Latin America: Political or Apolitical
Forrest Colburn argues in his book, Latin America at the End of Politics that ideological conflicts between the conservative and liberal ideologies have lost their pull in Latin America and a new more apolitical consensus about government has emerged regionally. This work will analyze and evaluate Colburn's claims regarding the new ideology of Latin America. Specifically, the work will compare Colburn's theories with the case material about Guatemala, Mexico, Cuba, Nicaragua, Chili and Brazil that can be found with Harry E. Vanden and Gary Prevost's book, Politics of Latin America: The Power Game. Colburn's core ideas are bolstered and contradicted within the case work mentioned but the overall impression of the work has much merit in the foundation of the political climate within Latin America.
Colburn's theories revolve around the idea that through the dramatic changes both within Latin America and around the world that have proven to be at least some proof that the old grand design schemes of some nations are unworkable. Sighting the dissolution of socialist governments around the world as evidence of the demise of grand design government plans Colburn makes his claims:
Latin America at the end of politics? Yes, of politics with a capital p. With the electoral defeat of the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, disenchantment with the Cuban Revolution, and arguably even more important, the collapse of socialism in Eastern Europe in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the impetus in Latin America for remaking state and society has withered. There is an end to ideological confrontation and contestation. (Colburn 2)
He goes on to say that for a myriad of reasons, social, economic and political Latin America has taken its place in the collective death of "high politics" or the type that drive ideological revolutions based on egalitarian ideals of a people driven government (noting the Bolshevik Revolution and the French Revolution). Colburn attests that in the place of this ideology of social change from below is a very fragile system of,...
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