Embracing the Other Side: An Introduction

Abstract

An explosion of rage and hope irrupted and expanded throughout the Latin American region at the end of the twentieth century. A general sense of injustice felt by millions asserted itself as a series of demonstrations, mobilisations, struggles, strikes, uprisings and upheavals against neoliberal politics and policy. These collective actions undertaken by citizen, popular, labour and indigenous movements embraced ‘autonomy’ as the tool to resist structural adjustments, and their social, economic and political consequences. These protests and mobilizations soon developed into organizing tools for both to critique capitalism, patriarchal society, coloniality and to explore alternative relations and sociabilities beyond them.