Pink tide

Now, this was at the very time when we were protesting in places like Seattle and Genoa.

There was a, a backlash against this developing, especially in Latin America, and it led to the election of some of the left and center-left governments that were known as the Pink Tide, from Lula and the PT in Brazil to Chávez in Venezuela, Morales and the MAS in Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay.

Variations, different templates, different styles and ideologies, uh, some more radical than others, but they were all rooted in a backlash against this version of neoliberal globalization, and they did become a, a reference point for, uh, many people on, on the left more broadly.

And coming into the period after the 2008 crash, it was ironic that this was clearly a crisis of neoliberalism in its heartlands, especially in the US and Britain, but also in the Eurozone.

Lula for, you know, his previous three terms has, uh, has been able to brag about delivering strong economic results.

Uh, certainly in his first term, which was at the height of the so-called Pink Tide, the, the wave of, the first wave of left-wing victories, uh, throughout the region in which many countries, uh, did very well economically, uh, through exporting commodities.

In the case of Brazil, uh, things like, uh, soybeans, uh, natural gas, oil, uh, beef, and largely that was to feed China, which was, uh, growing very rapidly at the time.

And so this established a very strong economic relat- trade relationship, uh, with China.

Yeah.

That's, that's super helpful, um, and, and illuminating.

And just, Michael, if we could broaden out to the region as a whole and, and to situate Brazil in here, um, you know, just to, um, piggybacking of what Nara said, it seems to me that of course, as, as we mentioned, you know, the pink tide, in part its redistributive program was based on high commodity prices of the 2000s, which then got exhausted post-2014 after decline of oil prices and then a sort of slowdown of the Chinese economy.

Um, and so there seemed to be some sort of association between a sort of social democratic left program and high commodity prices and the sort of growth model that Nara was talking about, where ironically, actually gains of the left were, uh, uh, linked to a return to primary commodities, right? A sort of re-primarization of the economy.

They wouldn't be running the countries otherwise.

I'm old enough to remember, and I think we probably had the conversation ourselves, last time there appeared to be a trend across Latin America, it was the so-called Pink Tide.

It was all these left-wing, some actually quite populist left-wing government, but nevertheless left-wing governments being elected.

Is this, much as people have said Trump was a reaction Obam- to Obama, a, a reaction to that? Is this, and I'm mixing the tide and pendulum metaphor, but you know where I'm going with that.

Mm.

Things come and go, and they come and go in waves.

The Pink Tide was a wave itself, a reaction against, uh, the, uh, uh, securitization and, uh, precarity, uh, that preceded it during the, uh, early, uh, the late '90s and early 2000s.

You know, uh, the, uh, uh, easy appeal, uh, of the right to coercion.

There were thirty-two countries, uh, in Latin America that were anti-American, basically with five exceptions.

The left called it the Pink Tide.

And now when you look at the map of South America and Central America and the Caribbean, I can only count five that are communist or anti-American.

Brazil, and it's about ready to flip.

The left side depicts the state of the continent in December of 2023, when there were ten left-wing governments in South America and only three right-wing.

It was the so-called Pink Tide, the great wave of socialist governments that flooded the region in the previous decades, from Chávez in Venezuela to Lula in Brazil, to Correa in, uh, Ecuador, and Morales in, uh, Bolivia.

Now look at the right side.

That Pink Tide, as of this year, has not just receded, it's literally been annihilated.

The political right has triumphed in Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, Honduras, Costa Rica, Peru, Colombia, and now of course, Brazil.

Eight for eight elections.