How Latin America Met the Arab World: Toward a Political Economy of Arab–Latin American Relations

Recent years have borne witness to an unprecedented expansion of political and economic ties between Latin America and the Arab world. Concurrently, a growing number of mostly Latin American scholars has sought to analyze the history, present state, and future prospects of these relations. This chapter systematically reviews this literature and delineates its contributions to our understanding of this emerging research area. Based on this analysis and several friendly critiques of this body of literature, this chapter argues that to advance our understanding of Arab–Latin American relations, scholars should adopt a political–economy approach that is able to shed light on the mix of political and economic interests that will continue to serve as the impetus for this rising axis of relations.