A Second Look to LA Social Movements Stahler-Sholk y Vanden

8/14/2019 A Second Look to LA Social Movements Stahler-Sholk y Vanden

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Richard Stahler-Sholk is a professor of political science at Eastern Michigan University and anassociate editor of Latin American Perspectives. Harry E. Vanden is a professor of political scienceat the University of South Florida, Tampa, and a participating editor of LAP. Along with GlenDavid Kuecker, they edited Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-first Century:Resistance, Power, and Democracy(2008) for the Latin American Perspectives in the Classroom

series. The collective thanks them for their work in organizing this issue.

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 176, Vol. 38 No. 1, January 2011 5-13DOI: 10.1177/0094582X10384204 2011 Latin American Perspectives

Introduction

A Second Look at Latin American Social Movements

Globalizing Resistance to the Neoliberal Paradigm

byRichard Stahler-Sholk and Harry E. Vanden

It has been said here before, and accurately, that antisystemic struggles should not becircumscribed solely to what the orthodox call the infrastructure or base of capitalistsocial relations. The fact that we hold that the central nucleus of capitalist domination isin the ownership of the means of production does not mean that we ignore (in the doublesense of being unaware of and not giving importance to) other spaces of domination. Itis clear to us that transformations must not focus only on material conditions. Therefore

for us there is no hierarchy of realms; we do not hold that the struggle for land has prior-ity over gender struggles or that the latter are more important than recognition andrespect for difference. We think, rather, that all emphases are necessary and that weshould be humble and recognize that there is currently no organization or movement thatcould presume to cover all aspects of antisystemic, that is, anticapitalist, struggle.

Subcomandante Marcos

As we enter the second decade of the twenty-first century, the role of LatinAmerican social movements in resisting policies imposed by global capitalism

and the local elites who facilitate its penetration continue to be of great importance(see Alvarez, Dagnino, and Escobar, 1998; Eckstein and Wickham-Crowley,2003; Ballv and Prashad, 2006; Johnston and Almeida, 2006; and Stahler-Sholk,Vanden, and Kuecker, 2008). Their impact can be seen in several arenas: (1) Theyhave been fundamental in spearheading the expansion of citizenship, the useof public space for popular purposes, and the strengthening of democraticparticipation (see Lievesley, 1999; Avritzer, 2002), including an insistence onrecognition of collective rights (for example, those of indigenous peoples) thatquestions the limits of liberal notions of democracy (Otero, 2003; Yashar, 2005;Zibechi, 2005; 2006). (2) They have disrupted the Washington Consensus on

neoliberal economic policies in the region (Hershberg and Rosen, 2006), andin the process they have developed transnational modes of social-movementorganizing that challenge old patterns of Northern nongovernmental organi-zation (NGO) hegemony (Smith, Chatfield, and Pagnucco, 1997; Veltmeyer,2007; Thayer, 2009). (3) They are experimenting with ways of engaging with


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6 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

parties and governments of the left without surrendering autonomous capacityfor mobilization in the wake of the pink tide of elected left-of-center govern-ments at the turn of the twenty-first century (Beasley-Murray, Cameron, andHershberg, 2009). These movements have sustained the progressive govern-ment in Venezuela and have been key to the insertion of new progressive

governments in Ecuador and Bolivia (Petras and Veltmeyer, 2005). They con-tinue to pressure the governments of Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico for much-needed changes and have organized to resist the illegal coup and sham electionin Honduras. (4) They are changing the way ordinary citizens in Latin Americathink about politics and political participation and helping to define what wemight call a new politics and concomitant political culture (Chalmers et al.,1997; Lievesley, 1999; Petras and Veltmeyer, 2005).

In this issue we hope to continue charting the growth and development ofthese social movements and extend the examination of their origins, strate-gies, and outcomes begun in our first 2007 Latin American Perspectivesissue on

globalizing resistance (Stahler-Sholk, Vanden, and Kuecker, 2007) and contin-ued in the book based on it (Stahler-Sholk, Vanden, and Kuecker, 2008). Thisissue focuses on key aspects of the social movements that have been develop-ing in Argentina, Ecuador, Venezuela, and Mexico and details the new formsof resistance, conceptualization, and organization that they are engendering.It also begins to examine the diffusion of these new forms of resistance andorganization and suggests that some of their practices (e.g., of Zapatismo andof the Brazilian landless movement) hold lessons for activism and organiza-tion in the United States and elsewhere.

