ABSTRACT
At the end of the twentieth century, more people in Latin America and the Caribbean live in poverty than did twenty years ago, and income distribution has worsened. Attempting to link the future of revolution in Latin America and the Caribbean with the Latin American and Caribbean literary concept of magical realism is perhaps not intuitive. The concept of magical revolution, meant —however inelegantly—to invoke magical realism, might be of some use in assessing revolutionary processes under way in contemporary Latin America and the Caribbean. There is, in some sense, a recurring plot line with regard to revolutions in Latin America and the Caribbean: Revolutions happen; they are practically part of the region's "romantic" flora and fauna. But the pronouncement of the end of revolutions might be news to those in the mountains of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as in parts of Africa, Asia, and Oceania.
