The Sao Paulo Forum: is there a new Latin American left?

Is there a new left emerging in Latin America in the post-Cold War era? Over the past few years, a quite diverse group of parties and movements has coalesced around a reconstructed left identity. All of them share a commitment to rethink revolution and social change in the new international situation of the 1990s. This group includes the Workers Party of Brazil (PT), the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua (FSLN), the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front of EL Salvador (FMLN), the Democratic Party of the Revolution of Mexico (PDR), the Broad Front of Uruguay (FA), the Free Bolivar Movement of Bolivia (MBL), the United Left of Peru (IU), and the Lavalas movement of Haiti, among others. Taken collectively, they are poised to play a major role in the hemisphere in the 1990s as a counterweight to the neoliberalism currently being pushed on the continent by transnational capital and local ruling elites.

For instance, taking advantage of limited electoral openings provided by a shift from military to civilian rule in 1990, the Broad Front in Uruguay captured the mayorship of Montevideo in 1990, home to almost half the country's population. Similarly, left and progressive groups in Paraguay united under the "Asuncion for Everyone" coalition following the collapse of the Stroessner dictatorship in 1989, and captured city hall in the country's capital. Both coalitions have used local power to challenge corruption and the traditional parties, to mobilize the population, and to expand their social base.

Brazil's PT is viewed by many as the "rising star" of the left in the Third World. In Haiti, the liberation theologist Jean-Bertrand Aris fide was swept into the presidency in December 1990 by a mass grassroots movement, in what was termed "the first revolution after the Cold War." Despite the coup d'etat which deposed Aristide in September 1991, the Lavalas movement retains its vitality, making Haiti ungovernable by the current military dictatorship. In El Salvador, the FMLN has forced the government and the United States into a negotiated settlement that opens the way for the former rebels to compete peacefully and legally for political power, promising authentic democratization for the first time in the history of the Salvadoran republic.

The Sandinistas, now out of power, remain the principal political force in Nicaragua. In Mexico, there is a democratic and progressive movement outside the governing PRI for the first time since the revolution of 1910. In Chile, the Socialists share government with the Christian Democrats and the left has not been marginalized despite the best efforts of Washington and the Pinochet dictatorship. In Guatemala and Colombia, peace and stability will be difficult to achieve without the participation of the left.

These institutional inroads underscore the potential for the left to compete in civil and political society in new historic circumstances, and reflect the high level of popular discontent with the prevailing social order. However, such gains should not be exaggerated; the overriding challenge of the new left is to translate formal, institutional inroads into structural transformation and social change, an undertaking which is far from accomplished.

The Sao Paulo Forum and Post-Cold War Thinking in Latin America

At the invitation of Brazil's PT, in July 1990 representatives from forty-eight leftist parties, organizations, and fronts-including those mentioned above and others, among them the Cuban Communist Party--met in Sao Paulo to interchange ideas and experiences. The participants established the Sao Paulo Forum with the objective of developing unity and collective strategies and programs. The final resolution stated: "We express our joint determination to renew leftist thought, to correct erroneous conceptions, to overcome all bureaucratism and all obstacles to an authentically social and mass democracy."[1]

In June 1991, the Forum held its second meeting, hosted in Mexico City by that country's PDR and attended by sixty-eight organizations from twenty-two nations. The final resolution read:

Our discussion has been frank, open, democratic, pluralist, and unitary, involving a broad spectrum of forces. Some of us identify ourselves as nationalist, democratic, and popular, and others are decidedly socialist. We are all committed to the structural transformations of our societies necessary to fulfill the aspirations of our peoples for social justice, democracy, and national liberation.[2]

Nicaragua's FSLN hosted the third conference of the Forum in Managua in July, 1992.

The process of rethinking on the part of the Latin American left has challenged all the old dogmas. The collapse of the socialist bloc, although it jarred political and ideological points of reference for many, also accelerated the creation of a new identity for the left in Latin America. Despite the diversity of the Sao Paulo Forum and the ongoing, often fierce debates within and among left parties and organizations, general points of agreement can be identified. Summarized below are the basic tenets of the new thinking, derived from a careful study of the policies, platforms, and documents circulated by Sao Paulo Forum groups. Taken as a whole, they point to the development of new paradigms for revolutionary struggle in Latin America.

