Pink-Tide Governments: Pragmatic and Populist Responses to Challenges from the Right

• Author: Steve Ellner
• Published date: 01 January 2019
• DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18805949
• Date: 01 January 2019
• Subject Matter: Introduction

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 224, Vol. 46 No. 1, January 2019, 4–22

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X18805949

© 2018 Latin American Perspectives

4

Introduction

Pink-Tide Governments

Pragmatic and Populist Responses to Challenges

from the Right

by

Steve Ellner

The downturn in international commodity prices after 2008 heavily impacted

leftist and center-leftist Latin American governments, leading to economic con-

traction and political confrontation and culminating in a series of setbacks

beginning in 2015. Adversaries to the right ascribed the problems to the flaws

inherent in the model that those governments had adopted. As could have been

expected, some government critics pointed to the model of leftist-style popu-

lism as the root cause. Ironically, the Mexican scholar Jorge Castañeda, who had

viewed Brazil’s Workers’ Party as the quintessence of the “good left” in con-

trast to the “populist left” personified by Hugo Chávez, by 2015 classified the

nation’s president Dilma Rousseff as a populist and pointed to her allegedly

populist policies as responsible for her downfall (Castañeda, 2015; Castañeda

and Morales, 2008: 9–11). Other analysts on the right attributed the political and

economic woes faced by progressive governments to economic intervention-

ism, a model they considered to be tantamount to socialism (Ellner, 2015; 2016).

These attacks from critics at the international level reflected what was happen-

ing politically at the national level. The phenomenon known as the pink tide,

consisting of a rapid succession of electoral triumphs of leftists and center-leftist

presidential candidates at the outset of the century, has heightened internal ten-

sion and set off intense political and social polarization in each of the nations.

Underlying the confrontations between pink-tide governments and the opposi-

tion was the clash between two visions. Pink-tide parties, nearly all of which had

previously been identified with the left, supported nationalistic economic and

cultural goals, Latin American economic integration, extensive social programs,

nonelite input in decision making, and, in some cases, a socialist model consist-

ing of a mixed economy with the state being dominant. In addition, they contrib-

uted to the growth of social movements and social organizations, which were

part of the constellation of forces that got them elected, and in some cases incor-

porated them into the decision-making process.

Steve Ellner taught economic history and political science at the Universidad de Oriente in

Venezuela from 1977 to 2003. Among his books are Venezuela’s Movimiento al Socialismo: From

Guerrilla Defeat to Electoral Politics (1988), Organized Labor in Venezuela, 1958–1991: Behavior and

Concerns in a Democratic Setting (1993), and Rethinking Venezuelan Politics: Class, Polarization, and

the Chávez Phenomenon (2008). He has published on the op-ed page of the New York Times and the

Los Angeles Times and is a regular contributor to NACLA: Report on the Americas and In These Times.

The collective thanks him for organizing this issue.

805949LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X18805949Latin American PerspectivesEllner / Introduction

research-article2018

Ellner / INTRODUCTION 5

Another aspect of the polarization was the tensions between progressive

Latin American governments and Washington, which used its considerable

resources to check the advances of both radical leftist and moderate leftist gov-

ernments. U.S. policy in this respect followed a historical pattern. Washington’s

efforts at destabilization and regime change during the Cold War years tar-

geted governments across the spectrum on the left: Jacobo Arbenz (in 1954),

João Goulart (in 1964), Juan Bosch (in 1963 and 1965), Salvador Allende (in

1973), and the Sandinistas (in the 1980s).

The opposition groups that put up the strongest resistance to pink-tide gov-

ernments tended to be pro-neoliberal. Their intentions were made evident not

only by the electoral platforms of their presidential candidates but by their

actions upon reaching power, specifically in the case of Mauricio Macri in

Argentina and Michel Temer in Brazil. Policies that defined them politically

included privatization, cutbacks in social programs, the opening of protected

and indigenous lands for agribusiness and logging, and closeness to the U.S.

orbit. Washington’s solid support for these governments was also a clear indi-

cation of their political orientation.

The two conflicting visions corresponded to the outlooks of two distinct

social blocs. While support from the popular sectors was essential for the sur-

vival of the pink-tide governments, the opposition as a whole had close ties

with privileged sectors. Class cleavages manifested themselves in Venezuela in

2014 and 2017 when disruptive protests designed to achieve regime change

were concentrated in wealthy municipalities governed by opposition mayors

but failed to resonate in the barrios. In Venezuela and elsewhere, most of the

major parties and leaders of the opposition had governed the nation prior to

the emergence of the pink tide. Their return to power promised to signal the

restoration of the old order in which business groups, traditional political par-

ties, the church hierarchy, and media owners would regain their position of

hegemony. There was also considerable evidence that if the old elites regained

power they would deliver heavy blows to pink-tide leftists as well as to the

social movements that supported them. The jailing of Luiz Inácio (Lula) da

Silva in Brazil and the judicial proceedings against Cristina Kirchner and Rafael

Correa, as well as the continuous pronouncements of Venezuelan opposition

leaders at all levels that the Chavistas would be prosecuted for their alleged

crimes, all pointed in that direction.

The pressing economic and political problems facing progressive Latin

American governments and the resultant setbacks in Brazil, Argentina,

Venezuela, and elsewhere in the recent past call for a critical analysis of the

pink-tide phenomenon (Carrillo, 2014: 70–71). Some who analyze the govern-

ments from a leftist perspective put forward an all-encompassing critique of

what they consider to be deviations from acceptable political practice, includ-

ing those with negative structural consequences. In doing so they coincide with

movements on the far left—such as Ecuador’s Confederación de Nacionalidades

Indígenas del Ecuador and Venezuela’s Marea Socialista—that follow a “plague

on both your houses” with regard to the left in power and the opposition to its

right (Ellner, 2017a).

A second group of writers on the left is more balanced in its critiques and

adopts a more nuanced approach. On the one hand, these analysts acknowledge