Joseph y Spenser - 2008 - in From The Cold Latin America's New Encounter Wi

Latin American history/Cold War studies
“Of exceptional importance, In from the Cold is, at last, a volume general readers and classes
have needed to fill a wide, embarrassing, and revealing gap in the current literature. It is an
authoritative, cross-cultural, and provocatively interpretive work (led by Gilbert M. Joseph’s
Joseph
In from the Cold
superb introductory overview of both the global Cold War and post–1945 U.S.–Latin Ameri- and
can relations), and notably important in regard to Washington’s success in helping to kill
l at i n A m e r i c a’s n e w E n c o u n t e r
Latin American democratic and independent cultural movements even as U.S. officials were
demanding the spread of democracy elsewhere.”—Wa lt e r L a F e b e r , Andrew and James Spenser,
Tisch University Professor, Cornell University
w i t h t h e C o l d Wa r
“This outstanding collection explains why Latin America was central to the Cold War and editors
why the Cold War was central for Latin America. By providing easy access to some of the best
research currently being undertaken on Cold War history, the editors have done a great favor
to those who are looking for critical and innovative explorations of the recent past.”
— O. A . W e s ta d , London School of Economics, author of The Global Cold War
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 dis-
cussions of the broader conflict. With some notable exceptions, studies have proceeded in
In from the Cold

rather conventional channels, focusing on U.S. policy objectives and high-profile leaders (Fi-
del 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 to analyze how the international conflict transformed the region’s
political, social, and cultural life. Representing a collaboration among eleven North Ameri-
can, 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 away from the bipolar conflict, the preoccupation of much so-called new Cold War
history, in order to showcase research, discussion, and an array of new archival and oral
sources centering on the grass roots, where conflicts actually brewed. The contributors ex-
amine international and everyday contests over political power and cultural representation,
concentrating on communities and groups above ground 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.
Gilbert M. Joseph is Farnam Professor of History and International Studies at Yale Uni-
versity. Da n i e l a S p e n s e r is Senior Research Professor at the Centro de Investigaciones y
Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social in Mexico City.
Edited by
american encounters/global interactions
A Series Edited by Gilbert M. Joseph and Emily S. Rosenberg Gilbert M. Joseph
D u k e U n i v e r s it y Pr ess
Box 90660, Durham, NC 27708-0660
duke and Daniela Spenser
www.dukeupress.edu
cover photograph: © Jorge Uzon
∫ 2008 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper $
Designed by Erin Kirk New
Typeset in Minion by Keystone Typesetting, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data appear on the

last printed page of this book.
This book was published with the assistance

of the Frederick W. Hilles Publication Fund of Yale University.
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 sí, Yanquis no! The Sacking of the Instituto Cultural México–
Norteamericano in Morelia, Michoacán, 1961 Eric Zolov 214
vi contents
Miracle on Ice: Industrial Workers and the Promise of

Americanization in Cold War Mexico Steven J. Bachelor 253
Chicano Cold Warriors: César Chávez, 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
Preface
The challenge of writing a more multilayered and multivocal history of the Latin
American Cold War, one that would synthesize new approaches and interpreta-
tions from the field of diplomacy and foreign relations with new work by social
and cultural historians of Latin America, is what motivated this volume. When
we began planning the project in 2000, the timing could not have been better,
for Cold War scholars were now the beneficiaries of an avalanche of new docu-
mentation that had become accessible in the United States, the former Soviet
bloc, and Latin America itself.
To bring this project to fruition, we realized that a far-flung collaboration was
essential. It began between us and our home institutions—the Council on Latin
American and Iberian Studies at Yale University and the Centro de Investiga-
ciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (ciesas) in Mexico City. As
plans began to emerge for an international conference, ‘‘México, América Cen-
tral y el Caribe durante la Guerra Fría,’’ which would assess new documentary
sources and conceptualizations of the Latin American Cold War within a global
context, we enlisted the partnership of the Cold War International History
Project (cwihp) at the Woodrow Wilson International Center of Scholars in
Washington, through its director, Christian Ostermann, and the Mexican Min-
istry of Foreign Relations (sre), through the director of its Acervo Histórico
Diplomático, Mercedes de Vega. Our first debts therefore spring from this
unique four-way international collaboration encompassing academics and ar-
chivists, think tanks and state agencies, which produced a stimulating three-day
conference at the Foreign Relations Ministry in November 2002 and ultimately
gave rise to a Spanish volume, Espejos de la guerra fría: México, América Central y
el Caribe, ed. Daniela Spenser (Mexico City: Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2004). We
gratefully acknowledge the e√orts of ciesas’s former director Rafael Loyola
Díaz, and those of Gustav Ranis, former director of Yale’s MacMillan Center for
viii p r e fa c e
International and Area Studies, without whose financial and moral support the
conference and Spanish volume would have been much more di≈cult. The 2002
conference received the lion’s share of its funding from Yale University, through
its Latin American and Iberian Council, then directed by Gil Joseph and assis-
tant chair Beatriz Riefkohl. The dialogue between new sources and interpreta-
tions that distinguished the Mexico City conference would not have been pos-
sible without the unstinting support of Christian Ostermann of the cwihp.
Throughout 2000 and 2001, Christian made available new Eastern European
documents and financed research in Mexican archives, all of which generated
materials that found their way into several of the papers and enlivened our
discussions. In making the conference’s local arrangements, Daniela Spenser
received invaluable logistical support from Mercedes de Vega and her sta√ at the
Archive of the Mexican Foreign Relations Ministry; moreover, the ministry’s
former vice minister for Latin America, Gustavo Iruegas, generously joined
Mercedes as host of the event. Obviously, we are also tremendously indebted to
the broad array of colleagues who shared ideas and insights at the Mexico City
conference that enriched this volume—particularly Adolfo Gilly, Friedrich Katz,
Lorenzo Meyer, Jürgen Buchenau, Jorge Alonso, Barry Carr, and Kate Doyle.
The present volume includes refocused and expanded versions of several of
the papers that appeared in the Espejos collection (for which we are grateful to
the original publishers), as well as several essays commissioned expressly for this
occasion. It seeks to grapple with broader Cold War debates involving the region
and the international conflict, in an e√ort to bring Latin America more mean-
ingfully and centrally into Cold War studies: too often the region has been
marginalized from that literature, apart from a preoccupation with a few high-
profile events, personalities, and coups. The collection also showcases a healthy
sample of newer work on the culture, representation, and memory of the Latin
American Cold War; includes a state-of-the-art inventory of new sources of
documentation; and speculates about where future research on the Latin Ameri-
can Cold War should go.
Like the 2004 Spanish volume, this collection’s strengths remain Mexico,
Central America, and the Caribbean, but several essays give more comparative
attention to the Southern Cone and other parts of Latin America, and one
focuses on Cold War struggles among Mexican and Chicano workers in post-
1945 California. (Readers may be interested in knowing about a companion vol-
ume, also based on a Yale conference and forthcoming from Duke University
Press’s American Encounters/Global Interactions series. Edited by Greg Grandin
and Gil Joseph, A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence
p r e fa c e ix
during Latin America’s Long Cold War focuses extensively on the post-1945 period
as part of a broader examination of revolution and counterrevolution through-
out the twentieth century. A Century of Revolution includes chapters on countries
such as Chile, Peru, and El Salvador and Nicaragua, which are not featured in the
present volume.)
Some final acknowledgments are in order regarding the preparation of this
volume. We are grateful to Frances Bourne and Amanda Levinson for ably
translating two of the contributions from Spanish, and to Yale’s Latin American
Council for helping to cover these and other costs connected with the manu-
script. Ruth DeGolia, Christopher Dampier, Christina Li, Evan Joiner, Sydney
Frey, Sarah Morrill, and Alejandro Peña García provided timely research and
clerical assistance as the manuscript moved toward completion. We also want to
acknowledge Duke’s two anonymous readers for their particularly detailed and
helpful reviews. Last, it gives us great pleasure to thank our editor at Duke,
Valerie Millholland, for the encouragement she has bestowed at every phase of
this journey. She has been with us in New Haven and Mexico City and provided
good counsel and therapy at many moments in between.
Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser

GILBERT M. JOSEPH
What We Now Know and Should Know

Bringing Latin America More Meaningfully
into Cold War Studies
Few periods in Latin America’s history have been as violent, turbulent, and,
some would argue, transformative as the half century that ran roughly from
the end of World War II to the mid-1990s and constituted the Latin American
Cold War. This is because, as in other regions of the global South, Latin Amer-
ica’s Cold War experience was rarely cold.∞ Indeed, one has to go back to the
nineteenth-century wars of independence to find comparably protracted and
far-flung episodes of mass mobilization, revolutionary upheaval, and counter-
insurgent reprisal; yet the international linkages, organizational capacities, and
technologies of death and surveillance at work in the late twentieth century
render this earlier cycle of violence almost quaint by comparison. Gabriel García
Márquez graphically evoked this ‘‘outsized’’ and ‘‘unbridled reality’’ in his 1982
Nobel Prize acceptance speech, conjuring up the apocalyptic events of the 1970s
and early 1980s that turned Central America and the Southern Cone into late-
century killing fields and challenged him to develop a new literary genre—
‘‘magical realism’’—to assimilate the period’s mind-boggling occurrences and
‘‘render our lives believable.’’≤ Since 1971, when his colleague the Chilean poet
Pablo Neruda had received his Nobel Prize, García Márquez reflected, ‘‘we have
not had a moment’s rest’’:
There have been five wars and seventeen military coups; there emerged a diabolical
dictator [Guatemala’s Efraín Ríos Montt] who is carrying out in God’s name the first
Latin American genocide of our time. In the meantime, twenty million Latin Ameri-
can children died before the age of one—more than have been born in Europe since
1970. Those missing because of repression number nearly one hundred and twenty
thousand, which is as if no one could account for all the inhabitants of Uppsala. Nu-
merous women arrested while pregnant have given birth in Argentine prisons, yet
nobody knows the whereabouts and identity of their children. . . . Because they tried
4 gilbert m. joseph
to change this state of things, nearly two hundred thousand have lost their lives in
three small and stubborn countries . . . Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala. If this
had happened in the United States, the corresponding figure would be that of one
million six hundred thousand violent deaths in four years. One million people have
fled Chile, a country with a tradition of hospitality—that is, ten percent of its popula-
tion. Uruguay, a tiny nation of two and a half million inhabitants which considered
itself the continent’s most civilized country, has lost to exile one out of every five citi-
zens. Since 1979, the civil war in El Salvador has produced almost one refugee every
twenty minutes.≥
How do we account for such cataclysmic violence? To be sure, the Latin

American past is littered with alternating cycles of social reform and intense
conservative reaction, in which the influence, aid, and intervention of imperial
powers have figured prominently. Even so, the dynamics of the Latin American
Cold War are embedded in a particularly ferocious dialectic linking reformist
and revolutionary projects for social change and national development and the
excessive counterrevolutionary responses they triggered in the years following
World War II. This dialectic, which shaped regional life in the late twentieth
century and conditioned the region’s prospects for the new millennium, played
out in overlapping and interdependent domestic and international fields of
political and social power.∂ At a macro level, the Cold War was a struggle be-
tween superpowers over shifting geopolitical stakes and ‘‘mass utopias,’’ ideolog-
ical visions of how society and its benefits should be organized.∑ But what
ultimately gave the Cold War in Latin America its heat—what Greg Grandin
terms its ‘‘transcendental force’’—was the ‘‘politicization and internationaliza-
tion of everyday life.’’ On a variety of fronts across several decades, Latin Ameri-
can elites and popular classes participated in local and national political contests
over land, labor, and the control of markets and natural resources that rarely
escaped the powerful undertow of the larger conflict. At certain junctures (most
notably the triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the strategy of inter-
national armed struggle that it supported in the 1960s and 1970s, or the trans-
nationalized anti-Communist crusade of the 1970s and 1980s), these struggles
and the leftist and rightist ideologies that fueled them transcended national
borders and powerfully influenced the relationship between the superpowers
themselves.∏ The result was an ‘‘international civil war’’ that not only pitted the
United States against the Soviet Union and ‘‘capitalism’’ against ‘‘Communism’’
but, at the national and grassroots levels, opposed di√erent views of the shape
that social citizenship would take.π As local conflicts throughout Latin America
w h at w e k n o w a n d s h o u l d k n o w 5
(some of which had extensive antecedents, issuing as they did from the social
contradictions of capitalist development) were subsumed in the intensely polar-
izing global struggle, opposition movements, like the governments they op-
posed, received inspiration and material support from afar. Not infrequently,
Latin American states used a Cold War rationale, generated outside the region,
to wage war against their citizens, to gain or perpetuate power, and to create or
justify authoritarian military regimes. In the process, the stakes rose precipi-
tously, and the potential for violence and terror escalated to an almost incon-
ceivable scale. A scene from cnn’s documentary series on the Cold War starkly
and eerily illustrates this point. ‘‘I saw these weird weapons,’’ a Cuban campesino
reminisces, referring to the ballistic missiles that rolled by his modest shack one
morning in the fall of 1962. ‘‘I said to my friend Pablo, ‘Pablo, how powerful are
these weird weapons?’ and he answered ‘these are nuclear missiles.’ So I thought,
‘oh, really powerful.’ And they just put them here [he points to his field], right
out in the open.’’∫
Happily, the missiles were never launched, and ultimately, thirty years later,
the Cold War wound down in its final, most brutal theaters, with the negotiation
of the Central American Peace Accords terminating civil wars in Guatemala,
Nicaragua, and El Salvador in the early to mid-1990s. But can we really say that
the Latin American Cold War has ‘‘ended’’? Certainly, it endures in the tortured
context of U.S.–Cuban relations and is intensely alive in Miami’s ‘‘Little Ha-
vana,’’ where an increasingly frail Fidel Castro has haunted diasporic Cubans for
nearly fifty years. Although the comparable graying of the exile community has
slightly diminished its zeal and transformed the monolithic stridency that once
defined it, there is little question that it remains a force in state and national
politics, and in the United States’ unswerving opposition to normalizing rela-
tions with the hemisphere’s last (albeit considerably tempered) Communist
regime.Ω Certainly the Cold War is still palpable in Central America, the South-
ern Cone, the Andean nations, and even Mexico, as relatives of the victims of
terror continue to protest past atrocities, exhume graves, and actively press legal
claims against the perpetrators. Although the results of these legal actions are, at
best, mixed, with most individuals from the former security forces continuing to
enjoy immunity, some signal gains have been registered, and in the process, the
cultural fabric of these societies and the manner in which the past is collectively
remembered have been substantially changed.∞≠
Finally, apart from the bubbling up of local episodes of extrajudicial violence
that frequently map onto the fault lines and frustrations of recent Cold War
pasts (e.g., lynchings that continue to plague countries like Guatemala and
6 gilbert m. joseph
Nicaragua), there is a larger question that should be raised about the Cold War’s
conclusion, or at least regarding continuities of power: is the United States
essentially waging a new version of the conflict under another name? Over a
century ago, in his corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, President Theodore Roo-
sevelt told the U.S. Congress that ‘‘chronic wrongdoing or an impotence which
results in a general loosening of the ties of civilized society may in America as
elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation,’’ namely,
‘‘however reluctantly,’’ the United States. Indeed, one might argue that over the
past century, the United States has repeatedly intervened to protect its southern
neighbors from foreign and evil empires and ensure that the ‘‘ties of civilized
society’’—as Washington defined them—remained firm. With talk of ‘‘benevo-
lent hegemony’’ (and even of a ‘‘benevolent U.S. empire’’) once again explicitly
on the agenda,∞∞ and with the Bush administration having already demonstrated
its preemptive resolve to contend globally to guarantee not only U.S. interests
but its prescriptions for global civilization as well—‘‘(constrained) free elections,
(selective) free markets and (U.S.-dominated) international security’’∞≤ —are we
not embarked on another dichotomizing rendition of cold war? In this incarna-
tion, ‘‘democracy promotion’’ (‘‘dempro’’ to practitioners and Bush administra-
tion insiders) has become something of a cottage industry,∞≥ and there is a new
‘‘axis of evil,’’ comprising drug lords, terrorists, failed states, and rogue regimes
and movements. The members of this network (which include some holdovers
from the last conflict, such as Castro and the Sandinistas) can be constructed as
broadly or narrowly as circumstances dictate—just as Communism was.
Indeed, at certain moments, as when Vladimir Putin’s Russia approved a deal
to send fighter planes to Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela in July 2006, one experiences
an eerie sense of déjà vu—which raises a host of questions. Are Russia and the
United States once again moving into potentially ominous opposing alliances?
Ultimately, how di√erent is Putin’s brand of authoritarian realpolitik from that
of his Soviet predecessors?∞∂ And what of continuities in U.S. attitudes and
practice? This would not be surprising, given that Latin America—particularly
Central America in the 1980s—seems to have played a defining role in the genesis
of the foreign policy of the current generation of New Right activists, and that
several key Latin Americanists in the Bush administration previously advised
Presidents Reagan and Bush (the father) on Nicaragua and El Salvador a genera-
tion ago. Ultimately, is Chávez’s ‘‘Bolivarianism’’ a more aΔuent and hemi-
spherically influential version of the ‘‘Tercerismo’’ (‘‘Third Way’’ strategy) of the
Nicaraguan Sandinistas of the 1980s, who were similarly led to purchase weap-
ons from Russia following an earlier campaign by the U.S. government to pre-
vent American and Western defense contractors from selling arms to them?∞∑ To
what extent have the end of the Cold War and the lifting of the onus of Commu-
nism allowed social justice issues to rise to the top of inter-American relations
where nations such as Venezuela or Evo Morales’s Bolivia are concerned?
This volume, which represents a collaboration among eleven North American,

Latin American, and European historians, anthropologists, and political scien-
tists, all students of the Latin American Cold War, does not pretend to present a
‘‘new history’’ of that struggle. Such claims are made too frequently these days,
almost as frequently as new caches of documents are discovered, reclaimed, or
declassified in Washington, the former Eastern bloc, or elsewhere, and ‘‘the
truth can now be known.’’ Rather, what this volume aspires to contribute is an
intellectual ‘‘rapprochement’’ with the Cold War in Latin America. This reen-
counter with the conflict identifies new sources of documentation (see par-
ticularly the essay by Blanton) and suggests how they might alter prevailing
paradigms of interpretation, particularly where questions of international real-
politik, the ideology of Cold War states, and the ‘‘Latin Americanization’’ and
‘‘transnationalization’’ of the conflict are concerned. For example, the essays in
part II shed important new light on the projection of Soviet, Cuban, and Argen-
tine power and the ideologies that underwrote the strategies of each of these
nations. In part III, the essays by Fein, Zolov, and Bachelor further our under-
standing of the motivation and capacity of the Mexican state to skillfully balance
between the superpower contenders.∞∏ At the same time, the collection also seeks
to delve more deeply into what was actually being fought over in the Latin
American Cold War among grassroots populations (including Chicanos in the
U.S. Southwest). In the process, especially in part III, contributors focus on
everyday contests over culture and representation that brought Cold War states,
elite establishments, and culture industries into play with local populations.
Readers will note this collection features a strong emphasis on Mexico, Cen-
tral America, and the Caribbean; there is less coverage of South America, and
certain high-profile Cold War arenas—for example, the Dominican Republic,
Panama, Chile, Bolivia—do not receive explicit treatment. Probably no single
volume can adequately cover the gamut of multiform engagements that con-
stituted the Latin American Cold War; we have sought to feature instructive and
absorbing cases representing mainland and circum-Caribbean areas, and to
include Brazil as well as Spanish America. Perhaps the two major South Ameri-
can nations, Brazil and Argentina, are treated in essays by Langland and Armony
that have conceptual and substantive reach across national borders. The vol-
8 gilbert m. joseph
ume’s overarching essays, by Joseph, Blanton, and Spenser, treat the region as a
whole and also suggest arguments and methods that apply to nations that do not
receive monographic attention. Finally, the strong emphasis on Mexico is meant
to address important lacunas in the literature on the Latin American Cold War.
The Mexican case not only points up oft-ignored, highly ambivalent relation-
ships between Cold War allies but also showcases pivotal cultural and social
issues, thereby moving the narrative away from its prevailing emphasis on diplo-
matic confrontation and military intervention. That Mexico’s experience has
thus far received so little treatment in Cold War studies is astonishing: not only is
Mexico (with Brazil) one of Latin America’s two ‘‘middle powers,’’ but it is the
southern neighbor of the hemisphere’s Cold War hegemon.
One of the abiding goals of this project is to foment a more sustained dia-
logue between foreign relations (or diplomatic) historians of the Cold War—
particularly those who work on Latin America—who have largely been preoc-
cupied with grand strategy and the determinants of U.S. policy, and those who
approach the conflict from the standpoint of the periphery, often ‘‘from below,’’
using the tools of area studies, social and cultural history, and cultural studies.
Sadly, although foreign relations historians and Latin Americanists should share
fraternal relations, they have more often been, in the words of one diplomatic
historian, ‘‘polyglot distant cousin[s].’’∞π Most of this volume’s contributors have
worked across the methodological, interpretive, and linguistic divides that have
until now separated these fields, and their essays portend a more vital cross-
fertilization of them.
The Cold War and Latin America: Perspectives from

Foreign Relations History
No field of foreign relations history is as well studied as the Cold War.∞∫ Initially,
attention focused on the conflict’s early phases (i.e., from the mid-1940s through
the 1960s), but in recent years, foreign relations historians have ranged beyond
staples such as the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Vietnam War (which have
constituted veritable cottage industries in the U.S. diplomatic field) to concen-
trate on the later phases of the conflict. In the process, they are more systemati-
cally engaging the Cold War in its peripheries in the global South.∞Ω The current
boom in Cold War studies is not really surprising. The end of the conflict paved
the way for greater access to the records of the former Soviet Union, its satellites
in Eastern Europe, and those of the People’s Republic of China. Increasingly, key
documents from the era have also become more accessible in the United States,
Mexico, the Southern Cone, Central America, and, to a lesser extent, Cuba.≤≠
Moreover, the sudden implosion of the Soviet Union and the resounding cries of
victory by the West triggered a wave of euphoria among some U.S. diplomatic
and political historians that immediately prompted them—and others who re-
sisted such triumphalism—to reassess the origins, the variegated trajectory, and
denouement of the conflict. It also brought a number of Western and Eastern
European scholars, and increasingly Asian historians, into the debate.≤∞
And based on production in the field’s journal of record, Diplomatic History,
the appearance since 1999 of several new specialist journals, and the continuing
vitality of the Cold War International History Project of the Woodrow Wilson
International Center for Scholars and the National Security Archive of George
Washington University, interest in the global conflict shows no sign of abating.≤≤
Scholars continue to debate—often quite heatedly—the causes, strategies, ide-
ologies, flash points, turning points, and legacies of the global conflict, in addi-
tion to contending in their assessments of the Cold War’s endgame.
For their part, diplomatic historians of Latin America have scrutinized the
strategic stakes of the United States and the Soviet Union in Cuba, Central
America, and the Caribbean; debated the psychology and personal style of Fidel
Castro; sought to gauge the ebb, flow, and relative autonomy of his relation-
ship with the Soviets, and the consequences for Cuban and Soviet intervention
abroad; and examined U.S. policies to contain that intervention. But, in the
words of Mark Gilderhus, the senior foreign relations scholar charged with
taking stock of this field, the Latin Americanist literature, despite some impres-
sive pieces of work, remains ‘‘fragmented,’’ ‘‘dominated by the monograph, nar-
rowly focused, and largely dependent upon the records of the United States.’’≤≥
Greg Grandin, a historian of Guatemalan social movements who recently pro-
duced a major study of the Guatemalan Cold War that attempts a provocative
new synthesis of the broader Latin American conflict, independently supports
Gilderhus’s 1995 assessment, chiding diplomatic historians for their myopic
concerns:
Poets may see the world in a grain of sand . . . but only diplomatic historians could
reduce the Latin American Cold War to a Cuban beach. The Cold War radically
transformed Latin America, yet historians of U.S. policy toward the region inevitably
focus on the period’s most rousing events. These episodes more often than not have
to do with Cuba—the 1959 Revolution, the Bay of Pigs, the Missile Crisis, and plots to
murder Fidel Castro. Yet just as Fidel eventually made it o√ the beach and into the
mountains, the time has come for U.S. historians to assess the Latin American Cold
10 gilbert m. joseph
War from [another] vantage point, one less preoccupied with what motivated United
States policymakers and more concerned with identifying what was being fought
over in Latin America itself.≤∂
No doubt these critiques account in part for the fact that the region has rarely
been incorporated into the great historiographic debates about the character of
the Cold War and remains disproportionately underrepresented in journals
specializing in the conflict.≤∑
But this is not the only reason. For many years (indeed, through the mid-
1990s at least) Cold War debates centered excessively on the origins of the conflict
—e√ectively on who was to blame—and, of course, the U.S.–Soviet rivalry began
in terms of the postwar settlement in Europe. The Cold War then spread, first to
East and Southeast Asia, then to Latin America and roughly simultaneously to
the Middle East, and finally to Africa. While foreign relations scholars disagree
vehemently on which side was the fuerza motriz of the Cold War, they may be
said to have reached a baseline consensus on the conflict’s broader contours. It is
useful to establish this broader understanding at the outset, since the second half
of this essay (and, more implicitly, the volume as a whole) engages it from a
rather di√erent perspective, that of newer approaches to Latin American politi-
cal, social, and cultural history.
Diplomatic historians concur that the Cold War was a complex phenomenon
that turned on the rivalry of two powerful states, each a ‘‘rookie superpower,’’
each possessing a universalizing ideology and a distinct system of political econ-
omy. The rivalry between them led to the division of Germany and Europe, an
intense, often violent competition in the southern peripheries, and a strategic
arms race. Although the belligerents were careful not to engage in direct hos-
tilities with each other, they consistently eschewed serious negotiation of their
disputes—in e√ect seeking a diplomacy based on their own terms. The conflict
took place in the wake of World War II, when an unsettled international system
conjured up unprecedented threats and opportunities for the leaders of many
nations, but especially for those of the United States and the Soviet Union. As
Melvyn LeΔer has put it: ‘‘Interpreting those threats and opportunities through
ideological lenses, cultural traditions, and cognitive habits of mind, American
and Russian o≈cials had the incentive and the power to pursue their strategic
and economic goals in ways that accorded with their understanding of national
interest and their ideological predilections. Their actions triggered reactions in a
spiraling model of distrust and recrimination. Meanwhile, other governments
(and parties and groups within those nations) sought to exploit the rivalry to
enhance their own interests.’’≤∏
Finally, the consensus holds, one of the belligerents, the United States, was far
more powerful and wealthy throughout and enjoyed a political-economic sys-
tem that was vastly more productive, flexible, and technologically responsive.
‘‘The wonder,’’ LeΔer observes, is that the other side imploded without pre-
cipitating a major conflict.’’≤π
Intellectual historians of foreign relations have contributed important in-
sights into the intensely ideological character of this ‘‘abnormal’’ war. This was
no ordinary state conflict, and geopolitical analysis does not su≈ce to explain
the cruel and brutal form it took, especially in the global South. Indeed, geo-
politics may enrich our understanding of the military-political domain of the
global conflict, but it has little to say about the ideological-cultural realm. The
irony of the Cold War was that it represented, in the words of Anders Stephan-
son, ‘‘an extreme polarity organized around total annihilation of the opponent
in a period of ostensible peace.’’≤∫ Before 1963, annihilation literally seemed a
distinct possibility. Thereafter, neither side appeared to require or seriously
risked the actual destruction of the other. In theory, each could have gone on
indefinitely without having to change its system as a result of the other’s exis-
tence (the ‘‘long peace,’’ as John Lewis Gaddis terms it),≤Ω since open conflict was
deterred by the nuclear reality of ‘‘mutually assured destruction’’ and e√ectively
displaced and managed on the so-called Third World periphery. Yet in another
sense, the Cold War remained systemic and total. It was waged in fiercely doc-
trinal terms as an ‘‘invasion’’ or delegitimization of the other’s social order,
replete with a demonology of the other and a mythology of one’s own eternal
virtues. No doubt, argues Stephanson, the rigid territorialization of systems,
beginning in 1947 in Europe, only intensified the mutually exclusive ideological
aspect of the war, propelling it into its most primitive forms. This intensification
of ideology assisted in securing, in di√erent ways and contexts, each side’s socio-
economic systems in the two halves of Europe and in spheres of influence such
as Latin America.≥≠ Yet in whatever context, the domestic social order could
never be taken for granted: repression of internal dissent was axiomatic: redbait-
ing and worse in the United States and Mexico; wholesale purges in the Soviet
Union; ethnocide in the western highlands and northern jungles of Guatemala.
The Cold War therefore cannot be reduced in its origins or development to
notions of geopolitics and strategy.
Unfortunately, for too long the great debates in Cold War literature were often
reductionist and disproportionately preoccupied with geopolitics and grand
strategy. Such ‘‘realist’’ staples fueled paradigms of explanation that have con-
tended over the last fifty years with other master narratives emphasizing the
logic of U.S. economic domination.≥∞ Since many area studies scholars may not
be familiar with these venerable paradigms, they are worth glossing here. First
there was the ‘‘orthodoxy’’ of the 1950s and early 1960s, driven by o≈cials of the
U.S. government, which saw a paranoid style of Stalinist expansionism as forc-
ing the pace of world events.≥≤ This gave way in the 1960s and 1970s to a New Left
‘‘revisionism,’’ which proved most compelling during the Vietnam War. This
paradigm viewed inexorable U.S. economic drives, interwoven with a muscular
liberal capitalist ideology, as mostly responsible for the character of the global
struggle between East and West.
New Left revisionism, in turn, was displaced by a self-proclaimed school of
‘‘postrevisionism,’’ which held sway from the late 1970s through the middle
1990s.≥≥ This current of interpretation, galvanized by a series of seminal writings
by John Gaddis, trumpeted a new synthesis in Cold War studies.≥∂ While recog-
nizing the structural patterns of the world economy, it stressed the dynamics of
the postwar international system, which, in combination with the exigencies of
U.S. domestic politics, best accounted for the behavior of Washington and
Moscow. Unlike the ‘‘revisionists’’—who argued that ‘‘American policy merely
fitted the Soviet problem into a much larger context,’’ that of sustaining and
reforming world capitalism, whose ‘‘specific needs’’ shaped the United States’
‘‘global role’’≥∑ —Gaddis contended that American o≈cials were not seeking eco-
nomic hegemony. Rather, constrained by partisan and bureaucratic politics at
home and obsessed with attending to global power balances, they sought to
contain the imperial drives of the Communist bloc. In the process, Gaddis ac-
knowledged (and here he was influenced by European scholars) that the United
States established its own empire. Yet unlike its Soviet counterpart, it was an
empire of liberty and diversity, an ‘‘empire of invitation,’’≥∏ called into existence
by America’s allies in Western Europe and elsewhere who embraced the promise
of liberal democracy.
In his earlier writings of the 1970s and 1980s, Gaddis was not overly pre-
occupied with apportioning blame. He judged the Soviet Union to be primarily
responsible for the Cold War, arguing that ‘‘Stalin’s paranoia, together with the
bureaucracy of institutionalized suspicion with which he surrounded himself,’’
made agreement futile—but Gaddis devoted relatively little attention to the
matter of blame.≥π It is therefore striking that in his more recent, post–Cold War
statements, especially his highly influential book We Now Know: Rethinking the
Cold War (1997),≥∫ he essentially jettisons postrevisionism and harks back to the
orthodoxy of America’s early cold warriors. Gaddis finds in the plethora of new
documents from Russian, East European, and Chinese archives clear-cut sub-
stantiation that the Soviets not only started the Cold War but determined its
trajectory.≥Ω For Gaddis, ‘‘the ‘new history’ is bringing us back to an old an-
swer,’’∂≠ namely, that the Cold War was determined by the authoritarian cast of
Soviet government and the revolutionary romanticism of Marxist-Leninist ide-
ology, which inspired both the Kremlin’s leaders and their international clients
from Mao to Castro.∂∞ For Gaddis, the central significance of the Cold War now
becomes the abiding role of the United States (and its allies) in resisting and
defeating this ferocious brand of authoritarianism. Indeed, in his presidential
address to the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations in 1993, he
called on his colleagues to join him ‘‘at the center of that debate.’’∂≤
Other diplomatic historians, certainly the revisionists but also a number of
Gaddis’s former postrevisionist colleagues, have read the new sources somewhat
di√erently. Melvyn LeΔer referred to We Now Know as ‘‘in many ways . . . the
scholarly diplomatic counterpart of Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History’’ and
warned that ‘‘master narratives will soon be outdated if they are too influenced
by contemporary fashions [that is, triumphalism].’’ He added that what struck
him about the new documentation and resulting scholarship was ‘‘the extent to
which [it] leaves itself open to diverse conclusions.’’∂≥ In his view, a close reading
of the new materials ‘‘suggests more nuanced conclusions’’:
The Cold War was not a simple case of Soviet expansionism and American reaction.
Realpolitik held sway in the Kremlin. Ideology played an important role in shaping
their perceptions, but Soviet leaders were not focused on promoting worldwide revo-
lution. They were concerned mostly with configurations of power, with protecting
their country’s immediate periphery, ensuring its security, and preserving their rule.
Governing a land devastated by two world wars, they feared a resurgence of German
and Japanese strength. They felt threatened by a United States that alone among the
combatants emerged from the war wealthier and armed with the atomic bomb. So-
viet o≈cials did not have preconceived plans to make Eastern Europe communist, to
support the Chinese communists, or to wage war in Korea. Soviet clients [e.g., Ul-
bricht and Honecker’s East Germany, Mao’s China, Castro’s Cuba], moreover, could
and did act in pursuit of their own interests, sometimes goading the Kremlin into in-
volvements it did not want.∂∂
Thus, like Gaddis, LeΔer believes the newly accessible documents a√ord
much greater insight into how foreign policy was made in the Communist
world. Unlike Gaddis, however, LeΔer’s reading of the new materials suggests
that Soviet actions were less reflexive, and more contingent, than previously
imagined. (For a particularly apposite example of this, see Spenser’s essay in this
volume on the 1962 Caribbean crisis and its consequences for the projection of
Soviet power.) Still, according to LeΔer, likely nothing the United States might
have done would have eased Soviet suspicions, at least in the early years of the
Cold War. In actuality, American policies only exacerbated the anxieties of the
Warsaw bloc, thereby fueling the arms race and the extension of the conflict into
the Third World. ‘‘Rather than congratulate themselves on the Cold War’s out-
come,’’ LeΔer concludes, ‘‘Americans must confront the negative as well as the
positive consequences of U.S. actions and inquire much more searchingly into
the implications of their nation’s foreign policies.’’∂∑
The current moment of documentary revelation is clearly fraught with pitfalls
as well as promise. Are the sources dribbling out in such piecemeal fashion that
they produce incomplete impressions that must constantly be revised? Will they
be read in Rorschach fashion, as historians seek in them the confirmation of
existing views? For a number of Eastern European and U.S. scholars, the new
documentation from the Communist world seems only to further their preoc-
cupation with Soviet culpability and bipolar confrontation, while minimizing
the relevance of North-South contexts. Will the new evidence merely provide
new ammunition to refight old battles? Michael Hogan, who recently concluded
an innovative tenure as editor of Diplomatic History, worries that the new evi-
dence from Communist archives will become a ‘‘strait jacket’’ for historians
of foreign relations, ‘‘locking them into well-established categories of analysis
when they might be exploring new directions and asking new questions.’’∂∏ In his
essay in this volume, Seth Fein echoes this view, warning against ‘‘fetishizing the
declassification of new documents,’’ whose production and consumption are
overdetermined by the prevailing Cold War master narratives.∂π
Hogan’s and Fein’s concerns about the hegemony of established categories are
borne out when we examine more closely the scholarship by U.S. diplomatic
historians on the Cold War in Latin America.∂∫ Although this regional body of
work has rarely informed the Great Debate, it has certainly been inspired by
its contending paradigms. Not surprisingly, radical revisionist narratives have
dominated writing on Latin America. Beginning in the 1970s and 1980s, the New
Left history of William Appleman Williams and his students was complemented
and updated by neo-Marxian dependency theory and world systems analysis,
both of which were heavily indebted to Latin American and African thinkers.
The fit seemed appropriate. Latin America had su√ered colonial and neocolo-
nial structural inequality since the early modern era: After centuries of Spanish
and Portuguese colonial rule and a briefer period of British hegemony, the
United States practiced new forms of imperial domination as the world’s pre-
eminent capitalist power. Moreover, during the Cold War, Latin America repre-
sented something of an ‘‘Achilles’ heel in the hard armor of U.S. virtue’’: even the
most triumphal Cold War scholars were hard pressed to explain away U.S.
actions that brought about the toppling of popularly elected regimes and con-
tributed to the murder and torture of hundreds of thousands of people.∂Ω It is
hardly surprising, therefore, that, aided by the increased declassification of U.S.
security documents, there has been a steady stream of monographs critiquing
U.S. involvement in Latin America from the late 1940s to the 1990s—even as
some synthesizers of the larger conflict have declared an unshakable faith in
American righteousness and exceptionalism. New Left scholarship and depen-
dency theory came together most forcefully in Walter LaFeber’s Inevitable Revo-
lutions: The United States in Central America. Appearing in 1984, as Guatemala,
Nicaragua, and El Salvador had become the Cold War’s final killing fields, the
volume highlighted the contradiction created by a U.S. development model that
generated chronic poverty and insurgency and a regional diplomacy that en-
forced political stability at tremendous human cost.∑≠
More recently, in a mammoth, meticulously documented, and powerfully
written critique of U.S. policy toward Central America from the late 1970s to the
early 1990s (particularly support for Nicaragua’s anti-Sandinista Contras and
El Salvador’s military-backed governments), William LeoGrande argues that
where the isthmus was concerned, both the Carter and the Reagan administra-
tions participated in the completion of the debate on Vietnam. Drawing on a
trove of documents declassified in the wake of the investigation by the U.S.
Congress into the Iran-Contra scandal, LeoGrande shows how conservatives
attempted to exorcise the ghost of Vietnam and liberals desperately sought to
avoid repeating its mistakes. Unfortunately absent from the tome’s almost eight
hundred pages of policy analysis is a nuanced understanding of the internal
(much less grassroots) dynamics of contention that intersected with U.S. and
Soviet-Cuban involvement.∑∞
This is not to say that the ascendancy of a ‘‘triumphal realism’’ has not
registered an impact on the foreign relations literature on the Latin American
Cold War. A number of admirably researched histories of Cold War interven-
tions have obsessively debated the ‘‘motivations’’ of U.S. policymakers in a seem-
ing attempt to distinguish the well-meaning intent of government actors from
the more horrific consequences of U.S. actions.∑≤ While not inattentive to eco-
nomic interests, historical-structural inequalities, and long-running traditions
of imperial hubris and racism, these scholars have often ultimately chosen to
focus on the political culture, climate of heightened fear, and international
exigencies of the Cold War to explain away a series of ‘‘tragic U.S. mistakes.’’
Thus, after substantial critique, Stephen Rabe concludes his recent study of JFK
and Communist revolution in Latin America in the following manner: ‘‘Ken-
nedy brought high ideals and noble purposes to his Latin American policy.
Ironically, however, his unwavering determination to wage Cold War . . . led him
and his administration ultimately to compromise and even mutilate those grand
goals for the Western Hemisphere.’’∑≥ Similarly, Robert Pastor and others have
ascribed democratic motives to Eisenhower amid the human tragedy wrought
by the cia-orchestrated 1954 coup in Guatemala.∑∂ Interestingly, the cognitive
dissonance between the liberal democratic values that America claims to defend
and the terrible consequences of its policies in the Third World even bedeviled
the doyen of New Left revisionism, William Appleman Williams. Throughout
his writings, Williams ‘‘always seemed to feel that the United States could, if
only it just would, abandon its imperialist career and go into a more modest
business.’’∑∑
It is, of course, less surprising that John Gaddis takes this tack in We Now
Know, in his own brief discussion of the U.S.-engineered overthrow of the
reformist government of Jacobo Arbenz. Deeming U.S. policy a mistake, ‘‘a
massive overreaction’’ at a moment fraught with anti-Communist hysteria, he
then goes a step further, writing the episode o√ as a response to ‘‘a minor
irritant,’’ one that ‘‘did little to alter the course of events inside Guatemala,’’
where Arbenz’s ‘‘Quixotic’’ regime ‘‘had made so many enemies . . . that it
probably would not have lasted in any event.’’∑∏
Reassessing the Latin American Cold War from Within
Gaddis’s bullet verdict on Guatemala, invoking as it does the correlation of

