On Sunday, May 20, Book TV aired the video of the Americas Quarterly launch of Financial Times journalist Hal Weitzman's latest book, Latin Lessons: How South America Stopped Listening to the U.S. and Started Prospering. The program will air again this upcoming weekend, on Saturday, May 26, at 12 p.m. Eastern time.

In Latin Lessons, Weitzman charts the decline of U.S. influence in a region long considered its backyard, and he argues that the U.S. must reengage with Latin America if it hopes to maintain its leadership status in a world of emerging superpowers. Weitzman spoke with Christian Deseglise from HSBC Global Asset Management and NYU Professor Patricio Navia at a launch event at the Americas Society/Council of the Americas earlier this year.

Book TV is a weekend program of the American cable network C-SPAN2, dedicated to nonfiction books and authors. Programs often feature interviews with authors, as well as live coverage of book events across the country.

Read a review of Latin Lessons in the Spring 2012 issue of Americas Quarterly.

The Library of Congress announced today that it would award the $1 million Kluge Prize for lifetime achievement in the study of humanity to Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a distinguished sociologist and political scientist who also served two terms as the president of Brazil (from 1995-2003). Cardoso has taught as the Universidade de São Paulo, Cambridge University and, most recently, Brown University’s Watson Institute for International Studies; he has also served as a member of Americas Quarterly’s editorial board since 2007.

In a statement, librarian of Congress James H. Billington described Cardoso as “the outstanding political scientist in late-20th-century Latin America.” He added, “If you want to make an American comparison, he is like Jefferson, playing a key role in building a democracy on a scholarly foundation.”

Cardoso’s work on the social structures of Brazil spanned the fields of sociology, political science and economics, and deeply informed his role as the shepherd of Brazil’s transition from a military dictatorship with high inflation to a more inclusive democracy with high economic growth. His analysis of slavery’s impact on economic patterns paved the way for greater dynamism and innovation in the Brazilian economy. Cardoso is perhaps best known, however, for the book Dependency and Development in Latin America (1979), in which he and Chilean scholar Enzo Faletti countered one of the tenets of traditional dependency theory by arguing that developing countries could use strategic partnerships with foreign companies to promote development.

Endowed by Library benefactor John W. Kluge, the Kluge prize is international and the main eligibility criterion is “deep intellectual accomplishment in the study of humanity,” with a focus on disciplines not recognized by Nobel prizes, including history, philosophy, politics, sociology, humanities and arts criticism, and linguistics. The Library of Congress will present the Kluge prize to Cardoso on July 10 in the Library’s Thomas Jefferson Building in Washington DC.

*This event has now passed.

On Sunday, April 29, the Dolores Huerta Foundation is hosting a “zoot suit tardeada” in downtown Los Angeles to celebrate the longtime activist’s 82nd birthday. The afternoon party will include food, mariachi, remarks by Huerta, and live music and dancing. The celebration will also honor the 70th anniversary of the Sleepy Lagoon trial and zoot suit riots of Los Angeles in the 1940s, and special guests include original cast members of the Zoot Suit film and play. Zoot suit attire is strongly encouraged.

Event Details:

April 29, 2012
2:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.

La Plaza De Cultura y Artes (Next to Olvera Street)
501 North Main Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012

Admission: $30 General / $50 Preferred Seating
Table Sponsors: $1,000 * $2,500 * $5,000 * $10,000 * $25,000

Tentative Event Schedule:

2:00-3:00 p.m.: Special Performance - Surprise Musical Group
3:00-4:00 p.m.: Lunch Served - Mariachi
4:00-4:30 p.m.: Guest Speakers & Zoot Suit Numbers
5:00-6:00 p.m.: Dancing & Music by the Anthony Prieto Band

To purchase tickets, visit www.doloreshuerta.org/events.

Dolores Huerta was co-founder, with César Chávez in 1962, of the National Farm Workers Association (later the United Farm Workers). She is a feminist, labor leader, farm workers advocate, community organizer, and gay rights activist, among others. Proceeds of this event will benefit the Dolores Huerta Foundation, a 501(c)3 nonprofit that organizes low-income working-class communities in California’s Central San Joaquín Valley. Read an interview with Dolores Huerta in Americas Quarterly here.

