Chapter 14 Summary

CHAPTER 14

Under the mid-century corporatist model, citizens had related to their governments primarily by being grouped together through class or occupation – as members of professional associations (doctors, lawyers) or unions of campesinos, industrial workers, or students, for example. As corporatism waned during the neoliberal era, Latin Americans have embraced new identities, especially ones based on ethnicity, race, gender, and religion. In the more open political climate after the return to democracy, new identity-based social movements, and also environmental movements, arose to represent people to and demand new responses from the state, challenging aspects of the neoliberal order and of the legacy it inherited from the liberal era and the Cold War.

Latin Americans of indigenous and African descent pushed against the prevailing discourses of assimilationism, mestizaje, and "racial democracy." Instead, they demanded new rights – for education in indigenous languages, for protection of cultural practices like coca cultivation, for recognition of the plurinational or multiethnic character of Latin American nation-states, and for restoration or protection of communal landholdings, among others. An increasingly assertive environmental movement has been integrated into larger campaigns for social and economic justice, often led by indigenous people. Women's political activism grew to the point where they have won the right to a guaranteed 50% of seats in legislatures and cabinets in most Latin American states, and election to the presidency in a handful of them.

Some new identities, political challenges, and cultural practices exemplify rising transnational influences. Musical genres and telenovela soap operas cross borders within the region and between it and the United States. Protestant Christianity arrived first with North Atlantic missionaries but is now firmly entrenched and evolving by itself in Latin America. A "pink tide" of left-wing presidents formed a new anti-imperialist and anti-neoliberal alliance among a half-dozen Latin American states. In a new climate of competitive democracy, Mexico's governments continue to struggle with violent drug-trafficking gangs that link that country to the Andes, Central America, and the United States.