As Latin America Turns Right, Popular Movements are Fighting Back – with Gabriel Hetland

Under great pressure from the US, Latin America is rapidly turning Right. This puts gains won by the Left and social movements – in areas such as climate, labor rights, land reform, gender equality, and ethnic and racial inclusion – under grave threat. Against great odds, movements and progressive forces in Venezuela, Bolivia, Colombia, and beyond are fighting back, with important lessons for leftists in New York City and elsewhere.

Gabriel Hetland is a SUNY professor exploring democracy, social movements, and inequality in Latin America and the United States. His award-winning book, Democracy on the Ground, draws on fieldwork in Venezuela and Bolivia to examine when ordinary people can exercise meaningful political power. He has written on Venezuelan politics, labor movements, participatory democracy, and climate justice, and has appeared on Democracy Now!, NPR, the BBC, and Al Jazeera. Hetland is an active public scholar whose current work examines both the promise and failures of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution and the possibilities for linking decarbonization, social justice, and democratic renewal. Jacobin published two of his essays urging Mamdani to leverage South American municipal socialism innovations.
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