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Over the last twenty years, Brazil has staked successive claims to regional leadership, with varying explicitness and unclear success. What factors explain the acceptance or rejection of such claims by South American countries? This article summarises the literature on regional powers and frames regional powerhood as arising from geographical belonging, resources, and will to lead; and leadership/followership as stemming from exclusivity, hierarchy/influence, consensus, and provision. By analysing panel data on Brazil and South America from 1995 to 2015, the study concludes that Brasilia enjoyed higher followership in situations characterised by high exclusivity and consensus, and low hierarchy and provision. These conditions were present in South America in the 1990s, thus rendering that decade more receptive to Brazilian leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the conflict between academic and popular understanding on Spanish America's wars of independence, wherein historiography failed to include colonies like Kingdom of Guatemala. Topics include the dissolution of the Spanish empire between 1808 and 1826 as culmination of Spanish imperial crisis, collapse of Spanish empire, and the role of Guatemalan oligarchy. It also discusses how Latin American countries including Mexico, Cuba, and Puerto Rico achieved independence.

The article explores the history of Polish people in Latin America, with a focus on their migration to Peru from the 19th century to the early 20th century. The author discusses the roles of Poland's political turbulence and loss of independence in the exile and migration to other countries, including Latin America and Peru. It is emphasized that Latin America's pro-immigrant policy led to large waves of Polish immigrants arriving in South America, including Peru. Polish workers in Peru included those who built roads and railways, Polish missionaries and nuns and Polish agronomists who managed estates in northern Peru.

The new trade data used here document the significance of industrialisation in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico after 1870. By 1910 Brazil and Mexico, in particular, led most of the poor periphery in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. While some of this impressive industrialisation was due to fast productivity growth in manufacturing, perhaps yielding some catch-up on their competitors in the United States and Europe, this article argues that there were even more powerful forces at work. Much of the industrialisation that occurred in Latin America was due to a cessation in the seven-decade rise in its net barter terms of trade, trends that reversed the deindustrialisation and 'Dutch Disease ' forces that had dominated Latin America for almost a century. Equally important for Brazil and Mexico was favourable policy in the form of higher effective rates of protection for manufacturing, and a depreciation of the real exchange rate. These policies were missing in Argentina and Chile, and industrialisation suffered there as a consequence. Changing market conditions and policies seem to have been more important than changing fundamentals in accounting for Latin American industrialisation after 1870. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the political and economic history of Latin America from 1800 to 2000. Success of the Chilean Revolution; Implementation of free-market economic reforms; Relationship between the U.S. and Latin America.