The Last Colonial Massacre

The Last Colonial Massacre PDF Author: Greg Grandin
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226306909
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Book Description
After decades of bloodshed and political terror, many lament the rise of the left in Latin America. Since the triumph of Castro, politicians and historians have accused the left there of rejecting democracy, embracing communist totalitarianism, and prompting both revolutionary violence and a right-wing backlash. Through unprecedented archival research and gripping personal testimonies, Greg Grandin powerfully challenges these views in this classic work. In doing so, he uncovers the hidden history of the Latin American Cold War: of hidebound reactionaries holding on to their power and privilege; of Mayan Marxists blending indigenous notions of justice with universal ideas of equality; and of a United States supporting new styles of state terror throughout the region. With Guatemala as his case study, Grandin argues that the Latin American Cold War was a struggle not between political liberalism and Soviet communism but two visions of democracy—one vibrant and egalitarian, the other tepid and unequal—and that the conflict’s main effect was to eliminate homegrown notions of social democracy. Updated with a new preface by the author and an interview with Naomi Klein, The Last Colonial Massacre is history of the highest order—a work that will dramatically recast our understanding of Latin American politics and the role of the United States in the Cold War and beyond. “This work admirably explains the process in which hopes of democracy were brutally repressed in Guatemala and its people experienced a civil war lasting for half a century.”—International History Review “A richly detailed, humane, and passionately subversive portrait of inspiring reformers tragically redefined by the Cold War as enemies of the state.”—Journal of American History

Latin America’s Cold War

Latin America’s Cold War PDF Author: Hal Brands
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674055284
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 408

Book Description
For Latin America, the Cold War was anything but cold. Nor was it the so-called “long peace” afforded the world’s superpowers by their nuclear standoff. In this book, the first to take an international perspective on the postwar decades in the region, Hal Brands sets out to explain what exactly happened in Latin America during the Cold War, and why it was so traumatic. Tracing the tumultuous course of regional affairs from the late 1940s through the early 1990s, Latin America’s Cold War delves into the myriad crises and turning points of the period—the Cuban revolution and its aftermath; the recurring cycles of insurgency and counter-insurgency; the emergence of currents like the National Security Doctrine, liberation theology, and dependency theory; the rise and demise of a hemispheric diplomatic challenge to U.S. hegemony in the 1970s; the conflagration that engulfed Central America from the Nicaraguan revolution onward; and the democratic and economic reforms of the 1980s. Most important, the book chronicles these events in a way that is both multinational and multilayered, weaving the experiences of a diverse cast of characters into an understanding of how global, regional, and local influences interacted to shape Cold War crises in Latin America. Ultimately, Brands exposes Latin America’s Cold War as not a single conflict, but rather a series of overlapping political, social, geostrategic, and ideological struggles whose repercussions can be felt to this day.

Latin America and the War

Latin America and the War PDF Author: Percy Alvin Martin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 608

Book Description


America's Backyard

America's Backyard PDF Author: Grace Livingstone
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1848136110
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 337

Book Description
The United States has shaped Latin American history, condemning it to poverty and inequality by intervening to protect the rich and powerful. America’s Backyard tells the story of that intervention. Using newly declassified documents, Grace Livingstone reveals the US role in the darkest periods of Latin American history, including Pinochet’s coup in Chile, the Contra War in Nicaragua and the death squads in El Salvador. She shows how George W Bush’s administration used the War on Terror as a new pretext for intervention; how it tried to destabilise leftwing governments and push back the ‘pink tide’ washing across the Americas. America’s Backyard also includes chapters on drugs, economy and culture. It explains why US drug policy has caused widespread environmental damage yet failed to reduce the supply of cocaine, and it looks at the US economic stake in Latin America and the strategies of the big corporations. Today Latin Americans are demanding respect and an end to the Washington Consensus. Will the White House listen?

Blood and Debt

Blood and Debt PDF Author: Miguel Angel Centeno
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271074191
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 203

Book Description
What role does war play in political development? Our understanding of the rise of the nation-state is based heavily on the Western European experience of war. Challenging the dominance of this model, Blood and Debt looks at Latin America's much different experience as more relevant to politics today in regions as varied as the Balkans and sub-Saharan Africa. The book's illuminating review of the relatively peaceful history of Latin America from the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries reveals the lack of two critical prerequisites needed for war: a political and military culture oriented toward international violence, and the state institutional capacity to carry it out. Using innovative new data such as tax receipts, naming of streets and public monuments, and conscription records, the author carefully examines how war affected the fiscal development of the state, the creation of national identity, and claims to citizenship. Rather than building nation-states and fostering democratic citizenship, he shows, war in Latin America destroyed institutions, confirmed internal divisions, and killed many without purpose or glory.

