The gender of modernization and the modernization of gender: Latin America and the Caribbean since 1914
This chapter opens in the middle of a revolution. The Mexican revolution exploded as long-standing issues such as land tenure and labor practices boiled over once concerns about suffrage and presidential succession were thrown into the cauldron of grievances, marking Latin America's first crisis of liberalism. Disillusionment with neoliberalism swept in what was dubbed a "pink tide" of left-leaning governments, starting with the election of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in 1998 and spreading through most of South America and parts of Central America and the Caribbean. Reflecting the prevalence of materialist analyses, twentieth-century Latin American history is conventionally periodized around major shifts in political economy. Turn-of-the-century liberalism and first-wave industrialization gave way to corporatist populism following the Great Depression. As with developments in political economy, each turn of the wheel brought new debates about what the modernization of gender might look like and whether it was a desideratum.
