Has the Left Run Its Course in Latin America?

[eridani]

http://www.thenation.com/article/has-the-left-run-its-course-in-latin-america/

So in countries that were vulnerable to these problems—Argentina, because it could not borrow internationally, and Venezuela, because of a dysfunctional exchange-rate system and its dependence on oil revenue—the commodities bust was damaging.

But overall in the region, during the upswing Latin America’s economic and social progress in the 21st century was driven by economic-policy changes: counter-cyclical changes in fiscal and monetary policy, increased public investment, increases in minimum wages, public pensions, healthcare, and conditional cash-transfer programs for the poor. From 2002 to 2013, the regional poverty rate fell from 44 to 28 percent—after actually rising over the previous two decades.

Just as positive policy changes, many enabled by Latin America’s “second independence,” were behind the region’s big rebound in the 21st century, much of the current slump is driven by policy mistakes. Beginning at the end of 2010, with some interruptions, and then doubling down after Dilma Rousseff was reelected at the end of 2014, Brazil’s PT government began to implement a series of policies that pushed Latin America’s largest economy into a deep recession. These included large cuts in public investment, budget tightening at the wrong times, two cycles of interest-rate increases, and credit tightening.

<snip>

But don’t expect the current downturn in the region to repeat the lost decades of the late 20th century. That kind of long-term disaster generally happens when countries do not have sovereign control over their most important economic policies (as in the troubled eurozone countries today). For the past 15 years, Washington has sought to get rid of Latin America’s left governments; but its efforts have really succeeded, so far, only in the poorest and weakest countries: Haiti (2004 and 2011), Honduras (2009), and Paraguay (2012).

The Latin American left has led the region’s “second independence” in the 21st century, altering hemispheric economic and political relations, and—even including the economic losses of the recent downturn—presiding over historic economic and social changes that benefited hundreds of millions, especially the poor. Despite the electoral setback in Argentina and the current threat to democracy in Brazil, they are likely to remain the dominant force in the region for a long time to come.

[MisterP]

1. the Latin American right has only been able to keep power by 1. pretending long-term crises

are all the fault of the LW and that things will turn around any day now under their belt-tightening and "fiscal responsibility" to lenders and 2. selling off state assets to cronies and riding that bubble (til it pops)

the Latin RW in fact has no unified program--some represent political elites, others "managers" of oil companies, others rural patrons, others the middle class that wants its savings safe from inflation (bankers FLYING OFF with everything in their accounts are a possibility that RW rhetoric carefully obscures): this leads to constant friction between personalist mini-empires so the RW always ends up gunning down other RWers as much as mass street protests