Contradictions in the Latin American left.

• Author: Wallerstein, Immanuel
• Position: Thinking Politically

Latin America has been the success story of the world left in the first decade of the twenty-first century. This is true in two senses. The first and most widely-noticed way is that left or left-of-center parties have won a remarkable series of elections during the decade. And collectively, Latin American governments have taken for the first time a significant degree of distance from the United States. Latin America has become a relatively autonomous geopolitical force on the world scene.

But there has been a second way in which Latin America has been a success story of the world left. Movements of the indigenous populations of Latin America have asserted themselves politically almost everywhere and have demanded the right to organize their political and social life autonomously. This first gained world attention with the dramatic uprising of the neo-Zapatista movement in the Mexican state of Chiapas in 1994. What has been less noticed is the emergence of similar kinds of movements throughout Latin America and the degree to which they have been creating an inter-American network of their local organizational structures.

The problem has been that the two kinds of lefts--the parties that have achieved power in the various states and the indigenista movements in the various states--do not have identical objectives and use quite different ideological language.

The parties have made as their principal objective economic development, seeking to achieve this objective at least in part by greater control over their own resources and better arrangements with outside enterprises, governments, and intergovernmental institutions. They seek economic growth, arguing that only in this way will the standard of living of their citizens be enhanced and greater world equality achieved.

The indigenista movements have sought to get greater control over their own resources and better arrangements not only with non-national actors but also with their own national governments. In general, they say their objective is not economic growth but coming to terms with PachaMama, or mother earth. They say they do not seek a larger use of the earth's resources, but a saner one that respects ecological equilibrium. They seek buen vivir--to live well.

It is no surprise that the indigenista movements have been in conflict with the most conservative governments in Latin America--like Mexico, Colombia, and Peru. Increasingly, and quite openly, these movements have also come into...