ‘federalism: A comparative Perspective — Belgium transforms from unitary to a federal state’ in De Villiers, Bertus (ed.) Evaluating federal systems (Kenwyn, cape Town: Juta & co.).↵

Bourdieu (1984).↵

Recently, félix Patzi criticised our proposal of indigenous autonomies in the book Sistema comunal (La Paz: ceA, 2004). He thinks that the regime of autonomies does not affect the core of the regime of capital, and thus that the demand for a regime of autonomies is not revolutionary. Patzi’s first error lies in that he confuses the issue of cultural identities with the issue of civilisational diversity. While the former refers to the existence of several linguistic or cultural identities in the same territory, indiscriminately including different productive logics (capitalist, communitarian, family-based, etc.) and different social classes (communards, business owners, workers, peasants, etc.), the latter refers to the overlapping of different societal, productive, organisational, political and symbolic logics (marketindustrial civilisation, communal civilisation, etc.). The dismantling of the relations of ethnocultural domination, as demonstrated by the political history of other countries, is not necessarily an anti-capitalist event, and much less so a socialist one indeed, in general this occurs within modern social processes of democratisation and decolonisation that form a part of capitalist development, which does not mean that in the Bolivian case, their extinction would not be a gigantic decolonising revolution in political and economic relations. In contrast, dismantling the relations of civilisational domination would affect the expansion of the capitalist regime itself, and though this can intersect with the issue of cultural domination, it has its own internal dynamic. Studying to what extent it is possible to move forward in the transformation of relations of civilisational domination is an issue that can not be carried out as a matter of will, but rather must emerge from studying the structure of real and potential forces of contemporary social struggle. Patzi’s second error is that although the indigenous are the ‘majority’, this is a circumstantial majority to the extent that it depends on the strength of indigenous identity construction, which is a political and historical matter and not a natural, physical one. moreover, in a strict sense, the indigenous majority is a general sum of different indigenous cultural and national minorities — Aymaras, Quechuas, guaranis, mojeños, etc. even in the case of the Quechuas, more than having a shared identity as the Aymaras do, they have a set of quite fragmented territorial and local identities, which makes it impossible to speak of a real, socially mobilisable Quechua majority. In a strict sense, Aymaras, Quechuas, guaranis and so on, as well as the mestizos in terms of mobilised sociocultural identities, are all ‘minorities’ with respect to the others, which justifies even further the need for modes of territorial self-government where these are the majority, and their subsequent articulation at the macro level in a regime of higher multinational institutions. in third place, the possibility of affecting capitalist society and the possibility of building a communitarian society are not matters of bookish logic, but rather of historical logic. Capitalism is not transcended by mere theoretical deduction from a conceptual framework, as Patzi does, but rather by following the actual ‘movement going on before our own eyes’ The fact that social communitarianism could overcome capitalism is a fact that has to be analysed in historical events and in the actual struggles of communities, and Patzi has not been able to corroborate any of this. The error of Patzi’s position lies in confusing the proposal of a long-term, theoretical and wilfully emancipatory model with a politically conjunctural proposal dependent upon the balance of existing and potential forces, as suggested in our proposal of indigenous autonomies. Additionally, it is clear that the peasant rationality of family, not communal, work, applied to industrial production, which is essentially Patzi’s ‘emancipatory’ proposal, entails little or nothing of a real communitarisation of the conditions of social reproduction..↵

Lijphart,Arendetal.1998Lasdemocraciascontemporáneas:Unestudiocomparativo (Barcelona: Ariel) spanish translation by elena de grau; 3rd edition.↵

Pas, Wouter ‘La estructura asimétrica del federalismo belga’ in fossas, enric & requejo coll, ferrán (eds.) 1999 Asimetría federal y Estado plurinacional (madrid: Trotta).↵

Lijphart (1998).↵

caminal (2002).↵

Bobbio (1987); Dahl, robert 1989 Democracy and its critics (new haven: Yale university Press).↵

for a discussion on the democratic act that goes beyond the liberal procedural and minimalist perspective, see: rancière, Jacques 1999 Disagreement: Politics and philosophy (minneapolis: university of minnesota Press); Tapia, Luis 2002 La velocidad del pluralismo (La Paz: muela del Diablo).↵

Rivera (1993); spedding, Alison & Llanos, David 1999 No hay ley para la cosecha. Un estudio comparativo del sistema productivo y de las relaciones sociales en Chari y Chulumani (La Paz: PieB/sinergia).↵

garcíaLinera,Álvaro2001‘sindicato,multitudycomunidad.movimientossociales y formas de autonomía política en Bolivia’ in garcía Linera, Álvaro; Quispe, felipe; gutiérrez, raquel; Prada, raúl & Tapia, Luis Tiempos de rebelión (La Paz: comuna).↵

Fernández, marcelo 2000 La ley del ayllu (La Paz: PieB); and El sistema jurídico indígena (santa cruz: centro de estudios Jurídicos e investigación social, 2003). See also the ten volumes on community Justice prepared by the Bolivian ministry of Justice and human rights in 1999.↵

Textile and braided are ancient Andean writing systems (copy editor ́s note).↵

Arnold, Denise & Yapita, Juan de Dios 2000 El rincón de las cabezas. Luchas textuales, educación y tierras en los Andes (La Paz: umsA).↵

gerbrandy, gerben & hoogendam, Paul 1998 Aguas y acequias. Los derechos al agua y la gestión campesina de riego en los Andes bolivianos (La Paz: Plural).↵

Spedding & Llanos (1999).↵

Tapia (2002).↵

Tapia (2002).↵

Weber, max 1978 Economy and society (Berkeley: university of california Press).↵

OsborneDavid&gaebler,Ted1992Reinventinggovernment:Howtheentrepreneurial spirit is transforming the public sector (reading: Addison-Wesle); elster, Jon 1988 Constitutionalism and democracy (cambridge/Paris: cambridge university Press/ maison des sciences de l’homme).↵

Cuba and the new inter-american system[1]

Jaime Antonio Preciado Coronado[2] and Pablo uc[3]

Introduction

Statements against the trade embargo imposed against cuba by the united states since 1962 are no longer coming only from academics and intellectuals, nor are they a mere expression of institutional condemnation by multilateral bodies. The issue has taken a new turn in the hemispheric agenda and in the agendas of countries in the region, both in Latin America and the united states. The geopolitical rhetoric of the cold War era that warned of the ‘cuban threat’ to hemispheric and American stability and that rationalized international isolation of the country has faded and is now considered to be the most anachronistic aspect of us foreign policy.

The lack of objective reasons for the policy led American national security agencies to strike the ‘cuban threat’ from their list of strategic priorities 10 years ago, a view supported by former President Jimmy carter. The embargo is now justified more as a matter of domestic politics than as part of Latin American policy and has become a divisive issue among us interest groups. It has also come under serious questioning by regional players who are demanding autonomy for their own international affairs and policies. Although officially formulated as a series of economic measures designed to promote ‘democratization and greater respect for human rights’ (state Department, 1992), it has also led to the island nation’s exclusion from inter-American relations and regional institutions with strong ties to the united states. under this scenario, the embargo can be viewed as a policy geared towards influencing the hemispheric balance of power.

As the embargo approaches its fiftieth anniversary, Latin American countries are virtually unanimous in their call for its cancellation and for cuba’s full political and diplomatic reintegration into regional affairs. Foremost among these countries are those with leftist governments, who have moved from issuing statements at multilateral forums to carrying out an intensification of trade relations with cuba, to the displeasure of Washington. In the political sphere, the absence of any normalization of cuban-American relations has led these countries to abandon negotiation forums such as the organization of American states (oAs) and the summit of the Americas, which they consider to be dominated by a us vision of pan-American relations. At the same time, there is a growing group of countries that acquiesce to the us position, and linking the lifting of the embargo to the implementation of political reforms in cuba. The most prominent among these are countries with non-leftist governments such as Chile and Panama, as well as countries such as honduras and haiti where the us exerts direct influence.

The new cuban role in inter-American relations requires that a number of variables and players involved in this reincorporation be taken into consideration, as well as the terms under which it will take place. First of all, it is necessary to examine the most significant changes, both real and symbolic, that have taken place in the cuban political system since raul castro became president. Such changes include new foreign policy initiatives that have led the caribbean country to reconfigure its ambitions with respect to new Latin American realities as well as new global powers and alliances.

It is thus important to understand and assess the isolationist policy pursued by the us against cuba as well as the unsustainable exclusion of cuba from the inter-American system. We should also try to determine whether the political capital that sustained the anti-cuban agenda as an unquestionable feature of us foreign policy for both republican and Democratic administrations is running out, or whether the same policy towards cuba will continue with only minor adjustments.

Making such a diagnosis will enable us to analyze the reintegration of cuba into the inter-American system at the end of the twenty-first century’s first decade from two perspectives. The first consists of an examination of the new inter-American institutional system, whose validity is challenged by the emergence of cuba as a regional player. The second entails a detailed analysis of the restructuring of the neo-conservative geopolitical framework backed by the us as the basis for the structural resistance that cuba will face, contrasted with a new Latin American emphasis on autonomous regional integration which includes cuba.

This chapter is divided into three sections. In the first offers an analysis of internal changes on the island taking place at the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century and their impact on inter-American relations, not only at the intergovernmental level but also in relations between groups and social movements that resist and demand autonomy from the hegemony of us power. It also contextualizes the new geopolitical status of cuba, the prestige and international solidarity that it enjoys; its strengths in the fields of biomedical and genetic research and its quest for autonomy with respect to the european union and the strengthening its ties with russia and especially china. The second section sets out the contradiction inherent in the domestic and foreign policy of the united states regarding cuba: the continuance of the embargo and the many ways in which the state Department imposes isolation on multilateral, international, continental and regional levels. It also underlines some signs of easing of pressure under the republican administration of george W. Bush, frustration resulting from the failure of Barack obama to fulfil some of the ideals articulated during his campaign and the transformations experienced by the powerful cuban-American lobby and its power to affect us foreign policy through domestic politics. The third section discusses cuba’s role in the transformation of inter-American relations and highlights its leadership in criticizing longstanding Pan-American power structures.

I. Changes in the cuban political system in the context of a new regional and global scenario

After the fall of the soviet union in 1991, cuba turned its gaze to the new Latin American reality of change and resistance, and not with an eye towards promoting armed movements, but with the aim of strengthening the anti-establishment movements and governments that emerged from elections with broad popular support. Similarly, on the worldwide level, improvements during the ‘special Period’ (1991-1997) during which the Jaime Antonio Preciado Coronado and Pablo uc cuban economy was reorganized to cope with the hardships that ensued following the termination of soviet union support resulted in a strengthening of trade relations with the european union, eastern europe, russia and particularly with china. The weakening of old export sectors such as sugar made feasible the strategy of including cuba in the new dynamic of international relations that favoured tourism, extraction of raw materials and energy resources of Latin American countries.

The internal-domestic sphere

The ascent of raul castro to the cuban presidency in february 2008 brought a number of liberalization measures, reforms and changes that could be interpreted as a response to internal and external expectations for a ‘transition administration’ yet which in reality did not break with the historical ideals of the cuban revolution. In addition, several of these measures can be taken as an attempt to adapt to the regional, hemispheric and global realities of Latin America in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

In the area of domestic policy, the following measures taken during the first weeks of the current administration (BBC, 2008) are noteworthy:

 Allowing cubans living on the island access to tourist hotels.

 making cell phone service available to all cubans.

 Liberalization of the sale of computers and appliances within the country.

 streamlining procedures for civil servants to buy houses belonging to government agencies.

 Transferring land to private farmers and cooperatives to stimulate the production of food, coffee and tobacco. This measure will boost agricultural output, reduce the prices of products and increase the purchasing power of wages.

 cancellation of farmer debts and increasing prices the state pays for milk and meat.

 increasing pension payments and salaries for employees of the judiciary, from may 2008.

 commuting all death sentences, with the exception of three prisoners incarcerated for terrorism.

other more comprehensive measures, including those related to the property system, dual currency, low wages and allowing foreign economic investment, will certainly take more time to implement, but they have been greeted with enthusiasm by the international community and some cuban-American dissidents (hernández, 2009).

In the economic sphere, one sign of a turn by the new administration was the appointment of several senior military officers directly associated with raul castro to economic affairs posts for the purpose of optimizing efficiencies, which has been achieved to the greatest extent in companies run by the armed forces. These measures can be compared with the tight state control of the economy undertaken by china before adopting an open-market approach (sader, 2009).

After two years of such measures, it is possible to make a critical analysis of the extent to which they have affected the re-positioning of cuba within the inter-American and international system and influenced changes in cuban diplomacy on the regional and global levels.

Strategic foreign policy moves

The beginning of raul castro presidency was marked by two decisions which greatly impacted the cuban international agenda: the dismissals of carlos Lage, who served as a kind of prime minister, and felipe Pérez roque, the young chancellor who was noted for his close association with the political ideas of fidel castro. These changes, in spite of the controversial circumstances that precipitated them, were interpreted as signs of openness to dialogue with the us, and above all as harbingers of a new era in cuban diplomacy that would coincide with changes in the extra-regional and extra-continental spheres. According to journalist Lissette Bustamante (2009) ‘[m]ost analysts and observers of the cuban issue in the us believe that the changes implemented by raúl castro strengthen the economy and set the stage for a new chapter in relations between both countries’.

Important steps have been taken towards reactivating relations with the european union and the international community. Southsouth relations have been strengthened, particularly with two major regional players: Venezuela and Brazil. Harmonious relations have been re-established with the government of Mexico after the diplomatic break that occurred under the administration of former president Vicente fox Quezada (the first such rupture in 45 years). In addition, an interesting approach has been taken regarding closer relations with china and russia, which includes strengthened strategic relations with Venezuela and the prospect for triangulated negotiations in energy and military matters.

Cuba, the largest island in the Antilles, was the first nation in the Western hemisphere to establish diplomatic ties with the china of mao Zedong (1961), a country which is now its second largest trading partner for sugar and nickel after Venezuela.On the occasion of the visit of chinese President hu Jintao in 2009, cuba obtained a deferral of several debt payments to china and a $70 million loan for the repair and renovation of the cuban hospital network.

Havana has also renewed relations with moscow. In 2006, the two countries signed 30 cooperation agreements, which according to the russian ministry of finance included more than $350 million in loans and aid for the island. russia was among the first countries to provide disaster assistance to cuba for three hurricanes that struck in 2008 (grogg, 2009).

In the geopolitical sphere, russia expanded its military cooperation with cuba as a result of us support for the uprising in south ossetia in August 2008 and conducted joint military manoeuvres with the Venezuelan army later that year. All of this contributes to the strengthening of cuba’s strategic defence and national security.

The international sphere

The economic, commercial, trade and financial embargo is the most serious difficulty faced by the cuban government and people at the international level. The united nations general Assembly has overwhelmingly voted to condemn the embargo 19 times since 1992. most recently, on october 26, 2010, 182 countries voted in favour of ending the embargo, while 2 voted against and 3 abstained. Cuban foreign minister Bruno rodriguez said on that occasion: ‘The direct economic damage that the embargo has inflicted on the cuban people amounts to 751 billion dollars at current exchange rates’.

Aynel Álvarez guerra and Anet Pino rivero (2010) offer the background to this situation: ‘The embargo against cuba was imposed by the us government on february 3, 1962 through Presidential Proclamation 3447. This decision, based on the legal authority afforded presidents under section 620(a) of the foreign Assistance Act of 1961, established a total embargo on all trade between the us and cuba, even though the us had already been applying economic measures against the young cuban revolution since 1959’. They then conclude:

The legal structure of the embargo is a flagrant violation of human rights of the people of cuba, citizens of third countries and American citizens themselves. Its provisions also violate us law, and it has also received condemnation for violating fundamental provisions and tenets of international law related to the political, economic, commercial and financial relations between states.

Internationally, in other controversial un debates, cuba agreed to human rights discussions with spain (resulting in the release of several political prisoners) and promised to sign united nations protocols on civil rights in 2008. earlier that same year it resumed cooperative initiatives with the european commission through a joint declaration signed by commissioner for Development and humanitarian Aid Louis michel and then cuban minister of foreign Affairs felipe Pérez roque at a ceremony in havana.

The declaration establishes a general framework to guide both parties through the gradual development of their future cooperation. In addition, both parties agreed to continue to explore potential areas of cooperation in which cuba excels such as the environment, science and technology, trade, cultural exchanges and natural disaster preparedness. european commission funding, which totalled €20-25 million, could be invested in these areas (Europa Press/IP, 2008).

Internationalization strategies left over from the cold War period have been adapted to prevailing circumstances and included in the integration process, mainly through the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of our America (ALBA). In December 2004, cuba and Venezuela signed their first ALBA statement and agreement, consolidating a strategic alliance with the symbolic backdrop of ideological and political opposition to the longstanding strategy of us-imposed isolationism, amidst the present reality of already strong ties between caracas and havana.

Joining ALBA has given cuba a higher profile among governments in the region, and it has also become a key factor in updating its image in Latin America. The move has drawn key support from networks of social movements throughout Latin America and the caribbean, mostly in the southern cone. Support from organizations throughout Latin America has been expressed at the post-2004 editions of the World social forum and at Peoples’ summit sessions held in parallel to official presidential meetings, such as the summit of the Americas, where the rejection of cuba’s isolation has been a constant demand.

It should be noted that cuba provides doctors and health technology to Venezuela as part of mission Barrio Adentro, as well as strategic advice regarding the design of Venezuelan anti-poverty programs. In return, cuba receives 60,000 barrels of oil per day (Trinkunas, 2006). In 2006, following the victory of evo morales in Bolivia, the Andean country became a full member of ALBA, followed by nicaragua after Daniel ortega’s victory in 2007. In 2008, Dominica joined ALBA as a full member, followed by honduras in october of that year, although the participation of honduras was thwarted by the June 2009 coup. Saint Vincent and the grenadines joined in April 2009, followed by ecuador in June, giving ALBA its current membership of eight countries.

We should also mention the importance of the media project Televisora del sur, better known as Telesur, which was founded in 2005 by the governments of Argentina, Uruguay, Venezuela and cuba to offset the quasi-total monopoly of Anglo-American media corporate empires and the national economic elites and their impact on the political (de)-stabilization of Latin American countries that have adopted policies unfavourable to their interests (Villamil, 2009).

The establishment of contacts between progressive leftist governments and civil society organizations has resulted in a subtle but important step towards ownership of the initiative in terms of both the pragmatic aspects of international political relations and alternative civilian actors in Latin America. While pragmatism is associated with political realism, that which is doable or feasible, without consideration for the means to achieve the goals, the policy of social agencies is seen as an ethical stance which subordinates the type of means used to the validity of the purposes.

In this context, there has been growing momentum behind proposals for Peoples’ Trade Agreements (TCPS). These proposals were initially driven by Bolivia, Venezuela and cuba in 2006 and then gradually taken on by a number of social movements as part of an advocacy for fair trade and in opposition to the neoliberal and orthodox versions of other free Trade Agreements (FTAS) (gudynas, 2006). This has been a fundamental factor in linking cuban political development to that of the rest of Latin America. It has expanded historical support from certain sectors of Latin American civil society associated with the traditional left joined by new generations and expressions of resistance and a global leftist movement contributing new ideas to the anti-neoliberal struggle. These initiatives champion regional integration initiatives as alternatives to neo-Pan American initiatives, and with the express inclusion of cuba.

ALBA’s strategic focus covering the caribbean ring, which encompasses havana, caracas, managua and extends all the way through the Amazonian-Andean region to La Paz, has enabled the creation of a platform for the negotiation of strategic alliances in areas such as energy, economics, trade and to a great extent ideology.

These factors take on geopolitical significance when we consider the interest that the united states has in making central America and the caribbean part of its primary security perimeter as defined by usnorThcom, the push to adopt the central America-Dominican republic-united states free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-Dr) and its ongoing support for the idea of giving Mexico a pivotal role as a regional hub and geopolitical linchpin between the us and central America through the mesoamerican initiative, which replaced the Puebla-Panama Plan.

In spite of such geopolitical determinants, the multi-faceted political and diplomatic agenda of cuba is opening doors to the possibility of it becoming key player in regional debate. The intensity with which the cuban government is going forward with its Latin American foreign policy, through its presence in forums that are not directly controlled by the united states (rio group, Latin American and european ibero-American forums and the são Paulo forum), is putting an end to past isolationism and helping to consolidate and amplify its stance against us imperialism. As a result, cuba has attained the cooperation of some Latin American countries for the coordination of political and trade negotiations with Washington, in a way that strengthens Latin American regional autonomy.

Ending the us embargo is at the top of the list of demands presented before other regional organizations such as the south American union of nations (unAsur) and the caribbean community (caricom) and even continental bodies such as the organization of American states (oAs), with historical implications to be dealt with below.

The international solidarity and moral prestige associated with the cuban revolution

The abovementioned political and diplomatic efforts, combined with the quality of cuban international solidarity projects made possible by its scientific and technological development, have contributed to the ethical and moral prestige of the cuban revolution in Latin America and throughout the world. Cuban ‘literacy brigades’ have helped to eradicate illiteracy in Venezuela and nicaragua and mitigate it in several other countries in the region. ‘operation miracle,’ which provides specialized eye surgery, has returned sight to hundreds of thousands of senior citizens throughout the region, and without such care being based on ideological considerations of any kind. And in the case of cuba, the humanitarian aid provided to countries that have fallen victim to natural disasters is not a question of giving what one has left over, but sharing what one has. This attitude is reflected in the values of solidarity that lead cuba to cooperate in natural disaster relief even though providing this international assistance involves making sacrifices on the domestic front.

A case in point is the prestige gained by cuba’s integrated security system against risks, a social safety program that has helped Latin American countries overcome catastrophic damage from hurricanes that have killed in endemic fashion in the caribbean region. Cuba’s prestige is reaffirmed not only by its response to disasters in Latin America, but also by the evident hypocrisy of international disaster relief and the way preparedness is managed elsewhere.

Some specific cases illustrate this view. In early July 2005, hurricane Dennis, a category 4 hurricane, as was Katrina, struck cuba (De Belder, 2005). Cuban authorities evacuated 1.5 million people in a timely and orderly manner. In the case of hurricane ivan, a category 4 hurricane and the fifth most powerful storm ever to have struck the caribbean, two million people were evacuated, 100,000 within the first three hours, and casualties were kept to a minimum. While deaths resulting from natural disasters in other countries, including the us, have numbered in the thousands, in cuba there have not been more than a few dozen. This record has given the cuban disaster preparedness system recognition as a model for all countries in the region, according to the office of humanitarian Affairs of the united nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The role of cuban cooperation in natural disaster relief in haiti confirms the humanitarian intensions of their international solidarity (carpineta, 2010): ‘They came when the hurricanes struck in ‘98 as a health care contingency. After the earthquake struck, they were examples to other physicians.Over 12 years, 744 cuban doctors have treated more than 34,500 patients.Of the 2,728 operations performed, 1,297 were highly complex surgeries, 380 were upper limb amputations and 644 of the lower limbs. A total of 744 doctors, nurses and laboratory technicians, worked on 18 surgical teams in three hospitals in Port-au-Prince and in care centres throughout the 10 departments of haiti’.

In the first weeks after the disaster, professionals from spain, Chile, Venezuela, Colombia and germany joined the effort in hospitals operated by cubans. So did about 400 haitians recently graduated or about to finish their medical studies in havana. ‘The us, however, refuses to reach out to the cubans. Not counting the un peacekeeping mission, the us and cuba are the two countries with the most people deployed in the devastated country’ (carpineta, 2010). The earthquake in haiti questions the depth of international humanitarian cooperation and the funding of official development assistance. This situation, illuminated by cuban foreign policy initiatives, begs a rethinking and reorientation of international financial assistance for natural disasters.

II. The waning of the american policy of cuban isolation

The normalization of cuban-latin american relations

The normalization of diplomatic relations between costa rica and el salvador with cuba in march 2009, which had been suspended since 1961, resulted in cuba having diplomatic relations with more countries in the Americas that it had ever had since gaining full independence in 1902. At the same time, this milestone also made the us is the only country in the hemisphere that has no formal relations with cuba. In other words, the most powerful country in the Americas is utterly alone in its policy towards cuba.

In 2009, costa rica and el salvador re-established diplomatic ties with cuba, after having been the only two countries in Latin America not to have such relations. This breakthrough allowed all of the region’s political cooperation agreements to be implemented, including the Latin American economic system (seLA), in which cuba has participated since it began, and the rio group, which it joined in 2009 at the request of Mexico, which served as Pro Tempore secretariat at that time. Still pending is membership in the organization of American states (oAs), which in June, 2009 reversed the 1962 decision barring cuba from oAs membership (collins, 2009). The cuban government declined the invitation on the grounds that the spurious origins of the oAs had not been overcome.

Another fundamental demonstration of cuba’s full incorporation into regional dynamics is the fact that 40% of cuba’s current trade is with other Latin American countries, an unprecedented statistic (suárez salazar, 2009). These factors reinforce its imminent integration into the contemporary Latin American scenario, and even its symbolic leadership, as argued in the preceding section.

The effects and limitations of the cuban-american lobby

With the exception of local-level concerns in southern florida, cuba no longer has priority status within us foreign or domestic policy. At present, the old embargo coexists with recent liberalization initiatives promoted by powerful American business interests. The republican Party itself has organized new pro-dialogue lobbies in Louisiana, iowa, Texas, north carolina, nebraska, minnesota, and other agricultural states.

However, ‘[s]ince george W. Bush assumed the presidency of the united states in 2001, the budget to create a social opposition movement in cuba allied to the interests of miami and the White house ballooned from $3.5 million in 2000 to $45 million in 2008’ (Pertierra, 2010). In 2003, Bush created the President’s commission for Assistance to a free cuba, whose aim was to ‘identify ways to quickly bring the cuban regime to an end and organize a transition’. The policies of President Barack obama follow the patterns laid down by this body: ‘To implement measures to train, develop and strengthen the opposition and civil society in cuba’ (Pertierra, 2010).

In spite of such high-level support, as of this writing millions of dollars in funding have not yet been released to this commission. Senator John Kerry (D-massachusetts) questioned the use of that funding, citing concerns of misuse by cuban residents of florida and echoing an audit in 2006 by the government Accountability office (gAo) which documented such corruption. In 2009, Kerry, as chairman of the senate foreign relations committee, asked for a review of the project, which now has $20 million budgeted for 2010. Consequently, the state Department temporarily froze the sizeable fund until, following a new enquiry concluded in march 2010, ‘plans were announced to release $20 million in anti-cuban funding, arguing that the program had been restructured in such a way that the funds would arrive clandestinely to certain cubans on the island and not to certain others in miami’ (Pertierra, 2010).

Meanwhile, the international community has become increasingly persistent in its calls for the reintegration of cuba into the international system. From a critical perspective, many see reintegration as a solution to the problems of democratization and respect for human rights, issues on which the united nations human rights commission has been adamant.

Cuba is not a threat to any country, yet it remains on the list of terrorist states, even though no us allies consider it to be such — even the uK refuses to blacklist cuba. Several cuban and American political analysts have found a direct relationship between progress towards détente in cuban-American relations and the level of belligerence of the cuban-American lobby (Landau, 2010): ‘in 2010, Washington continues to adopt a provocative attitude towards havana — currently for not saving a political prisoner, orlando Zapata Tamayo, who died from a hunger strike. Zapata, arrested on charges of assault, decided to become a dissident while in jail. There are videos showing him being hospitalized by cuban authorities. Another video showed him receiving top-level medical care without anyone asking for his insurance policy. Another dissident, guillermo fariñas, then began his own hunger strike at home demanding that cuba to release all political prisoners. When he collapsed, cuban authorities rushed him to hospital’.

According to Landau (2010), tense situations such as these can be linked to a hardening of us policy toward cuba, steered by the cuban lobby: ‘ronald reagan privatized the American policy toward cuba, leaving it in the hands of a minority group in miami who had no desire to see things improve. every step forward, such as the migration talks in february, was met with a step backwards, thanks to the power of the anti-cuban contingency. A hunger striker dies, and another arises to steal the headlines. maybe things will change when oil begins to flow from cuban offshore platforms’ (Landau, 2010).

We should clarify at this point that the cuban-American lobby is in fact a diverse group of actors that can be classified into three categories:

Those who are most reluctant to open the door to negotiations between cuba and the us government, and who influence the us congress and senate by applying political pressure through their elected representatives. Prominent political figures associated with this contingency have included the likes of brother congressmen Lincoln and mario Diaz-Balard of the state of florida.

A second group takes a position which is apparently more open to negotiation but which in reality promotes ‘horizontal relations’ between the civilian populations of both countries to the exclusion of the cuban government. This group, which has ties with the cuban American national foundation, has influenced the policies of the Department of state and the White house under Barack obama. This group also supports corporate interests that attempt to dissuade governments of agricultural exporting states from exporting to cuba.

Although not formally identified as a group, a broad network of social agencies, unions, human rights advocates, representatives and personalities from the American cultural and intellectual communities are calling for end to the embargo and for the establishment of us-cuba diplomatic relations.

Of course, operating independently of such groups in the united states are a number of diverse forces in Latin America and the caribbean which have broadened the autonomy of the region over the past decade and led to enhanced political, economic and institutional convergence in which cuba is a participant, and who through a number of forums continue to challenge the justification for cuba’s isolation in the political, economic, financial, trade, immigration and information technology spheres.

III. Twenty-first century: restructuring of the inter-american system

The pan-american system and us dominance

From the first half of the nineteenth century, and in the midst of independence movements in places that would become the new nationstates of Latin America, the united states gradually consolidated its position under the ideas of the monroe Doctrine (1823), the geopolitical fulcrum of the ‘pan-American’ project inspired by ‘pan-American ideas’ that would shape the western hemisphere (clearly laid out in the manifest Destiny doctrine). This point of view, which reflects haushofer’s geopolitical model of pan-regions, defines Latin America as an ‘appendix subordinated’ to that power (cairo, 2008), whose primary function was to provide the natural resources needed by American industrialization and serve as an immediate consumer market for American products. In other words, Latin America would be ‘the greater market’ of the emerging hegemonic power, to use the geo-economic term of Alfred Weber.

Suárez salazar (2008) classifies inter-American affairs into a number of periods: 1) from the haitian revolution to the American civil War; 2)the spanish-American War (in which the us, as new world power, snatched independence from cuban liberators) and the Treaty of Paris of 1898 to the great Depression; 3) the ‘good neighbour’ period following the end of World War ii until the cuban revolution in 1959; 4) the beginnings of the cold War and the ongoing efforts to promote a cuban counter-revolution during the current new postcold War period. Thus, the construction of the ‘inter-American hemispheric order’ in the twentieth century was the institutionalization of a neo Pan-American system supported by the implementation of a ‘natural area’ of control by the united states, anxious to counter any political, identity-related or inter-regional projects in Latin America or the caribbean perceived as being against its interests.

This system of Pan-American ideas and regimes supported by the historical triangulation of the organization of American states (oAs) in the political sphere, the inter-American Development Bank (iDB) in the business and financial sector, and the inter-American Treaty of reciprocal Assistance (TiAr), with the help of the inter-American Defense Board in the military field, expelled cuba from the Pan-American institutional system. This isolationism became a cornerstone for the maintenance of unfettered us dominance in the region and a way to avoid any type of regional contamination from the ‘cuban threat.’ sustained under a double argument of reward (carrot diplomacy) and punishment (gunboat diplomacy), the us has implemented a parallel foreign policy which makes use of instruments of power (hard power) and deterrence (soft power) (nye, 2003). Such policies became the basis of many forms of direct and indirect involvement in Latin America during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Barack obama’s campaign promise to combine soft power and smart power has not materialized in the area of inter-American relations. Although the internationalist Joseph nye, who was the first to define hard power (the power of coercion by military means) and soft power (obtaining consensus, acceptance and support) proposed adding the trait of intelligence and concluded that the obama campaign’s new synthesis could be called smart-soft power. unfortunately, cuba is proof that this proposal falls into the category of empty rhetoric used in presidential campaigns that is never put into practice by the winners once in office.

Events and movements in Latin America and the caribbean over the last decade, and in particular cuba’s reintegration into the interAmerican system, represent a break in both symbolic and practical terms with the scheme of unrestricted domination described above.

The role of cuba in the inter-american system

Signs of questioning and a potential weakening of the Pan-American scheme can be surmised from the following:

The failure of the original format of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA). The rejection of the fTAA in its original format at the 4th summit of the Americas in mar del Plata, Argentina in 2005 prevented the us from creating a deregulated and homogeneous institutional framework in which the state does not intervene to influence market forces. A uniform framework of continental integration based on free trade would have favoured its expansionary business practices and given it access to a main supply market for natural resources. ALBA and mecosur member countries led an opposition drive that has kept the monroe doctrine at bay in the twenty-first century (oliva, 2008).

WithoutCuba,theOASisananachronisticinstitution.Aspreviously stated, at its 39th general Assembly in June 2009 the oAs rescinded resolution Vi, which had been adopted on January 31, 1962 and condemned cuba to regional isolation. The move to rescind the resolution taken in san Pedro sula, honduras does not stipulate specific conditions but does issue a request for dialogue with the cuban government and a willingness for it to address fundamental principles of security, democracy, self-determination, non-intervention, human rights and development, ideals which the institution has traditionally championed.

It is important to point out that the cuban government expressed disinterest in returning to the body, while recognizing that ‘the general Assembly debating cuba’s return to the institution is a heroic deed of Latin American rebellion‘ (castro, 2009). meanwhile, the decision to drop the exclusion of cuba from the oAs prompted seven us congressmen, mostly republicans, to introduce a bill to suspend their country’s financial contribution to the oAs if cuba was readmitted as a member.

Cuba influences both South-Latin Americanism and Latin Americanism. With respect to south America, cuba offers key elements for the consolidation of the ALBA project, namely new mechanisms for cooperation in the area of oil through Petrocaribe, in alliance with Venezuela, and it also maintains close cooperation with the union of south American nations (unAsur), an organization which supports a post-neoliberal and autonomous regionalism.

Special mention should be made of the newly established community of Latin American and caribbean states (ceLAc), an organization that will undoubtedly influence the restructuring of the inter-American system. This community was created during the 2nd Latin American and caribbean unity summit, held in Mexico in february 2010. For the first time since gaining independence, the countries of the region agreed to create their own body, without the presence of any former ‘colonial’ powers, as was the case for events such as the summit of the Americas, led by the united states, the ibero-American summit, presided over by spain, and the caribbean-european union summit, led by the european union.

This quest for Latin American autonomy has its roots in two organizations: the rio group, which provided a space for intergovernmental policy dialogue and consensus and recently welcomed cuba, at the request of Mexico, making it the most inclusive organization in the region, and the summit of Latin America and the caribbean on integration and Development, held since December 2008, which brings together all national leaders of Latin America and the caribbean without the presence of the united states or canada.

A first challenge for this community is to define itself with respect to the united states. Here two governmental discourses intersect: creating a counterweight to areas in which the us is dominant, and complementing or strengthening negotiation capacity in the presence of asymmetrical relations with the us. The cuban situation is one of the most representative cases of this balancing act.On the one hand, it supports and strengthens the Latin American forums and meetings that serve as a counterweight to us hegemony, while on the other hand it strengthens its international negotiating skills through unconditional participation in ALBA and the promotion of Peoples’ Trade Agreements, as the alternative format to free trade model. As demonstrated by the 39th general Assembly and at the 5th summit of the Americas, although dominated in part by the resounding speech of Barack obama, who promised a new relationship with Latin America based on cooperation, the wildcard in the area of making demands for Latin American autonomy turned out to be cuba (malamud and garcía-calvo, 2009).

From a strategic perspective ceLAc faces three major issues in inter-American relations: modifying the us doctrine of militarized security, promoting a policy that overcomes the limitations of the interAmerican commission on human rights, now under us influence, and transforming the ibero-American Democratic charter from a mere certificate of good conduct issued by the united states to a charter that acknowledges a democracy which is plural, representative, participatory and community-based, as now reflected in the Bolivian constitution, and that also recognizes the particular nature of democracy in cuba.

It is also important to consider that in terms of the development agenda, it is risky for countries like Mexico, Colombia, Peru and the cAfTA-Dr signatories to equate economic autonomy with more free trade agreements, as this situation would limit the recognition of ALBA or People’s Trade Agreements, in which cuba is a participant. Preferable are schemes that emulate community formats of a reciprocal, gradual nature and which emphasize selective trade liberalization and strengthening pathways towards the development of alternatives to neoliberalism.

Conclusions

Although there are clear signs that cuba is finding itself in a new phase of the inter-American system and within the framework of a regional integration initiative which is attempting to achieve unprecedented autonomy from the us and other globally-imposed processes, we should also consider the geopolitical scenario where Latin American geopolitical trends meet structural resistance from ‘hard power’ forces.

We must also make a realistic assessment of the new us administration almost a year and a half after Barack obama became president of the united states. The emergence of a renewed us foreign policy agenda based on ‘good neighbour’ principles (suárez salazar, 2010) as articulated by the new Partnership for the Americas initiative has met with significant structural limitations imposed by the American political system (interest groups, lobbyists, the military-industrial complex). Among the few initiatives that seem to enjoy support is the liberalization of remittances and some easing of travel restrictions for cubans who have family ties on the island. However, proposals for trade liberalization in areas such as medicine, construction materials and spare parts have not gained any traction. The state Department insists that relations between the civil societies of both countries may be intensified, while discounting the possibility of any negotiation involving the cuban government.

This less than positive scenario has been worsened by occasional political miscalculations by the obama administration, which has further called into question us leadership potential in Latin America, particularly regarding more cordial relations with cuba. As noted by nye (2009), a key aspect that should be driving us diplomacy during a historic period when its leadership is widely questioned is the use of smart power. Yet despite the obama’s novel proposal to re-establish new leadership for the Americas based on a new good neighbour framework, the exercise of hard power has been more than explicit since his arrival to the presidency. Some examples:

Strengthening of the us military presence in the region through existing military bases (casus belli), seven new bases in Colombia and the redeployment of the fourth fleet in the south Atlantic.

The mérida initiative, which complements the Plan Colombia (now called the mesoamerican initiative) and provides the pretext for the war on drugs, has militarized the state and politics in Colombia, Mexico, Panama, central American countries and Peru.

The coup in honduras (June 28, 2009), which demonstrated the inconsistency of obama’s policy towards the Americas. even though he condemned it a few hours after it occurred, the state Department was leaning towards backing the coup.

The earthquake in haiti (January 12, 2010), which was used to reinforce the Pentagon’s military presence in the caribbean, with more than ten thousand marines deployed to control the international humanitarian aid and all logistical and military aspects on the island.

American think tanks and lobbies are showing contradictory trends, as conciliatory policy reforms aimed at easing us-cuban relations are torpedoed by the right-wing cuban-American lobby (hard power).

The resurgence of right-wing governments and elite groups in several Latin American countries, as well as the cuban-American lobby, who may promote belligerency towards cuba and Latin America (Bolivia, Venezuela, Paraguay, Colombia, Peru, Panama, honduras) in the second decade of the twenty-first century through their relationship with the us.

Although the prospects for a policy favouring changes in hemispheric relations during the obama administration are clearly limited, the progress made towards the reincorporation and leadership by cuba in the inter-American system is indisputable. It is a reinsertion that does not paint cuba as a regional military power connected to processes of national liberation in Africa and Third World countries, but a ‘cultural’ regional power in areas of international cooperation and solidarity. Furthermore, diversification of cuba’s trade relations with the world market and to some Latin American countries with which it has close relations, such as Venezuela and the mercosur countries, has strengthened its negotiating hand with respect to other countries and international institutions. This relatively successful reintegration, which has also occurred in the areas of medical, educational and biogenetic research, has allowed cuba to take a moral and intellectual leadership role in Latin American projects.

The three pillars that have supported the inter-American system have come into disuse: the organization of American states is experiencing a crisis of legitimacy and lags behind transformational events that call into question us hegemony in several Latin American countries; the rio Treaty (known more formally as the inter-American Treaty of reciprocal Assistance, or TiAr) does a bad job of hiding the militarization of the continent under the guise of a counter-terrorism and anti-narcotics strategy promoted by the united states; and the free Trade Area of the Americas (fTAA) has failed in its continental aspirations and now has an adversarial relationship with the new democratic leftist governments in Latin America.

However, the return of cuba to the rio group, combined with the growing force of social movements demanding autonomy and national sovereignty, builds on the expectations generated by the community of Latin American and caribbean states (ceALc) as the first regional organization that was created without the intervention of any external power.

Such trends will strengthen cuban autonomy and sovereignty if a newly integrated Latin America accepts the notion that to defend cuba is to defend all of Latin America.

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Text extracted from: Preciado coronado, Jaime Antonio & uc, Pablo 2011 ‘cuba and the new inter-American system’ in Prevost, gary & oliva, carlos Cuban Latin American Relations in the Context of a Changing Hemisphere (new York: cambria Press) pp. 73-100. Translated by robert Kimpleton.↵

PHD in Latin American studies at university of Paris, france. Professor and researcher at the university of guadalajara, Mexico. research lines: geopolitics of the integration and democracy in Latin America; political geography and electoral processes; municipality, local government and decentralization. member of the national system of researchers, Mexico. Co-director of Revista Espiral; Studies of the State and Society and collaborator in the Público-Milenio newspaper. President of the Latin American sociological Association (2007-2009).↵

Research fellow at the Latin American council of social sciences (cLAcso).↵

The gaze of / on the other

Sartre,pasolini and the European cultural fascination for the third world

Eduardo Grüner[1]

In The aftermath of world war II, and most particularly in the sixties, left-oriented european intellectuals felt a growing fascination for Third World culture, art and politics. This was due partly to the fact that it was an era of vibrant anti-colonial insurgence (Vietnam war, cuban revolution, Algerian and general African liberation movements, the Palestinian conflict, chinese ‘cultural revolution’ and so on) and partly to the sense of an exhaustion of Left-wing politics in europe (stalinist bureaucratization of the communist parties, integration of the traditional working class into late capitalism). Arguably the two most important and representative of these ‘new Left’ intellectual trend-makers were the french philosopher, playwright and novelist Jean-Paul sartre and the italian filmmaker, poet and narrator Pier Paolo Pasolini. This paper will try to show that, although these two great thinkers / artists were quite different in theoretical perspective and aesthetic sensibility, from their distinct points of view

they strived and managed to ‘let otherness speaks for itself’, instead of merely constructing an ethnocentric and ‘orientalised’ imagery of such other. each in their own way, therefore, they anticipated by at least two or three decades (and with stronger radicalism, we might add) the current fashionable debates in the fields of postcolonial theory or subaltern studies. And they did this not only ‘in Theory’ (to paraphrase Aijaz Ahmad) but also in the very logic of their artistic praxis, in which the presence of a variously represented ‘excluded other’ allegorizes a tragic conflict within western reason itself, much in the vein of Adorno’s ‘negative dialectic’. Nowadays, in the context of what seems a nearly apocalyptic crisis of late capitalism and ‘globalization’, and the concomitant demise of so-called Postmodern thought, a return to such precedents could prove to be a stimulating ‘anachronism’, a modest but decided way ‘to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger’, to quote Walter Benjamin’s famous dictum.

