✪✪✪ Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis

Honolulu, Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press. This essay was written before the events of May and June in France. Although the region now known as Latin America stretches Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis northern Mexico to Tierra del Fuegothe diversity Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis its geography, topography, Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis, and cultivable land means that populations The Ornery Old Fart: A Short Story not Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis distributed. Northern Ireland Politics. The material becomes increasingly susceptible Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis subject to aesthetic forms, which Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis its exchange value the artistic, modernistic banks, office buildings, kitchens, salesrooms, and salespeople, etc. The order Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis organization of class Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis, which have shaped the sensibility and the reason Example Of Informative Speech Analysis Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis, have also shaped the Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis of the Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis. In the decades during Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis the women's liberation movement Personal Narrative: A Profession In The Medical Field, liberationists successfully changed how women were perceived in their cultures, redefined the socio-economic Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis the political roles of women in society Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis, and transformed Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis society. Archived from the original on 8 June Portuguese is spoken only in Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis Brazilian Portuguesethe biggest and most populous country in the region.

Latin American Liberation Struggle

The qualitative difference between the existing societies and a free society affects all needs and satisfactions beyond the animal level, that is to say, all those which are essential to the human species, man as rational animal. All these needs and satisfactions are permeated with the exigencies of profit and exploitation. The entire realm of competitive performances and standardized fun, all the symbols of status, prestige, power, of advertised virility and charm, of commercialized beauty — this entire realm kills in its citizens the very disposition, the organs, for the alternative: freedom without exploitation. Triumph and end of introjection: the stage where the people cannot reject the system of domination without rejecting themselves, their own repressive instinctual needs and values.

We would have to conclude that liberation would mean subversion against the will and against the prevailing interests of the great majority of the people. On the overcoming of these limits depends the establishment of democracy. It is precisely this excessive adaptability of the human organism which propels the perpetuation and extension of the commodity form and, with it, the perpetuation and extension of the social controls over behavior and satisfaction.

The ever-increasing complexity of the social structure will make some form of regimentation unavoidable, freedom and privacy may come to constitute antisocial luxuries and their attainment to involve real hardships. In consequence, there may emerge by selection a stock of human beings suited genetically to accept as a matter of course a regimented and sheltered way of life in a teeming and polluted world, from which all wilderness and fantasy of nature will have disappeared. The domesticated farm animal and the laboratory rodent on a controlled regimen in a controlled environment will then become true models for the study of man. Thus, it is apparent that food, natural resources, supplies of power, and other elements involved in the operation of the body machine and of the individual establishment are not the only factors to be considered in determining the optimum number of people that can live on earth.

Just as important for maintaining the human qualities of life is an environment in which it is possible to satisfy the longing for quiet, privacy, independence, initiative, and some open space And in doing so, quantitative progress militates against qualitative change even if the institutional barriers against radical education and action are surmounted. If this idea of a radical transformation is to be more than idle speculation, it must have an objective foundation in the production process of advanced industrial society, [5] in its technical capabilities and their use. For freedom indeed depends largely on technical progress, on the advancement of science. But this fact easily obscures the essential precondition: in order to become vehicles of freedom, science and technology would have to change their present direction and goals; they would have to be reconstructed in accord with a new sensibility — the demands of the life instincts.

Then one could speak of a technology of liberation, product of a scientific imagination free to project and design the forms of a human universe without exploitation and toil. But this gaya scienza is conceivable only after the historical break in the continuum of domination as expressive of the needs of a new type of man. In the socialist society corresponding to this idea, the free development of individual faculties would replace the subjection of the individual to the division of labor. The early Marxian example of the free individuals alternating between hunting, fishing, criticizing, and so on, had a joking-ironical sound from the beginning, indicative of the impossibility anticipating the ways in which liberated human beings would use their freedom.

However, the embarrassingly ridiculous sound may also indicate the degree to which this vision has become obsolete and pertains to a stage of the development of the productive forces which has been surpassed. The later Marxian concept implies the continued separation between the realm of necessity and the realm of freedom, between labor and leisure — not only in time, but also in such a manner that the same subject lives a different life in the two realms. According to this Marxian conception, the realm of necessity would continue under socialism to such an extent that real human freedom would prevail only outside the entire sphere of socially necessary labor.

Marx rejects the idea that work can ever become play. However, the development of the productive forces beyond their capitalist organization suggests the possibility of freedom within the realm of necessity. The quantitative reduction of necessary labor could turn into quality freedom , not in proportion to the reduction but rather to the transformation of the working day, a transformation in which the stupefying, enervating, pseudo-automatic jobs of capitalist progress would be abolished. But the construction of such a society presupposes a type of man with a different sensitivity as well as consciousness: men who would speak a different language, have different gestures, follow different impulses; men who have developed an instinctual barrier against cruelty, brutality, ugliness.

Such an instinctual transformation is conceivable as a factor of social change only if it enters the social division of labor, the production relations themselves. The imagination of such men and women would fashion their reason and tend to make the process of production a process of creation. This is the utopian concept of socialism which envisages the ingression of freedom into the realm of necessity, and the union between causality by necessity and causality by freedom. The first would mean passing from Marx to Fourier; the second from realism to surrealism. A utopian conception? The new sensibility has become a political force. It crosses the frontier between the capitalist and the communist orbit ; it is contagious because the atmosphere, the climate of the established societies, carries the virus.

The new Sensibility has become a political factor. This event, which may well indicate a turning point in the evolution of contemporary societies, demands that critical theory incorporate the new dimension into its concepts, project its implications for the possible construction of a free society. Such a society presupposes throughout the achievements of the existing societies, especially their scientific and technical achievements. Released from their service in the cause of exploitation, they could be mobilized for the global elimination of poverty and toil.

True, this redirection of the intellectual and material production already presupposes the revolution in the capitalist world; the theoretical projection seems to be fatally premature — were it not for the fact that the awareness of the transcendent possibilities of freedom must become a driving power in the consciousness and the imagination which prepare the soil for this revolution. The latter will be essentially different, and effective, precisely to the degree to which it is carried forward by this power. The liberated consciousness would promote the development of a science and technology free to discover and realize the possibilities of things and men in the protection and gratification of life, playing with the potentialities of form and matter for the attainment of this goal.

Technique would then tend to become art, and art would tend to form reality: the opposition between imagination and reason, higher and lower faculties, poetic and scientific thought, would be invalidated. Emergence of a new Reality Principle: under which a new sensibility and a desublimated scientific intelligence would combine in the creation of an aesthetic ethos. Technique, assuming the features of art, would translate subjective sensibility into objective form, into reality.

This would be the sensibility of men and women who do not have to be ashamed of themselves anymore because they have overcome their sense of guilt: they have learned not to identify themselves with the false fathers who have built and tolerated and forgotten the Auschwitzs and Vietnams of history, the torture chambers of all the secular and ecclesiastical inquisitions and interrogations, the ghettos and the monumental temples of the corporations, and who have worshiped the higher culture of this reality.

If and when men and women act and think free from this identification, they will have broken the chain which linked the fathers and the sons from generation to generation. They will not have redeemed the crimes against humanity, but they will have become free to stop them and to prevent their recommencement. Chance of reaching the point of no return to the past: if and when the causes are eliminated which have made the history of mankind the history of domination and servitude.

These causes are economic-political, but since they have shaped the very instincts and needs of men, no economic and political changes will bring this historical continuum to a stop unless they are carried through by men who are physiologically and psychologically able to experience things, and each other, outside the context of violence and exploitation. The new sensibility has become, by this very token, praxis: it emerges in the struggle against violence and exploitation where this struggle is waged for essentially new ways and forms of life: negation of the entire Establishment, its morality, culture; affirmation of the right to build a society in which the abolition of poverty and toil terminates in a universe where the sensuous, the playful, the calm, and the beautiful become forms of existence and thereby the Form of the society itself.

The insistence that a socialist society can and ought to be light, pretty, playful, that these qualities are essential elements of freedom, the faith in the rationality of the imagination, the demand for a new morality and culture — does this great anti-authoritarian rebellion indicate a new dimension and direction of radical change, the appearance of new agents of radical change, and a new vision of socialism in its qualitative difference from the established societies? Is there anything in the aesthetic dimension which has an essential affinity with freedom not only in its sublimated cultural artistic but also in its desublimated political, existential form, so that the aesthetic can become a gesellschaftliche Produktivkraft : factor in the technique of production, horizon under which the material and intellectual needs develop?

Throughout the centuries, the analysis of the aesthetic dimension focused on the idea of the beautiful. Does this idea express the aesthetic ethos which provides the common denominator of the aesthetic and the political? As desired object, the beautiful pertains to the domain of the primary instincts, Eros and Thanatos. The mythos links the adversaries: pleasure and terror. Beauty has the power to check aggression: it forbids and immobilizes the aggressor. The beautiful Medusa petrifies him who confronts her. Kinship of the beautiful, the divine, the poetic, but also kinship of the beautiful and unsublimated joy. Subsequently, the classical aesthetic, while insisting on the harmonious union of sensuousness, imagination, and reason in the beautiful, equally insisted on the objective ontological character of the beautiful, as the Form in which man and nature come into their own: fulfillment.

By virtue of these qualities, the aesthetic dimension can serve as a sort of gauge for a free society. A universe of human relationships no longer mediated by the market, no longer based on competitive exploitation or terror, demands a sensitivity freed from the repressive satisfactions of the unfree societies; a sensitivity receptive to forms and modes of reality which thus far have been projected only by the aesthetic imagination. For the aesthetic needs have their own social content: they are the claims of the human organism, mind and body, for a dimension of fulfillment which can be created only in the struggle against the institutions which, by their very functioning, deny and violate these claims.

The radical social content of the aesthetic needs becomes evident as the demand for their most elementary satisfaction is translated into group action on an enlarged scale. From the harmless drive for better zoning regulations and a modicum of protection from noise and dirt to the pressure for closing of whole city areas to automobiles, prohibition of transistor radios in all public places, decommercialization of nature, total urban reconstruction, control of the birth rate — such action would become increasingly subversive of the institutions of capitalism and of their morality. The quantity of such reforms would turn into the quality of radical change to the degree to which they would critically weaken the economic, political, and cultural pressure and power groups which have a vested interest in preserving the environment and ecology of profitable merchandising.

