Latin America: Revolution and counter-revolution

By Jorge Gómez Barata

Social revolutions respond to historical needs and their nature is determined by the tasks they perform, the forces that compel them, and the regimes they help install. The leaders and the avant-gardes that lead them influence the profile of each particular process and of the movement as a whole.

Not since the 19th Century — when Western Europe witnessed a succession of political events known as the revolutions of 1848, which consolidated the political power of the bourgeoisie — until today in Latin America could we see with such clarity the shape of an era when the tendencies to change transcend national borders and encompass an entire historical period.

Under those circumstances, we see what is usually called “a revolutionary situation,” a crossroads at which “the ruling classes cannot exercise power with the traditional methods and the popular sectors can no longer stand the exploitation and oppression to which they are subjected.” Thus are the propitious conditions created for a breakdown of the established order.

To Karl Marx, who made that outcome dependant on essentially economic circumstances, “an era of social revolution” had opened. Perceived from that viewpoint, the change assumes forms that are predominantly peaceful and on an international scale.

In this case, the word “peaceful” does not mean placid situations or suggests that the ruling classes will renounce their privileges without fighting back. It means that the changes can be made without resorting to guns and without bloodshed. Nevertheless, in those stages, the class struggle is expressed through intense confrontations and, likewise, as the revolution advances, the counter-revolution unfolds.

Deprived of a popular base and without arguments to try to revert the process through political debate, the reaction (repeatedly defeated at the polls) mobilizes the most conservative, violent and primitive elements of the oligarchy, mainly the military, the clergy and the remnants of the defeated political class, including elements without class, lumpen, and even mercenaries.

In the wake of the changes initiated by the Cuban Revolution — which stimulated the maturation of the objective and subjective conditions in the region and found positive replications in the triumph of Salvador Allende in Chile, of Sandinism in Nicaragua, and, more recently, in the political processes unfolding democratically and peacefully in a dozen countries — the counter-revolutionary forces maneuver to halt and, if possible, revert the revolutionary process in this continent.

Thus, in an open or subtle manner, with parliamentarian methods, trying to articulate opposing forces and manipulate public opinion to win elections or resorting to military or media coups, to oil lockouts and all kinds of maneuvers, the reaction attempts to raise its head.

In recent days, in Honduras, Latin America has witnessed the reprise of the worst chapter in the hemisphere’s political history. It was developed on the basis of a well-known script, according to which the top Army staff rebels and draws to its side the judiciary, the Congress, the top clergy, the communications media and the business circles. Together, through brute force, they try to depose a legitimate government to paralyze the social changes.

What’s really new is not the attempt of a barracks coup, which has been latent in several countries, but the rejection and isolation met by the putschists, who this time cannot even count on the OAS, not even with Washington’s support.

This is a sign of the times and the evidence of the irreversible nature of an authentic revolutionary process in this continent, a process that accomplishes historical tasks that can no longer be postponed, among them the rescue of natural resources, national sovereignty and independence and the enthronement of social justice.

Barack Obama, a president who is repeatedly asked to prove what he says, even what he thinks, has a unique opportunity (except that it requires a boldness he may not have) to invite President Manuel Zelaya to climb aboard Air Force One and fly in it to Tegucigalpa. It’s a golden opportunity.

Jorge Gomez Barata is a journalist. He lives in Havana.