COMPARATIVE POLITICS OF

LATIN AMERICA

SECOND EDITION

Students

Introduction

Discussion Questions

  1. Why, do you think, that to study politics we rely so much on comparison of countries?
  2. What are your initial ideas about whether democracy can exist in Latin America (or anywhere) alongside high levels of poverty and inequality?

Chapter 1

Discussion Questions

  1. To what extent, in your opinion, is democracy is mainly a matter of elections, of making sure that a government holds fair elections, respects civil rights, and applies laws impartially?
  2. Do you think that democracy can function in conditions of social and economic inequality? Why or why not?
  3. Increasingly, in this age of globalization, it seems that democracy is becoming the only form of government that is accepted as legitimate. Do you think this is a good trend? Should we accept that there are other legitimate forms of state that are not democratic?
  4. If you were evaluating the condition of democracy for each country of the world, would you focus on factors that affect “choice” (i.e., elections, civil rights, free markets) or would you include some factors involving participation (i.e., rates of voting, extension of democracy to social and economic spheres of life) and socio-economic equality (i.e., wealth and income equality)? What would be the key factors you would include in your evaluations?

Chapter 2

Discussion Questions

  1. Should we treat the degree of inequality among social classes, men and women, and different ethnic groups as a test of how democratic a nation is? Or should we limit the idea of democracy to proceduresand the form of government, looking at equality as something that might be an outcome of democracy?
  2. Do you find it surprising that Latin America, often stereotyped for its machismo, has produced several women presidents, whereas the U.S. (at least through 2016) has yet to produce one?
  3. What are the most important ways we might measure the extent to which someone (not only in Latin America, but wherever we may live) is part of those “excluded”, as we have used the term here?
  4. Has anything in this chapter about equality and political culture changed your thinking or reinforced your earlier response to the question of how much we should take equality into account in evaluating the democratic condition of Latin American countries?

Chapter 3

Discussion Questions

  1. What does it mean to be a “Latin” American? To what extent would you classify the following individuals as Latin American?:
    • An Aymara Indian from Bolivia
    • A descendant of slaves in Cuba
    • A white landowner in Chile
    • An entrepreneur descended from Asian
    • Arab immigrants in Venezuela
  2. In considering your responses to Question 1, would you agree with the notion that nations are nothing more than imagined communities?
  3. Do some research on the singer Sharkira (e.g., find videos, biographies, etc.) Shakira, who is of Arab descent but was born and raised in Colombia, has enjoyed significant success in Latin American countries. Where would you place her in the racial/class pyramid of Latin America? Do you consider her music to be Latin?
  4. Latin American criollos wanted independence in the form of territorial sovereignty. What did most of them not want to happen with independence and why?
  5. Choice, participation and equality: Part of the “legacy” of colonialism is that indigenous peoples and Afro-descendent peoples still disproportionately populate the ranks of the poor and indigent. Do you think that the persistence of this state of affairs (hardly unknown in the U.S., we should acknowledge) is a sign of democratic failure?

Chapter 4

Discussion Questions

  1. Just before he died, Bolívar bitterly and famously remarked that in trying to make a revolution he had “plowed the sea.” What did he mean?
  2. Can you identify two or three important features of Latin America’s political, economic, or social landscape today that can be traced back to the colonial era?
  3. Sometimes we use “counterfactuals” to spur discussion. Here are two for you to consider.
    1. If Bolívar and other liberators had failed to achieve independence, would Latin American history have been different? (You might take the history of Brazil into account in thinking about this question.)
    2. If Latin America had been colonized by the British instead of by the Iberians, what difference, if any, might that have made?
  4. It is said that “modernization” took place in the period between 1850 and 1920. What did this mean in political, economic, and military terms?

Chapter 5

Discussion Questions

  1. What social groups in Latin America gained the most from import substitution policies? Which ones gained least or lost the most?
  2. How did ISI as a development strategy also help populists build a base of political support? Do you think that overall ISI was a success or a failure?
  3. List some of the key factors that brought about the crisis of populism. Do you think the roots of the crisis were predominantly economic or political?
  4. Given the experience with populism in Latin America, would you say that calling a politician a populist was a compliment or an insult? Why?

Chapter 6

Discussion Questions

  1. How and why did countries in Latin America adjust to international pressure to abandon import substitution and adopt market-friendly policies? Why were many of the new policies called “neoliberal”?
  2. Does the fact that several leaders who implemented neoliberalism were elected mean that Latin American voters supported neoliberalism?
  3. What arguments can be made for and against the proposition that strengthening market forces has strengthened democracy in Latin America?
  4. What are the key ways that modernization and dependency theory differ? Why do you think dependency first emerged in Latin America rather than in other parts of the Global South?
  5. List ways that you think neoliberal economic policies might strengthen or weaken democracy in Latin America. Overall, what do you think is their impact on the democratic condition in the region?

Chapter 7

Discussion Questions

  1. Why were the military regimes that took power at the close of the populist era determined to keep power instead of playing a “moderator role”?
  2. What seems more important to you, and why, in explaining democratic breakdowns—the role of underlying economic and social forces or the actions of elites?
  3. Are military governments and military rulers intrinsically conservative? Whose interest does the military represent when it seizes power?
  4. Does the Chilean case prove that socialism cannot be achieved through democracy?

