ABSTRACT
Urbanization and industrialization have brought no diminution in income inequality or poverty to Latin America. Indeed the connection between economic growth and urban poverty is, if anything, more evident in the 1990s than in the 1970s. Economic success stories, such as that of Chile, brought an increase in income inequality in the 1980s, as did Mexico's economic restructuring policies in the same period. The re-emergence of democracy in Latin America in the 1980s and 1990s has thus occurred in unpropitious circumstances. Particularly important is the central role of the leader, now an elected President, who governs as he or she sees fit and with little consultation other than through plebiscite. The amount and quality of information available to the citizen through the media has increased dramatically and the failures of the powerful are rapidly communicated, as witnessed by the current crisis of confidence in Latin America's longest-standing example of delegative democracy, Mexico's presidential system.
