URBAN RESISTANCE · 2016-10-27 · aumentar el costo de los alimentos y los servicios urbanos, y...

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URBAN RESISTANCE to Neoliberal Democracy in Latin AmericaSusan Eckstein1

recibido 20/04/06, aprobado 30/05/06

C olombia Internacional 63, ene - jun 2006, 12 - 39

Introduction

T he new millenniumbegan with the triumphof democracy over dic-

tatorship and the institutionalization ofmarket economies minimally encum-

bered by interventionist states. Manybelieved that in Latin America thesechanges would usher in more just soci-eties and resolve problems created ornot resolved by import substitutionand the military governments that

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Los procesos de democratización en América Latina restauraron los derechoslaborales y políticos que habían sido negados durante los gobiernos militares quetuvieron lugar entre las décadas de los sesenta y ochenta. El aumento de lasubordinación a las fuerzas del mercado, menos constreñidas por barrerasinstitucionales bajo el modelo neoliberal, debilitó, de hecho, la habilidad de lostrabajadores para utilizar sus derechos recién restaurados para el mejoramiento desus condiciones laborales. Este artículo describe cómo y explica por qué lasprotestas contra las injusticias económicas percibidas bajo estas circunstancias sehan trasladado, en las ciudades de toda la región, de la producción al consumo; yen este dominio del consumo, de los reclamos pro-activos en favor de acceso avivienda hacia protestas defensivas en contra de iniciativas estatales tendientes aaumentar el costo de los alimentos y los servicios urbanos, y también hacia laconfiguración de movimientos de solidaridad que desde los países más ricosamenazan a las empresas que explotan a los trabajadores latinoamericanos conboicots de consumidores.

Palabras clave: protesta, movimientos sociales, neoliberalismo, distensión urbana,crimen.

Redemocratization across Latin America restored labor and political rights deniedunder the military governments in the 1960s through the 1980s. Increasedsubjugation to global market forces, less fettered by institutional barriers underneoliberalism than under import substitution has, however, weakened, de factowhile not de jure, the ability of laborers to deploy their restored rights to improveconditions at work. The article describes how and explains why protests againstperceived economic injustices under the circumstances have shifted in cities acrossthe region from the point of production to the point of consumption, and withinthe arena of consumption from pro-active claims for affordable housing todefensive protests against state-backed increases in the cost of food and urbanservices and to solidarity movements in rich countries that threaten businesses thatexploit Latin American workers with consumer boycotts.

Keywords: protest, social movements, neoliberalism, urban strife, crime.

1 Susan Eckstein es profesora de sociología en la Universidad de Boston. Fue presidente de la Asociación de Estudios Latinoa-mericanos (LASA) y ha escrito más de seis docenas de artículos sobre America Latina.

U rban resistance to neoliberal democracy in Latin America

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dominated the region between the1960s and 1980s. Neoliberal reformswere to improve the performance ofeconomies, democratization to openup channels for majority rule and rep-resentation and, in turn, for the selec-tion of rulers responsive to theinterests and concerns of the citizenry.At the same time, democratization, inprinciple, made it less risky for the dis-satisfied to organize collectively todefend concerns formal institutionalarrangements left unaddressed.

The purpose of this essay is sub-stantive: to synthesize how and explainwhy the Latin American repertoire ofeconomic struggles has shifted underdemocratic neoliberalism from worksites both to neighborhoods and over-seas to consumer solidarity move-ments, and from protests to improvework-linked conditions to efforts tolower costs of consumption and tomake cities more livable. The shiftoccurred as the work force’s earningand purchasing power deterioratedwhen subjugated to market forcesmore global in scope and more perni-cious in effect than under import sub-stitution, even as democratizationformerly restored labor and other citi-zenship rights. Globalization has weak-ened labor’s bargaining power relativeto capital’s at the same time that priva-tizations and subsidy cutbacks havedriven up the cost of living.The mobi-lizations described below are illustra-tive. They are not exhaustive, andinclude only those urban-based2.

Struggles for Work-Based RightsWork based movements are

shaped by the political-economiccontext in which laborers lives areembedded. In this vein, during theimport substitution era Latin Ameri-can workers were somewhat shieldedfrom the full effects of global marketforces because governments imposedtrade barriers and industrial produc-tion was largely domestically oriented.Labor accordingly could exert pres-sure on capital when possessing skillsin short supply. Skilled workers wonrights to organize, to protect andadvance their interests, and to strike,namely, to withdraw collectively theirlabor power as a weapon to defendtheir interests. They thereby wonrights to a minimum wage, to fringebenefits, to restrictions on the lengthof the work day, and to job security,formalized in labor codes. Unionsprovided an organizational nexuswhereby workers with shared interestsand concerns bonded and shared ideason how collectively they could pressfor improved work conditions (Eck-stein and Wickham-Crowley 2003c).

Workers in the public sectorwon similar rights. And because thestate’s role in the economy expandedunder import substitution, as bothstate-owned enterprises and state socialservice provisioning expanded, thelabor force covered by labor laws cameto include middle class employees.Even more than workers in the privatesector, those in the public sector were

2 I base this article on years of following social movement developments in Latin America. Because my goal, here, is interpreti-ve, I only provide selective references and mainly only to document factual statements for, at the time of writing, recent socialmovement developments.The interested reader may wish to consult essays in Eckstein (ed.) (2001) and Eckstein and Wick-ham-Crowley (eds.) (2003a and 2003b), and references therein, that inform my analysis.The interested reader might also wishto consult the anthologies focusing on Latin American social movements edited by Jelin (1995), Escobar and Alvarez (1992),Calderon (1995), and Alvarez, Dagnino and Escobar (1998), although they include few articles that specifically address socialmovements with economic roots.

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shielded from the vagaries of the mar-ket, which strengthened their bargain-ing power.

The range of rights organizedworkers in Latin America won duringthe import substitution era comparedfavorably with those enjoyed by work-ers in the more industrial countries.However, their wage power and theproportion of workers enjoying the

rights remained far less. Labor in noLatin American country won universaleconomic rights3. Benefits are work-linked, and only selective sources ofemployment have gained labor rights.Around the time import substitutionfell from favor about half of the urbanlabor force region-wide relied oninformal sector work, unprotected bylabor laws ensuring rights

Formal Sector Worker Protests

Formal sector workers firstexperienced improvements, but thena deterioration in their material well-being with the transitions to neolibe-ral democracies. Labor had previouslyexperienced a retraction of rights,under the dictatorships that swept theregion in the 1960s and early 1970s.Military governments repressed laborto create a more favorable investmentclimate. With the restoration ofdemocratic rule, which the labor

movements in many countries helpedbring about (Foweraker and Landman1997), work-based strife immediatelysurged. Wages rose as strike activitypicked up (Noronha, Gebrin andElias 1998).

But by the 1990s formal sectorworkers found themselves unable tohold on to their recent gains. Thenew democracies did not formallyretract labor rights, as had the militaryregimes, but they did not protectworkers from the labor-unfriendly

Table 1. Employment and salaries in Latin América, 1985 - 1996

1985 1990 1995 1996 1997Unemployment rate 8.3 5.7 7.2 7.7 7.2

Informail sector1 47.0 51.6 56.1 57.4 n.d.

Industrial Salaries2 89.9 84.7 98.8 102.2 102.6

Minimum wage3 83.5 68.5 70.8 69.9 73.7

Source: Tokman - (1997 : 152).

