Abstract
This chapter examines Latin America’s changing role in the modern world-system and the contributions that it has made, and may yet make, to the contemporary world revolution. Taking into account the period between 1959 and 2012, we discuss how earlier world revolutions have played out in Latin America and the contributions that Latin American social movements are making to the contemporary global justice movement. Noting that semiperipheral regions have often implemented innovative social organizational forms that transformed the scale and logic of world-systems, we develop and apply a method for coding regimes in Latin America based on whether and how they relate to what is broadly called the Pink Tide. We use this coding to examine the relationship between regime form and world-system position (periphery vs. semiperiphery). Both peripheral and semiperipheral countries have contributed to the Pink Tide, but semiperipheral countries did it earlier and more completely.