Forgotten Continent The Battle For Latin America S Soul

The bestselling primer on the social, political, and economic challenges facing Central and South America by The Economist editor and author of Brazil. Latin America has often been condemned to failure. Neither poor enough to evoke Africa’s moral crusade, nor as explosively booming as India and China, it has largely been overlooked by the West. Yet this vast continent, home to half a billion people, the world’s largest reserves of arable land, and 8.5 percent of global oil, is busily transforming its political and economic landscape. This book argues that rather than failing the test, Latin America’s efforts to build fairer and more prosperous societies make it one of the world’s most vigorous laboratories for capitalist democracy. In many countries—including Brazil, Chile and Mexico—democratic leaders are laying the foundations for faster economic growth and more inclusive politics, as well as tackling deep-rooted problems of poverty, inequality, and social injustice. They face a new challenge from Hugo Chávez’s oil-fueled populism, and much is at stake. Failure will increase the flow of drugs and illegal immigrants to the United States and Europe, jeopardize stability in a region rich in oil and other strategic commodities, and threaten some of the world’s most majestic natural environments. Drawing on Michael Reid’s many years of reporting from inside Latin America’s cities, presidential palaces, and shantytowns, the book provides a vivid, immediate, and informed account of a dynamic continent and its struggle to compete in a globalized world. “No one who seriously aspires to discuss Latin American politics, economics, and culture should go without reading Forgotten Continent.”—National Interest

The bestselling primer on the social, political, and economic challenges facing Central and South America—now fully revised and updated. Ten years after its first publication, Michael Reid’s bestselling survey of the state of contemporary Latin America has been wholly updated to reflect the new realities of the “Forgotten Continent.” The former Americas editor for the Economist, Reid suggests that much of Central and South America, though less poor, less unequal, and better educated than before, faces harder economic times now that the commodities boom of the 2000s is over. His revised, in-depth account of the region reveals dynamic societies more concerned about corruption and climate change, the uncertainties of a Donald Trump-led United States, and a political cycle that, in many cases, is turning from left-wing populism to center-right governments. This essential new edition provides important insights into the sweeping changes that have occurred in Latin America in recent years and indicates priorities for the future. “[A] comprehensive and erudite assessment of the region . . . While the social and economic face of Latin America is becoming more attractive, political life remains ugly and, in some countries, is getting even uglier.”—The Washington Post “Excellent . . . a comprehensive primer on the history, politics, and culture of the hemisphere.”—Francis Fukuyama, New York Times bestselling author “Reid’s book offers something valuable to both specialists and the general reading public . . . He writes of Latin America with great empathy, intelligence, and insight.”—Hispanic American Historical Review

For Latin America, the Cold War was anything but cold. Nor was it the so-called Òlong peaceÓ afforded the worldÕs superpowers by their nuclear standoff. In this book, the first to take an international perspective on the postwar decades in the region, Hal Brands sets out to explain what exactly happened in Latin America during the Cold War, and why it was so traumatic. Tracing the tumultuous course of regional affairs from the late 1940s through the early 1990s, Latin AmericaÕs Cold War delves into the myriad crises and turning points of the periodÑthe Cuban revolution and its aftermath; the recurring cycles of insurgency and counter-insurgency; the emergence of currents like the National Security Doctrine, liberation theology, and dependency theory; the rise and demise of a hemispheric diplomatic challenge to U.S. hegemony in the 1970s; the conflagration that engulfed Central America from the Nicaraguan revolution onward; and the democratic and economic reforms of the 1980s. Most important, the book chronicles these events in a way that is both multinational and multilayered, weaving the experiences of a diverse cast of characters into an understanding of how global, regional, and local influences interacted to shape Cold War crises in Latin America. Ultimately, Brands exposes Latin AmericaÕs Cold War as not a single conflict, but rather a series of overlapping political, social, geostrategic, and ideological struggles whose repercussions can be felt to this day.

Nearly thirty years have passed since Latin America began the arduous task of transitioning from military-led rule to democracy. In this time, more countries have moved toward the institutional bases of democracy than at any time in the region’s history. Nearly all countries have held free, competitive elections and most have had peaceful alternations in power between opposing political forces. Despite these advances, however, Latin American countries continue to face serious domestic and international challenges to the consolidation of stable democratic governance. The challenges range from weak political institutions, corruption, legacies of militarism, transnational crime and globalization among others. In Latin American Democracy contributors – both academics and practitioners, North Americans and Latin Americans – explore and assess the state of democratic consolidation in Latin America by focusing on the specific issues and challenges confronting democratic governance in the region.

Latin America occupies an increasingly prominent position within the global political, economic and cultural consciousness, with intra-regional governance structures and multilateral processes now a key topic of interest to foreign policy and international business circles. It has become abundantly clear that outside of Latin America there is a poor understanding of how the shifting sands of regional power are impacting, not only on how regional countries fit into the global system, but also on how intra-regional relations are viewed and managed. The contributions to this collection investigate these issues, examining how changing global power dynamics are in turn impacting on national foreign policies and regional governance structures. The book focuses first and foremost on the Latin American view outwards, not the US or European view to the south. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Iberian and Latin American Research.

Studies of the right and radical right have proliferated since the rise of European nationalist and populist parties in the 1980s. Yet, the literature on the right and the radical right has a largely Euro-American bias and has been limited by partisan academics that focus on the left. The Right and Radical Right in the Americas hopes to be a pioneering work that examines the history and contemporary manifestations of the right and radical right throughout the Americas. From interwar Canada to contemporary Chile, the right and radical right have come in diverse ideological currents. Those ideological currents have undergone historical changes and the strategies of the right and radical right need to be contextualized in respect of country and region. The right and radical right also have distinctive meanings throughout the Americas and in different epochs.

What becomes clear throughout is that there is a paradox at the heart of Latin America's democracies. Despite decades of struggle to replace authoritarian dictatorships with electoral democracies, solid economic growth (leading up to the global credit crisis), and increased efforts by the state to extend the benefits of peace and prosperity to the poor, democracy - as a political system - is experiencing declining support, and support for authoritarianism is on the rise.

This book examines the long, complex experience of American involvement in irregular warfare. It begins with the American Revolution in 1776 and chronicles big and small irregular wars for the next two and a half centuries. What is readily apparent in dirty wars is that failure is painfully tangible while success is often amorphous. Successfully fighting these wars often entails striking a critical balance between military victory and politics. America's status as a democracy only serves to make fighting - and, to a greater degree, winning - these irregular wars even harder. Rather than futilely insisting that Americans should not or cannot fight this kind of irregular war, Russell Crandall argues that we would be better served by considering how we can do so as cleanly and effectively as possible.