domestic forces underwriting the 1954 Guatemalan coup, provides the entry
point for the second half of this essay. I want to take discussion of the Latin
American Cold War in a di√erent direction, beyond—or better beneath—the
great diplomatic debates that have particularly stunted the region’s Cold War
historiography. Marc Bloch wrote in The Historian’s Craft that ‘‘to be excited by
the same dispute, even on opposing sides, is still to be alike. This common
stamp . . . is what makes a generation.’’∑π A veritable obsession with first causes,
with blame, and with the motives and roles of U.S. policymakers has served to
join New Left historians and realists at the hip and until only recently preempted
other intellectual agendas for examining the Latin American Cold War. In this
sense, this volume represents an attempt to bring its study ‘‘in from the cold,’’
that is, to transcend frayed, dichotomizing paradigms of interpretation that

themselves appear to be artifacts of the conflict. My fellow contributors and I
would be the last to argue that the state and its agents do not play a preponderant
role in the history of the Latin American Cold War.∑∫ But the manner in which
foreign relations historians have assessed the conflict in terms of national inter-
est, state policy, and the broad imperatives of the international economy has
often marginalized human subjects, particularly women and members of the
poorer and middle sectors (e.g., peasants, workers, intellectuals, students, and
religious workers of di√erent ideological stripes, indigenous and ethnic groups),
ignoring a serious examination of their social and cultural identities and politi-
cal agency. At times, it has seemed as if the region’s Cold War historiography
served only to illustrate Thucydides’ classic (eminently realist ) maxim: ‘‘Large
nations do what they wish, while small nations accept what they must.’’∑Ω
The prevailing diplomatic literature on the Latin American Cold War has also
largely neglected other political-cultural realms—we might call them trans-
national ‘‘contact zones’’—in which the state’s power is deployed (and contested)
through a series of representations, symbolic systems, and new technologies
involving agents that transcend the state: business and communication net-
works, culture industries, educational institutions, and philanthropic founda-
tions, to name but a few. Several of this volume’s contributors focus on these
sites of transnational encounter—for example, the electronic and print media
(Fein and Langland); forms of popular culture, leisure, and consumption (Fein,
Bachelor, Pitti, Langland, and McAllister); riots and public demonstrations (Zo-
lov and Pitti); revolutionary and counterinsurgent aid missions (Gleijeses and
Armony)—which throw subtle, foreign-local dimensions of Cold War power
relationships, as well as critical interstate collaborations, into sharp relief. Sev-
eral of these essays mark out a broader understanding of political history as
‘‘integrative’’ history that blends material and cultural levels of analysis.∏≠ They
acknowledge that Cold War history should be properly fixed on the exercise of
power, but appreciate that power does not flow only from the policies and
interventions of states; it also works through language and symbolic systems and
manifests itself in identities and everyday practices.∏∞
I hasten to emphasize that while the scholarship gathered in this book repre-
sents a relatively new approach to the Cold War in Latin America, it draws from
and builds on some exciting new developments in the larger field of foreign
relations history. For many years, the gatekeepers of the diplomatic field prac-
ticed a strategy of containment on those who would introduce newer forms of
social and cultural history, purporting to welcome arguments based on these
new approaches but then ‘‘demonstrating why older conceptual frameworks

remain more persuasive.’’ Happily, over the course of the past decade or so, an
increasing number of foreign relations historians have moved away from a
narrow preoccupation with institutional political and economic history and
built a compelling justification for the usefulness of cultural, gendered, ethno-
racial, visual, and deconstructionist approaches to the study of empire and the
Cold War.∏≤ This corpus of work has sought to establish a concern with culture
and ideology at the center of the inquiry and, to varying degrees, to connect the
realm of elite policymaking with that of everyday experience.∏≥ It has breathed
new life into Cold War studies and extended the horizons of foreign relations
history, a field that even many of its practitioners had begun to refer to as a
hidebound, increasingly irrelevant discipline. Some of the present volume’s con-
tributors have previously played a role in this boundary shift,∏∂ and the essays in
the second part of the collection contribute to it.
While this burgeoning new literature is admirably heterogeneous in its inter-
disciplinarity, it owes its greatest debts to the latest currents in American studies
and cultural studies, particularly critical studies of gender and postcoloniality.
Much of this new work in foreign relations history focuses on the representa-
tional machines of American empire—particularly the technologies and dis-
courses that conveyed empire to audiences back home.∏∑ While the present
volume has much to say about imperial enterprises of representation (and the
Pitti essay focuses explicitly on the domestic reception of Cold War events and
symbols), it is more concerned with representation as an integral dimension of
Cold War encounters at the Latin American grassroots. Thus particular atten-
tion is given to a materially grounded, processual analysis of U.S. and other
foreign interaction with local polities, societies, and cultures.∏∏ The manner
in which Cold War encounters reciprocally shaped imperial cultures at home,
although implicit or secondary in some of the essays, is not a central con-
cern here.
In shifting the conceptual focus of the Latin American Cold War to the
international struggle’s ‘‘periphery’’—especially its grassroots—and to the inter-
section of culture and power, we hope to constructively engage with mainstream
diplomatic historians of the regional conflict. If only to accomplish their core
objectives of identifying the relevant interests and actors involved, and explain-
ing the determinants and consequences of policy, these scholars should take note
of newer work on the region’s social and cultural history that has been produced
over the past decade or so. Interestingly, one of John Gaddis’s central arguments
in We Now Know is that New Left historians have refused to come to terms with
the ‘‘strong base of popular support, confirmed repeatedly,’’ that supported the
American presence in Western Europe and Asia and kept friendly governments
in power. The same criticism might also be leveled at those who underestimate
the level of support for anti-Communist authoritarianism in Latin America—
among middle sectors, workers, campesinos, Christians, men and women—
and adduce terror to be the only compelling reason for the existence of late-
twentieth-century counterinsurgent regimes in Central America and the South-
ern Cone. Any adequate history of the global Cold War, Gaddis concludes and
we would concur, must therefore also be a social and cultural history, one that
takes seriously the actions, identities, and beliefs of ordinary people, as well as
of elites.∏π
Such a social and cultural history of the Latin American Cold War would
contribute to the oft-declared yet never achieved synthesis sought by several
leading foreign relations scholars. It would scrutinize the abstract claims of
relevant but insu≈cient paradigms like dependency and world systems theory
with on-the-ground studies of hard-fought battles involving state and society
over economic exploitation, national inclusion, and the meaning of citizenship.
At the same time, it would force us to come to a more rigorous understanding of
just what we mean by the term ‘‘Cold War.’’ For historians and social scientists of
Latin America during the second half of the twentieth century, the term has been
used as a kind of ‘‘shorthand to describe either direct U.S. or Cuban [or Soviet]
intervention in Latin American politics, or the collateral damage from super-
power conflict.’’∏∫ What has been lacking is a framework for understanding the
grassroots dynamics and meanings of the Latin American Cold War, one that
would enable us to better integrate the conflict’s domestic and foreign dimen-
sions. This is obviously a far-flung assignment given the diversity of the region
and the duration of the Cold War. Even in suggesting the potential of such an
approach, I can only paint in broad strokes here.
Recent work by a variety of social and labor historians has examined the
region’s brief but tumultuous ‘‘democratic spring’’ in the years immediately
following World War II. The war had spurred the economic growth and facili-
tated the political mobilization of Latin American societies. Although only in-
directly associated with the Allied e√ort, large numbers of people, especially
among the lower and middle classes, were a√ected by the democratic discourse
and ideological fervor that inspired the struggle against fascism. Nationalist
wartime propaganda, crafted in collaboration with Nelson Rockefeller’s O≈ce
of the Coordinator of Inter-American A√airs, promoted democratic values and
freedoms, often invoking strong, popular liberal traditions in Latin American
politics and culture that went back to the independence struggles of the early
nineteenth century.∏Ω Miners, factory workers, and some campesinos organized,
joined unions (or bid for greater union independence in nations, like Mexico,
where the labor movement was closely controlled by the state), mounted strikes
of unprecedented militancy, supported new democratic parties, and injected
strength into existing Communist, socialist, and radical movements. In some
places (e.g., Mexico, El Salvador, Chile), such Old Left formations had gal-
vanized local rebellions and popular struggles in the 1920s and 1930s, which had
been targeted by repressive, typically oligarchical states during virulent Red
Scares that some scholars now refer as the ‘‘first Cold War.’’π≠ Now, in the
aftermath of World War II, validated by antifascist patriotism and frequently
neglected by Moscow, many of the region’s Communist parties sought to con-
solidate their wartime strategy of allying with other ‘‘progressive’’ sectors of
society in nationalist, popular movements to break the power of the so-called
feudal landed class.
In a real sense, then, Latin America had much in common with Western and
Eastern Europe, the Middle East, India, China, Southeast Asia, and Japan, where
the years linking the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War
constituted an e√ervescent and critical conjuncture. The pioneers in the study of
this period for Latin America, Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough, assembled a
team of scholars to flesh out these themes across the continent.π∞ Despite local
variation, in case after case, they found ‘‘a forward march by democracy, the
Left, and labor,’’ but also ‘‘a shift in the nature of political discourse and ideol-
ogy.’’ Democracy took on a pronounced social flavor, coming to mean ‘‘a com-
mitment to popular, more particularly working-class participation in politics,
and social and economic improvements for the poorer sections of the popula-
tion.’’π≤ In both Communist and non-Communist sectors of the Left, democracy
increasingly became identified with development and state welfarism, typically
structured around nationalist strategies of import substitution industrialization
(isi).
According to the new scholarship, the postwar democratic spring and its
undoing fell out in two phases. Its all-too-brief consolidation took place any-
where from 1944 through 1946, depending on the country. Throughout the
hemisphere, dictatorships fell, popular forces were mobilized, and elections
with a relatively high level of participation were held. For the first time, an array
of reformist populist parties (some with roots going back to the 1920s) articu-
lated the political, social, and economic demands of the urban middle class and
the working class (though less frequently those of the peasantry).
We should not minimize the diversity and contentiousness that characterized

these popular movements and coalitions—in Peru, for example, the apra and
the Communist Party occasionally attacked each other more fiercely than they
did the oligarchs.π≥ Peronism in Argentina embodied a constant tension between
impulses of reform and reaction, with its leadership, once in power, striving
mightily ‘‘to contain the heretical challenge it had unleashed.’’π∂ But, as a host of
recent local and sectoral studies of populist and popular front arrangements
demonstrate, this did not preclude these reform movements and coalitions from
tapping into and raising popular expectations of state-administered economic
justice and national inclusion.π∑
At first the United States lent encouragement to this democratic e√ervescence,
which prompted regional economic and military elites temporarily to acquiesce
to popular demands for democratization of their societies. These were the years
when Fidel Castro quoted Tom Paine and Thomas Je√erson rather than Lenin
(just as Ho Chi Minh cited passages from the Declaration of Independence).π∏
The well-reported anecdote that, as a twelve-year-old, Fidel sent FDR a letter
congratulating him on his victory earlier in the decade (and also asking him for
a ten-dollar bill!) similarly accentuates the importance the New Deal state had as
a model for would-be Latin American reformers.ππ
The denouement of this postwar democratic spring played out in most cases
during 1946 and 1947 and was completed almost everywhere by 1948—with the
notable exception of Guatemala, where spring endured for ten years, until the
1954 coup. Most everywhere else, organized labor was reined in by the state and
militants were purged; Communist parties were outlawed and su√ered severe
repression; populist reform parties lost their dynamism or moved to the right;
and the democratic advance was largely contained, if not reversed. The window
of democratic opportunity for political and social change, which had cracked
open at the end of the war, had essentially been slammed shut by 1948 as the
Cold War gathered force.π∫
In a careful analysis that seeks to integrate domestic and international vari-
ables, Bethell, Roxborough, and their collaborators persuasively argue that ‘‘the
attack on labor and the left, especially the Communist left, was . . . overdeter-
mined.’’πΩ They remind us not to minimize the strength of Latin America’s
authoritarian tradition, which—like its multistranded popular liberal tradition
so much in evidence during the democratic spring—also had deep historical
roots and was now harnessed to support the power of the threatened dominant
classes, not least the landed class. The emerging Cold War reinforced a domes-
tic anti-Communism that went back decades and was ingrained in the military,
the Catholic hierarchy, and segments of the middle class—independent of U.S.

prompting.∫≠ While the United States essentially neglected Latin America, its
gaze fixed on Europe during the first years of the Cold War, it would still be a
‘‘mistake to underestimate its importance.’’∫∞ World War II had cemented a
century-long process of U.S. ascendance in the hemisphere. U.S. intelligence
realistically discounted the Soviet threat to the region in the mid-1940s, and little
U.S. military or economic aid came into Latin America in the late 1940s. Nev-
ertheless, operating through its embassy o≈cials, the fbi, the American Federa-
tion of Labor, and, after 1947, the newly created cia, the United States carefully
monitored the region’s internal front, applying a range of economic and political
pressures on governments and unions. The popular democratic movements that
Washington had validated in the middle of the decade were discouraged by 1947.
‘‘Latin America is in the throes of a social revolution,’’ observed a worried State
Department o≈cial, and Washington would take increasingly graduated mea-
sures to contain and then reverse it.∫≤
To conclude their analysis of how both national and international agendas
came together to seal the fate of social democracy in the late 1940s, Bethell and
Roxborough examine the perception that regional elites had of the new inter-
national economic order, and its consequences for Latin American political
economy. The United States had quickly made it clear that there would be no
Marshall Plan for its ‘‘good neighbors’’: compared with the $19 billion in foreign
aid sent to Western Europe from 1945 to 1950, only $400 million flowed to Latin
America—less than 2 percent of total U.S. aid.∫≥ Latin America’s ruling elites had
no recourse but to seek private foreign capital to underwrite their nations’ costly
isi initiatives. The attraction of such capital hinged on the creation of a proper
investment climate, one shaped by political stability; a commitment to liberal,
capitalist development; the marginalization of the Left; and the curtailment of
independent currents in the unions. Thus the reversal of the democratic spring
by ruling elites was regarded to be a ‘‘necessary precondition’’ for the region’s
‘‘participation in the unprecedented expansion of the international economy, in
which the United States played the dominant role.’’∫∂
In his important study of Cold War Guatemala, The Last Colonial Massacre,
Greg Grandin analyzes the belated, violent overthrow of Guatemala’s Ten Years
of Spring, the outlier in this historical watershed of the rise and fall of an
extremely diverse, popularly driven social democracy. The heart of the book
is Grandin’s ability to evoke the shifting struggles of indigenous Guatemalan
campesinos, mostly Q’eqchi’ Mayan peasants and plantation workers from the
co√ee-producing region of Alta Verapaz. Drawing on local archives and many
hours of oral testimonies, he shows how these Mayans first responded to the
democratic promise of the Arévalo-Arbenz revolution and its expanded vision of
economic rights, agrarian reform, and claims to citizenship. Tracing local strug-
gles back to the 1920s (and rooting their determinants in the mid-nineteenth
century), Grandin attempts to convey how political action and political ideas
defined people’s lives, and ‘‘how the frustration and ultimate destruction of their
ideals a√ected not only those few who survived but a wider [Cold War] his-
tory.’’∫∑ In the face of triumphalist arguments that one of Communism’s worst
sins was its dissolution of the self into an all-encompassing and tyrannical system
of belief—such that Communism became fascism’s totalitarian twin, inimical to
the autonomous individual that stands at the center of liberal democracy—
Grandin suggests that it was political action associated with Guatemala’s home-
grown Communist Party (the Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo) that produced
a more pronounced sense of the self, an ‘‘insurgent individuality.’’∫∏ It was this
insurgent individuality that struggled against, and succeeded in at least loosen-
ing, the chains of hierarchy and extreme exploitation that traditionally bound
Guatemalan society together. But this notion of the self always existed ‘‘in rela-
tion to more encumbered social and cultural identities,’’ such as family, commu-
nity, and race. Grandin argues that the strength and threat of Latin America’s Old
Left, represented here by the pgt, was its ability through political action to bridge
‘‘the fault lines of modernity, linking nation and world, community and state,
and self and society.’’∫π Thus, its class-based, male, modernist, urban bias not-
withstanding, the pgt, which exerted a powerful influence on Arbenz’s revolu-
tionary coalition, was driven by particular grievances and diverse identities.
Struggles in the countryside, especially over access to land and an end to forced,
uncompensated labor, stretched the party’s rhetorical frame of modernizing
Marxist social democracy to encompass the multitude of experiences and subjec-
tivities on the ground. The pgt’s founder Humberto Alvarado alluded to this
tension and his party’s bridging mission when he wrote: ‘‘To be universal, one
has to be from somewhere.’’∫∫
After the 1954 coup, reform strategies divided. A new generation of vanguard-
ist revolutionaries dismissed the pgt’s attempt to usher in progressive capitalism
as misguided, in view of U.S. intervention, and irrelevant, in the wake of the
Cuban revolution. Banned and persecuted by the state, but still influential na-
tionally and in its highland centers of strength, the pgt ultimately allied with
these New Left rebels. It did so grudgingly, regarding armed resistance more as a
pressure tactic than a viable means of taking state power. (Here, as elsewhere,
regional Communist parties and Cuban-inspired vanguards mostly disagreed
on this point.) Grandin shows that many of the pgt’s leaders, along with other
nationalist reformers, still hoped to remake Guatemalan social democracy. That
dream was extinguished early in 1966 with the kidnapping, torture, and execu-
tion of close to thirty pgt and other non-Communist reformers by a U.S.-
trained elite counterinsurgency unit. With the pgt obliterated, Grandin chroni-
cles at the grassroots level the transition from Guatemala’s Old Left to the New,
and the conversion of political repression into a new and particularly intense
form of state terror that peaked in the Scorched Earth campaign of the early
1980s.∫Ω
The second major contribution of Grandin’s new volume is precisely the
intimate account it provides of this counterinsurgent regime and its social and
political consequences. Ruling elites not only continued to turn outward to the
hemisphere’s Cold War hegemon, the United States, which had multiple reasons
for supporting the status quo. They also reached downward to local power
holders able to mobilize an often popular but terribly savage anti-Communism
among campesinos, members of the urban poor and middle sectors. Not only
did members of these popular sectors occasionally nurture personal rivalries
and other discontents with the increasingly indigenous leftist insurgency; the
counterrevolution was also ‘‘powered by subterranean currents of status anxiety,
race hatred, and fear of social liberalization, which for men could mean a loss
of prerogative and for women a loss of protection.’’Ω≠ Significantly, Grandin
shows that, in the main, the fight against Guatemala’s burgeoning revolutionary
challenge was directed not by those ‘‘at society’s commanding heights’’ but by
middle-class ideologues, often anti-Communist Catholic students who fancied
themselves in the vanguard of a worldwide movement of the Right. With the
assistance of the cia, ‘‘these students a√ected an insurgent internationalism
exuberant in tone and content, communicating with other anti-communist
movements not only throughout Latin America but in Asia as well, and pro-
moted the ‘salvation’ of Guatemala as merely the ‘first step’ in liberating Latin
America from Communism. It was this impassioned middle sector that func-
tioned as a broker between the upper echelons, both domestic and foreign, of
reaction and the street thugs and paramilitary forces responsible for some of the
worst acts of counterinsurgency.’’Ω∞
In Latin America, as other recent work by scholars such as Robert Holden,
Martha Huggins, Marguerite Feitlowitz, Peter Kornbluh, Cecilia Menjívar and
Néstor Rodríguez, Ariel Armony, Sergio Aguayo, Leslie Gill, and Juan Corradi,
Patricia Weiss Fagan, and Manuel Garretón shows, counterinsurgency became
the well-honed, high-tech art of counterrevolution.Ω≤ The formidable power of
counterinsurgent regimes resided in a deadly combination of ‘‘rational, precise

counterinsurgent tactics’’—typically imported from the United States, Israel,
South Africa, France, and, as Armony’s chapter in this collection documents,
Argentina—and ‘‘more furious (local) sentiments and aesthetics.’’Ω≥ Thus the
Southern Cone’s premier and highly centralized national intelligence agencies—
Argentina’s side, Chile’s dina, and Brazil’s sni—were all funded and trained by
the United States. Not only did they collaborate in surgically precise e√orts
to track down and eliminate ‘‘leading subversives’’ across national boundaries
(Operación Condor),Ω∂ but like the security apparatuses in Guatemala and El
Salvador, they worked closely with local death squads to disappear, torture, and
murder thousands of their own nationals, adopting brutal tactics that have
elicited comparisons with those of European fascism. The practices and dis-
course of the ruling Argentine military junta during its ‘‘dirty war’’ under-
score this synthesis of rationality and atavism: the junta employed free-market
economists (‘‘los Chicago Boys’’) and Madison Avenue publicists to ‘‘bring Ar-
gentina into the twentieth century’’; simultaneously it orchestrated a vicious anti-
Semitic campaign against the nation’s Jews, proclaiming Freud and Einstein,
along with Marx, to be three principal enemies in a ‘‘Third World War’’ between
‘‘dialectical materialism and [its own brand of ] ideological humanism.’’Ω∑
Although most U.S. diplomatic personnel throughout the continent may
have sincerely believed, or at least went on record to state, that there was a clear
di√erence between their aims and actions and the worst excesses of local security
forces, the powerful glimpses a√orded by recently declassified documents sug-
gest a far murkier situation.Ω∏ For example, the National Security Archive has
revealed that as early as 1968, Viron Vaky, then second-in-command at the
embassy in Guatemala City, was unnerved by the manner in which his subordi-
nates had come to justify repression: ‘‘After all hasn’t man been a savage from the
beginning of time so let us not be too queasy about terror. I have literally heard
this from our people.’’ Filled with remorse, Vaky bluntly admitted: ‘‘We have
condoned counter-terror; we may even in e√ect have encouraged or blessed it.’’Ωπ
This certainly squares with the cia’s ‘‘Psy Ops’’ campaign before the coup it
sponsored against Arbenz in 1954, in which one agent instructed that appeals
and arguments be directed to the ‘‘heart, the stomach, and the liver’’—that is, to
people’s fears rather than their reason.Ω∫ Moreover, it resonates with Henry
Kissinger’s and the cia’s strategy, on the eve of another coup it backed in Chile in
1973, to ‘‘discredit Salvador Allende’s parliamentary solution as unworkable’’
and ‘‘make the [Chilean] economy scream.’’ΩΩ It is hardly surprising, then, that
decades of repetition have not reduced the appeal of the old Latin American joke
‘‘Why are there no coups d’etat in the United States? Because there is no U.S.
embassy there.’’∞≠≠ At the end of the day, it is hard to argue with Grandin’s verdict
that ‘‘counterrevolutionary terror was inextricably tied to empire. . . . That
Washington was not solely responsible for the coups and atrocities carried out
by their [Latin American allies], and at times had no involvement in them at all,
matters less than the fact that it did little to discourage them.’’∞≠∞
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, new research suggests, Latin American mili-
tary regimes applied ‘‘best counterinsurgent practices,’’ perfected by the Ameri-
cans in Vietnam, the French in Algeria and Indochina, and the British in North-
ern Ireland, to check Latin America’s New Left revolutionary movements.∞≠≤
‘‘Following the success of the Cuban rural insurgency, militaries quickly learned
not only to terrorize the population to dry up guerrilla support but to incor-
porate it into new ideological and political structures of authority.’’∞≠≥ Occasion-
ally, in their pursuit of a new moral order, counterinsurgent regimes appeared to
borrow from and even mimic the discourse and practice of the guerrillas: in
Guatemala, the counterrevolutionary pacs, or civil patrols, were modeled on the
insurgents’ own organizational patterns; Argentine junta leader General Jorge
Videla spoke of his mission as nothing less than a ‘‘profound transformation
of consciousness.’’∞≠∂ Meanwhile the destabilization of leftist governments and
movements, psychological operations, and civic action programs—all of which
crystallized in the 1980s in an emerging counterinsurgency doctrine known
as ‘‘low-intensity conflict’’—were flexibly deployed by U.S.-supported military
forces as circumstances warranted, most notably in Nicaragua and El Salvador.∞≠∑
The Right’s success in the final stages of the Latin American Cold War can also
be attributed, at least in part, to its ability to address—and co-opt—some of the
frustrated popular demands that had driven so many to reformers and revolu-
tionaries in the first place. Guatemala’s pacs were repressive and helped to
consolidate military rule, but they also entailed local development initiatives,
some of which furthered the interests of indigenous actors at the expense of
Ladino elites. Indeed, since the Alliance for Progress in the 1960s, military and
civilian regimes on the right had attached some level of tepid social and agrarian
reform to the imperatives of counterinsurgency. In the Southern Cone, the
Brazilian and Chilean military regimes attempted to steal the Left’s thunder by
implementing their own programs of moderate social reform, cultural renova-
tion, and folk nationalism; in Uruguay, the military promoted a species of wel-
farism (targeting the humble families of its own recruits) in a society that had
witnessed the collapse of one of Latin America’s most venerable welfare states.∞≠∏
But ultimately, much recent scholarship suggests, it was the fusion of rational
counterinsurgent technologies with a brutal brand of local repression that en-

abled right-wing regimes in Guatemala, other parts of Central America, and
much of South America’s Southern Cone to destroy ‘‘the ideological and politi-
cal challenge set loose in the years following WWII.’’∞≠π Grandin, for example,
argues compellingly that Cold War terror silenced demands for economic jus-
tice, hollowed out the egalitarian content from postwar democracy, severed
alliances between reforming elites and popular classes, and used repression to
reduce powerful collective movements to individual survival strategies. Where
the last point is concerned, he invokes Elaine Scarry’s argument that the wide-
spread use of torture ‘‘literally had the e√ect of ‘unmaking’ people’s worlds,’’ for
victims were forced to choose between endless, excruciating pain and giving up
the political comrades and networks that had sustained them.∞≠∫ All things
considered, Grandin argues, Cold War terror powerfully transformed Latin
America, discrediting collective, egalitarian notions of social democracy (‘‘the
vision of a social and historical commons’’) and paving the way for an ‘‘age of
astrictive neoliberalism,’’ which promoted a di√erent version of democracy tied
exclusively to personal freedom and access to the market.∞≠Ω Thus, he would
contend, Latin America’s ‘‘transition to democracy’’ did not come with the
eclipse of the Cold War’s counterinsurgent military regimes; rather, they them-
selves brokered the transition, and their brutal ‘‘success’’ made Latin America’s
post–Cold War, radical free-market policies possible.
Of course, neoliberalism and the destruction of social democratic solidarities
were not exclusively the product of brutal counterinsurgent states. In certain
places (e.g., Bolivia) the Left imploded in relatively unthreatening circumstances;
in other societies (e.g., Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador), nationalistic,
welfare-oriented isi regimes were dismantled without recourse to the kind of
severe repression and terror that distinguished the Southern Cone and much of
Central America. Perhaps most importantly, the limitations of the isi model
itself, coupled with the excessive levels of corruption that characterized the
regimes that implemented it, produced a monumental debt crisis that rendered
nationalist development strategies virtually indefensible against the pressures of
financial markets, international institutions like the International Monetary
Fund, and Washington’s increasingly strident neoliberal agenda to privatize
industries, defang labor codes, and reduce social services. While Grandin accepts
such caveats, he subordinates them in his analysis to ‘‘unrelenting repression.’’∞∞≠
While the origins of neoliberalism may be open to debate, it is di≈cult to
argue with the verdict of a new generation of Latin American social and labor
historiography that the most significant targets of the Latin American Cold War
were the liberal-left alignments of the late forties and early fifties, heterogeneous
popular coalitions that creatively combined aspects of liberalism and socialism
at society’s grassroots, and typically built on earlier struggles in the 1920s and
1930s. This Latin Americanist literature runs counter to some other recent con-
tributions to global Cold War studies that attack left alliances and popular fronts
with gusto.∞∞∞
It also calls into question recent high-profile studies by the political scientist
Jorge Castañeda and the anthropologist David Stoll. In the wake of the failed
vanguardist projects that played out from the 1960s through the early 1990s,
these social scientists have indicted the Cuban-inspired revolutionary road for
interrupting what had been a still-viable evolutionary social democracy. They
argue that the radicalization of Latin American politics after 1960 was a disas-
trous turn taken by romantic elite intellectuals turned absolutist revolutionaries,
one that reaped a whirlwind of repression. They suggest that now that the Cold
War is over and the vanguardist bubble has burst, the Left, broadly defined (and
pruned of a troublesome Marxism), can get back on the right track and lead the
current democratic renewal throughout the hemisphere.∞∞≤
Was the political terror that swept Latin America beginning in the 1960s
primarily the result of a wrong turn by a New Left vanguard run amok, or was it
more the manifestation of a fundamental political contradiction? Grandin’s
work poses this contradiction most starkly: the grassroots promise of a so-
cial democratic option was e√ectively—and brutally—snu√ed out by an inter-
national Cold War alliance that deployed new strategies and technologies to beat
back any egalitarian e√ort at reform, resulting in the spiraling polarization and
radicalization that came to define the international Cold War. In this sense, it
was Guatemala’s failed social democratic revolution, rather than Cuba’s success-
ful Marxist revolution, that really ‘‘set the pace of much of Latin American Cold
War politics.’’∞∞≥ But does his argument apply best to Guatemala, El Salvador,
and Southern Cone examples (Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay) of coun-
terinsurgent ferocity, of politics in extremis?∞∞∂ If so, how do we conceptualize
Cold War struggles in countries where the dialectic between episodes of popular
mobilization and reaction had rather di√erent watersheds and valences and
often seems more chaotic (e.g., Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Venezuela)? And
what of Mexico, where for decades a somewhat less brutal U.S.–Mexican Cold
War alliance was mediated through, and substantially muted by, the intensely
nationalistic filter of the pri’s formidable political and cultural apparatus, in
close partnership with the establishment media and culture industries? (Here,
see the contributions to this volume by Zolov, Fein, and Bachelor.)∞∞∑
Definitive answers to these questions no doubt require much more research

by Latin American historians on the critical period of the 1960s to the 1990s,
particularly where the mobilization, demobilization, and shifting consciousness
of left and counterinsurgent supporters are concerned.∞∞∏ Over the course of the
last decade, as people have felt less constrained to tell their stories, as truth
commissions have reported and documents have seeped out (see particularly the
essay by Blanton)—in short, as a horizon of life has replaced one of death in the
former killing fields and streets of Central America and the Southern Cone—a
variety of fine-grained studies have emerged. They constitute early attempts to
reconstruct the social histories and memories of the followers of both revolu-
tionary and counterrevolutionary movements, as well as of men and women on
the margins and in the interstices of both. These studies attend to complex local
processes in workplaces, communities, and households whereby ideologies were
mediated and appropriated.∞∞π They also shed light on the transformation of old
left/populist formations into newer incarnations of the Left and populism.
More often than not, these studies contain surprises that muddy the master
narratives. They suggest that just as workers, peasants, the urban poor, and
women were not mere creatures of populist and popular-front arrangements at
midcentury, so they were also not passive instruments in the hands of vanguard
intellectuals or counterinsurgent states later on. They draw our attention to
more autonomous and creative uses of socialist ideas by the grassroots Left than
model-building social scientists will allow. In some cases, the very durability of
guerrilla movements had much to do with appeals to more latent but venerable
traditions of popular liberalism or to radical, communally driven forms of
democracy, under cover of more standard Marxist-Leninist discourse.∞∞∫ Finally
this new scholarship, especially on Guatemala and the Southern Cone, gives us
greater insight into how people remember and come to grips with the telling of
episodes of collective violence and trauma, and how the protagonists in cul-
ture wars over memory use this arena to shape the political and cultural fu-
ture.∞∞Ω Thus, here, as in the recent scholarship on the rise and fall of postwar
democracies in the 1940s and 1950s, new social and cultural histories are graphi-
cally demonstrating the tenuousness of global assessments of the Cold War—
realist and revisionist alike. From Olympian heights, these master narratives
seek to generalize about late-twentieth-century superpower conflict over world-
historical ideas of how society should be ordered. Unfortunately, too often they
occlude the human beings caught up in the messy process of history. Perhaps an
attempt to reconstruct and contextualize their complex stories is where a truly
‘‘new history’’ of the Latin American Cold War should begin.
Notes
I am particularly indebted to Greg Grandin for a variety of insights that helped shape the
arguments of this essay, to my coeditor Daniela Spenser for her patient and thoughtful
readings of several drafts, and to Duke University Press’s two anonymous readers for
their constructive critiques and bibliographic suggestions.
1. The phrase ‘‘Cold War’’ is generally attributed to George Orwell, who used it in 1945
to describe the competition between the United States and the Soviet Union in Europe
following the defeat of Nazi Germany. For a recent global synthesis, which e√ectively
evokes the heat of the conflict in the global South, see Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold
War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2005).
2. García Márquez, ‘‘The Solitude of Latin America (Nobel Lecture, 1982),’’ in Gabriel
García Márquez and the Powers of Fiction, ed. Julio Ortega and Claudia Elliott (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1988), esp. 81.
3. Since 9/11 and the U.S. retaliation in Afghanistan and Iraq, it has almost become
fashionable in European and American circles, left and right alike, to feel a twinge of
nostalgia for the Cold War—when James Bond and his adversaries at least played by some
set of rules. For a depiction of Cold War protocol and the adversarial ties that influenced
spy-masters, see Robert DeNiro’s recent acclaimed film The Good Shepherd (2006). James
Buchan has written: ‘‘Those were the days: political caution and circumspection, the
survival (as if in ice) of old institutions and manners, history so slow you could even
become tired of it.’’ Buchan, ‘‘The Superpowers’ Balance Sheet,’’ Guardian, January 28,
2006. In Latin America and other parts of the global South, where the Cold War was so
much hotter, residents would be less prone to engage in such nostalgia.
4. I am grateful to Greg Grandin and Arno J. Mayer for this dialectic of revolution and
counterrevolution in twentieth-century Latin America. See Grandin’s The Last Colonial
Massacre: Latin America and the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004),
which draws provocatively on Mayer’s model for understanding European cycles of
revolutionary and counterrevolutionary violence, elaborated in The Furies: Violence and
Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
2000). Grandin and I use this dialectic to structure our new collection, A Century of
Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America’s Long Cold
War (Durham: Duke University Press, forthcoming). For deft analyses of overlapping
and interdependent international and domestic fields of power, see Westad, The Global
Cold War ; and Jonathan Haslem, The Nixon Administration and the Death of Allende’s
Chile: A Case of Assisted Suicide (New York: Verso, 2005). Another synoptic study, which
provocatively relates the contradictions of capitalist development and ensuing revolu-
tionary transformations in the global South to the phasing of geopolitical conflict during
the Cold War, is Richard Saull, Rethinking Theory and History in the Cold War: The State,
Military Power and Social Revolution (London: Frank Cass, 2001); also see Saull, ‘‘El lugar
del sur global en la conceptualización de la guerra fría: Desarrollo capitalista, revolución

