Struggling between Autonomy and Institutional Transformations: Social Movements in Latin America and the Move toward Post-Neoliberalism

Abstract

Since the middle of the 1990s, and more visibly since the beginning of the new century, governments, parties and social movements in Latin America are attracting attention with their explicitly anti-neoliberal discourse. How can this shift to the left be interpreted? In our contribution to this volume, we intend to interrogate from a Gramscian perspective the multidimensionality, dynamics and contradictions of post-neoliberal societal (re)construction processes in Latin America, as well as the role of social movements and civil society organizations in them. We aim less to retell the success stories of individual social movements in changing official policies than to highlight different dynamics, problems and structuring moments of post-neoliberal processes. We argue that in many Latin American countries, neoliberal strategies face growing resistance from emancipatory social forces and, thus, cannot be implemented as easily as during the heyday of neoliberal hegemony.

It was effectively the social mobilisation which succeeded in overthrowing corrupt or unpopular presidents, in modifying power relations in various countries, in delegitimizing neoliberal politics and especially privatizations, and which contributed decisively to progressive political sectors reaching government. Nevertheless, the movements’ achievements do not stop here. A new world is emerging on the territories of the movements. … It is not only one world, but different worlds.

(Zibechi 2006: 123)