Chapter 8

Discussion Questions

  1. Given the way that negotiated transitions result in pacts limiting human rights prosecutions and changes in economic policies, should current governments respect them?
  2. Does a vote approving amnesty, as happened in Uruguay, make amnesty legitimate?
  3. What do you think most influenced the transition from dictatorship in the Southern Cone and Brazil? Which do you regard as more important in inducing change—the international context or domestic politics? Would you weight domestic versus international factors different for each case, or the same?
  4. The new “rules of the game” that followed transitions from military rule in the four countries considered in this chapter were negotiated among elites in the context of popular pressure in the streets. Did the elites on the opposition side give away too much to achieve the transition?
  5. Can it be coincidence that three of the countries analyzed here have seen women advance to the presidency since the transitions? If it’s not coincidental, what might account for their success?

Chapter 9

Discussion Questions

  1. What do you regard as the key similarities and differences between the experiences of Mexico and Venezuela? Were the forces of change similar or different from the ones that caused breakdowns of and later transitions to democracy in the Southern Cone and Brazil?
  2. Would it be fair to say that neoliberalism undermined democracy in Venezuela but strengthened it in Mexico? Why or why not?
  3. Some political scientists credited the Pact of Punto Fijo with preventing Venezuela from experiencing the military rule that swept much of the rest of the continent in the 1970s and 1980s. Would you agree? What lessons should Latin America’s relatively new democracies take from the Venezuelan case?
  4. Do you think that in either case true “regime change” took place, and if so, when do you think it took place?

Chapter 10

Discussion Questions

  1. The outbreaks of revolution in Cuba and Mexico took place nearly 50 years apart. Nonetheless, do you see any common factors that led to both? Why do you think both cases veered away from the pluralist model (polyarchy) after defeating the old regime?
  2. Why do you think that Cuba came to identify its revolution with communism rather than with some nationalist label?
  3. Would Cuba’s socialist system crumble if its leaders abandoned the single- party system? What do you think would be the impact on Cuban politics if the United States ended its economic embargo?
  4. El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua are poorer and more violent today than before the insurgencies of the 1980s. However, for all their flaws, they now have 25 years of experience with elected democracy. When all is said and done, can we say that the insurgencies in Central America accomplished anything?
  5. What brought Colombia and the FARC to the negotiating table? Does it help or hurt the peace process to list the FARC as a terrorist organization?
  6. Based on the Latin American experience, can revolutions succeed in addressing both of the issues cited by Arendt: freedom and the social question? If revolutionaries must choose, which do you think should take priority?

Chapter 11

Discussion Questions

  1. Can Latin American countries be considered democracies given the large gaps between rich and poor in the social class system?
  2. Labor unions have played a historically important role in struggles for democracy, yet some would say that other types of movements amongst the poor people where they live have become an even more important force in Latin American politics. Why might this be? Do you agree?
  3. Land redistribution has been a central demand of peasants for centuries, yet we have few successful cases of success. Why do you think peasants have faced such difficulties achieving reform? Can movements like the MST change the record?
  4. How might the emergence of social movements strengthen democracy? How might they threaten it?
  5. To some degree social movements are wary of both the market and the state. To what extent do they have an alternative to working with both of these?

Chapter 12

Discussion Questions

  1. Why are Latin Americans in general so skeptical about parties? Do you think it would be possible for democracy to function in Latin America without parties?
  2. Do you think that media, think-tanks, and short-lived parties supporting particular candidates will someday displace political parties altogether in Latin America? What about in the United States?
  3. We have discussed several cases of relatively new parties that have sought to represent the views of social movements. One could argue that, in every case, once in power—or close to power—they seemed to fall back into the practices of the older parties. Why do you think that happened? Do you think that this pitfall (at least from the point of view of the movements) can be avoided?

Chapter 13

Discussion Questions

  1. Most of this book is consistent with the area studies tradition that puts the focus on historical, socioeconomic, and cultural influences in politics. Should we put more effort into examining institutions and constitutional design? Or should someone who wants to understand Latin America place more emphasis on the distribution of economic and social power?
  2. To what extent can and should political scientists be involved in designing constitutions (i.e., systems of representation, executive–legislative relationships)? Is that their job?
  3. Is your view of institutions closer to Huntington’s or Avritzer’s? Why?

Chapter 14

Discussion Questions

  1. Looking at Latin America, do you think that rule of law and democracy are inseparable, or do you think it is possible to have one without the other? In particular, can one have the rule of law without democracy?
  2. Choice, participation and equality: In judging human rights conditions in Latin America, besides civil rights (such as freedom of speech), should we also include consideration to substantive rights (such as the right to an education)?
  3. Why do you think that prison conditions are so bad (even by U.S. standards) in Latin America? Do you think it is possible for democratic governments to bring (a) crime and (b) corruption under control in the region, or might this be something only nondemocratic governments can accomplish?

