The battle in Latin America is getting tough. The turning point, as Lula da Silva explained, occurred in 2009, when Barack Obama took office: “In his relationship with Brazil, George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice were much more Democrats than Obama and Hillary Clinton.” On June 28, 2009, six months after Obama’s inauguration, Obama supported the military coup in Honduras. Subsequently, various intervention and/or destabilization strategies were launched in various countries to support local allied oligarchies in the United States.

The coups have not disappeared, they have only been transformed and disguised with different techniques: Media oligopolies controlled by the Western capital media and local oligarchies extend information poisoning; the United States imposes economic sanctions or develops strategies to boycott the economy with the local oligarchy; at the same time, it finances social movements and NGOs, co-opts and trains its employees to promote the fight against government and revolt.

All attempts at rebellion and “revolution” in Latin America are right-wing. All these false revolutions driven by “civil society” are supported by entrepreneurs, bankers, large landowners, right-wing politicians and US governments. Paradigmatic examples are Bolivia 2008, Venezuela 2013 and Nicaragua 2018. Each with its own characteristics, but there is never a demand to put the financial resources of the State at the service of the people, to increase social spending or to expropriate the lands of the large landowners to distribute them among the poor peasants.

Meanwhile, in 2009 there was a coup attempt in Ecuador and in 2012 there was an institutional coup d'état in Paraguay. In 2016, an institutional coup d’état took place in Brazil against President Dilma Rousseff, Brazil. For decades, state-owned appliances in Latin America have been in the hands of oligarchies. The first media criminalise leftist politicians and then legal proceedings are being conducted against them. They have in view the leaders who can win the elections. The coup d'état against Rousseff would be complicated if Lula were to stand for the elections and, therefore, the judicial proceedings against him. The reason for the judicial persecution against Rafael Correa is similar.

The importance of leadership in Latin America is enormous. In Western countries, democratic systems are highly institutionalised and technocratic, allowing the system to function without government or with poor leaders, as Belgium and Italy have demonstrated for years. As Correa says, institutions are becoming stronger, leadership is less important and vice versa. In Latin America there is a great institutional weakness, so strong leadership can replace weak institutionalization and build genuine institutionalization processes. It's not just any kind of work. It's the most unequal continent in the world in economics. Economic, media and political power is concentrated in a few elites at the service of the United States and in the face of this, the policy of social justice and the construction of polarized institutionalization.

These are the challenges faced by Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico. If it is capable of implementing progressive policies and boosting institutionalization, even if it is done moderately, it will polarize it and against that the oligarchs tend to take the path of economic war, the sicarians (as in Colombia) and the false revolutions. The struggle will be tough.