ABSTRACT
Four of the largest economies in Latin America went through the privatization of their respective telephone companies in a period of 4 years. Chile was the first to privatize the State-Owned Telecommunications Enterprise (SOTE) in 1988, with Mexico and Argentina doing the same in 1990 and with Venezuela the following year. Other countries in the region that privatized their SOTEs include Jamaica, Bermuda, St. Kitts, and Belize. Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, and Costa Rica are already planning to hand SOTEs over to private capital.1 A common denominator in these processes has been the key role of foreign capital and the absence or the subordinated role of domestic capitaJ.2 Despite the commonalities in the timing and actors involved, these countries have very different political systems in terms of their centralization of power in the executive branch, the nationalist orientation, and the extent of support to capital accumulation.