social y conflicto geopolítico,’’ in Espejos de la guerra fría: México, América Central y el
Caribe, ed. Daniela Spenser (Mexico City: Miguel Angel Porrúa, 2004), 31–66.
5. In 1967, David Horowitz aptly observed: ‘‘The very term cold war may be a mislead-
ing description, for unlike its prototype, this war has no centrality in terms of geopoliti-
cal space. . . . Its contested areas are themselves shifting and non-delimitable.’’ Horowitz,
ed., Containment and Revolution: Western Policy towards Social Revolution, 1917 to Viet-
nam (London: Anthony Blond, 1967), 9.
6. See, for example, the essays in this collection by Spenser and Gleijeses on the
international dimensions of Cuba’s Marxist revolution, and also Armony’s contribu-
tion on Argentina’s understudied hemispheric crusade against Communism. Such cases
underscore the arguments of scholars such as Saull (Rethinking Theory and History) and
Grandin (The Last Colonial Massacre) that the texture of the Latin American Cold War
emerged out of widening processes of social conflict in the global South—processes that
should not be subordinated to the grand strategies or machinations of the superpowers.
7. Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre, 17.
8. cnn Cold War documentary, cited in Greg Grandin, ‘‘Living in Revolutionary Time:
Coming to Terms with the Violence of Latin America’s Long Cold War,’’ in Grandin and
Joseph, A Century of Revolution.
9. See, for example, Abby Goodnough, ‘‘Letter from Miami: Florida’s Zeal against
Castro Is Losing Heat,’’ New York Times, July 6, 2005.
10. See, for example, Larry Rohter, ‘‘After 30 Years, Argentina’s Dictatorship Stands
Trial,’’ New York Times, August 20, 2006; Rohter, ‘‘Argentine Ruling Revives Cases of
‘Dirty War’ Victims,’’ New York Times, July 15, 2005; Ginger Thompson, ‘‘Mexico Opens
Files Related to ’71 Killings,’’ New York Times, February 13, 2005; James C. McKinley Jr.,
‘‘Mexican Judge Throws Out Genocide Charge,’’ New York Times, July 27, 2005; McKin-
ley, ‘‘Mexican Report Cites Leaders for ‘Dirty War,’ ’’ New York Times, December 23, 2006;
‘‘Colombia Unearthing Plight of Its ‘Disappeared’: Families of Victims of Right-Wing
Militias Come Forward,’’ New York Times, August 10, 2005; Larry Rohter, ‘‘Chile’s Leader
Attacks Amnesty for Pinochet-Era Crimes,’’ New York Times, December 24, 2006; and
Blanton’s essay in this volume.
11. The neoconservative commentator Charles Krauthammer brought the term ‘‘em-
pire’’ ‘‘out of the closet’’ (his words) in 2002; also see the writings of Wall Street Journal
editor Max Boot: for example, ‘‘The Case for American Empire: The Most Realistic
Response to Terrorism Is for America to Embrace Its Imperial Role,’’ Weekly Standard,
October 15, 2001; and The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American
Power (New York: Basic Books, 2002). For an earlier statement, see Robert Kagan, ‘‘Be-
nevolent Empire,’’ Foreign Policy, no. 111 (summer 1998): 24–36; for a more recent forum
that rehabilitates the concept, see ‘‘Imperialistics’’/‘‘Kill the Empire! (Or Not),’’ New York
Times Book Review, July 25, 2004, esp. 11–13, 23. In a similar vein, see Niall Ferguson,
Colossus: The Price of America’s Empire (New York: Penguin, 2004). For discussions of the
‘‘new imperial discourse,’’ see Fred Rosen, ‘‘Introductory Essay,’’ in ‘‘Empire and Dissent,’’
special issue, nacla Report on the Americas 39, no. 2 (September–October 2005): 4–7;
Alan Knight, ‘‘Empire, Hegemony and Globalization in the Americas,’’ nacla Report on
the Americas 39, no. 2 (September–October 2005): 8–12; and Greg Grandin, ‘‘Imperial
Overstretch,’’ Harper’s Magazine, December 2004, 89–93.
12. Rosen, ‘‘Introductory Essay,’’ 4; also see Luis Fernando Ayerbe, Los Estados Unidos y
la América Latina: La construcción de la hegemonía (Havana: Casa de las Americas, 2001),
esp. 292, for a similar rendition of the severely qualified values and ‘‘benefits’’ that the
United States has bestowed on Latin America since World War II. For an incisive critique
of the promotion and perils of U.S. ‘‘liberal imperialism’’ in the Caribbean Basin over the
past century, see Michel Gobat, Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua under U.S.
Imperial Rule (Durham: Duke University Press, 2005), esp. 267–80.
13. See, for example, Simon Romero, ‘‘Venezuela Groups Get U.S. Aid amid Meddling
Charges,’’ New York Times, November 9, 2006. For the first substantial treatment of this
Bush-administration phenomenon, which includes a diversity of views by U.S. and Latin
American scholars, journalists, activists, and democracy promotion practitioners, see
‘‘In the Name of Democracy: U.S. Intervention in the Americas Today,’’ ed. Jonah Gindin
and Kirsten Weld, special issue, nacla Report on the Americas 40, no. 1 (January–
February 2007). For a darkly humorous documentary film on the marketing of Amer-
ica’s ‘‘brand’’ of democracy in Bolivia, see Rachel Boynton’s Our Brand Is Crisis (2005).
14. Not for nothing have Russianists like Stephen F. Cohen begun to speak ominously
of a ‘‘new Cold War’’ in U.S.–Russian relations. See Cohen’s ‘‘The New American Cold
War,’’ in The Nation, July 17, 2006.
15. See, for example, ‘‘Deal Approved to Send Russian Jets and Helicopters to Vene-
zuela,’’ New York Times, July 28, 2006. Chávez’s highly publicized catching and expulsion
of U.S. diplomats as ‘‘spies,’’ and the alarm that is registered in Washington every time
Chávez or one of his diplomats visits a ‘‘terrorist regime’’ (e.g., Iran and Syria), also
trigger memories of analogous choreographies during the Cold War. Indeed, in August
2006 the New York Times referred to ‘‘unsubstantiated claims’’ among Chavista oppo-
nents that ‘‘Mr. Chávez wants eventually to replay the Cuban missile crisis.’’ ‘‘Venezuela
Boasts of Catching 4 U.S. Spies; Embassy Denies It,’’ New York Times, August 20, 2006;
Simon Romero, ‘‘Venezuela, Tired of U.S. Influence, Strengthens Its Relationships in the
Middle East,’’ New York Times, August 21, 2006 (quotation on a7); cf. David Sanger and
Elaine Sciolino, ‘‘Iran Strategy: Cold War Echo,’’ New York Times, April 30, 2006. On the
Central American roots of New Right foreign policy, see Greg Grandin, Empire’s Work-
shop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (New York:
Henry Holt, 2006).
16. Regarding the balancing act of the Mexican state, also see Lorenzo Meyer, ‘‘La
guerra fría en el mundo periférico: El caso del régimen autoritario mexicano. La utilidad
del anticomunismo discreto,’’ and Jürgen Buchenau, ‘‘Por una guerra fría más templada:
México entre el cambio revolucionario y la reacción estadounidense en Guatemala y
Cuba,’’ both in Spenser, Espejos de la guerra fría, 95–117 and 119–49, respectively; and
Kate Doyle, ‘‘The Quiet Americans: U.S. Policy in Mexico during the Cold War,’’ paper
presented at the conference ‘‘México, América Central y el Caribe durante la guerra fría,’’
Mexico City, November 2002.
17. Max Paul Friedman, ‘‘Retiring the Puppets, Bringing Latin America Back In:
Recent Scholarship on United States–Latin American Relations,’’ Diplomatic History 27,
no. 5 (November 2003): 621–36, quote on 625. Friedman puts most of the blame on
diplomatic historians, who have been slow to learn the relevant languages and use
foreign archives. For an even more admonishing statement, by a past president of the
Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, which warns diplomatic historians
to ‘‘internationalize’’ their scholarship before much of their field is ‘‘usurped’’ by area
studies, cultural studies, postcolonial studies, and American studies scholars, see Mi-
chael J. Hogan, ‘‘The ‘Next Big Thing’: The Future of Diplomatic History in a Global
Age,’’ Diplomatic History 28, no. 1 (January 2004): 1–21.
18. Indeed, Hogan, in ‘‘The ‘Next Big Thing,’ ’’ laments that the field of U.S. foreign
relations history and its flagship journal, Diplomatic History, have become ‘‘so narrowly
focused on the Cold War’’ that some of the best diplomatic history research on imperial-
ism, comparative and international history, and other themes is now published else-
where (20).
19. In this regard, the most significant contributions to date are Westad’s award-
winning synthesis The Global Cold War, which like this volume interrogates the rather
U.S. and Eurocentric notion of Cold War ‘‘peripheries,’’ and Piero Gleijeses’s Conflicting
Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2002).
20. For the opening up of new caches of documents in Latin America and the Eastern
bloc, see Blanton’s contribution and Spenser’s concluding chapter, respectively. The
excitement generated by the bulk declassification of U.S. records that took place during
the Clinton administration was tempered recently by revelations that the cia, U.S. mili-
tary and intelligence, and other federal agencies have secretly been withdrawing from
public access and at times reclassifying tens of thousands of pages of National Archives
and Records Administration materials—documents these agencies felt had been im-
properly released. The disclosures have unleashed a firestorm of criticism from historians
and other researchers, who contend that rather than constituting a threat to national
security, these materials—some of which are more than fifty years old—were sequestered
because they were embarrassing to the agencies in question. As this volume went into
production, historians and scholars were awaiting the results of a government audit of
the process of reclassification by the Information Security Oversight O≈ce. See New York
Times, 21 February 2006, http://nytimes.com/2006/02/21/politics/21reclassify.html; and
Bruce Craig, ‘‘Historians Expose Government Reclassification E√ort,’’ Perspectives: News-
magazine of the American Historical Association 44, no. 4 (April 2006): 29–30.
21. On these scholarly trends, see Melvyn P. LeΔer, ‘‘Inside Enemy Archives: The Cold
War Reopened,’’ Foreign A√airs 75, no. 4 (July–August 1996): 120–35; and LeΔer, ‘‘The
Cold War: What Do ‘We Now Know’?’’ American Historical Review 104, no. 2 (April
1999): 501–24.
22. The new journals for Cold War specialists are the Journal of Cold War Studies,
inaugurated by the Harvard Project on Cold War Studies in 1999; Cold War History,
produced by the London School of Economics’ Cold War Studies Centre and first pub-
lished in 2000; and American Communist History, sponsored by the Historians of Ameri-
can Communism, which began operations in 2002. The Cold War International History
Project (cwihp), founded at the Smithsonian Institution’s Woodrow Wilson Center in
Washington in 1991, has actively supported the dissemination of historical materials as
governments on all sides of the Cold War have made such material available, and has
become one of the major forums for new scholarly debates about the conflict. In addi-
tion to holding regular seminars and maintaining an award-winning website, the cwihp
publishes articles, documents, and correspondence in its Bulletin and sponsors a book
series. The National Security Archive at George Washington University has become the
main conduit for ferreting out and circulating new archival sources, particularly de-
classified materials.
23. Mark T. Gilderhus, ‘‘An Emerging Synthesis? U.S.–Latin American Relations since
the Second World War,’’ in America in the World: The Historiography of American Foreign
Relations since 1941, ed. Michael J. Hogan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995),
424–61 (quotation on 424); originally published in Diplomatic History 27, no. 5 (Novem-
ber 2003): 429–52.
24. Grandin, ‘‘O√ the Beach: The United States, Latin America, and the Cold War,’’ in
A Companion to Post-1945 America, ed. Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy Rosensweig
(New York: Blackwell, 2002), 426–45 (quotation on 426). The fortieth anniversary of the
Cuban Missile Crisis has fomented a new cycle of foreign relations literature that has
brought Cuba into the context of a broader, multisided ‘‘Caribbean Crisis’’ that tran-
scends thirteen days of brinkmanship by the world’s superpowers. For example, in
addition to Spenser’s essay in this volume, see Adolfo Gilly, ‘‘A la luz del relámpago: Cuba
en octubre,’’ in Spenser, Espejos de la guerra fría, 215–45, and the National Security
Archive’s fortieth-anniversary web page at http://www.gwu.edu/&nsachiv/nsa/cuba—
mis—cri/index.htm. Also see the papers from the panel (‘‘Putting Cuba into the Cuban
Missile Crisis’’) organized by Peter Kornbluh and James G. Blight for the Latin American
Studies Association’s March 2003 meeting. The session focused on Cuban agency and
placed events in a context of U.S.–Cuban hostility going back years; and see Blight’s and
Kornbluh’s earlier volume Politics of Illusion: The Bay of Pigs Invasion Re-examined
(Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1998).
25. One is struck by the virtual absence of Latin America in new specialist journals like
Cold War History and the Journal of Cold War Studies, even as coverage of other regions
of the global South (e.g., South Asia and the Middle East) has increased. The flag-
ship journal for foreign relations history, Diplomatic History, has done a bit better, but
Latin America still remains grossly underrepresented in the journal’s o√erings on the
Cold War.
26. LeΔer, ‘‘Bringing It Together: The Parts and the Whole,’’ in Reviewing the Cold
War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory, ed. Odd Arne Westad (London: Frank Cass,
2000), 43–63 (quotation on 56–57). Westad’s collection is particularly helpful in articu-
lating the scholarly consensus on the Cold War’s broad contours; also see Hogan, Amer-
ica in the World.
27. LeΔer, ‘‘Bringing It Together,’’ 57. New scholarship on the Cold War’s denouement
has proliferated of late. See, for example, the special issue ‘‘Ideas, International Relations,
and the End of the Cold War,’’ Journal of Cold War Studies 7, no. 2 (spring 2005), which
was preceded by a useful survey article by Jeremy Suri, ‘‘Explaining the End of the Cold
War: A New Historical Consensus?’’ Journal of Cold War Studies, 4, no. 4 (fall 2002): 60–
92. Also see Olav Njolstad, ed., The Last Decade of the Cold War: From Escalation to
Conflict Transformation (London: Frank Cass, 2004); Silvio Pons and Federico Romero,
eds., Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War (London: Frank Cass, 2005); and the final two
chapters (‘‘Actors’’ and ‘‘The Triumph of Hope’’) in John Gaddis’s recent interpretive
synthesis The Cold War: A New History (New York: Penguin Press, 2005).
28. Anders Stephanson, ‘‘Ideology and Neorealist Mirrors,’’ Diplomatic History 17
(spring 1993): 285–95 (quotation on 293).
29. John Lewis Gaddis, ‘‘The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar Inter-
national System,’’ International Security 10 (spring 1986): 99–142; later reprinted as the
final chapter in Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1987). Though see Gaddis’s latest synthesis, The Cold War,
which stresses the agency of ‘‘visionaries’’ such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher,
who set about ‘‘sabotaging’’ the East–West stalemate by exploiting Soviet weaknesses and
asserting the West’s strengths.
30. Stephanson, ‘‘Ideology and Neorealist Mirrors,’’ 294–95.
31. The following historiographic discussion draws on a broad literature, especially the
essays in the Westad and Hogan collections cited earlier; Melvyn P. LeΔer, ‘‘The Interpre-
tive Wars over the Cold War, 1945–1960,’’ in American Foreign Relations Reconsidered,
1890–1993, ed. Gordon Martel (New York: Routledge, 1994), 106–24; LeΔer, ‘‘New Ap-
proaches, Old Interpretations, and Prospective Reconfigurations, Diplomatic History 19
(spring 1995): 173–96; and Robert Buzzanco, ‘‘What Happened to the New Left? Toward a
Radical Reading of American Foreign Relations,’’ Diplomatic History 23 (fall 1999): 575–
608.
32. See especially George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900–1950 (Chicago: Uni-
versity of Chicago Press, 1951).
33. For a discussion of the long-running debates between ‘‘revisionists’’ and their
‘‘realist’’ and ‘‘postrevisionist’’ critics, see Paul M. Buhle and Edward Rice-Maximin,
William Appleman Williams: The Tragedy of Empire (New York: Routledge, 1995); and
Bruce Cumings, ‘‘ ‘Revising Postrevisionism,’ Or, The Poverty of Theory in Diplomatic
History,’’ in Hogan, America in the World, 20–62.
34. See, for example, John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold
War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972; Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A
Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1982); and Gaddis, ‘‘The Emerging Post-Revisionist Thesis on the Origins of the
Cold War,’’ Diplomatic History 7 (summer 1983): 171–90.
35. Joyce and Gabriel Kolko, The Limits of Power: The World and United States Foreign
Policy, 1945–1954, quoted in LeΔer, ‘‘Interpretive Wars,’’ 110.
36. The phrase comes from the Norwegian historian Geir Lundestad; see his essay
‘‘Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945–1952,’’ Journal of
Peace Research, 23 (1986): 263–77.
37. See, for example, Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 359.
38. John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1997).
39. It should be pointed out that Gaddis’s synthesis is not based on his own research in
the newly accessible archives but rather is culled from the way other historians have read
the documents.
40. Odd Arne Westad, introduction to Reviewing the Cold War, 5.
41. Not least for Gaddis, the Cold War was the product of Stalin’s brutal, paranoid, and
narcissistic personality. He waged cold wars incessantly, ‘‘within the international system,
within his alliances, within his country, within his party, within his personal entou-
rage . . . even within his family.’’ Gaddis, We Now Know, 292–93.
42. Gaddis’s presidential address, ‘‘The Tragedy of Cold War History,’’ was published
in Diplomatic History 17 (winter 1993): 1–16, and, in slightly di√erent form, in Foreign
A√airs, 73, no. 1 (January–February 1994): 142–55.
43. LeΔer, ‘‘The Cold War,’’ 523, 501. Since these comments by LeΔer in 1999, a rather
acrimonious debate has ensued between the triumphalists and their critics. See, for
example, Ellen Schrecker, ed., Cold War Triumphalism: The Misuse of History after the Fall
of Communism (New York: New Press, 2004); and John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, In
Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003).
44. LeΔer, ‘‘Inside Enemy Archives,’’ 120–21. LeΔer’s larger argument about real-
politik and contingency is certainly on target, but his statement that the Soviet Union
lacked ‘‘preconceived plans to make Eastern Europe communist’’ or ‘‘support the Chi-
nese communists’’ seems rather dubious. The war in Korea may have surprised the
Soviets, but the weight of new research supports the view that the Soviet Union had
formulated a careful strategy vis-à-vis Eastern Europe before the end of World War II,
and their e√orts to support Mao’s Communists began as far back as 1920. On these
matters, see Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1996); Odd Arne Westad, ed., Brothers in Arms: The Rise
and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance, 1945–1963 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998);
and Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (London: Jonathan Cape,
2005), esp. 19. Regarding the self-interested, refractory, and often pivotal role of Soviet
client states (and the West’s ‘‘junior partners’’) in the global history of the Cold War, see
Tony Smith, ‘‘A Pericentric Framework for the Study of the Cold War,’’ Diplomatic
History, 24, no. 1 (fall 2000): 567–91; for a particularly apposite monograph, see Sergei N.
Goncharov, John W. Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the
Korean War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993).
45. LeΔer, ‘‘Inside Enemy Archives,’’ 120–21. This point is strongly underscored by
Westad in The Global Cold War, particularly in the bleak concluding chapter (397–407).
46. Michael J. Hogan, ‘‘The Historiography of American Foreign Relations: An Intro-
duction,’’ in Hogan, America in the World, 159–165 (quotation on 163). This fear is well
taken, though thus far document releases from Communist archives have produced
important shifts in our understanding of pivotal issues in Cold War history, for Latin
America (see, for example, the contributions to this volume by Spenser and Gleijeses)
and elsewhere.
47. Regarding such ‘‘fetishization,’’ some foreign relations historians who study Latin
America have complained that the editors of journals specializing in Cold War history
(see note 22 earlier) excessively prize submissions that discuss newly released documents,
and not those merely based on reinterpretations of older sources or on oral histories.
One colleague reports that editors bluntly told him not to bother sending a manuscript if
it contained no new treasure trove of documents.
48. The following discussion draws heavily on Grandin, ‘‘O√ the Beach,’’ 427–30;
Gilderhus, ‘‘An Emerging Synthesis?’’; and Gilbert M. Joseph, ‘‘Close Encounters: To-
ward a New Cultural History of U.S.–Latin American Relations,’’ in Close Encounters of
Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.–Latin American Relations, ed. Gilbert M.
Joseph, Catherine C. LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1998), 3–46, esp. 10–13.
49. Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre, xii.
50. Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (New
York: Norton, 1984). For an influential statement by a Latin American dependentista on
the deformation of inter-American relations during the Cold War, see Ayerbe, Los Esta-
dos Unidos y la América Latina.
51. William M. LeoGrande, Our Own Backyard: The United States and Central America,
1977–1992 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000).
52. Cf. Mark T. Berger, ‘‘U.S. Power, North American Knowledge and the Cold War,’’
Journal of Iberian and Latin American Studies 2, no. 1 (1997): 41–63, which points up the
‘‘convergence’’ of liberal and radical approaches in the foreign relations literature on the
Cold War in Latin America.
53. Stephen G. Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts
Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1999), 199. Significantly, in his latest work, a study of U.S. meddling in British Guiana
from 1953 to 1969, U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2005), which engages in a much more grassroots—
and, at times, even cultural and gendered—analysis of the deployment of power, Rabe is
much more critical of the White House’s (as well as the cia’s) role.
54. Robert A. Pastor, ‘‘A Discordant Consensus on Democracy,’’ Diplomatic History 17,
no. 1 (1993): 117–28, especially 125; also see the critique in Grandin, ‘‘O√ the Beach,’’ 430.
55. Marilyn Young, cited in Dina M. Copelman and Barbara Clark Smith, ‘‘Excerpts
from a Conference to Honor William Appleman Williams,’’ Radical History Review 50
(1991): 39–70 (quotation on 69).
56. Gaddis, We Now Know, 178.
57. Marc Bloch, cited in Allen Weinstein and Alexander Vassiliev, eds., The Haunted
Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era (New York: Modern Library, 1999), ix.
58. See, for example, my recent edited collection in collaboration with Ann Rubenstein
and Eric Zolov, Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico since 1940
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2001).
59. Thucydides, cited in Lars Schoultz, Beneath the United States: A History of U.S.
Policy towards Latin America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), xii. For a
thoughtful critique by a foreign relations scholar of ‘‘the almost exclusive preoccupation
in U.S.-based scholarship with Washington policy and policy-makers,’’ which, while
‘‘enlightening on the U.S. side[,] . . . sadly bears too marked a resemblance to the nature
of U.S.-Latin American policy,’’ see Stephen J. Randall, ‘‘Ideology, National Security, and
the Corporate State: The Historiography of U.S.–Latin American Relations,’’ Latin Amer-
ican Research Review 27, no. 1 (1992): 205–17 (quotation on 206).
60. See Gilbert M. Joseph, ed., Reclaiming the Political in Latin American History:
Essays from the North (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), especially the essays in
part 1.
61. On the relevance of ‘‘contact zones,’’ see Joseph et al., Close Encounters of Empire,
and Joseph et al., Fragments of a Golden Age; also see ‘‘The Nation and Beyond,’’ a special
issue of the Journal of American History (December 1999), especially David Thelan’s essay
‘‘The Nation and Beyond: Transnational Perspectives on United States History,’’ 976–86.
Thelan gives particular attention to ‘‘how people and ideas and institutions and cultures
move above, below, through, and around, as well as within the nation state’’ (976).
Several works by mainstream diplomatic historians underscore the utility of this ap-
proach for studies of Latin America and the Cold War’s ‘‘peripheries’’: see Eric P. Roorda,
The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime in the Domini-
can Republic (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998); Friedman, ‘‘Retiring the Puppets’’;
Rabe, U.S. Intervention in British Guiana; and Odd Arne Westad, ‘‘The New Inter-
national History of the Cold War: Three (Possible) Paradigms,’’ Diplomatic History 24,
no. 4 (fall 2000): 551–65; also see Hogan, ‘‘The ‘Next Big Thing,’ ’’ esp. 14–17.
62. The quotation on gatekeepers appears in Melvyn LeΔer’s presidential address to
the Society of Foreign Relations Historians, ‘‘New Approaches, Old Interpretations,’’ 193;
also see Buzzanco, ‘‘What Happened to the New Left?’’ For an e√ective critique of such
‘‘gatekeeping,’’ see Robert Dean, ‘‘Tradition, Cause and E√ect, and the Cultural History
of International Relations,’’ Diplomatic History 24 (fall 2000): 615–22. While progress has
been obvious in the field as a whole, the newer approaches have manifested themselves
more slowly in journals specializing in Cold War studies. Developments are most en-
couraging in the International History Review and in the field’s premier journal, Diplo-
matic History. Since about 2000, Diplomatic History has made a concerted e√ort to open
itself up to new approaches, first under the editorship of Michael Hogan and then under
Robert Schulzinger. In his 2003 presidential address to the Society of Historians of
American Foreign Relations, Hogan referred positively to the journal’s commitment to
include more nontraditional topics, such as race and gender studies, as well as ‘‘new
theoretical approaches, most notably those borrowed from cultural studies.’’ Hogan,
‘‘The ‘Next Big Thing,’ ’’ 2. Thus far, however, articles showcasing these nontraditional
themes and theoretical approaches have largely been restricted to special issues and
roundtables. Moreover, responses to these contributions from more conventional for-
eign relations historians have been skeptical, to put it mildly: Witness the rocky reception
new approaches have received in the field’s electronic journal, H-DIPLO, which since
1997 has featured an online discussion of articles published in Diplomatic History. Mean-
while the newer Cold War journals have not done as well as Diplomatic History in
integrating new social, cultural, and interdisciplinary approaches into their regular fare.
For a preliminary survey of recent work in Cold War cultural history, see Robert Gri≈th,
‘‘The Cultural Turn in Cold War Studies,’’ Reviews in American History 29 (2001): 15–57;
and Hogan, ‘‘The ‘Next Big Thing.’ ’’
63. I can only gesture here to a representative slice of this proliferating literature on
American empire and the Cold War. For starters, see Amy Kaplan and Donald E. Pease,
eds., Cultures of United States Imperialism (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993); and
the new essays by Emily Rosenberg, Frank Costigliola, and others in the revised edition
of Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson, eds., Explaining the History of American
Foreign Relations (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Also see the following
(listed roughly in the order in which they appeared): Frank Costigliola, France and the
United States: The Cold Alliance since World War II (New York: Twayne, 1992); Penny M.
Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957 (Ithaca,
N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997); Kristin L. Hoganson, Fighting for American Man-
hood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); Hoganson, ‘‘Adding Currency to Culture,’’
Diplomatic History 25, no. 2 (spring 2001): 329–34; Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht, Transmis-
sion Impossible: American Journalism as Cultural Diplomacy in Postwar Germany, 1945–
1955 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1999); Mark Bradley, Imagining
Vietnam and America: The Making of Postcolonial Vietnam, 1919–1950 (Chapel Hill: Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press, 2000); Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology:
American Social Science and ‘‘Nation Building’’ in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: Univer-
sity of North Carolina Press, 2000); Andrew J. Rotter, Comrades at Odds: The United
States and India, 1947–1964 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000); Melani McAlis-
ter, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, and U.S. Interests in the Middle East, 1945–2000
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Robert Dean, Imperial Brotherhood:
Gender and the Making of Cold War Foreign Policy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 2001); Mary Renda, Taking Haiti: Military Occupation and the Culture of U.S.
Imperialism, 1915–1946 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Ann
Laura Stoler, Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial
Rule (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Stoler, ed., Haunted by Empire:
Geographies of Intimacy in North American History (Durham: Duke University Press,
2006; Maria Hohn, gis and Frauleins: The German-American Encounter in 1950s West
Germany (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); Douglas Little, Ameri-
can Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945 (Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2002); Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism: Asia in the Mid-
dlebrow Imagination, 1945–1961 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Alan Mc-
Pherson, Yankee No! Anti-Americanism in U.S.–Latin American Relations (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2003); Emily Rosenberg, A Date Which Will Live: Pearl Harbor
in American Memory (Durham: Duke University Press, 2003); Seth Jacobs, America’s
Miracle Man in Vietnam: Ngo Dinh Diem, Religion, Race, and U.S. Intervention in South-
east Asia (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004); Jacobs, ‘‘ ‘Infamy’ and Other Legacies,’’
Reviews in American History 32, no. 2 (2004): 239–46; Jana Lipman, ‘‘Guantánamo: A
Working-Class History between Empire and Revolution, 1939–1979’’ (Ph.D. diss., Yale
University, 2006); Harvey R. Neptune, Caliban and the Yankees: Trinidad and the United
States Occupation (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007); and the works
cited earlier in note 61.
64. See, for example, the essays by Joseph, Fein, Zolov, and Bachelor in collections
such as Close Encounters of Empire and Fragments of a Golden Age.
65. For a stimulating essay on Latin America’s role during the Cold War as an indis-
pensable laboratory for America’s ‘‘new imperial’’ mind-set under the Bush administra-
tion (which is much less indebted to poststructuralist and postcolonial approaches), see
Grandin, Empire’s Workshop.
66. This register of analysis has also been lacking in recent high-profile syntheses of the
Cold War. As exemplary as Westad’s 2005 synthesis of the global Cold War is, it is weakest
for Latin America; even on its strongest terrain—Asia—it rarely transcends general ex-
aminations of Third World nationalisms and leaders to engage quotidian struggles at
society’s grassroots. Gaddis’s eminently readable synthesis, The Cold War: A New History
(released almost simultaneously with Westad’s study), is, by contrast, a history of super-
power grand strategy that gives short shrift to the global South, which provided almost
all of the victims of the conflict’s intermittent proxy wars. On this point, see the Euro-
peanist Tony Judt’s critique, ‘‘A Story Still to Be Told,’’ The Nation, March 23, 2006.
67. Gaddis, We Now Know, 285; also see The Cold War, esp. chapter 7 and the epilogue.
For a compelling analysis of ‘‘subaltern collaboration’’ with Central America’s authori-
tarian regimes, see Robert H. Holden, ‘‘Constructing the Limits of State Violence in
Central America: Towards a New Research Agenda,’’ Journal of Latin American Studies 28,
no. 2 (May 1996): 435–59, esp. 442–46.
68. Grandin, ‘‘O√ the Beach,’’ 430; also see Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre, 17.
69. See, for example, Seth Fein, ‘‘Myths of Cultural Imperialism and Nationalism in
Golden Age Mexican Cinema,’’ in Joseph et al., Fragments of a Golden Age, 159–98.
70. See Grandin and Joseph, A Century of Revolution, especially the essays in part 1
(‘‘The First Cold War’’) by Jocelyn Olcott (‘‘Mueras y Matanza: Spectacles of Terror
and Violence in Postrevolutionary Mexico’’); Je√rey L. Gould (‘‘On the Road to ‘El
Porvenir’: Revolutionary and Counterrevolutionary Violence in El Salvador and Nica-
ragua’’); and Thomas M. Klubock (‘‘Ránquil: Violence and Peasant Politics on Chile’s
Southern Frontier’’).
71. Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough, eds., Latin America between the Second World
War and the Cold War (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992); also see their
synoptic essay, ‘‘The Impact of the Cold War on Latin America,’’ in Origins of the Cold
War: An International History, ed. Melvyn P. LeΔer and David Painter (New York:
Routledge, 1994), 293–316.
72. Bethell and Roxborough, ‘‘Conclusion: The Postwar Conjuncture in Latin America
and Its Consequences,’’ in Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War,
327–28.
73. See, for example, Nigel Haworth, ‘‘Peru,’’ in Bethell and Roxborough, Latin Amer-
ica between the Second World War and the Cold War, 170–89.
74. Daniel James, Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine Working
Class, 1946–1976 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 34.
75. See, for example, Thomas Miller Klubock, Contested Communities: Class, Gender,
and Politics in Chile’s El Teniente Copper Mine, 1904–1951 (Durham: Duke University
Press, 1998); Karin Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises: Political Cultures and the State in
Chile, 1920–1950 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000); James, Re-
sistance and Integration; Je√rey Gould, To Lead as Equals: Rural Protest and Political
Consciousness in Chinandega, Nicaragua, 1912–1979 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1990); John French, The Brazilian Workers’ ABC: Class Conflict and Al-
liances in Modern Sao Paulo (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992);
Jocelyn Olcott, Revolutionary Women in Postrevolutionary Mexico (Durham: Duke Uni-
versity Press, 2005); and John W. Green, ‘‘Sibling Rivalry on the Left and Labor Struggles
in Colombia during the 1940s,’’ Latin American Research Review 35, no. 1 (2000): 85–117.
Grandin e√ectively analyzes this new wave of scholarship on the confluence of populist
and left formations after World War II in The Last Colonial Massacre, esp. 177–79; also see
‘‘O√ the Beach,’’ 432–33.
76. See, for example, Fidel’s now-classic 1953 trial defense speech, History Will Absolve
Me, bilingual edition (New York: Center for Cuban Studies, n.d.); cf. Ho Chi Minh,
Selected Works, vol. 3 (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1960–62), 17–21.
77. The letter, which can be read online at the website of the U.S. National Archives, is
cited in Grandin, ‘‘O√ the Beach,’’ 431.
78. For the broader periodization and national variations, see Bethell and Roxbor-
ough, Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War.
79. Bethell and Roxborough, ‘‘The Impact of the Cold War,’’ 313 (italics mine).
80. See, for example, Sandra McGee Deutsch, Las Derechas: The Extreme Right in
Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, 1890–1939 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999); San-
dra McGee Deutsch and Ronald H. Dolkart, eds., The Argentine Right: Its History and
Intellectual Origins, 1910 to the Present (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1993);
Frederick B. Pike, Hispanismo, 1898–1936: Spanish Conservatives and Liberals and Rela-
tions with Spanish America (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1971); Gould,
‘‘On the Road to ‘El Porvenir’ ’’; and Klubock, ‘‘Ránquil.’’ For a valuable analysis of
Central America’s violent authoritarian political culture over a longue durée, see Rob-
ert H. Holden, Armies Without Nations: Public Violence and State Formation in Central
America, 1821–1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004).
81. Bethell and Roxborough, ‘‘The Impact of the Cold War,’’ 306.
82. Thomas Mann, U.S. Department of State, 1951. I am grateful to Greg Grandin for
bringing this citation to my attention.
83. Bethell and Roxborough, ‘‘The Impact of the Cold War,’’ 312–13.
84. Ibid., 314–15.
86. Ibid., 181.
87. Ibid., 183–84.
88. Ibid., 183.
89. Ibid., esp. chap. 3 (‘‘Unfinished Lives’’); also see Grandin, ‘‘O√ the Beach,’’ 437–38.
The personal testimony that did much to reveal this state terror to the world is Rigoberta
Menchú, Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia (Mexico City Siglo XXI,
1985).
90. Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre, 186; cf. Aldo A. Lauria-Santiago, ‘‘The Cul-
ture and Politics of State Terror and Repression in El Salvador,’’ in When States Kill: Latin
America, the U.S., and Technologies of Terror, ed. Cecilia Menjívar and Néstor Rodríguez
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 85–114; Holden, Armies Without Nations; and
Holden, ‘‘Constructing the Limits of State Violence,’’ for the determinants of local cul-
tures of repression in El Salvador and throughout Central America.
91. Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre, 185–86.
92. See, for example, Holden, Armies Without Nations, pt. 2; Martha K. Huggins,
Political Policing: The United States and Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press,
1998); Marguerite Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A De-
classified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, rev. ed. (New York: New Press, 2004);
Menjívar and Rodríguez, When States Kill; Ariel C. Armony, ‘‘Producing and Exporting
State Terror,’’ in Menjívar and Rodríguez, When States Kill, 305–31, as well as the essay in
this volume; Sergio Aguayo Quezada, México, 1968: Los archivos de la violencia (Mexico
City: Grijalbo-Reforma, 1998), and La charola: Una historia de los servicios de inteligencia
en México (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 2001); Leslie Gill, The School of the Americas: Military
Training and Political Violence in the Americas (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004);
and Juan E. Corradi, Patricia Weiss Fagan, and Manuel Antonio Garretón, eds., Fear at
the Edge: State Terror and Resistance in Latin America (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1992).
93. Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre, 188; also see Grandin’s more recent study Em-
pire’s Workshop, esp. chapter 3, ‘‘Going Primitive: The Violence of the New Imperialism.’’
94. J. Patrice McSherry, ‘‘Operation Condor as a Hemispheric ‘Counterterror’ Organi-
zation,’’ in Menjívar and Rodríguez, When States Kill, 28–56; Menjívar and Rodríguez,
‘‘State Terror in the U.S.–Latin American Interstate Regime,’’ in When States Kill, 3–27;
Christopher Hitchens, ‘‘The Case against Henry Kissinger: Crimes against Humanity,’’
Harper’s Magazine, March 2001, 49–74; and John Dinges, The Condor Years: How Pino-
chet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents (New York: New Press, 2004);
also see Blanton’s essay in this volume.
95. See Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre, 189, and ‘‘Living in Revolutionary Time’’;
Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror, 42–43; Nancy Caro Hollander, Love in the Time of Hate:
Liberation Psychology in Latin America (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997),
quotation on 93.
96. The discussion in this paragraph draws on Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre,
190–91, and ‘‘O√ the Beach,’’ 438–39, as well as on Blanton’s essay in this volume.
97. Viron P. Vaky, Policy Planning Council, U.S. Department of State, to Covey T.
Oliver, ara [Latin American Bureau], ‘‘Guatemala and Counter-Terror,’’ March 29, 1968,
document 367 in the National Security Archive’s Guatemala collection, published by
ProQuest/Chadwyck-Healey. I am grateful to the nsa’s Kate Doyle for originally bring-
ing this document to my attention.
98. Quoted in Nick Cullather, Secret History: The cia’s Classified Account of Its Opera-
tion in Guatemala, 1952–1954 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 66.
99. Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre, 191. The notorious cia quote was reprinted
in Harper’s Magazine in Christopher Hitchens’s two-part investigative report, ‘‘The Case
against Henry Kissinger.’’ See part 1, ‘‘The Making of a War Criminal,’’ February 2001, 33–
58, esp. 53–58 (quotation on 53); and part 2, ‘‘Crimes against Humanity,’’ March 2001, 49–
74 (quotation on 49).
100. This venerable bromide is quoted in Friedman, ‘‘Retiring the Puppets,’’ 621.
101. Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre, 188; and see the discussion in Blanton’s essay
in this volume.
102. For example, see Huggins, Political Policing, 135–36. For a recent documentary
film that details the French contribution to the ideology and practice of counterinsur-
gent terror, see Marie-Monique Robin’s Death Squadrons: The French School (2003).
103. Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre, 186–87.
104. Feitlowitz, A Lexicon of Terror, quotation on 19; Grandin, The Last Colonial
Massacre, 15.
105. The literature, both academic and more popular, on ‘‘low-intensity’’ conflict or
warfare is quite extensive. For a broad sampling, see Lynn Horton, Peasants in Arms: War
and Peace in the Mountains of Nicaragua, 1979–1994 (Athens: Ohio University Center for
International Studies, 1998); Thomas Walker, ed., Reagan vs. the Sandinistas: The Un-
declared War on Nicaragua (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987); Timothy C. Brown,
The Real Contra War: Highlander Peasant Resistance in Nicaragua (Norman: University
of Oklahoma Press, 2001); Christopher Dickey, With the Contras: A Reporter in the
Wilds of Nicaragua (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985); and Philip J. Williams and
Knut Walter, Militarization and Demilitarization in El Salvador’s Transition to Democracy
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997).
106. Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre, 195–96. On the military’s moderate social
measures in Uruguay, see Juan Rial, ‘‘Makers and Guardians of Fear: Controlled Terror in
Uruguay,’’ in Corradi, Fagen, and Garretón, Fear at the Edge, esp. 92–93. For military-
sponsored social programs in poor Chilean neighborhoods, see Alison J. Bruey, ‘‘Orga-
nizing Community: Defying Dictatorship in Working-Class Santiago de Chile, 1973–
1983’’ (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2007), esp. chapter 4.
108. Ibid., 196; Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1987).
109. The Last Colonial Massacre, esp. 196–97 and the preface.
110. Ibid., 197.
111. See, for example, Weinstein and Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood; Harvey Klehr, John
Earl Haynes, and Kyrill M. Anderson, The Soviet World of American Communism (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1998); John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decod-
ing Soviet Espionage in America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); Ronald Radosh
and Mary Habeck, eds., Documents on the Spanish Civil War ; and Haynes and Klehr, In
Denial. In a personal communication, Grandin suggests that it is precisely the need of
triumphalists to isolate liberalism and democracy from socialism that underlies this spate
of new exposés of the espionage and authoritarian nature of the Communist Party of the
United States during and after the New Deal and fuels the recent assault on the last great
bastion of popular-front mythology, the Spanish Civil War.
112. Jorge G. Castañeda, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War
(New York: Knopf, 1993); David Stoll, Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guate-
malans (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999).
113. Grandin, ‘‘O√ the Beach,’’ 435; also see The Last Colonial Massacre, 4.
114. See, for example, the more hopeful reformist scenario that Kyle Langley paints for
Costa Rica under Pepe Figueres, in The Sparrow and the Hawk: Costa Rica and the United
States during the Rise of José Figueres (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997).
Although Langley may be a bit too sanguine about the extent or staying power of early
Cold War reform in Costa Rica, his study illuminates creative strategies of ‘‘non-violent
resistance and accommodation’’ in small nations’ struggles against U.S. domination that
Grandin’s analysis may elide.
115. Also see Meyer, ‘‘La guerra fría en el mundo periférico: El caso del régimen
autoritario mexicano’’; Buchenau, ‘‘Por una guerra fría más templada’’; Fein, ‘‘Myths of
Cultural Imperialism’’; and John Mraz, ‘‘Today, Tomorrow and Always: The Golden Age
of Illustrated Magazines in Mexico, 1937–1960,’’ in Joseph et al., Fragments of a Golden
Age, 116–57. In his provocative essay, Lorenzo Meyer argues that as long as Mexico’s well-
entrenched pri was able to guarantee the nation’s stability—which it managed to do
throughout the Cold War by means of a well-calibrated strategy that included both re-
pression and timely doses of social reform—the United States tolerated the party’s na-
tionalistic discourse and relative autonomy in foreign policy. In the process, the United
States helped perpetuate Latin America’s longest-running authoritarian regime—the
‘‘perfect dictatorship’’—by refraining from making any real criticism of it. For disturbing
recent revelations about the dynamics and scope of Mexico’s ‘‘dirty war,’’ see Alberto
Ulloa Bornemann, Surviving Mexico’s Dirty War: A Political Prisoner’s Memoir (Phila-
delphia: Temple University Press, 2007); and James C. McKinley Jr., ‘‘Mexican Report
Cites Leaders for ‘Dirty War,’ ’’ New York Times, December 23, 2006.
116. On the challenges attending research on the 1960–1990s period in the aftermath of
the Latin American Cold War, see Steve J. Stern, ‘‘Between Tragedy and Promise: The
Politics of Writing Latin American History in the Late Twentieth Century,’’ in Joseph,
Reclaiming the Political, 32–77.
117. The literature is growing rapidly, and I can cite only a portion of it here. In
addition to the essays by Steven Bachelor and Carlota McAllister in this volume (and the
broader ethnohistorical projects on which they are based), see Roger N. Lancaster, Life Is
Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nicaragua (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1992); Brown, The Real Contra War ; Ricardo Falla, The Story of a Great
Love: Life with the Guatemalan ‘‘Communities of Population in Resistance’’ (Washington:
epica, 1998); Deborah Levenson-Estrada, Trade Unionists against Terror: Guatemala City,
1954–1985 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Oficina de Derechos
Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala, Guatemala: Nunca más (Guatemala City,
1998); Comisión de Esclarecimiento Histórico, Guatemala: Memoria del silencio (Guate-
mala City, 1999); Elizabeth Oglesby, ‘‘Desde los Cuadernos de Myrna Mack: Reflexiones
sobre la violencia, la memoria y la investigación social,’’ in De la memoria a la reconstruc-
ción histórica (Guatemala City: avancso, 1999); Daniel Wilkinson, Silence on the Moun-
tain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in Guatemala (Boston: Houghton MiΔin,
2002); Linda Green, Fear as a Way of Life: Mayan Widows in Rural Guatemala (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1999); Beatriz Manz, Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey
of Courage, Terror, and Hope (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004); Steve Stern,
ed., Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995 (Durham: Duke Univer-
sity Press, 1998); Orin Starn, Nightwatch: The Politics of Protest in the Andes (Durham:
Duke University Press, 1999); Daniel James, Doña María’s Story: Life, History, Memory,
and Political Identity (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000); Peter Winn, Weavers of
Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism (New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 1986); Rosa Isolde Reuque Paillef, When a Flower Is Reborn: The Life and Times
of a Mapuche Feminist, ed. Florencia E. Mallon (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002);
Heidi Tinsman, Partners in Conflict: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the
Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950–1973 (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002); Lynn Ste-
phen, Zapata Lives! Histories and Cultural Politics in Southern Mexico (Berkeley: Univer-
sity of California Press, 2002); Ulloa Bornemann, Surviving Mexico’s Dirty War ; and
Diana Sorensen, A Turbulent Decade Remembered: Scenes from the Latin American Sixties
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007).
118. In addition to a number of the works cited in the preceding note, see the case
studies in Grandin and Joseph, A Century of Revolution; and Catherine LeGrand, ‘‘The
Colombian Crisis in Historical Perspective,’’ Canadian Journal of Latin American and
Caribbean Studies 28, nos. 55–56 (2003): 165–210 (particularly with regard to local forma-
tions of the farc and the eln).
119. For example, see the series of books (‘‘Memorias de la Represión’’) edited since
2002 by the Argentine sociologist and historian Elizabeth Jelin and others, which emerged
out of the Social Science Research Council’s long-term project ‘‘Collective Memory of
Repression in the Southern Cone.’’ To date, twelve volumes have been produced. Another
collaborator in this international interdisciplinary project, Steve Stern, has written a
trilogy, under the umbrella title The Memory Box of Pinochet’s Chile, which will be
published by Duke University Press in 2004–9. The first two volumes are Remembering
Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London 1998 (2004) and Battling for Hearts and Minds:
Memory Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973–1988 (2006). Also see the discussion in Blan-
ton’s essay of the intensely collaborative Memoria Abierta project in Argentina, and other
initiatives around memory in the Southern Cone.
THOMAS S. BLANTON
Recovering the Memory of the Cold War

