Download or read book Our Own Backyard written by William M. LeoGrande and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2009-11-18 with total page 790 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this remarkable and engaging book, William LeoGrande offers the first comprehensive history of U.S. foreign policy toward Central America in the waning years of the Cold War. From the overthrow of the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua and the outbreak of El Salvador's civil war in the late 1970s to the final regional peace settlements negotiated a decade later, he chronicles the dramatic struggles--in Washington and Central America--that shaped the region's destiny. For good or ill, LeoGrande argues, Central America's fate hinged on decisions that were subject to intense struggles among, and within, Congress, the CIA, the Pentagon, the State Department, and the White House--decisions over which Central Americans themselves had little influence. Like the domestic turmoil unleashed by Vietnam, he says, the struggle over Central America was so divisive that it damaged the fabric of democratic politics at home. It inflamed the tug-of-war between Congress and the executive branch over control of foreign policy and ultimately led to the Iran-contra affair, the nation's most serious political crisis since Watergate.
Download or read book Fujimori s Coup and the Breakdown of Democracy in Latin America written by Charles Dennison Kenney and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text explores why and how democracy broke down in Peru in 1992. The author's argument is that institutional factors - especially the absence of a legislative majority - were crucial to the collapse of democracy in Peru during and before this period and throughout Latin America since the 1960s.
Download or read book When Montezuma Met Cort s written by Matthew Restall and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2018-01-30 with total page 442 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A dramatic rethinking of the encounter between Montezuma and Hernando Cortés that completely overturns what we know about the Spanish conquest of the Americas On November 8, 1519, the Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortés first met Montezuma, the Aztec emperor, at the entrance to the capital city of Tenochtitlan. This introduction—the prelude to the Spanish seizure of Mexico City and to European colonization of the mainland of the Americas—has long been the symbol of Cortés’s bold and brilliant military genius. Montezuma, on the other hand, is remembered as a coward who gave away a vast empire and touched off a wave of colonial invasions across the hemisphere. But is this really what happened? In a departure from traditional tellings, When Montezuma Met Cortés uses “the Meeting”—as Restall dubs their first encounter—as the entry point into a comprehensive reevaluation of both Cortés and Montezuma. Drawing on rare primary sources and overlooked accounts by conquistadors and Aztecs alike, Restall explores Cortés’s and Montezuma’s posthumous reputations, their achievements and failures, and the worlds in which they lived—leading, step by step, to a dramatic inversion of the old story. As Restall takes us through this sweeping, revisionist account of a pivotal moment in modern civilization, he calls into question our view of the history of the Americas, and, indeed, of history itself.
Download or read book The Epic of Latin America written by John Armstrong Crow and published by . This book was released on 1946 with total page 780 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Making Of Social Movements In Latin America written by Arturo Escobar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-02-19 with total page 469 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book, paying attention to the axes of identity, strategy, and democracy, grew out of the authors' shared and growing interest in contemporary social movements and the vast theoretical literature on these movements produced during the 1980s, particularly in Latin America and Western Europe.
Download or read book The Macroeconomics of Populism in Latin America written by Rudiger Dornbusch and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Again and again, Latin America has seen the populist scenario played to an unfortunate end. Upon gaining power, populist governments attempt to revive the economy through massive spending. After an initial recovery, inflation reemerges and the government responds with wage an price controls. Shortages, overvaluation, burgeoning deficits, and capital flight soon precipitate economic crisis, with a subsequent collapse of the populist regime. The lessons of this experience are especially valuable for countries in Eastern Europe, as they face major political and economic decisions. Economists and political scientists from the United States and Latin America detail in this volume how and why such programs go wrong and what leads policymakers to repeatedly adopt these policies despite a history of failure. Authors examine this pattern in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru—and show how Colombia managed to avoid it. Despite differences in how each country implemented its policies, the macroeconomic consequences were remarkably similar. Scholars of Latin America will find this work a valuable resource, offering a distinctive macroeconomic perspective on the continuing controversy over the dynamics of populism.
Download or read book Contesting Citizenship in Latin America written by Deborah J. Yashar and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-07 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Indigenous people in Latin America have mobilized in unprecedented ways - demanding recognition, equal protection, and subnational autonomy. These are remarkable developments in a region where ethnic cleavages were once universally described as weak. Recently, however, indigenous activists and elected officials have increasingly shaped national political deliberations. Deborah Yashar explains the contemporary and uneven emergence of Latin American indigenous movements - addressing both why indigenous identities have become politically salient in the contemporary period and why they have translated into significant political organizations in some places and not others. She argues that ethnic politics can best be explained through a comparative historical approach that analyzes three factors: changing citizenship regimes, social networks, and political associational space. Her argument provides insight into the fragility and unevenness of Latin America's third wave democracies and has broader implications for the ways in which we theorize the relationship between citizenship, states, identity, and social action.
Download or read book From Movements to Parties in Latin America written by Donna Lee Van Cott and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-04-30 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a detailed treatment of an important topic that has received no scholarly attention: the surprising transformation of indigenous peoples' movements into viable political parties in the 1990s in four Latin American countries (Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela) and their failure to succeed in two others (Argentina, Peru). The parties studied are crucial components of major trends in the region. By providing to voters clear programs for governing, and reaching out in particular to under-represented social groups, they have enhanced the quality of democracy and representative government. Based on extensive original research and detailed historical case studies, the book links historical institutional analysis and social movement theory to a study of the political systems in which the new ethnic cleavages emerged. The book concludes with a discussion of the implications for democracy of the emergence of this phenomenon in the context of declining public support for parties.
