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
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
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
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
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
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