First book review of "Latin America's Pink Tide: Breakthroughts and Shortcomings"

The following is the first review of my edited “Latin America’s Pink Tide: Breakthroughs and Shortcomings” published by Rowman and Littlefield, 2020. The review is by Cynthia McClintock 

As the momentum behind Latin America’s left recedes, this important, cohesive, timely volume, edited by Ellner, a well-known scholar of Latin America, takes stock of the successes and failures of the Pink Tide. Separate chapters consider “radical" Pink Tide governments (Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador), “pragmatic” Pink Tide governments (the Workers’ Party in Brazil, the Frente Amplio in Uruguay, and "Kirchnerism" in Argentina), and the left in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Mexico. One of the volume's core arguments is that aspirations for structural transformation were severely constrained by the hegemony of global capitalism as Pink Tide governments largely maintained "extractivist" economic models based on commodity exports. However, despite these constraints, these governments sought to reduce social and economic injustice and succeeded, according to the authors. Contributing scholars hail from diverse countries, providing a wealth of valuable information for each case study. They effectively engage with questions regarding the implications of global capitalism's hegemony for the political economy of Latin America, though this reviewer would have liked them to wrestle more vigorously with questions drawn from the dictum “absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and professionals.