ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the experience of one particular region, Latin America, in the crisis and restructuring of world capitalism in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Latin America has been deeply implicated in the restructuring crisis of world capitalism. Economically, Latin American countries experienced a thorough restructuring and integration into the global economy under the neo-liberal model. In Latin America, the preglobalization model of accumulation based on domestic market expansion, populism, and import substitution industrialization corresponded to the earlier nation-state phase of capitalism. Globalization brought about a dramatic sharpening of social inequalities, increased polarization, and the persistence of widespread poverty in Latin America, reflecting the broader pattern of global social polarization. In the wake of the Asian meltdown of 1997 and 1998, Latin American countries began the slide toward renewed stagnation. By the late 1970s, authoritarianism as the predominant mode of social control in Latin America faced an intractable crisis.