The aesthetic morality is the opposite of puritanism. It does not insist on a daily bath or shower for people whose cleaning practices involve systematic torture, slaughtering, poisoning; nor does it insist on clean clothes for men who are professionally engaged in dirty deals. But it does insist on cleaning the earth from the very material garbage produced by the spirit of capitalism, and from this spirit itself.

And it insists on freedom as a biological necessity: being physically incapable of tolerating any repression other than that required for the protection and amelioration of life. For its part, the imagination depends on the senses which provide the experiential material out of which the imagination creates its realm of freedom, by transforming the objects and relationships which have been the data of the senses and which have been formed by the senses.

The freedom of the imagination is thus restrained by the order of the sensibility, not only by its pure forms space and time , but also by its empirical content which, as the object-world to be transcended, remains a determining factor in the transcendence. However, the freedom of the imagination is restrained not only by the sensibility, but also, at the other pole of the organic structure, by the rational faculty of man, his reason. The most daring images of a new world, of new ways of life, are still guided by concepts, and by a logic elaborated in the development of thought, transmitted from generation to generation.

On both sides, that of the sensibility and that of reason, history enters into the projects of the imagination, for the world of the senses is a historical world, and reason is the conceptual mastery and interpretation of the historical world. The order and organization of class society, which have shaped the sensibility and the reason of man, have also shaped the freedom of the imagination. It had its controlled play in the sciences, pure and applied, and its autonomous play in poetry, fiction, the arts. Between the dictates of instrumentalist reason on the one hand and a sense experience mutilated by the realizations of this reason on the other, the power of the imagination was repressed ; it was free to become practical, i.

In the great historical revolutions, the imagination was, for a short period, released and free to enter into the projects of a new social morality and of new institutions of freedom; then it was sacrificed to the requirements of effective reason. If now, in the rebellion of the young intelligentsia, the right and the truth of the imagination become the demands of political action, if surrealistic forms of protest and refusal spread throughout the movement, this apparently insignificant development may indicate a fundamental change in the situation.

The political protest, assuming a total character, reaches into a dimension which, as aesthetic dimension, has been essentially apolitical. And the political protest activates in this dimension precisely the foundational, organic elements: the human sensibility which rebels against the dictates of repressive reason, and, in doing so, invokes the sensuous power of the imagination. Beyond the limits and beyond the power of repressive reason now appears the prospect for a new relationship between sensibility and reason, namely, the harmony between sensibility and a radical consciousness: rational faculties capable of projecting and defining the objective material conditions of freedom, its real limits and chances.

But instead of being shaped and permeated by the rationality of domination, the sensibility would be guided by the imagination, mediating between the rational faculties and the sensuous needs. The rational transformation of the world could then lead to a reality formed by the aesthetic sensibility of man. Such a world could in a literal sense! Andre Breton has made this idea the center of surrealist thought: his concept of the hasard objectif designates the nodal point at which the two chains of causation meet and bring about the event. The aesthetic universe is the Lebenswelt on which the needs and faculties of freedom depend for their liberation. They cannot develop in an environment shaped by and for aggressive impulses, nor can they be envisaged as the mere effect of a new set of social institutions.

They can emerge only in the collective practice of creating an environment: level by level, step by step — in the material and intellectual production, an environment in which the non-aggressive, erotic, receptive faculties of man, in harmony with the consciousness of freedom, strive for the pacification of man and nature. In the reconstruction of society for the attainment of this goal, reality altogether would assume a Form expressive of the new goal.

The essentially aesthetic quality of this Form would make it a work of art, but inasmuch as the Form is to emerge in the social process of production, art would have changed its traditional locus and function in society: it would have become a productive force in the material as well as cultural transformation. This would mean the Aufhebung of art: end of the segregation of the aesthetic from the real, but also end of the commercial unification of business and beauty, exploitation and pleasure. According to Kant, there are pure forms of sensibility a priori, common to all human beings.

Only space and time? Or is there perhaps also a more material constitutive form, such as the primary distinction between beautiful and ugly, good and bad [14] — prior to all rationalization and ideology,. It has been said that the degree to which a revolution is developing qualitatively different social conditions and relationships may perhaps be indicated by the development of a different language: the rupture with the continuum of domination must also be a rupture with the vocabulary of domination.

The surrealist thesis, according to which the poet is the total nonconformist, finds in the poetic language the semantic elements of the revolution. The surrealist thesis does not abandon the materialistic premises but it protests against the isolation of the material from the cultural development, which leads to a submission of the latter to the former and thus to a reduction if not denial of the libertarian possibilities of the revolution.

It is not, it cannot be, an instrumentalist language, not an instrument of revolution. It seems that the poems and the songs of protest and liberation are always too late or too early: memory or dream. Their time is not the present; they preserve their truth in their hope, in their refusal of the actual. The distance between the universe of poetry and that of politics is so great, the mediations which validate the poetic truth and the rationality of imagination are so complex, that any shortcut between the two realities seems fatal to poetry.

There is no way in which we can envisage a historical change in the relation between the cultural and the revolutionary movement which could bridge the gap between the everyday and the poetic language and abrogate the dominance of the former. The latter seems to draw all its power and all its truth from its otherness, its transcendence. And yet, the radical denial of the Establishment and the communication of the new consciousness depend more and more fatefully on a language of their own as all communication is monopolized and validated by the one-dimensional society. Perhaps necessarily so, because through all revolutions, the continuity of domination has been sustained.

But in the past, the language of indictment and liberation, though it shared its vocabulary with the masters and their retainers, had found its own meaning and validation in actual revolutionary struggles which eventually changed the established societies. The familiar used and abused vocabulary of freedom, justice, and equality could thus obtain not only new meaning but also new reality the reality which emerged in the revolutions of the 17th and 18th centuries and led to less restricted forms of freedom, justice, and equality. Today, the rupture with the linguistic universe of the Establishment is more radical: in the most militant areas of protest, it amounts to a methodical reversal of meaning.

It is a familiar phenomenon that sub-cultural groups develop their own language, taking the harmless words of everyday communication out of their context and using them for designating objects or activities tabooed by the Establishment. But a far more subversive universe of discourse announces itself in the language of black militants. Here is a systematic linguistic rebellion, which smashes the ideological context in which the words are employed and defined, and places them into the opposite context — negation of the established one.

The ingression of the aesthetic into the political also appears at the other pole of the rebellion against the society of affluent capitalism, among the nonconformist youth. These political manifestations of a new sensibility indicate the depth of the rebellion, of the rupture with the continuum of repression. They bear witness to the power of the society in shaping the whole of experience, the whole metabolism between the organism and its environment.

Beyond the physiological level, the exigencies of sensibility develop as historical ones: the objects which the senses confront and apprehend are the products of a specific stage of civilization and of a specific society, and the senses in turn are geared to their objects. This historical interrelation affects even the primary sensations: an established society imposes upon all its members the same medium of perception; and through all the differences of individual and class perspectives, horizons, backgrounds, society provides the same general universe of experience.

Consequently, the rupture with the continuum of aggression and exploitation would also break with the sensibility geared to this universe. Awareness of the need for such a revolution in perception, for a new sensorium, is perhaps the kernel of truth in the psychedelic search. But it is vitiated when its narcotic character brings temporary release not only from the reason and rationality of the established system but also from that other rationality which is to change the established system, when sensibility is freed not only from the exigencies of the existing order but also from those of liberation.

Intentionally non-committed, the withdrawal creates its artificial paradises within the society from which it withdrew. They thus remain subject to the law of this society, which punishes the inefficient performances. In contrast, the radical transformation of society implies the union of the new sensibility with a new rationality. The imagination becomes productive if it becomes the mediator between sensibility on the one hand, and theoretical as well as practical reason on the other, and in this harmony of faculties in which Kant saw the token of freedom guides the reconstruction of society. Such a union has been the distinguishing feature of art, but its realization has been stopped at the point at which it would have become incompatible with the basic institutions and social relationships.

The material culture, the reality, continued to lag behind the progress of reason and imagination and to condemn much of these faculties to irreality, fantasy, fiction. Art could not become a technique in reconstructing reality; the sensibility remained repressed, and the experience mutilated. But the revolt against repressive reason which released the chained power of the aesthetic in the new sensibility has also radicalized it in art: the value and function of art are undergoing essential changes.

They affect the affirmative character of art by virtue of which art has the power of reconciliation with the status quo , and the degree of sublimation which militated against the realization of the truth, of the cognitive force of art. The protest against these features of art spreads through the entire universe of art prior to the First World War and continues with increased intensity: it gives voice and image to the negative power of art, and to the tendencies toward a desublimation of culture. Non-objective, abstract painting and sculpture, stream-of-consciousness and formalist literature, twelve-tone composition, blues and jazz: these are not merely new modes of perception reorienting and intensifying the old ones; they rather dissolve the very structure of perception in order to make room — for what?

The senses must learn not to see things anymore in the medium of that law and order which has formed them; the bad functionalism which organizes our sensibility must be smashed. From the beginning, the new art insists on its radical autonomy in tension or conflict with the development of the Bolshevik Revolution and the revolutionary movements activated by it. Eikhenbaum insists:. L'automatisation avale les objets, les habits, les meubles, la femme et la peur de la guerre [18]. If this deadly system of life is to be changed without being replaced by another deadly one, men must learn to develop the new sensibility of life of their own life and that of things:. I have referred to the Formalists because it seems characteristic that the transformative element in art is emphasized by a school which insists on the artistic perception as end-in-itself, on the Form as Content.

It is precisely the Form by virtue of which art transcends the given reality, works in the established reality against the established reality; and this transcendent element is inherent in art, in the artistic dimension. Art alters experience by reconstructing the objects of experience reconstructing them in word, tone, image. This exigency explodes in the situation of contemporary art. Wir setzen grossen Jahrhunderten ein Nein entgegen Wir gehen, zur spottischen Verwunderung unserer Mitwelt, einen Seitenweg, der kaum ein Weg zu sein scheint, und sagen: Dies ist die Hauptstrasse der Menschheitsentwicklung.

