The dominance of free-market economics in the West is finally showing its cracks after a quarter-century on the rise. Syriza’s victory in Greece on an anti-austerity platform, the strong showings for Podemos in Spain, Jeremy Corbyn’s election as U.K. Labour leader and the popularity in the U.S. of Bernie Sanders all highlight popular political challenges to the neoliberal orthodoxy.

There can be no understanding of this weakening of the free-market consensus in the West without first giving attention to the region that was the precursor in the fight for a fairer, more humane world order.

It was Latin America that set the tone in questioning what became known as the Washington Consensus — reached in 1989 by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the U.S. Treasury, without participation by any Latin American country.

At the turn of the century a wave of leftist governments came to power in Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Ecuador, among others, winning election after election in Latin America.

These processes were not homogeneous, given the different histories of each nation and variations in their party politics, social movements and leadership. But their common focus was the construction of independent, sovereign nations in the context of what the United States treated as its backyard as well as tackling poverty and inequality, addressing long-standing social ills and espousing an unwavering democratic path to societal transformation.

Today, Latin America has become a global reference point for those struggling for social justice and the building of truly representative democratic societies that serve the interests of the majority. This effort is best served not only by expanding representative democracy but also by using direct or participative and plebiscitary mechanisms. A reversal of the region’s political progress would be a setback for social progress everywhere.

Yet there are growing claims that the tide seems to be turning. “Frustration with Latin America’s left on the rise,” the Associated Press reports; “‘Pink tide’ on turn as Latin American revolutions fade,” The Financial Times says. Latin America’s left is allegedly in trouble, and a new dawn for the conservative parties that long governed the continent is on the horizon.

Driving this idea is economic troubles from the global fall in commodity prices — still the core of Latin America’s economy — and the impact on exports of slower Chinese growth, down from its 30-year average of 10 percent per year, even if remains an impressive 7 percent.

This prognosis is simplistic. The current wave of progressive governments owes its successes to much more than a commodities boom. Export price spikes occurred in the past without the impressive reductions in poverty and inequality underway in Latin America. Rather, a wide array of anti-austerity measures have been behind the economic success of the last decade, and the hope instilled in long-excluded communities, through an emphasis on social justice, has delivered repeated electoral victories for the new left.