Manuel Larrabure

Bucknell University · International Relations

This special issue emerged from the seminar of the same name in which took place at the Université du Québec en Outaouais in Gatineau, Quebec in June 2019. It focused on two interrelated political and economic dynamics currently taking place in Latin America. First, the decline of the wave of Left and Centre-Left governments that emerged in the reg...

In May 2020, the guest editors of this special number organized a roundtable discussion centred on six themes and covered a broad range of topics pertaining to Latin American development, politics and economics. The context of ‘pink tides’ and ‘right turns’ are a backdrop that represent both the consequences and the lead up to what comes next. At t...

In this introductory article, we present the special collection by outlining the shared theoretical underpinnings of our attempt to understand the current crisis of the left in Latin America. Challenging state-centred perspectives that over-emphasize state autonomy and the role of charismatic leaders, we propose a relational approach, one that focu...

The ongoing crisis of Latin America’s pink tide seems to confirm the warnings of populist decline that first emerged in mainstream political science in the early years of the twenty- first century. At the heart of this view is a sharp distinction between moderate centre-left governments on a supposed path to progress, and a radical left bound towar...

Location: Université du Québec en Outaouais (Gatineau/Ottawa, Canada) Date: June 12-13, 2019 Abstracts due: November 15, 2018 Response date: December 15, 2018 Papers due: February 1, 2019

The current decline of Latin America’s “pink tide” seems to signal the end of what has been a three decades long leftward cycle that began with massive grass roots movements against neoliberalism in the 1990s. The hope expressed in recent decades by the popular calls of “Another World is Possible”, “21st Century Socialism” and “Buen Vivir” is now b...

The persistence of struggles by popular sectors in the context of the pink tide has generated ongoing debates about how to interpret the region’s left turn. For some, these movements are understood as forming part of a tense but ultimately productive relationship with left governments in the pursuit of post-neoliberal development. For others, it po...

From 2010. Camila Vallejo commenting on, among other things, her position towards the Concertación.

The article traces the rise of Chile's Frente Amplio coalition

Argentina’s recuperated factory movement – worker-run cooperatives formed out of previously bankrupted or abandoned businesses – was a reaction to the 2001 crisis following the neoliberal reforms of the 1990s. As a radically transformed workplace, expressing the values of cooperation and democracy, recuperated enterprises challenge linear and stagi...

This paper analyzes the Brazilian free transit movement of June 2013. I begin by contextualizing the movement as being part of a new Left that emerged following the 2008 global crisis. I argue that the movement was a reaction to neoliberal continuities in Brazil and to the limits of the Workers’ Party's (Partido dos Trabalhadores, PT) strategy for...

The Chilean student movement that began in early 2011 poses a significant challenge to Chilean neoliberalism and is beginning to reconfigure left politics within the country. Specifically, the movement’s demands for free education and public control of strategic domestic industries strikes at the heart of neoliberalism in Chile. In addition, in emp...

In this paper, I outline what I take to be the most important theoretical claims and innovations of ‘twenty-first century socialism’ in Venezuela. These, I argue, consist of an emphasis on human development through popular-economy initiatives, and the importance of building popular power through the state, rather than by ignoring or fighting agains...

Webber, Jeffrey. 2011. From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia. Chicago: Haymarket Books. ISBN: 978–1–60846–106–6. Paperback: 21.50 CAD. Pages: 281.

In the first decade of the 21st century, efforts to create alternatives to neoliberalism emerged in many parts of Latin America. Social movements across the region took to the streets, occupied abandoned factories, and started to create new democratic spaces, solidarity networks, and social economy initiatives. In one country after another, progres...

From 2011, this student movement poster represents a breakthrough for the left in Chile.

From circa 2007. This poster created by the University of Chile Student Federation is still stuck in the 20th century.

In this paper we look at how Karl Marx's theory of praxis/consciousness and the practice of participatory are relevant to the events taking place in Venezuela. Amidst the current turmoil of capitalism there is a growing, deep rooted, acknowledgement that capitalism is a deeply flawed and anti-human system. The conditions needed to seriously challen...