Of course, we won’t have time to examine more than a couple of examples from the vast work of these two ‘infinite’ authors. But we trust they will be enough to make our point.

Sartre: or, the ambiguities of the ‘other’

Probably the most famous (and for that very same reason, the most misunderstood) line in all of sartre’s literature is the statement uttered by his character garcin at the end of his play No Exit (Huis Clos): ‘hell is the other’ (‘L’enfer c’est l’Autre’)[2]. misunderstood, i say, because only too frequently sartre’s critics have taken this as a declaration of solipsistic desperation and misanthropy. And yet, already in his earlier and major philosophical treatise, Being and Nothingness (L’Etre et le Néant), and most particularly in a section titled precisely ‘The for – other’ (‘Le Pour-Autrui’), sartre had clearly stated his notion of an irresoluble conflict between man’s need for the other — more specifically, for the other’s gaze —, and his / her feeling of being trapped in the field of the other’s gaze[3]. The other strives to dominate my ‘conscience’ as i try to dominate his / hers, creating a perpetual and unavoidable tension between the mutual rejection and at the same time the mutual interpenetration of both consciences. Now, this picture is quite obviously modelled on the famous section IV of hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind, the so-called ‘master / slave’ dialectic; and, whether intentional or not, the very inspiration stemming from such a representation of what we can dub as ‘class struggle’ (never mind the ontological or metaphysical meaning this might have in hegel, as in sartre himself) is highly suggestive. What is at stake here is of course man ́s freedom and its limits. In fact, the next and last section of sartre ́s opus magnum deals precisely with the category of freedom (‘Liberté’)[4]. There we learn that the other is both someone through and against whom i can, and must, conquer my freedom. Also, that i don ́t have the choice of not choosing freedom. As another famous sartrean paradox states, ‘We are condemned to be free’.

But about a decade later we witness a more clear-cut surfacing of some of these more or less tacitly political implications. From the mid-50s, and especially in the early 60s, sartre ́s engagement with a heterodox, even ‘heretical’ version of marxism and most particularly with Third World anti-colonialist or anti-imperialist causes becomes utterly strong. He visits revolutionary cuba and is fascinated by the figures of fidel castro and che guevara (although consistently, he will later not hesitate to head a worldwide intellectuals’ protest against heberto Padilla’s arrest). He presides over the Bertrand russell Tribunal against war crimes in Vietnam. He supports popular resistance against military dictatorships in Latin America and national liberation movements in Africa. In 1964 he rejects the nobel Prize as a symbolical recusation of the cultural and literary ‘system’. And of course, throughout all this period he feverishly writes and speeches in favour of the fLn, Algeria ́s national Liberation front. These last interventions include his extraordinary ‘Preface’ to frantz fanon’s Les Damnées de la Terre (The Wretched of the Earth)[5], to which we will come back in a moment.

This period is one in which sartre’s role as an engagée political essayist at least equals that of philosopher / playwright / literary theorist. And yet, this all-too linear periodization should be challenged. At least as far back as 1947 (that is, somewhere between Being and Nothingness and No Exit ) sartre has already quite clearly expressed his ‘Pascalian wager’ on Third World not only in political, but also in artistic and poetic terms (although certainly for sartre these different levels of discourse are strictly inseparable). In that year he writes his famous essay ‘Black orpheus’, a long introduction to Leopold sedar senghor’s Anthology of ‘negro’ poetry[6], where he profusely uses Aimé césaire’s concept of négritude. Aimé césaire was an extraordinary Black poet born in martinique, the former french colony in the caribbean, and educated in france; in the late 1930s, in Paris, he launches the polemical concept of négritude , ‘blackness’, as a way to affirm the right to an autonomous African / Antillean art, literature and cultural identity against neo-colonialist and white supremacist european culture [7]. Césaire’s basic contention is that there is a specific and irreducible, even un-translatable ‘African’ way of writing poetry, which has not as much to do with thematic ‘content’ as with an idiosyncratic grammar, syntax, lexicology and ‘rhythm’, all of them absolute singularities which resist its ‘colonization’ by an allegedly ‘universal’ european culture.

Césaire was bitterly, sometimes violently criticized for this thesis. Although ‘political correctness’ had not yet become the tyranny we suffer today, even many ‘progressive’ intellectuals accused him of creating a sort of reverse exclusivism, if not an outright new form of reversed ‘racism’, and of proposing the utopia of an impossible return to ‘mother Africa’ for black Antilleans. But sartre takes a totally different stand. He understands that the concept of negritude is no doubt an ideologically ‘defensive’ argument, very much in today’s sense of a strategic essentialism (to quote gayatri spivak’s notion)[8] but it also is a new form of poetic thought, a new ‘concrete particularity’ (this time quoting the hegelian jargon) which has the political advantage of questioning de facto european pretensions to literary superiority, without schematizing the claim into direct political pamphlet. He also correctly understands, because he reads césaire attentively and ‘to the letter’, that there is no such utopian ‘return to Africa’, but that what césaire is talking about is the Atlantic triangle (europe à Africa à America) of the colonial slave trade. And sartre realizes something else, perhaps deeper and more complex: since the debate had been launched in France by a group of intellectuals coming from the former caribbean and African colonies, négritude was a way the ‘other’ had found to speak ‘for themselves’ from the inside of ‘enemy territory’ and nevertheless remaining utterly ‘themselves’. As sartre writes in his introduction, ‘We (meaning the white europeans) must acknowledge that these poets are not speaking to us, but they are speaking among themselves over our heads’. So, for sartre this was a statement of strict sovereignty, and at the same time a reminder that anyhow europeans had to listen, because it was within their territory and their culture that this ‘insurgence’ was happening. Sartre was probably very much ready to grasp this complexity, because in many ways it was a political-artistic translation of the philosophical subtleties of Being and Nothingness, with all the ambiguities and irresolvable conflicts of the relation to ‘otherness’.

Therefore, when in 1960 he was asked to write a Preface to fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, he knew exactly where to stand. Fanon was yet again an Antillean intellectual, also from martinique and also educated in france, where he had graduated as a psychiatrist; he was sent to practice in an Algerian hospital in the 50s. The Algerian masses were by then starting a more consistently organized independence movement, and fanon almost immediately became an fLn partisan. An extraordinarily gifted writer, he set himself to explore the colonized peoples’ ‘subjectivity’ in a series of essays full of deep philosophical, cultural and psychological insights, explaining how his sudden awareness of negritude (which he owed to his fellowcountryman césaire, and which he had analyzed in his first major book Black Skin, White Mask[9]) had made him understand the material and symbolic violence of the asymmetric relation to the other.

So, again sartre discovered in fanon the complexities he had been coping with since Being and Nothingness, and that he was just then, in 1960, re-examining in his Critique of Dialectical Reason, a book where the tragedies of history had an incomparable larger presence than in the former.Only this time, for sartre, there is no metaphysical ambiguity: the ‘others’ are still ‘hell’, but they have a precise determination; they are the oppressors of all kinds: colonial, class, race and gender oppressors. So now the other is neatly split: we have the ‘good’ other (the oppressed) and the ‘bad’ one (the oppressor). Which does not mean that these relations have gotten over-simplified, that ambiguities and contradictions have disappeared, specially inside the oppressed field, where the oppressor has for a long time succeeded in its ‘colonizing’ of the minds and the ‘subjectivity’, and not just the territory, so the struggle must go on, perhaps eternally. But what all this does mean is that for sartre the relation to the other (the conflict between ‘consciences’, the limits and obstacles to freedom, the master / slave dialectic, and so on) has became intensely politicized. While still maintaining its ontological structure, the tragedy of otherness is permanently ‘crystallized’ in the concrete historical situation. And this adds complexity instead of reducing it, because now we have a new tensional dimension, that between ‘ontology’ and ‘history’. The poetic word, the artistic work, the literary or dramatic fiction, the philosophical essay are (and should be consciously faced as) symptoms of such tension: the theory of ‘engaged’ literature and art is not — as so often has been misread — a reductionist attempt to ‘simplify’ a politicalphilosophical ‘message’, but a rigorous, energetic call to embrace the ‘symptom’, both in ‘form’ and ‘content’.

But this is not all. There ́s still a huge question we have to approach. Where do all these ideas originally come from, whether sartre is aware of it or not? Let us remind ourselves: he ‘discovers’ negritude as a metaphor of a rebellious ‘good’ otherness thanks to Aimé césaire, and the concept acquires a full political meaning with frantz fanon. Both césaire and fanon are Black, and both come from the former french colonies in the caribbean. Well, that ́s where it comes from, and not by chance. Because the conditions of possibility , if not the signifier itself, of the emergence of such concept have appeared much before césaire and fanon, in 1804, with the triumph of the monumental haitian revolution for independence (the island of saint-Domingue, named ‘hayti’ after its independence from france, was the richest slave colony in the whole continent). ‘monumental’ it was indeed, in several senses: to begin with, it was the first independence revolution in all the Americas south of the rio grande; second, it was by far the most radical of them all, for it was the only one where the most oppressed classes and ethnic groups, the plantation slaves of African origin, seized power and founded a new nation (besides being the only triumphant slave revolution in the whole history of mankind, by the way); third, it was not just a social and political revolution, but also a ‘philosophical’ and cultural one, so to speak. The famous Article 14 of the first haitian constitution of 1805 makes a very strange statement: it decrees that from then on, every haitian citizen, regardless of the colour of his / her skin, will be known as… ‘Black’ (Négre). And what does this mean? in 1789 the french revolution had declared the Universal rights of man and citizen. But the slaves of the colonies were very soon to discover that this ‘universality’ had a very particular limit, and that limit had a very particular colour of skin: black. So in 1791 they had to launch a huge revolution which paid the price of 200.000 massacred black slaves, and which only five long and bloody years after the french Declaration succeeded in obtaining the emancipation from slavery in 1794, although the struggle for independence had to go on for still ten years more[10].

This, we repeat, was a great philosophical achievement as well. In the first place, as susan Buck-morss has consistently proved, hegel’s master / slave dialectic, published in 1806, is straightforwardly inspired by the haitian revolution, which hegel knew in detail[11]. Second, and possibly even more relevant for us: Article 14 calls into question the pretensions of ‘fake universalism’ (as Adorno would say) of no less than the most ‘progressive’ european event of the time, the french revolution, and therefore of Western culture as a whole. It is as if they said: ‘so we were the particular Other excluded from the universal? Well, now we are the ‘universal’ and you are the excluded particular’. What this is revealing is, as we have insisted above, the dimension of tragically irresoluble conflict between the universal and the Particular, its ‘negative dialectic’ (as again Adorno named it) and the sheer brutal material and symbolic violence of any ideology which tries to force, from ‘the outside’ as it were (that is, from a ‘fake universal’ pretension of being the Totality) such resolution.

Unless we think of things like art, literature, poetry. All through the ninetieth and twentieth centuries there are strongly implicit — and sometimes quite explicit — traces of the debate on negritude catapulted by the haitian revolution, in european and Latin American / caribbean narrative, poetic and essayistic literature, and also in visual art and film. It would be too long to review all its expressions in this paper. Let us merely mention that the debate is still very much alive in our day. many of the most significant Antillean intellectuals (like the poet / philosopher edouard glissant and the 1993 nobel Prize winner, writer Derek Walcott) have in the last decades re-launched the polemic through the concept of créolité (‘creole-ness’), as a more nuanced and subtle way to think the amphibologies of the relation to otherness (a ‘philosophy of relation’ is precisely the notion coined by glissant[12]). As we have seen, on the european side it is the merit of Jean Paul sartre to have realized the simultaneously political and artistic power of those notions.

Pasolini: or, the ‘free indirect’ other

Pier Paolo Pasolini is best known for being one of the most creative and original of the italian avant-garde filmmakers of the 60s. The public is perhaps less aware of the fact that he was one of the greatest italian poets and novelists of the twentieth century, and that he made decisive contribution to Literary and film Theory, semiotics and Art  history. Like sartre (albeit in a very different way) he is a hardly classifiable intellectual. A heretic marxist, a heretic catholic, a heretic homosexual, an angry impugner of what he called ‘neo-capitalism’, he was too irritating for any one of those ‘churches’, to the point that even today there are serious suspicions that his violent death in 1975, at the age of 53, supposedly a consequence of an obscure sexual episode, might have been a political crime. Whatever the case, what matters for us now is that he too, again like sartre, and maybe even more sanguineously, took sides consistently with ‘the other’: the marginalized ‘sub-proletariat’ of the urban borgate (the italian cities slums), the poor rural peasants, the ethnic and sexual minorities, and of course the Third World and the colonized or neo-colonized peoples. He defended this standing not only in the realm of straight politics, but also, and more deeply, in that of every expression of art and culture at large. His contention was that neo-capitalism, the so-called italian ‘economic miracle’ of the 60s, the ‘new technocracy’ of industrial acceleration and the quick-paced erection of a consumption society were committing a sheer cultural genocide. The richness and diversity of traditional cultures, local dialects, artistic forms and even la lingua del Dante (Dante’s language) were being shred apart and turned into expendable ruins by the capitalist homogenization and the materialistic ‘commodity fetishism’ which strived to unify and degrade culture, not to mention human beings, sacrificing them in the altar of capital accumulation and fast earning.

Art and literature, including cinema, in Pasolini ́s view, could only resist this cultural genocide through struggling to ‘let the other speaks’. Political denunciation and militant opposition (which he also practiced) was not enough. The structural logic and the semiotic texture itself, the ‘grammar’ of poetry, narrative, film, needed to open the space for the other to ‘speaks’. Pasolini tried to do this in every way. many times in his poetry he used the peasant dialect of friule (where he had grown), subtly combining it with the most exquisite and intellectual inflections, to show a possibility of cultural dialogism (to use Bakhtin’s famous notion) between ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultures. In many of his novels (Ragazzi di Vita and Una Vita Violenta come immediately to mind) the jargon of the borgate youth is reproduced with extreme credibility. In most of his films (from Accatone to Edipo Re, from Il Vangelo secondo Mateo to the so-called Trilogia della Vita) he used non-professional actors or actresses, marginal men and women from the very same locations where he shot the films. The presence of the ‘Third World’, in the broadest sense of the word, is always felt in various ways; in Edipo, for example, the main sequences are filmed in the millenary villages of the moroccan desert, and its real inhabitants play all secondary parts; the clothes look African, the hats Vietnamese; the musical background is an ancient Japanese ritual litany, and so on. In sum, archaic greece, which has always passed for the very same origin of Western culture, is a sort of condensation of non-Western ‘marginalities’. But once again, the ‘lowest’, most oppressed end of culture is articulated to the ‘highest’, most canonized of its historical expression. Pasolini does not hesitate to transpose the literary likes of Aeschylus, sophocles, euripides, the new Testament, chaucer, Boccaccio, the marquis de sade, not to mention his own narrative (as in Teorema).Only he does it in such a manner that the sublime ‘spiritualization’ of academically consecrated symbols does not hide ‘the slums’ of the world. Being a convinced if heterodox catholic, he believes in the possibility of redemption; but as in fanon (or as in Walter Benjamin) this rescue of the spirit can only come from the ‘wretched of the earth’, from the ‘victims’ of neocapitalism and colonialism. Linear history as the dominant ideology conceives it, the history of ‘technocratic progress’ for instance, is only the ephemeral history of the victors ; but there is another, a subterranean and therefore much more profound history, that of the vanquished: a ‘pre-history’ which art must make evident in its clash with present ‘history’, creating a ‘barbarous polyphony’, a squeaking discordance within the tedious ‘comfort’ of Western culture, to show that all its apparently indisputable elegance is rooted in the ‘mud and blood’ of the oppressed, and to make those roots visible.

Yes, but, how to do this? Pasolini does not fool himself. We (again meaning the white Westerners) are not ‘the other’. To pretend that we can speak for the other in our own language would be just another insidious way of colonialism, disguised as paternalist understanding.Once more, we are in the midst of an irresoluble tension. The only way out (or, more accurately, the only way into this tension in the inside of which we should create our art) is that which ernesto de martino — the important italian ethnologist who Pasolini has read very deeply — would call a ‘critical ethnocentrism’: we must be constantly and perfectly aware of the fact that we belong to the dominant culture and that we cannot deny or renounce this fact, and at the same time we must make an effort to let ourselves be ‘penetrated’ by the other culture, by the culture of the other, even if it necessarily clashes with ours[13] , because it is precisely from the standpoint of this clash that will rise a rigorous self-critical possibility.

Now, how does this ‘translate’ into actual aesthetic praxis? in his poetic and narrative writing, Pasolini aims to put into practice what  in his theoretical work he explains about ‘free indirect speech’, a halfgrammatical, half-stylistic device which does not give his / her ‘voice’ to the other (as ‘Direct speech’ would do), but allows his (Pasolini’s) own speech to be ‘invaded’ by the accents and modalities of the other, generating a split between the two ‘voices’ in the inside of the same speech level, in such a way that the ‘same’ and the ‘other’ are not mutually external and incommunicable realities, but a moebius bandlike, frequently conflictive but intertwining ‘heterotopic’ space (to retrieve foucault’s expression)[14]. In film, this is even more difficult, but nonetheless possible, to achieve. It’s what Pasolini dubs the ‘indirect subjective shot’, in which the eye of the camera, usually situated behind and a little to the side of the character’s back, is able to simultaneously ‘see’ what the character and the camera itself are watching, so we spectators can grasp both superimposed gazes, interacting with each other within the same sequence-shot[15], thus not allowing a full ‘ideological’ identification between the ‘narrator’ and the character.

In Pasolini’s view these are of course not merely technical devices. They represent an ethical and political besides an aesthetic positioning, by mean of which the ‘narrator’ does not pretend to ‘lose’ his voice in favour of the other’s voice, but acknowledges the tense co-existence of the different voices. Thus, cultural conflict is made to objectively live before our eyes or in our reading, without having to be explicitly (and reductively) proclaimed. We have already mentioned how Pasolini’s use of friulan dialect in his (especially early) poetry, or of the borgate idiom in his novels, is an attempt at permitting this invasion of his own voice by the other’s ‘accent’. Pasolini’s films are also filled with these attempts. In some of them, the resource of ‘indirect subjective shot’ is even exceeded towards an allegorical reality of conflict which portrays what the author calls a ‘cinema of poetry’, that is, the interaction of ‘historic’ and ‘pre-historic’ voices and images where the ‘narrator’ strives to make the reader / spectator aware that he / she, like the narrator, is not the other but nevertheless can share the other’s ‘heterotopic’ space.

Of all the examples we could cite, we have chosen one that we might even connect with césaire ́s negritude and sartre ́s reading of it. The film in question is Appunti per un’Orestiade Africana (or Notes for an African Orestes, 1970). This is not a finished film.Or, more precisely, it’s a ‘finished-as-unfinished’ film; it is made of visual ‘notes’ (fragmentary shots and sequence-shots) which Pasolini intended to use as basic inputs for a future film in which he was to transpose Aeschilus’ orestiad to a film about African national liberation movements. Afterwards, he decided not to make the second film, and leave it in its state of ‘notes’. It is therefore a very strange film, part fictional, part ‘documentary’, part mythical allegory.On the other hand, as a whole, it transparently illustrates Pasolini’s aesthetic and political view: a condensation of greek ‘pre-history’ (as evoked by Aeschilus’ tragic trilogy) and African ‘modernity’ (the anti-colonial struggle of the 60s). And by the way, were it not for the fact that this is Pasolini ‘speaking’, it might come as a surprise that europe is on the side of ‘pre-history’, while Africa is on that of ‘modernity’. But let’s keep on going. In one scene, Pasolini himself is interviewing some African political science students (so he is situated before, and not behind, the camera, moving from ‘narrator’ to ‘character’) and he celebrates, precisely, the ‘modernity’ of the emancipation movement, until one of the students refutes his one-sided view, confronting him with the need to understand the conflictive combination of such ‘modernity’ with the tribal mythical tradition of African peoples. Pasolini honestly realizes that, against his best intentions, he has not been able to avoid the trap of ‘speaking for the other’. He then changes his strategy. We switch to a long and functionally unexplained scene where he films Argentinean jazz musician gato Barbieri playing his ‘squeaking’ tenor sax to back an African-American female singer who half sings, half recites an African ritual litany. Because he now has gone back to his ‘narrator’ role, he leaves room for the Latin American and African-American ‘voices’ to build a visual and musical metaphoric evocation of the Atlantic ‘triangle’, where the gaze of europe (that is, Pasolini himself) is certainly present, but not as an interference, let alone a ‘view from above’.

(In)conclusion: to think again

To my knowledge, sartre and Pasolini, being coetaneous, never read each other. There is no connection whatsoever between them, beyond having to bear, as their second name, the signifier of the apostle Paul (if i’m allowed this small half-joke). And still, as i have tried to show, a deep connection does exist. They both wanted to ‘let otherness speaks for itself’, but they both had the ethical and political seriousness of not pretending to concede the other his voice. They were willing to stand on an ideological and cultural tightrope, looking in the face of a tragic, unsolvable conflict. They both discovered that certain forms of art could be practiced as a conscious symptom of the conflict, without surrendering to the temptation of an aesthetization of the conflict, which would have meant, at best, its trivialization, and at worst, a new ‘leftist’ form of colonial self-empowerment. Also to my knowledge, none of them read Theodor Adorno or Walter Benjamin. But both of them, pivoting upon notions such as negritude or free indirect speech, put into practice the negative dialectic or the dialectic at a standstill which those other great contemporary thinkers theorized, and where the work of art denounces, with its own specific artistic means, the state of ‘non-reconciliation’ of a violent, unjust and oppressive worldsystem, and of the ‘instrumental reason’ which culturally corresponds to it. In my personal opinion (which of course is as debatable as any opinion) this ‘style’ of thinking and making art and culture is considerably more radical and questioning than the ‘rhyzomatic dispersions’ of so-called postmodernism, with its risk of a displacing of the dimension of violent domination and cultural conflict behind an exhilarated celebration of multicultural ‘differences’. In our context of global capitalist crisis, it would be far from useless to return to thinkers like sartre and Pasolini, who had the courage of confronting the sometimes unbearable tensions of cultural clash. For the thinkers and artists, for the men and women from the Third World and specifically from Latin America, who have had to learn in their own skins what this is all about, such ‘return’ could mean a stimulating challenge to think again (and again, and again) about their own place in the conflict, and also to think about, quoting sartre, ‘not so much what history has done to us, but what we can do with that which has been done to us’.

PHD in social sciences at university of Buenos Aires. Full Professor of Anthropology of Art; and of film & Literature, at the faculty of Philosophy and Letters (uBA). Author of several books on these subjects, the latest of which is Darkness and Enlightment. Capitalism, Culture and Revolution (Buenos Aires/Barcelona: edhasa, 2010).↵

Sartre, Jean Paul 1948 Huis Clos (Paris, gallimard) p. 41↵

Sartre, Jean Paul 1943 L’Étre et le Néant (Paris : gallimard) p. 275 passim↵

Sartre (1943: 508 passim).↵

Sartre, Jean Paul 1961 ‘Preface’ in fanon, frantz Les Damnées de la Terre (Paris: maspero) p. 7 / 31↵

Sartre, Jean Paul 1947 ‘introduction’ in senghor, Léopold sedar Anthologie de la Nouvelle Poesie Négre et Malgache (Paris, Puf).↵

See, for instante: césaire, Aimée 1939 ‘cahier d’un retour au pays natal’ in Volontées n° 20: 23-51.↵

See: spivak, gayatri chakravorty 1999 A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (massachussetts: harvard university Press).↵

See: fanon, frantz 1952 Peau Notre, Masques Blancs (Paris: Du seuil). For the uses and abuses of fanon’s concept of ‘blackness’ see: read, Alan (ed.) 1996 The Fact of Blackness. Frantz Fanon and Visual Representation (London/seattle: institute of contemporary Arts/Bay Press); gordon, Lewis r. 1995 Fanon and the Crisis of European Man , (London: routledge); and Alessandrini, Anthony c. (ed.) 1999 Frantz Fanon: Critical Perspectives , (London: routledge). For a (rather violent) discussion of the concept of négritude, see Adotevi, stanislas 1972 Négritude et négrologues (Paris, 10/18).↵

for all this problematic, see our recent book: grüner, eduardo 2010 La oscuridad y las luces (Buenos Aires: edhasa).↵

Buck-morss, susan 2000 Hegel and Haiti (London: Verso).↵

See: glissant, edouard 2009 Philosophie de la Relation (Paris : nrf/gallimard). Also, his former work Le Discours Antillais (Paris: gallimard, 1997).↵

See De martino, ernesto 1958 Il Mondo Magico (Torino: einaudi) and also, Morte e Pianto Rituale (Torino: Bollati Borlingheri, 1965).↵

Pasolini, Pier Paolo 1964 ‘intervento sul discorso libero indirecto’ in Empirismo Eretico / Saggi sulla Letteratura e sull’Arte (milano: mondadori); english translation in Pasolini, P. P. 1988 Heretical Empiricism (Bloomington: indiana university Press).↵

‘Observations on the sequence shot’ in Pasolini (1988).↵

Culture and democracy[1]

Marilena Chaui[2]

I

From the Latin verb colere, in its origin, culture means crop or care. At the beginning, it referred to the crop or taking care of the land as in agriculture, in the same way as puericulture refers to infants as well as the gods and the sacred refer to cult. As crop, culture was conceived as an action directed to the sheer fulfilment of the potentialities of someone or something; it referred to sprout, fruit, blossom and cover with benefits.

Through western history this meaning was lost until the eighteenth century with the philosophy of illustration when the word culture emerges as a synonym to a different concept: civilization. Civilization derives from the idea of civil life, therefore, of political life and political regime. During the period of enlightenment, culture refers to the pattern or criterion that measures the level of civilization in a society. In this way, culture turns into a number of practices (arts, sciences, techniques, philosophy and crafts) for the assessment and hierarchysation of political regimes, according to an evolutionary criterion.

The idea of time is introduced in the concept of culture, however, it refers to a very precise kind of time, it is continuous, linear and evolutionary then little by little turning into a synonym of progress. In a civilization, progress is assessed through its culture and culture is valuated through the progress it brings to such civilization.

Deeply political and ideological, the illuminist concept of culture reappears in the nineteenth century, when it becomes part of human sciences and anthropology. At the beginning of the constitution of anthropology, the anthropologists kept the illuminist concept of evolution or progress. Since anthropologists took the notion of progress as a measure to culture, they established a pattern to measure evolution or level of progress in a culture and this pattern was evidently the one of capitalist europe[3].

Societies started to be evaluated according to the presence or absence of some elements that belong to western capitalism and the absence of such elements was considered a sign of lack of culture or a poorly developed culture. Which are those elements? state, market and writing. every society developing exchange, communication, power and writing forms different from the european ones were defined as ‘primitive’. In other words, a concept of value was introduced to differentiate cultural forms.

The notion of primitive can only be elaborated if determined by the concept of not primitive, therefore, by the figure of that producing an ‘evolution’. This fact implies not just passing judgment, even more; it implies that those criteria defined the essence of culture in a way that societies yet without market, without writing and without state would necessarily get to such stage in time. The capitalist european culture appears not only as telos[4], as necessary end to the development of any culture or civilization. Thus, adopting an ethnocentric position but specially legitimizing and justifying firstly colonization and later imperialism when presenting itself as the necessary model of historical development.

In the nineteenth century, mainly with the german philosophy, the idea of culture suffers a decisive mutation because it is elaborated as the difference between nature and history. Culture is the breakup of the immediate adhesion to nature, which belongs to the animal world, and opening to a world that is merely human. The natural order or physics is governed by laws related to a necessary causality for the balance of the whole. The vital order or biology is governed by rules related to the adaptation of the organism to the environment. The human order is the symbolic one, that is, the human capacity to relate to the absent and the possible through language and labour. The human dimension of culture is a transcendence movement that places existence as the power to transcend a certain situation through an action directed to what is absent. For this reason, it is only through this dimension that speaking about history per se is possible. A human body immediately stops adhering to the environment, as an animal does, through language and work. It transcends the immediate data from signs and objects and recreates them into a new dimension. Language and labour reveal that a human action cannot be reduced to a vital action, an ingenious device to reach a fixed target, however, there is an immanent sense relating means and ends that determines the development of such action as the transformation of data into ends and from these means into new ends therefore defining man as the historical agent per se and opening the order of time and discovery of what is possible.

Finally, this enlarged concept of culture is incorporated by european anthropologists in the second half of the twentieth century. They will try to undo the ethnocentric and imperialistic ideology of culture whether because they had marxist instruction or a deep sense of guilt, hence inaugurating a social anthropology and a political anthropology in which each culture conceives a symbolic human order historically and materially determined with its own individuality or own structure. Since then, the word culture is more comprehensive than before. Now, it is understood as the creation and production of language, religion, sexuality, work tools and forms of work, clothing, housing, cooking, leisure expressions, music, dance and social relation systems particularly the systems of kinship and family structure, power relations, war and peace, the notion of life and death. Culture starts to be understood as a field where human subjects elaborate symbols and signs, establish practices and values, define for themselves the possible and the impossible, the time line sense (past, present, future), the differences in space (the sense of proximity and distance, big and small, visible and invisible), values such as true or false, beautiful and ugly, fair and unfair, establish the idea of law and therefore of what is permitted and forbidden, determine the sense of life and death and the relations between sacred and profane.

However, in modern societies this enlargement of the notion of culture collides with a problem: the fact of their being societies and not communities.

The main characteristic of community is the internal non-division and the idea of common wealth; its members are always in a one to one relationship (without institutional mediation). Communities have a sense of a unity of destinies or a destiny in common and assert the incarnation of the communal spirit in some of its members and under certain circumstances. But the modern world does not acknowledge communities: the capitalist production model originates a society, whose first feature is the existence of individuals separated from others by their interests and desires. Society means isolation, fragmentation or atomization of its members thus forcing the modern thought to investigate how isolated individuals can relate to one another or become partners. In other words, a community is perceived as natural by its members (its origin is the biological family) or otherwise ordered by a divinity (like in the Bible), but a society also imposes the requirement of an explanation to its social origin. Such requirement leads to the invention of the idea of a social contract or social covenant signed by the individuals constituting a society. The second feature, what really makes it a society, is the internal division. If the community is perceived as ruled by the principle of non-division, a society cannot avoid internal division being its principle. Such division is not accidental; it is not produced by some people’s evil and might be corrected, but is an original division. machiavelli understood this for the first time, when in The prince he states that ‘every city is divided between the bourgeoisie’s desire to oppress and command and the people’s desire not to be oppressed and commanded’, and was later restated by marx when opening the Communist Manifesto saying that ‘until now, history has been the history of struggle between classes’. The main feature of a society is the existence of social division, that is, the division of classes.

How is it then that within a class divided society so broad and generous a concept of culture as the expression of an indivisible community can be maintained, as proposed by the philosophy and anthropology? in fact, it is possible, since society of classes states a cultural division. This receives different names: we can speak about dominated or dominating culture, oppressed or oppressing culture, elite culture and popular culture. Whatever the term used, a clear cut within culture between what was agreed to be called formal culture or lettered culture and popular culture is evidenced, it spontaneously runs in the veins of a society.

On the other hand, the concept of popular culture is not an easy one. Let’s just remember the three main approaches. The first one during the romantic period in the nineteenth century states that popular culture is the culture of a good, truthful, fair people or the one that embodies the spirit of the nation and the people. The second approach, from the french illustration considers popular culture as a tradition residue, a mixture of superstition and ignorance to be corrected by educating people; and the third one from the populisms of the twentieth century blending the romantic and the illuminist vision by maintaining the idea that culture made by the people is per se good and truthful. From the illuminist vision it also keeps the idea that culture tends to be traditional and behind in time since made by the people, thus in need for updating in terms of a pedagogical action carried out by the state or a political avant-garde. each conception of popular culture purports quite determined political options: the romantic view searches for universalizing the popular culture by means of nationalism, that is, transforming it into a national culture; the illustrated or illuminist conception proposes the disappearance of the popular culture through formal education by the state; and the populist one pretends to bring the ‘right consciousness’ to the people so that popular culture may turn into revolutionary (in the perspective of left-wing vanguards) or support the state (in the perspective of right-wing populisms).

Let’s change the focus of our analyses. Thanks to analyses and reviews in ideology, we know that the place a dominant culture occupies is quite clear: it is the place where the exercise of economic exploitation, political domination and social exclusion is legitimized. However, this place makes popular culture clearer too, as something produced by popular classes, particularly the working class, according to what is done in terms of domination; that is, as repetition or response depending on historical conditions and the forms of popular organizations.

For this reason, how cultural division tends to be hidden must be taken into consideration and for this, reinforced with the rise of mass culture or cultural industry. How does cultural industry function? in the first place, it separates cultural commodities according to their supposed market value: there are ‘expensive’ and ‘rare’ pieces destined for the privileged that can pay for them, creating an elite; while on the other hand there are ‘cheap’ or ‘ordinary’ pieces addressed to the mass. In this way, instead of guaranteeing the same right to everyone to the totality of the cultural production, the cultural industry over-determines the social division thus increasing the division between the ‘cultivated’ elite and the ‘not cultivated mass’.

In the second place and contrary to the first aspect, it creates the illusion that everyone has access to the same cultural commodities, each one freely choosing what he wishes, as a consumer does at the supermarket. However, we just need to pay attention to the timetables of radio or TV programs or what is sold at the newsagent to realize that culture promoting companies have already chosen what each class or social group can and must listen to, read or watch.

For example, in terms of newspapers and magazines, the paper quality, graphics, typos and images, kind of headline and topic published define the kind of consumer and determine the content of what it will have access to or the kind of information that it may receive. If we compared five or six newspapers in the same morning we would notice that the very same world where — we all live in — turns into five or six different and even opposing worlds since one same event receives quite a different treatment according to the kind of target reader the news agency is interested in (economic and political) .

In the third place, it invents a figure called the ‘average viewer’, ‘average listener’ and ‘average reader’ who is attributed ‘average’ mental capacities, ‘average’ knowledge and certain ‘average’ tastes and therefore, ‘average’ cultural products are offered.

What does all this mean? The cultural industry sells culture. In order to do so, it has to seduce and please the consumer. In order to seduce and please the industry cannot shock, provoke or make the consumer think by bringing him any new information that might upset him. Accordingly he must receive what he already knows, has done or seen with a new appearance. The ‘average’ is the common sense crystallized; what the cultural industry gives back with a new face.

In the fourth place, it defines culture as entertainment and leisure.

Hannah Arendt stated the transmutation of culture under mass communicative imperatives, that is, the transformation of cultural work, mental work, art pieces, religious and civic acts and entertainment festivals. evidently, she says, human beings do need entertainment and leisure. Be it as marx showed, so that work force increases productivity because of rest, or as marxist scholars show, so that social control and domination are perpetuated through alienation or even as Arendt states: because entertainment and leisure are vital to the human metabolism.

No one shall be contrary to entertainment, even when critical to entertainment modes that amuses social and political domination. Whatever the concept of entertainment, it is true that its main characteristic is not just repose but also a pastime. It is spending time as free time without any obligation, our time (even when this ‘our’ is illusive). entertainment or leisure time is related to the biological time and to the vital cycle of recovering physical and mental forces. entertainment is a dimension of culture taken in its broad and anthropological sense, since it is the way a society invents its moments of distraction, amusement, leisure and repose. However, and just because of this, entertainment differs from culture when it is understood as a creative work and expression of thought and art.

If for a moment we set aside the broad concept of culture as a symbolic order and we take it under the prism of creation and expression of thought, mental work and art pieces we will say that culture has three main features that separate it from entertainment: the first one is work, that is to say, the movement towards creation of sense when a piece of art or thought capture the experience of the world given to interpret it, criticize it, transcend it and transform it, it is the experience of what is new. In second place, it is the action to give what is hidden behind lived experiences or everyday experiences to be thought about, to be seen, to be reflected on or imagined and felt, thus turning them into a piece of work that transforms them since they become known (in works of thought) dense, new and profound (in art pieces). Third, in a society of classes, exploitation, domination and social exclusion culture is a citizen’s right, the right to have access to cultural works and commodities, the right to do culture and participate on decisions about cultural policies. Then, the culture industry denies such features of culture. As part of the culture of masses, works of thought and art tend to: turn from expressive to reproductive and repetitive; from creational works to consumption events, from experimentation of what is new to the consecration of what is consecrated by fashion and consumption; from lasting events to be part of the fashion market, something ephemeral and transient without past or future, from forms of knowledge that unveil reality and establish relationships with what is true they become a disguise, a falsifying illusion, propaganda or publicity. even more than this. The so called culture of masses appropriates cultural works to consume them, devour them, destroy them and make them null in simulations. Just because the spectacle becomes a simulation or the simulation is exhibited as entertainment; the mass media turn everything into entertainment (wars, genocides, strikes, parties, religious ceremonies, tragedies, policies, natural catastrophes, works of art, and mental labour). This is the cultural market.

In order to assess the contemporary meaning of cultural the industry and mass media producing so it is worth to briefly remember what was conveyed to be called the post-modern condition, that is, the social and cultural existence under a neoliberal economy.

The social and economic dimension of the new kind of capital is inseparable from a dramatic transformation in terms of time and space, as stated by David harvey ‘the space-time comprehension’. The fragmentation and globalization of the economic production produce two contrary and simultaneous phenomena: on the one hand, spacetime fragmentation and spreading out; on the other, under the effects of electronic and information technologies, a different understanding of space — everything happens here, without distances, frontiers or differences — and the comprehension of time — everything happens now, without past or future. In other words, the fragmentation and scattering of time and space condition their reunion under a no-differentiated space (a flat space with fugacious images) and an ephemeral time without depth. Paul Virilio (1993) speaks about acrony[5] and atopy[6] or the disappearance of sensitive units of time and space lived under the effects of the electronic and computer science revolution. Time depth and its differentiating power disappear in front of the power of the instantaneous. Accordingly, field depth that defines the space of perception disappears under the power of a location without a place and overflying technologies. We live under the sign of the telepresence and teleobservation that precludes the differentiation between the impression and the sense, the virtual and the real, since everything is immediately given to us within the form of temporal and spatial transparency of the appearances introduced as evidence.

Volatile and ephemeral, today our experience is unaware of any sense of continuity and is exhausted in a present meaning of a fugacious instant. When we lose the temporal differentiation we not only pursue what Virilio calls ‘immediate memory’ or the absence of past depth, but also lose the depth of the future as a possibility inscribed in human actions in relation to the power to determine the indeterminate and to overcome given situations by understanding and transforming their sense. That is to say, we lose the sense of culture as historical action.

II

Massification is the opposite of democratization of culture.Or better, it is the denial of the democratization of culture.

What could culture be when treated from the point of view of democracy? What would the culture of democracy and a democratic culture be? Which are the problems of a democratic treatment of culture, therefore, of a culture of democracy and the realization of culture as a democratic vision, thus a democratic culture? These questions mark some of the problems to be faced. In the first place, the problem refers to the relation between culture and the state; secondly, the relation between culture and the market; and thirdly, the relation between culture and the creators.

If we examined the way in which the state traditionally functions in Brazil, we may say that in the treatment of culture its tendency was antidemocratic. Not because the state was occupied by this or that ruling group, but because of the way the state addressed the question of culture. Traditionally, it always tried to capture every social creation of culture under the pretence of broadening the public cultural field, turning a social creation into the official culture to make it operate as a doctrine and to be spread to the whole society. In this way, the state is presented as culture producer bestowing it with national generality by taking from antagonist classes the place where culture is effectively realized. Still, there is another form of state action that comes from 1990s where the sate proposes a ‘modern treatment of culture’ and considers it archaic to present itself as the official producer of culture. government understands modernity as the cultural industry criteria and logic whose patterns are repeated by the state by means of culture governmental institutions. Thus, the state starts to operate within culture with market patterns. If in the first case it appeared as a producer and distributor of the official culture, in the second, it appears as a counter where demands are attended by adopting consumption and mass media patterns, particularly the pattern of consecrating the consecrated.

However, we know that a different relation of state organisms and culture is possible. In order to understand why the state cannot be a culture producer we need to return to the broad philosophical and anthropological concept — culture as the social activity that establishes a field of signs and symbols, values, behaviours and practices — though increasing that there are cultural differentiated fields within society resulting from social class divisions and plurality of groups and social movements. In this multiple vision of culture, yet within the field of the philosophical-anthropological definition, the impossibility in fact and rights of the sate to produce culture becomes evident. Then, the state starts to be seen as one of the elements of culture, that is, one of the ways in which a society creates for itself power symbols, signs and images under certain historical conditions and the imperatives of social division of classes. The state is a product of culture and not the producer of culture. It is a product that establishes social division and multiplicity.

In relation to the state perspective of adopting the logic of the cultural industry and cultural market we may reject it by, now, considering culture in a less broad sense, that is, like a specific area of creation: creation of imagination, sensitivity and intelligence that is expressed in art pieces and mental work when looking for critically surpassing what is established. This specific cultural field cannot be defined by the market prism, not just because it operates as consumption, fashion and the consecration of the consecrated; but also because it reduces this form of culture to the condition of entertainment and leisure, the reverse of the critical and creative sense of cultural works. It does not mean that culture does not have a ludic and laze side that is essential and a constituent part of it, but one thing is perceiving the ludic and laze inside culture and another, orchestrating it so as to reduce it to just that: something superfluous, like a dessert, a luxury in a country where basic rights are not attended. Do not to forget that under the market logic, the merchandise ‘culture’ becomes something absolutely measurable. The measure is given by the number of spectators or sales, that is to say, the cultural value derives from the ability to please. This measurement has even another sense: it indicates that culture is taken at its final step, at the moment the works are exhibited as a spectacle, leaving aside the essential, that is: the creative process.

What is a new relation with culture where the creative process is considered? it is the understanding of such as labour. It is treating culture as the work of intelligence, sensitivity, imagination, reflection, experience and debate as well as work within time; thinking about it as a social institution, therefore, determined by the material and historical conditions of its realization. It is known that work is an action that produces something inexistent up to that moment, the result of transforming the existent into something new. Free labour surpasses and modifies what already exists. As work, culture brings changes to our immediate experiences, opens time with the new, and produces what has not been done, thought or said yet. Accepting culture as work ultimately means the understanding that the cultural result (the work/ piece) is offered to the other social subjects, it is exhibited to them as something to be received by them so as to become part of their intelligence, sensitivity and imagination and to be re-worked by the recipients because they interpret the work or because the piece generates the creation of other pieces. The exhibition of cultural works is essential to them; they exist to be given to others’ sensitivity, perception, intelligence, reflection and imagination. This is so because of cultural market explores this dimension in art pieces, in other words, the fact that they are a spectacle subordinate them to show business.