Open Veins of Latin America

Open Veins of Latin America PDF Author: Eduardo Galeano
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0853459916
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 333

Book Description
Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx. Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe. Weaving fact and imagery into a rich tapestry, Galeano fuses scientific analysis with the passions of a plundered and suffering people. An immense gathering of materials is framed with a vigorous style that never falters in its command of themes. All readers interested in great historical, economic, political, and social writing will find a singular analytical achievement, and an overwhelming narrative that makes history speak, unforgettably. This classic is now further honored by Isabel Allende's inspiring introduction. Universally recognized as one of the most important writers of our time, Allende once again contributes her talents to literature, to political principles, and to enlightenment.

Neither Peace Nor Freedom

Neither Peace Nor Freedom PDF Author: Patrick Iber
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674286049
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 336

Book Description
Patrick Iber tells the story of left-wing Latin American artists, writers, and scholars who worked as diplomats, advised rulers, opposed dictators, and even led nations during the Cold War. Ultimately, they could not break free from the era’s rigid binaries, and found little room to promote their social democratic ideals without compromising them.

The World That Latin America Created

The World That Latin America Created PDF Author: Margarita Fajardo
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674270029
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Book Description
How a group of intellectuals and policymakers transformed development economics and gave Latin America a new position in the world. After the Second World War demolished the old order, a group of economists and policymakers from across Latin America imagined a new global economy and launched an intellectual movement that would eventually capture the world. They charged that the systems of trade and finance that bound the world’s nations together were frustrating the economic prospects of Latin America and other regions of the world. Through the UN Economic Commission for Latin America, or CEPAL, the Spanish and Portuguese acronym, cepalinos challenged the orthodoxies of development theory and policy. Simultaneously, they demanded more not less trade, more not less aid, and offered a development agenda to transform both the developed and the developing world. Eventually, cepalinos established their own form of hegemony, outpacing the United States and the International Monetary Fund as the agenda setters for a region traditionally held under the orbit of Washington and its institutions. By doing so, cepalinos reshaped both regional and international governance and set an intellectual agenda that still resonates today. Drawing on unexplored sources from the Americas and Europe, Margarita Fajardo retells the history of dependency theory, revealing the diversity of an often-oversimplified movement and the fraught relationship between cepalinos, their dependentista critics, and the regional and global Left. By examining the political ventures of dependentistas and cepalinos, The World That Latin America Created is a story of ideas that brought about real change.

A New History of Modern Latin America

A New History of Modern Latin America PDF Author: Lawrence A. Clayton
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520963822
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 709

Book Description
A New History of Modern Latin America provides an engaging and readable narrative history of the nations of Latin America from the Wars of Independence in the nineteenth century to the democratic turn in the twenty-first. This new edition of a well-known text has been revised and updated to include the most recent interpretations of major themes in the economic, social, and cultural history of the region to show the unity of the Latin America experience while exploring the diversity of the region’s geography, peoples, and cultures. It also presents substantial new material on women, gender, and race in the region. Each chapter begins with primary documents, offering glimpses into moments in history and setting the scene for the chapter, and concludes with timelines and key words to reinforce content. Discussion questions are included to help students with research assignments and papers. Both professors and students will find its narrative, chronological approach a useful guide to the history of this important area of the world.

The Tango War

The Tango War PDF Author: Mary Jo McConahay
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 1250091241
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

Book Description
One of WW2 Reads "Top 20 Must-Read WWII Books of 2018" • A Christian Science Monitor Best Book of September •One of The Progressive's "Favorite Books of 2018" The gripping and little known story of the fight for the allegiance of Latin America during World War II The Tango War by Mary Jo McConahay fills an important gap in WWII history. Beginning in the thirties, both sides were well aware of the need to control not just the hearts and minds but also the resources of Latin America. The fight was often dirty: residents were captured to exchange for U.S. prisoners of war and rival spy networks shadowed each other across the continent. At all times it was a Tango War, in which each side closely shadowed the other’s steps. Though the Allies triumphed, at the war’s inception it looked like the Axis would win. A flow of raw materials in the Southern Hemisphere, at a high cost in lives, was key to ensuring Allied victory, as were military bases supporting the North African campaign, the Battle of the Atlantic and the invasion of Sicily, and fending off attacks on the Panama Canal. Allies secured loyalty through espionage and diplomacy—including help from Hollywood and Mickey Mouse—while Jews and innocents among ethnic groups —Japanese, Germans—paid an unconscionable price. Mexican pilots flew in the Philippines and twenty-five thousand Brazilians breached the Gothic Line in Italy. The Tango War also describes the machinations behind the greatest mass flight of criminals of the century, fascists with blood on their hands who escaped to the Americas. A true, shocking account that reads like a thriller, The Tango War shows in a new way how WWII was truly a global war.