Warriors and Scribes opens and closes using the prism of biography to question the framing of Latin American political life from both a northern, Cold War perspective and from the trivializations of postmodernism. An investigation of Jorge Castaneda's Utopia Disarmed reveals that Latin American politics are eminently transformable beyond the failed nostrums of multilateral organizations and collapsed dictatorships of the 1980s. In surveying regional relations with the USA since 1800, and a taking a wry look at Hollywood's treatment of Central America under Reagan, Dunkerley points out that Anglo-America has possessed neither a uniform imperialist vocation nor the consistent capacity to impose it. Two pieces written in the late 1990s--a reappraisal of Latin American Studies since the Cuban Revolution and a survey of the contemporary politics of Bolivia--reflect the author's concerns with a place that was "American" for half a millennium before "Americanization through globalization" became a watchword.

Author Bio:James Dunkerley is Director of The Institute of Latin American Studies, University of London and the editor of The Journal of Latin American Studies. His previous books include Power in the Isthmus, The Long War, Rebellion in the Veins, and Americana.