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Writer's pictureGabriel Silvestre and Marilín López Fittipaldi

New municipalism and the Latin American left

The third edition of the Fearless Cities summit was held in the Argentinean city of Rosario between 21 and 23 October 2022. This was the first in-person meeting since the inaugural event held in Barcelona in 2017 that brought together a new generation of politicians, activists, NGOs and scholars among others to discuss the contours and direction of the nascent ‘global municipalism movement’. Since then, regional chapters took place, and a second online summit was organised in 2021.


The trajectory of this movement changed considerably since the 2017 ‘coming out’ event held in the aftermath of the Spanish ‘wave’ of local ‘cities of change’ and street protests across the globe. Looking at this trajectory from Latin America allows an analysis of how far the new municipalist movement has been articulated from and the extent to which it has been capable of delivering meaningful change within the turbulent politics in the region in the past decade. Just as a new ‘Pink Tide’ of Latin American left-wing governments has consolidated in recent years, it is also important to question how the movement positions itself in relation to broader changes in national politics.


A Latin American municipalism wave?


New municipalism can be understood as the political expression of a movement starting outside formal institutions led by social movements, popular collectives, and citizens to build an alternative to traditional politics that respond to urban precarity, inequality, direct participation and more autonomy in building collective projects for the common good.

It has been broadly framed as the outcome of social protests and mobilisations that marked the late 2000s and early 2010s in many cities around the world (e.g. Arab Spring, Spain’s Indignados, Occupy, Chile’s students protests, Syntagma Square, Gezi Park, Brazil’s 2013 manifestations, among others) expressing distrust in the dominant politico-economic order. Despite the varied contexts in which these demonstrations emerged, the challenge was then, as scholars Dikeç and Swyngedouw recognised (2017), “to move from outbursts of indignation to the slow process of sustained transformative strategies” where a new urban politics could be “imagined, practised and universalized.”


In a number of cases this process was actually quite meteoric with movements deciding to form a political alternative and run for elections. In Spain, citizen-led platforms and new political parties were elected in several cities and to the national government in 2015. Barcelona en Comú has since been at the forefront of such movement – no less after the demise of many other experiences in the following years – while articulating an internationalist agenda with other like-minded experiences that resulted in the first Fearless Cities summit in 2017. On stage with Barcelona mayor Ada Colau in the opening of that event were key figures of the emerging ‘international municipalist network’, including representatives of three recently formed Latin American electoral platforms that had varied degrees of success. Their trajectories illustrate how municipalism is being shaped in the region.


A group of politicians
Fearless Cities summit 2017 with Barcelona mayor Ada Colau at the centre (in red) with Áurea Carolina and Bella Gonçalves from Muitas (first from right and second from left), Caren Tepp from Ciudad Futura (second from right) and Jorge Sharp from Valparaíso Ciudadano (fourth from right) | Diario de Madrid CC BY 4.0


Ciudad Futura is a movement party established in Rosario, Argentina’s third largest city. It was one of the most mature experiences when the municipalist network was formed, having its origins in two separate movements active in impoverished peripheries of Rosario for more than a decade. The recent trajectory of autonomist movements in Argentina has a longer precedent than most other municipalist articulations, being born out of the deep economic and social crisis that hit the country following the 2001 recession and riots. After consolidating programmes in education, culture and food security, it decided to occupy institutional space to strengthen their work following an ill-fated speculative project for a gated community that attempted to evict the movement’s cooperative dairy farm and popular settlements nearby. Since 2013 when it ran for seats in the City Hall it has grown to become the party with the largest representation in the city hall.


Ciudad Futura’s assembly meeting at their cooperative cultural centre Distrito Sie7e | Ciudad Futura.

The second example is led by Mayor Jorge Sharp from Valparaíso, the main city in Chile’s second largest metropolitan agglomeration. A leader of local student movements, Sharp was selected to represent the independent citizen-led campaign Valparaíso Ciudadano in running for office in their first attempt. The mobilisation grew out of popular dissatisfaction catalysed by a great fire that devastated part of the city in 2013. Citizens debated and co-designed a government programme in open meetings to which independent candidatures, mostly from existing movements, could postulate to lead in the campaign. Elected to the mayoral office in 2016, Sharp later defected from the group and was re-elected while creating the municipalist platform Territorios en Red.


Finally, Muitas – as it was originally named before changing to Gabinetona – emerged from the street protests in Belo Horizonte, Brazil’s third largest metropolitan area, that mirrored the country’s demonstrations in June 2013. In the years that followed participants from different autonomous coletivos (collectives), and social movements articulated the occupation of government buildings and added greater pressure to rarefied participatory channels. In 2016, the mobilisation decided to ‘occupy politics’ and created the feminist, anti-racist and pro-LGBTQ+ platform Muitas to run to local elections resulting in two council seats. The platform was hosted within a minor leftist party and has since elected a regional and national MP while holding the two seats in the city hall.


Group of female politicians making solidarity signs
Gabinetona representatives. From left: MP Áurea Carolina, former city councillor Cida Falabella, councillor Bella Gonçalves and regional MP Andréia de Jesus | Tamás Gontijo Bodolay.

The three experiences constitute some of the main references of new municipalism in Latin America. They have been active within the Fearless Cities network and last October's event was aimed at demonstrating the growth of the movement in the region. Nevertheless, their reach is restricted by their localist activism, for being outside the major urban centres of their respective countries and by the volatile politics at the national level. Therefore, it is premature to state that there has been a ‘wave’ of municipalism platforms in Latin America, as examples are few, but the agenda discussed last October give a sense of the content of the Latin American movement.


The Fearless Cities 2022 summit


The 2022 Fearless Cities summit in Rosario was organised by Ciudad Futura and was the culmination of their ascendancy as a political alternative in the city. According to official figures, it attracted 15,000 participants and brought over 100 speakers known for their political activism, most notably from within Latin America. It was held over three days and delivered talks, workshops, cultural events and fairs in different locations in Central Rosario in addition to guided visits to community activities run by Ciudad Futura, cooperatives and initiatives from other social movements. Key figures from Barcelona en Comú – such as Mayor de Ada Colau – and from the Rosa-Luxemburg Foundation sent recorded videos.



Cultural events in a park
Cultural events held in Independencia Park, Rosario | Marilín Lopez Fittipaldi.

The opening act had the presence of representatives from Ciudad Futura, Barcelona en Comú, Valparaiso, Belo Horizonte and from the Argentinean national government. The main thread of the interventions was how each context responded to a scenario of “inter-related crisis at multiple scales” (Júlia Miralles, Barcelona en Comú), from “a new round of neoliberal adjustment to the construction of far-right alternatives that do not resemble old forms” (Rodrigo Ruiz, Valparaiso). New municipalism must respond then, according to Juan Monteverde from Ciudad Futura, to the construction of popular power and direct democracy while crossing the boundaries on three fronts: between countries, ideological and among parties, and between institutions and people.



Evening political talk outside
Opening talk: Latin America from fear to hope. Seated from left: Pedro Brieger (journalist, moderator), Gerardo Pisarello (Barcelona en Comú), Caren Tepp (Ciudad Futura), Isabel Cortez (Peruvian MP), Jorge Sharp (Valparaíso), and Mónica Benicio (Río de Janeiro councillor) | Marilín Lopez Fittipaldi.

Two speakers with an image of football pitch
Presentation of the Rosario Letter 4-3-3 by Patrícia Nari from the Instituto de Gestión de Ciudades | Marilín Lopez Fittipaldi


The three days brought a wide range of activists both from recent and longer established movements. A particular issue raised through different talks was the extent to which new municipalism was an appropriate label or indeed ‘new’. Its meaning is not automatically understood by many groups and the term has yet to feature in mainstream political commentary. Looking at the themes in the programme and at some of the organisations presented, although it was clear that these were linked to progressive agendas it was less obvious how these could be pursued through a municipalist approach. The tone of debates and the claims presented were not, for instance, far from the content of the World Social Forum meetings. Some groups, such as the Patria Grande front - a coalition of diverse social movements - highlighted the fact that key municipalist topics such as direct democracy, empowering citizenship through participation or protecting the commons were items that Latin American movements have long struggled for, especially since the post dictatorship experienced in several countries of the region. Nevertheless, its use, at least in Ciudad Futura’s case, has been strategic to demarcate a political position different from the traditional left and thus enable the building of a new project capable of connecting to wider audiences.


The event closed with the presentation of the Rosario Letter 4-3-3, a collaborative document setting out four principles, three objectives and three missions to consolidate the network and popular municipalist political mandates. It consisted of: ‘democratising democracy and feminising politics’, ‘protection and social management of the commons’ and ‘internationalising new municipalism (principles); to strengthen the municipalist movement, empower territories through community-building and develop a municipalist ecosystem of policies and instruments (objectives); exchange knowledge and experiences through the creation of an online municipalist school, create a municipalist collaborative platform, and generate a shared communication strategy to counter the progress of the far-right. The experience in Latin America was claimed by Gerardo Pisarello from Barcelona en Comú to be the beacon of hope for the paralysis seen in the Global North. For Ciudad Futura’s Caren Tepp, the common challenge is to call for “revolutionary Latin American new municipalism”.


The Latin American Pink Tide 2.0


If the three examples of new municipalism in Argentina, Chile and Brazil can be seen as vectors of a new kind of progressive politics in the region, how do they relate to more traditional parties? Particularly those that have been voted back into power in national governments, at least in part, and that have been speculatively framed as the return of the Pink Tide? Their position is particular to each national context, but the interplay has had important consequences to the direction of their activities.


