Between 1989 and 2002, a nationwide massive anti-neoliberal mobilization shook Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela to the core. All across each country, protestors rioted, blocked highways and roads, disrupted transport and commerce, staged marches from the interior to the capital, laid siege to capital cities, burned effigies, and attacked and occupied government buildings as well as the offices of transnational corporations. Ferocious street battles with riot police and the army rocked the establishment, leaving behind a toll of dead and wounded that spurred outraged protestors to redouble their efforts. At times, the army and the police refused to fulfill their repressive function.

These events were not just anomic outbursts of rage. In most cases, from inauspicious beginnings in the 1980s and early 1990s, participants patiently built organizational and coalitional capacity and used it for political purposes. This process involved the formation of new social movement organizations (composed of indigenous peoples, the unemployed, pensioners, and neighborhood associations, among others), new unions, and new political parties. These existed alongside traditional union and middle-class movements and political parties, sometimes in competition and sometimes in cooperation. Over time, mobilization became increasingly coordinated and powerful as organizations rooted in cultural, identity, and class politics linked together and reached out to new political parties and, on occasion, to dissident military factions.