“Progress is realization of utopia”, so believed Oscar Wilde. Utopia is no flight of infancy; it is the roadmap of the future and the lifeblood of societal change. Modern ideas like shared living, equality, justice and a yearning for a better society have influenced both philosophers and political leaders. Utopia may be universal but in the contemporary world, Latin America is considered to be a fertile ground for utopian projects, movements and experiments. For many, utopia is a process of making a better tomorrow.

Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes writes, “we have clung to utopia because we were founded as a utopia.” Memory of a good society “lies in our origins and also at the end of the road, as a fulfilment of our hopes.” Hundreds of social, political and ideational experiments are currently under way in Latin America. Political leaders never fight shy of experimenting with both progressive and regressive development strategies, even untested new policy measures. Civil societies and ordinary citizens are experimenting with alternative forms of governance creating both public and institutional spaces for democratising and deepening democracy.

There may be failures and frustrations but that has not stopped them from imagining alternative utopias. Latin America is building what Zapatistas of Mexico would say, “un mundo donde quepan muchos mundos” (a world where many worlds fit in). Latin American thought leaders have made seminal contributions in the fields of inquiry like resistance and liberation movements, race, pedagogy, coloniality and indigenous epistemologies. To a great extent, the political space that the new left in Latin America has created is largely the product of utopian visions and its new imaginations.

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The new left in its various avatars has drawn inspiration from........

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