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Latin American Directions in Popular Struggle

By Richard Stahler-SholkRecently I went with friends to visit Alberto Patishtán Gómez, a Tsotsil

indigenous schoolteacher and social activist from the Chiapas highlands

municipality of El Bosque who is 13 years into his 60-year prison sentence

on charges of participating in the 2000 killing of seven police officers.

The case of “El Profe” Patishtán illustrates many aspects of contemporary

Latin American social movements that find it necessary to continue the

struggle for justice outside of state institutions, even after the supposed

metamorphosis of the authoritarian regimes of yesteryear. Supporters say

Patishtán was framed on preposterous charges because he is an activist. He

is an adherent of the Sixth Declaration of the Lacandón Jungle, a

sympathizer of the Zapatista movement. The 1994 rebellion of mostly Maya

indigenous, poor peasants in the southeast corner of Mexico was part of an

upswing in the Latin American cycle of protest going into the 21 century

(Stahler-Sholk, Vanden & Kuecker 2008). The Zapatista rebellion has

struck a chord with a wider disillusionment with the political class that

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continues to fuel resistance across Latin America and beyond, as seen in

recent creative protests from Spain to Turkey to Brazil.

The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN), notwithstanding its

name, broke from the old vanguard revolutionary model of armed seizure of

state power to focus on empowerment from below, from within society. The

uprising of January 1, 1994 had long roots (Harvey 1998), but was timed for

the date the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect,

symbolizing the groundswell of popular protest across Latin America and

beyond against the devastating global impact of neoliberalism.

Neoliberal policies of austerity, deregulated “free trade” and privatization in

the 1980s and ‘90s disrupted established patterns of state-society relations,

imposing hardship on the poor that generated waves of protest (Eckstein &

Wickham-Crowley 2002). Social movements also took the lead in bringing

down the military and other authoritarian regimes that had dominated the

region in the preceding decades. Creative forms of grassroots mobilization

had necessarily emerged under authoritarian regimes that suppressed

conventional politics. The return of the old political class and their

institutions (hailed by some as a wave of “transitions to democracy”) has

generated ongoing struggles with popular movements committed to

horizontal, anti-hierarchical ways of doing politics; and a corresponding

academic divergence between liberal (Weyland 2013) and radical (de Sousa

Santos 2007) conceptions of democracy.

Procedural democracy with little meaningful popular participation or

substantive justice has generated new waves of frustration, along with direct

action to implement new ways of doing politics. In Latin America the “pink

tide” of progressive governments, swept into office in the early 2000s by

social movements, initiated participatory processes of drafting new

constitutions and reconstituting the state for a “post-neoliberal” era

(Hershberg and Rosen 2007; Goodale and Postero 2013) in which natural

resources would be nationalized and the state would redirect the proceeds

into social programs for the poor.

But as social movements in Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela moved

inside or uncomfortably close to the state, they confronted the limits of

state-directed transformation within a global capitalist framework; as well

as potentially depoliticizing and clientelistic effects of state anti-poverty

initiatives such as Brazil’s vaunted Bolsa Família program (Reyes 2012).

One of the central dilemmas for Latin American social movements today is

how to define their relations with the state, even (or especially) under left

governments (Dangl 2010; Oliva Campos, Prevost and Vanden 2012;

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Webber and Carr 2012).

A specific aspect of this dilemma is “neo-extractivism” (Gudynas 2010, Ruiz

Marrero 2011), the new turn toward state-led resource development,

portrayed as an improvement over the old model because the enterprise is

nationalized and/or the resources more equitably distributed. The

implications for the environment and indigenous rights have been

problematical, as illustrated by the irony of Bolivia’s first indigenous

president, Evo Morales, allowing Brazilian investors to begin construction of

a highway through the TIPNIS indigenous territory and ecosystem as part of

a mega-project. The tensions are compounded by the fact that Bolivia and

Ecuador’s left governments, in power thanks to indigenous mobilizations,

have incorporated elements of indigenous ecology and cosmovision such as

the concept of buen vivir (“good life,” based on sustainable development

where Mother Nature is recognized as having rights) into their legal and

constitutional frameworks (Gudynas 2011).

