Brazil and Latin America

José Briceño-Ruiz is associate professor of economics and social sciences at the University of the Andes.Andrés Rivarola Puntigliano is assistant professor in economic history and lecturer of Latin American studies at Stockholm University.

Briceño-Ruiz (Univ. of the Andes, Colombia) and Puntigliano (Univ. of Stockholm, Sweden) offer a diplomatic intellectual history of Brazil's unsteady relationship with Hispanic America. Brazilian thinkers tend to contrast Brazil with its neighbors, citing original Luso-Spanish differences, Brazil's 1822 non-violent independence, its 19th-century monarchical stability, and its mammoth geographic and economic stature. The "path of separation" of the "Brazilian island" led many to omit Brazil from "Latin America." Even Bolivar agreed; Brazil was just too different. All the while, however, Brazilian thinkers have entertained notions of "paths of integration" based on an Argentine-Brazil axis aimed at holding off a return of European colonialists. It never panned out, partly because of the several states' attempts at economic autocracy and import substitution. Some saw Latin American integration as an attempt at Brazilian dominance, which did not thrill its neighbors. The latest effort was the 1991 Mercosur of the Southern Cone countries…. Good corrective to the modern tendency to reify "Latin America." Summing Up: Recommended…Graduate students through faculty.

• ContentsAcknowledgmentsList of Acronym AbbreviationsIntroductionChapter 1—A Prologue of IntegrationChapter 2— Distant but not Absent: Brazil and Latin America from the Independence to theInternational American Congress Chapter 3—Brazil and the Making of Latin AmericaChapter 4—“Setting the Path for Integration”: Developmentalism, Nationalism, and IntegrationChapter 5— Brazil and the Contemporary Path of Integration: From MERCOSUR to CELAC ConclusionBibliographyAbout the Authors