AN NPR BEST BOOK OF 2024 - An award-winning journalist's exploration of how race, identity and political trauma have influenced the rise in far-right sentiment among Latinos, and how this group can shape American politics

A deeply reported, surprisingly personal exploration of a phenomenon that is little understood in our politics: the affiliation of Latino voters with causes and candidates that would seem, at first glance, unwelcoming to them.--Rachel Maddow

Democrats have historically assumed they can rely on the Latino vote, but recent elections have called that loyalty into question. In fact, despite his vociferous anti-immigrant rhetoric and disastrous border policies, Trump won a higher percentage of the Latino vote in 2020 than he did in 2016. Now, journalist Paola Ramos pulls back the curtain on these voters, traveling around the country to uncover what motivates them to vote for and support issues that seem so at odds with their self-interest.

From coast to coast, cities to rural towns, Defectors introduces readers to underdog GOP candidates, January 6th insurrectionists, Evangelical pastors and culture war crusaders, aiming to identify the influences at the heart of this rightward shift. Through their stories, Ramos shows how tribalism, traditionalism, and political trauma within the Latino community has been weaponized to radicalize and convert voters who, like many of their white counterparts, are fearful of losing their place in American society.

We meet Monica de la Cruz, a Republican congresswoman from the Rio Grande Valley who won on a platform centered on finishing what Donald Trump started and pushing the Great Replacement Theory; David Ortiz, a Mexican man who refers to himself as a Spaniard and opposed the removal of a statue of a Spanish conquistador in New Mexico; Luis Cabrera, an evangelical pastor pushing to Make America Godly Again; Anthony Aguero, an independent journalist turned border vigilante; and countless other individuals and communities that make up the rising conservative Latino population. Cross-cultural and assiduously reported, Defectors highlights how one of America's most powerful and misunderstood electorates may come to define the future of American politics.

The gripping and astonishing story (Douglas Preston) of the Cinta Larga, a tribe that had no contact with the West until the 1960s and came to run an illegal diamond mine in the Amazon.

Growing up in a remote corner of the world's largest rainforest, Pio, Maria, and Oita learned to hunt wild pigs and tapirs, and gathered Brazil nuts and açaí berries from centuries-old trees. The first highway pierced through in 1960. Ranchers, loggers, and prospectors invaded, and the kids lost their families to terrible new weapons and diseases. Pushed by the government to assimilate, they struggled to figure out their new, capitalist reality, discovering its wonders--cars, refrigerators, TV sets, phones--as well as a way to acquire them: by selling the natural riches of their own forest home. They had to partner with the white men who'd hunted them, but their wealth grew legendary, the envy of the nation--until decades of suppressed trauma erupted into a massacre, bloody retribution that made headlines across the globe.

Based on six years of immersive reporting and research, When We Sold God's Eye tells a unique kind of adventure story, one that begins with a river journey by Theodore Roosevelt and ends with smugglers from New York City's Diamond District. It's a story of survival against all odds; of the temptations of wealth and the dream of prosperity; of an ecosystem threatened by our hunger for resources; of genocide and revenge. It's a tragedy as old as the first European encounters with Indigenous people, playing out in the present day. But most of all, it's the moving saga of a few audacious individuals--Pio, Maria, Oita, and their friends--and their attempts to adapt and even thrive in the most unlikely circumstances.

El recuento de lo que significó el sexenio de la transformación histórica del país y de cómo el compromiso con la ciudadanía marcó el camino de una nueva política.

Me voy, y aunque la vida sigue su curso, necesitaba reiterar acerca del pasado para comprender mejor el presente y el porvenir: no hay texto sin contexto y tampoco los procesos políticos y sociales surgen de repente, de la nada, son frutos de un largo camino, de resistencias, fatigas, en los cuales participan muchos, que son, como ha sucedido en nuestro movimiento, los protagonistas principales de esta histórica transformación. A todas y todos de corazón. Gracias . Andrés Manuel López Obrador

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

The recounting of what the six-year term meant for the historical transformation of the country and how the commitment to the citizenry marked the path of a new politics.

