José Luis León-Manríquez is a Professor of International and East Asian Affairs at the Department of Politics and Culture of the Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (UAM) in Mexico City. He obtained his B.A. in International Relations and his M.A in Latin American Studies at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). He holds a M.A. and a Ph.D. in Political Science from Columbia University, New York.

Luis Felipe Alvarez is a doctoral candidate in Geography at University of California Los Angeles. He received his MA in Geography at UCLA in 2011 and holds postgraduate diplomas in Regional Development (2008) and Geographic Information Systems (2009) from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. He specializes in political economic geography and his research examines the economic, legal and geopolitical implications of technological change for the creation of markets and their associated regulatory regimes. He is a former a Fulbright-Garcia Robles doctoral fellow and a current CONACYT- UC MEXUS grantee. He has participated in numerous conferences and workshops in the United States, Mexico and the Netherlands.

León-Manríquez was a diplomat at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs where he was appointed Deputy Director of the Matías Romero Institute for Diplomatic Studies. He has been advisor to the ministers of Foreign Affairs and Health and to the Presidential Council of National Security in Mexico. He has conducted consultancy projects for the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Mexican Agency for International Development Cooperation (AMEXCID).

He has been visiting scholar in several Mexican and foreign universities, such as University of California San Diego (USA), the Université du Québec à Montréal (Canada), the University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Costa Rica), and the King Mongut’s University of Science and Technology (Thailand). He has lectured worldwide on economic development and international relations in East Asia and Latin America. He is a member of the China-Latin America Working Group of the Inter-American Dialogue (IAD), Washington DC and of the Task Force on East Asia and Latin America sponsored by Claremont McKenna College and Soka University of America in California.

He has published 10 books and more than 100 articles and book chapters. Some of his recent books are:

• José Luis León-Manríquez and Theresa Moyo (editors), The Global Financial and Economic Crisis in the South: Impact and Responses. Dakar, Senegal: CODESRIA, forthcoming, 2014.
• Adrian H. Hearn and José Luis León-Manríquez (editors), China Engages Latin America. Tracing the Trajectory. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2011. https://www.rienner.com/uploads/4e0cdfe81dd79.pdf
• Francisco Haro, José Luis León and Juan José Ramírez, Historia de las Relaciones Internacionales de México, 1821-2010. Asia. Mexico City: Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores, 2011. http://www.sre.gob.mx/acervo/images/libros/RI/vol_6_asia.pdf
• José Luis León-Manríquez (editor), Historia Mínima de Corea, Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 2009. http://libros.colmex.mx/index.php/grandes-proyectos-2010-2011/item/historia-minima-de-corea-2

Articles and book chapters:

• “Trade Issues and Beyond: Mexican Perceptions on Contemporary China”. In Latin American Policy, Volume 4, Number 1, June 2013. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/lamp.12005/pdf
• “Managing the Great Recession in South Korea and Mexico: economic institutions, domestic market and regional trade”. In Christopher M. Dent y Jorn Dosch (editors), The Asia-Pacific Regionalism and the Global System Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012. http://www.e-elgar.com/bookentry_main.lasso?id=14888
• “Similar Policies, Different Outcomes: Two Decades of Economic Reforms in North Korea and Cuba”. In Academic Papers Series on Korea, Korea Economic Institute, Washington, DC, Volume 6, Number 4, April 2011. http://www.keia.org/publication/similar-policies-different-outcomes-two-decades-economic-reforms-north-korea-and-cuba
• With Melba Falck Reyes, “Mexico’s East Asia Strategy”. In Jorn Dosch and Olaf Jacob (editors), Asia and Latin America: political, economic and multilateral relations, London and New York: Routledge, 2010. http://www.amazon.com/Asia-Latin-America-Multilateral-Contemporary/dp/0415556503

Read the article:

LEON-MANRIQUEZ, Jose; ALVAREZ, Luis F.. Mao’s steps in Monroe’s backyard: towards a United States-China hegemonic struggle in Latin America?. Rev. bras. polít. int., Brasília , v. 57, n. spe, 2014 . Available from <http://www.scielo.br/article_plus.php?pid=S0034-73292014000300009&tlng=en&lng=en&gt;. access on 18 Oct. 2014. http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/0034-7329201400202.