The Sao Paulo Forum: is there a new Latin American left?

Monthly Review, Dec, 1992 by William I. Robinson

Is there a new left emerging in Latin America in the post-Cold War era? Over the past few years, a quite diverse group of parties and movements has coalesced around a reconstructed left identity. All of them share a commitment to rethink revolution and social change in the new international situation of the 1990s. This group includes the Workers Party of Brazil (PT), the Sandinista National Liberation Front of Nicaragua (FSLN), the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front of EL Salvador (FMLN), the Democratic Party of the Revolution of Mexico (PDR), the Broad Front of Uruguay (FA), the Free Bolivar Movement of Bolivia (MBL), the United Left of Peru (IU), and the Lavalas movement of Haiti, among others. Taken collectively, they are poised to play a major role in the hemisphere in the 1990s as a counterweight to the neoliberalism currently being pushed on the continent by transnational capital and local ruling elites.

For instance, taking advantage of limited electoral openings provided by a shift from military to civilian rule in 1990, the Broad Front in Uruguay captured the mayorship of Montevideo in 1990, home to almost half the country's population. Similarly, left and progressive groups in Paraguay united under the "Asuncion for Everyone" coalition following the collapse of the Stroessner dictatorship in 1989, and captured city hall in the country's capital. Both coalitions have used local power to challenge corruption and the traditional parties, to mobilize the population, and to expand their social base.

Brazil's PT is viewed by many as the "rising star" of the left in the Third World. In Haiti, the liberation theologist Jean-Bertrand Aris fide was swept into the presidency in December 1990 by a mass grassroots movement, in what was termed "the first revolution after the Cold War." Despite the coup d'etat which deposed Aristide in September 1991, the Lavalas movement retains its vitality, making Haiti ungovernable by the current military dictatorship. In El Salvador, the FMLN has forced the government and the United States into a negotiated settlement that opens the way for the former rebels to compete peacefully and legally for political power, promising authentic democratization for the first time in the history of the Salvadoran republic.

The Sandinistas, now out of power, remain the principal political force in Nicaragua. In Mexico, there is a democratic and progressive movement outside the governing PRI for the first time since the revolution of 1910. In Chile, the Socialists share government with the Christian Democrats and the left has not been marginalized despite the best efforts of Washington and the Pinochet dictatorship. In Guatemala and Colombia, peace and stability will be difficult to achieve without the participation of the left.

These institutional inroads underscore the potential for the left to compete in civil and political society in new historic circumstances, and reflect the high level of popular discontent with the prevailing social order. However, such gains should not be exaggerated; the overriding challenge of the new left is to translate formal, institutional inroads into structural transformation and social change, an undertaking which is far from accomplished.

The Sao Paulo Forum and Post-Cold War Thinking in Latin America

At the invitation of Brazil's PT, in July 1990 representatives from forty-eight leftist parties, organizations, and fronts-including those mentioned above and others, among them the Cuban Communist Party--met in Sao Paulo to interchange ideas and experiences. The participants established the Sao Paulo Forum with the objective of developing unity and collective strategies and programs. The final resolution stated: "We express our joint determination to renew leftist thought, to correct erroneous conceptions, to overcome all bureaucratism and all obstacles to an authentically social and mass democracy."[1]

In June 1991, the Forum held its second meeting, hosted in Mexico City by that country's PDR and attended by sixty-eight organizations from twenty-two nations. The final resolution read:

Our discussion has been frank, open, democratic, pluralist, and unitary, involving a broad spectrum of forces. Some of us identify ourselves as nationalist, democratic, and popular, and others are decidedly socialist. We are all committed to the structural transformations of our societies necessary to fulfill the aspirations of our peoples for social justice, democracy, and national liberation.[2]

Nicaragua's FSLN hosted the third conference of the Forum in Managua in July, 1992.

The process of rethinking on the part of the Latin American left has challenged all the old dogmas. The collapse of the socialist bloc, although it jarred political and ideological points of reference for many, also accelerated the creation of a new identity for the left in Latin America. Despite the diversity of the Sao Paulo Forum and the ongoing, often fierce debates within and among left parties and organizations, general points of agreement can be identified. Summarized below are the basic tenets of the new thinking, derived from a careful study of the policies, platforms, and documents circulated by Sao Paulo Forum groups. Taken as a whole, they point to the development of new paradigms for revolutionary struggle in Latin America.