A comparison is challenging as the electoral results were varied: while in Valparaíso Sharp has been leading the executive office since 2016, Ciudad Futura is an independent block with large representation in Rosario’s council while Gabinetona is a minor opposition block in Belo Horizonte. In all three cases, the different strategies to run for politics, from party movements to citizen platforms and the ‘hacking’ of an existing party constituted a change from the traditional politics in the related cities. Looking in retrospect, despite the slow growth of their representation, the three examples occupied a position within the leftist spectrum of local politics, diminishing or dislodging the hold of traditional leftist parties. However, their ability to gain further traction is also related to the direction of national politics.


In Argentina, Ciudad Futura has so far adopted an independent position in relation to the national politics represented by Frente de Todos, the coalition of Peronists and Kirchnerists that defeated the neoliberal government of President Mauricio Macri in the 2019 national elections. However, it has established important connections with representatives of social movements at the base of the government coalition. One important outcome has been the inclusion of the area of Nuevo Alberdi, the peripheral stronghold of Ciudad Futura in a national programme for the social and urban integration of popular settlements, one of only thirteen initiatives across the country. An economic crisis has marked most of 2022 while the government entered in negotiations with the International Monetary Fund – bringing back sore memories of two decades ago. The reduction of spending in social policies has shacked the base of support at Frente de Todos with social movements on the verge of leaving the coalition – a process halted by the attempt to assassinate vice-president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner.


The relationship between the local politics of Valparaíso and the radical break at the national level has been a close affair in Chile’s case. Sharp has been an ally of Gabriel Boric for many years, one of the leaders of the 2011 student protests, but not without occasional disputes before the unprecedent election of Boric’s Frente Amplio to national government in 2021. Sharp has distanced himself and followed an independent position since the Estallido Social protests of 2019 and has recently announced the creation of a new political party, Transformar Chile. The organisation is formed by mayors and councillors claiming the need to occupy a position with explicit territorial links – connected with neighbourhood associations, social movements, indigenous groups – capable of demonstrating the popular support for progressive policies that President Boric’s government has so far vacillated about – a process affected by the defeated referendum to approve a new popular constitution. Sharp’s initiative is not isolated as the Chilean left – both independents and traditional parties such as Chile’s Communist Party – also had unprecedent victories in the 2021 local elections and form an important cauldron for municipalist and progressive policies to be scaled up. A clear example is the communist-run Recoleta municipality of Santiago where municipalist policies in all but name; including a low-cost cooperative pharmacy network, an open university, after-school programmes among others, have gained attention for their innovation.


Man holding a poster in a park
Valparaíso mayor Jorge Sharp promoting his newly created party Transformar Chile | Jorge Sharp.

Lastly, Gabinetona’s electoral platform found a very hostile political environment with the rise of the Brazilian far-right that led to the election of President Jair Bolsonaro for the 2019-2022 government. Pioneering experiences with shared council representation by social movements in other cities have reduced significantly, while progressive agendas were attacked by the reactionary politics represented by Bolsonaro. All parties within the left political spectrum, and later many from the centre, gravitated toward the candidature of former union leader and president (2003-2010) Lula da Silva to contest the 2022 national elections. Gabinetona representatives gradually embraced the more traditional representation of the Brazilian left, with some members switching to Lula’s party. As members of the broad democratic coalition that elected Lula, Gabinetona members have been involved in working groups related to urban and cultural policies tasked with the transition to the new government. Although the use of the municipalist label has been less evident in the Brazilian case, activists expect that the legacy of previous rounds of political change can be deepened, such as the thematic policy councils that was a channel for direct popular participation and that were closed down in recent governments or participatory budgeting supported at the national scale – both innovations implemented at the local scale by municipalist governments of the 1980s and 1990s.


Despite the challenges that each context present for the advancement of the Latin American municipalist agenda, the experiences discussed have helped to (re)introduce key topics for debate while renewing a generation of activists and politicians. If the frustrations with the previous tide of left governments is to be avoided, some lessons can be drawn from the municipalist experiences. These include the key role of building a bottom-up popular platform to give support to progressive policies, overcoming the goal of mere redistributive policies toward a redistribution of power, decentralising decision-making and political leadership, widening the scope for new agendas and policies, and transforming institutions for new kinds of political subjectivities.


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Gabriel Silvestre is an urban scholar based at Newcastle University, UK at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape. His research covers the themes of urban politics, policy learning, social movements and the right to the city.


Marilín López Fittipaldi is assistant lecturer at the School of Anthropology, National University of Rosario and Postdoctoral Fellow of the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET), Argentina.

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