The Latin American Comprador Ruling Classes
In the early 1800s, with the Spanish fleet defeated at the Battle of Trafalgar of 1805 and then Portugal and Spain embroiled in the Peninsula War of 1807-1814, the Latin American colonies were able to claim their independence. The result were newly independent nations that were dominated by white and mestizo elites that had a much greater affiliation to Europe than to the majority of the population. This has remained the same to the current day, with those elites becoming compradors of the US; focused on their own, and US, interests rather than those of the general populace.
The US has worked hard to co-opt these elites, whether they be businessmen, academics, military, security services or the judiciary. Together these represent a parallel power structure to the official state structures that remains in place across democratically elected administrations. It is always ready to undermine, and if needed replace, administrations that do not fully serve elite and US interests. Where a true revolution has taken place and this elite is overthrown, the US will carry out a never-ending war until it wins; as with Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. If democracy has been overturned, but the strong-man put in place forgets who his real bosses are, then the US military may intervene – as in Panama in 1990. In the case of Haiti, where independence was gained by the slaves who did the unacceptable of killing the elites, the general populace has had to be “put down” numerous times as the spirit of true freedom refuses to be quashed.
In the past few months and years, the readiness of the local parallel elite power structure to take action to undermine or reverse the will of the people has been on display. As Gramsci has stated, to overcome a modern hegemonic elite a War of Position is required to create a truly alternative culture before the state can be taken in a War of Manoeuvre. The parallel power structure exists to undermine the former and if needed block the latter when the former succeeds.
Argentina – A trumped up prosecution years in the making
In 2003 Nestor Kirchner became the President of Argentina, following the 1998 to 2002 economic collapse. He restructured foreign private debt with significant reductions and paid off the IMF debt in a single payment with the aid of Venezuela (under the Chavez leadership). In 2007, Nestor’s wife Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was elected president and remained in that position until 2015. She nationalized private pension plans and fired the president of the Central Bank and attempted to wrest economic control from the agrobusiness elites but failed. The major energy company YPG was renationalised, public services were subsidized, and exchange controls were introduced. All of this was anathema to a ruling class that had enjoyed the deregulation, privatization and IMF disciplining of the state of the 1980s and 1990s, together with the decade of military rule prior to that.
After years of attacking Kirchner and her party through the press, and continuous legal allegations aided by a biased judiciary, the ruling class got their candidate elected in 2015 - Mauricio Macri (the son of an Italian-born business tycoon). He immediately set about undoing the actions that had benefitted the mass of the population, lifting currency controls, removing export taxes and subsidies on energy, liberalizing the energy sector, opening up of the Vaca Muerta shale deposits to foreign interests, re-oriented foreign policy to be slavishly US-following, and then took on a massive US$50 billion loan from the IMF. A further US$7 billion was taken from the IMF and significant government austerity initiated with the currency collapsing. In four years Macri had managed to return Argentina to the mess it was in in 2002. The ruling class had done very well though, and the US$57 billion in IMF monies stabilized the currency long enough for them to move their funds into other currencies. Something that the currency controls would have stopped. The current government of Bolivia has also accused the Macri government of providing arms to the Bolivian coup forces in 2019.
In 2019 election, Macri lost the presidency to the centre-left Alberto Fernandez and his running mate, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, in the first round. The new administration raised taxes on foreign currency transactions, agricultural exports and wealth, froze utility rates and provided assistance to the poor and has maintained capital controls, and has taken a much more independent foreign policy stance (e.g. leaving the anti-Venezuela Lima Group). The agrobusiness elites attempted to resist the agricultural exports tax increases but failed. The response from the ruling class has been one of great resistance toward a government that more serves the people as a whole, and that has included an intensification of the judicial war against a Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner who is such a symbol of their defeats.