I am leaving, and although life goes on, I needed to reiterate about the past in order to better understand the present and the future: there is no text without context and neither do political and social processes arise suddenly, out of nowhere, they are the fruits of a long journey, of resistance, of fatigue, in which many participate, who are, As has happened in our movement, the main protagonists of this historic transformation. I am one of them, of the authors of this work, but not the only one; It fell to me to lead this struggle, but I was supported by men and women who forged a collective will willing to truly change public life in Mexico. To all of you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you. Andrés Manuel López Obrador

We are in a fight for our lives. Hurricanes Irma and María unmasked the colonialism we face in Puerto Rico, and the inequality it fosters, creating a fierce humanitarian crisis. Now we must find a path forward to equality and sustainability, a path driven by communities, not investors. And this book explains, with careful and unbiased reporting, only the efforts of our community activists can answer the paramount question: What type of society do we want to become and who is Puerto Rico for? --Carmen Yulín Cruz, Mayor of San Juan

In the rubble of Hurricane Maria, Puerto Ricans and ultrarich Puertopians are locked in a pitched struggle over how to remake the island. In this vital and startling investigation, bestselling author and activist Naomi Klein uncovers how the forces of shock politics and disaster capitalism seek to undermine the nation's radical, resilient vision for a just recovery.

All royalties from the sale of this book in English and Spanish go directly to JunteGente, a gathering of Puerto Rican organizations resisting disaster capitalism and advancing a fair and healthy recovery for their island. For more information, visit http: //juntegente.org/.

Naomi Klein is an award-winning journalist, syndicated columnist, documentary filmmaker and author of the international bestsellers No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, and No Is Not Enough.

La historia de México no es como te la contaron...

Con la pluma filosa y espléndidamente documentada que lo caracteriza, Francisco Martín Moreno indaga en la deslumbrante historia de México y sus zonas más tenebrosas: revela los verdaderos intereses de líderes y caudillos, las conjuras más atroces que marcaron nuestra Independencia, la Revolución, la Guerra de Reforma y la Guerra Cristera, y analiza los motivos reales de los asesinatos para sentenciar con voz potente: por qué nos han ocultado siempre la verdad?

Apoyado en una bibliografía reveladora, 100 mitos de la historia de México traza el verdadero rostro de nuestra nación y pone a nuestro alcance los grandes yerros de nuestros hombres de gobierno y las conspiraciones sangrientas, pero también la reseña de sus verdaderos héroes y los sucesos memorables de auténticos patriotas.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

Mexico's history is not what you've heard...

With the sharp and splendidly-documented pen that characterizes him, Fracisco Martín Moreno explores Mexican history and its most-obscure areas: he reveals the real intentions of leaders and caudillos, the most-atrocious plots that marked our Independence, our Revolution, the Reform War, and the Cristero War, and analyzes the real motives behind the assassinations, to pronounce with a powerful voice: why have they kept the truth from us?

Relying on a revealing bibliography, 100 Myths of the History of Mexico 1 traces the real face of our nation and puts at our reach the greatest mistakes of men in government, as well as bloody conspiracies, but also the profile or true heroes and the memorable happenings of real patriots.

The Olavo de Carvalho Reader, a far-reaching selection of philosophical essays by the celebrated Brazilian philosopher available for the first time in English, presents indispensable writings that have generated an intellectual revival in Brazil and beyond. Following Carvalho's definition of philosophy as the search for unity of knowledge in the unity of consciousness, and vice-versa, it lays out the historical roots of the current cultural crisis in the West-both in the phenomenon he called cognitive parallax and then in the advent of the revolutionary mind. Averse to utopian thinking, Carvalho's analyses are often responses to events that have shaped the history of ideas and their factual consequences. His approach seeks truth and expresses reality as Carvalho sees it, resisting pressure to conform to the collective and reaffirming the power of individual consciousness. In writings from a period of over three decades, this edition introduces the reader to one of the greatest philosophers of our time.

A new collection from one of Latin America's most dynamic radical thinkers--in the tradition of Frantz Fanon and Eduardo Galeano.

Constructing Worlds Otherwise sets itself against the recolonization of Latin America by one-dimensional, ethnocentric perspectives that permeate the North American left and block fundamental social change in the Global South. In a provocative mix of polemic and on-the-ground analysis, Raúl Zibechi argues that it is time for radicals in the Global North to learn from the people their governments have colonized and oppressed for centuries. Through a survey of the most marginalized voices across Latin America--feminists, the Indigenous, people of African descent, and inhabitants of urban favelas and shantytowns--he introduces the Anglo world to a range of critical perspectives and new forms of struggle.

