A new wave of protests linking labour, feminist, climate justice, indigenous, LGBTQ and student movements have driven the recent shift to the left in Latin America. Commentators have been talking about a second Pink Tide, echoing the left governments of the 2000s – for example, Lula in Brazil, Chávez in Venezuela, and Evo Morales in Bolivia. By the end of 2022, it is quite possible that Latin America’s six largest economies — Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru — will all have governments of the left or centre-left. But the electoral beneficiaries of this left resurgence are often quite ready to cut deals with the right and are attentive to the demands of the financial markets and the International Monetary Fund.

The defeat of Chile’s new progressive constitution in the recent referendum shows that the power of the right and the pressure to accommodate them have not gone away. While violent resistance to progressive change remains a real threat, fear of the right’s return is used to discipline the radical left and bind it to centre-left electoral projects. But the strength and diversity of the movements that have emerged open up the prospect of more radical alternatives. Join us for an international panel discussion on the prospects and challenges of the left resurgence in Latin America.

Speakers

Mariano Feliz (PhD in Economics and Social Sciences) is a Professor at Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Argentina) and Researcher at CIG-IdIHCS/CONICET-UNLP (Argentina). He is a fellow of the International Research Group on Authoritarianism and Counter-Strategies (IRGAC) / Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.

Catalina Montoya Londoño (PhD) is Senior Lecturer in International Relations, director of the MA in International Relations and Director of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Centre for War and Peace Studies at Liverpool Hope University. Her current research focuses on public diplomacy and peacebuilding in Colombia.

Rhaysa Ruas is an Afro-Brasilian researcher and human rights lawyer. Mother and lecturer at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. She has been working at the intersections of law, race and gender studies, and Marxist political economy.

Camila Vergara (PhD) is a critical legal theorist, historian, and journalist from Chile writing on the relation between inequality, corruption, and domination, and how to institutionally empower common people to resist oppression from the powerful few. Currently, she is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the University of Cambridge conducting research on plebeian constitutional rights.