Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Pink Tape: Leftist State Bureaucracy And Neoliberalism In The Mining Sectors Of Bolivia And Ecuador, Cristina Nicole Mendez

Senior Theses

Latin America is the locus of various policy experiments and social movements, where political and economic leaders have vacillated between prioritizing neoliberalism and social security since the 1960s. Scholars have observed Latin American leftist governments for viable alternatives to neoliberal economics, but such projects have effectively failed to truly change the course of economic development in Latin America (Weyland, 2010; Escobar, 2010). One of the most salient contemporary instances of this ideological conflict has been the issue of land use rights and neo-extractivism, particularly in mining conflicts in the Andes of South America. This thesis posits that so-called leftist political …