kidnapping

Between the mid-1980s and the early 1990s, amid the terminal crisis and collapse of the so-called European socialist bloc, the era of struggle that had begun following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution came to a close in Latin America. A new phase began, during which the leftist and progressive social and political organizations and movements of the subcontinent went through phases of accumulation and de-accumulation of forces.

Phases of accumulation

From 1985 to 1998, these movements accumulated enough social power to topple neoliberal governments and enough political power to secure seats in local governments and national legislatures, but not enough to take control of the national government.

From 1998 to 2009, they accumulated enough social and political power to elect—and in some countries, to re-elect several times—leftist or progressive governments.

Phases of de-accumulation

From 2009 to 2012, there were no electoral defeats for leftist or progressive governments, but there were coups d’état of a “new type” in the “weakest links in the chain”: Honduras and Paraguay.

In 2013 and 2014, there were no electoral defeats, but the margin by which the left retained power in Venezuela and El Salvador was reduced to a bare minimum.

From 2015 to 2019, electoral defeats in Argentina, El Salvador, and Uruguay, coups of a “new type” in Brazil and Bolivia, along with Lenín Moreno’s betrayal in Ecuador, broke six of the “strongest links in the chain,” and the siege against Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba intensified.

Phase of partial recovery and subsequent acute loss of strength

Following the election of Andrés Manuel López Obrador as President of Mexico in 2018 and Alberto Fernández in Argentina in 2019 at the end of the phase of decline, between 2020 and 2024, the left and/or progressive movements regained power in Bolivia, Honduras, Brazil, and Uruguay, held power in Chile, Colombia, and Guatemala, and lost it again in Chile and Honduras in November and December 2025, respectively. In January 2026, President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores were kidnapped by the US military and are currently being held illegally in that country.

Predominant factors in the phases of accumulation (1985–1998 and 1998–2009)

1. The legacy of the historical accumulation of popular struggles, particularly during the period ushered in by the Cuban Revolution in which other revolutionary or reformist processes did not succeed or survive, contributed to opening up spaces for legal struggle.
2. The rejection of the genocidal repression traditionally employed against the peoples of the region forced the United States and its Latin American allies to seek less brutal forms of domination.
3. The momentum of popular movements in full swing brings into the political and electoral struggle social sectors that previously lacked the consciousness, motivation, or conditions to participate in it.
4. The protest vote against neoliberal governments by broad sectors of the population that were not politically conscious could nonetheless be turned against leftist and progressive forces if they failed to meet their expectations, whether fair or unfair, rational or irrational.

Predominant factors in the de-accumulation phases from 2009 onward

1. Historical accumulation depreciates. As time passes, with the superseding of recent realities, the emergence of new social expectations and demands – in some cases due to the fulfillment and in others due to the unfulfillment of previous ones – and the shortcomings and errors of the left and progressivism, there is a relativization or devaluation of the historical legacy.
2. The brutal repression of the past was replaced by “full-spectrum destabilization” against progressive and left-wing governments.
3. Due to their dissatisfaction with left-wing or progressive governments over the failure to fulfill their economic and social promises – due to the “constraints” of the system, pressure from the powers that be, and shifts toward the “center” to broaden their electoral base – a large part of the popular social movements that had provided decisive support in earlier phases began to exercise punitive abstention against them.
4. Social sectors without political ties or preferences, which in an earlier phase cast their protest votes against neoliberal parties, began to cast them against the left and progressivism.

​​With the exception of Uruguay, the overthrow, defeat, or betrayal of left governments was followed by the criminalization, prosecution, and, in many cases, imprisonment of their leaders, most notably Lula in Brazil.

The transformative processes with the greatest capacity to remain in power have been those in Venezuela and Nicaragua, which set out to and succeeded in establishing control over all the institutions of state. It is this concentration of power that has guaranteed the survival of the Cuban Revolution over six and a half decades. However, in Venezuela and Nicaragua there is a contradiction between the formally prevailing liberal/bourgeois system and the actually prevailing institutional system, with characteristics of state socialism, in which a political party – not the only one, but certainly the dominant one – monopolizes control of the four branches of government, the armed forces, and the security services.

The incompatibility between the formally existing institutional system and the institutional system actually in place in Venezuela and Nicaragua remained latent as long as the leaders of their respective transformative processes enjoyed widespread popularity and maintained high levels of approval, or raised expectations regarding the fulfillment of social needs and interests. However, this concentration of power has both a positive and a negative aspect:

• The positive aspect is that it has been decisive in resisting the policy of encroachment, economic blockade, and political isolation that has affected Cuba since the triumph of its Revolution (1959), Nicaragua during the two periods of FSLN rule (1979–1990) and (2006 to the present), and Venezuela since the first term of Hugo Chávez’s government (beginning in 1999).

