Moderated by Andrés Martinez, Los Angeles Times Editorial Page Editor

In his 1994 book Utopia Unarmed, Jorge Castañeda blended his academic pedigree–Princeton, the Sorbonne, a series of professorships at prominent universities–with his practical experience as a political activist and advisor to examine the failed movements of the Latin American left. The Los Angeles Times Book Review praised the work for its honesty, its lack of dogmatism and its success in “[restoring] direction to the Latin American left.” More than ten years later and after serving as Mexican President Vicente Fox’s foreign secretary, Castañeda visits Zócalo to reexamine Latin America’s left and its latest incarnations–including Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez and Mexican presidential candidate Andrés Manuel López Obrador–in a lecture followed by a discussion with Andrés Martinez.