THIRTEEN years ago, I saw for the first time the film The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. It documents, in fly-on-the-wall fashion, not only the 2002 US-backed coup d’etat against the Chavez government, but also its defeat by the massed hands of Venezuelans who came onto the streets to oppose it.

A year later, I was on a plane to Caracas, joining a solidarity delegation of trade unionists and activists to witness first hand the Bolivarian revolution being made in Venezuela. There were two central lessons of that experience.

First, solidarity matters. The revolution in public services, poverty reduction, and education alongside demonstrations for the government — unthinkable in Britain as politicians turned to the slash-and-burn logic of austerity — bore little relation to the headlines at home about anti-democratic and dictatorial strongmen.

Second, it was important to unpick that layer of half-truths, distortions and smears because the British left had so much to learn from the struggle not only in Venezuela but across the region.

New left governments in Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina had also been delivered on a “pink tide” of social movements to shake off the fetters imposed by the US State Department and institutions like the IMF, often by gun barrel or police baton. 

There was much to learn from their programmes in government, their experience of winning power through mass mobilisation and movement-building, and the opposition they faced not only from their own coup-mongering domestic elite, but from US-dominated international institutions and the CIA.

Today, it’s more vital than ever that we offer our solidarity to established left governments, as in Venezuela and Cuba, and to the left in Brazil and Ecuador who are fighting to return to power, often in the face of heavy repression. 

That work must also extend to new progressive governments and the movements that support them in Peru, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia and Honduras.

Take Peru. Alberto Fujimori is a corrupt former president responsible for committing serial crimes against humanity while in office. His daughter, political inheritor and right-wing candidate in the 2020 presidential election, Keiko Fujimori, embarked on a protracted “lawfare” campaign to steal the election from the socialist schoolteacher, Pedro Castillo, who won narrowly with 50.13 per cent of the vote. 

The lawfare campaign was defeated but since Castillo’s election, the opposition parties — who have a majority in the parliament — have repeatedly vetoed his cabinet appointments, alongside the programme he was elected on, while senior military officers have been caught plotting a coup d’etat.

We’ve seen similar battles before in the lawfare waged in Ecuador, Brazil and Bolivia, including through the ousting of Dilma Rousseff as president of Brazil and Lula’s jailing and barring from running last time around.

We should be wary of these tactics being used against new progressive governments across the region and be ready to offer our solidarity when they are. 

The renewed pink tide faces many challenges, but it’s also a beacon of light — offering hope of an alternative to the extreme poverty, war, and climate crisis created by neoliberalism, and a guide in our own struggle for a better world. Our solidarity is vital. 

Sam Browse is an activist with the Labour Friends of Latin America. Follow them at www.facebook.com/LabourFriendsofProgressiveLatinAmerica and twitter.com/labourfplam.