Abstract

NAZARENO, Marcelo. ¿Hace la izquierda la diferencia?: La política socio-económica en el «giro a la izquierda» de  América Latina. Estud. - Cent. Estud. Av., Univ. Nac. Córdoba [online]. 2010, n.23, pp.217-240. ISSN 1852-1568.

When Chávez was elected in 1998, Latin America started a «left turn» which implied that many parties, whose ideological commitment was contrary to the neoliberal economic policies applied up until then, took over the administration in several countries of the region.  However, these administrations did not promote processes of radical reversion from the neoliberal programs, which in many respects continued on. Questions therefore arise regarding the reason for this relative moderation and whether or not these governments have produced any socio-economic differences from the right-wing governments. In this article I give evidence that: 1) the so-called new Latin American left produced, in spite of its programmatic moderation, a notable difference in social and economic results with regard to those produced by neoliberal governments, and 2) however, the way in which the new left went ahead with its program turned up in at least two kinds of social and economic management that implied, each in their own way, a different kind of «truncation» of what a leftist social and economic policy should be in the whole sense of the term, namely, one that develop expansive macroeconomic policies and at the same time implement an aggressive social policy.

Keywords : Left; Economic and Social Policy; Latin America; Poverty; Democracy.