Rethinking the Global Order: Latin America, China, and the U.S. Amid Transforming Economic and Political Paradigms

Mariano-Florentino (Tino) Cuéllar is the tenth president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an institution created by Andrew Carnegie in 1910 to advise policymakers, support diplomacy, and conduct independent research on international cooperation, conflict, and governance. A former justice of the Supreme Court of California, Cuéllar has served three U.S. presidential administrations at the White House and in federal agencies and was the Stanley Morrison Professor at Stanford University, where he held appointments in law, political science, and international affairs and led the university’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He has served on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board and the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board and chairs the board of the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation. 

Marisol Argueta is a Salvadoran lawyer, career diplomat, and international leader with over two decades of experience in foreign affairs and global cooperation. She currently serves as Senior Director and Head of Latin America at the World Economic Forum, where she leads regional initiatives focused on sustainable growth, public-private collaboration, and innovation. From 2008 to 2009, she was El Salvador’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, having previously held senior diplomatic roles including Director General of Foreign Policy, Minister Counselor at the Embassy in Washington, D.C., and Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations. She holds a law degree from Universidad Dr. José Matías Delgado and a postgraduate degree in Diplomacy from the University of Oxford, with additional studies at Harvard University and the International Peace Academy. Argueta de Barillas is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, a member of the Aspen Institute’s Central American Leadership Initiative, and has been recognized by multiple governments and institutions for her contributions to diplomacy, regional integration, and the advancement of women and youth. 

Pedro Henrique Batista Barbosa is a Brazilian career diplomat with a bachelor's degree in Law from PUC-Rio, a master’s degree in Diplomacy from the Diplomatic Academy Rio Branco Institute and a doctorate in international politics from Renmin University of China. He has published extensively about China-Brazil relations, with a focus on energy. He is the organizer of the book “Challenges and opportunities in the Brazil-Asia relationship in the perspective of young diplomats” (FUNAG) and author of the book “China, Brazil and Petroleum: the role of China in Brazil's transformation into an oil power” (Palgrave Macmillan). 

 Dr. Rebecca Bill Chavez is president and CEO of the Inter-American Dialogue. She has over 30 years of experience in academia, policymaking, and government service.  

Dr. Chavez served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs from 2013 until 2016, for which she was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service. Her areas of focus included expanding defense institution-building programs, shaping Defense Department contributions to President Obama’s Central America Strategy advancing U.S. security cooperation with Mexico and Colombia, and resetting defense relations with Argentina and Brazil.  

Prior to joining the Obama-Biden administration, Dr. Chavez was a tenured professor of political science at the United States Naval Academy, where she served on the Admissions Board and the Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate. Her research focused on democracy, the rule of law, and security, and she taught a wide variety of comparative politics and international relations courses. 

Dr. Chavez is the author of The Rule of Law in Nascent Democracies (Stanford University Press). Her work has appeared in edited volumes and scholarly journals, including The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics, Courts in Latin America (Cambridge University Press), Comparative Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, and The Journal of Latin American Studies. Her opinion pieces have been published in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and Defense One.  

Raised in Austin, Texas, Dr. Chavez received her MA and PhD in political science from Stanford University and her BA in public and international affairs from Princeton University. She is a member of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security (LCWINS) Steering Committee, the Princeton University Institute for Regional and International Studies Advisory Board, the Center for Media Integrity in the Americas Board, the Foreign Policy for America Advisory Board, and the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the recipient of multiple academic grants, including a Fulbright Scholarship.  

Enrique Dussel Peters has a Ph.D. in Economics at the University of Notre Dame (1996). Professor at the Graduate School of Economics, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) since 1993. Coordinator of the Center for Chinese-Mexican Studies (Cechimex) of the School of Economics at 
UNAM and of the Academic Network of Latin America and the Caribbean on China (Red ALCChina). Member of Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (level 3). Author of chapters and books on political economy, industrial organization, development, processes of segments of global value chains 
and the socioeconomic Latin America and Caribbean-China relationship in Spanish, German, English, Chinese, and Portuguese. His last book (2025): Latin America, China, and Great Power Competition. New Triangular Relationships (Lynne Rienner Publishers).

Mark Wu (伍人英) is the Director of the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University and the Henry L. Stimson Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he teaches international trade and international economic law. He recently returned to Harvard after serving as Senior Advisor in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. 

Prior to academia, Wu worked as an engagement manager for McKinsey & Co., where he focused on high-tech companies. He began his career as an economist and operations officer for the World Bank in China, working on environmental, urban development, health, and rural poverty issues.  

Wu received his J.D. from Yale Law School, after which he clerked on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and was an Academic Fellow at Columbia Law School. He received his M.Sc. in Development Economics from Oxford University, which he attended on a Rhodes Scholarship, and his A.B. summa cum laude in Social Studies and East Asian Studies from Harvard University.   

At Harvard, he has also served as a Faculty Co-Director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, and as a faculty affiliate at Harvard’s Asia Center, Center for the Environment, Center for International Development, East Asian Legal Studies, and the Harvard Environmental Economics Program. 

Steven Levitsky is David Rockefeller Professor of Latin American Studies and Professor of Government and Director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard.  He is Senior Fellow at the Kettering Foundation and a Senior Democracy Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. His research focuses on democratization and authoritarianism, political parties, and weak and informal institutions, with a focus on Latin America.   He is co-author (with Daniel Ziblatt) of How Democracies Die, which was a New York Times Best-Seller and was published in 30 languages, and Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point.    He has written or edited 11 other books, including Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: Argentine Peronism in Comparative Perspective (Cambridge University Press 2003), Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes after the Cold War (with Lucan Way) (Cambridge University Press, 2010), and Revolution and Dictatorship: The Violent Origins of Durable Authoritarianism (with Lucan Way) (Princeton University Press, 2022).   He and Lucan Way are currently working on a book on democratic resilience across the world. 

Professor Levitsky has written for New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Foreign Affairs, and The New Republic, and he has been a columnist for La Republica (Peru) and Folha de São Paulo (Brazil).