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Introduction: Latin America in the Global Sixties

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2015

Eric Zolov
Eric Zolov*
Affiliation:
Stony Brook UniversityStony Brook, New York
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An important shift is under way in the scholarship on Latin America during the Cold War. This special issue on the Global Sixties presents many of the leading academic voices of that historiographical movement. In part, today's shift is influenced by a new generation of historians unencumbered by the ideological baggage carried by those who witnessed and participated in the political struggles and artistic exuberance of the 1960s as they occurred. With this shift, we are finally reaching a point where more historia than memoria. is being written. Without question, the numerous memoirbased narratives written by participants have helped to inform our understanding of the epoch, providing rich primary-source narratives of personal recollection and witness. The new historical investigations build on these memoirs, yet are firmly grounded in archival research. In turn, this archival research has fleshed out old historical questions and brought to the forefront many new ones. The results have often been fundamentally revisionist interpretations of the prevailing assumptions of the period.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
The Americas , Volume 70 , Issue 3 , January 2014, pp. 349 - 362
Copyright
Copyright © Academy of American Franciscan History 2014 

Footnotes

I am very grateful to the numerous individuals who have read and provided insightful commentaries on earlier drafts of this introduction, including Robert Chase, Terri Gordon-Zolov, Robert Holden, Matthew Rothwell, members of the editorial board of The Americas, and the contributors to this special issue. An early impetus for this collection dates to a 2010 Latin American Studies Association panel, Discursos transnacionales y nueva izquierda a fines de los 60 organized by Aldo Marchesi and Vania Markarian; I am especially indebted to the many engaging conversations I have had over the past years with Vania and Aldo on this topic.

1. There are numerous examples of memoir-based histories and each country has its own repertoire. Some of the more notable memoirs that have been translated into English include Alberto Ulloa Bornemann, Surviving Mexicos Dirty War: A Political Prisoners Memoir, Arthur Schmidt and Aurora Camacho de Schmidt, eds. and trans. (Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 2007); Maria Eugenia Vsquez Pcrdomo (foreword by Schmidt, Arthur), My Life as a Revolutionary: Reflections of a Former Guerrillera, Lorena Teraiido, trans. (Philadelphia, Pa.: Temple University Press, 2005); Guillermoprieto, Alma, Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution, Esther Allen, trans. (New York: Pantheon Books, 2004); and Veloso, Caetano, Tropical Truth: A Story of Music Revolution in Brazil, Isabel de Sena, trans., Einzig, Barbara, ed. (New York: Alfred Knopf, 2002).

2. Bender, Thomas, Introduction: Historians, the Nation, and the Plenitude of Narratives in Rethinking American History in a Global Age, Bender, Thomas, ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), p. 10.

3. The earliest citation I have found for the phrasing is from Hans Righart, Moderate Versions of the Global Sixties: A Comparison of Great Britain and the Netherlands, Journal of Area Studies 6:13 (1998), pp. 82 96. In 2011 Duke University Press added the series term Global Sixties to its catalog, reflecting the broader acceptance of the designation in recent years.

4. See in particular Gaddis, John L., We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Suri, Jeremi, Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Dtente (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003); and Westad, Odd, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

5. Suri, Power and Protest, pp. 262263. Emphasis is in original.

6. Gosse, Van, Rethinking the New Left: An Interpretative History (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2005), p. 5.

7. An important early example of pursuing a transnationalist frame is Gosse, Van, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left (London: Verso, 1996). Two foundational texts are Varon, Jeremy, Bringing the War Home: The Weather Underground, the Red Army Faction, and Revolutionary Violence in the Sixties and Seventies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); and Elbaum, Max, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to Lenin, Mao and Che (London: Verso, 2006).

8. Marwick, Arthur, The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c. 1958c.1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 7.

9. See for example Patrice McSherry, J., Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America (Lanham, Md.: Rowman Littlefield, 2005); Sterns trilogy, Steve J. Remembering Pinochets Chile: On the Eve of London 1998 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006); Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochets Chile, 19731988 (2006); and Reckoning with Pinochet: The Memory Qticstion in Democratic Chile, 19892006 (2010). On the role of transnational solidarity and Latin American exiles, see Green, James N., We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Military Dictatorship in the United States (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010); Stites Mor, Jessica, ed., Transnational Solidarity in Cold War Latin America (Madison, Wise: University of Wisconsin Press, 2013); and Markarian, Vania, Left in Transformation: Uruguayan Exiles and the Latin American Human Rights Network, 19671984 (New York: Routledge, 2005).