Download or read book Cuba and Revolutionary Latin America written by Dirk Kruijt and published by Zed Books Ltd.. This book was released on 2017-01-01 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cuban revolution served as a rallying cry to people across Latin America and the Caribbean. The revolutionary regime has provided vital support to the rest of the region, offering everything from medical and development assistance to training and advice on guerrilla warfare. Cuba and Revolutionary Latin America is the first oral history of Cuba’s liberation struggle. Drawing on a vast array of original testimonies, Dirk Kruijt looks at the role of both veterans and the post-Revolution fidelista generation in shaping Cuba and the Americas. Featuring the testimonies of over sixty Cuban officials and former combatants, Cuba and Revolutionary Latin America offers unique insight into a nation which, in spite of its small size and notional pariah status, remains one of the most influential countries in the Americas.
Download or read book Fear at the Edge written by Juan E. Corradi and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 1992-12 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A genuinely interdisciplinary work . . . the best attempt I have ever seen at a truly unified intellectuals' approach to an important issue."—Timothy Wickham-Crowley, Georgetown University "Very seldom does a collected volume achieve the academic quality and internal coherence that one sees in this case. It is a major contribution to comparative research on post-authoritarian situations."—Carlos Waisman, University of California, San Diego
Download or read book The Penguin History Of Latin America written by Edwin Williamson and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2003-07-31 with total page 720 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now fully updated to 2009, this acclaimed history of Latin America tells its turbulent story from Columbus to Chavez. Beginning with the Spanish and Portugese conquests of the New World, it takes in centuries of upheaval, revolution and modernization up to the present day, looking in detail at Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Chile and Cuba, and gives an overview of the cultural developments that have made Latin America a source of fascination for the world. 'A first-rate work of history ... His cool, scholarly gaze and synthesizing intelligence demystify a part of the world peculiarly prone to myth-making ... This book covers an enormous amount of ground, geographically and culturally' Tony Gould, Independent on Sunday
Download or read book Latin America s Economy written by Eliana A. Cardoso and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 1995 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines broad patterns of development and some economic issues facing Latin American countries. Includes a chapter outlining recurrent patterns of economic development and economic crises throughout the past 500 years.
Download or read book Children of Cain written by Tina Rosenberg and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 1992-10 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning journalist Tina Rosenberg spent five years in Latin America--drinking coffee with hit men and sunbathing with death-squad financiers--to understand people for whom violence is a way of life. Her six vivid and haunting portraits illuminate the human face of violence, not only in Latin America, but all over the world.
Download or read book Coastal Plant Communities of Latin America written by Ulrich Seeliger and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 1992 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vegetation ecology of rocky shores, Macroalgae of the Cabo Frio upwelling region, Brazil: ordination of communities, Mangrove macroalgal communities of Latin America: The state of art and perspectives, Effect of human exploitation on the intertidal community structure at the Valdivian Coast, Chile, Lessonia trabeculata, a subtidal bottom kelp in Northern Chile: a case study for a structural and Geographical comparison, Algal communities of a wave-protected intertidal rocky shore in Southern Chile, The seagrass ecosystem and Resources in Latin America.
Download or read book Liberty for Latin America written by Alvaro Vargas Llosa and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2015-05-12 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Latin America's Foremost Political Journalist Makes a Brilliant and Passionate Argument for Real Reform In the Economically Crippled Continent In Liberty for Latin America, Alvaro Vargas Llosa offers an incisive diagnosis of Latin America's woes--and a prescription for finally getting the region on the road to both genuine prosperity and the protection of human rights. When the economy in Argentina--at one time a model of free-market reform--collapsed in 2002, experts of all persuasions asked: What went wrong? Vargas Llosa shows that what went wrong in Argentina has in fact gone wrong all over the continent for over five hundred years. He explains how the republics of the nineteenth century and the revolutions of the twentieth-populist uprisings, Marxist coops, state takeovers, and First World-sponsored privatization-have all run up against the oligarchic legacy of statism. Illiberal elites backed by the United States and Europe have perpetuated what he calls the "five principles of oppression" in order to maintain their hold on power. The region has become "a laboratory for political and economic suicide," while comparable countries in Asia and Eastern Europe have prospered. The only way to change things in Latin America, Vargas Llosa argues, is to remove the five principles of oppression, genuinely reforming institutions and the underlying culture for the benefit of the disempowered public. In Liberty for Latin America, he explains how, offering hope as well as insight for all those who care for the future of this troubled region.
Download or read book Sustaining Civil Society written by Philip Oxhorn and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 2011 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Devoting particular emphasis to Bolivia, Chile, and Mexico, proposes a theory of civil society to explain the economic and political challenges for continuing democratization in Latin America"--Provided by publisher.
Download or read book State and Nation Making in Latin America and Spain Volume 1 written by Miguel A. Centeno and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-03-29 with total page 485 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The growth of institutional capacity in the developing world has become a central theme in twenty-first-century social science. Many studies have shown that public institutions are an important determinant of long-run rates of economic growth. This book argues that to understand the difficulties and pitfalls of state building in the contemporary world, it is necessary to analyze previous efforts to create institutional capacity in conflictive contexts. It provides a comprehensive analysis of the process of state and nation building in Latin America and Spain from independence to the 1930s. The book examines how Latin American countries and Spain tried to build modern and efficient state institutions for more than a century - without much success. The Spanish and Latin American experience of the nineteenth century was arguably the first regional stage on which the organizational and political dilemmas that still haunt states were faced. This book provides an unprecedented perspective on the development and contemporary outcome of those state and nation-building projects.
