nothing will ever be the same

nothing will ever be the same



Wednesday, December 30, 2015


 Nothing will ever be the same in Latin America diagonalperiodico.net   The ending was the worst year for the Latin American progressivism, to the point that governments in 2016 will not look like there were in 2014. But the year is ending, paradoxes of life, a key element in the restructuring of the antisystemic movements in the region now.  The fall of the progressive governments announced a long episode. The bell rang two years ago and issued two very different sounds. The sharp drop in commodity prices was seen as a temporary phenomenon, but eventually broke up budgets that had been made ​​with a barrel of oil to over a hundred dollars.  A long-announced economic disaster, because the progressive decade governments They deepened dependence on soybean oil and minerals. Brazil even, the only industrial country in the South American region, saw wither their industry while fattening exports iron ore, meat and soy in exchange for manufactured Chinese products.  Exhaustion of a model  The so-called 'achievements' of the progressive ones began to show the lint from his exhaustion: poverty fell tremendous levels it had reached at the peak of the crisis, around 2000, but were unable to change the levels of inequality in the world's most unequal region. With the crisis, social policies are being swallowed up by inflation, unemployment and fiscal tightening.  As it happens, the economic crisis exposed the miseries that years of prosperity allowed disguise: mediocre efforts, corruption, lack of projects long-term excess returns. How is it possible that socialism of the XXI century "revolutions" in place have been neutralized by a handful of votes? Still, nothing will ever be the same in the region. The experiences which millions of people can not match the speeches, but always leave sediments.  For those who believe that history is made ​​by the peoples and social movements play a central role in the changes, 2015 was a year of joy. In Argentina the enormous power of the women's movement in June, was when 350,000 took to the streets in Buenos Aires under the slogan "Not one less", in opposition to male violence; as well as the 65,000 who gathered in Mar del Plata, at the 30th National Conference of Women.  The struggle of high school students in São Paulo, with the occupation of 200 study centers in rejection of a neoliberal education reform it is an example of the June days of 2013 are still alive in the hearts and Brazilian avenues. The extension of the struggle against mining in southern Peru, where rural communities have been resisting the Las Bambas copper project in Arequipa shows that the movement is far from exhausted in a region or to a specific project. The recent indigenous and popular uprising in Ecuador against Rafael Correa's decision to deprive the people of the autonomous management of intercultural bilingual education is another sign that states have failed to discipline the people.  Before turning to the right of the region, repositioning and US finance capital movements are there, ready to fight to say two things that many seem to have forgotten: the life is not played, lords of capital; do not use our struggle as a ladder to climb, progressive gentlemen.