10. Power, Margaret, Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle Against Allende, 19641973 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).

11. Joseph, Gilbert, What We Now Know and Should Know: Bringing Latin America More Meaningfully into Cold War Studies, in In from the Cold: Latin Americas New Encounter with the Cold War, Joseph, Gilbert and Spenser, Daniela, eds. (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2008), p. 11. This collection was based on a conference held in Mexico City in 2002 and initially published in a Spanish-language edited volume, Spenser, Daniela, ed., Espejos de la Guerra Fra: Mexico, America Central y el Caribe (Mexico: CIESAS/Angel Porrua, 2004). In important ways, In from the Cold built upon the epistcmological framework established in an earlier, groundbreaking collection edited by Joseph, Gilbert, LeGrand, Catherine, and Ricardo, D. Salvatore: Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998). An important difference was that In From the Cold assessed the impact of the Cold War on Latin America from more of a global (versus U.S.) perspective. Notably absent from In From the Cold was examination of the Sino-Soviet conflict and the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a topic broached only by Daniela Spenser in this collection.

12. Joseph and Spenser, In from the Cold, p. 4. A foundational text that established this paradigm, and one implicitly referenced here by Joseph, is Grandin, Greg, Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). See also the later edited collaboration between Joseph, and Grandin, , A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence During Latin Americas Long Cold War (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010). A recent important contribution to this literature is Harmer, Tanya, Allendes Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2011).

13. Zolov, Eric, Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Dunn, Christopher, Brutality Garden: Tropiclia and the Emergence of a Brazilian Counterculture (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); Moore, Robin, Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba (Berkeley: University of California, 2006); Manzano, Valeria, The Age of Youth in Argentina: Culture, Politics, and Sexuality from Pern to Videla (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming 2014); Sorensen, Diana, A Turbulent Decade Remembered: Scenes from the Latin American Sixties (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007); and Gilman, Claudia, Entre la pluma y el fusil: debates y dilemas del escritor revolucionario en Amrica Latina (Buenos Aires: Siglo 21, 2002).

14. For an early effort to push the conceptual definition of the New Left in Latin America, see Zolov, Eric, Expanding Our Conceptual Horizons: The Shift from an Old to a New Left in Latin America, A Contracorriente 5:2 (Winter 2008), pp. 47 73. Two recent and pathbreaking contributions are Lang-land, Victoria, Speaking of Flowers: Student Movements and the Making and Remembering of 1968 in Military Brazil (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013) and Pensado, Jaime, Rebel Mexico: Student Unrest and Author-itarian Political Culture During the Long Sixties (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2013).

15. Vania Markarian, Distancia y compromiso: algunas reflexiones desde el caso uruguayo, presentation at the Taller de Historia Intelectual, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes, Buenos Aires, November 15, 2012.

16. Dubinsky, Karen, Kruli, Catherine, Lord, Susan, Mills, Sean and Rutherford, Scott, eds., New World Coming: The Sixties and the Shaping of Global Consciousness (Toronto: Between the Lines, 2009), p. 3.

17. See the 2009 two-part forum on The International 1968 in American Historical Review 114:2 and 114:3. Recent monographs include The Third World in the Global 1960s, Christiansen, Samantha and Scarlett, Zachary A., eds. (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013); Rothwell, Matthew D., Transpacific Revolution aries: The Chinese Revolution in Latin America (New York: Routledge, 2013); Wolin, Richard, The Wind from the East: French Intellectuals, the Cultural Revolution, and the Legacy of the 1960s (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2012); Slobodian, Quinn, Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2012); and Ivaska, Andrew, Cultured States: Youth, Gender, and Modern Style in 1960s Dar Es Salaam (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2011). See also Timothy Brown, Scot, West Germany and the Global Sixties: The Anti-Authoritarian Revolt, 19621978 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013); Klimke, Martin, The Other Alliance: Student Protest in West Germany and the United States in the Global Sixties (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010); Klimke, Martin, 1968 in Europe: A History of Protest and Activism, 19561977 (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2008); and Ross, Kristin, May 68 and Its Afterlives (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004). For a refreshingly critical synthesis see DeGroot, Gerard, The Sixties Unplugged: A Kaleidoscopic History of a Disorderly Decade (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2008).Early efforts at a global approach to 1968 include Katsiaficas, George, The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 (Boston: South End Press, 1999); 1968: The World Transformed, Carol Fink, Philipp Gassert, and Dedef Junker, eds. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Wallerstein, Immanuel and Zukin, Sharon, 1968: Revolution in the World System: Theses and Queries, Theory and Society 18:4 (July 1989), pp. 43149.

