Seeing and not seeing populism in Latin America

Abstract

I suggest a different, if complementary approach to understanding populism by turning to the specificity and complexity of Latin American politics in the 20th and 21st century histories. First, I view populism in the context of Latin American nations’ failures to achieve equality and inclusion as they modernized. In so doing, I consider together what I call “the first coming of the people on the scene,” between the Mexican Revolution and the military governments of the 1960s and 70s, and the “second coming of the people on the scene,” between the 1980s and the present. I suggest that we are seeing today a repetition of mid-20th century experiences and that the present should be seen as a replay, with key differences, of the 1960s and 1970s.