In my third year of college, I took a semester off from school, and I traveled overland from Arizona to the end of the road in southern Chile, hitch-hiking most of the way. That impromptu journey, covering the length and breadth of no less than 12 countries, marked the first phase of my abiding love affair with Latin America. I spent most of my final year of school doing anthropological field work in Colombia, and after I graduated, I stayed, for several more years, shuttling between Colombia...