Born in Blood & Fire (Introduction)

This is the book that my class is reading for Latin American Studies. So far, what I've gotten from the Introduction are a few things. One was that besides from proverty the reason why so many Latin Americans come to the United States is because of how so few in places like Brazil, Chile, and Columbia are able to emulate the lifestyle of the U.S. middle class. They want to be able to at least live the life of a middle class person and in these country not that many are able to experience that. To them this seems like wealth; like the middle class in the United States is wealth compared to what they have in other country. Also I think that the purpose of John Charles Chasteen wrote this book because he wants to put the aspects of a confrontation between, I think, the United States and Mexico because of the NAFTA. The aspects of the confrontation can be traced back to 1492, so that's is why the author wrote this book.