Venezuelan Social Conflict in a Global Context

Having escaped the harsh experience of military rule during the 1970s and 1980s, Venezuela did not undergo the political demobilization and abandonment of social democratic policies that occurred in most of Latin America during the same period. As a consequence, it appears to have been unprepared for the neoliberal policies promoted by the United States as part of the Washington consensus. Authoritarian regimes throughout the continent sought to restructure the principal dimensions of social life to adapt to the new exigencies of the global economy. Policies of deregulation, liberalization, privatization, reduction of the state's social activity, and the limitation of social rights, which could only be partially implemented in the United States and Europe, were imposed with few constraints in Latin America, in some cases after all resistance had been crushed through repression. Chile represents the most extensive and painfully successful experiment of this type. The Popular Unity government was overthrown, the multifarious popular