In the midst of a rapidly shifting global economy, Brazil has emerged as a powerful new player on the geopolitical stage. Against all odds, the Latin American nation managed, in just three years, to repay a 2002 $15.5 billion IMF bailout loan thanks to aggressive economic restructuring and a series of alliances that have placed it at the center of political and economic power in the region.From the outside, Brazil is a poster child for neoliberal capitalism. Yet inside the country,...

Zibechi goes to Bolivia to learn. Like us, he goes with questions, questions that stretch far beyond the borders of Bolivia. How do we change the world and create a different one? How do we get rid of capitalism? How do we create a society based on dignity? What is the role of the state and what are the possibilities of changing society through anti-state movements?... the most important practical and theoretical questions that have risen from the struggles in Latin America and the world ...

In Mexico and across other parts of Latin America local Indigenous peoples have built community policing groups as a means of protection where the state has limited control over, and even complicity in, crime and violence. Luis Hernández Navarro, a leading Mexican journalist, offers a riveting investigation of these armed self-defense groups that sprang up around the time of the 1994 Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. Available in English for the first time, the book spotlights the intense pre...

The fascinating Bolivian president Evo Morales is vying with the brash and provocative leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, to be the most influential figure in South American politics today. Since coming into office four years ago, Morales has been intensely critical of the United States, speaking out against the drug war at the United Nations and implementing socialist programs at home, including the nationalization of British Petroleum holdings and other foreign investments. And he has rea...

A Washington Post Best Nonfiction Book of 2025From acclaimed and prize-winning historian Paul Gillingham, a rich and vibrant history of one of the world’s most diverse, politically ground-breaking, and influential of countriesAt the beginning of his masterful work of scholarship and narration, Paul Gillingham writes, from its outset “Mexico was more profoundly, globally hybrid than anywhere else in the prior history of the world.” ...

The term Mexican Drug War” misleads. It implies that the ongoing bloodbath, which has now killed well over 100,000 people, is an internal Mexican affair.But this diverts attention from the U.S. role in creating and sustaining the carnage. It’s not just that Americans buy drugs from, and sell weapons to, Mexico’s murderous cartels. It’s that ever since the U.S. prohibited the use and sale of drugs in the early 1900s, it has pressured Mexico into acting as its border enforcer-with i...

As the heyday of the Chicano Movement of the late 1960s to early 70s fades further into history and as more and more of its important figures pass on, so too does knowledge of its significance. Thus, Chicano Movement For Beginners is an important attempt to stave off historical amnesia. It seeks to shed light on the multifaceted civil rights struggle known as “El Movimiento” that galvanized the Mexican American community, from laborers to student activists, giving them not only a ...

Every year the United States spends millions of dollars to help the war-ravaged country of Colombia. But help it with what? In Colombia and the U.S. Mario Murillo explores the misdirected and devastating impact that U.S. military "aid" continues to have on the war torn-people of Colombia. Beginning with a brief history of Colombia, Murillo analyzes the complex forces driving Colombia's current decades-old guerilla war, U.S. involvement, media perceptions, and possible paths to peace. Wheth...

Though pillage, profit, and plunder have been a mainstay of war since pre-colonial times, there is little contemporary focus on the role of finance and economics in today's "Drug Wars"—despite the fact that they boost US banks and fill our prisons with poor people. They feed political campaigns, increase the arms trade, and function as long-term fixes to capitalism's woes, cracking open new territories to privatization and foreign direct investment.Combining on-the-ground reporting...

Dictatorship in South America explores the experiences of Brazilian, Argentine and Chilean experience under military rule.Presents a single-volume thematic study that explores experiences with dictatorship as well as their social and historical contexts in Latin AmericaExamines at the ideological and economic crossroads that brought Argentina, Brazil and Chile under the thrall of military dictatorshipDraws on recent historiographical currents from...

"History of Guatemala: The Fascinating Story of the Land of the Quetzal" is a captivating journey through the complex and intriguing history of Guatemala. From the ancient Maya civilizations to the modern-day struggles and triumphs, this book delves into the fascinating story of the Land of the Quetzal.With meticulous research and engaging narrative, this book explores the cultural, social, and political developments that have shaped Guatemala's identity. Explore t...

Two Pulitzer Prize–winning reporters deliver "a gripping and insightful history of Mexico's democratic transition" (Daniel Kurtz Phelan, The Washington Post ).Opening Mexico is a narrative history of the citizens' movement which dismantled the kleptocratic one-party state that dominated Mexico in the twentieth century, and replaced it with a lively democracy. Told through the stories of Mexicans who helped make t...