From Enron to Evo captures the central conflict and question that has defined Latin America for much of its history: What should “development” look like? And who should decide? On the one hand, Latin American oligarchies, multinational corporations, and the US government have continued to push a neoliberal orthodoxy that relies on an almost religious commitment to capitalist markets in order to preserve pro-growth models of development. At the core of this project lies the extraction of hydrocarbons on an increasingly massive scale, a process that both feeds global consumption and ensures the continued flow of profit from Latin America to the global North. On the other hand, the Left has robustly challenged this model, instead placing the continued extraction of hydrocarbons under the control of a progressive state in order to ensure that energy sector royalties remain in the region. Natural resources are still extracted, often through partnerships with...

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