Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Are Hugo Chávez and Evo Morales Enemies of the United States?

SOURCES

I want to express my deep gratitude and appreciation for the help of Susan Miller Kaplan, an expert librarian and researcher, who graciously took the time out on a Sunday afternoon (when she no doubt was cooking dinner for her family) to give me invaluable assistance in accessing articles on Latin America through Nexis – Lexis. Thank you again, Susan.

** In this paper, I use the word “American” interchangeably with U.S. to refer to residents or policies of the United States. However, I don’t mean to imply that we have exclusive ownership of the word “American.” I recall a conversation I had years ago with a student from Argentina who objected to my calling fellow citizens Americans. Citizens from Central and South America had just as much right to call themselves “Americans,” he argued. I agreed with him then and still do now.

1. The World Markets Research story, BBC Monitoring Service and the Associated Press story of 4/5/10 were accessed through Lexis- Nexis - http://www.lexisnexis.com:80/us/Inacademic/results/docview

Information for this paper also comes from various news articles and sources gathered from the Web sites of two highly respected research and advocacy organizations on Latin America:

2. The Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA)
1250 Connecticut Avenue, NW, suite 1C, Washington, D.C. 20036
www.coha.org

3. The InterAmerican Dialogue
1211 Connecticut Avenue, NW, suite 510, Washington, D.C. 20036
www.thedialogue. Org

4. The entry for Simon Bolivar in Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Encyclopedia
(2000 edition) reads in part: “The Liberator (1783 – 1830). Soldier and statesman who led the revolutions against Spanish rule in New Granada (now Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador), Peru and Upper Peru (now Bolivia).” Page 206.

5. “In Brazil, the ‘Middle Path’ Helps Expand the Middle Class, “ by Juan Forero. The Washington Post, 1/3/2010, page A6.

6. “Leader May Join ‘Responsible Left’ Bloc,” by Andes Oppenheimer.
The Oppenheimer Report, Miami Herald, 1/10/2010.

7. “A Quiet Revolution: Latin America’s Unheralded Progress,” by Francis Fukuyama. Foreign Affairs. November/December 2007, pages 177 – 182.
Foreign Affairs is a journal published six times a year by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City. Fukuyama is a professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. At one time he was prominently associated with the school of neoconservatives at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C., who led the call for a U.S. invasion of Iraq. His comments were part of a review of a book by Michael Reid – Forgotten Continent: The Battle for Latin America’s Soul.