Forensic History and Latin America
Few scholarly enterprises are more timely than the one presented in this vol-
ume, which promises to accelerate the process of bringing Cold War narratives
into Latin American historiography, and even more importantly, Latin Ameri-
can narratives into Cold War historiography. There is a desperate need for this
cross-fertilization, not least because Cold War historiography—like the unipolar
world—su√ers from a hegemonic problem these days. Latin Americans and
scholars of Latin America have major value to add, steeped as they are in the
pilot project of unipolar hegemony tried out by the United States in this hemi-
sphere during the Cold War years.
In this chapter, I look first at examples of missing Latin American narratives
in the prevailing Cold War history discourse, which has been dominated by
North American, and to a lesser extent European, voices. Then comes a discus-
sion of the breakthrough in Latin American political and social history provided
by the truth commissions of the 1980s and 1990s, in their challenges to the
authorities and their privileging of the victims of repression. Next I explore the
restoration of evidence sparked by the truth commissions, especially in the form
of declassified U.S. documentation, and the impact of this new documentation
in countries like Guatemala and Argentina. I also describe the gradual recovery
of the archival reality in Latin America as the result of various historical justice
e√orts, showing that despite destruction and coverup, evidence and files have
survived from a wide range of repressive regimes. Finally, I outline the challenge
and opportunity for scholars who now can integrate multiple new primary
sources into comparative studies, especially of authoritarian regimes and their
interactivity with U.S. policy, while connecting the past with the Latin American
present in which hyperactive military power and impunity both persist.
Let us begin with the most prominent example of European scholarly impact
on the writing of Cold War history. At the 2002 Norwegian Nobel Institute
48 thomas s. blanton
symposium on the end of the Cold War, one English scholar proudly pointed to
the host, Geir Lundestad, head of the institute and secretary of the Nobel Peace
Prize Committee, and—clearly eager for another invitation back to the para-
dise of smoked herring and salad bowls of caviar that is Oslo—remarked that
Lundestad’s now-famous notion of the U.S. ‘‘empire by invitation’’ (in contrast
to the Soviet empire) was the single substantial European contribution to Cold
War historiography at the conceptual level, which otherwise was completely
dominated by U.S. scholars. Specifically, Michael Cox of the London School
of Economics said that Lundestad’s idea was ‘‘perhaps the most—possibly the
only—influential European concept to travel well across the Atlantic.’’∞
Latin Americans might point out that the concept does not travel well across
the Caribbean, or certainly the South Atlantic. This is not for lack of nuance on
Lundestad’s part, or cultural tunnel vision, or comparisons limited to the bi-
polar frame—the more typical sins of commission or omission on the part of
superpower historians. Lundestad was among the first to call for a new ‘‘inter-
national’’ history: ‘‘To use a paradox, the study of American [i.e., U.S.] foreign
policy should focus less on America. Instead, more attention should be paid to
the many complex ‘local’ factors which in di√erent ways influenced Wash-
ington’s policies and/or helped determine the outcome of the events we are
studying.’’≤ Lundestad stated that his study of the U.S. empire during the Cold
War ‘‘supports the revisionist argument that the American expansion was really
even more striking than the Soviet one, [but] it di√ers from revisionist accounts
in that it stresses the invitational aspect of much of this expansion. Occasionally
the United States did thrust itself into the a√airs of other countries. Yet, the basic
pattern, particularly in the early post-war years, was a di√erent one. The rule was
that the United States was invited in.’’≥
We should note the use of the word ‘‘occasionally’’ in regard to this ‘‘thrust’’
business. Lundestad is speaking from a European perspective, where indeed the
invitational nature of the relationship with the U.S. seems predominant; yet the
history of various U.S. Cold War ‘‘thrusts’’ in Europe is still to be written. For
example, Marshall Plan administrator and later cia operations chief Richard
Bissell revealed in his posthumous memoirs the diversion of the so-called coun-
terpart funds—the 5 percent U.S. share of the local governments’ match in local
currency of overall U.S. Marshall Plan funding—for covert operations in Eu-
rope.∂ But the internal cia history of its interventions in the French and Italian
elections of 1948, to take only one such example, remains classified, despite
several cia veterans who spoke on camera about the 1948 operations for cnn’s
Cold War series and other documentaries.∑
A more powerful contrast to Lundestad’s formulation of ‘‘occasional thrusts’’
r e c o v e r i n g t h e m e m o ry o f t h e c o l d wa r 49
but mostly ‘‘invitation’’ comes from the Latin American experience. Compare
Lundestad, for example, to the description of the U.S. invitation to empire as
found in Stephen G. Rabe’s superb study of the Kennedy administration’s Latin
America policy:
Through its recognition policy, internal security initiatives, and military and eco-
nomic aid programs, the administration demonstrably bolstered regimes and groups
that were undemocratic, conservative, and frequently repressive. Its destabilization
campaigns in Argentina, Brazil, British Guiana,and Guatemala had ironic results. Ar-
turo Frondisi, João Goulart, Cheddi Jagan, and Juan José Arévalo respected constitu-
tional processes and praised the Alliance for Progress, while their authoritarian, anti-
Communist successors opposed free elections and disdained the idea of social re-
form. . . . Like Dwight Eisenhower and John Foster Dulles, the president and his ad-
visors opted for the short-term security that anti-Communist elites, especially
military o≈cers, could provide over the benefits of long-term political and social de-
mocracy. . . . During his brief tenure, President Kennedy may have authorized more
covert interventions in Latin America than any other postwar president—including
Ronald Reagan, who fomented wars in Central America.∏
Reading Rabe (and many other scholars of Latin America), one might say that
the invitation to the Empire Ball extended by the U.S. to Latin America was
one that required her to be escorted by a sti√-backed colonel wearing sun-
glasses, who picked her up in a tinted-glass Jeep Cherokee driven by guards, who
brought her home after midnight if at all. Consider, for example, the cia’s own
assessment, written by its Directorate of Intelligence in 1983, of its 1954 coup in
Guatemala, seen as a Cold War triumph at the time. Nearly thirty years later, the
cia admitted that the coup had ‘‘ended a decade of economic and social reforms’’
and empowered elites who ‘‘share a tacit understanding that unpredictable and
unmanageable political processes—such as free elections and greater popular
participation—are inimical to their interests’’ and who therefore ‘‘killed’’ op-
ponents who ‘‘could not be co-opted, silenced or frightened into exile’’ with
‘‘government . . . and rightwing-sponsored use of death squads.’’π
A further example of the need for Latin American narratives in Cold War
history can be found in the book that dominated the European debate in the
1990s over the Cold War, so much so that Harvard University Press issued an
American edition that received significant attention and praise.∫ The Black Book
of Communism began life as an entry in the French polemics sweepstakes and
displays an extreme unevenness in its research and presentation. The section
on Poland and Central Europe, written by two of the most distinguished and
entrepreneurial scholars using the newly opened Eastern bloc archives (Andrzej
Paczkowski and Karel Bartosek), presents a complex, archivally based, histo-

riographically embedded description and analysis of the horrors visited upon
East and Central Europe by the Stalinist system. At one point, for example,
Paczkowski even comments critically on the overall enterprise of the book:
‘‘Looking at the past only from the point of view of repression risks a somewhat
deformed assessment of the Communist system, since even in the most repres-
sive periods the system did have other functions.’’Ω
In stark contrast to the sophisticated treatment of Eastern and Central Eu-
rope, the Black Book’s section on Latin America is superficial and almost purely
polemical. The author, Pascal Fontaine, is described only as a ‘‘journalist with
special knowledge of Latin America,’’ but to call the essay journalism is to insult
the profession. Fontaine actually has a more distinguished pedigree (as Jean
Monnet’s last assistant from 1973 to 1977, an aide to the president of the Euro-
pean Parliament from 1984 to 1987, and a Ph.D.-credentialed political scientist at
the Institut d’Etudes Politiques in Paris), so one wonders at The Black Book’s
cursory credit line; but at least it is consistent with the essay’s own cursory
treatment of Latin America. Fontaine’s section consists of three parts, on the
Castro regime in Cuba, on the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua, and on the
Shining Path insurrection in Peru. The author seems to have consulted only a
handful of articles and books, mostly published in French; and the Nicaragua
section—to note only one of many glaring omissions—does not mention the cia
or the Argentines. Indeed, Fontaine puts in quotes the words ‘‘armed incursions
of Somocista guards’’ as if to cast doubt on their existence; in the same sentence,
he calls these incursions merely a ‘‘pretext’’ for Sandinista repression.∞≠
One can only speculate at the motivations behind giving such short shrift to
Latin America. Perhaps one di≈culty for the editors of The Black Book was that
the Western Hemisphere has generated a multivolume, multinational work that
is the equivalent of a ‘‘black book of anti-Communism.’’ Beginning in Argentina
with the collapse of the military junta after the Malvinas War, citizens of Latin
America launched ‘‘truth commissions’’ to investigate the human rights abuses
committed by military governments in the name of fighting Communism—
especially the unknown fates of the desaparecidos (disappeared persons). Argen-
tina’s famous Nunca Más report of 1984 set a precedent for the region, followed
by Chile’s Rettig Commission (formally the Commission of Truth and Recon-
ciliation) in 1991, El Salvador’s Commission on the Truth in 1993, and the nine-
volume work of Guatemala’s Historical Clarification Commission in 1999.∞∞
Even with the constraints imposed by persisting military power and political
compromise (such as amnesty laws for military perpetrators and prohibitions
on ‘‘naming names’’ of rights abusers), the reports of the Latin American truth
commissions stand as landmarks of justice and history. They represent a base
line for the new international history of Latin America in the Cold War, espe-
cially to the extent that they have created new archives of documentation and
testimonies about recent history, both in Latin America and in the United States.
By privileging the victims of the violence and exposing the horrors—up to
and including a specific finding of acts of genocide, in the Guatemala case,
against indigenous peoples in the early 1980s—the commissions a√ected the
balance of power in each country toward greater accountability, though in very
di√erent ways in each national circumstance. The commissions reached out to
victims, to human rights monitors, to international ngos like the National
Security Archive, and even to foreign governments for support and for evidence.
It was precisely in this vast expansion of the evidentiary base that the commis-
sions moved into the realm of forensics, the art and science of verification of evi-
dence, usually meant in the legal or judicial sense, but here applied to history—
using forensic language and methods, exhumation and autopsy, deposition and
cross-examination.∞≤ The ultimate achievement, of course, was to break the
conspiracies of silence, the airbrushing of history, the willful forgetfulness, the
coverup of state terror, in which the Latin American authoritarians were so
tragically reminiscent of the Stalinism that they saw as their ideological enemy. It
was a Czech writer, Milan Kundera, who remarked at the beginning of The Book
of Laughter and Forgetting that ‘‘the struggle of man against power is the struggle
of memory against forgetting.’’
The truth commissions opened political space, both in their own countries
and in the United States, especially once the Cold War was over. Another entire
book would be required to trace the interactive e√ects of the Cold War’s ending
on the motivations of U.S. o≈cials, guerrillas of various political persuasions,
incumbent military and authoritarian regimes, and would-be peacemakers in
Latin America; but su≈ce it here to say that the opportunity for memory and
the struggle against power was seized in Latin America in ways that have not yet
come to Russia, and only fitfully across Eastern Europe.∞≥ Only days after the
Soviet flag came down for the last time from the Kremlin ramparts, for example,
Salvadorans from the government and from the rebels signed peace agreements
in January 1992 that included a mandate for a United Nations ‘‘Commission
on the Truth’’ to investigate the violence and the impunity in the twelve-year
civil war. After interviews with more than two thousand Salvadorans as well as
rapid compilation and analysis of thousands of pages of documents previously
released from U.S. files under the Freedom of Information Act, the commis-
sion reported in March 1993 on thirty-two specific cases of gross human rights
abuses, named names of the perpetrators (who were barred from future political
activity), and established that 85 percent of the violations were the responsibility
of state security forces and associated death squads and paramilitary groups.∞∂
The opening of political space also triggered its equal and opposite reaction in
El Salvador. Instead of judicial proceedings to follow up the Truth Commission
report, the ruling party (which had originally been founded and led by death
squad organizers such as Roberto D’Aubuisson) responded by passing an am-
nesty law that halted any progress toward an independent judiciary, and even
freed convicted murderers (two o≈cers who had organized the 1989 assassina-
tions of six Jesuit priests). The El Salvador experience showed that truth is not
enough in the face of persisting impunity for the powerful and that information
is necessary but not su≈cient to change the balance of power; yet the Truth
Commission’s e√ort did change the base line of acknowledgment and settled
some contested terrain. For example, while the commission worked in 1992, the
Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (Equipo Argentino de Antropología
Forense, or eaaf) came to El Salvador and pulled back the veil on one of the
most notorious human rights cases, that of the El Mozote massacre. The eaaf
began in 1984 as a direct outgrowth of the Argentine truth commission, the
National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (conadep), which
asked for forensic help, attracted noted experts from around the world (such as
Dr. Clyde Snow), and began to professionalize the process of exhumation and
identification of human rights victims, not only in Argentina but around the
world.∞∑ At El Mozote, the eaaf’s exhumations found remains of 143 people in
the village, all but 12 of whom were children, all victims of a counterinsurgency
sweep in 1981 by the U.S.-trained Atlacatl Battalion. Despite stories and photo-
graphs in the New York Times and Washington Post by reporters who personally
visited El Mozote and spoke with survivors shortly after the massacre, the U.S.
government had roundly denied that a massacre had taken place and continued
its military and financial support for the Salvadoran army.∞∏
The El Mozote findings particularly and the Truth Commission’s report gen-
erally also opened political space in the United States. The new Clinton admin-
istration in 1993 included a number of human rights advocates who had partici-
pated in congressional e√orts to wring the truth about Central America from
Reagan administration appointees in the 1980s; so new requests from the com-
mission and from Congress for documentation led to President Clinton’s order
for a systematic declassification of human-rights-related documentation on El
Salvador. The new documents came too late for the commission’s report, but
they established the primary source base line for all future accounts of Salvador’s
conflict, military impunity, human rights abuses, and U.S. policy. Among many
other chilling lessons to be found in these documents was proof of the U.S.
government’s lies about El Mozote. After the press coverage, the U.S. Embassy
sent two o≈cers out to investigate, but because of small-arms fire they actually
never managed to land at El Mozote and never interviewed the survivors. Their
cable back to Washington was then transformed by assistant secretaries of state
Thomas Enders and Elliott Abrams into a flat denial of the massacre, in front of
congressional committees, claiming that ‘‘no evidence could be found to con-
firm that government forces systematically massacred civilians in the operation
zone.’’ The denial fit a pattern of U.S. complicity in the bloodshed in El Salvador:
support for the military at all costs, the censure and redbaiting of any critics as if
they supported Communism, claims that engagement would improve the mili-
tary’s human rights record, and a consistent failure actually to hold any abusers
accountable. Only after the Truth Commission’s reported was the defense minis-
ter René Emilio Ponce forced to retire—the declassified record showed Ponce as
a long-standing death squad leader and human rights violator. So the struggle
for justice in El Salvador continues, but at least now in a much less militarized
society.∞π
Another lesson from the El Salvador experience dramatically improved the
process of getting o≈cial U.S. documents declassified. The El Salvador release
had been too late for the truth commission but had been enormously helpful to
ongoing accountability e√orts because the U.S. files were so rich in evidence on
Latin American military and security forces. So as early as 1994, when talks
between Guatemalan insurgents and the government seemed close to an agree-
ment that would include a truth commission (signed in June 1994), human
rights advocates and the sta√ of the National Security Archive began filing
declassification and Freedom of Information Act requests on Guatemala. One
key step was coming to consensus among human rights monitors about a core
list of the most important human rights cases, ones that any truth commission
would have to deal with. Another major analytical step forward was the creation
of a target list of the most important Guatemalan military units and o≈cers over
the extended period of the conflict. Between 1994 and 1999, more than 1,200
Freedom of Information Act requests and several hundred more Mandatory
Declassification Review requests produced the release from U.S. files of more
than 100,000 pages of previously classified documents. Spurring the declassifica-
tion process were a lawsuit brought by the American wife of a Guatemalan
guerrilla who had been murdered and a public scandal in 1995 over a paid asset
of the cia (Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez), whom the cia knew was involved in that
murder and in the 1990 murder of an American citizen named Michael Devine.
Prompted by congressional and media attention, as well as by White House sta√
who had been misled by the cia about Alpirez, President Clinton ordered a full
review of U.S. intelligence operations in Guatemala, a process that ultimately
declassified some six thousand documents and found that cia assets had in fact
committed ‘‘assassination, extrajudicial execution, torture, or kidnapping while
they were assets.’’∞∫
The U.S. declassifications ultimately produced an enormous file of primary
sources for the U.N.-sponsored Historical Clarification Commission in Guate-
mala, whose work from 1997 to 1999 was subsequently assessed by outside
experts as perhaps the most successful commission experience to date. National
Security Archive sta√ constructed a computerized database from the Defense
Intelligence Agency documents tracking every significant Guatemalan military
unit and its o≈cers throughout the decades of conflict, so that when the com-
mission received testimony from victims’ families or from survivors about par-
ticular massacres or murders, the commission was able to identify the specific
units and o≈cers involved. Combined with the extraordinary spadework al-
ready done by the Catholic Church’s human rights o≈ce, as well as by the
various associations of families of the disappeared, and with thousands of hours
of interviews, the documents enabled the commission to back up its fundamen-
tal conclusions, including a specific finding that the Guatemalan army had
committed genocide in the 1981–83 period of its ‘‘scorched earth’’ eradication of
indigenous Mayan villages, and that the state was responsible for 93 percent of
the total deaths in the thirty-six-year conflict. Delivered to the Guatemalan
nation with top government o≈cials sitting in the front row, the commission’s
findings stunned onlookers with the forcefulness of the language: ‘‘Believing
that the end justified anything, army and state security forces blindly pursued
the anticommunist struggle, respecting neither judicial principle nor the most
elemental ethical or religious values, and thus arrived at the complete loss of
human morality.’’∞Ω
The new documentation brought a new measure of accountability not only to
the Guatemalan army and security forces but also to the U.S. policy that had
aided and abetted the slaughter. Only two weeks after the truth commission
report, President Bill Clinton participated in a roundtable discussion in Guate-
mala City with President Alvaro Arzú and a large public audience and expressed
o≈cial regret for U.S. policy. Clinton remarked, ‘‘For the United States, it is
important that I state clearly that support for military forces or intelligence units
which engaged in widespread repression . . . was wrong, and the United States
must not repeat that mistake.’’ When the National Security Archive’s full data-
base of military unit and o≈cers’ biographies was published on the Web and
released in a public briefing in Guatemala City in June 2000, every major news-
paper published front-page stories under headlines such as ‘‘A luz 36 años de
secretos militares’’ (Prensa Libre), ‘‘Archivo identifica a oficiales guatemaltecos
genocidas’’ (Al Día), and ‘‘Los secretos del ejército’’ (El Periódico). The publica-
tion restored some of Guatemala’s secret history back to Guatemalans, but it also
connected that history to U.S. policy. The featured Web graphic and the frontis-
piece of the two-volume printed set of data and documents on the Guatemalan
military consisted of a photograph from 1965 of two U.S. military advisors
standing with the ‘‘Butcher of Zacapa,’’ the notorious Col. Carlos Arana Osorio,
who later served as president of Guatemala.≤≠ Subsequently the database pro-
vided the basis for what the Economist called ‘‘the first time that senior o≈cers
have faced justice,’’ in the 2002 trial that put one colonel in jail for the 1990
murder of the anthropologist Myrna Mack.≤∞
Not long after the 1965 photograph was taken, the former number two in the
U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City registered a quiet, classified secret, but passion-
ate protest of such partnerships in counterinsurgency. Relying directly on his
own experience in Guatemala, Viron Vaky warned U.S. ambassador John Gor-
don Mein in a private conversation on March 28, 1968, that U.S. policy in e√ect
was to ‘‘rationalize murder’’ (within a few months, Mein himself would be
assassinated by the insurgents). Vaky then sent a more formal memo to the head
of the Latin America bureau. Vaky reported that the whole counterterror ap-
proach taken by the Guatemalan army and government, with U.S. support, was
having a ‘‘corrosive’’ e√ect on Guatemala because it was ‘‘indiscriminate,’’ ‘‘bru-
tal,’’ and ‘‘has retarded modernization and institution-building’’; ‘‘it says in
e√ect to people that the law, the constitution, the institutions mean nothing, the
fastest gun counts.’’ Vaky wrote that his own deepest regret was not having
fought harder to press these views while he was at the embassy: ‘‘We have not
been honest with ourselves. We have condoned counter-terror; we may even in
e√ect have encouraged or blessed it. We have been so obsessed with the fear of
insurgency that we have rationalized away our qualms and uneasiness. This is
not only because we have concluded we cannot do anything about it, for we
never really tried. Rather we suspected that maybe it is a good tactic, and that as
long as Communists are being killed it is alright. Murder, torture and mutilation
are alright as long as our side is doing it and the victims are Communists. . . . Is it
conceivable that we are so obsessed with insurgency that we are prepared to
rationalize murder as an acceptable counterinsurgency weapon?’’≤≤
Vaky’s cry from the heart produced few echoes in the corridors of U.S. power,
according to the declassified record. More typical was the performance of Secre-
tary of State Henry Kissinger, who delivered a speech at the 1976 Organization of
American States meeting in Santiago, Chile, calling for all member states to
respect human rights—a speech taken as implicit criticism of the Chilean dicta-
tor Augusto Pinochet and thus cited ever since by Kissinger aides like Assistant
Secretary of State William Rogers as evidence of Kissinger’s attention to human
rights (as well as in Kissinger’s own memoirs). But when the declassified record
emerged from previously closed U.S. files in the 1990s, researchers found the
transcript of Kissinger’s face-to-face meeting with General Pinochet on the day
before the speech, a meeting in which the American assured the dictator that he
was not to take the speech personally, that the intended audience was the U.S.
Congress (debating sanctions on Chile for human rights abuses), and that ‘‘my
evaluation is that you are a victim of all left-wing groups around the world and
that your greatest sin was that you overthrew a government which was going
communist. . . . I want you to succeed. And I want to retain the possibility
of aid.’’≤≥
In one of the more grotesque ironies of the Cold War, it took Chinese Com-
munist intervention to get the U.S. government even to make an internal classi-
fied accounting of the killings committed by Pinochet during and after his
September 1973 coup. Kissinger had apparently not even inquired about the
scale of the Chilean violence until his November 1973 trip to China, during
which Chinese premier Zhou En-lai accusingly told Kissinger that the U.S. was
supporting ‘‘slaughter’’ in Chile. (Of course, the Cultural Revolution was just
then winding down, after having sacrificed thousands of intellectuals to ram-
paging mobs, and China was only fourteen years removed from the mass starva-
tion caused by Mao’s policies, so perhaps Zhou believed the best defense was a
good o√ense.) Kissinger promptly cabled Washington asking about summary
executions in Chile, and the State Department put together a ‘‘fact sheet’’ listing
all the figures from public sources (such as the approximately one hundred
executions acknowledged by the Chilean government), and four figures marked
with asterisks indicating that sensitive intelligence sources had provided them.
These included 320 (not 100) summary executions, 1,500 killed overall, 13,500
arrested since the September 11 coup, and 1,500 still in detention. The hard
numbers seem to have made no di√erence in Kissinger’s policy of support, and