If the state is neither the producer of culture nor the instrument for its consumption, what is the relation that state may have with culture? it may conceive culture as a citizen’s right and accordingly, ensure the right to access cultural works produced, particularly the right to enjoy them, the right to create pieces, that is, to produce them, and the right to take part in the cultural policies.

What does the right to produce cultural works mean? if we consider culture as the group of fine arts then we may suppose that this right would for example mean that the right to be a painter is available to everybody. After all, each of us, one day or the other feels like painting a picture with watercolours, gouache, drawing and so, cultural policies might be created to spread ateliers, classes and painting groups all around the cities. Such policy will not guarantee the right to produce paintings but will probably create a hobby, a leisure time activity and in the best of the cases a ludotherapy. What is a painting? The expression of the enigma of vision and what is visible: enigma of a body that sees and is seen, that makes a corporal reflection because it sees itself seeing; the enigma of the visible things that are simultaneously out in the world and inside our eyes; the enigma of depth that is not a third dimension beside height and width, but what we do not see and accordingly, allows us to see; the enigma of colour, since colour is just a difference among colours; the enigma of a line because when marking the limits of a thing it does not close in itself but is located in relation to all the others. The painter questions such enigmas and his work is to present the visible we do not see when we look at the world to be seen. So, if not everyone is a painter but mostly everyone loves paintings, wouldn’t it be better if people could have the right to see the artists’ works, enjoy them, being drawn to them? Wouldn’t the state be in charge of guaranteeing the citizens the right to have access to paintings — the painters guaranteed the right to create them, and to those who are not painters the right to enjoy them?

Those who are not painters or sculptors or dancers are nevertheless culture producers in the anthropological sense of the word: they are, for example, subjects, agents, authors of their own memory. Why not offer them conditions so that they can create ways to record and preserve the memory they are subjects to? Why not offer them technical and theoretical conditions so once they know the variety of memory support tools (documents, writings, photographs, films, objects etc) and they may preserve their own creation as social memory? This is not about the exclusion of people from the production of culture but the enlargement of the concept of culture further than the fine arts, thus guaranteeing people that they have the right to produce the best possible work, when they are subjects of their own work.

Finally, the right to take part in the decisions related to cultural policies is a citizens’ right, the right to participate in the definition of cultural guidelines and public budgets in order to ensure citizens both, access to culture and its production.

Then, we refer to a cultural policy defined by the idea of cultural citizenship where culture is not just reduced to the superfluous, to entertainment, market patterns, official doctrinarism (that is, ideology) but that is accomplished as the right to every citizen; right as from social class division or class struggle can be manifested and worked through the exercise of the right to culture. Within this frame, citizens as social political subjects, differentiate from each other, enter into conflicts, communicate and exchange experiences, reject forms of culture, create others and move the cultural process.

III

Asserting culture as a right is rejecting the neoliberal policy that abandons the guarantee of rights turning them into services sold and bought in the market and therefore, into class privileges.

This conception of democratization of culture supposes a new conception of democracy. In fact, we are used to accepting a liberal definition of democracy as the regime of law and order to guarantee individual freedom. Considering that the liberal thought and practice identify freedom and competition, such definition of democracy means in the first place, that freedom is reduced to economic competition, the so called ‘free initiative’ and political competition among parties disputing elections. Secondly, there is a reduction of Law towards the judiciary in order to limit political power defending society against the tyranny, since law guarantees the government chosen by will of the majority. Thirdly, there is identification between the order and the potency of the executive and judiciary power to contain social conflicts and restrain their becoming explicit and their development by means of repression. Lastly, despite the fact that democracy appears to be justified as ‘value’ or as a ‘commodity’ it is in fact approached through the efficiency criterion and measured in the legislative area through the representatives’ actions; understanding they are professional politicians. In the executive, it is measured through the activities developed by the elite of competent technicians that are responsible for the state administration.

In this way, democracy is reduced to an efficient political regime based on the idea of citizenship organized in political parties and that is expressed at the election processes where representatives are chosen, at the rotation of governments and technical solutions to economic and social problems.

However, in the democratic practice and ideas, there is a bigger and superior depth and truth to what liberalism perceives and enables to perceive. We may, in general and brief traces, characterize a democracy as surpassing the simple idea of a political regime identified with a form of government by taking it as a society’s general form and so, considering it a:

 Socio-political form defined by the principle of isonomy (citizens’ equality in law) and isegory (everyone’s right to public exposure of opinions, their discussion, acceptance or rejection) taking into consideration the statement the everyone is equal in rights because they are free, that is to say that there is noone under the power of other because everyone obeys the same laws of which they are all authors (direct authors, in a participative democracy, indirectly in a representative democracy) Where the major problem of democracy in a society of classes lies in the observance of its principles — equality and freedom — under the effects of the real inequality.

 A political form where, contrarily to others, the conflict is considered legitimate and necessary, looking for institutional mediations so it can express itself. A democracy is not a regime of consensus, but of work on and about conflicts: What is the origin of other democratic difficulties in societies of classes: like operating with conflicts when they have the form of a contradiction and not of mere opposition? A socio-political form that tries to face — the difficulties above mentioned by reconciling the principle of equity and freedom and the real existence of inequalities, just like the legitimacy principle of the conflict and the existence of material contradictions and for that purpose introducing the idea of (economic, social, political and cultural) rights. Thanks to the rights, those who are not equal conquer equity by entering the political space to vindicate their participation in already existing rights and above all, in order to create new rights. These are just new not only because they did not previously exist, but because they are different from those already existing once they emerge as citizens; new political subjects that established them and made them known to the whole society.

 Because of the creation of rights, a democracy emerges as the unique political regime that is really open to temporal changes, once the new emerges as part of its existence and as a consequence, temporality becomes a constituent of its being.

 The only socio-political form where the popular character of power and struggles tends to become evident in societies of classes, as rights only enlarge its scope or just arise as new by the action of popular classes against the judicial-political crystallization in favour of the dominant class. In other words, a feature of a modern democracy, permitting its passage from liberal democracy to social democracy, results from the fact that only the popular classes and the excluded (the minorities) feel the exigency of vindicating rights and creating new ones.

A political form where the distinction between power and government is ensured not only by the presence of laws and the division of several authority areas but also by the existence of elections since (contrarily to what the political sciences state) they do not merely mean ‘rotation in office’ but also show that power is always empty, that the holder is a society and the government is just occupying the place because a temporary mandate was received. In other words, the political subjects are not simple voters, but electors. Choosing means not just the exercise of power but manifesting the origin of such power, recovering the principle stated by the romans when they invented politics: it is ‘giving someone what is possessed, since nobody can give what he does not have’, that is, electing is asserting the sovereignty to choose the temporary occupants of the government.

Then, we say that a society — not a simple government regime — is democratic when apart from elections, political parties, division into three powers in the republic, respect to the will of the majority and the minorities, it establishes something more profound that is also condition of the political regime, that is when it establishes rights and such institution is a social creation in a way that the social democratic activity is carried out like a social counter-power that determines, directs, controls and modifies the state actions and the power of governors.

A democratic society establishes rights by opening the social field to the creation of real rights, to the enlargement of existing rights and the creation of new rights. That is why we can assert that democracy is a really historical society thus, opened to time and what is possible, to transformations, changes and to what is new. In fact, by the creation of new rights and the existence of social counter-powers, a democratic society is not fixed to a form for ever determined, in other words, it never ceases working in its divisions and internal differences, neither stops focusing on the objective possibility (freedom) nor being altered by its own praxis.

For this very same reason, democracy is the form of social life that creates for itself a problem that cannot cease to solve because each solution found reopens, rediscovers that problem, whatever the question of participation is.

As popular power (demos = people; krathos = power) democracy demands law to be done by those that will enforce it and to express their rights. In societies of class, we know the people in its quality of governor is not the total of classes or the population, but the dominant class presenting itself through voting as representing the whole society to pass laws, enforce them and guarantee rights. Thus, paradoxically, the political representation tends to legitimize forms of political exclusion without being perceived by the population as illegitimate, on the contrary, this is perceived as unsatisfactory. Consequently, social movements and actions are developed on the sidelines of representation under forms of pressure and vindication.

This way tends to receive the name of popular participation without its effectively being one, since popular participation will only be political and democratic if it could produce its own laws, rules and regulations to govern the socio-political life. So being, in each step, democracy demands the enlargement of representation and participation as well as the discovery of other procedures to guarantee participation as an effective political act that increases with the creation of every new right. If democracy is that, we can assess how far from it we are, since we live in a society that is oligarchic, hierarchic, violent and authoritarian.

IV

What is the Brazilian society as an authoritarian society?
It is a society got to know citizenship through the unusual figure of the master (of slaves) — citizens that conceive citizenship as a class privilege, making it a concession from the dominant class to the other social classes; something that may be taken from them when decided by those dominating.

It is a society where social and personal differences and asymmetries are immediately transformed into inequalities in terms of hierarchy, command and obedience. The individuals are immediately distributed between superior and inferior, although someone who is superior in a relation may result inferior in others depending on the hierarchy codes ruling the social and personal relations. All the relations take the form of dependence, tutelage, concession or favour. This means that people are not seen as autonomous and equal subjects on the one hand, or as citizens thus holders of rights on the other. This is exactly what makes violence the rule in social and cultural life. even greater violence because it is invisible under paternalism and patronage considered as natural and sometimes glorified as positive qualities of the ‘national character’.

It is a society where Law has always been a weapon to preserve privileges and also the best instrument for repression and oppression, without ever defining concrete rights and duties understandable to everybody. In the case of popular classes, rights are always presented as a concession granted by the state depending on the governor’s personal wish or will. This situation is clearly recognized by workers when stating that ‘justice only exists for the rich ones’. Such situation results in a diffuse social consciousness that is represented in the wellknown saying ‘for the friends everything and for the enemies the law’. For those who are big, the law is a privilege; for the popular stratums it is repression. The law does not appear as the public pole of power and the regulation of conflicts; it never defines citizens’ rights and obligations because in our country the task of the law is to preserve the privileges and the exercise of repression. For this reason, the laws appear as innocuous and useless or incomprehensible. They are created to be broken and not to be transformed — violent situation that is mythically transformed into a positive feature when the transgression is praised as the ‘Brazilian way’ [o jeitinho brasileiro]. The Judiciary is clearly perceived as distant, secret, representing the privileges of the oligarchies and never the rights of the society in general.

In this society the authentic political representation does not exist, neither the idea nor the practice. The political parties tend to be private clubs belonging to the local or regional oligarchy; they always take the form of patronage which results in relationships of tutelage and favouritism. It is a society where the public sphere never becomes public since it is always and immediately defined by the demands of the private space, thus, the governor’s wishes and will become the features of the government and the ‘public’ institutions. The indistinctness of public and private (politics is born on the distinction between both, as mentioned above) is not an accidental failure that might be corrected, since it is a structure of the social and political field determined by the indistinctiveness of public and private. Society and politics are realized in the same indistinctness: it is not just politicians and congressmen who practice corruption on public funds but there is no social perception of a public sphere of opinion, of collective sociability, of the street as a common place in the same way there is no perception of rights of privacy and intimacy.

For this reason it is a society that blocks the public sphere of opinion as the expression of the interests and rights of differentiated and/or antagonistic groups and social classes. This blockage is not like an absence or emptiness but a group of determined actions that are translated into a determined way of dealing with the opinion field: the mass media that monopolize information and consensus is confused with unanimity therefore disagreement appears as ignorance or behind in time. Disputes on the possession of cultivable land are solved with weapons and clandestine murders. economic inequalities acquire the dimension of genocide. Black people are considered childish, ignorant, a dangerous and inferior race; this is so, that until recently an engraving at the entrance of the escola de Polícia de são Paulo (Police school in são Paulo) read ‘A black person standing is suspicious, when running is guilty’. Indigenous people, in the final phase of extermination, are considered irresponsible (that is, incapable of citizenship), lazy (that is to say, misfit to the capitalist job market), dangerous, so they should be exterminated or then ‘civilized’ (that is, delivered to the rage of the market selling and buying manpower but without any labour guarantee since they are ‘irresponsible’). And, at the same time and since romanticism, the indigenous image is presented as heroic and epic by the lettered culture, as founders of the ‘Brazilian race’. rural and urban workers are considered ignorant, behind in time and dangerous and the Police are authorized to stop any worker on the street and ask for his work identification and arrest him to ‘verify antecedents’. If he is not carrying a professional identification with him, and if he is black, apart from the identification, the Police are authorized to examine his hands to check whether they show any ‘sign of work’ and arrest him in case such ‘signs’ are not found). There are cases where women report being raped or beaten and they are again beaten or raped by the ‘public force’ at police stations. Just not to mention torture of homosexuals, prostitutes and infant criminals in prisons. In other words, popular classes carry the stigma of suspicion, guilt and permanent incrimination. This situation is even more terrifying when remembering that the instruments created during the dictatorship (1964-1975) for repression and torture of political prisoners were transferred to the treatment of the working population on daily basis and that the prevailing ideology according to which misery is the cause of violence. The so-called ‘underprivileged’ classes are considered potentially violent and criminal. This prejudice profoundly affects the inhabitants of the favelas (slums), they are stigmatized not only by dominant and middle classes but also by their equals: the city looks at the favela as a pathological reality, an illness, a plague, a cyst, a public calamity.

This is a society where the population in big cities is divided in the ‘centre’ and the ‘ suburbs’, this last term is used not only in a spacegeographical sense but a social one [periphery] since it names distant neighbourhoods where no basic services are available (electricity, gas, sewers, pavement, transport, schools, medical attention centres). As a matter of fact, this situation is also found in the ‘centre’ of the city in pockets of poverty, slums and favelas. Population in these places has a 14-15 working hour day, including commuting, and in the case of women also includes house chores and taking care of the children.

This is a society where the land structure and the settlement of agro-industries created not only the phenomenon of immigration but also new figures in the landscape of the fields: the landless [sem-terra], migrant farm workers [bóias-frias] and cleaning women without work contract and without minimum work guaranties. Those workers’ labour day start around three a.m. when they get to the roads to wait for the trucks that will take them to work and ends around 6 p.m. when they are deposited again by the road that will be followed by a long walking way home. more often than not, the trucks are in very bad conditions and fatal accidents are constant, dozens of workers die and their families do not receive any indemnity.On the contrary, to substitute a dead worker, another member of the family — children or women — becomes a migrant worker. They are called bóias-frias because their only meal — between 3 a.m. and 7 p.m. — some rice, egg and bananais eaten when already cold because it is prepared at very early hours of the day. Workers do not always carry with them a bóiafria [cold pot], and those who carry them try to hide from others at lunch time, feeling embarrassed and humiliated.

At last, it is a society that cannot tolerate an explicit manifestation of contradictions, just because social divisions and inequalities are pushed to the limit and cannot be accepted back, not even by the routinization of the ‘conflicts of interest’ (in the way of liberal democracies).On the contrary, in this society the dominant class exorcizes the horror to contradictions producing the ideology of the non-division and national unity at whatever the price. For this, it refuses to perceive and work on the social, economic and political conflicts and contradictions as so, since conflicts and contradictions deny the mythical image of a good indivisible, pacific and organized society. Contradictions and conflicts are not ignored and do receive a precise meaning: they are ignored as a sign of danger, crisis, turmoil and they receive just one response: political and military repression on the popular layers, a constant condescending disdain for the opposers in general. It is a society that encloses the fascination for signs of prestige and power, as can be observed in the use of titles of honour without any relation to a possible appropriateness of their attributions; ‘doctor’ is the most commonly used term when in a social relation the other is seen or felt as superior (‘doctor’ is the imaginary substitute for the old nobility titles), or when the importance given to the maintenance of the household maids is observed; the bigger number of servants the greater prestige and status etc.

Wages inequality between men and women, black and white, infant work exploitation and elder people are considered normal. The existence of landless, homeless and unemployed people is attributed to ignorance, laziness and the incompetence of the ‘miserable’. The existence of marginalized children [crianças de rua] is seen as the ‘natural tendency of poor people to criminality’. Work hazards and accidents are attributed to the ignorance and incompetence of the workers. Working women (if they are not teachers or social workers) are considered potential prostitutes and prostitutes are vicious, perverted and criminals, however essential to preserve the sanctity of the family.

In other words, the Brazilian society is polarized between popular layers that lack of everything and the absolute privilege of the dominant or managing classes, thus blocking the institution and consolidation of democracy. In fact, since it is founded in the notion of rights, the democracy is apt to differentiate ‘privilege from lack’. By definition, a privilege is something particular that when generalized or universalized stops being a privilege. A lack is also a particular or specific deficit that results in a particular or specific demand; it cannot be obtained without becoming general and universal. Contrary to a privilege or a lack, a right is not particular or specific but it is general and universal, whether because it is the same and valid to every individual, social class or group or because even when it is differentiated it is also recognized by everyone (like minority rights). In this way, the economic and social polarization between lack and privilege stands as an obstacle to the institution of rights that defines a democracy.

Apart from what was mentioned above, two major neoliberal offerings are added: on the side of economy, there is an accumulation of capital that does not need to incorporate more people to the labour and consumption market operating as structural unemployment; on the side of politics: the privatization of the public that is, the state not only abandons social policies but there is also a re-intensification of the historical structure of the Brazilian society centred in the private space reinforcing the impossibility of the public sphere to be constituted. Before the distinction between public and private is established, a new form of capital establishes de non-difference between public and private.

Politically and socially, the neoliberal economy is the project of shrinking the public space and the enlargement of the private sector — with an essentially anti-democratic characteristic — perfectly suiting the Brazilian society.

In the Brazilian case, neoliberalism means: taking the polarization lack-privilege to the extreme, socio-political exclusion of popular layers, disorganization of society as a mass of unemployed people, increasing the private space barely occupied by big economic and financial corporations but also by organized crime that in front of the sate shrinkage can spread to the whole society as a substitute for the state (protection, security, privatization of war, privatization of the use of force). It means solidifying and finding new justifications for the oligarchic form of politics, social authoritarianism and the blockage to democracy.

Facing this picture, we may say that social policies establishing economic and social rights against privileges and cultural policies determining the right to culture and against social exclusion constitute a real democratic revolution in Brazil.

V

It is possible to say that democracy enables the culture of citizenship because of its own rooting. Its realization is only possible through cultivating the citizens.

If we can think about a cultural citizenship we can be sure that it is only possible through the culture of the citizens, only possible in democracy.

These facts open up a complicated topic: a concrete democracy and therefore the topic of socialism.

What is socialism?

In terms of economy, the socialism is defined by the social property of social means of production. This means on the one hand, that the private individual property is preserved and guaranteed as the rights to commodities which are not only necessary to the reproduction of life but above all, essential to its development and betterment.On the other, work stops being waged, thus producing more value, exploited and alienated force, to become the social self-management practice of economy, a commitment of the individuals to the society as part of the whole. Work is free, that is, the subjective human expression into objects or exteriorized in products. As long as the property of production means is social, production is self administered and the labor is free. What centrally defines capitalism ceases to exist, that is, the private appropriation of social wealth by the exploitation of work as merchandise that produces goods that are sold and bought by means of the universal merchandise: money.

Socially, it is defined by the ideas of justice ‘ each second with its necessities and capacities’, as marx said — abundance — there is no private appropriation of social wealth — equality — there is no class holding wealth and privileges — freedom — there is no class holding social and political power — rational autonomy — knowledge is not at the service of private interests of a dominant class — ethical autonomy — the individuals are conscientious agents that establish behaviour rules and values — cultural autonomy — art and though works and pieces are not determined by the logic of the market or the interest of a ruling class. These ideas and values that define socialism also establish rights.

Politically, socialism is defined by the abolition of the state apparatus as an instrument of domination and coercion, it is substituted by participation and self-administration practices through sociopolitical associations, committees and movements; that is, power is not concentrated in a state apparatus, neither realized by the logic of force or the identification with the figure of the leaders but truly, with the public space of debate, discussion and collective decision making.

If we understood democracy as an institution of a democratic society and socialism as an institution of a democratic policy we would understand that only in a socialist policy, rights that essentially define a democratic society, may come true and only in a democratic society a socialist policy practice becomes concrete. Thus, a new cultural policy needs to start as a new cultural policy whose main column is the idea and exercise of participation

Bibliography

Virilio, Paul 1993 Critical Space – O espaço crítico (rio de Janeiro: editora 34).

Text extracted from: Crítica y Emancipación (Buenos Aires: cLAcso), Year 1, n° 1, 2008. Translated by claudia Pereira.↵

Professor at the Philosophy Department, university of são Paulo, Brazil. Specialist in Political Philosophy and history of Philosophy.↵

Lecture given in salvador, Bahia on november, 11th. Chaui discusses issues included in her book: Democracy and Culture. Competent discourse and other words (são Paulo: cortes, 2007).↵

Target, objective (Translator’s note).↵

In greek, kronos means time like in chronology, chronometer etc. Anachronism means without time, absence of time.↵

In greek, topos means place, the space that is differentiated by places and qualities like distant, close, tall, short, small, big etc. like in: topology, topography. Atopy means without place, absence of a differentiated space. utopia derives from topos that according to some people means no place and according to others: a perfect inexistent place.↵

Orphans of strategy?[1]

Emir Sader[2]

Although a continent of revolutions and counter-revolutions, Latin America lacks the strategic thinking it needs to orient its rich variety of political experiences, which is adequate to the challenges it faces. In spite of considerable analytical skills, important processes of change and a number of emblematic revolutionary leaders, the continent has not yet produced the theory of its own practice.

The three historic strategies of the left have had dynamic forces in their leadership — socialist and communist parties, nationalist movements and guerrilla groups — and have steered experiences of profound political significance such as the cuban revolution, the government of salvador Allende, the sandinista victory, the post-neoliberal governments in Venezuela, Bolivia and ecuador, the building of local power, as in chiapas, and the experiments with participatory budgets, of which the most important were developed in the city of Porto Alegre. Nonetheless, there is no overall, strategic vision that  could combine assessments of these different approaches and a number of other reflections into a set of new proposals.

The fact that these three strategies were developed by distinct political forces means there has been no shared process of common activity, reflection and synthesis. While they still had a real presence, the communist parties encouraged theoretical reflection on their own experiences. During its short lifespan, the oLAs (Latin American solidarity organization) did the same for the processes of armed struggle. The nationalist movements, for their part, never had enough contact with each other to produce anything similar. Today’s processes have allowed little room for theory, or for critically examining the new realities.

The strategies adopted in Latin American suffered badly, above all in the early days, from the left’s international links, especially with the communist parties, but also with the social democrats. The ‘class against class’ line introduced in the second half of the 1920s was a direct import from the soviet union, where it reflected the isolation from Western european governments, and was not based on concrete conditions in Latin America. As a result, it made it difficult to understand the particular political forms taken by the response to the crisis of 1929 — of which the government of getúlio Vargas in Brazil was just one expression, alongside the fleeting socialist government in Chile, that lasted just twelve days, and similar phenomena in cuba.

The revolts led by farabundo martí in el salvador and Augusto sandino in nicaragua were born of the specific circumstances of resistance to north American occupation and were direct expressions of anti-imperialist nationalism. The processes of industrialization in Argentina, Brazil and Mexico came in response to the 1929 crisis. There was not, at least to begin with, any developed strategy behind them. The economic commission for Latin America and caribbean (CEPAL)[3] was merely describing an existing state of affairs when, at the beginning of the postwar period, it began to develop its theory of import-substitution industrialization, which in any case was a purely economic strategy. Nor did the 1952 Bolivian revolution elaborate a strategy of its own; rather it put into practice a number of existing demands, like universal suffrage, land reform and the nationalization of the mines.

Thus neither nationalism nor traditional reformism based their action on strategies; they simply responded to economic, political and social demands. When the communist international adopted its position on anti-fascist fronts in 1935, application of the new policy clashed with the concrete circumstances in Latin American countries. If the ‘class against class’ line corresponded to conditions inside the ussr, the new orientation was a response to the growth of fascism in europe. Neither took account of the situation in Latin America, which was just thrown in alongside the colonial periphery in general, with no particular identity of its own.

This failure had various consequences. For example, the Brazilian movement led by Luis carlos Prestes, in 1935, found itself caught between these two contradictory, imported political lines[4].On the one hand, they organized an uprising based on the ‘lieutenants’, in keeping with the more confrontational ‘class against class’ orientation; on the other, they advocated not a workers’ and peasants’ government, but a national liberation front, in accordance with the new, broader orientation of the communist international. In other words, the forms of struggle corresponded to the earlier, radical line, while the objective reflected the more moderate one of a democratic front. The result was that the movement isolated itself from the nationalist, popular ‘revolution of 30’, led by getúlio Vargas.

The Popular front in Chile imported the ‘anti-fascist’ slogan, even though fascism had barely reached the continent. This was a mechanical transfer of the analysis of european fascism to Latin America, with all the mistakes that flowed from that. In europe, fascism had taken a stance that was nationalist and anti-liberal, but in no sense anti-imperialist. european nationalism was characterized by chauvinism, by the supposed superiority of one national state over others and by opposition to liberalism, including liberal democracy. This liberal ideology had been taken up by the rising bourgeoisie as a means of releasing the free circulation of capital from its feudal fetters.

In American Latina too, nationalism was both politically and economically anti-liberal; but it also took an anti-imperialist stance, because of its position on the periphery — in our case in relation to the united states — which put it on the side of the left. However, the mechanical copying of european schemas of fascism and anti-fascism led some communist parties (for example in Brazil and Argentina), on  occasions, to characterize Juan Perón and getúlio Vargas as reproductions of fascism in Latin America, and therefore identified them as mortal enemies to be fought. The Argentinean communist Party, for example, in the 1945 elections, in opposition to Perón, allied itself not only with the liberal candidate, of the radical Party, but with the church and the us embassy, on the grounds that any alliance was justified against the main enemy, which was fascism.

The main confusion has to do not just with nationalism, but also with liberalism, which in europe was the ideology of the bourgeoisie in its ascendancy, but which in Latin America was taken up, along with free trade, by the oligarchies that controlled primary commodity exports. Not only nationalism, but liberalism too has exactly the opposite significance here.

It was this that produced a separation between the social and the democratic, and the incorporation of social question into the nationalist agenda, at the expense of democratic ones. Liberalism always sought to lay claim to the theme of democracy, and to accuse nationalist governments of being authoritarian, totalitarian and dictatorial. These, in turn, accused the liberals of governing for the rich and of lacking social awareness, while claiming themselves to defend the impoverished mass of the population.

Only the concrete analyses of concrete situations, like those developed by, among others, the Peruvian José carlos mariátegui, the cuban Julio Antonio mella, the Chilean Luis emilio recabarren and the Brazilian caio Prado Jr.[5] — all of them independent analyses which were largely ignored by the communist parties of which all these were members — would have made it possible to take on board specific historical conditions of each country and the region as a whole. But it was the perspectives of the communist international that held sway, and made it more difficult for the communist parties to sink roots in the countries.

When nationalism was taken up by the left, it was a subordinate force in alliances with popular leaders representing multi-class blocs. This long period was never theorized by the left, and the alliances and theories put forward by the popular fronts did not understand this new phenomenon, where anti-imperialism took the place of antifascism, with very different characteristics.

There was a dispute over how to interpret the Bolivian revolution of 1952, because it contained both nationalist elements, like the nationalization of the tin mines, and popular ones, like land reform. But the active role of worker ́s militias, taking the place of the army, the existence of a worker–peasant alliance and the inclusion of anticapitalist demands, enabled other interpretations of what was emerging from this multi-class movement, ranging from a classic nationalism of an anti-oligarchic bent, to different versions of anti-capitalism.

The cuban revolution could count on two kinds of theoretical support: the programmatic one of fidel in History Will Absolve Me, and that of che in Guerrilla Warfare, on the strategy for building a political-military force and struggling for power. The text that fidel wrote as his defence in the trial of those who attacked the moncada Barracks, in 1952, is an extraordinary exercise in developing a political programme on the basis of the concrete conditions of cuban society at the time. Che’s analysis describes in concrete detail how the guerrilla war combined political and military struggle, from the initial guerrilla nucleus to large detachments of the rebel army; how it resisted the offensive of the regular army, and how it launched the final offensive that led to victory.

However, either because they hadn ́t thought about it, or because they wanted to maintain an element of surprise — which could be important for victory — there was never any public attempt to explain the character of the movement, defining whether it was merely nationalist, or embryonically anti-capitalist. It was in the light of unfolding events that the cuban revolution developed its strategy for a rapid transition from the democratic and national phase to the antiimperialist and anti-capitalist phase, as the dynamic between revolution and counter-revolution dictated. This development was much less discussed than the forms of struggle, especially guerrilla warfare, which occasioned the major debate in Latin America after cuban victory. Armed struggle or peaceful road? guerrilla war or people’s war? urban guerrillas or rural guerrillas? The link between national or antiimperialist questions and anti-capitalist or socialist ones was far less discussed and theorized.

The various guerrilla struggles and the Popular unity government in Chile prolonged this central debate. Nationalist military governments, especially that of Velasco Alvarado in Peru, but also, fleetingly, those in ecuador and honduras, raised the question of nationalism again, but their military character did not encourage the left at the time to analyse their dynamics or to consider them as strategic alternatives.

The nicaraguan revolution incorporated earlier strategies for taking power and elaborated a rather vague governmental platform which took account of a series of new factors. The most important of these were the arrival of large numbers of christians and women into the revolutionary ranks, and a more flexible foreign policy.Obstacles were dealt with in an empirical way —most notably, the military siege mounted by the united states. Yet the platform produced little or no theory to explain what was being done.

As with Popular unity, the sandinista experience generated a vast bibliography. But this hardly led to a clear strategic balance sheet, capable of leaving lessons for the left as a whole. The debate about Chile became a part of the international discussions on the left, and thus lost its Chilean or Latin American specificity. The debates about nicaragua, on the other hand, raised important issues, for examples of ethics. But they did not produce a strategic assessment of the eleven years of sandinista government.

Just when the left was at its weakest around the world, the Brazilian left appeared as an exception; it seemed to be moving against the general current, especially in comparison with the radically regressive turn-about in the international balance of forces. Here Lula projected himself as a political alternative from the very first time he stood for president, in 1989. By reaching the second round he helped the left, for the first time, to look like a viable governmental alternative in Brazil — in the same year as the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the socialist camp, with strong signs that the soviet union was about to fall apart and the united states about to win the cold War, delivering the world to the uncontested, imperial hegemony of the united states.

At the same time, carlos menem and carlos Andrés Pérez won in Argentina and Venezuela, thereby extending the neoliberal experience to nationalist and social-democratic forces and indicating the spread of these policies to the whole of the continent. To this would be added the election of fernando collor de mello, who in the end defeated Lula, and of the concertación, an alliance between christian Democracy and the socialist Party, in Chile in 1990. In february of the same year came the electoral defeat of the sandinistas in nicaragua. Cuba had entered into its ‘special period’, during which it would confront, with considerable difficulty, the consequences of the end of the socialist camp, into which it had been structurally integrated.

Meanwhile a number of developments in Brazil pointed towards a new kind of left — post-soviet according to some, post-social-democratic according to others. In addition to Lula and the PT, the 1980s had seen the foundation of the cuT, the first legally-recognized trade union congress in the country’s history; the emergence of the MST, the country’s strongest and most innovative social movement; and the beginnings of participatory budgets in local government, generally in municipalities governed by the PT. For all these reasons, the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre would later be chosen to host the World social forums.

All of this meant that great hopes were placed on the Brazilian left, and especially on the PT and Lula’s leadership — hopes that a new phase was opening for a renovated left. Yet as the previous chapter’s analysis suggests, these expectations were hardly justified by the real situation of the party and its leader, or the political and ideological characteristics these had developed over the years.

Some parts of the left, and some international currents, painted Lula as class-struggle, worker’s leader, linked to the traditions of worker ́s councils, as well as the leader of a new, gramscian kind of left party, at once socialist and democratic. Lula was nothing of the sort. Nor was he a leader in the image of what the PT had become. Lula’s origins were as a grassroots, trade union leader in the period when trade unions were banned by the dictatorship, a leader who negotiated directly with the bosses, a great mass leader, but without ideology. He felt no connection with the left tradition, neither with its ideological currents nor with its historical experiences. He joined what we might call the social left, without necessarily having any political or ideological links to it. He sought to improve the conditions of either the working masses, the people or the country, according to the evolution of his own vocabulary over the course of his career. He is a negotiator at heart, averse to confrontation, and therefore with no radical bent for revolution.

One aspect of the hegemonic crisis in Latin America is the lack of any accompanying theorization. In general the post-neoliberal processes have advanced by trial and error, along the lines of least resistance in the neoliberal chain. The work of the Bolivian group, comuna, is a notable exception. They have produced the richest collection of texts that the Latin American left has to draw on. It’s a unique example, because they have been able to combine individual and academic works of great theoretical creativity by writers like Álvaro García Linera, Luis Tapia and Raúl Prada, among others, with direct political interventions — so much so that garcía Linera became vice-president of the republic, and raúl Prada was a leading member of the constituent assembly.

These processes have already gone beyond the initial phase, when — as we pointed out — they made progress relatively easily, until the right reorganized and regained its capacity for initiative. Since then it has become essential, for any further advance, that we develop theories that will allow us to understand the real historical situation that the region confronts, with its strengths and weaknesses, the real, concrete and global balance of forces, the challenges and possible solutions.

Ever since the neoliberal hegemony took hold, resistance to this model and the struggles of the social movements, including the World social forum, have shifted the focus of their thinking to the arena of denunciation and resistance, and neglected to reflect on political and strategic questions. In the other words the emphasis has been on working in the area of so-called civil society, to the detriment of politics, the state and, with these, issues of strategy and the construction of alternative hegemonic projects and new political and social blocs. This theoretical stance has severely diminished the analytical capacity of the anti-neoliberal forces, which have virtually limited themselves to celebrating the voices of resistance and grassroots mobilizations, while ignoring the positions of parties and governments.

The new social movements had no updated, Latin America, strategic thinking to draw on — not even balance sheets of previous positive and negative experiences. What made the situation even more serious were the deep changes in the historic period, notably the shift from a bipolar to a unipolar word, under us imperial hegemony, and from a regulated model to a neoliberal one. These were changes on a world scale, with consequences for Latin America.One of these was the step backward in the way the countries of the region were inserted into the word economy, as a result of the neoliberal lifting of trade barriers and the debilitation of national states.

Theories like those of John holloway and Toni negri seemed to accommodate to the way things were; instead of putting forward strategic solutions, they made a virtue of their absence. Although they used different theoretical frameworks, both ended up supporting the congenital lack of strategy on the part of those who rejected the state and politics, and took refuge in a mythical ‘civil society’ and a reductionist ‘autonomy of the social movements’. Such a renunciation of strategic thinking and propositions left the anti-neoliberal camp unprepared to meet the challenges presented by the hegemonic crisis, which became more acute as the dispute over hegemony came to the fore.

Post-neoliberalism brings new theoretical challenges. The new circumstances that social and political struggles face in the region mean a new kind of practice needs to be explained, and that requires strategic reflection and proposals which point towards new forms of power.

Several things make it difficult for the Latin American left today to theorize its practice.One of them is the way theoretical work is mainly concentrated in universities, where the change in period had a particular impact: through the ideological offensive of neoliberalism; because people get trapped in the universities’ internal division of labour, especially through specialization; and due to the tendency to take refuge in merely critical positions, often quite doctrinaire ones, without pointing to any alternatives.

Meanwhile the real struggles to overcome neoliberalism have raised issues that are far removed from academic reflection. Issues like the indigenous peoples and pluri-national states, the nationalization of natural resources, regional integration, or the new nationalism and post-neoliberalism have little to do with the topics usually included in university courses or those favoured by research institutions. The latter have promoted a fragmented approach, giving no credit to global historical interpretations and accentuating the separation of concrete reality into separate spheres — economic, social, political and cultural.

There are also the effects of the ideological crisis which have affected theoretical work during this transition from the previous historical period to the current one. The rejection of so-called overarching narratives and widespread adoption of the idea of a crisis of paradigms indicated that general analytical models were being abandoned in favour of postmodernism; the result was structures without history, history without a subject, theories without truth. It was truly the suicide of theory and of any attempt to produce a rational explanation of the world and of social relations.

Questions that are essential for any strategy for power, such as the nature of power itself, the state, strategies, alliances, the development of alternative blocs of forces, imperialism, foreign alliances, analyses of the balance of forces, the building of support, the development of a hegemonic bloc, and others, were either set aside or disappeared altogether. This was especially the case in so far as the social movements came to play the leading role in anti-neoliberal struggles. The passage from defensive struggles to a dispute over hegemony has to mean — as it does in the texts of the comuna group or in the speeches of hugo chávez and rafael correa — a return to these questions, updating them for the period of neoliberal hegemony and the struggle against the tyranny of markets. relying on mere denunciation, with no commitment to formulate and develop concrete political alternatives, tends to distance much of the intelligentsia from the concrete historical processes faced by the popular movements in the region. These, in turn, are condemned to endless processes of trial and error, because they no dot have the support of a body of theory committed to the processes of change that really exist.

The opposite temptation is a strong one. Since fidel castro is not Lenin, che is not Trotsky, hugo chávez is not mao Zedong. evo morales is not ho chi minh and rafael correa is not gramsci, it might seem easier to reject to processes that really exist, because they do not correspond to the dreams of revolution cast in the image of another era, than do try to understand contemporary history as it is, with all its enigmas. In other words, either we recognize the signs left by the new Latin American mole, or we resign ourselves to the anthologies to which classic texts have been reduced by the nervous and sectarian hands of those who are afraid of history.

Taking refuge in classic texts is the most comfortable path, but also the surest route to failure. Defeats are usually attributed not to political causes but to moral ones. ‘Betrayal’ is the most common. The inability to give political explanations leads to sub-political, moral accounts. Trotsky’s diagnosis of the soviet union is the opposite of this. It is a political, ideological, and social explanation of the course adopted by the Bolshevik leaders. For this reason it moves from the thesis of the revolution ‘betrayed’ to a substantive explanation of the state under bureaucratic hegemony.

The defence of principles supposedly contained in those classic texts seems to explain everything, except the most important thing: why is that doctrinaire, extremist views of the ultra-left never triumph, never manage to convince the majority of the population, never build organizations capable of leading revolutionary processes? They identify with the great balance sheets of defeats, but never lead to the growth of revolutionary political forces. Not by chance, their horizon is generally limited to polemics within the ultra-left itself and criticisms of other sections of the left, without leading big, national debates, without directly confronting the right or taking part in the dispute over hegemony. Those who only appear in public to criticize others on the left, often taking advantage of spaces in the right-wing media, have lost sight of who the main enemies are, and of the central confrontations with the right.

The challenge is to face the contradictions of history as it really exists, in the concrete conditions of Latin America today, and to tease out the elements with which to build a post-neoliberal order. The comuna group were able to do this because they reread Bolivian history, particularly since the 1952 revolution; deciphered significance, identified the country’s subsequent historical periods, understood the cycles that led to the decline of neoliberalism, managed to avoid the mistakes of the traditional left in relation to the historic subjects, and did the indispensable theoretical work needed to marry evo morales’s leadership with the re-emergence of the indigenous movement as the essential protagonist of the current period of Bolivian history. In this way were able to re-establish the link between theoretical and political practice and help the new popular movement to carry their economic and social demands into the ethnic and political arenas.

Such theoretical work is indispensable and can only be done on the basis of the concrete reality of each country, combined with reflection on the historical experiences and theories acquired by the popular movement over the years. reality has no mercy on theoretical errors. Latin America in the twenty-first century needs and deserves a theory that is up to the challenges of the time.

Reform and/or revolution

In recent decades, the Latin American left has oscillated between for reform and others projecting a rupture through armed struggle. The former were accused of being ‘reformist’, the latter of ‘ultra-leftism’ and ‘adventurism’. To freeze to process of reforms without challenging the dominant system, without raising the question of power, is to drown in the reproduction of existing social and political relations.On the other hand, to concentrate on strategic demands without linking these to the underlying feelings and interests of the vast majority of the population leads to sectarianism, to positions that sound radical but are incapable on winning the hearts and minds of the people. Both versions have scored victories — social improvements for the poor, electoral triumphs in cuba and nicaragua — but by the beginning of the twenty-first century, in their original forms, both had had their day.

The movements that have been victorious since then are those that managed to escape the logic of these two opposed positions and combine both of them: they brought together a platform of reforms with modes of struggle that permitted the conquest of power. Trotsky’s proposal in The Transitional Programme pointed in this direction, that is, to reform that the dominant system in incapable of carrying out without suffering fatal consequences. These are, by definition, historical demand, subject to modification in time and space, which is why they are called ‘transitional’; they serve to deepen the contradictions in the system and awaken society’s awareness of them.

In practice, these demands have taken various forms: ‘peace, bread and land’ in russia; expulsion of the Japanese invaders and agrarian revolution in china; the overthrow of the Batista dictatorship in cuba; the expulsion of us invaders and reunification of the country in Vietnam; the overthrow of the somoza dictatorship in nicaragua. All had, nonetheless, a transitional character, pointing to the passage from capitalism to post-capitalism.

In Latin America, traditional reformism, which includes both the nationalist variety (particularly of getúlio Vargas and Perón, in addition to the mexican Pri) and the traditional left variety, which had two examples in Chile — the Popular front in the 1930s and Popular unity in the 1970s — remained at level of reforms to the system, with-out linking these to the question of power. Apparently, Popular unity raised the question of power when it proposed a transition, albeit gradual, from capitalism to socialism. However, as we shall see later, it did not analyze what would be the real conditions for defeating the existing power and building an alternative one. It believed these would emerge through the application of a programme of essentially economic reforms, as a natural consequence, and ended up falling into an economism that left in incapable of taking on other decisive centres of power, like the Armed forces, imperialism and the private press.

The cuban and sandinista revolutions did manage to combine the struggle against dictatorship with the struggle against imperialism and, in the cuban case, against capitalism too.Other examples on anti-dictatorial or merely democratic struggle concluded without projecting and strategy of rupture: witness the re-establishment of liberal-democratic system in the southern cone of the continent. At the opposite extreme, some other struggles concentrated exclusively on the armed struggle, with its promise of a military rupture, and failed to connect with the sentiments or immediate needs of the vast majority of the population; they ended in isolation and defeat.