As Multipolarista reported, she has faced 654 legal complaints between 2004 and 2022, the majority emanating from only six judges, with virtually all of them proven to be frivolous. With a case that seems to have first been formulated in 2019, she has been found guilty, sentenced to 6 years in prison (which will not come into effect until she loses her current Vice-Presidential immunity) and banned from future political office. Leaks have shown that members of the Argentine judiciary conspired with other parts of the ruling class and the security services to successfully bring the case against the Vice President. Even if the case is successfully appealed, such an appeal will eat up a lot of Kirchner’s time and also serve to besmirch her political reputation. It is so obviously an attempt to stop the ruling class’s most successful political opponent from ever taking office again.
Peru – Removing a progressive President
In June last year the deeply corrupt oligarchy that rules Peru were shocked to find that a lowly schoolteacher from a peasant family, Pedro Castillo, was elected President. They immediately set to work to make his administration unworkable and to remove him as fast as possible; all out class war was declared.
As Liberation reported:
In October 2021, recordings were released that revealed that since June 2021, this group of industrialists, along with other members of Peru’s elite and leaders of the right-wing opposition parties, had been planning a series of actions including financing protests and strikes. Groups of former military personnel, allied with far-right politicians like Fujimori, began to openly call for the violent overthrow of Castillo, threatening government officials and left-leaning journalists.
This included two attempts to impeach Castillo by the right-wing dominated Congress. Castillo made the fundamental error of attempting to compromise with a ruling class that would only be satisfied with his removal, instead of going on the attack backed up with the popular will. His many attempts at compromise alienated much of his support and opened him up to a third impeachment attempt which he responded to by attempting to dissolve Congress, If he had done this soon after his election he may have been successful, although an outright right-wing military coup may have been a response. Instead, his call for dissolution was ignored and he himself was arrested with his 18 months of compromise removing the chance of widespread demonstrations to reverse his arrest. His VP has now become the President, and she seems ready to form a Caesarist “national unity” government.
Brazil – The Second Re-education of Lula
The elected president of Brazil is well aware of lawfare, with his political ally Dilma Rousseff removed from the Presidency on spurious charges and he himself jailed (stopping him from running for the Presidency in 2018) on charges lacking any substantive evidence (and later reversed). In 2022 the Brazilian ruling class allowed him to run for the Presidency again, perhaps because of the chaotic and deeply corrupt nature of the Bolsonaro administration, and the threat to the legitimacy of state institutions, together with its refusal to support the US sanctions against Russia. For example, in 2018 the Brazilian Electoral Court made a series of ruling that greatly benefitted Bolsonaro (barring Lula from standing for office and from giving interviews, not allowing Lula’s name to appear on election literature, and failing to act against a massive right-wing disinformation campaign). In 2022, the rulings tended to go be more in Lula’s favour, including actions to stop right-wing social media disinformation campaigns.
President-elect Lula had previously ruled Brazil with a “neoliberal with crumbs” set of policies, but even these had been considered too much for the elite after the commodities price crash after the Global Financial Crisis; hence the removal of his successor Rousseff in 2016. After being convicted and jailed, a further education of Lula (who was a radical during his youth but slowly changed after repeated electoral failures, some of which may have been due to voting irregularities) may have taken place. If Lula forgets his “education” we can expect the ruling class parallel power structure to take action, fully supported and aided by the US.
The Bolivian 2019 Coup
In 2019 the Bolivian ruling class interrupted the election of Evo Morales for a fourth term as President through a coup, facilitated by lies about the electoral process spread by the comprador head of the Organization of American States (OAS) and fully backed up by Western media and governments. These reported “irregularities” were rejected by later analyses. Western governments, including the US, happily recognized the new coup regime and the Western media refused to report on the widespread violence used by the military and other security services against demonstrators. The lives of Morales and many of the other leaders of his party were directly in danger, and many fled to other countries for safety.
Morales, of indigenous origins, had been the President since 2006 and had presided over a period of economic growth and a great reduction in poverty in the country. He massively increased the share of oil and gas profits that went to the state (from 18% to 82%), increased social spending, removed dependency upon the IMF and World Bank, followed an independent foreign policy, improved labor rights, defeated an attempt by the rich eastern departments to break away, revised the constitution, expelled the US Ambassador for working with the rich against his government, and banned GMOs. No wonder the ruling class and the US wanted rid of him and his party.
