Back to the Backyard? Recent International Relations Scholarship on Extra-Hemispheric Actors‘ Involvement in Latin America

Kurzfassung/Abstract

In the early 2010s, optimism regarding Latin American countries’ striving for autonomy from traditional asymmetric relations with Northern powers were at an all-time high. Some countries, such as Brazil, were fashioning their development strategies as alternatives to neoliberal capitalism and formed multi-letter groupings with other countries of the Global South. Others, led by Hugo Chávez’ Venezuela, took to an at least symbolically more radical approach, celebrating revolutionary nostalgia with their Cuban and Nicaraguan allies. While concrete successes of those foreign policy ventures of might have been scarce even back then, few observers would have doubted that Latin American countries had acquired a significant measure of independence.