South Atlantic Quarterly

Alvaro Reyes

Revolutions in the Revolutions:

A Post-counterhegemonic
Moment for Latin America?

Over the past quarter century, Latin America

has witnessed an intense cycle of struggle sig-
naled most prominently by events such as the
Caracazo in Venezuela, the Zapatista uprising
in Mexico, the Argentine rebellion, and the wave
of indigenous uprisings and protests in Bolivia
and Ecuador. These organizations and move-
ments created a moment of open rupture with
the prevailing naked logic of neoliberalism. This
in turn forced open a space for counterhege-
monic forces and figures within each of these
countries to take state power. It is these figures
(Hugo Chvez, Rafael Correa, Luiz Incio da
Silva, and Evo Morales) that have come to sym-
bolize the struggles for which Latin America is
today most widely known. Yet the results of these
progressive governments, which rode the wave
of generalized revolt to state power, have been
rather uneven. Today, from Lulismo in Brazil to
socialism for the twenty-first century in Ecua-
dor, Bolivia, and Venezuela, these governments
are increasingly facing a new round of discon-
tentranging from criticism to open revolt
from the very movements that brought them to
power. These new expressions of discontent can-
not be understood without the recognition that
the cycle of struggles from which they arose not

The South Atlantic Quarterly 111:1, Winter 2012

DOI 10.1215/00382876-1472567 2012 Duke University Press

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only reconfigured the domestic relations of force in each country and the
geopolitical map of the region as a whole, but was in fact the product of an
enormous shift in the reconceptualization of the means, ends, and scope of
what it means to do politics. Understanding these moments of rupture and
the evolution of these Latin American struggles will prove invaluable in
assessing the potentials and pitfalls in this moment of worldwide uprisings
against the localized expressions of the global neoliberal dispositif.

The Revolution That Made It Possible

Given the decades that have passed and the dramatic events that have
unfolded since the inception of this powerful cycle of struggle (as well as
the filters of reception that have minimized its consequences, coherence,
and impact), a brief retrospective is necessary to understand the unique
array of political forces and conceptualizations of politics present today in
Latin America. Without the details of these events (of which I can scratch
only the surface here), it is easy to lose sight of the fact that each of the
various moments of rupture in this cycle had a particular dynamic, related
to organizational histories, innovative forms, and moments of open rebel-
lion, but that also exceeded those histories and initiatives. A clear pic-
ture of these events and their contemporary significance seems particu-
larly difficult from within the United States. Here these events appeared
mediated through stereotyped visions of Latin American politics as mere
moments in a seemingly never-ending chaos that constantly engulfs our
neighbors to the south. The consequent arrival of electoral personas were
then quickly identified within the long-standing narratives of Latin Ameri-
can populism (which, independent of the limitations and possibilities of
that concept, is intended in the hands of the US press to mean nothing
but base demagoguery) and the Latin American caudillo. Alternatively, in
a more sympathetic but nonetheless problematic vein, such events were
often received within more progressive communities in the United States
as the revival of the romantic figure of the guerrilla fighter and the struggle
for socialism. Although the cycle I refer to here was not divorced from
such figures and ideas (as many of the essays in this issue highlight), it
is exactly the relation (and distinction) among those figures, the goals of
the organizations and movements, and the events of this cycle that con-
tinues to occupy the very center of the political discussion in much of Latin
America today.
The problematic reception of this cycle from within the United States

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Reyes Revolutions in the Revolutions3

was further complicated by the fact that in many cases the arrival of pro-
gressive governments throughout the region served, at least in part, to
obscure the initial moments of rupture. The amount of coverage given to
electoral events (the inaugurations of Rafael Correa, Evo Morales, the return
of Hugo Chvez, and so on) went far beyond that given to prior moments
of struggle, making it highly likely that, at least in the United States, those
moments are today barely remembered if not totally unknown. As a con-
sequence, many discussions in the United States regarding the past two
decades in Latin America easily lapse into confusion between causes and
effects, between new beginnings and closures, exactly the distinctions nec-
essary to understand the direction, continuation, and scope of the cur-
rent struggles for emancipation and autonomy in Latin America. In other
words, if we are to understand what was truly innovative within this Latin
American cycle of struggle, we must be able to make one key distinction
that Forrest Hylton and Sinclair Thomson highlight for us about Bolivia
(but which could be said about a number of Latin American contexts): In
our own historical view the election of Evo Morales did not bring about a
revolution. It was a revolution that brought about the government of Evo
Morales.1 What was that revolution, then?
The first rumblings in what would later evolve into a tectonic shift
throughout the region occurred on February 27, 1989. That morning,
informal workers, students, and marginalized residents of Caracas, Vene-
zuela, and the nearby town of Guarenas refused to accept the neoliberal
structural adjustment package implemented by then president Carlos
Andrs Prez (who had just been elected to the presidency on a clear anti-
neoliberal platform) and imposed on Venezuela by the International Mone-
tary Fund (IMF) in exchange for increased loans (the package ended gaso-
line subsidies leading to an immediate and exorbitant rise in transportation
and food costs). This refusal grew quickly into a full-blown, five-day urban
insurrection, known as the Caracazo, consisting of barricades, looting, and
persistent rioting that was initially concentrated in neighborhoods such
as 23 de Enero, Catia, and El Valle, where loose organizations had formed
out of exclusion from the formal political process.2 These actions quickly
spread throughout the country, to which the Prez administration (with
the approval of his largest political rivals in government) responded with
the massacre of hundreds if not thousands of Venezuelans. The result of
this insurrection and its aftermath was the creation of an enormous chasm
between that countrys traditional political elite (the parties of the Pacto de
Punto Fijo, particularly Accin Democrtica and the Partido Social Cris-

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tiano) and the Venezuelan populace at large. The same chasm appeared
on April 13, 2002, when, in response to the coup dtat against Chvez,
an enormous wave of self-organized action (a chavismo without Chvez)
throughout Venezuela stopped the traditional Venezuelan political elite
(which was then acting with the explicit encouragement and support of
various sectors within the US government) from returning to power.3
Latin America was once again shaken on the eve of January 1, 1994,
when thousands of soldiers belonging to the almost exclusively indige-
nous Ejrcito Zapatista de Liberacin Nacional (EZLN; Zapatista Army of
National Liberation) declared war on the Mexican government and its deci-
sion to privatize rural lands and enter into the North American Free Trade
Agreement. In its twelve-day offensive, the EZLN was able to overtake five
municipal seats, occupy some 600,000 hectares of land, and stave off the
Mexican military from an area of operation the size of most Central Ameri-
can countries.4 This unexpected uprising, and the spontaneous sympathy
it inspired throughout Mexico and the world, was central in a long process
that would eventually end the seventy-year reign of the Partido Revolucio-
nario Institucional (PRI) and lead global financial corporations to insist
that Mexican financial stability passed directly through the destruction of
Zapatismo.5
In the spring of 2000, the people of Bolivia followed suit. Carrying
their wiphalas,6 members of the Coordinadora por la Defensa del Agua y por
la Vida and its allies occupied and effectively shut down the city of Cocha-
bamba on several occasions in defiance of the rising costs created by the
World Bankmandated privatization of water in Bolivia. By April 2000,
the protests had spread to the cities of La Paz, Oruro, and Potosi, block-
ing off transportation across much of the country and effectively ending
the Bechtel Corporations water privatization scheme, creating a nation-
wide awareness of the need to end structural adjustment policies.7 Two
and a half years later this scene would be repeated as members of indige-
nous neighborhood organizations in El Alto, the Bolivian Workers Central
Union, and the Union Confederation of Working Peasants of Bolivia united
to lay siege to cities throughout Bolivia, demanding an end to proposed
gas exports to the United States and the nationalization of gas and other
natural resources.8 Once again roadblocks, strikes, and generalized block-
ades of several Bolivian cities brought the nation to a standstill and forced
then president Gonzalo Snchez de Lozada out of office in October 2003.
Just two years later, Snchez de Lozadas successor, Carlos Mesa, met the
same fate as demands for resource nationalization crisscrossed with other

