From Rio de Janeiro
The Latin American Right It has had two peaks in the last decades. In the first, he implemented military dictatorships in some of the most important countries on the continent. If she openly confronted democracy, she was identified with repression, violence, social exclusion.
It was defeated with the exhaustion of these regimes, followed by processes of democratic transition. The image of the right was identified with the dictatorship and the breakdown of democracy.
It used truncated transitions, which only restored the liberal democracy, without democratizing society as a whole and without reducing social and regional inequalities, to change the agenda. He introduced the issue of inflation and the imbalance of public accounts as a central theme. And from there enter neoliberal policies.
The right began to identify itself with neoliberalism, with its policies of disqualification of the State, privatization, deregulation of economies, opening of the internal market, globalization. It was successful in the first decade, when societies were convinced that the main problem of the countries was the inflation.
When the peak of inflation was exceeded, these governments were exhausted, because they did not implement social policies, they did not fight against inequalities. Inflation itself returned, because its roots had not been attacked.
At that time, Latin American rights were exhausted. arose anti-neoliberal governments, who assumed the fight against inequalities as a central objective. In front of them, the right was unarmed.
They tried to focus their fight on fighting corruption, in addition to resuming attacks on the State. The anti-neoliberal governments resumed economic growth with income distribution, without increasing inflation.
To retake the government, the right appealed to a coup and a new breakdown of democracy in Brazil and Bolivia. He won elections in Argentina, losing shortly after, by showing that he had no other project than the already exhausted neoliberalism.
It saw neoliberal governments spread to Mexico, Honduras, Chile, ColombiaBesides the perspective of its recovery in Brazil. This complements a global defeat of the right practically throughout the continent. The United States has never been so isolated in Latin America. It only has minor countries on the continent, like Uruguay, Ecuador, Paraguay, as its allies.
What will remain for the Latin American right, if this extensive bloc of leftist governments is confirmed throughout the continent? If these governments manage to resume economic growth accompanied by income distribution policies, without a return to inflation? What flags would fit on the right?
In addition to the permanent theme of corruption, return to the topic of inflation -as in the typical case of Argentina-, but in general it is neutralized and defeated. There are no social policies in the most unequal continent in the world. It is no longer capable of disqualifying the State when, in the crisis of the pandemic and the war in Ukraine, the State was called to implement urgent measures, to combat the recession, to face hunger and misery.
The great defeat in this third decade is that of the Latin American right, either in its extreme right modality –as in the case of Brazil- or in the traditional right –as in the cases of Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Bolivia.
The future of Latin America, therefore, is in the hands of the left, of the anti-neoliberal governments. Its success and the consolidation of the defeat of the Latin American right-wing depend on its ability, integrating progressive governments, to strengthen democracy in the continent and to implement not only anti-neoliberal but also post-neoliberal policies to overcome neoliberalism.
