In 2008, President Barack Obama had a clear idea for Latin American foreign policy. The Bush administration, distracted by events in the Middle East, had pursued a harmful hemispheric policy of blustering unilateralism and neglect; Obama, conversely, would pursue a “new partnership” with the Americas, one marked by cooperation and mutual interests. His subsequent election was heralded throughout Latin America as an opportunity to repair the dam...
...tration. To be sure, this strategy repositioning was farsighted and necessary; China’s exploits are at the forefront of policymakers’ minds and have caught the public’s attention. A recent Gallup poll found that a majority of Americans believed that the Chinese economy was the largest in the world; clearly, domestic sentiment supports such a reorientation. But are we putting too many of our foreign policy eggs in one basket? Certainly, China repr...
This past Tuesday, United States law enforcement announced that they had foiled a plot by the Iranian government to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US in Washington, DC. Unsurprisingly, this news generated headlines across the globe. This has all the makings of a Tom Clancy novel – a foreign government, let alone Iran, contemplated a political assassination on American soil. Yet, this is not the most bizarre part of the story. The Unite...
...largest economies remain in a constant state of flux (due to the failure of the European experiment and burgeoning growth in emerging markets). This is one of the reasons that I believe 2012 will be an exciting year in Latin America. Continuing fallout from the economic crisis has slowed down the new dynamic giants to our South, but growth rates have remained positive. Violent revolutions, which, with a few exceptions, came to be synonymous with...
Here’s the thing about dictators: as sticky as they are when they’re in power, it’s even harder to deal with them once they’re gone. It’s an issue that is still being grappled with in Latin America. How do we create democratic institutions from scratch? How do we view the dictatorial era itself? Is political and economic stability worth a suspension of human rights? Perhaps one of the most difficult and pertinent questions for modern Latin Ameri...
...8217;s Louis Vuitton toting noveau riche. In Brazil, income inequality is not a passe debate confined to academic circles. It is as blatant as a gun in your face. For all of the Goldman Sach’s-induced media frenzy over South America’s newest economic powerhouse, Brazil has the eighth worst income inequality in the world. And it is in good company. According to a United Nations development program, 10 of the 15 most unequal countries are in Latin...
The somewhat grandiosely titled the “Summit of the Americas” (SoA) concluded this week in sunny Cartagena, Colombia. The regional meeting included 44 of the Western Hemisphere’s heads of state – with the awkward and controversial exception of Cuba. As we have learned to expect from these large-scale, feel-good summits, little was accomplished. The meeting ended without a formal joint declaration – which is not to say that it was bereft of its sh...
Last Thursday, as part of an ongoing seminar series organized by Columbia’s Institute for Latin American Studies (ILAS), professor and author Katherine Hite presented some of her findings from her book Politics and the Art of Commemoration: Memorials to struggle in Latin America and Spain. Hite, formerly the associate director of ILAS and currently the director of Vassar College’s Latin American and Latino/a Studies program, led a fascinating mu...
The print media has painted a painted a pretty bleak picture: not only that the best days of Western democracy are far behind us, but also China’s global hegemony in the next century is written in the stars. Many already speak of the twenty-first century as “The Chinese Century.” This is presented in concert to the conventional wisdom that the twentieth century was “The American Century” and the nineteenth century was “The British Century.” Ther...
...nd to remain so for future generations. Despite the indelible images of that day, the greatest impact that 9/11 will have in the public memory may be its description in the pages of history textbooks. However, several recent American history textbooks fail to give a thorough explanation of the attacks. In two of the most widely used textbooks in America, Daniel Boorstin’s A History of the United States and Andrew Cayton’s Pathways to...
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