Redeemers: Ideas and Power in Latin America

Inhis first book to appear in English since Mexico: Biography in Power, awork which the Wall Street Journal calls “the standard history ofpostcolonial Mexico,” prize-winning author Enrique Krauzeilluminates the evolution of political, social, and philosophical discourses inLatin America. With echoes of Richard Hofstadter and Edmund Wilson, Krauze explores the Latin American intellectual traditionby deftly animating its decisive figures, from Octavio Paz to Che Guevara, José Vasconcelos toHugo Chávez, and inscribing them upon a vivid landscape of patriotism,opportunism, morality, and avarice—and of love, honor, loyalty, and identity. Redeemersdelivers an unparalleled explication of the roots of ideology and action inLatin America today. |

Latin America has been of vital importance to the United States almost since the birth of our nation, and the significance of this relationship has only increased in recent decades. But mutual understanding between these regions is lacking, even as Latin Americans are striving to promote the values of democracy in their native countries and beyond. Why has this process proved to be such a struggle, and what does the future of the region hold?

In Redeemers, acclaimed historian Enrique Krauze presents the major ideas that have formed the modern Latin American political mind during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, from early postcolonial authoritarian regimes to nineteenth-century Liberalism and Conservatism, and then the impact of Socialism and Marxism as well as nationalism and indigenism and the movement toward liberal democracy of recent years. Krauze looks closely at how these ideas have been expressed in the lives of influential revolutionaries, thinkers, poets, and novelists—figures whose lives were marked by a passionate involvement in history, power, and, for some, revolution, as well as a personal commitment to love, friendship, and family. Krauze’s subjects come from across the continents. Here are the Cuban José Martí; the Argentines Che Guevara and Evita Perón; the groundbreaking political thinkers José Vasconcelos of Mexico and José Carlos Mariátegui from Peru. Writers José Enrique Rodó, Mario Vargas Llosa, Octavio Paz, and Gabriel García Márquez reinforce the importance of imagination to inspire social change.

Redeemers also highlights Mexico’s Samuel Ruiz and Subcomandante Marcos and Venezuela’s president Hugo Chávez, and their influence on contemporary Latin America.

In this brilliant and deeply researched history, Enrique Krauze uses the range of these extraordinary lives to illuminate the struggle that has defined Latin American history: an ever-precarious balance between the ideal of democracy and the temptation of political messianism. Through this comprehensive collage of the distinct but interconnected experiences and views of these twelve fascinating cultural and political figures, we can better understand how this balance continues to affect Latin America today and how its nations will define themselves and relate to the larger world in the years ahead.

“An engaging mixture of biography and historical currents in the style of Isaiah Berlin or Edmund Wilson, thus allowing lay readers to follow what can sometimes be a dizzying succession of revolutions, doctrine and caudillos.” - Kirkus Reviews

Historian Krauze illuminates Latin American thought and politics in a vibrant and invaluable blend of biography and analysis. . . . He is equally fluent in complex political thought and the complexities of creative, bold, and controversial lives. . . . Krauze’s clarifying and engaging group portrait provides discerning and much-needed insight into our dynamic neighbors.” - Booklist

“Krauze illuminates Latin American thought and politics in a vibrant and invaluable blend of biography and analysis. . . . Redeemers provides discerning and much-needed insight into our dynamic neighbors.” - Booklist

“Highly readable. . . . An important book.” - The Tuscon Citizen

“Krauze attempts to weave together the disparate threads of all the feuding orthodoxies through mini-biographies of 12 leaders and thinkers. Krauze, perhaps Mexico’s most widely respected intellectual, is uniquely suited to the task, and the resulting tapestry is both persuasive and evocative.” - Publishers Weekly

“Krauze is, without a doubt, one of the most renowned and important intellectuals in Mexico. . . . “Krauze [is a] survivor, a living witness to an era in which intellectuals tried to be men of ideas as well as men of action. Redeemers is a lucid and moving homage-a swan song-to that tradition by one of its last protagonists. . . . He has a first-rate instinct for storytelling that grabs the reader from the very first page. . . . He has developed a prose style of expressive clarity and metaphoric restraint that has enormous impact. His books read like novels: the greatest possible achievement for a historian of ideas. . . . Few writers have his ability to synthesize and interpret the life and opinions of a person in a few pages.” - The Nation

“Krauze is, without a doubt, one of the most renowned and important intellectuals in Mexico. . . . He has developed a prose style of expressive clarity and metaphoric restraint that has enormous impact. His books read like novels: the greatest possible achievement for a historian of ideas.” - The Nation

“Redeemers is a fundamental work for our time. . . . All the chapters are written with fluid movement, intelligent precision, and felicitous language. You read them with the expectation and excitement offered by the best novels.” - Mario Vargas Llosa, El País

“An ambitious attempt to trace the interaction of ideas and power in Hispanic America.” - The Wall Street Journal

“Erudite and wise. . . . A magisterial history of the ideas, books and politics that shaped modern Latin America, from 19th-century liberalism to revolutionary commitments and back again towards modern, more democratic versions of liberal thought.” - The Financial Times

“Krauze is marked by a rare and attractive gift for noticing the several ways that, under the bright sun of the imagination, and kingdom of politics and the kingdom of literature sometimes merge.” - Paul Berman, The New York Times Book Review

“This collection of erudite biographical essays is held together by the singular worldview of its author, one of the leading members of Mexico’s literati. Krauze’s long, loving ode to his mentor and friend the Nobel Prize-winning writer Octavio Paz could stand on its own as a major contribution to the literature on Paz and twentieth-century Mexico.” - Foreign Affairs

“An engaging survey of the ideas and quasi-religious convictions that have powered modern Latin America’s consequential political movements.” - The Daily