Neoliberalism and Class Conflict in Latin America A Comparative Perspective on the Political Economy of Structural Adjustment

In Latin America the 1980s opened with a crisis in the capacity of governments in the region to make interest payments on their accumulated external debts. Under conditions of this crisis the region experienced a drastic reduction in the rate of capital accumulation, a veritable haemorrhage of resources (a new outflow of over 60 billion dollars), and a drastic deterioration in the standard of living of the population, a large part of which was pushed into poverty. The decade also saw the implementation of a sweeping programme of economic reforms, either imposed as a condition for securing new loans or to embrace the neoliberal doctrine of structural adjustment, the ideology of a newly formed transnational capitalist class.