The turmoil in U.S. financial markets was viewed with irony by many in Latin America, who have been told for years the free-market system was superior.

Portuguese-born commentator Boaventura de Sousa Santos chided the government for its years of "iron-handed evangelizing" about the benefits of the free-market system, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday.

Abdon Ubidia, a writer and historian from Quito, Ecuador, said it would be clearer now to North Americans why South American governments leaned to the left.

While many worried that remittances sent from the United States to families in Latin America would dwindle in the wake of the financial turmoil, some were still critical of the free-market system.

Argentina's President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner was critical of the theory that the free-market system would correct itself.

"What it has produced is the largest state intervention in memory," she said last week. "We are seeing how the First World collapses."