Latin America's Turbulent Transitions

Roger Burbach was director of the Center for the Study of the Americas and a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. He wrote extensively on Latin America and US foreign policy for over four decades. He died in 2015.Michael Fox is a former editor of NACLA Report on the Americas. He has worked for many years as a freelance journalist, radio reporter, and documentary film-maker covering Latin America. He is the co-author of Venezuela Speaks!: Voices from the Grassroots (2010) and the co-director of the documentary films Beyond Elections: Redefining Democracy in the Americas and Crossing the American Crises: From Collapse to Action, both available through PM Press. He is on the board of Venezuelanalysis.com and his articles have been published in The Nation, Yes Magazine, Earth Island Journal, and more. His work can be found at blendingthelines.org.Federico Fuentes edits Bolivia Rising, is on the board of Venezuelanalysis.com, and is a regular contributor to the Australian-based newspaper Green Left Weekly, serving as part of its Caracas bureau from 2007 to 2010. He has co-authored three books with Marta Harnecker on the new left in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Paraguay. His articles have been published with ZNet, Counterpunch, MRZine, Venezuelanalysis.com, Aporrea, Rebelión, America XXI, Comuna, and other publications and websites in both Spanish and English.

• Introduction: Turbulent Transitions and the Specter of Socialism1. Globalization, Neoliberalism, and the Rise of the Social Movements2. The Pink Tide and the Challenge to US Hegemony3. Between Neo-Extractivism and Twenty-First-Century Socialism4. Venezuela's Twenty-First-Century Socialism5. Bolivia's Communitarian Socialism6. Ecuador's Buen Vivir Socialism (by Marc Becker)7. Brazil: Between Challenging Hegemony and Embracing It8. Cuba: 'Updating' Twentieth-Century Socialism?9. Conclusion: Socialism and the Long Latin American SpringAppendix: Nationwide Elections in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador

Burbach, Fox, and Fuentes have written a thoughtful account of the radical projects that have arisen in Latin America in the wake of the collapse of the "old" socialism and the simultaneous weakening of U.S. hegemony in the region. Anyone who wishes to know more about the forces behind Latin America's "left turn," and the movements from below that have made that left turn possible, will benefit from reading this book.