Emancipatory Rural Politics in Latin America 2010-2020: Alliance-Building, Right-Wing Populisms and Political Transitions

Abstract

The 2010s could be defined for Latin America as a period of multiple and interrelated transitions. The decay of the “Pink Tide” and the reemergence of different strands of right-wing, authoritarian, and populist political projects was shaped by the impacts of convergent social and ecological crises in the region, particularly in the disputes over extractivism and environmental affairs. This paper examines such transitions in the Latin American region by considering the emancipatory character of different forms of rural political mobilization that confront not only the rise of contemporary forms of right-wing populism and authoritarianism but also their political source, that is, the social fragmentation produced by decades of enforcement of economic and political neoliberalism.