The New Militarism, the Exceptional States and the Models of Modernization in Latin America

Abstract

In South America in the 1960s and 1970s the contradictions of economic, social and political structures were deepening. In order to surmount the structural crisis the different political forces, tendencies and governments elaborated various strategies. These attempts aiming at reorganizing the society led to undermining the hegemony of ruling governing block and radical transformation of state apparatus. Progressive and regressive forms of military dictatorship and excepcional states of the new militarism appeared on the continent because of the Brazilian military takeover of April, 1964. Formally these state systems were set up by the institutional takeover of the armed forces. The military governments strove for the total reorganization and modernization of the societies in their all - economic, political and ideological - territories. The study aims at analizing the different models of modernization during the past sixty years.