Sociedades latinoamericanas: los movimientos sociales

Taking as a starting point the ideas of Zygmunt Bauman, Noam Chomsky, Gilles Lipovesky and Karl Marx, this course explores social power in Latin America. Lack of appropriate public policies, failure of state-owned industries, military coups, and globalization are some of the problems that Latin America has confronted in recent years. They are the backdrop against which various political and revolutionary movements have developed: peasants' and urban workers' associations, ethnic groups, youth groups, human rights associations and environmental groups, etc. Topics include the 'Landless Workers' of Brazil; the 'recovered factories' movement in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Venezuela; the Zapatistas in Chiapas, the "Cochabamba Water Wars" in Bolivia, human rights and indigenous rights movements in Argentina and students in Chile, illustrating just some of the social movements in Latin America's democratic societies currently struggling for representation. However, expressions of discontent and anger are nothing new. Latin America has a long tradition of revolutionary social movements we need to look at in order to understand the present. The course also encourages comparisons with current social movements in developed countries.

English course title: Social Movements in Latin America

The University of Belgrano utilizes a 45-minute contact hour whereas the United States higher education system utilizes a 50-minute contact hour. All University of Belgrano courses represent the 45 contact hour amount and an estimated US credit calculation based on the contact hours. Each University of Belgrano transcript will include the number of hours per week and the weeks in the semester, so US universities may calculate the appropriate number of US credits for students.