title: Latin America's Political Economy of the Possible: Beyond Good Revolutionaries and Free-Marketeers
author:  Javier Santiso 
description: Throughout the 20th century, a tug-of-war of political and economic policies was waged in Latin America, with revolutionary Marxists on one side and neo-liberal reformers on the other. But now, in the early 21st century, pragmatism rules the day, or so argues Santiso, the chief development economist at the OECD Development Centre. Through his cogent analysis of political and economic trends in the region over the last century, Santiso suggests that leaders have discarded utopianism, moving their focus from the future to the present. This shift has allowed policy and planning to focus on the real needs of the various countries, and has engendered solutions that mix a number of formerly exclusive ideologies. In his chapters on Chile, Mexico and Brazil, Santiso argues that Latin American leaders no longer believe in a region-wide panacea. Though his case for economic steadiness is strong, Santiso disregards the great economic inequalities in Latin America, and he ignores how recent policies are affecting the poor. This book is a refreshing look at Latin America and will be encouraging to those who fear those countries are turning too for to the left, or for anyone who wishes to see how the land of magical realism has become quite pragmatic. <i>(Apr.)</i> <br />Copyright  Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
zlib_text: Ernesto Laclau(h)
  Debate on the Left in the last decade over the origins and present nature of
  Latin American societies has focused on the problem of whether they should be
  seen as feudal or capitalist in character. A complex and lengthy discussion has
  taken place whose importance is not diminished by the conceptual confusion
  which has often accompanied it. Its significance, moreover, has not been
  confined to theory, since different theories have led to different political
  conclusions. Those who maintain that the Latin American societies were
  historically constituted as feudal in character and have remained so ever since,
  wish to emphasize that they are closed, traditional, resistant to change and
  unintegrated into the market economy. If this is the case, then these societies
  have still not yet reached a capitalist stage and are, indeed, on the eve of a
  bourgeois-democratic revolution which will stimulate capitalist development
  and break with feudal stagnation. Socialists should theref