Last November, Olivera and Frank interviewed Gutiérrez during her brief visit to Bolivia. The following is an english translation of their conversation.

Question: In Europe, it is generally believed that Latin American governments have turned rapidly towards the left (Chávez, Lula, Kirchner, Morales, Correa) and that they identify themselves as part of a new wave of leftist politics in Latin America. Do you agree with this concept?

Raquel Gutiérrez: It is clear that the opposition to neo-liberal measures and the struggles following the terrible privatizations, plunder, devaluation of labor, and all the other disastrous happenings of last two decades, have led to the return of what is now being called a “progressive” government.

The experience of Venezuela is very positive; the experience of the other three countries could end up being very similar; although each has its particularities. But what we are experiencing are governments that claim to be assuming a leftist position only in the sense that they are not continuing the unchecked implementation of the neo-liberal programs of the past.

There has been a limiting of the excesses of past decades, but only that. A series of economic and political measurements continue to preserve a central tenets of what created a slow dismantling of social rights all over Latin America.

To begin with, these so called progressive governments continue allowing foreign capital investment in diverse sectors under conditions that are very adverse for the state. They continue proposing development programs centered on needs that are not agreed upon internally by the people, but which serve the need of accumulation. And perhaps most importantly, these governments are implementing policies only within the neo-liberal framework, which means that political parties remain the only means of representation. This is absolutely contradictory to what society was trying to construct in the moments in which the people broke from the grip of neo-liberalism. Social movements carried out this struggle outside the boundaries of political parties. Let’s look at some examples.

Mr. Kirchner, for example, has maintained energy production as a central focus of his government. , That is, he enables the Argentine state to continue producing energy in partnership with transnational companies and he has subordinated internal prices to undetermined international ones. He did a good job of stabilizing the country again, but he did not open new factories, nor did he support the widespread movement of re-appropriation of local, abandoned companies. So, if we have a “leftist” government that is partnering with certain transnationals and that is antagonizing and punishing workers, I ask myself: is this what it means to be leftist?

Let’s take Lula–perhaps the most frightening case. Lula is in his second term. He has not begun to implement an agrarian reform, which is the primary social issue in Brazil. Lula ground energy production in Petrobras even though it is not really a Brazilian state company but has essentially become a foreign company because of the type of business partnerships it has established. Additionally, Lula has completely become beholden to the increase of soybean cultivation as a means for producing ethanol despite the fact that this goes against the interests of the Brazilian people. Brazil’s prison system and its agrarian policy also make me wonder whether this is truly a leftist government.

Let’s talk about a country close to all of us: Bolivia. There we see a nationalization that is not a real nationalization but is merely a set of changes in the contracts with the oil companies to generate a little more revenue. Nationalization was one of the demands of the Bolivian people throughout years of struggle. We also have an agrarian reform that is not really an agrarian reform, but is a timid attempt to limit the expansion of continually growing extensions of agrarian property. The new law puts a limit on the possibility of expanding, but it is not a redistribution of land. Economically, Bolivia has is absolutely open to transnational capital. I ask myself: is this what a leftist government has to do right now? To me this is the central question concerning this wave of progressive governments.

These governments were born from Latin American societies’ attempts to limit the brutality of neo-liberalism. Yet they are governments which, nevertheless, lack direction and advance with an exasperating slowness, producing a frustration in their own societies that increases by the minute and that furthermore serve as the base on which the right wing reconstructs itself. That is to say, it is not that the right reconstitutes itself because the governments are very leftist, but rather the opposite: the right begins to capitalize off of this frustration and they put forth issues because the people gradually begin to feel that they are not represented by their progressive government.

