Doctor or Monster? The Pink Tide and Its Aftermath

• Author: Fabio Luis Barbosa dos Santos,Daniel Feldmann
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211061329
• Published date: 01 March 2022
• Date: 01 March 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X211061329

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 243, Vol. 49 No. 2, March 2022, 69–86

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X211061329

© 2021 Latin American Perspectives

69

Doctor or Monster?

The Pink Tide and Its Aftermath

by

Fabio Luis Barbosa dos Santos and Daniel Feldmann

Translated by

Heather Hayes

The recent evolution of capitalism has shifted the ground on which developmentalism

stood as a civilizing utopia in Latin America, making the neodevelopmentalism that

inspired different nuances of progressivism in the twenty-first century an idea “out of

place.” Starting from this premise, the notions of progressivism as regression and contain-

ment as accelerating desocialization form the foundations of an interpretation of the Pink

Tide that emphasizes the contradictions inherent in its own dynamics, which reinforced

the neoliberal rationale. The attempt to govern social tensions through containment of the

ongoing dissociative movement did not stop the regression of the structure of production

and the intensification of a self-destructive social dynamic. Progressivism is revealed as a

political rationale that is different from but not contradictory to its opponents in a reality

in which capital governs as a totalizing extraparliamentary force.

A evolução recente do capitalismo modificou as bases materiais que davam sentido ao

desenvolvimentismo como utopia civilizatória na América Latina, tornando o neodesenvolvi-

mentismo que inspirou diferentes nuances de progressismo no século XXI, uma ideia fora do

lugar. A partir desta premissa, são discutidas as noções de progressismo como regressão e de

contenção como aceleracion de dissocializacion, como alicerces de uma interpretação da onda

progressista que enfatiza as contradições inerentes à sua própria dinâmica que reforçou a

razão neoliberal. A pretensão de governar as tensões sociais por meio de políticas de contenção

do movimento dissocializante em curso não evitou a regressão da estrutura produtiva e o

aprofundamento de uma dinâmica social autofágica. O progressismo revela-se como uma

racionalidade política diferente, mas não contraditória em relação aos seus opositores em uma

realidade em que o capital se impõe como uma força extra-parlamentar totalizante.

Keywords: Progressivism, Progressive wave, Development, Developmentalism,

Neoliberalism

It was the curse of mankind that these incongruous faggots were thus bound together

that in the agonized womb of consciousness, these polar twins should be

continuously struggling. How, then were they dissociated?

—J. L. Stevenson. The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 1886

Fabio Luis Barbosa dos Santos is a professor at the Universidade Federal de São Paulo and a

research associate of the Society, Work, and Politics Institute of the University of the Witwatersrand.

He is the author of Power and Impotence: A History of South America under Progressivism (1998–2016)

(2020). Daniel Feldmann is a professor of economics at the Universidade Federal de São Paulo.

Heather Hayes is a translator in Quito, Ecuador.

1061329LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X211061329Latin American PerspectivesSantos and Feldmann / The Pink Tide and its Aftermath

research-article2021

70 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

The months leading up to the coronavirus outbreak were eventful ones in

Latin America. There were uprisings in Chile and Ecuador, intense protests in

Colombia, elections in Argentina, Uruguay, and Bolivia. The specter of a coup

d’état circled Venezuela and landed in Bolivia. A president was impeached in

Peru, while in Brazil Lula was let out of prison. Faced with this turmoil, it

makes sense to ask whether it is possible to find a common thread or at least

common ground among these multifarious national processes.

Our hypothesis is that these events translate, albeit in different ways, into the

aggravation of the social crisis in Latin America and reveal the exhaustion of

progressivism as a way of managing social tensions on the continent.

“Progressivism” alludes to the prevailing direction of the governments identi-

fied with the left that were elected in recent years in a pushback to neoliberal-

ism in the region: Chávez in Venezuela (in 1998), Lula in Brazil (in 2002),

Kirchner in Argentina (in 2003), Vázquez in Uruguay (in 2004), Morales in

Bolivia (in 2005), Correa in Ecuador (in 2006), and Lugo in Paraguay (in 2008).

Socialists also took over the presidency in Chile in 2000, with the difference

being that in that country they were already part of the nation’s governing

coalition. In South America, only in Peru and Colombia did politics shift to the

right, these being two countries in which guerrillas continued to be active after

the end of the Cold War. In fact, Colombia under Uribe (2002–2010), which can

be considered a pioneer in the continent’s politics of hate, embodied the oppo-

site of the Latin American progressivism of the beginning of the twenty-first

century most radically represented by Venezuela under Chávez (1999–2013).

We understand this situation as a dual breakdown, since progressivism was

seen differently by those at the top and those at the bottom. Seen from the top,

progressivism had become infeasible as a way of maintaining order, while for

those at the bottom it had lost its former legitimacy as an alternative civiliza-

tional hypothesis. In this context, new options are being forged when it comes

to managing the social pressure cooker that is Latin America, and this is in tune

with the global trend toward increasing commonality between neoliberalism

and authoritarianism (Geiselberger, 2019).

Under our analysis, there is a second hypothesis. Instead of understanding

the current moment as a reaction to progressivism—a conservative wave reject-

ing previous advances (García Linera, 2020; Sader, 2019)—we suggest that the

progressive attempt to contain a historical process of desocialization within the

framework of the structural crisis of capitalism involved the use of practices,

devices, and policies that ended up accelerating the process itself, responding

to a dynamic that we call containment as acceleration. In other words, despite

the subjective intentions and desires of its leaders, progressivism’s contain-

ment of the crisis did not put a stop to the desocializing trends that preceded

and surrounded it. Rather, it ended up accelerating those trends. This dynamic,

in turn, led to the reinforcement of socioeconomic traits of colonial origins,

resulting in a second paradox: a regressive progressivism not to be confused

with a return to the past as social integration mediated by consumerism shaped

modalities of inclusive neoliberalism, corroborating and deepening the neolib-

eral rationale. Containment that accelerates (desocialization), regressive pro-

gressivism, and inclusive neoliberalism are key to examining progressivism in

terms of its contradictions, and this leads to a conceptual and political critique