In the first case, the reforms got bogged down in the dominant system; in the second, they never managed to break out of the narrow circle of the organizations themselves, whether political or politicalmilitary in character.

Ever since the classic debate between rosa Luxemburg and eduard Bernstein, the left has been trapped in this dichotomy between reform and revolution. Bernstein laid everything on the movement, to the detriment of its final objectives, as if the accumulation of partial gains would pose and resolve the question of power and anti-capitalism transformation. rosa Luxemburg drew attention to the fact that such reforms could open the way to a restructuring of capitalism, broadening its support — something Lenin called the ‘labour aristocracy’, in reference to the predominance of privileged layers within the working class.

The fact is that reformism acquired a dynamic of its own, and became hegemonic in the history of the left. mainly this took the form of the social democratic parties coming to accept capitalism, or of the stageist strategies of the communist parties, which never managed to pass beyond the first of these stages and remained locked in reformism, with no rupture.

In Latin America, this was the principal face of the left, especially from the 1930s to the 1970s, in the midst of the industrial growth based on import substation. In countries such as Mexico, Brazil and Argentina, such reformism was sponsored by nationalist forces led by the Pri, Vargas or Perón; in others, like Chile and Uruguay, it was articulated by alliance of socialists and communists.

This logic — almost spontaneous within the left in a context of development and modernization — coincided with the expansion of the domestic, mass consumer market, the democratization of the public health and education systems and the growth of both urban and rural trade unions, which identified with aspects of this programme of democratic, anti-oligarchic and anti-imperialist reforms. As long as they served the needs of the industrial expansion, they could be carried out. When the import substitution process went into decline, the alliance between the trade unions, sectors of the middle class and industrial bourgeoisie broke down, rendering the reform strategy unviable. The Chilean experiment with Popular unity was a solitary attempt to take this process further; now lacking any alliance with bourgeois sectors, it found itself smothered within the state apparatus and eventually defeated by a military coup supported by all of the bourgeoisie.

Nonetheless, the reformist logic survives, adapting to new political circumstances and driven by the spontaneous reactions of the popular movement to neoliberalism’s attacks on its rights. It is important to take into account that the reappearance of reforms projects occurs in a context where class relations have changed, with a much wider and deeper internationalization of the region’s bourgeoisies and the erosion of formal labour rights, leading to a weakening of the workers’ movement and the trade unions.

The current period presents a new challenge to the left ́s ability to overcome dichotomies that rather hinder than help the formulation of strategies linking theory and practice, concrete reality and strategic proposals. The processes which have triumphed in the past are rich in lessons of this ability, and have made those responsible — Lenin, Trotsky, Mao Zendong, ho chi minh and fidel castro — the left ́s greatest strategists. In none of these cases did a reformist project simply transcend into a revolutionary one. Nor were any for them based on a pured proposal to break with capitalism in favour of socialism. All of them were born of concrete imperatives — to overthrow Tsarism, expel the invaders, revolt against dictatorship — but the leaderships of these struggles imposed a dynamic that went to the root of the problem and pointed to a rupture with the imperial system of domination and, with it, the underlying capitalist system.

Gramsci’s description of the russian revolution as a revolution ‘against Capital’ has various meanings.One of them — which in the end had a tragic outcome — points to the fact that it occurred on the periphery of capitalism and faced task of breaking out of its encirclement to enable the anti-capitalist struggle in the most advance countries to itself really negate and overcome capitalism. This objective was not achieved, neither in the crisis following the first World War, when the attempted revolutions in germany were defeated and it was the far right that filled the void, nor later, when the ussr was left isolated and the revolutionary process moved in the opposite direction, towards the most backward countries of Asia.

Another of is meanings is that all revolutions are inevitably heterodox. No revolutionary formula has been repeated over time; all are unique and represent a peculiar combination of multiple factors. Such combinations mean that revolutions are always exceptions, never the rule, in historical development. The list of factors that make possible the outbreak of revolution include, according to Lenin, subjective and objective factors, which come together at a specific moment and for a limited time. The art of revolution situation is to harvest this combination of factors at just the right moment.

Lenin speaks of the revolutionary situation and the revolutionary crisis. The first occurs when there is such polarization in a country that those below are no longer prepared to live in the old way, and those above are no longer able to dominate in the old way. The revolutionary crisis occurs when a political leadership manages to steer this polarization towards a revolutionary outcome.

As gramsci correctly pointed out, Lenin was referring to the strategy in backward societies, where the decisive axes of power come together in the state apparatus; seizing the latter should make it possible to dismantle this power and build a new one. In gramscian terms, hegemony in these societies rests manly on coercion rather than consensus. This analysis suggests that a much more complex political strategy would be required in societies where power rests on the fabrication on consensus and where the decisive axes of power are coordinated by the state, but exist manly outside of it. Developing strategy for power in these societies means developing alternative, hegemonic projects (counter-hegemonic ones), which end up contesting the state apparatus, but whose key battles will unfold in the complex fabric of economic, social and ideological relations in society as whole.

The problem is that this proposition of gramsci’s seem to contradict one of the basic principles of marxism, which states that, in class societies, ‘the dominant ideas are those of the dominant class’. This is a structural condition, because ideology is not just the development of ideas on the cultural level: it is a born deep within the process of capital accumulation, from the relations between capital and labour and the forms of appropriation of surplus value, from alienation as a fundamentally economic phenomenon that impregnates all social and cultural relations. The alienation we feel before the world we have ourselves created, but in which we do not recognize ourselves, comes from the relations of production, the process of wealth creation, which separates the products from the producers and prevents the latter from recognizing the wealth created by their labour.

This rupture between subject and object, between history and nature, between producer and product, between human beings and the world reproduces the mechanisms of alienation day after day, in every corner of society. It poses the question, both theoretical and political, of how, in these conditions, it is possible to develop a counter-hegemonic project, of how the hegemony of the dominant ideology can be broken. In other words, it presents a challenge: how can the alternative class bloc develop its own hegemony before accedes to national, state, power?

Indeed, an alternative ideological force is essential for developing alternative political subjects. In Bolivia, for example, this was achieved through a reunification of political forces which assumed anew their indigenous identity. The victory in Bolivia — in this case an electoral one — was the result of a long and profound process of mobilization and struggle, over the previous half decade.Once it acceded to government, the development of an alternative project took a qualitative leap, for now it could mobilize more widely and employ more sophisticated instruments. But before it achieved this dominance, Bolivia’s indigenous movement had to assume leadership, organizing and putting itself at the head of a bloc of alternative forces with a basic platform — nationalization of natural resources, agrarian reform, constituent Assembly — and to demonstrate that this combination was possible. That meant understanding the real balance of forces, the dynamic of the confrontations, and the real strengths and weaknesses of each of the opposing blocs.

To comprehend better how counter-hegemonic projects can be developed, we need to look more closely at the two logics that have to be understood and overcome, so that we can then move on to the concrete analysis of concrete reality, with all its contradictions, structural determinations and potential for change.

ThE ULTRA-LEfT LoGIC

‘Ultra-left’ is a political category that has characterized much of the history of the international left. We are not going to rake over this history now; it is enough to mention Lenin’s analysis in ‘Left Wing’ Communism: An infantile disorder and Trotsky’s in Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Germany, to take just two of the most rigorous and systematic critiques of this phenomenon.

The russian revolution, like all victorious revolutions, did not come about through calls for the overthrow of capitalism and the building of socialism.On the contrary, it captured the essential needs of the russian people — for ‘peace, bread and land’ — and channelled these into a dynamic that ran up against not only Tsarism but also the alliances between russia and the Western capitalist powers, and against capitalism itself. This is the art of revolutionary leadership: the ability to link immediate demands, or a minimum programme, with strategic objectives, or a maximum programme, thus opening the way to a revolutionary solution to the question of power. In other words, it means reconnecting, in a dynamic, non-segmented, non-corporative, and much less counterposed way, the terms ‘reform’ and ‘revolution’.

Some on the ultra-left in russia wanted to install socialism immediately and expropriate all sectors linked in one way or another to capitalism. They were opposed to the Brest-Litovsk agreement, by means of which the new soviet government sought a kind of peaceful coexistence with germany in order to begin rebuilding after the damage done by the war. They were also opposed to the new economic Policy (neP), introduced by Lenin to encourage the reactivation of small and medium rural landholdings and to restore production and supply to the domestic market, especially in the towns. The aim of the neP had been to combat the threat of widespread hunger resulting from the encirclement of the countryside, where the counter-revolution of the Whites was prolonged by intervention from more than fifteen foreign armies and by the failure of the revolution in germany, which, if successful, could have broken the siege and isolation of the Bolshevik government.

Immediately after the triumph of the revolution, a system of ‘war communism’ was decreed, which simply shared out what there was in the most egalitarian way possible, as it were socializing the existing poverty. When the war ended, there was strong internal pressure to re-establish economic growth and ensure the supply of basic necessities, especially to the cities. It was to this end, and in a defensive situation, that the government decreed the neP. For the ultra-left, it was a betrayal of revolutionary ideals, a capitulation by Lenin, Trotsky and their fellow revolutionaries. The correctness of the policy became clear a few years later, when the change in policy carried out by stalin failed to resolve the question of the countryside, the peasants intensified their supply boycott and the new leadership of the revolution had to resort to the worst possible solution: the expropriation of the land by force and the dead of millions of peasants from starvation. unresolved, the agrarian question was removed from the agenda through the front door, only to come back through the window in explosive fashion, marking one of the weak points of the russian revolution. right up to the last days of the ussr, this was an issue that was never resolved.

The ultra-left has difficulty understanding defeats, retreats and negative shifts in the balance of forces. It tends to reduce its diagnoses to accusations of betrayal by the leaders, generally discovering innumerable cases of leaderships that have become corrupt or bureaucratized, and which have reneged on their ideals or platforms. But critical balance sheets that to not lead to alternatives also fail build support for their positions; they end up being a part of the defeat, because they do not translate into solutions.

The crises unleashed by the first World War confirmed Lenin’s prediction, when he said that it was never more difficult to make a revolution than at the beginning of a war, when chauvinism holds sway and demands national unity against other countries, but it was never more likely than in the course of a war. When the inter-imperialist character of the war became clear, people could see that they were being used as cannon fodder in a conflict that didn’t concern them. In germany and italy, however, the possibility of revolution that arose from the suffering and defeat of war never came to fruition — the attempts failed, leaving the way clear for the mass counter-revolutions of fascism and nazism to impose their solutions to the crisis.

In germany, a failure to grasp the strength and danger of nazism meant that the social democratic and communist parties did not put unity against this enemy above their own differences. They thereby facilitated the rise of hitler, who repressed them all. The communists called the social democrats ‘social fascists’ — socialists in word, fascists in deed — and argued that they would open the door to nazism. The socialist accused the communists of being an extension of soviet totalitarianism, something quite similar to nazism. Trotsky drew up a scathing balance sheet of the ultra-leftist attitudes of both parties. They were incapable of understanding its strength and facilitated its rise.

More recently, we saw typical examples of ultra-leftist positions in china, during the cultural revolution, and in cambodia, soon after the defeat of the united states in Vietnam. China disagreed with the soviet attitude to the building of socialism and relations with us imperialism; it claimed that the ussr was restoring capitalism, citing as an example of adaptation to capitalist lifestyles the importing of a car factory from fiat in italy — located in a city now renamed Togliatti, in homage to the former leader of the italian communist Party. According to this analysis, as a major capitalist power in an imperialist epoch, the soviets must also be a new imperialist power, like the us. While the united states represented decadent imperialism, the ussr was characterized as a rising power; it was therefore more dangerous and should be targeted as the main enemy.

On this basis, the chinese did all they could to combat the ussr and all those forces and governments that seemed to depend on its supports. They went so far as to back racist or dictatorial governments in south Africa and Chile, because these opposed so-called soviet expansionism. They classified the cuban government as ‘the armed wing of soviet imperialism’, because it helped the Angolans to resist the south African invasion.

The logic of the chinese position — often repeated by others on the ultra-left — was that if they didn ́t displace the ussr from its position, china would never have room to expand its own leadership in the world. Hence the violence of the repeated attacks on the soviet and — as also happened with other forces in similar position — the alliance with decadent imperialism (the united states) to try to liquidate the main enemy (the soviet union). This alliance, sealed with richard nixon ́s visit to china, gave rise to the so-called ping-pong diplomacy.

To cap it all, despite the immense defeat it would have meant for the first socialist revolution in history to restore capitalism and become an imperialist power, china continued to preach that the revolution was advancing and that imperialism was a ‘paper tiger’, calling on peoples everywhere to rebel and change the world, as if nothing had happened.

Cambodia saw one of the most tragic examples of sectarianism by a left-wing government. This put into practice an even more radical version of the chinese cultural revolution ́s diagnosis that capitalism, it culture and its cities, corrupt human beings, in contrast with the pure life of the countryside. millions of people were sent off to become proletarianized on the land, and many were eventually executed. Driven by a dogmatic and sectarian vision of capitalism ideology and modern culture, the cambodian regime carried out a brutal form of ideological ‘cleansing’ until it was overthrown with the aid of the Vietnamese, who had already suffered invasion by china, on the grounds that they had become agents of the soviet union.

The most radical currents of the left — among them Trotskyists and maoists — are characterized by the criticisms of the majority, reformist currents. They have always tended to adopt this critical view, without ever being able to develop mass support — most typically in the case of the Trotskyists. In the intellectual field, more understandably, such critical tendencies have played an important part, pointing out the mistakes and ‘deviations’ of the political forces. However, precisely because of this intellectual character (they are not themselves a political forces), they are unable to formulate alternatives that would overcome the problems they identify, even when their diagnoses turn out to be correct.Often, these critical views arise from a contrast with what are regarded as the principles of revolutionary theory; at other times, from what are seen as the internal inconsistencies of the projects in question. Such currents make a key contribution to political practice, but they often succumb of the temptation of ultra-leftism because they put theory before the concrete conditions of struggle, which prevents them from grasping the dilemmas imposed by concrete practice.

What is the contemporary logic of ultra-leftism, which is so widely disseminated in these times when liberalism has such an ability to co-opt, and there is such a contradiction between the historic decline of capitalism and the retreat of socialism as a current possibility?

In quite a thorough text, James Petras — one of the most representatives of these ultra-left positions — sets out to analyse the history of the left in order to explain the present and future of revolutionary politics[6]; his text was in response to an article that Perry Anderson wrote in 2000 to inaugurate a new phase of New Left Review, the journal he had begun to edit forty years earlier. In that article, Anderson had compared the situation at the beginning of the new century with that which existed when he took over the publication[7].

In line with the logic underlying his approach, Petras includes a number of extremely aggressive references in his article, seeking to brand Perry Anderson as one of those intellectuals who had adopted ‘a certain apolitical centrism’, born of defeatism, the self-flagellation of the left and its capitulation before the strength of neoliberalism. This language matches the content of Petras’s argument and that of others who take a similar stance: the dismissal of those criticized is justified because they have abandoned the left, capitulated, and because they defends views that are only apparently of the left. Therefore they need to be not just answered but thoroughly thrashed and ‘unmasked’, to make sure they no longer exert a negative influence within the left.

But what was Anderson ́s balance sheet in 2000? in making his comparison between that period and the 1960s, Anderson organized the differences into three categories: historical, intellectual and cultural.

In the 1960s, ‘a third of the planet had broken with capitalism’. While nikita Khrushchev proposed reforms in the ussr, china maintained its prestige, the cuban revolution was unfolding in the Americas, the Vietnamese were successfully resisting us occupation and capitalism felt under threat. Intellectually, there began ‘a discovery process of suppressed leftist and marxist traditions’, and ‘alternative  strands of revolutionary marxism’ gained currency[8]. Culturally, compared with the conformist atmosphere of the 1950s, rock music and new wave cinema provided a flavour of rebellion.

Four decades later, the climate could not have been more different. ‘The soviet bloc has disappeared. Socialism has ceased to be a widespread ideal. marxism is no longer dominant in the culture left’. The 1990s brought ‘the virtually uncontested consolidation, and universal diffusion of neoliberalism’[9].

Five interconnected processes had radically changed the landscape:

Us capitalism reasserted its predominance in all fields (economic, political, military and cultural);

European social democracy made a turn towards neoliberalism;

Japanese capitalism entered a deep and prolonged recession, while china moved towards membership in the WTo, and india, for the first time in the history, came to depend on the imf;

The new russian economy did not provoke popular protest, in spite of the catastrophic regression imposed on the country;

The deep socio-economic changes imposed by neoliberalism were accompanied by two shifts, one political and the other military:

Ideologically, the neoliberal consensus extended to partiesidentifying with the ‘third way’, like Tony Blair’s Labour Party in Britain and Bill clinton ́s Democrats in the united states; whit this, it seemed the ‘single orthodoxy’ and the Washington consensus had become immovable, because a change of government in either of neoliberalism’s main bastions would no longer change the model, but simply reproduce it;

Militarily, the war in the Balkans ushered in the age of ‘humanitarian wars’, a type of military intervention conducted in the name of ‘human rights’.Among intellectuals, who had previously been mostly socialist, there were two main reactions. The first was conversion to the new order — capitalism passed from being a necessary evil to become ‘a necessary and on balance salutary social order’[10], with the superiority of private  enterprise given pride of place. The second was consolation — the need to sustain a message of hope led here to overestimating the importance of the various forms of opposition, as if it were these that set the tone of the period.

As a result, the idea ‘of the spread of democracy as a substitute for socialism, either as hope or claim’, became widely accepted. It didn’t seem to matter that the actual practice of democracy had been emptied of all content, limiting its historical horizons to what currently existed — the liberal democracy and capitalist economy as promoted by francis fukuyama. Faced with this situation, Anderson concluded that:

The only starting-point for a realistic Left today is a lucid registration of historical defeat [...] no collective agency able to match the power of capital is yet on the horizon [...] for the first time since the reformation, there are no longer any significant oppositions — that is, systematic rival outlooks — within the thought-world of the West [...] neo-liberalism as a set of principles rules undivided across the globe: the most successful ideology in world history[11].

The whole system of references in which the generation of the 1960s had been educated, had now been swept from the map.

Anderson ́s analysis completes his 1994 account of neoliberalism, which remains the best overview of the new hegemonic project[12]. Already at that time, he drew attention to the breadth and depth of this model, which introduced radical changes in the Keynesian model and extended market relations to areas never before reached by capitalism, like the ex-socialist countries, including the ussr, eastern europe and china. The model launched by the far right proceeded to incorporate first nationalists and then social democrats. It was possible to say: ‘We are all neoliberals now’[13].

It is against this analysis that James Petras reacts so strongly, in a denunciation that tries to interpret the history of the left without, as he sees it, succumbing to the liberal illusion and defeatism. According to him, ‘During periods of counter-revolutionary ascendancy, following temporary or historic defeats, many of the former radical intellectuals revert to their class origins, discovering the virtues of right-wing ideologies’, which, he says, they present as invincible and  irreversible. They make the mistake of concentrating on a ‘particular one-dimensional configuration of contemporary power as the reality’, in an approach without historical roots[14].

Petras sets out to debunk a certain view that sees the 1950s as dominated by conformism, the two following decades by the spread of revolution, and the period from 1980 to 2000 as one of defeat and dissolution. He recounts a series of struggles in the 1950s, none of them fundamental, to try to show that there were mobilizations — but this does not alter the general picture of capitalist stability, albeit uneven.

As ever, the left finds it difficult to recognize political defeats and setbacks. The 1950s unquestionably saw us hegemony reach its height. eric hobsbawm has characterized the long cycle of growth stretching from the end of the second World War to the mid 1970s as ‘the golden age of capitalism’[15], when the three locomotives of metropolitan capitalism, the united states, germany and Japan, found their economic growth synchronized. The fact that the second two countries achieved this status is itself noteworthy, after being destroyed in the second World War and then rebuilt, along with the italian economy, with the help of the us-financed marshall Plan. This coincided with growth in peripheral capitalist countries like Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, as well as in non-capitalist areas, which ended up contributing to growth rate under the hegemony of the world capitalist market.

Hobsbawm believes that, in the 1950s, the united states established its economic and technological superiority over the ussr in irreversible fashion, but that the full effects of this were only felt a decade or two later. Drawing on second World War rearmament, the us economy was already recovering from the 1929 crisis by the end of the 1930s and experienced growth in the 1940s, while europe and Japan were destroyed.

Whatever the important struggles that can be identified in the 1950s, what is needed is to take the measure of the hegemony in the period, and not limit one’s view the strength of anti-hegemonic forces. For Petras, ‘it is a monstrous distortion to refer to the 1950s as a period of ‘conformisy’’[16]— yet he fails to grasp that this was a period of considerable ideological consensus around ‘the American way of life’.

He refers to political developments that might contradict Anderson ́s argument: the presence of powerful communist parties in greece, italy, france and Yugoslavia; the revolts in hungary, Poland and east germany; the re-emergence of the left in Britain and the united states; the Vietnamese victory against the french in 1954; and, what he sees as steps toward the following decade, the support for the war in Algeria and peasant struggles that led to the revolutions in cuba and indochina.

These are clearly insufficient counterweights to the immense stabilization and consolidation of capitalist hegemony that characterized the decade. The procedure is typically ultra-left: it takes a few examples, without measuring their relative importance in the overall balance of forces. A political analysis of any given situation cannot limit itself to examples of the supposed strength of the left. A political analysis which is not merely descriptive, which as a serious journalistic or academic function, and aims to elucidate the big class confrontations, must concentrate on the balance of forces while understanding that any balance of forces is temporary, referring as it does to the relationship between the strength of one side and that of the other.

In this sense, it is impossible to overlook the strengthening of the Western bloc and the reaffirmation of us leadership, alongside the reconstruction on more modern foundations of germany, Japan and italy, all of them led by conservative forces.

This inability to characterize a decade in accordance with its dominant aspects is patently obvious in the way Petras rushes to deny Anderson ́s contrast between the relative conformism of the 1950s and the radicalization of the decade that followed. For Petras, ‘if the 1950s were not a period of worldwide conformity, neither were the 1960s, in all of their manifestations, an age of uniform revolutionary upheaval’[17]. Historical development is based, fundamentally, on uneven processes. No period can be described as homogeneously moving in one direction or the other. It is therefore inappropriate to apply the word ‘uniformly’ to any historical period.

Petras recognizes the rise of mass struggles in north America, europe and parts of the Third World, but holds that there were important setbacks in important countries and various contradictions and conflicts within the mass movements. He argues that the result should be a positive re-evaluation and a creative development of marxist thought to take in new areas and new problems.

He places particular importance on the struggles in indochina, cuba and other countries where peasant struggles gave rise to new strategic ideas. However, he says that much intellectual work contributed little politically, because it failed to grasp the role of imperialism in the contemporary world. He dismisses the counter-cultural of  the 1960s as motors of individualism, which were finally co-opted by ‘market populism’ — they were so permeated by drugs, according to him, that ‘opium became the opium of the left’.

For Petras, ‘There are links between some variants of intellectual and cultural life in the 1960s and 1970s and the right turn in the 1990s: the substantive differences in political activity in the two periods, particularly in the Anglo-saxon world, are bridged by the pseudo-radical individualist cultural practices and values in both periods’[18].

The key to the problem is presented as a deep division between anti-imperialist thinkers and Western marxists. The latter had supposedly denied the importance of the struggles in indochina, Latin America and south Africa, giving a derogatory connotation to the expression Third World, while focusing their attention on the central capitalist countries. The theoreticians of anti-imperialism, for their part, had focused their attention on the relations between centre and periphery, samir Amin, Andre gunder frank and immanuel Wallerstein, and sometimes from a perspective of class struggle.

On the other hand, military coups in Brazil and indonesia, supported by the united states, had interrupted two processes in the biggest and most promising countries of the Third World. Petras also includes, in this category of ‘counter-revolution in the revolution’, the turn in china, which opened the way to way would become capitalist restoration at the end of the 1970s. As the same time, Khrushchev’s anti-stalinist movement had been defeated by the ‘repressive apparatus’.

Petras ́s inability to grasp the global correlation of forces is revealed most clearly in the passage to a decade of obvious reversals for the popular camp and of obvious gains for imperialism — the 1990s. He takes it up in a section of the essay entitled, ‘restoration, imperialism and revolution in the 1990s’, in which the inclusion of the third element aims to reinforce its presence even in a decade like this.

His main claim in relation to this new period is that ‘certainly only an ahistorical and hasty judgment can claim that the decade was a period of unprecedented historical defeats, surpassing anything in prior history’. He compares this period with another, from the beginning of the 1930s to the beginning of the 1940s, in which he says there was huge setback and devastation of the left in europe on an unprecedented scale, either through physical repression, isolation or co-option. Nothing similar, he argues, ad occurred in the 1990s:

Us ‘hegemony’, a rather vacuous concept that inflates the role of ‘political persuasion’, is totally inappropriate when one considers the scope  and depth of violence in the recent past and its continuous use on a selective but demonstrable basis in the present[19].

In this way, Petras calculate shifts in the balance of forces as a function of the level of repression, and not in terms of imperialism ́s hegemonic capacity, which is a synthesis of both forces and persuasion. If the two periods mentioned are, in many ways, not comparable, it is nonetheless clear that Petras underestimated the scale of the imperialist victory in the new period, which began in the 1990s.

The years from 1930s to 1940s saw the ussr grow stronger, and liberalism grow weaker as a result of the great Depression; the second successive war in europe, as an inter-imperialist war, attacked the foundations of european capitalism and created the conditions for the left to grow, just as the struggle by the communist parties against fascism and nazism consolidated the international prestige of the ussr.

Thus, the defensive position the left had to adopt in this period — expressed especially by the Vii congress of the communist international, which approved Dimitrov’s resolution on the anti-fascist united front — although it had a strategic character, did not come about in a context of political and ideological dismantling of the left like that which occurred in the 1990s.

When Petras lists the movements of resistance to neoliberalism, he misses out the main thing: the fundamental, strategic changes that happened at the beginning of the 1990s, with all the consequences these had. I am referring to the shift from a bipolar world to a unipolar one, under us hegemony, and the shift from Keynesianism to the neoliberal model. The combination of both and their consequences — of which the most important is the hegemony of the north ‘American way of life’, as a value and as a lifestyle — give a globally regressive character to the new period. Whatever countertendencies there may be, these do not outweigh the negative shift in the balance of forces.

The disappearance of the bipolar world does not just mean a shift to a world under the hegemony of a single, imperialist super-power. It also means an ever larger gap between the strength of the united states and that of others powers. At the same time as the world ́s number two power, the ussr, disappeared, the economies of Japan and germany were stagnating. And because the strength of a country is defined not in comparison with its past achievements, but in relation to the strength of other countries, the united states entered the new period stronger than ever before.

The consequences for the left were devastating. There was an ideological retreat, with a questioning of everything that had to do with socialism (state, party, labour, planning, socialization, etc.), and a political one too, with social democracy sliding to the right, the break-up of alliances with the communist parties, the weakening of both these and the trade unions, and a proliferation of right-wing governments. Any global evaluation of 1990s must conclude that there was a radical change in the correlation of forces between the blocs. The disappearance of the ussr and the socialist camp saw these replaced, not with something further to the left, but with the restoration of capitalism in its neoliberal form. Socialism, which had been a part of history through most of the twentieth century, practically disappeared, to be replaced by anti-neoliberal struggle. Capitalism extended its hegemony as never before in history.

A comparison of the 1990s with the present decade in Latin America also confirms the regressive nature of the former. It was only at the end of that decade that the first anti-neoliberal government emerged in the region, that of Venezuela. Although there were varied forms of resistance to neoliberalism, these developed in a defensive framework. But it was only the strength accumulated in this defensive phase that made possible the current hegemonic struggle, marking a new, more favourable situation for the popular camp.

The ultra-left view does not take account of these setbacks, rather clinging to one of its constant themes, the permanent possibility of revolution. The only option this leaves is to accuse the political leaders of ‘betrayal’, making them responsible for the fact the revolution hasn ́t happened.Originally, this line of analysis goes back to Trotsky. He held that the objective conditions for revolution already exist, and it was precisely such betrayal by leaders that created the obstruction; the problem was that these leaderships had become bureaucratized, defended their own interests, made compromises with the ruling class and abandoned the side of the revolution and the left.

This kind of analysis is also based on what Lenin said about the ‘aristocracy of labour’: a section of the working class that identified with colonial and/or imperial domination and forms the social basis for certain kinds of political representation.

Nonetheless, we need to take account alterations in the balance of forces that indicated changes in the objective conditions, especially in the current period. Here there is a contradictory combination between setbacks in the subjective conditions for anti-capitalist struggle and the evident limits of capitalism. The victory of the imperialist camp and the defeat of the socialist camp, along with the structural and ideological changes introduced by neoliberal policies, have change the objective and subjective conditions for political struggle. This is how the possibilities for struggle should be understood, in their actual historical context, and not applying the same rigid and dogmatic approach to all situations.

More recently, before evo morales had even assumed office, Petras was already accused him of betrayal, and calling Álvaro garcía Linera a ‘neoliberal intellectual’, which shows a failure to understand the concrete conditions of the Bolivian process. Leaders of others countries, and even the leadership of the msT in Brazil, were not spared similar accusations.

What does the charge of ‘betrayal’ imply? could it be a question of ideological co-option? This would give it a concrete class meaning, and a perfectly plausible on, given the way institutional politics works, the reach of neoliberalism’s ideological values in today ́s world and the pressure from powerful, private media.

The worst consequence of this type of criticism is that it tends to foster the idea that the ‘traitor’ is the main enemy, a representative of the ‘new right’ who needs to be ‘unmasked’, defeated and destroyed.Otherwise, the new force represented by these criticisms cannot become an alternative leadership for the left.

The results of such a political approach have been isolation and a blurring of the boundaries between the left and right. This has produced a sense of impotence, reflecting the absence of movements with these positions that have been able to build major forces and lead revolutions. Victorious movements like the 26 July movement in cuba, the sandinista front in nicaragua, Bolivarianism in Venezuela or the movement to socialism (MAS) in Bolivia, even when they call for radical forms of struggle as in cuba and nicaragua, mainly adopt a broad political approach, in their platforms and slogans as well as in their alliances. What characterizes them as revolutionary movements is the fact that they manage to tackle the question of power in a direct, concrete and appropriate way, and to build a strategic force that corresponds to the history of popular struggles in their country and to the kind of power structures that exist there.

The particular experience in Chile, where the Popular unity government of salvador Allende sought a peaceful transition to socialism, presented the revolutionary left with a tricky dilemma. ever since it was founded, the movement of the revolutionary Left (mir) had a class vision of the state as bourgeois, denounced the pro-imperialist character of the national bourgeoisies and therefore saw as impossible an institutional road to socialism. Nonetheless, after Allende’s unexpected election in 1970, it had to decide what position to take.

In line with its strategic orientation, immediately after Popular unity’s electoral victory the mir offered to provide personal protection for Allende, forming what was called the group of friends of the President (GAP). In this capacity, it sought to investigate the first act of destabilization carried out by those who would later stage the Chilean coup — namely the kidnapping and murder of the then commander-in chief of the Armed forces, general rené schneider. He had christian Democratic tendencies and had been appointed by eduardo frei, the president who was still serving out his time in office. His killing had been immediately blamed on armed movements of the left, but the investigations discovered it was a plot by the right, seeking to provoke tension and spread fears that under Allende the armed groups would act openly. The objective was to prevent the Chilean congress from ratifying the victory of Allende — who had won with just 36.3% of vote in the first round, and who therefore, according to the constitution, had to be confirmed by parliament.

The challenges faced by a government coming to power in circumstances like those in which salvador Allende was elected — with a radical, anti-capitalist programme, but without the support of even a simple majority of the population — were complex. Allende tried to carry out his political platform, but found himself smothered within the state apparatus, until he was eventually overthrown by a military coup. The mir fought for a strict and even more radical application of the socialist programme.On the one hand, they were convinced that the existing power structures would prevent the application of this programme, and therefore considered a military coup inevitable.On the other, they did their utmost to have the programme implemented as deeply as possible.

The mir succeeded in spreading the organization of the popular movement, especially in the countryside, in the shanty towns and among students; in alliance with more radical sections of the socialist Party, they proposed and began to build organs of popular power, as the structures of what might become an alternative national power. Since they regarded a military coup is inevitable, they tried to prepare the mass movement and the party itself to confront this. They believed that, once the reformist strategy had had its opportunity and failed, then the time would come for a revolutionary strategy.

The military coup did indeed happen, and it hit the whole of the left hard. It represented not just a failure for the reformist strategy, but a brutal change for the worse in the balance of forces. It also meant the beginning of strategy of annihilation against the entire left and the popular movement, whit the mir as its main target. A mistaken judgment about what was possible at the time of Allende’s victory led them to deepen the level of confrontation, without the left being in a position to prevent the coup or successfully to resist it once it began. The course of events could have been different, if there had been a rethinking of the relation between reforms and revolution and an attempt to carry out projects of urban and agrarian reform. even if these had not had a directly anti-capitalist nature, they would have represented a profound social and democratic advance, in the direction of anticapitalism. The mir’s slogan — ‘socialism is not a few factories and some land for the people, but all the factories and all the land’ — reflected this maximalism. This was the most important organization of the revolutionary left in Chile, with an extraordinary membership that demonstrated tremendous political creativity and organizational ability. Yet it succumbed to this ultra-left logic.

The question below is posed as an updating of the relation between reform and revolution, and of the relations between radical, anti-capitalist movements and centre-left forces with a different orientation. What position should a radical organization adopt in relation to governments like those of Lula, Tabaré Vásquez, Cristina Kirchner, Daniel Ortega, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and others of the kind? These are not governments of the right; in all these countries, there are indeed forces of the right, that act in opposition to these governments, even though they are not carrying out a clearly left-wing programme.

Manichaeism is an all too familiar phenomenon in politics. In such situations, it pushes on the one hand towards a subordinate alliance, in an effort to occupy what space exists to the left, and on the other hand towards the creation of news spaces, in an effort to break this logic. manichaeism also entails the serious and permanent risk of concentrating one’s attacks on the governments — of the centre-left, now characterized as the ‘new right’ — and thereby promoting confusion instead of strengthening the polarization between right and left.

The failure to recognize the left or centre-left character of the governments mentioned tends to disorient the forces that seek to occupy the space to their left. By centring their opposition on these governments themselves, they end up benefiting the right. What they should do instead is take a position on specific policies, supporting those that have a left character and opposing the right-wing ones.

If a political approach loses sight of where the right is located and of the dangers it poses, when it confuses a moderate, contradictory ally with the enemy, this shows it hasn’t grasped the reality of the existing political landscape. This is what happened to the german communist Party. When it characterized german social democracy at the beginning of the 1930s as a disguised form of fascism, an ally of fascism or as a part of the right, it was mistaking a vacillating ally for the enemy. It couldn’t differentiate between the sides, wasted energies that should have been directed against the dangerous rise of the right, isolated itself and effectively assisted the victory of the enemy. The same thing happened in reverse, dramatically and tragically, with german social democracy. By characterizing the communist Party as a different version of nazi totalitarianism, the stalinist version, it completed the division that helped the nazis come to power and then repress both social democrats and communists without distinction.

If we take the case of the Lula government, its own contradictory character left it open to praise and criticism from both the right and the left, in spite of the great differences between them.

The left should be working to open up an area of political and ideological dispute in which the polarization between right and left is what predominates. This is not out of some fetish, but because one side represents the maintenance and reproduction of the system, while the left is seeking to create an anti-neoliberal and anti-capitalist alternative. Ideological and social struggle should be pursued with vigour, but they must be subordinate to the political struggle, which is key, and whose focus is opposition to the dominant power and the building of an alternative power.

The left experiences that have managed to develop sufficient strength to win the struggle for hegemony are those that have shown themselves able to develop mass struggles and the battle of ideas, while keeping the political dispute as their main reference. This means that the ideological battle must choose the decisive strategic themes that are capable of uniting all the popular forces at a given moment — which is at present that of anti-neoliberal and post-neoliberal struggle. It is anti-neoliberal in the sense of combating all forms of submission to the market; it is post-neoliberal in the sense that it promotes alternatives centred on the public sphere, because in the neoliberal era conflict is based on a polarization between the market sphere and the public sphere.

Doctrinaire logic subordinates everything to the ideological struggle, and sets itself up as the guardian of marxist principles and their theoretical purity. As a result, it not only remains isolated but also creates even bigger divisions within the left, over interpretations of theory – Trotskyism, for example. It also tends to decry all new revolutionary experiences which, since they are always heterodox, ‘against Capital’, have to be rejected and condemned. This is what happened with all the victorious revolutionary processes, in russia, china, cuba, Vietnam, nicaragua, and it is happening today with Venezuela, Bolivia and ecuador. It is similar to what happened in france in 1968, when sartre wrote of the difficulties the communists had in recognizing the new forms of the class struggle – what he called their ‘fear of revolution’ as it actually existed, which was inevitably different from the Bolsheviks’ assault on the Winter Palace.

The russian revolution, for example, could not represent a break with capitalism, because that would contradict marx’s prediction that socialism would arise in the countries of the capitalist heartland. The chinese revolution should confine itself to expelling the invaders and developing a national capitalism. The cuban revolution was explicitly condemned for using methods considered ‘adventurist’ and ‘provocative’, when the conditions supposedly did not exist for the kind of rupture that was being proposed. In none of them, including the Venezuelan and Bolivian processes, did the working class play a leading part, nor did the economic circumstances make it possible to speak of anti-capitalism.

However, the truth is concrete: it is born out of the concrete analysis of concrete reality. Principles are principles: they do not move out of books into reality, but are concretely reborn out of daily struggles when they demonstrate their usefulness. Theoretical mistakes cost dear in practice; but theoretical zeal cannot confine the rich experience of concrete historical processes in narrow, dogmatic bands.

Álvaro García Linera’s analysis of the way the traditional left in Bolivia regarded the indigenous population is an excellent contemporary example of how concrete reality rebels against dogma. The Bolivian left always sought to develop a workers and peasants ́ alliance along the lines of the Bolshevik revolution. There was concrete support for this in the existence of a mining proletariat, located in a key sector of the Bolivian economy, which could exert a kind of veto power over the country ́s economic activity, because paralysing the mines meant shutting down the entire economy. However the isolation of such an enclave, not least physically, made it difficult to develop an alternative hegemonic project led by the miners.

The role of the miners in the 1952 revolution, with the nationalization of the tin mines, the development of workers’ councils, even the replacement of the Armed forces by self-defense brigades, gave the impression that the miners did have such a strategic capacity. The agrarian reform, in turn, seemed to suggest the peasantry could be a strategic ally for the mining proletariat, in classic style. It was an attempt to apply to a specific, concrete reality, a theoretical scheme derived from another reality — the soviet one.

The rural population was viewed in terms of its labour, and the forms of reproduction of its conditions of existence. Since they lived on the land, they were classified as peasants, regardless of whether they were indigenous or not. They were to forget their ancient origins and play the part of the peasants, subordinate allies of the mine workers — and up to a point vacillating allies too, since they were not proletarianized but still tied to their smallholdings. The economic determination was seen as direct and mechanical, reducing indigenous peoples to peasants.

It was the specific, concrete reconstruction of Bolivian history, beginning in the pre-colonial period, that allowed garcía Linera to grasp the decisive elements of the native peoples’ identity, of their indigenous condition — more specifically their condition as Aymara, Quechua or guaraní. It was this kind of analysis that made it possible to grasp the identity of the indigenous peoples as a whole, that allowed them to assume this identity politically and elect evo morales as president, as well as to build a party — the mAs — as a vehicle to establish their hegemony over Bolivian society as a whole.

One case where a victorious strategy was apparently repeated was that of the sandinista revolution in relation to the cuban revolution. It was an exceptional situation, but it deserves to be noted. There were, it is true, differences in the way these guerrilla wars were conducted, and in the much broader way in which the nicaraguan experience incorporated women, christians, children and old people into the clandestine mass struggle. But in essence, the similarities between these two processes, occurring in the same historical period, are greater than those between any other revolutionary experiences. If the element of surprise was decisive in cuba, in nicaragua it was a combination of the us defeat in Vietnam, the struggles against the war and for civil rights at home, the Watergate crisis and richard nixon’s resignation, that led to Jimmy carter’s efforts to restore us prestige abroad. Through a policy of human rights, he sought to distance Washington from the dictatorships it had previously supported in the continent.

Guerrilla movements in guatemala and el salvador were, however, unable to repeat the experience.One decisive factor prevented this and pushed the guerrillas back into political forms of struggle: the international balance of forces had changed and made it impossible for armed struggle to prevail. Whatever the criticisms of the left’s current experiences, that alternative is no longer available. It means that the left has to settle accounts with the existing power structures, reworking the radical critique which would allow it to go beyond these structures while passing through them.

The shift to the current historical period has created new parameters for struggle. The strategy of reforms leading to a violent break through armed struggle is no longer an option. This should make it easier to once more develop rich and concrete combinations between reform and revolution.

The reformist logic

The reformist logic underestimates or abandons both the ideological struggle and the mass struggle. It seeks the lines of least resistance, to advance where it can, in an attempt to gradually change the balance of forces without touching on the central question of the relations of power. undoubtedly it achieved significant advances in Latin America — especially under the nationalist governments in Argentina, Mexico and Brazil — when the industrial bourgeoisie’s plans for economic development coincided with those of the trade union movement and sectors of the middle classes. These were the decades of rapid growth, with income distribution and upward social mobility, which came to an end when the long expansive wave of international and Latin American capital went into decline.

In theory, the reformist project seeks a profound overhaul of the existing economic, social and political structures. It obeys a logic of spontaneous, progressive change, of successive shifts in the power relations, won through economic and social demands that gradually strengthen the popular camp and undermine the enemy pole.

This has been and remains the prevailing logic in the immense majority of historical situations. The conditions required for a revolutionary process to emerge are much more unusual, and have to be combined in very particular ways to make a revolution — that special historical moment — possible.

The spontaneous ideology and practice of social, economic and political struggles are those of gradually winning improvements in the situation of the mass of the people, through gradual changes in existing legislation and through gradually conquering greater space in the existing political institutions.

Although reformism has been responsible for most of the economic and social gains won over the decades, it has failed as a strategy to transform, little by little, the relations of power. Its attempt to turn partial victories into qualitative changes in the relations of power, and thereby to introduce a new political system, never bore fruit. Indeed, the reforms were neither a substitute for revolution, nor did they lead to revolution; all too often they did not even succeed in toning down the reaction of the ruling classes to such moderate, gradualist proposals from the left. This failure was mainly a result of not making the question of power the central concern, and therefore not working to develop alternative forms of power. This deficiency is decisive, and fatal for any political force aiming at structural transformation. It is an issue that often goes unnoticed, only to return with much greater force and take unawares those who propose changes to the prevailing power relations — and the less prepared they are, the harder it hits them.

