Unit 7: New Left Turn and Current Events

Unit Objectives:

• Assess the legacies of military dictatorship, a return to democracy, and neoliberalism on current affairs in Latin America
• Evaluate efforts to bring members of repressive military regimes to justice and to come to terms with legacies of violence and torture
• Identify the key economic, political, social, and cultural issues facing Latin American nations in the present

In this unit, we will begin by studying the conditions that set the stage for a return to democracy throughout Latin America in the mid-1980s. Since that time, neoliberal economic policies have created division within the region and its people are still striving to bring former dictators to justice for their systems of torture and abuse. In Chiapas, the EZLN (Zapatista National Liberation Army), or the Zapatistas, have created a system of local democracy that both resists the neoliberal tendencies of Mexico's national government and attempts to provide fair trade for the region's produce and education for its people. Although imperfect (I don't think any human political/social/economic system is ever perfect), it has achieved a sense of dignity for the rural population of southern Mexico. Also in response to the rise of neoliberal economics, a New Left has taken hold in South America, particularly in Venezuela, Uruguay, Brazil, and Argentina. In the first decade of the 2000s, the government of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela gained recognition as the vanguard of the Latin American Left. Following his death in 2013, his hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro, succeeded him in a national election. In 2014 demonstrations, protests, riots, and violence erupted in Venezuela against Maduro's government. Most of the direct conflict has now abated, but it will be interesting to see which direction that nation, and the region at large, takes in the near future. In Brazil and Argentina, left-leaning presidencies face strong political opposition.

Image: Shop with Zapatista decoration by a road (Chiapas, Mexico)"Krámek" by I, Ondřej Žváček. Licensed under CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kr%C3%A1mek.jpg#/media/File:Kr%C3%A1mek.jpg