In Their Own Best Interest

Winner of the William M. LeoGrande Prize For over a century, the United States has sought to improve the behavior of the peoples of Latin America. Perceiving their neighbors to the south as underdeveloped and unable to govern themselves, U.S. policy makers have promoted everything from representative democracy and economic development to oral hygiene. But is improvement a progressive impulse to help others, or realpolitik in pursuit of a superpowers interests? In this subtle and searing critique of U.S. efforts to uplift Latin America, Lars Schoultz challenges us to question the fundamental tenets of the development industry that became entrenched in the U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy over the last century. Piero Gleijeses, author of Visions of Freedom In this masterful work, Lars Schoultz provides a companion and follow-up to his classic Beneath the United StatesA necessary and rewarding read for scholars and students of U.S. foreign policy and inter-American relations. Renata Keller, The Americas