Chapter 15

Discussion Questions

  1. Do you see the nation-state presently growing weaker or stronger in Latin America? Why?
  2. Has economic globalization, as it has unfolded thus far, strengthened or weakened democracy in Latin America?
  3. Would Latin America be better off entering into a NAFTA-like agreement covering the entire hemisphere, or is some other alternative, for example ALBA or Mercosur, preferable?
  4. Do you think Latin American countries should give up some sovereign control over their affairs (in areas such as human rights and the environment), or should countries be allowed to retain their right to self-determination over these kinds of issues? And if you think they should yield on sovereignty, should they do so even if the United States and other wealthy countries refuse to do the same?
  5. Do you agree with the Thomas Friedman quote at the end of this chapter, or is your position closer to “another world is possible”?

Chapter 16

Discussion Questions

  1. What has motivated U.S. foreign policy on democracy and human rights? Are those goals in and of themselves, or are there more imperial motives behind democracy promotion?
  2. What do you think would be the most intelligent policy for the United States to take toward Cuba today? What goals would you set for that policy?
  3. Do we tend to give the United States too much credit or blame for what happens in Latin America? If you had to quantify it, how much of the course of events—for better or worse—in Latin America should be ascribed to U.S. policy? None? Ten percent? Fifty percent? More? Why?
  4. Would it be a good or bad development for democracy if CELAC, UNASUR, and ALBA were to entirely displace the OAS?
  5. Should the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights should concentrate mainly on the Washington Consensus about democracy and civil rights, or should its commissions on other kinds of rights be equally respected and funded?

Introduction

Resources for Further Study

For Basic Information:

Do you need a primer on Latin America’s geography—capitals, riv­ers, mountains, and so on? Sheppard Software has a briefing page consisting of map games that are easy to play and will bring you up to speed quickly:

http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/South_America_Geography.htm

Help Teaching provides a good self-quiz at:

http://www.helpteaching.com/questions/South-American_Geography

Several sources are available for basic demographic and geographic facts about Latin Amer­ica. The Socio-Economic Data Base, http://sedlac.econo.unlp.edu.ar/eng/institutional.php, provides information gathered about the region by the World Bank and Universi­dad de La Plata.

Reading:

Few Latin American politics courses are required, so presumably you chose to study this topic and therefore bring an interest. You can do no better than the NACLA Report on the Americas, which comes out six times per year and, though it draws heav­ily on academic specialists, is written for a general audience. Latin American Research Review is the most prestigious area-study journal. Among many other good journals, Latin American Perspectives differs in dedicating itself more to Latin American views, particularly radical ones. Among several other good journals on Latin America, Latin American Politics and Society and the Journal of Latin American Politics (published in Great Britain) are good sources.

Video and Film:

A list of hundreds of Latin American films with English translation can be found at Steve Volk’s resource page: http://www.oberlin.edu/faculty/svolk/latinam.htm. A recent look, sympathetic to more radical leftist leaders, is South of the Border, Oliver Stone’s 2009–2010 documentary. Icarus Films is a repository of hundreds of documen­taries; for Latin America, you can find them listed at http://www.icarusfilms.com/subjects/latin_am.html.  Another source of good documentary material is http://www.journeymantv.com,, which seems to add five or six high-quality videos of varying length every week and which can be streamed for free (and sometimes downloaded for free). Another interesting list of the top 25 political documentaries on Latin America can be found at http://www.latintimes.com/top-25-political-documentaries-shed-light-latin-americas-reality-135722.

On the Internet:

The Latin American network Information Center (http://lanic.utexas.edu)) is the best general portal, with links categorized by theme and by country. More diverse is the portal Zona Latina (http://www.zonalatina.com/), which contains innumer­able resources, systematically listed by type and then broken into country or region. The site links differentiate, with a wide range of types and subject matters, with many English-language articles; the site is very eclectic ideologically and especially good on cultural topics. The Library of Congress offers the Handbook of Latin American Studies (HLAS) online, providing the titles and annotations of all sorts of articles and books concerning the region. Using the website’s search engine, a student can find citations of documents for further study on any specific topic found in this textbook. The main page is located at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/hlas/hlashome.html. Another helpful source on current politics events is Keele Guide to Latin American Government & Politics on the Internet at http://www.keele.ac.uk/depts/por/labase.htm.

Following News:

The Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR), a Washington-based think tank, provides a valuable compilation three to five days per week of English-language news. You can sign up to receive the digest (links to articles divided by region) via e-mail at the organization’s website, http://www.cepr.net.

Chapter 1

Reading:

Robert Dahl’s most accessible work for newcomers to the pluralist approach is the hard-to-find Pluralist Democracy in the United States: Conflict and Consent (Chicago: Rand-McNally, 1968), a textbook on U.S. politics but a good overall introduction to his ideas. C. B. MacPherson’s very readable Real World of Democracy (CBC Enter­prises, 1965) argues that liberal democracy is but one form of democracy. It is a good explanation of liberalism, and it is online at http://books.google.com/books.

Video and Film:

Political philosopher Benjamin Barber and host Thomas Watson produced The Struggle for Democracy, a 10-part series produced for PBS and CBS in 1998, exploring the idea from the ancient Greeks until modern times. You can find a debate that took place at an Australian University on the topic, “Is Democracy Not for Every­one?,” at http://fora.tv/2009/10/04/Is_Democracy_Not_For_Everyone. 