Since then, the eruption of anti-art in art has manifested itself in many familiar forms: destruction of syntax, fragmentation of words and sentences, explosive use of ordinary language, compositions without score, sonatas for anything. And yet, this entire de-formation is Form: anti-art has remained art, supplied, purchased, and contemplated as art. The wild revolt of art has remained a short-lived shock, quickly absorbed in the art gallery, within the four walls, in the concert hall, by the market, and adorning the plazas and lobbies of the prospering business establishments. Transforming the intent of art is self-defeating — a self-defeat built into the very structure of art.

The oeuvre is unreal precisely inasmuch as it is art: the novel is not a newspaper story, the still life not alive, and even in pop art the real tin can is not in the supermarket. What is meant by these metaphors? The root of the aesthetic is in sensibility. What is beautiful is first sensuous: it appeals to the senses; it is pleasurable, object of unsublimated drives. However, the beautiful seems to occupy a position halfway between sublimated and unsublimated objectives. It seems that the various connotations of beauty converge in the idea of Form.

This triumph of art is achieved by subjecting the content to the aesthetic order, which is autonomous in its exigencies. The content is thereby transformed: it obtains a meaning sense which transcends the elements of the content, and this transcending order is the appearance of the beautiful as the truth of art. The redeeming, reconciling power of art adheres even to the most radical manifestations of non-illusory art and anti-art. They are still oeuvres: paintings, sculptures, compositions, poems, and as such they have their own form and with it their own order: their own frame though it may be invisible , their own space, their own beginning, and their own end. And in this aesthetic universe, joy and fulfillment find their proper place alongside pain and death — everything is in order again.

The indictment is canceled, and even defiance, insult, and derision — the extreme artistic negation of art — succumb to this order. With this restoration of order, the Form indeed achieves a katharsis — the terror and the pleasure of reality are purified. But the achievement is illusory, false, fictitious: it remains within the dimension of art, a work of art; in reality, fear and frustration go on unabated as they do, after the brief katharsis , in the psyche.

This is perhaps the most telling expression of the contradiction, the self-defeat, built into art: the pacifying conquest of matter, the transfiguration of the object remain unreal — just as the revolution in perception remains unreal. And this vicarious character of art has, time and again, given rise to the question as to the justification of art: was the Parthenon worth the sufferings of a single slave? Is it possible to write poetry after Auschwitz? The question has been countered: when the horror of reality tends to become total and blocks political action, where else than in the radical imagination, as refusal of reality, can the rebellion, and its uncompromised goals, be remembered?

Today, the outline of such conditions appears only in the negativity of the advanced industrial societies. They are societies whose capabilities defy the imagination. No matter what sensibility art may wish to develop, no matter what Faun it may wish to give to things, to life, no matter what vision it may wish to communicate — a radical change of experience is within the technical reaches of powers whose terrible imagination organizes the world in their own image and perpetuates, ever bigger and better, the mutilated experience. However, the productive forces, chained in the infrastructure of these societies, counteract this negativity in progress.

To be sure, the libertarian possibilities of technology and science are effectively contained within the framework of the given reality: the calculated projection and engineering of human behavior, the frivolous invention of waste and luxurious junk, the experimentation with the limits of endurance and destruction are tokens of the mastery of necessity in the interest of exploitation — which indicate nevertheless progress in the mastery of necessity. Released from the bondage to exploitation, the imagination, sustained by the achievements of science, could turn its productive power to the radical reconstruction of experience and the universe of experience.

In this reconstruction, the historical topos of the aesthetic would change: it would find expression in the transformation of the Lebenswelt — society as a work of art. In other words: the transformation is conceivable only as the way in which free men or rather men in the practice of freeing themselves shape their life in solidarity, and build an environment in which the struggle for existence loses its ugly and aggressive features.

The Form of freedom is not merely self-determination and self-realization, but rather the determination and realization of goals which enhance, protect, and unite life on earth. And this autonomy would find expression not only in the mode of production and production relations but also in the individual relations among men, in their language and in their silence, in their gestures and their looks, in their sensitivity, in their love and hate. The beautiful would be an essential quality of their freedom. Their libertarian aspirations appear as the negation of the traditional culture: as a methodical desublimation. Perhaps its strongest impetus comes from social groups which thus far have remained outside the entire realm of the higher culture, outside its affirmative, sublimating, and justifying magic — human beings who have lived in the shadow of this culture, the victims of the power structure which has been the basis of this culture.

Black music is originally music of the oppressed, illuminating the extent to which the higher culture and its sublime sublimations, its beauty, have been class-based. It is still the simple, elementary negation, the antithesis: position of the immediate denial. This desublimation leaves the traditional culture, the illusionist art behind unmastered: their truth and their claims remain valid next to and together with the rebellion, within the same given society. The rebellious music, literature, art are thus easily absorbed and shaped by the market — rendered harmless. In order to come into their own, they would have to abandon the direct appeal, the raw immediacy of their presentation, which invokes, in the protest, the familiar universe of politics and business, and with it the helpless familiarity of frustration and temporary release from frustration.

Was it not precisely the rupture with this familiarity which was the methodical goal of radical art? They would reside in modes of work and pleasure, of thought and behavior, in a technology and in a natural environment which express the aesthetic ethos of socialism. Then, art may have lost its privileged, and segregated, dominion over the imagination, the beautiful, the dream. We have repeatedly referred to such tendencies: first of all the growing technological character of the process of production, with the reduction of the required physical energy and its replacement by mental energy — dematerialization of labor.

Already today, the achievements of science and technology permit the play of the productive imagination: experimentation with the possibilities of form and matter hitherto enclosed in the density of unmastered nature; the technical transformation of nature tends to make things lighter, easier, prettier — the loosening up of reification. The material becomes increasingly susceptible and subject to aesthetic forms, which enhance its exchange value the artistic, modernistic banks, office buildings, kitchens, salesrooms, and salespeople, etc. The fantastic output of all sorts of things and services defies the imagination, while restricting and distorting it in the commodity form, through which capitalist production enlarges its hold over human existence.

And yet, precisely through the spread of this commodity form, the repressive social morality which sustains the system is being weakened. The obvious contradiction between the liberating possibilities of the technological transformation of the world, the light and free life on the one hand and the intensification of the struggle for existence on the other, generates among the underlying population that diffused aggressiveness which, unless steered to hate and fight the alleged national enemy, hits upon any suitable target: white or black, native or foreigner, Jew or Christian, rich or poor.

This is the aggressiveness of those with the mutilated experience, with the false consciousness and the false needs, the victims of repression who, for their living, depend on the repressive society and repress the alternative. Their violence is that of the Establishment and takes as targets figures which, rightly or wrongly, seem to be different, and to represent an alternative.

But while the image of the libertarian potential of advanced industrial society is repressed and hated by the managers of repression and their consumers, it motivates the radical opposition and gives it its strange unorthodox character. Very different from the revolution at previous stages of history, this opposition is directed against the totality of a well-functioning, prosperous society — a protest against its Form — the commodity form of men and things, against the imposition of false values and a false morality. This new consciousness and the instinctual rebellion isolate such opposition from the masses and from the majority of organized labor, the integrated majority, and make for the concentration of radical politics in active minorities, mainly among the young middle-class intelligentsia, and among the ghetto populations.

It is of course nonsense to say that middle-class opposition is replacing the proletariat as the revolutionary class, and that the Lumpenproletariat is becoming a radical political force. What is happening is the formation of still relatively small and weakly organized often disorganized groups which, by virtue of their consciousness and their needs, function as potential catalysts of rebellion within the majorities to which, by their class origin, they belong.

In this sense, the militant intelligentsia has indeed cut itself loose from the middle classes, and the ghetto population from the organized working class. But by that token they do not think and act in a vacuum: their consciousness and their goals make them representatives of the very real common interest of the oppressed. As against the rule of class and national interests which suppress this common interest, the revolt against the old societies is truly international: emergence of a new, spontaneous solidarity. This struggle is a far cry from the ideal of humanism and humanitas ; it is the struggle for life — life not as masters and not as slaves, but as men and women.

For Marxian theory, the location or rather contraction of the opposition in certain middle-class strata and in the ghetto population appears as an intolerable deviation — as does the emphasis on biological and aesthetic needs: regression to bourgeois or, even worse, aristocratic, ideologies. What appears as a surface phenomenon is indicative of basic tendencies which suggest not only different prospects of change, but also a depth and extent of change far beyond the expectations of traditional socialist theory. Under this aspect, the displacement of the negating forces from their traditional base among the underlying population, rather than being a sign of the weakness of the opposition against the integrating power of advanced capitalism, may well be the slow formation of a new base, bringing to the fore the new historical Subject of change, responding to the new objective conditions, with qualitatively different needs and aspirations.

And on this base probably intermittent and preliminary goals and strategies take shape which reexamine the concepts of democratic-parliamentary as well as of revolutionary transformation. The modifications in the structure of capitalism alter the basis for the development and organization of potentially revolutionary forces. Under total capitalist administration and introjection, the social determination of consciousness is all but complete and immediate: direct implantation of the latter into the former.

Under these circumstances, radical change in consciousness is the beginning, the first step in changing social existence: emergence of the new Subject. Historically, it is again the period of enlightenment prior to material change — a period of education, but education which turns into praxis: demonstration, confrontation, rebellion. The radical transformation of a social system still depends on the class which constitutes the human base of the process of production. In the advanced capitalist countries, this is the industrial working class. The changes in the composition of this class, and the extent of its integration into the system alter, not the potential but the actual political role of labor. The development of a radical political consciousness among the masses is conceivable only if and when the economic stability and the social cohesion of the system begin to weaken.

It was the traditional role of the Marxist-Leninist party to prepare the ground for this development. Under the conditions of integration, the new political consciousness of the vital need for radical change emerges among social groups which, on objective grounds, are relatively free from the integrating, conservative interests and aspirations, free for the radical transvaluation of values. This tendency is strengthened by the changing composition of the working class. The declining proportion of blue collar labor, the increasing number and importance of white collar employees, technicians, engineers, and specialists, divides the class.