The coup against salvador Allende is a case in point. As president he won the support of the Chilean congress for the nationalization of the copper mines, controlled by us companies. But this consensus could not obviate the heavy blow to the us government. As a result, the administration of richard nixon — with none other than henry Kissinger as secretary of state — accelerated the plans for a coup against Allende. For his part, the socialist president, trusting in Chile’s traditions of parliamentary democracy and the Armed forces’ respect for the rule of law, did not prepare to confront the right’s offensive with strategies for an alternative power. As a result, when the end came, he found himself surrounded inside the presidential palace, defending alone a legality that the right had long since decided to throw overboard.

The gains that were won by the various reform projects were achieved because they fitted into a long historical period — from the 1930s to the 1970s — when the hegemonic project on both a world and a regional scale was one of progressive, Keynesian regulation and social welfare. The winds were blowing in favour of reform, allowing a certain convergence between the interests of the popular camp and those of a part of the hegemonic bloc.

When the period changed, and regressive projects prevailed — neoliberal ones of deregulation and privatization — the right appropriated the very notion of reform. This came to mean, in the dominant parlance, the dismantling of the state’s regulatory role, economic liberalization, open markets and the elimination of employment guarantees.

The very same elite that had dismantled the mechanisms of state regulation, destroyed the public patrimony and left the public purse with impossible debts, now claimed that the key dilemma was the polarization between public and private, or more directly, between state and market.

In this framework, what could a reform project mean? As long as it doesn’t challenge the neoliberal model, it will remain just a variant of the same thing. This is what happened with the so-called ‘third way’ that claimed to be ‘the human face of neoliberalism’. It is also the risk that is run by governments that develop important social policies — like the Kirchner, Tabaré Vázquez and Lula administrations and their respective successors, cristina fernández in Argentina, Pepe mujica in Uruguayand Dilma rousseff in Brazil; they altered the balance of forces in the social field by extending access to basic goods to much wider sectors of the population, but left untouched the hegemony of finance capital, the dictatorship of the private media, and the immense influence of agribusiness, to mention just some of the most important centres of power that dominate our societies. This is the limit of reform today, in the framework of neoliberalism’s global hegemony and its consequences in eac country. unless these problems are addressed and solved democratically, these governments could lose the capacity to act that they demonstrated at an earlier stage. That in turn could put a brake on the process of income redistribution and favour a possible return of right-wing governments that take on board some of these policies, strip them of their progressive content and co-opt the beneficiaries.

This is why processes like those in Bolivia, Venezuela and ecuador — at the same time as they try to implement an anti-neoliberal economic model — seek to combine this with a refounding of the state and the public sphere, so as to allow the emergence of a new bloc of forces in power and a resolution of the crisis of hegemony in a postneoliberal direction. It is still a process of reforms, but one that leads towards a substantial transformation of the relations of power that underpin the neoliberal state. Without this, it would be difficult to attack the hegemony of finance capital and impose controls on capital movements and foreign exchange, or subordinate the central Banks to policies of economic and social development.

Returning to the question of reform and revolution, there is no necessary or fundamental contradiction between the two. It depends on the kind of reform, the way and extent to which it affects the key relations of power, as well as on the ability to develop an alternative bloc of forces in which the state — its economic, social and political nature — plays an essential role.

Superficial reforms which do not affect the overall balance of power between the main social forces, between opposing political camps, obstruct the processes of profound change in society; they occupy this space and waste social and political energies on mere readjustments — which at present still means readjustments of the hegemonic neoliberal model — instead of helping to build support for the replacement of this model and of the bloc of forces that promotes it.

The defeat of neoliberalism, and the triumph of post-neoliberal projects, depends on this combination between deep reforms and the revolutionary transformation of the old structures inherited by progressive governments in the region. This is where the new mole has unexpectedly and forcefully re-surfaced at the beginning of this new century.

The three strategies of the latin american left

1. The strategy of democratic reforms

The first strategy developed by the left was based around major structural reforms that would unblock the path to economic development, embodied in the project for import-substitution industrialization. An alliance that subordinated the working class and the left to large-scale, national business, set as its aim the promotion of economic modernization, agrarian reform and national independence. It was a strategy implemented by nationalist forces — getúlio Vargas in Brazil, Lázaro cárdenas in Mexico, Juan Perón in Argentina, among others — as well as by forces of the left or centre-left — as in the cases of the Popular front, led by Pedro Aguirre cerda (1938), and Popular unity, led by salvador Allende (1970), both in Chile.

The fullest expression of this strategy coincided with a long cycle of growth in international capitalism and, in Latin America, with processes of industrial development, under the overarching dominance of export-oriented agricultural and mining interests. Alongside the urban middle classes, the working class grew, helping to expand the domestic consumer market and extend social rights — a process that continued for almost five decades, beginning in the 1930s.

This first main strategy of the left saw its political objective as a transition to national, democratic, industrial societies, in an alliance between the industrial bourgeoisie, the working class and urban middle layers, as a stage prior to the building of socialism. There were two main variants of this kind of project: one led by nationalist forces — examples of which include the Chilean Popular front, the mexican Pri, the Bolivian mnr, Peronism, and the Vargas governments in Brazil; the other led directly by a left coalition — whose main example was the government of salvador Allende.

Its programmes were centred on economic and social demands, for development and income distribution. It saw the main enemies as big landholdings and imperialism. The premise of the strategy was the existence of a national bourgeoisie with distinct interests from those other two, which would lead a bloc that the left and the workers’ movement should join in order to remove the obstacles to national development and democracy.

It was these governments that repeatedly occupied the political space of the left, whether or not they were supported by socialists and communists. The alliance between the latter two forces participated actively in the political struggle until, with Popular unity’s victory in Chile, for the first time the class forces of the left exercised hegemony themselves. Here the strategy took on its most radical form — for this was the only time in the international history of the left that an attempt was made to implement a peaceful transition to socialism.

It was a strategy of institutional transition, without violent breaks, which aimed to incorporate the existing democratic structures, strengthening them and widening them. It sought to democratize economic and social relations, increasing the regulatory role of the state by nationalizing basic industries and controlling the remission of profits abroad.

Popular unity’s programme represented a break with the earlier, stageist strategy (according to which socialism would be preceded by a stage of reforms that would modernize capitalism); it proposed expropriating big capital by nationalizing the 150 largest companies, both foreign and Chilean, thereby giving the state control over the central nervous system of the economy. These nationalized companies would be socialized by setting up councils in which the workers would decide the course of the economy and of each enterprise. Politically, the most important proposal was to unify the Lower house and the senate in a single chamber.

These proposals were incompatible with existing state structures: the plan was to change these qualitatively, from within. The Allende government had occupied the heart of the state apparatus, that is, its executive branch — albeit with only minority electoral support, of 36.3% in 1970 and 41% in 1973 — but it found itself asphyxiated by these structures. It did not call for a refounding of the state, because it trusted in its democratic character; nor did it call for the building of new power structures, what was called ‘popular power’, outside the state. The military coup, when it came, marked the demise of this strategy in the most dramatic and complete way possible.

The nationalist governments were either toppled — as happened with Perón and Vargas — or co-opted and reabsorbed, losing their initial momentum — as in the cases of the mexican and Bolivian revolutions. getúlio Vargas’s suicide in 1954, and the coup against Peron in 1955, coincided with the end of a long parenthesis in world history that began with the 1929 crisis and stretched through the end of the second World War to the war in Korea. They marked, simultaneously, a change in the nature of the nationalist project of import-substitution — a result of the return of foreign investments on a massive scale (symbolized most clearly by the arrival of the car industry in the region), and at the same time a new phase of the subordination of Latin American capital to processes of inter-nationalization.

This first strategy went into decline, therefore, in parallel with the model of industrialization, when the internationalization of Latin American economies pushed the business class of each country into solid alliances with international capital — a process that would later lead into neoliberalism. Before that, this change made possible the military dictatorships in the southern cone, and showed just how ready the dominant bloc was to liquidate the popular movement in order to adhere to economic policies based on exports, the domestic consumption of the rich, and the super-exploitation of labour.

The cycle of southern cone military coups — heralded by the overthrow of Perón and getúlio Vargas’s suicide a year earlier; and later carried through by coups in Brazil, in 1964, in Bolivia, in 1971, in Chile and Uruguayin 1973, and again in Argentina in 1976 — formalized the end of that period, ideologically and politically, and the adherence of the region’s national bourgeoisies to a dictatorial, repressive, pro-us posture, that went hand in hand with the internationalization of capitalism in the continent.

The two coups that consolidated this spread of dictatorship across the south of the continent, those in Chile and Uruguay, occurred the same year that is generally held to mark the end of the long wave of growth for capitalism — the longest in its history, described by eric hobsbawm as ‘the golden Age of capitalism’. marked by the oil crisis, it turned the page on a period of history, and with it on one of the strategies of the Latin American left.

2. The strategy of guerrilla warfare

Following the triumph of the cuban revolution in 1959, insurrection combined with guerrilla warfare as a strategy of the Latin American left to take power. guerrilla war had been a characteristic of the chinese and Vietnamese revolutions, and now made the ‘possibility of revolution’ a reality in Latin America, through the offices of the 26 July movement[20] and the cuban rebel army.

Insurrectional movements had played a part in the wars of independence at the start of the nineteenth century. In the last century, first the mexican revolution, later the rebellions of sandino in nicaragua and farabundo martí in el salvador, in the 1930s, and then the Bolivian revolution of 1952, revived the insurrectionary tradition in the continent, with various forms of struggle. But it was the cuban revolution that posited armed struggle — in the form of guerrilla warfare — as the second main strategy of the Latin American left.

As had happened before with the russian and chinese revolutions, the victorious strategy applied in cuba exerted an important influence and encouraged numerous imitations, with minor modifications, in various countries. In Colombia, the guerrilla movement had already begun to develop in the 1950s with the fArc. In nicaragua, the struggle of the sandinistas had existed for some time before the sandinista national Liberation front was formally created in 1961.

But in countries like guatemala, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Mexico, the Dominican republic and el salvador, it was the impetus of the cuban victory that was mainly responsible for spreading this strategy. In a Latin America that was much more homogeneous than europe at the time of the russian revolution — in spite of the obvious national differences — the cuban influence spread rapidly, from the cities of Argentina and Uruguayto the rural areas of guatemala or Peru.

The new strategy was based on the sharp contradictions in the Latin American countryside, the result of the dominance of big landholdings, foreign companies and the primary-export model, which blocked agrarian reform and made this the weakest link of capitalist domination in the continent. In cuba the guerrillas took advantage of this, along with their mobility, the peasantry’s experience of previous victories, the existence of a us-supported dictatorship, and the element of surprise, to achieve victory and open a new strategic path for the Latin American left — one that confronted the end of the cycle of import substitution and liberal democracy, and the proliferation of dictatorships.

There were three different cycles of guerrilla struggle during the four decades after 1959. After that, the conditions that had allowed it to appear as the principal form of struggle for the left in the continent no longer existed. The first cycle developed as an immediate effect of the cuban victory, in Venezuela, guatemala and Peru. These last two were, like cuba, mainly agricultural economies, but with a decisive indigenous presence — although these ethnic groups were seen by the guerrilla movements, in a reductionist way, as peasants. Venezuela, on the other hand, was an oil economy, with only a sparse rural population.

This first cycle could not benefit from the element of surprise, which had made an important contribution to the cuban revolutionary movement, and for that reason couldn’t work after that.On the contrary, the united states, once it got over the surprise, stepped up its cold War mechanisms, labelling any democratic and popular force as subversive and drawing up a policy to encourage land reform as a condition for inter-governmental aid. With this it sought to reduce the acute level of conflict in the countryside, seen as an essential condition for the emergence of guerrilla movements — which could then swim like fish in this sea. The aim was to isolate these movements from their support base. It was a preventive mechanism similar to the agrarian reforms imposed in Japan and south Korea under us occupation, in order to prevent any repetition of the chinese revolution, which had fed off peasant discontent.

On the other hand, in some of these countries the governments still enjoyed a degree of political legitimacy, because they had come to power in non-dictatorial electoral processes, unlike the government of fulgencio Batista in cuba. guatemala was the country most similar to the cuban case. The version of the victorious cuban strategy that circulated most widely was a reductionist interpretation — that of régis Debray in Revolution in the Revolution[21]. This favoured voluntarism and militarism, underestimating the mass support enjoyed by the 26 July movement in cuba. It gave the impression that the ‘small motor’ — the initial guerrilla nucleus of twelve fighters — was alone able to create the conditions for the emergence of the ‘big motor’ — that is, the mass movement. The image of the heroic gesture of those twelve guerrillas who survived the landing of the boat, the granma, and went on to create the conditions for the revolutionary victory, spread widely. It encouraged groups with no mass roots, in countries whose governments enjoyed some institutional legitimacy, to launch guerrilla struggles which made no headway, because of their social and political isolation.

This first cycle suffered its sharpest defeat in Peru — where it had taken various forms, including the revolutionary Left movement (mir) of guillermo Lobatón and Luis de la Puente uceda; the national Liberation Army of héctor Béjar, and an armed self-defence movement organized by hugo Blanco — and in Venezuela, both with the mir of moisés moleiro and with the Armed forces of national Liberation (fALn) of Douglas Bravo. The strategy would re-emerge in guatemala, however, with the movements led by Yon sosa and Luis Turcios Lima, because there the conditions more closely resembled those that had existed in cuba.

This cycle represented the extension of guerrilla warfare as a means of struggle and would mark a new period of left struggle. Its novel aspect, which aimed to lend the struggle a continental dimension, came from che’s plan to organize a guerrilla group in Bolivia, not just as a local revolutionary force, but mainly as a co-ordinating axis for the existing guerrilla movements, and those that were beginning to organize, in Argentina, Uruguayand Brazil.

Che’s death and the defeat of his project was in fact the first big defeat for the guerrilla movement in the continent. It closed the first cycle of armed struggle. A second, however, was already gestating, this time centred in the cities of the three countries already mentioned. This development altered key factors, basic principles, of the guerrilla struggle as it had been practised and theorized in cuba. Countries  with largely urban populations, like Argentina and Uruguay, or in the process of rapid urbanization, like Brazil, changed the original rural scenario; the struggle moved closer to its support bases, but it became more difficult to grow from small guerrilla nuclei into the regular, formal structures of an army, because of the very conditions of operating in a dense, urban environment, and the capacity of the repressive forces to operate in that milieu.

On the one hand, the urban context has the advantage of closeness to the nerve centres of power.On the other, it makes it much harder to create liberated zones, which in turn affects the guerrilla forces’ ability to grow and leaves them more vulnerable in terms of security. This is what led to the setbacks for the urban guerrilla movement in Argentina, with the montoneros and the People’s revolutionary Army (erP), in Uruguaywith the Tupamaros, and in Brazil, including all the armed organizations, but especially the most important — the national Liberation Alliance (ALn) and the Popular revolutionary Vanguard (VPr).

In Argentina and Uruguay, because the development of both popular support and military capability had been greater, the scale of the defeats was also greater. Little remained but the traces of the victims and the destruction of the organized left. given the radical changes in both the national and international balance of forces that occurred in the years immediately following, these experiences today seem even more distant possibilities, lost in the mists of the past.

The defeats inflicted on the popular camp did not spare any area of opposition, from trade unions to political parties, from universities to civil servants, from social movements to the opposition press, publishers and parliament. They brought a deep, regressive shift in the balance of forces between the fundamental classes, which would prepare the ground for the hegemony of the neoliberal model. The defeat of the popular movement and its organizations, savaged by repression, would also establish the military superiority of the dominant forces.

In the meantime, the old mole of guerrilla struggle would head back to where it started, back to its original habitat in both social and geographical terms, to countries with a mainly rural character. It travelled to central America and began there the continent’s third and last cycle of guerrilla struggles. The sandinista movement managed to reorganize and reunite the forces it had built up in previous years, and to relaunch the struggle, after somoza himself helped to open up a space for them by having the main leader of the liberal opposition, Joaquín chamorro, assassinated.

As mentioned before, nicaragua reproduced several of the factors that had made victory possible in cuba. These, together with the breadth of the sandinistas’ international alliances, ended working in favour of a new guerrilla victory in Latin America, twenty years after the triumph of the cuban revolution.

Applying similar strategies, the guerrillas in guatemala and el salvador relaunched their struggles. Like the nicaraguans, they managed to unite all the military organizations in each country. However, as had also happened immediately after the cuban victory, the element of surprise was no longer with them. It should be recalled that the sandinista victory happened in the same year as the us suffered setbacks in iran and grenada.

The effects on the us domestic scene were not long in coming: the Democrats were defeated, the republicans returned to power with ronald reagan and the ‘second cold War’ began. Nicaragua was a privileged target of the us counter-attack, so much so that reagan declared it to be the ‘southern flank of the united states’. Nicaragua’s frontiers were militarized, especially the northern one with honduras, which itself became a military rearguard for the united states, just as Laos and cambodia had done in indochina.

The united states was intent on preventing the domino effect that had happened in southeast Asia. To this end, it put all its military might at the service of the guatemalan and salvadoran governments, clearly signalling to the guerrilla movements and the international community that Washington would not permit another victory of a hostile movement in the region.

A series of strategic offensives by the guerrilla fronts in both countries were repulsed by government forces, closely supported by the us. This continued until an external factor of unexpected and decisive magnitude fell upon the third cycle of Latin America’s guerrilla struggles: as a consequence of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the soviet union and the socialist camp, the world returned to a unipolar system, under the hegemony of the very superpower that was confronting the nicaraguan government and the guerrilla movements in guatemala and el salvador. The fall of the sandinista government — following the invasion of grenada and, a few years before, the capitulation of the government in surinam — only accentuated the radical shift in the international correlation of forces.

The sandinista government had called presidential elections, which were held under conditions of barely concealed bribery by the united states. Holding a sword over the heads of the nicaraguan people, Washington sent a clear message: vote for opposition candidate Violeta chamorro, who was linked to the us, and the war will end; vote to keep the sandinistas in government, and the war will continue. It was at this same time that the guatemalan and salvadoran guerrillas realized they could not achieve a military victory, and began to return to institutional, political channels, leaving the armed struggle behind.

Thus concluded the third cycle of guerrilla struggle, and with this a period of the Latin American left in which armed struggle remained the main form of struggle for approximately three decades. At the same time, the defeat of guerrilla movements in countries under military dictatorship, like Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia and Chile (which had brief experiences of guerrilla groups with the mir and the manuel rodríguez Patriotic front), opened the way for liberal-democratic forces to seize the initiative, take the lead of the opposition and displace the armed groups within the left.

Guerrilla groups continued to exist in countries like Colombia and Mexico, but in a very different national and international context. The fArc, the oldest guerrilla movement in the continent, and the national Liberation Army (eLn) — following the disappearance of the urban guerrilla group, m-19 — continued their trajectory in Colombia, but with much more difficulty than before, as did the local guerrilla groups in Mexico. The Zapatista Army, for its part, is a special case, which emerged as an armed rebellion but does not consider itself a guerrilla movement, nor does it seek victory through armed struggle.

As the Colombian case brutally demonstrates, the balance of military forces turned utterly against the guerrilla movements, and in favour of the armed forces of the various countries, now directly supported by Washington. This was one decisive reason why the current social and political movements in the region, including the most representative and radical ones, like the Landless rural Workers’ movement (msT) in Brazil, the Zapatista national Liberation Army in Mexico, the indigenous movements in Bolivia and ecuador, have not sought to militarize their conflicts. To do so, as they know, means they would inevitably be decimated by the crushing military superiority of the regular forces, both inside their countries and beyond.

3. The third strategy of the latin american left

Neoliberal hegemony reshaped the overall framework of political and ideological struggle in Latin America. The radical change in the balance of forces imposed over previous decades — which for some countries meant military dictatorships — was consolidated by the new hegemonic model. The resistance struggles against neoliberalism constituted a new strategy for developing an alternative model. This sought to go beyond the two previous strategies, incorporating and dialectically negating both of them, while shaping itself in the new conditions of neoliberal hegemony.

One of the first features of this new strategy was determined by the nature of neoliberal hegemony itself — in particular, by the creation of a consensus among the elites in favour of profound, liberalizing (counter-) reforms. This consensus was strongly supported and nurtured by the private media which counted on the support of the traditional parties. The social movements were put on the defensive, and resisted, drawing on potentially very widespread popular support, but hampered by this political and media offensive, as well as by the difficulties of their own objective situation (unemployment, precarious jobs, social fragmentation).

A second feature was determined by the adherence of left parties, both social democratic and nationalist, to the neoliberal agenda, leaving the social movements practically alone in their resistance to government policies. The Zapatistas, the msT, the Bolivian and ecuadorean indigenous movements, all played a prominent part in these struggles of resistance. They were struggles to defend rights under threat, but they adopted militant methods, ranging from the land occupations and marches of the Landless movement, through the rebellion in chiapas, to the popular uprisings of indigenous peoples in Bolivia and ecuador.

As neoliberalism rolled back the state, privatized public enterprises and eliminated rights stretching from formal employment to public education and healthcare, the social movements did what they could to resist.Opposition to the north American free Trade Agreement (nAfTA) was central for the launch of the Zapatista movement in 1994. The struggle against privatizations was essential to the mobilizations of the Landless in Brazil. resistance to the privatization of water in Bolivia was the starting point for a whole new stage of the left in that country. Something similar happened in ecuador, with the power of veto exercised by the social movements over the neoliberal governments and over the signing of a free trade treaty with the united states.

As the neoliberal model began to show its limitations and run out of steam, the carefully manufactured consensus began to break down. Splits emerged between traditional parties, various presidents had to depart without completing their terms in office, or even when they had barely begun them, due to mobilizations launched by the social movements. This was particularly the case in ecuador, Bolivia and Argentina. In this context, the question of alternatives came to be posed quite concretely for the forces resisting neoliberalism — of how to move from the defensive to the offensive, from struggles of resistance to the dispute for a new hegemony.

There was a shift from the phase of resistance to one where the capacity to veto a government’s actions was demonstrated, rendering that government inoperative, but this still did not go as far as developing alternatives. The best example was in ecuador, whose social movements were able to overthrow three presidents in a row and then block the signing of the free Trade Treaty with the united states. Lucio gutiérrez, the third of these presidents, had been elected with the support of these social movements, which took part in his government through the confederation of indigenous nationalities of ecuador (CONAIE) and Pachakutik, a political movement set up by conAie and other social movements.

Such mobilizations combined forms of struggle ranging from territorial uprisings to hunger strikes, road blockades, mass rallies and armed resistance to repression, among others. From this point on, differences began to surface among the anti-neoliberal forces. Some wanted to remain as social movements, justifying themselves with theoretical arguments about the ‘autonomy of social movements’.Others sought new forms of articulation with the political sphere, with the aim of being in a position to dispute the unfolding crisis of hegemony. The Bolivian, ecuadorean and Paraguayan cases clearly fit into this second category; the mexican and Argentinean into the first.

The argument about ‘the autonomy of social movements’ found its fullest theoretical expression in the work of john holloway, who sought to explain the strategy of the Zapatistas, summed up in the title of his book, Change the World without Taking Power[22]. This implied changes in the social sphere at a local level, as illustrated by the Zapatistas’ actions in chiapas. It is an approach that also emphasizes the importance of the grass roots and of building new social structures from the bottom up.

It is understandable that social movements should be critical of the traditional parties and the traditional way of doing politics, given the many frustrations they have experienced. The mistake is to give up on politics altogether, believing that an alternative, even one built from the bottom up, could simply avoid disputing the political sphere.

The presence of ngos (which by definition distance themselves from politics and with which many social movements work closely) strengthens this tendency. The emergence of the World social forum, whose ‘charter of Principles’ crystallized the separation between social struggle and political sphere, froze the strategy of the popular movements in the phase of resistance, from which it could not escape unless it managed to reconnect these two areas. As long as the social movements limited themselves to the social sphere, they remained on the defensive, unable to create the instruments needed to fight for political hegemony. The ‘other possible world’ could not be created merely out of grass-roots resistance, but only with new structures of power.

The argument in favour of the ‘autonomy of social movements’ suffers from two main ambiguities. Firstly, there is a blurring of the differences with neoliberal discourse, in so far as the social movements also choose the state, politics, parties and government as the targets of their attacks. These are positions that are also defended by neoliberals, leading to confusions over what exactly the ngos and some of the social movements stand for. Secondly, one of the key characteristics of neoliberalism is its wholesale confiscation of rights. To redress this and restore such rights, along with their respective guarantees, can only be done through government policies. Similarly, the regulation of capital movements and financial markets — another central concern of the Wsfs — can only be achieved by deliberate state action.

Eight years after the first Wse that ‘other possible world’ is beginning to be built in Latin America. In arenas like the Bolivarian Alternative for the Peoples of our America (ALBA), one of the initial proposals of the Wse for ‘fair trade’, is being put into practice, along with other post-neoliberal initiatives like operation miracle, the Latin American school of medicine (ELAM), literacy campaigns and the Bank of the south.

The political battles to develop post-neoliberal governments came after the anti-neoliberal forces had suffered several failures. The Zapatistas had retreated into isolation in the south of Mexico, unable to turn their struggle into a national political alternative; the piqueteros in Argentina had lost their initial momentum because they had no political expression for their struggles; while ecuador’s indigenous movements had delegated their political representation to a candidate outside their ranks[23], who then betrayed them even before he took office. Yet while all this was going on, other social and political forces were beginning to outline a new strategy for the left.

This new strategy has had its main developments in Bolivia, Venezuela and ecuador. The combination of popular uprisings and mass demonstrations gave rise to political-electoral alternatives, distinct from the earlier strategies of insurrectional struggle. However, these new alternatives are also different from the traditional reformist projects, because they propose to implement a programme of economic, social, political and cultural changes, not through the existing power structures but through a refounding of these states. To this end they  have united elements from both the reformist strategy and the insurrectionary one, seeking to combine different forms of struggle and to reconnect the social struggle with the political one.

Bolivia is the clearest example of this new strategy. There, the social movements first paralysed the neoliberal governments, then founded their own party, the movement to socialism (MAS), in order to establish indigenous hegemony in the political sphere by getting evo morales elected as president. The strategy of the Bolivian new left was based on a critique of the traditional left’s economism, which had defined the indigenous people as peasants — because they worked the land — and characterized them as small landowners. According to this scheme, they became subordinate allies of the working class, which was concentrated in the tin mines.

This economism robbed the Aymara, Quechua and guaraní of their profound and ancient identity as indigenous peoples. It was this critique, elaborated by Álvaro garcía Linera, the current vice-president of Bolivia, that made it possible to develop a new political subject capable of reconnecting the political sphere with the strength of the mass movement built up since the year 2000, and thereby of fighting for hegemony in the country as a whole. The path that led nationalist officers to power in Venezuela, and that which got rafael correa elected and led to the approval of a new constitution in ecuador, both followed this new strategy of the Latin American left.

These processes, which are regenerating the Latin American left, did not happen in countries where the left was traditionally strongest and where, as a result, the repression had been most severe — countries like Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. Nor were they led by traditional parties or movements of the left, like communists, socialists or old-style nationalists. And they are not happening in Brazil, where, until recently, there seemed to be some of the most important political and social organizations of the left, like the PT, the CUT, the MST or the WSF, as well as the experiences of participatory budgets.

Venezuela, after the guerrilla movements of the 1960s, saw the creation of a new party, the movement to socialism (MAS), which came out of a split in the communist Party following denunciations of the soviet invasion of czechoslovakia. At first its positions were close to those of the italian communist Party (PCI), with its theses on eurocommunism. However, it later followed the collapse of european social democracy into neoliberalism. As such, it took part in the government of rafael caldera in the 1990s, with its main leader, Teodoro Petkoff, serving as economy minister. Another movement, the causa r, also emerged, but subsequently lost popular support and failed to regenerate the Venezuelan left.

It was, however, a movement of nationalist — Bolivarian — soldiers that expressed the popular discontent at carlos Andrés Pérez’s 1989 package of neoliberal measures. Coming just after he had been elected on a platform for development, it was met by a massive mobilization against his government, called the Caracazo, whose repression resulted in several hundred deaths. Something similar happened in Argentina the same year; when carlos menem promised a ‘strong dose of production’ only to assume immediately a neoliberal programme — this time without much popular reaction. Also that year, fernando collor de mello won the presidential elections in Brazil on a neoliberal programme, making 1989 a key year in the implantation of the neoliberal programme in the region. It was of course the same year that the Berlin Wall fell, and the transition to a new period began across the world. Before the year was out, cuba entered its ‘special period’, and the following year the sandinista government fell in nicaragua.

The military uprising led by hugo chávez in 1992, along with the cry of the Zapatistas in 1994, came as the first expressions of resistance to neoliberalism — symptoms of the new kind of force to lead this resistance, in a new and sharper way, encompassing indigenous movements and nationalist military officers. As chávez himself tells it, the soldiers who rebelled called on the rest of the left to support their movement, but remained isolated and were defeated. Nonetheless his movement had an impact on the political scene, similar to that of the attack on the moncada barracks in cuba four decades earlier, or the sandinistas’ first offensive in 1987. They were all military defeats, but political victories.

After the military uprising, the Bolivarian movement was able to recycle itself for political-institutional struggle, with chávez standing for president of the republic in 1998. The failure of both the socialdemocratic governments of Democratic Action (AD), which ended in the impeachment and imprisonment of carlos Andrés Pérez, and the christian Democrat government of the other main party, coPei, with rafael caldera as president, signalled the collapse of the two-party system that had characterized Venezuelan politics for three decades.

As a result, in the presidential campaign of 1998, the two favourites were both ‘outsiders’: irene sáez, an ex-miss universe who had been mayor of chacao, a rich neighbourhood of caracas, and was backed and financed by Venezuelan bankers who had taken refuge in miami after the banking crisis and subsequent nationalization carried out by caldera; and hugo chávez, who overtook her in the final stage of the campaign and won the election. Chávez immediately called a constituent Assembly with the idea of refounding the Venezuelan state, thus inaugurating this new strategy of the left.

The anti-neoliberal content, of protest against the neoliberal package and government of carlos Andrés Pérez, was thus present in the origins of the Bolivarian movement. The anti-imperialist content would come with the oil policy of the new government, when it worked to put fresh life into the organization of Petroleum exporting countries (OPEC) and intensified trade with cuba, thereby clashing with both the local private media and the Bush administration. This polarization with Washington only accelerated the process.

In 2000, the second year of the chávez government, as if to celebrate the new century, indigenous revolts broke out in Bolivia and ecuador. The Bolivian indigenous movement led the Water War, which prevented the privatization of the water distribution system in the city of cochabamba and its sale to a north American company (the Bechtel corporation). This began an impressive cycle of struggles that would topple two presidents — sánchez de Lozada and his vicepresident — and lead, five years later, to the election of evo morales, the first indigenous person to be elected president of Bolivia.

The rebellions of the ecuadorean social movements — at first indigenous but later led by urban movements — led to the overthrow of three successive elected presidents who had maintained the neoliberal model. The third of these, Lucio gutiérrez, had been supported by the indigenous movements, but went back on his programme. This led to a division in the movement. Some sectors stayed in the government, while others broke with it, but were weakened by the defeat and undermined by the fact they had supported the president.

At the same time, other social movements confronted similar challenges: how to bring the strength developed in resistance to neoliberalism to bear at the political level of the dispute over alternatives. To reject the political sphere wholesale because of criticisms of particular political practices was only to ‘throw out the baby with the bathwater’ and marginalize oneself from the national political dispute.

This is what happened to the Zapatistas, who isolated themselves from the national political struggle. The piqueteros, for their part, after the biggest crisis of the Argentinean state, with the fall of three presidents in one week, adopted the slogan ‘que se vayan todos’[24] in the presidential elections. However, without the strength to overthrow ‘them all’, they left the field open for carlos menem to win the first round by promising to dollarize the economy — with all the consequences that would have had for Latin American integration. In the second round, Kirchner occupied the space vacated by the social movements and was elected president, avoiding the worst. Continuing to defend the ‘autonomy of social movements’ and failing to understand the need to build alternative hegemonic projects, the piqueteros isolated themselves and saw their enormous capacity for mobilization evaporate, just a few years after they had so spectacularly burst onto the scene.

For these currents, the ‘autonomy of social movements’ ended up being not a means of regrouping mass forces in order to organize new kinds of political action, nor a way to build alternative forms of power, but simply a refusal to face up to the question of power, a rejection of the battle for hegemony. It represented a retreat to pre-marxist positions, because the marxist critique of this kind of autonomism emphasizes the concept of power as a synthesis of economic, social and ideological relations, putting power back in command, as the fundamental strategic objective. To abandon the political sphere is to abandon the struggle for power. It serves to protect the supposed ‘purity’ of the social sphere, directly representing the ‘grass roots’ against the leadership, which is itself automatically regarded as an illegitimate form of political representation. It means falling back into corporative and fragmented perspectives, an inevitable outcome when the social is split from the political.

The most developed versions of this approach come in the works of Toni negri, on the one hand, and John holloway on the other. Both explicitly abandon the struggle for power and hegemony which are seen as corrupting everything with their forms of representing the popular will. For negri, the state is a conservative body in relation to globalization. Both theorize existing situations, dealt with in purely descriptive terms; they fail to develop anti-neoliberal strategies and become trapped in the inertia that results from insisting on the autonomy of the social sphere.

Both end up prisoners of a theoretical framework produced by neoliberalism itself — the opposition between public and private, state and civil society, which is a central tenet of neoliberalism. However, this polarization conceals the core axis of neoliberalism, the principle that drives our age. For behind the category of the private, or of civil society, are hidden very different, indeed counterposed phenomena. Within civil society there coexist trade unions, banks, social movements, drug traffickers and many others. It is not the private sphere that characterizes the neoliberal project. This does not set out to strip power and resources from the state in order to transfer them to individuals, in their privacy, but to throw them into the market. When a company is privatized, it is not the workers who acquire it, but the market which takes control, transferring it to whichever of the competing conglomerates has most financial power.

So what really drives the neoliberal scheme is ‘mercantilization’ or ‘commodification’, the turning of everything into commodities, with a price in the marketplace, where everything is bought and everything is sold. Neoliberalism is the most advanced expression of capitalism’s historical project, that ‘immense accumulation of commodities’ with which marx opens Capital[25]. It is a project that began with the end of servitude, making the labour force free — ‘naked’ in marx’s words — because separated from its realization, which requires the means of production, and turning the land into a commodity too. In this its most recent phase, following the interregnum of the welfare state, things that had been thought of as rights (education, health, etc.) become commodities and are traded in the marketplace. even goods like water become commodities. Thus the hegemonic sphere in neoliberalism is the sphere of the market.On the other hand, the opposite pole is not really the state — because this could be a socialist state, a welfare state, a fascist, liberal or neoliberal one. There is, precisely, a dispute over what kind of state. For neoliberalism, it should be a market-oriented, ‘financialized’ state, which gathers resources from the sphere of production and transfers a large part of them to finance capital through debt payments. But it could also be a state that has been refounded by governments that seek to break out of neoliberalism, developing new structures of power. The state is, therefore, a space in dispute.

The opposite pole to the market sphere is in fact the public sphere, that which revolves around rights and their universalization, and which demands a profound and extensive process of de-commodifying social relations. Democratizing means de-commodifying. It means removing from the marketplace and transferring to the public sphere, rights that are essential to citizenship. It means replacing the consumer with the citizen. In other words, overcoming neoliberalism requires a refounding of the state around the public sphere, incorporating aspects such as participatory budgets, which mean handing fundamental decisions over to organized citizens.

In the neoliberal era, therefore, the theoretical framework is shaped around this opposition between the public sphere and the market sphere, with the state as an area in dispute between the two.On the outcome of this dispute depends the nature of the state and the kind of society that exists.

All the more reason, therefore, for the presence of the state in the fight against neoliberalism, in order to guarantee rights, regulate capital movements and create the spaces for direct participation by citizens in politics and the structures of power. Post-neoliberalism requires a state that has been refounded around the public sphere, and not a polarization against the state in the name of some supposed civil society or private sphere.

To such positions can be added those of the ultra-left. These include intellectual positions that confine their analyses to the level of criticism and denunciations of betrayal, without ever proposing alternatives, and those of doctrinaire groups who merely repeat maximalist demands — abstract calls for the building of socialism — with no grasp of concrete reality, but intent on preserving theoretical principles from the realities that always contaminate them. They do not realize that no revolutionary process ever started from theoretical principles, but rather arrived at these on the basis of demands deeply rooted in the immediate reality — like the russian revolution’s demands for ‘peace, bread and land’. Dogmatic positions like those of the ultra-left have never triumphed anywhere.

In ecuador, the indigenous movements were slow to recover from their setbacks. In the meantime, from the beginning of 2006, rafael correa channelled the strength developed in the anti-neoliberal struggle and occupied the political space they had left free. By the time the indigenous movements launched their main leader, Luis macas, as candidate, the political landscape had already been defined. Correa won a resounding victory in the second round of the presidential election in november 2006, which allowed him to command the process of building a post-neoliberal order in ecuador; he called the constituent Assembly and got the new constitution approved in a referendum in september 2008, along with a series of other measures in line with his assertion that ‘the long night of neoliberalism was ending in ecuador’, which was experiencing ‘not a period of change, but a change of period`.

At about the same time, in 2006 in Paraguay, fernando Lugo emerged as the main anti-colorado leader, at the head of a popular movement to stop the re-election of the then president, nicanor Duarte. The social movements were slow to take the elections scheduled for April 2008 seriously, and to mobilize for them. When they did, they allowed their differences to prevail and ran separately. Thus weakened, they only got two candidates elected to the national parliament, when their joint vote should have enabled them to elect five times that number. As a result, Lugo didn’t win a majority in parliament and had to make alliances with other sectors in order to be able to govern, in addition to deepening his dependence on the Liberal Party.

If the social movements had understood better the shift from a phase of resistance to one of hegemonic dispute, and combined politically, they would have strengthened their own position and favoured a postneoliberal project in Paraguay.

The Bolivian, ecuadorean and Venezuelan experiences have thus converged on a similar strategy. The aim is to overcome neoliberalism and develop processes of regional integration that strengthen the resistance to imperial hegemony, so as to begin to develop post-neoliberal models. This is the third strategy in the history of the Latin American left.

The big advances made in Latin America in the first years of this century have come about precisely because of the democratization obtained through de-commodification. The economic exchanges between cuba and Venezuela are a model of what the Wsf called fair trade — a trade based on solidarity and complementary capacities, rather than market prices as preached by the World Trade organization. Venezuela supplies cuba with the oil it needs, at subsidized prices financed over the long term, while cuba gives Venezuela practitioners of the best community health care in the world, as well as sports technicians and literacy experts; the latter helped to make Venezuela the second country in the Americas, after cuba itself, to eradicate illiteracy, according to unesco.

These principles were later extended, via ALBA, to exchanges with countries that have far greater needs and much less ability to contribute to others — countries like nicaragua, Bolivia, honduras and Dominica, as well as Ecuador and Haiti[26]. It is a system of exchange in which each country gives what it has and receives what it needs, according to the capacities and necessities of each participant. It is the only example of this kind of commerce in the world and is quite different from the market-based criteria of the WTo. It was these principles that gave rise to the eLAm (Latin American school of medicine) with its original centre in cuba and another one in Venezuela. This institution, which is training the first generation of poor doctors in the continent, already has several thousand graduates.Once selected from among the social movements and other popular organizations, including some north American ones, these young people are trained and then return to their own countries to practice health care in the community.

Operation miracle was set up in similar fashion. Through this, more than a million Latin Americans have received free eye surgery to restore their sight, in cuban, Venezuelan and Bolivian hospitals. Campaigns against illiteracy have also spread; Venezuela has already completed the process and Bolivia, nicaragua and Paraguay have all set deadlines for eradicating illiteracy.

All these are examples of de-commodification, as a way of making rights universal. They can only come about through a break with the central axiom of the neoliberal model, that is, with the primacy of market criteria. They are therefore a step towards the development of a post-neoliberal model.

The development of such a post-neoliberal model, however, demands a prolonged battle for hegemony between the new social-political bloc and the old structures of power. Álvaro García Linera sees this progressing through five different stages.

The crisis of the state is revealed when there emerges ‘a politically dissident social bloc whose ability to mobilize and expand territorially has become permanent`.

Next, if this dissident bloc manages to consolidate itself as a national, political project that cannot be co-opted by the dominant system, there begins what garcía Linera calls a catastrophic stand-off — which means that this oppositional force shows itself able to develop ‘a proposal for power (including programme, leadership and organization, all aimed at assuming state power), and also able to split society’s collective imagination between two, different and opposing, political-state structures’.

Then comes the formation of a new, governmental, political bloc ‘dedicated to using government office to convert opposition demands into acts of state’.

There follows the use of the state to build an ‘economic-political-cultural power [...] bloc combining the ideas of mobilized society with material resources provided by or via the state’.

Finally, there is the ‘turning point or historical-political fact after which the crisis of the state’ is resolved ‘through a series of confrontations which either consolidate the new or reconstitute the old’ — and this involves not only the political system but also the dominant bloc in power and the symbolic order of state power[27].

García Linera gives as an example the state crisis in Bolivia that emerged in 2000 with the Water War and which simultaneously reversed the state policy of privatizing public resources and permitted ‘the creation of the territorial nuclei of a new, national-popular bloc’. The catastrophic stand-off developed in 2003, when the social movements took the lead in developing a programme of structural changes and thereby embodied ‘a mobilized will to assume state power’. When evo morales became president, the old governmental elites were displaced, beginning the development of a ‘new economic power bloc and a new redistribution of resources’ which continues to the present. The turning point therefore came with the approval of a new constitutional text by the constituent Assembly, and really took form when this was approved by referendum in August 2008 — although it remains impossible ‘to establish with precision the precise moment when this will reach completion’[28].

This rich classification of the different stages of the battle for hegemony makes it possible to see how the process unfolds and the balance of forces shifts, how the capacity to take the initiative and develop one’s own strength changes, and by what means power shifts between the two main blocs in contention.

In the course of this ‘state transition’, there was a ‘modification of the social classes and their ethniccultural identities; these classes assumed, first, control of the government and then, gradually, the modification of political power, control over the economic surplus and over the structure of the state’. This new, emerging, power bloc is based economically on urban and agrarian petty-commodity production, especially that of indigenous peasants and small urban producers, as well as a new urban and indigenous intelligentsia, wellknown cultural figures, precariously employed workers and a section of the traditional business class, part of it linked to the domestic market. In addition this bloc incorporates a new state bureaucracy, originating in the public universities, which also includes members of trade union networks.

