This course grounds students in the foundations of US – Latin American relations through the Cold War in order to guide a better understanding of the controversies of today, from immigration to drug policy to Venezuela to trade relations. This is a true seminar course, with students using diverse readings, often with opposing viewpoints, to engage in debate and informed analysis in class. Students will explore how is it that conflict between the United States and the former Soviet Union lived out more intensively in Latin America with extensive military intervention, covert operations, and diplomatic isolation, even though Soviet intervention never threatened Latin America (save a moment in Cuba as it did in Berlin, Korea, Afghanistan, Africa and elsewhere). Students will trace the evolution from the Cold War to the Drug War, through civil conflicts in Central America and Colombia, through to today’s migration crisis in Venezuela and security and immigration crisis in Central America.

This course will advance student learning on labor markets in developing countries and examine the range of policies that can be employed to improve employment outcomes and human capital development. The course will focus not only labor market policies but also on more integrated policies linked with labor markets such as social policy and economic development. Active labor market polices – job finding/intermediation services, training, and wage subsidies in particular – are being adapted in developing countries to improve employment outcomes, in some cases with better performance than in the advanced nations. Latin America has had particular success in youth training which requires, not training for training's sake, but demand-based training that leads to employment or a return to school.

This course will enable students to analyze, critique and apply a rethinking of social, economic and labor market policies to distinct developing country contexts examining in particular on how or whether these policies can support the poor towards better employment as a principal exit to poverty. Students will be analyzing the principal literature and studies in this emerging field and discussing the performance of these policies in distinct country contexts as this field defies model answers given such different contexts of high informality, urban/rural-driven economies, high youth unemployment or idleness or outmigration, to name a few factors.