Over the last two decades, military and authoritarian regimes in Latin America have receded as indigenous social movements and popular protests have demanded and won peaceful transitions to democratically-elected governments. Across the entire Southern hemisphere, democracy arose with a radical flourish, bringing dramatic changes in politics, education, civil society, and the media. Historically, revolution in Latin America has been depicted as civil war, violent conflict, and armed resistance, but recent social change has resulted from the political power of mass social movements reflected in elections and government policy change rather than guerrilla insurgencies. The Pink Tide investigates the relationship between media access and democracy, arguing that citizen participation in broadcasting is a primary indicator of the changed social relations of power in each country. Democracy has meaning only to the extent that citizens participate in discussion and decisions. This book demonstrates that participation in public communication is a prime ingredient in democratic action and citizen self-organization, a vital means for constructing new cultural practices and social norms.

This book evaluates the record of the Left in Brazil and Venezuela, two key cases of the “pink tide” wave. The wave of Left governments that emerged across Latin America in the early 2000s – a process dubbed the “pink tide” – has been on the wane in recent years. The Left regimes that, at one point, seemed unbeatable have either been defeated at the ballot, ousted through coups or have had to contend with increasing economic and political conflicts which have nullified many of their achievements. This book argues – like many voices on the Left today – that the waning of the “pink tide” in the region must be viewed in the context of the Left’s inability to initiate radical structural changes in its constituencies. At the same time, however, the book makes the case for a more nuanced and balanced evaluation of the development record of the Left than is often done. In doing so, it seeks to go beyond the reform–revolution binary that has blinkered recent assessments and intends to highlight alternative paths that the Left could have taken.

How can we create a model of politics that reaches beyond the nation-state, and beyond settler-colonialism, authoritarianism, and neoliberalism? In Beyond the Pink Tide, Macarena Gómez-Barris explores the alternatives of recent sonic, artistic, activist, visual, and embodied cultural production. By focusing on radical spaces of potential, including queer, youth, trans-feminist, Indigenous, and anticapitalist movements and artistic praxis, Gómez-Barris offers a timely call for a decolonial, transnational American Studies. She reveals the broad possibilities that emerge by refusing national borders in the Americas and by seeing and thinking beyond the frame of state-centered politics. Concrete social justice and transformation begin at the level of artistic, affective, and submerged political imaginaries—in Latin America and the United States, across South-South solidarities, and beyond.

The left-wing Pink Tide movement that swept across Latin America seems now to be overturned, as a new wave of free-market thinkers emerge across the continent. This book analyses the emergence of corporate power within Latin America and the response of egalitarian movements across the continent trying to break open the constraints of the state. Through an ethnographically grounded and localized anthropological perspective, this book argues that at a time when the regular structures of political participation have been ruptured, the Latin American context reveals multiple expressions of egalitarian movements that strive (and sometimes momentarily manage) to break through the state’s apparatus.

Politics and the Pink Tide investigates the ways in which protest varied across five Latin American countries that elected leftist presidents during the Pink Tide. Kathleen Bruhn compares the differences in protest that occurred under the new leftist governments to their conservative, neoliberal predecessors, offering a wide-angle view into the complex relationships between neoliberalism, political party structures, and protest. Using individual and event-level data from Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, and Ecuador, Politics and the Pink Tide shows how economic policy choices and the links between leftist parties and social movements affect patterns of protest. For example, although more orthodox neoliberal approaches did motivate more economic protest, the book demonstrates that neither more radical nor more socially linked leftist governments were better able to contain protest—or to do so without resorting to police violence. Politics and the Pink Tide proposes a sweeping exploration of protest, one that is controlled by economic policy and grievances, the social embeddedness of political parties, and the norms surrounding protest tactics within public life.

The book examines the 'Pink Tide' of leftist governments in Latin America struggling against neoliberal hegemony from a critical International Political Economy perspective. Focusing particularly on Venezuela and Brazil, it evaluates the transformative and emancipatory potentials of their political projects domestically, regionally and globally.

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.

This book presents case studies around issues of national development, right wing populism and use of social media, left wing authoritarianism and popular uprisings as well as reflections on short and long term political and economic cycles in Latin America in the past 10 years. Scholars, government and civil society practitioners have long recognized both the democratic and development deficit in Latin American countries, as well as their potential. The path towards a consolidated democratic state and civil society, as well as socio-economic collective well-being, has been far from linear and this edited collection provides theoretical clarity on the social, political and economic dynamics driving these changes such as historical cycles in the commodities market, the emergence of new social movements, the rise and pitfalls of populism, the influence of corporate media, and the erosion of democratic institutions. The chapters in this volume approach the topic of Latin American right and Left forces by attempting to determine whether a new and potentially long-term political cycle is unfolding in the region. To this end, the chapters focus on a perspective that compares the emergence of the new Right with the successes and limitations of the previous 20 years of Pink Tide governance. This volume will be of great use to students and researchers interested in Latin American studies, comparative politics as well as political leadership. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Globalizations.

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Romance Studies - Latin American Studies, grade: 8,5, Utrecht University (Latin American and Caribbean Studies), language: English, abstract: In the last ten years, left parties won elections in the majority of Latin America countries - an unexpected success would have seemed impossible just a decade before when the end of the Cold War and the stagnation in Cuba suggested that the era of socialism was over (Castañeda 1993: 3). In many countries, the voters trusted liberal parties to bring about democratization and neoliberal reforms, but in fact even left parties had little choice but to follow the same agenda. This phenomenon of the success of “restricted quality” left parties (Weyland 2004: 150) as a result of limited space of action came to be known as Latin America’s pink tide. The various parties of pink tide are often closely linked to its respective leader, which characterizes these movements as personalist and neopopulist (ib.: 149). The diversity of left governments has risen debate about whether or not the left can still be seen a one political camp and how to conceptualize these different parties and its leaders. The most common practice of dividing them into a ‘good’, social-democratic left and a ‘bad’, radical one is as often reproduced as it is criticized (French 2009: 351). To see whether this distinction is justified, this paper is going to focus two politicians that are usually positioned at the opposing ends of the left spectrum: Brazil’s former president Lula, a representative of the ‘good left’, and Bolivia’s president Evo Morales as part of the ‘bad left’.

This book examines the tensions and convergences between social movements and twenty-first century progressive Latin American governments. Focusing on feminist, indigenous, environmental, rural, and labor movements, leading scholars present a well-rounded picture on a controversial topic and argue against the accepted view that robust Latin American social movements are independent of the state. This cutting-edge book will be an invaluable supplement for Latin American studies and beyond for courses on democracy, peace studies, labor studies, gender studies, and ethnic studies.