Let’s talk panoramically: In Brazil, to a certain extent, and in Argentina and Bolivia with greater clarity, there was a popular movement that went beyond the liberal political institution (the party system) and beyond the established forms of decision making and beyond progressive government. For Néstor Kirchner’s government in Argentina—like for the Morales government in Bolivia—the reconstruction of governability or stability was a high-priority task. But this is a contradiction to the movements that brought these governments to power. During their struggles, the people operated from a position of autonomy, with their own organisms of self-governance. Theirs was a completely different way of understanding coexistence and collectivity. In my opinion, this is what constitutes a true and authentic leftist program. I therefore challenge the idea that these Latin American governments are progressive. To assume these government are the desired product of these social struggles skews our vision and prevents us from understanding the processes of social transformation we lived for the last several years. There is a contradiction between this tendency of self-governance and self-determinism (what I consider a true leftist agenda) and our new progressive governments that have elements of old nationalism and that generate dependency. I do not believe that this is conducive to any type of liberation.

Question: European mass media focuses on the leaders. What is happening with the popular movements, with the unions? Have you seen that there is a new rise of the working-class or of a workers movement in Latin America?

R.G.: What I think has happened, in almost all the countries, is that after the elections, after the struggle and the restoration of a government that is not explicitly right-wing, something akin to a social depression has begun. It’s a collective frustration and confusion because expectations have not been fulfilled on many different levels. I think the social movements are in a difficult moment in which they are trying to understand what is happening around us.

There are two reasons for this; One, the governments in power and the policies that they are implementing are perceived by practically everyone as insufficient. Two, the movement’s struggles, and the emergence of what seemed like a new form of politics, of direct participation, of assembly, of a horizontal process of gaining consensus via extensive, multi-level deliberation, of virtually holding our own destiny in our hands hit a wall. These processes became paralyzed and we ended-up with the usual vertical administrative and procedural processes of any liberal state.

So on the one hand the people don’t see leaders making the advancement they should; and on the other, they feel that they no longer have the capacity to intervene in public matters in the way they did before (through these horizontal and community oriented mechanisms). I therefore see a process of depression, of general frustration, that comes from the fact that the social movements haven’t gained any more power from the existence of their progressive governments. In fact, they no longer have the capacity of political intervention that they previously during other government. Generally speaking, it’s a kind of disempowerment — to use the antonym of a word that is now in fashion within the liberal technocracy. I see a process of disempowerment that stems from the way in which these leaders continue relying on the old elites, the way they continue using the old methods of action and decision making. These governments are defending the very institutions they used to criticize and are timidly implementing processes for a only a superficial modification of those institutions.

In the middle of all of this, what happens to a country’s workers who were the ones that previously mobilized and restrained the un-tempered growth of contemporary liberal capitalism? They feel weaker, less capable in the face of this disempowerment. So, no, I do not see a rapid emergence of new movements because a confused and depressed society can not bring forth the collective energy needed to once again question and challenge their reality.

And yet it is this phenomenon from which these progressive governments gain stability. These governments’ stability comesbecause they establish links and varying methods of coordination with society. Specifically, they coordinate with various organized class, ethnic and social groups. They legitimize their power by co-opting leaders in the social movements and identifying themselves with those movements..

I believe that time, clearer concepts and more than anything, a shift in vision are needed in order to be able to speak about all this. Why? Because our understanding of our struggles and social processes is what, to a great extent, determines the way in which we are going to see and act in the world.

An enormous cultural and ideological offensive had to be implemented in order to establish a neo-liberal perspective, economy, and policy. Because of this, we now see a polarity between this right-wing neo-liberal perspective and we call anything that differs from this leftist. We see a polarity between the so-called progressive governments and corporate power. But it is a false dichotomy because the social movements who rose up in recent years, have been relegated to silence and are once again cast in the role of spectators. And it is the progressive governments themselves that want the social movements in this position. This is why I feel that we are in a bit of a gray moment in the social struggle.

