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• Jorge Castenada

Jorge Castenada

Jorge Castaneda is one of the most prolific socialist writers in Latin America and has written numerous books and articles for the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Time Magazine, and Newsweek Magazine. As visiting professor at Columbia, Harvard, Princeton and other Ivy League schools he has earned the reputation as one of the most articulate leftist in the whole of the Americas. He completed his undergraduate work at Stanford University and received his Ph.D. from the Sarbonne in Paris, France.

In his most popular book “Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara,” Jorge G. Castaneda reconstructs the complicated life of Argentine revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, explaining how Che ultimately transcended ideology and politics to become a counter-cultural hero and idol of La Raza and many American college students.

Jorge Castañeda, who is read by policy-makers around the globe, has been a senior associate of the Carnegie Institute for International Peace in Washington and also teaches Economics and International Affairs at the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico and in addition has an appointment as Professor of Political Science and Latin American Studies at New York University. It is not clear whether he will resign these positions to devote full time to his new assignment.

Jorge Castañeda is the son of Mexican ex-Foreign Minister Jorge Castañeda Sr. who died at age 76 in 1997. His father bolstered Mexico’s role as regional leader. During his three-year tenure, Castañeda Sr. turned Mexican foreign policy southward, nurturing ties with Central America and moving away from U.S.-centered initiatives. But lack of American support doomed his most ambitious project: a 1982 peace plan for war-torn Nicaragua.