For Zibechi, real change comes from societies in movement, the people already fighting for their survival using egalitarian and traditional models of world-building, without the state, without official representatives, and without vanguards of political experts. His book contributes to global geographies of autonomous and anti-state thinking, with Zibechi placing his work in conversation with the ideological theorist of Kurdish resistance, Abdullah Öcalan, for a rich and dynamic survey of global movements of decolonization. Now more urgent than ever, this translation by George Ygarza Quispe comes at a time when the global left--struggling to expand its vision in a time of climate chaos and rising authoritarianism--finds itself at an impasse, desperate to animate and renew its critical imaginary.

The Hidden Ancestral Identity of the American Negro is the introduction to a series of books for black American people to learn the omitted facts about their Heritage history. The books are intended to give a balanced overview of the true dynamics that is the core foundation of the United States and its relation to the destiny of Negro People of the America's called black Americans today.

In order for the survival of the black American population of people collectively, the who, what, when, where and why must be identified; and which methods are being used to create the deep seated sense of powerlessness black America is experiencing as a collective today. The purpose of this book is to clarify the identity behind the term Negro and help the current generations of Negro people aka black Americas to start an honest dialogue with their elders identified as Negro about their ancestry. The information contained in these pages will allow black Americans to identify distorted historical information, and why this distortion exists.

All books authored by RaDine America. Harrison are written in a format that will give the reader a lot of hidden pertinent facts about their ancestral heritage history quickly..

The essential political and theoretical work of one of Latin America's most important contemporary theorists.

Raquel Gutiéeacute;rrez Aguilar is one of the foremost Latin American political thinkers. From armed Indigenous struggle in the Bolivian altiplano to the contemporary wave of feminist uprisings, Raquel Gutiérrez's life and work have spanned and spurred on some of the most important political sequences in the last forty years in Latin America.

Almost unknown in the United States, Raquel is one of the Latin American anticapitalist, antistate Left's most important contemporary theorists. She has produced important work on communal struggles and political forms and has been at the center of some of the most important political organizing in Bolivia and Mexico in the last forty years.

This volume presents an extensive interview with Raquel in which she charts her political and intellectual trajectory from her militancy in the Ejército Guerrillero Tupac-Katari, to Bolivia's famous Water and Gas wars, to the massive wave of popular feminist rebellions and organizing. Translator and writer, Brian Whitner offers two essays in translation that contain some of her central theoretical concepts, including the veto and reappropriation of communal wealth, for thinking a politics in common, and of the commons.

With the publication of In Defense of Common Life, a new audience of English-language readers can finally engage with the thought and political experience of a thinker and militant, whose contributions to social movements span an incredible political and regional breadth, and resonate deeply with current debates with the US about the conditions and practices of revolutionary change, feminism, and popular struggle.

How does oligachic power work in practice? In this fascinating and original study of Guatemala's economic elite or 'oligarchy', Roman Krznaric explores the inner workings of the country's wealthy business sector and how they have maintained power and privilege in the face of change. Based on extensive personal interviews, What The Rich Don't Tell The Poor reveals the oligarchs speaking candidly in their own words on issues ranging from political violence and civil war to race and inequality. The result is a pathbreaking work of political and sociological analysis that offers unique insights into the global phenomenon of oligarchic power.

'An important book that fills a big void in progressive thinking about elites, privilege and power' - Professor Duncan Green, London School of Economics

Roman Krznaric is a public philosopher who has taught politics and Latin American Studies at the universities of Cambridge, Essex and City University, London. His bestselling books have been published in more than twenty languages. He is currently a Research Fellow of the Long Now Foundation and a member of the Club of Rome.

Ever since Fidel Castro assumed power in Cuba in 1959, Americans have obsessed about the nation ninety miles south of the Florida Keys. America's fixation on the tropical socialist republic has only grown over the years, fueled in part by successive waves of Cuban immigration and Castro's larger-than-life persona. Cubans are now a major ethnic group in Florida, and the exile community is so powerful that every American president has curried favor with it. But what do most Americans really know about Cuba itself?

