THE FAR LEFT IN LATIN AMERICA - HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES AND CONTEMPORARY ISSUES

Latin America consists of nineteen countries, extending over a wide geographical region, from Mexico in the north to Chile and Argentina in the south. These countries have witnessed hugely different historical experiences, rich in their cultural and linguistic diversity. Although they differ locally and are not united politically or economically, Latin America with its geographical, historical, linguistic, religious, and political roots is politically acceptable; these countries also share several key factors, including poor governments. Most of the Latin American countries do not control their territories, opening Pandora’s box for drug smuggling and trafficking and the outbreak of wars gangs. This makes it difficult to realize development, prosperity, and well-being. Social inequality is notoriously rampant, opportunities in the education and health sectors are unequal, and infrastructure is poor. Riddled with these challenges, the far left became the only political force that sought to establish unions and blocs that cross borders and bring together countries to form one political front.

The reality of the far left in Latin America is different from what it is in Europe. The revolution, according to Marx and Lenin in the Soviet experience, depends on the conscious working class (the proletariat), and the establishment of socialism can only be the control of the working class over the means of production politically and economically, which is termed the tyranny of the class. Working class (dictatorship of the proletariat), the biggest challenge to the far left in Latin America is the low proportion of the working class, despite the efforts made in the interwar period by some countries to achieve industrial autonomy.

It must be pointed out that it is necessary to be patient in assessing this challenge in the countries of the Southern Cone. Like Argentina, Chile along with Brazil, which are characterized by what the Nordic countries call the informal economy, have economies shrouded in ambiguity, designed to exploit some of the gaps in the government systems for tax evasion, and other irregularities. However, it is sometimes subject to strict regulatory controls and standards in traditional structures, such as federations and unions. These economic practices prevailing in the countries with the informal economy did not receive attention in the Marxist theory according to the Soviet applications. Therefore, the theory was not fully applied; rather, the far left in Latin America relied on its own notions of the people and populism, which, albeit ambiguous, is a defining line for them.

The Cuban Revolution had a profound impact on the political culture of Latin America. The revolutionary war broke out on the continent according to the Foucauldian theory developed by the French thinker Roger Depres on the doctrine of armed guerrilla wars. Although the results of this inconclusive war, its ideologies mushroomed widely, the leaders became icons and sources of inspiration, especially Che Guevara, who was executed in Bolivia.

This type of revolutionary struggle was criticized and challenged, causing the fragmentation of the far left, and the emergence of Maoist groups that adopted a new theory based on the ideologies of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, and based on the model developed by the ideologies of the Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong; it is more suitable for the conditions of Latin America in terms of the expansion of the oppressed peasantry.

Latin politics was affected by the conditions of the Cold War, and the direct and indirect interference of the United States of America in Operation Condor, in which the far-right authorities in the Southern Cone of Latin America practiced political repression and assassinations to eliminate communism, which weakened the far left and changed the features of revolutionary ideological approaches.

Among the influences on the change in the trajectory of the far left is the movement of exodus from the countryside and uncontrolled urban expansion, which created a huge popular sector suffering from neglect and exclusion, and an informal economy. These two issues are not compatible with the traditional far-left organizations and movements. The traditional left was previously indifferent to these social groups, and the new changes forced it to try to integrate them into its plans, without causing any clashes.

While the traditional leftists previously neglected the impact of indigenous societies and the class of forced laborers who do not own land, far left movements today consider the indigenous community and the neglected and oppressed class, with the importance of the working class, and classify them in the actors influencing the radical transformation, capable of causing a level of conflict with the middle classes on which liberal right governments depend.

This includes the political factors, especially the American intervention, and the cultural factors, the most important of which is the eradication of indigenous cultures in some cases eliminating them, historical elements associated with the memory of the colonial history of the region, and economic elements. Combined together, they all made patriotism or nationalism a central focus of fundamentalist revolutionary ideology. The left and the far left in Latin America had previously shown that the upheaval of the Cold War, an unbridled and inspiring nationalism, manifested itself in the long-forgotten ideals of Simon Bolivar; it was reformulated according to the fundamentalist ideology of the indigenous people of America, which calls for a return to America before Western colonialism.

Latin American societies are deeply rooted in Catholicism; they are not purely secular societies, which compels the far left to adopt the Christian identity as a starting point for its struggle against colonialism and imperialist capitalism, unlike the general left who sees religion as the opium of the people. The militant Christian liberation ideology influenced and inspired the trend of political Islam; religion for them is the main engine for the fight against colonialism and global capitalism. In view of all these features, the far left gives priority to social goals before economic goals, and to voluntary work before forced work.