Pink tide

The term "pink tide" (Spanish: marea rosa, Portuguese: onda rosa) or "turn to the Left" (Sp.: vuelta hacia la izquierda, Pt.: Guinada à Esquerda) are phrases used in contemporary 21st century political analysis in the media and elsewhere to describe the perception of a turn towards left wing governments in Latin-American democracies straying away from the then more frequent neo-liberal economic model. This occurred primarily between 1998 and 2009, entering in relative stagnation and decline afterwards.

Analysts have pointed out additional anti-American,populist, and authoritarian-leaning traits in those governments. The Latin American countries viewed as part of this ideological trend have been referred to as "Pink Tide nations". The term post-neoliberalism has been used as a term to refer to the Pink Tide.

In the 1990s, following the end of the Cold War, Latin-American countries turned towards neo-liberal economic policies and underwent a process of privatization of public companies, cuts in public spending, foreign investment and espousing of free market policies. These neo-liberal economic policies promoted by the IMF and the World Bank were dubbed as the "Washington consensus". According to the BBC, a "common element of the 'pink tide' is a clean break with what was known at the outset of the 1990s as the 'Washington consensus', the mixture of open markets and privatisation pushed by the United States". The Neo-liberal experiment collapsed in several countries by the end of the decade, leaving the different economies with features such as high level of unemployment, corruption, inflation and increasing inequality. With the difficulties facing emerging markets across the world at the time, Latin Americans turned away from the liberal economics and used the promoted democracy to elect leftist leaders, with nearly half of a dozen elected governments turning to authoritarianism. With China becoming a more industrialized nation at the same time and requiring resources for its growing economy, it took advantage of the strained relations with the United States and partnered with the leftist governments.

...
Wikipedia