Latin America, rich in natural resources, geographic assets and human capital.
With its colonial past, its Catholic church and missionaries who brought the Truth
to its pre-Columbian inhabitants.
With its central governments and its political instability and populism.
Vibrant region full of the interaction of ideas and power, nationalism and anti-Americanism.
With its secular saints, where theology and revolution marry.
Jose Vasconcelos, Jose Carlos Mariategui, Jose Marti, Che Guevara, Subcomandante Marcos.
A land of religious prophets and theological seriousness
The continent's lost century. Toxic mix of state repression and legalized plunder.
Peronism, first great populist movement in Latin America.
Argentina then among the fifteen richest in the world -a huge budget surplus.
Military dictatorships and radio melodramas.
Peron venerated Mussolini and studied "Mein Kampf".
From Goebbels he learned the importance of oratory and the medium of radio.
The political manipulation of the masses.
Evita(r) deeply bitter about her childhood.
Latin America, a volatile combination of populism and authoritarianism,
with its uneducated industrial workers and its cult of personalities.
Ruthless persecution of opponents, a large category that included classical liberals.
Evita owned 1200 gold and silver brooches, 1653 diamonds, and 120 wristwatches.
Meanwhile politicians applied policies that brought disaster and backwardness.
The story of 20th-century Latin America.
The failure to respect property rights, the erecting of (trade) barriers
that destroyed currencies and produced nothingness.
Politics set in motion by resentment, envy, and feelings of cultural inferiority.
The problem may have started with economic liberals' fell prey but finished with
the temptations of state intervention.
Creativity, openness, generosity were lost among socialist populisms.
Neither socialism nor populism, free of Spanish colonial masters and American influence.
Millions of Latin American men and women died or lived in political exile.
Heterogeneous, hardworking, conservative people who dislike US excessive individualism.
The Latin American enigma looking for models to benefit everyone
against the United States military interventions and coup d'Etats.
Latin Americanism evolved into nationalism and anti-Americanism.
The reaction of all things Anglo-Saxon would lead to embrace communism.
Fascism and communism two sides of the same coin.
Individual liberty versus collectivism.
The left turn in Latin America intellectual life, a tendency to give the heroes of the left
the benefit of the doubt because they were idealists.
The parallel between Che Guevara and Jesus Christ, a journey toward redemption.
Latin American intellectuals rejecting European fascism moved to communism and ideological
fanaticism determined to deliver social justice.
They did not brake free of colonial mentality that saw society as hierarchical,
governed from the top down by an elite.
Latin American intellectuals needed to let it go the socialist ideal that guided them
to swing toward democracy and social justice and stop trying to reconcile liberalism with socialism.
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