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The result was not a single anti-U.S. doctrine, but a diverse body of scholarship that frequently examined how external powers, especially the United States during the 20th century, interacted with domestic institutions, social hierarchies, and development paradigms throughout the region.

While scholars have differed in their conclusions, these traditions repeatedly return to questions of foreign intervention, economic dependence, colonial legacies, resource extraction, and local systems of power. The primary focus has remained the history and challenges of Central & South America.

Many of the most influential movements to emerge from Central and South American academia were shaped by efforts to explain the region's persistent inequality, political instability, and uneven development.

Cuerpo-Territorio argues that violence against territories through extraction, displacement, and environmental destruction is connected to violence against human bodies, especially Indigenous female bodies. This concept became influential in decolonial, feminist, and environmental justice research.

Cuerpo-Territorio. Lessons Learnt on a Method to Study Embodied Emotions - Martina Angela Caretta, Vasna Ramasar, Sofia Zaragocin, Kamila Torres, 2026

In the 2010s, Indigenous and decolonial feminist scholars developed the concept of cuerpo-territorio (body-territory). Associated with thinkers such as Lorena Cabnal, the framework argues that the body and the land cannot be separated. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

journals.sagepub.com

Qualitative researchers have strived to recenter epistemic authority and knowledge creation by increasingly engaging with Indigenous methodologies. Such effort ...

Local Histories/Global Designs

In the 2000s, scholars like Walter Mignolo expanded Quijano's ideas through the Modernity/Coloniality research network. Such work helped popularize decolonial approaches across the disciplines of history, cultural studies, education, and international relations. press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

press.princeton.edu

biblioteca-repositorio.clacso.edu.ar

In the 1990s, Peruvian sociologist Aníbal Quijano introduced the idea of "Coloniality of Power," arguing that colonial-era hierarchies of race, knowledge, and authority continued to shape modern societies long after formal colonial rule had ended. biblioteca-repositorio.clacso.edu.ar/handle/CLACS...

Repositorio institucional de CLACSO: Colonialidade do poder, Eurocentrismo e América Latina

Within the context of civil war in El Salvador, Martín-Baro argued that psychological theory must confront the realities of poverty, violence, repression, and social conflict, addressing how structural conditions shape mental health. Not just relying on models reflecting wealthier Western contexts.

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A Theology of Liberation: History, Politics, and Salvation

In 1971, Peruvian theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez published "A Theology of Liberation." The work argued that Christian faith requires engagement with social injustice and poverty, introducing the idea of "structural sin" to describe institutions and systems that perpetuate human suffering.

orbisbooks.com

One of Christianity Today's 100 Top Books of the Twentieth Century One of Church Times (UK) Top 100 Christian Books of All Time - Orbis Books

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While social science departments were affected by dictatorships, with faculty dismissed, censored, imprisoned, or forced into exile, Latin American social science was partially reconfigured through displacement. Scholars relocated to Mexico, Venezuela, the US, and parts of Western Europe.

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The 1973 coup in Chile and military governments across the Southern Cone forced many scholars into exile. Institutions like FLACSO and CLACSO expanded, creating regional academic networks circulating research on development, democracy, inequality, and foreign intervention throughout Latin America.

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Open Veins of Latin America

In 1971, Eduardo Galeano published "Open Veins of Latin America." This book argued that centuries of colonialism, foreign investment, and external economic control contributed to Latin America's underdevelopment. It ranked among the most widely read works of political literature in the region.

nyupress.org

Tracing five centuries of exploitation in Latin America, a classic in the field, now in its twenty fifth yearSince its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this...

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Faletto and Cardoso argued that Latin America's development was shaped by unequal relationships within the international capitalist system, challenging modernization theories that predicted all nations would eventually follow the same path toward prosperity.

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Profile: Raul Prebisch (1901-1986)

At the 1950 UN Economic Commission for Latin America in Santiago, economist Raul Prebisch challenged orthodox trade theory. His center-periphery model argued that countries exporting primary commodities often faced structural disadvantages within the global economy. www.ecoint.org/post/profile...

ecoint.org

Written by Johanna Gautier | 2023

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While these traditions differed from one another, many concluded that foreign intervention, unequal economic relationships, and cultural dependence played an important role in shaping Latin American development. These ideas became institutionalized across universities and research networks.

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From economics and sociology to theology, psychology, and cultural studies, many of Latin America's most influential intellectual movements emerged from attempts to explain the region's persistent poverty, inequality, and political instability.

