Re-imagined Community: The Mapuche Nation in Neoliberal Chile

In the last decades, one of the punchlines that has sought to legitimize neoliberal political discourse in Latin America is that of a harmonious multicultural community resulting from the recognition of cultural difference. However, progressive multicultural policies are routinely confronted with neoliberal economic mandates and prevalent socio-economic inequalities grounded in dominant criollo-mestizo culture. In this context, the multicultural policies of many of the region’s governments achieve little when it comes to improving the lives of indigenous peoples. Neoliberal multiculturalism may come to constitute a disciplinary framework deployed against indigenous groups to enforce political and economic demands. This chapter analyzes the ways in which some indigenous communities, namely the Maya in Mexico, the Mapuche in Chile and Afrocolombians on the Pacific coast, deal with and challenge these multicultural politics in their countries. Governmental efforts to promote multiculturalism may result in important limitations, as in the case of ambiguous legal procedures to define who can be represented as part of an indigenous culture. One of the ways indigenous communities (here we took Afrolatinamericans as well as indigenous people) have found to challenge neoliberal intercultural policies is to re-imagine their culture identity through memory and literature. Constructing a discourse of self-recognition as a different “imagined community” from the hegemonic criollo-mestizo group within the territory of the Nation-State they inhabit, they articulate a counter-narrative that not only challenges the infamous narratives about them inherited from the Colonial era, but also challenges those of recent times dictated from above

Argentina: The Philosophical Resistance to the Conquest of the Soul1

In 1976, a terrible dictatorship was established in Argentina, even before Foucault claimed with crystal clarity that the fundamental difference between classical liberalism and neoliberalism was the substitution of the homo economicus −related to the exchange− by the homo economicus as entrepreneur of himself (lecture delivered on 14 March 1979); and also before Margaret Thatcher (in Ronald Butt’s interview, Sunday Times, 3 May 1981) confirmed Foucault´s analysis stating that: “Economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul”. In the same year, Milton Friedman received the Nobel Prize in Economics. The explicit purpose of the Military Junta was to promote a profound cultural transformation, based on the premise that the causes of the alleged “underdevelopment” were not so much economical but cultural and political. Nevertheless, as García Delgado and Molina (2006) pointed out, the problem is not related to a sort of inevitable structural poverty, due to the culture of our people. It is a matter of a decline in society, produced by the policy orientation of the dictatorship. Until then, the income distribution was similar to that of the countries from the Southern Europe with an almost frictional unemployment. Until the coup d’état, Argentina had a poverty rate of 8% and the best distributive structure of income in Latin America. However, 1976 was a turning point; the surge of the neoliberal model promoted a process of over-indebtedness, wealth concentration, unrestricted opening of markets with an unfavourable exchange rate for national industry, labour flexibilization, with the insertion in a competitive globalization of “savage capitalism” that “strengthened the asymmetries and transfers of resources from the periphery to the centre. This concept differs from thinking about inequality as a problem related to culture, corruption and poor institutional quality” (García Delgado, 2006).Despite the overwhelming adverse evidence, it is still a commonplace to blame all the ills of our society on that culture, the maximum expression of which would be Peronism. In fact, the great majority of disappeared people during the dictatorship were Peronist political, trade union and social leaders. The motto of the Ministry of Economics during the dictatorship was “towards a change of mentality”. The current Argentine situation, in terms of advances of neoliberalism as well as resistances to it, cannot be understood without referring to the dictatorship. In Poratti words, “the coup d’état of 1976 does not only put an end to a government, a political system and project, but also to a 'world' in which Argentinians were living at least from the independence project of 1810. In those days, there was not an abrupt differentiation between generations and, in many aspects, people could identify themselves, diachronically, with a historical line beyond the particular generational characteristics” (Various Authors, 2009).These aspects go along with others that appeared in other areas, such as the implementation of new computer and communication technologies and, as a consequence, individual and social fragmentation. The impact of these technologies on daily life was decisive to the emergence of what some authors, like Sloterdijk (2002), called “mass individualism.” No doubt, this is a necessary aspect to explain the rise of the neoliberal subjectivity in developed countries. Yet, in Argentina, the existence of political, social, trade-union and ecclesiastical movements based on popular roots, with solidarity as a fundamental value, hampered the conquest of the “heart and soul” in 1976; and they are still now an obstacle to be overcome by sectors interested in imposing a neoliberal model. It is impossible to explain any isolated phenomenon of popular resistance to the hegemonic attempts from neoliberalism without analysing the common conceptions and understandings found in Argentina. Indeed, the popular culture substrate in Argentina is made up, mainly, by the confluence of different cultures: Andean, Guaraní Indians, Afro and Criollo (native). All of them are characterized by their relational and solidarity conceptions, intrinsically opposed to a subjectivity that conceives the individual as an entrepreneur of himself/herself.

