Classical liberals live a lonely political existence at the best of times. Some climates, however, are less hospitable than others.
Contemporary Latin America fits squarely into the less-than-friendly category. Certainly, there were long periods in the nineteenth century in which liberal ideas exercised considerable influence throughout the region after the end of colonial rule. By the 1890s, however, politics south of the Rio Grande were moving in decidedly illiberal directions. Over the next 100 years, populisms of left and right, reactionary caudillos, socialist movements, Marxist dictators, and indigenous ideologies flooded the Latin American world.
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