Yet, it is an interesting moment. Honestly we have not been defeated, even though the current governments in power are making us feel frustrated and depressed. This doesn’t mean defeat, but rather confusion. If we shift our vision and collectively begin to return to discussing the possibility of obtaining what we proposed throughout our struggle—that we envision social change as something that goes beyond a progressive governments—then it’s possible to once again find our organizational footing. At the moment I see only a few small pockets of resistance. These groups suffer from social isolation as they continue pushing for a way to perform direct politics instead of succumbing to the inherited institutionalized norms of the liberal state.

Question: Are social movements strengthened when there’s a leftist government?

R.G.: The saddest case was a few years ago when a very powerful indigenous movement in Ecuador (organized in the CONAIE) decided to support a military man in the [presidential] elections. This alliance was a triumph for General Lucio Gutiérrez. The CONAIE co-governed for a short period of time. On leaving the government coalition, after having realized that there was no possibility of transforming things from where they were, some of the indigenous Ecuadorian leaders developed a concept that I like a lot. They described their experience being in state power with the phrase: “We have never been as weak as when we were in the government”. As paradoxical as that sounds, they explained it quite clearly: “because when you are in the government, the only thing that we could do was behave like the government does.”

And I thought, of course. We must seek a social transformation that completely changes the manner in which things have been thought-out and proposed. Meaning we have to rethink politics itself, and above all else we much re-think the power of government as power over others. We should start thinking of government as the possibility of creating a more fluid and self-regulating collective co-existence. This part is not simple for us to grasp. Perhaps it can only be understood by someone who has lived in a social movement, and is able to have keep in mind these experiences and the potential and the capacity to create within those spaces. When one has had that experience, and perhaps the Europeans haven’t had that experience for many decades, then it is important to try to understand the novelties that are produced and the increase in the collective sensibility that has taken place in America, over the last few years.

“We were never as weak as when we were in the government.” That was the concept that the CONAIE in Ecuador brought about at the end of 2003; but later they came up with another concept that is very useful: “We won, but we lost” and this “we won, but we lost” alludes to the results of many of their mobilizations, their great sieges, their great uprisings, and to the indigenous social struggle in general. The most concrete example of this is in the moment in which one of the Ecuadorian presidents, who was later ousted, proposed the dollarization of their economy–something that was terribly harmful for all the urban population and even more for all the citizens who didn’t have immediate access to the dollar. There was an uprising that lasted several days. The president falls but the dollarization remains. So they say “we won, but we lost”, or vice versa: “we lost, but we won”. This phrase shows their understanding of ambiguity of some of their struggles.

Bolivia 2003 is another example. We managed to the overthrow a president via a forceful, vigorous and diverse struggle. The people declared that Bolivia’s –gas—the principal hydrocarbon—belonged to Bolivians themselves and that it must be managed by the Bolivian people. The President fell but throughout 2004 and 2005 the struggle continued because the newly proposed hydrocarbon law was identical to the one that had been promulgated in the era of neo-liberalism.

Did we win or lose? It seems to me that the Ecuadorian analysis could be useful here. And even with the new nationalization of 2006, that we have already mentioned is not such, the phrase is pertinent It is necessary to see if that demand for the collective re-appropriation of the peoples’ common wealth prevailed or not.

At the same time, the pursuit of an objective that collectively led to the fall of a government opened a period of transition. There was an electoral triumph of the political segment closest to the social movements–the MAS party, the party of Evo Morales. Nevertheless this party has not been able to forcefully impel the aspiration since 2003. To a certain extent, the government has taken small steps in that direction; it’s not like they have totally gone in the opposite direction. But, those steps have been timid and insufficient.

Did we win or lose? That may be the question that here, in Bolivia, we are have not managed to analyze with the clarity of Ecuadorians. Yet it is important because it helps us understand our struggles better—to see that they are not black and white, not just about winning or losing but rather it’s about seeing the rhythms of our actions, the meanings they produce and the reach of their effects.

