Jorge Castañeda's article on the left and populism

I finally got around to reading the Jorge Castañeda's article in Foreign Affairs, which I think is thought provoking and worth reading, but still incomplete in its analysis of the “two lefts” in Latin America.

Here is Castañeda’s definition of “left”:

“that current of thought, politics, and policy that stresses social improvements over macroeconomic orthodoxy, egalitarian distribution of wealth over its creation, sovereignty over international cooperation, democracy (at least when in opposition, if not necessarily once in power) over governmental effectiveness.”

Is it analytically useful to put Perón in the same category as Hugo Chávez? Or, for that matter, to label Néstor Kirchner as an unrepentant leftist? He argues that populists are ardent anti-Communists, which fits Perón but not Chávez (I am not sure about Kirchner). We are all familiar with Chávez, but is López Obrador in Mexico really the boogeyman that Castañeda makes him out to be, i.e. that he “loves power more than democracy, and…will fight to keep it at great cost”?

I think Castañeda conflates populism and “leftism,” which bring us back to the problem of over-simplifying political realities in Latin America. It is more useful to argue that there are indeed two strands of the left in the region, but that populism (and corporatism) is also present, such that not all leaders can easily be categorized as leftist. As political scientists, we need to dust off these old concepts, which were so prevalent in the 1970s, and rethink them. It would be a great idea for an article (if only I had the time).