The process of creating a more progressive Chilean constitution took another decisive step on 9 May. Unfortunately, it was a step further away from the demands of the 2019 rebellion, which pushed the conservative government to the brink of collapse and forced it to initiate the constituent process as a way out of the political crisis.
After seventeen months in office, Peruvian President Pedro Castillo was this month deposed by a right-wing parliamentary coup hidden behind the facade of an official and legal impeachment process. The impeachment vote came just hours after Castillo announced that he planned to dissolve Congress, hold new elections, redraft the constitution and place Peru under a state of emergency. His vice-president, Dina Boluarte, has assumed the presidency while Castillo is held by police on charges of “rebellion” and has been ordered to remain in prison for the next eighteen months.
More than 150 million Brazilians went to the polls to elect a president and members of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies on 2 October. The election was a showdown between the two heavyweights of Brazilian politics, pitting former president and leader of the Workers’ Party (PT), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, against the far-right incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro.
After eighteen days of mass protests, an “agreement for peace” was reached between the Ecuadorian government and leading social organisations on 30 June to return stability to the country. The protests were in response to President Guillermo Lasso’s plan to cut fuel subsidies and were led by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), an umbrella organisation of various groups with a history of leading rebellions that have ousted several presidents.
It has been generations in the making but, on 19 June, the first ever leftist president of Colombia was elected. Gustavo Petro defeated his right-wing opponent, Rodolfo Hernández, in a second-round run-off with 50.4 percent of the vote against 47.3 percent. The traditional conservative and centre-left coalitions were both defeated in the first round, winning 24 percent and 4 percent of the vote respectively.
The phrase “under workers’ control” is, unfortunately, not one we are accustomed to hearing. But twenty years ago, ceramics produced in the Zanon factory in Neuquén, Argentina, began to have these words proudly printed on them. The story of the workers behind the factory’s takeover is full of important lessons for revolutionaries.