ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the Frente Amplio's productive Uruguay economic model as an example of the country's turn to the commodity consensus through its promotion of mega-development and extractivism. It focuses on the political-economic continuities and the socio-environmental consequences and legacies located at the intersection between ostensibly neoliberal and post-neoliberal models. The chapter argues that the productive Uruguay model has garnered strong popular support of the state through the left's poverty reduction, job growth, and social justice agendas, thereby leading to a virtual end of the "neoliberal protest cycle" that characterized popular movements of the past few decades. It also examines Uruguay's New Environmentalism expressed through three emblematic movements that have contested the Left's political economic model: the anti-mine Uruguay Libre movement, the broader anti-extractivist Permanent National Assembly coalition, and the anti-Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) Western Montevideo Neighbors Coordinate. These three interconnected movements have mirrored the government's triangulation of extraction, infrastructure, and energy.
