For several decades, we have witnessed a global reorganization of capitalism around neoliberal political and economic principles. While these have predominated globally, since the beginning of this century, Latin America has experimented with governmental models aimed at developing alternative forms of social and political organization, with varying degrees of success. In some cases, such as Venezuela, reforms of socialism were proposed, adapted to new global realities, with what was called 21st-century socialism. In others, such as Ecuador and Bolivia, constitutional and institutional reforms were developed, geared towards incorporating community practices, resulting in multicultural and plurinational states with strong experiences of legal pluralism and interlegal systems. In still other cases, such as Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay, popular governments emerged, supported by movements with broad grassroots support and high levels of mobilization. These and other experiences changed the political landscape of the continent at that time and eroded the historical US dominance in the region, whose weakest point was probably the rejection of the FTAA at the Fourth Summit of the Americas, held in 2005 in Mar del Plata. All these popular, national, and anti-neoliberal projects had a significant impact on their respective societies, but also faced concrete limitations—both internal and external—that prevented them from definitively breaking with neoliberal governance and effectively establishing other forms of economic and political systems. Gradually, most of them collapsed, leaving those that survived, especially in the case of Bolivia, in a state of profound isolation. The coup against Manuel Zelaya in 2009, the death of Hugo Chávez Frías in 2013, the displacement of Kirchnerism in 2015, the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff in 2016, and the rise of Lenin Moreno to the presidency of Ecuador in 2017 have brought about a political upheaval in the region.

We are witnessing not only the displacement of these alternative governments, but also a shift towards the most radical and repressive neoliberal options. Mauricio Macri in Argentina, Sebastián Piñera in Chile, Iván Duque in Colombia, and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil are expressions of this new trend.

In this context, neoliberal governance—which never completely ceased in the region—is accelerating and deepening. Some of its distinctive features at this time are:

1. The deepening of different forms of accumulation by dispossession. In addition to privatization and the transfer of public resources to the private sector, there are forms of environmental depredation, linked to megaprojects, which result in a strong displacement and dispossession of large sectors of the population.

2. The role of the Nation-State is weakened, both by its subordination to supranational bodies and by its fragmentation at the local and regional level, with the emergence of relatively autonomous and sovereign local power networks – in many cases linked to criminal networks.

3. In addition to the above, a territorial reorganization of centers and peripheries is taking place, both globally and within states. “Local sovereignties,” which articulate regional political elites, corporate interests, and illegal practices, develop territories of high insecurity and violence, sustained by the principle of “performance” and “profit,” regardless of the high cost they represent for significant sectors of society.

4. Criminal networks are presented as if they were at “war” against the State when, in reality, they can develop and grow extraordinarily thanks to the protection, if not of the State as a whole, at least of fragments of it.

5. Mass media are the vehicle and amplifier of a highly successful system of thought and subjectivity production. A significant portion of political battles are fought within them, without even discussing politics. It is from there that aspirational and disposable objects are constructed; acceptable and punishable feelings are defined.

6. The social system presents itself as tolerant and pluralistic, and it is. This “tolerance” merely “endures” the discomfort of difference without truly engaging with it and, above all, without any interest in any real, substantial differentiation that falls outside the parameters of neoliberal “lightness.” Plurality manifests itself as the “consumer’s” choice, who receives a variety of essentially identical offerings. In this context, differences are recognized, classified, and hierarchized, giving rise to new forms of social, ethnic, and sexual exclusion.

7. The organizational structures are of a network and corporate type. That is, they have a whole-level integration, with relatively autonomous units, which protects the whole and isolates each of its components.

8. In this scenario, violence, both public and private, is on the rise. There is a range of structural violence—neoliberalism deepens social and economic polarization—as well as state and repressive violence—primarily channeled through the so-called “war on terror” and “war on organized crime,” but also through the outright repression of social movements and resistance. Finally, much of the violence presented as private is associated with or permitted by the political apparatus; in other words, it is a form of public-private violence.

