Latin America’s Turbulent Transitions

Roger Burbach is director of the Center for the Study of the Americas and a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. He has written extensively on Latin America and US foreign policy for over four decades. His first book, Agribusiness in the Americas (1980), co-authored with Patricia Flynn, is regarded as a classic in the research of transnational agribusiness corporations and their exploitative role in Latin America. His most notable book is Fire in the Americas (1987), co-authored with Orlando Núñez, which is an informal manifesto of the Nicaraguan revolution during the 1980s. With the collapse of twentieth-century socialism in the Soviet Union and eastern Europe he began to study the emergent system of globalization and to write about the new Latin American social movements and the renewed quest for socialism in the twenty-first century.Michael Fox is a former editor of NACLA Report on the Americas. He has worked for many years as a freelance journalist, radio reporter, and documentary film-maker covering Latin America. He is the co-author of Venezuela Speaks!: Voices from the Grassroots (2010) and the co-director of the documentary films Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas and Crossing the American Crises: From Collapse to Action, both available through PM Press. He is on the board of Venezuelanalysis.com and his articles have been published in The Nation, Yes Magazine, Earth Island Journal, and more. His work can be found at blendingthelines.org.Federico Fuentes edits Bolivia Rising, is on the board of Venezuelanalysis.com, and is a regular contributor to the Australian-based newspaper Green Left Weekly, serving as part of its Caracas bureau from 2007 to 2010. During his time in Caracas he was based at the Fundación Centro Internacional Miranda as a resident researcher investigating twenty-first-century political instruments and popular participation in public management. He has co-authored three books with Marta Harnecker on the new left in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Paraguay. His articles have been published with ZNet, Counterpunch, MRZine, Venezuelanalysis.com, Aporrea, Rebelión, America XXI, Comuna, and other publications and websites in both Spanish and English.

Over the past few years, something remarkable has occurred in Latin America. For the first time since the Sandinista Revolution in Nicaragua in the 1980s, people within the region have turned toward radical left governments - specifically in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Why has this profound shift taken place and how does this new, so-called Twenty-First-Century Socialism actually manifest itself? What are we to make of the often fraught relationship between the social movements and governments in these countries and do, in fact, the latter even qualify as 'socialist' in reality?These are the bold and critical questions that Latin America's Turbulent Transitions explores. The authors provocatively argue that although US hegemony in the region is on the wane, the traditional socialist project is also declining and something new is emerging. Going beyond simple conceptions of 'the left', the book reveals the true underpinnings of this powerful, transformative, and yet also complicated and contradictory process.

Investigates the recent rise of radical left governments in many Latin American countries, exploring why this profound shift has taken place and how this new 'Twenty-First Century Socialism' actually manifests itself.

Introduction: Turbulent Transitions and the Specter of Socialism1. Globalization, Neoliberalism, and the Rise of the Social Movements2. The Pink Tide and the Challenge to US Hegemony3. Between Neo-Extractivism and Twenty-First-Century Socialism4. Venezuela's Twenty-First-Century Socialism5. Bolivia's Communitarian Socialism6. Ecuador's Buen Vivir Socialism (by Marc Becker)7. Brazil: Between Challenging Hegemony and Embracing It8. Cuba: 'Updating' Twentieth-Century Socialism?9. Conclusion: Socialism and the Long Latin American SpringAppendix: Nationwide Elections in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador