Editorial Letter

Abstract

Our third issue of Latin American Policy (LAP) for 2025 includes 6 studies dealing with current issues in the region. Raphael Leao and Luis F. Goulao provide a new framework for analyzing rural development in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). Meanwhile, Lucas Sudbrack examines how perceptions of China in South America are influenced by political ideology in larger and more diverse economies, by perceived social class in market-oriented nations, and by environmental and extractivist concerns in resource-dependent countries.

Carolina Betancur and Claudio Parés argue that gender and incumbency play critical roles in fundraising and in the electoral process, contributing to a gender disadvantage. By studying the 2021 Chilean Constitutional Convention election, a process that had no incumbency effects and which enforced both entrance and exit parity, they conclude that there are effective ways to promote gender parity not only in the election for which they were designed but also in subsequent elections.

Daniel Egaña et al. constructed a matrix of public policy recommendations to improve food environments in Chile. The results show the population is aware of the issue, is clear about the solutions to the problems that affect it, and realizes that what was proposed requires political will on the part of both local and national authorities.

Carlos Moreno-Jaimes and Alfonso Rojas-Alvarez conducted an online survey involving graduate students preparing to influence public policymaking in the United States and Mexico. It revealed that polarized partisans in the two nations have contrasting viewpoints about the problems of the neighboring country and about the role that their own country should play in the binational relationship.

Using data from the National Center of Historic Memory and Civil Registration and Vital Statistics of Colombia, Harold Mera León and Camilo Echandía examine the effects of regional violence on neonatal health outcomes. Their study reveals a significant correlation between Colombian Armed Conflict dynamics and increased adverse outcomes, particularly in urban areas, from 2003 to 2007.

This issue also includes an Opinion article, authored by three distinguished Latin American researchers—Guadalupe González, Mónica Hirst, and Carlos Luján. They argue that Donald Trump uses LAC to test its capacity for command, subordination, and extortion by dictating unilaterally specific agendas such as migration, security, border control, trade, and investment while ignoring issues related to the environment, energy transition, international cooperation, and technology.

Finally, we include two review essays. The first is written by Jialin Shi, on Catalina Montoya Londoño's book titled Shaping Peacebuilding in Colombia: International Frames and Spatial Transformation, published by Bristol University in 2023. The other covers the important topic of North American regional integration, with a review by Abelardo Rodríguez Sumano of the editors' Eric Hershberg and Tom Long compilation of texts published by University of New Mexico, North American Regionalism: Stagnation, Decline, or Renewal?

Isidro Morales, editor in chief, is retired professor at the School of Social Sciences and Government at Tecnológico de Monterrey, and an external fellow of the Mexico–United States Center at Rice University's Baker Institute.