he decided not to tell the Chinese they were right about the slaughter.≤∂
The U.S. documents on Pinochet emerged in the 1990s only because of a
confluence of pressures very similar to the Guatemala case. The spark came from
the Spanish judge Baltazar Garzón, urged on by the Spanish lawyer and former
Allende aide Joan Garcés, and helped by the British chapter of Amnesty Inter-
national when they were tipped o√ by a New Yorker magazine interview with
Pinochet while he was in London for medical treatment in October 1998. The
resulting warrant produced a six-year legal drama that included house arrest in
London, claims of health problems that persuaded the British government to let
Pinochet go home to Chile, where he resumed his robust public presence,
various and often contradictory court findings in Chile regarding Pinochet’s
immunity from prosecution or lack thereof, and a courageous Chilean prosecu-
tor named Juan Guzmán who carried on the task of bringing the dictator to
justice. In the most remarkable measure of how things had changed, on the day
Pinochet was arrested in London, Chile’s court dockets included only two legal
actions against Pinochet and his henchmen for human rights abuses, but by
2003 there were 247 actual indictments on human rights charges, and the num-
ber was rising. In the United States, the Clinton administration did not want to
back up the Spanish judge’s claims for universal jurisdiction, just in case future
charges might be lodged against Americans; but many senior o≈cials did want
to contribute to the human rights investigations and to the democratic transi-
tion in Chile. Using the precedent of the Guatemala and El Salvador declassifica-
tions, plus pressure from the press and from groups like the National Security
Archive, the White House overcame cia objections and released more than
150,000 pages in 1999 and 2000, including extraordinary new details on cia
covert operations and the U.S. embrace of Pinochet.≤∑
The cause of human rights in Argentina also benefited from the U.S. political
dynamic, but the U.S. government was more careful this time. Argentina had
been the early leader in Latin America for accountability of the dictators, with
the pioneering truth commission e√ort, Nunca Más, that established the facts of
at least 8,961 murders and disappearances by the military in the so-called dirty
war of 1976 to 1983. Argentina also carried out actual prosecutions of the junta
members after the disaster in the Malvinas led to the civilian government of Raúl
Alfonsín in 1983. But pressure from the military forced the civilians to grant
sweeping amnesties to military o≈cers, despite popular protest led by the Ma-
dres and Abuelas of the Plaza de Mayo, who had marched with photos of their
disappeared loved ones even in the darkest days of the dirty war. Despite the
amnesty, groups like the Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (cels) creatively
sought alternative grounds for prosecutions, such as the kidnapping of the
children of the disappeared, hundreds of whom were brought up by military
families and remained ignorant of their actual parentage. When Clinton’s secre-
tary of state Madeleine Albright visited Buenos Aires in 2000, the groups pressed
her for a declassification like that on Chile, and she agreed. But over a period
that spanned the end of the Clinton administration and the beginning of the
Bush term, the State Department bureaucracy carefully limited the terms of
declassification just to information on human rights abuses in Argentina—
omitting the policy debates in Washington and also U.S. accountability that had
been integral to the Guatemala and El Salvador releases. Thus the 4,667 docu-
ments that the U.S. government finally disgorged in August 2002 included ex-
tensive new details on disappearances, including a thick series of index cards
amassed at the time by embassy o≈cer F. A. ‘‘Tex’’ Harris from his hundreds of
interviews with the families of victims. The release also included an October
1976 cable from U.S. Ambassador Robert Hill complaining that the Argentine
foreign minister, Admiral Guzzetti, ‘‘went to U.S. fully expecting to hear some
strong, firm, direct warnings on his government’s human rights practices, rather
than that, he has returned in a state of jubilation, convinced that there is no real
problem with the USG over that issue.’’ U.S. o≈cials at the time assured Hill that
Guzzetti heard only what he wanted to hear, and that the United States had
warned the Argentines on human rights. But the transcripts of Guzzetti’s meet-
ings in Washington were not in the 2002 release, and it took a further Freedom
of Information Act request by Carlos Osorio of the National Security Archive
to get copies released. The actual memcon of Guzzetti’s meeting with Secretary
of State Kissinger sounded almost exactly like Kissinger’s earlier meeting with
Pinochet. Kissinger told Guzzetti, ‘‘Look, our basic attitude is that we would like
you to succeed. I have an old-fashioned view that friends ought to be supported.
What is not understood in the United States is that you have a civil war. We read
about human rights problems but not the context. The quicker you succeed the
better. . . . If you can finish before Congress gets back, the better. Whatever
freedoms you could restore would help.’’ This is what passed for a stern warning
on human rights in the Kissinger years.≤∏
An even more complex interaction of U.S. policy and Latin American actors
occurred in Panama. This is a story we now know largely because a truth
commission worked in 2001 and 2002 to document the disappearances and
human rights abuses in the two decades of military dictatorship led by generals
Omar Torrijos and then Manuel Noriega. For example, among the documents
found by National Security Archive researchers working on behalf of the Pana-
manian truth commission were a series of cia reports on the June 1971 dis-
appearance of the Catholic priest Héctor Gallegos Herrera—which almost all
observers attributed to the National Guard getting revenge on a leading critic.
One cia cable included in its headline the phrase ‘‘General Torrijos e√ort to
blame kidnapping on the United States,’’ and a second cable described Noriega’s
role in directing press coverage of the case toward a student communiqué blam-
ing the kidnapping on ‘‘North American imperialism.’’≤π Seemingly, these docu-
ments provided evidence of a classic nationalistic response, rather than the usual
pattern of local military elites working closely with the United States. But the
archival record did not end there.
When General Torrijos was on his way to Washington in October 1977 to ne-
gotiate one of the articles in what would become the Panama Canal Treaty,
President Carter’s national security advisor asked the U.S. intelligence commu-
nity to describe its relationship with Torrijos and whether there was any pos-
sibility of foreign intelligence control over Torrijos. The resulting memo of Octo-
ber 14, 1977, written by U.S. Army intelligence and declassified from the Carter
Library files, carries President Carter’s handwritten initial ‘‘J’’ at the top, along
with the word ‘‘Zbig’’ (for advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski). The memo summarizes
a ‘‘three-volume intelligence operational file on Torrijos’’ that began with his
recruitment ‘‘(pay $25 per month) as a confidential informant’’ in October 1955,
when he was a captain stationed at Tocumen Airport: ‘‘he accepted recruitment
because of his low salary but also desired funds for drinking and womanizing.’’
Because of ‘‘lack of production and infrequent reporting,’’ he was dropped in
December 1959 but reactivated, again at $25 per month, in January 1960. In 1963
an apparent personality conflict with a case o≈cer produced another cuto√
recommendation, but Torrijos continued on the U.S. intelligence payroll, ‘‘re-
ceiving periodic salary increases up to a peak of $300 per month,’’ as well as
cartons of cigarettes, bottles of Scotch, and cases of C rations as ‘‘incentives.’’ The
memo reports that in March 1969, ‘‘five months after he assumed power in the
October ’68 coup, he voluntarily gave up his $300 monthly salary because ‘now
that he is a general o≈cer, it is below his dignity to accept it.’ ’’ However, the
memo says, he did receive several additional payments as well as an air condi-
tioner in July 1969, and there were no reasons to suspect any foreign intelligence
influence or control. The memo closes with a list of other Panamanians pre-
viously or currently on the U.S. intelligence payroll, including Noriega.≤∫
One can imagine the comfort Jimmy Carter received from knowing that his
cosignator on the Canal Treaty had also been on the U.S. payroll, and for
decades. Indeed, perhaps this reality played a significant role in the Carter
administration’s willingness to ‘‘give away’’ (as the opponents termed it) the
Panama Canal, and thereby, ironically, to make the single gesture most respect-
ful to Latin American sovereignty ever o√ered by the United States. Yet the
memo that Carter saw also contained complexities and nuances, even about the
paid informer role. For example, Torrijos is said to have provided only his own
chosen information in his later years rather than fully responding to tasks.
Torrijos cut o√ the salary because it wasn’t befitting a general o≈cer. Torrijos
had personality conflicts with handlers. The available documentation, although
rich in detail, does not answer the question of how much Torrijos gained in his
rise to power from the relationship with U.S. intelligence. Did he benefit from a
perception of being a chosen partner of the United States? Or did he gain a sense
of security that the U.S. would not abandon a cooperative informer? Or did he
manipulate the relationship with information most useful for his own rise and
detrimental to his rivals? One quickly sees that the basic fact of being a paid
informer is only the beginning of the necessary analysis, and such are the prob-
lems with secret police files the world over.≤Ω
But such files do exist, not only in U.S. archives. The crescendo of truth com-
missions and the flood of U.S. declassifications garnered most of the headlines in
the 1990s, but in many ways the most remarkable recent developments in the
forensic history of Latin America consisted of the gradual, intermittent, episodic
recovery of the region’s own previously hidden archives. Usually this recovery
came in the context of an interactive process with the truth commissions and
with the new U.S. documents. For example, the Historical Clarification Com-
mission in Guatemala received no cooperation and no documentation from the
Guatemalan military, which claimed it had no surviving archives. Ironically, it
was the U.S. documentation that proved this was a deliberate coverup and
deliberate destruction of evidence. In April 1994, just at the time that the peace
negotiations had guaranteed the forthcoming truth commission on that coun-
try’s bitter thirty-six-year conflict, a U.S. defense attaché wrote Washington that
one of his local sources, a Guatemalan o≈cer at the southern air base at Retal-
huleu, had proposed starting vegetable gardens on the base as a way to supple-
ment the mediocre military food ration, but higher-ups vetoed the plan, because
plowing and digging would expose what the attaché concluded was the ‘‘sus-
pected presence of clandestine cemeteries.’’ The source told the attaché that small
buildings used as interrogation rooms and pits filled with water used to hold
captured suspects had once existed on the base, but they had since been de-
stroyed or filled in with concrete. The document described the army’s technique
of disposing of bodies (and, at times, live prisoners) by flying them over the
ocean and pushing them out of a plane: ‘‘In this way, the D-2 has been able to
remove the majority of evidence showing that the prisoners had been tortured
and killed.’’≥≠
The U.S. defense attaché reported again in November 1994 about a coverup in
Guatemala, this time because of the public, journalistic, and especially U.S.
attention to the case of the captured rebel leader Efraín Bámaca Velásquez,
husband of U.S. lawyer Jennifer Harbury. The attaché wrote that the Guate-
malan army high command had ordered military personnel to destroy any
‘‘incriminating evidence . . . which could compromise the security or status of
any member of the Guatemalan military.’’ The destruction of documents, hold-
ing pens, and interrogation facilities had already been accomplished at the
Retalhuleu air base (and the defense attaché writing this message described
exactly where those facilities used to exist on the base). Furthermore, the army
had designed a strategy to block future ‘‘United Nations investigating commis-
sions’’ from even entering military bases to examine any remaining files.≥∞
But files survived. Only two days before the Clarification Commission deliv-
ered its report in February 1999, human rights advocates in Guatemala acquired
a particularly extraordinary record, one that would make front-page headlines.
A former military man, who said he had participated in the 1994 document
destruction but had kept one item for himself, o√ered for a finders’ fee (ulti-
mately $2,000) to hand it over. With mounting excitement and dread, Kate
Doyle and her Guatemalan partners examined the brown legal-size ledger, read-
ing the entries listing 183 names, most with photographs either photocopied or
taped into the margin, apparently cut or ripped from actual identity cards. The
entries under each name gave pseudonyms, memberships in various guerrilla
and leftist groups, locations where the individuals were captured, cryptic codes
like ‘‘300’’ (which turned out to be summary execution), and occasional clarity
(‘‘cayó abatido al oponerse a su detención’’). Comparing the ledger to previous
human rights and press reports and to the declassified U.S. record, the analysts
concluded that the ledger was a daily log from 1983 to early 1985 of the activities
of a death squad—a unit based in Guatemala City in the actual security detail of
the country’s president. This squad, the ‘‘Archivos,’’ had begun as a communica-
tions and intelligence center for the presidential sta√ and by the early 1980s
became the cutting edge of counterinsurgency in the capital. For many of the
families of the disappeared, the ledger provided the first confirmation of what
had happened to their loved ones. A few of those listed had escaped, one by
leaping the wall of a nearby embassy, another by informing on his friends (who
wound up themselves as entries in the ledger) and thereby ‘‘recovering his
liberty.’’ Turning the pages of this death squad diary, one can only wonder at the
remorselessness of the bureaucratic jottings, a kind of productivity report so
reminiscent of the Nazi and gulag records created by human beings doing
systematic evil but somehow justifying it to themselves through o≈cial jargon,
following orders, and systematic routine.≥≤
The death squad diary was a one-of-a-kind find, but more of Guatemala’s
secret archives soon began rising from the depths, more than anyone could have
imagined in 1999. The security forces turned out to have kept records even after
the destruction orders, for the same reasons all bureaucracies do so, to regularize
their activities, to cover their rears, and to run their systems. In January 2004,
investigators for the human rights ombudsman (Procuraduría de los Derechos
Humanos, headed by Dr. Sergio Morales) gained access to a concrete-block
building containing piles of files stacked from floor to ceiling in places, the
residue of the parent bureaucracy of the Archivos death squad itself—the Estado
Mayor Presidencial (emp). Pilloried by human rights advocates and abolished in
2003 by a civilian president, the emp had dumped its files unceremoniously in a
military warehouse. The ombudsman’s o≈ce sponsored a team of investigators
who used digital cameras to photograph the hundreds of thousands of pages in
the files, which included high-level documents like the military strategic plan for
1982 as well as mundane material such as the emp’s gasoline purchase logs—yet
those purchase entries also listed the names of the drivers of the Jeep Cherokees
and other vehicles, including those used by the Archivos. And before the inves-
tigative team could even finish the job of putting all the emp document images
into a database for analysis and research, the ombudsman became the custodian
of an even larger and more challenging collection—the millions of pages, per-
haps tens of millions, left behind in bales of files by the notorious National
Police after its abolition in 1996 during the peace process. Discovered in July
2005 in four bat-infested buildings among junked police cars at an abandoned
military ammunition depot, the National Police archives date back to 1930 and
include case files as recent as the early 1990s, with labels like ‘‘Disappeared
People 1989’’ and the names of famous victims like Myrna Mack. The size and
scope of the National Police archives present an almost overwhelming challenge,
initially one of preservation, since the papers are literally rotting; only over time
will come access, analysis, and dissertation writing.≥≥
If the Guatemala police files survive to be analyzed, they will join several
remarkable success stories in the Latin American recovery of memory and his-
tory. First to preserve its secret police files was perhaps the most unlikely, the
land of the dictator Stroessner, who ruled Paraguay for decades until 1989. But
Stroessner’s secret police had arrested and tortured an innocent teacher named
Martín Almada, whose wife died of a heart attack while he su√ered in Paraguay’s
jails from 1974 to 1978. After Stroessner’s fall, Almada came back from exile to
dig up the evidence, using a ‘‘habeas data’’ provision in the new constitution
(access to government information about oneself ), a court order from a sympa-
thetic lower-court judge, and tips from a former policeman. In December 1992,
Almada and the judge and tv cameras showed up at an obscure police station in
the town of Lambare outside the capital, broke open a padlock on a second-floor
room, and found what turned out to be 593,000 pages of the secret police’s
investigative files. The room held hundreds of ringed archival binders, boxes of
tapes from surveillance, fingerprint cards and arrest records for thousands of
prisoners, interrogation reports, and even Almada’s own ‘‘rap sheet.’’ Buried
outside in the courtyard were scores of identity cards of political prisoners who
had been executed. Almada and his cohorts formed a kind of fire bucket line,
passing sheaves of paper out of the building and onto borrowed trucks, which
carried the files to the Palace of Justice in Asunción, where the collection today
resides on the eighth floor, in the custody of the Paraguayan Supreme Court,
with the nickname of ‘‘Archive of Terror.’’ Researchers have subsequently found
here the original Chilean invitation to Southern Cone countries for the found-
ing meeting of Operation Condor, the dictators’ joint military intelligence proj-
ect that achieved its greatest notoriety in the 1976 Washington bombing murder
of the former Allende o≈cial and Pinochet critic Orlando Letelier. With support
from the U.S. State Department and Agency for International Development in
the 1990s, the collection has been microfilmed, and a collaboration with the
Catholic University of Paraguay and the National Security Archive since 1999 has
digitized some 300,000 pages for Internet access.≥∂
Compared to the archival eurekas in Paraguay and Guatemala, the process of
archival recovery in Argentina has been slow and grinding, but the ultimate
results in the form of accessible raw material may well prove just as massive
and important. A Chilean reporter visiting Buenos Aires in 1989, just as then-
president Carlos Menem issued his controversial pardons of the military per-
petrators of the ‘‘dirty war,’’ found the first hints of the flood of evidence to
come. Mónica González was chasing the story of Pinochet’s predecessor, Gen-
eral Carlos Prats, who declined to carry out a coup, left Chile, and was subse-
quently assassinated in Argentina by Pinochet’s thugs in 1974. González found
little until a court employee alerted her to the case of Enrique Arancibia Clavel, a
notorious right-wing Chilean who had to flee Chile in 1970 because of his
involvement in bombings, worked for the Chilean state bank branch in Buenos
Aires, and was arrested for espionage in 1978 at a time of tension between the two
countries. The charges were later dropped, but González found, after pestering
the judge for access to the Arancibia files, that Arancibia had been Chile’s
intelligence station chief in Argentina, and the dusty court records contained
four years’ worth of his correspondence and instructions from Santiago, even
identity cards of Chileans who had been disappeared. González read the docu-
ments into her tape recorder, since note taking was too slow, made headlines in
Chile with her stories, and turned over her transcripts to the Catholic Church’s
human rights organization in Chile, the Vicariate of Solidarity, for use in human
rights cases. Years later, an Italian judge pursuing Operation Condor assassina-
tions in Europe obtained the full Arancibia file from the Buenos Aires court, as
did the author John Dinges and the National Security Archive. Perhaps the most
remarkable single document in Arancibia’s file was his July 1978 report to Chile
about Argentina’s dirty war, giving a secret estimate from his contacts in Intel-
ligence Battalion 601—the central coordinator of the repression—that the Ar-
gentine military had killed 22,000 people between October 1975 and July 1978
alone. The 1983–84 truth commission had only been able to document 8,961
disappearances for the entire 1973–83 period, a number subsequently revised to
9,098; but Arancibia’s contemporaneous report makes clear that the estimates of
human rights groups of 30,000 total casualties were more accurate.≥∑
Argentine human rights groups have developed some of the most sophisti-
cated projects in the entire hemisphere for the recovery of memory and archives.
They won a law that protects the archives of that pioneering 1983–84 attempt to
account for the disappeared, the Comisión Nacional de los Desaparecidos (con-
adep). The conadep files remain in the custody of a special o≈ce at the Minis-
try of Justice’s Secretariat for Human Rights, including all the testimonies and
denunciations received by the commission. The leading human rights groups
have also transcended the usual turf problems and factionalism to join a re-
markable e√ort, Memoria Abierta, that is videotaping and preserving the mem-
ories of victims and survivors of the dirty war, using the images and sounds to
create public broadcasts and school programs. Memoria Abierta also has under-
taken to create a common catalog of the various groups’ documentation centers.
Most promising of all, the groups persuaded the Province of Buenos Aires in
2000 to turn over to an independent public authority the archives of the intel-
ligence division of the Buenos Aires police that existed from 1957 to 1998, includ-
ing the dirty war years. Some 3.8 million folios (including eleven volumes of 300
folios each, covering just the Madres of the Plaza de Mayo) now reside in La
Plata, Argentina, in the custody of the Comisión por la Memoria, whose mem-
bers include dignitaries such as the Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.
The La Plata archives have funding from the province and cooperation from La
Plata University in creating a state-of-the-art facility that seeks to protect the
privacy of the victims while holding the perpetrators accountable.≥∏
Archival recovery in Brazil provides in many respects some of the most prom-
ising developments in the struggle for memory anywhere in the world. The
activist stage, so essential in cases like Guatemala, Argentina, and Panama, where
truth commissions, investigative journalists, and human rights activists took the
lead, had its parallel in Brazil as well. Subsequently, however, that initiative has
matured into a full-fledged academic project in which scholars of archival and
information sciences have developed important methods that are pushing into
the public domain the files of the former security forces, together with analysis
and public access tools. Early insights into the structure of repression in Brazil
came from the 1980s activists’ study, modeled on Argentina’s Nunca Más report,
called Brasil Nunca Mais. The Brazilian report was largely based on the stolen
copy of the Supreme Military Tribunal’s archive, which contained more than ten
thousand documents and hundreds of photographs produced by military courts
in their judgments against political prisoners during the period of the military
dictatorship from 1964 to 1979. But Brazil’s political police—the Department of
Political and Social Order, or Departamento de Ordem Politica e Social do
Estado, dops or deops—dates back to earlier periods, beginning in São Paulo in
1924 and in Rio de Janeiro in 1934, and lasting into the 1970s (in Rio) and until
1983 (in São Paulo), when the ‘‘democratic opening’’ of that period brought the
closure of dops. And the dops archives, especially in Rio de Janeiro and São
Paulo, take the evidentiary base to an exponentially larger universe, containing
literally millions of files and thousands of photographs and artifacts.≥π
Various national and state archives in Brazil gradually absorbed these mate-
rials after the dissolution of deops, but it took an academic’s insights to begin to
make them truly accessible and useful. In 1996 Professor Maria Luiza Tucci
Carneiro at the University of São Paulo proposed a formal project to inventory
the largest deops archive, that of São Paulo. She succeeded in building a joint
project, the Projeto Integrado (proin), between the State Archive (Arquivo do
Estado, part of the Secretaria de Estado da Cultura) and the university (par-
ticularly its department of history). Over the years she has integrated classroom
study and graduate training with archival assessment and inventory e√orts,
preservation and digitization work, and analytical and scholarly studies of the
substance of the files. In e√ect, Professor Tucci Carneiro is accomplishing the in-
stitutionalization of the struggle for memory, bringing the past alive and train-
ing future generations in the often arduous work required to connect memory,
justice, and knowledge. Measures of her success include seven master’s theses
and four doctoral dissertations produced by graduate students in the proin (as
of 2004), a dozen published printed inventories covering particular subjects in
the files, and a long-term systematic study of political and ethnic intolerance
in Brazil. In addition the proin has built extensive computerized inventories
and guides and organized multiple exhibitions and public events based on the
deops files.≥∫
The Brazil example signals some of the extraordinary opportunities for schol-
ars that arise from the recovery of archives in Latin America, as well as from the
formerly secret files in the hegemon to the north. Documentary recovery has
not been as auspicious in Latin America’s other emerging middle power, Mex-
ico. As this volume makes clear, the Cold War took on a special character in
Mexico. U.S. relations with Mexico’s ‘‘o≈cial’’ Party of the Institutionalized
Revolution (pri) were always circumscribed by the delicate and mitigating reali-
ties of proximity, interdependence, and Mexican ‘‘revolutionary nationalism.’’
One searches in vain for the aggressive posture of ‘‘containment and roll back’’
that characterized U.S. policy in the rest of Latin America. Indeed, there was no
need for the United States to become heavily involved because the pri state had
an e≈cient repressive apparatus of its own, one that was more than able to
guarantee its powerful northern neighbor’s concerns regarding national se-
curity. By and large, the Cold War in Mexico tended to fizz rather than flash, and
atrocities against left-wing opponents never remotely approached the levels
reached in Central America or the Southern Cone. It is not surprising, therefore,
that following the Cold War, there was much less of a groundswell in Mexico for
documentary disclosure and the struggle against impunity. A small but tena-
cious ‘‘Comité 68’’ has tried without much success to bring the perpetrators of
the massacres in Tlatelolco (1968) and Corpus Christi (1971) to justice.
Although the Mexican government of Vicente Fox (which defeated the pri in
2000) sanctioned a Ley de Transparencia and set up a commission of inquiry
into crimes committed in the past (the Fiscalía Especial para Movimientos
Sociales y Políticos del Pasado, or femospp), the research e√orts of the commis-
sion have made little headway. The principal reason has been a lack of consistent
and easy access to the documents themselves. The archive that was generated by
the Intelligence Branch of the Ministry of Interior and deposited in the Archivo
General de la Nación has technically been open to the public since 2002. Unfor-
tunately, the same authorities who organized the materials have carefully regu-
lated access to them, doling out materials page by page and rarely permitting
access to complete files. Thus, while access has rarely been denied, the research
enterprise has remained fragmentary and next to useless.
Mexico’s Ley de Transparencia, modeled somewhat on the U.S. Freedom of
Information Act, has primarily facilitated private citizens in their e√orts to ob-
tain information about missing family members, rather than leading to broader
veins of historical evidence. Happily, historians of the Mexican Cold War have
been well served by the project that the National Security Archive launched at
the end of the 1990s on U.S. policy in Mexico. Based on declassified documents
from the cia, the Pentagon, the State Department, and other U.S. agencies, the
project’s findings have shifted our understanding of the parameters of U.S.–
Mexican relations in important and nuanced ways. Most notably, nsa project
director Kate Doyle has examined the disconnect between public policy and
image and the reality of the bilateral arrangements that were negotiated behind
closed doors.≥Ω What has come to light, for instance, is the manner in which
Mexico supported Havana but spied on Cuba for the United States; traded with
Red China but voted with the United States on the important questions; main-
tained correct but extremely cautious relations with the Soviet Union; permitted
the Mexican Communist Party to operate but harassed, surveilled, jailed, and
disappeared its leaders. Ever Janus faced, Mexico consistently managed to re-
assure U.S. policymakers that Mexico was, at bottom, a reliable ally of the United
States.
The newly declassified documents, therefore, make amply clear why the United
States had no significant military or police assistance program in Mexico and
saw no need for one. The ‘‘authoritarian core’’ of Mexico’s political system, as
Lorenzo Meyer terms it, was deemed to be strong enough to take care of its own
security problems. This is not to say that the United States did not support
Mexico’s cold war: it did, but mainly through covert means (e.g., via extensive
intelligence support, about which we still know very little) or indirectly (e.g., via
support for Mexico’s balance of payments) as part of a broader e√ort to under-
write regime legitimacy. At present, critical dimensions of this transnational
Cold War alliance remain hidden in the Mexican archives.
All told, the opportunities for Cold War scholarship based on newly re-
covered archives in Latin America and the United States are immense. Now it is
possible to write the interactive history of U.S. policy in Latin America, assessing
with primary source evidence the relevance to history of Newton’s third law of
motion (for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction). Now it is
possible to write comparative histories of Latin American repression, of military

structures, of national security concepts, of human rights abuses, with evidence
from Paraguay, Argentina, Brazil, Guatemala, Mexico, and elsewhere. Now it is
possible to turn the surveillance state upon itself, using the secret police files to
deconstruct the methods and means of repression. These files also potentially
provide rich evidence for comparative social history, in the same way that
medieval court records have allowed European historians to reconstruct social
and economic relations from centuries past.
Scholars can look to the international human rights struggle for a powerful
metaphor that should spur such e√orts toward comparative and truly interna-
tional history. Only five years after Pinochet’s arrest in London in 1998 came a
new landmark in universal legal jurisdiction, when a Mexican court extradited a
former Argentine navy o≈cer and accused dirty war torturer to face terrorism
charges in Judge Garzón’s court in Spain. The author John Dinges calls this ‘‘the
first case in human rights law of a person arrested in one country being extra-
dited to a second country for crimes committed in a third.’’∂≠ Likewise, the
ongoing recovery of archives and memory in Latin America makes possible new
landmarks in the universal jurisdiction of history. Cold War history will not be
the only field turned upside down with new evidence and new narratives from
the South, but Cold War history can perhaps learn the most from Latin Ameri-
cans, their truth commissions, their exhumations, and their resurrected files.
Notes
1. Michael Cox, ‘‘The 1980s Revisited, or the Cold War as History—Again,’’ Paper
presented to the Nobel Symposium 2002, Oslo, Norway, June 17, 2002, 5.
2. Geir Lundestad, ‘‘Moralism, Presentism, Exceptionalism, Provincialism, and Other
Extravagances in American Writings on the Early Cold War Years,’’ Diplomatic History 13,
no. 4 (fall 1989); reprinted in Lundestad, The American ‘‘Empire’’ and Other Studies
of U.S. Foreign Policy in a Comparative Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1990), 29.
3. Lundestad, The American ‘‘Empire,’’ 55–56.
4. Richard M. Bissell Jr. with Jonathan E. Lewis and Frances T. Pudlo, Reflections of
a Cold Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996),
68–69.
5. See especially ‘‘The Marshall Plan, 1947–1952,’’ episode 3 of Cold War, produced by
cnn and Jeremy Isaacs Productions, and the interview transcript with former cia o≈-
cial E. Mark Wyatt, dated February 15, 1996, at www.gwu.edu/&nsarchiv/coldwar/inter
views/episode-3/wyatt1.html.
1999), 196–99.
7. cia, Directorate of Intelligence, ‘‘Guatemala: Prospects for Political Moderation,’’
August 1983, document no. 946 in the National Security Archive Guatemala collection,
edited by Kate Doyle and published by ProQuest in the Digital National Security Archive.
8. Stephane Courtois, Nicolas Werth, Jean-Louis Panne, Andrzej Paczkowski, Karel
Bartosek, and Jean-Louis Margolin, The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror,
Repression, trans. Jonathan Murphy and Mark Kramer (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1999).
9. Andrzej Paczkowski and Karel Bartosek, ‘‘The Other Europe: Victim of Commu-
nism,’’ in The Black Book of Communism, 361–456. Paczkowski’s comment is on p. 375.
10. Pascal Fontaine, ‘‘Communism in Latin America,’’ in The Black Book of Commu-
nism, 647–82. The cursory author’s credit line is on p. 858; the ‘‘pretext’’ comment is on p.
668. For contrast, see Ariel C. Armony, Argentina, the United States, and the Anti-
Communist Crusade in Central America, 1977–1984 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997).
The biographical data included here come from Pascal Fontaine, Europe—a Fresh Start:
The Schuman Declaration, 1950–90 (Luxembourg: O≈ce for O≈cial Publications of the
European Communities, 1990), 1.
11. For Argentina, see Nunca Más: The Report of the Argentine National Commission on
the Disappeared (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986); Nunca Más: Informe de la
Comisión Nacional sobre la Deasparición de Personas (Buenos Aires: Editorial Univer-
sitaria, 1984); and www.nuncamas.org/index.htm. For Chile, see Report of the Chilean
National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation, 2 vols., trans. Philip E. Berryman
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993); and www.derechoschile.com. For
El Salvador, see From Madness to Hope: The 12-Year War in El Salvador: Report of the
Commission on the Truth for El Salvador, United Nations Document S/25500, 1993. For
Guatemala, see Guatemala: Memoria del Silencio: Informe de la Comisión para Esclareci-
miento Histórico, 9 vols. (Guatemala City: ceh, 1999, distributed by f&g Editores); also
http://hrdata.aaas.org/ceh.
12. The most useful summary and comparative account of truth commissions, not
only in Latin America but worldwide, is Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths: Confront-
ing State Terror and Atrocity: How Truth Commissions around the World Are Challenging
the Past and Shaping the Future (New York: Routledge, 2001); also see Greg Grandin,
‘‘The Instruction of Great Catastrophe: Truth Commissions, National History, and State
Formation in Argentina, Chile, and Guatemala,’’ American Historical Review 110, no. 1
(February 2005): 46–67.
13. See Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Eastern Europe after Communism (New
York: Random House, 1995), for a superb history of the post-Communist reality in East-
ern Europe, informed by the author’s extensive previous experience in Latin America.
14. From Madness to Hope.

15. Argentina Forensic Anthropology Team, Annual Report 2002, 4–7; the eaaf website
may be viewed at www.eaaf.org.ar.
16. The stories appeared on January 27, 1982. For details of the stories and the U.S.
government’s attack on the reporters’ credibility, as well as the evident contradictions in
government statements, see Raymond Bonner, Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El
Salvador (New York: Times Books, 1984), 337–55.
17. For the best summary of the interaction between the Truth Commission, the U.S.
declassification, and the lessons to be learned, see Kate Doyle, ‘‘Documenting War, Peace,
and Human Rights in El Salvador,’’ an essay in the National Security Archive refer-
ence collection El Salvador: War, Peace, and Human Rights, 1980–1994 (Alexandria, Va.:
Chadwyck-Healey, 1996), which contains the 1,384 most important documents in the
U.S. declassification and is also available in the Digital National Security Archive pub-
lished by ProQuest. For the last word on El Mozote, see Mark Danner, The Massacre at El
Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War (New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 304.
18. For an overview of the Guatemala declassification e√ort, see Kate Doyle, ‘‘The
United States and Guatemala: Counterinsurgency and Genocide, 1954–1999,’’ an essay
in the National Security Archive’s Death Squads, Guerrilla War, Covert Operations, and
Genocide: Guatemala and the United States, 1954–1999 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: ProQuest/
Chadwyck-Healey, 2002), a reference collection of the 2,071 most important declassified
documents. For the Alpirez investigation, see President’s Intelligence Oversight Board,
Report on the Guatemala Review, June 28, 1996, document no. 2064 in the National
Security Archive Guatemala collection published by ProQuest (also in the Digital Na-
tional Security Archive).
19. Summary speech by Christian Tomuschat, coordinator of the Comisión para el
Esclarecimiento Histórico, at the presentation of the commission’s report Guatemala:
Memoria del Silencio, Guatemala City, February 25, 1999 (Spanish text at www.c.net.gt/
ceg/doctos/tomu0225). Tomuschat called the Archive’s technical assistance ‘‘invaluable’’
in a letter of February 12, 1998, to the Archive. For outside commentary on the commis-
sion’s ‘‘extensive’’ use of the documents, see Priscilla Hayner, Unspeakable Truths, 241.
20. For President Clinton’s comments, see ‘‘Remarks by the President in Roundtable
Discussion on Peace E√orts,’’ March 10, 1999, Public Papers of the President. For the
military database, see Kate Doyle, ed., ‘‘The Guatemalan Military: What the U.S. Files
Reveal,’’ National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book no. 32, posted June 1, 2000, at
http://www.gwu.edu/&nsarchiv/nsaebb/nsaebb32/index.html.
21. ‘‘The Army on Trial: A Bid to Bring the Generals to Book,’’ The Economist, Septem-
ber 21, 2002, 36, which reported: ‘‘For the first time, the army’s order of battle and
methods are being revealed in public . . . pieced together from declassified American
documents.’’
22. Viron P. Vaky, Policy Planning Council, U.S. Department of State, to Covey T.
Oliver, ara (Latin America Bureau), ‘‘Guatemala and Counter-Terror,’’ March 29, 1968,
document 367 in the National Security Archive Guatemala collection published by Pro-
Quest/Chadwyck-Healey.
23. Department of State, Memorandum of Conversation (Pinochet–Kissinger), ‘‘U.S.–
Chilean Relations,’’ June 8, 1976, reprinted in Peter Kornbluh, The Pinochet File: A De-
classified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability, rev. ed. (New York: New Press, 2004),
264–73. As recently as 2004, despite the public availability of the transcript, Rogers
characterized the conversation as ‘‘the stern human rights warning Kissinger delivered
directly to Pinochet at their only meeting.’’ See Rogers and Kenneth Maxwell, ‘‘Fleeing
the Chilean Coup: The Debate over U.S. Complicity,’’ Foreign A√airs, January–February
2004.
24. Zhou-Kissinger Memorandum of Conversation, November 13, 1973, 4:30–7:15
p.m., National Archives, Record Group 59, Department of State Records, Policy Planning
Sta√, box 372, quoted and summarized in William Burr, The Kissinger Transcripts: The
Top-Secret Talks with Beijing and Moscow (New York: New Press, 1999), 199–200, 215n.
The November 15, 1973 fact sheet and November 16 cover memo are reprinted in Korn-
bluh, The Pinochet File, 182–84.
25. The instructive story of the Pinochet arrest and the Chile declassification is told in
detail and with colorful anecdote by the leading outside pressure organizer, Peter Korn-
bluh, in The Pinochet File, 465–98.
26. For the State Department declassification, see Carlos Osorio, ed., ‘‘State Depart-
ment Opens Files on Argentina’s Dirty War,’’ National Security Archive Electronic Brief-
ing Book no. 73, posted August 20, 2002, at http://www.gwu.edu/%7Ensarchiv/nsaebb/
nsaebb73/index.htm. For the Guzzetti-Kissinger memcon, see Carlos Osorio and Kath-
leen Costar, eds., ‘‘Kissinger to Argentines on Dirty War: ‘The Quicker You Succeed the
Better,’ ’’ National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book no. 104, posted December 4,
2003, at http://www.gwu.edu/&nsarchiv/nsaebb/nsaebb104/index.htm.
27. cia, Intelligence Information Cable, ‘‘Statement by Carlos López Guevara con-
cerning his conviction of National Guard involvement in the kidnapping of Father
Héctor Gallegos Herrera, peasant reaction and General Torrijos’s e√ort to blame kidnap-
ping on the United States,’’ June 18, 1971, National Security Archive Panama Collection;
cia, Intelligence Information Cable, ‘‘Role of Lieutenant Colonel Manuel Noriega in
directing press coverage of kidnapping of Father Héctor Gallegos Herrera,’’ June 25, 1971,
National Security Archive Panama Collection.
28. Information Memorandum, ‘‘Subject: Brigadier General Omar Torrijos Herrera,’’
secret/noforn, October 14, 1977, Jimmy Carter Library, nlc-96-158.
29. For a particularly thoughtful examination of the relationships between informers
and secret police, see Timothy Garton Ash, The File: A Personal History (New York:
Random House, 1997).
30. Defense Intelligence Agency, secret message, ‘‘Suspected Presence of Clandestine
Cemeteries on a Military Installation,’’ April 11, 1994. Document 30 in Kate Doyle and
Carlos Osorio, eds., U.S. Policy in Guatemala, 1966–1996, National Security Archive
Electronic Briefing Book no. 11, at www.gwu.edu/&nsarchiv/nsaebb/nsaebb11. Did the

Guatemalans learn the ocean disposal method from the Argentines? The former naval
o≈cer Francisco Scilingo confessed his role in Argentina’s dirty war air drops to the
Argentine journalist Horacio Verbitsky in The Flight (New York: New Press, 1996), esp.
49–56.
31. Defense Intelligence Agency, secret message, ‘‘The Rising Impact of the Bámaca
Case on the Guatemalan Military Establishment,’’ November 24, 1994, Document 31 in
Doyle and Osorio, U.S. Policy in Guatemala, 1966–1996, at www.gwu.edu/&nsarchiv/
nsaebb/nsaebb11.
32. See Kate Doyle, ‘‘Death Squad Diary: Looking into the Secret Archives of Guate-
mala’s Bureaucracy of Murder,’’ Harper’s Magazine, June 1999, 50–53; the death squad
diary is posted on the Web at http://www.gwu.edu/&nsarchiv/nsaebb/nsaebb15/press
.html with related documents and is also included in the National Security Archive
Guatemala collection published by ProQuest.
33. On the emp files, see Miguel González Moraga and Claudia Méndez Villaseñor,
‘‘Defensa oculta archivos del emp,’’ Prensa Libre (Guatemala City), January 15, 2004. On
the National Police files, see Eduardo García, ‘‘Rescued police files hold Guatemala’s dark
secrets,’’ Reuters, July 22, 2005.
34. The most vivid description of the Paraguay archive discovery is in John Dinges,
The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents
(New York: New Press, 2004), 237–41. For Almada’s own story, see Martín Almada,
Paraguay: La cárcel olvidada, el país exiliado (Asunción: Intercontinental Editora, 1993);
for the Terror Archive website, o≈cially the Centro de Documentación y Archivo para la
Defensa de los Derechos Humanos, of the Corte Suprema de Justicia de Paraguay, see
www.unesco.org/webworld/paraguay/documentos.html.
35. This account relies on Dinges, The Condor Years, 233–36. See also Mónica Gon-
zález, La Conjura: Los mil y un días del golpe (Santiago: Ediciones B Grupo Zeta, 2000).
The comparison of Arancibia’s estimate to that of the commission’s is made most explicit
in John Dinges, ‘‘Green Light–Red Light: Henry Kissinger’s Two-Track Approach to
Human Rights during the ‘Condor Years’ in Chile and Argentina,’’ in Argentina–United
States Bilateral Relations: An Historical Perspective and Future Challenges, ed. Cynthia J.
Arnson (Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2003), 72–73.
36. For information on the conadep files, see the Secretariat website at www.der
human.jus.gov.ar. For Memoria Abierta, see www.memoriaabierta.org.ar and www.sites
ofconscience.org/eng/memoria.htm. For the La Plata archives, see www.comisionporla
memoria.org.
37. For Brazil’s Nunca Mais project, see http://www.dhnet.org.br/memoria/tnmais;
for the São Paulo deops, see http://www.arquivoestado.sp.gov.br/deops.htm; and for the
Rio de Janeiro dops, see http://www.aperj.rj.gov.br/fs — acervogfundo.asp. For an excel-
lent overview of Brazil’s progress, characterized as ‘‘bastante más avanzado’’ than Argen-
tina’s, as well as a chart summarizing access to the dops archives, see Ludmila Da Silva
Catela, ‘‘La casa, la calle, el estado . . . : Democratización de la información vs. resguardo

de la intimidad,’’ Puentes, August 2000, 54–64.
38. Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro, ‘‘Oficinas de historia: Uma politica publica de resgate
da memoria,’’ presentation with PowerPoint slides at the international encounter ‘‘El
Estado y las Políticas de la Memoria: Archivos, Museos y Educación,’’ hosted by the
Comisión Provincial por la Memoria, La Plata, Argentina, September 3, 2004.
39. What follows draws on Kate Doyle, ‘‘The Quiet Americans: U.S. Policy in Mexico
during the Cold War,’’ paper presented at the conference ‘‘México, América Central y el
Caribe durante la guerra fría,’’ November 2002.
40. Dinges, The Condor Years, 246. The Mexican court ruling occurred in June 2003;
the Argentine o≈cer was Ricardo Cavallo.
DANIELA SPENSER
The Caribbean Crisis

