ABSTRACT
In response to the debt crisis of the 1980s, the collective of Latin American countries under pressure from international financial institutions like the IMF experienced rough and profound programmes of economic reform. Almost half a century of Keynesian economic policies, which implemented a scheme of self-sustained and state sponsored industrial development, was replaced by neo-liberalism-an open economic model that reintegrated the region into the global market on the basis of comparative advantage. The programmes of stabilisation and structural adjustments ended up disarticulating and dismantling the system of relations between the state, the economy and the global market, established during the post-war era. Latin America’s insertion into the process of globalisation meant a return to regional capitalism and the elimination of the populist state as the basis of relations between the economy and social actors.
