Viva la revolucion!

"We should note that social movement rebellions do not suddenly occur because all of the contingencies are in place. The social upheavals at the end of the nineties and early half years of the new millennium had a decade ofgestation: organizing, accumulating social forces, creating alliances with institutional dissidents – like radical church people – and developing leaders and cadres. Economic crises, at best, were “trigger” events which severely discredited the ruling class, undermined the dominant ‘globalization’ ideology, and allowed the movements to make a qualitative leap from protest to political rebellion and regime change.

Finally though, it is not central to this paper, we should note that while social movements at their height were able to oust incumbent neo-liberal regimes, they were not able to take political power and revolutionize society: to their upheavals allowed center-left politicians to come to power. Ironically, once in power they passed sufficient social economic reforms to fend off the re-radicalization of the movements when the world economic crises struck again at the end of the first decade of this century."

http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/10/imperial-globalization-and-social-movements-in-latin-america/