1 non - agricultural employment2 1980 = 1003 estimates

3 Cuba under Castro is an exception.The entire population there qualifies for the right to universal health care, and all state wor-kers, the majority of the labor force, qualify for pensions, unemployment, and other benefits. However, workers there lack theright to organize freely, independent of the state, and to strike, to defend collectively shared interests.


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Table 2. Country shifts in strike activity, Latin América (in countries with available information)

Increase Decrease Increase Decrease

Number of Strikes Bolivia Brazil Argentina (c) Brazil (a)

Chile Colombia Bolivia Chile

El Salvador Costa Rica Domin. Repub. Ecuador (a)

Panama Ecuador Venezuela (d) Mexico

Guatemala Mexico

Honduras Peru

Mexico

Nicaragua

Peru

TOTALS: 4 9 4 6

Number of Strikers Costa Rica Brazil Argentina (c) Brazil (a)

El Salvador Colombia Domin. Repub. Chile

Panama Chile Venezuela (d) El Salvador

Ecuador Mexico (b)

Mexico Peru

Nicaragua

Peru

TOTALS: 3 7 3 5

1990 - 1995 1995 - 2000

“invisible market.” The removal oftrade barriers subjected workers toglobal market competition which, ineffect, weakened their labor power.Against this backdrop, labor strifetapered off, and jobs protected bylabor laws contracted. According to

country data reported to the Interna-tional Labor Organization (ILO), thenumber of strikes, the number ofworkers involved, and the number oflost workdays declined in more coun-tries in the region than it increased(see Table 2)4. Strike activity tapered

4 The ILO data unfortunately only provide an approximation of actual strike activity.The organization’s compilations are basedon different types of sources in different countries, e.g. employers and workers organizations, and official labor relations records,and not on uniform indicators of strike activity across countries.

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off even though employment insecu-rity rose, income inequality increased,average industrial salaries barelyrecovered and the minimum wageremained below levels of 1980(www.eclac.org/publicaciones/DesarrolloSocial/0/LCL.222OPE/Anexo_Estadistico_version_preliminar.els).

The tempering of labor strife inLatin America, against the backdrop ofeconomic losses on the one hand, andthe restoration of political rights on theother hand, is traceable to the mannerthat global market forces perniciouslyeroded labor’s ability to exercise formalrights. Democratically elected govern-ments became accomplices in the defacto retraction of rights workers offi-cially regained, aiding and abetting theadvancement of business over laborinterests. Strike activity in Latin Amer-ica contracted especially in the privatesector, where under import substitu-tion it had been concentrated. Globalmarket competition under neoliberal-ism eroded labor’s ability to deploy itshistorically most important weapon fordefending and advancing its interestsvis-à-vis capital.

Country experiences suggestthat as of the 1990s strike activity cen-tered mainly in the public sector (onBrazil, see Noronha, Gebrin, and Elias1998, on Argentina, see McGuire1995), and it occurred in the context ofneoliberal state streamlining. Theneoliberal attack on the public sectorincluded union busting, to make state-owned enterprises more attractive topotential private investors (and buyers).This was true, for example, in El Sal-vador and Nicaragua. Governmentsalso slashed public sector jobs, wages,and social benefits to rein in fiscalexpenditures.They prioritized not onlybusiness interests but their own institu-tional fiscal interests over workers’.

Somewhat shielded from globalmarket competition, public sectorworkers protested threats to theirmeans of livelihood. Also working topublic employees’ advantage, states bytheir very nature are politically vul-nerable, especially under democracieswhen dependent on electoral backing.For such reasons, along with savvyorganizing, teachers, for example, haveengaged in strikes to improve their

Workdays Not Worked Costa Rica Brazil Argentina (c) Brazil (a)

Chile Ecuador Domin. Repub. Chile

El Salvador Mexico El Salvador Mexico (b)

Panama Nicaragua Peru

Peru

TOTALS 4 5 3 4

Source: ILO, 1990, pp.1004-06; 1998, pp. 1204-1211, 1229-1236, 1255-1261; and 2005.

(a) 1999(b)increase according to one data source(c) data only for 1999 and 2000(d)1997 - 2000 data for number of strikes, 1999 - 2000 data for number of strikers


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earning power (see Foweraker 1993,Cook 1996). But public sector protestshave not been sufficiently forceful toshield Latin American workers fromsome of the most far-reaching privati-zation programs in the world. Theirinability to defend themselves fromthe brutal retrenchment of workopportunities reveals that the restora-tion of work-based rights withdemocratization was more formalthan real and substantive.

Brief Comparison of Country Repertoires of Formal Sector Worker Strife

Workers’ experiences variedwithin individual countries over theyears, and among different countries atthe same historical juncture, includingindependent of economic conditions.These variations, some of which Ibriefly highlight here, reveal the role ofagency, on the part of labor and politi-cal parties that claim to speak in itsname, and of democratically electedgovernments that in principle protectthe social and economic rights of theirpeople. They also reveal that laborasserted itself most in countries experi-encing economic crises, when politicalcontrols over labor broke down andwhen, and if, labor shifted from focus-ing on the work place to their neigh-borhoods and society at large. Andwithin and across countries labor insectors vital to economies tend to bemost effective in pressing claims. Laborstrife is not explicable in terms ofmaterial conditions alone.

Argentina illustrates that thereis no mechanistic relationshipbetween economic deprivation andlabor strife (McGuire 1996). Therewere fewer strikes, strikers, and days

lost to strikes under President CarlosMenem in the 1990s, especially dur-ing the first half of the decade, thanunder President Raul Alfonsin in the1980s, even though Menem erodedworker rights far more. As in othercountries in the region, in Argentinademocratization initially breathednew life into previously repressedlabor.This explains why strike activitypicked up under Alfonsin, the firstdemocratically elected president inover a decade. But despite being dem-ocratically elected and despite havinghistoric ties to the labor movementthrough the Peronista party, Menemkept a firm grip on workers, whichmade protest difficult. Menem usedand abused political capital he attainedfrom slashing inflation to turn on hislabor political base.

Nonetheless, when the econo-my crashed around the turn of the cen-tury, as the full effects of Menem’sextreme neoliberal restructuring(which included dollarization of theeconomy) were felt, conditions were soegregious that workers ceased to besubmissive (James 2003). Strike activityincreased, largely for restorative claims.Workers mobilized defensively to pressfor pension payments and unemploy-ment compensation that they weredenied but legally entitled to.They alsoprotested for rights to payment forwork rendered. Some public sectoremployees who had managed to retaintheir jobs had gone months withoutreceiving cashable paychecks. Thisoccurred in certain provinces wheregovernments prioritized their owninstitutional economic concerns withfiscal deficit reduction and their ownpolitical priorities over workers’ rightsto payment for their labor. Decentral-

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ization of governance, one of the leit-motifs of neoliberalism, furthermore,left some provincial governments, aswell as central government agencies,without sufficient revenue to covertheir labor bills. Such was the rage thatworkers moved beyond their workplace grievances and they broadenedtheir strategies of resistance.They tookto the streets to demand economy-wide change, namely an end to stateneoliberal austerity policies. Angryworkers set automobiles aflame, sackedbuildings, and blocked vital foreigntrade routes, while angry civil servantsthreatened to shut down schools, hos-pitals, and state-run offices.As the eco-nomic crisis caused businesses to beshuttered, some workers, desperate toretain a source of livelihood, even tookover firms (www.wsws.org/arti-cles/2003/apr2003/arg-a23). Workertakeovers have been rare in the region5,and the Argentine takeovers involvedwomen, a new base of labor resistance.

