Few have a complete understanding of the recent history of Panama, markedly since the signing of the Carter–Torrijos Treaties in 1977. Although the Treaty set the stage for the country to finally control all of its territory, little is known about how Panama has fared, both as a manager of a major waterway and as a sovereign nation in a unique region. Authors Michael L. Conniff and Gene E. Bigler seek to fill this major gap in Latin American history with Modern Panama, a thorough account o...

The story of exiles from the Confederate South who fled to Brazil after the US Civil War. The collection includes a previously unpublished narrative by an original settlerIn the wake of the American Civil War, thousands of disillusioned Southerners sought refuge far from Reconstruction’s reach—many found it in Brazil. The Confederados is a compelling exploration of this little-known migration, tracing the journey of Confederate exiles who forged n...

After Panama assumed control of the Panama Canal in 1999, its relations with the United States became those of a friendly neighbor. In this third edition, Michael L. Conniff describes Panama’s experience as owner-operator of one of the world’s premier waterways and the United States’ adjustment to its new, smaller role. He finds that Panama has done extremely well with the canal and economic growth but still struggles to curb corruption, drug trafficking, and money laundering. Historically...

A New History of Modern Latin America provides an engaging and readable narrative history of the nations of Latin America from the Wars of Independence in the nineteenth century to the democratic turn in the twenty-first. This new edition of a well-known text has been revised and updated to include the most recent interpretations of major themes in the economic, social, and cultural history of the region to show the unity of the Latin America experience while exploring the diversi...

A scholarly analysis of the origins, evolution, and enduring impact of populism in Latin American political life.This updated edition of Populism in Latin America discusses new developments in populism as a political phenomenon and the emergence of new populist political figures in Mexico, Argentina, and Venezuela in particular.For more than one hundred years—from the beginning of the twentieth to the early twenty-first century—Latin Ameri...

The second edition of A Concise History of Brazil offers a sweeping yet accessible history of Latin America's largest country. Boris Fausto examines Brazil's history from the arrival of the Portuguese in the New World through the long and sometimes rocky transition from independence in 1822 to democracy in the twentieth century. In a completely new chapter, his son Sergio Fausto, a prominent political scientist, brings the history up to the present, focusing on Brazil's increasing global e...

A study of Mexico - political, social, cultural, economic - by a journalist who was for the past 6 years the NYT bureau chief in Mexico City. With portraits of Mexico's top leaders, about a nation whose stability is vital to our national well-being.

Among the top ten oil exporters in the world and a founding member of OPEC, Venezuela currently supplies 11 percent of U.S. crude oil imports. But when the country elected the fiery populist politician Hugo Chavez in 1998, tensions rose with this key trading partner and relations have been strained ever since. In this concise, accessible addition to Oxford's What Everyone Needs to Know® series, Miguel Tinker Salas -- a native of Venezuela who has written extensively about the coun...

Today all would agree that Mexico and the United States have never been closer--that the fates of the two republics are inextricably intertwined. It has become an intimate part of life in almost every community in the United States, through immigration, imported produce, business ties, or illegal drugs. It is less a neighbor than a sibling; no matter what our differences, it is intricately a part of our existence. In this outstanding contribution to Oxford's acclaimed series, What Ever...

The History of Costa Rica provides a thorough, straightforward narrative of a Central American country that has become increasingly more visible since the end of the 20th century. Written for students and the general reader, this book covers the nation from its pre-Colombian origins to the present day.||This chronologically organized volume documents the area's earliest inhabitants, then moves on through the colonial period, the process of nation-state formation in the 19th century, the vo...

The political upheaval in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Guatemala had a devastating human toll at the end of the twentieth century. A quarter of a million people died during the period 1974-1996. Many of those who survived the wars chose temporary refuge in neighboring countries such as Honduras and Costa Rica. Others traveled far north, to Mexico, the United States, and Canada in search of safety. Over two million of those who fled Central America during this period settled in these three c...

Michel Gobat deftly interweaves political, economic, cultural, and diplomatic history to analyze the reactions of Nicaraguans to U.S. intervention in their country from the heyday of Manifest Destiny in the mid–nineteenth century through the U.S. occupation of 1912–33. Drawing on extensive research in Nicaraguan and U.S. archives, Gobat accounts for two seeming paradoxes that have long eluded historians of Latin America: that Nicaraguans so strongly embraced U.S. political, economic, and c...