ABClatino Magazine Year 3 Issue 8 | Page 9

LatinoAmérica

The Decade Won ... and Lost

by Enrique Rob Lunski with Juan Carlos "Pocho" Salcedo

The beginning of the 21st century saw Latin America in a global context that favored the emergence of progressive governments that promoted regional integration.

From 2001 to 2015 the following presidents, democratically elected by their people, Nestor Kirchner and Cristina Fernandez (Argentina), Lula de Silva and Dilma Rouseff (Brazil), Michelle Bachelet (Chile), Rafael Correa (Ecuador), Hugo Chavez (Venezuela) and Jose Pepe Mujica (Uruguay), promoted a political, economic, cultural, and programmatic collaboration never before seen in Latin America. The main instrument was UNASUR (Union of South American Nations).

All these governments favored the economic growth of their countries by encouraging programs aimed at the social mobility of their inhabitants, the promotion of universal education and of heading to the Great Homeland (Patria Grande) dreamed by the liberators of Latin America Simon Bolivar and Jose de San Martin.

In 2015, and also within a global context, Latin American countries turned to the right with governments that immediately annulled and vilified the work and achievements of the previous decade.