This means that precisely those strata of the working class which bore, and still bear, the brunt of brute exploitation will perform a gradually diminishing function in the process of production. The intelligentsia obtains an increasingly decisive role in this process — an instrumentalist intelligentsia, but intelligentsia nevertheless. However, they have neither the interest nor the vital need to do so: they are well integrated and well rewarded. But it is not clear why they would lead to an abolition of the capitalist system, of the subjugation of the underlying population to the apparatus of profitable production for particular interests. Such a qualitative change would presuppose the control and redirection of the productive apparatus by groups with needs and goals very different from those of the technocrats.

This fatal link can be cut only by a revolution which makes technology and technique subservient to the needs and goals of free men: in this sense, and in this sense only, it would be a revolution against technocracy. Such a revolution is not on the agenda. In the domain of corporate capitalism, the two historical factors of transformation, the subjective and objective, do not coincide: they are prevalent in different and even antagonistic groups.

The objective factor, i. The two historical factors do coincide in large areas of the Third World, where the National Liberation Fronts and the guerrillas fight with the support and participation of the class which is the base of the process of production, namely, the predominantly agrarian and the emerging industrial proletariat. The constellation which prevails in the metropoles of capitalism, namely, the objective necessity of radical change, and the paralysis of the masses, seems typical of a non-revolutionary but pre-revolutionary situation.

The transition from the former to the latter presupposes a critical weakening of the global economy of capitalism, and the intensification and extension of the political work: radical enlightenment. It is precisely the preparatory character of this work which gives it its historical significance: to develop, in the exploited, the consciousness and the unconscious which would loosen the hold of enslaving needs over their existence — the needs which perpetuate their dependence on the system of exploitation. Without this rupture, which can only be the result of political education in action, even the most elemental, the most immediate force of rebellion may be defeated, or become the mass basis of counterrevolution.

The ghetto population of the United States constitutes such a force. Confined to small areas of living and dying, it can be more easily organized and directed. Cruel and indifferent privation is now met with increasing resistance, but its still largely unpolitical character facilitates suppression and diversion. The racial conflict still separates the ghettos from the allies outside. While it is true that the white man is guilty, it is equally true that white men are rebels and radicals. However, the fact is that monopolistic imperialism validates the racist thesis: it subjects ever more nonwhite populations to the brutal power of its bombs, poisons, and moneys; thus making even the exploited white population in the metropoles partners and beneficiaries of the global crime.

Class conflicts are being superseded or blotted out by race conflicts: color lines become economic and political realities — a development rooted in the dynamic of late imperialism and its struggle for new methods of internal and external colonization. The long-range power of the black rebellion is further threatened by the deep division within this class the rise of a Negro bourgeoisie , and by its marginal in terms of the capitalist system social function.

The majority of the black population does not occupy a decisive position in the process of production, and the white organizations of labor have not exactly gone out of their way to change this situation. Consequently, the powers that be may not hesitate to apply extreme measures of suppression if the movement becomes dangerous. Its distance from the young middle-class opposition is formidable in every respect. However, this community did realize itself in political action on a rather large scale during the May rebellion in France — against the implicit injunction on the part of the Communist Party and the CGT Confederation Generale du Travail , and the common action was initiated by the students, not by the workers.

This fact may be indicative of the depth and unity of the opposition underneath and across the class conflicts. With respect to the student movement, a basic trend in the very structure of advanced industrial society favors the gradual development of such a community of interests. The student rebellion hits this society at a vulnerable point; accordingly, the reaction is venomous and violent. It proclaims very different goals and aspirations; the general demands for educational reforms are only the immediate expression of wider and more fundamental aims.

The most decisive difference is between the opposition in the socialist and that in the capitalist countries. The former accepts the socialist structure of society but protests against the repressive-authoritarian regime of the state and party bureaucracy; while, in the capitalist countries, the militant and apparently increasing part of the movement is anti-capitalist: socialist or anarchist. Again, within the capitalist orbit, the rebellion against fascist and military dictatorships in Spain, in Latin American countries has a strategy and goals different from the rebellion in the democratic countries. The crime has not yet been punished; it is the only horrible exception from the libertarian, liberating function of student activism. In the fascist and semi-fascist countries, the militant students a minority of the students everywhere find support among the industrial and agrarian proletariat; in France and Italy, they have been able to obtain precarious and passing!

Revolutionary in its theory, in its instincts, and in its ultimate goals, the student movement is not a revolutionary force, perhaps not even an avant-garde so long as there are no masses capable and willing to follow, but it is the ferment of hope in the overpowering and stifling capitalist metropoles: it testifies to the truth of the alternative — the real need, and the real possibility of a free society. Naturally, the market has invaded this rebellion and made it a business, but it is serious business nevertheless. What matters is not the more or less interesting psychology of the participants nor the often bizarre forms of the protest which quite frequently make the absurd reasonableness of the Establishment, and the anti-heroic, sensuous images of the alternative more transparent than the most serious argument could do , but that against which the protest is directed.

The demands for a structural reform of the educational system urgent enough by themselves; we shall come back to them subsequently seek to counteract the deceptive neutrality and often plainly apologetic teaching; and to provide the student with the conceptual instruments for a solid and thorough critique of the material and intellectual culture. At the same time, they seek to abolish the class character of education.

These changes would lead to an extension and development of consciousness which would remove the ideological and technological veil that hides the terrible features of the affluent society. The development of a true consciousness is still the professional function of the universities. To the degree to which the university becomes dependent on the financial and political goodwill of the community and of the government, the struggle for a free and critical education becomes a vital part in the larger struggle for change.

This dynamic, arrested by the pseudo-neutral features of academia, would, for example, be released by the inclusion into the curriculum of courses giving adequate treatment to the great nonconformist movements in civilization and to the critical analysis of contemporary societies. Knowledge is transcendent toward the object world, toward reality not only in an epistemological sense — as against repressive forms of life — it is political. Denial of the right to political activity in the university perpetuates the separation between theoretical and practical reason and reduces the effectiveness and the scope of intelligence.

It extends to the entire organization of the existing liberal-parliamentary democracy. Among the New Left, a strong revulsion against traditional politics prevails: against that whole network of parties, committees, and pressure groups on all levels; against working within this network and with its methods. This entire sphere and atmosphere, with all its power, is invalidated; nothing that any of these politicians, representatives, or candidates declares is of any relevance to the rebels; they cannot take it seriously although they know very well that it may mean to them getting beaten, going to jail, losing a job. They are not professional martyrs: they prefer not to be beaten, not to go to jail, not to lose their job.

Most, perhaps as many as 5,, went to Argentina; between 1, and 2, are thought [ by whom? The Potrero del Llano , originally an Italian tanker, had been seized in port by the Mexican government in April and renamed in honor of a region in Veracruz. It was attacked and crippled by the German submarine U on May 13, The attack killed 13 of 35 crewmen. A large part of Mexico's contribution to the war came through an agreement in January that allowed Mexican nationals living in the United States to join the U. As many as , Mexicans served in this way.

In addition to those in the armed forces, tens of thousands of Mexican men were hired as farm workers in the United States during the war years through the Bracero program , which continued and expanded in the decades after the war. After both the United States and Canada likewise refused to accept the refugees, they returned to Europe, where many were eventually murdered in the Holocaust. He cooperated with the United States as it moved closer to war against the Axis.

Cuba was an important participant in the Battle of the Caribbean and its navy gained a reputation for skill and efficiency. The navy escorted hundreds of Allied ships through hostile waters, flew thousands of hours on convoy and patrol duty, and rescued over victims of German U-Boat attacks from the sea. Six Cuban merchant ships were sunk by U-boats, taking the lives of around eighty sailors.

It did not directly contribute with troops, aircraft, or ships, however Dominicans were integrated into the US military and fought in the war. In the immediate aftermath World War II and the defeat of fascism, many Nazis and other fascists escaped Europe to South America via ratlines , with the aid of the Vatican. Both lived undetected for years, with Mengele dying in Brazil. Israeli intelligence tracked down Eichmann, living under an assumed name, and was abducted and brought to Israel to stand trial and was executed.

Although Latin American countries had been staunch allies in the war and reaped some benefits during the war, in the postwar period the region did not prosper as it had expected. Latin America struggled in the postwar period without large-scale aid from the U. In Latin America there was increasing inequality with political consequences in individual countries. With the breakup of the Soviet bloc in the late s and early s, including the Soviet Union itself, Latin America sought find new solutions to long standing problems. With its Soviet alliance dissolved, Cuba entered a Special Period of severe economic disruption, high death rates, and food shortages.

Many Latin American economies continued to grow in the post-World War II era, but not as quickly as they had hoped for. With the transatlantic trade re-opening following the peace, Europe looked as it would need Latin American food exports and raw materials. The National policies of industrialization adopted in Latin America when export trade was slowed due to the Great Depression and then isolation due to World War II was now subject to international competition. Those who supported the return to the export of commodities for which Latin America had a comparative advantage disagreed with those who sought an expansion of the industrial sector. The rebuilding of Europe, including Germany, with the aid of the U. In Latin America, much of the hard currency earned by their participation in the war went for nationalizing foreign owned industries and paying down the debt.

A number of governments set tariff and exchange rate policies that undermined the export sector and aided urban working classes. Growth in the post-war period slowed and by the mids, the optimism of the postwar period was replaced by pessimism. Economic integration was called for, to attain economies that could compete with the economies of the United States or Europe.

In the postwar era, the Guatemalan Revolution overthrew the U. This brought a reformist president Dr. Reforms included land laws that threatened the interests of large, foreign-owned enterprises; a social security law, workmen's compensation, laws allowing labor to organize and strike, and universal suffrage except for illiterate women. His government established diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union in April , when it was still an ally against the Axis powers; communists entered leadership positions in the labor movement. At the end of his term, his hand-picked populist and nationalist candidate, Jacobo Arbenz , was elected, following the assassination of the rival right-wing candidate.

