This remarkable book tells the story of one man's kidnapping in Colombia from the first-person perspectives of all those involved: the guerrillas, the victim, his wife, his friends, and his brother-in-law, Herbert Braun. In this second edition, the author has added a new chapter that recounts the endurance of Colombia and Colombians in the face of escalating kidnapping and violence, explores the current political situation in Colombia, and reevaluates his own complex response to the guerrillas.

Few publications cover the full span of the history of revolutionary movements in Latin America. In Revolution and Revolutionaries, editor Daniel Castro examines all aspects of guerrilla warfare-from revolutionary programs to the repressive tactics used by various governments to rid themselves of the threats presented by revolutionary movements. In addition to illustrating specific cases of guerrilla struggles, Revolution and Revolutionaries also analyzes the political and social conditions that made the outbreak of revolutionary movements throughout the region unavoidable. Finally, Castro examines the remaining guerrilla movements still active in Latin America as the century comes to a close. Revolution and Revolutionaries revives the debate about the viability of revolutionary violence in Latin America, and will interest those studying Latin American history and sociology, and political science.

To many foreigners, Colombia is a nightmare of drugs and violence. Yet normal life goes on there, and, in Bogotá, it's even possible to forget that war still ravages the countryside. This paradox of perceptions—outsiders' fears versus insiders' realities—drew June Carolyn Erlick back to Bogotá for a year's stay in 2005. She wanted to understand how the city she first came to love in 1975 has made such strides toward building a peaceful civil society in the midst of ongoing violence. The complex reality she found comes to life in this compelling memoir. Erlick creates her portrait of Bogotá through a series of vivid vignettes that cover many aspects of city life. As an experienced journalist, she lets the things she observes lead her to larger conclusions. The courtesy of people on buses, the absence of packs of stray dogs and street trash, and the willingness of strangers to help her cross an overpass when vertigo overwhelms her all become signs of convivencia—the desire of Bogotanos to live together in harmony despite decades of war. But as Erlick settles further into city life, she finds that "war in the city is invisible, but constantly present in subtle ways, almost like the constant mist that used to drip down from the Bogotá skies so many years ago." Shattering stereotypes with its lively reporting, A Gringa in Bogotá is must-reading for going beyond the headlines about the drug war and bloody conflict.

Violence In Colombia provides students with a deeper understanding of the crisis facing Colombia today. The book focuses on the 1990s, a decade that witnessed a strengthening of the oldest and largest guerrilla insurgency in the Americas and the emergence of a powerful paramilitary right. The decade also saw a dramatic rise in homicide, kidnapping, and human rights violations that made Colombia by far the most violent nation in the hemisphere. But the 1990s was also about negotiating peace. The decade began with negotiations between the government and some of the guerrilla groups that led to their demobilization and to the important reforms codified in the Constitution of 1991. It ended with another serious attempt at negotiating peace, a historic agreement between the government and the largest and most powerful of the guerrilla groups to put a range of social and economic reforms on the negotiating table. For many, the crisis in Colombia is understood in terms of the drug trade. To be sure, the drug trade is implicated in every aspect of the crisis. And despite (or because of?) escalating efforts by the Colombian and U.S. governments to curb the trade, Colombia's role as the leading supplier of cocaine, and increasingly of heroin, to the U.S. market continues to expand. But the drug trade, by itself, cannot explain the crisis. If it could, why have other Latin American drug-producing and trafficking nations not experienced a fate like Colombia's? To answer this question, the book presents some of the best recent work by Colombian scholars on the crisis facing the nation. Violence in Colombia also includes a large section devoted to primary documents, which enables students to get a feel for the views of the protagonists in the conflict and judge for themselves the meaning of what they say. Examples include the negotiating positions of the government, the guerrillas, and the paramilitary right; testimony by kidnap victims and human rights lawyers; and assessments by U.S. officials and Colo

An in-depth explanation of how the Cuban Revolution dictated Latin American politics and U.S.-Latin American relations from the 1950s to the present, including widespread democratization and the rise of the "Pink Tide." Fidel Castro's ascent to power and the revolution he carried out in Cuba not only catalyzed a wave of revolutionary activity; it also set off a wave of reaction that led to widespread military dictatorships and severe repression culminating in state terrorism. Both revolution and reaction were essentially over by 1990, and yet significant long-term effects of the Cuban Revolution can still be seen in the modern era. Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution and Beyond covers the events of the Cuban Revolution itself, the resulting radicalization of Latin American politics, the United States' responses to the threat of communist expansion in the hemisphere, and rural and urban guerrilla warfare that were spawned by the Cuban Revolution. It also addresses the very different but incomplete communist revolutions in Peru, Chile, and Nicaragua, the rise of state terrorism in response to the threat of revolution, and major developments after 1990. This book provides unique historical insights by bringing together under the umbrella of the impact of the Cuban Revolution developments that otherwise might seem unrelated to each other, thereby documenting the relationship between revolution and reaction. This third edition has three new chapters covering state terrorism in South America; state terrorism in Central America; and post-1990 developments such as neoliberalism, an unprecedented degree of democratization, the "Pink Tide" of leftist governments like those of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia; and women's major gains in politics. Additionally, all of the chapters and the bibliography are updated.

Between 1946 and 1966a surge of violence in Colombia left 200,000 dead in one of the worst conflicts the western hemisphere has ever experienced. the first seven years of this little-studied period of terror, known as la Violencia, is the subject of Blood and Fire. Scholars have traditionally assumed that partisan politics drove La Violencia, but Mary Roldán challenges earlier assessments by providing a nuanced account of the political and cultural motives behind the fratricide. Although the author acknowledges that partisan animosities played an important role in the disintegration of peaceful discourse into violence, she argues that conventional political conflicts were intensified by other concerns. Through an analysis of the evolution of violence in Antioquia, which at the time was the wealthiest and most economically diverse region of Colombia, Roldán demonstrates how tensions between regional politicians and the weak central state, diverse forms of social prejudice, and processes of economic development combined to make violence a preferred mode of political action. Privatization of state violence into paramilitary units and the emergence of armed resistance movements exacted a horrible cost on Colombian civic life, and these processes continue to plague the country. Roldan’s reading of the historical events suggests that Antioquia’s experience of la Violencia was the culmination of a brand of internal colonialism in which regional identity formation based on assumptions of cultural superiority was used to justify violence against racial or ethnic "others" and as a pretext to seize land and natural resources. Blood and Fire demonstrates that, far from being a peculiarity of the Colombians, la Violencia was a logical product of capitalist development and state formation in the modern world. This is the first study to analyze intersections of ethnicity, geography, and class to explore the genesis of Colombian violence, and it has implications for the study of repression in many other nations.

With contributions from leading experts, Culture and National Security in the Americas examines the most influential historical, geographic, cultural, political, economic, and military considerations shaping national security policies throughout the Americas. In this volume, contributors explore the actors and institutions responsible for perpetuating security cultures over time and the changes and continuities in contemporary national security policies.