After the debt crisis of the 1980s and the parallel right-wing neoliberal assault across Latin America, roughly the last decade witnessed resurgence in leftist movements and governments in the region, says Webber. As imperial wars advanced in other areas of the world, Latin America served as a beacon of hope, a site of resistance.

"Latin American peasant, worker and indigenous radicalism placed revolution back in the vocabulary of leftists across the planet. At the same time, centre-left regimes assumed power in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, and elsewhere, only to perpetuate the neoliberal capitalist projects that preceded them. The possibilities and limitations of the Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales governments in Venezuela and Bolivia respectively are raising fundamental questions concerning the plausibility and character of advancing a twenty-first-century socialism against the ravages of global capitalism," he says.

Jeffery R. Webber began teaching at the University of Regina in the Fall of 2009. He spent the last several years splitting time between Canada, Europe, and various countries in Latin America. His main focus has been Bolivia, but he is now expanding his research into the rest of the Latin America. A revised version of his doctoral dissertation will be published as Red October: Left-Indigenous Struggles in Modern Bolivia (Brill Academic Publishers, 2010). In addition, he is currently at work on four major projects: a new book manuscript, Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia: Indigenous Liberation and Class Struggle under Evo Morales (Haymarket Books, 2010); a collective volume on the new Latin American Left, co-edited with historian Barry Carr (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010); a Spanish-to-English translation of Stefan Gandler's major text, Marxismo Crítico en México, or, Critical Marxism in Mexico; and, finally, early research preparations for an eventual book manuscript, Canada in the Americas: Imperialism and Resistance in the Age of Neoliberalism, to be co-authored with Todd Gordon. Webber is also an active member on the editorial boards of Historical Materialism, Latin American Perspectives, and New Socialist.