The president's seat represents the dream job for most politicians. Presidents are power brokers, party leaders, role models, the daily focus of public opinion. Presidents speak for the nation, they are primi inter pares among national political figures. “They say,” former Chilean president Patricio Aylwin once joked, “that the most difficult task after being president is getting used to not being president.” Presidents, however, are not free from failure. And the completion of their terms, particularly in Latin America, is never guaranteed.

This book deals with an extreme form of political failure: presidential impeachment. Impeachment transforms the luck of the most successful politician in the country into a model of defeat. Presidents are deprived of honor and power, deserted by former allies and voters, prosecuted as ordinary citizens, and many times incarcerated or forced into exile.

In the 1990s, an unprecedented wave of impeachments swept Latin America. Dwellers of presidential palaces, from Carondelet to Miraflores and from Planalto to the House of Nariño, unexpectedly confronted this threat. In just over a decade, between 1992 and 2004, six presidents faced an impeachment process, and four of them were removed from office. Brazilian President Fernando Collor de Mello in 1992 and Venezuelan President Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1993 were accused of corruption and ousted on impeachment charges. In 1996, Colombian President Ernesto Samper was charged with receiving illegal campaign funds from the Cali drug cartel. Congress ultimately acquitted Samper, but his political leverage was greatly diminished as a consequence of the scandal.