摘要：The impact of the global crisis on the region is less than that caused by the convulsions of the 1980s and the 1990s, but with unequal effects and increased social polarization. There is a prevailing desynchronization that demonstrates cyclical tendencies and the consequences of an already processed/absorbed devaluation of capital. It also reflects the new role of the semi-peripheral economies. These changes are ignored by orthodox economists, who mystify fiscal adjustment, and by heterodox economists, who exaggerate the results of state intervention. The localization of the crisis in the developed countries and the European periphery has important ideological consequences for Latin America. The relative buoyancy of Latin American economy has not resulted in significant improvements in employment or income for the majority of the population. Structural poverty and labour precariousness continue to widen the social gap in the region. Latin America still has the highest international indices of inequality, and this inequity tends to grow during phases of both economic growth and recession. The class polarization this signals intensifies social deterioration, as is evidenced in the increase in the crime rate, the destruction of agrarian communities, the growth of urban marginality and the collapse of the public school system. This essay will examine how the specific class effects of the crisis have played themselves out in very different ways in right-wing, centre-left and more radical left governments in Latin America, and in the different contexts of popular advances and retreats.
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