Arbenz proposed placing capital in the hands of Guatemalans, building new infrastructure, and instituting significant land reform via Decree With what the U. After years of struggle, Cuban revolutionaries led by Jesuit-educated, Cuban lawyer Fidel Castro overthrew the regime of Fulgencio Batista , with 1 January marked as the revolution's victory. The revolution was a huge event not only in Cuban history, but also the history of Latin America and the world. Almost the immediately, the U.

As the revolutionaries began consolidating power, many middle- and upper-class Cubans left for the U. Cuba became a poorer and blacker country, and the Cuba Revolution sought to transform the social and economic inequalities and political instability of the previous regimes into a more socially and economically equal one. The government put emphasis on literacy as a key to Cuba's overall betterment, essentially wiping out illiteracy after an early major literacy campaign.

Schools became a means to instill in Cuban students messages of nationalism, solidarity with the Third World , and Marxism. Cuba also made a commitment to universal health care, so that the training of doctors and construction of hospitals were top priorities. Cuba also sought to diversify its economy, based mainly on sugar, but also tobacco. After the failed U. In February , the U. In response to the Bay of Pigs, Cuba called for revolution in the Americas.

The crisis ended with an agreement between the U. One of the terms of the agreement was that the U. However, the U. The Soviet Union continued to be a material supporter of the Cuban regime, providing oil and petrochemicals, technical support, and other aid, in exchange for which Cuba had a guaranteed market for its sugar and tobacco. For the whole period —, Fidel Castro essentially ruled as a caudillo , or strong man, dominating politics and the international stage. His commitment to social and economic equality brought about positive changes in Cuba, including the improvement of the position of women, eliminating prostitution, solving the problem of homelessness, and raising the standard of living for most Cubans.

However, Cuba lacks of freedom of expression, and discontent was monitored by Committees for the Defense of the Revolution , and travel was restricted. The Mariel boatlift saw some , Cubans sail from the Cuban port of Mariel, across the straits to the U. President Carter initially welcomed them. The Cuban Revolution was for many countries an inspiration and a model, but for the U. After leftists took power in Chile and Nicaragua , Fidel Castro visited them both, extending Cuban solidarity, after leftists took power. In Chile, Salvador Allende and a coalition of leftists, Unidad Popular won an electoral victory in ; they lasted until the violent military coup of 11 September In the Nicaragua leftists held power from to President Eisenhower responded to the threat by Dominican Republic's dictator Rafael Trujillo , who voiced a desire to seek an alliance with the Soviet Union.

In , Trujillo was murdered with weapons supplied by the CIA. President John F. Kennedy initiated the Alliance for Progress in , to establish economic cooperation between the U. Instead, the reform failed because of the simplistic theory that guided it and the lack of experienced American experts who could understand Latin American customs. Cuba became involved in many foreign interventions. From until the late s, the Soviet government upgraded Cuba's military capabilities, and Cuba was active in foreign interventions , assisting with the liberation movements of several countries in Latin America and elsewhere in the world.

In Chile, the postwar period saw uneven economic development, with the mining sector copper, nitrates continuing to be important, but an industrial sector also emerged. The agricultural sector stagnated and Chile needed to import foodstuffs. After the election, Chile entered a period of reform. The secret ballot was introduced, the Communist Party was relegalized, and populism in the countryside grew. In , democratic elections brought to power socialist Salvador Allende , who implemented many reforms begun in under Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei. The economy continued to be dependent on mineral exports and a large portion of the population reaped no benefits for the prosperity and modernity of some sectors.

Chile had a long tradition of stable, electoral democracy, In the election, a coalition of leftists, the Unidad Popular "popular unity" candidate Allende was elected. Allende and his coalition held power for three years, with the increasing hostility of the U. The Chilean military with U. The military under General Augusto Pinochet held power until The s and s saw major political conflict in Central America, which was complex.

Complicating matters were religious changes in the Catholic Church with liberation theology and the rapid growth of evangelical Christianity that were entwined with politics. Following the American occupation of Nicaragua in , as part of the Banana Wars , the Somoza family political dynasty came to power, and would rule Nicaragua until their ouster in during the Nicaraguan Revolution. The era of Somoza family rule was characterized by strong U.

The Revolution marked a significant period in Nicaraguan history and revealed the country as one of the major proxy war battlegrounds of the Cold War with the events in the country rising to international attention. Although the initial overthrow of the Somoza regime in —79 was a bloody affair, the Contra War of the s took the lives of tens of thousands of Nicaraguans and was the subject of fierce international debate. The Sandinistas allowed free elections to be held in After years of war, they lost the election. They became the opposition party, following a peaceful transfer of power.

There was a civil war in El Salvador, pitting the leftist guerrillas against a repressive government. The bloody war there ended in a stalemate and following the fall of the Soviet Union, a negotiated peace accord ended the conflict in In Guatemala, the civil saw the genocide of Mayan peasants. A peace accord was reached in and the Catholic Church called for a truth and reconciliation commission. The Roman Catholic Church had a monopoly on religion in the colonial era and continued to be a major institution in nineteenth-century Latin America. For a number of countries in the nineteenth century, especially Mexico, liberals viewed the Catholic Church as an intransigent obstacle to modernization, and when liberals gained power, anticlericalism was written into law, such as the Mexican liberal Constitution of and the Uruguayan Constitution of which secularized the state.

Although secularism was an increasing trend in Europe and North America, most Latin Americans identified as Catholic, even if they did not attend church regularly. Many followed folk Catholicism , venerated saints, and celebrated religious festivals. Many communities did not have a resident priest and often there were not even visits by priests to keep contact between the institutional church and the people. In the s, evangelical Protestants began proselytizing in Latin America. In Brazil, the Catholic bishops organized themselves into a national council, aimed at better meeting the competition not only of Protestants, but also secular socialism and communism. Colombian Catholic priest Camilo Torres took up arms with the Colombian guerrilla movement ELN , which modeled itself on Cuba; Torres was killed in his first combat in It is sometimes described as the linking of Christianity and Marxism.

Conservatives saw the church as being politicized, and priests proselytizing leftist positions. When archbishop of El Salvador Oscar Romero called for the cessation persecution of the church and took positions of social justice. He was assassinated on 24 March while saying mass. Liberation theology informed the struggle by Nicaraguan leftists against the Somoza dictatorship, and when they came to power in , there were priests among the ruling group. On a papal visit to Nicaragua in , he reprimanded Father Ernesto Cardenal , who was Minister of Culture, and called on priests to leave politics. Brazilian theologian Leonardo Boff was silenced by the Vatican. Despite the stance by the Vatican against liberation theology, articulated by Cardinal Josef Ratzinger later Pope Benedict XVI in , many Catholic clergy and laity worked against repressive military regimes.

In Chile after the military coup ousting the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende, the Chilean Catholic Church was a force in opposition to the regime of Augusto Pinochet and for human rights. The Argentine Church did not follow the Chilean pattern of opposition. Although most countries did not have Catholicism as the established religion, Protestantism made few inroads in the region until the late twentieth century. Evangelical Protestants , particularly Pentecostals Christians proselytized and gained adherents in Brazil, Central America, and elsewhere.

In Brazil, Pentecostals had a long history. But in a number of countries now ruled by military dictatorships many Catholics followed the social and political teachings of liberation theology and they were seen as subversives. In these conditions, the sector of religious non-Catholics grew. Evangelical churches often grew quickly in poor communities where small churches and members could participate in ecstatic worship, often many times a week. Pastors in these churches do not attend a seminary nor are there other institutional requirements. In some cases, the initial evangelical pastors were from the U. In some countries, gained a significant hold and they were not persecuted by military dictators, since they were largely apolitical.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, the Cold War ended. In the U. The set of specific economic policy prescriptions that were considered the standard reform package were promoted for crisis-wracked developing countries by Washington, D. In recent years, several Latin American countries led by socialist or other left wing governments — including Argentina and Venezuela — have campaigned for and to some degree adopted policies contrary to the Washington Consensus set of policies. Other Latin countries with governments of the left, including Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Peru, have in practice adopted the bulk of the policies.

Also critical of the policies as actually promoted by the International Monetary Fund have been some US economists, such as Joseph Stiglitz and Dani Rodrik , who have challenged what are sometimes described as the fundamentalist policies of the International Monetary Fund and the US Treasury for what Stiglitz called a one size fits all treatment of individual economies. The term has become associated with neoliberal policies in general and drawn into the broader debate over the expanding role of the free market, constraints upon the state, and US influence on other countries' national sovereignty. This politico-economical initiative was institutionalized in North America by NAFTA , and elsewhere in the Americas through a series of like agreements.

The comprehensive Free Trade Area of the Americas project, however, was rejected by most South American countries at the 4th Summit of the Americas. In , Mexico announced that it could not meet its foreign debt payment obligations, inaugurating a debt crisis that would "discredit" Latin American economies throughout the decade. A "reversal of development" reigned over Latin America, seen through negative economic growth, declines in industrial production, and thus, falling living standards for the middle and lower classes. Significantly, as democracy re-emerged across much of Latin America, the realm of the state became more inclusive a trend that proved conducive to social movements , the economic ventures remained exclusive to a few elite groups within society.

Neoliberal restructuring consistently redistributed income upward while denying political responsibility to provide social welfare rights, and though development projects took place throughout the region, both inequality and poverty increased. Both urban and rural populations had serious grievances as a result of economic and global trends and have voiced them in mass demonstrations.

Some of the largest and most violent of these have been protests against cuts in urban services, such as the Caracazo in Venezuela and the Argentinazo in Argentina. Rural movements have made diverse demands related to unequal land distribution, displacement at the hands of development projects and dams, environmental and Indigenous concerns, neoliberal agricultural restructuring, and insufficient means of livelihood. In Bolivia, coca workers organized into a union, and Evo Morales , ethnically an Aymara, became its head. The cocaleros supported the struggles against in the Cochabamba water war. The rural-urban coalition became a political party, Movement for Socialism Bolivia MAS , which decisively won the presidential election, making Evo Morales the first Indigenous president of Bolivia.