In Brazil, where economic prob-lems never reached the scale ofArgentina’s, labor strife following thetransition from dictatorship to democ-racy initially also was politically morethan economically explained. As inArgentina, in Brazil the number ofstrikes and strikers, and duration ofstrikes, rose substantially initially withthe political opening but then taperedoff (Noronha, Gebria and Elias 1998).The number of annual strikes droppedfrom a peak of over 2,000 to under1,000 in the course of the 1990s.Whileas in Argentina a reining in of inflationhelped defuse tensions, the remains ofstrike activity in Brazil centered main-

ly in the slimmed down public sector.And also as in Argentina, workers wereespecially indignant when local gov-ernments, in the context of neoliberal-induced administrative decentraliza-tion, withheld paychecks.

Yet in Brazil, labor that lostpower at the work place throughprotest gained formal political powernationally.Well organized and under thesavvy leadership of Luis Ignacio Lula daSilva, popularly known as Lula, theWorkers Party won the presidency in2002.With his government subjected tothe same neoliberal strait jacket byinternational financial institutions asnon labor-led governments, workersquickly found themselves, in manyrespects, benefiting symbolically morethan materially. Lula’s government didnot turn on labor as Menem’s had, buteven with labor winning command ofthe state more powerful global forceskept its influence at bay. Some programsof Lula’s government targeted the poorand in ways that somewhat reducedincome inequality in a country withone of the worst distributions of wealthin the world, but the formal politicalpower that organized workers gained,brought them little economic gain.Thelabor movement found itself exchang-ing, in effect, improved economic rightsfor the political right to rule.

The Chilean experience furtherillustrates how neoliberal restructuringwith state backing muted labordemands, including when labor securedrepresentation in governance. Chile, thefirst country in the region both todownsize massively its state sector andto eliminate barriers to trade, did so

5 Workers deliberated whether the factories they seized should be transformed into state-owned firms or remain worker-ownedcooperatives. Personal communication from Carlos Forment, November 2004.


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under a military government that bru-tally repressed labor. As unpopularamong workers as were GeneralPinochet’s labor policies that caused liv-ing standards to plunge and manyworkers to lose their jobs, the risks ofasserting collective claims were so greatthat strikes were rare and only minimal-ly coordinated.Against the backdrop ofthe risks, workers in such economicallyvital foreign exchange earning sectorsas mining helped play a key role in themovement to restore democracy (Gar-reton 1989/2001 and 1995).

Civilian rule, which defiantworkers helped bring about in thestreets if not the work centers, gave riseto a reinvented labor movement, and areinvented socialist party in turn, thatin its new incarnation won the presi-dency in 2000 and again in 2006.Yearsof repression and memories of repres-sion led workers, among others, tobury their militant pasts.They came tosettle for distributive over redistributivegains, against a backdrop of growinginequality in the allocation of wealth asbusiness benefited more from the eco-nomic growth Latin America’s mostsuccessful neoliberal economy usheredin. A Center-Left political pact con-tained labor demands, though not byuse of force.

A different mix of political-economic conditions similarly tamedlabor in Mexico, with less pay-off toworkers.There, state-crafted business-labor pacts caused both real wages tofall and income inequality to rise(Ros and Lustig 2003). In agreeing tothe pacts, the main labor confedera-tion lent formal support to worker-unfriendly stabilization policies.While labor never gained the upperhand in the pacts, the hegemonic

hold of the Party of the Institutional-ized Revolution (PRI), with whichlabor for decades had been formallyaffiliated, whittled away. The Left-leaning Revolutionary DemocraticParty (PRD) won elections withbreak-off labor support, at the munic-ipal and congressional levels, althoughmainly only in the south and centralregions of the country, not in theincreasingly richer industrial north.Unlike in Brazil and Chile, though,labor remained out of favor at thenational political level. Indeed, whenthe PRI lost the presidency for thefirst time in 2000, it lost out to theconservative pro-business party, theNational Action Party (PAN).And sixyears later PAN won the presidencyonce again, although this time with alaser-thin victory over the PRD.Meanwhile, in the absence of a pactamong politically organized socialgroups, democratization resulted incongressional stalemates with littleeconomic pay-off to labor of a dis-tributive as well as redistributive sort.

While the pacts in Mexico tamedlabor mobilizations in the private sectorwhere capital was the main beneficiary,and did so in the absence of brutalrepression as in Chile, two deep reces-sions, in the 1980s and a decade later,stirred some new bases of unrest in thepublic sector. Even though strike activi-ty overall declined in the context ofexceptionally high increases in livingcosts (Tables 2 and 3), a gradual erosionof government legitimacy led a broad-ened range of aggrieved public emplo-yees to be less submissive than in yearspast. Well publicized political scandalsand poor economic management, andnew political party contestation sofueled, contributed to the erosion of

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PRI-dominated state legitimacy.Againstthis backdrop, some public employeesturned to new strategies to assert collec-tive claims. Public sector nurses, upsetwith shortages of medical supplies in thehospitals where they worked, for exam-ple, publicly drew blood from their armswith syringes that they then squirted atthe doors of hospital administrators(New York Times 21 January 1997: 10).They turned to such strategies, captur-ing the popular imagination, as govern-ment control of the media diminishedwith democratization.

Against the same macro politicaland economic backdrop, low-skilledpublic sector workers in Mexicanprovinces also protested abuses. Illus-trative, in 1997 streetsweepers in thestate capital of Tabasco collectivelypressed both for compensation for pri-vate services politicians exacted ofthem and for job reinstatements whenausterity policies cost them theiremployment. They staged a hungerstrike, marched en masse to MexicoCity, and stampeded into congresswhere they peeled off their clothes topress their claims (New York Times 21January 1997: 10). Like the nurses, thestreetsweepers turned to new creativepost-modernesque ways to expresstheir rage, to attract attention to theircollective claims in the context of newdemocratization-linked media access.

At the century’s turn Venezuela,under Hugo Chavez, was the onecountry where a democratically electedgovernment tried to centralize powerand use it purportedly to the benefitthe poor (the Bolivian case, morerecent, is addressed below). In doing so,

though, Chavez stirred the rile not onlyof the middle and upper classes accus-tomed to privilege, but also of the mostprivileged organized workers. Business-men, along with the oil worker “laboraristocracy” in a vital economic sector,stopped production, closed downstores, and took to the streets in protest.They resorted to the typical weapons ofthe weak, presuming that in destabiliz-ing the economy they would bring theChavez regime to heel. They alsobacked a coup d’etat.

While Chavez weathered thestorm to depose him, which in 2004also included an opposition-organizednational referendum, the strife debili-tated the government and left ordinarypeople with few improvements in theirlevel of well-being. Despite Chavez’spopulist rhetoric, available evidencesuggests that even in Venezuela underhis rule whatever improvements inwell-being ordinary people experi-enced neither entailed an improvementin income distribution nor a reductionin the poverty rate (according to themost recent United Nations data avail-able, at the time of writing, for 2002).Under Chavez’s watch income redistri-bution deteriorated slightly and thepoverty rate at first declined but begin-ning in 2000 increased)6. Chavez han-dled his populist agenda in aninflationary manner, driving livingcosts up for the very populace he pur-ported to defend (see Table 3), and bycontracting Cuba for teachers andespecially medics to provide social wel-fare services free of charge toVenezuela’s humble stratum inexchange for oil.

