Neoliberal turn in Argentina and Brazil in recent years: peripheralization, dependency and inequality

Abstract

Latin America is known as the most unequal region in the world in terms of income, and it also stands out for its “underdeveloped” nature or its poverty levels. The dominant perspectives make invisible that these phenomena are closely related to the fact that the region is located in the origins of capitalism and the modern world system as a periphery (founding), wrapped in the logic of unequal and combined development. It is a region where the socio-economic consequences of the situation of dependency, of the subordinate place in the international division of labor and in the interstate system are expressed clearly and with certain particularities. However, it is not a constant and unchangeable situation.

Just as from certain moments we observe political turns - "progressive", "left", "populist", "post-neoliberal", or popular nationals from our perspective - which tend to reverse or at least moderate the indicated conditions, we also observe turns that reinforce them. In this sense, this paper analyzes the strategic political turn that took place from 2015-2016 in Argentina and Brazil, in favor of a neoliberal-peripheral program that displaced the national neo-developmental program and the socio-political articulation that sustained it. This had an impact on the rapid increase in wealth and income inequality, poverty, unemployment and the gap respecting the center and other semi-peripheral territories. From this perspective, Argentina and Brazil are at a fundamental crossroad: deepening their setback under a program of peripheral neoliberalism and subordination to a declining power, or generating a new political turn and developing a regional strategy to end the conditions of subordination and dependency.