Redentores: Ideas y poder en latinoamerica / Redeemers: Ideas and Power in LatinAmerica (in Spanish) - Enrique Krauze

A través de estas doce biografías sutilmente entrelazadas, Enrique Krauze esclarece el dilema central de América Latina, la tensión entre el ideal de la democracia y la tentación, siempre presente, del mesianismo político.

ENGLISH DESCRIPTION

The protagonists of this book are ideas, the ideas embodied in people with lives touched by power, history, and revolution; but also by love, friendship, and family. Real lives, not walking ideas.
                           
In this book we read about liberation leaders and prophets, such as the heroic Martí, the idealist Rodó, Vasconcelos from Educator, and the pro-Indian advocate Mariategui. Poet and essayist Octavio Paz is used as a central figure since his life spans the entire century and whose family roots capture the whole modern revolutionary tradition. Just like Plutarch and his Parallel Lives, the author immediately draws the profiles of Eva Peron and Che Guevara, compares Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa’s political and moral attitudes, and explains the historical connection between theologian Samuel Ruiz and revolutionary Subcomandante Marcos. Finally, it connects Hugo Chávez with the caudillo tradition.
 
Through these twelve subtly interwoven biographies, Enrique Krauze sheds a light on the central dilemma in Latin America, the always-present tension between the ideal of democracy and temptation.