Imaginaries, Sociability and Cultural Patterns in the Post-Neoliberal Era: A Glance at the Argentinean, Paraguayan, and Venezuelan Experiences

From the final years of the 20th century onwards, radical changes in forms of political subject formation have taken shape in Venezuela. These changes have displaced the dominant forms of economic and political regulation of the past fifty years. The emergence of political imaginaries rooted in social and political struggles has entailed the constructions of new forms of sociability, new cultural paradigms, and new modes of historical memory. These have contributed to the reformulation of the meaning of politics and the dislodging of neoliberal hegemony across Latin America. A new popular vocabulary focused on resistance and the critique of neoliberalism has resulted from these processes. The Venezuelan experience in this sense amounts to a turning point in the political development of the region. However, the far-reaching consequences of the global crisis that began in 2008 have entailed problematic consequences across Latin America. Tensions caused by fragmented practices of consumption, the extension of criminal networks and the dislocation of social policy have had profoundly destabilising consequences. This chapter seeks to formulate a comprehensive analysis of the tensions, divisions and uncertainties in popular imaginaries of the social in Latin America. Its argument will focus on Argentina, Paraguay and Venezuela, contrasting divergent modes of social change, from the moderate and progressive development of Argentine society to radical transformation of Venezuela. Against this backdrop, the chapter will explore alternative modes of social development in the context of the widening social structural heterogeneity of Latin America.

Fleeing (Post-)Chávez Memories: The 1990s and the Black Friday Generation

After 17 years of Chavism, Venezuelan literature is living a boom confirmed by the Tusquets Novel Award (2015) granted to Patria o muerte by Alberto Barrera Tyzska. Young writers such as Juan Carlos Méndez Guédez, Eduardo Sanchez Rugeles, Ricardo Ramírez Requena, Gustavo Valle, Hector Bujanda and Camilo Pino have problematized the current situation of the country in their narratives. In this essay I propose a comparison of the apocalyptic imaginaries in the novels La última vez (2007) by Bujanda, Bajo tierra (2010) by Valle, and Valle Zamuro (2011) by Pino. Focusing on the period preceding Chavista hegemony, these narratives expose dissolution processes that lead their protagonists to generational strangeness. These processes uproot the principles that sustain the sense of nation. The Chavista political change, then, does not represent a break with the past, but a form of continuity with these historical processes of collapse.

Bare Life in Contemporary Mexico: Everyday Violence and Folk Saints

Popular religion is frequently considered as the remains of “pre-modern” times. To some it may seem anachronistic in an era of highly developed technologies and urban life styles. However, in Mexican society, new types of religious practices and the devotion to secular saints are associated with the drug world and the informal sector at the margins of urban life. These new forms of popular religion are a sign of a changing Mexican society that has been deeply impacted by globalization and neoliberal economics. This paper explores this contemporary religious phenomenon by using Giorgio Agamben’s notion of “bare life”. The worship of Jesús Malverde, La Santa Muerte and other laic figures is gaining popularity among those who are abandoned by the mainstream and involved in the informal sector, where they remain exposed to danger and violence and abandoned by the law. The role of new religious icons is to provide protection, identification and a sense of community without authorization by the Catholic Church the traditional system of Christianity. Practitioners of these forms of popular religion may be accused of justifying illicit activities and reproducing the culture of fear and everyday violence. This study discusses these controversial practice in order to examine a social environment in which the informal sectors have been condemned illegality while nonetheless constructing their own culture, identity and ways of life.

