Multiple Sources of Protest Movements in Latin America

Abstract

Social outbreaks which have been characteristic of the political landscape of Latin America throughout the course of history of this region , reached their peak in the late 90s of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. It can be argued without exaggeration that a special culture of mass protests has already formed in this part of the world. It functions as an independent “pressure mechanism” aimed at expanding rights and reducing historical injustice. In the fall of 2019 Latin America became the epicenter of social protests. Residents of the highest income inequality region of the world ceased restraining their discontent. It turned out to be impossible for the state authorities to react to such indignation by the usual repressive methods, thus they were forced to listen to society demands. In just a few months, Haiti, Ecuador, Chile, Bolivia were caught in a massive political crisis which was marked by massive street demonstrations. Gradually, a wave of public discontent swept over countries such as Colombia and Argentina. Although the root causes of these events in each country were different, several general trends stand out in all the chaos that is happening in Latin America. These trends can be traced in all foci of instability that broke out almost simultaneously in several countries of the region. This paper attempts to analyze the main factors that led to such widespread unrest. The goal of this analysis is to reveal the unresolved problems of the region. The author identifies the main reasons that together caused social explosions, and presents them in the form of a hierarchical pyramid: from the underlying economic instability, the crisis of the neoliberal development model, social inequality; the weakening of the political system and corruption, that are situated in the middle; until the very top of the pyramid – the “democracy deficit” and the influence of social networks. In this context, I divided the article into 4 thematic blocks, which will allow a systematic review of the most important causes that set a chain reaction in motion of protest activities, as well as an assessment of the further development of the socio-political situation in Latin America. A combination of regional and country approaches were applied in this paper to the phenomenon under study.