Aaron Wells @aaronwells.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

All World Cup teams should have boycotted the US location as soon as Trump 2 immigration policy went into effect.

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Aaron Wells @aaronwells.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

CM Punk > US Olympic Hockey Team.

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Aaron Wells @aaronwells.bsky.social · 16/06/2026

Who would have thought it would take a WWE champion to provide the proper guidelines for responding to a White House invitation.

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Aaron Wells @aaronwells.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

The Republican party was never great, but the platform below reveals how much New Deal values still influenced American politics prior to the growth of neoliberalism.

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Aaron Wells @aaronwells.bsky.social · 12/06/2026

"The decision to allow Alabama to implement a never-before-used congressional map repeatedly found to be racially discriminatory by a district court panel and a previous Supreme Court ruling is so shoddy and partisan that it is hard to take the court’s conservative supermajority seriously anymore."

huffpost.com

The Supreme Court Is Illegitimate

The court’s conservatives ripped the mask off the institution in a brief, unsigned decision allowing Alabama to use a racially discriminatory congressional map.

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Reposted by Aaron Wells

geraldmcgrew @geraldmcgrew.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

*ICE held an average of 25 babies and toddlers per day between January 2025 and March 2026—ten times the rate under President Joe Biden—with at least 500 children aged 3 and under spending time in custody since Trump took office and at least 175 held beyond a court-mandated 20-day limit*

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The Prisoner @thechimesofbigben.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

I SAID OPEN HORMUZ! White Coat: He still thinks he's the president. Give him another 20cc.

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Reposted by Aaron Wells

Greg Sargent @gregsargent.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

Interesting point in this @mattpolprof.bsky.social thread: Trump's ballroom employs fascist kitsch aesthetics to inspire awe of the imperial leader/dictator in a way that has an ugly and very recognizable history:

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In some regions of the U.S., race and party affiliation overlap strongly enough that redistricting has substantial racial effects despite claims of neutrality. The overlap guides the new GOP southern strategy and lust to redraw maps quickly after a Scotus debacle, nullifying all claims of integrity.

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Recent redistricting often preserves democratic forms while using highly technical legal arguments about race, partisanship, equal protection, and constitutionality. That can make drastic changes appear formally neutral yet still grounded in institutional racism having major political consequences.

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New today are several power consolidation tactics. Precision data analytics: modern mapmakers use census data, consumer data, voting history, and algorithmic modeling to predict electoral outcomes with extraordinary accuracy. This creates far more precise control than older forms of gerrymandering.

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Today, many fragile democracies struggle with forms of malapportionment, partisan map drawing, voter suppression, or electoral engineering. These include Hungary, Turkey, parts of India, and some Latin American states. where ruling parties are accused of reshaping electoral systems for power-grabs.

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In parts of Northern Ireland during the 20th century, local electoral boundaries were manipulated to preserve Protestant unionist control in cities with substantial or majority Catholic populations. This became one of the grievances contributing to the conflict known as The Troubles.

Again, not identical to U.S. redistricting disputes, but structurally relevant as a case of institutional design preserving disproportionate minority political influence.

Historians sometimes describe this as managed democracy or restricted democracy. South African Apartheid is illustrative. The white government used territorial fragmentation, separate political jurisdictions, and controlled representation systems to maintain power as a demographic minority.

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Such tactics maintained white Democratic dominance despite large Black populations in many areas. This is important because the system often preserved rule by a politically organized minority of elites through institutional mechanisms rather than pure numerical majority support.

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One of the clearest historical parallels to the present emerged after the Reconstruction Era. When federal protections weakened in the late 19th century, Southern states used a combination of: districting, poll taxes, literacy tests, white primaries, intimidation, and administrative control.

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The point of similarity between older political power grabs and modern gerrymandering is reflected in district manipulation tied to factional advantage, regional power, and sometimes racial or ethnic control.

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The British industrial cities remained badly underrepresented. Colonial powers designed institutions to preserve settler or elite dominance over larger populations. These were not gerrymandering in modern cartographic terms; this was institutional engineering aimed at controlling political outcomes.

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Aristocratic republics, colonial administrations, restricted franchise systems, and property-based voting systems all existed. The Roman Republic heavily weighted political influence toward elite classes. Pre-Reform Act Britain had Rotten Burroughs, where tiny electorates chose Parliament members.

There are several important historical patterns worth examining. Before modern democratic republics, political systems were often structured to preserve the influence of a socially dominant minority.