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Introduction: Latin America’s “Left Turn”: A Framework for Analysis
- Johns Hopkins University Press
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i n t r o d u c t i o n Latin America’s “Left Turn” A Framework for Analysis s t e v e n l e v i t s k y a n d k e n n e t h m . r o b e r t s The beginning of the 21st century witnessed an unprecedented wave of electoral victories by leftist presidential candidates in Latin America. The wave began in 1998, when Hugo Chávez, a former paratrooper who had led a failed military uprising six years earlier, was elected president of Venezuela. Chávez was followed in quick succession by Socialist candidate Ricardo Lagos in Chile (2000); ex-metalworker and Workers’ Party (PT) leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil (2002); left-of-center Peronist Néstor Kirchner in Argentina (2003); Tabaré Vázquez of the leftist Broad Front (FA) in Uruguay (2004); and coca growers’ union leader Evo Morales of the Movement toward Socialism in Bolivia (2005), the first indigenous president in that country’s history. In 2006, ex–revolutionary leader Daniel Ortega and the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) returned to power in Nicaragua, while independent left-wing economist Rafael Correa won the Ecuadorian presidency.¹ By decade’s end, leftist candidates had also scored improbable victories in Paraguay (ex-Catholic bishop Fernando Lugo) and El Salvador (Mauricio Funes of the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front [FMLN], a former guerrilla movement). Incumbent leftist presidents or parties were subsequently reelected in Venezuela (2000, 2006), Chile (2006), Brazil (2006, 2010), Argentina (2007), Ecuador (2009), Bolivia (2009), and Uruguay (2009). By 2009, nearly two-thirds of Latin Americans lived under some form of left-leaning national government. The breadth of this “left turn” was unprecedented ; never before had so many countries in the region entrusted the affairs of state to leaders associated with the political Left (see table I.1). The political ascendance of the Left extended beyond these presidential victories. Leftist alternatives emerged or strengthened during the 2000s even in countries where they did not capture the presidency, such as Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and Costa Rica. In Honduras, one of the few remaining countries in the region with no significant leftist party, Manuel Zelaya of the center-right Liberal Party veered left after winning the presidency, eventually provoking a military coup. And crucially, the rise of leftist 2 The Resurgence of the Latin American Left alternatives was associated with a broadening of social and economic policy options in the region. Unlike the 1980s and 1990s, when candidates often campaigned for office on vague leftist platforms but governed as promarket conservatives (Stokes 2001), the post-1998 wave of leftist victories ushered in a new era of policy experimentation in which governments expanded their developmental, redistributive, and social welfare roles. The “left turn,” therefore, changed not only who governed in Latin America, but also how they governed. The rise of the Left was a stunning turn of events in a region where political and economic liberalism—buttressed by U.S. hegemony—appeared triumphant at the end of the Cold War. With the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the demise of statist and socialist development models, and the rise of the so-called Washington Consensus around free market or “neoliberal” economic policies (Williamson 1990; Edwards 1995), U.S.-style capitalist democracy appeared to be the only game in town in the 1990s. The debt and inflationary crises of the 1980s had discredited state-led development models, while neoliberal reforms deepened Latin America’s integration into global trade and financial circuits, thereby narrowing governments’ policy options. The reform process was directed by technocrats who claimed a mantle of scientific Table I.1. Left governments in Latin America, 1998–2010 Country Party President Year elected Venezuela Chile Brazil Argentina Uruguay Bolivia Nicaragua Ecuador Paraguay El Salvador Fifth Republic Movement/ United Socialist Party of Venezuela Chilean Socialist Party (PSCh) Workers’ Party (PT) Justicialista Party (PJ) Broad Front (FA) Movement toward Socialism (MAS) Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) Country Alliance Patriotic Alliance for Change Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) Hugo Chávez Ricardo Lagos Michelle Bachelet Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva Dilma Rousseff Néstor Kirchner, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner Tabaré Vázquez José Alberto (Pepe) Mujica Evo Morales Daniel Ortega Rafael Correa Fernando Lugo Mauricio Funes 1998; reelected in 2000, 2006 2000 2006 2002; reelected in 2006 2010 2003 2007 2004 2009 2005; reelected in 2009 2006 2006; reelected...