Revolution and democracy are indivisible. Democracy refers both to the internal life of leftist organizations and to the democratic political and social organization of society. The latter includes formal representative democracy (elections, the rule of law, traditional civil and political liberties, etc.), as well as social justice, economic democracy, grassroots participation and empowerment, and democratization of the state. "The history of Eastern Europe made it crystal clear that absolute power is an error and that people do not live on bread alone," affirms FMLN leader Joaquin Villalobos. "There is no democracy without revolution, and no revolution without democracy."[3]

Revolutionary projects may unfold in the context of political and social pluralism, civic and electoral competition. Far from arguing that the "new world order" has rendered popular struggles and revolutionary aspirations obsolete, the new left is proposing that recent developments have opened the possibility for social confrontation to take place on the political terrain, without a military dimension, and that meaningful social change can be achieved through battles waged within the realm of civil societies liberated from military influence. This is an arena where the left may press for change through mass mobilization and participation in the structures of representative democracy. Having to compete in elections means that the left must win approval for its program from a majority of society, beyond its own core constituency. This, in turn, forces accountability and subordinates left parties and leadership to mass social bases.

Military fetishism is out of date. The new left has not rejected armed struggle or revolutionary violence in principle. "We can't repeat today the mistakes made in the 1970s when it was said that those who didn't pick up a gun weren't revolutionaries," asserts FSLN General Secretary and former Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega. "Nor can we say today that in order to be a revolutionary, it is necessary to forget about armed struggle and get involved in the institutional process of the bourgeois-democratic systems-"[4]

The fetishism of armed struggle which characterized an earlier generation of revolutionary movements is being replaced by reconsideration of the relationship between the military and the political. This relationship was perverted in the 1960s by an erroneous interpretation of the Cuban experience, influenced by Regis Debray's military foquismo.[5] With an end to military fetishism, politics is regaining its position as the essence of revolutionary struggle. Such eminently civic groups as the PT have ruled out armed struggle, not as illegitimate, but as entirely inappropriate for Brazil at this time. Other groups, such as the FMLN and the Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG), as well as several political-military organizations in Colombia, have redefined the role of armed struggle during the 1980s as a necessary instrument to bring about the conditions that allow the struggle to be transferred to civic terrain.[6]

Revolutionary movements must move from ideology to a politics rooted in the specific realities of the nation. The tendency in the past has been to substitute ideology for politics and political objectives as the focus for uniting people and linking the political action of separate groups. "Political groups who, on the one side, represent the marginalized and the impoverished, and on the other side, the privileged and the wealthy, have concrete and contrasting interests which each will pursue," says Victor Hugo Tinoco, a Sandinista militant and former Nicaraguan Deputy Foreign Minister. These groups "have not disappeared with the Berlin Wall or the socialist bloc." However, the junctions between distinct interests are now expressed "less through dichotomous schemes or ideologies which draw societal divides than through the contradictions between concrete policies and goals. This is the harbinger of political struggle in Latin America."[7]

Progressive change and revolutionary transformation of society are not one-class projects. The old debate among Latin American leftists which posited an opposition between reform and revolution has given way to the view that there is no contradiction between struggling for reforms and struggling for revolution. Fundamental transformations in Latin America will be achieved through broad multi-class national projects that bring together popular majorities, well beyond "workers and peasants."

The relations among the state, civil society, and power must be restructured. The correlation of social forces in civil society is at least as important as who actually holds state power, maybe more so. Although it is of great importance, state power can only transform society if it mobilizes popular majorities with hegemony over civil society. The state must be democratized through popular control over its activities.

The days of vanguardism and verticalism are over; the autonomy of the new social movements must be respected and encouraged. There has been a real revolution of civil society in Latin America. Mass popular and social movements have burgeoned, demanding thoroughgoing democratization of political, social, and economic life. Indigenous communities, women, campesinos, trade unions, ecological and religious movements, shanty-town residents, the poor and marginalized everywhere are becoming "new historic subjects." These social movements advance the demands of specific popular sectors, yet also embody wide aspirations for a new social order.

Different sectors may link their struggles in numerous ways around an overall popular project. It is not for a single "vanguard"to lead masses of people, but for masses of people to organize themselves and become actors in their own struggles. The role of a revolutionary organization in these struggles is to help articulate the actions of diverse sectors and forces.

The old vanguardist conception of a revolutionary movement keeping mass social movements under close control in conformitywith its revolutionary line and program is obsolete. The relation between revolutionary organizations and mass social movements is perceived as mutually reinforcing. However, the new left groups have not yet defined the precise nature of this relation.

