Abstract
This chapter focuses on co-operatives in four representative Latin American countries—
Argentina, Chile, Cuba, and Mexico—in order to highlight their historical trajectories,
evolutionary trends, and potential for further development. These representative coun
tries reflect the range of co-operative development in Latin America, both historically and
contemporaneously. Each country, for instance, shows different paths of co-operative de
velopment related to, among other factors, different levels of support by their govern
ments, community-based responses to neoliberal policies, and varying connections to
broader social movements and other forms of grass-roots organizations. This chapter will
also present a number of experiences that are of particular interest today in the region,
such as worker-recuperated enterprises and other forms of workers’nself-management,
indigenous co-operatives, community-owned agricultural co-operatives, co-operatives
managing general-interest social services, and, most controversially, public-services and
work-for-welfare co-operatives created by the state.