South America in the Twenty-First Century: Twenty Years on a Roller Coaster

South America began the twenty-first century amidst a generalized crisis. In the beginning of the 2000s, people’s response to this crisis led to an upsurge of progressive governments, known as the Pink Tide, that with different timing, improved the living conditions for most of its inhabitants, especially for the poor. Although differences between each country’s processes were significant, this progressive wave had many common aspects, and most of the political leaders consciously emphasized this affinity. Favorable international conditions helped this wave to gather momentum, but the improvements cannot be reduced to a mechanical rebound of these circumstances over and inside each country. This advantageous situation began to be reversed by the economic crisis at the beginning of the 2010s, when most of the popular governments failed to find adequate answers. The progressive governments, caught in their own limits, began to be considered responsible for the economic downturn by many of their former supporters. Karl Polanyi’s double movement is crucial to explain both the progressive move of the 2000s, as well as its reversal in the 2010s. Despite the mid-2010s weakening of the Pink Tide, signs of another Polanyian reaction open the third decade of the century.