Latin America's Trump Whisperer

The year was 1967, and worried presidents from across the Americas gathered at a hotel in Punta del Este, Uruguay to discuss a region in crisis. The twin shocks of the Cuban revolution and the Vietnam War were sowing unrest throughout the hemisphere. Ernesto “Che” Guevara was in the mountains of Bolivia, trying to incite a peasant revolt (he would be killed six months later). Elsewhere, street protests, financial chaos and coup-mongering generals were the rule of the day.

Peru was in particular trouble, its fragile government mere days away from potentially defaulting on a $40...

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