for socialism in Latin America today must take into account 5 phenomenon: world economic conditions in the current conjuncture,





the state of US-Latin American relations relative to the project of world domination and imperialism,





the specific impact on Latin American countries of these conditions and relations,





the conditions deriving from the correlation of class forces within these countries,





and the class nature and agency of the state relative to these forces. World Economic Conditions and Their Impact on Latin America Latin America’s “restructured” capitalist economy emerged from the financial crisis of the 1990s and the recession of the early years of the new millennium with its axis of growth anchored in the primary sector of agro-mineral exports (Cypher, 2007; Ocampo, 2007). From 2003 to 2008 all Latin American economies, regardless of theirpolicy to favor agro-mineral exporters and accommodated the poorest section through populist clientelistic “poverty programs”. In the context of a primary commodities boom and the emergence of a range of democratically elected centre-left regimes, trade union leaders were co-opted and the social movements that had mobilized the forces of resistance to neoliberalism in the 1990s were forced to beat a retreat from the class struggle (Petras and Veltmeyer, 2009). The link between U.S. finance capital, the growth of industry and the domestic market in Asia, and the primary commodities boom, was responsible for the period of high growth in Latin America from 2003 to 2008. This took place when the boom went bust and most economies in the region succumbed to a financial crisis of global proportions and