31705 - International Relations of Latin America

Academic Year 2022/2023

  • Docente: Loris Zanatta
  • Credits: 8
  • SSD: SPS/05
  • Language: Italian
  • Teaching Mode: Traditional lectures
  • Campus: Forli
  • Corso: Second cycle degree programme (LM) in International Relations and Diplomatic Affairs (cod. 9247)

Learning outcomes

The aim of the course is to provide a map of Latin American geopolitics, with particular attention to the history of relations between the United States and Latin America. At the end of the course the student will be able to understand and interpret the international Latin American system and its interaction with the hemispheric and the global one.

Course contents

The course is organized with a part of lectures taught online on MS TEAMS and another taught in presence. The number of students allowed in class is determined on the basis of class capacity and by the health and safety provisions that deal with the pandemic emergency. In case more students want to attend classes in presence than permitted by the rules, a system of shifts will be organized so to allow students to participate. Regardless of the health-related conditions and the specific organization of the course, students will be able to follow the lessons of the entire course remotely on MS TEAMS.

The course will study the inter-American relationships embracing the entire period of time between the independence of the Latin American states from Spain and Portugal and the present day. From the Monroe doctrine, therefore, to the war between the United States and Mexico and the Hispano-American one for Cuba, to continue with the age of the Big Stick and the Dollar Diplomacy, the Good Neighbor, the consolidation of the inter-American system after World War II, the relations between the United States and Latin America during the administrations Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush Sr. and after the end of the Cold War. Particular attention will be placed on the dimension of intra-American relations, that is on the history of relations between the nation-states of Latin America.

Readings/Bibliography

Testo di base

Peter H. Smith, Talons of the eagle: dynamics of U.S.-Latin American relations, - Oxford : Oxford university press, 2012 (e tutte le edizioni successive)

Testo propedeutico per chi non ha mai frequentato corsi di Storia dell'America Latina:

L.Zanatta, Storia dell'America Latina contemporanea, Laterza, Roma-Bari (Nuova Edizione aggiornata), 2017

Gli studenti dovranno inoltre studiare una monografia a scelta tra le seguenti (eventuali testi alternativi possono essere concordati col docente):

Brands Hal, Latin America's Cold War, Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2010.

Gardini, Gian Luca, The Origins of Mercosur: Democracy and Regionalization in South America, Pallgrave – Macmillan 2010.

Iber, Patrick, Neither peace nor freedom: the cultural Cold War in Latin America, Cambridge; London : Harvard University press, 2015

Harmer Tanya, Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War, The University of North Carolina Press, 2011.

Lajous Roberta, Historia mínima de las relaciones exteriores de México, 1821-2000, El Colegio de México, 2012.

Pettiná Vanni, Historia mínima de la Guerra Fría en América Latina, El Colegio de México, 2018.

Poggio Teixeira, Carlos Gustavo, Brazil, the United States, and the South American subsystem : regional politics and the absent empire, Lexington Books, 2012.

Smith Joseph, Brazil and the United States: Convergence and Divergence, Univ of Georgia Press 2010.

Stallings Barbara, Dependency in the Twenty-First Century?: The Political Economy of China-Latin America Relations, Cambridge University Press, 2020.

Zanatta, Loris, I sogni imperiali di Peron. Ascesa e crollo della politica estera peronista, Libreria Universitaria, Padova 2016.

Teaching methods

Students will be able to follow the lessons of the entire course in classroom, unless there is a change in the pandemic situation. Students unable to attend lessons in class will be able to follow them remotely on MS TEAMS.

Assessment methods

The final exam will consist of a normal oral interview.

Teaching tools

No one

Office hours

See the website of Loris Zanatta