Indigenous groups, reasserting group rights and a collective relation to land

and nature, have figured prominently in the contemporary surge of Latin

American social movements. Disillusionment with liberal democracy

(Robinson 1996) and with neoliberal “development” have fueled a

questioning of the individualist construct of citizenship, forged when the

modern nation-state was grafted onto colonial societies (Quijano 2005;

Yashar 2005). From Tahrir Square to Occupy to the Chilean student

movement to uprisings across Asia (Katsiaficas and Rénique 2012), there is

a backlash against the feeling of political and economic exclusion, echoing

the “¡Ya basta!” of the Zapatista Maya rebellion and their call for “a world in

which many worlds may fit.”

Like “El Profe” Patishtán who identifies as Tsotsil, Mexican, peasant,

schoolteacher, Liberation Theology catechist, and social activist in a globally

networked cause, the region’s indigenous are claiming multiple and fluid

identities and strategies of self-representation (Jackson and Warren 2005).

Diverse cultures and identities are key in the mobilization of social

subjectivities (Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar 1998)—including indigenous

and Afrodescendant peoples, women’s and LGBT groups, and transnational

communities—and there are tensions and contradictions inherent in both

identity politics and “globalization from below” (Edelman 2001). States in

the neoliberal era scrambled to coopt and reencapsulate multiculturalism in

a safer form (Hale 2002).

When the gates clanged shut behind us as we entered Prison Number 5,

where Patishtán and fellow prisoners brought us coffee and gave us a tour of

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Latin American Directions in Popular Struggle | Mobilizing Ideas

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the facilities, there was an odd feeling that we had entered liberated

territory. A striking feature of today’s movements is their quest to occupy

and democratize social spaces. This altered spatialization of power

(Hesketh 2013) has created what Zibechi (2012) calls territories in

resistance. In contrast to the fixed and contiguous concept of territorial

space, these spaces fundamentally consist of everyday practices of solidarity

and equality (Motta 2009) as well as horizontality of social relations (Sitrin

2012), unlike Leninist and other statist organizational models.

What Motta (2013) has called the reinvention of the lefts has involved

remaking politics from below, in participatory practices that build new

collective identities and shared values. The urgent need for alternatives to

an alienating and exclusionary global phase of capitalism is fueling a

multiplicity of efforts at prefigurative politics (Maeckelbergh 2009),

recapturing the commons and modeling alternative worlds (on the street

barricades of Oaxaca, the landless encampments of Brazil, the worker-

occupied factories of Argentina, the occupied spaces of Zuccotti Park and

Hurricane Sandy relief), without waiting for authorization from the state.

Reflecting on the visit with Patishtán on the bumpy ride back to San

Cristóbal, we talked about the strong political culture of collectivity in so

many Latin American popular struggles. Possible factors include vestiges of

precapitalist social relations, evident incapacity of the state to deliver on

basic promises, and the sheer survival imperative of personal networks and

complicities. As “El Profe” summarized his struggle with quiet dignity,

“They themselves have given us the weapon; the system itself has opened

our eyes.”

References:

Alvarez, Sonia E., Evelina Dagnino, and Arturo Escobar, eds. 1998. Cultures

of Politics, Politics of Cultures: Re-visioning Latin American Social

Movements. Boulder: Westview Press.

Dangl, Benjamin. 2010. Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and

States in Latin America. Oakland: AK Press.

De Sousa Santos, Boaventura, ed. 2007. Democratizing Democracy:

Beyond the Liberal Democratic Canon. N.Y.: Verso.

http://www.boaventuradesousasantos.pt/pages/pt/livros/democratizing-

democracy.-beyond-the-liberal-democratic-canon.php

Eckstein, Susan Eva, and Timothy P. Wickham-Crowley, eds. 2002.

Struggles for social Rights in Latin America. N.Y.: Routledge.

Search

Latin American Directions in Popular Struggle | Mobilizing Ideas

http://mobilizingideas.wordpress.com/2013/08/08/latin-american-directions-in-popular-struggle/[9/27/2013 8:26:58 AM]

Edelman, Marc. 2001. “Social Movements: Changing Paradigms and

Forms of Politics.” Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 285-317.

Goodale, Mark, and Nancy Postero, eds. 2013. Neoliberalism, Interrupted:

Social Change and Contested Governance in Contemporary Latin America.

Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Gudynas, Eduardo. 2010. “The New Extractivism of the 21 Century: Ten

Urgent Theses about Extractivism in Relation to Current South American

Progressivism.” Americas Program Report, 21 Jan.

Gudynas, Eduardo. 2011. “Buen Vivir: Today’s Tomorrow.” Development

54(4): 441-447.

Hale, Charles R. 2002. “Does Multiculturalism Menace? Governance,

Cultural Rights and the Politics of Identity in Guatemala.” Journal of Latin

American Studies 34: 485-524.

Harvey, Neil. 1998. The Chiapas Rebellion: The Struggle for Land and

Democracy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Hershberg, Eric, and Fred Rosen. 2007. Latin America after

Neoliberalism: Turning the Tide in the 21 Century? New York: The New

Press.

Hesketh, Chris. 2013. “The Clash of Spatializations: Geopolitics and Class

Struggles in Southern Mexico.” Latin American Perspectives 40(4): 70-87.

Jackson, Jean E., and Kay B. Warren. 2005. “Indigenous Movements in

Latin America, 1992-2004: Controversies, Ironies, New Directions.”

Annual Review of Anthropology 34: 549-573.

Katsiaficas, George, and Gerardo Rénique. 2012. “A New Stage of

Insurgencies: Latin American Popular Movements, the Gwangju Uprising,

and the Occupy Movement.” Socialism and Democracy 26(3): 14-34.

Maeckelbergh, Marianne. 2009. The Will of the Many: How the

Alterglobalisation Movement is Changing the Face of Democracy.

London: Pluto Press.

Motta, Sara C. 2009. “Old Tools and New Movements in Latin America:

Political Science as Gatekeeper or Intellectual Illuminator?” Latin

American Politics and Society 51(1): 31-56.

Motta, Sara C. 2013. “Reinventing the Lefts in Latin America: Critical

Perspectives from Below.” Latin American Perspectives 40(5): 5-18.

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Oliva Campos, Carlos, Gary Prevost, and Harry E. Vanden, eds. 2012. Social

Movements and Leftist Governments in Latin America: Confrontation or

Co-Option? London & New York: Zed Books.

Quijano, Aníbal. 2005. “The Challenge of the ‘Indigenous Movement’ in

Latin America.” Socialism and Democracy 19(3): 55-78.

Reyes, Alvaro. 2012. “Revolution in the Revolutions: A Post-

counterhegemonic Moment for Latin America?” South Atlantic Quarterly

111(1): 1-27.

Robinson, William I. 1996. Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, U.S.

Intervention and Hegemony. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Ruiz Marrero, Carmelo. 2011. “The New Latin American ‘Progresismo’ and

the Extractivism of the 21st Century.” Americas Program Report, 17 Feb.

Sitrin, Marina. 2012. Everyday Revolutions: Horizontalism and

Autonomy in Argentina. London and New York: Zed Books.

Stahler-Sholk, Richard, Harry E. Vanden, and Glen David Kuecker, eds.

2008. Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-first Century:

Resistance, Power, and Democracy. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Webber, Jeffery R., and Barry Carr, eds. 2012. The New Latin American

Left: Cracks in the Empire. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Weyland, Kurt. 2013. “Latin America’s Authoritarian Drift: The Threat

from the Populist Left.” Journal of Democracy 24(3), Jul.: 38-32.

Yashar, Deborah J. 2005. Contested Citizenship in Latin America: The

Rise of Indigenous Movements and the Postliberal Challenge. New York:

Cambridge University Press.

Zibechi, Raúl. 2012. Territories in Resistance: A Cartography of Latin

American Social Movements. Trans. Ramor Ryan. Oakland: AK Press.

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Mexico, neoliberalism, transitions to democracy, Zapatistas

One Response to Latin American Directions in Popular Struggle

Leave a Reply

nicholasjoncrane August 9, 2013 at 12:33 PM

Reblogged this on For Another Critique of the Pyramid and commented:

An excellent essay by Richard Stahler-Sholk, beginning with some

commentary on imprisoned schoolteacher-activist Alberto Patishtán,

moving through discussion of the Zapatista rebellion in the context of

neoliberalization, and linking these examples from Mexico to Latin

America’s “pink tide” and the contradictions of “neo-extractivism” here

in Bolivia, among other places. Well worth reading!

Reply