As such, this process of globalization has different orders of magnitude, within the Latin American region, depending on the historical mode of insertion within the international division of labor and the specific levels of development.

Therfore, countries such as Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico -- which implemented industrial models of import substitution and experienced high levels of urbanization -- are being reincorporated within the global economy in a very different manner than those economies that were not able to implement industrial urban regimes i.e, Guatemala, Honduras, and Bolivia, to just mention a few representative examples.

The urbanized economies of Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico -- in reaction to the international economic crisis and the financialization of capital -- are currently dismantling their inwardly oriented industrial models in favor of outwardly orientated models based on neo-liberal dictates.
The foundational components of these newly constituted models of economic development are free trade, foreign investment, privatization, and the implementation of non-traditional export strategies.

These approaches to economic development have resulted in increased levels of unemployment, informalization of local labor markets, skewed income structures, and rapidly accentuating class polarization.These proceses are clearly evident in the region's primate urban centers and the newly developing growth poles.

These cities are increasingly characterized by rapidly rising levels of class and spatial polarization, social and political instability, exploding street crime, and the emergence of well organized social movements that are mobilizing in response to the above mentioned processes.

These trends have accentuated the devalorization of labor and has truncated the effective demand of large segments of the population which have not benefitted from the newly formulated economic policies. Effective consumer demandis limited to those sectors of the population that are linked to the most dynamic and over-valorized sectors of the neo-liberal economy.
Moreover, the demand patterns of these high income groups are characterized by a high propensity to consume expensive durable groups goods, assembled locally (or imported) by transnational corporations, or else they manifest a tendency to purchase high prestige imported consumer products i.e., designer goods, electronic products, etc.

In effect, via the process of neo-liberal economic restructuring, internal urban demand patterns are being reconfigured away from consumption of internally produced consumer goods -- which were formally purchased by middle and working class sectors that were linked directly or indirectly to an urban based industrial structure -- to a demand structure predicated on the limited and selective demand of high income groups.
Such a skewed demand structure has limited the positive extertnalities of a domestic multiplier effect and has negatively impacted on the growth potential of those local labor markets associated the formal economy.

The net effect of this political economy has led to increased levels of transnational economic penetration, denationalization of the local economy, consumerist enclaves, urban pauperization, and the truncation of internal markets.

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