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Reyes Revolutions in the Revolutions5

demands: calls by coca growers for an end to repression and for land redis-
tribution; the call by indigenous organizations for the decolonization of the
Bolivian state; and the generalized insistence on recovering some form of
self-determination in the face of open meddling by the United States and
international financial institutions in Bolivian national policy.9
In neighboring Argentina, the combination of economic instability
created by recession, the flight of foreign investment, and attempts to peg
the Argentinean currency one-to-one with the US dollar led to an unprece-
dented level of political instability. Actions taken by the administration of
Fernando de la Ra to avoid a run on banks exacerbated the problem and
even middle-class residents of Buenos Aires began to express their long-
standing and overwhelming discontentthat of those who had never bene-
fited from the wave of privatizations and neoliberal structural adjustment
programs that had been implemented consistently throughout the 1980s
and 1990s. Although this discontent had been evident for some time, it
fully exploded on December 19 and 20, 2001, when enormous crowds of
Argentinians took to the streets banging pots and pans and chanting, Que
se vayan todos; que no quede ni uno solo (Out with the lot of them; let
none remain).10 The force of the protests was quickly extended through the
formation of some seventy neighborhood assemblies across Buenos Aires,
the occupation of nearly two hundred factories, and the appearance of
countless roadblocks or piquetes (picket lines), which became the weapons
of choice for the Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados (Unemployed
Workers Movement) in a situation of highly decentralized production. The
protests of 2001 and the movements that it created would eventually bring
down three successive presidents, Fernando de la Ra of Unin Cvica
Radical and Adolfo Rodrguez Sa and Fernando Duhalde of the tradition-
ally Peronist Partido Justicialista.
Events in the northern Andes were no less dramatic. On January 17,
2000, after a decade of protest, movement growth, and increasing coordi-
nation (including nationwide protests in 1990 and 1999), thousands of
members of the Confederacin de Nacionalidades Indgenas del Ecuador
(CONAIE), displaying their wiphalas and demanding the overthrow of the
three state powers, occupied Quito in protest of deteriorating economic
conditions and the proposed dollarization of the economy.11 Five days
later, the CONAIE occupied the national congress and, with the support of
lower-level military officials (particularly that of Colonel Lucio Gutirrez),
forced out then president Jamil Mahuad. Lucio Gutirrez took power, but
his continued implementation of neoliberal reforms and support for the

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Free Trade Agreement of the Americas was seen as direct treachery by the
indigenous movements he had counted among his supporters, and his
moves to transfer power to the executive branch were seen by large sectors
of Ecuadorian society as a blatant personal power grab. In April 2005, three
years after being elected president (a victory significantly supported by
the CONAIE and its electoral wing, Movimiento de Unidad Plurinacional
Pachakutik), Gutirrez was deposed as massive protests grew among even
middle-class residents of Quito and Guayaquil during the Revolucin Rosa
(Pink Revolution).12
Such sustained revolt was accompanied by significant tremors
throughout the continent. These include the uprising of the Asamblea
Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) and the Seccin 22 del Sindicato
Nacional de los Trabajadores de la Educacin against the continued reign
of corruption, brutality, and neoliberal policies that the PRI imposed on
state workers and indigenous people in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico; the
less-well-known indigenous and afro-descendant Minga13 in Colombia that
took place in autumn 2008 and was largely organized by the Asociacin
de Cabildos Indgenas del Norte del Cauca against the implementation of
a free trade agreement between Colombia and the United States and the
free trade economic model as a whole; the uprisings of the indigenous
people of Peru under the banner of the Asociacin Intertnica de Desarro-
llo de la Selva Peruana in May 2009 in response to legislative changes that
opened up further foreign investment in mining and oil drilling projects in
the Amazon region of northern Peru; the long-term land takeover strategy
of the Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (MST) in Brazil,
which has built an organization of 1.6 million landless members in the last
two decades and occupied and settled some 7.5 million hectares of land;
and the migrant marches in spring 2006 in the United States that culmi-
nated in the largest single-day protest march in US history on May 1, 2006,
in which amnesty for undocumented workers was demanded.14

Progressive Governments and the Demise of Neoliberal Orthodoxy

Within this atmosphere, which Mexican sociologist Raquel Gutirrez refers
to as one of generalized insurrection and insubordination, Latin Ameri-
can movements successfully directed their attention to the most biting ele-
ments of neoliberal adjustment and showed themselves to be the central
determinant of the social and political situation of the region.15 With inno-
vative forms of protest and organization (roadblocks, city sieges, assem-

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Reyes Revolutions in the Revolutions7

blies, rotating leadership, etc.), this wave of mass uprisings was able to
place those previously excluded from the site of institutional politics (par-
ticularly indigenous peoples, the residents of the urban periphery, and mar-
ginalized intellectuals)those who as Frantz Fanon might say, ha[d] still
not found a single bone to gnaw within neoliberal colonialityat the very
center of political events in the region.16 The force with which these sectors
finally erupted and the heightened expectations that their success created
within these communities effectively delegitimized the existing hegemonic
political class in each of these countries. Not only had this political class
been charged with implementing neoliberal policy and was thus despised
by even the urban middle classes that had suffered under its rule, but it had
also been explicitly characterized by strict lines of racialized, classed, and
gendered exclusions, lines that had sustained the distinctive character of
the qara and criollo elite discussed by Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui and Roland
Denis in this issue. Such lines would become increasingly difficult to sus-
tain after the newfound protagonism of these previously marginal sectors.
In this sense, it is important to highlight that, intentionally or not, the past
two decades of revolt not only blunted the sharpest edges of neoliberal-
ism (privatization, deregulation, labor flexibility, and free trade) in Latin
America, but they also opened an unprecedented space within the previ-
ously narrow institutional and electoral arenas.
This institutional and electoral space was quickly seized upon by
counterhegemonic forces throughout the region that had for years prepared
to struggle within these arenas, many of these forces led by figures that had
emerged from within these same marginalized sectors. This dynamic is
evident starting with the presidential inauguration of Chvez and the for-
mation of his Movimiento Quinta Republica (Fifth Republic Movement),
which would eventually morph into the Partido Socialista Unido de Vene-
zuela (United Socialist Party of Venezuela). The figure of Chvez, it should
be noted, created as much discussion and disgust from the opposition due
to his indigenous and African ancestry and the fact that he was born poor
than as a result of his policy positions. This was quickly followed by an ava-
lanche of progressive electoral victories: the election of Luiz Incio Lula da
Silva, a former metal worker and union organizer whose formal education
didnt exceed the fourth grade, and the consolidations of the Partido dos
Trabalhadores (Workers Party) formed in 1980 and which today continues
to hold power through Dilma Rousseff, Brazils first female president and
former member of various urban guerilla organizations, who was jailed
by the Brazilian dictatorship between 1970 and 1972; the appearance of

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Nestor Kirchner and the revival of the leftist sector of the Partido Justicia-
lista in Argentina; the December 2005 election of Evo Morales, leader of
the coca growers union of Chapare and Bolivias first indigenous president,
and his vice presidential candidate, lvaro Garca Linera, former leader in
the Ejrcito Guerrillero Tupac Katari (Tupac Katari Guerrilla Army), on the
ticket of the Movimiento al Socialismo-Instrumento Poltico por la Sobe-
rana de los Pueblos (Movement toward Socialism-Political Instrument for
the Sovereignty of Peoples); and the arrival of Alianza PAIS to the Ecuador-
ian presidency in 2006 with the election of Rafael Correa, an economist
and a trained dependency theorist.
This much commented turn to the left among Latin American gov-
ernments moved even beyond the countries that had experienced moments
of open insurrection in this latest cycle and included the consecutive elec-
tions of Tabar Vzquez and Jos Mujica (former member of the Tupamaros
guerilla organization) of the Frente Amplio (Broad Front) of Uruguay; the
election of the liberation theologian and former bishop Fernando Lugo to
the presidency of Paraguay in 2008 under the banner of the Alianza Patri-
tica Para el Cambio (Patriotic Alliance for Change); the return of Daniel
Ortega and the Frente Sandinista de Liberacin Nacional to the presidency
of Nicaragua; the election of Mauricio Funes of the Frente Farabundo Mart
para la Liberacin Nacional in El Salvador; the victory of PRD-backed can-
didates in Chiapas (2000 and 2006) and Oaxaca (2010) in Mexico; and
most recently, the narrow presidential victory of Ollanta Humala and the
Partido Nacionalista Peruano (Nationalist Party of Peru) in Peru. Finally, if
we understand the migrant marches of 2006 in the United States within
the dynamics of the Latin American cycle of struggles, then the election
of Barack Obama (even if belonging to other dynamics as well) should be
considered within this general context (helping us to clarify why the Si se
puede! of 2006 would be important enough to become the Yes, we can!
of 2008).
The arrival of these progressive governments, as they are often
called, was greeted with an outpouring of enthusiasm and hope that they
would bring the end of both physically repressive policies and the applica-
tion of the neoliberal model that had characterized many Latin American
regimes throughout the 1980s. Although such a large and varied field of
political projects is certain to have disparate outcomes, after some years we
can see an emerging pattern within the new administrations of key Latin
American countries (Brazil, Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina)
that help us to outline the nature and direction of what have alternatively

