Skidmore and Smith. Modern Latin America

Abstract

A course in Latin American history, unfortunately, often becomes simply a class in the individual histories of various Latin American countries. This absence of any common bonds tends to have a "centrifugal" effect upon understanding, with students holding dearly to a number of disparate facts and questioning whether it was Esteben or Luis Echeverria who was president of Mexico. Through their synthesis of both the modernization and dependency theories, Thomas Skidmore and Peter Smith pull together into a "composite portrait" a history which they state provides a comparative basis for understanding the context in which individual Latin American countries developed.