Full Description
Over the last decade, studies of the Cold War have mushroomed globally. Unfortunately, work on Latin America has not been well represented in either theoretical or empirical discussions of the broader conflict. With some notable exceptions, studies have proceeded in rather conventional channels, focusing on U.S. policy objectives and high-profile leaders (Fidel Castro) and events (the Cuban Missile Crisis) and drawing largely on U.S. government sources. Moreover, only rarely have U.S. foreign relations scholars engaged productively with Latin American historians who analyze how the international conflict transformed the region's political, social, and cultural life. Representing a collaboration among eleven North American, Latin American, and European historians, anthropologists, and political scientists, this volume attempts to facilitate such a cross-fertilization. In the process, In From the Cold shifts the focus of attention away from the bipolar conflict, the preoccupation of much of the so-called "new Cold War history," in order to showcase research, discussion, and an array of new archival and oral sources centering on the grassroots, where conflicts actually brewed. The collection's contributors examine international and everyday contests over political power and cultural representation, focusing on communities and groups above and underground, on state houses and diplomatic board rooms manned by Latin American and international governing elites, on the relations among states regionally, and, less frequently, on the dynamics between the two great superpowers themselves. In addition to charting new directions for research on the Latin American Cold War, In From the Cold seeks to contribute more generally to an understanding of the conflict in the global south.
Contributors. Ariel C. Armony, Steven J. Bachelor, Thomas S. Blanton, Seth Fein, Piero Gleijeses, Gilbert M. Joseph, Victoria Langland, Carlota McAllister, Stephen Pitti, Daniela Spenser, Eric Zolov
Contents
Preface vii
I. New Approaches, Debates, and Sources
What We Now Know and Should Know: Bringing Latin America More Meaningfully into Cold War Studies / Gilbert M. Joseph 3
Recovering the Memory of the Cold War: Forensic History and Latin America / Thomas S. Blanton 47
II. Latin America between the Superpowers: International Realpolitik, the Ideology of the State, and the "Latin Americanization" of the Conflict
The Caribbean Crisis: Catalyst for Soviet Projection in Latin America / Daniela Spenser 77
The View from Havana: Lessons from Cuba's African Journey, 1959-1976 / Piero Gleijeses 112
Transnationalizing the Dirty War: Argentina in Central America / Ariel C. Armony 134
III. Everyday Contests over Culture and Representation in the Latin American Cold War
Producing the Cold War in Mexico: The Public Limits of Covert Communications / Seth Fein 171
Cuba si, Yanquis no: The Sacking of the Instituto Cultural Mexico-Norteamericano in Morelia, Michoacan, 1961 / Eric Zolov 214
Miracle on Ice: Industrial Workers and the Promise of Americanization in Cold War Mexico / Steven J. Bachelor 253
Chicano Cold Warriors: Cesar Chavez, Mexican American Politics, and California Farmworkers / Stephen Pitti 273
Birth Control Pills and Molotov Cocktails: Reading Sex and Revolution in 1968 Brazil / Victoria Langland 308
Rural Markets, Revolutionary Souls, and Rebellious Women in Cold War Guatemala / Carlota McAllister 350
IV. Final Reflections
Standing Conventional Cold War History on Its Head / Daniela Spenser 381
Selective Bibliography 397
Contributors 427
Index 429
