About the Book
This timely book analyzes the governing experiences of the nine major pro-leftist governments in Latin America. The individual country case study chapters are preceded by chapters that frame the discussion by considering the theoretical implications of the Pink Tide experience relating to globalization, the state, and neo-extractivism. The contributors examine the Pink Tide policies and rhetoric that gained widespread approval and led to the long tenure of many of these governments. These included ambitious social programs, prioritizing the needs of the poor, nationalistic foreign policy, economic nationalism, and asserting control of strategic sectors of the economy. The book continues by taking a critical look at policies that have contributed to recent setbacks, acknowledging the inability of progressive governments to overcome embedded structures holding back economic development. One such setback has come from the opposition—often supported by powerful foreign actors—pressuring the government into making concessions and carrying out policies that ultimately undermined economic and political stability. The contributors critically examine these policies, which were politically successful in the short run but eventually backfired in the form of corruption, bureaucratic waste, and economic sluggishness. With its balanced and thorough assessment, this book will provide readers with a deep and nuanced understanding of the complexity of the political, economic, and sociocultural reality of contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean.
Table of Contents:
Foreword
Boaventura de Sousa Santos
Introduction: Latin America’s Pink Tide Governments: Challenges, Breakthroughs, and Setbacks
Steve Ellner
PART I: THEORETICAL OVERVIEW
Introduction
1 Latin America’s Pink Tide: The Straitjacket of Global Capitalism
William I. Robinson
2 Has the Pink Tide Cycle Come to an End? Will It Have a Long-Lasting Impact?
Steve Ellner
3 Walking the “Tightrope” of Socialist Governance: A Strategic Relational Analysis of Twenty-First-Century Socialism
Marcel Nelson
PART II: THE SOUTHERN CONE: BRAZIL, URUGUAY, AND ARGENTINA
Introduction
4 The Limits of Pragmatism: The Rise and Fall of the Brazilian Workers’ Party (2002–2016)
Pedro Mendes Loureiro and Alfredo Saad-Filho
5 The Frente Amplio Governments in Uruguay: Policy Strategies and Results
Nicolás Bentancur and José Miguel Busquets
6 Kirchnerism in Latin America’s Anti-neoliberal Cycle
Mabel Thwaites Rey and Jorge Orovitz Sanmartino
PART III: THE RADICAL PINK TIDE: VENEZUELA, BOLIVIA, AND ECUADOR
Introduction
7 Class Strategies in Chavista Venezuela: Pragmatic and Populist Policies in a Broader Context
Steve Ellner
8 An Opportunity Squandered? Elites, Social Movements, and the Bolivian Government of Evo Morales
Linda Farthing
9 Left Populism, Democracy, State Building and the Ephemeral Counterhegemony of the Citizens’ Revolution in Ecuador
Patrick Clark and Jacobo García
10 Neo-extractivism, Class Formations, and the Pink Tide: Considerations on the Venezuelan Case
Luis Fernando Angosto-Ferrández
PART IV: CENTRAL AMERICA: NICARAGUA, EL SALVADOR, AND MEXICO
Introduction
11 The Rise and Fall of Sandinista Alliances as a Means of Sociopolitical Change in Nicaragua
Héctor M. Cruz-Feliciano
12 The Limits of Change: El Salvador’s FMLN in Power
Hilary Goodfriend
13 The Last Surfer to Hit the Beach: Mexico and the “Pink Tide”
John M. Ackerman
Index
About the Contributors
About the Author :
Steve Ellner is associate managing editor of Latin American Perspectives.
Review :
This text offers the richness of empirical details and the comparative project that seeks patterns and explanations. As part of the "Latin American Perspectives in the Classroom" series, it gives students at every level a comprehensive overview of two decades of Latin American political history; it is, however, also a valuable contribution to original scholarship on the subject.
As the momentum behind Latin America’s left recedes, this important, cohesive, timely volume, edited by Ellner, a well-known scholar of Latin America, takes stock of the successes and failures of the Pink Tide. Separate chapters consider “radical" Pink Tide governments (Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador), “pragmatic” Pink Tide governments (the Workers’ Party in Brazil, the Frente Amplio in Uruguay, and "Kirchnerism" in Argentina), and the left in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Mexico. One of the volume's core arguments is that aspirations for structural transformation were severely constrained by the hegemony of global capitalism as Pink Tide governments largely maintained "extractivist" economic models based on commodity exports. However, despite these constraints, these governments sought to reduce social and economic injustice and succeeded, according to the authors. Contributing scholars hail from diverse countries, providing a wealth of valuable information for each case study. They effectively engage with questions regarding the implications of global capitalism's hegemony for the political economy of Latin America. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals.
Latin America’s Pink Tide is, without exaggeration, the richest and most complete overview of the region’s leftist experiments to date. The volume is an essential starting point for debate on progressive governments’ legacy. . . . Quite simply, it is required reading for anyone interested in the recent past, present, and future of Latin America.
A critical ethical theoretical framework for assessing the performance of left and left-of-center governments in Latin America during the Pink Tide. . . . Rather than see the dynamics of the Pink Tide governments in relation to right-wing restorations as the result of deterministic cycles, each reading takes a more nuanced approach by taking into account the economic and political context of specific countries and the balance of forces at critical junctures.
Beginning in the late 1990s, Latin American voters elected presidents who identified as progressives and socialists. Today, the tide has turned, and the right has returned to power seeking to undo the legacy of the past twenty years. These essays, written by leading social scientists committed to the process of change in Latin America, are required reading for anyone trying to understand the rise and eventual demise of the progressive governments that dominated Latin America over the past two decades.
In a world swept by winds of change, Latin America’s plural lefts have built windmills not walls since 1998. This volume’s contributors are not among those who sit on the mountaintop, looking down on the battlefield, to appear when the fighting is over to lecture the survivors. This stimulating collection contributes to the future of living projects by those convinced that another world is possible.
Latin America’s Pink Tide is now well in retreat. Finally, the book we’ve been waiting for: a measured, insightful, and comprehensive assessment of what worked, what didn’t, and why, by some of the sharpest analysts of Latin America’s left. Exceptional in its breadth—offering global, regional, national, and local perspectives—and impressive in its depth—anchored in rich empirical evidence underlain by convincing theoretical arguments—this book sets the standard for careful analysis of the promise and limits of the Pink Tide. Debates about the left’s accomplishments in power will long continue. But for anyone wanting seriously to engage with the legacy of those years, and what comes next, this book is a must-read.
