The common struggles of the left and identity – 05/04/2023 – Maria Hermínia Tavares

Absolutely, Rafael Correa, who governed Ecuador from 2007 to 2017, maintained in an interview with this Sheet, published last Monday (3), that the Latin American left is wrong to place identity and moral issues at the center of their agenda, because it would take the focus away from the essential – the fight against poverty and inequality. The idea is not new. In reality, Correa echoes many others, shared by some progressives in the developed North.

Critics maintain that the emphasis on egalitarian demands from specific groups (women, LGBTQUIA+, victims of discrimination based on their color or nationality) facilitates the electoral mobilization of the poorest workers — and whites — by right-wing populist leaders. This is, for example, the thesis of the book “The Progressive of Yesterday and Tomorrow” (Companhia das Letras, 2018) by Professor Mark Lilla, from Columbia University, himself a progressive and card-carrying voter of the Democratic Party.

Back to Correa.

Having moved with ease from Marxism to populism, the former Ecuadorian president errs in the diagnosis and in the medicine he prescribes. It is false that the advocacy of those groups is central to leftist parties in the region — except for the coalition government partners in Chile. On the contrary, left-wing associations resist doing so, as in Brazil, where the theme moves in leaps and bounds.

It doesn’t seem possible to seriously combat poverty and inequality without understanding that both are experienced in the plural. In other words, they do not result only from the inequitable distribution of income and assets —and much less are resolved solely on this level. After all, it is bordering on platitude to state that segments targeted by so-called identity policies are generally overrepresented in the poorest sections of the population and suffer discrimination that hinders, when not inhibits, the progress of its members.

At heart, such policies are nothing more than attempts to give everyone equal treatment and due respect—two principles that lie at the heart of the notion of citizenship.

On the other hand, there is no doubt that they are more “difficult” rights to recognize, as they tend to collide with worldviews, private values, intimate feelings. This is why they are so easily caricatured by the extreme civil and religious right, who believe their existence would threaten the way of life of ordinary citizens.

In this way, this rights agenda challenges the ability of progressives who embrace it to associate it with the traditional agenda of economic equity — and to figure out how to talk about it with those who are refractory to it.

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