Introduction: Social Movements, Progressive Governments, and the Question of Strategy

• Author: Ronaldo Munck,Kyla Sankey
• Published date: 01 July 2020
• Date: 01 July 2020
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20917991
• Subject Matter: Introduction

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X20917991

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 233, Vol. 47 No. 4, July 2020, 4–19

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X20917991

© 2020 Latin American Perspectives

4

Introduction

Social Movements, Progressive Governments, and the

Question of Strategy

by

Kyla Sankey and Ronaldo Munck

With Latin America’s remaining progressive governments facing consider-

able uncertainty, this issue reflects on the lessons of the past 20 years for polit-

ical strategy from a social movement perspective. Our points of departure are

the various experiments in new ways of doing politics—the new forms of

political participation and organization that were opened up—and how these

have fared in the shifting political terrain of the progressive governments in

power across Latin America since the turn of century. Rejecting the persistent

but misguided and simplistic distinction between a “good” left that respects

liberal democracy and does not seek radical change and a “bad” left that is

supposedly “populist” rather than democratic and sometimes articulates

radical intentions (Castañeda, 2008; for a discussion see Ellner, 2013; Munck,

2013; Webber and Carr, 2012), we emphasize the complex interplay of politi-

cal and social struggles. We cannot conceive of government and state politics

in isolation, nor do we seek to explain their “rise and fall” as if they were a

tide that supposedly ebbs and flows according to the phases of the moon or

“cycles” that come and go according to some underlying mechanism not

totally explained.

In the retrospective analysis that follows we will not assume any model

along these “naturalistic” lines. We will foreground concrete politics and not

take a position of exteriority that interprets, judges, and corrects the actions of

others. Against any schema that posits binary oppositions, we will see that

politics is always complex and cannot be analyzed the way meteorologists

analyze the tides (and even there complexity now rules). The past 20 years in

Latin America cannot be understood in terms of any simplistic schema that

foregrounds mysterious mechanisms rather than the day-to-day political

struggles to construct a “people,” adopt alternative visions and values,

develop political alliances, and maximize the articulation of social forces con-

testing the dominant order.

Kyla Sankey has conducted research on peasant social movements in Colombia and is currently

teaching Latin American politics at Queen Mary University in London. She has published in Latin

American Perspectives, Jacobin, and the Journal of Developing Societies, among other journals. Ronaldo

Munck, a participating editor of Latin American Perspectives, teaches at Dublin City University

(Ireland) and the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja (Ecuador). His most recent book is Social

Movements in Latin America: Mapping the Mosaic (2020).

917991LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X20917991Latin American PerspectivesSankey and Munck / Introduction

research-article2020

Sankey and Munck / INTRODUCTION 5

Political context

By the beginning of the 1990s there was consensus that neoliberal economic

policies were hegemonic in Latin America. For its part, the left seemed to a

large extent confused and bereft of a viable strategic compass. By then the

intense struggles that had characterized the region in the 1960s and 1970s had

been firmly pacified, and the chances for a revival seemed remote. Unions were

in retreat, undermined by structural adjustment and a dirty war that had

decapitated its leadership (Grandin, 2006; see also Carneiro, Fuentes, and

Midaglia in this issue for a wider view). Their ties to the peasant movement had

been severed and previous “incorporation” into political parties eliminated

under authoritarian rule. Organized labor, rural populations, and even sections

of the urban middle classes were in increasingly precarious conditions. Swaths

of people catapulted into the ranks of the poor were rendered irrelevant to the

economy, while free-market policies tore up the safety nets that had kept them

afloat. There was, it seemed, no alternative to neoliberalism even with the

“transition to democracy,” where democracy was regarded as a political regime

while the economic model driving extreme inequality and marginalization

remained intact (Munck, 2013; Weyland, 2004).

Seen in this context, the dramatic resurgence of mass popular revolts through-

out the continent was both surprising and momentous. The first signal was the

1989 Caracazo in Venezuela, an unexpected urban uprising that quickly saw a

semi-insurrectional situation emerging in a previously stable country. By and large

it was peasant and indigenous groups that were now at the leading edge of the new

challenge to neoliberalism. The Zapatistas in Chiapas and large-scale indigenous

rebellions in Ecuador were the first sustained challenge to neoliberalism in the mid-

1990s, marking a major shift in the terrain of social protest. Soon after, they were

followed by the eruption of urban-based movements: street protests in Argentina

and the Bolivian gas and water wars. By the turn of the century, popular move-

ments had returned with new vigor; the neoliberal policies that had once reigned

supreme were now being delegitimized, and a truly continental transformation

was under way (Rodríguez-Garavito, Barrett, and Chavez, 2008; Zibechi, 2007).

The increased pace of political activity, albeit diverse in terms of both social

base and political character, demonstrated not only that neoliberalism’s hege-

mony was more fragile than it had seemed but also the potential for mobilizing

a broad array of groups behind anti-neoliberal and even anticapitalist projects.

One notable feature of this radical upsurge was that it was not propelled by any

particular sector of the working class in the traditional sense, such as industrial

workers, or even the political parties or peasant guerillas. The new wave of

mass mobilizations against neoliberalism was led by movements of indigenous

groups, unemployed people, precarious workers, community organizations,

and landless peasants—a constellation of groups that had been economically

marginalized and politically excluded. Organized resistance was turning away

from wage-based struggles toward new forms of activism that sometimes

called the political system itself into question. Despite the weakening of tradi-

tional labor and peasant movements, new coalitions and antisystemic projects

were still a very real possibility, but this would also require a rethinking of the

way political subjects were formed and coalitions built.