Latin America’s Left Turn

By Ioana Botea

NEW YORK, Mar 12 – In the past decade, a wave of democratically-elected leftist governments has swept over Latin America. In a lecture at NYU Wagner, Dr. Robert Kaufman analyzed the main factors behind this change in the political landscape, and tried to assess the performance of the new generation of left-wing leaders in the region.

The election of Hugo Chavez in 1998 instigated the rise of generally labeled “leftist” leaders and parties across the Latin American continent. Following the Venezuelan example, Brazil elected labor leader Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Argentina chose socialist Nestor Kirchner, Uruguay voted for Tabare Vazquez, and Bolivia appointed indigenous Evo Morales to the country’s leadership.

According to Kaufman, the revival of the Left reflected the hard times of late 1990s and early 2000s. The disenchanted population manifested “retrospective voting” against incumbents, rather than an amplified preference for the political Left. In addition, there was a broad backlash against neoliberal reforms in the region. In this sense, the political changes in Latin America might be compared to the revival of the Labor Party under Tony Blair following Margaret Thatcher’s conservative reign. Nevertheless, public opinion was vacillated: while privatization was largely unpopular, there was widespread support for trade liberalization. Kaufman also pointed out that, “the most radical left governments [of Venezuela and Ecuador] emerged in countries that experienced only limited [neoliberal] reform.”

The boom period of early 2000s allowed for massive relaxation of economic constraints on policy. Bolstered by economic prosperity, leftist leaders managed to consolidate their power, despite the lack of a clear ideology their precursors possessed. However, Kaufman warned that the current economic meltdown is exposing the vulnerability of Venezuela and Argentina, which have problems of inflation and redistribution. Conversely, despite being hit hard by the global crisis, Chile and Brazil are experiencing an increase in public support for their presidents, with dissatisfaction targeting the Right rather than the Left.

Responding to one of the questions raised by the audience, Kaufman insisted that the Left is spread over a very large spectrum, and the governments of Latin America should not be lumped into a homogeneous and consistent regional block. The new generation of left-wing leaders has emerged from diverse, and sometimes even conflicting, traditions and from disparate local contexts. On one hand, countries such as Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia had inchoate party systems that enabled left-wing candidates to run against the system itself, on the promise of radical economic and political transformations. On the other hand, Chile, Uruguay and Bolivia had institutionalized party systems where left opposition parties were established competitors, and focused their electoral campaigns against the incumbents and not the system.

In a rather controversial classification into “bad” and “good” lefts, Kaufman contrasted the leadership of Chavez, who has taken advantage of oil revenues to promote unsustainable social reforms, with that of Lula, who has implemented numerous pro-poor programs such as BolsaFamilia, but continued with market-oriented policies. Kaufman suggested that Venezuela is an outlier, rather than an indicator of Latin America’s future direction.