Introduction: Bush Administration Policy
So it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny…
Category: U.S. Foreign Policy
International Symposium in Puebla
It is likely that Don Quijote first reached the Western hemisphere—in what was, at the time, lightning speed—as a stowaway. On September 28, 1605, Franciscan commissioners of the…
Adiós 61 Kirkland
For the past eight years, the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies has made its home at 61 Kirkland Street. Countless film screenings, celebrations and roundtable discussions…
DRCLAS and IDB Launch Book Series
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and DRCLAS have signed an agreement to create the “Latin American Development Series,” a peer-reviewed English-language books series on…
New Executive Director
Biorn Maybury-Lewis made his first trip to Latin America when he was only an infant. Brazilian Air Force pilots left him and his anthropologist parents in the middle of the central highlands of…
Terrorism, Freedom, and Security: Winning Without War
Philip B. Heymann, the James Barr Ames Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, analyzes the domestic and foreign policy aftermath of September 11, 2001 in the United States in this…
Despite the Odds: The Contentious Politics of Education Reform
In the 1990s, education policy in Latin America cried out for reform. Although literacy rates and access to education in Latin America had risen in previous decades, education reform became…
Landscapes of Devils, Tensions of Place and Memory in the Argentinean Chaco
Gastón R. Gordillo’s portrayal of the Toba aborigines population from the Gran Chaco is a deep and thoughtful insight into the minds of the men and women of that region and the memories…
Integrating the Americas: FTAA and Beyond
oday, two out of five people in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) live below the official World Bank poverty line of two dollars per day. Over the last two decades, the number of poor…
The Cuban Economy at the Start of the Twenty-First Century
The profession of an independent economist in 21st century Cuba is unusual. Like unofficial journalists, such economists are targets of government repression. Several of them were…
U.S. Drug and Coca Eradication Policies in Bolivia
The 1980s brought us such things as big hair, baggy clothes, and the resurgence of both neon colors and the electric keyboard. It also brought us Reaganomics and a rambunctious First Lady…
Aerial Spraying and Alternative Development in Plan Colombia
After one year of negotiations with the U.S. Government, President Pastrana presented Plan Colombia in 1999 as A Plan for Peace, Prosperity, and the Strengthening of the State…
A Victory Over Patents
Brazil has become the first developing country to provide free and universal treatment to HIV-infected people and a relative stabilization of the disease incidence has been observed since…
When Silence is Gold(en)
As I write this, there’s a crowd protesting, chanting and waving banners, 15 floors below my window here in Lima, Peru. Police in full riot gear encircle protesters and occasionally restrain…
When Ideology Undermines Public Health
Recently I reviewed a request for proposals to evaluate a USAID-funded organization in Latin America, and was dismayed to see the following description: “an evaluation of the adolescent…
Viques’ Struggle for Peace
Ever since the Spanish-American War in 1898, the history of relations between the United States and Puerto Rico has been a complex one. Yet the nature of this relationship cries for elucidation…
Nicaragua and the United States
When I arrived in Nicaragua in 1997 to work on a grassroots environmental project, Managua was in chaos. Six thousand students were raging against spending cuts in education. President…
Lula and Jorge
Lula, aka Luiz Inacio “Lula” de Silva, the president of the Federative Republic of Brazil, and Jorge aka George W. Bush, the president of the United States of America, seem by all accounts to get…
Guatemala, The Aftermath
The year 2004 marked the 50th anniversary of the CIA-orchestrated coup in Guatemala that overthrew the democratically elected government of Jacobo Arbenz in the name of U.S…
The United States and Guatemala
English + Español
The figure of Guatemala’s overthrown President Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán powerfully illustrates lost hopes and dashed dreams, what could have been and wasn’t. It portrays, in essence, the life…
