The Impasse of the Latin American Left (Radical Amricas)

"In The Impasse of the Latin American Left, Franck Gaudichaud, Massimo Modonesi, and Jeffery R. Webber explore the region's Pink Tide as a political, economic, and cultural phenomenon. At the turn of the twenty-first century, Latin American politics experienced an upsurge in progressive movements, as popular uprisings for land and autonomy led to the election of left and center-left governments across Latin America. These progressive parties institutionalized social movements and established forms of state capitalism that sought to redistribute resources and challenge neoliberalism. Yet, as the authors demonstrate, these governments failed to transform the underlying class structures of their societies or challenge the imperial strategies of the United States and China. Now, as the Pink Tide has largely receded, the authors offer a portrait of this watershed period in Latin American history in order to evaluate the successes and failures of the left and to offer a clear-eyed account of the conditions that allowed for a right-wing resurgence." "At the turn of the twenty-first century, Latin American politics were marked by an upsurge in progressive movements, as popular uprisings for land and autonomy in the later 90s and early 2000s led to election of left and center-left governments in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Uruguay, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and El Salvador. Impasse of the Latin American Left explains the ascent, consolidation, and crisis of the contemporary Latin American Left's political experiences, from the rise of social movements in the 1990s, through the height of the electoral Pink Tide and the commodities boom of the 2000s, to the regional crises of economic stagnation and the COVID-19 pandemic in recent years"-- Provided by publisher In this important new book, Franck Gaudichaud, Massimo Modonesi, and Jeffery R. Webber provide a timely and incisive analysis of the lefts waning fortunes in Latin America over the past two decades. The limits of what they call progressivism in this convulsed region offers great lessons for popular struggles and left politics around the world. The study could not be more timely given the devastating impact that the crisis of global capitalism and the coronavirus pandemic has had on Latin America. A must-read for students Latin America and for all those concerned with advancing genuine transformative projects in the twenty-first century. William I. Robinson, author of Global Civil War: Capitalism Post-Pandemic Franck Gaudichaud, Massimo Modonesi, and Jeffery R. Webber explore the Latin American Pink Tide as a political, economic, and cultural phenomenon, showing how it failed to transform the underlying class structures of their societies or challenge the imperial strategies of the United States and China. Conflict, blood and hope : popular movements and progressive politics in the storm of the Latin American class struggle -- World market, patterns of accumulation, and imperial domination : the political economy of the Latin American Left -- Latin American progressivism : an epochal debate