ABSTRACT

This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book concerns recent and current political developments in Latin America generally, and in Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba and Venezuela more particularly. These developments largely concern the meaning attached to a series of regimes that have recently emerged on the crest of a wave of anti-neoliberalism. As for the apparent decline of neoliberalism in the late 1990s it occurred in the context of a growing social divide, widespread disenchantment and organized resistance in the popular sector of many class divided societies in the global south. Neoliberalism in this context came to mark an historic shift in the balance of power in Latin America and also all over the world, a turning point in the social forms of economic and political power and the patterns of everyday life in capitalist society.