From FIU:
Eduardo A. Gamarra received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Pittsburgh in 1987. He has been affiliated with Florida International University since 1986 where he is currently a tenured-full professor in the department of politics and international relations. Between 1994 and 2007 he served as director of FIU’s Latin American and Caribbean Center (LACC) a federally supported National Resource Center for Foreign Language and Area Studies. At LACC he also co founded and edited Hemisphere, a magazine on Latin American and Caribbean affairs. Under Gamarra’s leadership, LACC became one of the fastest growing and most dynamic Latin American and Caribbean Studies programs in the United States.
Gamarra is the author, co-author, and editor of several books including Revolution and Reaction: Bolivia 1964-1985 (Transaction Publishers, 1988); three volumes of the Latin America and Caribbean Contemporary Record (Holmes and Meier Press); Latin American Political Economy in the Age of Neoliberal Reform (Lyne Rienner Publishers 1994); Democracy Markets and Structural Reform in Latin America: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, and Mexico (Lyne Rienner Publishers, 1995); Centro América 2020: Un nuevo modelo de desarrollo regional (Nueva Sociedad, 2002), and Entre la Droga y la Democracia (Freiderich Ebert Foundation, 1994). The author of nearly one hundred articles on Latin America and the Caribbean, he has testified several times in the US Congress on Latin America and Caribbean issues affecting US policy.
Gamarra is currently completing a book on his native Bolivia that examines US-Bolivia relations and that country’s experience with democratization since the mid 1980s and the coming to power of Evo Morales in 2005. He is also currently editing two books. With David Twigg, he is editing a book on US Security Policy toward Latin America and the Caribbean under the Obama Administration. And, with Diana Pardo, he is editing a book in Spanish on the state of the counternarcotics policy in the Western Hemisphere.
Over the course of his career Gamarra has been a consultant to multilateral agencies, the Library of Congress, foundations, non-governmental institutions, executive branch agencies, legislatures, judiciaries, police institutions, and armed forces throughout the hemisphere. His consultancies range from constitutional reform and political party reform to political campaign management in the Andes, the Caribbean, Central America, and the Southern Cone. He served as a consultant to USAID evaluating that agency’s democratic institution building programs in Bolivia. Gamarra was the principal consultant to the United Nations Development Program for Bolivia’s 2002 Human Development Report, which was selected as the best report worldwide by the UNDP. Also for UNDP, Gamarra was the lead consultant that evaluated that agency’s programs throughout the Western Hemisphere. Gamarra has also been a consultant to major transnational companies on issues related to Latin American and Caribbean political and economic trends. Since the late 1990s, Gamarra has served as campaign and foreign policy adviser to Dr. Leonel Fernandez Reyna, the current president of the Dominican Republic.
Gamarra has worked closely with media outlets including radio, television and newsprint. He has been quoted in papers ranging from the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal to El Tiempo de Bogota, El Mercurio de Chile, Clarin de Buenos Aires, and La Razon de La Paz, Bolivia. Gamarra often serves as political analyst for CNN en Español, Univision, Telemundo, Caracol, RCN, and Al Jazeera on Latin American and Caribbean issues. He has appeared on programs such as Nightline, The McNeil Hour, ABC News, NBC News and CNN in English. He is also regularly interviewed in radio programs including the BBC and National Public Radio.
Finally, Gamarra is a co-founder of Newlink Research, a consulting firm dedicated to electoral and public policy campaigns throughout Latin America. Since 2006 and in partnership with Colombia’s Centro Nacional de Consultoría, Gamarra has been involved in the Iberoamerican Governability Barometer, a major survey of Latin America, the Caribbean and the Iberian Peninsula. As a result of these experiences, his major future project is a book on campaigns, elections and public policy in Latin America and the Caribbean.