6 www.eclac.org/publicaciones/DesarrolloSocial/0/LCL.222OPE/Anexo Estadistico version preliminar.xls, Table 25 and0/LCL2220PI/PSI-2004_cap1.pdf,p.13.


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201 + Brazil (c) Colombia Uruguay Ecuador (d)

Nicaragua Ecuador Venezuela Mexico

Peru Honduras Uruguay (i)

Uruguay Mexico Venezuela (f)

Venezuela Nicaragua

Peru

Uruguay

Venezuela

TOTALS 5 8 2 4

Source: ILO (1998 : 1036-37, 1044-45; 2004)

(a) countries with available information(b)based on available price indexing information: for some countries prices are provided for only selective regions and devalua-

tions and bases of indexing shifted during the years under consideration (c) inferred (see ILO 2000: 1064, notes 12 and 13) (d)1998(e)1994-2000(f) 1997(g)mid-1990s until end of decade (h)1993(i) 1999

Table 3. CONSUMER PRICE INCREASES FOR FOOD AND FUEL/ELECTRICITY, 1990-2000 (1990=100)

1995 2000 1995 2000

200 or less Bolivia Costa Rica Bolivia Costa Rica (g)

Costa Rica Brazil (e) Panama Panama

Chile Haiti El Salvador El Salvador

Domin. Repub. Panama Mexico (h)

Panana

TOTALS: 5 4 5 3

201 - 500 Argentina Argentina Argentina Argentina

Colombia Bolivia (d) Ecuador Bolivia

Ecuador Chile Honduras El Salvador

El Salvador Domin. Repub. (f) Costa Rica Honduras

Guatemala El Salvador

Haiti Guatemala

Honduras Paraguay (d)

Mexico

Paraguay

TOTALS: 9 7 4 4

Food Fuel / Electricity

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Transnational Alliances and Consumer-Based Labor Movements

Unionization and strikes toimprove work conditions proved par-ticularly difficult in the new low-skilled labor intensive export-orientedindustries that mushroomed, especiallyin Mexico, the Caribbean, and CentralAmerica. The expansion of so-calledmaquila production was tied not mere-ly to the global neoliberal restructuringthat removed cross-border trade andinvestment barriers but also to suchpolitically negotiated accords asNAFTA, the Caribbean Basin Initia-tive, and, most recently, the CentralAmerican Free Trade Agreement(CAFTA), that granted signatory coun-tries privileged access to the U.S. mar-ket (under circumscribed conditions).Business took advantage of the neweconomic opportunities the neoliber-al-linked reforms and transnationalagreements made possible, plus the lowcost of labor in Latin America7.Maquila production expanded as theU.S. and other rich countries with highlabor costs deindustrialized.

Management repression andability to locate, and relocate, globallywherever it perceived its investmentoptions best, kept workers from press-ing for improved work conditions.Under the circumstances a new cross-border labor-friendly strategy evolved(Anner 2003; Ambruster-Sandoval2004; Porta and Tarrow 2004). It cen-tered on solidarity mobilizations in therich countries: on initiatives by human(including child labor) and women’srights groups and transnational con-sumer-based social movements. Move-

ments for worker rights becamedelinked from the point of production.The success of these movements hasrested on conditions created, not pre-existing, and on movement participantswillingness to sacrifice their own mate-rial interests.When labor sympathizersorganized consumer boycotts inwealthy countries to press firms toimprove conditions for workers, theyran the risk that increased labor costswould be passed on to them in higherprices for their purchases.

Although multinational firmshad the upper hand, they were notwithout their own vulnerabilities,including through exposure of theirsweatshop conditions, as in the KathieLee Gifford /Honduras uproar.Threatsof boycotts in the U.S. from the multi-campus United Students AgainstSweatshops movement, and embarrass-ment from bad media exposure, exert-ed some pressure on companies totemper their exploitation of LatinAmerican labor. In calling for con-sumer boycotts of goods produced byinternationally renowned companies(and their suppliers) shown to deploydeplorable labor practices, the anti-sweatshop movement has exerted somepressure to improve factory work con-ditions. How successful this strategywill prove remains to be seen.

The Informal Sector Independently Employed:Struggles for the Right to Work

Conditions for most workerstypically are worse in the informal thanin the formal sector, both because gov-ernments in the region rarely have

7 However, because labor in China is even cheaper as well as docile, subcontracted production increasingly is moving here


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granted informal sector workers laborprotections and because these workersare subject to widespread competitionthat keeps their earning power low.Unlike in the wealthier countrieswhere the informal sector shrank asindustrialization advanced, in LatinAmerica the informal sector hasremained large, and it expanded in sizein the 1990s (see Table 1), including insome of the most successful economiesin the region, such as Mexico, Brazil,and Peru (Centeno and Portes 2006,essays in Portes, Castells, and Benton1989). Close to 60 percent of the laborforce regionwide is estimated to workin such highly precarious jobs.

Because informal sector worklife is individuated as well as competi-tive, rarely do laborers so employedpress collectively for shared grievances.Street vendors are among the fewinformal sector workers to have mobi-lized across the region, largely in self-defense. They have staged collectiveactions to make claims on the state,especially in Mexico and Peru. InMexico City would-be vendors bor-rowed tactics from squatter settlementland invaders (addressed below) forrights to space to sell.They have collec-tively “invaded” sidewalks, streets, andother public places, and pressuredauthorities to honor their locationalvending claims (see Eckstein 1988 and2001: 329-50). Cognizant that vendingis labor-absorbing and that widespreadunemployment is politically explosive,officials often acquiesce to vendor pres-sures. Authorities have been mostaccommodating when vendors havehad the support of influential politi-cians and when their leaders have deft-ly manipulated the political system(Cross 1998).

In August 2004 an unprece-dented broad alliance of informal sec-tor workers took to the streets in ragein Mexico City, when the govern-ment appeared on the verge ofclamping down on poor people’sclaims for a basis of livelihood. Pro-testers included self-employed park-ing attendants, windshield cleaners,open-air musicians, and disabled gumsellers, along with subway vendors(www.wola.org/mexico/police/dmn_081104.htm). What sparked theircollective defiance? Opposition to anew “civic culture” law that madetheir jobs illegal. New York City for-mer mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, hadrecommended the restrictive statute.A business coalition, dismayed aboutthe breakdown in law and order inthe city, had hired Giuliani as a con-sultant. A law that might work inNew York City, however, exacerbatedsocial and economic tensions in Mex-ico’s capital, where citydwellersturned to such jobs less by choicethan default, unable to find otherwork and without recourse to welfarefor those unemployed.

Street vendors also mobilized inArgentina, which historically rankedamong the countries with the smallestinformal sectors in the region. Former-ly secure workers who took up streetvending when losing formal sector jobswith the economic downturn protestedpolice efforts to evict them in thedowntown commercial promenade.They were joined in their protest by asocial movement of the unemployed.Police stepped in when local businessesthreatened the government not to paytaxes unless authorities removed theirstreet competition. Pressed to choose,the government sided with established

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businesses, as governments in the regionhave historically typically done(groups.yahoo.com/group/argentina_solidarity).

