ABSTRACT
As modern industrialization required more and more raw materials from the South, Latin America’s position as supplier of natural resources, commodities, and cheap labour to the globalized capitalist system was all but set in stone. While formally free from colonial domination, market imperialism ensured a new round of neocolonialism for at least a century to come. By the end of the 20th century, Latin America had become the most income-unequal region in the world, violence surged as a result, and anti-neoliberal sentiment was ripening quickly toward political change. A rising tide did not, in fact, lift all boats. Instead, “redistributive effects and increasing social inequality have in fact been such a persistent feature of neoliberalization as to be regarded as structural to the whole project”.