The term “social inclusion” is generating a lot of buzz these days. It comprises a wide range of things: not just the reduction of economic inequality, but also civil and political rights, greater political representation and voice for minorities, and access to public and private goods. The latest issue of Americas Quarterly, released on Thursday, April 26, explores the many facets of social inclusion, recognizing advances that have been made in democracy, civil and human rights, and poverty alleviation, while acknowledging collective challenges that lie ahead.

The Spring 2012 AQ features reflections by former President Bill Clinton on Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and the civil rights movement in the U.S., alongside 20 other heroes of social inclusion from across the hemisphere as part of a special photo and essay series. They include Aura Dalia Caicedo, a defender of Afro-Colombian women’s rights; former Mexican Secretary of Health Julio Frenk, the driving force behind Mexico’s universal health care program; and U.S. immigrants’ rights activist Helen Rivas. The issue also unveils AQ’s first-ever Social Inclusion Index. The index includes measures of income per capita, access to education, access to adequate housing, political and civil freedoms, and government responsiveness and personal empowerment, measuring 11 countries in each of these variables and ranking them.

In other articles, authors address specific hurdles to inclusion: Javier Corrales of Amherst College discusses the LGBT movement in Latin America, and José Manuel Salazar-Xirinachs of the International Labour Organization focuses on youth unemployment. Finally, this issue reminds us that social inclusion requires both economic development and a proactive state; Harvard economist Dani Rodrik describes how developing countries must enter the global economy to lift their people out of poverty, while Juan Pablo Jiménez of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean explains how states’ fiscal and tax policies can promote inclusion.

Subscribe and get your copy of Americas Quarterly.

The new Americas Quarterly features 24 Heroes of Social Inclusion as part of a special photo and essay series on champions of the struggle for racial, gender, economic, and political progress.

To help choose our heroes, AQ asked readers for their suggestions. We received many great ideas from across the hemisphere, and while we couldn’t feature them all, the new AQ highlights three heroes directly proposed by our readers. Each of these respondents wins a complimentary one-year digital subscription.

Our reader suggested heroes include: Santiago Levy, the Mexican economist, former deputy minister of finance and current vice president of the Inter-American Development Bank; María Elena Moyano, the late Peruvian women’s rights advocate; and David Razú, the Mexican assemblyman and same-sex marriage proponent. We thank Charles Shapiro (Levy), Andrés Bermúdez-Liévano (Moyano) and Enrique TorreMolina (Razú) for these excellent suggestions.

Here’s a little more about each of these AQ readers:

Charles Shapiro is a retired U.S. diplomat and president of the Institute of the Americas, a San Diego-based public policy think tank. He recently authored an AQ Web Exclusive titled “The Summit of the Americas: Why It Matters.” Ambassador Shapiro selected Dr. Levy because “as Mexico’s deputy minister of finance, Levy designed Mexico’s conditional cash transfer (CCT) program Progresa. Now called Oportunidades, the program has been expanded across almost all of Mexico and helped the poorest quintile of Mexicans weather the 2007-2009 economic recession. Key to Progresa’s success was Levy’s insistence that all data be made available to internal and external researchers.”

Levy’s book, Progress Against Poverty: Sustaining Mexico’s Progresa-Oportunidades Program, is referred to by Shapiro as “the owner’s manual for any CCT program.” He adds: “Not satisfied with resting on his laurels, Levy is busy investigating the limits of CCTs and working on other programs to increase financial and economic inclusion.”

Ambassador Shapiro can be found on Twitter: @ioa_shapiro.

Andrés Bermúdez-Liévano is editor-in-chief of China Files, a Beijing-based editorial agency that writes reports and articles about China for Latin American and Italian media. He first learned about Moyano while traveling through Peru five years ago and stumbling on a photography exhibition called Yuyanapaq that featured collages on the country’s turbulent past.

Bermúdez-Liévano reflects: “Several of the photos told Moyano’s story—from her community work and her leadership to her tragic death—and her tale immediately captivated me. I think she truly embodies what a social inclusion hero is.”

Andrés can be found on Twitter: @bermudezlievano.

Enrique TorreMolina is a freelance journalist and activist based in Mexico City and also the news and opinion editor at Ohm, a Mexican publication covering lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues in Mexico and the world.