The movement of the unem-ployed with which vendors allied itself isnoteworthy. Such a movement is excep-tional in the Latin American repertoireof resistance. It took the economic crisisto induce its formation. The MST, theacronym for the movement of theunemployed, staged protests for jobs andhealth and education services(groups.yahoo.com/group/argentina_solidarity). MST protests and demonstra-tions, in turn, built on the support ofhundreds of organizations and civicmovements in neighborhoods rangingfrom old industrial slums to middle classenclaves that gained vibrancy in thecontext of the crisis. But the movementof unemployed quickly became politi-cally and ideologically divided, asdiverse groups on the Left tried to cap-italize on the discontent.

Divisions aside, at the communi-ty level neighbors joined together inasambleas barriales and asambleas popu-lares, to address shared concerns (seeGonzalez Bombal, Svampa, and Bergel2003;Di Marco,Palomino, and Mendez2003)8. Citydwellers, accordingly,protested their plight collectively inmultiple and overlapping settings: notonly where they had claims to work butalso where they lived. Many leaders ofthe new movements had previouslybeen active in labor unions. Old basesof labor organization thereby influ-enced new bases of collective strugglesand for a broader range of concerns.

Struggles over the Cost of City Living

Worker struggles to improveincome might be expected to fade fromfashion for economically explicablereasons if living costs lessened as earn-ings declined.However, living costs roseimmediately with the onset of neolib-eral restructuring. While governmentsubsidies had kept urban living costslow under import substitution, whengovernments in the region were pressedby international creditors to reduce fis-cal expenditures in conjunction withthe restructuring, they retracted bothfood and utilities subsidies.The retrac-tion of the latter rested on privatizationsof previously publicly owned serviceprovisioners.

Protests for Affordable Food Ordinary citydwellers across the

region had come to consider food sub-sidies as a basic right, a subsistenceright. It was also a material benefit theycounted on to make city living afford-able and migration from the country-side therefore feasible. Against thisbackdrop, people experienced govern-ment-permitted hikes in prices of basicfoods as a tacit state violation of amoral contract (Eckstein and Wick-ham-Crowley 2003b: 8-16). Makingcutbacks in food subsidies all the moreegregious, many governments simulta-neously devalued their currencieswhich caused living costs to spiral.

Against this backdrop, food pricehikes fueled unrest. While consumerstypically directed their anger at author-ities perceived responsible for the rise

8 By 2005 nearly all neighborhood groups had become moribund.The economic crisis also fueled more individual, anti-social, and self-destructive responses. Economic anxieties caused an upsurge in suicides, and induced growing numbers toseek refuge abroad. Meanwhile, crime, street violence, and looting picked up, discussed in more detail below.


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in food prices they considered unjust,angry citydwellers on occasion alsolooted supermarkets (e.g. in Argentinaand Brazil) where they experiencedsudden jolts in the price of food funda-mentals. Urban consumer revoltsoccurred in at least half of the LatinAmerican countries just in the 1980s(c.f. Walton 1989/2001and 1994), andin Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentinathrough the early years of the new mil-lennium.These revolts are the modernday equivalent to the sans culottes’ andworkers’ bread riots of eighteenth andnineteenth century France and Eng-land, and the urban equivalent to peas-ant rebellions stirred by the erosion ofsubsistence rights claims (Scott 1976).

Systematic information on inci-dences of urban protests over subsis-tence claims, both across countries andwithin individual countries over time,unfortunately is non-existent. To assessthe relative importance of consumer, incomparison to other bases of defiance, Icoded incidences of protest recorded in1995, ten years after most governmentsin the region initiated their first cut-backs in urban food subsidies in con-junction with neoliberal restructuring. Irecorded incidences reported in theLatin American Weekly Report (LAWR), anews summary source on Latin Ameri-ca of high repute. Because LAWRdescribes only the most important inci-dences and underreports ongoingunrest, it provides only a rough approx-imation of actual tumult. Qualificationsaside, LAWR reported consumerprotests in six countries (over educationcosts as well as retail prices). During thesame year it reported protests againstneoliberal-linked state-sector downsiz-ing and privatizations in ten countries,and against wage reforms (including

proposals to eliminate the indexing ofwages to cost-of-living increases), theelimination of the right to strike andorganize, cutbacks in labor security(through new, more flexible hiringpolicies), and paycheck-withholding forwork rendered in eleven countries.

Assessing the situation cross-regionally since the onset of neoliber-al restructuring, John Walton (1998and 1989/2001) concluded that noother region in the world experiencedas many protests centering on food,along with protests centering onincreases in prices of such so-calledcollective goods as electricity andwater, as Latin America (Walton).WithLatin America the most urbanizedThird World region, proportionallymore people there both depend onthe market for food and services andbenefit from consumer subsidiesunder import substitution. Protests inLatin America also were more gen-dered than elsewhere in the world,that is, more female-based, and moresecular in orientation. Women’sgreater involvement in Latin Americaresulted from their greater absorptioninto the paid labor force and life out-side the confines of the home, alongwith their greater dependence on themarket for subsistence. And in coun-tries such as Peru, Guatemala, andChile, women‘s participation in con-sumer protests built on collectiveinvolvements in such neighborhoodand parish based groups as soupkitchens and food-purchasing cooper-atives. Non-governmental organiza-tions, NGOs, had helped organizesuch groups when government-initi-ated austerity policies had made sub-sistence exceedingly problematic forurban poor in the early to mid-1980s.

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Table 3 gives a sense of why costof living increases stirred collectiverage. Between 1990 and 1995, as wellas between 1990 and the century’sturn, food prices in most countries atleast doubled. By the end of the 1990seight countries experienced more thana five-fold increase in food costs. Thefood index, of 100 in 1990, rose toover 1,000 in Ecuador, Peru, Uruguay,and Venezuela.

Nonetheless, as in the case ofstrike activity, cost of living protests isnot entirely economically explained:neither their incidence nor theirform. Protests ranged in form, fromdemonstrations, strikes, riots, andlooting; to attacks on governmentalbuildings. The form varied by coun-try. They varied with national reper-toires of resistance, cultural traditions,and organizational and associationalinvolvements, as well as with macropolitical-economic conditions, state-society relations, and group alliances.Cutbacks in subsidies, for example,stirred riots in Jamaica,Argentina, andVenezuela, street demonstrations inChile, and strikes and roadblocks inAndean nations. Protests also variedin how violent they turned, largelydepending on how public authoritiesresponded. Protests in cities acrossVenezuela against cutbacks in con-sumer subsidies turned especially vio-lent in 1989. Hundreds of protestersthere were killed in consumer protestsknown as the caracazo (Coronil andSkurski 1991: 291). It was against thisbackdrop that Chavez was initiallyelected in the late 1990s. State vio-lence turned ordinary Venezuelansagainst the rule of elite-linked parties.Chavez represented a break with theoligopolistic parties of the past.

The assaults on former tacitlyagreed-upon urban subsistence rights,nonetheless, typically only stirredpublic protest under certain politicalconditions. Democratization itself didnot necessarily prepare the ground.Protests occurred especially wheregovernments were weak and unpopu-lar and where political divisivenessand power struggles prevailed. Undersuch circumstances the risks of rebel-lion were less and the possibility ofgaining political support greater.Where political contestation wasminimal and the state comparativelystrong, widespread consumer subsidycutbacks rarely led unhappy cityd-wellers to take to the streets.This wasespecially true in Mexico as long asthe PRI retained national power,when the cost of living rose consider-ably, but even afterwards.

