The Impasse of the Latin American Left

Radical Américas

by Franck Gaudichaud, Massimo Modonesi, Jeffery R. Webber

“In this important new book, Franck Gaudichaud, Massimo Modonesi, and Jeffery R. Webber provide a timely and incisive analysis of the left’s waning fortunes in Latin America over the past two decades. The limits of what they call progressivism in this convulsed region offers great lessons for popular struggles and left politics around the world. The study could not be more timely given the devastating impact that the crisis of global capitalism and the coronavirus pandemic has had on Latin America. A must-read for students Latin America and for all those concerned with advancing genuine transformative projects in the twenty-first century.” — William I. Robinson, author of Global Civil War: Capitalism Post-Pandemic

Genres: History

216 pages, Hardcover

Published May 27, 2022

Reviews

[Marina Hernandez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book may not be the best resource for people who don't have some knowledge of the Latin American "left turn" or "pink tide." The three chapters in this book delve into the complexities of the changing sociopolitical landscape within Latin American countries including (but not limited to) Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. The authors do a great job of providing background information and creating arguments that support the left turn narrative as well as highlighting critiques of categorizing this period (2000s-2018ish) as a wave of leftist victories. I sometimes find texts from political scientists and historians to be a bit challenging to digest, but the book was relatively straightforward.