The Myth of Two Americas

“Why is Latin America so different from the United States?” James Sanders has been asked this countless times throughout his career as a historian. As a leading expert on the region, he has often confronted the belief that Latin America is fundamentally distinct from, or inferior to, its northern neighbor. This myth—that there are two Americas, one wealthy and democratic, the other poor and autocratic—has proven surprisingly durable, even among experts. Sanders shows that this misconception of a hemisphere divided is fundamentally false: the countries of the New World have much more in common than not.

Spanning centuries, from precolonial Indigenous societies to the present day, The Myth of Two Americas shatters many common assumptions about both halves of the hemisphere. Each chapter debunks a major myth of difference between Latin America and the United States, showing that the most important historical experiences—colonialism, slavery, racism, the ascendancy of democracy, dirty wars, and social movements for liberty and equality—occurred across the New World. The greatest myth is that there are two distinct Americas, instead of a hemisphere with a shared history and an increasingly shared destiny.