These seemingly spontaneousprotests typically involved somedegree of coordination (c.f. Walton1998 and 1989/2001). They occurredespecially where backed by laborunions. Social class in its organizedform accordingly shaped mobiliza-tions to lower living costs, at a timewhen strikes for higher wages thatwould make consumer price hikesmore affordable became difficult.Protests also occurred where backedby clergy inspired by Liberation The-ology, which called for concern withthe poor. In Brazil the CatholicChurch played an especially active andvisible role, including at the nationallevel.There, in 1999 the national bish-ops’ organization sponsored demon-strations against state withdrawal ofsubsistence protections, as well asagainst other neoliberal policies.Theycalled their movement “The Cry of


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the Excluded Ones,” and coordinatedtheir activity with unions, and withparties of the Left and the increasing-ly influential Landless Workers Move-ment (MST).

Thus, consumer protests becamea new addition to the Latin Americansocial movement repertoire at the sametime that work-based protests subsided.The new economic order alone, how-ever, does not account for the shift inbases of collective action. Even thescale of price hikes has not in itselfdetermined when angry citydwellersrebel. Consumer protests against risingliving costs typically occurred whenencouraged and led by labor, parish,neighborhood, and other groups.

The impact of cost of livingprotests, in turn, varied across theregion. When defiance was broad-based, insurgents often succeeded ingetting governments to retract orreduce price hikes (Walton1989/2001). Yet, Table 3 reveals thatwhatever impact protesters had oncontaining price increases provedshort-term and limited, in that foodcosts dramatically rose in most coun-tries in the region in the course of the1990s, including in countries wheremobilizations against surges in the costof living transpired.

When governments temporarilycut back price hikes they did so fortheir own institutional reasons: torestore order and legitimate their con-tinued claims to rule. Occasionallygovernments, such as Brazil’s underFernando Henrique Cardoso, respond-

ed to stepped up nationwide protestswith ambitious spending programs. Butsome weak governments even uponrestoring consumer subsidies collapsedunder the weight of unrest. Thisoccurred in Ecuador both in 1997 and20009. Although Ecuador had experi-enced far from the highest food, alongwith fuel, price increases in the regionbetween 1990 and 1995, food pricesnearly doubled between 1995 and1997, and by 2000 the food priceindex, on a base of 100 in 1990, hadspiraled to over 3,000 (see Table 3, andsources)10. Rage over the rise in subsis-tence costs drove trade unionists andteachers, together with indigenousgroups mobilized around new claimsto ethnic rights, into the streets.

As angry citydwellers inEcuador staged road blocs that para-lyzed the country, officials foundthemselves between a rock and a hardplace. In attempting to appease pro-testers and restore order, by rollingback contested price increases,Ecuadorian governments defaulted onforeign loans and initiated overarchinghyperinflationary policies that madethem yet more unpopular.

Similarly, in Argentina food riotscontributed to the downfall first of Pres-ident Fernando de la Rua’s governmentand then to the governments that brieflyfollowed in the first years of the newmillennium. While Argentina had notranked among the countries with thehighest hikes in food costs, widespreadunemployment and impoverishment,and then an official devaluation of the

9 The immediate cause of the mass movement that deposed the incumbent president in 2005 was more explicitly political.It centered on anger over Supreme Court appointments viewed as an unconstitutional grab for power. However, fuelingthe anger that drove tens of thousands of protesters to the streets, including women and indigenous groups, was discon-tent with the government’s neoliberal agenda.

10 Prices in Nicaragua surged even more than in Ecuador.

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local currency, priced basic subsistencebeyond most citydwellers’ reach.Yet, thestruggles for subsistence rights rested notmerely on new and unprecedented eco-nomic insecurity. The neighborhood,work-based, and other organizations thatthe general economic crisis fueled, coor-dinated the food riots, along with otherprotests, and induced the desperate toseek collective redress.

Aware of the politicizing effectsausterity measures often have, somegovernments targeted anti-povertyfunds selectively to preempt collectiveresistance to cost of living increases.President Salinas (1988-1994),through his famed Solidarity Pro-gram, for example, in Mexico master-fully channeled social expenditures tocommunities his administration con-sidered politically problematic, in amanner that made beneficiariesdirectly indebted to, and dependenton, the central government.The Fuji-mori government in Peru similarlytargeted anti-poverty funds, and in sodoing weakened the influence ofgrass-roots community organizationsthat had mushroomed in oppositionto subsidy cutbacks. Fujimori’s auto-cratic interventions, which concomi-tantly reined in the guerrilla group,Shining Path, managed to containconsumer revolts as food pricessoared. The food price index joltedfrom a base of one hundred in 1990,when Fujimori first came to power, toover a thousand mid-decade. Pricesduring the five year interval raisedmore in Peru than in all countries inthe region besides Nicaragua.

While Fujimori managed tostave off subsistence rights protests, heproved unable to hold on to power.Exposure of abuses of democracy, par-ticularly of corruption at the highestlevels of his administration and of vote-rigging, were the immediate causes ofthe movement that drove him fromoffice, all the while that anger brewedover deteriorating living standards.Fujimori’s successor, Alejandro Toledo,dark-skinned and born poor, camefrom a background with which mostPeruvians could identify, since they stillwere impoverished and of indigenousheritage.Although Toledo won a land-slide victory in 2001, in failing to keephis electoral promise to create jobs andalleviate poverty to offset the steep risein living costs, workers, teachers, andothers in cities and towns across thecountry took to the streets to demandbetter pay and better work conditionsand to oppose privatizations that droveliving costs up under his politicalwatch. Food prices rose even higherthan under Fujimori, although not ashigh as in Ecuador, Venezuela, andNicaragua (see Table 3 sources). Livingcosts, together with a litany of othergrievances, resulted in Toledo’s popu-larity plunging to the single digits, tothe lowest level of any president in theregion. Urban unrest across the coun-try became a near daily occurrence11.However, Toledo managed to keepfood protests minimal by continuingtargeted food subsidy programs (fromwhich reputedly 20 percent of thepopulation benefited)12. The govern-ment’s Vaso de Leche (Glass of Milk)

11 Other protests across the country focused on such issues as anger over privatizations, the eradication of coca fields deprivingfarmers of a livelihood, corruption, and mining company environmental pollution.

12 Personal communication from Cynthia McClintock, November 2004.


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program partially offset the general risein food costs, and the very administra-tion of the program, including throughneighborhood committees, no doubthelped deflect consumer rage.

In sum, citydwellers experi-enced neoliberal linked state cutbacksin food subsidies as unjust. It was gov-ernment violation of their moral andnot merely material economy thatfueled food riots. But neither statereneging on its tacit social contractnor the scale of price increases inthemselves determined when indig-nant urban residents took to thestreets. Protests were very much con-tingent on the institutional and cul-tural context in which citydwellers’lives were embedded. Where civilsociety organizations brought angryconsumers together and leadersinstilled a sense that the dramaticincreases in living costs should not betolerated, and where governmentswere weak and the polity politicized,consumer protests were most likely.Democratization made protests easierwhile not ensuring citydwellers theright to affordably priced food.

Struggles for Affordable Housing and Urban Services

Under import substitutionmany citydwellers came to feel enti-tled to affordable housing and afford-able urban services, such astransportation, piped water, and elec-tricity. Populist regimes before themilitary takeovers had accommodatedto these claims, to consolidate politicalsupport while ensuring a cheap laborforce for business. If city living costs

were low, so too could wages be.Theprovisioning of affordable housing andservices accordingly benefited thepopular sectors, business, and the statesimultaneously.