9. All these forms of violence generate enormous insecurity and fear across diverse sectors of the population. Neoliberal governments exploit both of these circumstances as strategies for population control. This creates the conditions for a population terrified by all this violence—of which the State is not a mere accomplice—to demand security policies that enable the restriction of rights.

10. For all the above reasons, neoliberal governmentality, which presents itself as democratic, is not only not democratic because it privileges and sustains the rule of the rich, but also because it fosters clearly authoritarian practices that link the sovereign right of death with the disciplining of subjects and the control of life, in an authentic exercise of biopower and selection of life.

In this context, the resistance practices on which our project focuses are revealed as fundamental, since they allow us to oppose and create alternatives to a model that has proven so predatory and yet continues to rise within the region.

These forms of resistance are, by definition, always new. Otherwise, they could not be effective in the face of changing situations like those we are currently experiencing. However, to build something new, it is essential to draw on past experiences, both old and recent. In this sense, collective memories play a crucial role when they help us recover what we have learned from other resistance movements for use in the face of present-day dangers.

Observing resistance movements in Latin America also reveals their persistence and proliferation in the present day. All of them draw upon previous experiences, ranging from ancient and ancestral knowledge to that stemming from more recent political struggles. In this sense, we are interested in observing and analyzing what current resistance practices draw upon and how they do so, from the knowledge of Indigenous peoples to the positive and negative aspects of the most recent experiences of the 21st century.

In the current context of neoliberal resurgence, this Working Group seeks to focus primarily on the role of collective memories as instruments of resistance. We are interested in contributing to such practices, recovering their connection to past experiences. We also aim to establish possible links between national cases and the general process in Latin America, in order to highlight the cross-cutting nature of both neoliberal governance and resistance practices.

This group defines its field of work as the articulation between collective memory processes and resistance practices in the context of current neoliberalism, with the aim of understanding, decoding and influencing the new sociopolitical reality.

We understand collective memory as a social, political, and cultural process and product through which people imbue their personal and collective histories with meaning (Halbwachs 1950; Vázquez 2001; Piper et al. 2013). We begin with the assumption that memory is realized in the present and is inherently linked to the social and political context in which it is produced and to the social position from which its versions unfold. As part of a network of power relations, collective memory practices constitute a field of conflict where versions of the past struggle to establish themselves—versions that become resistant when they manage to challenge the hegemonies of the present and envision other possible futures.

Remembering is about constructing meaning from the past in light of the needs of the present, in order to understand and act against new hegemonies and their violence. It is then that memories can be considered resistant memories, and both practices—memory and resistance—reinforce each other.

We consider resistance in relation to the set of practices, strategies, and institutions that come together in what Foucault called governmentality, understanding it as a complex form of power that “has as its main target the population, as its major form of knowledge political economy, and as its essential technical instrument security apparatuses” (Foucault, 2006, p. 136). It encompasses the practices of a specific power regime, directed by a specific population, including techniques and procedures aimed at shaping people's behavior, and serves as a “grid for analyzing power relations” (Foucault, 2007, p. 192). In this sense, we can clearly speak of a neoliberal governmentality that, while acknowledging the general characteristics mentioned in the previous section, is articulated with the specific features of each national or local reality. At the same time, we take as our starting point the forms of resistance to the different types of power, based on a radical consideration: “politics is, neither more nor less, what is born with the resistance to governmentality” (Foucault, 2006, pp. 450-451).

The research of this Working Group will contribute to understanding the specific characteristics of this form of governmentality in the different countries of the region under investigation, through the analysis of diverse histories of struggle and resistance. We understand resistance as those practices—generally carried out from the margins—lateral and even underground, that seek to build alternatives and, in doing so, erode and divert hegemonic processes. Currently, this resistance is often local. Examples include Indigenous movements and their community practices; organizations defending natural and energy resources, which oppose the penetration of megaprojects and corporations in various regions; and movements for the defense of women's rights and the rights of sexual minorities.

Migrant advocacy organizations, women's rights groups, and others. At first glance, these movements might seem insignificant compared to the extraordinary powers they face. However, they often achieve important victories and a reshaping of politics, despite hegemonic powers, including those of the media.

