A. few people understood the risk involved with buying stock on the loan.
Latin America has traditionally been home to dictators: charismatic men who have seized almost complete control over their nations and held it for years, even decades. Some have been fairly benign, some cruel and violent, and others merely peculiar.
A confession extracted by torture should not easily be trusted by a historian. One of the reasons why this is the case is because the individual who was being tortured may have admitted to something that he/she did not do in order to stop the physical punishment they were facing. However, this does not necessarily mean that all confessions extracted by torture are not true. A good historian would use several different pieces of evidence and research in order to determine the validity of the confession.
I’m not sure how you would do this