<P> The set of specific economic policy prescriptions that were considered the "standard" reform package were promoted for crisis - wracked developing countries by Washington, DC - based institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, and the US Treasury Department during the 1980s and' 90s . </P> <P> According to the BBC, a "common element of the' pink tide' is a clean break with what was known at the outset of the 1990s as the' Washington consensus', the mixture of open markets and privatisation pushed by the United States". According to Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a pink tide president herself, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela (inaugurated 1999), Lula da Silva of Brazil (inaugurated 2003) and Evo Morales of Bolivia (inaugurated 2006) were "the three musketeers" of the left in South America . By 2005, the BBC reported that out of 350 million people in South America, three out of four of them lived in countries ruled by "left - leaning presidents" elected during the preceding six years . </P> <P> Despite the presence of a number of Latin American governments which profess to embracing a leftist ideology, it is difficult to categorise Latin American states "according to dominant political tendencies, like a red - blue post-electoral map of the United States ." According to the Institute for Policy Studies, a liberal non-profit think - tank based in Washington, D.C.: </P> <P> While this political shift is difficult to quantify, its effects are widely noticed . According to the Institute for Policy Studies, 2006 meetings of the South American Summit of Nations and the Social Forum for the Integration of Peoples demonstrated that certain discussions that "used to take place on the margins of the dominant discourse of neoliberalism, (have) now moved to the centre of public debate ." </P>

Where did the gold of the inca civilization along the west coast of south america come from