Introduzione. Una intensa stagione elettorale

This essays offers an introduction to a volume which collects the revised papers presented at the symposium “L’America Latina nel nuovo millennio: un cantiere aperto, tra innovazioni e continuità”, organized by the editor of the volume itself and held on March 5, 2008, at the University of Padua. The essay stresses the fact that, after the years of military dictatorships and the beginning of processes of re-democratization that both the outburst of the debt crisis and the subsequent adjustment policies made rather troublesome, the whole region has undergone a phase of greater political stability that has made it possible the resort to elections as the main instrument to designate the heads of state and prime ministers. Against this backdrop, the year 2006 stood out as particularly revealing because it witnessed the rise to power on the part of personalities that can be defined as “innovators”. In this respect, conventional wisdom has it that Latin America “turned Left”, a generic expression overlooking the remarkable differences among the single countries.