Skip to content
February 8, 2023
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Reddit
  • Telegram
  • TikTok
  • LinkedIn
  • Discord
Orinoco Tribune – News and opinion pieces about Venezuela and beyond

Orinoco Tribune – News and opinion pieces about Venezuela and beyond

From Venezuela and made by Venezuelan Chavistas

Primary Menu
  • News
  • Opinion
  • About us
    • About us
    • Who we are – Becoming a Volunteer
    • Editorial guidelines for contributors
    • Our Sources
      • Venezuelan Sources
      • International Sources
    • Contact us
  • Categories
    • Politics
    • Economy
    • Security and Defense
    • International
      • Africa
      • Asia
      • Europe
      • Oceania
      • US/Canada
    • Latin America and ALBA-TCP
      • South America
      • Central America and the Caribbean (+Mexico)
    • Ideology-Commune-Labor
    • Health-Education-Sport-Culture-Technology
    • Solidarity and Social Movements
    • OT Specials
  • Support Us
Light/Dark Button
YouTube Channel
  • Home
  • News
  • Álvaro García Linera: The Central Command of the Latin American Right is the US, not Spain
  • Latin America and ALBA-TCP
  • News

Álvaro García Linera: The Central Command of the Latin American Right is the US, not Spain

December 23, 2021

The conservative command of the Latin American right is in the United States, not in Spain. Vox is small and clumsy. On the other hand, Washington promotes a series of basic values: market, individuality, institutionality against social convulsions and wealth as the goal of life, affirms Álvaro García Linera.

The vice president of the Plurinational State of Bolivia between 2006 and 2019 is one of the most prominent contemporary leftist intellectuals. His extensive and provocative intellectual production is the result of a political commitment that led him to imprisonment for seven years and of a solid theoretical training.

Back in Mexico, where he studied mathematics at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and where he was in asylum due to the coup d’état against him and President Evo Morales, he spoke with La Jornada about the difficult relationship between the continent’s progressivism and the middle classes, the right-wing project in the region and the excessive confidence that governments of national-popular inspiration have had in their armies.

The following is part of this interview.

RELATED CONTENT: Lack of Left-Wing Culture, Weakness of Progressivism in Latin America (Interview)

What does progressivism in Latin America consist of?
Progressivism has a broad spectrum, but it shares common things. The first is that they are new political forces that are bursting onto the political scene, criticizing the old traditional political system, which had been anchored to the structures of the State for 40 years, and in other countries for 50 or 70 years.

The second is a vindication of the popular, of its presence, of its rights. It seeks a modification of the composition of the distribution of the national economic surplus between capital and labor, in favor of the popular sectors and labor. And a recovery of the protagonism of the State as manager, administrator or amplifier of common goods and collective rights. That is what is common to progressivism.

From that you can range from more moderate views that comply with this minimum common denominator and stay there, to more radicalized progressivism, which proposes a productive protagonism of the State, through nationalization of certain strategic sectors of the economy, and mobilization as a way of managing the administration of the State.

These three elements: a productive presence of the State, social democratization in the management of public affairs and modification of the class composition of the State leadership, would be the most radicalized progressivism.

Is it a project different from that of social democracy, the old revolutionary nationalism, communism and national liberation?
There are no sharp breaks. In some cases it is the continuation of the national-popular of the 50’s. Middle class elites committed to the popular that make certain decisions, as happened in the 40’s, 50’s and part of the 60’s in Latin America. But in other cases, no. In other cases it is a substantial rupture.

The presence of Indians governing, in the case of Bolivia, breaks with any continuity of revolutionary nationalism or the national-popular of the 50’s. Although there is continuity in terms of the role of the State, it is a modification in class composition. It is the serf becoming the master. There you have a 180-degree turn of the composition of the state.

The same interests
Does the Latin American right wing have a project?
It always has a project: fundamentally, to protect its interests. The question is whether it has an expansive, seductive, universalist project, as it came to have in the 1980s, when neoliberalism at the world level was presented as the answer to the crisis of the welfare state in the countries of the North. And it was presented as the necessary conclusion of the collapse of the experiences of real socialism.

But not today. Today it is: let’s go back to privatization, to deregulation of labor, to market openings and let’s concentrate wealth in the rich who will trickle it down to the poor. But, doing it in war, in a crusade against those who oppose it: the communists, the indigenous rebels, the migrants (depending on which country you are in), the populism of the rulers, the empowered unions.

Now, the discourse has lost its universality. It no longer seduces you, but seeks to impose itself on you. Its content is the same: to defend the rich by means of that four-axis prescription, but now based on a holy war against the infidels of this economic-political creed. It is a discourse that comes to impose, no longer to convince.

Is the organizing center of the Latin American right wing, either with the face of José María Aznar or Vox, in Madrid?
No. Vox is still small and clumsy. Its colonial mentality prevents it from understanding the Latin American reality, beyond such nonsense as showing civilization to Latin Americans. Today, that story is given to you by the pure racists of the continental political life. Those who are grateful, every time they have lunch and make the sign of the cross, for having a foreign surname and a lighter skin color than the rest of their compatriots.

The conservative command continues in the United States. It is very powerful. It does so through USAID, the State Department and the institutions that promote human rights and support entrepreneurship. That is where the strength of this discourse continues. Not in its extreme version, because the Americans are the Empire of the last 100 years. They are smarter than the extinct and cadaverous Empire represented by the Spanish oligarchy.

