Change is in the air as many leftist governments in Latin America face serious setbacks. What could be interpreted as the twilight of this wave of the Latin American left really underlines how phenomenal this last stretch of history was -- from the election of Hugo Chávez in 1998 to Evo Morales and the rise of a progressive regional bloc, and all the other people's victories in between.
News pointing to global inequality and a lack of democracy has been dominating newspaper headlines in recent days. From the Panama Papers to controversies swirling in the US presidential primaries, a divided world is in crisis. As recent events illustrate, the stakes couldn’t be higher.
Bolivian President Evo Morales lost the referendum last Sunday that could have given him the ability to run for re-election in 2019. The margin was small, but the implications are huge: Bolivia’s longest standing and most popular president finally has an end date for his time in power, on January 22, 2020. The Bolivian left and its vibrant social and indigenous movements were always bigger than Morales, and Sunday’s referendum results underline this.
Benjamin Dangl is the editor of Toward Freedom. He has worked as a journalist throughout Latin America for over a decade, and is the author, most recently, of Dancing with Dynamite: Social Movements and States in Latin America (AK Press). He teaches journalism at Champlain College and is a doctoral candidate in Latin American history at McGill University.
Below are the collected articles Dangl has written for Toward Freedom:
After Empowering the 1% and Impoverishing Millions, IMF Admits Neoliberalism a Failure
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump gave a campaign speech at the Flynn Theater in downtown Burlington, VT this evening. The event was greeted outside by boisterous protests which denounced Trump’s hate-filled campaign.
The gains of South America’s progressive period, won in the halls of power and in the streets, won't likely be swept aside anytime soon.
Copyright Toward Freedom 2019