Jorge G. Castañeda

Traces the life of the Latin American communist revolutionary from his youth, to his relationship with Fidel Castro, to his untimely demise

The Life and Death of Che Guevara

Compañero

Why are Mexicans so successful in individual sports, but deficient in team play? Why do Mexicans dislike living in skyscrapers? Why do Mexicans love to see themselves as victims, but also love victims? And why, though the Mexican people traditionally avoid conflict, is there so much violence in a country where many leaders have died by assassination? In this shrewd and fascinating book, the renowned scholar and former foreign minister Jorge Castañeda sheds much light on the puzzling paradoxes of his native country. Here’s a nation of 110 million that has an ambivalent and complicated relationship with the United States yet is host to more American expatriates than any country in the world. Its people tend to resent foreigners yet have made the nation a hugely popular tourist destination. Mexican individualism and individual ties to the land reflect a desire to conserve the past and slow the route to uncertain modernity. Castañeda examines the future possibilities for Mexico as it becomes more diverse in its regional identities, socially more homogenous, its character and culture the instruments of change rather than sources of stagnation, its political system more open and democratic. Mañana Forever? is a compelling portrait of a nation at a crossroads.

Manana Forever?

Marco A. Morales

Over a decade ago, Jorge Castañeda wrote the classic Utopia Unarmed, which offered a penetrating and comprehensive account of the Latin American left’s fate at the end of the Cold War. Since then, the left across Latin America has travelled in paths no one could have predicted. Latin American nations from Mexico to Argentina wavered for years between leftism and American-supported neoliberalism, but in recent years the left has experienced a tremendous resurgence throughout the region. However, the left is not unified, and as Castañeda, Morales, and their contributors show, it has followed two distinct paths – a more cosmopolitan style leftism, exemplified by Brazil and Chile, and a left fuelled by populist nationalism that has clear debts to Perón or Cárdenas, and is most evident in Venezuela, Mexico’s PRD, Bolivia, and Argentina. Leftovers comprehensively updates this very important story, with country and area specialists contributing.

Tales of the Latin American Left

Leftovers

"Esta segunda edición de la versión española es precedida de un prólogo que confronta las tesis originales del libro con los acontecimientos más recientes, especialmente el movimiento de Chiapas, cuyo examen ocupa la mayor parte de dicho prólogo y tiene un valor en sí como análisis. Según el autor, aquellas tesis (agotamiento de la vía revolucionaria, función reformista de la izquierda) quedan corroboradas, lo cual no impide que puedan reclamarse condiciones más justas dentro del esquema imperante"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.

La utopía desarmada

intrigas, dilemas y promesa de la izquierda en América Latina

Ernesto Che Guevara es analizado aquí a la luz de fuentes y documentos tan diversos como polémicos, que nunca antes se habían divulgado. La vida de Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, el Che, es relatada aquí a la luz de numerosos testimonios y documentos, tan diversos como polémicos, y desde los orígenes hasta nuestros días. Cuando se celebra el 30 aniversario de la muerte del Che, Jorge Castañeda desentraña las facetas más recónditas del hombre que marcó a una época y sus ideales. Jorge G. Castañeda interroga a los testigos, a los protagonistas y a los sobrevivientes para desentrañar facetas recónditas y perfilar la personalidad del hombre que marcó los ideales de varias generaciones, consciente de que incursiona en un territorio que ya es historia y de que el pasado, que puebla estas páginas, nos pertenece a todos, para bien o para mal.

Una biografía del Che Guevara

La vida en rojo

A sociopolitical evaluation of America's Mexican immigrant group challenges popular misconceptions while discussing why today's immigrants have chosen to live in the United States and what they hope to achieve, in an insider's account by a former Mexican foreign minister who addresses the 2006 rally for immigrant rights.

From Migrants to Immigrants

Ex Mex

Do Americans care what foreigners think about the United States? This book makes the case that they should. In these pages, Jorge Castañeda writes from his unique vantage point as a former Foreign Minister of Mexico who has lived, studied, and worked in America. He offers an impressionistic, analytical, and intuitive review of his experience in the country over the last half-century, and shows how foreigners can provide perspective on the United States' true nature. Castañeda brings a different viewpoint to issues ranging from purported American exceptionalism, uniformity, race and religion, culture, immigration, and the death penalty. Visitors and analysts, from Dickens to Naipaul, have generally asked the right questions and described America's most salient features and mysteries. But, they have not always followed through with answers and explanations. Castañeda draws from his work with American civil society and government authorities to provide both insight and context. Americans have long seen their country as "exceptional," standing outside of history, but by comparing its contemporary politics and culture with those of other countries, Castañeda shows how increasing nationalism and nostalgia are actually making the US more like other countries. Castañeda admits that most Americans have never cared much about what a foreigner thinks about their country, but the dynamic is shifting. The outside world means more to the US than ever before, and Americans should care about what foreigners think since they are now so sensitive to what foreigners do. Since Trump's election in 2016, American politics increasingly resemble those of Europe, Latin America, and parts of Asia, such that pining for a lost and glorious past is as American as it is British, Mexican, Chinese, or Italian. Now, the questions that serious, knowledgeable, and sympathetic foreigners address to Americans may be the ones Americans ask--or should ask--for themselves.