On the Internet:

See the Americas Barometer Insight Series of the Latin America Pub­lic Opinion Project (LAPOP), located at Vanderbilt University: http://www.vanderbilt.edu/lapop/insights.php. Several different nongovernmental organizations rank the world’s countries on democracy using liberal criteria.  See, for example, WorldAudit at http://www.worldaudit.org/democracy.htm and Freedom House, which is partly funded by the U.S. government, at http://www.freedomhouse.org.  One of the few rankings to include social and economic criteria is at http://democracyranking.org. Upside-Down World, at http://upsidedownworld.org, carries news reports from a social movement perspective. As just mentioned, http://gapminder.org is a great place to go for comparative data and historical trends about economic and social progress in countries of the world.

Chapter 2

Reading:

The World Bank publishes the annual World Development Report with an appen­dix filled with comparative economic statistics, including measures of inequality. Clientelism in Everyday Latin American Politics, edited by Tina Hilgers (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012), gives well-supported insight into the relationship between democracy and clientelism.

Video and Film:

“In Women’s Hands,” in the Americas series, explores the role of women in politics through the tumultuous years of revolution, dictatorship, and re-democ­ratization in Chile. Las Madres: Mothers of the Plaza del Mayo (1986) exemplifies the powerful influence of women in the human rights movement. Black Orpheus (1959) is now a classic, a great film about the life of African descendants in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. On the same subject, a more recent film is City of God (2002). See also The Maid (2002). Romero (1989) is a powerful biography of the Salvadoran archbishop.

On the Internet:

The United Nations Development Project has a page devoted to the Millennium Project, which has much information on trends regarding poverty. See http://www.undp.org/mdg. The emergence of indigenous and Afro-descendant identity is very evident on the Indigenous Cultures page of the Latin American Network Infor­mation Center portal (http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/region/indigenous) and the African Diaspora page at the same site (http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/region/african). A Wiki page with extensive information on class in Latin America can be found at: http://uclast203.wikispaces.com/CLASS%2C+INEQUALITY.

Chapter 3

Reading:

The Villagers (Huasipungo), by Jorge Icaza, translated by Bernard Dulsey (Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1964), is a novel exploring the life of indigenous people in Ecuador under the latifundia system. Women in the Crucible of Conquest, by Karen Vieira Powers (University of New Mexico, 2005), tells how some women resisted dominance and made a place for themselves in colonial society. Colo­nial Legacies: The Problem of Persistence in Latin American History, edited by Jeremy Adelman (New York: Routledge, 1999), deals with the impacts and influences of colo­nial life on Latin America today and its likely future relevance. One way to understand the clash between republican values and Creole fears of social upheaval is through the life of Simón Bolívar. A good recent biography is American Liberator by Marie Arana (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2013).

Video and Film:

The Mission (1986), set in colonial Brazil, explores the complex relation­ship between the Church and exploitation of indigenous people. One of the most important examples of indigenous politics is Bolivia’s first indigenous president, Evo Morales. A 2008 Tuttle Films documentary, Bolivian Voices (http://www.journeyman.tv/58726/documentaries/bolivian-voices.html) explores Evo Morales’s biography and his rise to the presidency of Bolivia. It also ponders a future under his political guid- ance and notes mixed feelings of anticipation and hope. The documentary Cocalero (2007) looks at the movement that brought him to prominence. También la lluvía (“Even the Rain,” 2010) links Spanish colonialism to a modern-day conflict over control of water supplies in Bolivia. A Place Called Chiapas (1985), about the Zapatista uprising, can now be viewed on YouTube. Controversy about the Wiphala, the indig­enous flag, is the subject of this news report from Taiwan TV (TITTV): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6MGKbzFG38. Buried Mirror (1994), from the PBS Americas series, focuses on identity in Latin America.

On the Internet:

For women in Latin America, a good portal is http://womenshistory.about.com/od/latinamerica/Central_and_south_america.htm. Perhaps no region is as rich in Afro-Latin history as Bahia, in northeast Brazil (see http://isc.temple.edu/evanson/brazilhistory/Bahia.htm).

Chapter 4

Reading:

John Lynch’s Simón Bolívar: A Life (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006) is a new biography that sheds light not only on the liberator but also on his times and con­flicts within the Creole ruling class. Of the many surveys of Latin American history, a relatively brief and lively written account is E. Bradford Burns and Julie A. Char­lip, Latin America: An Interpretive History, 5th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2007). Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude is perhaps the best-known novel to come out of the region, and much of the novel explores how the mythical town of Macondo experienced modernization with the arrival of the banana export business.

Video and Film:

The Battle of Canudos tells the story of a poor family’s fate in the bloody conflict in northeast Brazil. Searching for “Canudos” on YouTube will provide access to the film in Portuguese. It is not hard to follow even without knowledge of the language. Camila (1984) is the story of star-crossed lovers, a priest and the daughter of wealthy landowners in post-independence Argentina, the era of the dictator Juan Manuel de Rosas.

On the Internet:

Paul Hall’s Internet Modern History Sourcebook provides thousands of relevant sources, including many on Latin America. His briefing on world systems theory is extremely useful. Consult the left-hand column at the following http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook.asp. The world systems summary is located at http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/Wallerstein.asp. You can find an 11-minute segment on Canudos on the BBC website, at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0205w53.

