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The initial reaction of many Latin American leaders to the unfolding U.S. financial meltdown has been an almost gleeful celebration of arrogance’s defeat. As the situation’s gravity multiplies, responses have become more tempered, but disdain for the years in which the region acted as a primary laboratory for the economic experiments of the United States, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank remain. Frequently such feelings have emanated from the way these prescriptions were imposed upon societies experiencing the "shock" of political repression — a process that Chilean economist Orlando Letelier once eloquently described as the linking of technical considerations with terror. Economic growth was pursued no matter its social or human cost.

Now a new generation of leaders, elected in large part due to the shortcomings of the market fundamentalism of the "Washington Consensus," has staked much of its political future on altering such conventional economic wisdom. In particular, this new wave of leadership has placed the creation of varied economic solutions that move the region beyond neoliberalism and its disregard for social welfare at the top of their agendas. While the triumph of these local, national, and regional initiatives are far from guaranteed, change in the directorship of the Latin American laboratory continues to inspire hope that sustainable, innovative economic alternatives will take hold.