by Benjamin Purper
When you think about Latin American studies, a couple different academic fields come to mind: history, literature, sociology, and economics. Yet there’s one academic area you might not think of – the field of international relations. Many IR students focus on Europe, the Middle East, or Asia. Other regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America, are afterthoughts. I argue that Latin America is an exciting, diverse region that offers more study and career opportunities than most IR students think.
For a field as broad and interdisciplinary as international relations, Latin America has high research potential for IR students of all kinds. Those interested in international peace, politics, and security will find just as much material to study in Latin America as they would in the Middle East or Europe. The regions’ propensity for authoritarian backslides, while tragic, offers unique case studies, with which to analyze the international community’s commitment to democracy and human rights promotion. Examples range from coups in Honduras and Guatemala to Venezuelan democracy’s recent death knell. Those interested in American foreign policy and its impacts on the the world would do well to study Operation Condor, a collusion of South American military dictatorships in the 1970’s described by The Guardian as an “organised program of state-sponsored murder, in which U.S.-backed regimes conspired to hunt down, kidnap, and kill political opponents across South America and beyond.” Latin American history is full of political violence and international conflict that can be just as instructive to IR students as the more traditional Europe or the hot-spot of the modern Middle East.
However, international relations encompass more than politics and history. For IR students passionate about environmental sustainability and economic development, there is no better regional concentration. According to UNESCO, the region contains “five of the ten most biodiverse countries on the planet (Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, and Peru), and the eastern slopes of the Andes constitute the highest biodiversity area known.” Such ecological richness means the region will continue to face massive sustainability challenges that both necessitate cooperation and cause conflict on a global scale. The same is true for those students with a penchant for political economy. Despite progress in recent years, the region remains the most unequal in the world, with development projects in countries like Peru and Bolivia severely stalled. Accordingly, students who are fluent in development theory and understand the influence of economic aid in the developing world will find plenty to study in Latin America.
Although Latin American countries still rank relatively low in American foreign policy priorities (as they always have, historically), the region’s rising political and economic prospects should cause IR students to start paying attention. Brazil, despite the political turmoil that garnered extra coverage thanks to the Olympics, is still poised to become an economic power in the coming years. The formation of South American regional trading and security agreements MERCOSUR and UNASUR promise the type of cooperation that, once member countries can resolve their respective internal challenges, could create a European Union-esque bloc of Latin American nations. Accordingly, IR students with both an interest in the past and an eye on the future should recognize the untapped potential that the region holds for the field of international relations.
Benjamin Purper is a senior at the University of Redlands, where he studies International Relations and Instrumental Performance.
