Iberoamerica 2017 № 1

When Donald Trump took office in the White House, all his opponents not only in the United States but also abroad were sounding alarms. His standpoints announced during the presidential campaign: to concentrate efforts on the internal problems, to cut foreign investments and to abandon the Trans-Atlantic and Trans-Pacific Trade and Investment Partnership completely change American pre-existing foreign economic and foreign policy priorities and provoke other countries of the world to readjust their policy. The Latin American countries are not the last ones to be concerned, especially, Mexico due to their location in the area of influence of the USA. The changes to be expected in the relations between USA and Latin America are the main topics of the opening paper of this issue: “Trump Effect and Latin America” by Petr Yakovlev. The author comes to the conclusion that Latin American countries in these new circunstances will be forced to re-direct a part of their trade and economic relations to other extra regional countries.

The entire section of the related articles under heading “Domestic and Regional Conflicts” concerns political, territorial, migration and other conflicts and ways of their solution in different Latin American countries. The first article by Victor Semenov examines the internal conflict around the “Bolivarian project”. In the author's opinion, although this project has reached its limits and its further development brings nothing else but the escalation of the conflict between the opposition and the government, the president of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro will hold the reins of power until 2019 at least. It is followed by Natalya Kudeyarova's paper focused on the illegal migration and related criminalization of the transit migration countries. The objective and subjective reasons for illegal migration and its consequences such as social conflicts, security threat, escalation of national and international confrontation are analyzed by the author. The next paper by Ekaterina Kosevich deals with new Mexico's Security and Anti-Crime Strategy of President Enrique Peña Nieto. The author concludes that this strategy did not change a lot in the country during four years of its implementation and as for results, they don't differ essentially from the strategy of the former president Felipe Calderon. The title of last article of this section is “The Territorial Trap: Venezuela-Guyana relations” by Dmitriy Rozental. The author analyzes different stages of the territorial dispute characterized by either its attenuation or aggravation. He makes the point that there is no ground for expectations that the conflict will be solved soon because of its protracted nature and it is frequently used by the parties as an instrument to achieve the internal political outcome.

In the section “Political portrait” Emil Dabagian describes the political career of the President of Uruguay Tabare Vazquez. He is shown as an extraordinary personality who has guided the national development into the center-left political trend; as a politician, who has fostered “development within the paradigm combining the sustainable economic growth with individual care for the citizens' interests”. This article was admitted for publication in our journal on the eve of the official visit of Tabare Vazquez to Russia in February of the current year.

At the end of the issue, there is review by Anatoly Borovkov about the book “Portugal: history of the political modernization” by Nailya Yakovleva (Moscow, ILA RAN, 2016, 260 pages).

IBEROAMERICA Nо. 1, 2017 (january - march)