Many people on our continent are honestly concerned about the brutal rise of what they call the far right. The case of Milei in Argentina is even more worrying than that represented by Bolsonaro in Brazil years ago, because it has no counterweights and no alternatives are seen.
Argentina is a society that has been gradually devastated since the military dictatorship (1976-1983), a situation aggravated by neoliberalism and bad governments. It was on the back of this devastation that a devastating figure like Milei came to power, who, however, continues to attract crowds for his speeches full of insults and meanness. Instead of causing repulsion, this attitude is attractive to millions of people, which reveals the degree of participation of society.
But his case is not the only one. There are examples such as Bukele in El Salvador, who became a reference point due to his mistreatment and humiliation of young people who are often accused of crimes they did not commit. There are more and more countries where it is impossible to govern with a minimum of decency, as is the case in Guatemala, where the prosecutor Consuelo Porras is in charge, accused of corruption, blocking the government of Bernardo Arévalo.
The devastation of the social and institutional fabric affects almost all countries, even those governed by forces that call themselves left-wing, as is the case of Nicaragua. The crisis that is taking place in Bolivia with a tremendous confrontation between the president elected by MAS, Luis Arce, and the former president elected by MAS, Evo Morales, embodies nothing more than a struggle for power, without different projects that support such a dispute.
The list of nations in social, economic, institutional analysis and in crisis of governability (such as Venezuela today), is too long to review exhaustively. I only intend to note that similar processes are taking place between governments of apparently opposite sides.
The question that I believe we need to ask ourselves is about the relationship between the extractivist model/Fourth World War and this social analysis. To get to the bottom of the matter, we must include so-called organized crime within the neoliberal extractivist model, since it is one more piece of the ongoing war against peoples and Mother Earth. Although the media presents drug trafficking as a deviation from the norm, we know that in the territories it operates in complicity with the armed apparatus of the State to control and displace populations.
In countries and regions where humanitarian and social crises are taking place, we see the presence of extractive violence in all its forms: from drug trafficking to illegal gold mining, human and organ trafficking, arms and common goods. The craze for profit and accumulation is devastating us.
Systemic brutality leaves nothing standing but the electoral rituals varnished by the media as democracy; in the territories of the people it leaves a trail of destruction, shattered social fabrics and armed groups that make violence their preferred language. All of them come together in the task of clearing territories to open routes for various types of trafficking and turn lives into commodities, as Subcomandante Marcos explained it a quarter of a century ago in the text “What are the fundamental characteristics of the Fourth World War?”.
If we are right and a storm of such proportions is just beginning, we cannot attribute it to a particular political force, the president in office or certain institutions of the nation-state. It is the whole way of life that we call capitalism that is generating destruction, that is why we say that it is something structural, that cannot be resolved with partial measures or with meetings like the COP (United Nations Conference on Biodiversity) that will be held next month in Colombia.
It is not pessimism or fatalism, but realism, which leads us to say that the catastrophe/collapse is imminent and that it is not worth entertaining or distracting ourselves with electoral participation or with deals with the system. The urgency is to put ourselves out of the storm, as peoples and collectives, not individually. To do this, it is essential to build ways of life anchored in autonomy to provide ourselves with the health and food we need, because the system will only bring destruction and violence.
The creation of other worlds is not only to protect us, but is the first step to rebuild societies devastated by real existing capitalism. This reconstruction will not be undertaken by those at the top, but by organized people. As the EZLN has pointed out, the devastation also includes nation-states, whose institutions are being destroyed by this system to accelerate the accumulation of wealth.
Throughout our region we have a set of small and medium-sized local initiatives that are showing the way. It is possible that during the storm we will not only manage to resist and continue building, but that other towns, neighborhoods and social sectors will see in them an inspiration to survive and rebuild life.
Original article by Raúl Zibechi, Desinformemonos, September 9th, 2024.
Translated by Schools for Chiapas.