Chesa Boudin (born 21 August 1980) is an American lawyer, writer, and lecturer specializing in the U.S. criminal justice system and Latin American policy.

Note to the Reader
1
Chicago Boys Chile
31
Crisis of Currencies Argentina
59
Into the Amazon Brazil
82
In the Presidents Palace Venezuela
104
Ten Fingers for Chávez Venezuela
132
Pilgrimage of the Displaced Colombia
149
Of Indians and Oil Ecuador
171
Bolivian Hearts and Mines Bolivia
190
Back in Caracas Venezuela
209
Afterword
222

“My four parents had always decried the labor abuses perpetuated around the world.” Four? Yes. When Boudin’s radical Jewish parents were imprisoned in New York from the early 1980s, he was raised in Chicago by Weathermen William Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Over the last decade, the award-winning Rhodes and Rotary Scholar has interrupted his academic studies to travel to 25 countries across Latin America, and this gripping narrative weaves together his personal journey with his acute, on-the-ground political observation. There is no self-importance, no simplistic message, always the wry awareness that he is the privileged tourist gringo in his cargo pants and multipocketed vest, even as he witnesses ecological devastation, economic crises, and the struggle of the indigenous movements. Down a mine in Bolivia, he is reminded of his regular prison visits to his parents. Even readers who skip the detailed local politics from Venezuela to Colombia will be held by the broader issues, as he confronts the difference between need and want, the value of privacy, the luxury of space.