Pink Tide 2.0: Causes, Characteristics and Consequences

Latin America has witnessed a remarkable political transformation in the last six years.Even more remarkable is the fact that it has happened twice already in the 21st century.Beginning in 1998 with the election of Hugo Cha vez in Venezuela, there was a continental-wide shift from the politics of neoliberalism to the rise of the so-called 'pink tide'.This catch-all term was used to characterize the rise of left and leftof-centre regimes across Latin America.By 2016, with the election of Mauricio Macri in Argentina, this tide had ebbed, revealing a right-wing bedrock across the continent-none being more emblematic than Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.However, starting in 2018 with the election of Andre s Manuel Lo pez Obrador (AMLO) in Mexico, then further cemented by Bolivia in 2020, followed by Peru, Honduras and Chile in 2021, and then Colombia (for the first time in its history) and Brazil in 2022, there has been a clear resurgence of a pink tide once again across the Latin American continent.This essay will analyse this ebb and flow of left-wing politics across Latin America in the 21st century.It will discuss the principles upon which these pink tides are grounded, and any differences between them.Analysis of the curious phenomenon of continental shifts will emerge from this comparative exercise, suggesting that high levels of inequality are at the root of this tendency.To examine this argument, the essay is split into three sections.After an empirical outline of the different regimes that constitute the pink tide, a second section will outline a series of broad principles in which these tendencies can be understood.A third section will then analyse any differences between them, suggesting that changes (and continuities) in external economic and political conditions have had a significant role to play in the shaping of the contours of those differences.A final section will conclude by saying that this swing of a continental-sized political pendulum could well continue as long as deep inequalities remain in Latin America. THE POLITICAL TERRAIN OF THE PINK TIDESThe 1980s and the 1990s were a story of rising democratization in Latin America.This process of democratization occurred within a political economy dominated by the principles of neoliberalism.In other words, the national political economies of these new democracies were dominated by the interests of capital.The Washington Consensus model-as the bundle of policies that loosely represent neoliberalism became knownimplemented across Latin America dictated a variety of capitalism that concentrated income, reduced employment opportunities, limited business opportunities and restricted social rights.In the context of rising levels of democracy, this facilitated resistance, as these dynamics ultimately represented a fundamental contradiction: regimes based on increasing political equality, or democracy, and decreasing economic equality, or neoliberalism.The pink tide can be seen as the model of political economy that rose from the ashes of a series of crises of neoliberalism that manifested across Latin America in the 1990s.From the Tequila Crisis in Mexico in 1994 via the Samba Crisis in Brazil in 1999 to the Tango Crisis in Argentina in 2001-02, these multi-faceted crises spread political and economic havoc across the continent.By the first decade of the 21st century Latin Americanists analysed regimes such as those of Ina cio Lula da Silva (and Dilma Rousseff) in Brazil, Ne stor and Cristina Kirchner in Argentina, Tabare Va squez in Uruguay, Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Hugo Cha vez in Venezuela, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, Alan Garc a in Peru, Fernando Lugo (the so-called Red Bishop) in Paraguay, Mauricio Funes in El Salvador and Rafael Correa in Ecuador.Their rule was in stark contrast to earlier decades, where individuals such as Alberto Fujimori (Peru), Carlos Menem (Argentina),