In Brazil, the PT has avoided interfering in the autonomy of the social movements, including the trade-union movement from which the party sprang. "The trade-union leaders who belong to the PT subordinate their own party position to that defined by the trade union," explained Joaquin Soriano, a member of the PT National Directorate. Similarly in Mexico, the PRD "is developing relations with the social organizations, but the latter maintain complete autonomy from us," explains PRD leader Adolfo Gilly. "We are taking care not to repeat the corporatist tradition of the PRI [the governing party].[8] In Nicaragua the FSLN has been critical of the way the party subordinated the mass organizations that grew up in the wake of the 1979 revolutionary triumph. This had the effect of stifling grassroots initiative and creativity. Participation in the mass organizations declined and the social base eroded.

The Salvadoran FMLN, itself an amalgamation of five organizations, envisions itself as a centripetal force for uniting diverse national sectors around a popular alternative. In the words of FMLN Central Command member Eduardo Sancho, "A remarkable and unprecedented process of social and political organization has taken place in El Salvador. In the face of this process, the FMLN has come to accept a broad leadership shared among the multiple social and political movements, in a new and evolving pluralist situation .... [This implies] a collective, or shared vanguard--in other words, a political rather than an organic articulation of numerous groups.[9]

The Historic Context of the Latin American Left

The new left is emerging at a time of crisis in Latin America and at a great historic crossroad. The profound changes that are taking place make this decade strategiC. The 1990s will decide what combination of international forces will guide humanity into the next century.

The breakup of the self-proclaimed socialist bloc shifts the axis of world tensions from East-West to North-South, and has accelerated immiseration in the South. The share of global GNP going to the underdeveloped world, which has some 75 percent of the world's population, dropped from 23 percent in 1980 to 19 percent in 1990. The UN Development Program estimates that an additional 100 million people in the South will become impoverished every year of the 1990s.[10]

In Latin America, the number of people living in extreme poverty went from 112 million in 1980 to 184 million in 1990, nearly half of the continent's population. Latin America decreased its participation in the international market from 7 percent in 1980 to 4 percent in 1990, and the area's foreign debt exceeds $430 billion, a source of permanent economic hemorrhage.[11] What is happening constitutes an historic decapitalization of Latin America that rivals the colonial plunder of the sixteenth century.

Meanwhile, the United States has emerged from the Cold War with its control over the Americas intact, at least for the time being, with the invasion of Panama, electoral intervention in Nicaragua, destabilization in Cuba, and the military and political penetration of South America through "drug wars" and other forms of intervention.

Against this backdrop, Latin America is entering an uncertain transition. The entire framework of social and political struggles has shifted; the left and popular sectors are increasingly pitted not against the oligarchies of yesterday but against a new right. In nearly every country, the old oligarchies have given way to this new right. As the dominant class fraction in Latin America, it is overseeing a sweeping social and economic restructuring of the continent in accordance with the neoliberal model. The latter, in turn, is part and parcel of a global economic order in which transnational capital has become hegemonic. In every region of the world, states, economies, and political processes are being transformed under the guidance of a class-conscious transnational bourgeoisie. The new right in Latin America is the local representative of this class.

The magnitude and consequences of late twentieth century neoliberal restructuring of Latin American economic life have been far-reaching. It has uprooted vast numbers of workers and peasants, throwing masses of people into the informal sector where survival demands both legitimate and illegal activities. Restructuring is weakening the state as an instrument of economic regulation, accelerating the outward drainage as well as the internal concentration of wealth, and reducing each country's ability to guide its own national development. It has had devastating social repercussions, creating a whole new class of cast-offs, locked out of any meaningful or productive participation in society.

The Challenges of the New Left

Populism and traditional social democracy have been the dominant political currents in most of Latin America during the years since the Second World War. Both of these currents have largely run their course. In their wake, the new right and the left have become the ascendant forces. Though the former swept to power in the 1980s, it is now facing a mounting crisis of political legitimacy and social tensions brought about by structural adjustment,. The much talkedabout "social explosions" have already begun in several countries.

The contradictions of neoliberalism open up new possibilities as well as enormous challenges for the left. Nearly twenty Latin American countries will hold elections between 1993 and 1996; in many cases, the left stands a good chance of winning the government. The biggest challenge it faces is the lack of a strategic alternative to the neoliberal model. Constructing such an alternative is its most urgent task. Without its own project, based on a viable socioeconomic model, the left runs the risk of stagnating out of government, or even worse, of being reduced--once in government--to administering the crisis of neoliberalism.

Acutely aware of the need for an alternative project, over fifty economists and other experts from a special working group of the Sao Paulo Forum met in Lima, Peru, in late February. Titled "Integration and Alternative Development in Latin America," the meeting's purpose was to begin developing a viable left alternative to neoliberalism. The results of the meeting were then presented to the Forum plenary in Managua. Developing an alternative program will continue in meetings of five regional sub-groups (Southern Cone, Andean bloc, Central America, the Caribbean, and Mexico) scheduled for 1993, with the participation of popular and social movements. The aim is to achieve consensus on national electoral platforms before the series of elections during 19931996 period.