This whole process of state transition, as characterized by garcía Linera, ‘appears as a flux of movements, flexible and interdependent, going backwards and forwards’[29], which affect the structures of power and the balance of both political and symbolic forces.

In this third strategy of the Latin American left, there is no subordinate alliance with bourgeois sectors — as there was in the reformist one — nor are the dominant classes annihilated — as in the insurrectionary strategy. rather, there is a prolonged battle for hegemony, or war of position, in the gramscian sense. The way the constituent Assembly was called in Bolivia reflected this dispute. The government could have done it through the direct, proportional representation of the indigenous peoples, for this is what the mAs proposed as a fair way of electing the representatives of the majority of the nation. Such a criterion, however, would have given the government a massive political-electoral victory, resulting in a disconnection between the new political structure and the real relation of economic forces; the elites in the opposition states would certainly have boycotted the new Assembly. This would have created a very difficult situation for the government. Neoliberal policies had greatly weakened the Bolivian state, and a boycott by the wealthiest sectors would have dealt a grave blow to the new administration.

In Venezuela, by contrast, after the government regained control of the state oil company, PDVsA, the state became very strong and big private business, relatively weak. When the latter boycotted the parliamentary elections in 2004, they undermined themselves and reinforced the government. In Bolivia, the state was much weaker. The call for the constituent Assembly came when the process of renationalizing the country’s gas resources was just beginning, and state structures were still badly damaged by neoliberal policies.

The government revised its initial method, mainly because it did not have the means to implement a new constitution without the participation of any of the forces representing big private capital. The election of the Assembly confirmed a majority for the mAs, but without the two-thirds majority needed to approve the most hotly contested articles. The opposition took part but tried to obstruct the work of the constituent Assembly, in an effort to recover from their defeat in the presidential election.

The dispute continued in the national and state referenda on autonomy. Here the opposition sought to interpret decentralization in an institutional sense, concentrating solely on the state governments. In a country where state governors had been nominated up until the elections in December 2005, the liberals wanted to confine the democratic debate to the decentralization of regional state administrations; for its part, the government, reflecting the historic demand of the indigenous peoples, proposed a form of decentralization centred on these peoples. With its almost complete monopoly of the private media, the opposition succeeded in imposing its terms and managed, in the states it led, to win support for the referendums. What they really wanted, with their demands for autonomy, was to prevent the agrarian reform already begun by the government from affecting the material basis of

Their power, namely their monopoly over the land. They also wanted to get their hands on a significant part of the income obtained from the tax on gas. This had gone up from 18% under previous governments to 82% under President morales, making it a vital resource for the recomposition of the Bolivian state and the implementation of the government’s important social policies.

The government again reworked its original proposal, to incorporate aspects of autonomy for regional states. In the end the national referendum strengthened the government. However, the opposition knows that the new constitution — even after all its compromises — includes basic rights that limit its own power and open the way to multi-ethnic initiatives and institutions that were until recently non-existent.

Other governments were also elected on the strength of opposition to neoliberalism, like those of Lula, néstor Kirchner, Tabaré Vazquez, Daniel ortega and fernando Lugo. None of these, however, took clear steps to break with the model they had inherited, although they did make adjustments and produce significant differences. This was especially true in the first three cases, particularly Brazil, and less so in Paraguay, where fernando Lugo had great difficulty introducing the changes he wanted because of his lack of a majority in parliament. This aspect makes these countries different from the group mentioned earlier — which includes Venezuela, ecuador and Bolivia — where the governments have broken with the neoliberal model — apart from cuba, which of course never experienced neoliberalism.

On the other hand, these governments do prioritize regional integration — although nicaragua is a special case — above the free trade treaties proposed by the united states. Thus they take part in mercosur, the union of south American nations (unAsur), the south American Defence council, the Bank of the south, the g20, the continental gas pipeline, and other similar initiatives. In this way, alongside the other governments mentioned above, they contribute not only to strengthening the international space occupied by the south, but also to the development of a multi-polar world. These governments are allies for those that have gone further in breaking with the model and developing more advanced forms of integration, such as ALBA or Petrocaribe.

However, they are also contradictory governments, split between economic policies inherited from past neoliberal governments and foreign policies of regional integration. They are certainly different from their predecessors, while conserving many of the latter’s key characteristics, like the primary fiscal surplus and independent central Banks, etcetera.

What puts them in the progressive camp is their form of international insertion, which prioritizes integration — unlike the governments of Mexico, Peru, Chile, costa rica and others, which have signed free trade agreements with the united states and have thereby mortgaged their future and forfeited any ability to regulate their economies. The latter have joined those vast, free trade-oriented zones where capital moves unimpeded, privatizations abound and the market rules unchecked.

The fundamental dividing line in Latin America, therefore, is not between a good left and a bad left, as some on the right suggest — Jorge castañeda, for example, whose aim is to divide the left, co-opting the moderate sectors and isolating the more radical ones[30]. This is a position that favours the right.

The fundamental dividing line is between those countries that have signed free trade treaties with the united states, and those that prioritize processes of regional integration. This is the decisive criterion for judging these governments. Among these, of course, as we have said, there are some that advance firmly on the path of a break with neoliberalism and towards the development of a model that we can describe as post-neoliberal; others simply apply the model more loosely, developing more social programmes and taking part in regional integration projects. Taken together, these countries are creating various kinds of mutual interdependence for the future, while those that signed free trade treaties are completely tied to the united states and its policies.

Any sharpening of the differences between, for example, the governments of Venezuela and Brazil — which diverge in important respects — would favour the right, isolate the Venezuelan government and possibly push the Brazilian government closer to the united states and its allies in the region. The alliance between moderate governments and more radical ones in the process of integration strengthens both, and the progressive camp as a whole.

At the same time, the new form taken by the battle for hegemony, in an unfavourable international context, means that even in those countries where the governments are advancing in a post-neoliberal direction, the character of the process is not directly anti-capitalist. We call them post-neoliberal in so far as they are directly counterposed to the processes of commodification dictated by neoliberalism; but they continue to exist alongside big concentrations of private capital — including international and finance capital — while they carry on the battle for a new hegemony, on the domestic market, in parliament, and through a hard-fought struggle to win hearts and minds.

The further they are able to take the aspects of de-commodification, of socialization within the nationalized industries, of building popular power, of building a consensus in favour of socialization, of restoring the importance of labour and fighting against alienation, the greater will be their chances of moving beyond post-neoliberalism towards anti-capitalism and socialism.

To declare that only socialism can put an end to neoliberalism is to fail to grasp the extent of the historic retreat implied by the shift from the previous period of history to the present one. It was a retreat not only for socialism as a general objective, but also for the distinct forms of anti-capitalist consciousness, for the centrality of the world of labour and for the different kinds of popular organization. What is needed is not just an act of will, but the rebuilding, in new ways, of the objective and subjective conditions for anti-capitalist struggle. And one of these new ways, the most important in the current period, is the anti-neoliberal struggle and the building of post-neoliberal alternatives.

An affirmation like this fails to take account of the balance of forces that really exists in the region and in the world, which has to be our starting point. The left, and especially the ultra-left, has great difficulty accepting the setbacks suffered. It prefers to reiterate general theoretical theses, principles and dogmas, as if these operated directly in history as they do in books, without the concrete conditions of class confrontation getting in the way. It has difficulty accepting what Lenin and gramsci understood so clearly, namely, that ‘the truth is concrete’. It is therefore incapable of comprehending the dynamics of new, concrete experiences like those in Venezuela, Bolivia and cuba, and as a result misses the most important thread of what is going on in the region.

No revolutionary process ever developed as a result of attempts to impose general, abstract theses on a complex and always heterodox reality. In russia, as noted earlier, the goal was to obtain ‘peace, bread and land’; in china, to expel the invaders and carry out an agrarian revolution: in cuba, to oust Batista; in Vietnam, to expel the invaders and win national independence; in nicaragua, to overthrow the somoza dictatorship.

These objectives cleared the way for achieving other, more profound ones — anti-capitalist in some cases, anti-imperialist in others — because the revolutionary leaderships proved able to develop this dynamic out of those initial, concrete objectives. In russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, that meant going beyond the winning of peace by breaking international alliances with the imperialist powers; turning the demand for bread into the nationalization and socialization of large-scale industries; or developing the need for land into the agrarian revolution. Something similar happened in other revolutionary processes, through the transitional dynamic of concrete demands that were deeply felt by broad layers of the people, and which also served to establish alliances, build the new hegemonic social bloc and isolate the dominant regime.

Any strategic proposal has to the anchored, first and foremost, in concrete reality, in the specific dynamic of the great confrontations of the time. It has to take account of the fact that all processes of transformation involve aspects that are new and heterodox, which need to be understood, rather than reduced to theoretical axioms which never seem to have been verified in any specific situation. Fidel castro said that all revolutionary processes should be radical, in the marxian sense: that they should go to the root of things. But they should never be extremist, in the sense of taking one aspect of reality and giving it extreme importance, without understanding the significance of each historical process as a whole.

The term post-neoliberal is descriptive. It refers to new processes, that arise in response to the deep and repressive changes effected by neoliberalism, but have not yet acquired a permanent form. This is what we see in Venezuela, Bolivia and ecuador. They do not constitute a specific, historical phase, distinct from capitalism and socialism, but rather a rearrangement of the power relations between social classes, one that encourages the emergence of a new social bloc at the head of particular, sui generis historical processes, in circumstances that are much more favourable to the popular forces. Their destiny will be decided by the concrete experience of building post-neoliberal states.

The future of latin america phases of the anti-neoliberal struggle

The struggle against neoliberalism already has a history. It has been through several phases — from resistance to development of alternatives — and now faces a new situation, that of a counteroffensive from the right, and the respective responses from the left.

It was in 1994, the same year as the north American free Trade Agreement (nAfTA) came into effect, that the Zapatistas began resistance to the new hegemony. In 1997, ignacio ramonet, in an editorial in Le Monde Diplomatique, called for struggle against the ‘single orthodoxy’ and the Washington consensus. The World social forum in 2001 invited people to build ‘another possible world’. The demonstrations against the World Trade organization (WTo), which had begun in seattle in 1999, showed the extent of the disconnection between the new hegemonic model and the popular potential for struggles against it. This was a phase of resistance to the negative turn, of gigantic historical proportions, which resulted from the move from a bipolar to a unipolar world, and from the regulatory model to the neoliberal one.

At government level, the consolidation of the neoliberal model came with the shift from the initial right-wing leadership (Pinochet, reagan and Thatcher) to a second generation, called by some the ‘third way’ (clinton, Blair, fernando henrique cardoso), thus occupying the entire political spectrum. The dominance of this force first began to be checked with the election of hugo chávez as president of Venezuela in 1998, a process which from then on was concentrated in Latin America. When the model principal protagonist suffered successive electoral defeats (cardoso, menem, fujimori, carlos Andrés Pérez and the Pri), its failure became evident.

Nonetheless, the popular reaction against neoliberalism reflected in the electoral victories that followed that of chavez — Lula (2002), néstor Kirchner (2003) and Tabaré Vazquez (2004) — did not unfold in quite the way expected. Although these governments won election against hard-line, neoliberal predecessors, they did not move to break with the neoliberal model as such.On the contrary, they maintained it, applying it with varying degrees of flexibility, mainly depending on the relative weight they gave to social policies.

Brought together by their shared support for regional integration — first and foremost through mercosur — and the defeat of the fTAA, to which they actively contributed, these new governments showed significant differences from their predecessors. They helped create an unprecedented situation in the region, with the simultaneous existence of an assortment of different kinds of government, all opposed to the free trade policies preached by the united states, as well as its policy of ‘unending war’ — which Colombia was the only country in the region to support.

The victories of evo morales (2005) and rafael correa (2006), along with the creation of ALBA, the Bank of the south, the continental gas pipeline and the entrance of Venezuela and Bolivia into mercosur, broadened and strengthened an axis of governments that not only supported regional integration but were also beginning to develop post-neoliberal models. Fernando Lugo’s election in Paraguay (2008) and mauricio funes’s in el salvador (2009) further extended the camp of progressive governments in the continent.

Nonetheless, from 2007, after being rather taken by surprise by the spread of progressive governments across the region, the right recovered its ability to take the initiative. The progressive governments had managed to take electoral advantage of the social discontent at neoliberal policies — thus exploiting the weakest link in the neoliberal chain.

In order to retake the initiative, the right — both the old, oligarchic right and the social-democratic currents that adhered to neoliberalism — resorted to the two areas where its hegemony and its strength remained intact: the economy and the media, both of which it controlled. Its counteroffensive took slightly different forms in different countries, but the elements were the same. Criticism was levelled at the state and its regulatory functions, at tax policies and at regional and south-south integration initiatives. Attention was directed to issues like corruption (always in relation to government and the state), supply shortages, the autonomy of regional governments against state centralization, and supposed ‘threats’ to ‘press freedom’ (always identified with the private media).

In Brazil, there were campaigns of denunciation against the Lula government. In Venezuela, after the attempted coup in 2002, the right began to campaign in defence of the private monopolies in the media, and to denounce corruption and food shortages. In Bolivia, the attacks were directed at land reform, the new constitution and the introduction of new taxes on gas exports to finance social policies carried out by the government. In Argentina, the target was price regulation and supply problems, while in ecuador it was the new constitution and new forms of state regulation. In addition to these, the right could count on the two main right-wing governments in the region — Mexico and Colombia.

The right also went back on the offensive in the economic domain, having been on the defensive during the years of international economic growth, when the income from foreign trade could easily be used to finance social policies. Now it began again to warn of the danger of rising inflation and the need for fresh adjustments, with higher interest rates, giving priority to monetary stability at the expense of economic growth. The Economist magazine expressed the hope that, with the change in the international situation, the right might return to the fore, drawing on two issues dear to conservative thinking: inflation and law and order. The Latin American examples of this are significant.

This new phase, from 2008, was marked by renewed confrontation between progressive governments and the right-wing opposition, both politically and ideologically. The attempts to discredit the role of the state became the central axis of debate between right and left. Today in Latin America there are a number of countries that follow the prescriptions of the ‘minimum state’. Mexico began a process of privatizing the state oil company, Pemex, putting itself at the forefront of neoliberalism’s fresh push for privatization. Peru (which joined the ranks later), Chile and costa rica remain the success stories of this current — although they have had to repair gaping holes in their private pension systems, once models for the region.

On the other hand, there are a number of countries that seek to rebuild their states on post-neoliberal or post-liberal foundations. That means they seek new forms of political representation, that go beyond liberal formalisms, as in the cases of Venezuela, Bolivia and ecuador — the latter two seeking to found pluri-national, multi-ethnic, multicultural states.

Between these two groups, several countries — like Brazil, Argentina, Uruguayand Paraguay — have implemented certain levels of state regulation, without going back to the sort of state that existed before neoliberalism. They have slowed down the earlier processes of privatization, encouraged the growth of formal employment, and regenerated public administration and services.

Evo morales’s victory in the August 2008 referendum, by an ample margin, showed that mass support was still there. So did the levels of popular backing for rafael correa and Lula. The elections of fernando Lugo in Paraguay, mauricio funes in el salvador and then Dilma rousseff to succeed Lula in Brazil showed that the consolidation and expansion of progressive governments in Latin America had not come to an end, in spite of the offensives of the right. Dilma rousseff’s victory in Brazil was the result of enormous popular support for the Lula government, in which she had played the role of central coordinator; her success means that by the end of her mandate, the PT will have ruled Brazil for twelve years.The future of neoliberalism in the continent is not yet decided.

The model remains hegemonic. Mexico, Peru, Colombia and Chile continue to practise it in orthodox form, while it survives in various different forms in countries like Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. In the end its destiny will depend on the capacity of the first two of these to move beyond it. Brazil in particular, because of the strength of its economy, rising prestige and the possibility that its current government will continue and deepen the course set by its predecessor, could play a key role in the regional balance of forces between neoliberal hegemony and the projects that promise an alternative.

The consolidation and expansion of ALBA is another strategic element for the future of the continent, and even for the future of a post-neoliberal order on a world scale. At first this initiative advanced at the points of least resistance, where neoliberalism had never existed — like cuba — or where it had failed before it could really take hold, like Venezuela, Bolivia and ecuador, whose neoliberal governments were toppled by popular movements.Other countries joined, attracted by the more favourable terms of trade, which began to demonstrate the superiority of principles like solidarity and complementarity over those of free trade. Petrocaribe further reinforces this argument, and makes it possible to imagine a future favourable to the expansion of ALBA.

One limit to such expansion results from the high degree of internationalization of the region’s economies, especially the most developed among them, chiefly Mexico, Brazil and Argentina. In the case of the latter two, this could also limit the extension of mercosur. While the regional integration projects partly overlap with the interests of big international companies and internationalized, local companies, these might prefer free trade treaties, which allow them to increase their integration with the international marker and with the central capitalist powers. However, when these slow down in comparison with intra-regional trade and with the big economies of the south, especially china and india, that encourages these big companies to take a closer interest in some aspects of the integration process, especially those that give them access to bigger markets and promise fresh investments.

Some initiatives, like the Bank of the south, the continental gas pipeline, unAsur, the south American Defence council and even mercosur, are areas of dispute over the future shape of south American integration, which still does not have any clear statement of where it is going or how it should proceed.

For a post-neoliberal Latin America

How far can this new push for change in Latin America develop and deepen its anti-neoliberal models in a world still dominated by free trade, the WTo, the World Bank and by mainly conservative powers, of which europe is one example and the united states another?

Soviet socialism was the first big driving force for change in the last century, but it failed because it never managed to break out of its initial isolation. When it did, this was not in the direction of developed europe, of the centre of capitalism, of the countries where the forces of production were most highly developed, but in the opposite direction, towards backward Asia and Latin America, and one of the less developed countries of this continent, cuba. What is the potential of the anti-neoliberal struggle in Latin America? is it limited to antineoliberal reactions within a capitalist framework, or does it have the potential for much deeper change?

Although recent, the anti-neoliberal struggle already has a history and has gone through several stages. It began with the Caracazo, the popular resistance against President carlos Andres Pérez’s neoliberal package in 1989, continued with the Zapatista rebellion in 1994 and developed further with the mobilizations of landless peasants in Brazil, with the indigenous struggles in ecuador, Bolivia and Peru, and with the struggles of the unemployed or piqueteros and the factory occupations in Argentina.

The election of hugo chávez in 1998, combined with the crises in Brazil (1999) and Argentina (2001-2002), functioned as a moment of transition to a second phase. This resulted from a crisis of hegemony and involved a political battle for government and for the implementation of alternative policies. If the social movements played a leading role in the first phase, the shift to the second phase presented the antineoliberal forces with a challenge: how to win back the political arena through either traditional or novel ways of combining the social and the political spheres.

The phase that followed was marked by a striking series of electoral victories based on popular rejection of neoliberalism. These involved the election or re-election of governments that, in one way or another, came to form a bloc of progressive forces in Latin America and open up an alternative to the governments that had occupied virtually the entire political landscape of the continent during the previous decade.

These forces advanced along neoliberalism’s lines of least resistance — especially in areas of social policy, devastated by neoliberalism, and of regional integration, given the failure of free trade policies in the region. They also made some progress in restoring the capacity of the state — which had been rolled back by neoliberalism — to implement regulations and guarantee and extend social rights.

This was the period that brought the most sweeping progressive changes ever experienced on the Latin American political and ideological scene — only comparable to the cycle of independence wars, two centuries earlier. Neoliberalism was caught unprepared to face challenges in the political arena, while the united states was bogged down in its policy of ‘unending war’. As a result, in the few years between 1998 and 2008, governments of this kind came to office in eight Latin American countries, with important defeats in just four (Mexico, Peru, Colombia and costa rica).

After this period of extension of these new kinds of government, there began to be signs of a reaction, of a counteroffensive by the right. The two phases overlap in time. While fernando Lugo’s election was putting an end to more than six decades of colorado rule in Paraguay, and mauricio funes was leading the fmLn to victory in the march 2009 presidential elections in el salvador, the right-wing offensives continued to gather steam, taking advantage of contradictions besetting many of these governments.

This reaction began with the attacks by the Venezuelan right — and the attempted coup of April 2002 — soon followed by the denunciations of corruption against Lula in 2005. Both cases heralded the new line-up of the right bloc, with ideological and political leadership in the hands of the big, private media, and the parties of the right acting as their agents. The Bolivian right took advantage of the constituent Assembly to regroup, with its base in the economically dynamic eastern part of the country.

The right regained the initiative against Lula with denunciations of corruption — supported by its tight monopoly of the private media and by the bloc of right-wing parties — which looked like they might lead to impeachment. However, the support obtained through his social policies allowed the president to survive the crisis and use those same social policies to consolidate his position. He won re-election and by the end of his second term enjoyed popularity ratings of 87%, with a rejection rate of just 4%.

Hugo Chávez faced a right-wing opposition that had swung between boycott and electoral participation. When it put its trust in the latter, institutional path, it was able to reunite and strengthen itself, to the point of defeating the government in the referendum on constitutional reform in December 2007.

When cristina fernández succeeded her husband, néstor Kirchner, as president of Argentina, she suffered strong opposition attacks for her proposal to raise levies on agricultural exports. The death of nestor Kirchner rather than lessening the possibilities for cristina Kirchner’s continuation in office, strengthened her candidacy for a second term.

After managing to win approval for his proposal for a new constitution, evo morales suffered the most violent opposition attacks, which for a time undermined his support. Yet by 2009 he was again able to win large majorities, in the constitutional referendum in January and the presidential re-election in December.

Up until now, the opposition blocs have displayed a clearly restorationist response to the advances secured, in greater or lesser degree, by the progressive governments. Their positions advocate a return to the ‘minimum’ state, lower taxes, renewed privatizations, reduced public spending, more open markets and more precarious conditions of employment. It is a packet of measures that does not add up to a programme, but merely serves to rally the discontented and those displaced from power.

What will happen to Latin America in the future? how far are the changes irreversible? What kind of regression could the region suffer, if the current political processes are not consolidated?

One possibility is the continuation of the present governments and, as a result, the consolidation of the processes of integration, leading to a single regional currency, coordinated central Banks and the development of the Latin American Parliament[31], along with advances in each country’s economic model and increased possibilities of a rupture leading to the development of alternative models. Internationally, Latin America would make an important contribution to the development of a multipolar world, based on stronger regional integration.

It has to be remembered that anti-neoliberal strategies — the only ones possible, given the current national and international balance of forces — entail a prolonged battle for hegemony. That means they involve neither a subordinate alliance with leading fractions of the bourgeoisie — as the traditional reformist strategy did — nor the annihilation of the adversary, as the armed struggle strategy did. This encourages the recomposition of anti-neoliberal and anti-capitalist social subjects, and at a more advanced stage, once the state has been refounded, it crystallizes a new balance of forces and of power between the major social blocs.

Some regional integration projects present serious problems and could be abandoned, depending on how far the current governments advance. This is the case with the continental gas pipeline, the Bank of the south and the south American Defence council, among others. There is popular support on a level never before experienced by the left in the region, above all thanks to the social policies carried out by the progressive governments, which sets them apart from the neoliberal governments.

It is this support which confronts the economic and media power of the right, and means that elections across the region occur in very similar circumstances. The candidates may be more or less radical, but the scenario is always the same.On one side, there is a neoliberal bloc supported by the powerful, private monopoly of the media; on the other, the social policies of the governments. The media monopoly ‘manufactures’ public opinion — in the sense that chomsky gives the term in Manufacturing Consent[32] — and defines day after day the themes that are most important for the country, passing off its interpretation as if it were the general interest; yet when the electors have their say, it is defeated. As one Brazilian journalist put it after he and the paper he worked for had been defeated in the 2006 presidential elections: ‘The people have defeated public opinion’.

Given their importance, what happens to the processes in Venezuela, Bolivia and ecuador is vital to the political and ideological future of the region. Nonetheless, because of their size, in the last analysis this depends on what will happen to the current governments in Brazil and Argentina, and on the fate of Mexico. either way, it is clear that the future shape of Latin America in the twenty-first century depends on what happens to the progressive governments that currently exist in the region.

Yet what bearing could Latin America have on the situation of neoliberalism and capitalism in the world? how far does the region’s reduced economic weight — a result of neoliberal policies — take importance away from everything else that is going on here, in terms of its impact on the overall destiny of the world in the decades to come?

We could say, to summarize the essential aspects, that the world today is dominated by three main axes, three great monopolies of power: the power of arms, the power of money and the power of the word. Latin America may contribute, in some respects, towards overcoming these power structures, even if, by itself, it does not have sufficient weight to alter them substantially. Nonetheless, through alliances with india, china, south Africa, russia or iran, and with the intensification of south-south exchange, the continent may acquire a new weight through a new kind of presence on the world stage — a world stage that will itself have changed. To a certain extent this is already the case, as has been shown by the region’s relative ability to withstand the latest economic crisis. It has obviously been affected, but in a much milder way than in earlier crises.

The struggle against the power of arms means releasing the world from us hegemony. Latin America’s contribution here has been to oppose the empire’s policies of ‘unending war’. This was shown very clearly when the united states failed to persuade even its close allies in the region, Chile and Mexico, to back its plans for an invasion of iraq in the un security council. Colombia, the epicentre of ‘unending war’ in Latin America, finds itself isolated — as was shown after its aggression against ecuador, when it won the support only of Washington and was condemned by the other countries, as well as by the oAs (organization of American states). Latin America is the only region of the world to carry out processes of integration that are relatively autonomous from the us and to develop alternatives to the free trade treaties proposed by Washington and the WTo. It also has some of the few governments in the world which frontally oppose and challenge north American imperial hegemony: cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and ecuador.

However, this is not enough to develop a political and military counterweight to the united states. At most, it is an example of resistance, building an integrated area in a region with little weight in the new world economic order. The creation of unAsur, a project of integration for the whole of south America, and of a south American Defence council, both without the participation of the united states, as well as the first sessions of the mercosur Parliament, point towards broader forms of integration with fresh potential.

The importance of the region as a whole comes from its energy resources (especially oil, but also gas) and its agribusiness (with soya exports leading the way, but with production for the domestic market also growing constantly), alongside these integration processes that boost its political influence in international negotiations. But it is the processes of rupture with the neoliberal model and the alternative forms of trade, like ALBA, that make the region a reference point for debates about alternatives to neoliberalism, such as those developed in the World social forum and in its regional and thematic forums. Leaders with different kinds of influence in different milieus, like hugo chávez and Lula, along with the Bolivian and ecuadorean processes, indicate the political dimension of Latin America’s growing importance in the world.

All the same, there are weaknesses in Latin America’s post-neoliberal processes, and one of these weaknesses is their relative isolation in the world. In the absence of strategic allies, the continent is obliged to link up with countries that have some kind of conflict with the united states, like russia, iran, china, and Belarus. What is more, the countries that have taken concrete steps to break with the neoliberal model are not the relatively most developed ones in Latin America, although they can count on Venezuela’s oil as an important economic factor in their favour.

Ideologically, Latin America can throw up proposals for debate, like the pluri-national and multi-ethnic state, socialism of the twentyfirst century and integration through solidarity, exemplified by ALBA. However, the means to disseminate such ideas in a way that is adequate to the needs of the political moment simply do not exist, even within each of these countries. They have difficulty competing with the single orthodoxy and its basic propositions, which are repeated over and over again by the monopoly media.

Latin American critical thought, which has a long tradition of impressive interpretations and theoretical and political proposals, now faces new challenges, with old themes reappearing in new forms: the new nationalism and processes of regional integration; indigenous peoples and the new model of accumulation; processes of socialization and de-commodification the new forms to be assumed by the state and the nature and functions of the public sphere; the political future of the continent.

In some countries, the most significant of which is Bolivia, there is a rich and renewed process of theoretical reflection and elaboration on the processes that are unfolding. In others, the most extreme case being Venezuela, there is an enormous gulf between the academic intelligentsia and the process lived by the country. In others still, like Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, in spite of their strong academic systems and the high quality of their intellectual production, a large part of this work has no connection with the main political and social struggles these countries are experiencing. The theoretical potential that exists in the region could make an important contribution to the development of post-neoliberal alternatives, if only it can find new ways of engaging with these contemporary historical experiences.

At the beginning of this new century, Latin America is living through a crisis of hegemony of enormous proportions. The old is struggling to survive, while the new has difficulty in replacing it. The objective conditions for the end of neoliberalism already exist. Yet countries like Brazil, Argentina and Uruguayhave retained the model, applying it more loosely, continuing the financial policies but not the economic ones. In the process, they have managed to return their economies to cycles of growth, something the preceding governments had been unable to do, for all their orthodox application of the model. Mexico, which stills follows the orthodox path, has not managed to advance economically, and even Chile — a model of how to apply the neoliberal approach — has seen the cycle of concertación governments come to an end.

The difficulties encountered in developing social and political subjects able to break with neoliberalism are largely the result of the real obstacles faced by any attempt to leave neoliberalism behind. When steps were taken to develop new kinds of political and ideological leadership for the anti-neoliberal struggle, real progress was made in this direction. The outcome of the crisis of hegemony will push the future of the continent in the direction that the social, political and ideological struggles decide.

Text extracted from: sader, emir 2011 The New Mole: Paths of the Latin American Left (London/new York: Verso).Traslated by iain Bruce.↵

Philosopher at university of são Paulo, Brazil. PhD in sociology at sorbonne university, france. Director of the Public Policies Lab at national university of rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Current executive secretary of the Latin American council of social sciences (cLAcso).↵

cePAL was set up in 1948 as the body of the united nations responsible for encouraging economic and social development in the region, with its headquarters in santiago, Chile. under its first executive secretary, the Argentinean economist raúl Prebisch, from 1950 to 1963, it became an influential promoter of structuralist economic analyses and developmentalist policies (Translator’s note).↵

Luis carlos Prestes was a junior officer in the Brazilian military who led a revolt and ‘long march’ in the 1920s, spent time in the soviet union, became a leader of the Brazilian communist Party and led a failed uprising by the national Liberation Alliance (ALn) in 1935 (Translator’s note).↵

The first three were early leaders and theoreticians of the communist movement in Peru, cuba and Chile respectively. Caio Prado Jr. was a Brazilian communist intellectual active in the 1930s and ‘40s (Translator ́s note).↵

Petras, James 2001 ‘notes toward an understanding of revolutionary politics today’ in Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal, n° 19, may-August. Available at: <http://links.org.au/node/105>.↵

Anderson, Perry 2000 ‘renewals’ in New Left Review, n° 1, January-february.↵

Anderson (2000: 7).↵

Anderson (2000: 9-10).↵

8 Anderson (2000: 13).↵

Anderson (2000: 16-17).↵

Anderson, Perry & camiller, Patrick 1994 ‘introduction’ to Mapping the West European Left (London/new York: Verso).↵

11 This remark is an inversion of milton friedman ́s claim in a 1965 letter to Time magazine, later attributed to richard nixon, that ‘We are all Keynesians now’. Emir Sader ￼↵

Petras (2001).↵

Hobsbawm, eric 1994 Age of extremes (London: michael Joseph) esp. Chapter 9.↵

Petras (2001). Section 1.↵

Petras (2001).↵

Petras (2001).↵

Petras (2001), section 3.↵

The 26 July movement was the revolutionary organization planned and led by fidel castro that in 1959 overthrew the government of fulgencio Batista in cuba. It took its name from the date of castro’s failed attack on the moncada Barracks in santiago in 1953 (Translator ́s note).↵

Debray, régis 1967 Revolution in the Revolution (new York: octagon Books).↵

Holloway, John 2002 Change the World without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today (London: Pluto Press).↵

Lucio gutiérrez, a former army officer, was elected president in 2002 in alliance with the mainly indigenous party, Pachakutik.↵

The slogan ‘out with the lot of them` emerged during the mass mobilizations that swept Argentina from December 2001 through much of the following year (Translator's note).↵

This phrase in the first sentence of Capital, Volume 1, is itself a quote from marx’s own earlier work, marx, Karl 1859 ‘Zur Kritik der Politischen oekonomie’ (Berlin: franz Duncker Verlag) p. 3.↵

ALBA was set up by Venezuela and cuba in December 2004. Bolivia joined in 2006, nicaragua in 2007, honduras and Dominica in 2008. ecuador, st Vincent & the grenadines and Antigua formally joined in 2009, after participating in ALBA as observers for some time. grenada, haiti, Paraguay, Uruguayand syria have all attended as observers. The new administration installed in honduras after the coup of June 2009 was not recognized by most Latin American governments and immediately cut its ties with ALBA.↵

García Linera, Álvaro 2008 La potencia plebeya (Buenos Aires: cLAcso/muela del Diablo) p. 394.↵

García Linera (2008: 395).↵

García Linera (2008: 409).↵

See castañeda, Jorge 2006 ‘Latin America Left Turn’ in Foreign Affairs, may-June.↵

The Latin American Parliament (Parlatino) was formally created in 1964, and actually established in 1987. most of its members are elected by the legislatures of the different member countries, and it has few powers. However, some countries, like Venezuela, have sought to strengthen the body and elect their representatives directly, alongside the members of their own national assembly.↵

Chomsky, noam & herman, edward s. 2002 Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (new York: Pantheon).↵

Speech in Commemorati on of FLACSO’s 50th Anniversary[1]

Rafael Correa[2]

Celebrat ing the 50th anniversary of an institution like the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO, Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences) calls for a retrospective evaluation of social sciences and their impact on our times and on the historical processes of Ecuador and of Latin America.

It is worth remembering that the men and women who founded FLACSO were deeply committed to the integration of our Latin America and were notably dedicated to research and teaching aimed at developing our societies. FLACSO was born from an idea developed at the UNESCO General Conference in 1957 and was quickly taken up by a number of countries that understood what was meant by this action. The first to join were Brazil and Chile, and then Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, Peru, Dominican Republic and Suriname.

The idea was to build a social science institution that would generate a space for reflection and analysis that did not yet exist, and that would drive the development of Latin American thought tied to the specific needs and problems of our region. FLACSO’s objective was considered to be key at that time: to increase the capacity for countries to collaborate in the field of social sciences through regional institutions of high academic standard, which would cooperate with national governments and universities by preparing human resources for social change.

We also have to remember that FLACSO was formed in the global context of the Cold War and in the regional context of social and political unrest as a consequence of the influence of the Cuban Revolution, the appearance of guerrilla movements and the spread of Liberation Theology. It was a time in which capitalism and socialism seemed to define the battlefield of the options for social change. This was supplemented in our region with a marked interest in the development perspectives put forward, in large part, by the economic thought of ECLAC.

Thus, FLACSO, or, more accurately, the sites that were starting to work at that time, engaged in academic inquiry tied to a number of lines of research. For example, development. Theses about national strategies of regional development, economic concentration and development took shape, as did modes of alternative development, etc. Research that, it is worth remembering, in many cases linked the economic, the social, the cultural and the political, not dissociating them as if they were separate spheres without any type of relation.

In the field of development, education was not left out either. Economic development was thought about in a comprehensive way. The theory of human capital, which was later and for good reasons widely criticised, suggested important connections between the training of human resources and economic growth. Interest in thinking about the different paths to revolution in the region was also significant, as was interest in the impediments to consolidating the democratic regime.

Issues related to agrarian sociology and agrarian reform also became important. Issues related to the country, to rural space, and to the peasant and indigenous actors became inescapable, but, once again it is worth saying, in the context of processes of social change.

Similarly, historical analyses were important. Phenomena, their significance and their productivity were explored in the context of their concrete historical development. In those times, history took on a key relevance in Latin American studies: it was about discovering the Latin American specificity as well as the underlying processes and relationships that were constituting it.

In sum, there was a marked interest in constructing research objects that addressed Latin American issues and, in particular, those that were relevant for each country and even sub-region. For example, in the case of FLACSO-Ecuador, interest in Andean and indigenous issues was concentrated in this institution.

So now, after fifty years, if we had to do an assessment, we could say that FLACSO, to a large degree, still reflects these original expectations. Currently, this institution has become a key reference point in the academic and political world of our region. Nobody can deny that its research, seminars, books, journals and even the informed opinion of its professors and researchers are widely respected, not only in the world of social sciences, but also in public space and in decisionmaking spheres.

FLACSO also continues to participate in the creation of highlytrained human resources that make up much of the teaching staff in public and private universities in the region, as well as occupying senior posts in different institutions in the governmental and non-governmental administration of our countries.

Through its diverse academic activities, FLACSO continues to collaborate in the consolidation of social disciplines; although — as we will see shortly — in many cases it does so under the ideological dominance of certain theoretical and methodological perspectives. Similarly, FLACSO contributes, through its systems of scholarships, to the ability of many students from the region to carry out their studies, especially in countries other than their own. By having sites in different countries, student exchanges and the exchange of learning experiences, FLACSO has made its contribution to the pursuit of Latin American integration.

Finally, the Latin American nature of FLACSO is currently strengthened, not only by the origins of its students but also by its academic staff. Though we could organize a seminar to examine the role FLACSO has had in the social sciences, I would like to reflect on the challenges that I can see, in the spirit of constructive criticism.

I will mainly try to focus on a critical reflection on what I think is one of Latin American academia’s main problems and from which FLACSO is not immune: the crisis of Latin American thought.

A key question that all social scientists have at one point asked themselves revolves around the meaning of scientific-social inquiry: What really justifies the existence and development of the social sciences? What is the mission of a social scientist in the face of the dy namic, contradictory and in many respects painful reality of the contemporary world?

Though multiple answers are possible, in general terms we could say that as academics we seek to contribute to increasing our understanding of the phenomena of the social world in order to increase as well our ability to build a better society from which all can benefit. Especially in the social sciences, a theory that does not have clear political implications that can improve reality is essentially a useless theory.

Nonetheless, several questions emerge that this general answer conceals. When we say ‘our understanding of phenomena’, to whom are we referring with our understanding? And when we speak about a better society, how are we understanding the word better? With respect to the first question, we have to note that there are differences between understanding in academia and understanding that occurs in other spaces of knowledge. The type of explanations that academic discourse constructs, in contrast with others such as those of common sense, of a sophist or even of a politician, is based on a specific process that produces arguments and verifies them. This is not to underestimate or to not seek forms of dialogue between different types of knowledge and experience, nor to imply that there are hierarchies between them. The scientific-social argument is not justified through intuition, belief or desire, but rather through a reflexive process that recognises errors, the mechanisms that produce them, and the ways to overcome them while leaving the capacity for discovery intact. As Pierre Bourdieu would say, it is not just about an abstract methodology that works like a manual — like a set of rules that can be applied to all cases — and as an unequivocal guarantee of scientificity. Precisely because the unconditional obedience to an organon of logical rules tends to prematurely shut down the conditions for discovery.

It is, instead, about an attitude of epistemological vigilance in which not only is there an effort to understand the logic of the error but there is also an effort to construct a logic of discovery of the truth. In this sense, we can say that the academic-researcher seeks the greatest degree of ‘objectivity’ possible. The ideal would be that, through methodological transparency (of the procedures carried out and the justifications offered for each decision) and through the democratisation of information, anyone could reproduce the results and the conclusions. In this way, through dialectic exchange, the quality of our understanding of reality can be continuously improved.

With respect to the second point, that is, what do we understand to be a better world, we encounter one of the most serious dangers that lurk in academic discourse: trying to equate objectivity with neu trality, and therefore, free oneself of the inevitably political nature inherent to any teaching or research task, especially in the social sciences.

Following Boaventura de Sousa Santos, I think that it is essential to distinguish between objectivity and neutrality. We must strive to be objective social scientists but not neutral ones, and this means using the best methodologies that the social sciences offer us and doing so with the greatest possible rigour, impartiality and autonomy.

But, at the same time, we have to be clear about what side we are on; that is, how we construct our research problems, our research objects, how we formulate our working hypotheses, how we choose our methodological strategy and even our research techniques. Such non-neutrality (inevitable in our profession) unquestionably leads us to the political, social, cultural and other positions that we necessarily embody and about which we must remain constantly vigilant. But careful, to be vigilant is not the same as to deny.

Example: my home Country. Once we are clear about these differences, we can ask ourselves, for example: Where do the research topics in current social sciences come from? From what perspective are the research questions formulated? What is the political economy of the dominant theories in social sciences? Which brings us to ask: What is the form of knowledge production that seems to work in Latin American academia?

These questions locate us in a space for reflection about what has occurred over the last decades in Latin American academia and about what FLACSO, I believe, has not been able to escape from. As mentioned previously: the crisis in Latin American thought.

An example of the greatest expression of this crisis: the Washington Consensus. Without fear of being mistaken, I believe that academic spaces are spaces for ideological struggle with the objective of building the hegemony of some interests over others, of some world views over others. It is about imposing meanings on what we call ‘reality’ and thereby constructing it, and what ultimately each of us understands by a better world.

In this sense, Latin American academic space was practically colonized by a set of methodological theories and prescriptions that arose in the central countries.

For example, this can be seen in the predominance of the positivist economy which was uncritically and uncontrollably applied in the field of social sciences. This gave way to a kind of very profound homogenisation of research and teaching work, and certain pockets were only marginally able to resist and dispute what has become a type of common sense in academia.

The argument brandished was that such theories and processes were the only ones that could guarantee ‘relevant’ issues for study, ‘objective’ analytical perspectives (confusing this concept with neutrality) and ‘scientific’ methodologies. The rest was just left over. It was residual. Continuing with our example we can think about rational choice[3] applied to political science, and in some cases, even political sociology.

This has implied a return to the dominance of an extremely positivist methodology that only values what can be ‘observed’ (meaning preferences) and therefore ‘measured’, and that dismisses anything that in this context is considered ‘subjective’.

Useless theory. (Between parentheses we could say that this has reinforced the idea of academia as the only valid site of knowledge and a contempt for dialogue with other types of knowledge. Thus, along with other issues that were left out, those theoretical and methodological perspectives that emphasised the participation of the subjects being studied, because they were considered to be the principal beneficiaries of such studies, were rejected).

This also involved the generation of one-dimensional explanations that tended to account for social phenomena with a single, similar argument: the selfish, atomised, maximizing human being, etcetera. In this context, the definition of the ‘better world’ that social sciences must seek was reduced to the individual maximizing optimization of utilities, principally understood to be the preferences expressed in any market (political, cultural, economic, family, community) through consumption (also of any product: votes, goods, money, love, cultural consumption, etcetera).

In addition to being a largely useless theory, terribly reductionist, it presented the social sciences as being independent of value judgments. Example: market theory, rational actors, voluntary exchanges and ‘a girl lost in the desert’.

