Latin American Foreign relations remains a vastly underresearched field.  At its center is certainly not the history of imperialism.  Neither is it a naïve celebration of U.S. contributions to the region.  It is the history of a continent where Latin Americans, Iberians, Africans, Dutch, British, U.S. Americans, Arabs, Japanese, Russians, Indians, Germans, Chinese, Jews, Christians and Moslems encounter each other.  Their interactions continue to create a unique historical palimpsest.  What that means remains to be discovered and to be debated.  Men, women, believers, soldiers and traders meet, mix, and create vibrant new worlds. I want to learn and tell about them.