Catalyst for Soviet Projection in Latin America
The discovery and forced withdrawal of nuclear missiles in Cuba in October and
November 1962 were dramatic events on a world scale, humiliating for the
Soviet Union and traumatic for Cuba. After its debacle in Cuba, the Soviet
Union, which considered itself to be the most advanced, if not the only possible,
model for society and for the socialist bloc, and the leader of national liberation
movements, had to repair its damaged image and legitimacy in the face of left-
wing movements and the Third World. This reconstruction of its image and
legitimacy as the vanguard of international socialism, decolonialization, and the
struggle for the emancipation of nations under Western imperialism was com-
plicated by the growing conflict between the Soviet Union and the People’s
Republic of China, the two regimes that in the early 1960s were competing to be
the representatives of revolution in the world.
The central argument of this chapter is that the Caribbean crisis was a water-
shed for Soviet policy concerning Latin America. Both Cuba and the Soviet
Union emerged wounded from the denouement. While the Cubans were wor-
ried about the survival of the revolution, the Soviets feared losing Cuba. Al-
though the Soviet Union did not consider the use of force as the most feasible
way to achieve socialism, this fear lay at the root of the Soviet Union’s activities
when it was confronted by the expansionist policy of Cuba in support of revolu-
tion throughout Latin America. The Soviet directorate feared that if it did not
support armed combat, Cuba would act independently of the Soviet Union in
the Western Hemisphere and would ally itself with the Chinese revolutionaries.
Furthermore, it also supported the armed struggle because, at least in the case of
Cuba, it seemed to be an e≈cient way to secure power and to weaken the Soviets’
enemy. However, Soviet aid to the armed struggle in Latin America was ambigu-
ous and given in small amounts so that the Soviet Union would not be accused
of refusing to support national liberation movements, and cautiously enough to
78 daniela spenser
avoid provoking U.S. aggression or backlash in any part of the world. The results
of their actions were di√erent from what they intended them to be.
The natural allies of the Soviet Union in Latin America were the Communist
parties, not the guerrilla groups. However, because of the Cuban Revolution,
some parties considered armed struggle to be compatible with or complemen-
tary to other forms of participation in the politics of their countries. Although
the Soviet Union objected to the Communist parties’ adoption of radical forms
of combat, it demanded their support for the Cuban revolution. After the crisis
in the Caribbean and in order not to lose the battered leadership of the social
movements in the region, the Soviet Union adopted a more conciliatory ap-
proach toward the Communist parties that chose armed combat, and gave its
support to the Cuban political and military leadership, as well as to Cuban
intelligence, which were training and advising the combatants in various Latin
American countries in the 1960s.
The relations between the Soviet Union and the United States restricted the ex-
tent of this support. The coexistence that the Soviet Union sought with the United
States demanded the preservation of peace to expand the socialist bloc without
endangering the international system, which could have caused a world war.
The Soviet Union ceased to support the armed struggle in Latin America
toward the end of the 1960s. The removal of Nikita Khrushchev from the leader-
ship of the Soviet Union at the end of 1964 undoubtedly played a part in this.
However, the end of Soviet support was also due to the fact that armed combat
was proving ine≈cient as a way to establish socialism and to weaken the hege-
mony of the United States in the Western Hemisphere. This chapter focuses
on the years 1962 through 1967. Newly accessible documents from European,
Cuban, and North American archives shed new light on the aftermath of the
Caribbean crisis, revealing Cuba as a more central player in relations with the
Soviet Union than had previously been thought. The international conferences
held on the occasion of the anniversary of the missile crisis in 1992 and again in
2002 have also aided this investigation. Bringing veterans of the crisis from
Cuba, the United States, and the former Soviet Union into contact with scholars
and policymakers, these conferences have helped to assemble knowledge of the
missile crisis drawn from experience as well as from research in newly de-
classified documents.
Making the Decision
Nikita Khrushchev did not wish to unleash a world war when he decided to
install nuclear weapons in Cuba. In his memoirs, Khrushchev recalls:
the caribbean crisis 79
We wanted Cuba to remain revolutionary and socialist, and we knew Cuba needed
help in order to do so. . . . We had no other way of helping them meet the American
threat except to install our missiles on the island, so as to confront the aggressive
forces of the United States with a dilemma: if you invade Cuba, you’ll have to face a
nuclear missiles attack against your own cities.∞
However, the issues of the defense of Cuba and her revolution formed part of the
Soviet Union’s party and state ideology and foreign policy that extended beyond
Cuba’s borders. The unity and expansion of the socialist camp were important
components of the Soviets’ motivation to seek military protection for Cuba. No
less significant in the promulgation of Soviet foreign policy was its aim to
combine the traditional diplomacy of coexistence between states with an inter-
nationalist policy in support of national liberation movements and progressive
political organizations, all the while avoiding a conflict between its commitment
to revolutionary ideals and its diplomacy. Peaceful coexistence alongside the
capitalist system consisted precisely in expanding socialist domains without
disturbing the international order.
When Khrushchev became the leader of the party and the Soviet state after
the death of Stalin in 1953, Soviet foreign policy began to acquire a new revo-
lutionary dimension. Khrushchev advocated fraternal solidarity and interna-
tionalism that he contrasted with the colonial policies adopted by the West.
Khrushchev believed that the Third World would eventually form part of the
Soviet bloc and that the social transformation that this represented would dem-
onstrate to the world, and above all to the United States, that the Communist
cause was the wave of the future. Khrushchev firmly believed in the superiority
of the Soviet Union over the West and in the inexorable advance of Commu-
nism. He considered the stabilization of relations between East and West to be a
necessity at the same time as rearmament and political détente, but above all, he
believed that socialism was destined to win a military, political, and economic
advantage over the United States. Capitalism was doomed to die and was in fact
already in its death throes.≤
Moreover, Khrushchev was aware that the Soviet Union had become a nuclear
superpower. This reality prompted him to reevaluate the revolution, socialism,
and international relations in terms of the Soviet Union’s apparent military
equality with the United States. If the North Americans could use the threat of
nuclear armaments to contain Communism, why couldn’t the Soviets use the
same tactic to contain North American imperialism, o√er shelter from the
threat of nuclear war to friends in the colonial world, and force the retreat of
capitalism? Khrushchev wanted to use nuclear armaments to gain U.S. recogni-
80 daniela spenser
tion of the Soviet Union as an equal global partner, and he believed that nuclear
parity would allow it to protect national liberation movements, avoiding the
intrusion of the United States and European colonial powers.≥
The triumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 deeply impressed Khrushchev
and awakened his interest in Latin America. The Soviet leaders perceived the
Cuban Revolution first and foremost in its anti–North American dimension. In
September 1960, Khrushchev expressed the hope that Cuba would become the
beacon for socialism in Latin America, since with the United States against
Cuba, ‘‘Castro will have to gravitate to us like an iron filing to a magnet.’’∂ With
socialist Cuba, the bloc was expanding without having gone to war, which was
an ideal form for its peaceful coexistence with capitalism. By 1960, the Soviet
Union was exalting the Cuban Revolution, with its agrarian reform and na-
tionalization of U.S. companies, as the sociopolitical model for Latin America.
Touting the revolution’s social and economic policies, and not the use of force by
which the revolutionary government came into power, the Soviet leadership
presented the Cuban Revolution to Communist parties on the continent as the
example to follow in their respective countries and the best means to defend
against their enemies.∑
After the failure of the invasion of Cuba at Playa Girón in April 1961, some
Soviet theorists hypothesized that the United States did not resort to military
intervention because of a shift in the balance of power between the socialist and
the capitalist camps in favor of the former. To them, this confirmed the pos-
sibility of peaceful coexistence, the global crisis in the capitalist system, and the
inability of the United States to export counterrevolution to Cuba.
But the Soviets’ attitude of optimism changed to one of concern for the safety
of Cuba after it was excluded from the inter-American system at the conference
held at Punta del Este in January 1962 by the Organization of American States.
Then, in February, the North Americans increased their preparations to invade
Cuba. In May, Khrushchev decided that the only means of dissuasion would be
to transport missiles with nuclear warheads to Cuban territory. In addition, the
Soviet leader was ready to assume the risks that economic and military support
for Cuba would pose to his policy of peaceful coexistence with the United States.
The defeat of Cuba by the United States would mean defeat for the Soviet Union
and for Marxism-Leninism. If Cuba fell, ‘‘other Latin American countries would
reject us, claiming that for all our might the Soviet Union had not been able to
do anything for Cuba except to make empty protests to the United Nations.’’∏
Khrushchev’s decision to install nuclear weapons on the island was made
partly to protect the Cuban Revolution from the North American threat and
partly to correct the global balance of power that was not weighted in favor of
the Soviet Union. It was also prompted by the recent weakening of relations with
China and the Soviets’ need to strengthen relations with their new ally in the
Third World. Additionally, the Soviets would gain space to maneuver to their
advantage in other conflicts between the Soviet Union and the United States.
The transfer of nuclear weapons to Cuba—in the backyard of the United States—
was an act that would give the North Americans a taste of the same medicine
that the Soviets had been swallowing since the beginning of the year, when they
witnessed the installation of nato nuclear missiles in Turkey and Italy, a move
that went hand-in-hand with Kennedy’s decision to continue testing for nuclear
weapons. Khrushchev believed that nuclear weapons radically changed interna-
tional relations and that putting them in place would integrate Cuba into the
socialist camp, provoke a general crisis in the global capitalist system, and make
the United States vulnerable.π
Khrushchev outlined his proposal at the meeting of the Defense Council and
with members of the Presidium of the Party on May 21, having rejected the idea
that the second U.S. invasion of Cuba would be as badly carried out as the first at
Playa Girón: ‘‘In addition to protecting Cuba, our missiles would achieve what
the West likes to call ‘the balance of power.’ ’’ The North Americans, having
surrounded the Soviet Union with military bases and threatened to use nuclear
weapons, would now themselves feel what it was like to be faced by enemy
missiles. The weapons were intended not to be used but to threaten and temper
the aggressors. It was necessary to remind the North Americans that the Soviet
Union was powerful and demanded their respect. It would show the Cubans that
the Soviet Union was capable of protecting and defending its revolution and
projecting its power in the Western Hemisphere. The operation was a plan to
contain the belligerency of the United States toward Cuba. The weapons would be
transferred in secret, and their existence would be made public in November, fol-
lowing the U.S. congressional elections and when Khrushchev would be in Cuba
to sign the treaty for military defense with his Caribbean partner. In addition, this
would silence China’s criticisms of Soviet reformism by demonstrating that the
Soviet Union was capable of leading the battle against imperialism.∫
The Humiliation of the Soviets
The transfer of nuclear missiles in Cuba was detrimental to the Soviets be-
cause ‘‘Khrushchev had not thought things through or prepared backup plans
for various contingencies. He badly misjudged the American response, im-
82 daniela spenser
provised madly when he was found out, and was fortunate the crisis ended as
safely as it did.’’Ω
To begin with, the key to the success of the operation was the secrecy of the
installation of the rockets before they became functional. Anastas Mikoyan, the
Soviet deputy prime minister, traveled to Havana at the beginning of November
1962 to try to repair the damaged relations between the Cuban and the Soviet
leaders. Having presented failure as success and the withdrawal of the missiles as
the strengthening of Cuba’s defensive capacity, he revealed where the planners
had miscalculated: ‘‘We proceeded on the assumption, our military had advised
us, that under the palm leaves of Cuba the strategic weapons would be safely
hidden from air reconnaissance.’’∞≠
Several years later, in his autobiography, Mikoyan referred to Marshal Sergei
Biryuzov, the military o≈cial in charge of installing the missiles in Cuba, as a
person who ‘‘was not very bright. . . . I myself had seen those palms, and there
was no way anybody was going to hide rocket launch sites under them.’’∞∞ In
reality, the secrecy of the development and maintenance of the missile operation
was one of its weaknesses. The discovery in August of the increase in the supply
of military equipment and personnel to Cuba and then, in September, the
discovery of the construction of the sites where the missiles would be installed
were serious barriers to the operation’s success. Instead of strengthening Cuba,
these operations made the island more vulnerable in the event of an invasion by
the United States, especially while the missiles were in transit and before their
installation in October.∞≤
When the North Americans discovered the presence of new weapons and
troops in Cuba, Khrushchev responded by accelerating the speed at which they
were delivered and installed. On October 22, Kennedy made public the discovery
of the Soviet military preparations in Cuba and the greater possibility of war
between the superpowers. Khrushchev, who was in Moscow and in a state of
disbelief about what had happened and what was to come, defended the ini-
tiative to place nuclear weapons in Cuba as an act whose objective was to
intimidate the United States and deter an invasion of the island. On that same
day, Khrushchev was firm in his resolve: ‘‘They can attack us and we shall
respond. . . . This may end in a big war.’’∞≥
Khrushchev maintained his defiant attitude for some days after October 22
when President Kennedy announced the blockade of Cuba against Soviet ships,
which was to begin on the twenty-fourth. Realizing that there was no imminent
danger of an invasion of Cuba, Khrushchev saw no reason to discontinue the
construction of missile sites or to change the course of the four ships that were
on the high seas carrying nuclear warheads and the submarines with nuclear
torpedoes that were moving toward the Cuban coasts. In condemning the block-
ade, Khrushchev conveyed the message to President Kennedy that the Soviet
ships were not obliged to respect it; at the same time, the armed forces of the
Warsaw Pact were put on high alert. Khrushchev wrote a letter to Fidel Castro on
October 23, assuring him that the Soviet Union had no intention of turning
back. So that the Cubans would not doubt his commitment to defend the island,
Khrushchev did not tell Castro that one section of the fleet had already returned
to the Soviet Union after being warned by Kennedy. By then, some of the
medium-range missiles were already in Cuba and almost operative. Khrushchev
tried to improve the Soviet position in this crisis situation by demanding that in
exchange for withdrawing the missiles from Cuba, the North Americans should
withdraw the nato missiles from Turkey.∞∂
It was not until Khrushchev received a letter from Kennedy on October 25, in
which the president demanded total capitulation, and after the Soviet military
shot down a spy plane flying over Cuba on October 27, that Khrushchev decided
to dismantle the missiles. Military equality in the Caribbean would be unattain-
able while nuclear war was on the verge of breaking out.∞∑ To save the world, it
was necessary to retreat, Khrushchev said on October 28. Nevertheless, while the
Soviets, faced with their clear military inferiority in the Caribbean, were dis-
mantling and packing up their weapons, Khrushchev defiantly tried to make his
weak position appear strong. The installation of nuclear weapons in Cuba was a
response to the continual attacks and acts of piracy in Cuban waters by exiles
from the island who were operating from U.S. territory, and the Soviet Union
could not abdicate ‘‘our responsibility to give assistance to the Cuban people.’’∞∏
As soon as Khrushchev conceded the withdrawal of the rockets from Cuban
soil, he called the pullout a victory. The Soviet government had saved the world
from a nuclear catastrophe. The Soviet Union and the forces of socialism, of
peace and reason, had triumphed.∞π In the presence of the Czechoslovak allies,
Khrushchev declared:
We also agreed to dismantle the missiles because their presence in Cuba was essen-
tially of little military importance to us. The missiles were meant to protect Cuba
from attack; they helped us to wrench out of the imperialists the statement that they
would not attack Cuba, and they thus served their main purpose. Otherwise we can
hit the U.S.A. from elsewhere, and we do not need missiles in Cuba for that. On the
contrary, their deployment on our territory is safer for us and our technical person-
nel who look after them.∞∫
84 daniela spenser
In conclusion, Khrushchev asserted, ‘‘I am of the opinion that we won.’’ Cuba

and her revolution were saved. This could not have happened without the
missiles. Moreover, ‘‘the proximity of our missiles made them understand, per-
haps for the first time, that we have weapons that are at least as strong as
theirs. . . . . Now they have felt the winds of war on their own house.’’∞Ω
These defiant and self-assuring messages were directed as much toward the
Soviet population as to the socialist camp—above all to the Chinese leaders, who
had at first viewed the Soviet nuclear initiative in Cuba as an adventure and then
as a capitulation. Khrushchev wanted to show them that the solution to the crisis
had revealed the fallacy of the Chinese point of view that imperialism was a paper
tiger; the Soviet Union had demonstrated that it was a dangerous tiger that could
be tamed. Moreover, the resolution of the crisis was ‘‘a classic example of ‘peace-
ful coexistence,’ which is nothing other than continuous struggle, a series of
conflicts, one concession after another. Only through this struggle is it possible
to preserve peace and gain advantages at the expense of the imperialists.’’≤≠
But Khrushchev’s most arduous task during the months after the crisis re-
quired him to persuade the members of his own party, Fidel Castro, the Cuban
government, and the entire world that the Soviet Union was defending peace
and socialism, that the resolution of the Caribbean crisis had been not a capitu-
lation but a strengthening of socialism, the Soviet Union, and the defense of the
security of Cuba. On October 30 Khrushchev wrote Fidel Castro that the in-
stallation of rockets in Cuba had forced Kennedy into the commitment not to
invade, and that this had been achieved without a nuclear attack. The indepen-
dence and sovereignty of Cuba had been strengthened.≤∞
Persuading the Cuban government that the decision to dismantle the missiles
had been correct, while at the same time convincing it to allow an inspection to
confirm the withdrawal of the nuclear weapons, was a delicate task. At the
beginning of November, Khrushchev sent the deputy prime minister Anastas
Mikoyan to Havana to placate the Cubans. By then, the presence of the missiles
that had originally been sent to strengthen the Soviets’ position in the Caribbean
was an obstacle to ending the crisis. The United States was demanding the
inspection of the withdrawal of the missiles, which the Cuban government
squarely rejected. Mikoyan thus saw the Cubans as an obstacle to the negotia-
tions with the United States, because it would not be until the withdrawal ended
that ‘‘we will be able to adamantly oppose overflights, the quarantine, verifica-
tion by the Red Cross, violations of airspace. At that moment the correlation of
forces will change.’’≤≤
Aggravating the damage already done, the United States was also demanding
that the IL-28 bombers, which the government considered o√ensive weapons, be
removed from the island. These planes, no longer used by the Soviet Union,
were among the first bombers to be sent to Cuba before the decision to place the
missiles. On November 11, Khrushchev, his colleagues, and the military decided
to accept the demands of the North Americans. This decision placed Mikoyan in
an extremely uncomfortable position because he had assured the Cubans that
the planes had not been included in the compromise package between Khru-
shchev and Kennedy. Aware of the impact that the decision would have, the
party secretary had to first convince Mikoyan himself: ‘‘What do we lose and
what do we gain as a result of the removal of the IL-28s from Cuba? There are no
particular losses; there will be only moral losses for Cuba.’’ Cuba was no less
vulnerable without the bombers than it was with them. On the contrary, its
safety would be strengthened because the removal of the bombers was precisely
one of the conditions for Kennedy’s guarantee not to attack Cuba.≤≥
But in those moments, Khrushchev was looking beyond Cuba and the social-
ist camp. If the Soviet Union wanted to be the pole of attraction for the progres-
sive countries, ‘‘those which at decisive moments unfortunately do not vote with
us in the United Nations on fundamental points,’’ it had to give the appearance
of being a pacifist power. Withdrawing the IL-28 bombers from Cuba was a
concession made to demonstrate the Soviet vocation for peace.≤∂ Castro’s impul-
sive attitude jeopardized world peace, and his argument that the Soviet Union
wanted to benefit from installing nuclear weapons in Cuba appeared o√ensive in
the light of all the material aid that had been given to Cuba and from which the
Soviet Union had reaped no benefits: ‘‘This gives us nothing, and this is known
to everyone and is known to our Cuban Comrades.’’ Yes, the Soviet Union
defended its interests: ‘‘But our interests here were expressed as common revolu-
tionary interests, the interests of the revolution, the interests of the workers’
movement, and Marxist-Leninist teaching. We did it only in the name of that.’’
Finally, Khrushchev asked Mikoyan to explain to Castro that the Soviet Union
had not placed missiles in Cuba to defend the socialist camp:
The interests of the defense of the socialist camp, and the USSR, as the most powerful
socialist state, did not require the deployment of our missiles in Cuba. We possess
su≈ciently powerful missiles on the territory of the USSR to ensure this defense, and
we can use them against the imperialist aggressor.≤∑
Following the Soviet promise to remove the IL-28s from Cuba, the United
States lifted its embargo of October 24 on Soviet ships, and toward the end of
November the crisis was apparently over for the Soviets. Again, the Soviets
celebrated this step as a triumph for the fulfillment of peaceful coexistence and
praised the fact that the two superpowers had the ability to negotiate and make
86 daniela spenser
verbal commitments. The United States did not insist on the inspection denied
by Castro because ‘‘they trust us.’’≤∏ The fact that the North Americans had
trusted the Soviets’ word meant that the United States considered the Soviet
Union as an equal. The Soviets would have wanted to preserve this achievement
of the missile crisis.
Carlos Rafael Rodríguez of the National Agrarian Reform Institute visited
Moscow in December. Khrushchev took advantage of the opportunity o√ered
by the presence of a high o≈cial from the Cuban government to vent his feelings
about the Cubans’ lack of enthusiasm for the Soviet decision to install and then
withdraw the missiles. Rodríguez remembered such comments from his conver-
sation with Khrushchev as follows:
We have also felt a lot of bitterness. . . . We have never declared that the missiles are
going to be used to convert Cuba into a launching pad against imperialism. . . . Only
fools can claim that we placed the missiles there with the intention of keeping
them. . . . We consider that we have achieved a victory for Cuba and for the Soviet
Union, that the objectives we had when we placed them there have been achieved. . . .
We have retreated tactically, but they have retreated fundamentally. I repeat: we have
not retreated on any front, we are not on the defensive anywhere; I insist, anywhere,
even in Cuba. We are on the o√ensive everywhere.
Cuba, moreover, would ‘‘be a catalyst for a revolution in Latin America. We have
put all our e√orts into saving Cuba, so that it can serve as an example in Latin
America.’’≤π
Contrary to the factual evidence, Khrushchev asserted: ‘‘In transferring the
missiles we have foreseen everything, we have known that we were putting
ourselves on the brink of war and could even engage in the war itself.’’ Another
of Khrushchev’s assertions was that ‘‘now we have a situation in which imperial-
ism is not progressing anywhere, nowhere, even in Cuba. I stress: nowhere.’’
Nonaggression was ensured for the following six years—the two years remaining
in Kennedy’s first presidential term and the four years of his second term: ‘‘In
these years, the balance of power will be in our favor. Possibly Brazil and other
countries will enter into revolution.’’≤∫ All the actions that had been taken were
justified: the Soviet Union had saved Cuba, it had not retreated in the face of the
North Americans, the international standing of the Soviet Union had grown, it
was the North Americans who had been afraid during the crisis, and it was
Castro’s fault that the Soviet Union had had to compromise because it was he
who had wanted the Soviet Union to use the nuclear weapons.≤Ω
But behind the triumphant tone there was a feeling of defeat: Kennedy in-
sisted that the exchange of the Soviet missiles in Cuba for the nato missiles in
Turkey had to remain secret. And Khrushchev had not been successful in ob-
taining a written commitment from the United States not to invade Cuba. The
Soviet Union had been humiliated by the return of the missiles. From then on, it
tried to recover its wounded pride by pushing to manufacture its own military
equipment and by supporting the movements for national liberation and revo-
lution. The strengthening of these movements potentially weakened the oppos-
ing capitalist camp, expanded socialism, and defended the Soviet Union.
In reality, the missile crisis of October 1962 not only pushed the world to the
brink of nuclear war but also undermined the credibility of the Soviet leaders in
the eyes of the U.S. government. Although Cuba would not be invaded and the
United States would withdraw its rockets from Turkey, the U.S. government
would henceforth see Cuba as a trampoline that the Soviets wanted to use in
their plans to change the existing balance of power in Latin America and Africa.
The credibility of the Soviet Union in the socialist camp and in the national
liberation movements had su√ered a blow, and any future threats from the
Soviet Union to confront the United States were less convincing. Additionally,
there was an increase in China’s influence on Cuba and other Latin American
countries as a result of the missile crisis.≥≠
To sum up the Caribbean crisis, the collision between the three countries re-
sulted in humiliation for the Soviet Union. This was the predominant feeling in
the circles of power in the Soviet Union and led to the conviction that the embar-
rassing withdrawal of the Soviet missiles from Cuba had in fact resulted from the
military superiority of the United States, a situation that the Soviet Union would
try to correct.≥∞ The crisis also contributed to Khrushchev’s downfall. In October
1964, the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party accused Khru-
shchev of being an adventurer for insisting that the Soviet Union give military
assistance to such faraway countries in Latin America, with little probability of
technical-military success. The committee also admonished him for leading the
Soviet Union to the point of no return with the discovery of the missiles:
Having no other way out, we were forced to accept all the demands and conditions
dictated by the U.S.A., including humiliating inspections of our ships by the Ameri-
cans. The missiles, as well as most of our troops, were withdrawn from Cuba after the
U.S. demand. This event also damaged the international prestige of our country, our
party, and our armed forces, while at the same time helping to strengthen U.S. pres-
tige. All in all, the missile crisis of 1962 caused serious damage to Soviet-Cuban rela-
tions, and in 1964 ‘‘we still feel them.’’≥≤
88 daniela spenser
The Cuban Trauma
The withdrawal of the missiles and the way it was carried out without asking
their opinion left the Cubans with the feeling of having been abandoned, creat-
ing distrust with the Soviet Union. When the Soviets took back the rockets,
Cuba felt more vulnerable than before they had been installed, and feared that
the Soviets’ apparent lack of determination to protect their Caribbean partner
would allow the United States to take advantage of the situation to launch an
attack. The insecurity and fear of such an attack lasted during the following years
and influenced Cuban foreign policy as well as its relations with the Soviet
Union. Toward the end of 1967, these relations reached a breaking point owing
to the accumulation of apparently irreconcilable di√erences between the two
countries.≥≥
The conceptual di√erences concerning the meaning of, and the procedure for,
Soviet military aid to Cuba became apparent in May 1962, when the initial
decision to give the assistance was o√ered. When a Soviet delegation arrived in
Havana in June with the proposal to send the rockets to Cuba, Castro saw the
possibility for consolidating the defense of Cuba and the socialist camp, but he
also saw the inconveniences and dangers. He was worried that Soviet military
aid would hurt Cuban pride and create the impression that Cuba was unable to
defend itself. Castro wanted the installation of the missiles to be seen as an
improvement of the international position of the socialist camp, not as a desper-
ate stratagem on behalf of Cuba to avoid an attack by the United States.≥∂ In 1992
Castro recorded what he then believed:
We did not like the rockets. If it had only been a matter of our defense, we would not
have accepted the missiles. But don’t go and think that it was fear of the dangers that
could have followed from having the missiles here; it was because of the way in which
this could tarnish the image of the Revolution, and we were very zealous about the
image of the Revolution in the rest of Latin America; and that the presence of the
missiles would convert us into a Soviet military base and this in our opinion had a
high political cost for our country’s image.≥∑
To harmonize the agreement with Cuban sentiment, the members of the

Dirección Nacional de las Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas pointed
out the need to develop a military agreement and to make it public. On August
11, Aleksandr Alekseev, recently appointed as the Soviet ambassador to Cuba,
arrived in Havana with the project for the military agreement. However, Castro
did not agree with the text because it made the objective appear to be the defense
of Cuban territory, while he considered that the objectives should be military

cooperation and mutual defense. Confronted by the North American campaign
against Cuba, which intensified after August 1962 when the United States de-
tected an increase in the movements of armaments and troops on the island, the
Cuban leadership saw the first signs of a crisis. In light of both these circum-
stances, the Cubans believed it was convenient to immediately publicize the
military agreement. For this purpose, Castro sent Ernesto Guevara and Emilio
Aragonés to Moscow carrying the text of the military agreement, which the
Soviets drafted and the Cubans edited, to make it public, although they accepted
that the Soviets would make the final decision.≥∏
Khrushchev agreed to the corrections in the agreement, but not to its im-
mediate publication, preferring to wait until the missiles were operative. Che
Guevara and Aragonés argued that the rockets could be discovered before they
were operative and that the United States could take advantage of the situation
and attack. Khrushchev replied that he was sure that the weapons would not be
discovered, or at least not before they were in operation. And if the North Amer-
icans were to find out, they would have no alternative but to accept the fact.≥π
As we now know, once the missile crisis exploded on October 22, Khrushchev
sent Castro Kennedy’s declaration that demanded the withdrawal of the missiles
from Cuba. The Cubans considered the demands of the U.S. president to be an
‘‘exceptional interference in the a√airs of the Republic of Cuba, the violation of
the norms of international law and of the basic rules that govern the relations
between States and a disrespectful, provocative act against the Soviet Union.’’
They rejected ‘‘the presumptuous demands of the North American government
to control the consignments of arms to Cuba and its ambition to determine the
kind of weapons that the Republic of Cuba can possess.’’≥∫
Castro, who was convinced of the imminence of an attack from the United
States, wrote to Khrushchev on October 26 that if the United States bombarded
Cuba, ‘‘rest assured that we will resist firmly and decidedly, whatever the kind of
attack.’’ Castro wrote this letter with great care ‘‘and some major qualms. Be-
cause what I was going to say was audacious and was daring.’’ Castro considered
that if this were to happen, then ‘‘it was necessary to fire a complete and total
load of nuclear missiles’’ in the conviction that whoever fired the first shot had
the absolute advantage. The Soviet Union should not allow the imperialists ‘‘to
fire against her the first nuclear attack.’’ At that time, Castro was contemplating
the possibility that Cuba could disappear: ‘‘It was our lot to have to pay the price,
but at least the world would be liberated from imperialism.’’≥Ω
To Khrushchev’s letter, in which he had informed Castro that he was conced-
90 daniela spenser
ing to Kennedy by withdrawing the missiles in order to save Cuba from an

invasion by the United States and to end the conflict in the Caribbean, Castro
replied: ‘‘We knew—do not presume that we ignored it—that we would have
been exterminated, as you insinuate in your letter, in the case of a nuclear war.
However, it was not for this reason that we asked you to withdraw the rockets,
not for that that we asked you to give in.’’ To Castro it seemed unacceptable that
Khrushchev had withdrawn the missiles without in exchange demanding from
the United States ‘‘guarantees that satisfy Cuba.’’
The Yankees should have been forced to debate with us and been brought into the
most uncomfortable situation that they had ever been in, because they would have
had lengthy arguments with us, the tension would have been lightened a little, and
the results would have been di√erent and at least honorable and within the principles
and within the most elementary consideration for the country and the agreements
that had been made with a people that had not shown the remotest sign of vacillation
at that critical time.∂≠
On October 29, Castro publicized the five points of his main conditions for re-
solving the crisis: the economic embargo must end; the subversive activities
against Cuba must cease; the attacks of piracy on bases outside U.S. territory must
be prevented; the violation of Cuban airspace must cease; and the U.S. marines
must leave Guantánamo. Abandoned by the Soviet Union at the moment of
greatest danger to Cuba, Castro announced that he would seek an agreement with
the United States in accordance with his own needs, independently from the
Soviet acceptance of Kennedy’s commitment not to invade Cuba.∂∞
Various testimonies following the announcement of the Soviet–North Amer-
ican agreement to dismantle and withdraw the nuclear missiles summarize the
sentiment of the Cubans. On October 31, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez visited the
Czech ambassador in Havana, Vladimir Pavlicek, to inform him of the disas-
trous e√ect on Fidel and his government of the dismantling of the missiles and
of the un decision to carry out inspections in Cuba, and the situation in which
they had been placed in front of the Cuban people. In addition, ‘‘the actions
taken by the Soviet Union would have a catastrophic e√ect on the position of the
ussr, as well as on the whole of the socialist camp and Latin America’’ unless
guarantees of nonaggression could be obtained from North America, although
nobody in Cuba would believe them.∂≤
The impressions collected by the Hungarian ambassador during the days in
which Cuba lived in fear and insecurity for its future were even more expressive.
On October 27, when Che was inspecting the military units in Pinar del Rio and
heard Khrushchev’s message on the radio that the missiles in Cuba were to be
dismantled in exchange for the dismantling of the U.S. missiles in Turkey, ‘‘he
went mad, threw his beret to the floor and furiously repeated that this was a
violation because he had had conversations in Moscow and they had been for
something di√erent.’’ From another conversation, János Beck picked up the
rumor that Fidel Castro had instructed President Dorticós to handle public
a√airs for a month so that he could allow himself su≈cient time to recover from
this blow.∂≥
The Cuban people, Beck observed, had lost their respect for the Soviet Union
and Khrushchev. For example, in some military units, the opinion could be
heard that it would make no di√erence if the North Americans or the Russians
arrived because the soldiers would shoot at anyone in self-defense, even if it
resulted in their death. Letters expressing feelings of desperation, abandonment,
and deception arrived at the Soviet Embassy. Cubans expressed the opinion that
both the Soviet Union and the United States were superpowers and that the
Soviets were using Cuba as a means to resolve their conflicts with the United
States. The exchange of the missiles in Cuba for those in Turkey caused special
irritation because it placed the two countries on equal terms. Other voices heard
on the streets protested that the Soviets had demanded the removal of the
missiles from the bases in Turkey but had ignored those at the military bases in
Guantánamo.∂∂
Che Guevara was making no pretenses to Mikoyan when he expressed that an
extremely complicated situation had developed in Latin America as a conse-
quence of the crisis. Communists as well as revolutionary groups had been
disconcerted by the actions of the Soviets. Several organizations had divided,
and new factions had appeared. Criticisms of Guevara arose from his conviction
that it was possible to take power in several Latin American countries and to
remain there. This opportunity was in danger because of recent Soviet errors,
including the exchange of missiles in Turkey for those in Cuba, and the decline
of the revolutionary movement in Latin America instigated by the concessions
made to the United States.
The interests of both camps converged in Cuba. But it was the United States
that passed itself o√ in public opinion as the camp that had defended peace
against Soviet aggression and achieved the removal of the Soviet base in Cuba.
Guevara’s harangue against the Soviet Union concluded: ‘‘Even within the con-
text of all our respect for the Soviet Union, we believe that the decisions taken by
the Soviet Union were erroneous.’’∂∑
The Polish ambassador, Leopold Unger, met with Carlos Rafael Rodríguez on
92 daniela spenser
November 27. Referring to the conversation that had taken place, he informed
his ministry that the Cubans felt o√ended by the way in which the crisis had
been resolved and that the Soviet Union had made concessions in exchange for
nothing and had retreated in the face of the imperialists. Kennedy’s guarantees
meant nothing because the economic pressure and the sabotage against the
island persisted. The acceptable policy would have been to fight fire with fire.
Cuba and the Soviet Union had di√erent points of view on coexisting with
imperialism. Although Latin American countries had not experienced the hor-
rors of war, they had experienced the horrors of imperialism, and from this
perspective, the result of the Caribbean crisis was to postpone the revolutionary
process in Latin America and strengthen the most reactionary circles in the
United States and Latin America.
According to Rodríguez, the conversations with Mikoyan in Havana were
going nowhere because it was impossible to reach an understanding. The Soviet
Union lacked a policy for colonial countries and for colonial revolution. The
cases of the Congo, Guinea, Algeria, and now Cuba testified to this fact. The
Soviet Union did not have an adequate conception of how to help the revolu-
tionary anti-imperialist movements. In addition, the Soviets did not understand
the regional political dynamics, believing, for example, that the Central Ameri-
can countries were subjects of the United States without taking into account
their formal sovereignty. The fact that the press in neither the Soviet Union nor
any other socialist country published Castro’s declaration of November 1, when
he spoke of the di√erences of opinion with the Soviet Union, created a bad
impression in the Cuban leadership: ‘‘It is a shameful policy to hide the most
serious issues from public opinion. It is di≈cult for the Communists to criticize
the Soviet leadership, but you cannot refrain from doing so if you want to follow
your conscience and be in agreement with history.’’∂∏
The main question for the Cubans at this time concerned the extent to which
the Soviet Union was prepared to defend Cuba. And this was unknown. To Cuba
this meant ‘‘simultaneously repairing the consequences of the errors of the
Soviet policy in Cuban territory and in Latin American territory, and even in
Africa.’’ The Cuban experience with the Soviet Union had another implication
for its policy toward Latin America: taking the peaceful road to power did not
ensure triumph. ‘‘The only future lies exclusively in a very active Cuban policy. It
has to respond to the aggressive policy of imperialism with a policy of armed
conflict against imperialism.’’ Cuba did not export revolutions, as it was accused
of doing; it gave assistance to existing revolutionary movements.∂π
In Moscow in December, Carlos Rafael Rodríguez complained to Khrushchev
that during the crisis the Soviets had not treated the Cubans as representatives of
a party and a state. He recalled that the two countries had di√erent interpreta-
tions of the reason for the installation of the rockets. Fidel had accepted the
rockets as part of a Soviet global strategy that would benefit the socialist camp.
In accepting the rockets, the Cubans accepted the danger of atomic destruction:
‘‘Furthermore, I told him that the Comrades who had led the main discussions
were convinced that the rockets were there to stay, as part of this global strategy.
That the interviews between him and Che and Aragonés had left the Comrades
with the impression that there had even been statements from him that more or
less expressed that ‘the Yankees are going to shout, but they will have to swallow
the rockets.’ ’’ It was for this reason that the decision to withdraw the rockets
came as a disorienting surprise and ‘‘had endangered the influence and the
prestige of the Cuban Revolution and the socialist character of our country, and
so had obliged us to publicly express our di√erences, something that was a bit-
ter decision for Fidel and for all of us; and as a result of this handling of the
process he had had to adopt a position that conflicted with the commitment of
the USSR.’’∂∫
But the controversy did not stop there: Cuba was unprotected because of the
lack of a military agreement with the Soviet Union. The two governments had
agreed that Soviet soldiers should remain on the island as trainers and would
leave when Cuban troops had been instructed to use the weapons. It was neces-
sary that both the Cuban people and the imperialists know ‘‘that in this case
Cuba had the military standing that was necessary to contain any aggression.’’∂Ω
Even this arrangement was insu≈cient to alleviate the fear of an attack on Cuba.
This continued to a√ect Cuban-Soviet relations, with the Cuban leadership
convinced that security continued to depend on increasing the area liberated
from U.S. domination in Latin America.
The way in which the crisis was resolved in the case of Cuba, Rodríguez
continued, gave credibility to the Chinese accusation that the Soviet Union had
solved its problems with the United States at the expense of other countries. In
early November 1962, the Chinese Embassy in Havana organized large demon-
strations to support Cuba and to ensure that the crisis would be resolved with-
out excluding the island. China’s show of solidarity gained supporters in Cuba.
It was also China, not the Soviet Union, that emphasized in the press the impor-
tance of armed combat in the revolutionary movement in Latin America.∑≠
In January 1968 Fidel Castro was still recalling the crisis of October 1962. In his
speech at the meeting of the central committee of the Cuban Communist Party,
in the presence of its young members, Castro referred to the early years of the
94 daniela spenser
relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union: ‘‘At that time we had a very high
regard for the Soviet Union, I think more than it deserved.’’ To demonstrate this,
he gave a detailed account of the military pact presented by the Soviets and the
process for installing the missiles on the island. Regarding the project for the
military pact, Castro described it as ‘‘one of the most incredible hoaxes ever
written. . . . It was the work of bureaucratic cretins, absolutely impolitic.’’∑∞ The
Cubans’ trust in the Soviet Union had been naive; they could not conceive that
revolutionary leaders could act in any other way than with impartiality and
internationalism.
In fact, the crisis never dissipated for the Cubans. The international crisis was
resolved, but peace for Cuba remained in limbo. Not one of the five points to
guarantee the security and integrity of the island was taken into consideration.
No document for nonaggression was signed; and even if the United States never
invaded, from then on, its policy for Cuba was to work toward the destabiliza-
tion of the country and the downfall of Castro and his revolutionary regime.
Relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union were permanently damaged.∑≤
After October
Although the crisis between the United States and the Soviet Union temporarily
abated in November 1962, this was not the case with Cuba and the Soviet Union.
The Cuban government had lost its confidence in the Soviet Union, which in
turn resented this loss because it was convinced that it had saved Cuba from the
aggression of the United States. However, the Soviet Union did not want to lose
the expansion of the Soviet bloc in the Caribbean, a region in which the North
Americans clearly had strategic and geographic advantages. In January 1963
Khrushchev wrote a long letter to Castro to ensure that the leader did not lose
his confidence in the capacity of the Soviet Union to protect the socialist world
in the event of a nuclear war. It was known in Moscow that Che Guevara
considered the missile crisis to be responsible for weakening the Soviet leader-
ship of the revolutionary movement in Latin America. As a result, however
much the Soviet Union wanted to remove all its weapons from Cuba to comply
with its commitment to the United States and resolve the crisis within the terms
of the deal, it would be unable to do so if it did not want to lose Castro’s
remaining support, especially in light of the rumors of renewed North American
aggression toward Cuba. From then on, Cuba and Fidel Castro had an impor-
tant influence on the terms of relations with the Soviet Union.
In April 1963, Castro traveled to Moscow to seek a permanent commitment
from the Soviet Union to defend Cuba militarily, and to negotiate Cuba’s par-
ticipation in the Warsaw Pact. The Soviets initially rejected both petitions in
order to avoid providing Kennedy with an excuse to not adhere to his verbal
commitment to refrain from attacking Cuba. The two governments signed vari-
ous agreements concerning technical assistance for the armed forces and Cuba’s
defense system, and for considerable economic aid. In the final communiqué
that was signed before Castro’s return in June, the Soviets inserted their guaran-
tee for the nuclear defense of Cuba.∑≥
In January 1964, Castro returned to the Soviet Union, and the Soviets reiter-
ated their commitment to defend Cuba from any aggression with all the means
at their disposal. These kinds of pronouncements were intended to calm the
feelings of frustration in Cuba and to refute the constant accusations from the
Chinese that Moscow had initially taken the risk to support Cuba, only to
capitulate when confronted by North American imperialism, thus leaving Cuba
at the mercy of the United States. After Brezhnev took control of the party
following the fall of Khrushchev in 1964, the Soviets withdrew their commit-
ments to assist Cuba with nuclear weapons. This followed the realization that no
verbal declaration could prevent an attack on Cuba, and that in the event of a
confrontation with nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union would not respond with
another politically humiliating defeat.∑∂
The months following the crisis were di≈cult for Khrushchev, who continued
to be concerned because, despite the formidable concessions the Soviets made to
North American demands, he had been unable to secure a firm commitment
from Kennedy not to invade Cuba. However, a verbal commitment would have
little weight while the U.S. aggressions toward Cuba continued to reveal Khru-
shchev’s weakness to the world. Khrushchev was continually being reminded
of the absence of this obligatory commitment. During a conversation with
Mr. Trevelyan, the British ambassador in Moscow in March 1963, Khrushchev
pointed out that the United States frequently commented that its government
was not committed against an invasion of Cuba. These statements, according to
Khrushchev, ‘‘are very dangerous and full of deadly consequences, since this can
lead to destruction in the confidence—still in its embryonic stage, still tenuous—
in the promise, which developed during the settlement of the Caribbean crisis.’’∑∑
In addition to these rumors, Khrushchev continued to be pressured by the
United States to reduce the military forces in Cuba as if, according to him, the
concessions that had already been made were insu≈cient. In April 1963, Khru-
shchev met with Undersecretary of State Averell Harriman and Ambassador Foy
Kohler. Both questioned Khrushchev about the commitment he had made to
96 daniela spenser
Kennedy during the crisis to substantially reduce the Soviet armed forces in
Cuba. But Khrushchev was unwilling to reveal his military plans—if he did, he
would be subjected to further humiliation. Somewhat provoked, Khrushchev
replied to Harriman, who had forced the chairman into submission by invoking
the pressure put on Kennedy by the hawks to solve the problem of Cuba once
and for all: ‘‘The Soviet Union is not accountable to the United States and
cannot appear before the world as constantly conceding to American pressure.’’
Khrushchev had no objections to giving the president himself the information,
but this would only embolden the president’s critics to demand more, in the
understanding that only pressure tactics produced results. Later, in a state of
visible irritation, Khrushchev commented: ‘‘If the United States wants normal
relations with the Soviet Union, don’t aggravate the issues, don’t ask questions
which cause tensions for us, don’t insult our national pride.’’ The Soviet Union
wanted friendship with the United States but was ready to act drastically: ‘‘Nei-
ther of us wants to start anything over Cuba, but if anything is started, the
Soviets have retaliatory power.’’∑∏
Although the military and political circumstances were notably weak, it was
important to Khrushchev that in spite of the crisis and the withdrawal of the
missiles from Cuba, the United States treat him not as an inferior but as a
partner of equal standing: ‘‘At our meeting in Vienna we seemed to have agreed
to proceed from the fact that the forces of our states were equal. Well, then, if our
forces are equal, then there should also be equal possibilities. Why does the
United States forget about this?’’∑π
But 1963 was radically di√erent from 1961, and the United States was not
willing to reduce the pressure on Cuba. For example, throughout 1963 the
Cuban Coordinating Committee of the U.S. National Security Council dis-
cussed various undercover operations, such as attacks on Soviet troops in Cuba
by Cubans who opposed the regime, and various acts of sabotage, such as
attaching mines to Cuban ships.∑∫ Although this tactic was rejected, the presi-
dent approved of ‘‘inciting Cubans to harass, attack and sabotage Soviet military
personnel in Cuba, provided every precaution is taken to prevent attribution.’’
The president ‘‘approved the sabotage of cargoes on Cuban ships and the crip-
pling of ships (through sand in the gears).’’ The invasion of Cuba remained on
the agenda as a possibility. John McCone, director of the cia, preferred a plan
that, once it had a consensus, would ‘‘remove the Soviets from Cuba and take
care of Castro.’’∑Ω
While these plans were being discussed, Kennedy was urging Khrushchev to
continue withdrawing Soviet troops from Cuba as an important element in
reducing tensions between the two countries, and because the presence of Soviet
forces in Cuba ‘‘can never be regarded with equanimity by the people of this
hemisphere and therefore further withdrawals of such forces can only be help-
ful.’’ This withdrawal was the condition under which the United States would
comply with the commitment it had made in October and November of the
previous year.∏≠ What the president did not say in public was that he did not
oppose the cia plan to solve the Cuban question ‘‘by bringing consistent pres-
sure of every possible nature on Khrushchev to force his withdrawal from Cuba,
and then bring about the downfall of Castro by means which could be developed
after the removal of the Soviet troops (but not before) and thereafter establish a
satisfactory government in Cuba.’’∏∞
The North American government was closely watching the development of
the relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union and saw any improvement as
an obstacle to the United States’ own intentions. These relations, according to a
memorandum from the director of the cia, reached the point at which both
sides were willing to live with the di√erences: ‘‘Castro is asserting and declaring
his independence of the Soviets. He considers that he is not a satellite but is
obviously beholden to the Soviets for economic aid and military assistance.’’∏≤
Another cia memorandum pointed out that it would be convenient for the
United States if relations soured to the point where Castro broke away from the
Soviet Union, causing the Soviets to withdraw their troops from Cuba, which
would facilitate the downfall of the regime, thereby putting an end to Cuban
subversion in the hemisphere.∏≥
Nevertheless, the situation developed in another direction: ‘‘The USSR has
evidently decided to supply su≈cient economic aid to sustain the Cuban econ-
omy at about the current level, and will probably train Cubans in the operation
of the Soviet military equipment now in Cuba under Soviet control.’’ Later,
contrary to what the cia had anticipated, ‘‘Castro, perhaps owing to Soviet
influence, has toned down his inflammatory appeals for violent revolutions
throughout Latin America. There is no indication, however, of a basic change in
Castro’s determination to promote insurgent movements. In his mind Vene-
zuela in particular continues to be a priority target.’’∏∂ The real issue was that
Cuba under Fidel Castro and allied to the Soviet Union was unacceptable to the
United States.∏∑
It is not di≈cult to conceive that both Cuban and Soviet intelligence were
aware of the subversive intentions of the North Americans, which made it
apparent that no agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States
could ensure peaceful coexistence between the United States and Cuba. Neither
98 daniela spenser
Soviet diplomacy in Washington nor economic and military aid to Cuba could
give the required assurances. The limitations to protecting Cuba influenced the
Soviets’ projection into the hemisphere. Because of the continued aggression
from North America, the Soviets felt the obligation to support Cuba materially
and politically by increasing trade and public guarantees of protection in the
event of an invasion.∏∏ Verbal commitments not to invade Cuba were left up in
the air after Kennedy’s death in November 1963. The new administration of
Lyndon B. Johnson proved less tolerant of Cuban activism in Latin Amer-
ica than the Kennedy administration, and this increased Cuba’s fear for its
security.∏π
In light of the Sino-Soviet conflict, the Soviet Union could not abandon
Cuba. The confrontation between China and the Soviet Union had convinced
the Chinese leaders that the epicenter of world revolution had moved from
Moscow to Beijing. The Chinese would liberate Asia, Africa, and Latin America
in the same way that they had liberated their own vast territory.∏∫ Thus the
Soviet Union, faced with this threat to its leadership of the undeveloped socialist
world, had to demonstrate that it was capable of promoting the growth of the
socialist camp. Soviet leaders knew that in many countries, Communist parties
were not in the revolutionary vanguard and that they would have to connect
with the sociopolitical forces that represented the impetus for change.∏Ω In Latin
America this energy was found in the armed movement that was directed from
Cuba and supported by some of the Communist parties.
The Soviet Union and the Armed Struggle
It was the attitude toward armed combat as a method of eradicating injustice

