Latin America, Its Problems And Its Promise: A Multidisciplinary Introduction

This textbook, extensively revised and updated, introduces the student to what is most basic and most interesting about Latin America. The authors—each widely recognized in his or her own discipline as well as among Latin Americanists—analyze both the enduring features of the area and the pace and direction of change. The book conveys the unifying aspects of Latin American culture and society, together with the distinct characteristics of major subregions and countries.Highlights of the third edition of this well-regarded text include discussions of the resolution of conflict in Central America, the tenuous trend to redemocratization in South America, and the traumatic impact of drugs and debt throughout the hemisphere. Contributors carefully examine developments in the 1990s, such as spurts of economic growth, emphasis on the export sector, a trend to privatization, general retrenchment with regard to social welfare programs, and the recognition that distinctive ecological zones are threatened. Also given special attention is the expanding influence of Latin American intellectual, literary, and artistic contributions.

Jan Knippers Black is a professor in the Graduate School of International Policy Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California. She has authored or edited and co-authored a dozen books, including Development in Theory and Practice: Paradigms and Paradoxes, Second Edition (Westview Press, 1999).