Word: latinities
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...international institutions held a global popularity contest, there's little doubt the International Monetary Fund would finish last. Over the past 30 years, the Washington-based agency has aroused fear and loathing throughout much of Africa, Asia and Latin America because of the tough conditions it imposed on governments as the price for its financial assistance. When its role dwindled to near-irrelevance earlier this decade as the world economy expanded strongly, few tears were shed. Taking over as managing director in 2007, Frenchman Dominique Strauss-Kahn warned its directors that, "what might be at stake today is the very...
When I started covering Latin America 20 years ago, a leftist source asked what books I'd read to help myself understand the region's manera de pensar, or psyche. I fidgeted and mentioned Octavio Paz's Labyrinth of Solitude. He shrugged. José Martí's Our America? Eh. How about everything by Gabriel García Márquez? (Although I had to admit that was to impress women.) He shook his head and handed me Eduardo Galeano's The Open Veins of Latin America - the same book Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez made a show...
...Read the subtitle of Galeano's 1971 work - Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent - and you know why the left-wing, anti-U.S. Chávez would present it to a U.S. President. The book's thesis is that Spain, then Britain, the U.S. and Latin oligarchs ransacked Latin American resources, from copper to crude, bleeding the region of its natural wealth and its sovereign dignity. But even if you don't subscribe to its Marxist-tinged polemic, The Open Veins is one of the best introductions to the longstanding Latin grievances that keep producing populist leaders...
...genuine, it's hard to overestimate how important that promise is to Latin Americans, who've experienced a lot more heavy-handed interventionism and condescending disregard than they have partnership from either Republicans or Democrats in Washington. It not only heartened Latin leaders in Trinidad, it disarmed them. The summit could have easily deteriorated into another yanqui-bashing fest over the U.S.'s role in the global economic crisis or its antiquated trade embargo against Cuba. But Obama had even Chávez feeling "great optimism" that his nation's icy relations with the U.S. will thaw, starting with...
...seems, does the rest of the region after this summit. To most Latin Americans, Obama could not present a starker contrast to his predecessor, George W. Bush, whom Chávez once called "the devil" and whose relations with the hemisphere were strained at best. Even Bill Clinton as President didn't set foot south of the border until five months into his second term. Latin America, according to many experts, has the worst gap between rich and poor of any region in the world - a big reason why the U.S. has so many immigration-policy headaches. And what Obama...