An alternative project is far from elaborated. However, there is recognition that the socioeconomic transformation of society must conform to what is possible in the late twentieth century and to the reality of actual participation in a capitalist world economy.

Rather than nationalizing the means of production, the new left groups emphasize democratizing property ownership, deconcentrating wealth, and promoting broad, associative forms of production and solidarity among producers. In sharp contrast to neoliberals, they stress a vital role for the state in a mixed economy where markets and planning mechanisms are combined. The state should help regulate investment, accumulation, and distribution, and state property should be one of several forms of ownership (state, private, mixed, and cooperative). Similarly, the state should promote the development of the domestic market through structural reforms (including agrarian reform) and the encouragement of small and medium producers.

The participants in the Lima meeting also stressed redirecting hemispheric integration away from U.S. domination and towards Latin American integration "with a nationalist focus and a continental perspective that addresses North-South inequalities." In the view of the Sao Paulo groups, the process of transnationalization now taking place calls for internationalization of the revolutionary struggle in Latin America. The prospects for success of a popular national project in any one country are linked to cooperation and integration among Latin American countries. There are wellknown limitations on social change within any one nation. The only way Latin America can develop its own negotiating power vis-a-vis the developed countries of the North is through collective action and cooperation. This, in turn, depends on the extent to which popular sectors gain power in Latin America and use it to shape national and foreign policies. This view does not argue that withdrawing from the world economy is an option, or that Latin American nations can resolve their problems exclusively by interacting among themselves. Rather, integration and collective action :are the bases up.on which Latin America can maximize its strength and negotiate better terms for its participation in the world economy.

"The solution to our difficulties and problems lies in the profound transformation of our societies and in the political and economic integration of Latin America and the Caribbean," stated the resolution from the 1991 meeting in Mexico. "[This is] the basis upon which we may pursue our emancipation in the face of the restructuring of world capitalism and contribute to forging a new international order that respects our national values and satisfies the needs of our peoples." [12]

NOTES

1. "Decalaraci6n de Sao Paulo," July 4, 1990. Published in Boletin Sur-Sur, no. 1 (the Sao Paulo Forum, January, 1992).

2. "Declaracion de Mexico," Mexico City, June 15, 1991 in Boletin.

3. "Gracias Por No Fallarnos," address by Joaquin Villalobos to the First Congress of the FSLN, Managua, July 21, 1991. Reprinted in La Avispa, no. 6 (Managua, August--September, 1991).

4. "For An International Front of Struggle," address by Daniel Ortega in Managua, October 4, 1991. Reprinted in Barricada Internacional, vol. XI, no. 345 (Managua, November, 1991).

5. See Regis Debray, Revolution in the Revolution ? (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1967).

6. See, for example, "El Salvador: Modelo Para Desarme," and "Posibilidades de una Salida al Conflicto en Colombia," presentations made by the FMLN of El Salvador and the Simon Bolivar Guerrilla Coordinating Committee of Colombia, respectively, at the Second Symposium of the Guerrilla and Civic Left of Latin America, June 1991, Managua, Nicaragua. In La Avispa,

7. Victor Hugo Tinoco, "American Latin Frente al Afio 2,000," in Cuardernos del Centro de Estudios Intenacionales, no. 1 (Managua, May 1991).

8. Both quotes are cited in "La Nueva Izquierda: Criticar No Basta," in Pensamiento Propio, year IX, no. 82 (Managua: CRIES, July, 1991).

9. Eduardo Sancho, "El Salvador Frente a los Desafios del Siglo XXI (Parte II) in Estudios Centroamericanos, year 16, no. 510 (San Salvador, April, 1992).

10. United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Human Development, (New York, 1991).

11. Sistema Economico para America Latina (SELA), Informe Annual 1990. 12. "Declaracion de Mexico."

An annual subscription to Boletin Sur-Sur, the publication of the Sao Paulo Forum, may be ordered for $30.00 from the Centro de Estudios Internacionales, Apartado 1747, Managua, Nicaragua.)

William I. Robinson is a Research Associate with the Managua-based Center for International Studies, and news analyst at the Latin American Data Base of the University of New Mexico. He is author of A Faustian Bargain: U.S. Intervention in the Nicaragua Elections and American Foreign Policy in the Post Cold War Era (Westview Press, 1992), and co-author of David and Goliath: The U.S. War Against Nicaragua (Monthly Review Press, 1987).

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