Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Latin America, the EU and the US: The New Polarities by James Petras

Latin America, the EU and the US: The New Polarities
by James Petras

. . . . Beginning in the early 1990s massive extra-parliamentary socio-political movements emerged throughout most of Latin America and were accompanied by large-scale popular uprisings, deposing ten incumbent neoliberal client “Presidents” of the US/EU: Three in Ecuador and Argentina, two in Bolivia, one each in Venezuela and Brazil. In retrospect, it is clear that the new wave of potentially revolutionary socio-political movements reached their pinnacle of power by 2002. With massive support, widespread legitimacy, facing a corrupt, discredited and an internally divided bourgeois political class and crisis-ridden economies, the socio-political movements were in a strong position to initiate comprehensive structural changes, if they could transform social power into state power.....(full article)