Allen Wells is the Roger Howell, Jr. Professor of History at Bowdoin College. Originally from New York, he received his M.A. and Ph.D. in history at the State University of New York at Stony Brook and his B.A. in History and Latin American Studies from the State University of New York at Binghamton. Wells’ scholarship has focused on modern Mexican history, especially Yucatán. His most recent book is Tropical Zion: General Trujillo, FDR and the Jews of Sosúa (Duke University Press, 2009). He offers a range of courses in colonial and modern Latin American history, including a seminar on the Cuban Revolution, and has done research on the Cuban sugar economy during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 2000, he traveled to the island with a group of Maine educators during the midst of the Elian González crisis. They were there when Attorney General Janet Reno ordered U.S. marshals to storm the home of Elian’s relatives in Miami