Among the variables associated with progress and development, time and opportunities are of capital importance, Americas are an example of this.
Upon arriving at the New World, Christopher Columbus, who left Spain as an explorer, became a conqueror, a function that the representatives of the crowns of Spain and Portugal exercised during the four hundred years.
In the Americas of the fifteenth century, Europeans found peaceful, technological, economic and militarily backward civilizations with respect to them, with which they could dialogue and, while benefiting from natural wealth, including gold and silver, implementing inclusive policies with the peoples of the region, some that, like those of Mexico and Peru, were advanced and rich.
The evidence that they came to land inhabited by people who could be partners and not vassals, never existed.
As if they were sent from Providence, the conquerors took possession of lands populated by about 50 million people, on which, with the complicity of the Church, they established vassalage and slavery, in addition, millions of African slaves and, together with evangelization, went to feudal practices, such as mitas and parcels.
To punish disobedience and insumission, Hispanic conquerors used torture and death penalty at discretion. The Cacique Hatuey was burned in the bonfire and Tupac Amaru dismembered alive by four horses that threw arms and legs, then the head, separated from the torso and stuck in a spicy, was exhibited for the public escarnio.
The native peoples and the Creoles were victims of a prolonged stagnation and prevented from progressing economically with the metropolis; They did without them and then against them. The discontent for ill -treatment, together with the identities that forged time, coexistence and shared expectations, nourished by philosophical ideas and liberal political from Europe, gave rise to nationalism and patriotism.
The late Independence favored the formation of antediluvians Creole oligarchies constituted by leaders linked to military, landowners and clergy estates, which, acting as a consuno, with the only exception of the United States, assumed the republics as loot.
Those retrograde forces, alien to democracy and the rule of law that was already in force in the nineteenth century, were the political dimension of structural deformations integrated to the agro -export economic scheme, to plantations and farms in which, with slave or servile labor, indigenous, African, even Creole, occurred in the colonies to consume in Europe.
Assuming as valid the right-left dichotomy, according to which, the original core of the Latin American right were the retrograde and reactionary forces linked to the leaders, the landowners and the clergy that, once the independence is conquered, in the form of oligarchy, exercised the power, in some countries until very recently. Then: Who were the left?
The first Latin American left valid in national political life, was the liberalism that in the region was formed from the influences, experiences and cultural inheritances whose vectors were, in addition to personal exchanges, literature and the press. Liberals were the precursors and forgers of Independence in the 19th century.
In the twentieth century, the liberal sectors formed by intellectuals and artists, journalists, writers, lawyers, teachers, teachers and politicians who accompanied political and social struggles, against oppression, landowners, for democracy and political modernity in republics governed by native oligarchies, in connivance with imperialism and foreign capital.
At the beginning of the 20th century, due to the dissemination of Marxism, socialism and other advanced European political currents such as social democracy and social Christian thought that radiated their influence, in Latin America the communist parties appeared, new political actors that, by the radicalism of their discourse, although not because of their political impact, poor Bourgeoisie and the liberals with whom they had to ally.
In some cases, confusion endures. For remnants of dogmatic Marxism, being liberal is a stigma and not an advanced political condition.
The first Latin American Communist Party was founded in Argentina in 1918 and by 1929 when the first conference of such organizations in Latin America was held, with 38 delegates, there were already small communist organizations in Brazil, Bolivia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Cuba, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Venezuela and Chile.
With the parties, from Europe and the United States, anti -communism also arrived that is still the main flag against social fighters, whether or not they are Marxist, including all liberals present in the broad Latin American political spectrum.
Even retrograde forces accuse several US presidents, naturally liberal, including Roosevelt, Obama and Biden of being socialists. In Latin America where Marxist parties and ideology were illegal, communist or Marxist qualifiers, even liberals could mean persecutions, jail, and torture.
Although there are everywhere, populist rulers, all liberals in their best version, may be a typically Latin American invention. It is a casual mixture of democracy and authoritarianism, civil and military components present in honest personalities, sensitive to the need for social justice and progress, capable of interpreting great social demands and popular interests, cohesion to elements of all classes and layers, assume nationalist and even anti -imperialist positions and exercise power in an authoritarian way, discarding the institutions and the usual formulas.
These magnificent creatures, linked to unique historical moments, usually lack fixative and have an expiration date, although in some cases, among other Getulio Vargas, Lázaro Cárdenas, Juan Domingo Perón, Omar Torrijos and many others, their legacy survives them.
In the search for their role in those Latin American countries in which it receives opportunities, the left should worry, not so much to underline its identity as an alternative to the system, as to find the way of consistently integrating into the struggle for the general progress of society. Spectacular advances, followed by setbacks, are expensive episodes. We see you there.
*This text was originally published in the newspaper Therefore! It reproduces with the express authorization of its author.