Neoliberalism and the Negotiation of the American Dream in Contemporary Latina Narratives

This chapter will examine the relationship between Christian religiosity and attitudes toward social safety-net policies over the past three decades among Latinos in the US. Over the past thirty years the US has experienced notable reductions in social safety-net coverage, in the context of successive waves of neoliberal economic reforms. This has left members of the Latino and Black community particularly vulnerable to economic cycles and downturns. Within this context, this chapter analyzes the nexus between neoliberal political discourse, potent cultural narratives found within American Christianity and public support for social protection policies. In particular, the chapter addresses the way in which Christian themes, such as the Catholic social teaching, the mainline Protestant social gospel, the American adaptation of liberation theology, and the evangelical ethos of self-reliance and independence, interact with the formation of public attitudes towards greater or lesser support for social safety-net policies among American Latinos. Additionally, the present chapter will also bring to the foreground the role of Christianity among US Latinos in the creation of an issue-bundling effect in recent electoral competition since moral or social value issues are often bundled along with opposition to social protection policies in the two-party American political system. Lastly, the present work will propose a broad framework through which to interpret our findings grounded on the existence and interaction of two counterpoised cultural narratives on social protection found within Latino American Christianity.

Neoliberalising Humanity: Culture and Popular Participation in the Case of the Street Market of Caruaru, Brazil

The street fair of Caruaru is one of the most important ones in the world, in terms of culture, extent and commerce. In 2006 received the title of “imaterial cultural brasilian heritage” by Brazil’s Ministry of Culture. The economy of the region relies hardly on its trading. In 2014, the city mayor initiated polemically the process of change of its site. The project includes modify significantly the current structure, turning it into a Shopping Mall. The main goal is to increase profits even if it means the loss of their cultural value. The majority of the merchants and population is against this change, but until now the forces of the market has performed stronger than popular opinion. So that this research aims to verify the practice of democratic mechanisms of popular participation as resistance to the liberal policies in the case of the street fair of Caruaru site change. This research uses mainly the works of David Harvey and Franz Hinkelamert as Theoretical Framework. The methodology includes survey and interviews with traders, politicians, entrepreneurs, mayor and people's representatives.

From Uribe’s “Democratic Security” to Santo’s Peace Accords with the FARC: Hate, Fear, Hope and other Emotions in Contemporary Colombian Politics

This article first presents explanatory factors concerning Colombian divergence from the recent tendency in several Latin American countries towards 21st century models of political socialism or in conjunction with post neoliberal development. A second part explores the complex legacy of political culture bequeathed by the governments of Álvaro Uribe Velez (2002-2006 and 2006-2010) which involved an important military effort to combat the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC by its Spanish acronym) but was not able to defeat them, although their debilitation undoubtedly constituted one of the factors that led to the negotiations in Havana. Hatred and fear of the FARC promoted by President Uribe’s discourse supported by the mainstream media and important journalistic sectors are then explored as factors in conjunction with societal ideological homogenization around the policy of "Democratic Security". A third part deals with redefinitions in the political culture and hegemonic communicative regime promoted by President Juan Manuel Santos (2010-2014 and 2014-2017), which favored promoting successful conclusion of the peace process with the FARC and initiation of a new, complex and still uncertain phase of national reconciliation among Colombians, notwithstanding obstinate Uribistic loathing of both the FARC and President Santos and President Uribe’s systematic and ideological delegitimization of the peace process. This section also deals with issues concerning the October 2, 2016 ratificatory plebiscite of the Havana Accords, the triumph of the rejectionists, the renegotiation of the Accords with representatives of the rejectionists by the government’s negotiating team, the mobilization of the citizenry in defense of the Accords, and, the ratification of the revised accord by the Congress at the Colon Theater. Finally, the "Conclusions" outline some of the challenges and possible alternatives for the country’s political development during the post-Accord era.

