Latin America: Transition to what kind of democracy?

Following the wave of militarization which swept across Latin America in the nineteen sixties and seventies, leading to the establishment of brutal, autocratic regimes, like that imposed by General Pinochet on Chile on 11 September 1973, the nineteen eighties witnessed a gradual return to democracy across the region. However, thirty years on, the situation still begs a number of questions about the quality of this newly-acquired democracy.

How should we interpret the relative inability to handle issues relating to justice and memory revealed by most Latin American countries? To what extent have they distanced themselves from the ‘neo-liberal revolution’ which, championed by the dictatorial regimes they replaced, was the root cause of exclusion and poverty?

It is these unfinished transitions that will be the subject of this round-table discussion on the state of Latin America’s democracies in the 2010s.

Olivier Compagnon

Olivier Compagnon is a professor of Contemporary History at the University of Paris III –Sorbonne Nouvelle (Institute of Latin American Studies). He has been a visiting professor at universities in Spain (Salamanca), Brazil (SãoPaolo) and the United States (Berkley). He also contributed to the collective volume “Violencia y transiciones políticas a finales del siglo XX. Europa del Sur – América latina” (Casa de Velázquez, Madrid, 2009) and recently published the book “L’adieu à l’Europe. L’Amérique latine et la Grande Guerre” (Fayard, Paris, 2013).

Nancy Nicholls Lopeandía

Nancy Nicholls Lopeandía holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Essex in the UK and teaches Contemporary History at the Academy of Christian Humanism and the Catholic University of Chile in Santiago de Chile. She is the author of “Memoria, arte y derechos humanos: la representación de imposible” (Museum of Memory and Human Rights, Santiago de Chile, 2013).

Daniel Aarão Reis

Daniel Aarão Reis holds a Ph.D. from the University of São Paolo and is a professor of Contemporary History at the Fluminense Federal University in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro and is the author of a number of books on 20th-century Brazil and the history of the international Left. He recently published “A ditadura que mudou o Brasil” (with Marcelo Ridenti e Rodrigo Patto Sá Motta, Jorge Zahar, Rio de Janeiro, 2014) and “Ditadura e democracia: do golpe de 1964 à Constituição de 1988” (Jorge Zahar, Rio de Janeiro, 2014).