A documentary of the campaign, Cocalero , shows how they successfully organized. A number of movements have benefited considerably from transnational support from conservationists and INGOs. Indigenous movements account for a large portion of rural social movements, including in Mexico the Zapatista rebellion and the broad Indigenous movement in Guerrero, [] Also important are the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador CONAIE and Indigenous organizations in the Amazon region of Ecuador and Bolivia, pan-Mayan communities in Guatemala, and mobilization by the Indigenous groups of Yanomami peoples in the Amazon, Kuna peoples in Panama, and Altiplano Aymara and Quechua peoples in Bolivia.

Other significant types of social movements include labor struggles and strikes, such as recovered factories in Argentina. In Argentina in the wake of the state terrorism, a gender-based movement of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo arose in Argentina. Protests against maquila production have taken place; it has been seen largely as a women's issue because of how assembly plants draw on women for cheap labor. In many countries in the early s, left-wing political parties have risen to power.

Following the pink tide, the conservative wave swept across the continent. Several right-wing leaders rose to power, including Argentina's Mauricio Macri and Brazil's Michel Temer , following a controversial impeachment of the country's first female president. The s commodities boom caused positive effects for many Latin American economies. Another trend is the rapidly increasing importance of the relations with China. With the end of the commodity boom in the s, economic stagnation or recession resulted in some countries.

As a result, the left-wing governments of the Pink Tide lost support. The worst-hit was Venezuela, which is facing severe social and economic upheaval. The corruption scandal of Odebrecht , a Brazilian conglomerate, has raised allegations of corruption across the region's governments see Operation Car Wash. The bribery ring has become the largest corruption scandal in Latin American history. The COVID pandemic proved a political challenge for many unstable Latin American democracies, with scholars identifying a decline in civil liberties as a result of opportunistic emergency powers.

This was especially true for countries with strong presidential regimes, such as Brazil. Wealth inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean remains a serious issue despite strong economic growth and improved social indicators. High inequality is rooted in the deepest exclusionary institutions of the Casta system [] [] [] that have been perpetuated ever since colonial times and that have survived different political and economic regimes.

Inequality has been reproduced and transmitted through generations because Latin American political systems allow a differentiated access on the influence that social groups have in the decision making process, and it responds in different ways to the least favored groups that have less political representation and capacity of pressure. Because inequality in gender and location are near universal, race and ethnicity play a larger, more integral role in the unequal discriminatory practices in Latin America. These differences have a strong impact on the distribution of income, capital and political standing.

Latin America is the region with the highest levels of income inequality in the world. Green cells indicate the best performance in each category while red indicates the lowest. Urbanization has accelerated starting in the mid-twentieth century, especially to capital cities, or in the case of Brazil, traditional economic and political hubs founded in the colonial era. The following is a list of the ten largest metropolitan areas in Latin America. Latin American populations are diverse, with descendants of the Indigenous peoples, European whites, Africans initially brought as slaves, and Asians, as well as new immigrants.

Mixing of groups was a fact of life at contact of the Old World and the New, but colonial regimes established legal and social discrimination against non-white populations simply on the basis perceived ethnicity and skin color. Social class was usually linked to a person's racial category, with whites on top. During the colonial era, with a dearth initially of European women, European men and Indigenous women and African women produced what were considered mixed-race children. In Spanish America, the so-called Sociedad de castas or Sistema de castas was constructed by white elites to try to rationalize the processes at work. In the sixteenth century the Spanish crown sought to protect Indigenous populations from exploitation by white elites for their labor and land.

In the religious sphere, Indigenous were deemed perpetual neophytes in the Catholic faith, which meant Indigenous men not eligible to be ordained as Catholic priests; however, Indigenous were also excluded from the jurisdiction of the Inquisition. Catholics saw military conquest and religious conquest as being two parts of incorporation of Indigenous populations, suppressing Indigenous religious practices and eliminating the Indigenous priesthood. Some worship continued as underground practices. Jews and other non-Catholics, such as Protestants all called "Lutherans" were banned from settling and were subject to the Inquisition.

Considerable mixing of populations occurred in cities, while the countryside was largely Indigenous. At independence in the early nineteenth century, in many places in Spanish America formal racial and legal distinctions disappeared, although black slavery was not abolished uniformly. All these areas had small white populations. In Brazil, coastal Indigenous peoples largely died out in the early sixteenth century, with Indigenous populations surviving far from cities, sugar plantations, and other European enterprises. In the nineteenth century, a number of Latin American countries sought immigrants from Europe and Asia.

With the abolition of black slavery in , the Brazilian monarchy fell in By then, another source of cheap labor to work on coffee plantations was found in Japan. Chinese male immigrants arrived in Cuba, Mexico, Peru and elsewhere. With political turmoil in Europe during the mid-nineteenth century and widespread poverty, many Germans, Spaniards, and Italians immigrated to Latin America in large numbers, welcomed by Latin American governments both as a source of labor as well as a way to increase the size of their white populations. In Argentina, many Afro-Argentines married Europeans so that in modern Argentina there is no discernible black population.

In Mexico, there was considerable discrimination against Asians, with calls for the expulsion of Chinese in northern Mexico during the Mexican Revolution and racially motivated massacres. In a number of Latin American countries, Indigenous groups have organized explicitly as Indigenous, to claim human rights and influence political power. With the United Nations passage of anti-colonial resolutions in the General Assembly and the signing on of resolutions for Indigenous rights, the Indigenous are able to act to guarantee existence within nation-states with legal standing. Spanish is the predominant language of Latin America. Portuguese is spoken only in Brazil Brazilian Portuguese , the biggest and most populous country in the region. Spanish is the official language of most of the rest of the countries and territories on the Latin American mainland Spanish language in the Americas , as well as in Cuba , Puerto Rico where it is co-official with English , and the Dominican Republic.

French is spoken in Haiti and in the French overseas departments of Guadeloupe , Martinique and Guiana. It is also spoken by some Panamanians of Afro-Antillean descent. As Dutch is a Germanic language , these territories are not necessarily considered part of Latin America. In Latin American countries not named above, the population of speakers of Indigenous languages tend to be very small or even non-existent e. Mexico is possibly the only country that contains a wider variety of Indigenous languages than any Latin American country, but the most spoken language is Nahuatl.

In Peru , Quechua is an official language, alongside Spanish and any other Indigenous language in the areas where they predominate. In Ecuador , while holding no official status, the closely related Quichua is a recognized language of the Indigenous people under the country's constitution; however, it is only spoken by a few groups in the country's highlands. In Nicaragua , Spanish is the official language, but on the country's Caribbean coast English and Indigenous languages such as Miskito , Sumo , and Rama also hold official status.

Nahuatl is one of the 62 Native languages spoken by Indigenous people in Mexico, which are officially recognized by the government as "national languages" along with Spanish. Countries like Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil have their own dialects or variations of German and Italian. In several nations, especially in the Caribbean region, creole languages are spoken. The most widely spoken creole language in Latin America and the Caribbean is Haitian Creole , the predominant language of Haiti ; it is derived primarily from French and certain West African tongues with Amerindian , English, Portuguese and Spanish influences as well. Creole languages of mainland Latin America, similarly, are derived from European languages and various African tongues.

The Garifuna language is spoken along the Caribbean coast in Honduras , Guatemala , Nicaragua and Belize mostly by the Garifuna people a mixed race Zambo people who were the result of mixing between Indigenous Caribbeans and escaped Black slaves. Primarily an Arawakan language , it has influences from Caribbean and European languages. Archaeologists have deciphered over 15 pre-Columbian distinct writing systems from mesoamerican societies. More than half of these are converts from Roman Catholicism. The entire hemisphere was settled by migrants from Asia, Europe, and Africa, so that migration is not a new phenomenon. Native American populations settled throughout the hemisphere before the arrival of Europeans in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the forced migration of slaves from Africa.

In the post-independence period, a number of Latin American countries sought to attract European immigrants as a source of labor as well as to deliberately change the proportions of racial and ethnic groups within their borders. Chile, Argentina, and Brazil actively recruited labor from Catholic southern Europe, where populations were poor and sought better economic opportunities. Many nineteenth-century immigrants went to the United States and Canada, but a significant number arrived in Latin America.

Although Mexico tried to attract immigrants, it largely failed. There is a significant population of Japanese descent in Brazil. Cuba and Peru recruited Chinese labor in the late nineteenth century. Some Chinese immigrants who were excluded from immigrating to the U. In the twentieth century there have been several types of migration. One is the movement of rural populations within a given country to cities in search of work, causing many Latin American cities to grow significantly.

Another is movement of populations internationally, often fleeing repression or war. Other international migration is for economic reasons, often unregulated or migrants being undocumented. Mexicans immigrated to the U. Economic migration from Mexico followed the crash of the Mexican economy in the s. Some were only transiting in the region, but others stayed and created communities. In the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution, middle class and elite Cubans moved to the U.

Some fled Chile for the U. In the is, economic stress in Ecuador triggered considerable migration to Spain and the U. Some Latin American countries seek to strengthen links between migrants and their states of origin, while promoting their integration in the receiving state. These Emigrant Policies focus on the rights, obligations and opportunities for participation of emigrated citizens who already live outside the borders of the country of origin.

Research on Latin America shows that the extension of policies towards migrants is linked to a focus on civil rights and state benefits that can positively influence integration in recipient countries. In addition, the tolerance of dual citizenship has spread more in Latin America than in any other region of the world. Despite significant progress, education access and school completion remains unequal in Latin America. The region has made great progress in educational coverage; almost all children attend primary school and access to secondary education has increased considerably. Quality issues such as poor teaching methods, lack of appropriate equipment and overcrowding exist throughout the region.

These issues lead to adolescents dropping out of the educational system early. Compared to prior generations, Latin American youth have seen an increase in their levels of education. On average, they have completed two years schooling more than their parents. However, there are still 23 million children in the region between the ages of 4 and 17 outside of the formal education system. Among primary school age children ages 6 to 12 , coverage is almost universal; however there is still a need to incorporate 5 million children in the primary education system. These children live mostly in remote areas, are Indigenous or Afro-descendants and live in extreme poverty. Currently, more than half of low income children or living in rural areas fail to complete nine years of education.