Question: This year, we have seen intense struggles in the streets of Latin America such as in El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Bolivia and Argentina. Can you comment on the reasons for and results of these struggles? Are there common factors? Is the situation different among these leftist countries, or is it similar? In Europe, it is rare that we hear of this type of uprisings in the streets; we hear more about strikes. Are the struggles in the streets more important than the struggles we have seen in the factories?

R.G.: Those are actually two separate questions. On the one hand, yes, we have seen mobilizations in many countries in Latin America. Nevertheless, I would make a distinction. I would distinguish between two types of struggles. One are those that seek to reign in the terrible wrath of neo-liberalism. The best example of this kind of struggle is that of CONACAMI in Peru (the National Coordinator of Communities Against Mining Development) a type of fight that, to a certain extent, is also present in Guatemala (although not as strong) and in parts of northern Mexico (although there it’s even weaker). This type of struggle, along with other struggles against the outright expropriation of the people’s collective goods and communal properties, occur in the countries where the lines are clearer, where it is clear that the right controls the government with support from the military.

The other type of struggle has occurred where we have these progressive governments, and these are very difficult to wrap our minds around. This type can be divided into two categories.

First, we have the struggles against the progressive governments because of their incapacity to satisfy their own constituents’ demands. Second, are confrontations within the population itself—confrontations between different sectors of society that have to do with the dispute over wealth redistribution.

In Bolivia, the most tragic example of this is what has happened in Huanuni, in a confrontation between cooperative miners and the existing state mine workers that wanted to begin to extract the minerals differently than before. The confrontation ended in many deaths. I simply mention these examples to draw distinctions. Perhaps because of my ignorance, but I do not believe that these social movements have figured out how to deal effectively with the so-called progressive governments and for this reason, we see much confusion.

As for people-driven re-vindicative struggles, with clear aspirations, these have not emerged in a way that would allow for a true and autonomous social transformation. They have not taken place, but they are going to happen because we have not been defeated; we are frustrated, we have disagreements, but they have not defeated us. Nevertheless, I see and believe that right now –more important than the actions of progressive governments—is the struggle to stop the brutality of neo-liberalism that we find in Peru, Mexico, and Guatemala to name a few. What is most urgent is that we collectively begin to process the ways in which the so-called progressive governments are limiting entities in and of themselves. We must try to make sure that in the new struggles set to unravel in other parts of the continent–such as in Peru–that we do not let it happen in the same way

I believe that we can contribute intellectually by thinking about the possibility of going beyond these progressive governments, beyond the idea that being part of the government is the ultimate goal. During periods of struggles, many times—mainly in the very long struggles—the people have clearly moved beyond the state in such a way that now, to have to return to being part of the government is indeed a step backwards. The question is how we move beyond that. And the answer will be given by those who have already experienced it and who have been a part of the struggle for several years. These new struggles will have those experiences to build upon, if among all of us we are capable of producing concepts and words to understand these things.

Question: Do you think that there is some danger that we could return to the era of dictatorships, like in El Salvador, for example?

R.G.: The case of Central America is dreadful because they are societies that have been absolutely traumatized by years of war. To be honest, given the level of degradation of basic social cohesion that I have seen on the occasions while in Central America, I believe that anything is possible.

In the case of Mexico, one way to understand what it is happening to us is that we are, in fact, living under a coup d’etat that is disguised as a type of transition. What you see is the absolute disrespect of our basic constitutional rights.

The fact that the military are in the streets in the way that they are is an example of this—that the military police brutally attempt to stop public protests that express the collective hope to transform. Beginning with Atenco, this is the pattern and the most recent example is the military occupation of towns and cities in Oaxaca. This tells me that something very serious is happening there. We’re not talking about what’s going to happen, because in fact it is already happening.

