This meme is being used in the media now to attack the Chavez/Morales Left as being authoritarian verus the left like Lula in Brazil and the new Socialist President Michelle Bachelet in Chile, who are more amenable to capitalism and imperialist demands.
Ironically populism is the basis of the new right in Canada and the United States, it is the source of the popularity of the Klein, Manning, Harper new right, in Canada as well as the base of the U.S. Republican party. Of course the commentators who denounce the populist left in Latin America do not apply the same critique to the Populist Right in North America.
The populism of the Left is being described as authoritarian when in reality it is not. But Castaneda sees it for what it is. That the seizure of state power is limited, where it will go, nowhere as in the case of Brazil, or towards a dual power situation as in Bolivia, Argentina and Venezuala with popular assemblies, worker community control is the real question. The latter is what scares the bejezus out of the right and liberals like Castaneda.
Latin America's Left Turn
Jorge G. Castañeda
From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2006
Summary: With all the talk of Latin America's turn to the left, few have noticed that there are really two lefts in the region. One has radical roots but is now open-minded and modern; the other is close-minded and stridently populist. Rather than fretting over the left's rise in general, the rest of the world should focus on fostering the former rather than the latter -- because it is exactly what Latin America needs.
JORGE G. CASTAÑEDA is the author of Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left After the Cold War and Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara. Having resigned as Mexico's Foreign Minister in 2003, he is currently Global Distinguished Professor of Politics and Latin American Studies at New York University.
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