Bridges and Borders: A Reading Guide to U.S.–Latin American Relations

The United States and Latin America have always lived in each other’s imaginations. Sometimes as partners, sometimes as rivals, often as projects of desire. From the Monroe Doctrine to the banana trade, from exchange programs to border walls, the hemisphere’s story is one of ambition and misunderstanding — of bridges built and borders reinforced, often at the same time.

This reading guide offers a way into that long, complicated relationship. It’s meant for anyone curious about how culture, policy, and everyday life intertwine across the Americas. These books reveal not just what governments did, but how people felt about empire, progress, and belonging — and how those feelings shaped history.

(Last updated October 2025)

The Imperial Imagination

Before there was foreign policy, there was fantasy. The U.S. imagined Latin America as a testing ground for its ideals—tropical, pliable, and waiting for improvement—while Latin America saw the U.S. as both model and menace. These books explore the ideas that made empire feel inevitable.

Gilbert Joseph, Catherine LeGrand, and Ricardo Salvatore, eds., Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.–Latin American Relations (1998)
The book that redefined the field—revealing how culture and power intertwine in hemispheric history.

Greg Grandin, Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (2006)
How Latin America became the proving ground for U.S. interventions—political, military, and ideological.

Kristin Hoganson, Consumers’ Imperium: The Global Production of American Domesticity, 1865–1920 (2007)
A study of how U.S. women participated in empire through consumption, turning global goods into domestic virtue.

Amy Kaplan, The Anarchy of Empire in the Making of U.S. Culture (2002)
The classic argument that American culture and empire grew up together, shaping each other’s myths.

Performing the Hemisphere, Heritage, and Identity

Hemispheric friendship was never just negotiated—it was staged, curated, and performed. Fairs, films, and travel offered scripts for how the Americas should see one another. These works trace the performances that sold cooperation while concealing hierarchy.

Rosalie Schwartz, Pleasure Island: Tourism and Temptation in Cuba (1997)
A lively look at how Cuba became the U.S.’s tropical playground—and a mirror for its desires.

Lisa L. Munro, Desire as Empire: Consuming Indigenous Identity in Transnational Imaginations (forthcoming)
Explores how Guatemala used art, film, and design to sell “Indigeneity” to the world, revealing how culture became both diplomacy and exploitation.

Patricia Seed, Ceremonies of Possession: Europe’s Conquest of the New World, 1492–1640 (1995)
Shows how conquest was always a performance—rituals of claiming and seeing that still echo today.

Bananas and the Business of Empire

Bananas built empires—literally. Railroads, ports, and plantations remade Central America in the image of U.S. capital. These accounts, from corporate propaganda to narrative nonfiction, show how empire traveled by freight train and steamship.

Peter Chapman, Bananas: How the United Fruit Company Shaped the World (2007)
A crisp narrative history of the fruit that became a global industry and a political metaphor.

Rich Cohen, The Fish That Ate the Whale: The Life and Times of America’s Banana King (2012)
The biography of Samuel Zemurray, the hustler who personified the energy—and ruthlessness—of U.S. expansion.

Dan Koeppel, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World (2008)
The global story of the banana’s rise and its ecological collapse, showing how monoculture and empire grow hand in hand.

Charles Kepner and Jay Soothill, The Banana Empire: A Case Study of Economic Imperialism (1935)
A remarkably early critique of United Fruit’s control of land, labor, and politics.

Stacy May and Galo Plaza, The United Fruit Company in Latin America (1958)
A company-sponsored defense that inadvertently reveals how empire justified itself in the language of “development.”

Desire, Development, and the Cold War

After World War II, the United States promised development instead of direct control. Aid programs, universities, and cultural diplomacy offered friendship wrapped in reform. These books uncover how goodwill became a foreign policy strategy.

Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (2004)
A devastating study of counterinsurgency and idealism, and how both were shaped by Cold War politics.

Shana Klein, The Fruits of Empire: Art, Food, and the Politics of Race in the Age of American Expansion (2020)
Explores how aesthetics and agriculture worked together to make empire look natural and beautiful.

Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007)
Shows how neoliberalism took root in Latin America under the guise of reform, revealing economic policy as a new form of control.

Legacies and Afterlives

The story of hemispheric relations doesn’t begin or end with the Cold War. The hemispheric ties built over a century still shape migration, violence, and belonging. These works bring the story to the present, showing how the borders between public and private, love and power, remain porous in both the past and present.

Rachel Nolan, Until I Find You: Disappeared Children and Coercive Adoptions in Guatemala (2024)
A haunting investigation of how the disappearances of Guatemala’s civil war morphed into the international adoption system.

Oscar Martínez, The Beast: Riding the Rails and Dodging Narcos on the Migrant Trail (2013)
Firsthand reporting on the human costs of hemispheric inequality, told from the top of a train.

Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions (2017)
A spare, luminous reflection on migration and bureaucracy, written from inside the U.S. immigration system.

Andrés Reséndez, The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America (2016)
Expands our sense of empire by tracing forced labor systems that long predate modern borders

The Americas have always been bound together by movement — of people, capital, and imagination. These books help us see that history not as background, but as the main story.

