Venezuela and other LatAm pink tide democratic socialist experiments are bogged down by being incomplete revolutions caught in the middle of deep contradictions where any major lessoning of living standards leads to risks of the revolution losing support among the people.

I only have a quibble here, the pink tide democratic socialist experiments were not incomplete revolutions. They were attempts to restore the abortive post-war reforms that the US killed, only under a new context: the defeat of the pro US Latin American Juntas by US financial capitalism.

In 1982, literally overnight, the entirety of Latin America saw itself with no liquidity. The Volcker Shock saw to it that these countries, with dollarized external debts, could no longer finance what had been a more or less consistent policy of import substitution, mild reforms and capitalist developmentism under what had previously been the auspices of the USA. The Americans had been happy as long as Land Reform initiatives were timid at best and Latin American military regimes were firmly and ideologically committed against their own peoples, under the Algerian War inspired French Doctrine of policing the local population against socialist, progressive and soviet sympathies.

But even that state of affairs was not to last. Like the Europe of today, what wealth Latin America built in the post war period was reaped by the US financier class. Latin American sovereign debts were not allowed to be renegotiated and the demands by institutions like the World Bank, the IMF and the ivory towers of US economics were that the purchasing power of the population at large was sacrificed during a turn towards Export Oriented policies, almost entirely concentrated in the areas of mineral extraction and agricultural investment.

Hyperinflation was state policy demanded by the imperial core and with it fell the pro US military juntas. What took their place were neoliberal representative democracies and that is what the pink tide was. Only the difference between neoliberalism in an impoverished continent like the 90s Latin America and social democracy in, say, the EU since 2008 is that Latin American countries are attempting to build social democracy via the neoliberal playbook. Which makes sense, 1990s Latin America is dealing with the fallout of the 1982 debt crisis and the policy of impoverishment that followed. Europe, on the other hand, deals with its own contradictions, with the fact that it is a quasi-confederation and its own imperatives to dismantle social democracy via the neoliberal playbook.

So, I'd argue, the Pink Tide and the Venezuelan Revolution arose from defeated countries. At the start of the Cold War, American policy towards Latin America went from constructive, with wartime investment, tech transfers and even some tolerance for natural resource nationalizations to hostile - and, as a result, the entire continent became vassals of the CIA. Then, at the end of the Cold War, American policy remained hostile even towards its own vassals. It didn't matter that the juntas were all pro USA, it didn't matter that the closest thing to a disagreement between the Juntas and the US was during the Jimmy Carter administration when the Juntas insisted they had to continue to torture communists as hard as ever, all that mattered is that American banks wanted sovereign debt premiums comparable to those of the suddenly higher interest rates produced by the Volcker Shock. And so Latin America was reaped, and defeated once again.

The Pink Tide was not without its opportunities however. The return to Representative Democracy meant that previously verbotten topics such as Land Reform could be talked about once again, however timidly. LGBTQ rights could be enforced, by judicial fiat if necessary, because of changes in the imperial core itself. But most of all, for all the pain and suffering it caused, the hyperinflationary export oriented policies did lead to the creation of a new material economy. On the surface of it, Latin America went from having a middling industry with occasional points of competitiveness at the forefront to its post colonial incarnation as a giant farm for the needs of international capitalism. The contradiction as we all know is that Latin America's land only served the needs of the imperial core indirectly - the continent's minerals and agricultural goods went to China most of all, not the US or Europe.

If we are to argue that countries like Cuba and Venezuela are under a permanent state of hybrid warfare, involving intelligence, trade blockades as well as military incursions then we must also recognize that intelligence and economic activity on the part of all States are also a part of said situation. When Brazil starts the 2000s using its dollar surplus to nationalize its debts and goes on to use one of its last State companies (EMBRAPA, the Brazilian Agricultural and Animal Husbandry Research Enterprise) to become self sufficient in staple foods like Wheat and Rice (thought impossible by liberal economists only 60 years ago), and then goes onto firmly entrench their trade relations with China, then Brazil constitutes what I mentioned earlier - a defeated nation of the Pink Tide generation, making its own moves which, often, happen to the chagrin of the reactionary landowning class. It was palpable when the Ukrainian War started and the Bolsonaros wanted to fully embark on a pro US anti Russia crusade, only to realize that their closure of the National Fertilizer Factory left the country too dependent on Russian potash. The Brazilian Landowning class and its clients, fully ensconced in american ancap ideology and Evangelical Americanist religiosity, truly wish that their greatest client wasn't China, that their second greatest client wasn't Europe and that their greatest competitor wasn't the United States. And they act like it. But when all is said and done, they have to leave their money where it is, even if they won't put their mouths in defense of Evil Communist China.

This is why I am more optimistic about the future of the continent. @Frogmanfromlake@hexbear.net I understand the feelings of disempowerment that come from being weak. But I believe there is more that can be done for the future of Latin America than just wait for the eruption of Yellowstone Park or an American Civil War. Venezuela and Cuba show that open defiance is possible for long periods of time, even if it doesn't get us where we need to go. Mexico shows that it is possible to become so central to the American economy that concessions can be extracted, even in the age of Trump, and that a strong social democratic project can be achieved and sustained in these post Cold War times. And Chile as well as Brazil, neoliberal capitalists that they are, show that the iron law of materialism forgives no one. If one's country is turned into a farm by American Finance Diktat, then said farm will go on to supply the only industrial superpower in the world today and that is China. If it wasn't for that, Brazil would have had no room for maneuver when resisting US tariffs. Argentina's policy of selling everything and anything to the Americans for just one more IMF bailout would have had no ties to a third economy to soften the landing of those Dollar denominated debts ending out. Mexico wouldn't be a massive middleman industrial economy between the US, Canada and China. Peru wouldn't have a comprador regime with US boots on the ground while preparing to service the needs of industrial China anyways. US imperialism would have had no contradictions to deal with.

We'll be here when Rome falls.