dissatisfaction with those democracies … has been growing, often with deeply destabilizing consequences.” (Caputo, 2005) “Deeply destabilizing consequences”: civil conflict against water privatization (Cochabamba, Bolivia, 2000), revolt provoked by a banking/peso crisis (Argentina 2001/2), challenging the privatization of electricity supply (Arequipa, Peru 2002). In other words, the failure of democratic governance to ameliorate individuals’ marginalization and the impoverishment of the masses had provoked the emergence of radical social movements. Opposition to economic liberalization and the ALCA proposal was regionally articulated through the Alianza Social Continental (Hemispheric Social Alliance) of trade unions, social movements and indigenous, environmental and citizen organizations (see Saguir 2007): 30 mass movements from 19 countries organized into 18 regional networks, struggling under the banner “Yes to LIFE, No to FTAA: Another America is Possible”. The Alianza “ is a forum where progressive movements from around the Americas can gather, strategize, share information and plan joint actions … [and] fight for an alternative development model” (HSC 1999). The Alianza convened for the first time in Costa Rica in March 1999. After opposition to neoliberalism in Seattle, Genoa, the World Social Forum and elsewhere; Third World governments’ inability to agree to further trade liberalization at the WTO; and regional opposition organized by the Alianza Social Continental, it became politically impossible for Latin American government representatives to reach agreement on the ALCA proposal at the Vth Summit of the Americas at Mar del Plata (Argentina) in November 2005. As “the Nestor Kirchner [President of Argentina] Administration hosted the official Summit of the Americas … [a] Peoples' Summit brought together various social movements, labor, piqueteros, and community groups from Argentina and throughout the Americas to strategize a more just form of Latin American integration” (Fischer-Hoffman 2005). The Peoples’ Summit was “an enormous affair which consumed … two stadiums and the university provided the space for dialogue on how to build an anti-imperialist hemispheric movement” (op.cit.) and it hosted three workshops on ALBA. "In the future, we will speak of US-Latin American relations in terms of the era before Mar del Plata, and the era after it," remarked President Hugo Chávez in his weekly televised talk show, Aló Presidente.
Political Mobilization The significance of informal political organization to challenge disadvantage and impoverishment through social movements reflects the process by which individuals become radicalized to search for alternative modes of existence. Normally a shared heritage is disseminated through social institutions (schools, universities, religious worship, the media) ideologically creating a consensus which morally and ethically maintains and preserves social stability.