Jorge G. Castañeda

La historia de la izquierda en M xico es la historia de dos corrientes: la que proviene de la Revoluci n mexicana y la que ha buscado deslindarse de ella y de los gobiernos que de ella emanaron. En una de las naciones m s desiguales del planeta, la lucha por abatir la injusticia ha moldeado su historia, sus instituciones, su car cter y, por ello, su esencia misma. Este libro relata la historia de aquellos que han entregado su vida para construir un M xico menos injusto. Pero tambi n cuenta la historia de sus contradicciones y errores, de sus carencias y pugnas fratricidas, e incluso la de aquellos que la han traicionado, aprovechado, y que han fracturado al pa s en su empe o. Sin manique smos, Jorge Casta eda y Joel Ortega nos cuentan una perspectiva nueva desde la que leer y entender el combate de tantos mexicanos por una vida menos vieja, menos injusta, m s luminosa... «Por izquierda entendemos aquellas posiciones pol ticas e ideol gicas --de personas, agrupaciones, partidos, sindicatos, universidades, publicaciones, gobiernos extranjeros-- que se han empe ado a lo largo del ltimo siglo y medio en M xico por cambiar el estado de cosas vigente hacia otro, menos desigual, m s pr spero, m s nacionalista, m s solidario, m s democr tico... -De la Introducci n ENGLISH DESCRIPTION The history of the left-wing party in Mexico is one of two opposing currents: one that comes from the Mexican Revolution and another that has sought to distance itself from it and from any government that emerged from it. In one of the nations with the most inequality on the planet, the struggle to overcome injustice has shaped its history, its institutions, its character, and, therefore, its very essence. This book tells the story of those who have dedicated their lives to building a Mexico with less injustice. But it also tells the story of their contradictions, mistakes, their shortcomings, and internal struggles, and even the stories of those who have betrayed it, taken advantage of it, and fractured the country while doing so. Without Manichaeism, Jorge Casta eda and Joel Ortega present a new perspective from which to read and understand the struggle of so many Mexicans for a newer, less unjust, brighter life... "By "left", we mean those political and ideological positions--by individuals, groups, political parties, unions, universities, publications, foreign governments--that have, over the past century and a half in Mexico, committed themselves to changing the prevailing state of affairs towards a new, more equal, more prosperous, more nationalist, more solidarity-based, more democratic..." -From the Introduction"

«A trav s de las ideolog as dif cilmente vamos a avanzar en posiciones comunes. Latinoam rica tiene ciertas identidades propias, no ideol gicas, desde las que puede hablar con una sola voz. sa es la voz que no existe, que desapareci en Am rica Latina. Ahora es cuando debemos crear esa sola voz. --Ricardo Lagos Entre julio de 2020 y abril de 2022, Ricardo Lagos, Jorge G. Casta eda y H ctor Aguilar Cam n sostuvieron una serie de encuentros virtuales para conversar sobre la situaci n de Am rica Latina ante las diversas crisis globales del siglo XXI. La preocupaci n central y originaria de este di logo es la condici n de aislamiento de la regi n, debido a la divisi n ideol gica de los pa ses, a la falta de foros de encuentro para sus gobiernos y, sobre todo, a la falta de una voz propia en el mundo. Durante esta conversaci n a tres bandas --entre Santiago de Chile, Nueva York y Ciudad de M xico--, los interlocutores revisan cuestiones como la nueva guerra fr a entre China y Estados Unidos y los retos que plantea para Am rica Latina, los desaf os de la democracia ante el populismo y la convulsi n del cambio digital, las causas y los efectos de la nueva ola de gobiernos de izquierda en la regi n, los problemas claves del crecimiento econ mico, y un mundo que ha salido m s desigual de la pandemia. Lagos, Casta eda y Aguilar Cam n re nen su experiencia y su amplio conocimiento sobre la materia para discutir los graves problemas que aquejan a los pa ses latinoamericanos en este momento de su historia y, sobre todo, plantean alternativas para salir de este aislamiento paralizador. ENGLISH DESCRIPTION "We will hardly move forward over common ground through ideologies. Latin America has certain identities of its own, non ideological, from which it can communicate through a single voice. This is the voice that doesn't exist, that vanished in Latin America. Now is the time to create that one voice." --Ricardo Lagos From July, 2020 to April, 2022, Ricardo Lagos, Jorge G. Casta eda, and H ctor Aguilar Cam n had a series of virtual meetings to discuss Latin America's situation given the many global crises of the twenty-first century. The main concern that promoted this dialogue is the region's confinement due to ideological divides between the countries, the lack of fora for governments to meet, and, above all, the lack of a voice of its own in the world. During this three-way conversation--among Santiago de Chile, New York, and Mexico City--the parties reviewed issues such as the new cold war between China and the United States, and the challenges this poses to Latin America; the hurdles of democracy in the face of populism and the convulsion of digital change; the cause and effect of a new wave of left-wing governments in the region; key problems of economical growth, and a world that came out of the pandemic even more unequal. Lagos, Casta eda, and Aguilar Cam n gather their experience and vast knowledge on the matter to discuss the major problems afflicting Latin American countries at this moment of history and, most importantly, they put forward alternatives to get out of this paralyzing seclusion.

