by Gary Prevost, Critical Studies Seminar Series
The last decade in Latin America has witnessed
two important simultaneous and interrelated developments: the rise in
prominence of social movements, and the election of a number of left and
center-left governments. The social movements have ranged from the broad,
community organized “piqueteros” of Argentina that brought down three
governments in the space of one month in 2001 to the indigenous-based movements
of Ecuador and Bolivia that have been instrumental in toppling five governments
in the two countries within the last decade, the Landless Movement in Brazil
(MST), Afro-Colombians resisting displacement in a region coveted by investors,
the Cocalaros and the mobilizations against water privatizations and gas
pipeline investments in Bolivia, to the Zapatistas in Mexico, who burst on the
scene to challenge the formation of NAFTA and the marginalization of the mostly
indigenous peasants in Chiapas. The social movements of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia are
complemented across the region by a myriad of organizations that engage on a
range of issues from land rights to women’s rights to environmental concerns.
These groups have been studied in detail under the rubric of “new social
movements,” but they are equally a continuation of a long history of social
movements in Latin American history that have resisted the domination of the
continent by colonialism, neo-colonialism and native elites for centuries and
more recently have engaged in vigorous forms of collective action that have
reinvigorated the political struggle for economic and social justice in the
context of globalized resistance. They have also continued to develop ever
wider repertoires of contentious actions and ever stronger and more dynamic
forms of participatory democracy.
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