Approaches that explain Latin American politics through cyclical shifts—from social democracy to neoliberalism, from populism to liberalism, from left to right—and that analyze, as an independent variable, the governments and movements embodying those poles, often overlook a central sociological issue. This issue lies in understanding the collective mood of societies—individuals, groups, classes, and institutions—which, through changes in their voting behavior, make the emergence of those governments possible.
Since the mid-1990s, Western political science, and particularly Latin American scholarship, has focused on explaining these relatively abrupt political shifts through what for years was the discipline’s main conceptual key: the crisis of political representation. As a result, analyses concentrated on the functioning of political systems—parties, governments, and electoral systems—and on how to reconfigure them to make them more predictable and stable. However, it was not sufficiently recognized that the problem did not lie in the possible solutions, but in an inadequate diagnosis: the crisis of political representation was advancing because the societal matrix meant to be represented was itself being critically dismantled. In other words, if politics was considered one variable of analysis, the other was missing: society.
Contemporary shifts in Latin American politics are more pronounced and abrupt than in other regions of the world. Governments swing from right to left, and from self-proclaimed revolutionary socialisms to extreme right-wing forces articulated around the so-called cultural battle. Perhaps it is these latter movements that have attracted the most attention, given that leftist revolutions and “revolutionary” governments have existed throughout the region’s contemporary history. Extreme right-wing movements, by contrast, had until now appeared almost exclusively in the form of past military coups.
What brings these extreme right-wing forces to power?
Why are right-wing governments elected whose programs seek to dismantle—under the threat of a cultural battle—everything that has been institutionally established in terms of values, rights, new rights, and equalities? Where do figures such as Bolsonaro, Milei, Bukele, Kast, Noboa, and those waiting “on the bench,” such as a reloaded Uribista current in Colombia or Fujimorismo in Peru, come from? How can reactive and/or reactionary programs be championed after decades of political achievements that improved living conditions across the region?
A first answer is that these movements have been able to instrumentalize social discontent. They gave political form to broad social sectors sunk in precariousness, lack of horizons, neighborhood insecurity, institutional distrust, absence of expectations, and profound disbelief in the state. This is not solely an economic issue, but rather a lack of hope in a better future. It is what the French sociologist Émile Durkheim coined in the nineteenth century as anomie. He used the term to describe a social condition marked by disenchantment and difficulty in living the present, due to the weight of expectations about the future. This condition manifests itself as apathy and as a loss of self-confidence.
Vast social segments throughout the region perhaps live in this anomic state. It is not only about indicators such as unemployment, informality, or poverty measured by institutions like ECLAC. It is about the reproduction and expansion of these situations, and the personal and social perception that there is no belonging, no purpose, no possibility. It is this precariousness that leads to anarchic, regressive, and harmful behaviors. Insecurity is not only fear of crime; it is the lack of confidence in the possibility of a better life.
For this reason, alongside political analysis of the superstructure, it is essential to incorporate this social scenario. When articulating it with politics, it is necessary to recognize that the “virtue” of the new extreme right-wing movements in the region has been their ability to politicize this discontent. They have succeeded in integrating it into a project that proposes to refound—violently, if necessary—everything that has thus far been normatively established and accepted, under the premise that this institutional order benefits only those who “belong.” Within this framework, the idea is also sustained that those who do belong do so through the dispossession of those left on the margins.
This new form of social discontent has found, and strengthened, a new politics: the reactionary right. At its extreme lies what is referred to as the NRx right.
From here on, the key question is what could constitute an opposition to this new political hegemony. Can it be a left that appeals to the traditional—and undoubtedly valuable—imperative of justice and social equality? Or should it be a left that adds to this the issues of gender, the environment, and sexuality? It would seem not, at least judging by the results of the most recent elections in the region.
Therefore, it appears that the so-called left and/or political progressivism must refound its ideas and political agenda. It must engage with the forms, codes, and moods of contemporary social discontent in order to generate future expectations. For new generations—perhaps the so-called Generation Z—to find the path they feel is being denied to them, political programs conceived and written by leaders from another era will not suffice.
*Machine translation, proofread by Ricardo Aceves.
Autor
Director of the Degree in Political Science and Government of the National University of Lanús. Regular professor of the School of Social Sciences of the Univ. of Buenos Aires UBA. Degree in Sociology from the UBA and in Political Science from Flacso-Argentina.
