A Message from the Editor Seeing Ourselves in Others: How Latin America Can Help the United States Know Itself

Abstract

Dear Readers: I learned a lesson during the preparation of the last issue, my first as editor of the Journal of Global South Studies. The lesson was this: the amount
of time that passes between the submission of this essay and its printing and distribution is significant enough that the topic at hand might seem a bit dated by
the time it reaches you. Such was the case with my comments on developments in Venezuela, which were red-hot in the news cycle at the time I submitted my initial draft, and absent from the news by the time the issue was out. This does not mean the relevance of the issues had disappeared. Quite the contrary. The
grim realities I described have not been resolved just because they have disappeared from the ever-churning news mill, and the underlying causes of those realities are even more resistant to change. Nevertheless, the point that the news cycle moves very, very fast was not lost on me.