Journalist Jon Lee Anderson began his career as a correspondent in the 1980s. His early publications were long chronicles of his travels through the Amazon jungle. Later, he became a war correspondent, covering conflicts worldwide, including Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Angola, Somalia, Sudan, Mali, and Liberia. Anderson also could not miss one of the most pivotal events in the Middle East — the fall of Bashar al-Assad's regime. Over the years, he has witnessed immense brutality, but the level of institutionalized sadism he encountered in Syria at the end of 2024 shocked even him. Anderson wrote his stories from various corners of the globe, but Latin America has always been at the heart of his work. "The New Yorker," where Anderson has been a contributing writer for nearly three decades, has published his articles on the gangs of Rio de Janeiro, the earthquakes in Haiti, the slums of Caracas, and an isolated tribe in Peru. He has a keen sense of the region's "political weather" and its internal dynamics, writing not only about the daily lives of Latin Americans or the crises unfolding in specific countries, but also delving into comprehensive profiles of politicians. Anderson, for example, has written about Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, and Augusto Pinochet. He believes that not every politician has charisma, but he is particularly interested in those who understand the understand the use of power. Journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk talks to Anderson about what has left a lasting impression on him in Syria today, Latin America's resentment toward the United States, how to persuade leaders of the region to support Ukraine, Argentina's eccentric president Javier Milei, and the last fascist, Augusto Pinochet.
