Michael Reid is one of the world’s leading analysts and commentators on Latin American affairs. He wrote the Bello column in The Economist (2014-2022) and was the magazine’s writer-at-large for Latin America, based in Lima. From 1999 until December 2013 he was The Economist’s Americas Editor responsible for coverage of Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada. He was previously the magazine’s correspondent in Brazil (1996-99) and Mexico and Central America (1990-93) and spent most of the 1980s based in Lima covering the Andean region for the Guardian and the BBC. He has written Special Reports for The Economist on Retailing (1995); Mercosur (1996); Latin American Business (1997); Brazil (1999); Colombia (2001); Argentina (2004); Mexico (2006); Spain (2008); Latin America at 200 (2010); and Cuba (2012).
His books include “Forgotten Continent: A History of the New Latin America” (Second edition, 2017) and “Brazil: The Troubled Rise of a Global Power” (2014), both published by Yale University Press. His new book “Spain: The Trials and Triumphs of a Modern European Country” published by Yale in March 2023.
Michael Reid was a columnist for Poder magazine (Mexico) from 2001 to 2013 and is a regular contributor to Valor Econômico, Brazil’s financial daily newspaper. He studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford University. He was awarded the Maria Moors Cabot Prize in 2003 for outstanding reporting on Latin America by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He received Brazil’s Ordem Nacional do Cruzeiro do Sul in 2000 for his writing on Brazil and the Mercosur region. He speaks both Spanish and Portuguese fluently. In 2024, he was awarded the El Mundo International Journalism Prize.
He speaks frequently on Latin American affairs to business, academic and public-policy audiences. He has testified about the region to the Foreign Relations Committee of the US Senate and to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the UK House of Commons.