The news out of Latin America today shows protest alive and well in many quarters: the student movement for educational reform in Chile and Colombia, the indignados and #YoSoy132 movements in Mexico, the indigenous movements against mining in Ecuador, and more recently, the movement against national corruption in Brazil during the lead-up to the World Cup. For years, social movement scholarship on Latin America focused on the leftist movements of the 1970s and 1980s. But for this month’s dialogue, we asked contributors to discuss how contemporary Latin American movements are both building on and moving away from past movements. How are the goals of today’s movements, their types of tactics, and the involved actors on both sides different or similar to past movements? How does drawing attention to today’s movements challenge assumptions both about Latin America and about social movement activism more generally? Moreover, most of these movements are decidedly local and have local idiosyncrasies and grievances, but they also seem to share larger themes with the rest of the recent global movements. What lessons, innovations, and/or conclusions can social movement scholars draw from this recent wave of global south movements? We are posting a few essays now and will add others periodically throughout the month. Many thanks to our distinguished contributors.
Rebecca Neaera Abers, University of Brasília (essay)
Francisco Dominguez, Middlesex University (essay)
Paul Dosh, Macalester College (essay)
Margaret Keck, Johns Hopkins University (essay)
Salvador Martí i Puig, University of Salamanca (essay)
Richard Stahler-Sholk, Eastern Michigan University (essay)
