Gringo: A Radical Coming of Age in Latin America (Scribner)
Four decades ago Chesa Boudin's parents Kathy Boudin
and David Gilbert were making headlines as leaders of
the Weather Underground. At the age of nineteen, hop-
ing to discover how their politics fared in the living struggle
of the Third World, Chesa paid his first visit to Latin America.
His timing could not have been better: It was 1999 and Hugo
Chavez was just taking power in Venezuela, heralding sweep-
ing radical change across the subcontinent.
Over the next eight years Chesa crisscrossed the region on
journeys that form the raw material of this book. The stories
he relates are written from the ground up, woven from the
voices of ordinary Latin Americans. He never takes a plane
when a fifteen-hour bus ride in the company of unfettered
chickens is available.
Chesa Boudin is a twenty-eight year old Rhodes Scholar with degrees
from Oxfrord and Yale Universities. He has contributed to The Nation magazine and is the coauthor of The Venezuelan Revolution: 100 Questions and 100
Answers and the co-editor of Letters from Young Activists.
