Over the last two decades, economic, political, and social life in Latin America has been transformed by the region's accelerated integration into the global economy. Although this transformation has tended to exacerbate various inequities, new forms of popular expression and action challenging the contemporary structures of capital and power have also developed. This volume is a comprehensive, genuinely comparative text on contemporary Latin America. In it, an international group of contributors offer multidimensional analyses of the historical context, contemporary character, and future direction of rural transformation, urbanization, economic restructuring, and the transition to political democracy. In addition, individual essays address the changing role of women, the influence of religion, the growth of new social movements, the struggles of indigenous peoples, and ecological issues. Finally, the book examines the influence of U.S. policy and of regionalization and globalization on the Latin American states. Sandor Halebsky is professor of sociology at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. He coedited Cuba in Transition: Crisis and Transformation (Westview, 1992). Richard L. Harris is chair of the faculty at Golden Gate University in Monterey, California. He is one of the coordinating editors of the journal Latin American Perspectives and the author of Marxism, Socialism, and Democracy in Latin America (Westview, 1992).

Latin American Perspectives Series -- Introduction: Capital, Power, and Inequality in Latin America -- Rural Latin America: Exclusionary and Uneven Agricultural Development -- Urban Transformation and Survival Strategies -- Demilitarization and Democratic Transition in Latin America -- The Contemporary Latin American Economies: Neoliberal Reconstruction -- Economic Restructuring, Neoliberal Reforms, and the Working Class in Latin America -- The Riddle of New Social Movements: Who They Are and What They Do -- Latin American Women and the Search for Social, Political, and Economic Transformation -- Latin America's Indigenous Peoples: Changing Identities and Forms of Resistance -- Whither the Catholic Church in the 1990s? -- Latin America and the Social Ecology of Capitalism -- The Global Context of Contemporary Latin American Affairs