Dictatorship in South America explores the experiences of Brazilian, Argentine and Chilean experience under military rule. Presents a single-volume thematic study that explores experiences with dictatorship as well as their social and historical contexts in Latin America Examines at the ideological and economic crossroads that brought Argentina, Brazil and Chile under the thrall of military dictatorship Draws on recent historiographical currents from Latin America to read these regimes as radically ideological and inherently unstable Makes a close reading of the economic trajectory from dependency to development and democratization and neoliberal reform in language that is accessible to general readers Offers a lively and readable narrative that brings popular perspectives to bear on national histories Selected as a 2014 Outstanding Academic Title by CHOICE

A “compelling and shocking account” of a brutal campaign of repression in Latin America, based on interviews and previously secret documents (The Miami Herald). Throughout the 1970s, six Latin American governments, led by Chile, formed a military alliance called Operation Condor to carry out kidnappings, torture, and political assassinations across three continents. It was an early “war on terror” initially encouraged by the CIA—which later backfired on the United States. Hailed by Foreign Affairs as “remarkable” and “a major contribution to the historical record,” The Condor Years uncovers the unsettling facts about the secret US relationship with the dictators who created this terrorist organization. Written by award-winning journalist John Dinges and updated to include later developments in the prosecution of Pinochet, the book is a chilling yet dispassionately told history of one of Latin America’s darkest eras. Dinges, himself interrogated in a Chilean torture camp, interviewed participants on both sides and examined thousands of previously secret documents to take the reader inside this underground world of military operatives and diplomats, right-wing spies and left-wing revolutionaries. “Scrupulous, well-documented.” —The Washington Post “Nobody knows what went wrong inside Chile like John Dinges.” —Seymour Hersh

Based on research conducted in archives in six countries, An International History of South America in the Era of Military Rule: Geared for War offers a detailed account of the tensions and fears of war that engulfed South America in the 1970s, when most countries of the region were ruled by military governments. Scholars of contemporary history and international relations, graduate and undergraduate students of Latin American history, and anyone interested in issues of international history will gain from reading this book, which explores the long-standing territorial controversies that underlay international rivalries, the incidence of military thinking in them, and the multifarious effects of the international order of the Cold War in the rise of tensions in South America in the era of military rule. Since war did not break out in South America in the 1970s, the book also stands as a study of the reasons why peace prevailed, even under conditions that seemed conducive to its demise. As a study based on multiarchival research, the book offers an original narrative and analysis of a topic scarcely treated by scholarly literature on the history of South America in the twentieth century, which makes it useful and interesting for audiences in various countries of the region.

"Detailed study of the political, economics, and social changes carried out by Brazil's twenty-year military regime, in the context of a South American era of military rule during the Cold War"--Jacket flap.

A thorough study of Brazilian politics from 1930 to 1964, this book begins with Getulio Vargas' fifteen-year-rule--the latter part of which was a virtual dictatorship--and traces the following years of economic difficulty and political turbulence, culminating in the explosive coup d'état that overthrew the constitutional government of President Jo~ao Goulart and profoundly changes the nature of Brazil's political institutions. The first book by Thomas E. Skidmore, Politics in Brazil, 1930-1964, immediately became the definitive political history in English and Portuguese of those turbulent times. It was published by OUP in 1937 in hardcover but has been out of print in recent years. For this 40th anniversary, James Green, who is Skidmore's literary executor at Brown University, will write a new foreword for the book, placing it in the context of the literature.a

In December 1931, El Salvador’s civilian president, Arturo Araujo, was overthrown in a military coup. Such an event was hardly unique in Salvadoran history, but the 1931 coup proved to be a watershed. Araujo had been the nation’s first democratically elected president, and although no one could have foreseen the result, the coup led to five decades of uninterrupted military rule, the longest run in modern Latin American history. Furthermore, six weeks after coming to power, the new military regime oversaw the crackdown on a peasant rebellion in western El Salvador that is one of the worst episodes of state-sponsored repression in modern Latin American history. Democracy would not return to El Salvador until the 1990s, and only then after a brutal twelve-year civil war. In Authoritarian El Salvador: Politics and the Origins of the Military Regimes, 1880-1940, Erik Ching seeks to explain the origins of the military regime that came to power in 1931. Based on his comprehensive survey of the extant documentary record in El Salvador’s national archive, Ching argues that El Salvador was typified by a longstanding tradition of authoritarianism dating back to the early- to mid-nineteenth century. The basic structures of that system were based on patron-client relationships that wove local, regional, and national political actors into complex webs of rival patronage networks. Decidedly nondemocratic in practice, the system nevertheless exhibited highly paradoxical traits: it remained steadfastly loyal to elections as the mechanism by which political aspirants acquired office, and it employed a political discourse laden with appeals to liberty and free suffrage. That blending of nondemocratic authoritarianism with populist reformism and rhetoric set the precedent for military rule for the next fifty years.

During the most idealistic years of John F. Kennedy's Alliance for Progress development program, Bolivia was the highest per capita recipient of U.S. foreign aid in Latin America. Nonetheless, Washington's modernization programs in early 1960s' Bolivia ended up on a collision course with important sectors of the country’s civil society, including radical workers, rebellious students, and a plethora of rightwing and leftwing political parties. In From Development to Dictatorship, Thomas C. Field Jr. reconstructs the untold story of USAID’s first years in Bolivia, including the country’s 1964 military coup d’état.Field draws heavily on local sources to demonstrate that Bolivia’s turn toward anticommunist, development-oriented dictatorship was the logical and practical culmination of the military-led modernization paradigm that provided the liberal underpinnings of Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress. In the process, he explores several underappreciated aspects of Cold War liberal internationalism: the tendency of "development" to encourage authoritarian solutions to political unrest, the connection between modernization theories and the rise of Third World armed forces, and the intimacy between USAID and CIA covert operations. Challenging the conventional dichotomy between ideology and strategy in international politics, From Development to Dictatorship engages with a growing literature on development as a key rubric for understanding the interconnected processes of decolonization and the Cold War.