Customer Reviews

The New World of the Gothic Fox: Culture and Economy in English and Spanish America

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This novel take on the comparative economic fortunes of the north and south should encourage other scholars to focus on questions of economic culture. Too much work in Latin American studies is carried out from within a structuralist paradigm, yielding the same stale conclusions. Veliz' insistence that we cannot overlook cultural factors is timely and apt.

The book is well written and meticulously documented.

This is an excellent book! It was written more than ten years ago by a Latin who is obviously an Anglophile. He goes to the origins of English and Spanish character traits, the origins of Latin American dislike of things U.S. and makes a very compelling case that those countries of Spanish origins, due to their heritage, have and will have a very hard time developing in our changing world. It is not politically correct but it is real. A must read for those trying to understand why everything south of the Rio Grande is so terrible.

For those interested, read Carlos Alberto Montaner and Octavio Paz, one Cuban the other Mexican (1990 Nobel Prize winner for literature, actually poetry) for similar views from authors who are not enamored of the Anglo-American world.