ABSTRACT
As one of the first comprehensive academic pieces dealing with the Latin American left, Utopia Unarmed (Castañeda 1993) became a classic reference for those studying Latin American politics, and especially those interested in the Latin American left. Written at a time of economic, social, and political distress in the region, Utopia Unarmed concluded with a diagnosis of the Latin American left-adequate for the beginning of the 1990sand a prognosis for the years to follow. The recent surge of the left in Latin America calls for a necessary endeavor: revisiting the analysis in Utopia Unarmed. Many things happened in Latin America since 1993 that changed both intra-country and inter-country dynamics. In more than one way, the Latin America that Utopia Unarmed analyzed has undergone profound changes, some of them unforeseeable a decade and a half ago.
