Some latin American leftists I follow are claiming he'll be a disappointment just like Boric and Pencil man before him, but idk. We shall see if he can even make it though with the force of government/paramilitaries/cartels getting up in his shit
It's true, but there are some worrying signs. 1. A lack of commitment to international solidarity re. The summit of the Americas, 2. Willingness to fall back on the police and military to restore public trust in his admin and repress protest movements, 3. Lack of major energy directed towards the constitutional convention. An argument for Bernie, despite his moderation, was how he could fuel and facilitate programs for social change, and in Boric's context imo, the Constitution represents the only chance for fundamental legislative change in Chile and I haven't seen him performing this role. This could be my misinterpretation.
Heres an article on pt 1. It outlines how important the summit could be if turned away, and mentions that Chile has urged full participation https://www.coha.org/summit-of-the-americas-us-policy-of-exclusion-undermines-its-own-hegemonic-aspirations/ Here's an article on pt 2. , urgency could be good or bad depending on the politics, let's see https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/chiles-boric-attempts-relaunch-honeymoon-ends-abruptly-84591899
- A lack of commitment to international solidarity re. The summit of the Americas,
Fucking come on, even AMLO gets this right, and he's a social democrat.
I'm just an ignorant American but my impression is that AMLO and Lula's left populism has been more effective than actual socialist and communist electoral projects in Latin America (post cold war, at least). Which is unfortunate because they still fall short of where they need to be
It really depends on what you mean by effective and your ideological categories. I would put all 21st century Latin American socialist projects in the same mixed bag, where they have managed to get elected but are unable to fundamentally shift their nations due to opposition and international factors. This category does include AMLO and Lula, but I really wouldn't say their achievements so far are greater or distinctly superior than MAS in Bolivia, for example
Like, for this one good stance of his (international solidarity) AMLOs presidency has been a contradictory mess where ambitious plans are hampered by a political system opposed to redistributive change, even disregarding the cartel issue. I'm not as well read on Lula, but to my knowledge any Brazilian leftist would acknowledge that he started socdem/demsoc and his policies were pulled to the center over time.
only corection on this is that lula started as trade unionist and endeup socdem, he was a pretty serious leftist and he still is but i feel like lula understands it better than us that you can't do the change through the electoral system, so he is doing harm reduction, also on the achievements thing is kinda of a complicated affair because the sheer amount people that went from starvation to being the lower middle class is kinda of impressive by itself, lt is the only thing lula really has over a lot of the latam leaders is that he somehow did it from inside one of the most conservative political systems in latam
Thank you for the correction! I'm always happy to get more perspective on the regions incarnations of leftism, especially in previous blindspots
yes, but that's all the time a liberal needs to shit on everything
The US is probably making plans to derail him with Victoria Nuland visiting the country and speaking with every candidate but him.
He was a part of M-19, the organization that stole Bolívar's sword, awesome story. Anyway looks like he's going to win the first round handily, but I'm a bit worried about the runoff election. Polling has him barely ahead in a hypothetical runoff with the guy polling second and we all know what sorts of shenanigans can happen in a scenario like that. Still, the left has been winning in South America overall. We lost in Ecuador but won in Chile and Perú recently for example.
What would be ideal is to run as a party, maybe a council that picks a candidate to be their figurehead at the end of the campaign.
A group of people is a lot harder to liquidate than an individual.
Nobody takes national office without a significant coalition of supporters and officers underneath.
The issue is in how those lieutenants relate to one another and how many of them are proxies for another string of organizers and leaders. You don't want a Stalin/Trotsky situation if Lenin bites it.
Either way it helps to have a lot of people who are on the same page, trust each other, and also don't put personal ambitions above the group.
I believe that tends to be baked into any successful national campaign. Like, he wouldn't be here if he wasn't surrounded by like-minded trustworthy people.
