Media, Politics, and Democratization in Latin America

This special issue of Latin American Perspectives investigates a matter that has undergone critical transformations in recent years. From the period of progressive governments to the current neoliberal restoration, the media went from being thought of as a public service to a private business. This issue features articles on Ecuador, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Mexico and Argentina and covers a broad disciplinary spectrum of studies: from the laws of communication put into practice or projected, to the deregulation of the most advanced legislations of Latin America, to communication rights, audiovisual analysis, memory studies and historiographies of the Latin American left.

The editors were committed to organizing a special issue about the favorable democratization of the media, but in the process, the media landscape was transformed into a reactionary onslaught of the monopolies of information and communication; a process that ended in the electoral victories of right-wing corporatists.