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Andres Oppenheimer ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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Andres Oppenheimer Bordering on Chaos: Guerrillas, Stockbrokers, Politicians, and Mexico's Road to Prosperity
Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A. Little Brown & Co (T) 1996 0316650951 / 9780316650953 First Edition Cloth Very Good Very Good +
0316650951 Amazon.com This is an attempt to understand Mexico's steep descent into turmoil, which happened rapidly after the uprising in Chiapas on New Year's Day 1994. Following the assassinations of a presidential candidate and then the congressional leader, President Carlos Salinas de Gortari had barely left office when the peso collapsed. Pursued by allegations of corruption, Salinas then fled the country. Oppenheimer, a reporter for The Miami Herald, argues that the crisis is the result of nothing grander than a turf war within a decrepit ruling party and that the Chiapas uprising is not something new, just another eruption of the Marxist intellectualism that has long flourished in Latin America. From Publishers Weekly Miami Herald Latin American correspondent Oppenheimer traveled all over Mexico between 1992 and 1995, and this crisply written, eye-opening report depicts a country in the throes of political turmoil, corruption, peasant rebellions and massive layoffs. The authors, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 as part of a team that uncovered the Iran-Contra scandal, scaled guerrilla-held mountains to interview self-styled Subcommander Marcos, the white, middle-class Marxist revolutionary who in 1994 led a Maya armed uprising in the southern state of Chiapas. Oppenheimer views this revolt as symptomatic of a country marked by vastly unequal distribution of wealth and wasteful public works projects that fail to address the real needs of the people. He offers disturbing, fresh slants on the ruling party's control of TV news, the booming cocaine trade of Mexico's drug mafias, the rise of government-backed monopolies in key industries and the recent political assassinations that have weakened the ruling elite's credibility. Despite this bleak picture, Oppenheimer suggests that Mexico is stumbling toward a modern democracy under its new, technocratic administrator president, Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de Leon. Photos. Author tour. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. From Library Journal Oppenheimer, who produced an insightful book on Fidel Castro (Castro's Final Hour, LJ 7/92), repeats his performance in this outstanding exploration of the most notable political events in Mexico in the last three years. The author has incisively examined the assassinations of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio and Partido Revolucionario Institucional's secretary general Jose Ruiz Massieu, the arrest of Raul Salinas, the rise of Subcomandante Marcos and the Zapatistas, the devaluation crisis, and the extraordinary decline of ex-president Carlos Salinas de Gortari. Although many suppositions and incomplete facts about each remain, Oppenheimer, through careful investigation and firsthand interviews, provides convincing interpretations and even fresh, shocking factual information on each of these incidents, melding his analysis into a highly readable, entertaining account. Highly recommended. -?Roderic A. Camp, Latin American Ctr., Tulane Univ., New Orleans Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. New York Times Book Review, Sarah Kerr A persistent theme, and Mr. Oppenheimer's most useful point, is that despite all the recent turmoil, Mexicans are not the hot-blooded potential revolutionaries many Americans have assumed them to be. From Booklist Although Mexico shares a 2,000-mile border with the U.S., is one of our largest trading partners, has contributed millions of immigrants (both legal and illegal) to our population, and is home to the fourth-largest city in the world, many in the U.S. know little of the country and its people beyond a few misguided stereotypes. Oppenheimer spent four years traveling throughout Mexico to provide this revealing portrait. He met with Zapatista rebel commander Marcos in the Chiapas jungle of southernmost Mexico and attended a lavish dinner party where Mexico's top billionaires each pledged $25 million to the ruling PRI political party. Oppenheimer is senior Latin American correspondent for the Miami Herald, whose coverage of the region is unrivaled. Despite finding corruption, crushing poverty, and surreal politics, Oppenheimer is ultimately hopeful. His excellent reporting and his subject deserve attention. David Rouse From Kirkus Reviews NAFTA, Zapatista guerrillas, and Wall Street form the backdrop for this fine journalistic account of Mexico's current tumult. If the people of Mexico ever rise up in revolution---as they now seem poised to do--it will be at least in part a response to the Wall Street investment bankers who, in Miami Herald reporter Oppenheimer's charged telling, have long profited from that nation's misery. Oppenheimer dissects the career of former president Salinas de Gortari, who is now in hiding, a man who entered office supposedly determined to root out corruption and who, it now appears, robbed the country blind. While doing so, he managed to convince President Clinton to engineer a politically controversial bailout of Mexico, a nation Clinton had hailed as a model of economic development. The complicated financial doings that underlie this story do not make for easy reading, but Oppenheimer lays them out patiently, and Americans wondering just what goes on behind closed doors in Washington can do worse than ponder what he has to tell. What Oppenheimer has to say about Subcomandante Marcos's Zapatista Liberation Army, a substantial portion of the book, is less immediate, if only because Marcos has been so much in the news lately. Still, his tying the Chiapas revolt into the historical context of US-Mexican affairs drives home a needed point; as he writes, ``Mexican presidents had conveyed the idea to their friends in Washington . . . that they were the only ones standing between a modernizing, pro-American Mexico and an insurgent Mexico'' poised to expropriate American holdings there. That specter, Oppenheimer suggests, now allows the administration to hail yet another ``reform president,'' Ernesto Zedillo and to proclaim against all evidence, as Clinton has done, that ``the Mexican economy has turned the corner.'' Mexico watchers expect hard times to come for that country, and Oppenheimer's excellent book explains just why. -- Copyright ?1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Price:
2.99 USD
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Andres Oppenheimer Castro's Final Hour: The Secret Story Behind the Coming Downfall of Communist Cuba
New York, NY, U.S.A. Simon & Schuster 1992 0671728733 / 9780671728731 Third Printing Hardcover Good
0671728733 ISBN: 0671728733 Hardcover with dustjacket, Good-/Good 8vo - over 7.75" - 9.75" tall c. 1992, yellow/red bds. w/d.j., 462pp., (very lt.shelf wear, lt.moisture markings to some areas of covers, content clean and bright, d.j.: very lt.edge wear, lt.rubbed, sticker residue lower front). Nonfiction, Government & Politics, Cuba, Fidel Castro.
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5.95 USD
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