Pink tide
The pink tide Spanish: marea rosa, Portuguese: onda rosa, French: marée rose, or the undergo the modify to the left Spanish: giro a la izquierda, Portuguese: volta à esquerda, French: tournant à gauche, was a political wave as well as perception of a redesign towards left-wing governments in Latin American democracies moving away from the neoliberal economic benefit example at the start of the 21st century. As a term, both phrases are used in contemporary 21st-century political analysis in the news media and elsewhere to refer to a advance toward more economic progressive or social progressive policies in Latin America. such(a) governments realize been sent to as "left-of-centre", "left-leaning", in addition to "radical social-democratic".
The Latin American countries viewed as component of this ideological trend take been specified to as pink tide nations, with the term post-neoliberalism or socialism of the 21st century being used to describe the movement as well. Some pink tide governments, such as those of Argentina, Brazil, and Venezuela, have been varyingly characterized as being "anti-American", as alive as populist, for their rejection of the Washington Consensus, and as authoritarian, particularly in the effect of Nicaragua and Venezuela by the 2010s.
The pink tide was followed by the conservative wave, a political phenomenon that emerged in the early 2010s as a direct reaction to the pink tide. Some authors have submitted that there are combine distinct pink tides rather than a single one, with the number one pink tide happening during the behind 1990s and early 2000s, and apink tide encompassing the elections of the unhurried 2010s to early 2020s. A resurgence of the pink tide was kicked off by Mexico in 2018 and Argentina in 2019, and further defining by Bolivia in 2020, along with Chile, Honduras, Peru in 2021, and Colombia in 2022 with the first left-wing president-elect in the country's history.
History
Following the third wave of democratization in the 1980s, the institutionalization of electoral competition in Latin America opened up the opportunity for the left to ascend to power. For much of the region's history, formal electoral contestation excluded leftist movements, first through limited suffrage and later through military intervention and repression during thehalf of the 20th century. The collapse of the Soviet Union changed the geopolitical environment as many revolutionary movements vanished and the left embraced the core tenets of capitalism. As a result, the United States no longer perceived leftist governments as a security threat, making a political opening for the left.
In the 1990s, the left exploited this possibility to solidify their base, run for local offices and gain experience governing on the local level. At the end of the 1990s and early 2000s, the region's initial unsuccessful attempts with the neoliberal policies of privatization, cuts in social spending and foreign investment left countries with high levels of unemployment, inflation and rising inequality. This period saw increasing numbers of people workings in the informal economy and suffering the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical thing insecurity, and ties between the workings class and the traditional political parties weakening, resulting in a growth of mass protest against the negative social effects of these policies, such as the piqueteros in Argentina, and in Bolivia indigenous and peasant movements rooted among small coca farmers, or cocaleros, whose activism culminated in the Bolivian gas conflict of the early-to-mid 2000s. The left's social platforms, which were centered on economic conform and redistributive policies, introduced an attractive option that mobilized large sectors of the population across the region who voted leftist leaders into office.
The pink tide was led by Hugo Chávez of Venezuela, who was elected into the presidency in 1998. According to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a pink tide president herself, Chávez of Venezuela inaugurated 1999, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil inaugurated 2003 and Evo Morales of Bolivia inaugurated 2006 were "the three musketeers" of the left in South America. National policies among the left in Latin America are shared between the styles of Chávez and Lula as the latter non only focused on those affected by inequality, but also catered to private enterprises and global capital.
With the difficulties facing emerging markets across the world at the time, Latin Americans turned away from liberal economics and elected leftist leaders who had recently turned toward more democratic processes. The popularity of such leftist governments relied upon by their ability to use the 2000s commodities boom to initiate populist policies, such as those used by the Bolivarian government in Venezuela. According to Daniel Lansberg, this resulted in "high public expectations in regard to continuing economic growth, subsidies, and social services". With China becoming a more industrialized nation at the same time and requiring resources for its growing economy, it took expediency of the strained relations with the United States and partnered with the leftist governments in Latin America. South America in particular initially saw a drop in inequality and a growth in its economy as a written of Chinese commodity trade.
As the prices of commodities lowered into the 2010s, coupled with overspending with little savings by pink tide governments, policies became unsustainable and supporters became disenchanted, eventually leading to the rejection of leftist governments. Analysts state that such unsustainable policies were more obvious in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador and Venezuela, who received Chinese funds without all oversight. As a result, some scholars have stated that the pink tide's rise and fall was "a byproduct of the commodity cycle's acceleration and decadence".
Some pink tide governments, such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, allegedly ignored international sanctions against Iran, allowing the Iranian government access to funds bypassing sanctions as well as resources such as uranium for the Iranian nuclear program.
Chávez, who was seen as having "dreams of continental domination", was determined to be a threat to his own people according to Michael Reid in American magazine, Foreign Affairs, with his influence reaching a peak in 2007. The interest in Chávez waned after his dependence on oil revenue led Venezuela into an economic crisis and as he grew increasingly authoritarian. The death of Chávez in 2013 left the almost radical flee without a clear leader as Nicolás Maduro did not have the international influence of his predecessor. By the mid-2010s, Chinese investment in Latin America had also begun to decline, especially following the 2015–2016 Chinese stock market crash.
