LAUSR

Latin American societies are marked by profound socioeconomic inequalities that originated in the colonial period and were reiterated by the 20th-century processes of capitalist modernization, whose main characteristics were the countries’ peripheral role in the global economy and limited social redistribution. Throughout the last century, various Latin American countries developed segmented social protection and health systems tied to the formal labor markets which excluded the majority of the population due to high levels of informality 1,2. Latin American countries’ historical and structural characteristics and development models influenced the paths and specificities of the national systems for social protection. The state was responsible for the reproduction of inequalities through regressive tax systems and stratified social policies. In some countries, it has subsidized the development of private sectors in the provision of social services, as in education and health 3. In addition, contextual and political conditioning factors – economic cycles, government projects – influenced social policies at each historical moment. Finally, we highlight the importance of specificities in the different social policy areas – like health – which display singularities in the historical processes of societies given the different objects of intervention, backgrounds, and political stakeholders. In the 1980s and 1990s, Latin American states underwent important transformations amid processes of economic liberalization and democratization at different paces and with different intensities, with major implications for social policies. Various countries launched reforms in their health systems with differing orientations, depending on their structural, institutional, and political and contextual conditions. In the 2000s, the election of Center-Left governments in some countries 4 raised expectations for changes in the development models, with greater emphasis on social issues, while encouraging the debate on the relations between politics, democracy, and redistribution. The region witnessed positive experiences in the reduction of inequalities, associated with the redistributive effect of social policies and the increase in the workers’ income 5,6,7. However, the mid-2010s saw a new turnaround in various Latin American countries. The new scenario was characterized by economic and political instability, the rise of neoHealth policies and systems in Latin America: regional identity and national singularities