Russia and Latin America: Old and New Paradigms Vladimir Rouvinski, Icesi University There are some political figures and experts who like to think of the beginning of the 21st century as the onset of a new era in relations between Russia and Latin America 1 . In fact, in former times it would have been impossible to imagine such an impressive number of high-level visits by Russian officials to the region and by Latin American leaders to Russia as between 2000 and 2013, when Russian Presidents, Prime-Ministers and Minister of Foreign Affairs would fly a dozen of times to Latin America. Additionally, in many cases, the first decade of the 21st century was marked by the first ever visits by Heads of State and, in other cases, meetings took place after up to a half century break in activities at the high level. The visits in November 2008 by Russian strategic bombers and navy ships to Venezuela, Cuba, and Nicaragua made it to the top of the world news headlines. From a comparative perspective, the trade between 1 In his article published recently by Clarin (Argentina), Folha de Sao Paulo (Brazil) and Observador (Uruguay), Minster Lavrov announced ‘The New Stage of Development of Russian-Latin American Relations’. As for experts’ opinion, there are many academic publications by the Institute for Latin America of the Russian Academy of Sciences. For the opinions in the academy outside Russia, see, for example, Smith, Mark (2009), “Russia & Latin America: Competition in Washington’s ‘Near Abroad’?”, Defense Academy of the United Kingdom. The latest addition to this list is “Russia and Latin America: From Nation-State to Society of States” by Marvin L. Astrada and Félix E. Martín just released by Palgrave on April 26 this year. Russia and Latin American countries is thriving: in some areas, like the arms sales, which showed a nine hundred per cent growth in less than five years 2 , the achievements have been truly astonishing. Further evidence of the existence of a new level of relations between Moscow and its newly discovered friends in the New World is the symbolically important abandoning of the visa regime between Russia and the overwhelming majority of Latin American countries. And still, for some other experts it is rather unclear whether Russian contact with Latin America represents a broad, long-term commitment. Perhaps the truth about the Russian “return” to Latin America is to be found between the two opposing points of view. This is because, on the one hand, it is impossible to deny the existence of strong evidence of the Russian advance into the formerly taboo territory. On the other hand, are the above-mentioned developments sufficient to set off the alarm that “The Russians are back!”, as some government officials in Washington have done in the recent past? In other words, in order to demystify Russia-Latin America relations, it is necessary to answer the following questions: Have the Russians, in fact, returned to Latin America? And if so, why are they back? How long will their presence in this part of the world last, and what are the factors that would be likely to convince the Russian 2 Between 2004 and 2008. In 2008 and 2009, Russia exceeded the United States in volumes of arms sales to Latin American countries (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).