Drawing on the research and experience of fifteen internationally recognized Latin America scholars, this insightful text presents an overview of inter-American relations during the first decade of the twenty-first century. This unique collection identifies broad changes in the international system that have had significant affects in the Western Hemisphere, including issues of politics and economics, the securitization of U.S. foreign policy, balancing U.S. primacy, the wider impact of the world beyond the Americas, especially the rise of China, and the complexities of relationships between neighbors. Contemporary U.S.-Latin American Relations focuses on the near-neighbors of the United States—Mexico, Cuba, the Caribbean and Central America—as well as the larger countries of South America—including Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Peru, and Venezuela. Each chapter addresses a country’s relations with the United States, and each considers themes that are unique to that country’s bilateral relations as well as those themes that are more general to the relations of Latin America as a whole. This cohesive and accessible volume is required reading for Latin American politics students and scholars alike.

This book examines U.S.-Latin American relations from an historical, contemporary, and theoretical perspective. By drawing examples from the distant and more recent past—and interweaving history with theory—Williams illustrates the enduring principles of International Relations theory and provides students the conceptual tools required to make sense of inter-American relations. It is a masterful guide for how to organize facts, think systematically about issues, weigh competing explanations, and confidently draw your own conclusions regarding the past, present, and future of international politics in the region.

Featuring numerous updates and revisions, U.S. and Latin American Relations, 2nd Edition offers in-depth theoretical and historical analyses to explore the complex dynamic between the United States and the countries that comprise Latin America. Presents a theoretical framework that allows readers to view U.S.-Latin American relations from both a regional and global context Reviews the history of U.S.-Latin American relations from the 19th century to the present, including in-depth coverage of the ways political events in Cuba have shaped policy Examines former issues of conflict that are now areas of cooperation, such as debt and trade, immigration, human rights, illegal drugs, and terrorism Incorporates primary documents to place issues within historical context

Providing a balanced and interdisciplinary interpretation, this comprehensive reader traces the troubled U.S. Latin American relationship from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the post 9/11 period. Thoroughly revised and updated, the second edition includes original essays on critical issues such as immigration and the environment. In addition, a new section helps students understand the most important themes and topics that unify and divide the United States and Latin American nations today. The readings are framed by the editors' opening chapter on the history of the relationship, part introductions, and abstracts for each selection. Methodologically interdisciplinary, yet comparative and historical in organization and structure, this collection will benefit students and specialists of Latin America's complex historical, social, and political relationship with its northern neighbor."

Essays that suggest new ways of understanding the role that US actors and agencies have played in Latin America." - publisher.

In this sweeping history of United States policy toward Latin America, Lars Schoultz shows that the United States has always perceived Latin America as a fundamentally inferior neighbor, unable to manage its affairs and stubbornly underdeveloped. This perception of inferiority was apparent from the beginning. John Quincy Adams, who first established diplomatic relations with Latin America, believed that Hispanics were lazy, dirty, nasty...a parcel of hogs. In the early nineteenth century, ex-President John Adams declared that any effort to implant democracy in Latin America was as absurd as similar plans would be to establish democracies among the birds, beasts, and fishes. Drawing on extraordinarily rich archival sources, Schoultz, one of the country's foremost Latin America scholars, shows how these core beliefs have not changed for two centuries. We have combined self-interest with a civilizing mission--a self-abnegating effort by a superior people to help a substandard civilization overcome its defects. William Howard Taft felt the way to accomplish this task was to knock their heads together until they should maintain peace, while in 1959 CIA Director Allen Dulles warned that the new Cuban officials had to be treated more or less like children. Schoultz shows that the policies pursued reflected these deeply held convictions. While political correctness censors the expression of such sentiments today, the actions of the United States continue to assume the political and cultural inferiority of Latin America. Schoultz demonstrates that not until the United States perceives its southern neighbors as equals can it anticipate a constructive hemispheric alliance.

The Second Century: U.S.-Latin American Relations since 1889 focuses on U.S. relations with Latin America during the second century, a period bounded by the advent of the New Diplomacy late in the nineteenth century and the end of the Cold War about one hundred years later. This text provides a balanced perspective as it presents both the United States's view that the Western Hemisphere needed to unite under a common democratic, capitalistic society, and the Latin American countries' response to U.S. attempts to impose these goals on their southern neighbors. This book examines the reciprocal interactions between the two regions, each with distinctive purposes, outlooks, interests, and cultures. It also places U.S.-Latin American relations within the larger context of global politics and economics. The Second Century is an excellent text for courses in Latin American history and diplomatic history.