The openMovements series invites leading social scientists to share their research results and perspectives on contemporary social struggles.
President Lula speaking to recipients of Bolsa Familia programme, Diadema, 2005. Wikicomons/agencia Brasil. Some rights reservedIf we are to understand the evolution of the progressive Latin American countries one must remember that they have come out of a neoliberal period that affected the whole continent for more than two decades, starting in the 1980s. At the behest of dictatorships and guided by international financial organizations, such as the IMF and the World Bank, the economies were liberalized, the embryonic social security systems dismantled as states were subjected to structural adjustment – in other words to budgetary restrictions that were basically imposed in order to pay the interest on external debt.
Coming out of ‘neoliberalism’
Political resistance and that of social movements mounted in most countries of the continent and in a number of them succeeded in toppling the existing regimes, in particular through the ballot box.