One of the questions we posed in our earlier issue was to what extent the

social movements could achieve their objectives without seizing state powerwhether there was any practical resonance to the pursuit of rule from below.In his article on Venezuela, Anthony Spanakos examines the relationship

between social movements and the state in an attempt to elucidate the degreeto which control of the apparatus of the state by progressive forces is neces-sary for social movements to achieve their objectives. He shows how differentsmaller segments of the public (micropublics) were incorporated into theBolivarian movement and forged into a new conception of the public and aconcomitant new vision of the citizen. This analysis suggests that the caseof Venezuela is of prime importance because it shows how power, ideas, and(Chvezs) leadership can pull micropublics into a larger collective organiza-tion capable of pursuing the progressive transformations that the social move-ments desire. Finally, Spanakos sees the tension for social movements betweenmobilizing into a politics of resistance and taking over the state apparatus, aswas done under Chvezs leadership, as likely to persist. In the latter case thenewly formulated public may exclude other micropublics that can thenregroup to resist the state-led project and the incorporation of the new citizensof the public into participatory forms of democracy.

Sara C. Motta, in Populisms Achilles Heel: Popular Democracy Beyondthe Liberal State and the Market Economy in Venezuela, further explores thenature of politics in Venezuela. Her lucid analysis delineates the problemsinherent in the facile use of the concept populism to study the new politicsthat is developing in Venezuela and shows the concepts roots in liberal


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Stahler-Sholk and Vanden / INTRODUCTION 7

democratic theory. She argues that its applicability to the Venezuelan polit-ical process is cast into doubt by the persistence of liberal democratic elit-ist assumptions of democratic institutionality and politicsassumptions thatexclude popular articulations of democracy within and outside of the state.Additionally, the popular classes are often labeled irrational, shortsighted,

marginal, or open to manipulation. Motta cites De La Torre (1997: 13), whonotes that modernizing elites have argued that populisms rhetoric and styleof mobilization pose dangers to democratic institutions and that they haveconstructed popular subjects as the Otherthe negation of the modern andrational political subjects that they aim to forge. The concept of populismalso posits a concept of modernity bound by the limitations of capitalist ratio-nality that flows from assumptions derived from the market in liberal capital-ism. These conceptualizations raise methodological, empirical, and normativeproblems because within this framework of analysis the other is deniedand the politics of the other is silenced and/or ignored. Motta highlights

the limitations and dangers of the use of generic ahistorical concepts suchas populism/populist to explain political processes that seek to break the

boundaries of the liberal state and the market economy through the articula-tion of a popular democracy.

If the Venezuelan case raises questions of whether state-sponsored move-ments can remain true to their social base, Brazil under President Luiz IncioLula da Silva seems to represent a different sort of cautionary tale. InBrazil, the masses have consistently mobilized through the Movimento dosTrabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (Landless Rural Workers MovementMST)and other popular organizations but have not been part of or formed coali-

tions with the government or progressive parties or started their own parties.Thus the MST and other social movements have won only a few changes andhave not been able to turn national policy in the more radical direction theydesire. Indeed, the land reform that the MST has so passionately advocatedsince the 1980s is not on the horizon. Lulas Partido dos Trabalhadores(Workers PartyPT) has become more moderate and has begun to work withkey sectors of Brazils economic elite. Indeed, such policies are now referredto as Lula lite. Latin Americas largest country rejected U.S.-dominatedglobalization schemes and the neoliberalism of the Washington Consensus

but did not confront the United States as Venezuela and Bolivia have done.Brazils economic nationalism has been manifest in its focus on the CommonMarket of the South (Mercosur) and in its trade protectionism. But, as thoughtrapped by the economic growth, exploding consumerism, and credit revolu-tion that Brazil has experienced, the leadership of the Workers Party hasabandoned the social and economic revolution it flirted with in the early daysof the party. Lula and his party have adopted a much more calculated pro-

business line in the hope of continuing recent Brazilian growth and prosperity.Lula is still a popular figure with Brazils poor, and his policies are gainingwider acceptance among the wealthy classes, but the MST and many in hisown party are disillusioned by his apparent turn to the right and are unableto find the traction to initiate a movement strong enough to change the right-ward drift in the Lula government.


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The Confederacin de las Nacionalidades Indgenas del Ecuador (Confeder-ation of Indigenous Nationalities of EcuadorCONAIE) has been in the fore-front of indigenous movements in Latin America. The importance andeffectiveness of these indigenous movements have grown tremendously sincethe late 1980s, and governments have ignored them at their peril. Jameson

concludes that there is still a long road to travel before attaining the fullyplurinational state that indigenous groups desire or a plurinational eco-nomic development mode. Nonetheless, as does Becker, he believes that theindigenous movement has learned from its experience since 1986 and is unlikelyto disappear or to be co-opted.