Chapter 5

Reading:

A volume covering the wide varieties of current populism in Latin America is Carlos de la Torre and Cynthia Arnson (editors), Latin American Populism in the 21st Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).  On the great mythological woman, see Nicholas Fraser and Marysa Navarro, Evita: The Real Life of Evita Perón (New York: Norton, 1996). Paul Drake’s Socialism and Populism in Chile, 1932–52 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978) is a good case study of midcentury populism. My own Venezuela: Tarnished Democracy (Boul­der, CO: Westview Press, 1991) reviews the populist experience in that country. Enrique Krauze’s Redeemers: Ideas and Power in Latin America (New York: Harper, 2011) is a collection of biographies by one of Mexico’s premier historians and writers.

Video and Film:

Three episodes of the Americas (1992) series—on Brazil (“Capital Sins”), Argentina (“Garden of Forking Paths”), and Chile (“In Women’s Hands”)— review the twentieth-century rise and fall of populism, military rule, and transitions to democ­racy. Hour of the Furnaces (1968) documents the rise of guerrilla violence and military response in 1968 in Argentina.

On the Internet:

You have to be careful with Wikipedia, but the page on Juan Perón is well referenced (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Peron).

Chapter 6

Reading:

Luis Bertola and Jose A. Ocampo, The Economic Development of Latin America Since Independence (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012) is a neo-structuralist overview which leans towards state activism. David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) brings a critical perspective to the subject. Pedro-Palo Kuczynski and John Williamson defend market-oriented economic policy in their edited volume After the Washington Consensus: Restarting Growth and Reform in Latin America (Washington, DC: Peterson Institute, 2003). Before he became a vice minister and a key shaper of Venezuela’s oil policies under Chávez, Bernard Mommer wrote Global Oil and the Nation State (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). Both Rostow’s Stages of Growth (1960) and Frank’s Latin America: Underdevelopment or Revolu­tion (1969) are reader-friendly. Frank’s “The Development of Underdevelopment” appeared in Monthly Review (June 1989). Editor Ronald Chilcote’s Development in Theory and Practice: Latin American Perspectives (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Little­field, 2003) provides a good selection of Latin American views on development.

Video and Film:

Search “Hernando de Soto” and “economist” on YouTube for various speeches and videos elaborating his pro-market views on urban development. “Capital Sins,” the second program in the PBS Americas (1992) series, focuses on development issues in Brazil.

On the Internet:

One good reference on different theories can be found at http://www.uia.be/sites/uia.be/db/db/x.php?dbcode=pr&go=e&id=11202060, the website for the Australian Union of International Associations. Francisco Ferreira et al., Economic Mobility and the Rise of the Latin American Middle Class (Washington, DC: World Bank—free online). World Bank economists claim that 30% of the region’s citizens now fit their definition of the middle class: http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9634-6 Salón Chingón (http://www.salonchingon.com) has several video documentaries about economic struggles in Latin America.

Chapter 7

Reading:

The Breakdown of Democracy Regimes, edited by Juan J. Linz and Alfred Stepan (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1978), remains the best comparative mainstream analysis. In the copious literature on the Chilean road to socialism, I recommend Ian Roxbor­ough, Phil O’Brien, and Jackie Roddick’s Chile: The State and Revolution (London: Macmillan Press, 1977), which is sympathetic to the Chilean left but not uncriti­cal. Weavers of Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism, by Peter Winn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), an anthropologist, looks at how the Allende years were lived in one textile factory. Brian Loveman’s For La Patria: Politics and the Armed Forces in Latin America surveys the state of military politics as BA was coming to an end. Cynthia Arnson’s (editor), In the Wake of War: Democratization and Internal Armed Conflict in Latin America (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012) describes how corruption and lack of security destroyed public confidence in democratic institutions in Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, and Peru.

Video and Film:

The three-part documentary The Battle of Chile—The Insurrection of the Bourgeoisie (1975), The Coup D’état (1976), and Popular Power (1979)—tells the story of the rise and fall of Salvador Allende. The same director made Salvador Allende (2002). The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (2003) is the remarkable story of the 48 hour coup against Chávez in 2002.

On the Internet:

Steve Volk’s sources and general resources on Latin America, at http://www.oberlin.edu/faculty/svolk/latinam.htm, are especially rich on modern history and politics.

Chapter 8

Reading:

The sequel to The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes was Transitions from Authori­tarian Rule, four volumes edited by Guillermo O’Donnell and Laurence Whitehead (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1986). Manuel Puig, Kiss of the Spider Woman (New York: Vintage, reissued in 1991), deliberately tangles the themes of political and sexual repression. It was adapted to film in 1985.

Video and Film:

Search for Rubén Blades and “olvidar” (to forget) on YouTube to find the Panamanian’s salsa warning. La Historia Official (1985) tells the story of a school­teacher who must come to grips with her story and her country’s story when she suspects her adopted children may have been birthed by a victim of the Dirty War. Johnny 100 Pesos (1994) is set in Chile right after the transition (1994) and poses a test for the new democracy about how much violence it should use in a hostage situation. No (2012) tells the story of a young advertising executive who donates his skills to design TV ads for the winning 1989 campaign to force Pinochet to leave the presi­dency. Capital Sins (1991), in the Americas series, looks at the “Brazilian miracle” and the transition to democracy. Operation Condor (2003) details U.S. covert support for state terrorism in the three countries examined in this chapter.

