Western Hemisphere

Learning Diplomacy: An Oral History. BY LUIGI R. EINAUDI. Xlibris, 2023, 686 pp.

Einaudi, who served for decades in the U.S. State Department and later worked at the Organization of American States, has gifted us an erudite, detailed, and at times dramatic personal account of the major conflicts that transfixed inter-American relations during his distinguished tenure. Very much the State Department professional, Einaudi relished the diplomatic life— the business of crafting memos and speeches, networking, coordinating interagency decisions, resolving deeply rooted interstate conflicts—even as he recoiled at the disruptions that domestic politics caused and sorely resented White House meddling. Although professing nonpartisanship, Einaudi seems most comfortable with Republicans who saw themselves as realists: he disdains President Jimmy Carter’s human rights advocacy and faults President Bill Clinton’s Haiti intervention but sympathizes with President Ronald Reagan’s support for the Nicaraguan contra fighters. He discounts the overwhelming evidence that President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger supported the ouster of Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1973. But Einaudi played the long game, surviving the rotations in U.S. presidential politics by judiciously staying just below the radar and by virtue of his intellectual gravitas, bureaucratic savvy, and indefatigable work ethic. A consummate diplomat, Einaudi is not above settling scores; his pointed, if understated, barbs add spice to this most valuable historical record.

Dictators in Twenty-First-Century Latin America: Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, and El Salvador. BY OSVALDO HURTADO. TRANSLATED BY BARBARA SIPE. Rowman & Littlefield, 2022, 308 pp.

Hurtado, who served as president of Ecuador from 1981 to 1984, delivers a thunderous, emotive denunciation of his political nemesis, Rafael Correa, who was president of the country from 2007 to 2017. Hurtado painstakingly details the machinations through which Correa undid the checks and balances of liberal, representative democracy and concentrated power in his own hands. In addition, Hurtado locates Ecuador in the broader context of democratic backsliding elsewhere in Latin America with condensed but compelling comparative studies of other autocrats, including Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. Hurtado explicitly avoids much discussion of socioeconomics; in his country studies, the major causes underlying democratic backsliding appear to be the decline of traditional political parties and the opportunistic ambitions of emerging caudillos who seize on a common “deficit of cultural values and civic virtues.” Hurtado accepts that elections and public referendums often facilitated these

authoritarian revivals, but he does not consider whether liberal institutions are always good fits for certain highly fragmented societies enduring severe demographic stress. Nevertheless, Hurtado’s book is quite timely, as Ecuador is again facing political upheaval— and Correa’s possible return to power.

Falling Long-Term Growth Prospects: Trends, Expectations, and Policies EDITED BY M. AYHAN KOSE AND FRANZISKA OHNSORGE. World Bank Group, 2023, 564 pp.

This important, disturbing study foresees stagnation in many developing economies during the remainder of this decade. In Latin America and the Caribbean, growth will likely stall at around two percent per year.The factors depressing growth include insufficient and inefficient investment, disappointing labor productivity, the diminishing growth of labor forces as populations age, and the sluggish merchandise trade. Global financial crises, climate change, and the COVID-19 pandemic have added to these woes.The World Bank experts repeat their standard policy solutions but seem to doubt that these measures will be widely adopted: improving the climate for private investment, widening the labor-market participation of women and older workers, raising the quality of K–12 education, and promoting international trade in services through enhanced language and digital skills. They offer one note of optimism, however. Given Latin America’s wealth in the natural resources necessary for green technologies, such as lithium and copper, investments in the transition away from fossil fuels could boost growth in the region. But if the World Bank’s more pessimistic projections hold, political volatility will surely follow. Incumbent governments will likely be defeated at the ballot box— or attempt to maintain power through increasingly authoritarian methods.

Voyager: Constellations of Memory

BY NONA FERNÁNDEZ. TRANSLATED BY NATASHA WIMMER. Graywolf Press, 2023, 136 pp.

In this imaginative, poetic work—part memoir, part novella—Fernández braids the mysteries of the cosmos, the neural map of the human brain, and the traumas of contemporary Chilean history. Intertwining the personal and the historic, Fernández recalls her mother’s agitation at watching Jaime Guzmán, a prominent supporter of the 17-year military dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, on television—and her quiet glee when Guzmán was assassinated in 1991. Fernández recounts her own participation in a poignant memorial ceremony for 26 victims of a military death squad in Chile’s Atacama Desert, one of the world’s best spots for astronomical observations. Fernández is critical of her son’s high school for preventing him from suggesting publicly that Pinochet’s many political supporters should not have the right to participate in a democracy. But in her telling of Chile’s past, Fernández omits the cataclysmic disruptions that rocked the country under the ill-fated socialist coalition of Pinochet’s predecessor, President Salvador Allende. Chile’s current left-leaning government often makes the same

cognitive error and thus has failed, so far, to construct a historical narrative that rings true to most Chileans, regardless of their political inclinations.

Narcas: The Secret Rise of Women in Latin America’s Cartels.

BY DEBORAH BONELLO. Beacon Press, 2023, 176 pp.

As a journalist for Vice News, Bonello spent over a decade traveling in Colombia, Mexico, and Central America in search of women entrepreneurs working the global supply chains of illegal narcotics. Bonello attempts, with some success, to subvert the stereotypes of women as passive victims or as gangster molls serving as mere accessories for dominant males. Instead, she finds strong females boldly seeking money, power, and status for themselves and their families. These uncompromising executives routinely employ violence as a business tactic and may even relish the accompanying adrenaline rush. Traveling the dusty back roads of Honduras and Guatemala, where the formidable cartels easily co-opt or displace local authorities, the reader grasps the futility of the endless “war on drugs.” Bonello instructively distinguishes between the rational business of the international narcotics trade and the sadistic, misogynist gangs in El Salvador, where an old-school patriarchy prevails. Bonello’s own point of view is ambiguous. She is thrilled to witness female empowerment and admittedly sympathetic to her subjects and their rags-to-riches stories, but she also finds herself naturally repelled by the inescapable bloodletting that fills the lives they’ve chosen.