The most distinctive feature ofthe Latin American urban landscape inthe import substitution era had beenthe mushrooming of squatter settle-ments on the periphery of cities. Inthe new settlements city-dwellers col-lectively took to the offense: theystaked out land where they had noprior claims. Governments typicallytolerated the land takeovers providedthey occurred on public (or on polit-ically weak peasant) lands, for severalreasons. They addressed city people’sneeds for shelter at minimum cost tothe state. They were politically popu-lar.And land recipients could easily bemanipulated politically, votesexchanged for rights to property andthe provisioning of urban services13.Sometimes governments even success-fully pressed settlers to absorb costs ofurban services.

Under neoliberalism, however,collective mobilizations for urban landrights tapered off (Durand-Lasserve1998; Márquez 2004; Tironi 2003).For one, the squatter option becameless attractive to ordinary city folkwith limited economic means oncethe cost of living in such settlementsincreased with the privatization ofservice provisioning. For-profit com-panies, detailed below, raised rates forservices. Two, the public lands wheregovernments had tolerated “squat-ting” by the century’s turn had main-ly been claimed.Three, the neoliberal

13 For references and an analysis of the literature on Latin American squatter settlements, see Eckstein (1990) and thereferences therein.

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governments were biased toward mar-ket, not political, housing solutions.Consistent with their bias, theyfavored commercial dealings over landinvasions, a more business but lesspoor-people friendly way to build upthe city housing stock. As a result, thedeepening of neoliberalism eliminatedcitydwellers’ most effective means tominimize their housing costs, throughcollective land invasions.

Reflecting the rise in urbaninfrastructural costs with the neolib-eral transition, some two-thirds of thecountries with available informationexperienced more than a doubling offuel and electricity prices in the 1990s(see Table 3). Cost of urban serviceprotests that occurred against thiseconomic backdrop often were tiedto privatizations of previously stateprovided and subsidized so-called col-lective goods.

In Ecuador, for example, it wascutbacks in gasoline and not merelyfood subsidies that proved the undoingof the two democratically elected pres-idents deposed in Ecuador in the 1990s.Ecuador’s exorbitant increases in fueland electricity charges were the highestin the region. Gasoline price hikes werealso implicated in Venezuela’s 1989 cara-cazo, while in Argentina the govern-ment’s announcement of utility pricehikes amidst the country’s economiccrisis led people in cities across thecountry to take to the streets in rage.In 2002 Argentines staged a black-out, in protest against huge rises intelephone, heating gas, and electricityrates, on top of the unprecedented

unemployment and impoverishmentthe economic crisis caused.(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/busi-ness/2280537.stm).

Privatization of utilities com-panies, and the price hikes in servicesthat ensued, brought angry Peruviansinto the streets as well. Governmentsin the country that through targetedanti-poverty programs containedconsumer protests as the cost of livingoverall spiraled met with resistance tocost-of-services increases. Anti-priva-tization protesters at one point shutdown the country’s second largestcity. But widespread unrest left thegovernment weak and society divid-ed, with ordinary Peruvians’ plightunresolved.

The provisioning of utilitiesbecame especially contentious inBolivia. In Cochabamba, the coun-try’s third largest city, poor peopleprotested against an American com-pany the government contracted totake over the provisioning of the city’swater supply. The World Bank pres-sured Bolivia to privatize water deliv-ery as part of a broader campaign toget Bolivia to privatize state enter-prises. The neoliberal-biased butdemocratically elected governmenttacitly sided initially with the foreignfirm which it guaranteed a 16 percentrate of return on its investment andpermitted to raise water charges dra-matically14.The protests built on socialmovements brewing nationwide,including among indigenous peoplesstirred by newly awakened claims tocollective ethnic rights, and among

14 Latin Americans have protested the unequal provisioning of water, along with price increases of the essential. Bennett(1995), for example, documents the class bases to water provisioning in Monterrey, Mexico, and how protests by poorwomen pressured the government to democratize access.


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coca growers angry about govern-ment eradication of their crop whenpressed by Washington in conjunctionwith its war on drugs.

Hugo Banzer, president at thetime, called on more than one thou-sand police in February 2000 to crushdemonstrators. Hundreds wereinjured, one person died. Underduress though the government can-celled the foreign contract, whenpressed to choose between helping aforeign firm profit while lowering itsfiscal expenditures, and averting col-lapse of its legitimacy. Confrontedwith massive mobilizations by peopleconsidering the price hikes, alongwith other policies, unjust, the gov-ernment retracted the foreign contract(leading the foreign firm, in turn, tosue the state).

The Bolivian, like the Ecuadori-an government, found itself between arock and a hard place. Its legitimacywas so frail, in light of the social move-ment momentum, that it imposed astate of siege. It, in essence, curbed cit-izen civil rights after having retractedits tacit social contract to provideaffordable living.

While the state of siege restoredorder in the short-run, the humble nei-ther forgot the “water war” nor forgaveits perpetrators15. Nationwide, diversegroups of aggrieved increasingly coor-dinated their protests, targeting theiranger against those they dubbed “theneoliberals.” In December 2005 theytogether succeeded to elect Evo

Morales, the dark-skinned formerleader of the cocaleros, the coca growers,president, with the largest vote of anycontender for the office in the coun-try’s history.Anger over state complici-ty in the price hikes in living costscontributed to, although alone did notcause, the historical shift in who in thecountry was elected to rule.

The 2005 election marked thefirst time in Bolivia’s history that poorpeople elected a person who sharedtheir humble origins to the highestpolitical office in the land, followingthe footsteps of their social counter-parts in Peru in 2001 and in Brazil thefollowing year. Humble folk through-out the region have strength in num-bers, which when given theopportunity they increasingly areusing to support politicians born intheir ranks. In Bolivia more than inthe other countries the new politicalturn, however, rested on mobiliza-tions on the part of newly politicizedgroups in civil society, which along-side labor, with a long history of mil-itancy, asserted claims.The politicizedpursued a dual strategy, in the streetsand at the ballot box.

Crime and Struggles for Safe Cities

Latin Americans across theregion became so disaffected with thenew economy and new felt injusticesthat increasing numbers of them alsoresponded in ways that eroded themoral order of cities, through more

15 Although not a protest against the cost of living, Bolivia was further rocked by a union and opposition party led multi-citymobilization for the right to domestic ownership, control, and use of the country’s natural gas supply.After violently repres-sing protesters, the democratically elected president, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, was so discredited that he was driven fromoffice. Indigenous people’s success in toppling the wealthy and cosmopolitan president gave them a sense of empowermentand racial pride, on which other struggles built that in 2005 culminated with the election of the anti-neoliberal cocalero lea-der, Evo Morales, president of the country.This was an unprecedented political break with the past.

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individuated (though sometimescoordinated), violent, and anti-socialvenues (Caldeira 2000; Portes andRoberts 2005). Collective pro-activeactions proved far from the onlyresponse to neoliberal restructuring.Indeed, a surge of disaffected cityd-wellers from Mexico to the SouthernCone turned to theft, pilfering, loot-ing, gang activity, kidnappings, andkillings16. Colombia became the kid-napping capital of the world, withMexico not far behind17. In 2001 akidnapping occurred in Colombiaevery three hours. Crime generatedmore crime as a culture of illegality setin, and as criminality went unpun-ished. Poverty and unemployment,along with drugs, police corruption,and the entrenchment of leaner andmeaner governments, were at the rootof the rise in the illegal activity. Inmany countries law enforcementagents even became part of the prob-lem, not its solution, as they joined theranks of the criminals and operatedwith impunity.

