Latin American Modernities

Abstract

Modernity has been associated with a series of trends that have altered many societies worldwide, including those in Latin America. Chapter 2 analyzes Latin America and its path to global insertion and modernity. The chapter also addresses the images attributed to this multistate region. Latin American societies patterned their political institutions and public spheres after models that they conceived as the epitome of advanced global progress and modernity. They incorporated modern notions of citizenship, representative democracy, civic associations, elections, public debate and public spheres, justice, and equality before the law. Yet these multiple models were hybrid in nature, resulting from their international insertion and the format of internal colonialism and biases toward the centers of world development. Many of the promises of modernity were unfulfilled, generating new political demands, social change, and transnational spillover from one society to the others.