An EU – Latin America summit is taking place in Vienna May 10 – 13. The European leaders are meeting their counterparts from the Latin American states. Along, traditionally, an alternative summit is being held. 

Referring to the G8, the alternative summits could have been called “counter-summits”, but the organizational committee is avoiding this term. When the G8 leaders gather for meetings, the social movements send their representatives to make a protest. With the Vienna case things are more complicated, as this summit is expected to be attended by Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales, radical presidents of Venezuela and Bolivia, which are much admired by the Western left. As for presidents of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, they, themselves having recently been viewed as the left, now receive strong criticisms from the latter. On the international issues Latin American leaders keep getting into fights with the United States. So, the social activists go to Vienna mostly to talk to the reps from Latin America rather than for sparking protest actions.

Actually, summit in Vienna does not promise to deliver anything sensational. Its purpose basically consists in stimulating discussions of the feasible changes in Latin America. And there is plenty of room for discussion. In a thirty years period the region has undergone quite a number of political and economic changes. In the Soviet times it used to be referred to as the “Burning Continent”. And truly, the revolution outbreaks have been tormenting one country or the other. However, most of them were fought back. The Nicaraguan Revolution, which was a success, was inflicted by the “Cold War”: the hostile pressure from the US on the one side, and chocking “friendly hugs” from the Soviet Union on the other, made the organic revolutionary development impossible. The Sandinistas lost elections and resigned from power, which may actually be considered a sort of political achievement: they showed that a revolutionary party which came to power by force, may actually create favorable conditions for free and fair elections and accept the results, when people’s vote is not in their favor.

The second half of the 1980s and the 1990s were the time, when, on the one hand, the military regimes were defeated, while on the other hand, the era of neoliberal reforms began. Russian observers were gleefully announcing that the “Burning Continent” had turned into “privatizing” one. The outcome of the neoliberal reforms resulted in the waves of people’s indignation, which could now be embodied in the democratic forms of resistance. The rebellion against neoliberalism, having seized the whole of the Latin American continent, has lead to the astonishing success of the left parties, now having switched revolutionary banners over to the reformist ones. Firstly, the left forces headed the municipal bodies of the largest cities – like Mexico-city and Montevideo, and then they took over in many of the national governments.

The left forces’ success, however, was contradictory. The question most frequently asked by the left activists was “¿Ganar para qué?”–“Why win?” Victory in the elections doesn’t bring changes, let alone the facts that some of the high-profile revolutionaries get fancy ministerial posts. Uruguayan and Brazilian politicians, who were unmasking neoliberalism at the social forums, on granting access to power, themselves resorted to the neoliberal course. Hugo Chavez of Venezuela was the only exception. And recently the hopes of many protestors have been put on Bolivian President Evo Morales. And of course it’s not in Morales’ personality. The mass protest actions in Bolivia have already caused a number of resignations of the Bolivian presidents. Morales, being a politician of experience, realizes that if he does not provide people with tangible improvement in the social and economic sphere, he will have to face the same fate as his predecessors. 

The delegations from Eastern Europe will be scarcely represented on the alternative forum in Vienna. Actually, a bus was sent from Kyiv, which originally was planned for the European Social Forum in Athens. Russia is hardly represented. Some didn’t find money to come to luxurious European capital, others had problems issuing their visa, the rest happen to have no knowledge of Spanish or Portuguese. Well, it’s no big deal that the Russians will not hear the extensive speech of Hugo Chavez. What’s more important is to draw proper conclusions from the current situation in Latin America. Our situations have much in common. We, just like they did, have steered through the democratization of the late 1980s, accompanied by the market reforms and overwhelming poverty. We, just like they are, belong to the periphery of the capitalist world. Both Russia and the most of the Latin American countries possess natural resources, which are unwisely used, wasted, sold on the world market. There is only one major difference. The poorest of the Latin American countries are way ahead of the most “advanced” and most democratic post-Soviet states in terms of civil society development and social movement organization.

So it’s not Chavez and Morales who are worth looking at, but the societies that produced them, people who take the “We make our history” statement seriously. If we finally learn to stand for our rights, the Latin American experience, be it positive or negative, will do us a lot of good. If not, it will be no more than an exotic thing in the tropics, which is not something to die for.     

Boris Kagarlitsky is a Director of The Institute for Globalization Studies.

May 11, 2006