Archive
Browse all 4 articles across governance, urban systems, ecologies, and latitudes.
Why Hispaniola Kept Changing Flags: Spain, France, and the Road to Haiti
The island we now call Haiti and the Dominican Republic did not change hands because monarchs were whimsical. It moved with the tides of European war, sugar profits, and administrative exhaustion. This essay untangles the geography, the names, and the power ledger behind Hispaniola's shifting flags.
The Spanish Echo in the Non-Spanish Caribbean
Spanish heritage did not disappear from the English-, French-, and Dutch-speaking Caribbean; it migrated into other rooms of the house. This essay maps the living echo through Trinidad's parang, Jamaica's Spanish Town, Belize's bilingual markets, and the ABC islands' Papiamento—arguing that these traces are not antiquarian curiosities but working infrastructures of cooperation.
The Accidental Foundry: How Napoleon Broke Spanish America and Forged Latin America
Napoleon did not set out to invent Latin America. He wanted Europe, and the way to Europe ran through Madrid. Yet in toppling the Spanish monarchy, seizing Louisiana and flipping it to the United States, wrecking Spain's fleet, and turning sovereignty into a traveling mask with no face behind it, he shattered the imperial grammar that had ordered the New World for three centuries. From the shards came juntas, constitutions, caudillos, republics—an atlas of new futures. If Spain's empire died under French boots, Latin America learned to walk in the noise.
Neighbors at Arm's Length
The double standard that warps U.S. policy toward Latin America—and how to fix it. Europe gets the Rules for Allies; Latin America gets the Rules for Neighbors. Here's a field guide to ending the whiplash.