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Labor demand for export crops was driven both by territorial expansion and by the steadily rising yields from productivity-enhancing inputs. Whereas cattle ranching had low labor requirements, the new plantations were extremely labor-intensive, particularly during peak times of the production cycle…

While top state managers were transforming the industrial structures of the region’s larger economies, market forces were reshaping the composition of isthmian agriculture.

Self-interested elite responses to either adversity or new opportunities in the world economy enhanced popular classes’ capacities for struggle. Elite efforts to modernize their economies, through industrialization or the promotion of agro-industrial exports, provided the foundations for working-cl…

Once they had exhausted their disruptive potential, the Pink Tide subaltern constituencies lacked the leverage necessary to push further. Without constituencies with the structural power necessary to take on business elites, left governments focused on appeasing their followers with neo-corporatist…

The main factor distinguishing the Pink Tide from the classical Latin American left is not just the latter’s more radical will. The classical left’s aggressive pursuit of reform derived, as just noted, from its greater ability to pursue radical reforms. This enhanced sense of its ability, in turn, …