As Dynamite to a Popgun

“The most consistent voice on Latin America in US liberal-left circles.”

“Beals’s florid language and unashamedly gringo outlook seem quaint and ethnocentric from this end of the century.”

““Beals also captured the minutiae of poverty, political oppression and the imperial hand in terse, almost cinematic prose.””

““He communicated not contempt but admiration for Latin Americans who were trying to remake their countries, and targeted with unforgiving precision the mercenary, vulgar North Americans he found everywhere looking for an easy dollar. After 1945, opposition to empire often amounted to no more than this: speaking out on behalf of those who were different. During the Cold War years, Beals was almost the only writer of repute outside the quarantined left who refused to bow to the new anti-Communist orthodoxy and still asserted the traditional anti-imperialism, though his readership shrank…””