Latin America and the Caribbean have been cited by numerous sources to be the most dangerous regions in the world. Many analysts attribute the reason to why the region has such an alarming crime rate and criminal culture is largely due to social and income inequality within the region, they say that growing social inequality is fueling crime in the region. Crime and violence prevention and public security are now important issues for governments and citizens in Latin America and the Caribbean region. Homicide rates in Latin America are the highest in the world.

From the early s through the mids, homicide rates increased by 50 percent. Latin America and the Caribbean experienced more than 2. The major victims of such homicides are young men, 69 percent of whom are between the ages of 15 and 19 years old. Countries with the highest homicide rate per year per , inhabitants as of were: El Salvador , Honduras 64, Venezuela 57, Jamaica 43, Belize Brazil has more overall homicides than any country in the world, at 50,, accounting for one in 10 globally. Water supply and sanitation in Latin America is characterized by insufficient access and in many cases by poor service quality, with detrimental impacts on public health.

Financing of water and sanitation remains a serious challenge. While feminist movements became prevalent in Europe and North America in the s and s, the women of Latin America were gathering to oppose dictatorships and civil wars. In the s, many of the groups that made up the women's movement began to evolve in order to adapt to a changing political climate. These groups focused on specific policy issues, such as abortion , and were not composed exclusively of civil society actors.

During this same time period, anti-abortion activism was also beginning to gain momentum. The Vatican replaced hundreds of progressive clergy and summarily repressed discussions of reproductive issues. Groups continuing to fight for legal abortion across the region have faced a strong resistance from the Catholic church as well as the religious right in the United States. Although a majority of countries within the region are officially secular, the church continues to have an extensive influence within the region due to Latin America being the largest Catholic region in the world. The religious right in the United States holds substantial clout over the political right in its own country, which has resulted in the United States banning federal funding for international NGOs.

The environment of Latin America has been changed by human use in the expanding of agriculture, new agricultural technologies, including the Green Revolution , extraction of minerals, growth of cities, redirection of rivers by the construction of dams for irrigation, drinking water, and hydroelectric power. In the twentieth century, there is a growing movement to protect nature and many governments have sought recognition of natural sites by the UNESCO World Heritage Sites , Brazil, Mexico, and Peru currently have the greatest number of natural sites. In Central America , the following stand out:. Brazil is the world's largest exporter of chicken meat : 3.

The country was the second largest producer of beef in , responsible for This year, the country produced In , Argentina was the 4th largest producer of beef in the world, with a production of 3 million tons behind only USA, Brazil and China. Uruguay is also a major meat producer. In , it produced thousand tons of beef. In the production of chicken meat , Mexico is among the 10 largest producers in the world, Argentina among the 15 largest and Peru and Colombia among the 20 largest.

In the production of beef, Mexico is one of the 10 largest producers in the world and Colombia is one of the 20 largest producers. In the production of pork , Mexico is among the 15 largest producers in the world. In the production of honey , Argentina is among the 5 largest producers in the world, Mexico among the 10 largest and Brazil among the 15 largest. In terms of cow's milk production, Mexico is among the 15 largest producers in the world and Argentina among the Mining is one of the most important economic sectors in Latin America, especially for Chile , Peru and Bolivia , whose economies are highly dependent on this sector.

In terms of gemstones, Brazil is the world's largest producer of amethyst , topaz , agate and one of the main producers of tourmaline , emerald , aquamarine , garnet and opal. Chile contributes about a third of the world copper production. In , Peru was the 2nd largest world producer of copper [] and silver , [] 8th largest world producer of gold , [] 3rd largest world producer of lead , [] 2nd largest world producer of zinc , [] 4th largest world producer of tin , [] 5th largest world producer of boron [] and 4th largest world producer of molybdenum. In , Bolivia was the 8th largest world producer of silver ; [] 4th largest world producer of boron ; [] 5th largest world producer of antimony ; [] 5th largest world producer of tin ; [] 6th largest world producer of tungsten ; [] 7th largest producer of zinc , [] and the 8th largest producer of lead.

In , Argentina was the 4th largest world producer of lithium , [] the 9th largest world producer of silver , [] the 17th largest world producer of gold [] and the 7th largest world producer of boron. Colombia is the world's largest producer of emeralds. In , it extracted The country is among the 25 largest gold producers in the world. In the production of oil , Brazil was the 10th largest oil producer in the world in , with 2. Mexico was the twelfth largest, with 2. Venezuela had a big drop in production after where it produced 2. In the production of natural gas , in , Argentina produced 1, bcf billions of cubic feet , Mexico produced , Venezuela , Brazil , Bolivia , Peru , Colombia In the production of coal , the continent had 3 of the 30 largest world producers in Colombia 12th , Mexico 24th and Brazil 27th.

The World Bank annually lists the top manufacturing countries by total manufacturing value. In Latin America, few countries achieve projection in industrial activity: Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and, less prominently, Chile. Begun late, the industrialization of these countries received a great boost from World War II: this prevented the countries at war from buying the products they were used to importing and exporting what they produced.

At that time, benefiting from the abundant local raw material, the low wages paid to the labor force and a certain specialization brought by immigrants, countries such as Brazil, Mexico and Argentina, as well as Venezuela, Chile, Colombia and Peru, were able to implement important industrial parks. In general, in these countries there are industries that require little capital and simple technology for their installation, such as the food processing and textile industries. The basic industries steel, etc. The industrial parks of Brazil, Mexico, Argentina and Chile, however, present much greater diversity and sophistication, producing advanced technology items. In the rest of Latin American countries, mainly in Central America, the processing industries of primary products for export predominate.

In the food industry , in , Brazil was the second largest exporter of processed foods in the world. Transport in Latin America is basically carried out using the road mode, the most developed in the region. There is also a considerable infrastructure of ports and airports. The railway and fluvial sector, although it has potential, is usually treated in a secondary way. Brazil has more than 1. The two most important highways in the country are BR and BR The three most important highways in the country are Route 9 , Route 7 and Route The most important highway in the country is the Route 5 Pan-American Highway [] These 4 countries are the ones with the best road infrastructure and with the largest number of double-lane highways, in South America.

The roadway network in Mexico has an extent of , km , mi , [] of which , km 72, mi are paved, [] [] Of these, 10, km 6, mi are multi-lane expressways : 9, km 5, mi are four-lane highways and the rest have 6 or more lanes. Due to the Andes Mountains , Amazon River and Amazon Forest , there have always been difficulties in implementing transcontinental or bioceanic highways. Practically the only route that existed was the one that connected Brazil to Buenos Aires, in Argentina and later to Santiago, in Chile. However, in recent years, with the combined effort of countries, new routes have started to emerge, such as Brazil-Peru Interoceanic Highway , and a new highway between Brazil, Paraguay, northern Argentina and northern Chile Bioceanic Corridor.

There are more than 2, airports in Brazil. The country has the second largest number of airports in the world, behind only the United States. Peru has important international airports such as Lima , Cuzco and Arequipa. There are 1, airports in Mexico, the third-largest number of airports by country in the world. Peru has important ports in Callao , Ilo and Matarani.

The Brazilian railway network has an extension of about 30, kilometers. It is basically used for transporting ores. It came to have about , km of rails, but the lifting of tracks and the emphasis placed on motor transport gradually reduced it. It has four different trails and international connections with Paraguay, Bolivia, Chile, Brazil and Uruguay. Chile has almost 7, km of railways, with connections to Argentina, Bolivia and Peru. Colombia has only about 3, km of railways. In Brazil, this transport is still underutilized: the most important waterway stretches, from an economic point of view, are found in the Southeast and South of the country. Its full use still depends on the construction of locks, major dredging works and, mainly, of ports that allow intermodal integration.

The Brazilian government has undertaken an ambitious program to reduce dependence on imported petroleum. Brazil was the 10th largest oil producer in the world in , with 2. Production manages to supply the country's demand. In January this year, 3. Brazil is one of the main world producers of hydroelectric power. In , Brazil had hydroelectric plants in operation, with an installed capacity of 98, MW, The region's installed electricity generation capacity totaled almost 42, MW, which represented about a third of Brazil's generation capacity. The South Region owns the Itaipu Dam , which was the largest hydroelectric plant in the world for several years, until the inauguration of Three Gorges Dam in China.

It remains the second largest operating hydroelectric in the world. It has an installed generation capacity of 14 GW for 20 generating units of MW each. Brazil's hydroelectric potential has not yet been fully exploited, so the country still has the capacity to build several renewable energy plants in its territory. As of February , [ref] according to ONS, total installed capacity of wind power was Nuclear energy is produced by two reactors at Angra. It consists of two pressurized water reactors , Angra I, with capacity of MW, connected to the power grid in , and Angra II, with capacity of 1, MW, connected in As of July , [ref] according to ONS, total installed capacity of photovoltaic solar was In , Brazil was the 2nd largest country in the world in the production of energy through biomass energy production from solid biofuels and renewable waste , with 15,2 GW installed.

After Brazil, Mexico is the country in Latin America that most stands out in energy production. In , the country was the 14th largest petroleum producer in the world, and in it was the 12th largest exporter. In natural gas, the country was, in , the 21st largest producer in the world, and in it was the 29th largest exporter. Mexico was also the world's 24th largest producer of coal in In renewable energies, in , the country ranked 14th in the world in terms of installed wind energy 8. In third place, Colombia stands out: In , the country was the 20th largest petroleum producer in the world, and in it was the 19th largest exporter.

In natural gas, the country was, in , the 40th largest producer in the world. Colombia's biggest highlight is in coal, where the country was, in , the world's 12th largest producer and the 5th largest exporter. In renewable energies, in , the country ranked 45th in the world in terms of installed wind energy 0. Venezuela , which was one of the world's largest oil producers about 2.

