HIST 347
Democracy and Dictatorship in Latin America
Last Offered Spring 2023
Division II D Difference, Power, and Equity
This course is not offered in the current catalog

The scarcity of stable and democratic governments in Latin America has frustrated observers across the region and beyond for almost 200 years. This course will examine the historical creation of both democratic and anti-democratic regimes in different national cases, seeking to identify the conditions that have fostered the apparent persistence of dictatorial tendencies as well as diverse forms of pro-democratic and social justice activism. Our main cases will be Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, and the countries of Central America, but we will address the region as a whole. In this regard we will look at the social and economic forces as well as the political actors and ideologies that have contributed to distinct, if often parallel, outcomes. At the same time, we will also question the criteria we use to label regimes “democratic” or “dictatorial”–and the implications of our choice of criteria.