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.

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.

In this shrewd and fascinating book, the renowned scholar and former foreign minister Jorge Castaneda sheds much light on the puzzling paradoxes of politics and culture of modern Mexico. 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. Castaneda 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. "Manana Forever?" is a compelling portrait of a nation at a crossroads.

El rostro enigm tico de M xico presenta hoy hondas cicatrices y un gesto que va del escepticismo a la iron a, del resentimiento al desprecio: C mo pueden descifrarse las inquietudes de ese rostro? Qu estigmas conservan los mexicanos, a qu mitos se aferran? Qu fracturas hay tras la guerra contra el narcotr fico, la vor gine migratoria y el descr dito de sus gobiernos, de sus aparatos de justicia y sus instituciones? Jorge Casta eda nos ofrece aqu el an lisis m s profundo que se ha hecho en los ltimos a os sobre el car cter de su pa s. Sustentado por un estudio riguroso de fil sofos, historiadores, economistas y dem s intelectuales que han expresado su fervor o contrariedad por M xico, as como por las reflexiones de extranjeros que han visto en ese pa s a una naci n marcada por la hospitalidad o la barbarie, Casta eda nos advierte sobre las idiosincrasias de los mexicanos: la indiferencia a la competencia; la desgana a defender sus convicciones; el por qu se resisten a las acciones colectivas y a la participaci n comprometida en luchas pol ticas; de qu manera el descuido de la industria tur stica afecta su econom a; y c mo el crecimiento de la clase media no es necesariamente una se al contundente de bienestar y confianza en los gobiernos. Por las deducciones implacables sobre la realidad moderna mexicana, afiladas por la iron a en la cr tica y el reconocimiento de sus zonas m s oscuras y dolorosas, Ma ana o pasado es, sin duda, la obra imprescindible para entender el M xico contempor neo.

Jorge Casta eda, who served as Mexico's foreign minister from 2000 to 2003, has been both an insider and an outsider in Mexico's political system. In Perpetuating Power, he lays bare the often mystifying workings of power in Mexico, offering readers what the New York Times Book Review called "an unusually revealing explication of the inner workings of three decades of presidential succession."To outside observers, Mexico stood out for its odd mixture of democratic pretension with autocratic inevitability: there were always elections, but everyone knew the next president would be the candidate of the aptly named Party of the Institutional Revolution, which governed Mexico throughout most of the last century.In six penetrating essays combined with interviews by Casta eda with each of the living Mexican ex-presidents, Perpetuating Power provides a remarkably candid account of the political machinery behind Mexican presidential politics and a view, startling to political outsiders, of how power really operates.

Cuando lleg el momento en que fue muerto en las selvas de Bolivia, donde su cuerpo fue exhibido como un Cristo destronado, Ernesto "Che Guevara se hab a convertido en sin nimo de revoluci n en todas partes desde Cuba hasta los terrenos universitarios de los Estados Unidos. Esta biograf a extraordinaria por uno de los m s prominentes analistas pol ticos de Latinoam rica revela la leyenda del Che Guevara para mostrar el carism tico e inquieto hombre detr s de ella. Tomando de los archivos de tres continentes y de entrevistas con la familia y asociados de Guevara, Jorge Casta eda sigue al Che desde su ni ez en la clase media argentina hasta los a os de peregrinaje que lo hicieron un revolucionario dedicado. Casta eda examina las complejas relaciones entre Guevara y Fidel Castro, quien lo hizo su mano derecha a n cuando el Che se convirti en la conciencia pol tica de Fidel. Y Casta eda analiza las fallas de car cter que forzaron al Che a irse de Cuba y dar sus energias y, finalmente, su vida a aventuras quijotescas en el Congo y Bolivia. Una obra maestra de erudici n y simpat a literaria, Compa ero es el retrato definitivo de una figura que continua fascinando e inspirando a gentes del mundo entero.

Castro's Cuba is isolated; the guerrillas who once spread havoc through Uruguay and Argentina are dead, dispersed, or running for office as moderates. And in 1990, Nicaragua's Sandinistas were rejected at the polls by their own constituents. Are these symptoms of the fall of the Latin American left? Or are they merely temporary lulls in an ongoing revolution that may yet transform our hemisphere? This perceptive and richly eventful study by one of Mexico's most distinguished political scientists tells the story behind the failed movements of the past thirty years while suggesting that the left has a continuing relevance in a continent that suffers from destitution and social inequality. Combining insider's accounts of intrigue and armed struggle with a clear-sighted analysis of the mechanisms of day-to-day power, Utopia Unarmed is an indispensable work of scholarship, reportage, and political prognosis.