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Broadening of political participation
The Mexican Revolution evoked widespread admiration elsewhere in Latin America, especially for its commitment to socioeconomic reform, but the Mexican political system had few imitators. In the Southern Cone, a common pattern was the broadening of participation within a more conventional democratic system where at least the middle sectors gained a meaningful share of power and benefits.This happened in Argentina following an electoral reform of 1912 -
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The Mexican Revolution
The immediate challenge to existing regimes in country after country usually came from disaffected members of the traditional ruling groups and from the expanding middle sectors resentful of their exclusion from a fair share of power and privilege. This was evident at the outset of Latin America’s bloodiest 20th-century civil conflict, the Mexican Revolution of 1910The immediate challenge to existing regimes in country after country -
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Socialism, communism, fascism
Latin America in the first half of the 20th century was feeling the impact of outside events not only on its economy but also politically, by the spread of imported ideologies and through the examples both of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the United States and of emerging totalitarianisms of the left and right in Europe. -
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Good Neighbor Policy and World War II
One reason Latin American nations avoided an overly close association with fascism was a desire not to offend the dominant power of the hemisphere, the United States. During the 1920s it had already begun a retreat from the policy of active intervention in Latin America. This policy, adopted in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War and the United States open support of Panamanian secession from Colombia, had featured the creation of formal informal protectorates over many Caribbean -
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Economic agenda and patterns of growth
The economic shocks delivered by the depression and two world wars, in combination with the strength of nationalism, tilted economic policy after 1945 strongly toward internal development as against the outward orientation that had predominated since independence. The outward policy had been partially undermined by the trade controls and industrial promotion -
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Developments in social policy
Continued advances in public health were the principal basis for the explosion of population growth, which in turn made more difficult the provision of other social services. Nevertheless, educational coverage continued to expand, and state schools increased their share of students at the expense of private (often church-affiliated) institutions. -
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The United States and Latin America in the Cold War era
Whatever policies Latin American countries adopted in the postwar era, they had to take into account the probable reaction of the United States, now more than ever the dominant power in the hemisphere. It was the principal trading partner and source of loans, grants, and private investment for almost all countries, and Latin American leaders considered its favour worth having. Policy makers in Washington -
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Impact of the Cuban Revolution
By most social and economic indicators, Cuba by mid-century was among Latin America’s most highly developed countries. However, in the postwar period it was afflicted with lacklustre economic growth and a corrupt political dictatorship set up in 1952 by the same Batista who earlier had helped put his country on a seemingly democratic path. It was also a country whose long history of economic and other dependence on the United States had fed nationalist resentment -
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Impact of the Cuban Revolution
By most social and economic indicators, Cuba by mid-century was among Latin America’s most highly developed countries. However, in the postwar period it was afflicted with lacklustre economic growth and a corrupt political dictatorship set up in 1952 by the same Batista who earlier had helped put his country on a seemingly democratic path. It was also a country whose long history of economic and other dependence on the United States had fed nationalist resentment -
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Political alternatives Movement toward democracy
The Latin American countries that did not opt for the Cuban model followed widely varying political paths. Mexico’s unique system of limited democracy built around the Institutional Revolutionary Party was shaken by a wave of riots in the summer of 196 of the Olympic Games held in Mexico City,but political stability was never seriously in doubt. A somewhat analogous regime was devised in Colombia as a means of restoring civilian constitutional rule after a brief relapse in the mid-1950 -
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The advent of populism
The amorphous phenomenon of populism was another feature of the mid-20th-century political scene. Its consummate practitioner was Juan Perón of Argentina, who as a member of a military regime that seized power in 1943 took a special interest in social policy. Perón wooed Argentine labour by means of wage increases and bonuses, pensions and fringe benefits, while also exploiting widespread resentment of an oligarchy that in the 1930s -
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Latin America at the end of the 20th century
The last two decades of the 20th century witnessed a generalized economic crisis in Latin America, triggered in large part by external factors but aggravated by domestic mismanagement; in search of a way out, countries put their trust in neoliberal approaches favouring a free flow of trade and investment and reduction of the role of the state, all as recommended by the International Monetary Fund -
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Debt crisis
The ingredient of economic crisis that attracted widest attention was Latin America’s inability to maintain full service on its foreign debt, which had grown to dangerously high levels. Both Mexico and Venezuela, as major petroleum exporters, benefited from rising international oil prices during the 1970s, but, instead of concluding that foreign credit was no longer necessary, they assumed that any amount of indebtedness would be easy to pay back. -
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Return to democracy
Latin America’s democracies, and quasi-democratic Mexico, were politically less vulnerable to economic hard times than the dictatorships: their governments could be and were changed by regular electoral procedures, whereas dictatorial regimes that encountered similar problems had to be removed by other means. Armed force, however, was seldom necessary, and in Argentina change came from outside, in the form of Great Britain’s -
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A shift to neoliberalism
One of the last countries to return to democracy was Chile, where the Pinochet dictatorship had been more successful than most in economic management. After first imposing harsh readjustments and committing its share of mistakes, it had launched the country on a steady course of economic growth that made it a much-admired model in Latin America and continued even after the dictator finally turned over the presidency (though not control of the armed forces) -
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Religious trends
half of the 20th century. Its influence could be seen in the continuing prohibition, almost everywhere, of abortion and in the tendency to play down official support (which nevertheless existed) for birth control campaigns. Relations of the Roman Catholic Church with the state and with society at large were meanwhile affected, however, by new currents within the church itself. The movement of renewal and reform undertaken by the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) -
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A changing society
Despite the expansion (sometimes impressive, sometimes not) of the middle strata of Latin American society, by the late 20th century, progress toward reducing historically high levels of social inequality was disappointing almost everywhere save in communist Cuba. Also, the poorest countries of western Europe enjoyed greater per capita income than the wealthiest in Latin America. -
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Christian Democracy
A new feature since World War II was the appearance of a number of Christian Democratic parties, which offered a program of moderate reform inspired by Roman Catholic social teachings. Most were small splinter groups, but Christian Democrats eventually achieved power in Venezuela, El Salvador, and Chile. In Venezuela they alternated with the social democratic AD and in their policies became almost indistinguishable from it. In El Salvador in the1980s . -
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Challenges to the political order
The economic and social changes taking place in Latin America inevitably triggered demands for political change as well; political change in turn affected the course of socioeconomic development. As the 20th century opened, the most prevalent regime types were military dictatorship—exemplified by that of Porfirio Díaz in Mexico and after 1908 Juan Vicente Gómez in Venezuela—and civilian oligarchy—as in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, or Colombia. -
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Expanding role of the state
The world depression—which saw governments changed by irregular means in every Latin American country except Colombia, Venezuela, Costa Rica, and Honduras—temporarily ended the progress being made toward political democracy. Even where constitutional rule was not interrupted, chief executives felt the need (as also in the United States) to take emergency measures, and the enlargement of government functions in dealing with the economy outlasted the emergency itself. -
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Latin America Since The Mid-20th Century The postwar world, 1945–80
In Latin America as elsewhere, the close of World War II was accompanied by expectations, only partly fulfilled, of steady economic development and democratic consolidation. Economies grew, but at a slower rate than in most of Europe or East Asia, so that Latin America’s relative share of world production and trade declined and the gap in personal income per capita separating it from the leading industrial democracies increased.