Strategic Reading on Latin America, 3rd Ed.
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As we begin a new century, a bright shining star in Latin American history is an edited work from professors Lewis Hanke and Jane M. Rausch titled People and Issues in Latin American History: From Independence to the Present (2d ed., 1998). All the great names and issues both salutary and troubling in the region’s history since the early 1800s are here in short, pithy readings, edited with honesty and elegance. Sadly, Professor Hanke, one of Latin American history’s grand old men and certainly the premier scholar of the Western Hemisphere’s human rights tradition, passed away before this superb volume was published. Here we can read Simon Bolivar’s appeal to Bolivians to proclaim a constitution based on principles traced from ancient Greece, and we can find three different appraisals of Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution. Also in the mix are short, pertinent readings on land tenure, caudillismo, urban society, industrialization, Latin American views of the North America giant, and much more. For any introductory course on Latin America, this is the perfect book to read in conjunction with Robert T. Buckman’s regional introduction, Latin America 1999, from the excellent Stryker-Post series. Thomas O’Brien’s 1998 work The Century of U.S. Capitalism in Latin America and Terry L. McCoy’s The 1999 Latin American Business Environment: An Assessment offer the reader a nicely opposed pair of views on the region’s current economic situation. For Professor O’Brien, all US investment in Latin America has been a manipulative, profit-seeking venture that has contributed to undemocratic governments and societies. His factual descriptions of US investment and its political consequences are quite good. For Professor McCoy, the regional economic climate is guardedly optimistic, and neo-liberalism is an authentic world trend with overall positive trajectories for Latin America. Daniel Castro’s edited volume Revolutions and Revolutionaries (1999) and Kevin J. Middlebrook’s edited collection Electoral Observation and Democratic Transitions in Latin America (1998) offer comparative strategic insights on the political condition of the region. Castro’s revolutionary potpourri shows how the indigenous social and economic injustice issues within Latin America were manipulated by both giants during the Cold War, and have now died back into specific armed challenges heavily connected to the drug war in Colombia and Peru. Middlebrook’s work is a good portrait of what election supervision efforts can do with their often limited resources; one is struck by how much more successful these efforts have been in the Western Hemisphere than in the Eastern Hemisphere.
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About the Book
In 1994, Colonel John J. Madigan, Editor of Parameters, Professional Journal of the U.S. Army Wary College, authorized Dr. Russell W. Ramsey to write an annual review essay on strategic writing about Latin America. At Cold War’s end, this literature had become less polemical. These essays have continued for seven years, plus some single-issue essays. Professor Ramsey simultaneously wrote complementary review essays on Western Hemisphere military topics for the Hispanic American Historical Review, Journal of Comparative Strategy, Strategic Review, and Military Review. All of these essays are now assembled in a compilation of articles, which in sum comprise the most complete evaluation of the literature bearing on an emotional topic in the post-Cold War world.
About the Author
Russell W. Ramsey is the longest standing and most widely published U.S. scholar of the Latin American military scene. He was the pilot project officer at the U.S. Army School of the Americas in Panama (1960 – 1962) when (then) Attorney General Robert Kennedy installed the counter-insurgency program. As an Army Reserve officer, he was the Desk Officer for Long Range Strategy (J-5), U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in the 1980’s. His doctoral dissertation on the Colombian Violencia (1946 – 1965), published in 1970, is still a best seller in Colombia today. He was Chief of Latin American Studies for the U.S. Air Force Command and Staff College from 1987 to 1992, and Distinguished Civilian Professor for the U.S. Army School of the Americas from 1992 to 2000. His publications appear in every major U.S. journal of strategic studies and of Latin American Studies. Currently he is professor of Latin American Studies at Troy State University.