“This book is proof that today’s Latin American literature reaches far and digs deep. Alfredo Molano isn’t a novelist or poet, but rather a sociologist who realizes that ‘the way to understand wasn’t to study people but to listen to them.’ The testimonies that Molano collects are a point of departure for a work that knows how to relate, like few others can, Colombia’s pain in a language that has more colors than the rainbow.”—Eduardo Galeano, author of Upside Down and Open Vei...

The term Mexican Drug War” misleads. It implies that the ongoing bloodbath, which has now killed well over 100,000 people, is an internal Mexican affair.But this diverts attention from the U.S. role in creating and sustaining the carnage. It’s not just that Americans buy drugs from, and sell weapons to, Mexico’s murderous cartels. It’s that ever since the U.S. prohibited the use and sale of drugs in the early 1900s, it has pressured Mexico into acting as its border enforcer-with i...

In June 2009, 60 soldiers slipped into the bush above Devil's Curve, a notorious bend in the two-lane highway connecting Peru's northern Amazon to the outside world. The soldiers had orders to dislodge the 3,000 Awajun natives who had been camped there for the past 57 days. The subsequent clash was deadly.At issue was the lease of three-quarters of the jungle to foreign oil and mining interests over the previous decade. The Devil's Curve untangles the stor...

A massive uprising against the Mexican state of Oaxaca began with the emergence of the Popular Assembly of the Peoples of Oaxaca (APPO) in June 2006. A coalition of more than 300 organizations, APPO disrupted the functions of Oaxaca's government for six months. It began to develop an inclusive and participatory political vision for the state. Testimonials were broadcast on radio and television stations appropriated by APPO, shared at public demonstrations, debated in homes and in the stree...

Every year the United States spends millions of dollars to help the war-ravaged country of Colombia. But help it with what? In Colombia and the U.S. Mario Murillo explores the misdirected and devastating impact that U.S. military "aid" continues to have on the war torn-people of Colombia. Beginning with a brief history of Colombia, Murillo analyzes the complex forces driving Colombia's current decades-old guerilla war, U.S. involvement, media perceptions, and possible paths to peace. Wheth...

One of the most inspiring and successful global leaders of the early 21st century explains how bold, imaginative leadership can solve even the most intractable problems—and why there is no such thing as a lost cause.It’s one of the great, unexpected turnaround stories in modern history: Just a decade ago, Colombia was regarded as a “failed state,” besieged by megalomaniacal drug kingpins, ruthless terrorist groups, and abominable poverty. But since 2002, it has bee...

An extraordinarily vivid, unflinching series of portraits of South America today, written from the inside out, by the award-winning New Yorker journalist and widely admired author of Samba.

Ever since Fidel Castro assumed power in Cuba in 1959, Americans have obsessed about the nation ninety miles south of the Florida Keys. America's fixation on the tropical socialist republic has only grown over the years, fueled in part by successive waves of Cuban immigration and Castro's larger-than-life persona. Cubans are now a major ethnic group in Florida, and the exile community is so powerful that every American president has curried favor with it. But what do most Americans really ...

From theesteemed New Yorker correspondent comes an incisive volume of essays and reportage that vividly illuminates Latin America’s recent history. Only Alma Guillermoprieto, the most highly regarded writer on the region, could unravel the complex threads of Colombia’s cocaine wars or assess the combination of despotism, charm, and political jiu-jitsu that has kept Fidel Castro in power for more than 40 years. And no one else can write with such acumen and sympathy about statesmen...

A stylized reissue of the acclaimed, surreal noir collaboration between Mexico's greatest writer and its most courageous revolutionary."Taibo's expertise ensures a smart, funny book, and Marcos brings a wry sense of humor." — Publishers WeeklyIn alternating chapters, Zapatista leader Subcomandante Marcos and the consistently excellent Paco Ignacio Taibo II create an uproarious murder mystery with two intersecting storylines. The chapters w...

The fascinating Bolivian president Evo Morales is vying with the brash and provocative leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, to be the most influential figure in South American politics today. Since coming into office four years ago, Morales has been intensely critical of the United States, speaking out against the drug war at the United Nations and implementing socialist programs at home, including the nationalization of British Petroleum holdings and other foreign investments. And he has rea...

He is one of the most controversial and important world leaders currently in power. In this international bestseller, at last available in English, Hugo Chávez is captured in a critically acclaimed biography, a riveting account of the Venezuelan president who continues to influence, fascinate, and antagonize America.Born in a small town on the Venezuelan plains, Chávez found his interests radically altered when he entered the military academy in Caracas. There, as Hugo Chávez reveal...