Social and political context

In the first two decades of the twenty-first century, Latin America experienced critical and sometimes contrasting changes in terms of political and social orientations. On the one hand, progressive governments’ successive takeovers of power in the first decade of the century marked Latin America’s ‘left-wing turn’. With their own nuances, several governments opposed neoliberal principles by stressing the role of the state in implementing regulatory, redistributive and social policies, especially those oriented towards minorities and protected groups. On the other hand, in the second decade, most of these so-called progressive governments were replaced by right-wing ones. In this ‘right-wing turn’...