Comparative outcomes across different countries

Latin American Revolution: New Tactical Approach

The transition in how revolution occurs in Latin America can be explained by a growing awareness of the inefficiency of modern bureaucracy and/or government. In the past, revolution has occurred primarily through the overthrow of one government and the establishment of another. Today, however, revolution is more cultural—it is rooted more in the living of lives and less in the dynamic of governmental oversight. As Holloway states, “We are flies caught in a spider’s web…We can only try to emancipate ourselves, to move outwards, negatively, critically, from where we are” (Holloway 5). What this means is that it is useless to attempt to act as the spider acts—which is what replacing one government with another essentially signifies in the modern age. The web is what needs to be avoided—and so revolution is now centered on escaping the web—the web of politics, the web of government, the web of bureaucratic hierarchies that are so dysfunctional and corrupt that the only sense in keeping them is so that more “flies” can be caught and killed. A real revolution today in Latin America is one that rejects the web and all that goes with it. This is why communities are mobilizing themselves to resemble the world they wish to see: they are dissatisfied with the options given them. They seek to create their own world, as they wish it to be.

Popular social movements and the establishment of power outside of governmental institutions and political parties is a tactic that represents the popular resentment felt by revolutionary society for the controllers of the Established Order. They see that establishment as nothing more than the oppressors’ way to retain control of society no matter who is in charge. For instance, in Brazil, where corruption has riddled government, there is still the farcical situation in place of a government that attempts to police itself. The entire system is devoid of any real meaning and serves only its own interests. It is not about serving the people who have allegedly elected them to serve. The reality is that the people no longer care for these elections (and this is seen even in the U.S., where only a small percentage of eligible voters actually vote in elections). The prevailing sense is that in order for change to occur, it must occur at a grassroots, cultural level. It must occur at the community level. It is here at the local level that people really come together, interact within one another, and build real environments. They take control of their own lives and destinies instead of submitting to some government whose representatives are miles away, have never known them, and have no real investment in them or care for what happens to them.

Coronil explains that people are motivated by a sense of the “ideal”—by the “ideal future” which drives them to secure for themselves the change in environment and culture that they desperately seek (Coronil 232). They see in their imagined visions of life a better world for tomorrow. While the “global triumph of capitalism” has essentially turned the entire world into a single state, with a few competing emperors vying for control or else seeking a kind of triumvirate at best, local communities are sensing that the moment is at hand to seize control at the local level—which is really the only level that matters. The empire of the world is the new imagined ideal of the capitalist state—of the government as it seeks a broader part in the larger globalized Empire. But the member of the local community has a more realistic sense of life and community: he is not the member of a Parliament or of a governing body—he is the member of a community. He has neighbors and friends and they live and work together. He has a family, children, brothers, sisters, parents. He has to look out for them and for himself because in this world nothing is entirely free or entirely safe. The process of looking for a political solution or a political safeguard has proved extremely faulty. The new process—that of self-realization through the local grassroots approach to life—is the way that revolution now seeks to express itself: it is about escaping the spider’s web, as Holloway has stated.

The Mexican Revolution of the early 20th century, when the Cristeros fought against the new secular government that seeked to abolish the old culture is an example of one revolution that underscores the ideas put forward in both Holloway and Coronil. The Mexican Revolution saw one revolutionary body (the secular government) come to power and attempt to suppress a popular culture that philosophically opposed the new direction of the government. In doing so, the revolutionary government created a counter-revolutionary force (or a separate and distinct revolutionary force) that was localized, communal and committed to a culture that fostered real relationships rather than the perfunctory and compulsory attitudes that the secular government sought to place on institutions and organizations.

In this manner, the revolution of politics had one last flourish before dying in the 20th century and giving way to the power of the local community at last. Even though the Cristeros ultimately laid down the weapons and submitted to the government, their example stood out and has stood the test of time. There is no more than ever a dissatisfaction with and distrust of the politics of government and the organizational structures that give authority to people who have no vested interest in people at the community level. These organizations are self-serving, where as the community is based on the idea of every member serving one another. Unless there is a sense of this need to serve one another, the life of the state is dead.

In comparison with the Mexican Revolution, it can be seen that the tactics of today are an effect of the outcomes of that Revolution in a way. Today’s revolutionaries see the inefficiency of engaging with the state: instead, they seek to distance themselves from the state and to divorce themselves from the institutions and organizations that represent the state. They see more sense in forming bonds—like those of the ancient tribes, such as existed in the days of the ancient Roman Empire. If today’s global capitalist Empire is a modern variation on the Roman Empire, today’s revolutionary communities are modern variations on the tribes that combated or resisted that Empire. They are adaptations to new circumstances but also reactions to an age-old problem—which is simply: how do you protect yourself and your people from the face of an encroaching and overreaching, self-serving body of government interested only in preserving its own bureaucratically ill-gotten gains?

Whether it was colonialism, authoritarianism (such as is seen today) or the threat of foreign invasion, the tactics of revolutionary response have always centered around the need to resist—the need to resist the philosophical underpinnings of the opposition and the need to assert one’s own sense of self-governance. Some have attempted to overthrow governments, others have attempted to work within governmental structures, and some have moved away, attempting to flee the reach of the imposing opposition. Revolution today is something new in the sense that it is taking a more pragmatic, practical approach to the problems that communities now face in the real world. It sees that help is not coming from anywhere else. There will be no grand revolution like what occurred in Mexico in the 1920s with the Cristeros. The world is too fractured.

Works Cited

Coronil, Fernando. The Future in Question: History and Utopia in Latin America (1989-
2010). Business as Usual. NY: NYU Press, 2011. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qfkds.14

Holloway, John. Change the World without Taking Power. Pluto Press.