TorreMolina chose Dep. Razú because he “is a great example of the importance of having straight allies in the LGBT movement. By playing a key role in legalizing same-sex marriage in Mexico City, he has shown that being gay is not imperative nor sufficient to work for the respect and celebration of sexual diversity.”

Enrique can be found on Twitter: @eTorreMolina.

Again, thank you to all who contributed. We always welcome your thoughts via email (aqeditorinchief@as-coa.org) and Twitter (@AmerQuarterly).

AQ Fifth-Year Anniversary: Public Panel and Reception

Thursday, April 19, 2012
6:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m.
Registration: 6:00 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
Presentation: 6:30 to 7:30 p.m.
Reception: 7:30 to 8:30 p.m.

AS/COA
680 Park Avenue
New York, NY
Map of location

Americas Quarterly celebrated its fifth-year anniversary with a special event that included a discussion with two former presidents on political and economic changes and challenges in our hemisphere. Following the discussion, guests attended a reception featuring live music by a 12-piece brass band.

Speakers:

Ricardo Lagos, former president of Chile
Alejandro Toledo, former president of Peru
Moderator: Christopher Sabatini, Editor-in-Chief, Americas Quarterly; Senior Director of Policy, Americas Society and Council of the Americas

*This event has now passed. View a video of the discussion here. A written summary is forthcoming.

This weekend, AQ Editor-in-Chief and AS/COA Senior Director of Policy Christopher Sabatini appears as a guest on Pura Política, a weekly political talk show on NY1 Noticias hosted by Juan Manuel Benítez. During the interview, in which this weekend’s Summit of the Americas features prominently, Sabatini says we can expect “very little” from the reunion of 34 hemispheric leaders. He says this is regrettably the case because in an increasingly diverse region, with countries that have different political, economic and social development goals, the leaders attending the summit will find they have little of a common agenda to discuss or around which to unite.

Watch the full interview here, or catch it on NY1 Noticias this weekend. Pura Política airs on Fridays at 6:00pm and 11:00pm; Saturdays at 11:00am, 2:00pm and 11:00pm; and Sundays at 11:00am and 4:00pm.

With the Summit of the Americas approaching on April 14-15 and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff making her first-ever visit to the White House this week, U.S. policy makers have got their minds on their southern neighbors. In the latest installment of the "Foreign Affairs Focus On" discussion series, AQ Editor-in-Chief and Americas Society/Council of the Americas Senior Director of Policy Christopher Sabatini speaks with Foreign Affairs Editor Gideon Rose about how U.S. academics and policy makers view, and should view, Latin America.

Sabatini argues that in the U.S. today, Latin America continues to be viewed—mistakenly—through the prism of comparative development, rather than with an eye on the region's rise on the global stage and inter-state relations within it. Sabatini says that the U.S. has failed, in particular, to put forth a comprehensive trade agenda to meet the potential of Latin America's ascendant economies, and this has serious implications for the U.S.'s economic and even national security interests. Remarking on Rousseff's meeting with President Barack Obama, he notes that the U.S. so far has not been able to develop a relationship with Brazil consistent with that country's own ideas about how it should be perceived in the global arena.

Watch the full interview here.

The topic of "Pan American Day" on April 12 at the Union League of Philadelphia is "The United States and Latin America: Policy Continuity or Change?" This will be a dialogue on the future policy of the U.S. towards Latin America and the policy perspectives of Latin American countries towards the United States. What policies should be pursued to promote a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic hemisphere? A distinguished set of speakers from academia, diplomacy and the military, from both the U.S. and Latin America, will discuss this important question. For additional information and to purchase tickets, click here.

Previewing the upcoming Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, Tom Ashbrook hosted AQ Editor-in-Chief and AS/COA Senior Director of Policy Christopher Sabatini on NPR's On Point.

The theme of the show was, "Does the American hemisphere- North, South, Central- still hold together?" In a globalized world, with China's footprint growing larger and the U.S. seemingly neglecting Latin America, the U.S. is at risk of its influence waning in its own backyard. Tom Ashbrook interviewed Sabatini; John Price, Managing Director of Americas Market Intelligence; and Juan Carlos Lopez, political anchor and correspondent for CNN en Español about the U.S.'s role in the western hemisphere today.