Friday, January 23, 2009
LA in WPR
World Politics Review has a pair of interesting (I hope) articles on Latin America under Barack Obama. First, I say that any attempt to consolidate regional policy into a few goals is a bad way to approach Latin America. Second, Frida Ghitis considers the limits of Obama-mania in Latin America.
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4 comments:
Excellent piece. Same thing I say to anyone who will listen: stop looking for "trends" and "grand narratives" and look at the countries. The wave of elections in 2006 is largely to blame, since it spawned the "two lefts" theory and all the fear of "a pink tide." The right used this for fear; the left to trumpet its successes. Not that it's new to try and look for the "big issues" but I think 2006 energized it and blinded people to the diversity of "fundamental" issues.
Thanks JD. It's kind of weird with Castañeda, I thought his insights about the two lefts were a big step forward in how we look at Latin America (relatively speaking, I mean, much better than equating Lula to Chávez). But for him, that doesn't seem to have been an argument for breaking the region down into countries, but rather just exchanging one poorly fitting regional paradigm for another that fits only slightly better.
Indeed. For added nuance on the how-many-lefts theme, I recommend Ignacio Walker's sorta recent piece in Dissent and, especially, an essay Kenneth Roberts wrote for the Wilson Center in late 2007. Both easily Googlable.
Thanks, I'll check those out.
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