Argentina’s Progressive Agenda Rekindles Left-wing Hopes in Latin America

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The legal abortion law passed on December 29th in Argentina has mobilized the Latin American left-wing.

Having lost the hegemony it had at the start of this century, when virtually the whole continent was ruled by progressive governments, the left’s returns to power were hampered by economic crises and later by the pandemic.

Now the revival of the social rights agenda could be the foundation for new achievements, providing a boost to the regional left-wing.

In Argentina, Bolivia and Mexico, where the left or anti-establishment proposals have returned to power, through popular uprising movements in Chile and Peru and attempts to build an alternative political structure in Brazil and Colombia, progressive projects seek a path that allows them to reverse the current conservative hegemony.

The road is long. In terms of legal abortion, for instance, only Uruguay, Cuba, Guyana and French Guiana moved forward before Argentina. And although the new law places Argentina at the forefront, nations like Mexico are still a long way from this, despite the discourse of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The Mexican president, who gets repeated criticism from the feminist movements, argued at his most recent press conference this year that “power structures” should not intervene in decisions such as regulation of pregnancy termination, an issue on which, he added, “there are favorable and opposing viewpoints”. In any case, his best bet would be to call a referendum.

“The best thing is to ask citizens and, in this case, women. There are means to call for a consultation”. López Obrador thus refrains from taking sides on the right to abortion in a country where only Mexico City and the State of Oaxaca allow free abortion until the 12th week.

However, his position is not as strong as that of other progressive Latin American leaders who have not renounced traditional conservative positions on abortion. Colombian opposition leader Gustavo Petro, for one, once again stated this week that the path should not be prohibition, but rather an improvement in education to achieve a “society with no abortions”.

Some time ago, former left-wing Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa went further and threatened to resign if Parliament were to pass its legalization. “I will never endorse decriminalization,” he announced at the start of his last term in office in 2013.

It seems a paradox, but his words are similar to those of right-wing Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, a country that has embraced social conservativism.

The Brazilian president also felt the expansive wave begun in Buenos Aires. “In what concerns me and my government, abortion will never be approved on our soil,” wrote the President on Twitter. In Paraguay, Congress held a minute’s silence for “the thousands of lives of Argentinean fellow human beings who will be lost before they are born.”

“We are aware that we are being watched,” says Vilma Ibarra, legal and technical secretary of the Argentine presidency and articulator of the pregnancy termination law passed in Congress. “Above all, women are watching us. We embrace other experiences because we know that without them we won’t get there. It was hard for Argentine women, but Spain, Cuba, Uruguay and Mexico City have opened the way for us. The good thing about these struggles is to follow them and share experiences. Now we will be able to share experiences in the region,” says Ibarra in a teleconference with foreign correspondents.

The resumption of the progressive agenda in Argentina may encourage similar developments in other countries.

The Bolivian experience, with the electoral victory of President Luis Arce a year after the premature departure of Evo Morales, pushed the idea of a return. But economic troubles have complicated expansion plans. The political cost of an adjustment may be excessive.

“On the right-wing, the argument of less state with fiscal adjustment is only natural. But on the left, the promise of a more egalitarian society with more state, at a time of less money, fiscal adjustment and pandemic, sounds more challenging. This creates an incentive to resort to minorities, to an agenda of expanding civil rights beyond abortion. The indigenist view is expanded, the long term social agenda of cultural reform is resumed,” explains journalist and analyst Carlos Pagni, a columnist for Latin American issues.

In addition to these reflections, there are discussions of religious inclinations related to the churches’ political influence which proliferate in Latin America and which in some cases thicken the ranks of left-wing parties.

“There is a tacit effort not to interfere in matters that could unleash the anger of Evangelicals and Catholics, because there is a large part of the population that does not endorse certain agendas,” points out Sergio Guzmán, director of Risk Analysis, a Colombian consultancy.

“America has a 60% to 70% rate of religiosity, there is more religious ardor in Latin America. And churches are playing a decisive role in political decisions on the continent. Pope Francis himself tried to mediate between [former Colombian presidents] Juan Manuel Santos and Álvaro Uribe regarding the peace process,” he continues.

The trend is not new, although nowadays religious organizations are more fragmented. In Colombia, the National Liberation Army (ELN), a guerrilla movement born in the early 1960s with an ideological doctrine that blended Marxism and Liberation Theology, continues to be active.

One of its founders was Camilo Torres, a guerrilla priest. And although this is an extreme case, it means that conservatism and machismo have also for decades permeated the ideology of insurgent organizations, including the now defunct FARC guerrilla.

Even today, regimes that describe themselves as revolutionary, such as that of Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, refuse to legislate on abortion.

Tatiana Roque is a professor of Mathematics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro and was a candidate for PSOL, an opposition party to the left-wing PT governments (2003-2016). Roque has closely followed the discussion on the legalization of abortion in Argentina.

“The Argentinean movement marks a new way of doing politics, of creating consensus within a society that calls on the left to dialogue. The left tends to point fingers, accuse, and lecture, and this alienates the people with whom we have to talk, people from the lower middle class or the poor. The process of abortion in Argentina in this sense is a lesson, because the most conservative sectors have been dealt with,” she says.

In this dialogue strategy, Roque perceives a seed for the reconstruction of a left that, according to her, can no longer have the PT as a beacon nor Lula as “the only one capable of articulating”.

Neither Argentina nor Bolivia have left-wing personalities with the influence once exerted by Néstor Kirchner, Lula, Hugo Chávez, Pepe Mujica, or Rafael Correa. Some have died or are retired from active politics, others have been arrested for corruption or banned from running in elections for similar reasons.

For Argentine sociologist Mario Santucho, director of Crisis magazine and specialist in Latin American left-wing movements, this lack of references paves the way for new movements, more fragmented but no less powerful.

“Feminism in the region has no turning back. Although there has been a reaction from the churches, what remains is a consolidation of these more advanced agendas,” says Santucho. And he mentions Chile as an example, where the preparation of a new Constitution is also a debate about the new values of democracy.

“Advanced civil rights come into play there, which are not only rights in liberal terms,” he says. “We are talking about a new concept of the social, of the human. This is the great challenge of the left: to combine a progressive and democratic approach with the new discussions of the 21st century, along with the social rights that it has always advocated.”

Sergio Guzmán notes that it is precisely women who have taken the lead in the agenda. “Progressive male politicians are very reluctant to lead the issue,” he says in reference to the specific case of abortion. “Female progressive politicians have no problem with talking about freedoms and rights”.

This year and in 2022, the political map will be redefined in countries like Ecuador, Peru and Colombia, while Luis Arce, Morales’ heir, has only just started his mandate in Bolivia.

North American journalist Jon Lee Anderson, deeply knowledgeable of the region, stresses the decadence of the left based only on revolutionary rhetoric, incarnated a decade ago mainly by Hugo Chávez. This does not represent the death of progressive projects as such, but rather their obligation to adapt and reshape themselves through a new path centered on public policy.

Source: El Pais