and confronting imperialism in Latin America that di√erentiated Cuba from the
Soviet Union. From the time that the revolutionaries had come to power in 1959,
the Soviets had preferred to remain silent on the topic of armed struggle, opting
to praise those characteristics of the revolution that undermined the hegemony
of the United States in Latin America through structural reform and did not
create hostility with the Cubans. Furthermore, armed combat did not conform
to the Soviet theory of sociopolitical evolution toward socialism in the Third
World countries where the Soviets believed that it was first necessary to unite the
urban and rural workers, the so-called petit bourgeoisie and the national bour-
geoisie. By not referring to the issue of armed combat, the Soviet Union re-
mained in a neutral position between the position held by Cuba and that of the
majority of the Communist parties that opposed it. By keeping at a distance
from the armed struggle, the Soviet Union was also able to remain separate from
China, which endorsed it.π≠
However, by 1963 the Soviet Union could no longer remain silent. Since 1961
Cuba had intensified its support for, and leadership of, the armed movement,
not only in Latin America but across the three continents, thus becoming the
vanguard of anticolonialism.π∞ Guerrillas trained in Cuba had begun operations
in Venezuela, southern Peru, Argentina, and Bolivia. Between 1,500 and 2,000
Latin Americans had been trained by Cuba between 1961 and 1964, thereby
unleashing revolution in Latin America.π≤
It is true that the majority of the Communist parties in Latin America did not
agree with the Cuban method of attaining power, although they did not neces-
sarily share the Soviet vision for the progressive role of the national bourgeoisie.
Within the parties were those who supported or participated in the guerrilla
movement during the first half of the 1960s, although sometimes the leaders of
the Communist parties were opposed to the stance taken by their militants or
did not know which political line to follow.
The confusion arose partly from the ambiguity of the Soviets toward the issue
of armed combat, which they did not consider to be the most e√ective route to
socialism. However, as relations with Cuba deteriorated after the debacle in
October, the Soviets saw that a way to bridge this divide and prevent Cuba from
operating in Latin America without their coordination was to support armed
struggle. Even if the support was inconsistent and of little monetary value, it
reflected the Soviets’ need to compensate for the damage to their credibility as
Communist leaders. The Soviet Union needed to demonstrate to Cuba that it
was not faltering in its support for revolutionary and national liberation move-
ments and that it was willing to support the Cubans in their eagerness to extend
the scope of the revolution.
The Soviet Union channeled its economic aid to Communist parties through
the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party. Since 1955 the Latin American parties had been receiving financial aid and
support for propaganda. However, after 1963 the Venezuelan Communist Party
took the lead in Soviet-backed financial support, leaving the rest of the Latin
American parties far behind.π≥
The great leap in financing the Venezuelan party occurred after its involve-
ment in the armed conflict in 1962. Backed by Cuban support, the Venezuelan
Communist Party supplied the political and military leadership, as well as the
core of fighters. According to Régis Debray, ‘‘the revolution in Venezuela was
the focus of a very particular political, material, and financial investment by
100 daniela spenser
the entire socialist camp, to which we should add Cuba’s considerable emo-
tional and human investment.’’π∂ In 1963 the party received US$500,000 from
the Central Committee of the Soviet Communist Party, an increase of 100 per-
cent over the previous year, in comparison with the Chilean Communist Party,
which received $200,000. In 1964 the Venezuelan party received $600,000, while
the Chilean and Brazilian parties received $200,000 each. In 1965 the Venezuelan
party received $800,000, while the Chilean party received $200,000. In 1966 the
amounts began to decrease to $500,000 in 1966–71, until they reached $360,000
in 1972.π∑
The increase and decrease in the amounts destined for the Venezuelan Com-
munist Party coincided with the culmination and decline of the party’s par-
ticipation in the guerrilla movement in Venezuela. Although we cannot exclude
the possibility that part of the Soviet financial aid was destined to foment the
participation of the Communists in the elections at the end of 1963, the available
evidence suggests that the Soviets supported the party’s commitment to armed
combat in collaboration with the Cuban intelligence services. In so doing, the
Soviets were contradicting the Communist parties that opposed the use of force
to gain control in their respective countries.
In December 1964 the first public confrontation took place between the radi-
cal groups that favored the use of force and the Communist parties that rejected
it. At the Congress of the Communist Parties of Latin America, secretly con-
vened by the Cuban party in Havana, Castro criticized the conformism shown
by the Communists. However, the Soviets did not reject the use of force, nor did
they criticize the Cubans, and proposed a settlement that would allow the local
Communist parties to make the decision to use violence in the struggle to gain
power in their countries. The congress decided that Cuba should lead the Com-
munist movement in Latin America. Neither China nor its a≈liates were in-
vited, and this was an important triumph for the Soviet Union and the Commu-
nist parties on the continent. At the same time, Soviet support for the congress
and its initiatives was an indication of the Soviets’ intention to harmonize
relations with Cuba. But the cia detected disagreements between the Cubans,
the Soviet leaders, and the Latin American Communist parties concerning guer-
rilla activities, as well as the fact that Cuba was acting independently from the
Soviet Union and was aiding guerrillas with the weapons that the Soviets were
sending to defend Cuba.π∏
It seems that what the cia had not detected was the fact that for several years
the Soviets had already been indirectly supporting the armed struggle in Latin
America with logistic assistance. In December 1962, when the head of Cuban
intelligence turned to the representative of Czech intelligence in Havana for help

to ensure that the Venezuelan guerrillas trained in Cuba could return to Vene-
zuela via Prague, the so-called Operation Manuel was initiated to give assistance
to Latin American combatants. This involved Czech and Soviet aid to guerrillas,
Communist party members, and other revolutionary groups in various coun-
tries, enabling them to reach Cuba and return to their respective countries after
receiving military training on the island. By April 1966, 639 people had been
assisted in this way, including 172 Venezuelans, 73 Argentineans, 77 Dominicans,
63 Colombians, and 48 Guatemalans, among others.
In anticipation that this operation would be prolonged, in 1967 Czech intel-
ligence took stock of Czechoslovakia’s role in this assistance. This expectation
was based on Castro’s statement at the Tricontinental Conference in Havana in
1966 in which he confirmed that many Latin American countries o√ered condi-
tions that were suitable for armed combat. He also criticized the Soviets for their
lukewarm policy toward building a socialist world and for their lack of genuine
internationalism, demonstrated by the case of Vietnam, which at the time was
under fire from American airplanes. The Cubans considered that the Soviet
support for Cuba, for the Communist parties involved in the armed struggle in
Latin America, and for the guerrilla movement itself was insu≈cient and did not
correspond with the magnitude of the enemy to be defeated and the latent
insurgent energy that needed material encouragement.ππ
The notable defeats su√ered by the guerrillas and the significant reversals
experienced in some Latin American countries not only thwarted the delicate
strategies of the Soviet Union in Latin America but also jeopardized these coun-
tries’ peaceful coexistence with the United States (e.g., the military coup in Brazil
in 1964, and the U.S. military intervention in the Dominican Republic in 1965).
Nonetheless, in 1966 the Soviets refrained from showing any inconsistencies
with Cuba regarding its support for the armed conflict. While Castro called on
the countries of the three continents to intensify their struggles for liberation
and Latin American countries to wage insurgent struggle, the Soviet representa-
tive expressed solidarity with armed struggles in Venezuela, Peru, Colombia,
and Guatemala against the puppets of imperialism. The cia also commented
that the tone of the exhortation by Cuba was not congruent with the 1964
Cuban-Soviet agreement that the Communist parties themselves should decide
on the kind of struggle they would adopt in their respective countries.π∫ In 1966
Cuba still acted with relative independence from the Soviet Union.
The mood at the congress in Havana left Czechoslovakia with no alternative
but to continue with Operation Manuel. Czechoslovakia could not a√ord to
102 daniela spenser
stop, despite the sensitivity of an operation that contradicted the policies of

some of the Latin American Communist parties and drew criticisms in the
Western press about the country’s sanctioning of militants to pass through
Prague. At a meeting in Moscow in June 1967, the Czechs and the Soviets agreed
that it was inevitable that they should participate in this activity. Not to do so
would cause complications ‘‘that the Cubans would see as a fundamental ab-
dication to helping national liberation movements in Latin America.’’πΩ
In spite of this position, the Soviet Union was already pressuring Cuba to
cease supporting the armed struggle. The Soviet coercion coincided with the
military mission of Che Guevara in Bolivia. The Guevara episode negatively
implicated the Soviet Union in both Latin American countries and the United
States, which never ceased to consider the Soviet Union as a trampoline for
Cuban activism in the continent. The Soviets also feared U.S. intervention,
which would again endanger their commitment to protect Cuba from U.S.
aggression.
Although Castro had not informed the Soviet ambassador in Havana of
Guevara’s mission in Bolivia since November 1966, the Soviets must have known
about it through the general secretary of the Bolivian Communist Party (bcp),
Mario Monje.∫≠ If anyone was a stone in the shoe of the Soviet leadership after
the missile crisis, it was Che Guevara, who never ceased to criticize the socialist
camp and the Soviet Union for being accomplices of the capitalist world and
for their mercenary attitude toward their commercial relations with the Third
World. Che did not disguise his criticism of the corruption and ine≈ciency of
Soviet society, its lack of generosity toward Third World countries, and its e√orts
to influence the direction of the Cuban Revolution. In the same way, the Soviets
considered him to be their most dangerous opponent in Cuba and characterized
him as pro-Chinese.∫∞
Che Guevara had been in contact with the bcp and Mario Monje since 1964.
At least by 1965, Monje was not oblivious to the armed struggle and even briefly
entered a training program in Cuba in 1966. It appears that if he did not commit
the party or its members to Che’s guerrilla group, it was because he wanted to
lead the guerrilla project himself. A person of sinuous style, ‘‘Mario Monje
argued that if the revolution took place in Argentina he would carry Che’s
backpack, but that in Bolivia it had to be led by a Bolivian, himself.’’∫≤ In January
1967, after an interview with two leaders of the bcp in Havana, Fidel Castro still
believed in the possibility of collaboration between Che and the party, but the
relationship never jelled. According to Che, the Bolivian Communists led by
Monje, and Monje himself, were not apt collaborators for the guerrilla move-
ment, either for being traitors or for being ‘‘chicken-hearted.’’∫≥
The Bolivian Communist Party was pro-Soviet, although one sector of the
party was prepared to follow the path of insurrection. The party had been
involved in guerrilla operations in Bolivia in 1963; however, it appears that
neither then nor in 1966–67 was it supported by the Soviet Union, judging from
the insignificant amount of funding approved by the Central Committee of the
Soviet Communist Party for its operations in 1964 and 1967: US$24,500 and
$50,000 respectively. It is worth mentioning that in addition to the money
provided to the Bolivian party in 1967, the Central Committee of the Soviet
Communist Party earmarked $20,000 in 1966 for the Bolivian National Libera-
tion Front, the electoral wing of the Communist party.∫∂
In July 1967 Prime Minister Aleksei Kosygin visited Cuba. Kosygin questioned
Cuban support for the armed struggle in Latin America and expressed his
doubts over the correctness of Guevara’s actions in Bolivia. On this occasion,
Kosygin delivered an ultimatum to the Cubans: they must cease to support the
guerrillas in Latin America, or the Soviets would terminate aid to Cuba.∫∑ The
Cubans rejected this interference by the Soviets and argued that Cuban-Soviet
relations were based on mutual respect and independence. But relations with
Moscow deteriorated further after the death of Che Guevara in October 1967.
The failure of the guerrilla enterprise in Bolivia was added to other failed at-
tempts in Brazil, Peru, and Venezuela and confirmed the doubt that the Soviets
had always held concerning the validity of applying the Cuban model for attain-
ing power to other countries.∫∏ The weakness of Cuba in Latin America was also
the responsibility of the Soviets; the defeats in the Soviet-supported armed
struggle were also their defeats. According to a report submitted by the cia in
February 1968, the guerrilla movement supported by Cuba ‘‘has particularly
failed in gaining real advantages in the Hemisphere.’’ Despite nine years of
e√orts, there was not one guerrilla group that posed a threat to any Latin
American government. ‘‘The demise of the project led by Guevara in Bolivia is
proof that even when Cuba uses ‘its top team’ it will fail due to the lack of real,
popular support for the guerrilla cause,’’ the report stated.∫π
After the new crisis in their relations with Cuba, the Soviets reoriented their
policy toward Latin America. Faced with the increased control of North Amer-
ica in the hemisphere, the Soviet Union responded by strengthening its relations
with Latin American governments that appeared to be progressive. By using
economic aid, the Soviets wanted to send the recipients the message that they
104 daniela spenser
would be able to resist a beating by imperialism. They negotiated new commer-

cial treaties with Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay, and Costa Rica in the understanding
that every tractor, every screw, every piece of equipment that was sent to Latin
America carried a fragment of truth about the Soviet Union and demonstrated
its achievements and those of the socialist system.∫∫
Nevertheless, the Soviet Union could not abandon Cuba. Its defeat would
mean triumph for the United States and a loss for the socialist camp at a time
when it was su√ering fractures caused by the Sino-Soviet conflict. Unable to
openly criticize Cuba, the Soviet Union applied economic sanctions during 1967,
which mainly took the form of not satisfying the growing Cuban need for oil. It
was the progressive isolation of Cuba from the rest of Latin America and the
economic pressures that only the Soviet Union could alleviate that led Fidel
Castro to do the unexpected: in August 1968 Cuba justified the invasion of
Czechoslovakia by the troops of the Warsaw Pact. In so doing, he was recogniz-
ing the Brezhnev Doctrine or the policy of the Soviet government to limit the
sovereignty of countries in the socialist bloc whose destinies were interlinked.∫Ω
At the same time, Cuba also recognized Soviet leadership in the socialist camp.
In exchange for sustained economic aid to the island, the Soviet Union re-
covered its image as a pillar of socialism in Cuba and the leader of socialism in
Latin America and the Third World.
Conclusions
The Soviet Union wished to improve its relations with the United States, but
without forfeiting its influence over the countries that were liberating them-
selves from colonialism and imperialism. The Caribbean crisis revealed the
vulnerability of Soviet leadership. In Latin America, the Soviet Union had to
compete with Cuba’s revolutionary politics. From 1962 to at least 1967, the
influence of Cuba’s actions on Soviet goals and activities was disproportionate to
the geographic size of the island. Suddenly this small country was influencing
Soviet policy in Latin America and the relations between the Soviet Union and
the United States.
Soviet support for armed struggles in Latin America was one of the undesir-
able consequences of the missile crisis. As a result, not only was the Soviet Union
unable to reduce expenditures on defense in the way it would have liked, but its
relations with the United States su√ered because of its support for the national
liberation movements. The support of the Soviet Union for guerrilla move-
ments alongside the region’s Communist parties was contrary to the Soviets’
wishes, but it was motivated by the fear that they would also fall under the
Guevarist spell, which, in the eyes of the Soviets, too closely resembled the
Chinese position.
The Soviets did not believe in guerrilla warfare as an e√ective method to
weaken the United States and the capitalist regime; however, the armed struggle
appeared to be temporarily winning against imperialism, although for the So-
viets it entailed a political cost. The Soviet Union terminated its support for the
armed struggle in Latin America in the mid-1960s when the weakness of this way
of fighting imperialism was revealed. This was after Khrushchev lost power in
1964, and the majority of the Latin American Communist parties rejected armed
struggle because of its high social and political costs, the consequences of repres-
sion by state and paramilitary forces.
The relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union had been damaged not just
by the armed struggle alone but by its meager results as a method of reducing
U.S. domination in Latin America. The destruction of the guerrilla movement
in the 1960s and the shift of Cuban support to Africa sowed the seeds for
improving Cuban-Soviet relations. It was not because Cuba had ceased to be-
lieve in the armed struggle or because of reconciliation over this issue with the
Soviet Union, but because the Soviets could abandon a method of fighting in
which they did not believe and which caused unwanted conflicts with the United
States. The tensions between the two countries were reduced as a result of the
elimination of the guerrillas.
The consequences of the Caribbean crisis established the credentials of Cuba
as an actor with a global reach. They also confirmed how a small country could
change the global scene. Not only did the Cold War impact Cuba; Cuba had an
impact on the development of the Cold War.
In the long run, the Soviet fear that Cuba would turn to Chinese leadership
was unfounded. Castro considered Chinese criticisms of Soviet revisionism
harmful because they did not contribute to the unification of the revolutionary
movements. Moreover, China could not substitute for the Soviet Union as a
provider of the goods and military equipment that the Cubans were redirect-
ing to Latin America, where they considered them necessities. By 1965 Cuba
openly denounced Chinese attempts to divide the socialist camp. After this, pro-
Chinese factions emerged in Latin America that denounced across the board the
Soviet Union, military groups, and the Cuban Revolution.
The Soviet Union welcomed the peaceful road to socialism proclaimed by
Salvador Allende (1970–73). However, when this peaceful method was defeated
in the same way as the guerrilla movements of the 1960s, and when in the 1980s
106 daniela spenser
the armed struggle in Central America, encouraged by the triumphant revolu-

tion led by the Sandinistas, appeared to be successful, the Soviet Union returned
to its support of armed struggle. In the same selective and discretionary way as
in the 1960s, the Soviet Union gave armaments, guerrilla training, and economic
support to movements led by Communist parties. In 1989, two years before its
dissolution, the International Department of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party in the Soviet Union still allocated financial and logistic aid to
foment the military activities of the Communist parties in Central America,
which were battling local oligarchies and North American imperialism.
Notes
1. Strobe Talbott, ed., Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament (London: Andre
Deutsch, 1974), 510–11.
2. Ibid., 513.
3. Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From
Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966), 188–229; Jacques
Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution: Soviet Ideological and Strategic Perspec-
tive, 1959–1977 (New York: Praeger, 1978), 4.
4. Cited in Yuri Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance, 1959–1991 (Miami, Fla.: North-South
Center Press, 1966), 8.
5. Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution, 71–73.
6. Aleksandr Fursenko and Timothy Naftali, ‘‘One Hell of a Gamble’’: Khrushchev,
Castro and Kennedy, 1958–1964 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1997), 24–25; Pavlov, Soviet-
Cuban Alliance, 36; Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution, 39.
7. Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War
Presidents (1962–1986) (New York: Random House, 1995), 75–76; Fursenko and Naftali,
‘‘One Hell of a Gamble,’’ 52; Zubok and Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War, 171–73,
182–86, 260; Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution, 41–42; William Taubman,
Khrushchev: the Man and His Era (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 536.
8. Fursenko and Naftali, ‘‘One Hell of a Gamble,’’ 177–83, 214; Lévesque, The USSR and
the Cuban Revolution, 39; Taubman, Khrushchev, 533.
9. Taubman, Khrushchev, 531–32.
10. Fursenko and Naftali, ‘‘One Hell of a Gamble,’’ 294.
11. Cited in Taubman, Khrushchev, 546.
12. Fursenko and Naftali, ‘‘One Hell of a Gamble,’’ 192, 206.
13. Ibid., 241.
14. Ibid., 247–56, 274.
15. Ibid., 259. ‘‘From Trostnik to Comrade Pavlov,’’ October 28, 1962, Archive of the
President of the Federation of Russia, declassified in April 2002, English translation by
Svetlana Savranskaya, National Security Archive (nsa).
16. Message from President Khrushchev to President Kennedy, Moscow, October 28,
1962, in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, vol. 11 (Washington: U.S. De-
partment of State, 1984), 281; Fursenko and Naftali, ‘‘One Hell of a Gamble,’’ 260.
17. Taubman, Khrushchev, 572–79.
18. ‘‘Minutes of conversation between the delegations of the Czechoslovak Communist
Party and the Communist Party of the USSR,’’ Kremlin, October 30, 1962, in the State
Central Archive of the Czech Republic, Archive of the Central Committee of the Czech
Communist Party, file Antonín Novotný, box 193. Obtained by Oldrich Tuma. English
translation by Linda Mastalir.
19. Ibid.
20. Khrushchev to Castro, October 30, 1962, document presented at the international
conference ‘‘La Crisis de Octubre: Nueva visión política 40 años después,’’ Havana, Cuba,
October 11–13, 2002.
21. Ibid.
22. ‘‘Memorandum on the conversation between Mikoyan and the Cuban leaders,
Havana, 5 November 1962,’’ Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 5 (spring
1995): 101–9, 159.
23. Extract from the protocol number 66 on the session of the Presidium of the Central
Committee, November 16, 1962, ‘‘On the instructions to Comrade A. I. Mikoyan,’’ from
the personal archive of Dr. Sergo A. Mikoyan. English translation by Svetlana Sav-
ranskaya. Cited with permission from Sergo Mikoyan.
24. Ibid.
25. Telegram from N. S. Khrushchev to Comrade A. I. Mikoyan, November 11, 1962,
from the personal archive of Dr. Sergo A. Mikoyan. English translation by Svetlana
Savranskaya and Adam Mayle. Cited with permission from Sergo Mikoyan.
26. Speech by A. I. Mikoyan to the military advisor of General Pliev’s unit in Cuba,
November 21, 1962, from the personal archive of Dr. Sergo A. Mikoyan. Cited with
permission from Sergo Mikoyan.
27. Report on the conversation between Comrade Carlos Rafael Rodríguez and Com-
rade Nikita Khrushchev, in the presence of Comrade Anastas Mikoyan, December 11,
1962, document presented at the international conference ‘‘La Crisis de Octubre: Nueva
visión política 40 años después,’’ Havana, Cuba, October 11–13, 2002.
28. Ibid.
29. Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance, 64.
30. Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution, 44.
31. James G. Blight and Philip Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba’s Struggle
with the Superpowers after the Missile Crisis (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield,
2002), 15, 29.
32. Dmitry Polyansky, rough draft of the report to the plenum of the Central Commit-
tee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on Khrushchev’s errors, October 1964,
extract, in the Volkogonov Collection, U.S. Library of Congress, Manuscript Division,
reel 18, English translation by Svetlana Savranskaya, nsa.
108 daniela spenser
33. Fursenko and Naftali, ‘‘One Hell of a Gamble,’’ 94–95; Philip Brenner and James G.
Blight, ‘‘Cuba, 1962: The Crisis and Cuban-Soviet Relations: Fidel Castro’s Secret 1968
Speech,’’ Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 5 (spring 1995): 1, 81–85, 92;
telegram from Vladimir Pavlícek to the Ministry of Foreign A√airs, Havana, October 31,
1962, Central Archive of the Czech Republic, Archive of the Central Committee of the
Czech Communist Party, file Antonín Novotný, box 122, obtained by Oldrich Tuma,
English translation by Linda Mastalir; Blight and Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days, xvi,
xxi.
35. Fidel Castro Ruz, at the tripartite conference ‘‘The October Crisis,’’ Havana, Janu-
ary 9–12, 1992, cited in Tomás Diez Acosta, Octubre del 62: Un paso del holocausto
(Havana, 1999, electronic version), 63.
36. Ibid., 91–92; Blight and Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days, 21.
37. Acosta, Octubre del 62, 86.
38. ‘‘Fragments from the participation of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro at the
plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba,’’ January 25–26,
1968, document presented at the international conference ‘‘La Crisis de Octubre,’’
Havana, October 2002.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
42. Telegram from Pavlícek to the Ministry of Foreign A√airs, Havana, October 31,
1962.
43. Telegram from János Beck to the Ministry of Foreign A√airs, Havana, November
29, 1962, National Archives of Hungary, Foreign Ministry, secret file XIX, J-I-j. Obtained
from the Institute of the History of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. English translation
by Attila Kolontari and Zsofía Zelnik.
44. Ibid.
45. Ibid.
46. Ibid.
47. Leopold Unger, ‘‘Minutes of a conversation with Carlos Rafael Rodríguez, direc-
tor of inra, 27 November 1962,’’ Archive of New Documents, Warsaw, Poland, 237,
XXII/1090, 1961–63, file 245. English translation by Margorzata Gnoinska. Document
presented at the international conference ‘‘La Crisis de Octubre,’’ Havana, October 2002.
48. Report on the conversation between Comrade Carlos Rafael Rodríguez and Com-
rade Nikita Khrushchev, in the presence of Anastas Mikoyan, December 11, 1962; docu-
ment presented at the international conference ‘‘La Crisis de Octubre,’’ Havana, October
2002.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.
51. ‘‘Fragments from the participation of Commander in Chief Fidel Castro at the
plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba,’’ January 25–26,
1968, document presented at the international conference ‘‘La Crisis de Octubre,’’ Ha-
vana, October 2002.
52. Blight and Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days, 27–28; Fursenko and Naftali, ‘‘One
Hell of a Gamble,’’ 342; Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance, 55.
53. Agreement between the government of the Republic of Cuba and the government
of the Soviet Union concerning the increase in technical equipment to the Revolutionary
Armed Forces and in the reinforcement of the defense capacity of the Republic of Cuba,
Moscow, May 29, 1963, document presented at the international conference ‘‘La Crisis de
Octubre,’’ Havana, October 2002; Fursenko and Naftali, ‘‘One Hell of a Gamble,’’ 331–33.
54. Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance, 56–57.
55. Telegram from the U.S. Embassy to the State Department, March 27, 1963, Foreign
Relations of the United States, 1961–1963 (hereafter cited as FRUS, 1961–1963), vol. 11:
Cuban Missile Crisis and Aftermath, 301–25, Briefing Papers and Memo Series; Dobrynin,
In Confidence, 94; Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution, 43.
56. Memorandum from a conversation, Moscow, April 25, 1963, FRUS, 1961–1963, vol.
11, 301–25, Briefing Papers and Memo Series.
57. Editorial note for the letter from Khrushchev to Kennedy, April 29, 1963, delivered
through a private channel, FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 11, 301–25, Briefing Papers and Memo
Series. Khrushchev refers to his meeting with Kennedy in Vienna in September 1961.
58. Memorandum from Gordon Chase at the National Security Council to the special
advisor to the president for national security, Washington, 3 April 1963, FRUS, 1961–1963,
vol. 11, 301–25, Briefing Papers and Memo Series.
59. Memorandum from the Special Assistant to the Army Secretary, Washington, April
9, 1963, FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 11, 301–25, Briefing Papers and Memo Series; memoran-
dum of the conversation with President Kennedy, Palm Beach, Florida, April 15, 1963,
FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 11, 24, Briefing Papers and Memo Series. There is indeed evidence
that following the missile crisis President Kennedy sought a modus vivendi with Castro’s
Cuba so as not to risk another U.S.–Soviet confrontation. However, as Piero Gleijeses
mentions in the following chapter, the condition was that Cuba cease to be a revolution-
ary regime, which was never even a remote possibility. It merits mentioning that the
recently released documentary Rendezvous with Death (Wilfried Huismann, Germany,
2005) reopens the circumstances of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. Based on interviews
and previously unknown Mexican sources, the film suggests Cuba’s involvement in
Kennedy’s death. This would strongly suggest that the Cuban government did not think
much of Kennedy’s rapprochement.
60. Message from President Kennedy to President Khrushchev, Washington, April 11,
1963, FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 11, 301–25, Briefing Papers and Memo Series.
61. Memorandum of a conference with President Kennedy, Palm Beach, Florida, April
15, 1963, FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 11, 301–25, Briefing Papers and Memo Series.
62. Memorandum prepared by the director of the cia, John A. McCone, Washington,
April 15, 1963, FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 11, 301–25, Briefing Papers and Memo Series.
63. Memorandum from the coordinator of Cuban a√airs to the Special Group,
110 daniela spenser
Washington, April 18, 1963, FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 11, 301–25, Briefing Papers and Memo
Series.
64. Memorandum from the President of the Chamber of National Valuations to
the Director of the cia, FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 11, 301–25, Briefing Papers and Memo
Series.
65. Summary Report of the Second Meeting of the Permanent Council for National
Security, Washington, April 23, 1963, FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 11, 301–25, Briefing Papers and
Memo Series.
66. Memorandum for the archive, December 1963, ‘‘Contacts with Cuban leaders,’’
FRUS, 1961–1963, vol. 11, 301–25, Briefing Papers and Memo Series.
67. Fursenko and Naftali, One Hell of a Gamble, 340, 355.
68. Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2001), 211–12.
69. Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution, 67.
70. Ibid., 71–72, 95–96.
71. Claudia Furiati, Fidel Castro: La historia me absolverá (Barcelona: Plaza and Janés,
2003), 429; Régis Debray, Las pruebas de fuego: Las críticas de las armas, vol. 2 (Mexico
City: Siglo XXI, 1975), 19.
72. ‘‘Cuban subversive activities in Latin America: 1959–1968,’’ Special weekly report,
cia, February 16, 1968. Document presented at the international conference ‘‘La Crisis de
Octubre’’; Furiati, Fidel Castro, 430–31.
73. Until 1943 the financing was carried out by the Communist International (com-
intern), which was abolished in that year. The figures presented here are from the docu-
ments of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that were delivered in 1992 by Boris
Yeltsin to the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation for the trial of the Com-
munist Party of the Soviet Union. See fond 89, register 38, files 15–56, and the guide to the
archive compiled by Lora Soroka, Archives of the Communist Party and Soviet State: Fond
89. Communist Party of the Soviet Union on Trial (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press,
2001). As an example, I cite the funds for the year 1964, and for comparative purposes I
have chosen various Communist parties that benefited in that year from Soviet aid: Italy,
$5,000,000; France, $1,500,000; Indonesia, $1,000,000; Finland, $650,000; Venezuela,
$600,000; United States, $530,000; Chile, $200,000; Brazil, $200,000; Uruguay, $90,000;
Colombia, $50,000; Panama, $40,000; Ecuador, $40,000; Costa Rica, $40,000; Paraguay,
$30,000; El Salvador, $25,000; Mexico, $25,000; Bolivia, $24,500; Honduras, $20,000;
Dominican Republic, $20,000; Nicaragua, $12,000; and Peru, $10,000.
1999), 107; Debray, Las pruebas de fuego, 22; Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolu-
tion, 110–11, 123. From then on, as a consequence of the elections in December 1963 and
the ensuing defeats and betrayals, the guerrilla groups divided. One group of Commu-
nists decided to abandon armed conflict, and another to leave the party. The Venezuelan
Communist Party decided to lay down their arms at the end of 1965 and adopt the line of
‘‘democratic peace.’’ Were the Soviet leaders an influence on the decision of the vcp to
retire from armed combat? See Liza Gross, Handbook of Leftist Guerrilla Groups in Latin
America and the Caribbean (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1995), 151–54.
75. Fond 89, register 38, files 6–20.
76. ‘‘Cuban subversive activities in Latin America: 1959–1968,’’ special weekly report,
cia, February 16, 1968, document presented at the international conference ‘‘La Crisis de
Octubre,’’ Havana, October 2002; Jorge Castañeda, La vida en rojo: Una biografía del Che
Guevara (Mexico City: Alfaguara, 1997), 315; Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolu-
tion, 103–5; Furiati, Fidel Castro, 432, 440.
77. Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution, 131; Furiati, Fidel Castro, 451–52.
78. ‘‘Cuban subversive activities in Latin America: 1959–1968.’’
79. Extract from the report ‘‘Collaboration of the Czechoslovak and Cuban Intel-
ligence,’’ Prague, January 11, 1967, in Daniela Spenser, ‘‘Operation Manuel: Czecho-
slovakia and Cuba,’’ Cold War International History project, e-Dossier no. 7, http://
cwihp.si.edu.
80. Castañeda, La vida en rojo, 420, 466.
81. Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution, 109; Piero Gleijeses, Conflicting
Missions: Havana, Washington and Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2002), 103; Castañeda, La vida en rojo, 313–14.
82. Paco Ignacio Taibo II, Ernesto Guevara, también conocido como el Che (Mexico
City: Planeta, 1996), 643.
83. Ibid. To be able to determine with more certainty the kind of influences the Soviet
Union could have exerted on the Bolivian Communist Party, it remains for the Russian
archives to reveal the details of the deliberations and decision making at the center of
Soviet leadership.
84. Fond 89, register 38, files 7–8; Castañeda, La vida en rojo, 409; Furiati, Fidel Castro,
431, 460; Blight and Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days, xxii. These figures become impor-
tant when compared with the $600,000 allocated to the vcp for 1964 and $500,000 for
1967.
85. Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution, 124; Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban Alliance,
87–88; Blight and Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days, xxii; Furiati, Fidel Castro, 465;
Castañeda, La vida en rojo, 467–70.
86. Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 218.
87. ‘‘Cuban subversive activities in Latin America: 1959–1968’’; Pavlov, Soviet-Cuban
Alliance, 87–88.
88. Lévesque, The USSR and the Cuban Revolution, 138–42.
89. Blight and Brenner, Sad and Luminous Days, 141–44; Mark Kramer, ‘‘Ideology and
the Cold War,’’ Review of International Studies, no. 25 (1999): 544.
PIERO GLEIJESES
The View from Havana