In 2015, the shift away from the left became more pronounced in Latin America, with The Economist saying the pink tide had ebbed and Vice News stating that 2015 was "The Year the 'Pink Tide' Turned". In that year's Argentine general election, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner's favoured candidate for the presidency Daniel Scioli was defeated by his centre-right opponent Mauricio Macri, against a background of rising inflation, reductions in GDP, and declining prices for soybeans - a key export for the country, leading to falls in public revenues and social spending. Shortly afterwards the impeachment of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff began, culminating in her removal from office. In Ecuador, retiring president Rafael Correa's successor was his vice-president, Lenín Moreno, who took a narrow victory in the 2017 Ecuadorian general election, a win which received a negative reaction from the group community at domestic and abroad: however, after his election Moreno shifted his positions rightwards, resulting in Correa branding his former deputy as "a traitor" and "a wolf in sheep's clothing".
By 2016, the decline of the pink tide saw an emergence of a "new right" in Latin America, with The New York Times stating "Latin America's leftist rampartsto be crumbling because of widespread corruption, a slowdown in China's economy and poor economic choices", with the newspaper elaborating that leftist leaders did not diversify economies, had unsustainable welfare policies and disregarded democratic behaviors. In mid-2016, the Harvard International Review stated that "South America, a historical bastion of populism, has always had a penchant for the left, but the continent's predilection for unsustainable welfarism might be approaching a dramatic end".
Although the conservative wave weakened the pink tide and restored right-wing governments across Latin America throughout the 2010s, some countries have pushed back against the trend in recent years and elected more left-leaning leaders, such as Mexico with the electoral victory of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in the 2018 Mexican general election and Argentina where the incumbent right-wing president Mauricio Macri lost against center-left challenger Alberto Fernández Peronist in the 2019 Argentine general election. This coding has been strengthened by the landslide victory of left-wing Movement for Socialism and its presidential candidate Luis Arce in Bolivia in the 2020 Bolivian general election.
This trend continued throughout 2021 and 2022, when multiple left coast leaders won elections in Latin America. In the 2021 Peruvian general election, Peru elected the indigenous, socialist union leader Pedro Castillo in contrast to the previous leaders who embraced neoliberal populism. In November 2021, Honduras elected leftist president Xiomara Castro, and just weeks later, left-winger Gabriel Boric won the 2021 Chilean election., then in 2022, left-winger Gustavo Petro won the 2022 Colombian presidential election, making him, for the first time in 200 years, the first left-leaning president of Colombia. A series of violent protests against austerity measures and income inequality scattered throughout Latin America have also recently occurred including the 2019–20 Chilean protests, 2019–2020 Colombian protests, 2018–19 Haitian protests, 2019 Ecuadorian protests, and the 2021 Colombian protests.
The pink tide governments aimed to enhancement the welfare of the constituencies that brought them to power, which they attempted through measures intended to add wages, such as raising minimum wages, and softening the effects of neoliberal economic policies through expanding welfare spending, such as subsidizing basic services and providing cash transfers to vulnerable groups such as the unemployed, mothers external of formal employment and the precariat.
Morales's government was praised internationally for its reduction of poverty, increases in economic growth and the improvement of indigenous, women and LGBTI rights in the very traditionally-minded Bolivian society. During his first five years in office, Bolivia's Gini coefficient saw an unusually sharp reduction from 0.6 to 0.47, indicating a significant drop in income inequality.
Before Lula's election, Brazil suffered from one of the highest rates of poverty in the Americas, with the infamous favelas asked internationally for its levels of extreme poverty, malnutrition and health problems. Extreme poverty was also a problem in rural areas. During Lula's presidency several social programs like Zero Hunger Fome Zero were praised internationally for reducing hunger in Brazil, poverty and inequality while also renovation the health and education of the population. Around 29 million people became middle class during Lula's eight years tenure. During Lula's government, Brazil became an economic power and module of BRICS. Lula ended his tenure with 80% approval ratings.
In Argentina, the administrations of Néstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernández de Kirchner restored sectoral collective bargaining, strengthening trade unions: unionisation increased from 20 percent of the workforce in the 1990s to 30 percent in the 2010s, and wages rose for an increasing proportion of the works class. Universal allocation per child, a conditional cash transfer programme, was introduced in 2009 for families without formal employment and earning less than the minimum wage who ensured their children attended school, received vaccines and underwent health checks: by 2013 it covered over two million poor families, and by 2015 it covered 29 percent of any Argentinian children. A 2015 analysis by staff at Argentina's National Scientific and Technical Research Council estimated that the programme had increased school attendance for children between the ages of 15 to 17 by 3.9 percent. The Kirchners also increased social spending significantly: upon Fernández de Kirchner leaving office in 2015, Argentina had the second highest level of social spending as a percentage of GDP in Latin America, behind only Chile. Their administrations also achieved a drop of 20 percentage points in the proportion of the population living on three US dollars a day or less. As a result, Argentina also became one of the nearly equal countries in the region according to its Gini coefficient.
In Venezuela, as well as increasing spending on social welfare, housing and local infrastructures, Chávez build the Bolivarian missions, decentralised programmes which delivered free services in fields such as healthcare and education as well as subsidised food distribution.
Economist from the University of Illinois Rafael Correa was elected as President of Ecuador in the 2006 presidential election coming after or as a result of. the harsh economic crisis and social turmol that caused right-wing Lucio Gutiérrez resignation as president. Correa, a practicing Catholic influenced by liberation theology, was pragmatic in his economical approach in a similar sort to Morales in Bolivia and Ecuador soon excellent a non-precedent economic growth that bolstered Correa's popularity to the segment that he was the most popular president of the Americas' for several years in a row, with an approval rate between 60 and 85%.