ABSTRACT
The antipoverty program in Mexico may be considered part of the wider dynamic of the redefinition of the Latin American state. The state in Latin America has been periodically defined as populist, corporatist, and bureaucratic-authoritarian. If the neoliberal state has changed in Latin America during the debt crisis, it has been to increase responsiveness of the government to the interests of national and international capital. The policies of the neoliberal state have increased the pronounced inequalities already existing in Latin American societies. The Latin American state, under pressure from the neoliberal regime, has moved away from some of the day-to-day social welfare provision. In Mexico, neoliberal structural adjustment proponents identified state intervention in the economy as the source of many ills: disruption of international and national competition; stagnation of production; stunted technological development; increasing fiscal deficit and taxes; and the lack of efficiency and rationality in production.
