Latin America's Foremost Political Journalist Makes a Brilliant and Passionate Argument for Real Reform In the Economically Crippled Continent In Liberty for Latin America, Alvaro Vargas Llosa offers an incisive diagnosis of Latin America's woes--and a prescription for finally getting the region on the road to both genuine prosperity and the protection of human rights. When the economy in Argentina--at one time a model of free-market reform--collapsed in 2002, experts of all persuasions asked: What went wrong? Vargas Llosa shows that what went wrong in Argentina has in fact gone wrong all over the continent for over five hundred years. He explains how the republics of the nineteenth century and the revolutions of the twentieth-populist uprisings, Marxist coops, state takeovers, and First World-sponsored privatization-have all run up against the oligarchic legacy of statism. Illiberal elites backed by the United States and Europe have perpetuated what he calls the "five principles of oppression" in order to maintain their hold on power. The region has become "a laboratory for political and economic suicide," while comparable countries in Asia and Eastern Europe have prospered. The only way to change things in Latin America, Vargas Llosa argues, is to remove the five principles of oppression, genuinely reforming institutions and the underlying culture for the benefit of the disempowered public. In Liberty for Latin America, he explains how, offering hope as well as insight for all those who care for the future of this troubled region.

From the Banana Wars of the early 20th century through to the Football War of 1969, South and Central America has been a hotbed of revolutions, rebellions and conflicts as diverse as they are numerous. Some were small-scale affairs involving the poorly armed forces of Central American armies with rifles, machetes and a few aged machine guns. Others were full-scale conflicts involving sophisticated armies equipped with tanks, artillery and aircraft, and hundreds of thousands of troops. These wars often went largely unreported in the West, which was preoccupied with its own problems in fighting two world wars and dealing with Cold War tensions. Fully illustrated with a wealth of rare photographs, this fascinating story sheds light on seven decades of a continent in conflict that is rarely covered in English.

This book presents sixty-four essays and writings on liberty and liberalism, for the early republican period to the late twentieth century, from a variety of authors. The volume offers direct access to primary sources that are not available to readers in English and is a key primer to those interested in Latin American history, politics, and political theory.