In this third edition of the widely hailed Cuba: What Everyone Needs to Know(R), Julia Sweig updates her concise and remarkably accessible portrait of the small island nation. This edition contains a new foreword that discusses developments since Obama and Raul Castro announced the normalization of US-Cuba relations and restored formal diplomatic ties. A new final chapter discusses how normalization came to pass and covers Pope Francis' visit to Cuba, where he met with Fidel and Raul Castro. Expansive in coverage and authoritative in scope, the book looks back over Cuba's history since the Spanish American War before shifting to recent times. Focusing equally on Cuba's role in world affairs and its own social and political transformations, Sweig divides the book chronologically into the pre-Fidel era, the period between the 1959 revolution and the fall of the Soviet Union, the post-Cold War era, and -- finally -- the post-Fidel era.

Informative, pithy, and lucidly written, it is the best compact reference on Cuba's internal politics, its often fraught relationship with the United States, and its shifting relationship with the global community.

What Everyone Needs to Know(R) is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press.

An experienced fixer for journalists covering Haiti, Jean often finds himself on the subject side of stories. After his son was kidnapped and his house taken, Jean decided to move his family out of Port-au-Prince to the Dominican Republic. Jean tells us the story of this struggle to relocate, another change of country in his search for a better life.

Dispatches from individual lives, as they happen: Each short book originates in short confidences recorded by individuals during borrowed moments from their interesting lives. Set amidst some of our most pressing contemporary predicaments and edited by award-winning writers Peter Orner and Laura Lampton Scott, Dispatches captures some of the highs and lows of daily human endurance.

Tennyson Joseph provides
a comprehensive analysis of the relevance of C.L.R. James's political thought
to twenty-first-century Caribbean politics. He clarifies, explains and
justifies James's method, and applies his ideas to concrete political developments
occurring in the twenty-first century Caribbean in its interconnection with the
rest of the world. The work offers a unique treatment of James in three
distinctive ways: firstly, in its scope and specific focus on the application
of the thought of James to the post-Soviet Union, post-Cold War era of
Caribbean politics; secondly concerning discussing the possibilities for
radical, anti-systemic possibilities in the Caribbean in the early twenty-first
century; and thirdly, in the employment of James's thought and method as an
explanatory tool for understanding those contemporary issues. The book
brings the ideas of C.L.R. James to a new generation of Caribbean and global
readers and is a useful resource to all students, teachers, and activists
interested in Caribbean politics, political ideas, and radical political
theory.

Over the course of a decades-long armed conflict, the Colombian state took a variety of approaches toward its insurgent opponent, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Successive governments swung between pursuing negotiations and responding with military counterinsurgency measures. FARC, for its part, proclaimed its commitment to the combination of all forms of struggle seeking legitimation through both political and military means.

Investigating the relationship between FARC and the Colombian state from the outbreak of conflict in 1964 to the signing of the final peace agreement in 2016, Alexandra Rachel Phelan offers new insight into the dynamics of insurgencies. In such conflicts, both states and insurgents seek to assert their legitimacy, which has crucial implications for any prospective resolution. Phelan examines how FARC adopted different means of legitimation as part of its overall political and military strategy and how these strategies influenced government responses. She argues that the case of Colombia demonstrates that insurgents are more likely to engage in negotiations when the state recognizes their political legitimacy than when it demands their defeat. During a protracted conflict, when it is unclear that the state can win by military strength alone, offering incentives for political settlements can minimize--and perhaps even end--fighting. Drawing on interviews with former and active FARC leaders and Colombian government officials, as well as access to key primary documents, this book sheds new light on the Colombian conflict and provides rich theoretical understanding of the role of legitimacy in counterinsurgency more broadly.

An in-depth explanation of how the Cuban Revolution dictated Latin American politics and U.S.-Latin American relations from the 1950s to the present, including widespread democratization and the rise of the Pink Tide.

Fidel Castro's ascent to power and the revolution he carried out in Cuba not only catalyzed a wave of revolutionary activity; it also set off a wave of reaction that led to widespread military dictatorships and severe repression culminating in state terrorism. Both revolution and reaction were essentially over by 1990, and yet significant long-term effects of the Cuban Revolution can still be seen in the modern era.

