A Compact History of Latin America's Cold War

Vanni Pettinà's important, well-argued book analyzes in detail the specifically Latin American dynamics of the Cold War from 1946 onward. Reflecting a wider historiographical trend, he makes a strong case for the historical particularity of Latin America's Cold War as part of the global Cold War.In his introductory chapter Pettinà argues that while “the ideological conflict between socialism and capitalism certainly existed from 1917 onward,” if not earlier, the global Cold War started in 1946–54 (p. 16). The crux of his argument is that the 1940s saw a dramatic and qualitative geopolitical shift worldwide: Washington's and Moscow's “contrasting perspectives on modernity” would not have “been imposed to such an extent” in Europe, Latin America, and the Third World generally “as they were after 1945 without the power vacuum left by the dismemberment of European empires and, consequently, the transformation of the Soviet Union and the United States into superpowers” (p. 16).Pettinà argues that US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt's reformist approach to domestic problems made Washington far more tolerant of political reform and social change south of the border in the decades preceding the Cold War than it would be after 1946. This was reflected in the Good Neighbor Policy, which combined with the socioeconomic and political forces unleashed north and south by the Great Depression “created a virtuous circle during the 1930s and 1940s” that resulted in major social and political changes in an effort to address the capitalist crisis and adjudicate the populist political mobilization that characterized this period (p. 19).While this argument holds in general, there were important instances during the Good Neighbor era when the United States supported reactionaries rather than progressive political forces, including conservative and repressive dictators such as Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, Jorge Ubico in Guatemala, and Maximiliano Hernández Martínez in El Salvador. Of course, as per the author's argument, in the 1950s the United States under Harry Truman and particularly Dwight D. Eisenhower took a far more conservative approach than the one taken in the Good Neighbor era. As Pettinà makes clear, the altered geopolitical context of the post–World War II era meant that Washington was, among other things, increasingly opposed to protectionist economic policies and increasingly in favor of conservative and oligarchic social forces that espoused a vehement anticommunism and authoritarian politics while usually emphasizing the importance of primary mineral and agricultural exports over dirigiste-nationalist industrialization.In chapter 2, Pettinà examines the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, a period of rising social and political unrest in Latin America and preoccupation in the United States with the Soviet Union. When the United States did turn south, it sought to line up the region behind its deepening contest with the Soviet Union. This led to major diplomatic ructions with populist-nationalist Argentina under Juan Perón and to the signature Cold War episode of the 1950s: the Central Intelligence Agency–orchestrated overthrow of the decade-long experiment in progressive political change in Guatemala.The Cuban Revolution, the focus of chapter 3, marked a new phase of the Cold War during the 1960s as primarily rural insurgencies increased in Latin America, many with Havana's training and support. The early 1960s also saw the dramatic increase of US involvement, with less-than-successful initiatives such as the Alliance for Progress. And this period saw rising US involvement in counterinsurgency. Meanwhile, although the 1970s, as Pettinà emphasizes in chapter 4, brought détente between Washington and Moscow in Latin America, it also brought military dictatorships, urban guerrilla warfare, ferocious anticommunism, and state-sponsored repression and terrorism. As discussed in chapter 5, the final phase of Latin America's Cold War took place in the 1980s and was centered on revolutionary and counterrevolutionary warfare in Central America.Throughout the book Pettinà draws out the specifically Latin American dynamics of the Cold War and how they intersected with and played out against the backdrop of wider geopolitical trends. For example, although US-Soviet rivalry was crucial to the Central American crisis in the 1980s, it also brought in important players such as Mexico and Cuba. Meanwhile, the end of the Cold War—“which had turned every local conflict into a power struggle between the two blocs—amplified the internal weaknesses of Latin America's conservative and authoritarian projects” and thus paved the way for more progressive political trends (p. 167).This important book deftly outlines Latin America's Cold War and its significance for the region's post–Cold War history. My one quibble is that I still find the notion of the long Cold War useful in relation to Latin America, a region that (unlike much of Asia and Africa) was already comprised of nation-states and already a zone of US hegemony prior to 1945, where the conflict between socialism and capitalism had important and already deep roots stemming from the Mexican and Russian Revolutions. The existence of a long Cold War ensured that the global Cold War in Latin America would become both profoundly important and distinctive by the late 1940s and down to the late 1980s. That said, anyone interested in Latin America's Cold War will profit immensely from this book.

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