On the Internet:

Inside Pinochet’s Prisons is a Euro TV film with real footage and interviews from within the prisons that gives an interesting look at the cruelty of the govern­ment and at the different political views of Chile’s people. It can be found at http://www.journeyman.tv/8946/documentaries/inside-pinochets-prisons.html. The comparative democratization section of the American Political Science Association, which is asso­ciated with the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy, can be found at http://www.ned.org/apsa-cd/home.html.

Chapter 9

Reading:

Bart Jones’s Hugo! The Hugo Chávez Story from Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution (Hanover, NH: Steerforth Press, 2007) is a sympathetic biography but very acces­sible and a good window into many different aspects of Venezuela’s transition. Steve Ellner and I edited Venezuelan Politics in the Chávez Era (Boulder: Lynn Rienner, 2003). Miguel Tinker Salas’s The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society (Durham: Duke University Press, 2009) examines the profound influence of U.S. investment and consumer values on Venezuela. Matthew Gutmann’s The Romance of Democracy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002) looks at ordinary people’s hopes and disappointments during the Mexican transition. The fifth edition of Roderic Camp’s Politics in Mexico: The Democratic Consolidation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007) is an optimistic but critical look at Mexico’s political reforms. Shannon O’Neil’s Two Nations Indivisible: Mexico and the United States and the Road Ahead (New York; Oxford University Press, 2013) documents the interdependent fortunes of Mexico with its northern neighbor.

Video and Film:

The Revolution Will Not Be Televised is a remarkable documentary of the attempted 2002 coup against Chávez. ¿Puedo Hablar? (2007) looks at the 2006 presi­dential election, crediting Chávez for helping the poor but raising questions about the health of democracy. A Place Called Chiapas (1998) is one of the many good docu­mentaries on the Zapatistas.

On the Internet:

Venezuela Analysis, http://www.venezuelanalysis.com, disputes the general U.S. media view of Venezuela but also provides critical analysis and debate. An opposi­tion viewpoint that generally avoids hysterical rhetoric is Caracas Chronicles at http://www.caracaschronicles.com. You can find good perspectives from different points of view on Mexican politics at http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/mexico.htm A good source of alternative news with much analysis of Mexico and which is much less optimistic than the Camp book has the unfortunate name of Narco News Network (http://www.narconews.com).

Chapter 10

Reading:

Two excellent biographies capture the essence of revolution in Cuba and Mexico, respectively: Sebastian Balfour’s Castro, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 1995) is an evenhanded look at the Cuban leader, and John Womack’s Zapata and the Mexican Revolution (New York: Vintage Books, 1968) is an accessible classic. A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba by Alejandro De la Fuente (Chapel Hall: University of North Carolina Press, 2001) puts the shortcomings and accomplishments of the Cuban Revolution into perspective. See also Walter LaFeber’s Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, 2nd ed. (Norton, 1993).

Video and Film:

Strawberry and Chocolate (1995) is remarkable for its commentary on gay life and frustrated idealism, all the more so for having been made in Cuba. Continent on the Move (1992) in the Americas series looks at the economic factors behind migra­tion within Mexico and out of Mexico to the United States. The Uncompromising Revolution (1992) looks at Fidel’s leadership style on the eve of momentous change. Yo Soy Cuba (1964) is a Russian-made documentary with a surprisingly objective point of view. El Norte (1983) tells the story of a young Guatemalan boy caught in the counterinsurgency. When the Mountains Tremble (1983) is about the Guatema­lan army’s assault on the Mayan people, narrated by Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú.

On the Internet:

The Center for Cuba Studies at www.cubaupdate.org offers a sympathetic view of the revolution. The Cuba Transition site at http://ctp.iccas.miami.edu/main.htm at the University of Miami promotes pluralist democratization of the island. The section on the Mexican Muralists at http://smarthistory.khanacademy.org/los-tres-grandes.html provides a highly visual portrait of the changes wrought and ideology of the Mexican revolution. On the Colombia and the FARC, the process is described and analyzed by the Washington Office on Latin America at http://colombiapeace.org.

Chapter 11

Reading:

Finding a comprehensive description of social class structures in Latin America is difficult. I rely mainly on Alejandro Portes and Kelly Hoffman, “Latin American Class Structures: Their Composition and Change during the Neoliberal Era,” Latin American Research Review 38, no. 1 (February 2003): 41–77. Rodolfo Stavenhagen is a Mexican sociologist who has extensively studied social classes, urban and rural. His edited Agrarian Problems and Social Movements in Latin America (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970) is a good place to start to appreciate the variety of peasant commu­nities and organization. Hernando de Soto’s The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution in the Third World (New York: HarperCollins, 1989) argues for freeing small-scale capital in cities by reducing the reach of the state. El Alto, Rebel City: Self and Citizen­ship in Andean Bolivia by Sian Lazar (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008) is a good study of how social change, political change, and self-identity are interrelated. Patricia Fernández Kelly and Jon Shefner’s Out of the Shadows: Political Action and the Informal Economy in Latin America (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006) deals with urban protest movements. Editors Arturo Escobar and Sonia E. Alvarez’s The Making of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity Strategy and Democracy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992) was among the first publications to recog­nize the growing importance of movements and still remains relevant.