Making Neoliberal Selves: Popular Psychology in Contemporary Mexico

Since the 1970s, academic debates have considered how psychological discourses may legitimize or challenge capitalist forms of social organization. However, these debates have largely focused on the USA and Western Europe. The roles which psychological discourses play in contemporary popular cultures in Latin America remain poorly understood. Here, I use an analysis of the Mexican self-help publishing industry to examine the roles which psychological narratives may play in constructing, bolstering or subverting neoliberal subjectivities. Self-help books, my subject matter, are widely read in Mexico and at the international level. They therefore constitute a nexus through which the narratives of self and social relationships of academic psychology percolate into popular culture. In Mexico, self-help publishing involves, first, the translation and sale of texts written elsewhere, often in the USA, Europe and other Latin American nations, and, second, the sale of books by Mexican authors. This gives the Mexican self-help industry a distinctively hybrid character, as a variety of interpretations of self-improvement compete with each other for a readership. Here, I contrast self-help texts that blend psychological concepts with Christian nationalism with secular accounts that rely on pseudo-scientific and philosophical arguments to formulate a moral vision of a successful life. In spite of their narrative diversity, I argue that neoliberal understandings of self, choice, and personal responsibility are pervasive in self-help texts. The organization of the self-help publishing industry according to neoliberal economic principles and the refashioning of authors as competitive self-help entrepreneurs may explain this narrative convergence to some extent.

The Contribution of the Catholic Magazine Espacio Laical and the Constitution to the Cuban Public Sphere

In contemporary political, cultural and communicational debates, the idea of the public sphere has a notable presence. According to the classical Habermasian perspective, the public sphere is the realm of social life in which public opinion can be shaped by principles such as free access for all citizens, inclusion, reciprocity, reflection, equality and the rational justification of arguments. In this domain, people act as public when they discuss topics of general interest in conditions of equality and without coercion. These conditions guarantee, in normative terms, that the citizens can meet freely to express their opinions and points of view (Habermas, 1989). Nancy Fraser defends the influence of public discussions on decision-making and believes that the formation of public opinion can be a counterweight to discourses in formal deliberative arenas. He adds that sometimes the arguments put forward by civil society actors succeed in influencing the decisions of executive and legislative powers (Fraser, 1993). Reinforcing that idea, Avritzer and Costa (2004) argue that issues, positions and arguments defended by the new social actors must infiltrate the State through institutional mechanisms, and thus democratize and put it under the control of citizens. However, not all real public spheres are democratic, since cultural and material inequalities determine the differentiation between publics and their capacities, especially in spaces characterized by dependency relations and state interference (Chaguaceda, 2011). It has been pointed out that a merely conversational public sphere will not succeed in subverting power relations or guaranteeing the pursuit of the common good. The Habermasian model has also been criticized because it is confined to the analysis of the bourgeois public sphere and ignores that, together with the formation of the dominant bourgeois public, they suggested that the publics were composed of peasants, workers, women and nationalists, who constituted competing public spheres (Fraser, 1993) and complement each other. Therefore, one should not speak of sphere (singular) but of public (plural) spheres that together form the public space.In later texts, Habermas admits the coexistence of various public spheres and the need to observe the dynamics of the communicative processes that occur outside the dominant spaces of discussion. Now the public sphere is defined as a complex network formed by a diversity of forums for public discussion - both in formal institutions and outside of these, articulated through communicative activity, when different publics come together in organized networks to debate topics of common interest, contrasting points of view and assuming or reaffirming positions (Marques, 2008). Whatever position one takes within that debate, the notion of the public sphere reveals its value not only for critical social theory and democratic practice, but also for understanding the limits of democracy within existing capitalism and for the construction of alternative democratic projects (Fraser, 1993), both to the present neoliberal order and to socialist experiences of Soviet court. However, the Habermasian theory did not propose a universal law applicable to any context: it is a normative model to which existing societies approach or not. As has been stated (Chaguaceda, 2011), the concept must be anchored in specific contexts and subjects, given that the analysis of the public sphere in concrete spaces shows its normative limits. Limits appear when one analyses some countries, such as Cuba, that are not governed by the principles of liberal democracy, such as Cuba.