Mobility Justice in Latin America: Sidewalks, Bike Lanes, and the Politics of Belonging

On a recent bike ride through Mérida, I stopped for a wheelchair user traveling in the bike lane. They had no other choice: the sidewalk beside us was broken, too narrow, and blocked by parked cars. I dismounted and yielded, but the moment lingered with me. Why does this city — and so many others across the Americas — make movement so hard for its most vulnerable residents?

Mobility is more than getting from point A to point B. It is about who gets to move freely, safely, and with dignity. The way we design sidewalks, bike lanes, and streets tells us everything about whose lives count. In cities across Latin America and the United States, policy choices about infrastructure quietly shape who belongs and who doesn’t.

We often treat infrastructure as neutral — concrete poured without politics. But no sidewalk, street, or parking lot is built outside of power. These choices create winners and losers. Free parking may sound like a public good, but as Donald Shoup has argued in The High Cost of Free Parking, it encourages car dependence, spreads cities outward, and consumes space that could otherwise be housing, green areas, or public gathering places. Latin American planners made their own fateful choices in the mid-20th century, often importing U.S. models wholesale. Ring roads promised efficiency but instead encouraged sprawl and car dependency. Wide avenues privileged vehicles over people. The results are visible today: congested streets, fractured neighborhoods, and sidewalks that are at best an afterthought.

If you want to see inequality in action, look down. In Mérida, homeowners are legally responsible for repairing the sidewalks in front of their homes. Some keep them pristine; others patch them haphazardly; many leave them cracked or impassable. The result is a fragmented patchwork where a simple walk can become an obstacle course — especially for older adults, parents with strollers, or anyone with limited mobility. This isn’t unique to Mexico. As of 2025, an estimated 40% of Denver’s sidewalks don’t meet disability standards. Imagine the percentage in Mérida, or Mexico City, or countless other Latin American cities. Sidewalks are one of the cheapest forms of infrastructure, yet they remain chronically neglected. And when they fail, people are forced into the streets, where they compete with cars for space — often at deadly risk.

There are moments, though, when cities reclaim their streets. Mexico City closes its central avenues every Sunday for Muévete en Bici, a weekly ciclovía that draws hundreds of thousands of residents. Mérida’s own biciruta just turned 18, filling Paseo de Montejo with families, food vendors, and cyclists. These events prove what many urbanists argue: when given the chance, people flock to car-free streets. But a weekly celebration is not enough. Mobility justice requires more than symbolic gestures. It demands permanent infrastructure — wide sidewalks, continuous bike lanes, affordable public transit — that redistributes space every day, not just on Sundays.

The stakes are high because mobility is equity. A student who cannot safely bike or bus to school is at a disadvantage before class even begins. A worker who spends two hours each way commuting from the periphery of a sprawling city loses time, money, and energy that wealthier residents keep. A wheelchair user navigating broken sidewalks experiences exclusion in its most literal form. When mobility fails, equity fails. And when equity fails, democracy weakens. Cities that prioritize cars over people send a clear message: some lives are worth more than others.

What would it mean to take mobility justice seriously? It would mean funding sidewalks before highways, expanding bike networks before widening roads, and ensuring transit is not just available but affordable. It would mean rethinking parking minimums, as Mexico City did when it adopted the policy “Menos cajones, más ciudad” — “Less parking, more city.” It would also mean reframing mobility as a public right, not a private luxury. Just as we accept that education or clean water are collective responsibilities, so too should we see movement as essential to participation in civic life.

The challenges of Latin American cities echo those of the United States, though the contexts differ. In both regions, mobility reflects deep inequalities. In the U.S., suburban sprawl and underfunded transit trap low-income residents in cycles of car dependency. In Latin America, weak regulations and uneven infrastructure create dangerous and fragmented mobility systems. But solutions can also travel. Latin American ciclovías inspired similar programs in U.S. cities. U.S. disability rights movements have pushed for stronger accessibility standards that could inform Latin American reforms. The question is whether policymakers are willing to learn across borders, or whether they will remain locked in car-centric paradigms.

Every broken sidewalk, every missing curb cut, every unprotected bike lane is a policy choice. It is easy to think of infrastructure as background noise, the stage on which life unfolds. But it is more accurate to think of it as the script. It determines who appears on stage, who gets a speaking role, and who is silenced altogether. Mobility justice is not just about concrete and asphalt. It is about belonging. It is about recognizing that the freedom to move is inseparable from the freedom to live fully in one’s city.

That day in the bike lane, I stepped aside to let the wheelchair user pass. It was a small moment, but it underscored a larger truth: individuals can yield, but only cities can ensure safe passage. Until we design infrastructure with justice in mind, vulnerable people will keep being forced into dangerous spaces. Mobility justice means asking, over and over again: who gets to move, and who doesn’t? Until the answer is “everyone,” our sidewalks, streets, and cities will remain unfinished.

Boutique Imperialism: Desire and U.S. Power in Guatemala

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

Adoption as Global Policy and Market

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.

Cultural Diplomacy in a Fractured Hemisphere

It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest. If you read the words back and don’t hear your own voice in your head, that’s a good sign you still have more work to do.

Be clear, be confident and don’t overthink it. The beauty of your story is that it’s going to continue to evolve and your site can evolve with it. Your goal should be to make it feel right for right now. Later will take care of itself. It always does.