• The negative aspect is that it distorts the relationship between the end and the means. The end was to develop a national project that would satisfy society’s material and spiritual needs and aspirations, and the means was to establish a power capable of guaranteeing that national project. The distortion consists in continuing to exercise power when one no longer has the capacity to satisfy society’s needs and aspirations, either because one failed to develop that capacity or because it was lost.

Given that external and/or internal forces are attempting to undermine or overthrow the established institutional systems in these countries, and given that neither of them has managed to make progress in building a new society – with this project becoming unattainable in the form and substance originally envisioned – the defense of power becomes an end in itself.

When evaluating any process of progressive social reform or revolutionary social transformation, it is necessary to consider the extent to which it has met or failed to meet its historical goals. In cases of failure to meet these goals, one must take into account the adverse and external factors that have influenced this outcome. However, it cannot be ignored that, even if resulting from such factors, the failure to meet historical goals erodes these processes. In essence, every transformative process is compelled to achieve its historical goals within a timeframe no longer than the moment society perceives it as an “eternal uphill battle.”

The Venezuela Case: Between Reality and Utopia

The kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores by the US military – along with the questions of how such an operation could have been carried out (no less than inside the headquarters of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces!), how the kidnappers knew where they would be sleeping that night, and that they were indeed there, why there was no response, which had been assured would occur in the event of any aggression against Venezuela, and, on top of all that, that the outcome is a “normalization of relations” with the aggressor power agreed upon by the very government that Maduro headed – reveals the fragility of revolutionary processes that claim to have a solid base of popular power, but events like this reveal that, in reality, they lack it.

Twenty-seven years and five months after the start of the Bolivarian Revolution – the first link in a chain of elections and re-elections of leftist and progressive governments that has become increasingly fragmented since 2009–2019 and is now practically extinct – it is time to face reality and assess to what extent the parties, movements, fronts, or coalitions that have held and/or currently hold power in their respective countries are aware of the true relationship between their rhetorical utopias and their political realities.

Between every emancipatory utopia and its corresponding reality lies a “missing link.” The “missing link” between utopia and reality creates a “gap” between the project of revolutionary social transformation or progressive social reform and the transformative or reformist process intended to bring it about. The danger lies in failing to recognize the cumulative widening of the “gap” between utopia and reality and clinging to a utopia as the foundation of a process of revolutionary social transformation or progressive social reform that is increasingly deviating from and becoming disconnected from it.

The disconnect between utopia and reality has consequences, including most notably: the conversion of utopia into dogma; the social alienation that every reformist or revolutionary process is meant to eradicate; the divergence of interests and direction between “leaders” and “followers”; the drift of the process toward disillusionment and failure; and, in well-known historical experiences, such as that of the USSR (to mention only the most prominent), the absolute empowerment of a caste that creates and defends its own political and economic interests, leading to the negation of utopia: from the very pinnacle of “power” itself!

Utopia must be systematically grounded in reality through the active, genuine, and effective participation of society, and never reaffirmed or reformed from “above.” This reevaluation and renewal led by society is the only way to ensure that utopia not only serves as a guide, as Galeano says, but also serves to walk the path that turns it into a political, economic, and social reality that is as close as possible to the vision itself.

Based on experiences and studies conducted in previous decades, since the beginning of the chain of elections and re-elections of leftist and progressive governments in Latin America, attention has focused on denouncing media warfare, cognitive warfare, cultural warfare, and fourth- and fifth-generation warfare. In recent years, Caracas has been the main venue for events and the most active platform for denouncing this form of counterrevolutionary action. These analyses and denunciations must continue “at full speed,” but we must also recognize and accept that this is not the only threat facing leftist and progressive governments and political forces.

All forms of external and internal counterrevolutionary activity must be analyzed and combated, but with the knowledge and understanding that this is not the only battlefront. Another front, just as important or even more so, is the recognition and eradication of our own weaknesses and errors, which make transformative and/or revolutionary processes vulnerable to enemy strategies and tactics. What has happened in Venezuela is proof of this omission: plenty of denunciation of the enemy and little to no self-reflection.

The moral of the story is that yes, we must denounce and unmask the enemy. But no, we cannot focus attention on denouncing the enemy at the expense of recognizing and eradicating our own weaknesses and mistakes.

Roberto Regalado is a Cuban political scientist and PhD in Philosophy. He is a professor at the Center for Hemispheric and U.S. Studies at the University of Havana (CEHSEU) and a member of the Historical and Social Literature Section of the National Union of Cuban Writers and Artists.

He is the author of, among other essays, Latin America Between Centuries: Domination, Crisis, Social Struggle, and Political Alternatives of the Left (2006), Encounters and Disagreements of the Latin American Left: A View from the São Paulo Forum (2008), The Latin American Left in Government: Alternative or Recycling? (2012), and numerous articles in specialized journals.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

Source: Blog América