Latin America in the Era of the Cuban Revolution and Beyond covers the events of the Cuban Revolution itself, the resulting radicalization of Latin American politics, the United States' responses to the threat of communist expansion in the hemisphere, and rural and urban guerrilla warfare that were spawned by the Cuban Revolution. It also addresses the very different but incomplete communist revolutions in Peru, Chile, and Nicaragua, the rise of state terrorism in response to the threat of revolution, and major developments after 1990. This book provides unique historical insights by bringing together under the umbrella of the impact of the Cuban Revolution developments that otherwise might seem unrelated to each other, thereby documenting the relationship between revolution and reaction.

This third edition has three new chapters covering state terrorism in South America; state terrorism in Central America; and post-1990 developments such as neoliberalism, an unprecedented degree of democratization, the Pink Tide of leftist governments like those of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Evo Morales in Bolivia; and women's major gains in politics. Additionally, all of the chapters and the bibliography are updated.

In Don
Dada: Assessing
the Socio-economic and Political Power of Jamaica's Mafia Bosses, Damion Blake takes on a
controversial subject: the Jamaican don.

The Jamaican don is a non-state actor,
a male figure, usually from the community in which he plays a leadership role,
and who wields considerable power and control inside that nation's garrison
communities. Garrisons in Jamaica are poor inner city communities characterized
by homogeneous voting patterns for one of Jamaica's two major political
parties: the People's National Party and the Jamaica Labour Party.

With revelatory insight, Don Dada explores the
major roles dons play in their communities and how the activities of these
non-state criminal actors have influenced the governance process. Focussing on communities
in the downtown metropolitan area of Kingston, the capital city, the book
investigates the evolution of the don from the 1960s to the present and their
roles of security/protection, social welfare, partisan mobilization, and law
and order. Blake contends that dons have
emerged as embedded governing authorities in Jamaican garrisons based on the
socio-economic and political roles they carry out and puts forward a
peace-building model to dissolve the power of dons and their gangs in Jamaica's
marginal communities.

Qué sucesos oculta nuestra historia oficial? Conocemos realmente los hechos que dieron celebridad a nuestros caudillos?

En esta obra apasionante, Francisco Martín Moreno se encarga de ofrecer el verdadero rostro de héroes y gobernantes que han conformado México. Su apasionada labor investigativa y su pluma ágil, polémica y filosa entregan sucesos históricos desconocidos que nos permitirán hacer una lectura nueva de nuestra historia, nos descubrirán a otros protagonistas, otros villanos y harán temblar a héroes y caudillos de nuestra grandeza mexicana.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

What events does our official history hide? Do we really know the facts that gave celebrity to our heroes?

In this exciting work, Francisco Martín Moreno is in charge of showing the true colors of the heroes and rulers that shaped Mexico. His passionate research and his agile, controversial, sharp pen deliver unknown historical events that will help us read our history anew, discovering different protagonists, different villains, and will make the heroes and caudillos of our Mexican greatness tremble.

Politics and the Pink Tide investigates the ways in which protest varied across five Latin American countries that elected leftist presidents during the Pink Tide.

Kathleen Bruhn compares the differences in protest that occurred under the new leftist governments to their conservative, neoliberal predecessors, offering a wide-angle view into the complex relationships between neoliberalism, political party structures, and protest.

Using individual and event-level data from Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, and Ecuador, Politics and the Pink Tide shows how economic policy choices and the links between leftist parties and social movements affect patterns of protest. For example, although more orthodox neoliberal approaches did motivate more economic protest, the book demonstrates that neither more radical nor more socially linked leftist governments were better able to contain protest--or to do so without resorting to police violence. Politics and the Pink Tide proposes a sweeping exploration of protest, one that is controlled by economic policy and grievances, the social embeddedness of political parties, and the norms surrounding protest tactics within public life.

The Latin American political landscape has already changed substantially in the 21st century. This book offers an approach to the Latin American political panorama that makes room for a post-ideological perspective - exploring its dimensions, main underpinnings, and possibilities - while also subjecting it to criticism and exposing its shortcomings and blind spots.

In doing so, it presents a pluralistic view of social and political processes currently taking place in Latin America. Each chapter casts light on the subcontinent's transition from the 20th to the 21st century from different vantage points, countries or regions, and advances comparative lines that enrich our picture of the region as whole. Case studies include Paraguay, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela and Colombia.