A review of the curriculums of political science, sociology and economics programs in many FLACSO sites reveals to what extent this dominance has also permeated an institution that aimed to generate independent and specifically Latin American thought. Not to mention the programs that goes under the name of Government and Public Affairs or Administration and Public Policies. We have to realise that these theories and their associated analytical categories, that have co-opted ideological space, prevent us from seeing other ways of constructing the research problems and objects that are relevant for the plans for change that we believe in. They also make the intellectual inheritance of Latin American academia invisible, that academia that until a few decades ago was proud of its accomplishments and of its commitment to Latin American emancipation.

It is not about an uncritical return to the past, but rather about a more accurate recovery of a legacy that has not been sufficiently appreciated. With this dominance, disciplines and entire research lines have disappeared, such as for example history, agrarian sociology, studies of social structure, of economic concentration, of social inequality, and others.

it is true that other extremely important issues have been taken up that are related to types of social exclusion. For example, the treatment of groups determined by characteristics related to age, such as youth; to gender, such as women; to ethnic origin, such as the indigenous; to mobility, such as immigrants, etc. Academia has been particularly sensitive to these issues and to the human groups that have historically been denied their voices. This can be seen in the number of projects that have been developed, for example, in the different sites of fLAcso and above all in the research theses that these sites stimulate.

As Todd gitlin asserts, though the profusion of social actors has occurred throughout society, think about the visibility achieved by minorities and social movements in recent years; nowhere has there been such a vigorous result as in the academic world. There, in many programs of study, each movement experienced the joy of an identity based on the group. The problem lies in that the expansion of what has been called ‘identity politics’ was inseparable from the political fragmentation of what had initially been shared.

The university and academic world has taken up these new issues from a largely uncritical position, as in many cases such research lines imply abandoning the concern for what it is that human beings and groups share. The study of ‘identity’ becomes the study of a type of inescapable destiny, in a world made up of intrinsic and essentialist identities that prevent connecting with the other. The voice of the voiceless can thus end up constituting a new silence, functional to the dominant paradigm, and academia has not been immune to this.

So, based to a large extent on what Boaventura de sousa santos suggests, perhaps a debt and an outstanding challenge for fLAcso over the next fifty years would be to decide to invest time, money and human resources in offering contributions toward a notable epistemological and theoretical overhaul of current social sciences. An overhaul from a Latin American perspective; that is, from the south.

Similarly, the understanding of the world enabled by the social sciences in many cases denies social experience and denies the social changes that are taking place. example, the end of history. A set of experiences are thus neglected, unrecognised, robbed of their credibility by hegemonic perspectives. What is thus presented as the thesis is at most the dominant theory.Our challenge must be to take on this neglect of social experience. This can be achieved to the extent that we engage in a discussion not only about the objective conditions for the transformation of society, but about those conditions that speak about a will for change. Perhaps we have to think about how to create a rebellious subjectivity, not a paralysing objectivity.

In this sense, what i am trying to say is that we cannot escape this quagmire with the social sciences, because they are part of the problem. First, we have to epistemologically work through the social sciences.Our forms of rationality come from the periphery and we have to keep this in mind in order to bring about a change in our frameworks of thought, as edgar morin would say.

To a great extent, this will happen, as santos holds, if we think about ‘absences’ from a different place. Let me explain. much of what does not exist in society is produced as non-existent, which ends up reducing ‘reality’ (always constructed) to what exists. A look from the absences is a rebellious method for showing what does not exist, but with a different, clear objective: trying to attain it. It also entails seeing what does not yet exist but is emerging, showing signs of life. For example, contributing to the symbolic extension of a social or citizens’ movement. Free of romanticisms, we must make this development credible.

Also, questioning those concepts that speak to us of a time that is not ours and from a pre-defined point of arrival. Thus, in Andean and indigenous time, the ancestral is not part of the past, as we are told, but of the daily present; and the very ideas of ‘developed’ countries, ‘progress’, ‘modernisation’ and even ‘globalisation’ tell us of a time and a destination that are foreign to us, although we have internalised them as necessary goals. A first step towards this is to rethink the idea of development. Not from a modernising perspective or one based only on growth. I think that this is already included in our national Plan, which articulates, beyond economicist views, the human relationship with nature, the relationship between people and the way to perpetuate Latin American cultures indefinitely.

Moreover, we have to rethink the mode of knowledge production. Let us not forget once again that what is at stake is the construction of hegemony. We do not need alternatives, but rather ‘alternative thinking about alternatives’. This does not mean that we have to deny  the knowledge from the north, but rather that we have to understand it in order to discover its ways of constructing knowledge, those that make it hegemonic.

We also have to reflect on the conditions in which Latin American academia carries out its work. First, it is necessary to think about and relate funding and research. Frequently, research projects and education programs are conditioned by the source of funding, since it not only defines how much can be spent but also on what and in what ways. In many cases, academic programs first arise out of a need for funds rather than as a result of an academic need.

This type of funding has promoted short-term research, linked to specific conjunctural projects, while research into structural and far-reaching problems is precluded. This all ends up reproducing the predominance of a logic of consulting work and technical assistance more tied to ngos than to academia. In the best of cases, long-term research agendas are personal projects and not institutional ones. This has led to the disappearance of the idea of research programs or lines. The only things that seem to be of relevance are individualities that become islands or archipelagos of status.

For these same reasons, what prevails is not research of an empirical nature. In most cases, it consists of compilations of secondary sources, states of art, bibliographic research or interpretations not supported by field work.

This has also been accompanied by an important change with respect to the profile of the social scientist. The double role or utility of the social sciences as both technical tools and a space for intellectual productivity has lost its balance with the growing participation of these human resources in the processes of transformation of the state furthered by neoliberal policies. The importance that sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists and others acquire in studying the design, evaluation and theoretical and methodological justification of public policies in recent years has not been sufficiently appreciated in terms of its effects on the autonomy of the field and the political role of these resources.

To address this problem, it is first necessary to recover the autonomy of research production and agendas with respect to funding, and the sovereignty of the availability of academic programs as a function of academic criteria and social needs.

One of the messages i would like to make clear is that part of the crisis of thought is due to the discrediting of politics that has occurred over the last decades. Academia has destroyed itself by trying to gain visibility as something separate from politics, in the name of an objectivity confused with neutrality. under the predominance of the technical discourse of the 1990s, the political became entirely tainted as negative. I think we must rethink what we understand to be the political in academia. It is not about justifying political interests with research or teaching, but about recognising the political nature of the understandings of reality that we construct in academia. This is a responsibility that cannot be evaded.

I invite you, then, to build an academia that is committed to the needs of Latin America and mindful of the processes of change that we are living through today. And these are significant; perhaps we do not clearly perceive it right now, we do not see a revolution taking place, but that does not mean that we are not in its midst. There are already signs that we are living not only in a period of change, but also a change of period. Let’s help it be born from the place in which we find ourselves in this historic time.

Opening speech at the Congreso Latinoamericano y Caribeño de Ciencias Sociales (Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Social Sciences) in commemoration of FLACSO’s 50th Anniversary, 29 to 31 October 2007, Quito, Ecuador. Text extracted from: Crítica y Emancipación (Buenos Aires: CLACSO), Year 1, N° 1, 2008. Translated by Shana Yael Shubs and Ruth Felder. Also available in Spanish at <http://www.presidencia.gov.ec/secciones.asp?seid=238>.↵

President of Ecuador since 2007. PhD in Economics at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign↵

Original in english (Translators’ note).↵

What kind of basic changes do we need in the new world system?

Some reflections on globalization, development and social justice

Theotonio dos Santos[1]

Introduction

The end of the cold War in the end of 80s left the new decade with new realities: During the 90s, eastern europe and former soviet union had been facing enormous difficulties, the economies were in crisis, the political regimes were in dismantlement and the ideological system were in disarray. Civil wars, political instability, mass unemployment and poverty presented a gloomy reality to these former soviet or pro soviet countries.

Meanwhile, the eurocentrism is in definite crisis. The Anglo-American capitalism, as the ideal model for global social-economic development and for modern democracy, is gradually losing ground along with the decline of the us economic and political supremacy. The emergence of newly industrializing countries (nics) of Asia and Latin America challenged the us / europe and Japan absolute hegemony, the revival of islamic fundamentalism, the Latin American integration and the subsequent mercosur directly defied the us domination. These facts draw a new world, more complex and more difficult to be administered. The us supremacy will certainly continue for a period of time, but its hegemony has to be shared with the european union, Japan and russia, as well as the nics such as china, Brazil, India, and etcetera.

The cold War ended and with it all the justification for military aggressiveness. As the pretended unquestionable winner of the cold War, the united states also found it unbearable to maintain its hegemony, faced with budget pressure and power limits. Thus, the decade of 90s witnessed the end of the us absolute hegemony and beginning of a new world system: the shared global leaderships. In the first decade of twenty-first century we assist the intent of the W. Bush administration to re-install an undisputed unilateral hegemony of united states over the World. This phase is ending now during the world financial crisis, started 2007, that is being transformed in 2008 in a general economic crisis.

Meanwhile, the humanity entered into a new historical phase: the age of accelerated globalization, which would ultimately lead to a planetary civilization based on the synthesis of various civilizations that form the contemporary world. The human beings must follow the path of peace and understanding, correcting the great inequalities of the world and concentrating on more global policies and goals. But this new world will be not possible without strong national states capable to assure the transference of its sovereignty to a world order.

The united nations’ conference on environment and Development (Rio de Janeiro, 1992) was an expression of the increasing consciousness of the necessity to unite the complex humanity — plural and lacerated by her economic and social contradictions — to address global issues such as environment preservation and the struggle against poverty which are crucial for the improvement of the present situation and for a better world for future generations.

In the next years several summits on population, social issues, women, and other crucial questions prepare the basis for the ‘Declaration o the millennium’ in 2002. All the national states of the world subscribe a set of compromises that represents concrete goals for the human development of humanity.

In this new world system, the humanity shall go through a process of profound reflection, adjustments, and cooperation in order to adjust its great contradiction of interests between the few ultra-developed and the huge masses of unemployed, under-employed, excluded, and marginalized that seem to be the inevitable by-product of a technological modernization — based in the scientific and technological revolution — in the limits of the capitalist mode of production, oriented toward the profit and the private appropriation of the mankind wealth. Humanity will be obliged also to confront the malaise that is and will be, undoubtedly, the social, cultural and spiritual correspondence for this unacceptable situation.

Thus, the humanity is facing the needs to elevate its management or governance system of world economy. global solutions — produced from global negotiations — will need to substitute the socalled ‘invisible hand’ of the market, the idea of an automatic and mechanical adjustment of the various disputing interests, and the illusion of a law of comparative advantages presiding world commerce. The risks continue to exist: the deteriorating global environment, the threat of war and nuclear explosion, the menace of extermination of the non-renewable energy sources, and the destruction of environment and biodiversity in general. The principles of conscious and democratic planning will prevail over the idea of a self regulation of the market. The complexity of the new world system set the need for a global political and economic coordination aiming to a world where peace and sustainable and human development should win over all the nations.

The existing studies on world economy and world system

The study of the world economy in the context of world system is relatively recent. Since its beginning, it was limited mainly to the study on international commerce, which was dominated by the classical and neoclassic economics theories. It was the same case with the work of marx. His unfinished book Capital had limited systematic study on the matter. By the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, some sporadic attention was given to the study on the global development of the capitalism. During the 1920s, the League of nations published an empirical study about  world economy. Later on, Keynes produced expressive ideas on the economic conditions for the world peace which joined with other various efforts to understand the causes and the consequences of the war.

It was until the beginning of the twentieth century that the study on world economy gained global force when the concept of imperialism had been developed on the basis of marxist-Leninist analysis of economic concentration and the formation of the international monopolies. The success of russian revolution and the economic crisis of 1929 conduced to an ideological revolution on the interpretation of world economy. The ideological struggle assumed extremely radicals forms in the post-war years, until the end of the cold War.

The revolution was initiated when the analysis of the international conjuncture was introduced in 1921 in the congress of the international communist, so as to give tactical and strategic proposals for communist struggles. In the 30s, in the urss the institute of international relations and World economy (imemo) was created and directed by eugenio Varga. The studies about the imperialism and the world economy increased considerably in the 20s and in the 30s, more and more based on institutionalist approach.

At the side of marxism, but very influenced by him, it developed an institutionalist perspective that had in hobson, at the end of nineteenth century and beginnings of twentieth century one of its most interesting expression. Werner sombart was another impressive researcher of the formation of modern capitalism.

In the 40s, the work of Karl Polanyi about the great transformation was the most ambitious intent to understand contemporary capitalism as a historical phenomenon unifying economic, social, political and cultural approaches to the social reality. The development of an economic anthropology treated in a more holistic approach the role of culture and civilization in the great transformation that installed capitalism as a historical reality

During the 70s, the concept of world economy found its best expression in the work of immanuel Wallerstein on world system. Fernand Braudel’s researches have also contributed to establish a theoretical framework for the study of these concepts. During the 80s and early 90s, the concept of globalization has been developed in order to analyze the new trend the world system, and its accompanying phenomena.

Since the 70s much literature has been produced. The international institutions started a methodical analysis of the world economy, especially the creation, in 1978 of the annual publication of the World Bank named ‘World Development report’. In the 70s, various econometrics models of the world economy were created by international organizations like un and oecD, the World Bank, fmi, etc. In 1973, The State of the World was produced by the us president’s office, which has started the national emphasis on the world conjuncture. The Bureau of economic Planning of Japan also publishes the ‘White Papers on the World economy’.

The centre of the united nations for the Transnational corporations was created in the beginning of the 70s and published four general reports with substantial empirical information about the multinationals corporations and the world development. In 1991, started the annual publication of the ‘World investment report’.

The discussion about the new economic order proceeded with the proposal of President Luis echeverría of Mexico on ‘Declaration of the economic rights and Duties of the nations’ which was voted in the united nations in 1973. Afterwards, in 1975, Boumediene created the term ‘new world order’ in the meeting of the non-Alliance movement in Algeria. Because of the crisis of oil, the nations of the Third World advanced considerably in the international level that gave consistence to the ‘Development Decade’ created by the Assembly of the united nations in 1969. In this period the uncTAD was created; the nonAlliance movement and the north-south dialogue had been fortified. A wide literature was produced about the ‘new World economic order’, mainly a set of international reports, which started a new treatment for the world conjuncture and a new conscience of the running process of globalization.

World reports was elaborated by various research institutes, such as the club of rome, the institute of Bariloche, the Dag hammarskjold report of the united nations, as well as by the ad hoc commissions like the rio report (the Leontief report of the united nations), the Willy Brandt commission, the Willy Brandt and michael manley report, the olof Palme commission, the interfutures of oecD, the south commission, etc. Some were elaborated by national governments, such as the global 2000 report of the president of the united states and the World economic and social crisis of the President fidel castro.

From the 70s to our days the new global reality gave origin to several permanent publications on the world economy and global issues in general:

Since 1978, as mentioned above, the World Bank started an annual publication named ‘World Development report’, besides the analysis of one or two major matters, published its ‘World Development indicators’.

Since 1980 the international monetary fund published its ‘World economic outlook’ annually until 1984 and afterwards became half yearly.

Since 1986 the united nations publishes the ‘report on the World economy’, based on regional reports prepared by its regional commissions and special organizations located in europe, Latin America, Asia and Africa. Besides, the united nations publish ‘statistical Yearbook’.

In 1991 the UNDP started the publication of the ‘human Development report’.

The UNCTAD publishes annually the ‘Trade and Development report’, besides the ‘handbook of international Trade and Development statistics’.

The uniDo publishes each two years its ‘industry and Development – global report’ since 1989-90.

The unesco publishes for many years its ‘statistical Yearbook’, although it doesn’t contain any specific analysis on world economy, it was one of the main data sources.

Since its foundation in 1961, the OECD studies the world economy and publishes the ‘economic outlook’, with the exclusive distribution to its member nations.

The WALRAS, like the LinK, represents another model to study the world economy by means of quantifying the international economy.

A great number of reports by non-government organizations (ngos) were also prepared to analyze the situation of world economy, such as, ‘L’etat du monde’ published since 1981 by La Découvert, Paris; ‘rAmsÉs – rapport Annuel mondial sur le système Économique et les stratégies’ published since 1981 by the ifri – institut français des relations internationales; ‘The state of the World’, by the Worldwatch institute, published since 1984 on the human progress to create a sustainable society.

During the 90s and the new century the studies of Angus madison create a statistical basis for the study of development in the perspective of a longue durée.

During these years, the studies about peace expanded a lot. They contributed greatly to a holistic vision to the process of globalization. The international Peace research Association (IPRA) was the ‘locus’ of these studies, and has its influence in the creation of the university for Peace in costa rica. In the70s, however, a great step was made when the university of the united nations was set up, with headquarters in  Japan. The unu created the World institute on Developing economic research (WIDER) to study the issues of development joined this wave of global studies. The university has elaborated a program of studies about the global transformations that was developed through new theoretical and conceptual landmarks.

The most significant conceptual change related to the world economy during this period is due to the formation of a new theoretical framework in the end of the 70s, and mainly in the 80s, that links the concept of world system to the long waves of Kondratiev, to the technological-scientific revolution and to the study on transnational corporations. Based on these changes, the concepts of world system and globalization were developed.

Since the 70s, the debate about the development and the world economy reached new levels because of the introduction of the environment issue. Starting from the stockholm conference on the environment and Development in 1972, this relation had been elaborated. The critique made by the ecologists and the ‘green peace’ extended to the political field and started to question the proper concept of development. under the influence of neo-malthusians ideologies, some authors proposed a limit for the economic growth.

The oil’s crisis in 1973 showed that the limits of growth were more serious than the developmental optimism would accept. This discussion continued until the 80s, in the Bruntland report, about ‘our common Destiny’, that introduced the concept of sustainable development and called the attention to the global dimension of the ecological threat. The conference in rio de Janeiro (eco-rio), in 1992, represented a definitive step in this direction when it introduced 21 points and some global basic agreements about the climate, the ocean and the biodiversity.

When these conceptual and political advances were taking place, the success of economic growth in southeast Asia was taking place too. At the same time, Latin American newly industrialized nations, eastern europe and the indian subcontinent limited its growth because of the payment of high interests for its huge external debts. The African continent, which was newly freed from the colonialism, had a great number of debts, while the prices of the basic products that they export were falling.

During this period, the model of structural adjustment proposed by the World Bank and the fmi was the basic mechanism to make possible the payment of the international interests. High exportations, low importations, depreciated currencies formed a set of Draconian measures to create export surplus in order to pay for the debt services, by sacrificing the public expenditure and the governability of these countries. resultantly, these adjustment measures produced higher income concentration, dramatic amplification of the misery and social exclusion.

In spite of these harsh realities, the structural adjustments still continues from the 80s up to the 90s with the so called Washington consensus, and at the present we suffer with even stronger consequences. In all countries, the adjustments failed to achieve equilibrium between macroeconomic policies and social policies, which shows the limits of economic theory in relation to the economic, political and social realities. After 30 years of imposition of a neo-liberal conception of the world economy we have the stronger disequilibrium that humanity had in his all history. Instead of the fiscal, exchange, and monetary equilibrium that is the base of neoliberal economic doctrine, the deregulation and the privatization, promoted by neoliberal governs, produced a fantastic disequilibrium of the world economy characterized by gigantic deficits from one side and surplus from the other side. This deficits / surplus produced enormous debts from one side and incredible liquidity from the other side opening a new stage in the development of financial capital, with growing capacity to create fictional values.

The dependence Theory of latin american

Latin American views on world economy were developed only after the second World War. In 1948, the continental sessions of the social council of the united nations started the annual analysis of its regional economies, and established the economic commission for the Latin America (ECLA), raúl Prebisch, in that time executive secretary of ecLA, proposed a theoretical and analytical framework to analyze the world economy in terms of centre / periphery relation. He initiated the Latin American tradition of underdevelopment analysis and the development theories that became fundamental in the Latin American contemporary social and economic sciences.

The main characteristic of this tradition is its vision of the underdevelopment as the absence of development. The ‘delay’ of the underdeveloped countries is explained by the obstacles put in front of them, which retard its modernization. In the beginning of the 1960s, however, these theories lost its relevance. Latin American countries, who had achieved political independence in the beginning of the nineteenth century, were restricted by the depth of its economic and political dependence of the international economic system maintained after the World War ii. Its economic increase seemed destined to accumulate misery, illiteracy and unequal income distribution.

The dependence theory, which appeared in Latin America in the 60s, tries to explain the new characteristics of this dependent development that had been oriented in the direction of an industrialization based on the international capital, whose centre were the multinationals companies created in the 50s and in the 60s. This new point of view rejected the idea of that the underdevelopment meant the lack of development, but it was understood as the historical result of the development of the capitalism as a world system that produced development and under-development.

In the 70s, there had been extensive international debates about the matter that appeared in articles, books and in various conferences and seminars. Besides, the theory of dependence also exerted influence in many important political processes, like the Peruvian revolution; the Chilean Popular unit; the manley government in Jamaica; the socialist government in Tanzania; and etc. In the mid-70s, the critiques about the dependence theory became stronger and were extended by the 80s. These critiques came from the scholars of Latin American countries and from all parts of the world. They accused the authors of this theory for overrating the external factors and for abandoning the internal analysis, especially the social classes.Others criticized that this theory diluted the struggle of local classes and denied the importance of the concepts of ‘imperialism’ and ‘dependence’.

The recent critique that has a very widespread diffusion and repercussion came from francis fukuyama in his book The End of History and the Last Man, published in 1992. In his point of view, Dependence Theory is the last bastion of resistance to the ‘end of history’, and it would have been belied by the successful Asia experiences.

Thus, in Latin America, this extensive and animated debate led to discussion on development under the context of the world system. These theoretical advances corresponds to the new Latin American social, economic and political realities.

A latin american perspectives of globalization

The Latin American nations after the War ii had undergone a rapid process of capitalist internationalization, which would be accelerated and amplified, known as globalization in the 90s. The internationalization of capital in Latin America (especially Brazil) forced the Latin American social thinkers to study the new reality. Starting from raúl Prebisch with his famous 1950 manifesto (‘The economic Development of Latin America and its Principal Problems’), proclaimed a powerful role for government in avoiding the deflationary policies of the interwar years, a greater commitment to government microeconomic intervention, more controls, subsidies and protection, a greater emphasis on ‘planning’, and a greater distrust of market features of postwar development.

The post-war years witnessed Latin American’s dependent integration to the world economy. These countries (and Brazil in particular) were incarcerated in a vicious cycle since the debt crises of the 80s provoked the derangement of the local financial markets, deteriorating the public finances and the monetary politics, placing these countries in three digits hyperinflation. The consequent economic adjustment to ensure the payment of the debt services inflicted unbearable social cost on these nations. Domestic and foreign investment had shrunk, interest rates were high, wages and salaries were drastically reduced. The economic development was adversely affected, gravely impoverished these economies.

During the 80s, Latin American countries saw the creation of a new type of urban marginality, and consequent deterioration of social order caused by the increase of the criminality and the increase of illegal activities, like the drugs trafficking, the smuggling, prostitution, the kidnapping, and etcetera.

In the 90s, the international interest rates dropped and there is a relief of the pressure for the payment of the international debts. However, because of the pressure of the united states’ necessity to equilibrate its payment balance, these dependent countries that were previously supply-oriented, implanted a policy of commercial deficit. This conservative policy was based on the pegging of local currencies (the famous foreign exchange anchorage), on the indiscriminate increase of the interest rates of the public debts, as well as the sale of the public enterprises known as the ‘privatization’ of the economy. Consequently, the exports diminished and imports increased, producing the commercial ‘deficits’, that are compensated by the entrance of short term capital searching for the high interests and the stock market speculation.

Thus, Latin American social scientists have drawn experiences from imbalanced industrialization in the 50-70s; the military authoritarianism from the 60-80s; the debt crises of the 80s; the structural adjustment and subsequent domination of neoliberalism in the 80-90s; etc. It is necessary to emphasize the fact that, Latin America in general, and Brazil in particular, has developed an original thought about the world economy and politics that needs to be continued. With their own experiences, Latin American social scientists have been able to establish ‘Dependence Theory’, as a plausible theoretical formation consolidated in many years and contributed by many scholars of the Latin American region who have been following the model of raúl Prebisch.

As the reality tends to bypass national boundaries and to create units of production and circulation, more and more local and subregional economies are being developed, thus, arise the concepts of  regionalization as the base of globalization. These new economies change drastically the pictures of regional development. Therefore, the knowledge of the world economic system is more and more a condition of comprehension of the specific social-economic formations. This fact must be considered in the theoretical research and teaching, in the strategic formulation and governmental policy-making.

Globalization, development and socio-economic justice

The process of globalization of world economy and politics is based in the scientific-technological revolution that began in the 40s and changed radically the relation among science, technology and the productive process. This revolution changes tremendously the scale of the production by automation through the robotics and the informatics. It produced structural changes by extending the role of the services as well as the activities related to the knowledge, planning and design of the products. It creates new sectors, industries and economic activities and changes the relations between the economic sectors and causing a third industrial revolution. It integrates the planet in instantaneous process of communication and reduces the distances among the various regions of the globe. Finally, it breaks the traditional ecological balance at global level and threats the humanity’s survival because of the environmental deterioration and the threat of nuclear explosion.

In this context of rapid changes, the world’s regions that don’t participate of the development of the new forms of industrial and post-industrial production and circulation are more and more distant from the centres of world power. This process of globalization enlarged the technological gaps between the developed and the underdeveloped countries.

The technologically backward regions were penalized by a perverse double movement.On the one hand, the advance of new technologies and productive systems has wiped out subsistence sectors and the non-monetized sectors, such as, the peasants, tribal production, handicrafts, the barter trade, etc.), it conducts an ‘exodus’ of the rural population to the urban regions.On the other hand, the is a striking absence of a global development schemes to allow for a balanced industrialization, an extensive education system and a wellcoordinated service sector to sustain the advancement of new technologies and new productive system. The result was an explosive urbanization without a good social-economic structure, the deterioration of environment and increased marginalization and social exclusion. All these tendencies are recognized by the iLo, unDP and other international organizations which are dedicated to the study of the matter.

The unregulated and unplanned world economy is leading humanity to the increased poverty, except the case of china, to serious problems of social disintegration, social exclusion and to increased open unemployment. This situation posed a serious question to the humanity: are social justice and economic progress incompatible alternatives? or, to put it in a better way: can the humanity survive based in the seemingly uncontrollable competitive capitalist economic relations?

The un social summit conference that has been held in copenhagen in march 1995 was a new attempt to take control on the savage forms of capitalist competition and social and international relations. It continued a set of international initiatives that had already been proposed in other un conferences, the most important being the earth summit of 1992, in rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The copenhagen social summit demonstrates the universal will to control the economic forces by means of regulation and state intervention, by popular participation in the control of enterprises and by civilized forms of social and international relations.

The social summit has discussed three basic issues: fight against poverty; the social integration; and the creation of employment.

To address these issues, first of all, the international community needs to recognize the structural nature of poverty, social disintegration, inequality, unemployment and under-employment. Pure liberal mainstream economic theories can never lead our humanity to social justice. global negotiation and social intervention are urgently needed. A ‘world social contract’ as it is being proposed by unDP, should replace the liberal economic calculations. The chart of economic rights of Peoples and nations, voted in 1974 by the un Assembly, has to be respected.

If the humanity is to develop a more just and manageable world, the social thoughts of the underdeveloped countries should be respected, and the developed countries should not simply impose its ‘conventional wisdom’ and its eurocentric paradigms on the south.

To listen to the south means also to accept the social forces that represent old civilizations and strong cultural particularities in Asia, in America, in oceanic and in Africa. And it means also to accept the strength of regional plural dynamism. If you cannot eliminate some part of the human race, as had been done on the Jewish people during the nazi regime and the second World War, you must accept to live in a world where Asian, African and Latin American people are majority. moreover, Asia is showing that this majority can be educated and well developed in one or two generations. In the 50s, myrdall wrote the Asian Drama, and in the 80s, we are talking about the Asian hegemony; in the 80s, Latin America was living the ‘lost decade’, now, a part of it is being perceived as important ‘emerging’ economies.

Secondly, we need to reformulate the institutional framework of international relations. The present world institutions do not sufficiently allow the participation of the non-Western countries. The g7 prefers canada, england or italy to china, india or even Brazil, and they hardly accept russia as the eighth participant. The security council of un does not include Brazil, india or Mexico, let alone Japan and germany. The general Assembly of un is not being respected anymore. And what about islamic countries? Where they can express their voice in the world institutional framework?

Third, we need to restructure the present international aid programs. The majority of international technical aid is used to pay for northern ‘experts’ to help economies, societies and ecological realities unknown to them. Why not to use technicians and scientists from developing countries to give technical assistance to the south? We have much better scientific expertise on tropical ecological environments than you do. But you still think that we need your expensive technocrats from the World Bank, the imf, and other international institutions to teach us your disastrous policies of development!

International aid should be based on local development priorities formulated democratically by the local communities. The local human resources and technicians from the south should be used. Local experiences of social development should be studied, for example, the indian expertise on humid tropical development, and the bio-mass technology in Brazil (the sugarcane alcohol combustible program), and so on, must be the basis of international technical and social aid. This policy will reinforce local scientific and technological development, will fix the professionals in their countries, that otherwise would be part of the ‘brain drain’ that may impoverish our countries.

Fourth, we need to develop common strategies of development at world levels, unifying common interests. For example: Trade unions of developed countries supported, in the 70s and in the 80s, democratic movements in the south, to eliminate dictatorships, that protected low salaries and opened their countries to multinational investment.

Now, many developing countries in the south have established democratic governments, but they are still based on a controlled media system that maintains low salaries and economic dependency. Here lies a common interest between trade unions and popular movements of the south and the north: to maintain in the north and to improve in the south social legislation; defend labour market; pick up children from the streets and put them in schools; to defend labour safety, to develop workers’ training and education; protect our  labour force from over-exploitation, etc. These common areas of cooperation between the north and south should be implemented by the labour organizations.

Fifth, we have another common problem: the increase of world financial speculation, which is based in more and more modern means of communication. But this international financial system is based in very high rates of interest paid by government that expand each time their public debt and pay more and more interest to support a terrible exploitative financial structure. These high rates of interest subtracted the state resources of north and south countries, what diminishes the capacity of the state to attend basic needs of the population and to give possible foreign aid.

The people are paying more and more taxes only to pay interests of the public debt. For example, the public debt of germany administrations used to be 18.6% of the gnP in 1973. It’s now 65.9% after years of neoliberal policy. How can a liberal policy conduce to so high debts? german government used to pay 2.7% of annual interest in 1980. Now it is paying 6.1%. Big banks used to be against fiscal debt. Now they live on it. The us and european fiscal debts are the basis of international financial market.

Globalization in the financial sector is driving terrible amount of resources from the south to the north. This leads to growing concentration of income and inequality at world scale. So, we cannot think in terms of social justice, equal opportunities or even economic equilibrium at international level without reforming our present financial system.

In resume, an agenda for social Justice would be based in a new scientific framework really built at world level. It will be based in the points below:

A new World social contract to countervail market tendencies to concentration and inequality, to reduce labour time and assure more employment in education, research, communication, leisure, culture and so on. We need a more equilibrate international order and participation of the south in the formulation and execution of international economic cooperation.

Democracy and citizenship are the basis of a world order with social justice. Alliance among social forces punished by present economic development must be built to create a new world order. Society must control media power and assure free speech and free information to a well informed social movement and citizenship.

Public debt must be reduced not by cutting social welfare and forcing aid, but by cutting high rates of interest supported by tax payers of the entire world. Financial system must be deflated and reduced to its really necessary dimension.

Concluding remarks

Summing up, there is an enormous research work to be done in future. Together with the north, the south should also analyze the process of globalization of world economy and the role of the process of regionalization in the formation of an integrated world system. The south should recognize the danger of globalization in the destruction of the regional, national and local markets, and confront with the disintegration of social sectors and institutions that have extremely negative effects in short and long term. It should also utilize the regional blocs, such as NAFTA, mercosur, APEC, and etc., as a mechanism of negotiation and balance of power. All in all, the south should also adopt some lines of socio-economic and political strategies, and scientific-technological and industrial policies to effectively deal with the process of regional integration and globalization.

Though many researches have been done on globalization, and the issues of global development and the new world system, i think the future research efforts of the south should pay special attention to the following:

I. Major facts and hypotheses

The scientific-technological revolution makes possible the global scales of production, links the production to the pure science and the frontier research, diversifies the markets in terms of quality and quantity, local condition of demand and supply, joins intimately with the accumulation of capital, the economic, social and political development. To be simpler, technological factor plays a central role in world system.

The action of the long waves (Kondratiev’s cycles) is located at this moment in the end of the negative curve of the world economy, that began in 1967, and reached its lowest point in 1993 and began since 1994, a new long term of economic growth. In this new period of positive increase, the national economies will be able to assimilate a great number of scientific and technologic advances prepared during the long years of recession such as robotization and the flexible production, modern communications, biotechnologies, etc. It will create a new period of globalization and integration of the world economy.

This new period of increase, as related in the theory of the long waves, would be relatively stable for a long time. Nevertheless, it begins with a big problem of structural unemployment, as a consequence of the huge advance of the robotization of the productive process and the automation of great part of the service activities. The issues of this period will be: diminution of labour time; change the management system of micro and macroeconomic policies; restructuring of the corporations and public administrations; the reduction of social exclusion and criminal violence, consumption of drugs; the preservation of environment and etc., which are the legacies of unequal, imbalanced, and exhaustive economic growth.

The tendencies of monopolization and oligopolization of the local, national, regional and global markets, with the formation of the regional blocks, the increase of the intra-firm trade, the crescent cooperation among multinational corporations and the formation of networks and mechanisms of management through advanced telecommunications

The question of the governability arises from these realities at the global, regional and national levels will lead to the global institutional reconstruction that affects particularly the united nations and other international organizations, and a rebuilding of industrial and economic policies at these levels.

Thedefinitionofaglobalprojectofsustainabledevelopment,capable of guaranteeing the preservation and the betterment of the environment and the elimination of the poverty and the misery.

II. The perspectives of the south

The developing countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America should strengthen the capacity of their own international research systems and academic institutions to:

Establish a conceptual bases that permit to describe this process of globalization in three dimensions:

1. New Technologies vs. Capitalist Productive system/relations

2.Domestic Political relations vs. geopolitical strategies

3. Cultural Traditions, pluralism and globalization

Analyze their situation and to diagnose the problems and determine their respective national objectives;

Determine and draw politics of regional integration and of sustainable development capable to overcome these serious structural limits and to put itself in a level of civilization compatible with the scientific and technological revolution.

Last but not the least, the social scientists of the south should join the social forces and the political movements so as to produce an effective response to the global changes; they should unite the local, regional and global efforts in order to fight for sustainable development and global socio-economic justice.

Degree in sociology, Politics and Public Administration at ufmg. master in Politic science at unB. PhD in economics at ufmg and fluminense federal university. 2009 Doctor Honoris Causa at uBA, Argentina, and unmsm and r. Palma, Peru. President of the Advisory council of international relations of the state of rio de Janeiro. President of the ‘global economy and sustainable Development’ programme and network course of the united nations universityunesco. Consultant at sistema econômico Latino-Americano (seLA); university for Peace, un; united nations university-unesco; iLDes, friedrich ebert foundation; cnPQ. Director of studies at the École des hautes Études en sciences sociales, france; lecturer at the Latin America institute of the Academy of sciences, urss. Associate Professor at Paris Viii and ritsumeikan-Kyoto universities. emeritus Professor at fluminense federal university. He has published numerous books and papers, including: O Conceito de Classes Sociais (Petrópolis/santiago de Chile: Vozes/PLA, 1970); Dependency & Latin American Development (helsinki, 1977); Forças Produtivas e Relações de Produção (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1985); La Teoría de la Dependencia: Balance y Perspectivas (méxico: Plaza & Janés, 2002); Do Terror à Esperança: Auge e Declínio do Neoliberalismo (Aparecida/caracas/Beijing: ideias & Letras/monte Ávila/social sciences Academy, 2004; 2007); Economía Mundial, Integración Regional y Desarrollo Sustentable: Las Nuevas Tendencias y la Integración Latinoamericana (Lima: infodem, 2010) e-mail: <theotoni@nitnet.com.br>.↵

Contemporary latin american sociology and the challenges for an international dialogue

José Vicente tavares dos Santos[1]

Introduction

This article approaches the role played by sociology in the analysis of the transformation processes of Latin American societies, following the process of construction of the state and the nation, and in the research about the social issues in Latin America. Also, we will analyze the effects of worldization of the social conflicts, always maintaining a multiple international dialogue.

The new world social issues make an intellectual dialogue with chinese sociology possible, building up a productive agenda for the future of the contemporary sociology.

The distinctive features of the sociological knowledge in Latin America have been the following: internationalism, hybridism, critical approach to processes and conflicts of the Latin American societies, and social commitment on the part of the sociologist (Germani, 1959; Castaneda, 2004; Chacon, 1977; Ianni, 1993; Marini & Millán, 1994).

We may identify six periods in Latin American and caribbean sociology:

The intellectual inheritance of sociology (from the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century).

The sociology of the chair (1850-1950).

The ‘scientific sociology’ and the configuration of ‘critical sociology’ (19501973).

The institutional crisis, the consolidation of ‘critical sociology’, and the diversification (1973-1983).

The sociology of authoritarianism, democracy, and exclusion (1983-2000).

The institutional consolidation and the worldization of Latin American sociology (since 2000).

To analyze this internationalization of sociology, it seems interesting to formulate three hypotheses:

The Latin American sociology forms, from the years 1930, an intellectual approach marked by the internationalism and by sociological innovation.

It is not possible to understand the contemporary sociology without considering the work of Latin American sociologists.

The legacy of the critical approach on sociology could be an intellectual method to design a dialogue with others sociological traditions, as for instance, with the new chinese sociology.

The outlines of the sociological knowledge in Latin America must be remembered: the internationalism, the hybridism, the diversity and the critical analyses of the social process, the social conflicts and the public commitment of sociologists. Latin American sociology is inserted in the global space of the sociological knowledge: it has scientific legitimacy, and has being recognized by the civil society and by the state as a critical conscience of the social reality. The critical thought needs the construction of a new paradigm, in order to be able to imagine political alternatives, working with the dialectic between the sciences of the complexity and the experiences of the classes, the nations and the citizenship (gonzález casanova, 2004; mejía navarrete, 2009).

Prospects for critical sociology from latin America

The twenty-first century expresses long transformations of the contemporary societies, with new forms of the social agents, others social forces, emerging new social movements and a set of social representations very diverse. The present period is marked by the post modernity as a cultural form, by the intensive use of the scientific knowledge in new technologies, by the expansion of the industrial production but with precarious labour, by the advance of the financial capital but also a global social crisis (hobsbawm, 1996; 2000; ianni, 1992, 1996; Jameson, 1996; Arrighi, 2007).

The Late modernity means also the worldization of social conflicts and the new transnational social issues, which are analyzed by an international sociology. Indeed, a revolution within the information technology is reframing the material base of the society (castells, 1996) but the purposes of science, technology and innovation are mostly determined by the market’s demands (Baumgarten, 2008).

The new social questions are more complex: the question of social inclusion / exclusion; the relation of man with nature, indicating the ecological issue; the transformations of urban and agrarian spaces; the fragmentation of the cities; the question of the multiculturalism and transculturalism; the dilemmas of the university, science and the technology; the changes through the new technologies; the forms of violence; the ambivalent lines of the civilizing process and the alternatives of development for the contemporary societies (Castel, 1998; Castells, 1996; Ianni, 2004; Wieviorka, 2004).

There is a deep process of social exclusion — the unemployed, the migrants, the underclass, the landless peasants, those with hunger and ‘without work’, and people experiencing the digital divide (De Sousa Santos, 2000). The social bonds have been broken, by means of social fragmentation processes, a mass society but with individual values (Ianni, 1996). Among the new social questions, even crime acquires new contours and the multiplicity of violence produces a process of lacerating citizenship (Tavares dos santos, 2009).

We live, from the beginning of the twenty-first century, in the sixth period of this long intellectual history: the institutional consolidation and the internationalization of the Latin American sociology. So, it is possible to enunciate a set of questions:

Which is the significance of the Latin American sociology in the age of worldization of social conflicts?

how to develop a cosmopolite dialogue with others nationals sociologies, from the north to the south, from the West to the east?

how to express the Latin American social diversity in the spectrum of the new worldwide social questions?

how to construct the recognition of the Latin American sociological thought in an international sociology?

I. The intellectual inheritance of sociology (from the nineteenth century to the early twentieth century)

The intellectual inheritance of sociology in Latin America was outlined by authors who were concerned with a general interpretation of the society in which they lived. We may name them ‘social thinkers.’ The period of the social thinkers corresponds historically to the period that spans from the struggles for independence in Latin American nations until the beginning of the twentieth century During this period, social theory was developed mostly by thinkers who were under the influence of socio-philosophical ideas developed in europe and in the usA, such as the french illuminism, comte’s positivism, and spencer’s evolutionism (Liedke filho, 2003).

In Brazil, the intellectual milieu was marked by the modernist revolution (1922), a blossom of ideas that grew in with missions of foreign scholars from both the usA and france. It dates back to the 1930s the publication of some admirable works: Casa Grande e Senzala, by gilberto freyre (1933); Evolução Política do Brasil, by caio Prado Junior (1933); and Raízes do Brasil, by sérgio Buarque de holanda (1936).

In other Latin American countries, the social thinkers’ contributions were equally important. In Chile, José Vitorino Lastarria (1817), O Positivismo; Valentin Letelier (1852-1919); Enrique Molina, O Ensaio Moderno (Brunner, 1988). In Peru, we could list José carlos mariátegui (1895-1930) and Victor raúl haya de ia Torre (1895), EI Imperialismo y el APRA; and José miguel Arguedas. In cuba, ramiro guerra wrote Azúcar y población en Ias Antillas (sosa, 1994; in marina & millán, 1994). In Venezuela, Vallenilla Lanz wrote Cesarismo democrático, estudio sobre Ias bases sociológicas de Ia Constitución efectiva de Venezuela (1919); José rafael mendoza, Ideológica y moral (1938), and rafael caldeira, Idea de una sociología venezolana (1954) (romero salazar, 2001: 21). In Mexico, the following books had been published: Los Grandes Problemas Nacionales, by José Vasconcelos and Andrés molina henríquez; Las clases sociales, by mariano otero, and  Evolución Política del Pueblo Mexicano, by Justo sierra. In Argentina, as early as in the nineteenth century, Facundo o civilización y barbarie, by sarmiento (1811-1888), published in 1845, (sarmiento, 1994).

