What If Latin America Ruled the World?: How the South Will Take the North into the 22nd Century

by OscarGuardiola-Rivera (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2011

  $3.25

  For most Westerners, Latin America is the junior partner of the New World, an underdeveloped sibling to the US and Canada. The vibrancy of its culture is unquestionable, but the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries of Central and South America are easily typecast and overlooked as exotic, dangerous, and decidedly not part of the First World. In his provocative and powerful book, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera shows how Latin America and its people are making their presence felt across the world by upsetting long-standing political and economic assumptions and orthodoxies. The US will still occupy center stage in the West for the time being, but few observers have taken notice of the rapid growth of Spanish language and culture within the USA--which is quietly and quickly becoming part of Latin America in its own way. Guardiola-Rivera's stimulating work is equally a hidden history of the modern world (the silver peso was the first global currency) and a piercing look at the future. Latin America has been in the vanguard of opposition to globalization, and its politics are imaginative, innovative and unlike those anywhere else in the world. For anyone interested in the future of the Western hemisphere or the world economy, What if Latin America Ruled the World? is a must-read.

• Used

  Hardcover
  2010

  $3.25

  For most Europeans and Americans, Latin America is still little more than their underdeveloped sibling, its inhabitants pitching up on its shores or struggling across the Rio Grande into the USA. It's a place of exuberant music, mesmerising football, extravagant beauty, fantastic literature, drug trafficking and guerrilla warfare - in short, exotic, dangerous and exciting. In this counterintuitive and fascinating book, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, who teaches international Law and International Affairs at London University, shows how, unafraid to turn its back on some commonly held economic views that have now lost their currency, Latin America is in fact making its presence felt from Lima to Shanghai, from Brazilia to London and from Buenos Aires to New York. While the world acknowledges the continuing importance of the US in international affairs, few people have noticed that with Spanish language and culture in the ascendant the US is quietly but quickly becoming the next Latin American country. In fact, Guardiola-Rivera argues, the next Barack Obama is as more than likely to be of Latino origin. Both a hidden history of the modern world from the silver peso (the world's first truly global currency) to the recent shift away from globalism and an imaginative vision rooted in a sure understanding of the past, What If Latin America Ruled the World? is certain to provoke interest and controversy.

• New

  Paperback
  2011

  $14.58

  For most Westerners, Latin America is the junior partner of the New World, an underdeveloped sibling to the US and Canada. The vibrancy of its culture is unquestionable, but the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking countries of Central and South America are easily typecast and overlooked as exotic, dangerous, and decidedly not part of the First World. In his provocative and powerful book, Oscar Guardiola-Rivera shows how Latin America and its people are making their presence felt across the world by upsetting long-standing political and economic assumptions and orthodoxies. The US will still occupy center stage in the West for the time being, but few observers have taken notice of the rapid growth of Spanish language and culture within the USA--which is quietly and quickly becoming part of Latin America in its own way. Guardiola-Rivera's stimulating work is equally a hidden history of the modern world (the silver peso was the first global currency) and a piercing look at the future. Latin America has been in the vanguard of opposition to globalization, and its politics are imaginative, innovative and unlike those anywhere else in the world. For anyone interested in the future of the Western hemisphere or the world economy, What if Latin America Ruled the World? is a must-read.