Speaker Biographies
January 27, 2006
Peter DeShazo was named director of the CSIS Americas Program in September 2004. Previously, he was deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs. During his career in the U.S. Foreign Service, Ambassador DeShazo served as deputy U.S. permanent representative to the Organization of American States (OAS), where he was elected chair of the OAS Committee on Administration and Budget. He also directed the Office of Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs of the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs at the State Department and served at U.S. embassies and consulates in La Paz, Medellin, Santiago, Panama City, Caracas, and Tel Aviv. Dr. DeShazo received his B.A. from Dartmouth College and Ph.D. in Latin American history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and did postgraduate study at the Universidad Católica de Chile. He was a Fulbright scholar, Reynolds scholar, and Ford fellow and is the author of Urban Workers and Labor Unions in Chile, 1902-1927 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1983) and articles on the industrial relations and social history of Latin America.
Mark Falcoff is a resident scholar at AEI specializing in Latin American issues. He has taught at the universities of Illinois, Oregon, and California (Los Angeles), as well as the U.S. Foreign Service Institute and the NATO Defense College in Rome. His books include Modern Chile, 1970-1989: A Critical History (Transaction Publications, 1989); Small Countries, Large Issues (AEI Press, 1984); Panama’s Canal (AEI Press, 1998); and most recently, Cuba The Morning After: Confronting Castro’s Legacy (AEI Press, 2003). He was an international observer in Venezuela during the 1998 elections.
Desmond Lachman is a resident fellow at AEI whose research focuses on global currencies, major emerging market economies, and the role of the multilateral lending institutions. He writes extensively on topics such as economic policy, fund arrangements, monetary reform, import restrictions, and exchange rates. Before joining AEI, he was a managing director and chief emerging market economic strategist at Salomon Smith Barney. Previously, he was deputy director in the Policy Development and Review Department at the International Monetary Fund.
Roger F. Noriega is a visiting fellow coordinating AEI’s program on Western Hemisphere issues. Twice appointed by President George W. Bush (and confirmed by the U.S. Senate) and with a ten-year career on Capitol Hill, Mr. Noriega’s breadth of experience and contacts offers strategic vision and practical insight on the Americas. As assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Mr. Noriega managed a 3,000-person team of professionals in Washington and fifty diplomatic posts to design and implement political and economic strategies in Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean. As U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Mr. Noriega coordinated complex and sensitive multilateral diplomacy in a thirty-four-member international organization to bolster OAS efforts to promote trade, fight illicit drugs, and defend democracy. Mr. Noriega has held various other positions as well: senior policy advisor with the U.S. Mission to the OAS; various program management and public affairs positions with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of State; press secretary and foreign policy advisor for U.S. Representative Robert Whittaker (R-Kansas); and research assistant for the secretary of state of Kansas.
Julia E. Sweig is the Nelson and David Rockefeller Senior Fellow and director of the Latin America studies program at the Council on Foreign Relations. Her book, Friendly Fire: Misadventures Abroad and the Making of Anti-America, will be published by PublicAffairs in April 2006. She is the author of numerous scholarly articles, opinion pieces, and congressional testimonies on Cuba, Colombia, Venezuela, Latin America, and American foreign policy and has also directed several Council on Foreign Relations reports on the Andean region and on Cuba. Dr. Sweig’s Inside the Cuban Revolution: Fidel Castro and the Urban Underground (Harvard University Press, 2002) received the American Historical Association’s Herbert Feis Award for best book of the year by an independent scholar. Dr. Sweig serves on the editorial board of Foreign Affairs en Espańol and has been a consultant on Latin American affairs for the Aspen Institute’s Congressional Program since 1999. She frequently provides commentary for the major television, radio, and print media, speaking in both English and Spanish. She holds a B.A. from the University of California (Santa Cruz) and a M.A. and a Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
