The editors of this anthology seek to redefine the history of Cold War Latin America as part of a broader Third World history. This is an ambitious aim, but one the book's editors accomplish, highlighting South-South engagement and placing into focus Latin American agency during the Cold War. Essays in this collection move beyond the traditional focus of Cold War studies in the Western Hemisphere, which have underscored US-Latin American dynamics; in doing so, the essays break new ground that promises to reshape future research on the Cold War in the Americas.
From multiple geographic and chronological vantage points, this 14-essay volume examines how Latin American historical actors engaged with recently decolonized African and Asian nations, the Soviet Union, and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), as well as with the United States, the Organization of American States, and the United Nations during the Cold War. The authors and their research reflect an impressive multinational and multilingual effort. Indeed, the book's authors made use of Latin American, US, African, Asian, European, and Soviet archives.
The book's approach is a response to recent scholarship on the Non-Aligned Movement that has largely overlooked Latin America's role in developing Third Worldism. To counter this absence, the chapters stress the ties Latin Americans established with recently decolonized nations, including India, Algeria, and nations of Eastern Europe. In the case of postrevolutionary Cuba, Eric Gettig illustrates how Cuban officials sought leadership roles in the movement as a means of overcoming US attempts to politically and economically isolate their country. By the 1970s, Cubans’ success converted this island into a bridge between Latin America and decolonized African and Asian republics.
The authors’ largest contribution is in their ability to provide new texture and depth to important historical moments and processes using archival sources from outside the Western Hemisphere. These sources complicate the often ‘flat’ image that Latin American and US archival sources have painted, which often reduces Latin American agency and overemphasizes US influences. By considering Chilean and Algerian or Brazilian and Cuban diplomatic relations in the Cold War, the essays make visible Latin American agency, apart from US interests and perspectives.
Most of the essays consider how South-South reactions shaped and were shaped by much more studied US-Latin American relationships. This consideration ensures that the introduction of new historical actors does not obscure the unquestionable role that the United States played in defining Latin America's Cold War. A case in point is Thomas C. Field's insightful exploration of Bolivia's ill-fated Revolutionary Nationalist Movement (MNR) government. Utilizing Bolivian, Czech, Cuban, and US diplomatic papers, Field focuses less on the military coup and more on how Bolivian President Víctor Paz Estenssoro initially succeeded in playing Czech, Cuban, and US offers for aid against one another to carve out a nonaligned pathway for Bolivia. Highlighting Bolivian agency and exchanges with Cuba and Czechoslovakia does not minimize the clear role US power played in events, but it illuminates the broader political arena in which the coup unfolded.
As several of the authors in this volume suggest, the Non-Aligned Movement and Third Worldism emerged after World War II as a result of African and Asian decolonization and advances in air travel that made transcontinental conferences, summits, and other forms of exchange possible. This is a convincing reason to focus on the 1960s and 1970s, the apex of the movement and Third Worldism. Yet, some historical analysis of the trade, diplomacy, and exchange between Latin America, Asia, and Africa that predated the Cold War in the book's introduction could have permitted readers to better assess how the Non-Aligned Movement and Third Worldism reshaped Global South relations in these decades. Perhaps, this minor critique is something future scholars might tackle.
This well-researched and innovative anthology promises to become required reading for modern Latin Americanists and will undoubtedly encourage Cold War scholars to seek out resources beyond the Western Hemisphere in future projects.