The surge in criminality gaverise, in turn, to massive new multi-class anti-crime movements, in capi-tals across the region. Participantsdemanded tougher government anti-crime measures. Seeking unity andpublicity for their cause, protestersmade use of culturally crafted symbolsof resistance which they, like otherdefiant groups, could deploy to cap-ture the popular imagination throughdemocracy-improved media access.These new movements to the LatinAmerican protest repertoire brought

the middle classes across the regioninto the streets. In Rio de Janeiro in1995 a civic group, Viva Rio, forexample, oversaw a massive demon-stration for a cleanup of the policedepartment, as well as improved urbanservices. Hundreds of thousands ofrich and poor and old and young,cloaked in white, joined the demon-stration, React Rio. In Rio, faveladwellers independently organized topress for improved neighborhoodsecurity, including against policeincursions and drug-traffickers. Andin Colombia four years later an anti-kidnapping protest drew hundreds ofthousands of citydwellers, also clad inwhite, to demand tougher govern-ment action against criminals. Thesame year in Mexico City tens ofthousands of frustrated and frightenedresidents of all social classes, but espe-cially of the middle class, in turn,paraded with white ribbons and blueflags in outrage over the mountingwave of violent crime there. Anti-crime city-wide protests occurredagain in Mexico City in June andAugust of 2004. They were the city’slargest mobilizations in recent history(www.mana t t j one s . com/news-b r i e f / 2 0 0 4 0 9 0 9 . h t m l ;www.amren.com/mtnews/arhcives/2004/08/hundreds_of_tho.php). Themarches were organized by crimevictim groups, but scores of humanrights, civic, and public interestgroups joined in. Meanwhile, Argen-tines as well, in 2004, took to thestreets to demand a governmentcrack-down on crime.

16 Not discussed here, international immigration, was yet another response. I discuss that option in Eckstein 2002 17 For regional crime data see Portes and Hoffman (2003).


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In these various instances, as inthe case of consumer protests, thedeepening of neoliberalism alone didnot prompt the collective resistance.However, in slimming down the state’srole in the economy and society, andin generating new inequities, newinjustices, and new insecurities, theeconomic restructuring fueled crime,and anger about crime in turn.Democratization was not the sourceof citydwellers’ new plight but itproved not its solution either. Yet, itcreated a political opportunity struc-ture that made the movements morelikely, in reducing the risks of protestand allowing for greater media cover-age.The media coverage sparked bothinterest in and knowledge about theprotests, and in so doing broadenedthe base of collective defiance. At thesame time, democracy-linked electoralcompetition induced opponents ofgovernment incumbents to encourageparticipation in the broad-based anti-crime movements, to help discreditofficials’ ability to maintain law andorder. In Mexico City, for example,the anti-crime protests in 2004 werepartially supported by the middleclasses wishing to discredit the thenmayor, Andres Manuel LopezObrador, a populist, who they fearedmight win the 2006 presidential elec-tion (and, as noted above, came veryclose to winning to his most conser-vative opponent that the wealthy andmiddle classes supported). In similarvein, a businessman orchestrated andfinanced a-quarter-of-a-million- largeprotest to discredit Buenos Aires’ left-leaning mayor,Anibal Ibarra, as well asto demand tougher laws against kid-nappers. Outrage with the kidnappingand killing of his son stirred him to

build on the bedrock of anger withthe breakdown of law and order in thecity.Yet, even if political opportunismin such instances sparked the anti-crime movements, civil society sup-port built on the insecurities that thebreakdown of law and order underneoliberalism induced.

In Colombia, more than in anyother country in the region, the pre-occupation with public safety becameso widespread as to help elect, at thedawn of the new millennium, a presi-dent on, first and foremost, a “law andorder” platform: Alvaro Uribe. Civicorder had so decayed that the popu-lace put concerns with economicinjustices aside.

ConclusionWhatever the economic logic

to Latin American neoliberal restruc-turing, the deepening of the reformprocess carried seeds of obstruction toits unfettered permeation, though not,at least to date, seeds of its owndestruction. State sector downsizing,and trade and price liberalizations,addressed state fiscal exigencies, but sotoo did they generate unemployment,new economic vulnerabilities, andcost of living increases for city peoplewho could ill-afford them. Mean-while, a surge in crime made life incities unsafe and unbearable for folkacross the class divide.Accordingly, theremoval of market encumbrances gen-erated new grievances that broughtnew, distraught groups to the streets.Democratization restored politicalrights military governments in theregion had retracted, but it has yet toinstitute formal channels throughwhich new market generated griev-ances are adequately addressed.

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The range of Latin Americaneconomically driven social movementsunder neoliberal democracy suggestthe following propositions:

l. When citydwellers protest aspectsof the new economic model theyfind especially egregious they ini-tially do not defy the neoliberalrestructuring in the abstract.Rather, they rebel against neoliber-alism as they directly experience itin their everyday lives. However, asthe range of groups and sources ofgrievances build up, the economicmodel itself, and its domestic per-petrators, become targets of rage.Anti-globalization protests abroad,although beyond the scope of thisessay, contribute to the framing ofsome of the movements, but theroot causes of the movements aregrounded in conditions cityd-wellers in Latin America them-selves experience.

2. There is no mechanistic relationshipbetween neoliberal-based materialdeprivations and defiance. Politicalstructures and processes, includingstate structures, state/society rela-tions, leadership, alliances, and thevibrancy, politicization, and organi-zation of civil society, are mediatingfactors influencing how victims ofreforms respond. The weaker thestate on the one hand, and the morepoliticized society and less institu-tionalized state/society relations onthe other hand, the more probablethat economic grievances stir col-lective resistance.

3. Neoliberal restructuring has shift-ed the Latin American repertoire

of resistance from the point ofproduction to consumption, andwithin the arena of consumptionfrom pro-active claims for afford-able housing to protests againstincreases in the cost of living.Thisshift has transpired in the contextof neoliberal restructuring world-wide, in which labor at the workplace has increasingly been sub-jected to pernicious invisible mar-ket forces and to visible policies ofinternational financial institutionsthat weaken its ability to exerciseformal rights to organize andstrike in self-defense restored withdemocratization. Global competi-tion has made strikes a too riskyand ineffective weapon for mostworkers to turn to when theyconsider their low earnings andpoor and declining purchasingpower unjust. Under the circum-stances, some cross-regional soli-darity movements have taken aform that threatens firms withconsumer boycotts if the manufac-turers do not improve work con-ditions where they produce. Morefrequently under the circum-stances, labor, together with poorand lower middle class people,have shifted to collective disrup-tive efforts to halt cost of livingincreases, first in the price of basicfoods but more recently in costs ofurban services. Their protests havetempered price jolts, but more inthe short than long run. At thesame time, collective resistance tospecific neoliberal reforms is hav-ing a spillover effect in the formalpolitical arena, where angry andnewly politicized groups increas-ingly are using their new and


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restored political rights to electinto office people who share theirhumble origins and who claim tospeak in their name. Urban con-stituencies increasingly in LatinAmerica thus are combining insti-tutional and non-institutionalmeans to press claims.

4. As economic conditions deteriorateand state social controls breakdown, resistance increasingly is alsotaking more anti-social forms.Crime has become so endemic as tomake cities unsafe. Against thisbackdrop, cross-class movementshave emerged demanding that citiesbe remade more livable.

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