On April 1, Bolivia beat the Argentine soccer team, coached by legendary Diego Maradona, by 6-1.
Bolivia was expected to lose the match, as Argentina is ranked as the sixth best soccer team in the world. This story of David and Goliath in the Andes is just one of various events shaking up the hemisphere.
On April 14, Bolivian President Evo Morales completed a five-day hunger strike to push through legislation that allows him to run again in general elections this December.
And at the Summit of the Americas over April 17-19, US President Barack Obama will meet with Latin American presidents, who may end up giving some economic advice to their troubled neighbour in the north.
Hunger strike
When opposition party members in Bolivia left a Congress session on April 9, refusing to pass a bill that would allow for general elections in December, Morales began a hunger strike. Thousands of government supporters rallied in the streets in support of the bill.
Morales began the fast to pressure opponents into passing the legislation, which, in addition to enabling elections, would give indigenous communities broader representation in parliament and give Bolivian citizens living abroad the right to vote in the December elections.
During his hunger strike, Morales slept on a mattress on the floor in the presidential palace and chewed coca leaves to fight off hunger. Morales said that this was his 18th hunger strike.
Before becoming president, Morales was a long-time coca farmer, union organiser and congress deputy. He said the longest hunger strike he had been on lasted 18 days while he was in jail.
But Morales wasn't alone: 3000 other MAS supporters, activists, workers and union members also participated in the hunger strike, including Bolivians in Spain and Argentina.
Early in the morning on April 14, once it was official that the Senate passed the bill, Morales ended his strike.
"Happily, we have accomplished something important", he said. "The people should not forget that you need to fight for change. We alone can't guarantee this revolutionary process, but with people power it's possible."
This controversy erupted just weeks after Bolivia's new constitution was approved in a January 25 national referendum. Among other significant changes, the constitution grants unprecedented rights to the country's indigenous majority. It also establishes a broader role for the state in the management of the economy and natural resources.
Cuba, Obama and Chavez
On April 17-19, the fifth Summit of the Americas will take place in Trinidad and Tobago. The summit involves all countries in the region except Cuba, and most of the hemisphere's presidents will attend.
It will also mark the first meeting between US President Barack Obama and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.
Before the larger summit begins, a summit for the Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA) will take place in Venezuela from April 14-15. ALBA was initiated by Venezuela and Cuba in 2004 to create a trading bloc to promote regional integration based on pro-people solidarity rather than pro-corporate exploitation.
As well as its founders, other ALBA nations are Bolivia, Nicaragua, Honduras and Dominica.
Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo, and San Vincent and Grenadines' Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves also attended the summit, while Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa pulled out at the last minute due to an election campaign.
Chavez said the ALBA summit aimed to create common positions to take to Trinidad and Tobago. This includes ALBA plans for a new regional currency called the Sucre.
ALBA nations are also likely to lead the push for an end to the US blockade against Cuba.
Chavez said that if the US came to the Summit "with the same excluding discourse of the empire — on the blockade — then the result will be that nothing has changed …
"Cuba is a point of honour for the peoples of Latin America. We cannot accept that the United States should continue trampling over the nations of our America."
In an April 15 column, former Cuban president Fidel Castro noted that Obama planned to lift travel and remittance restrictions to Cuba, but that the blockade still needs to be lifted.
"[N]ot a word was said about the harshest of measures: the blockade", Castro wrote. "Numerous diagnostic equipment and crucial medicines — made in Europe, Japan or any other country — are not available to our patients if they carry US components or software."
The blockade against Cuba will likely be a hot topic of debate at the summit, and will be partly fueled by tension between Obama and Chavez.
Criticising his predecessor, George Bush, for neglecting the Latin American region, Obama has said: "No wonder, then, that demagogues like Hugo Chavez have stepped into this vacuum."
Yet a closer look at the region will show that the rise of leaders like Chavez is a result of more than just neglect on the part of the empire. It has to do with the disastrous impact of neoliberalism in the region, and a desire among Latin Americans to seek out alternatives.
Considering the current US economic crisis, Obama could learn a thing or two from the policies of leaders like Chavez. The latter is incredibly popular in Venezuela, works in solidarity with many of the region's leaders and has developed successful economic policies in his country.
Obama should put into action something he said when meeting with the G20: "We exercise our leadership best when we are listening."
Latin America changes
Whether or not the approach by Washington changes, Latin America is a different place than it was 30 years ago.
I asked Greg Grandin, a professor of history at New York University, and the author of Empire's Workshop, if another US-backed coup such as the one that happened against socialist Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973 would be possible in today's Latin America.
He said: "There isn't a constituency for a coup. In the 1970s, US policy was getting a lot more traction because people were afraid of the rise of the left, and they were interested in an economic alliance with the US.
"Now, the [Latin American] middle class could still go with the US, common crime could be a wedge issue that could drive Latin America away from the left. But US policy is so destructive that it has really eviscerated the middle class.
"Now, there is no domestic constituency that the US could latch onto. The US did have a broader base of support in the 1970s, but neoliberalism undermined it."
Grandin explained that in the 1960s and 1970s, security agencies in Latin America built up their relationship with Washington to "subordinate their interests to the US's cold war crusade".
There was a willingness among the Latin American middle class to do this, Grandin explained. "Now in South America, there has been a wide rejection to subordinate their military to the US."
One question remains: will changes made by leftist leaders in Latin America be irrevocable, even if the right regains power in the region in the next five years?
Not according to political analyst Laura Carlsen of the Americas Program in Mexico City. "In order for that to happen it would take more than just a change in the government, and I find it unlikely for anything like that to happen in the short term. It took years for the left in power to build up these social movements and the development of alternatives.
"It was the result of that process that brought these governments into power, and to reverse it you would have to silence or repress these movements."
Grandin said that "the changes seemed pretty irrevocable in the 1970s and with Reaganism and militarism … The failure of neoliberalism is certain, but it's hard to say what the response will be in the long term."
This weekend's summit, where Obama and Chavez will shake hands for the first time, might offer some glimpses into the region's future.
[Benjamin Dangl is currently based in Paraguay. He is the author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia and edits http://www.upsidedownworld.org. He can be contacted at bendangl@gmail.com