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Reyes Revolutions in the Revolutions9

been called the first generation of postneoliberal governments. In each

instance, as nearly all the contributors to this issue highlight, the demands
of the movements were quickly folded into the issue of the necessary recon-
stitution of the state in the face of the chaos produced by the application of
IMF orthodoxy.
In Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela, the reconstitution of the state
passed through the long process of establishing constituent assemblies
and the ratification through popular referenda of new national and pluri-
national constitutions. These new constitutions reintroduced the state as a
protagonist capable of intervening in the economic arena and responding
to the claims made by indigenous and afro-descendant communities for
administrative autonomy; the success of these referenda further consoli-
dated the popularity and institutional legitimacy of the new governments.
In addition, reinvigorated state protagonism and economic stability was
thought to pass through the much-heralded nationalization of key sectors
of the economy (particularly natural gas, oil, and minerals) demanded by
the movements. These nationalizations, however, did not amount to state
takeovers of industry but rather to the renegotiation of the royalties due
each country from multinational corporations in proportion to the reve-
nues gained through the production and sale of natural resources (a model
of private-public venture now shared by Petrleos de Venezuela S.A., Petro-
bras, Yacimientos Petrolferos Fiscales Bolivianos, and PetroEcuador).17
Despite the limited nature of these new schemes, the increased financial
capacity they provided the newly reconstituted states should not be under-
estimated. Bolivia provides just one example in this regard. When Morales
became president in 2006, Bolivias foreign currency reserves stood at a
little more than $2 billion dollars, and the national budget was $600 mil-
lion. By 2011, Bolivias foreign currency reserves stood at $10 billion, and
the national budget had grown to more than $2 billion.18 This growth in
state revenue has subsequently been directed toward the formation of con-
certed social programs to eliminate illiteracy, alleviate health care short-
ages, and end poverty. Brazils Bolsa Familia is also paradigmatic in this
regard as it distributes anywhere between $30 and $60 to more than twelve
million Brazilians each month in return for childrens school attendance.19
Other social programs on the continent include Socio Pas in Ecuador,
Bono Juancito Pinto in Bolivia, Planes Sociales in Argentina, and the vari-
ous misines in Venezuela.
In this way, increased budgets, the opening of spaces for expanded
participation (referenda and constituent assemblies), the approval of pro-

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gressive legislation, and the opening of governmental posts made pos-

sible by the displacement of the traditional political elites20 definitively
reinserted the state and state policy within the Latin American Left as a
battlefield for the continuation of the struggles that had been waged from
a number of dispersed locations prior to the arrival of the progressive gov-
ernments.21 This battlefield was envisioned not so much as the return of
politics (as more orthodox theorists in the region would have it) over and
above the prepolitical expressions of discontent of the previous decades,
but rather as the takeover by those movements (through recently con-
solidated counterhegemonic parties) of previously narrow and top-down
spaces. When one considers this opening of the state to the dynamics of
the social movements as well as the consolidation of projects among a
number of these progressive governments such as the Alianza Bolivariana
para los Pueblos de Nuestra Amrica (Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples
of Our America), especially its Banco del Sur (Bank of the South), or the
Unin de Naciones Suramricanas (Union of South American Nations),
both of which have already functioned to place clear limits on attempts by
the United States to continue its policy of interference in the region, the
merits of these projects can hardly be contested when compared to the pre-
vious decades of neoliberal devastation. It is exactly the relations between
these new anti-neoliberal governments and social movements as well as
the regional relations among these governments that for many around the
world, including thinkers as disparate as Antonio Negri, Perry Anderson,
and Noam Chomsky, that have made Latin America a truly exceptional site
for the experimentation of possible postneoliberal futures.22 Referring to
these new social programs and interregional relations in a 2011 interview,
Chomsky states, I think the developments in South America in the last
decade are probably the most exciting in the world.23

Impasse; or, The Limits of Hegemony in Reverse

Yet, these accomplishments have not been unidirectional advances. As
many authors have pointed out, the increasing reliance on resource extrac-
tion and monocultural crops (most specifically soy) for state revenue con-
tinues the late 1980s trend toward the deindustrialization of the region
and the consequent return to near total reliance on the export of primary
materials. In addition to the increased vulnerability to pricing in highly
speculative global commodities markets, this neoextractivist turn has
also meant that increased domestic social spending has been presented as

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Reyes Revolutions in the Revolutions11

directly at odds with the environmental issues created by the prevalence

of these extractive industries.24 On a number of occasions this has placed
the progressive governments, particularly those of Bolivia, Ecuador, and
Venezuela, at loggerheads with indigenous movements that raise concerns
regarding the environmental effects of oil and gas extraction as well as the
ceding of territorial rights this entails for their peoples. This has led to
a situation in which, despite rhetoric and legislation to the contrary, the
progressive governments have administered an era of continued environ-
mental devastation (the hastening of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon
under Lula is one case in point).25 In addition, several analysts have noted
the fact that the regions antipoverty programs have had extremely uneven
results, with rates of poverty remaining the same in countries like Bolivia
and Ecuador, decreasing in Brazil and Venezuela, but generally taking
place within a widespread context of increasing levels of exploitation and
inequalities in wealth and income that remain basically unchanged from
the late 1990s.26
When seen in this light, it is clear that the growth of state budgets
through neoextractivism and the implementation of antipoverty programs
cannot be seen solely as the product of the emancipatory demands of the
movements. If the state after the arrival of the progressive governments
became once again a viable battlefield within which movements could
press for change, it must be noted that this battlefield was also shared by
the institutions and projects of global capital. As Ecuadorian economist
Pablo Dvalos reminds us, as early as 1997, in no small part as a response to
the appearance of an insurrectionary climate in Latin America, the World
Bank adopted the neoinstitutional framework as its guiding logic and
signaled a sharp departure from the neoliberal orthodoxy of the IMF.27
Within the neoinstitutional perspective, the reconstitution of the state
takes center stage in such a way as to work toward long-term market sta-
bility (specifically through the implementation of poverty alleviation pro-
grams, the adoption of an environmental governance framework, and the
establishment of a judicial system capable of adjudicating contractual dis-
putes) while simultaneously staying true to the more orthodox neoliberal
dogma regarding the virtues of economic growth and the minimal state.
As Dvalos demonstrates by using the example of Ecuador and borrowing
from Michel Foucault, the World Bank, unlike the IMF, had understood
that neoliberalism did not so much require the destruction of the state as
its proactive reorientation in which the market functions as the organiz-
ing principle and objective of the state. This is a state under the supervi-