Video and Film:

Pixote (1981) is a portrait of a child’s life in the favelas of Rio. Simon Romero’s report on motorcyclists in Caracas barrios can be found at the New York Times website (www.nytimes.com) and YouTube by searching for “Caracas barrios.” Las Madres de la Plaza de Mayo (1985) documents the most famous of human rights movements led by women. Neighboring Sounds (2012), called the “best Brazilian film since 1976” by John Powers, film critic for National Public Radio, directed and written by Kleber Mendonca Filho, looks at the life of the new middle class in Recife, Brazil.

On the Internet:

Hans Rosling’s “Gapminder” website (http://www.gapminder.org) lets you explore inequality across regions and countries. News from the point of view of social move­ments, in English, can be found at Upside Down World (http://upsidedownworld.org/main). Information on the maquiladora movement of Mexican women can be found at http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=1528. Searching for “MST” on YouTube turns up several documentaries on the Landless Workers’ Movement. Particularly good is MST—Landless Movement in Brazil, in three parts.

Chapter 12

Reading:

Julia Buxton analyzes the collapse of the Punto Fijo system in The Failure of Political Reform in Venezuela (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2001). Nancy R. Powers looks at the political choices made by poor Argentinevoters in Grassroots Expecta­tions of Democracy and Economy: Argentina in Comparative Perspective (University of Pittsburg Press, 2001). As for politicians’ choices, see Barry Ames, Political Sur­vival: Politicians and Public Policy in Latin America (Berkeley: University of Califor­nia Press, 1987).

Video and Film:

Oliver Stone’s South of the Border (2010) takes a sympathetic view of the rise of leftist politicians and parties in recent years. Our Brand Is Crisis (2005) looks at culture clash and democratic values as U.S. campaign advisors try to work with Boliv­ian elites while indigenous people demonstrate in the streets.

On the Internet:

Latin Pulse (http://www.linktv.org/latinpulse) carries regular reports on elections and parties in Latin America.

Chapter 13

Reading:

A good example of the institutionalist approach, enriched by its drawing upon social and economic factors, is Joe Foweraker, Tod Landman, and Neil Harvey, Governing Latin America (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2003). Leonardo Avritzer, Democracy and the Public Space in Latin America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univer­sity Press, 2002), examines participatory democracy experiments approvingly. Gian­paolo Baiocchi, Radicals in Power: The Workers’ Party (PT) and Experiments in Urban Democracy, looks at how attaining power affects parties linked to social movements. Álvaro Vargas Llosa examines 500 years of oppression and sees reforming institutions and their underlying culture as the only way to reverse this history in Liberty for Latin America (New York: Farrar, Straus & Grioux, 2005). Gabriel L. Negretto, “Replacing and Amending Constitutions: The Logic of Constitutional Change in Latin America,” Law & Society Review 46, no. 4 (December 2012), reviews recent changes in Latin American constitutions and the causes.

Video and Film:

Beyond Elections (2009) looks at participatory budgeting and other experi­ments in deliberative democracy. It can also be found on YouTube. ¿Puedo Hablar? (2007) documents the Venezuelan electoral campaign and election of 2006, won by Hugo Chávez. Lula’s Brazil examines the first two years of the presidency of Luiz Inácio da Silva, examining Lula’s personal life and critically evaluating his political decisions.

On the Internet:

As just mentioned, the documentary Beyond Elections can be found on YouTube with a search. LANIC at the University of Texas has a page devoted to gov­ernment affairs (http://lanic.utexas.edu/subject/government). The World Bank’s views on good governance can be found at the “governance and anticorruption” section of http://www.worldbank.org. The website of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA, at http://www.idea.int/index.cfm) provides a wealth of informa­tion on voting and election procedures from around the world.

Chapter 14

Reading:

A leading study is Lynn Hammergren’s Envisioning Reform: Improving Judicial Performance in Latin America (College Park: Pennsylvania State University, 2007). Hammergren examines the difficulties in implementing legal reform in “Latin Ameri­can Experience with Rule of Law Reform and Its Applicability to Nation-Building,” Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law 38, no. 1 (2006): 6 93. On human rights, see Lars Schoultz’s Human Rights and United States Policy toward Latin America (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), which is particularly good on the Carter years. Martin Edwin Andersen’s Dossier Secreto is a critical look at the Argen­tine Dirty War from both a human rights and a security point of view. The September/October 2011 issue of NACLA Report on the Americas includes several articles claim­ing that the human rights issue has been used politically and selectively by the right in an attempt to undermine the international reputation of leftist regimes.

Video and Film

Cocalero (2007) depicts human rights issues raised by the drug war in Bolivia. Journeyman Pictures offers several good films on the impact of the drug war in the Andes. See its website: http://www.journeyman.tv. Landless (2007), produced by Sonofed and available on YouTube, documents a land takeover, including the move­ment’s interaction with law and the courts. Dictator in the Dock looks at the trial of former Guatemalan dictator General Efraín Ríos Montt, who was accused of crimes against humanity and genocide against the Maya Ixil people. Crime, drugs, and the lower class are all subjects of City of God (Cidade de Deus; 2002), a drama directed by Kátia Lund and Fernando Meirelles. This movie, based on a true story, tells of a dan­gerously violent neighborhood just outside of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Here, two boys grow up, one to become a photographer and one to become a drug dealer.