18. Christiansen and Scarlett, Third World in the Global 1960s, p. 16.

19. Westad, Global Cold War, p. 4.

20. Gould, Jeffrey, Solidarity Under Siege: The Latin American Left, 1968, American Historical Review 114:2 (April 2009), pp. 348 375; Zolov, Expanding our Conceptual Horizons.

21. Rothwell, Transpacific Revolutionaries, p. 6.

22. See Fields, Belden, Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory and Practice in France and the United States (New York: Autonomedia, 1988).

23. Kalter, Christoph, A Shared Space of Imagination, Communication, and Action: Perspectives on the History of the Third World in Third World in the Global 1960s, Christiansen and Scarlett, pp. 28 29.

24. Among a vast historiography, see for example Young, Cynthia, Soul Power: Culture, Radicalisin and the Making of a U.S. Third World Left (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2006); Rodriguez, Besenia, De la Esclavitud Yanqui a la Libertad Cubana: U.S. Black Radicals, the Cuban Revolution, and the Formation of a Tricontinental Ideology, Radical History Review 92 (Spring 2005), pp. 62 87; and Kelley, Robin D.C. and Esch, Betsy, Black Like Mao: Red China and Black Revolution, Souls: A Critical Journal of Black Politics, Culture, and Society 1 (Fall 1999), pp. 6 41.

25. Franco, Jean, The Decline and Fall of the Lettered City: Latin America in the Cold War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002); Moore, Robin, Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba (Berkeley: University of California, 2006). The Four Olds during the Cultural Revolution in China were Old Customs, Old Culture, Old Habits, and Old Ideas.

26. Suri, , Power and Protest, p. 3. Suri uses this term somewhat narrowly, applying it only to written texts, but the concept itself is quite useful.

27. For Mills in Mexico, see Pensado, , Rebel Mexico, p. 164.

28. Pacini, Deborah Hctor, Fernndez, Hernndez, LHoeste, and Zolov, Eric, eds., Rockin Las Americas: The Global Politics of Rock in Latin/o America (Pittsburgh, Pa.: Pittsburgh University Press, 2004).

29. Ibid., see Introduction.

30. The most famous of these instances was Camilo Torres Restrepo, the Catholic priest who joined one of Colombias main guerrilla movements and was killed in action in 1966. His famous quote, If Jesus were alive today, He would be a guerrillero was a theme subsequently disseminated by the Cuban artist Alfredo Rostgaard through his poster print Christ Armed (1969). See Chesucristo: The Christification of Che, in Che Guevara: Icon, Myth, and Message, Kunzle, David, ed. (Los Angeles: University of California-Los Angeles, Fowler/Center for the Study of Political Graphics, 1997), pp. 78 87.

31. Barr-Melej, Patrick, Siloismo and the Self in Allende's Chile: Youth, Total Revolution, and the Roots of the Humanist Movement, Hispanic American Historical Review 86:4 (November 2006), pp. 747 784. This is an underexplored area of potential research.

32. See Grandin, Greg and Joseph, Gilbert, eds., A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsur-gent Violence During Latin Americas Long Cold War (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2010). A recent dissertation by Luis Hernn Avila reflects the first systematic attempt to address the transnational networks of the Latin American right during the Cold War and to link these networks to local anticommunist expression. See Anti-communism, Political Violence and the Internal Enemy in Cold War Latin America: Transnational and Comparative Perspectives from Argentina, Colombia, and Mexico (19501974), (Ph.D. dissertation in progress, New School for Social Research).

33. See Brands, Hal, Latin Americas Cold War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012).

34. For the United States, see for example Andrew, John A., The Other Side of the Sixties: Young Americans for Freedom and the Rise of Conservative Politics (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997); and Perlstein, Rick, Before the Storm: Barry Goldrvater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus (New York: Hill Wang, 2001).

35. Borstelmann, Thomas, The 1970s: A New Global History front Civil Rights to Economie Inequality (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2013); DeGroot, Gerard, The Seventies Unplugged: A Kaleidoscopic Look at a Violent Decade (London: Pan Macmillan, 2011). For Latin America, the new work by Louise Walker would also fit into this historiography: Waking from the Dream: Mexicos Middle Classes after 1968 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2013).

36. This is a vast topic, but for one set of perspectives see the arguments proposed in Dubinksky et al., eds., New World Coming.