Thepiquetero movement of unemployed workers and neighborhood dwell-ers that emerged in the wake of Argentinas financial crisis also highlights thecomplexity of social movements relations with political parties and thestate. Jos Benclowiczs contribution to this issue offers a close-up look atthe dynamics of the piquetero organizations of Tartagal and Mosconi. Tracing

the origins and leadership of these groups, he finds deep roots in earlier laborunion struggles and left parties, arguing that they should therefore be thoughtof as union-social organizations rather than as entirely new social move-ments. Without detracting from the creativity of their tactics of struggle,Benclowiczs analysis highlights the importance of organizational experience,which in the new context of massive unemployment allowed activist leadersto convert the streets and neighborhoods into schools of direct action for themany who were newly mobilized. In this analysis, the long tradition of theorganized left in Argentina emerges as a crucial resource lending coherence tothe mass mobilization unleashed by the economic crisis. The ability to coordinate

resistance actions also proved decisive in whether local uprisings (puebladas)could effectively confront the repressive power of the state.

Complementing this interpretation of the piquetero movement is PaulaAbal Medinas article, which emphasizes the originality of symbolic politicsand the new forms of politics in new spaces that challenged the visual formsof neoliberal domination. Drawing on the theoretical insights of Foucaultand Bourdieu, she examines the seizure of public thoroughfares and otherpiquetero tactics as part of the struggle against the invisibilizing visibility ofthe capitalist state, with its Panopticon gaze designed for social control. Theinvisible unemployed burst forth onto the public stage, breaking the discur-sive barriers that labeled and excluded them as violent delinquents or unpro-ductive surplus labor. Abal Medina also examines critically the transitoryemployment programs designed to reorganize the ideological constructs bywhich the subaltern are excluded and the multiple discursive and visual tac-tics of the movement for resisting invisibilization. Guided by new sloganssuch as The Neighborhood Is the New Factory and Creating an AlternativeEconomy, the Argentine piqueteros claimed a political subjectivity outsidethe spaces effectively regulated by the capitalist state.

The seizure and reorganization of space is a crucial feature of social move-ments responding to the contemporary era of globalization, in which capitalseeks to privatize public realms in order to reduce social interaction to a seriesof transactions between individuals in the marketplace or between discon-nected citizens who are nominally equal in the liberal polity. It is for this rea-son that todays social movements in Latin America seek to reinvigorate the


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participatory quality of democracy and repoliticize spaces in society outsidethe control of parties and the state (Edelman, 2001; Zibechi, 2005; Motta,2009)whether these are the streets and neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, theindigenous communities of Chiapas or Ecuador, the rural land-occupationsettlements of the Brazilian MST (Garmany and Maia, 2008), or the symbolic

and discursive spaces that Abal Medina identifies in the Argentine piqueteromovement. As Zibechi (2009) notes, even with the advent of self-described leftgovernments, many of them brought to power on the crest of a wave of socialmobilizations, there is the danger that social programs are directed at theheart of communities that have engaged in rebellion. The state seeks to neu-tralize or modify the networks and methods of solidarity, reciprocity, andmutual aid created by those from below to survive the neoliberal model.

Amory Starr, Mara Elena Martnez-Torres, and Peter Rosset, in ParticipatoryDemocracy in Action: Practices of the Zapatistas and the Movimento SemTerra, scrutinize the internal dynamics of the MST movement in the context

of Lulas PT government in Brazil and the Zapatista movement in the Mexicanstate of Chiapas, which eschews entanglement with party or state programs.In these two movements they find an intensely personal participatory democ-racy. The Zapatista consultas(publicly staged opportunities to express opin-ion), encuentros(assemblies without fixed agendas), rotating structures of localgovernment constituted as good-government councils (juntas de buen gobi-erno), and invitations to network such as the Other Campaign (La OtraCampaa), are new forms of politics aimed at democratizing everyday rela-tionships in society. Similarly, for the MST, Starr, Martnez, and Rosset high-light the communal spirit of the Brazilian land encampments, the

decision-making processes of the 10-family units called ncleos de base,usingmodified consensus, performances of mstica (see Issa, 2007) to reinforceworker-peasant collective identity, Freire-influenced self-organized education,and collective strategies for getting resources from the state without becom-ing contaminated ideologically or co-opted. What these contributors call aschool of democracy in the practices of the MST and the Zapatista move-ment points toward an emerging political culture of deliberative and participa-tory democracy, a potentially powerful ideological and organizational tool forantisystemic movements. As scholars in this area we wish that this useful piecehad included more specific citations that would have allowed us to follow upon the research and helped others to learn from and verify it.

The articles by Kara Zugman Dellacioppa and Abigail Andrews both focuson the transnational dimension of social movements, with specific reference tothe Zapatistas. One of the themes in our earlier examination of Latin Americansocial movements was that the outcomes of such movements were difficult toevaluate in the era of globalization, since a local success could be parried byredeployment by transnational capital in another guise and place. Clearly oneof the challenges for effective organizing is globalizing resistancefindingways to transcend the boundaries of the nation-state.

