The Cold War in Latin America

This lecture offers a comprehensive view of the Cold War era in Latin America and zooms in on those places and moments when such war turned hot. It understands the Cold War as a multi-national and multi-layered conflict, which not only pitted two superpowers—the United States and the Soviet Union—against one another, but also a plethora of state and non-state actors that framed their actions as part of a larger struggle for the fate of humanity. In Latin America in particular, the idea of socialist revolution posed a significant challenge to both capitalism and United States hegemony. We will pay special attention to revolutionary and counterrevolutionary events in Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, and Nicaragua, probing the motives, actions, and influence of local and foreign actors in such events.