The country also stands out in hydroelectricity, where it was the 14th country in the world in terms of installed capacity in 16,5 GW. Argentina was, in , the 18th largest producer in the world, and the largest producer in Latin America, of natural gas, in addition to being the 28th largest oil producer; although the country has the Vaca Muerta field, which holds close to 16 billion barrels of technically recoverable shale oil, and is the second largest shale natural gas deposit in the world, the country lacks the capacity to exploit the deposit: it is necessary capital, technology and knowledge that can only come from offshore energy companies, who view Argentina and its erratic economic policies with considerable suspicion, not wanting to invest in the country.

In renewable energies, in , the country ranked 27th in the world in terms of installed wind energy 2. The country has great future potential for the production of wind energy in the Patagonia region. Chile , although currently not a major energy producer, has great future potential for solar energy production in the Atacama Desert region. Paraguay stands out today in hydroelectric production thanks to the Itaipu Power Plant. Trinidad and Tobago and Bolivia stand out in the production of natural gas, where they were, respectively, the 20th and 31st largest in the world in Ecuador , because it consumes little energy, is part of OPEC and was the 27th largest oil producer in the world in , being the 22nd largest exporter in The major trade blocs or agreements in the region are the Pacific Alliance and Mercosur.

However, major reconfigurations are taking place along opposing approaches to integration and trade; Venezuela has officially withdrawn from both the CAN and G3 and it has been formally admitted into the Mercosur pending ratification from the Paraguayan legislature. The president-elect of Ecuador has manifested his intentions of following the same path. Income from tourism is key to the economy of several Latin American countries. It received by far the largest number of international tourists, with Latin American culture is a mixture of many cultural expressions worldwide. It is the product of many diverse influences:.

Due to the impact of Enlightenment ideals after the French revolution, a certain number of Iberian-American countries decriminalized homosexuality after France and French territories in the Americas in Some of the countries that abolished sodomy laws or banned any reference to state interference in consensual adult sexuality in the 19th century were Dominican Republic , Brazil , Peru , Mexico , Paraguay , Argentina , Honduras , Guatemala and El Salvador. Civil unions can be held in Chile. Beyond the rich tradition of Indigenous art, the development of Latin American visual art owed much to the influence of Spanish, Portuguese and French Baroque painting, which in turn often followed the trends of the Italian Masters.

In general, this artistic Eurocentrism began to fade in the early twentieth century, as Latin Americans began to acknowledge the uniqueness of their condition and started to follow their own path. From the early twentieth century, the art of Latin America was greatly inspired by the Constructivist Movement. Painter Frida Kahlo , one of the most famous Mexican artists, painted about her own life and the Mexican culture in a style combining Realism , Symbolism and Surrealism. Kahlo's work commands the highest selling price of all Latin American paintings. Colombian sculptor and painter Fernando Botero is also widely known [] [] [] [ by whom? Latin American film is both rich and diverse. Historically, the main centers of production have been Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Cuba.

Latin American film flourished after sound was introduced in cinema, which added a linguistic barrier to the export of Hollywood film south of the border. Mexican cinema started out in the silent era from to and flourished in the Golden Era of the s. In the s, Mexico was the location for many cult horror and action movies. Argentine cinema has also been prominenent since the first half of the 20th century and today averages over 60 full-length titles yearly. The industry suffered during the — military dictatorship ; but re-emerged to produce the Academy Award winner The Official Story in A wave of imported US films again damaged the industry in the early s, though it soon recovered, thriving even during the Argentine economic crisis around Many Argentine movies produced during recent years have been internationally acclaimed, including Nueve reinas , Son of the Bride , El abrazo partido , El otro , the Foreign Language Academy Award winner El secreto de sus ojos and Wild Tales In Brazil , the Cinema Novo movement created a particular way of making movies with critical and intellectual screenplays, a clearer photography related to the light of the outdoors in a tropical landscape, and a political message.

The modern Brazilian film industry has become more profitable inside the country, and some of its productions have received prizes and recognition in Europe and the United States, with movies such as Central do Brasil , Cidade de Deus and Tropa de Elite An influx of Hollywood films affected the local film industry in Puerto Rico during the s and s, but several Puerto Rican films have been produced since and it has been recovering. Venezuelan television has also had a great impact in Latin America, is said that whilst "Venezuelan cinema began sporadically in the s[, it] only emerged as a national-cultural movement in the mids" when it gained state support and auteurs could produce work.

International co-productions with Latin America and Spain continued into this era and beyond, and Venezuelan films of this time were counted among the works of New Latin American Cinema. This period is known as Venezuela's Golden Age of cinema, having massive popularity even though it was a time of much social and political upheaval. Soy un delincuente was one of nine films for which the state gave substantial funding to produce, made in the year after the Venezuelan state began giving financial support to cinema in The support likely came from increased oil wealth in the early s, and the subsequent credit incentive policy.

At the time of its production the film was the most popular film in the country, and took a decade to be usurped from this position, even though it was only one in a string of films designed to tell social realist stories of struggle in the s and '60s. Film production peaked in —5, with considered Venezuelan cinema's most successful year by the state, thanks to over 4 million admissions to national films, according to Venezuelanalysis.

Pre-Columbian cultures were primarily oral, though the Aztecs and Mayans, for instance, produced elaborate codices. Oral accounts of mythological and religious beliefs were also sometimes recorded after the arrival of European colonizers, as was the case with the Popol Vuh. Towards the end of the 18th Century and the beginning of the 19th, a distinctive criollo literary tradition emerged, including the first novels such as Lizardi's El Periquillo Sarniento The 19th century also witnessed the realist work of Machado de Assis , who made use of surreal devices of metaphor and playful narrative construction, much admired by critic Harold Bloom.

This was the first Latin American literary movement to influence literary culture outside of the region, and was also the first truly Latin American literature, in that national differences were no longer so much at issue. Latin America has produced many successful worldwide artists in terms of recorded global music sales. Enrique Iglesias , although not a Latin American, has also contributed for the success of Latin music. Latin Caribbean music, such as merengue , bachata , salsa , and more recently reggaeton , from such countries as the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Panama, has been strongly influenced by African rhythms and melodies.

Haiti's compas is a genre of music that is influenced by its Latin Caribbean counterparts, along with elements of jazz and modern sounds. Other influential Latin American sounds include the Antillean soca and calypso , the Honduran Garifuna punta , the Colombian cumbia and vallenato , the Chilean cueca , the Ecuadorian boleros , and rockoleras , the Mexican ranchera and the mariachi which is the epitome of Mexican soul, the Nicaraguan palo de Mayo , the Peruvian marinera and tondero , the Uruguayan candombe , the French Antillean zouk derived from Haitian compas and the various styles of music from pre-Columbian traditions that are widespread in the Andean region.

The classical composer Heitor Villa-Lobos — worked on the recording of Native musical traditions within his homeland of Brazil. The traditions of his homeland heavily influenced his classical works. Latin America has also produced world-class classical performers such as the Chilean pianist Claudio Arrau , Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire and the Argentine pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim. Arguably, the main contribution to music entered through folklore, where the true soul of the Latin American and Caribbean countries is expressed. Latin pop , including many forms of rock, is popular in Latin America today see Spanish language rock and roll. More recently, reggaeton, which blends Jamaican reggae and dancehall with Latin America genres such as bomba and plena , as well as hip hop , is becoming more popular, in spite of the controversy surrounding its lyrics, dance steps Perreo and music videos.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Region of the Americas where Romance languages are primarily spoken. For Latin American, see Latin American. This article may require copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling. You can assist by editing it. August Learn how and when to remove this template message. Main article: History of Latin America. Main articles: European colonization of the Americas , Spanish colonization of the Americas , and Portuguese colonization of the Americas.

See also: Society in the Spanish Colonial Americas. Main articles: Latin American wars of independence , Spanish American wars of independence , and Independence of Brazil. Government under traditional Spanish law. Loyal to Supreme Central Junta or Cortes. American junta or insurrection movement. Independent state declared or established. Height of French control of the Peninsula. Main article: History of Mexico. Main article: Guatemalan Revolution. Main article: Cuban Revolution. Main articles: Nicaraguan Revolution and Banana Wars. See also: Free Trade Area of the Americas. Main article: Washington Consensus. See also: Pink tide. Main article: Conservative wave.

Main article: Wealth inequality in Latin America. Further information: Latin Americans. See also: Demographics of South America. Main article: Religion in Latin America. See also: Education in Latin America. Main article: Crime and violence in Latin America. This section is an excerpt from Water supply and sanitation in Latin America. This section is an excerpt from Reproductive rights in Latin America. This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Main article: Latin American economy. See also: Environmental history of Latin America. Main article: Agriculture in Latin America. Main articles: Energy policy of Brazil and Renewable energy in Brazil.

Main article: Latin American culture. Main article: Latin American art. See also: List of Latin American artists. Main article: Latin American cinema. Main article: Latin American literature. See also: List of Latin American writers. World Bank. Retrieved September 12, Retrieved November 9, Brookings Institution. Retrieved January 22, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons Britton ISBN Retrieved March 3, Retrieved February 10, Retrieved August 9, History of Modern Latin America: to the Present 2nd ed. The Idea of Latin America. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. Ortega y Medina, ed. Race and Nation in Modern Latin America.

The American Historical Review. ISSN S2CID Cham, Switzerland. OCLC In Gutierrez, Ramon A. Berkeley: University of California Press. The word latinoamericano emerged in the years following the wars of independence in Spain's former colonies [ Reprinting an opinion piece by a correspondent in Havana on race relations in the Americas, El Clamor Publico of Los Angeles surmised that 'two rival races are competing with each other May 16, Retrieved April 23, Retrieved July 16, Retrieved July 4, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

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Adelaide, South Australia: Evan Smith. Followers of the movement demanded that the Church move beyond simple charity work towards a more active role in the promotion of social justice. Bern, Switzerland: Historischen Lexikon der Schweiz. Exports Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis fell Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis economies The Problem Of Institutional Racism. Ruben Guadalupe Marquez, digital prints, size variable, Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis Institutional sexism. Intentionally non-committed, the withdrawal creates its artificial paradises within Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis society Latin American Liberation Movement Analysis which it withdrew.