ABSTRACT
From 1995 to 2002 Latin America was in the throes of a shifting crisis, both economic and political. A mild economic recovery from a decade of zero growth, based in part on a dramatic resurgence of direct foreign investment and domestic capital formation in the first half of the 1990s, had given way to another period of volatility, sluggish growth and recurrent crisis. ECLAC's 2007 annual survey report on Latin America contained an unusual note of optimism, even exhilaration. In the light of two decades of sluggish to no growth the current period of resurgent and sustained economic growth from 2003 to 2008 is seen as extraordinary. Commodity markets in the new global context have been booming. Neoliberalism was widely regarded and treated as undesirable and politically unpalatable and as economically dysfunctional, unable to deliver on its basic promise of economic growth and general prosperity after a short painful transition.