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sion of the market rather than a market supervised by the state (leaving
open the seemingly paradoxical possibility for what Colectivo Situaciones
refers to in this issue as nationally redistributive neoliberalism).28 Thus,
while many within the Left in Latin America had been prepared to fight
neoliberal orthodoxy by raising the demand for a reconstituted state, few
were able to imagine that they shared this demand with a reconstituted
neoliberalism, creating a situation in which it was extremely difficult to
parse out one reconstitution of the state from the other.
Of course, one can certainly claim that any of these disappointing
policy outcomes are the result of the risks and compromises one must
endure when undertaking any serious political project. In any case,
besides noting their uneven and contradictory nature, it is not my inten-
tion to pass judgment on the particular policy outcomes of the progressive
governments. Rather, beyond these specific issues, I would like to empha-
size an even more troubling situation: that the arrival of these counter-
hegemonic parties and projects in national office has effectively functioned
to dissipate the very organizational autonomy and emancipatory impulses
that made the rupture with orthodox neoliberalism possible.
For example, it is now widely noted that the construction and deploy-
ment of antipoverty programs throughout the region have had a danger-
ously depoliticizing effect in that the same dominated and exploited sub-
jects who recently brought the traditional elites to their knees are today
presented as the poor, mere objects of government assistance rather than
the creative and innovative subjects of this new situation.29 Furthermore,
the level of social control afforded by the handouts from social programs
has not been lost on those opposed to the movements. For example, US
consular officials in Brazil charged with collecting information on the MST
note that President Lula has been conspicuously silent on his early prom-
ises to support the MST and, further, that the MST has been increasingly
marginalized exactly because of programs like Bolsa Familia. After con-
versations with experts on the topic, Thomas White, the US consul in Sao
Paulo, stated bluntly that in addition to generalized discouragement due
to Lulas lack of support, the MST had difficulty maintaining membership
because many Bolsa Familia recipients are reluctant to join MST for fear
of losing their benefits.30
In other words, it is becoming increasingly apparent that what we
are today witnessing in Latin America is a new diagram of power in which
movements have been seemingly locked into the position of either sup-
porting or opposing state policy enacted by functionaries who are thought

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Reyes Revolutions in the Revolutions13

to speak in their name. If neoliberal orthodoxy in Latin America functioned

through rigid lines of exclusion in relation to indigenous peoples, those
on the urban periphery, and radical intellectuals, the current situation is
characterized by the fact that the inspirational value of these subjects of
struggle, often embodied in the heads of state (Evo, Lula, Chvez, Correa),
is the very basis on which contemporary neoliberal legitimation is founded.
Ironically, this gives the progressive governments an illusory autonomy
over the movements and therefore the unprecedented capacity to simply
discount the very movements they are thought to embody. Consider as just
one example the glee expressed by US consular officials at the powerful dis-
orientation created when a self-proclaimed 21st century socialist (in this
case Correa) denounced opposition coming from indigenous groups and
unions as infantile leftists and imperialists.31 Several progressive gov-
ernments have acted similarly based on this same illusion, leading to very
public disputes with formerly staunch supporterslvaro Garca Lineras
labeling of formerly close movements and theorists as infantile rightists
is but one example.32
More important, this situation has created tremendous confusion
within the movements that have consequently lost the capacity to mobi-
lize their base independent of the electoral figures they made possible but
who no longer respond to their concerns. This effectively ends the long
cycle of struggle detailed above and tendentially undercuts the base on
which these progressive governments were built. Thus, from one perspec-
tive, an impasse (to pick up a phrase used by Colectivo Situaciones) far
beyond anything resembling cooptation has been reached: the social move-
ments have lost their position of political protagonism due to the symbolic
authority afforded to the progressive governments, while the progressive
governments have in turn increasingly lost the social base necessary to pro-
duce substantive change within the state. The latter is due to the actions
these governments have taken against the efficacy and autonomy of the
movements in order to meet the seemingly intractable necessity of present-
ing themselves as the hegemonic force in politics while holding the reins
of the state. Within this impasse, a new diagram of power, which Fran-
cisco de Oliveira has termed hegemony in reverse, is consolidated such
that previously excluded subjects are explicitly included (in the very figures
of the counterhegemonic leaders) and are simultaneously markedly sub-
ordinate to the counterhegemonic parties and projects, to the state struc-
tures those parties inhabit, and to the continuing inequality over which
that state administrates.33 From this perspective, one can understand why,

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despite decades of struggle and without disregarding the enthusiasm of

some observers such as Chomsky, Ral Ornelas concludes in his essay in
this issue that at the end of this tremendous cycle of struggle everything
remains more or less the same.

Another Cycle? Or, An Other Politics?

From 1989 to 2006, there was an overwhelming focus on the anti-neoliberal
character of Latin American movements. Throughout this period the hori-
zon of the movements was understood as the immediate necessity of cre-
ating political initiatives that would definitively end the forceful imposi-
tion of IMF-style structural adjustment programs by traditional national
hegemonic elites. It is difficult not to conclude that on this account the
movements did in fact succeed, as they simultaneously diminished the
potential for repressive solutions and forced open a space for counterhege-
monic projects and marginalized populations to access the levers of state
power. As a consequence, some have claimed that we have entered a new
phase of the struggle in which all political antagonism should be conceived
of only as contending policy agendas within the state as administered by
counterhegemonic governments. Implicit within this framework is a tem-
poral logic that tends to determine the extent and density of the original
moment of rupture from within the logic of existing institutions, effec-
tively crushing any true novelty. That is, counterhegemonic logic, given its
acceptance of the parameters of politics as lying fully within the dynamics
between civil society and the state, can see those moments only as mov-
ing from uncivil to civil, from the prepolitical to the political, from move-
ments to the state. The moment of rupture is deemed fundamentally inco-
herent and thus pending the work of articulation so as to gain the legibility
necessary to enter the realm of the political as always already giventhe
state. The extreme limitation here is that these moments of rupture are
viewed only from the capacity they have to create effects within the domi-
nant political logic. In other words, within this framework there can be no
moments of actual rupture; there is only a never-ending chain of hegemony
and counterhegemony between which the point of iterability is provided by
the relation of domination (command-obedience) implicit within the lib-
eral/colonial state. (It is interesting to note that exactly this vision provides
a point of unity for social democrats, culturalists, and sectarians of various
stripes throughout Latin America today.) Consequently, this understand-
ing of moments of rupture reduces their direction and scope to a mere

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Reyes Revolutions in the Revolutions15

reaction to the negative elements within a given conjuncture (i.e., anti-

neoliberal). The subjects that produce these moments are thus also reduced
to merely making demands from the existing political order.
Yet, almost at the very moment that the consolidation of the progres-
sive governments and the deactivation of larger sectors of the social move-
ments made evident the end of the cycle that spanned 1989 to approxi-
mately 2006, a series of events have taken place that seem to place us on
the edge of yet another cycle. These include the emergence of the Zapatis-
tas Other Campaign directed against the entirety of the Mexican politi-
cal class, including, much to the dismay of many progressive intellec-
tuals, the institutional Left embodied in the PRD;34 the vicious dispute
between Correa and the CONAIE as well as renegade elements of Correas
own party, made clear both in their refusal to support him during the
police riots of late September of 2010 as well as in their active support
of the No option during the Correa-sponsored 2011 referendum (which
included questions on media ownership, financial services, and bullfight-
ing); the immediate and resounding rejection of Evo Moraless holiday gaso-
linazo (a cut to gasoline subsidies that would have doubled the price of gaso-
line and markedly increased the price of transportation and food); major
strikes in August 2011 led by indigenous organizations in El Alto; the resis-
tance of indigenous groups in the Territorio Indgena y Parque Nacional
Isiboro Secure (a national park in Bolivia) to the construction of a high-
way through their lands; and the recent worker, indigenous, and peasant
insurrections in the lower Amazon and in Jirau, Brazil. Given these revolts
it seems that whereas from one angle the new diagram of power in Latin
America presents itself as an impasse, from another it can be perceived as
the outline of a new political situation from which elements are drawn in
order to launch actions that move further in the direction of the new politi-
cal horizon implied in the initial moment of rupture.
It is extremely difficult from within the counterhegemonic frame-
work to shed any light on this recent wave of revolts that took place in
the context of governments that are themselves considered counterhege-
monic, except perhaps to characterize them as the handmaiden of the
Right. But this perspective ultimately proves untenable in that it pits the
recently elected progressive governments against social movements in
such a way that, as mentioned above, gives electoral phenomena an exteri-
ority and independence over and above the efficacy of the movements that
they simply do not have. Alternatively, those that have been close to the
movements these past two decades offer a rather different understanding of