After Morales resigned and the right-wing Jeanine Anez took office, massive popular protests broke out and were met with violent responses from the security forces – including massacres of protestors. The Anez regime was forced to hold new elections, and some of its own actions were deemed to be extreme even by Western commentators. The foreign policy immediately swung to a US-obedient stance. New elections were held in October 2022, for President, Vice President and all of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies, with Luis Arce (who had served under Morales) and his party MAS winning 55% of the vote and majorities in the Senate and Chamber of Deputies. Neoliberal policies put in place by the Anez regime were reversed, and an IMF loan returned, and the pro-US foreign policy orientation reversed. Anez was convicted of a breach of duties and acting against the Constitution, and was sentenced to 10 years in prison, while many other active members of the coup have fled to the US and other countries.
The economic elites of Eastern Bolivia will never give up their fight against the majority, and neither will the US. Already, protests over a delay to the national census have been turned into a general strike in the eastern parts of the nation.
Ecuador: The Turning of a President
In 2007, the lower middle-class mestizo Rafael Correa was elected as the President of Ecuador. IMF debts were paid off, and private debts paid off at very large discounts, radio spectrum franchises were renegotiated at a price ten times that previously agreed, an independent foreign policy stance was taken, the constitution rewritten, social spending increased, state control of the oil and gas industry extended, loans from China taken and the police force reformed.
Lenin Moreno served as Correa’s Vice President from 2007 to 2013 and was nominated by Correa’s party as his replacement in the 2017 elections. Within months of being elected he rejected his own electoral platform and shifted his domestic and foreign policies to the right; state austerity, deregulation, trade liberalisation, reducing taxes and providing tax amnesties, removing fuel subsidies and taking a US$10 billion load from the IMF and World Bank. He also moved to remove many Correa appointees from government and judicial positions; an arrest warrant was even issued for Correa himself. Foreign policy became US-serving, including the expulsion of Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Moreno’s approval rating dropped to 9% and he did not run again for the Presidency, but in four years he had done a thorough job of reversing Correa’s policies. In March 2021 he was expelled from his PAIS party. He was replaced by Guillermo Lasso, a right-wing politician, due to divisions among the left parties (indigenous parties called for a null vote, which significantly exceeded the margin of Lasso’s victory).
They Never Give Up!
The lighter-skinned Latin American ruling classes and the US ruling class never give up. They simply never accept a loss and keep trying to overthrow populist forces until they do. Only in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua have the populist forces been able to gain control of the state apparatus, the judiciary, and the military and security forces strongly enough to resist the pressure. In the case of Cuba for over six decades. Everywhere else there have been periods of populist victories, but eventually the national ruling class and the US ruling class have reasserted themselves, utilizing whatever means are necessary; from political destabilization, outright coups, to US military aggression.
The dynamic between China’s increasing economic and geopolitical presence and Latin America’s ruling classes will be an interesting one. Will those ruling classes start to orient toward China as the US dominance continues to wane, and what will be the US response to such moves? The repudiation of sanctions against Russia by all of the nations of Latin America must have come as a rude shock to the US ruling class.
The same “they never give up” process holds for the Western nations and the US itself, with the ruling class takedown of Corbyn and his replacement with a “safe pair of hands” Blairite, together with the cheating of Bernie Saunders out of the Democratic nomination twice, good examples. The ongoing and seemingly never-ending anti-Trump efforts represent an inter ruling class conflict, with the class fractions that have dominated since at least the 1930s attempting to put down a intra-class insurgency. The core of the Western nations (US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Holland, Belgium, Portugal, Denmark, Austria) together with Latin America, Scandinavia and the Russia-hating Poland and the Baltic States represent the hard nut of opposition to a multipolar world that may take decades to crack. Eurasia and Africa represent areas that are more rapidly orienting to such a multipolar world.
References
https://multipolarista.com/2022/12/08/judicial-coup-argentina-cristina-kirchner/
https://www.liberationnews.org/perus-oligarchy-overthrows-president-castillo/
https://multipolarista.com/2022/11/16/brazil-electoral-court-bolsonaro-fake-news/
great article and overview roger…. thanks! james