America through Foreign Eyes

Examines the history and national characteristics of modern Mexico, discussing the contradictions of its politics, its complicated relationship with the United States, and its possible future direction. Reprint.

Mexico and the Mexicans

In writing this portrait of Che Guevara, the author was given access to Che's family and friends.

Jorge Castañeda nos ofrece el análisis más profundo que se ha hecho en los últimos años sobre el carácter de México. Jorge G. Castañeda devela el rostro enigmático de México, con hondas cicatrices y un gesto que va del escepticismo a la ironía, del resentimiento al desprecio. El autor nos ofrece aquí el análisis más profundo que se ha hecho en los últimos años sobre el carácter de México. Sustentado por un estudio riguroso de filósofos, historiadores, economistas y demás intelectuales que han expresado su fervor o contrariedad por México, así como por las reflexiones de extranjeros que han visto en ese país a una nación marcada por la hospitalidad o la barbarie, Castañeda nos advierte sobre las idiosincrasias de los mexicanos. Por las deducciones implacables sobre la realidad moderna mexicana, afiladas por la ironía en la crítica y el reconocimiento de sus zonas más oscuras y dolorosas, Mañana o pasado es, sin duda, la obra imprescindible para entender el México contemporáneo.

El misterio de los mexicanos

Mañana o pasado

último capítulo del libro Sorpresas te da la vida

La última sorpresa?

Reviews the distrust and ignorance that have often marked the relations between the U.S. and Latin America

The Latin American Left After the Cold War

Utopia Unarmed

Enrique Hett

Jorge Castañeda

Subdesarrollo y dependencia designan realidades evidentes: la miseria y la sujeción de los países. La idea central de este libro es examinar estas nociones en cuanto tales, en su contenido, para evitar la tendencia muy común de explicar la una por la otra; para avanzar teóricamente es necesario, por lo tanto, ponerlas en tela de juicio.

El economismo dependentista

By the time he was killed in the jungles of Bolivia, where his body was displayed like a deposed Christ, Ernesto "Che" Guevara had become a synonym for revolution everywhere from Cuba to the barricades of Paris. This extraordinary biography peels aside the veil of the Guevara legend to reveal the charismatic, restless man behind it. Drawing on archival materials from three continents and on interviews with Guevara's family and associates, Castaneda follows Che from his childhood in the Argentine middle class through the years of pilgrimage that turned him into a committed revolutionary. He examines Guevara's complex relationship with Fidel Castro, and analyzes the flaws of character that compelled him to leave Cuba and expend his energies, and ultimately his life, in quixotic adventures in the Congo and Bolivia. A masterpiece of scholarship, Companero is the definitive portrait of a figure who continues to fascinate and inspire the world over.

Companero

"Foreigners have been writing about the United States ever since its foundation. Now it is my turn. But please don't hold this against me: the United States itself is at fault. Like a great many people on earth, I've long been fascinated by this remarkable phenomenon which calls itself America. My fate -or perhaps good fortune- has been that of a foreigner who for half a century lived the American experience-as a child, as a student, as an author, as a recurrent visitor and as a university professor. Being Mexican places me in a special category: having lost half its territory to the United States in the 19th century, having found itself caught up in the maelstrom of America's current identity crisis, Mexico can never ignore what happens north of the border. Further, while serving as Mexico's Foreign Minister from 2000 to 2003, I had the privilege of peeping inside the machinery of power that makes this great nation tick. That said, this book is not written from a Mexican perspective but rather from that of a sympathetic foreign critic who has seen the United States from both inside and outside. And its hope is to contribute something to how Americans view themselves and are viewed by the world. Before embarking on this journey, I naturally looked back at some of my forebears, earlier foreigners who were drawn to visit or live in the United States and who then went on to offer their version of America to their home readers. Some like the French traveler Alexis de Tocqueville, author of the early 19th century classic, Democracy in America, felt European nations had much to learn from the American democratic experiment. Others like Charles Dickens left dismayed by what he considered to be the country's singular obsession with money. But they are just two of dozens who have tried-and continue to try- to find a magic key that unlocks the complexities and contradictions of American society. Indeed, it is as if the United States seeks to challenge foreign writers to explain it, confident they will fail. And in taking it on, these outsiders have variously experienced frustration, hope, anger, excitement, disappointment and enlightenment- but never indifference"--

Jorge G. Castañeda

About

Books

Join the club