North Americans have more skill. They promote a series of basic values: market, individuality, institutionality against social convulsions, wealth as the goal of life. Therein lies the main force, the command of the conservative sectors of the continent. And it is a local creation of each country, how all these elements are wrapped in more democratizing or more authoritarian discourses.

Authoritarianism and the racialized discourse of the Latin American right emerges more as an endogenous reaction to a series of risks that they see with the emergence of populisms and progressivisms. What Vox is doing is trying -on that neoconservative, authoritarian and racialized right wing- to put together a kind of Ibero-American coordination, a kind of international-continental. But it is very clumsy. There, the North Americans give him lessons on how to know the local realities in order to have greater incidence.

Gramsci’s Transformism
How do you explain the romance and divorce between the middle classes and progressivism in Latin America?
Predictable, but not obligatory.
Gramsci called this transformism, in one of its aspects. How sectors of the middle or upper classes, not as a class, but as radicalized collectives, in certain moments of political crisis can feel attracted by the emergence and novelty of the popular. But, with time, says Gramsci, “there is the call of the class”. You return to where you started from. It is predictable, but it is not obligatory.

You have to look at how progressivism didn’t do enough to delay transformism, so that you do not complete the evil circle of them going back to where they came from. Each country has its own path to transformism.

The middle classes are becoming politicized, they are organizing, debating, discussing. But it is not a politicization of the left, as it was in the 1970s. We have a politicization of the middle classes with conservative logic, which makes it even more difficult to reverse that.

Progressivism is encountering a problem with the middle sectors. Also the United States, which is going to have, in the following decades, racialized fundamentalist sectors as active subjects of politics.

RELATED CONTENT: Puebla Group Calls for Unity in the Face of Far-Right Maneuvers in Latin America

What relationship has been established between the Army and progressive governments?
An excessive trust. In progressivism we have believed that respecting institutionalism, promoting the presence of the popular, was enough. But, with some exceptions, Latin American armies are armies of caste. Some more than others, the commanders have been caste commanders. And if they are not of real, visually verifiable caste, they are of imaginary caste.

In order to have loyalty of the armed forces to the processes of democratization of wealth and rights carried out by progressivism, it is not enough to promote the participation of the people in the mechanisms of selection for promotion in the commands, nor is it enough to respect their institutionality.

In progressivism we have not made a substantial reform of the military doctrine inherited from the years of the cold war, in which the enemy of the institution is the internal enemy, camouflaged, but internal enemy. This doctrine has not been eradicated from the mentality. This is one of the pending tasks and one of the risks of any radical progressive project in the continent.

 

 

Featured image: Álvaro García Linera

(Internationalist 360º)  by Luis Hernández Navarro

Want More?

Don't want to be a victim of the Algorithm?

SIGN UP TO RECEIVE OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER WITH ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT VENEZUELA

We don’t spam! Read our privacy policy for more info.

Orinoco Tribune 2
+ posts
  • Orinoco Tribune 2
    https://orinocotribune.com/author/yullma/
    Advertisement of the Revolución Ciudadana party where a person holds a flag and in a strip at the bottom it reads : "return with more strength" and on the right side can be seen former president Rafael Correa smiling. File photo.
    February 7, 2023
    Ecuador: Correistas Declare Victory in Local Elections
  • Orinoco Tribune 2
    https://orinocotribune.com/author/yullma/
    A demonstrator stomps on the window of an NYPD car as people protest the death of Tyre Nichols on January 27, 2023 in New York City. Foto Michael M. Santiago/Getty images.
    February 7, 2023
    'Broken Windows Policing' Gave Rise to Scorpion Unit That Killed Tyre Nichols
  • Orinoco Tribune 2
    https://orinocotribune.com/author/yullma/
    Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei delivers a televised speech in Tehran, Iran, January 8, 2021. Photo: Official Khamenei Website/Handout via Reuters atention/File Photo.
    February 7, 2023
    ‘Tens of Thousands’ of Prisoners Granted Amnesty in Iran
  • Orinoco Tribune 2
    https://orinocotribune.com/author/yullma/
    Venezuelan women demanded justice for femicides during last year's International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. Photo: Andreína Chávez Alava.
    February 7, 2023
    Venezuela Urgently Needs a Feminist Emergency Plan
Tags: Alvaro Garcia Linera EU Latin American right Spain US Imperialism Vox Party

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Reddit (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Telegram (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

Continue Reading

Previous Previous post:

Nine into two: The Failure of the US Two-Party System

Next Next post:

Reform on Supreme Court’s Organic Law to be Discussed in Venezuelan National Assembly

Deputy Jorge Rodriguez informing on the Supreme Court  reform project. Photo by RedRadioVE.

Subscribe to Our Weekly Newsletter

We keep your data private and share your data only with third parties that make this service possible. Read our Privacy Policy.

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

NEWS: Most Viewed 72 Hours

Calendar

February 2023
M T W T F S S
 12345
6789101112
13141516171819
20212223242526
2728  
« Jan    

Categories

OPINION: Most Viewed 72 hours

We are on Telegram


Receive our news directly in your cellphone or PC, join us on our TELEGRAM channel: https://t.me/OrinocoTribune1

 

Download TELEGRAM, click the link above and then press the JOIN button.

We are on Discord


Now we are also on Discord you will be able to follow our every move and interact with our team.

Join us by clicking here



All our work is free to use and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0.

We are on Reddit

If you are more into REDDIT, join our Orinoco Tribune Community.

 

Just click below and then click JOIN
https://www.reddit.com/r/OrinocoTribune/

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Instagram
  • Reddit
  • Telegram
  • TikTok
  • LinkedIn
  • Discord
Copyleft, No rights reserved.