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politics than the one implied from within the counterhegemonic projects.
Bolivian political scientist Luis Tapia and Brazilian geographer Carlos Wal-
ter Porto-Gonalves argue that it is a mistake to understand politics as what
occurs in the interactions between social movements (i.e., civil society)
and the state.35 Rather, it is more accurate to speak of societal movements
in that the initial moment of rupture always takes place due to the deci-
sion made by the forces that are not accounted for in the given order of
placesin either civil society or the stateto break the social inertia and
move (as was made evident in the actions of the indigenous peoples and
the urban periphery throughout Latin America in the past two decades), to
take action that creates an entire reordering of those places. From within
this perspective, then, civil society and the state are never the locations of
politics per se; at best they are its consequence (markers or indexes of the
given order) or its antithetical point, where political action meets a series
of mechanisms intended to restore stasis.
This conceptual reformulation of politics parallels the experiences of
the various organizations and movements that were so central in the last
two decades. As Ral Zibechi notes in this issue and elsewhere, the move-
ments that came to the fore in the last twenty years were in fact sustained
by organizational innovations and a concept of political action that actually
emerged prior to the anti-neoliberal wave. These emerged in the worldwide
movement for decolonization and the womens liberation movement that
decentered the state as the site of change, the industrial proletariat and the
economy as the subject of change, and the West as the origin and location
of that change.36 As Fanon notes in The Wretched of the Earth, within the
unfolding of the anticolonial struggles it had become apparent that lib-
eration could not be confused with the minimal program of expelling the
occupiers and taking their place. Rather, it involved the much more com-
plex matter of reckoning with the scope and direction of self-government.
Far beyond national sovereignty and formal independence, this implied
acting from the following principles: the people are not a herd to be led/
leaders no longer exist; the only legitimate function of political bodies is to
create spaces in which the people can speak, listen, and innovate for them-
selves; and finally, everyone must decide. In sum, during the anticolonial
struggle it became clear that sovereignty must be the exact equivalent of
dignity, or it is nothing.37 The struggle for liberation, then, was not equiva-
lent to the establishment of external (national independence) or internal
(state) sovereignty (a question of new inhabitants for the given places).

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Reyes Revolutions in the Revolutions17

It began to appear as inextricable from the struggle for the construction

of nondomination (a reordering made possible by the creation of as-yet-
unknown places).
Given the continuing sustenance the anticolonial struggle has pro-
vided Latin American movements, it is no surprise that placing society in
movement has remained central, while the relation between this action
and the long-term goals of counterhegemonic projects has been rather
tenuous. Take the Zapatistas, who declared, what we want . . . is not to
take power, but to exercise it,38 the Argentinean Que se vayan todos; que no
quede ni uno solo, and Silvia Riveras assessment from Bolivia, Pachakutik
is not the taking of power but the subversion of [that] power.39 All these
statements, building on the sequence of struggles that took place during
the 1960s and 1970s, eschew the notion that substantive transformation is
achieved through state power, even if the practical relation of those move-
ments toward the effective reality of power as expressed in state structures
(and thus to counterhegemonic projects) remains unresolved.
I would like to propose, then, that the most recent revolts, far from
handmaidens of the Right, are better understood as the resurfacing of
contradictions within the movement itself. In other words, what might
appear today as temporally succeeding cycles of struggle, the first against
orthodox neoliberalism and the latter against progressive governments, is
instead the expression of two distinct tendencies that have characterized
these movements and organizations across various cycles of struggle but
that temporarily found common ground in the struggle against neoliberal-
ism (forcing us to push beyond the politically ambiguous unity implied by
the discourse of movement or movement of movements that was often
deployed throughout the past cycle).40 That is, for many within these move-
ments, the counterhegemonic parties and projects of the last twenty years
were never intended as an independent end, despite the fact that today
certain sectors in the progressive governments seem to desire for that to
have been so. Rather, they were intended as one tactic among others in a
growing strategy for the dismantling of domination/hegemony as such.
Thus, although I could not agree more with Hylton and Thomson that the
election of the progressive governments did not bring about a revolution
but instead it was a revolution that brought about [the progressive gov-
ernments], it is the conceptualization and direction of that revolution that
today remains in play between these competing tendencies. As demon-
strated in the essays gathered here, in this light a (re)examination of the

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perspectives of autonomy and emancipation that have built a framework

for political thought and action intertwined with, but ultimately beyond,
counterhegemony, take on an overwhelming importance today.
Addressing the question of the conceptualization of this revolution
and moving in a rather different direction than the traditional counterhege-
monic logic, there is a growing chorus (particularly in Bolivia and Ecuador)
that points to the necessity of reinitiating the transformative processes in
each country that many feel were brought to a halt by the search for sta-
bility and homogeneity of the progressive governments. For these analysts,
the progressive governments have lost their way in that they did not cre-
ate the mechanisms to make the dynamics of the movements the motor of
the new governments, and as a consequence they have fallen back on the
mere defense of their own hegemonic presence within the state structure.
If the transformative process has effectively been halted above, these theo-
rists propose that a reinitiation or redirection of the transformative pro-
cess must therefore take place below, within the movements.41 They insist
that the movements must once again rebuild and mobilize independent of
the counterhegemonic parties and projects in order to impose again their
vision from below on those spaces above. In this formula, the reinitiation
of mass mobilizations would serve to short-circuit the elements of stasis
inherent in the state, and this transformative process would function to
complete the work that was left undone during the last two decades.
More specifically, these theorists call for the authentic implementa-
tion of the constitutions that were approved in national referenda but then
seemingly cut short by the agenda of the progressive governments. These
constitutions, they argue, already provide for the institutional framework
that will eschew the party-state apparatus and give the movements a more
permanent and direct presence within the state. The goal from this per-
spective is to radicalize institutions of democratic state representation so
as to invert the logic of state structures from locations that implement top-
down initiatives to ones that facilitate the self-activity of the movements.
In essence, they would provide a constant feedback loop that would run
between constituent power and constituted power, between the cycles of
struggles of the movements and the structures and functions of the state.
In this way they would provide an institutional form adequate to the knowl-
edge that the state is built on and lives off plebeian potential,42 that the
state structure beyond an impediment or even secondary index must help
facilitate the political initiatives emanating from the movements.43 Ironi-
cally, as Bruno Bosteels reminds us, lvaro Garca Linera, today seen by

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Reyes Revolutions in the Revolutions19

many as a prime agent of the missteps of the Morales administration, gives

us some of the most interesting theorizations regarding the possibility of
redirecting state functions to support as much as possible the unfolding
of societys autonomous organizational capacities and thus the possibility
of a state formation that would facilitate the establishment of nondomina-
tion, or communism.44
For others it is exactly the recent revolts against the progressive gov-
ernments that highlight the need to move beyond this tentative alliance
between radical democratic representational state function and nondomi-
nation. From this perspective, the current impasse is not the result of
opportunists or self-centered figures in the progressive governments (as is
sometimes implied by their opposition on the left) but stems rather from a
radical underestimation of the constraints inherent in the idea that the lib-
eral/colonial state and its representative institutions could be used for an
end independent of capitalist domination.
Let us consider the evaluation of Fredric Jameson, who from a rather
different location highlights what has become dramatically evident within
the impasse in Latin America, but which increasingly characterizes the
neoliberal dispositif (what Sheldon S. Wolin alternatively terms Democ-
racy Inc.) around the globe as a whole:
With the emergence of capital then, a host of the traditional categories of
constitutional thinking become unserviceable, among them citizenship and
representation; while the very idea of democracy as suchalways a pseudo-
concept and for most of its historical existence in any case a term of oppro-
briumbecomes a misleading illusion. The state is no longer an autonomous
entity, to be theorized by its own intellectual and specialized discipline, but
has become so infiltrated by capital that any autonomous economic theory is
impossible as well; and nowhere is this symbiosis more evident as in our own
time, where moralizing (and traditional) terms like corruption and faction
have become amusing period pieces.45

