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The Italian philosopher Toni Negri analyzes the United States’ invasion of Iraq as a “defeat.” He spoke to Pagina/12 from the recuperated Hotel Bauen, expounding an auspicious perspective for Latin America and criticizing the “traditional” European left.

The Italian philosopher and militant Toni Negri is in Argentina for a second time. He is arriving from a trip to Chile and is now headed to Brazil. After having launched a worldwide polemic with his book Empire, about the end of the age of classical imperialism, he is now convinced that we find ourselves in an anomalous period for Latin America because it has finally ceased to be “the back porch” of the United States. From the Argentine crisis in 2001 to the current crisis in Brazil, passing through the failed coup in Venezuela and the Andean revolts, Negri reads a profound continental change capable of giving way to a multilateralism that will dispute North American pretensions toward an imperialist sovereignty. In his dialogue with Pagina/12, he insists that Latin America is further along than Europe with regard to its ability to think the relation between social movements and governments through the experimentation of a democratic radicalism.