Aldo Marchesi's Latin America's Radical Left narrates the history of the ‘New Left’ organisations: the Uruguayan Tupamaros; the Chilean Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Left Movement, MIR); the Argentine Partido Revolucionario de los Trabajadores–Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (Workers’ Revolutionary Party–People's Revolutionary Army, PRT–ERP); and the Bolivian Ejército de Liberación Nacional (National Liberation Army, ELN). In the early 1970s, these organisations came together to create the Junta de Coordinación Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Coordination Junta, JCR). The JCR was a transnational radical-left coordination body, relevant during the 1960s for its widespread presence and because it created a new radical ‘transnational political culture’.
Through the history of the JCR and the organisations composing it, Marchesi makes a significant contribution to Global 1960s historiography, which has constituted a vibrant field of study in Latin America, Europe and the United States in the last 20 years. He succeeds in brilliantly summarising the prolific recent literature, and he also actively renews it, mainly regarding the debate on the ‘New Left’. The author argues that the Southern Cone ‘New Left’ organisations, which had their roots in socialism, communism or Trotskyism, developed a new radical ‘political culture’ transnationally after being deeply affected by the Cuban Revolution. Theirs was not a universalist, but a Latin Americanist ‘political culture’, one that viewed violence and transnational action as the main mode of fostering revolutionary change. Its transnational formation – and this is one of the author's strongest hypotheses – was made possible and was profoundly affected by the activists’ shared experience of exile, first in Uruguay, then in Chile and finally in Argentina, before having to move (for those who could) to other countries or continents.
The book covers an almost 30-year period and several Southern Cone countries. To execute such an ambitious project, the author combines transnational and comparative approaches (mainly between Argentina, Chile and Uruguay, with some occasional references to Bolivia and Brazil). The chapters’ rationale stems from the hybrid comparative/transnational perspective. With the exception of the fifth and last chapter, the chronological narrative in each is built around a specific historical moment and a city. The focus on a short period in each chapter allows the author to separately analyse the Argentine, Chilean and Uruguayan cases and compare them. The cities at the focus of each chapter are those where, at the particular historical moment, Southern Cone activists met and where the transnational formation of the radical Left's ‘political culture’ took place.
The first chapter focuses on 1962 to 1968 and on the Tupamaros’ Montevideo. Like previous scholarship, Marchesi shows that the reception of Guevarism was not an indiscriminate imitation of Guevara's ideas, but rather their transformation and adaptation to the local context. For instance, urban guerrilla, rather than Guevarist rural foco, was the Tupamaros’ main contribution to Latin America's radical Left.
This does not mean that Cuba's role in the formation of the Southern Cone ‘New Left’ was irrelevant. Marchesi stresses – in the second chapter – Cuba's key role in bringing together the Southern Cone organisations; first, through the 1967 Organización Latinoamericana de Solidaridad (Latin American Solidarity Organisation, OLAS) Conference in Havana, which legitimated a left-wing radicalism implemented transnationally instead of nationally; and, second, through Guevara's last guerrilla in Ñancahuazú. The latter was extremely relevant, not only because of the profound impact of Guevara's assassination, but also because a first Southern Cone coordination arose at that point, taking the form of a transnational network of assistance to Guevara's guerrilla in Bolivia. Here lies one of the main blind spots in Marchesi's book. In order to demonstrate the creation of a new ‘political culture’, the author tends to overstate the differences and disruptions between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ Left and relinquish the key question of the continuities between them. Yet, in OLAS and in the support network for the Ñancahuazú guerrilla, ‘Old Left’ organisations or leaders – John William Cooke and the Argentine Peronists, the Chilean Socialist Party, the Uruguayan Communists – played a key role, while the Tupamaros, MIR or PRT–ERP did not take an active part in this first phase.
The third and the fourth chapters are the core of the book. In a masterly manner, Marchesi shows how regional exiles – in Santiago de Chile (Chapter 3) and in Buenos Aires (Chapter 4) – co-produced their own transnational radicalism. He argues that the radicalisation of the PRT–ERP and the other Southern Cone ‘New Left’ militants based in Buenos Aires cannot be understood without taking into account the violent impact of the 1973 Uruguayan and, even more so, Chilean coups d’état. In this way, the author breaks from a dominant historiographical trend that views exile as a phase marked by political disengagement and the abandonment of revolution for the benefit of human rights.
The fifth chapter differs in its structure and scope. While it focuses on the 1980s, it also extends the analysis to the present, aiming to demonstrate – sometimes forcibly – the usefulness of the study of the Latin American Global 1960s in comprehending current regional politics. However, Marchesi is insightful regarding the 1980s, which he analyses not as a linear, inescapable march towards political liberalism, but as a period of tension and harrowing dilemmas (revolution or human rights; continental revolution or nationally-bound militancy).
These minor criticisms should not hide the fact that Marchesi's monograph constitutes a major contribution to a nascent, promising historiographical field. The author consolidates a rising but still marginal tendency in Latin American scholarship that breaks not only from nationally-centred narratives, but also from a transnational history of Latin America mainly written through its relations with the United States. In addition, and contrary to many cultural approaches to the Global 1960s, Marchesi always analyses the circulation of ideas in light of specific contexts. There is no doubt that Latin America's Radical Left is already a benchmark for specialists of the Latin American Global 1960s. Let us hope that this book – and hopefully, the ones that will follow and appear in English translation – will also allow a geographical decentring of the currently dominant historiographical gaze on the Global 1960s.
