A Brief Introduction to Latin America

Mexico – The War on Drugs, 1492-Present

In this course, Dr Benjamin Smith (University of Warwick) gives an account of the drug trade in Mexico from the pre-colonial period to the present day. After a brief history of the South American continent, including an account of the use of psychotropic and other drugs by the aboriginal inhabitants of the continent, the course goes to explore how and why the Spanish attempted to prohibit the use of drugs after their arrival from the early 16th century onwards, and how prohibitions on drugs, and the fight against the illegal production and distribution of drugs has continued into the 20th and 21st centuries.

A Brief Introduction to Latin America

In this module, we provide a brief introduction to the history of Latin America, beginning with the native civilizations of the Aztecs and the Incas, and describing the arrival of the Spanish from the late 15th century. In the second half of the module, we think about the popular rebellions that characterised the South American continent in the 19th and 20th centuries, including the revolutions in Mexico (1910-20), Bolivia (1950s) and Nicaragua (1960s-90).