{"id":55476,"date":"2026-03-04T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-04T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/?p=55476"},"modified":"2026-03-03T23:37:56","modified_gmt":"2026-03-04T02:37:56","slug":"the-wild-years-of-left-wing-populism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/the-wild-years-of-left-wing-populism\/","title":{"rendered":"The wild years of (left-wing) populism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

With the capture of Nicol\u00e1s Maduro, it is pertinent to ask whether this marks the end of the wild years of left-wing populism that began at the start of this century. The question is unavoidable, among other reasons, because this wave began with an anti-American, anti-globalization, and anti-neoliberal discourse: that of Hugo Ch\u00e1vez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From these guidelines emerged what came to be called twenty-first-century socialism\u2014a wave of left-wing populisms that, in general terms, was marked by a set of discourses and social policies presented as progressive alternatives to the inequalities produced by neoliberal practices implemented in the region toward the end of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To fulfill its promise of social equality and the radicalization of democracy, this form of populism relied on personalistic leaderships that believed they embodied the popular will through a discourse of moral polarization that divided society between \u201cthe people\u201d and \u201cthe elite\u201d\u2014something also present in the rhetoric of far-right populist leaders. Added to this were social programs aimed at redistributing wealth and expanding mechanisms of citizen participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although this populist current\u2014also referred to at the time as the \u201cpink tide\u201d\u2014experienced advances and setbacks in the region, its effects, both theoretical and practical, during this first quarter of the century have been intense in Latin America and globally. It would therefore not be an exaggeration to say that we have witnessed the wild years of left-wing populism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In practice, electoral victories turned these movements into a social force that generated a whirlwind of disputes, attacks, controversies, and political, academic, and everyday debates. In its theoretical dimension, the analysis of this populism has left us with grandiloquent defenses, a diversity of definitions, heterogeneous theoretical approaches, hard data used to defend or criticize it, and the occasional conciliatory perspective.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the center of this populist whirlwind lies the debate over its relationship with democracy: some are convinced that left-wing populism is a clear threat to democracy, while for others it expresses both the promise of inclusion of popular sectors and the fragility of democratic institutions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although there may be a broad spectrum between these two poles, this left-wing wave teaches us that populism\u2014whether from one side or the other\u2014cannot be conceived as an anomaly, as something that would not exist if democracy \u201cworked well.\u201d On the contrary, the intensity of the debate and its social penetration reveal that populism\u2014in its different faces\u2014is one of the recurring grammars of Latin America\u2019s political history. Thus, given its sweeping passage and polarizing character, both in university classrooms and in street conversations, it seems necessary to undertake a critical assessment of the mistakes that have led this left-wing populism into dead ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the case of Bolivia, a populist movement developed\u2014the MAS, initially led by Evo Morales\u2014which vindicated the necessary symbolic and political inclusion of historically marginalized sectors, one of populism\u2019s positive traits. However, this example also revealed one of the main weaknesses of left-wing populism: excessive dependence on the figure of the leader and the difficulty of distinguishing between personalistic and democratic projects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Mexico, although we can speak of a left-wing populism that is decidedly redistributive and respectful of certain democratic rules of the game, the moral construction of a \u201cgood people\u201d and its \u201cenemies\u201d<\/a> showed that, while it does not destroy democracy, it wears it down by polarizing society<\/a> and generating tensions between the government and autonomous bodies, the press, and civil society\u2014something also observable in contemporary far-right populisms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Venezuela may be, for having shown the path to other Latin American countries, the archetypal model. Although it began with a narrative of \u201cparticipatory democracy\u201d that shook its political and social gears\u2014at least suggesting that the promise of transforming democracy could be real\u2014that same discourse ultimately justified the progressive concentration of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Left-wing populism has the quality of challenging democracy, as it forces it to reconsider who is recognized as part of \u201cthe people\u201d and who is left outside its promise of equality. However, these populist movements ended up creating their own paradoxical conditions: either they left structures intact while covering them with a moralizing discourse, or they revealed their incapacity to give political space to those they claim to represent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This paradoxical condition of left-wing populism in power compels us to ask whether it has exhausted its capacity to offer equality and a future, or whether it will be able to remake itself without devouring itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If these wild years of left-wing populism\u2014like those of the right\u2014have left us with anything, it is that they are a reflection of the profound political crisis in which we live. Therefore, if they cannot sustain their promise of improving democracy, what should we do?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Did Maduro\u2019s fall put an end to the left-wing populist cycle and mark a historic turning point for the Latin American left?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":535,"featured_media":55463,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17057,16804],"tags":[15635],"gps":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-55476","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ideologias-es-en","8":"category-populismo-en","9":"tag-debates"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/535"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55476"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55477,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55476\/revisions\/55477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55476"},{"taxonomy":"gps","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/latinoamerica21.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/gps?post=55476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}