The major result of social thinkers contribution was the gain of legitimacy of a certain discourse on society, one that defined the intellectual as an interpreter of the meaning of the national society construction (Brunner, 1988: 37). In other words, the formation of the Latin American thought can be seen as the history of the idea of a Latin America, i.e., the ‘national question’ was its basic issue and this question refers to how a nation is formed and transformed (ianni, 1993: 32).

II. The ‘sociology of the chair’ (1890-1950)

The academic institutionalization of sociology took place in terms of the so-called ‘The sociology of the chair’, a period which began, in the Latin American countries, towards the end of the nineteenth century, when the disciplines of sociology were introduced in the schools of Philosophy, Law, and economy or, as in Brazil, in the secondary schools for Teachers (Liedke filho, 2003: 226). This phase was characterized by the publication of handbooks for the teaching of sociology, and it was through them that one could learn about the ideas of renowned european and American sociologists, as well as about sociological ideas on social problems such as urbanization, immigration, illiteracy, and poverty.

In Brazil, in the 1930s, some schools were founded in the higher education system: escola Livre de sociologia e Política (1933) and faculdade de filosofia, ciências e Letras of the university of são Paulo (1934), both in the state of são Paulo (Barreira, 2009). In the city of Rio de Janeiro, the university of the Distrito federal was founded in 1935, afterwards becoming the university of Brazil, when then its faculdade nacional de filosofia was founded in 1939 (Lippi, 1995: 242). An author of paramount importance in that period was fernando de Azevedo.

In Argentina, the institute of sociology of the school of Philosophy and Languages of the university of Buenos Aires was created in 1940. Alfredo Poviña was the intellectual leader in that period, notwithstanding the fact that sergio Bagú’s work, Economía de ia sociedad colonial (1949), was a milestone in the interpretation of the Latin American history.

In méxico, Mendieta y Nuñez encourages the organization of the instituto de investigaciones sociales and starts editing the mexican Journal of sociology. In Uruguay, the discipline of sociology is created in 1951 at the facultad de Derecho y ciencias sociales, universidad de ia república; and another discipline of sociology is created in 1952 at the facultad de Arquitectura. Among the most outstanding sociolo- gists are isaac ganon (Estructura social deI Uruguay, 1966) and Aldo solari (rural sociology). The instituto de ciencias sociales is created in 1958, and the centro Latinoamericano de economia humana (CLAEH) is founded (Universidad de la República, 2000; Filgueira, 1979; Pinheiro, 1988). In Chile, the facultad de filosofia y educación of the university of Chile was organized in 1931, and Astolfo Taipa moore was one of the most important Chilean sociologists from that period. In Venezuela, the first academic disciplines in sociology were created in the central university, in 1902, and, later on, at the university of Los Andes; the Department of sociology and Anthropology of the central university of Venezuela was created in 1953.

The Latin American sociology Association (ALAS) was founded during the first World congress of sociology, organized by the international sociological Association (ISA), in Zurich, in 1950. The ALAS 1st congress was held in Buenos Aires, in 1951. Alfredo Poviña was elected President. The ALAS 2nd congress was held in rio de Janeiro, in 1953, and manuel Diegues Júnior was then elected President. Two years later, in Quito, the 3rd ALAS congress was concerned with outlining ‘a common basic program for the Latin American universities which would address the following division and organization of academic disciplines: history of sociology, Logics of sociology, general sociology, special sociologies, and Latin American sociology’ (Brunner, 1988: 149).

From the very first congress on, the opponents of the ‘chair sociologists’ were already present in these international meetings, and would eventually become the ‘scientific sociologists’, people as, for instance, gino germani, which presented papers in rio de Janeiro in 1953, in Quito in 1955, and in montevideo in 1959 (germani, 1971: 13; germani, 2004: 133).

In 1957, in santiago, Chile, where the 4th ALAS congress took place, the sociologist Astolfo Taipa moore was elected President. In 1959, during the 5th congress, in montevideo, it was isaac ganon’s turn to be elected President.

One may assert that the phase of ‘chair sociologists’ made possible the institutionalization of the sociological discourse and the foundation of schools of higher education in sociology or else social sciences (Brunner, 1988: 347).

III. The ‘scientific sociology’ period and the configuration of a ‘critical sociology’ (1950-1973)

The ‘scientific sociology’ period was characterized by academic institutionalization and theoretical disputes linked to empirical investigation, from the mid-1950s to the late 1960s. In Argentina, the institute of sociology of the university of Buenos Aires was organized, and their ‘scientific sociology’ was defined by the presence of gino germani, Jorge graciarena, and Torcuato Di Tella; later on, sergio Bagú and Tulio halperin Dongui joined the faculty.

In Mexico, the national school of Political and social sciences was founded in the Autonomous national university of Mexico (unAm) in 1951, and the centre for Latin American studies was founded in 1961.

In Brazil, in the 1950s, the school of sociology of the university of São Paulo was finally consolidated, led by Antonio candido, florestan fernandes, octavio ianni, and fernando henrique cardoso. This faculty would guide Brazilian sociology for decades to come. The sociological work of florestan fernandes (1920-1995) is the major expression of sociology in Latin America, mainly being concerned with ‘sociology in an era of social revolution’ (candido, 2001; garcía, 2002; Liedke filho, 2003b; martins, 1998). In rio de Janeiro, at the same time, sociology was thriving in the universities: the state of rio de Janeiro, in the 1950s, has among its exponents in social sciences hélio Jaguaribe, nelson Werneck sodré, and guerreiro ramos (ramos, 1965; Lippi oliveira, 1995). In the other states of the Brazilian federation, the university courses of social sciences are being structured, especially in Bahia, Pernambuco. rio grande do sul and minas gerais, with professors who had had their education in Law or economy, as well as having graduated from medical school, as it was the case of Thales de Azevedo, from Bahia (Barreira, 2009).

The creation of the economic commission for Latin America (CEPAL) by the united nations in 1948 gave rise to an important diagnosis of the Latin American economies, based on raúl Prebisch, with a structural heterogeneity’: the centre/periphery concept developed from acknowledging the existence of an international division of labour, according to which the Latin American countries are assigned a subordinate role and specialize in producing and exporting raw materials and different kinds of food (estay reino; in marini & millán, 1994: 28) . As to the Latin American agrarian question, cePAL points out two elements: ‘(a] an extremely slow growth associated to certain agrarian structures, and (b) the structures of property and possession of land’ (giarracca, in Pineiro, 2000: 78). CEPAL congregated notorious economists from Latin America — celso furtado, Aníbal Pinto, oswaldo sunkel, among others — and gave rise to the creation of the Latin American institute of economic and social Planning (iLPes) in 1962, which aimed at taking a path to planning through theories on development.

In Chile, in 1951, the institute for sociological research of the school of Philosophy and education of the university of Chile was created. In 1958, the school of sociology was organized, and in the same year, the school of sociology of the catholic university opened its doors. In both institutions, a renowned generation of sociologists developed their academic work, and among them we find eduardo hamuy, hernán godoy, guillermo Briones, Rafael Baraona, Enzo Faletto, Danilo Salcedo, Edmundo Fuenzalida, Orlando Sepúlveda, Manuel Antonio Garretón, and Roger Vekemans.One might say that the influence of functionalism is evident in the theoretical concepts, and emphasis is put on quantitative techniques as a methodological option (Godoy Urzúa, in camacho, 1979: 519).

Unesco’s support to the development of social sciences in Latin America materialized, at that time, in two projects: the first unesco project resulted in the foundation of a Latin America center for research in social sciences, in rio de Janeiro, in 1957. many Latin American sociologists took part in seminars at the institution, such as Luiz A. Costa Pinto, Gino Germani, Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Torcuato Di Tella and Jorge Graciarena (chor maio, 1999: 35). The centre published the journal America Latina from 1959 to 1976. most articles discussed topics on development in Latin America.Or else they were topics concerning each of the different countries. The main bibliographical production referred to developmental sociology, from modernization to ‘dual societies’. Its end, in 1976, was dramatic, abandoned by the military government (Lippi, 1995; 2005).

The second unesco project resulted in the foundation of the Latin American school of social sciences (FLACSO), in 1957. lt first director was José medina echevarría (Aspectos sociales del desarrollo económico, 1959). FLACSO expanded throughout eleven countries in the following decades, and it was responsible for institutionalizing social sciences in Latin America during the difficult years of the military regimes which would scar the continent from the 1960s on.

In Colombia, a group formed around orlando fals Borda starts writing sociological analyses: their landmark is the publication of La Violencia en Colombia, followed by Las revoluciones inconclusas en America Latina (fals Borda, 1971 and 1976). In Venezuela, silvamichelena and orlando Albornoz start writing. In guatemala, severo martínez Peláez publishes, in 1970, La Patria deI Criollo, ensayo de interpretación de Ia realidad colonial guatemalteca, an indispensable reference book when the subject is the central American societies.

In Mexico, Pablo gonzález casanova publishes, in 1965, La democracia en México, a remarkable work in the sociological approach guided by a structural viewpoint, analyzing the shaping of the national state with the notion of an internal colonialism (gonzález casanova, 1967). In Uruguay, the institute of social sciences is founded, in the universidad de ia república, in 1958.

The period from 1950 to 1973 corresponds to the phase of the populist democracies: Vargas in Brazil (1950-54); Peron (1945-55),  and Frondizi (1958-62) in Argentina; Ibanez, in Chile (1952-58), followed by Allessandris liberalism (1958-64), and by eduardo frei’s Christian democracy (1964-70). There were a few experiences with socialist governments: Arbenz, in guatemala (1948-54); the mobilization in the Dominican republic (1966); the cuban revolution (1959); and in Chile, Allende’s government (1970-73).

This phase of the ‘scientific sociology’ attempted to institutionalize both the teaching of and the research in sociology — based on the structural-functionalist paradigm — in a way that were analogous to that of the sociological centres of the hegemonic countries. According to this approach, the concept of development was expressed in the theory of modernization and in the analysis of the process of transition from a traditional to a modern society. The theory of modernization perceived the process of development as a transition from a traditional rural society to a modern industrial society (Germani, 1971).

At that period, the ALAS congresses were held each time in a different country; for instance, in Venezuela, in 1967 — the elected President of the 6th congress was the sociologist rafael caldeira, and the main themes discussed were: ‘possibilities and limitations of the sociological research in Latin America; political parties and electoral sociology; and the social changes in Latin America’. In 1963, the 7th congress took place in Colombia; in 1967, the 8th congress was held in ei salvador.

By the end of that period, the configuration of the ‘critical sociology’ was undergoing, with an analysis that disputed both the assumptions of the ‘sociology of modernization’ and the development of an approach based on a ‘multiple interlocution’ (ianni, 1993), with nonconformist authors from the united states (such as W. mills and horowitz), or from the french heterodox marxism (as incorporated by henri Lefebvre and Jean-Paul sartre), and from the uK (the first works by historians from Birbeck college, London, who were followers of eric hobsbawm (hobsbawm, 2002).

One of the most prominent sociologists from that period is the Brazilian Luiz Aguiar de costa Pinto, director of the Latin American center for social sciences from 1957 to 1961, and editor of the journal Revista América Latina, having been Vice-president of the international sociological Association (ISA) from 1956 to 1959. The contribution of costa Pinto to sociology derives from his concept of sociological study as a critical analysis of society: he devoted himself to interpreting the racial relations and the transitions that characterized societies at his time (Chor Maio & Villas Bôas, 1999; Costa Pinto, 1970).

In other words, the institutionalization of sociology in that period that ends in 1964, in the case of Brazil, ‘revealed to the intellectuals another interpretive perspective in the horizon, one that was based on  the social and economic inequalities inherent to the Brazilian society’ (Villas Bôas; in Bomeny and Birman, 1991: 37). In Argentina, as early as 1967, Jorge Graciarena was already outlining a framework for the ‘sociology of conflict’ (gracierena, 1971: 178).

A critical approach to the ‘sociology of modernization’ was emerging; its exponents were miguel murrnis, Juan carlos Portantiero, and the followers of José Aricó — editor of the periodical Cuadernos de Pasado y Presente that came to define a renewal in the sociological thought in Latin America (Murmis & Portantiero, 1974).

The Latin American rural sociological Association (ALASRU) was created in 1969, in Buenos Aires, with the purpose to ‘encourage the circulation and refinement of rural sociology’ (nino Velásquez; in Pinheiro, 2000: 212). Their 1st congress was held in 1983, in the Dominican republic, and their 6th congress, in 2003, in Porto Alegre. The last one was organized in recife, Brazil, 2011.

The phase of institutionalizing social sciences in Latin America had come to its end, with a brilliant generation of intellectuals having been devastated by the military coups which succeeded each other in the south cone, starting with Brazil (1964) and Argentina (1966) (Brunner, 1988: 351-56).

Nonetheless, an intellectual process was noticeable: eliseo Verón revealed the beginning of the scientific sociology crisis.On the one hand, a certain ideological diversification is produced, with the marxist thinking with paramount importance, but also the structural anthropology, the communication theory), and the critical us academic sociologist, such as goffman, garfinkel, Becker (Verón, 1974: 45).

Finally, in many Latin American countries, at this moment, sociology would experience a sort of rebirth, and would even present itself as ‘critical sociology,’ often within that one space of freedom which was provided by the ALAs congresses.

IV. The institutional crisis, The consolidation of the ‘critical sociology’, and the diversification of sociology (1973-1983)

The Diaspora of sociologists from Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguayhad begun. In 1969, the 9th ALAs congress was held in Mexico, with Pablo gonzález casanova being elected President. The generosity of the mexican people contributed to the creation of institutions that welcomed many of the exiled intellectuals: this country was converted in the 1970s, into a sort of cultural-ideological crossroads. In 1971 the center for sociological studies is created, and in 1973, the Doctorate Program in sociology of colégio do méxico — not to mention that unAm was still going strong as an institution of reference, with Pablo gonzález casanova’s guidance.

In 1972, while Allende’s government was effervescent, guillermo Briones was elected President of the 10th ALAs congress That period, from 1964 to 1983, refers to the period of the military governments, with traces of authoritarianism and ‘state violence against their opponents and against many sociologists’ (Brazil, 1964-1985; Argentina, 1966-1983; Uruguay, 1973-1985; Chile, 1973-1989).

Within the context of the military coups, in the 1960s, there was the ‘period of crisis and diversification in the Latin American sociology,’ the consolidation of the ‘critical sociology,’ and the emergence of the theory of dependence, while at the same time a double movement was taking place.

If, on the one hand, in some countries (particularly in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay) an institutional crisis in sociology was brought about, in other countries, on the other hand, an institutional consolidation took place (as in the case of Brazil, in the 1980s, and Mexico), with the generalization of the theories of dependence, of marxism, and of critical sociology (olivier, 1996: 80).

During this period, in the 1970s, in many countries, centres for research were organized, thus giving rise to a process of overture to new institutional possibilities for sociological work: in Brazil, CEBRAP; CEDEC; in Uruguay, the ciesu; in Chile, FLACSO  and the group of Agrarian investigators (giA, 1991); in Peru, the center for Peruvian studies (ceP); and in Argentina, the institute Di Tella, cicso and ceur.

As a consequence, the Latin American council on social sciences (CLACSO) was founded in 1967, and it was their function to coordinate efforts, to be a representative organ before unesco, and to be an agent in raising funds from international organizations for the projects to be developed at the centres for research in the various Latin American countries, thus being able to provide opportunities in social sciences, something which would secure the continuity of critical sociology in Latin America (theirs executive secretaries had been Aldo ferrer; francisco Delich; fernando calderón; márcia rivera; Atilio Borón and, since 2007, emir sader).

The consolidation of ‘critical sociology’ may be well characterized by its basic dimensions: an integrated analysis perspective; the historical-structural or dialectic method; the historicity of the object of knowledge; the analysis of complex phenomena of an international nature; a radical criticism of structuralism-functionalism; an interest in marxism as an all encompassing theory that could explain any regional reality; the themes of development and of social and political change (franco; in camacho, 1979: 271-84).

The most important authors are Florestan Fernandes, Octavio Ianni, Orlando Fals Borda, Aníbal Quijano, Pablo González  Casanova, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Enzo Faletto, Miguel Murmis, Among Others.

One must add, to the above iist, the vast expansion of a critical sociology of the agrarian social processes in Latin America (Delich, 1970; GIA, 1991; Giarracca, 1998; 1999; Pereira de Queiroz, 1973; Pinero, 1998; 2000; Brunner and Tavares dos santos, in Pinero, 2000; Souza Martins, 1981; Tavares dos Santos, 1991).

Also, a landmark was heleieth saffioti’s book, The Woman in Class Society, published in 1969, about how gender operates in class societies (Saffioti, 1969). Her study suggests that the ‘explanation of the women’s situation in the capitalistic society can be found via the analysis of the relations between the factor gender and the essential determinations of the capitalistic mode of production’ (saffioti, 1969: 387).

There was an intense dispute as to the variants of marxism, from the historicist marxism of the university of são Paulo to the Althusserian marxism. It was also a period when the theory of dependence became internationality pervasive. moreover, one should not forget to mention the indigenous marxism, the neo-gramscian scholars, and the neo-developmentalists (mariátegui, 1973; marini and millán, 1995; Briceno-León, 1990).

Other authors from the second generation of the school of sociology of the university of São Paulo had their first books published in the 1980s. Among then, we have marialice foracchi, José césar gnacarini, Luiz Pereira, José de souza martins, gabriel cohn, and sedi hirano.

In the case of Chile, the production of ngos may be best characterized by their ‘critical texts’, due to a questioning attitude geared directly against the military government. The most important institution was FLACSO-Chile (Brunner, 1988). Norbert Lechner reflection belongs to that phase as well, for the main theme of his work is ‘to explore the subjective dimension of politics’ (Lechner, 1988: 13).

However, during the military regimes in the south cone, there were brutal repression and exile of sociologists, at first in Chile, then in méxico, central America and the caribbean islands. The Diaspora in Latin American sociology paradoxically produced an unprecedented process of academic exchanges and dialogue, and the ALAS congresses moved to the Andean America and central America.

In 1974, the 11th ALAS congress was held in san José, costa rica, and Daniel camacho was elected President. The main debate took place between two distinct approaches to Latin America: ‘a debate between those authors who advocate an approach that focuses on the concept of imperialism and those who choose to make use of the category of dependence’ (camacho, 1979: 12). The 12th congress took place in Quito, with Agustín cueva as President. In 1979, at Panama city, marco A. gandásegui presided over the 13th ALAS congress Two  years later, the 14th congress, held in san Juan, Porto rico, elected Denis maldonado to chair the meeting. The 15th ALAS congress was organized in 1983, in managua, while the sandinista revolution (1979-1990) was raging.

The atmosphere in that managua congress revealed hope in the overcoming of the central America dictatorships. The authoritarian forms of government — somoza family in nicaragua (1937-1979); the permanence of the Army in the government of ei salvador (19311979), and the military governments after Arbenzs fails from power in guatemala (1954-1982) (Torres-rivas, 1993: 17) — were followed by political agreements and peace treaties which left great hopes of change in central America (figueroa ibarra; in Torres-rivas, 1993: chapter 2).

That was the period of crisis and diversification in Latin American sociology (19731983), characterized by the institutional and professional crisis in sociology under the cultural-political repression of the authoritarian regimes and, at the same time, by a deep paradigmatic crisis, i.e., by a crisis of the hegemony of the ‘scientific’ sociology, given the emergence of theoretical options, such as the national sociology, the theory of dependence, and the theory of the ‘new authoritarianism’ (Liedke filho, 2005: 400)

Rodolfo stavenhagen work (Siete tesis equivocadas sobre América Latina: sociología y subdesarrollo), published in Mexico in 1973, represented a landmark in this critical rupture with the developmentalists and modernizing theories (stavenhagen; in Durand, 1974). Several authors — Theotonio dos santos, Vania Bambirria, Andre Gunder frank and Enzo Faleto, start asking themselves whether it was possible that the socioeconomic development could be frustrated if it attempted to reproduce the processes experienced by the ‘metropolitan’ hegemonic countries. Basically, they start thinking that underdevelopment has its historical specificity of dependence mean. According to florestan fernandes, this was the ‘phase of reflecting on the bourgeois revolution in Brazil (1967-1986)’, described in his book A Revolução Burguesa no Brasil, followed by another phase (1986-1995), that of the ‘citizenship militancy’ (Liedke filho, 2003b).

Fernando Henrique cardoso and enzo faletto’s book (published first in Chile and Mexico, and then in Brazil in 1970) was the sociological work from the region that had the most repercussion abroad. Their purpose was ‘to explain some controversial aspects about the conditions, possibilities, and forms of economic development in countries that, while keeping relations of dependence with the hegemonic poles of the capitalist system have managed to organize themselves into becoming nations — and, just like any other state, aspire to sovereignty (Cardoso & Faletto, 1973: 7).

In Latin America, there were disagreements in the relationship between the military governments and the academic, scientific, and technological development. even military authoritarian governments could be extremely different one from each other: in the cases of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay, on the one hand; and the case of Brazil, on the other, they affected the higher-education institutions (Brunner & Barrios, 1987: 42).

In the Brazilian case, after professors, researchers and university teachers were expelled from various institutions, both in 1964 and in 1968; scientific and technological development were incorporated to the model of development and geopolitics that had been adopted, especially after 1975, in a phase called ‘gradual transition’.

In Argentina (1966-1983), Chile (1973-1989), and Uruguay(19731985), a repressive and destructive authoritarianism prevailed in the universities in the area of social sciences (garretón, 1983; 1984).

V. Authoritarianism, democracy and social exclusion (1983-2000)

After the Argentinean example in 1983, the processes of re-democratization in the other countries (Brazil in 1985; Chile in 1989) outline new social processes, and in sociology the principal debate tackles authoritarianism and social exclusion (garretón, 1995; 2000).

It was then possible to scatter the ALAS congresses throughout Latin America and the caribbean islands. In 1985, the 16th congress was held in rio de Janeiro, under the supervision of Theotonio dos santos. In 1987, it was montevideo’s turn to host the ALAS congress in its 17th edition, when geronimo de sierra was elected President. In 1991, the 18th congress was held in cuba (salazar, 1992: 13).

Among the various debates, the question of the state in Latin America was summarized in three aspects. The first question relates to the modes of society participation in the structures and in exercising democracy. The second one relates to the ability this society will have to develop policies for its own interests. The third and last question is based on our prospects for the future of Latin America (Salazar, 1992: 177).

The following congress was held in caracas, in 1993 (Sonntag & Briceno-León, 1998). The more outstanding debates discussed the following subjects: the viability of democracy in Latin America in the 1990s; models for alternative development and for social policies; culture, modernity, and cultural tradition; and democracy and citizenship.

During that period, it was noteworthy the density in the theoretical and interpretive contribution of sociologists, in different countries from Latin America. In Peru, for instance, there was José matos mar, Aníbal Quijano, and Julio Cotler (Clases, Estado y Nación en el Perú, 1978). And we have already mentioned the sociological production  in Chile, with enzo faletto, José Brunner, norbert Lechner, sérgio gómez, and so many others. In Brazil florestan Fernandes, Octavio Ianni, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, José de Sousa Martins, Gabriel Cohn, and a new generation of young sociologists (who obtained their PHD at the university of São Paulo, at iuPerJ of Rio de Janeiro, and at universities abroad — France, uK, Germany, USA, Mexico) in the 1980s and the 1990s.

Much work was carried out in the field of agrarian studies, they overcame theoretically the concept of modernization; they interpreted the changes in the social classes in the agrarian milieu, they acknowledged the political presence of the peasants in the Latin American societies, and they evaluated the social changes in the agrarian milieu (gómez & echenique, 1988; gonzález casanova, 1984, 1985; Roger Bartra, 1974; 1981, 1982; Martins, 1981). The presence of the peasantry as a social force in Latin America was once again a topic in sociological studies, and these include the socio-historical studies by Arturo Warman, Jacques chonchol, and José Bengoa. At the same time, there was a boom of studies on the ‘new ruralism’ and the social conflicts (Giarracca, 2001; Gómez, 2002; Pérez Correa, 2001).

The changes in contemporary societies imposed new challenges to sociology in Latin America after the global crisis on the 1990s that conclude the short twentieth century (Hobsbawm, 1994). These new challenges were especially acute in the beginning of the twentyfirst century: the worldization of social conflicts, the globalization of economy, the neo-fordism mode of production and the cultural postmodernity.

VI. The institutional consolidation and th worldization of latin american sociology (After the year 2000)

In the process of worldization of Latin American sociology, the social dilemmas take on new configurations. This is the period when political democracy was steadily constructed in Latin America, with specific processes of re-democratization. The increasing claims for human rights, social rights, and the right to difference aspired to an extended social democracy and citizenship. This is a time for theoretical debate involving different notions of state, social classes, and new social movements (Larangelra, 1990; medeiros, 1989; scherer-Warren & Krischke, 1987), completed with discussions on modernity, postmodernity, and the future of Latin American societies (Domingos, 1999; ianni, 1996, 2000).

The ALAs congresses in the 1990s manifested this concern. In 1995, the 20th ALAS congress was held in Mexico, and Raquel Sosa was elected President. The congress’s theme was ‘Latin America and  the caribbean islands: prospects for their reconstruction’ (sosa, 1996). So, the contemporary challenges to the Latin American sociology are: globalization, the integration of Latin America into the new world scenery, the question of migrations and frontiers, the demographic transition, problems of the transition to democracy, political culture and the media, political violence, the agrarian urban crisis, the prospects for recovery of the environment and the design of a program for sustainable development, the problems of gender and autonomy for the different ethnic groups (olivier, 1996: 5).

The production of new knowledge after the social struggles and movements, in circumstances where we have criticism against the neoliberal hegemony — e.g., as in the Zapatista movement — was taking place (sosa, 1996: 24). The question of the prospects for democracy in Latin America was the big issue at that moment, mainly to social participation in the fundamental issues of society (salinas, 1999: 10).

The following ALAS congress, the 21st, was held in 1997, at the university of São Paulo, in the city of São Paulo, and emir sader was elected President. The final Declaration of the 21st congress establishes:

There are representative-democratic regimes in most of our countries today.On the one hand, an option is presented which favours an increasing concentration of both political and economic power, exclusion of the majority, and the existence of programs that reinforce social control, secure governability, and limit people’s participation in public life.On the other hand, democracy has in fact expanded the presence of the collectivities, the creation of horizontal networks not only of cultural and political organizations but also of social movements; democracy has also encouraged (and ma de deeper) the changes in both forms and means of the public activity, the establishment of new relations and means of alternative communication, the establishment of principles for a participative process and for a democratic culture (sader, 1988).

At this moment, Latin American sociologist analyses globalism as a totality that is not only geo-historical, but also socially, economically, politically and culturally comprehensive. It actually means a totality, but heterogeneous, uneven, contradictory, and fragmentary (ianni, 1992; 1996).

We were living a neoliberalism, the generator of a process of economic globalization, of increasing social inequalities, of a ‘world of poverty’ in ‘violent times’ (Borón, Gambina & Minsburg, 1999). In 1999, the 22nd ALAS congress took place in concepción, Chile. The final Declaration stated the following: ‘from our point of view, the alternative should be based on the value of the democracies at the national level, of the alliances between and of solidarity among all the  countries in the continent and those countries in the periphery of the planet, excluded as they are from the mega-markets of the rich countries. In the first place, one should be aware that, while experiencing the crisis of the neoliberal models, it is a must that alternatives that contemplate a sustainable development be designed, and such alternatives must articulate productivity and social equity.

In 2001, the 1st regional conference of LSA, hosted by the Venezuelan sociology Association, made manifest the worldization in sociology in Latin America, pointed the Latin American sociology main features: its empiricism, its eclecticism, and its social commitment (Romero Salazar, 2001: 54; Sonntag & Briceno-León, 1998: 24).

Also in 2001, the 23th ALAs congress took place in Antigua, Guatemala. The final document affirms:

We reiterate our commitment to a humanistic and critical thinking that engages in justice and peace, fights the various forms of oppression that crush our peoples today, pursues the consolidation of a Latin American identity, aims at restoring integrity and dignity, aims at the economic, social and cultural integration of our peoples, and seeks an active participation in the construction of a better and peaceful world.

The 24th ALAs congress was held in Arequipa, Peru, in 2003, and Jordan Rosas Valdivia was elected President (Zeballo, Salinas & Tavares dos Santos, 2005). Its central theme revealed the moment the continent was experiencing: ‘civil society: actors and organizations’. The final Declaration stated:

As social scientists from this region of the world, permanently committed to its obtainment, we can contribute with vocation, creativity and initiative in this and in the next period, so that these new possibilities for development may become sound and solid to the benefit of society as a whole. Some heartening experiences start to blossom – albeit extremely difficult and painful – in terms of a reconstruction of sociability’s, in terms of social struggles and movements, in terms of demonstrations and political participation.One can perceive, then, that the excluded are, in fact, including them. Alternatives can be foreseen: the renewal of forms to generate income, the reconfiguration of the social capital through solidarity networks, the processes that allow for the emergence of collective actions which apparently are strong enough to inspire hope in those excluded by the hegemonic model of globalization (Díaz & cattani, 2004).

Once again, critical knowledge had to face the challenges of interpreting the world social changes and their social and epistemological effects on Latin American sociology (Barreira, 2009; Delich, 2004; Lander, 2003; sánchez & sosa, 2004).

The 25th congress of the Latin American sociology Association (ALAS, hold in Porto Alegre in 2005, followed the theme ‘Development. Crisis, Democracy — participation, social movements and sociological theory’. The central topics where: (1) the dilemmas and the possibilities of democracy in Latin America, central America, and the caribbean islands — political violence vs. ethics; and (2) the theoretical challenges, both classical and contemporary, for sociology in Latin America (Tavares dos santos, 2009b, 2009c).

VII. The age of world conflictiveness

Assuming the analysis developed by hobsbawm about the twentieth century, the Age of Extremes, one may define the twenty-first century (which has begun in 1991) as the period of the process of globalization of social conflicts, characterized by a worldization of the capitalistic activities, global crisis and hybrid cultures in Latin America.

During this 10-year period, we arrived at a worldization of analyses, discussions and debates on some of the new global social issues, mainly through conferences sponsored by international organizations like the united nations, from 1989. In the mid-1990s, a new wave of protests is set off against the effects of the globalization process — a process that molds social forms marked by the effects of exclusion derived from the neoliberal policies, thus giving rise to new social conflicts, sometimes establishing limits to the consolidation of democracy in the countries that are peripheral to the capitalistic world.

Examples are many, from the Zapatista movement (1994) to the demonstrations against the meetings of the international financial organizations. In other words: ‘We have tried to demonstrate how the neoliberal doctrine was imposed upon the contemporary world, and how the economic policies derived from it have produced terrible inequalities in the world economy’. Against such discomfort of the contemporary civilization, a world process has been developed of debates on ‘another world possible’, something which has been taking place since the first World social forum in Porto Alegre, in 2001 (Dos santos, 2004; cattani, 2001; seoane & Taddei, 2001).

The social questions, focusing on work issues since the ninetieth century (castel, 1998), now become complex and worldwide questions, for many are the dimensions of social issues that are now questioned — among them the question of social bond (Tavares dos santos, 2009). The changes in the working world, given the technological transformations that bring about scantier and more uncertain work opportunities, provoke a crisis to the labour unions, unemployment, and a process of social selection / exclusion (cardoso, 2003; sierra, 2001; sobral fonseca & grossi Porto, 2001; mejía navarrete, 2009b).

Among the current social conflicts, the phenomena of diffuse violence have increased. They have acquired new characteristics, and now are pervasive in the entire society (Pinheiro, 1982, 1983, 1998; Preciado, 2004; Delito y sociedad, 1992-2012).One finds multiple forms of violence in the contemporary societies — ecological violence, social exclusion, violence between the genders, racism, violence in school —, and this comes to a process of citizenship laceration (Tavares dos santos, 1999). In other words, we face contemporary forms of social control that are characteristic of a repressive state plus a crisis in the welfare state (strasser, 2000: 14). There is a visibility and a notion of the importance the social struggles have against the worldization of injustice: we find new agents of resistance; we face the denial of centralized state power acting on the social space-time. Then, within the picture of crisis in the Latin American cities, it would be possible to consider the construction of a transnational world citizenship, one that would be marked by the conceiving of social, juridical, and symbolic practices that were innovative and global (Joseph, 2005; ribeiro Torres, 2004; Tavaresdos-santos, 2009).

Processes of social exclusion are unleashed: the landless, the social-classless, the computer divide, the homeless, the foodless, the workless; and the young people crisis (Balardini, 2000; Tavares dos santos, 2009). A new world social space of conflicts is delineating itself in the spaces and times of the ‘era of globalism’ (Beccaria & López, 1996; ianni, 1996; mazzei, 2002, minuin, 1995; souza martins, 2002). Being against a normative and programmed society (resulting from a power technology centred in life itself) and against a state guided towards social penal control, social forces of resistance have emerged in this still very young twenty-first century; examples range from the protests to the social movements, all of them seeking alternatives to ‘imperialism’ (Almeyra, 2004; Borón, 2002; cels, 2003; giarracca, 2001; scribano, 2003; seoane, 2003).

The 26th congress of the Latin American Association of sociology took place in guadalajara, Mexico, August 2007, Oriented by the subject ‘Latin America in and from the World. Social sociology and sciences in the change of Time: Legitimacies in Debate’. The proposition expresses the internationalization of critical sociology:

a) The worldwide debates: the influence that they have in Latin American and caribbean sociology, and simultaneously to emphasize the originality and the contribution from the Latin American thought to the worldwide social sciences debate; b) the best understanding of the original moment by which they cross our societies in his worlds of life, their local, regions and countries or even in his processes of integration and conformation of supranational identities; c) the analysis of the recent social transformations, in terms of the debate on democracy, social participation, citizenship, government, justice, public security, and the alternatives that are generated from the new left, and from other critics to the neoliberals; d) the subjective construction of the public ethics, like values of coexistence in the fairness and justice.

In accordance with this outlook, we can find a synthesis of the Latin American social sciences’ contributions to reinterpretations of sociological knowledge, as it presented itself in the second half of the twentieth century, in these concepts: (1) Political independence; (2) order; (3) Progress and development; (4) Liberty; (5) revolution; (6) marginalization; (7) centre/periphery and their relations; (8) Dependence; (9) internal colonialism; (10) socialist revolution and moral revolution; (11) Political systems and systems of power; (12) informal society and authoritarian formalism, and the neoliberal society; (13) exploitation; (14) the pedagogy of the oppressed and collective pedagogy; (15) Liberation theology; (16) Democracy; (17) radical post-modernism and constructing the world. It is centred on the concept of ‘Democracy for all’ including social groups of the various ethnic origins and the civil society (gonzález casanova; in: Tavares dos santos 2009b; mejia navarrete, 2009).

VIII. The dialogue between latin America and chinese sociology

To explain the societies of the twenty-first century, from the point of view of a critical sociology, some intellectual problems are decisive:

What role can sociology play in Latin America in the age of the worldization of social conflicts?

How to develop the multiple interlocutions in the world space, dialoguing with the diverse sociologies of the north and the south, and how to explain the homologies of the new worldwide social issues, in its national and regional contexts?

How to construct the intellectual recognition of the intellectual dialogue between Latin American and chinese sociologies?

Perhaps, a starting point could be the study of the social transformations (Li Peilin, guo Yuhua & Liu shiding; in roulleau-Berger et al., 2008), and also the concept of a ‘sociology of transition’ could help us in this dialogue (sun Liping; in roulleau-Berger et al., 2008).

Still, we needed to take a step forward to organize a contemporary agenda to construct an international sociology, by a comparative approach with an international dialogue of theoretical concepts, subjects of research, comparative methodologies and an interchange of sociological interpretations (chen Yingying; in roulleau-Berger et al., 2008).

For the sociological agenda, we may choose some sociological dimensions that could be shared for comparatives studies in contemporary society:

The agrarian social conflicts and the rural-urban migrations. A dialogue with the researches of Liu shiding, Li Youmei, guo Yuhua, Tang un (roulleau-Berger et al., 2008) could be quite interesting.

The transformations of the work, the effects of the technologies and the ‘fragmented cities’. It will be worthwhile comparing Latin American studies with the researches of Li chunling, Ton Xin, Li Peilin (roulleau-Berger et al., 2008).

The diffuse social violence and the ways of violence social prevention.

The systems of criminal justice and the model of social control. For instance, the work of Zhang Jing (roulleau-Berger et al., 2008).

The perspectives of construction of a society with respect to the citizenship, and the social diversity, in a different level of the civilizing process. This point is analyzed by shen Yuan (roulleau-Berger et al., 2008).

In the procedures of contemporary sociology, the dissemination of the habitus of the search resides marked by diverse elements: methodical doubt, creativity, methods and hypothesis of the scientific work; use of the computer methodologies, in order to surpass the antinomies of qualitative and quantitative procedures; flexible organization of the work in research groups; ethical responsibility and the use of the sociological imagination. These elements of the sociological thought define sociology as a critical and constructivist knowledge of social self-conscience of the reality.

By this made of intellectual practice, it would be possible to construct sociology for the twenty-first century, oriented by the perspective of the transition or transformation, both of society and knowledge. A sociology of the transformation, in which the quality of scientific work of the sociologist is made up by an imperative of social responsibility, with respect to the human dignity and by an academic conduct oriented by the social justice.

Conclusion

The recent period of an intellectual history consolidate the internationalization of the Latin America sociology.

The 26th congress of ALAS, located in guadalajara, México, in 2007, proposed the following general subjects: ‘The worldwide debates: the influence that they have in Latin American and caribbean sociology, and simultaneously to emphasize the originality and the contribution from the Latin American thought to the worldwide social sciences debate. The analysis of the recent social transformations, in terms of the debate on democracy, social participation, citizenship, government, justice, public security, and the alternatives that are generated from the new left, or from other critics to the neoliberals’. Almost the same issues have been discussed at the 27th congress of ALAS, in Buenos Aires, 2009: ‘We are determined to consolidate the Latin American intellectual movement in social sciences and to fortify the diverse participation about: natural resources degradation and the ecological conflict; citizenship and participative democracy; the new productive areas; and the construction of critical knowledge’.

Consequently, two key questions arise. First, if ‘modernity is a disappointment’, it means that another space-time perspective defies us, because the euro centrism, the Western world vision of the modern civilization, has a serious challenge (Wallerstein, 1998). The multiplicity of social times requires what we reconstruct our theories and our methodologies, minding on historicity (Touraine, 2007; sztompka; in Barreira et al., 2006).

Secondly, there is worldization of the social conflicts that changes norms, values and produces transnational social movements, like feminism, ecological mobilizations or migrations to the big cities (Wieworka, 2008). By the way, a blossom of ideas has been produced, as it shows the World social forum: (‘open meeting place for reflective thinking, democratic debate of ideas, formulation of proposals, free exchange of experiences, by groups and movements of civil society that are opposed to neoliberalism and to domination of the world by capital and any form of imperialism, and are committed to building a society centred on the human person’), located in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2010, 2012; in mumbai in 2004; in caracas and Bamako in 2006, and in nairobi in 2007; and the regional meetings in 2008 and 2009.

From Latin America, it could be possible to synthesize the social questions and the sociological problems in an emergent agenda for sociology:

The development of sociology: concepts, methodologies, institutions of education and research and associations.

Development and crisis of the rural society.

The big cities: immigration, housing deficit, slums, unemployment.

Crisis of the institutions of socialization: family, childhood, youth and school.

New organization of work relations, precarious work, vulnerability and social exclusion.

The environment issues and sustainability.

Sociology of the differences: gender relations, ethnical relations, and cultural diversity.

Social state and Policies: governmentally and social policies.

Models of social control: violence, the administration of justice and the human rights.

Social movements, civil society and social protests.

Internationalization of the knowledge by networks.

Alternatives of a democratic development.

The mode of culture: hybrid cultures, political culture, mass media, digital inclusion, the religions and the social imaginary.

In the Age of Late modernity, the social transformations present this complexity of social problems, the ‘mobilization and the activism of the masses’, in a global proportion with a dynamic temporality which affects millions of ‘common people’ (sztompka; in Barreira et al., 2006: 13). In order to answer these challenges, we observe, on the one hand, the perspective of multidisciplinary or Trans disciplinar approach (Sztompka; in Barreira et al., 2006: 16).

A global sociology leaves ‘of the global variability, the global connectivity and the global intercommunication’ (Therborn; in Barreira et al., 2006: 83). The author proposes five departure points: 1) The systems could only be understood if we recognize that its systematic is highly variable; 2) the world is divided, ‘with many borders — cultural, social and political’. Nevertheless, it is more related and interdependent, it is also a world of real time, a world constantly connected; 3) the national and the global could be overlapping to each other; 4) the increasing regionalization of some economic flows, particularly of commerce; 5) the persistent importance of the emergent countries (Therborn; in Barreira et al., 2006, p. 93; Therborn, 2006).

At this moment of paradigmatic transition, the possibility that we construct a late-modern critical theory could come if we recognize the relation between knowledge and emancipation, or a ‘decent knowledge for a prudent life’ (De sousa santos, 2000). Because it would be the possibility that we enunciate a new common sense, a participative and re-enchanted common sense (De sousa santos, 2000: 107; De sousa santos, 1995).

The sociologists have an imperative of social responsibility, of respect to the human dignity and academic conduct founded on social justice and solidarity, oriented by the scientific merit but even more by the social relevance of his work. This pattern of intellectual work defines the challenges of the international sociology.

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Bachelor in social sciences at federal university of rio grande do sul (ufrgs), Porto Alegre, Brazil; master in sociology (usP) and PhD (Docteur d ́Etat) at university of Paris X, nanterre. Professor of sociology at ufrgs. Senior research fellow at the national council for scientific and Technological Development (cnPq), Brazil. regional coordinator of the national institute of science and Technology on Violence, Democracy and citizenship security. Vice-president of the rc 29 ‘social control and Deviance’ at the international sociological Association (isA) and member of the executive committee at the Latin American council of social sciences (cLAcso). Author of several books including: Tavares dos santos, José Vicente & Teixeira, Alex niche (orgs.) 2012 Conflitos Sociais e Perspectivas da Paz (Porto Alegre: Tomo); Tavares dos santos, José Vicente; TeiXeirA, Alex niche & russo, maurício (orgs.) 2011 Violência e Cidadania: práticas sociológicas e compromissos sociais (Porto Alegre: ufrgs/sulina); Tavares dos santos, José Vicente 2008 Violências e Conflitualidades (Porto Alegre: Tomo); Tavares dos santos, José Vicente (org.) 2008 Mundialização e Sociologia Crítica da América Latina (Porto Alegre: ufrgs); Tavares dos santos, José Vicente (org.) 2008 Violências, Lutas Sociais e Democracia na América Latina (Porto Alegre: ufrgs). e-mail: <jvicente@ufrgs.br>.↵