On the Internet:

See the websites for Human Rights Watch (www.hrw.org), Amnesty Inter­national (http://www.amnesty.org), and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (http://www.cidh.org). The U.S. State Departments posts its annual human rights review by country on the web; the 2012 report can be found at http://www.state.gov/j/drl/rls/hrrpt/humanrightsreport/#wrapper. The human rights page at the University of Texas is a useful portal to the sites of human rights organizations throughout the hemisphere. See http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/region/hrights/.  

Chapter 15

Reading:

The Carnegie Endowment tried with some success to make an evenhanded assessment of NAFTA’s impact in NAFTA’s Promise and Reality: Lessons from Mex­ico for the Hemisphere (2004). Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2005) offers the strongest pro-globalization argument. Manuel Castells and Roberto Laserna, in “The New Dependency: Technological Change and Socioeconomic Restructuring in Latin America,” Sociological Forum 4, no. 4 (1980), see technological changes and globali­zation constraining democracy. Michel Reid, Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America’s Soul (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), sees globalization as pro­moting democracy and finds Venezuela’s President Chávez to be a threat to progress. William Robinson, Latin America and Global Capitalism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press 2010), looks at the changing economies of Latin America and also at the resist­ance to neoliberal globalization.

Video and Film:

Another World Is Possible (2008) looks at anti-globalization protests at the G8 economic summit in Genoa. Voices from the Edge: The Favela Goes to the World Social Forum (2005) is a Brazilian documentary. With an interesting twist on man­ufacturing and globalization, The Take, a documentary by Canadian filmmaker Avi Lewis, captures a movement in Buenos Aires that started with 30 factory workers who would not leave their factory. In protest against Argentina’s Carlos Menem (claimed to be “responsible” for a grave economic collapse in 2001) and his powerful company-controlling comrades, these unemployed revolutionaries relied on their slingshots and their value of “shop-floor democracy” in a desperate struggle to get their jobs back. For more on this video, go to http://www.thetake.org.

On the Internet:

The Carnegie study of NAFTA can also be found at http://carnegieen­dowment.org/2003/11/09/nafta-s-promise-and-reality-lessons-from-mexico-for-hemishphere. The World Social Forum has various sites associated with different countries, conferences, and movements. A prominent portal for the United States can be found at http://www.ussocialforum.net/. There are no shortages of videos on You­Tube where you can hear the views of Thomas Friedman. LANIC hosts a portal for all things NAFTA at http://lanic.utexas.edu/la/mexico/nafta/. What does a cat know about globalization and other world issues? Check out Pinky at http://www.pinkyshow.org/projectarchives/videos/defending-globalization-a-mission-for-the-educated-and-enlightened.

Chapter 16

Reading:

Larry Diamond, editor of the Journal of Democracy and collaborator with the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, defends pluralist democratization and worries about recent tendencies in The Spirit of Democracy (New York: Times Books, 2008). A critique of “transitionology” is William Robinson’s Promoting Polyar­chy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996). The editorial caricatures in this chapter are among many analyzed by John J. Johnson in Latin America in Caricature (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1980). Christopher Sabatini does not endorse U.S. hegemony in the past, but he does think it brought some benefits and at times strengthened democracy. See his article “Will Latin America Miss U.S. Hegemony?,” Journal of International Affairs 66, no. 2 (Spring/Summer 2013): 1–14. For a U.S. government justification of democracy programs, see Foreign Assistance: U.S. Democracy Programs in Six Latin American Countries Have Yielded Modest Results, GAO-03-358 (March 8, 2003). It is based on case studies of U.S. policy toward Bolivia, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicara­gua, and Peru. NED funding of the opposition to Chávez, including groups engaged in the 2002 coup, is documented by Eva Gollinger and Saul Landau in The Chávez Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela (Olive Branch Press, 2006).

Film and Video:

A list of films (and literature) about the Guatemalan case can be found at http://depts.washington.edu/hrights/guatbib.html. When the Mountains Tremble (1983), about Nobel Prize winner Rigoberta Menchú, remains a classic of the genre. Missing (1982) is about the political disillusionment of an American father, played by Jack Lemmon, as he tries to find the truth behind the disappearance of his son in Chile during the 1973 coup. Another film, State of Siege (1973), by the same direc­tor, Costa Gavras, looks at American involvement in the destabilization of Uruguay. Obie Benz’s Americas in Transition (1981) is a short, Oscar-nominated documentary describing U.S. relations with several Latin American countries in the 1970s and 1980s, including Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.

On the Internet:

The Americas Program (http://americas.irc-online.org) at the Washington-based Center for International Policy is a valuable resource for a variety of progres­sive organizations’ views on U.S. policy toward Latin America. The National Security Archive (http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv) at George Washington University is a trove of primary source material on U.S. security programs and intervention. Try searching for “Death of Che Guevara.”

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