Title: The Struggle for Women’s Equality in Latin America | Dissident Voice
Headings: The Struggle for Women’s Equality in Latin America
The Struggle for Women’s Equality in Latin America
Content: to what extent have conditions for women changed as a result of the left trend in Latin American politics? The U.S. has had interests in Latin America throughout the 1800s (the acquisition of much of Mexico being one of them), but Yankee domination throughout the region began in earnest with the Spanish-American war in 1898. It continued, despite Cuba’s breakaway in 1959, for a full century, but is now declining as progressive countries assert their independence. In the process have come economic and social reforms, a number of which have benefited the women of Latin America. In 1998, leftist Hugo Chavez won his first term as democratically elected president. Brazil elected Worker Party founder Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in 2002. In Bolivia, the poorest republic in South America, unionist Evo Morales was elected in 2005 after mass rebellions forced out three presidents in two years. Daniel Ortega, who led the Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution in the 1970s and ’80s, was democratically voted back into office in 2006. Progressive governments have been voted into office in Ecuador, Paraguay, Chile and Argentina. Chile, the country once ruled by the fascist regime of Augusto Pinochet, is now headed by a female Socialist Party member, Michele Bachelet.