Popular Resistance to Neoliberalism in Latin America

Abstract

During the early 1980s, the inability of most of the Latin American countries to finance the huge foreign debts they were encouraged to assume during the preceding decade by the international financial community gave rise to what is known in Latin America as ‘the debt crisis’. To stave off the complete collapse of their highly indebted and inflated economies, most of the Latin American governments were forced to devalue their currencies, refinance their foreign debts, drastically reduce government expenditures, and restructure their economies according to the terms set by the three major international financial institutions (IFIs) that operate in the region — that is, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Inter-American Development Bank. This process of economic restructuring has taken place within the larger context of the increasing integration of national and regional economies into the global capitalist economic system and the resulting ‘denationalization’ of the Latin American economies.¹