Despite sympathizing with such a position, those who propose the radical-
ization of democratic representation as a way out of the neoliberal order
seem unable to think nondomination today except as a consequence of
inhabiting the institutions of representational democracy. The danger here
is twofold. First, by attempting to inhabit the liberal state and its repre-
sentative institutions as means to a different end, these sectors radically
underestimate the constitutive function of the liberal state in capitalist
society. Undergirding this perspective is a reduction of the state to either

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a purely repressive apparatus or to a mere superstructural element (a sec-

ondary reflection and therefore instruments of the underlying dynamics
of capital). In both cases it is possible for the state to be inhabited and
redirected for purposes exterior to capital (social democracy), abolished
(anarchism), or a mixture thereof (the socialist transition). As Ral Cer-
deiras (founder of Grupo Acontecimiento) claims, it is exactly the contem-
porary Latin American conjuncture (the appearance of the progressive gov-
ernments, the ensuing impasse, and the new revolts) that has exposed this
vision of the state as ultimately inadequate. Drawing on the work of Alain
Badiou, Cerdeiras points out that within these visions of the state as either
repressive or expressive (merely superstructural), the metastructural or
primary ordering function of the state remains completely unanalyzed.46
Through the practices of representation, Cerdeiras notes, the states
primary productive function is to fragment immediate social ties into vari-
ous identities, groups, and factions, which can then be accounted for (or
counted) by the liberal state as one interest group, one fungible part, among
other ones. Once reduced to subjects of interest, to a mere part, members of
this society have little choice but to acknowledge the liberal state as the loca-
tion from which all parts are orderedthe attainment of recognition, the
petitioning of rights, and the arbiter of conflict. In this process of assigning
social places to each part through the practices of representation, the state
becomes the ultimate guarantor that the outplace (that which cannot be
counted, that which has no interests) does not appear or, rather, that the
outplace is neutralized by redirecting its appearance right back into the
play of factions and interests.47 For Cerdeiras, then, the liberal order that
runs from society to representation through political parties and ends in
state administration is far from a neutral medium that can be either occu-
pied or abolished in a strategy to move beyond that of capital. It is rather a
central location for the production of the subjects of interest without which
the market and capital would be inoperable. Given this ordering function
of the state, anyone attempting to take the liberal state (through what-
ever means) is far more likely to end up taken by it. Francisco de Oliveira
remarks on exactly this dynamic with regard to the more than 21,000 PT
functionaries that today inhabit the Brazilian state: if the appearance is
that of a total occupation of the state by the party, on closer inspection one
sees that the opposite is taking place: the party is being dissolved into the
state, in the sense that the tasks, obligations and rationale of the state have
imposed themselves on the functions of the party.48
Consequently, the second risk is that in occupying the state one is

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Reyes Revolutions in the Revolutions21

simply reconstituting domination/hegemony under a new leadership and

in the name of new subjects (as has seemingly taken place under the con-
temporary situation of reverse hegemony in Latin America). The Zapa-
tistas noted this tendency long ago with regard to the counterhegemonic
struggles of the 1970s:
What always remained unresolved was the role of people . . . in what became
ultimately a dispute between two hegemonies. There is an oppressor power
which decides on behalf of society from above, and a group of visionaries
which decides to lead the country on the correct path and ousts the other
group from power, seizes power and then also decides on behalf of society.
For us that is a struggle between hegemonies, in which the winners are good
and the losers bad, but for the rest of society things basically dont change. . . .
You cannot reconstruct the world or society, nor rebuild national states now
in ruins, on the basis of a quarrel over who will impose their hegemony on
society.49

The problem posed here by the Zapatistas is echoed and forcefully summa-
rized by Arif Dirlik: Hegemony is hegemony whether it is revolutionary
or not, and the goal of liberation is to abolish hegemony, not to perpetuate
it. Indeed, the greatest obstacle to liberation may not be hegemony of one
kind or another but the very inability to imagine life without hegemony.50
From the perspectives laid out by Cerdeiras as well as the Zapatistas, we see
that the recent revolts might also then be viewed as a signal that the disposi-
tions within the movements that looked to the reconstitution of the state as
either an end (the position defended today by the parliamentary parties and
progressive governments) or even a means to an end (as expressed in the
movements of the past two decades as well as many of the advocates of an
attempt to reinitiate the process of transformation) were always shadowed
by a third vision that saw nondomination or nonhegemony as both a means
and an end ultimately incompatible with the logic of counterhegemony and
representation.
Here we can cast new light on the movements emphasis on their
internal intensification through the explicit focus on spatial reorganization
and the creation of new territorialities, the strengthening of their capacity
to meet their immediate material needs (a pragmatism of needs that stands
in sharp contrast to the realpolitik pragmatism of the counterhegemonic
parties), and an emphasis on political bodies (neighborhood and com-
munity assemblies) outside of the liberal state system (each tendency is
discussed in detail by the authors in this issue). These actions should be

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22The South Atlantic Quarterly Winter 2012

viewed, then, not as actions of an as-yet-undeveloped prepolitical move-

ment, but rather as the expression of an epochal shift in the very concep-
tion of political action, the painful birth of an other politics whose main
focus is the production and organization of antagonistic subjects rather
than the occupation of positions within the given state apparatus, the pro-
duction and organization of non-hegemonic subjectivit[ies] that still have
the integrity to pursue the quest for liberation rather than electoral figure-
heads.51 This is a position perhaps most clearly taken up by the Zapatistas,
We think that if we can conceptualize a change in the premise of power,
the problem of power, starting from the fact that we dont want to take it,
that could produce another kind of politics, another kind of political actor,
other human beings that do politics differently than the politicians that we
have today across the political spectrum.52
In this light, the demand that emerges in Latin America today for
the destruction of the entire political class (whether hegemonic or counter-
hegemonic, on the right or on the left) cannot be understood as the call
for the recuperation of some original human freedom prior to state domi-
nation and exterior to the contemporary mode of production (what would
amount to some form of anarchism), but rather should be understood as
the recognition that imagining life beyond the capitalist mode of produc-
tion has become completely inseparable from the necessity to practice poli-
tics beyond the liberal state and representation, which are central to the
production and reproduction of this mode (a feat for which social democ-
racy, socialism, and anarchism seem poorly equipped). It is a recognition
that the generation of antagonistic political subjects will not emerge from
either the competing interests managed by the liberal state or from the
latent dynamics of capital (nor from their simple destruction). That is, they
will not be a product of those practices we know as the West. Rather, these
new subjects can emerge only through the slow and deliberate processes
of exteriorization from both the liberal state and capital through the inven-
tion and deployment of practices of nondomination that are made possible
by the reorganization of political and economic life in the here and now.53
Interestingly, it is among the indigenous peoples of Latin America where
these practices have flourished, making them an exemplary site for the pos-
sibility of life beyond the West, not due to some preexisting epistemologi-
cal or even ontological exteriority but due to their insistence on inventing
and reinventing governmental practices of exteriorization that are funda-
mentally incompatible with the liberal/colonial state. Yet, it is not so much
that these projects of separation in Latin America present themselves as a

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Reyes Revolutions in the Revolutions23

solution, but rather, their importance seems to lie in the fact that they have
created the necessary space in which to be able to conceive of the actual
enormity of the obstacles that seem to lie ahead for us all.
Given the prescience of these struggles, Latin America will thus con-
tinue to be an incredibly rich situation in which to examine the dynamics
that are very likely to be encountered by those movements arising through-
out the world in this moment of global indignation. From counterhege-
monic parties to the radical democratization of the liberal state, from radi-
cal democracy to the birth of another politics, the contemporary situation
in Latin America provides a kaleidoscope of struggles through which we
can closely explore the likely pitfalls and potentials of those projects that
seek to undo the global neoliberal dispositif, a laboratory where we can learn
to distinguish and select between projects that aim to change governments
and those that will settle for nothing less than changing politics.

