Who Said the Rise of the Left Was Over?

By Elio Delgado Legon

HAVANA TIMES – Enemies of the Left, who don’t want to lose their privileges and want to carry on plundering sovereign peoples of their natural resources, without a care for their suffering, have done everything under the moon to change the correlation of forces in Latin America so it sways in favor of the neoliberal and pro-Imperialist Right.

They carried out all kinds of evil deeds in order to take power in different countries. From military coups, parliamentary coups, lies and treason to take power and accuse Leftist leaders of crimes they didn’t commit and sentence them to jail, without any incriminating evidence, so they can’t run in elections, so they can euphorically claim that the rise of the Left in Latin America is over.

However, things are changing. Neoliberal capitalism is in crisis and it has nothing left to offer, and if Mauricio Macri drove Argentina into the ground with debt and didn’t keep a single promise, doing the exact opposite in fact, then the Argentinian people made sure to make him pay at the ballot box and went down the Leftist path again, which had given signs of caring about the country and its people. Now they will have to start from scratch, like previous governments have had to do ever since Nestor Kirchner came to power.

Other right-wing governments are in real crisis, such as in Chile, which is witnessing the greatest protests it’s ever had as I write this article. Tired of so many years of Pinochetismo, the Chilean people are calling for a new Constitution and current president Sebastian Pinera to leave office. However, they have been repressed by the army and police, like in the worst moments of the dictatorship, as there have already been 20 fatalities and 2000 people injured, as well as thousands of arrests and reports of torture.

In Brazil, people are constantly speaking out against far-right Jair Bolsonaro’s neoliberal economic measures, and I don’t believe that he will be reelected in the next elections, as the Brazilian people know his real pro-Imperialist ideology.

In Colombia, Ivan Duque’s government hasn’t abided by the Peace Agreement it signed with the FARC and former FARC guerrilla fighters and social leaders are being systematically killed, several hundred have already been recorded, and an outbreak of social unrest anytime now, isn’t off the cards.

These are just some examples of the Right in crisis, which is becoming less and less credible and more and more unpopular.

While all of this is happening, Imperialism and the International Right are attacking Leftist governments and trying to destabilize them with mercenary violence and illegal sanctions such as blockades and all kinds of measures to sink these countries into economic crisis, so they can then say that it is the result of the government’s incompetence.

For example, in Venezuela, they have resorted to every tactic in the book, from an assassination attempt with drones carrying explosives, street protests with the participation of paid violent mobs and organized from abroad, to stealing the country’s assets abroad and appointing and recognizing an alleged “president-elect”, so as to bring about a coup d’etat, which ended in failure.

In Nicaragua, every effort has been made to destabilize the country, which has a government with an 80% approval, so all of their attempts have failed.

Meanwhile, US governments have been waging an economic war against Cuba for the past 60 years, trying to get the people to give in by starving them and making them sick. However, we Cubans are willing to resist another 60 years, before handing over the country to US capital again and losing our independence and sovereignty, as well as everything the Revolution has achieved in health, education, culture, sports, jobs and scientific breakthroughs, biotechnology and the pharmaceutical industry, including others, such as civil peace.

Recently, the Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Conference, for Democracy and against Neoliberalism took place in Havana, between November 1st and 3rd, which brought 1332 representatives from over 700 organizations in 95 countries, from every continent, together, who agreed to work on unity of the Left. In the closing speech, they made their solidarity with the Cuban people clear, by taking Jose Marti’s words, which still apply today: “Whoever stands with Cuba today, stands with Cuba forever.”