Entre el final de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y la caída del Muro de Berín, América Latina atravesó un dramático periodo marcado por golpes de Estado, insurgencias guerrilleras y revoluciones, así como inestabilidad y violencia. En las actuales sociedades latinoamericanas, aún son visibles las secuelas de décadas de autoritarismo gubernamental y violaciones sistemáticas de los derechos humanos. A pesar de ello, desde la historia son contados los esfuerzos por interpretar en su conjunto un periodo tan convulso.

While not commonly centered in the Cold War story, Latin America was intensely affected by that historic conflict. In this book, available for the first time in English, Vanni Pettina makes sense of the region's diverse, complex political experiences of the Cold War era. Cross-fertilized by Latin American and Anglophone historiography, his account shifts from an overemphasis on U.S. interventions toward a comprehensive Latin American perspective. Connecting Cold War events to the region's political polarizations, revolutionary mobilizations, draconian state repression, and brutal violence in almost every sphere, Pettina demonstrates that Latin America's Cold War was rarely cold. In the midst of the tumult, some countries showed resilience and capacity to bend the disruptive dynamics to their advantage. Mexico, for example, drew on a mix of nationalism and anticommunism, aided by the United States, to achieve strong economic growth and political stability. Cuba, in contrast, used Soviet protection to shield its revolution from the United States and to strengthen its capacity to project power in Latin America and beyond. Interweaving global and local developments along an insightful analytical frame, Pettina reveals the distinct consequences of the Cold War in the Western Hemisphere.

This volume explores several notable themes related to foreign affairs in Latin America and the reconfiguration of the power of the different states in the region. It offers insightful historical perspectives for understanding national, regional and global issues from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day, from analysis of the traditional "hegemony" of the United States over Latin America through its military, and political influence due to the presence of the European Union, Russia, and China. These views cannot be reduced to a simplistic vision of the dominant and subordinate; rather, they attempt to seek lines of continuity by highlighting traditional interpretations of new scenarios such as regional trading and security blocs. The volume refuses to impose a traditional and uncritical linear historical narrative onto the reader but instead proposes an alternative interpretation of the past and its relation to the present. Finally, the growing importance of international mechanisms in enabling the success of certain Latin American regimes is also highlighted, in particular the influence of regional diffusion through international organizations or other networks.

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.

Latin America and the Global Cold War analyzes more than a dozen of Latin America's forgotten encounters with Africa, Asia, and the Communist world, and by placing the region in meaningful dialogue with the wider Global South, this volume produces the first truly global history of contemporary Latin America. It uncovers a multitude of overlapping and sometimes conflicting iterations of Third Worldist movements in Latin America, and offers insights for better understanding the region's past, as well as its possible futures, challenging us to consider how the Global Cold War continues to inform Latin America's ongoing political struggles. Contributors: Miguel Serra Coelho, Thomas C. Field Jr., Sarah Foss, Michelle Getchell, Eric Gettig, Alan McPherson, Stella Krepp, Eline van Ommen, Eugenia Palieraki, Vanni Pettina, Tobias Rupprecht, David M. K. Sheinin, Christy Thornton, Miriam Elizabeth Villanueva, and Odd Arne Westad.

En esta obra póstuma, Carlos Monsiváis, con su estilo y erudición únicos, recorre un siglo de la vida cultural de México, si bien, como él mismo confiesa, ésta es una tarea inacabable a la que además se suma la brevedad de la obra, que le obliga a cerrar su crónica en la década de 1980, dejando fuera los movimientos y creadores de los dos últimos decenios del siglo XX. Su recorrido parte de la época del modernismo y pasa por todas las manifestaciones culturales que se desarrollan a lo largo de las siguientes décadas, como la narrativa de la Revolución, el muralismo, la cultura en los años veinte, los Contemporáneos, la poesía de la generación del 50 hasta llegar al año de la ruptura que representa 1968 y las manifestaciones culturales que de él se desprenden.

By emphasizing Latin American reformers’ decades-long struggle to defeat authoritarianism, this transnational history challenges the timeworn Cold War paradigm and recasts the region’s political evolution Scholars persist in framing the Cold War as a battle between left and right, one in which the Global South is cast as either witting or unwitting proxies of Washington and Moscow. What if the era is told from the perspective of the many who preferred reform to revolution? Scholars have routinely neglected, dismissed, or caricatured moderate politicians. In this book, Allen Wells argues that until the Cuban Revolution, the struggle was not between capitalism and communism—that was Washington’s abiding preoccupation—but between democracy and dictatorship. Beginning in the 1920s, the fight against authoritarianism was contested on multiple fronts—political, ideological, and cultural—taking on the dimensions of a political crusade. Convinced that despots represented an existential threat, reformers declared that no civilian government was safe until the cancer of dictatorship was excised from the hemisphere. Dictators retaliated, often with deadly results, exporting strategies that had been honed at home to guarantee their political survival. Grafted onto this war without borders was a belated Cold War, with all its political convulsions, the aftershocks of which are still felt today.