Notes
I would like to thank Michael Hardt, Brenda Baletti, and Mara Kaufman for all their comments
and suggestions on this essay and this issue as a whole. I would also like to thank Michelle
Koerner and the translators for all the work that they put into this issue; without them it simply
would not have been possible. Finally, I would like to thank each of the authors who contrib-
uted their time and texts for this issue. As I believe the content and quality of the articles in
this issue demonstrate, their work is absolutely indispensable for understanding the contem-
porary moment in Latin America, though it has in large part gone without comment in the
United States. I hope this publication will serve, even if only in a small way, to begin to cor-
rect this situation. It is important to note that the essays here were chosen in order to provide
a US audience with an introduction to the broad set of questions that have circulated in the
regions. A more exhaustive publication of authors that share the spaces and problematics of
autonomy and emancipation in Latin America would certainly have to include the work of
Gustavo Esteva, Luis Tapia, Pablo Gonzlez Casanova, Adolfo Gilly, Suely Rolnik, lvaro Garca
Linera, Pablo Dvalos, Carlos Walter Porto-Gonalves, Luis Mattini, Pablo Mammani, Adriana
Lpez Monjardin, Sergio Tischler, Francisco Lpez Barcenas, Sergio Rodriguez Lascano, Luis
Gmez, Alberto Acosta, and Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, to name just a few.
1 Forrest Hylton and Sinclair Thomas, Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian
Politics (New York: Verso, 2007), 17.
2 Two key accounts of the Caracazo and its ensuing consequences are contained in
Roland Denis, Fabricantes de la rebelin: Movimiento popular, Chavismo y sociedad en los
aos noventa (Producers of the Rebellion: Popular Movement, Chavismo, and Society in the
90s) (Caracas: Primera Linea, 2001); and Fernando Coronil and Julie Skurski, States of
Violence (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005), 83152.
3 For a description of the events of April 12 and 13, 2002, in Venezuela and the (re)
appearance of a chavismo without Chvez, see Jon Beasley-Murray, The Revolution
Will Not Be Televised: Hugo Chvezs Return and the Venezuelan Multitude, NACLA:
Report on the Americas 36, no. 1 (2002): 1620.

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4 Hermann Bellinghausen, La otra campaa, opcin para agrupar a las organizaciones

campesinas en lucha (The Other Campaign: An Option for Coalescing Campesino
Organizations in Struggle), La Jornada (Mexico City), March 1, 2007.
5 For a chronicle of the events and initial assessments of January 1, 1994, see John Ross,
Rebellion from the Roots: Indian Uprising in Chiapas (Monroe, ME: Common Courage
Press, 1994); Adolfo Gilly, Chiapas, la razn ardiente: Ensayo sobre la rebellion del mundo
encantado (The Burning Reason: Essay on the Rebellion of the Enchanted World) (Mexico
City: Ediciones Era, 1997); and Neil Harvey, The Chiapas Rebellion (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1997). Shortly after the Zapatista uprising a memo began to circu-
late within Chase Manhattan Bank. The memo was later leaked to the US press, which
bluntly and most likely to no ones surprise advised the following, The [Mexican] gov-
ernment will need to eliminate the Zapatistas to demonstrate their effective control of
the national territory and of security policy. Riordan Roett, Chase Manhattan memo,
February 9, 1995, available at http://old.thing.net/wwwboard1/messages/678.html
(accessed June 15, 2011).
6 The wiphala is a multicolored indigenous emblem used across the Andes as a flag of
sorts.
7 Oscar Olivera and Tom Lewis, Cochabamba: Water War in Bolivia (Boston: South End
Press, 2004).
8 The innovative force of the indigenous organizations of El Alto in the wave of the
Bolivian revolts is detailed in a number of works: Pablo Mamani, Los microgobiernos
barriales en el levantamiento de El Alto (Neighborhood Microgovernments in the Uprisings of
El Alto) (El Alto: CADES, 2005); and Luis A. Gmez, El Alto de Pie (El Alto on Its Feet)
(La Paz: Comuna, 2004).
9 lvaro Garca Linera, Luis Tapia, and Ral Prada, Memorias de Octubre (Memories of
October) (La Paz: Comuna, 2004); Ral Prada, Largo Octubre (Long October) (La Paz:
ENLACE, 2004); Pablo Mamani, El rugir de las multitudes: La fuerza de los levantamien-
tos indgenas en Bolivia (The Roar of the Multitudes: The Force of the Indigenous Uprisings in
Bolivia) (La Paz: Ediciones Yachayawas, 2004); Forrest Hylton and Sinclair Thomson,
The Chequered Rainbow, New Left Review, no. 35 (2005): 4064; and Forrest Hylton
and Sinclair Thomson, Revolutionary Horizons: Past and Present in Bolivian Politics (New
York: Verso, 2007).
10 The conceptual novelty implied by the events of December 19 and 20, 2001, in Argen-
tina is explored in Colectivo Situaciones, 19 y 20 (Buenos Aires: Tinta Limn Ediciones,
2002); and Ral Cerdeiras, La Politica Que Viene (The Coming Politics), Revista
Acontecimiento, no. 23 (2002): n.p.
11 Catherine Walsh, The Ecuadorian Political Irruption: Uprisings, Coups, Rebellions,
and Democracy, Nepantla: Views from the South 2, no. 1 (2001): 173205; and Kintto
Lucas, La rebelin de los Indios (The Rebellion of the Indians) (Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala,
2000).
12 Arturo Cano, La Revolucin Rosa enfila sus bateras contra la OEA (The Pink Revo-
lution Directs Its Artillery against the Organization of American States), La Jornada,
April 23, 2005.
13 Minga is a Quechua word that today is often used to refer to a festive work party in
which the community as a whole divides and shares the community responsibilities.

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Reyes Revolutions in the Revolutions25

The indigenous movements of Colombia chose this word as the name for their 2008
movement against neoliberal reforms.
14 Although not often mentioned in the same context as the previously discussed events,
the migrant struggles here in the United States were and continue to be inextricably
tied to the very same dynamics of privatization, free trade, and neoliberal governance
in rural Mexico that gave rise to both the APPO and the EZLN.
See Gustavo Esteva, The Oaxaca Commune and Mexicos Coming Insurrection,
Antipode 42, no. 4 (2010): 97893; Mario Murillo, Despite National and Global Dis-
tractions the Popular Minga Marches to Bogot, Upside Down World, November 13,
2008 http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1579/1/; Hugo Blanco, Peru:
Amazonian Indigenous People Rise Up, Green Left, May 2, 2009, www.greenleft.org.
au/node/41542; Joo Pedro Stedile, Landless Battalions: The Sem Terra Movement of
Brazil, New Left Review, no. 15 (2002): 77104, www.newleftreview.org/A2390; and
William I. Robinson, Why the Immigrant Rights Struggle Compels Us to Reconceptu-
alize Both Latin American and Latina/o Studies, LASA Forum 38, no. 2 (2007): 2123.
15 Raquel Gutirrez, Reflexin sobre las perspectivas de la emancipacin a partir de los
levantamientos y movimientos de Bolivia y Mxico, Rebelin, October 25, 2005, www
.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=21627.
16 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans. Richard Philcox (New York: Grove Press,
2005), 81.
17 A great description of the difference between these nationalizations and what had
been demanded of the government by the movements was provided by Evo Moraless
oil minister Andrs Solz Rada, who resigned his post due to this very issue. Andrs
Solz Rada, La nacionalizacin arodillada (The Nationalization on Its Knees), Bol-
press, April 1, 2007, www.bolpress.com/art.php?Cod=2007040103 (accessed June 3,
2011).
18 Reservas internacionales de Bolivia superan por primera vez los 10 mil millones
de dlares (Bolivias International Reserves Exceed 10 Billion Dollars for the First
Time), TeleSUR, http://telesurtv.net/index.php/canal/secciones/noticias/87317NN/
reservas-internacionales-de-bolivia-superan-por-primera-vezlos-10mil-millones-
de-dolares/ (accessed June 3, 2011).
19 Anthony Hall, From Fome Zero to Bolsa Familia: Social Policy and Poverty Allevia-
tion under Lula, Journal of Latin American Studies 38 (2006): 689709.
20 Take, for example, the capacity of Lulas Workers Party (PT) to assign 21,358 party
members to state offices around the country.
21 Ministrio do Planejamento, Boletim Estatstico de Pessoal, no. 168, April 2010, 101.
For very suggestive theorizations of the state as a battlefield, see lvaro Garca Linera,
Luis Tapia, Ral Prada, and scar Vega, El estado, campo de lucha (The State, Battlefield)
(La Paz: Comuna, 2010).
22 Veronica Gago, Amrica Latina esta viviendo un momento de ruptura: Entrevista con
Toni Negri y Giuseppe Cocco (Latin America Is Living through a Moment of Rup-
ture: Interview with Toni Negri and Giuseppe Cocco) Pgina/12, August 14, 2006.
The singularity of this moment in Latin America was of such importance to Negri
and coauthor Cocco that they dedicated a full-length book to it: Global: Biopoder y las
luchas en un Amrica Latina globalizada (Global: Biopower and Struggles in a Globalized

