Page 13 - MONTT LATIN AMERICAN MAGAZINE, DECEMBER, 2021

argues that: “He came to power supported by a coalition of anti-system parties and with nods to terrorism, although his position as President-elect, with a large majority, gives him a considerable advantage. There is not the slightest reason to believe that presumed restraint. Boric’s generation is enthusiastic about the idea of experiencing unsuccessful proposals and ideas in the first person, articulated, yes, in a deconstruction project, “decolonization” is the precise term, of a society in which they are not recognized. Chile thus joins the drift of a continent that is increasingly moving away from the West ”.
The Old Regional Left
He adds later that, as a result of the social outbreak: “Be it an international conspiracy or unrelated events without a black hand behind, the result is there and his name is Gabriel Boric. He embodies the revenge of the State. He is going to fry Chileans with taxes and will return triumphant with the usual mercantilist “model”: more bureaucracy, more prohibitions and, in short, more State. This model carries a moral judgment on entrepreneurs: getting rich is ugly and it is bad, because wealth does not expand. The Chinese example is not even worth it. Invariably, the “extra” weight that we carry into the bank account or that becomes a luxury object, we have stolen from someone ”.
Others, however, hope Boric will be a much- needed breeze of fresh air for what many call a stunted Latin American left. According to Diego Fonseca, editor and columnist of The New York Times, the left of the Region today leaves much to be desired: “The 20th century and the two decades of the present one gave enough evidence: with few exceptions, the Latin American left has not been democratic but authoritarian. The vast majority never prepared to govern, just to come to power. It has not generated proposals for growth, only for the redistribution of poverty. It does not think about the future from the present, it lives armed in a stale past, locked in dogmas from which she pontificates with moral superiority (...) When it had to show what it was made of, in the first 20 years of the 21st century, while it governed a good part of the region it has proven that
it likes strong governments, disbelieves in agreements and has no imagination when it runs out of money. The President of Mexico, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, gave the latest example of the left’s love for the authoritarianism: he received with honours two autocrats - Nicolas Maduro and Miguel Diaz-Canel - and gave them applause and praise. The pandemic crisis, on the other hand, reminded us of the administrative ineptitude of the pink tide: Latin America benefited from good commodity prices during the first decade of the century, but the left, which ruled much of its countries, never envisaged how to manage social expectations when the cycle is over. The result: poorer countries with less democratic political cultures. Kirchnerism had billions of dollars in social spending after the 2001 default, but now, after at least 14 years of government, Argentina faces new suffocating liabilities and immoral poverty. Chavismo and Ortega’s Sandinismo incapacitated Venezuela and Nicaragua politically and economically. The Castro family dictatorship has been sinking their private island in the Caribbean for more than half a century. AMLO criticizes the legacy of neoliberalism, but adjusts as neoliberal and antagonizes feminism as a conservative. Bolivia and, to some extent, Ecuador exhibited historic reductions in poverty, but their leaders believed that this gave them the right to presidencies for life. “
Assume Social Democracy
Diego Fonseca vehemently adds in the North American newspaper; “They taught me that the left represented the pinnacle of humanistic and intellectual values. Solidarity, inclusion, equity, creativity and intelligence. Honesty. Defence of egalitarian democracy. Dialogue. Vocation for change. But for the most part, the Latin American left has been far from those ideas. He lives in conflict with novelty and likes zero-sum games, so while he includes some, he excludes others. A shame that the Latin American left, so old and macho, ended up just a little less sclerotic and prostatic than the right. Milita in the backwardness: morality of the 40s, worldview of the Cold War of the 50s and - being kind - economic
manual of the 60s. It never adjusted his political prism beyond the 70s, it is as lost as the 80s and is depressing and dark as the 90s. Finally, it entered a century of rapid change in fear, so it took refuge in dogma. As it does not want to recognize that it must design the future by reforming capitalism, it decided that it better take power and live off the state’s income ”.
The expert finally adds that: “A region as unequal as ours needs a new left. And to be really on the left today, I think, is to assume ourselves as social democrats. It is no coincidence that the most serious projects on the left are moderate: at the time the Chilean Concertación; Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff in Brazil; Uruguayans Pepe Mujica and Tabare Vazquez. They all embraced gradualism, understood that social investment must be responsible and, unlike their outrageous comrades, they learned to coexist with capital. In Brazil and Chile, for example, their leaders understood that promoting internationalization reduces the local political weight of companies - since they depend less on the domestic market - and helps the country’s global competitiveness: no economy grows by excluding itself from an interrelated world ”.
Hope or Enigma?
There is no doubt that the presence of the new Chilean Head of State caused a stir in the Region. Some have no doubt that he is the chosen man: he is a classic millennial, surrounded by people of his generation, without the weight of the tail-blows of the Cold War that enchanted Marxism- Leninism in the area for decades and without experiencing the rigors of the Chilean military government, since Boric himself was four years old when Augusto Pinochet handed power over to a civilian government. And that’s why he looks ahead, without the military ballast. It is the generation that grew up “without fear”, and broke with the traditional centre-left that between 1990 and 2010 led the democratic transition under the umbrella of the Concertación. Boric and his group learned about the military government from his parents or at school readings. That new generation of the left, very young and arisen in the colleges
Montt Latin American Magazine p13
A ‘Pink Tide’ Rises in Latin America