Liberating Pachamama : Corporate Greed, Bolivia, and Peasant Resistance

Abstract

The statements in this dingy auditorium in El Alto, Bolivia, reflect a growing sentiment across South America, where anger at the unfulfilled promises of the "Washington Consensus"—the neoliberal economic model imposed on much of the continent in the late 1980s and 1990s—has led to a succession of left-leaning governments, from Hugo Chavez in Venezuela to Luis Ignacio Lula da Silva ("Lula") in Brazil, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina, and, most recently, Evo Morales in Bolivia. But for all the fanfare over Morales's election and an apparent shift to the radical left, the growing popular desire for radical change in Latin America may well be crushed before it gets off the ground.