In Peru, the other country that does not have a so-called progressive government, there was a similar electoral process with the very similar techniques of polarization between the left and the right, the denigration of one and restoration of the other. The alliance between the government of Alan Garcia and the military is more evident. And in Bolivia, before a coup could take place a general climate of civil confrontation would have to develop. There have already been some examples: the miners of Huanuni that I mentioned, and what happened in January [2007] in the city of Cochabamba. For various complex reasons, two segments of the Cochabamba civilian population confronted one another, leading to deaths on both sides. If we take Bolivia as the place with one of the deepest social fractures perhaps we can see aspects of a new of military restraint that can teach us something about the threads of the counterinsurgency. We do not need, and we cannot keep expecting military revolts in the style of Pinochet. Rather, we must study the concrete forms of counterinsurgency that exist today, and I believe that these examples—fraud, the army in weak governments (like in Mexico) and militarization. And of course, Bolivia’s signs of civilian confrontation in Bolivia.

Question: Do you believe that the leaders in Latin America can trust the military? In Guatemala, an former general running for President and has promised to use his experience to combat violence, crime, etc. Is this mix of democracy and military an example that others are going to follow? How should the left react?

R.G.: This is actually not my area of study, so I am not as familiar with the topic. I study civil struggles. But I have some general thoughts on your question.

Until about four years ago, there was a clear emptying-out of military capacity in Latin America, because an enormous amount of resources–mainly originating from the US–prioritized different ways of policing. What the U.S. had once invested in the military, started going to the creation of police forces. Mexico is a very clear example, but in part, Bolivia and Argentina serve as examples too. So, instead of returning to the focus on the military, now discredited because of its history across Latin America, those resources were redirected at the transformation and indoctrination of police forces.

Now, this is beginning to change. I have not been following it so closely but states that are not sovereign do not need armies in this liberal change going on in all the countries of Latin America. Of course, the Armed Forces have been left with a role that is much less defined. The possibility that transformations can be led by the military is something I ended with the ’70s. In this sense, Chávez is an anomaly that must be viewed as an exception in Latin America, because of the make-up of the Venezuelan state and its army.

Question: Some countries in Latin America have had remarkable economic advances in recent years. How does this affect the political and social situation of those countries? Do you believe that the IMF and the World Bank—still have an influence in these countries or has it disappeared?

R.G.: Of course the influence has not disappeared. In the most progressive of the so-called progressive governments, the influence of these organisms and international financial institutions is always present through the type of macroeconomic policies that they insist on implementing, or through the possibility of interfering in the flow of resources that arrive in the countries.. Furthermore, this has been accompanied by a general dismantling of what was a national industry, power production, and food security, through free trade agreements and the sacking of basic resources.

I believe that from this period of struggle has emerged a collective sentiment of what is necessary to defend oneself against the ransacking of a people’s common goods which, of course, was carried out with the unrestricted support of these international organisms. In the course of almost one decade, these international institutions managed to create an entire discourse—limited and absolutely slanted—to describe economic processes. The way in which these organizations actually continue influencing these temporarily progressive states, in terms of their decision-making concerning their states own resources, is incredible. But these governments also adhere to the format established as correct and healthy for liberal macroeconomics. I ask myself, if perhaps there isn’t an enormous influence of these international players over these countries that is at times not even visible.

There was one period in which, in practically all Latin American countries, this influence was scandalous: one saw it clearly as the delegations of foreign experts entered and left government palaces, and how theytold the government how to do things. Up to what point will the so-called progressive governments accept this type of influence? I believe they will accept a very high level of this type of influence–a fact demonstrated by the concrete political decisions in their respective countries. Some examples are the methods they chose to maintain the exchange rate, what they do with energy expenses, how they treat the fiscal deficit, what they do with their reserves and their choice not to implement programs of national production but rather adhere to welfare formats of redistribution.

In the end, one seesthe same [economic] program and the same type of attenuated measures. With this, we return to the question that you asked me at the beginning: is that the meaning of the word “left”? If so, it is a very feeble meaning. I believe that by thinking about the real meaning of social transformation, we can develop a better meaning for the classic term that has been used over so many decades: the left.