In recent months, massive street protests throughout Latin America have made headlines. In June, Brazil saw the biggest public demonstration in more than two decades. A month later Peru witnessed the largest in a decade. Meanwhile in Chile, student protests of the recent past have evolved now to encompass issues well beyond education.
These protests are newsworthy by their sheer magnitude. But they are even more remarkable considering the fact that they have taken place in three of the most economically successful countries in Latin America.
Brazil is Latin America's largest economy and the sixth largest in the world. Chile, long recognized as one of the best run emerging economies, recently became a high income country. Peru, despite global uncertainty, has managed stellar economic growth in the past four years.
Why then are people protesting, instead of celebrating?
To begin with, the demonstrations should not be equated with protests in other latitudes. They do not represent a popular uprising against autocratic leaders. If anything, as Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff put it, "the size of [the] marches is evidence of the strength of our democracy."
Such a vibrant democratic tradition is likely to make significant social and economic gains of the past decade more sustainable. These protests, instead of weakening, reinforce this point. As people come out to demand better services, elected officials are pressured to deepen and reinforce the gains they have been able to accomplish. Those elected officials that understand the challenge have an opportunity to increase transparency and mechanisms of accountability.
Protesters are not coming to the streets with outrageous demands. The fact is that in recent months they have been paying higher prices for services that have not improved. In Brazil, for instance, prices for personal services and basic foods started to rise a year ago at a rapid pace, doubling the average inflation. In Chile, meanwhile, prices for education, personal services and food and beverages were up to three times higher than average inflation.
In the second half of the 20th Century, Latin America's middle classes were small, below 20 per cent of the population, and had limited commitments to and expectations from their governments. They were not asked to pay much in taxes and did not expect to receive much from public services either. They opted out of public services and paid for private education, health, security and even electricity.
Today, many of those in the much larger middle class, are realizing that there is a limit to opting out. There are public goods that everyone depends on, such as roads, public transport, quality of education and health care, fresh air, and citizen security, among many others.
Between 2003 and 2011, Latin America's middle class expanded by more than 50 percent. Today, and for the first time in history, there are more Latin Americans in middle class than in poverty. Still, more middle class population does not a middle class society make. To get there, one key prerequisite is to improve the quality and coverage of key public services. Only then can these countries' social contract be strengthened -- breaking the vicious cycle of low taxation and low quality of public education, citizen's security and health.
All this is not to say that the protests are a testament to government failure. Poverty reduction in recent years happened in a context of macroeconomic stability accomplished thanks to important government reforms. It is also in part due to better-targeted social policies that have helped most to those with least.
The protests do serve as reminders of the fact that Latin American societies have changed dramatically in recent past. The transformation in fact has come so fast that it has been hard for governments to keep up and improve services sufficiently to meet demand.
And while investing in improving public services represents longer term propositions that may not serve immediate political objectives, the protests help underscore that not investing may be just as costly for elected officials.
In today's interconnected world, Latin Americans' expectations are only likely to grow. National, state and local governments will need to become ever more efficient to be able to meet their demands. More than the inevitable price of success; the recent protests represent the price of a successful agenda, still unfinished.
Hasan Tuluy is the vice-president of the World Bank for Latin America & The Caribbean