Redeemers

In Redeemers, acclaimed historian Enrique Krauze presents the major ideas that have formed the modern Latin American political mind during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries-and looks closely at how these ideas were expressed in the lives of influential revolutionaries, thinkers, poets, and novelists. Here are the Cuban JosÉ MartÍ; the Argentines Che Guevara and Evita PerÓn; political thinkers like Mexico?s JosÉ Vasconcelos; and the writers JosÉ Enrique RodÓ, Mario Vargas Llosa, Octavio Paz, and Gabriel GarcÍa MÁrquez. Redeemersalso highlights Mexico?s Samuel Ruiz and Subcomandante Marcos, as well as Venezuela?s president Hugo ChÁvez, and their influence on contemporary Latin America. In his brilliant, deeply researched history, Enrique Krauze uses the range of these extraordinary lives to illuminate the struggle that has defined Latin American history: an ever-precarious balance between the ideal of democracy and the temptation of political messianism.

Enrique Krauze is the author of twenty books, including Mexico: Biography of Power. He has written for The New York Times, The New Republic, Dissent magazine, The Washington Post, and The New York Review of Books. Krauze lives in Mexico City.