Dellacioppas article, The Bridge Called Zapatismo: Transcultural andTransnational Activist Networks in Los Angeles and Beyond, considersZapatismo not just as an indigenous peasant uprising in Chiapas but as anorganizing model and philosophy that is also appearing on the other side ofthe border. She focuses on the case of the Casa del Pueblo in Los Angeles,


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arguing that an emerging trans(cultural) activist politics with ideals of hori-zontal relationships, decentralized structure, and community-based participa-tion is spreading globally across movements. At the same time, her examinationof organizing in Los Angeles notes contradictions and tensions, for example,

between organizers addressing specific community needs and activists

advocating more expressive forms of direct action. Dellacioppas study movesbeyond the framework of the transnational-advocacy-network literature, whichassumes that social movements in the global South need the muscle of coun-terparts in the global North to have a boomerang effect (Keck and Sikkink,1998) on their local contexts. Her shift of focus recognizes the agency andimpact of social movements originating in Latin America.

This last point is central to Abigail Andrewss article, How ActivistsTake Zapatismo Home: South-to-North Dynamics in Transnational SocialMovements. Through interviews with numerous activists of more than30 Northern groups in solidarity with the Zapatistas, she analyzes how ideo-

logical and behavioral change is transmitted from Latin America to U.S.movement organizing. She identifies dilemmas for groups seeking new soli-darity and alliance strategies but also the radical potential for invertingpower relations and getting beyond the constraints of the internationalNGOindustrial complex. Zapatista notions of autonomy have given themovement a particularly widespread international appeal, but Andrews notesthat by encouraging the people who provide them with financial and politi-cal support to take up Zapatismo at home they may be forgoing access tosupport from international civil society when they most need it.

Bernd Reiters contribution, Whats New in Brazils New Social Movements,

sounds a cautionary note about the reification of concepts such as new socialmovements. He reviews the history of Afro-Brazilian mobilizations to empha-size that identity-based movements have been present in Latin America sincecolonial times. His epistemological critique of the stretching of the conceptof new social movements (a term coined in the context of European post-materialist societies) is at variance with much of the recent comparative lit-erature on Latin America, which has highlighted distinctive characteristics ofthe regions upsurge in social movements since the 1980s. Although Reiterprefers to explain these trends in terms of changing political opportunitystructures, he too notes innovation and adaptation in the repertoires of con-tention practiced by contemporary Latin American social movements.

Together, the articles assembled here underscore the dynamism and creativ-ity of Latin Americas social movements in the face of an economic context ofneoliberal globalization, the political context of a hegemonic model of repre-sentative democracy that privileges clientelism over meaningful participation,and in recent years the ideological competition of parties and governmentsthat claim to be on the left. In important ways, these movements are continu-ally redefining politics, participation, and citizenship. They are not newthey obviously build on long traditions of struggle, and the social andeconomic conditions of Latin American countries present distinct contexts inwhich each movement organizes (Fuentes and Frank, 1989; Biekart, 2005;Petras, 2009). Yet capitalism in its current globalized manifestation hasspurred organized resistance expressed in mobilizations that do not directlyinvolve class identity or focus on the immediate goal of taking state power


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(Otero, 1999; Lievesley, 1999; Motta, 2009). These articles offer insights into thediverse forms of popular mobilizations under way in Latin America, suggest-ing both their dilemmas and their possibilities.

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Chalmers, Douglas A., Carlos M. Vilas, Katherine R. Hite, Scott B. Martin, Kerianne Piester, andMonique Segarra

1997 The New Politics of Inequality in Latin America: Rethinking Participation. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

De La Torre, Carlos1997 Populism and democracy: political discourses and cultures in contemporary Ecuador.Latin American Perspectives24 (3): 1224.

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Otero, Gerardo1999 Farewell to the Peasantry? Political Class Formation in Rural Mexico. Boulder: WestviewPress.2003 The Indian question in Latin America: class, state, and ethnic identity construction.Latin American Research Review38 (1): 248266.

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Stahler-Sholk, Richard, Harry E. Vanden, and Glen David Kuecker (eds.)2007 Globalizing Resistance: The New Politics of Social Movements in Latin America. LatinAmerican Perspectives34 (2).2008 Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-First Century: Resistance, Power, and

Democracy.Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.Thayer, Millie

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Zibechi, Ral2005 Subterranean echos: resistance and politics desde el stano. Socialism and Democracy19 (3): 1339.2006 Indigenous movements: between neoliberalism and leftist governments. Washington,DC: Center for International Policy/Americas Program. May 3. http://americas.irc-online.org/am/3257 (accessed March 1, 2010).2009 Autonomy or new forms of domination? The complex relationship between govern-ments and movements. Washington, DC: Center for International Policy/Americas Program.February 18. http://americas.irc-online.org/am/5877 (accessed March 1, 2010).

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A Second Look to LA Social Movements Stahler-Sholk y Vanden