Latin America’s Radical Left in Power

Abstract

The democratic, peaceful road to socialism, which has been pursued by the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador and serves as an inspiration for much of the Latin American left, hardly represents a new approach. Social democratic movements worldwide grouped in the Socialist International were the foremost advocates of socialism by pacific means from the organization’s founding in 1951. However, whereas the social democrats favored moderate policies designed to avoid discord and achieve broad consensus, the three Latin American nations have been subject to intense political conflict and class and political polarization. In this sense, they resemble the communist experiences in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, and Cuba, which were characterized by head-on confrontations with the opponents of far-reaching change and with institutions representing the old order. In contrast to that of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador, however, the official discourse of the communist parties in power dismissed the possibility of the peaceful democratic transition to socialism in accordance with orthodox Marxist thinking on the inevitability of class warfare (Regalado, 2007: 232). 1 The three Latin American leftist governments also resemble two experiences of the Latin American left in power in the latter part of the twentieth century. Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular in Chile and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua attempted to combine a radical transition to socialism with multiparty democracy and adherence to civil liberties. However, in the cold war environment of the period, both were defeated by the combined forces of U.S. and domestic opposition at great social cost. In general, the experience of the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador contrasts with that of communist, social democratic, and Latin American leftist ones in the twentieth century as well as with moderate leftist ones in the twenty-first. The term “twenty-first-century Latin American radical left” as used here applies primarily to the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador and