This volume 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.
The Alliance for Progress (1961–69) was a Cold War regional foreign aid initiative aimed at countering the radicalizing effects of the 1959 Cuban revolution in Latin America. The Alliance was based on anti‐communist academic theories of Third World modernization, and its aid funding was conditioned strictly on political reforms within participating countries. Targeting 2.5 percent growth over a ten‐year “decade of development,” President John F. Kennedy's Alliance envisioned $20 billion of US public and private investment flowing into Latin America over ten years. Scholarly views on the Alliance have been divided, with historians balancing its political and economic successes in avoiding a second Cuba and achieving annualized growth rates of around 3 percent against its ultimate failure to shore up democracy in a region soon beset by a wave of military
coups d'état
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The Cold War in Latin America had marked consequences for the region’s political and economic evolution. From the origins of US fears of Latin American Communism in the early 20th century to the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, regional actors played central roles in the drama. Seeking to maximize economic benefit while maintaining independence with regard to foreign policy, Latin Americans employed an eclectic combination of liberal and anti-imperialist discourses, balancing frequent calls for anti-Communist hemispheric unity with periodic diplomatic entreaties to the Soviet bloc and the nonaligned Third World. Meanwhile, US Cold War policies toward the region ranged from progressive developmentalism to outright military invasions, and from psychological warfare to covert paramilitary action. Above all, the United States sought to shore up its allies and maintain the Western Hemisphere as a united front against extra-hemispheric ideologies and influence. The Cold War was a bloody, violent period for Latin America, but it was also one marked by heady idealism, courageous political action, and fresh narratives about Latin America’s role in the world, all of which continue to inform regional politics to this day.
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