In its 2019-2012 phase, our working group aims to delve deeper into various processes and experiences of memory and resistance:

We have considered examining community resistance, especially autonomous resistance, in both Indigenous and Afro-descendant communities. The interpersonal relationships that predominate there, with shared pasts, common values, and selective bonds of trust, can develop a sociability and political engagement capable of exposing the procedures of the State and power groups at the micro level, which divert or obstruct state policies. But the most important aspect of such experiences is their capacity to build from the margins of the State, giving rise to new forms of sociability, politics, and novel legal systems that articulate so-called "customs and traditions" with other legal systems in an exercise of interlegality.

From a feminist and critical perspective, this project will explore the various connections between collective memory, gender, and resistance to diverse forms of discrimination, oppression, and violence. Each of these areas reveals different systems of oppression that intersect with the gendered organization of memory. From this perspective, the project will examine memories of experiences within anti-racist and migrant social movements; memories and resistance related to gender identities and non-normative sexualities; and experiences of grassroots feminisms. It will also explore the memories of women's organizations in diverse contexts, fostering dialogue between past and present experiences of resistance, such as the struggles of families of the disappeared; solidarity organizations; women from impoverished neighborhoods; migrants; and peasant women living in territories where the violence inherent in neoliberal globalization is manifested. The process of forming women's spaces or assemblies and their dynamics within organizations and in connection with other organizations and social movements, what memories they articulate in their processes of political action and what impact feminist movements in Latin America have had on their practices.

We propose to delve deeper into the Central American context, investigating the processes of constructing memories about the armed conflict, the impact of war violence on new generations, and the inherited, learned, or newly emerging practices of resistance with which the population resists and acts against the new forces of hegemonic repression and violence. This resistance can be directed against the State and its institutions, or against the new powers represented by corporations, megaprojects, the extractive economy, drug trafficking, or other forms of organized crime such as human trafficking and practices of global capitalism that threaten the survival and sustainability of communities.

We are interested in exploring the participation of diverse subaltern subjects in different spaces of social mobilization and organization, as well as the contributions of critical movements—such as feminism—in political and organizational terms. This field of work can contribute significantly to the conceptualization of feminisms and their potential for resistance against neoliberalism.

All these forms of resistance draw on practices of memory in everyday actions, giving meaning to past experiences and articulating them with the needs of the present. In this sense, we not only construct and analyze memories of resistance, but we also seek to understand how memory is used in the context of current counter-hegemonic struggles. We are interested in understanding the space created by the intersection between a micro-politics of memory and a geopolitics of the administration of the past (Castillejo, 2017), as well as analyzing public memory policies for their political evaluation, that is, asking ourselves to what extent they are functional to neoliberal narratives or, on the contrary, distance themselves from them to align with resistance movements. This will allow us to conduct a critical analysis of government policies and propose alternatives that do not functionalize memory for the currently prevailing order.

We believe that these works can contribute to the conceptualization of current governance, as well as to rethinking new forms of democracy that—by articulating direct and representative practices—open up new possibilities for politics in late capitalism. This involves delving into non-colonial perspectives, based on Latin American social and political experiences and theories, to develop resilient alternatives that contribute to critical thinking.

Analyzing the experiences described, which transcend the state and partisan logics of representative democracy, we propose to investigate to what extent this transcendence is irreversible or whether it is possible to articulate autonomous, non-partisan, horizontal, and network-based experiences with the formal political system. The possibility, or impossibility, of such articulation, which we have been developing since the previous stage of this Working Group, is part of a broad debate involving a growing number of autonomous experiences, as well as older theoretical reflections that have been continually reformulated (Gasparello, 2018a, 2018b; 2016a; Holloway, 2004; Zibecchi, 2003; Gargallo, 2012; Toledo and Ortíz, 2012).

This involves analyzing the experiences offered by different modes of action, organization, and relationship with the political system to confront violence and overcome fear as an instrument of social control. In other words, forms of political participation and organization that run counter to the accumulation and concentration trends of late capitalism.