Populism in Latin America

This essay is an expanded, Spanish language version of my earlier article on Bartra. "La jaula de la condición postmexicana" discusses the concepts of postnationalism and the “post Mexican condition” in Roger Bartra’s deconstruction of homogeneity in Mexican identity and nationalism. Bartra is a well known Mexican sociologist and anthropologist who bases his analyses of Mexican society on postmodern theory. His criticism of Mexican intellectuals and their invention of Mexican identity has made him an important figure in cultural studies. In his discussions of ethnicity, Bartra is critical of attempts to assimilate indigenous communities into a national culture, and is also skeptical of the segregation of indigenous communities based on an equivocal notion of multiculturalism following U.S. models. He cites the Zapatista uprising as an example of the decline of nationalist politics and identity. This article also examines Bartra’s position regarding Mexico’s transition to democracy, in particular his
notion of civil society’s role in political legitimation and his opposition to any populist or nationalist movements. His belief that Mexican society has entered a postnational condition, his postmodern disenchantment, and his distrust of nationalist and populist traditions in Mexico, have shaped his view of the ongoing crises of legitimation.
This article compares Bartra’s views to two other prominent intellectuals in Mexico: Néstor García Canclini and Carlos Monsiváis. This paper concludes that Bartra’s postmodernist standpoint has limited his ability to recognize the negative impacts of globalization and the transnationalization of culture, as well as the rise of the neoliberal
state, on Mexico’s democratic transition. In this extended version I also examine Bartra's role in the 2006 elections in Mexico and his views on populism and nationalism. In particular I criticize his reading of Ernesto Laclau's book On Populist Reason.

La teoría del populismo y el concepto de lo nacional popular han sido utilizados para pensar los problemas políticos latinoamericanos. Las lecturas marxistas críticas de Gramsci incluyeron a lo nacional-popular como un elemento clave, mientras que la teoría del populismo (posmarxista) también se apoyó en Gramsci pero sin tanta atención a este concepto. Este artículo propone una inclusión de la cuestión de lo nacional-popular de inspiración gramsciana como forma de contribuir a una teoría política del populismo capaz de pensar la conformación del sujeto “pueblo” y las estrategias políticas de las fuerzas nacional-populares.

¿Quién es el pueblo en la retórica populista? Para algunos la respuesta parece bastante obvia. Los partidarios dirán sin recato que el pueblo es un movimiento de base que arrebata el poder a las élites corruptas. Los detractores, en cambio, acusarán que se trata de masas irreflexivas organizadas en torno a un líder carismático con tendencias autoritarias. Ambas apelaciones tienen algo en común: afirman que el pueblo es lo que la perspectiva del observador quiere que sea. Y contrabandear juicios de valor así, por la puerta de atrás, resulta problemático si no se proporciona una justificación abierta al debate y la evidencia acerca de nuestros puntos de vista.