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 South Atlantic Quarterly

26The South Atlantic Quarterly Winter 2012

Latin America) (Buenos Aires: Paidos, 2006). See also John French, Understanding
the Politics of Latin Americas Plural Lefts (Chvez/Lula): Social Democracy, Popu-
lism and Convergence on the Path to a Post-Neoliberal World, Third World Quarterly
30, no. 2 (2009): 34970; and Perry Anderson, The Role of Ideas in the Construction
of Alternatives, in New World Hegemony: Alternatives for Change and Social Movements,
ed. Atilio Boron (Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2004), 3550.
23 Claudia Antunes, Noam Chomsky pede a Chvez clemencia para juza, (Noam
Chomsky Asks Chvez to Grant Judge Clemency), FOLHA de Sao Paolo, March 7,
2011.
24 Eduardo Gudynas, The New Extractivism of the 21st Century: Ten Urgent Theses
about Extractivism in Relation to Current South American Progressivism, Americas
Program Report, January 1, 2010; and Alberto Acosta, La maldicin de la abundancia (The
Curse of Abundance) (Quito: Abya Yala, 2009).
25 Brazil: Amazon Rainforest Deforestation Rises Sharply, BBC News, May 19, 2011,
www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-13449792.
26 For a range of statistics on poverty and inequality, see Jeffrey Webber, From Rebellion to
Reform in Bolivia: Class Struggle, Indigenous Liberation and the Politics of Evo Morales (Bos-
ton: Haymarket Books, 2011), 170229; Juan Ponce and Alberto Acosta, Pobreza en la
revolucin ciudadana, o pobreza de revolucin? (Poverty in the Citizens Revolu-
tion, or Poverty of the Revolution?), Rebelin, November 16, 2010, www.rebelion.org/
docs/116837.pdf; and Francisco de Oliveira, O avesso do avesso (The Reverse of the
Reverse), Revista Piau, no. 37 (2009): 6062.
27 Pablo Dvalos, La democracia disciplinaria: El proyecto posneoliberal para Amrica
Latina (The Disciplinary Democracy: The Postneoliberal Project for Latin America) (Quito:
CODEU, 2011), 10740. The central theorist of the neoinstitutional turn in World Bank
policy has been Joseph Stiglitz. See particularly his The Economic Role of the State (New
York: Blackwell, 1989).
28 Dvalos, La democracia disciplinaria; and Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, trans.
Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 116.
29 Ral Zibechi, Amrica Latina: Contrainsurgencia y pobreza (Latin America: Counterinsur-
gency and Poverty) (Bogot: Ediciones Desde Abajo, 2010).
30 Natalia Viana, How the U.S. Sees the Landless Movement in Brazil, Upside Down
World, December 22, 2010, http://upsidedownworld.org/main/news-briefs-archives-
68/2839-wikileaks-how-the-us-sees-the-landless-movement-in-brazil-.
31 Correa and Social Movements: Attacks from the Left? Cablegate/Wikileaks, Novem-
ber 13, 2009, www.cablegatesearch.net/cable.php?id=09QUITO951.
32 lvaro Garca Linera, El oenegenismo, enfermedad infantil del derechismo (NGOism,
Infantile Disorder of Rightism) (La Paz: Vicepresidencia de La Republica de Bolivia,
2011).
33 Francisco de Oliveira, Lula in the Labyrinth, New Left Review, no. 42 (2006): 522,
www.newleftreview.org/?view=2642.
34 This is a position that has recently gained further resonance within the March for Peace
and Justice organized by Mexican poet Javier Sicilia in the face of the complicity of the
Mexican political class in that social disaster called the war on drugs.
35 Luis Tapia, Movimientos sociales, movimientos societales, y los no lugares de la pol-
tica (Social Movements, Societal Movements, and the Nonplace of Politics), Cuader-

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 South Atlantic Quarterly

Reyes Revolutions in the Revolutions27

nos del pensamiento crtico Latinoamericano, no. 17 (2009): 14; and Carlos Walter Porto-
Gonalves, Geo-Grafias (Mexico City: Siglo XXI, 2001).
36 Ral Zibechi, 1968: When Those Below Said Enough! Americas Program, June 3,
2008, www.cipamericas.org/archives/662.
37 Fanon, Wretched of the Earth, 97144.
38 EZLN, Crnicas intergalcticas: Primer encuentro internacional por la humanidad y contra
el neoliberalismo (Intergalactic Chronicles: First International Encounter for Humanity and
against Neoliberalism) (Montaas del Sureste Mexicano, Planeta Tierra, 2007).
39 Silvia Rivera, quoted in Ral Zibechi, Dispersing Power: Social Movements as Anti-State
Forces, trans. Ramor Ryan (Oakland, CA: AK Press, 2010), 112.
40 My own insistence in considering the anti-neoliberal character of this past cycle as
a moment within the larger struggle toward decolonization intersects in interesting
ways with the work of Arturo Escobar, who has provided us with a wide-ranging and
inspired reading of the events of the last decades in Latin America. See Arturo Escobar,
Latin America at the Crossroads: Alternative Modernizations, Post-Neoliberalism, or
Post-Development? Cultural Studies 24, no. 1 (2010): 165.
41 Ral Prada Alcoreza, La crisis del proceso (The Crisis of the Process), Horizontes
nmadas (blog), June 3, 2011, http://horizontesnomadas.blogspot.com/2011/06/la-
crisis-del-proceso.html; and Alberto Acosta, Hace agua la constitucin de Monte-
cristi? (Does the Constitution of Montecristi Make Water?), Rebelin, June 27, 2009,
www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=87677.
42 Bruno Bosteels, The Actuality of Communism (New York: Verso, 2011), 245.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid., 247.
45 Sheldon S. Wolin, Democracy Inc.: Managed Democracy and the Specter of Inverted Totali-
tarianism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008); and Fredric Jameson, Rep-
resenting Capital: A Reading of Volume One (New York: Verso, 2011), 14041.
46 Ral Cerdeiras, La politica que viene (The Coming Politics), Revista Acontecimiento,
23 (2002): n.p.; and Alain Badiou, Being: Excess, State of the Situation, One/Multiple,
Whole/Parts, or /?, part 2 in Being and Event, trans. Oliver Feltham (New York: Con-
tinuum, 2005), 81112.
47 Ibid. It should be noted that Cerdeiras is here explicitly drawing from the analysis pro-
vided in Badiou, Being.
48 de Oliveira, Lula in the Labyrinth, 20.
49 Garca Mrquez and Roberto Pombo, Subcomandante Marcos: The Punch Card and
the Hourglass, New Left Review, no. 9 (2001): 71, www.newleftreview.org/A2322.
50 Arif Dirlik, After the Revolution: Waking to Global Capitalism (Middletown, CT: Wes-
leyan University Press, 1994), 104.
51 Ibid., 105.
52 EZLN, Crnicas intergalcticas.
53 For an examination of these governmental practices of nondomination in the case of
the Zapatista communities of Chiapas, Mexico, see Alvaro Reyes and Mara Kaufman,
Sovereignty, Indigeneity, Territory: Zapatista Autonomy and the New Practices of
Decolonization, SAQ 110, no. 2 (2011): 50525.

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