Lessons from Cuba’s African Journey, 1959–1976
Cuba’s role in the world since 1959 is without precedent. No other Third World
country has projected its military power beyond its immediate neighborhood.
Brazil’s mighty generals sent a small troop to the Dominican Republic in 1965 as
the United States’ junior partner; Argentina’s generals briefly helped Somoza’s
defeated cohorts in 1980–81; Vietnam’s soldiers never ventured beyond Indo-
china; China’s military activities outside Asia have been limited to supplying
weapons and dispatching a few hundred instructors to Africa. During the Cold
War, extracontinental military interventions were the preserve of the two super-
powers, a few West European countries, and Cuba. And West European military
interventions in the thirty years between the rise of Castro and the end of the
Cold War pale in size and daring compared to those of Cuba; even the Soviet
Union sent far fewer soldiers beyond its immediate neighborhood than did
Cuba. In this regard, Cuba is second only to the United States.∞
For over four decades, Castro has defied and humiliated the United States. In
the 1960s the fear of a second Cuba in Latin America haunted U.S. leaders and
was midwife to the Alliance for Progress. From the late 1970s through the late
1980s, Havana supported those who fought to bring revolutionary change to
Central America.
Castro’s vistas, however, extended beyond the Western Hemisphere. The dis-
patch of thirty-six thousand Cuban soldiers to Angola between November 1975
and April 1976 stunned the world, although small numbers of Cuban troops—a
little more than one thousand—had gone to Algeria, Congo Leopoldville (later
called Zaire), Congo Brazzaville, and Guinea-Bissau since 1959.≤
In the early 1960s, the Cuban leaders saw similarities between the Algerian
revolution against French rule and Cuba’s own struggle against both the Cuban
dictator Fulgencio Batista and the United States. In December 1961, a Cuban
ship unloaded a cargo of weapons at Casablanca for the Algerian rebels. It
t h e v i e w f r o m h ava n a 113
returned to Havana with seventy-six wounded Algerian fighters and twenty

children from refugee camps.
The aid continued after Algeria gained its independence in 1962. In May 1963,
a fifty-five-person Cuban medical mission arrived in Algiers. As would be the
case for all the missions that followed until 1978, the aid was free. ‘‘It was like a
beggar o√ering his help, but we knew that the Algerian people needed it even
more than we did, and that they deserved it,’’ said José Ramón Machado Ven-
tura, the minister of public health.≥ In October 1963, when Algeria was threat-
ened by Morocco, the Cubans rushed a special force of 686 men with heavy
weapons to the Algerians’ aid, although Morocco had just signed a contract with
Havana to buy one million tons of Cuban sugar for $184 million, a considerable
amount of hard currency at a time when the United States was trying to cripple
Cuba’s economy.
Cuba’s interest in sub-Saharan Africa quickened in late 1964. This was the
moment of the great illusion, when the Cubans, and many others, believed that
revolution beckoned in Africa. Guerrillas were fighting the Portuguese in An-
gola, Guinea-Bissau, and Mozambique. In Congo Brazzaville, a new govern-
ment was loudly proclaiming its revolutionary sympathies. And above all there
was Zaire, where armed revolt had been spreading with stunning speed since the
spring of 1964, threatening the survival of the corrupt pro-American regime that
Presidents Eisenhower and Kennedy had laboriously put in place.
To save the Zairean regime, the Johnson administration raised an army of
more than one thousand white mercenaries in a major covert operation that was
obvious to all but the U.S. press and provoked a wave of revulsion even among
African leaders friendly to the United States. The Cubans saw the conflict as
more than an African problem: ‘‘Our view was that the situation in the Congo
[Zaire] was a problem that concerned all mankind,’’ wrote Che Guevara.∂
In December 1964, Guevara went on a three-month trip to Africa. In the
following February he was in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, which was then, as the
U.S. Central Intelligence Agency pointed out, ‘‘a haven for exiles from the rest of
Africa . . . plotting the overthrow of African governments, both black and
white.’’∑ After a general meeting with ‘‘at least fifty people representing di√erent
movements . . . of at least ten countries,’’ Che met separately with the representa-
tives of each movement, and three times with the Zairean rebel leaders Laurent
Kabila and Gaston Soumialot.∏ ‘‘[Kabila] impressed me,’’ wrote Che. ‘‘I o√ered
him, on behalf of our government, about thirty instructors and all the weapons
we could spare, and he accepted with delight. He urged us to hurry, as did
Soumialot, in the course of another conversation. Soumialot also asked that the
114 piero gleijeses
instructors be black. . . . The aid was given unconditionally and with no time
limit.’’ Che left Dar-es-Salaam with ‘‘the joy of having found people ready to
fight to the finish. Our next task was to select a group of black Cubans—all
volunteers—to join the struggle in the Congo [Zaire].’’π
Two months later, a Cuban column of some 120 men under Guevara began
entering eastern Zaire through Tanzania. In a few weeks, a second Cuban col-
umn under Jorge Risquet arrived in neighboring Congo Brazzaville at the re-
quest of that country’s government, which lived ‘‘in fear’’ of an attack by the
cia’s mercenaries; the column would also perhaps assist Che in Zaire. ‘‘It was,’’
Raúl Castro noted, ‘‘a reserve force for Che’s column, which it would join if
possible, at the right time.’’∫ Overall, four hundred Cuban volunteers were in
Central Africa in the summer of 1965.
But Central Africa was not ready for revolution. By the time the Cubans
arrived in Zaire, the mercenaries had broken the resolve of the rebels. The story
of Che’s column is not one of great battles but one of 120 people thrust into an
impossible situation, in a totally alien world, who retained their humanity until
the end. Guevara could only preside over the agony of the rebellion until the
rebels’ collapse left him no choice but to withdraw in November 1965.
In Congo Brazzaville, meanwhile, Risquet’s column saved the host govern-
ment from a military coup in June 1966 through bluster and diplomacy, without
bloodshed. The doctors attached to the column conducted the first vaccination
campaign in the country against polio, and 254 young Congolese went to Cuba
to study, all expenses paid. In December 1966 the column withdrew, against the
wishes of the Congolese government. Risquet understood, and made Havana
understand, that there was no revolution in Congo Brazzaville. ‘‘He was able to
get us out at the right moment,’’ observed his second-in-command. ‘‘He was
flexible.’’Ω
The late 1960s marked a period of deepening maturity in Cuba’s relationship
with Africa. No longer deluded that revolution was just around the corner,
the Cubans were learning about sub-Saharan Africa. In those years—indeed,
through 1974—the main focus of Havana’s attention in Africa was Guinea-
Bissau, where the rebels of the Partido Africano da Independência da Guiné e
Cabo Verde (paigc) were fighting for independence from Portugal. The paigc
was ‘‘the most e√ective of the liberation organizations in the Portuguese African
territories,’’ U.S. reports stressed time and again.∞≠ At the paigc’s request, Cuban
military instructors arrived in Guinea-Bissau in 1966, and they remained there
through the end of the war in 1974. This was the longest Cuban intervention in
Africa before the dispatch of troops to Angola in 1975. It was also the most
successful. In the words of Guinea-Bissau’s first president:
We were able to fight and triumph because other countries and people helped us . . .
with weapons, with medicine, with supplies. . . . But there is one nation that in addi-
tion to material, political and diplomatic support, even sent its children to fight by
our side, to shed their blood in our land together with that of the best children of
our country.
This great people, this heroic people, we all know that it is the heroic people of
Cuba; the Cuba of Fidel Castro; the Cuba of the Sierra Maestra, the Cuba of Mon-
cada. . . . Cuba sent its best children here so that they could help us in the technical
aspects of our war, so that they could help us to wage this great struggle . . . against
Portuguese colonialism.∞∞
Some forty to fifty Cubans fought in Guinea-Bissau each year from 1966
until its independence in 1974. They helped in military planning, and they
were in charge of the artillery. Their contribution was ‘‘of the utmost impor-
tance,’’ as President Nino, who had been the senior military commander of the
paigc, said.∞≤
Just as the only foreigners who fought with the paigc in Guinea-Bissau were
Cubans, so too the only foreign doctors were Cubans (with one brief exception),
and there were no native doctors until 1968. From 1966 to 1974 there were, on
average, seven Cuban doctors in Guinea-Bissau. ‘‘They really performed a mira-
cle,’’ observes Francisca Pereira, a senior paigc o≈cial. ‘‘I am eternally grateful
to them: not only did they save lives, but they also put their own lives at risk.
They were truly selfless.’’∞≥
The Cubans who went to Algeria, Zaire, Congo Brazzaville, and Guinea-
Bissau were volunteers. They were captivated by the mystique of guerrilla war.
‘‘We dreamed of revolution,’’ one muses. ‘‘We wanted to be part of it, to feel that
we were fighting for it. We were young, and the children of a revolution.’’
Fighting abroad, they would defend the revolution at home. ‘‘In all those years
we believed that at any moment they [the United States] were going to strike us;
and for us it was better to wage the war abroad than in our own country.’’∞∂ The
volunteers received no public praise in Cuba. They left ‘‘knowing that their story
would remain a secret.’’∞∑ They won neither medals nor material rewards. Once
back they could not boast about their deeds because they were bound to secrecy.
Nevertheless, as U.S. documents make abundantly clear, U.S. o≈cials knew
that Cubans were in Africa—in Algeria, then in Zaire, in Congo Brazzaville, and
116 piero gleijeses
finally in Guinea-Bissau—and yet they paid little attention to it. Robinson Mc-
Ilvaine, the U.S. ambassador in Conakry, Guinea, from October 1966 through
August 1969, remarked, ‘‘The State Department was not particularly concerned
with the Cuban presence. It was not a big worry for us.’’∞∏ This complacency,
which contrasts starkly with Washington’s reaction to even the rumor of Cuban
combatants in Latin America, is explained by the fact that U.S. o≈cials were
confident that a handful of Cubans could not be e√ective in distant, alien
African countries. In discussing Communist subversion in Africa, the cia barely
mentioned Cuba. This helps explain why the United States was stunned by the
Cuban intervention in Angola in 1975. ‘‘In the 1960s there was no sense of a
Cuban danger in Africa; their intervention in Angola was a real surprise,’’ ob-
served the former State Department o≈cial Paul O’ Neill.
During my tenure as Director of Southern Africa O≈ce [of the State Department
from July 1973 to June 1975] we were aware that there was some Soviet/East European
support for the mpla, but I don’t recall any discussion of a Cuban role before I left.
Aside from the Soviet Union, we would discuss the possible role of East Germany. I
don’t recall any concern about a Cuban role. Before I left, when people in the Africa
Bureau [of the State Department] talked of the Soviet bloc role in Angola, they
thought of the Soviets, the East Germans, not of Cuba. I don’t recall that we knew of
Cuba’s ties with the mpla, but even if we knew, it didn’t worry us.∞π
These ties had begun in 1965, when Che Guevara had met Agostinho Neto,
Lúcio Lara, and other mpla leaders in Brazzaville in a ‘‘historic encounter,’’ as
Raúl Castro called it.∞∫ ‘‘We spoke, we discussed,’’ said Lara. ‘‘We wanted only
one thing from the Cubans: instructors. The war [against the Portuguese] was
becoming di≈cult and we were inexperienced. . . . Guevara promised that he
would speak with his Party and his government so that they would send us
instructors.’’∞Ω
Risquet’s column trained mpla guerrillas in Congo Brazzaville, and several of
its members joined the mpla in the Angolan enclave of Cabinda as advisors,
instructors, and combatants. There were moments of frustration for the instruc-
tors, who had learned their trade in the exacting school of Fidel Castro’s rebel
army and now found themselves in a culture with a very di√erent concept of
discipline, and there were also warm moments of humanity in that inhospitable
forest. ‘‘I looked at them all,’’ wrote the Cuban Rafael Moracén after delivering a
particularly severe dressing-down to the mpla fighters in which he had given
vent to all his frustrations, ‘‘and I was moved, I felt love for them. . . . They had
such dignity that I felt it was worth dying with them if I had to.’’≤≠ Bonds were
forged. Ten years later, in late 1975, Moracén pestered Raúl Castro to be allowed
to return to Angola. ‘‘I am an Angolan,’’ he pleaded.≤∞
In 1966 the mpla withdrew its forces from Cabinda and focused on a new
front in eastern Angola along the Zambian border. This meant that there was no
reason for the Cubans to remain in the Congo, and they were unable to send
instructors to eastern Angola, as the mpla requested, because of Zambian op-
position. Over the next few years, until the end of 1974, relations between Cuba
and the mpla were friendly but less close, and Cuba’s support for the movement
was limited to training a handful of mpla fighters in Cuba and, as the mpla was
convulsed by internal strife, to giving unwavering support to the group around
Agostinho Neto.
The basic outline of what happened in Angola in 1975–76 is well known.
When the Portuguese dictatorship collapsed on April 25, 1974, three rival inde-
pendence movements existed in the country: Neto’s mpla, Holden Roberto’s
National Front for the Liberation of Angola (fnla), and Jonas Savimbi’s Na-
tional Union for the Total Independence of Angola (unita). Although Portugal
and the three movements agreed that a transitional government under a Portu-
guese high commissioner would rule the country until independence on No-
vember 11, 1975, civil war erupted in the spring of 1975. In July, Pretoria and
Washington became engaged in parallel covert operations in Angola, first by
supplying weapons to both the fnla and unita. Then, in late August, South
Africa sent military instructors, and the United States sent cia advisors. Cuban
military instructors for the mpla did not arrive in Luanda until the end of
August, and Soviet aid to the mpla was limited because Moscow distrusted Neto
and did not want to jeopardize the salt ii negotiations with the United States.
Nevertheless, by September, both Washington and Pretoria realized that the
mpla was winning the civil war. It was winning not because of Cuban aid (no
Cubans were yet fighting in Angola) or because of superior weapons (the rival
coalition had a slight edge, thanks to U.S. and South African largesse) but
because, as the cia station chief in Luanda, Robert Hultslander, noted, the mpla
was by far the most disciplined and committed of the three movements. The
mpla leaders, Hultslander wrote, ‘‘were more e√ective, better educated, better
trained and better motivated’’ than those of the fnla and unita. ‘‘The rank and
file also were better motivated.’’≤≤
South Africa and the United States were not pursuing identical ends in An-
gola, but they agreed that the mpla had to be defeated. Pretoria wanted to shore
up apartheid at home and eliminate any threat to its illegal rule over Namibia,
sandwiched between South Africa and Angola. South African o≈cials were well
118 piero gleijeses
aware of the mpla’s implacable hostility to apartheid and of the movement’s

commitment to assisting the liberation movements of southern Africa. (By
contrast, unita and the fnla had o√ered Pretoria their friendship.) Although
U.S. o≈cials knew that an mpla victory would not threaten U.S. strategic or
economic interests, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger believed that success in
Angola could provide a cheap boost to the prestige of the United States and to
his own prestige, pummeled by the fall of South Vietnam a few months earlier.
He cast the struggle in stark Cold War terms: the freedom-loving fnla and
unita would crush the Soviet-backed mpla. Thus Washington urged Pretoria,
which might otherwise have hesitated, to act. On October 14, South African
troops invaded Angola, transforming the civil war into an international conflict.
There is a persistent myth that the South Africans invaded in response to the
Cuban intervention.≤≥ In fact, the opposite is the case; but because this myth has
remarkable staying power—despite the evidence—it merits a little probing. In
1978 the South African Defense Ministry commissioned a study by Professor F. J.
du Toit Spies on South Africa’s role in the 1975–76 Angolan civil war and gave
him access to the closed government archives. His report was approved by a
supervisory committee led by an army general and including representatives
from the Ministries of Defense and Foreign A√airs and from academia. It was
published as Operasie Savannah: Angola, 1975–1976. A member of Spies’s super-
visory committee, Commander Sophie du Preez, also published a book based
essentially on the same documentation. To my knowledge, these are the only two
published accounts based on South African documents.≤∂ In discussing why
South Africa invaded Angola on October 14, Spies and du Preez do not mention
Cuba. Let me be clear: Nowhere is Cuba—under any guise—present in their
analysis of the South African decision to invade. According to the accounts
provided by Spies and du Preez, the Cubans did not figure at all in South Africa’s
decision making about Angola until November, more than two weeks after the
South African invasion had begun on October 14. Although Spies and du Preez
may not tell the entire story, they would have no reason to hide or minimize
South Africa’s knowledge of the arrival of the Cuban instructors and the impact
that Havana’s actions had on their government’s decisions. Aside from the books
by Spies and du Preez, none of the most important accounts of South Africa’s
policy in Angola in 1975–76 refer to the Cubans as a motivation for South
Africa’s decision to invade.≤∑ The South Africans were not alarmed by the Cu-
bans’ presence in Angola until early November, after they first clashed with them
southeast of Benguela on November 2–3. This is not surprising. The Americans,
too, were not unnerved by the Cuban presence until November. South African
policy toward Angola until November 1975 was not influenced by any Cuban
action whatsoever. This includes—most emphatically—the decision to invade on
October 14.
As the South Africans raced toward Luanda, mpla resistance crumbled. The
South Africans would have seized the city if Castro had not decided, on Novem-
ber 4, to send troops in response to the mpla’s desperate appeals. The Cuban
forces, despite their initial inferiority in numbers and weapons, halted the South
African onslaught. The o≈cial South African historian of the war writes: ‘‘The
Cubans rarely surrendered and, quite simply, fought cheerfully until death.’’≤∏
As the South African operation unraveled and credible evidence surfaced in
the Western press that Washington and Pretoria had been working together in
Angola, the White House pulled back. U.S. o≈cials claimed that they had noth-
ing to do with the South Africans and condemned Pretoria’s intervention in
Angola. Hence the cry of pain from South Africa’s defense minister, who in 1978
told the South African parliament: ‘‘I know of only one occasion in recent years
when we crossed a border and that was in the case of Angola when we did so
with the approval and knowledge of the Americans. But they left us in the lurch.
We are going to retell the story: the story must be told of how we, with their
knowledge, went in there and operated in Angola with their knowledge, how
they encouraged us to act and, when we had nearly reached the climax, we were
ruthlessly left in the lurch.’’≤π Betrayed by the United States, pilloried as aggres-
sors throughout the world, and threatened by growing numbers of Cuban sol-
diers, the South Africans gave up. On March 27, 1976, the last South Afri-
can troops withdrew from Angola. The U.S.–South African gambit in Angola
had failed.
This dramatic dispatch of 36,000 Cuban soldiers to Angola in 1975–76 ush-
ered in a period of larger-scale operations: 12,000 Cuban soldiers in Ethiopia in
early 1978;≤∫ Cuban military missions in the Congo, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau,
Mozambique, and Benin; and, above all, the continuing Cuban presence in
Angola, which peaked in 1988 with 52,000 soldiers.
I have presented this background about Cuban policy in Africa in order to
reflect on Havana’s motivations and on the extent to which this policy was a
function of Soviet demands. Before turning to these questions, I must state the
limits of my sources. I have done extensive research in the Cuban archives, but I
have had access almost exclusively to documents dealing with Cuba’s policy in
Africa. Furthermore, I have been unable to interview the key policymakers—
Fidel and Raúl Castro. I have, however, examined Cuba’s policy through the eyes
of unsympathetic governments—combing through the U.S., British, Belgian,
120 piero gleijeses
and West German archives—and also through the eyes of the East German
government, a prickly and di≈cult friend whose perceptions closely reflected
those of the Soviet Union. (There are virtually no relevant documents in the
declassified material in the Soviet archives.) The best-organized and richest
archives that I have examined are those of the United States. Furthermore, I have
been highly impressed by the quality and objectivity of U.S. intelligence reports,
both those from the cia and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the State
Department (inr). Finally, I have complemented my archival research with
interviews with more than 160 U.S., Cuban, and African protagonists, and I have
studied the press of thirty countries from the Western Hemisphere, Europe, and
Africa. As I analyzed Cuban foreign policy of the 1960s, I was struck by how close
the assessment of cia and inr analysts was to the story that emerges from the
Cuban documents themselves, and, indeed, to all the evidence I have seen. And I
was struck time and again by the chasm that separates the views of these U.S.
intelligence analysts and those of the policymakers.
Throughout the 1960s, while U.S. policymakers publicly lambasted Castro as
a Soviet puppet, cia and inr analysts were quietly pointing to Castro’s resistance
to Soviet advice and his open criticism of the Soviet Union. ‘‘He has no intention
of subordinating himself to Soviet discipline and direction, and he has in-
creasingly disagreed with Soviet concepts, strategies and theories,’’ a 1968 intel-
ligence study concluded, reflecting the consensus of the intelligence community.
Castro had no compunction about purging those who were most loyal to Mos-
cow or about pursuing economic policies that ran counter to Soviet advice.
Soviet o≈cials ‘‘muttered about pouring funds down the Cuban rathole’’ and
footed the bill, the State Department noted. Castro also criticized the Soviet
Union as being dogmatic and opportunistic, niggardly in its aid to Third World
governments and liberation movements, and overeager to seek accommodation
with the United States. He made no secret of his displeasure with the inadequacy
of Moscow’s support of North Vietnam, and in Latin America he actively pur-
sued policies that went against Moscow’s wishes. cia and inr reports repeatedly
discussed Cuba’s motivations in Africa or Latin America, and not once did they
suggest that Cuba was acting at the behest of the Soviet Union.≤Ω
If, then, we eliminate the Soviet bogeyman, what were the motivations of
Cuba’s policy? Occasionally, cia and inr analysts referred to Castro’s ego—‘‘his
thirst for self-aggrandizement’’≥≠ —as a motivating factor for his foreign policy
activism, but they consistently stressed self-defense and revolutionary fervor as
his main motivations. U.S. intelligence analysts acknowledged that Castro had
repeatedly o√ered to explore a modus vivendi with the United States—in 1961,
1963, and 1964. With one fleeting and ‘‘very tenuous’’ exception in October and
November 1963, he had consistently been rebu√ed.≥∞ The American response
was instead to launch paramilitary operations against Cuba, to attempt to as-
sassinate Fidel Castro, and to cripple the island’s economy.
The Cuban leaders concluded that the best defense would be to counterattack,
not by attacking the United States directly, for that would be suicidal, but by
assisting revolutionary forces in the Third World whenever possible, thereby
gaining friends and weakening U.S. influence. As the cia concluded, Castro
believed that the survival of the revolution depended on ‘‘ ‘other Cubas’ succeed-
ing. . . . [Castro thought] that the U.S. would ultimately be forced to come to
terms with Cuba when it has to deal simultaneously with ‘several’ other revolu-
tionary regimes.’’ When Che Guevara went to Africa in December 1964, this
element of self-defense was evident, as U.S. intelligence o≈cers noted. With far
more wisdom than Che’s later biographers (particularly Jorge Castañeda, Mex-
ico’s former foreign minister), U.S. intelligence never claimed that Guevara was
acting independently of Fidel Castro. On the contrary, inr director Thomas
Hughes noted that ‘‘Che Guevara’s three-month trip was part of an important
new Cuban strategy.’’ This strategy, he argued, was based on Cuba’s belief that
Africa was ready for revolution and that it was in Cuba’s interest to spread
revolution there: it would win Havana new friends and weaken U.S. influence on
the continent. ‘‘It was almost a reflex,’’ Che’s second-in-command in Zaire
remarked. ‘‘Cuba defends itself by attacking its aggressor. This was our philoso-
phy. The Yankees were attacking us from every side, so we had to challenge them
everywhere. We had to divide their forces, so that they wouldn’t be able to
descend on us (or any other country) with all their might.’’≥≤
But to explain Cuban activism in the 1960s merely in terms of self-defense
would be to distort reality—a mistake that U.S. intelligence analysts did not
make. There was a second motivating force, as the cia and inr freely acknowl-
edged: Castro’s ‘‘sense of revolutionary mission.’’≥≥ As the head of the cia’s Board
of National Estimates told the director of Central Intelligence in September 1963,
‘‘he [Castro] is first of all a revolutionary.’’≥∂ Report after report stressed the same
point: Castro was ‘‘a compulsive revolutionary,’’≥∑ a man with a ‘‘fanatical de-
votion to his cause,’’≥∏ who was ‘‘inspired by a messianic sense of mission.’’≥π
He believed that he was ‘‘engaged in a great crusade.’’≥∫ The men who sur-
rounded Castro shared his sense of mission: ‘‘revolution is their raison d’etre.’’≥Ω
As Hughes wrote, Castro and his cohorts were ‘‘dedicated revolutionaries, ut-
terly convinced that they can and must bring radical change to Latin America
some day.’’∂≠
122 piero gleijeses
History, geography, culture, and language made Latin America the Cubans’
natural habitat, the place closest to Castro’s and his followers’ hearts, the first
place they tried to spread revolution. But Latin America was also the place where
their freedom of movement was most circumscribed. Castro was, as the cia
observed, ‘‘canny enough to keep his risks low’’ in the backyard of the United
States.∂∞ This is why fewer than forty Cubans fought in Latin America in the
1960s and why Cuba was extremely cautious about sending weapons to Latin
American rebels.
In Africa, Cuba incurred fewer risks. Whereas in Latin America Havana was
operating against legal governments, flouting international law and facing the
condemnation of the governments of the hemisphere, in Africa it was confront-
ing colonial powers or defending established states. Only in Zaire did Cuba help
insurgents fight against an independent government, but it was a government
that was considered illegitimate by many African states, and Cuba’s intervention
was coordinated with Egypt and Tanzania. Above all, in Africa there was much
less risk of a head-on collision with the United States. In fact, except for fleeting
moments (Algeria in October–November 1963 and Zaire in September 1965),
U.S. o≈cials barely noted the presence of Cubans in Africa—until Cuban troops
landed in Angola in November 1975.
Moreover, the Cuban leaders were convinced that their country had a special
empathy for the Third World—well beyond the confines of Latin America—and
a special role to play on its behalf. The Soviets and their East European allies
were white and, by Third World standards, rich; the Chinese su√ered from the
hubris of a great power and were unable to adapt to African and Latin American
culture. By contrast, Cuba was nonwhite, poor, threatened by a powerful enemy,
and culturally Latin American and African. It was therefore a special hybrid: a
socialist country with a Third World sensibility in a world that, as Castro rightly
understood, was dominated by the ‘‘conflict between privileged and under-
privileged, humanity against ‘imperialism,’ ’’∂≤ where the major fault line ran not
between socialist and capitalist states but between developed and underdevel-
oped countries.
These, then, were the dual motivations of Cuban activism in the 1960s: self-
preservation and revolutionary idealism. At times realpolitik clashed with revo-
lutionary duty, and realpolitik prevailed. The Mexican government did not join
the U.S. crusade against Cuba, and in return Cuba did not criticize Mexico’s cor-
rupt and repressive regime or support armed struggle there. But at other times,
revolutionary duty prevailed. In 1961 Cuba risked de Gaulle’s wrath to help the
Algerian rebels, and in 1963 it went to the defense of the Algerian Republic, even
though this jeopardized an important sugar contract with Morocco.
It is impossible to know what would have happened to Cuba’s foreign policy
activism had the costs suddenly escalated—that is, had Kennedy or Johnson
been willing to consider a modus vivendi with Castro if he abandoned his
support for revolution abroad. inr director Hughes wrestled with this question
in the spring of 1964:
On the one hand they [Cuba’s leaders] are still dedicated revolutionaries. . . . Many
would rather be remembered as revolutionary martyrs than economic planners. Yet
on the other hand these same men are aware that the current pressing problems de-
mand amelioration that can only be brought by muting the call to revolution, by at-
tempting to reach live and let live arrangements with the U.S., and by widening trade
and diplomatic contacts with the free world. Tensions between the two paths, be-
tween peaceful coexistence and the call for violent revolution will, continue to exist
within the Cuban hierarchy, both within and between individuals, for the foreseeable
future.∂≥
In the 1960s, Cuba did not have to choose between realpolitik and idealism,
because the United States consistently rebu√ed its attempts to discuss the mo-
dalities of a modus vivendi. Realpolitik and idealism ran along parallel tracks as
the main motivations of Cuba’s foreign policy. But does this hold true for the
1970s? More concretely, does it help explain the dispatch of Cuban troops to
Angola in November 1975? Two di≈culties are readily apparent. First, the argu-
ment of self-defense no longer applies, or at least it loses much of its power,
because in 1974 the United States had finally concluded that it was in its interest
to seek accommodation with Cuba. The conversations that began between the
two countries were undertaken at Washington’s initiative. In a secret meeting on
July 9, 1975—four months before Castro sent his troops to Angola—Cuban and
U.S. representatives discussed what Assistant Secretary of State William Rogers
described as ‘‘a series of ideas for a reciprocal, across-the-board improvement of
relations’’ leading to full bilateral ties.∂∂
Furthermore, whereas Castro’s fierce independence from the Soviet Union
in the 1960s was evident for all to see, by the early 1970s, reeling from the failure
of both his revolutionary o√ensive in Latin America and his economic poli-
cies at home, Castro had softened his attitude toward the Kremlin. Cuban
criticism of Soviet policies ceased, and Havana acknowledged Moscow’s primacy
within the socialist bloc. This may suggest that the Cuban intervention in An-
124 piero gleijeses
gola was motivated by Soviet demands, that Cuba was doing the bidding of the
Soviet Union.
This might seem plausible—until you study the documents. The Cuban inter-
vention in Angola was in fact a sterling example both of Cuba’s independence
from the Soviet Union and of Cuban idealism. It is now beyond question that, as
a Soviet o≈cial states in his memoirs, the Cubans sent their troops ‘‘on their own
initiative and without consulting us.’’∂∑ Indeed, the evidence is so compelling
that even Kissinger, who habitually dismissed the Cubans as Soviet proxies, has
reconsidered. ‘‘At the time we thought he [Castro] was operating as a Soviet
surrogate,’’ Kissinger writes in the final volume of his memoirs. ‘‘We could not
imagine that he would act so provocatively so far from home unless he was
pressured by Moscow to repay the Soviet Union for its military and economic
support. Evidence now available suggests that the opposite was the case.’’∂∏
Perhaps I should rephrase: it is beyond question, but it is still questioned.
That Cuba acted independently and challenged Moscow in late 1975 turns es-
tablished wisdom about the relationship between the superpowers and Third
World countries on its head. It may be hard to believe, but it is supported by
Cuban and U.S. documents that dovetail with remarkable precision and regu-
larity. Yet even serious Western scholars are tempted to ignore this evidence. Let
me give one example that is representative of a whole approach. In a recent
book, Odd Arne Westad writes that ‘‘Soviet, Cuban, Western, and South African
information gives conflicting versions of the Cuban build-up of troops in An-
gola.’’ He notes, correctly, that ‘‘Cuban sources claim that up to late Decem-
ber . . . all transport had taken place on Cuban ships and aircraft’’ (more exactly,
up to January 9, 1976). He notes that ‘‘Soviet archival documents give a di√erent
story, which is—at least in part—corroborated by information from other coun-
tries.’’ However, in the relevant footnote, he cites only one Soviet document, a
March 1, 1976, report by the Soviet chargé in Luanda. Westad fails to identify
‘‘the information from other countries’’ that corroborates ‘‘at least in part’’ the
Soviet ‘‘documents.’’ Although he claims that South African documents give ‘‘a
di√erent account,’’ he does not cite any. Most intriguing is Westad’s mention of
‘‘Western . . . information.’’ While he never explains what this information is, or
cites it, it is true that the U.S. government has declassified many U.S. documents
about the Cuban airlift, which U.S. intelligence services followed very closely.
These reports, however, completely support the Cuban version—to wit, that the
first Soviet logistical support for the transportation of Cuban troops to Angola
was provided on January 9, 1976.∂π Finally, forgetting his own earlier warning
that there are conflicting versions, Westad concludes, apparently on the basis of
his one Soviet document, that between November 1975 and mid-January 1976
the Soviets transported ‘‘more than twelve thousand soldiers from Cuba to
Angola.’’∂∫ Westad is a serious scholar. This is what makes his analysis par-
ticularly interesting. It reflects the depth of the bias about Cuba that aΔicts even
honest scholars.
What, then, motivated Castro’s bold and independent move in Angola? Not
Cuba’s narrow interests; not realpolitik. By deciding to send troops, Castro
challenged Brezhnev, who opposed the dispatch of Cuban soldiers to Angola.
Castro faced a serious military risk: Pretoria, urged on by Washington and
possibly Paris, might have escalated its involvement, and the Cuban soldiers
might have faced the full South African army without any guarantee of Soviet
assistance. (Indeed, it took two months for Moscow to provide the needed
logistical support to airlift Cuban troops to Angola.) Furthermore, the dispatch
of Cuban troops jeopardized relations with the West at a moment when they
were markedly improving: the United States was probing a modus vivendi; the
Organization of American States had just lifted its sanctions; and West European
governments were o√ering Havana low-interest loans and development aid.
Realpolitik would have demanded that Cuba rebu√ Luanda’s desperate appeals.
Had Castro merely been a client of the Soviet Union, he would have held back.
Castro sent troops because he was committed to racial justice. The victory of
the Pretoria-Washington axis would have meant the victory of apartheid, tight-
ening the grip of white domination over the people of southern Africa. It was a
defining moment: Castro sent his soldiers. As Kissinger himself now says, Castro
‘‘was probably the most genuine revolutionary leader then in power.’’∂Ω
Of course, Cuba could not have done what it did in Africa or in Latin America
without the economic and military support it received from the Soviet Union or
without the shield, however fragile, that Moscow o√ered against U.S. aggression.
(For example, although Castro intervened in Angola against Brezhnev’s wishes
and sustained the operation for two months without any logistical assistance
from the Soviet Union, his soldiers were armed with Soviet weapons, and Ha-
vana was able to bear the cost of the intervention because of Soviet aid. Further-
more, had the Soviet Union not existed, Cuba would have been exposed to the
likelihood of a U.S. military response and the even more likely threat of a
massive South African military escalation that would have crushed the fledgling
Cuban contingent.) Cuba’s ability to act was made possible by the existence of a
friendly superpower on which it depended for its economic and military lifeline,
a situation reminiscent of the fact that Israel’s freedom of maneuver has been
made possible by the support of the United States. Nonetheless, for Cuba—as
126 piero gleijeses
for Israel—this economic and military dependence did not translate into being
a client.
I do not know of any other country, in modern times, for which idealism has
been such a key component of its foreign policy. Not the United States (pace
the rhetoric of Je√ersonian idealism and Wilsonian idealism).∑≠ Arguably the
French revolutionaries for a fleeting moment in 1793; arguably Haiti when Presi-
dent Pétion gave invaluable aid to a desperate Bolívar; arguably the fledgling
Soviet Union briefly under Lenin.∑∞ It may also be asserted that a good dose of
idealism has characterized the foreign policy of the Scandinavian countries after
World War II—I am thinking of their generous foreign aid and their willingness
to assist the liberation movements of the Portuguese colonies, Namibia, and
South Africa—but this policy did not entail risks.∑≤ I know of no country other
than Cuba that for a relatively long period showed so much generosity and
courage in its foreign policy. As a paigc leader said, ‘‘The Cubans understood
better than anyone that they had a duty to fight and help their brothers be-
come free.’’∑≥
The Cubans treated movements and governments that depended on Cuba’s
assistance with a deference that I had not expected when I began my research
because I had never encountered it before. I had not believed it possible. Vis-
à-vis the paigc, the mpla, or the government of Angola, Cuba was a powerful
benefactor—but it behaved with a sense of respect that may be unique in the
annals of nations dealing with their dependent partners. Although the Cubans
were in a position to dictate terms, they never interfered and never tried to
impose their will on the Africans. The behavior of the Cuban government was
matched by that of the Cubans who fought on the ground. Even in Zaire in 1965,
the volunteers behaved during nine harrowing months with discipline and com-
mitment, despite their bitter disappointment with the rebels. Throughout, the
Cubans showed empathy and sensitivity that set them apart from their socialist
allies and their Western foes.
If we ask what the Cubans achieved with their revolutionary policy in Africa,
the ledger is largely positive. Cuban troops helped restrain Morocco in 1963; in
the Congo in 1965–66, they provided valuable aid to the mpla; and they lent
decisive assistance to the rebels of Guinea-Bissau in their quest for indepen-
dence. Obviously the Cubans’ most impressive success was in Angola, where
they humbled Washington and Pretoria and prevented the establishment of a
government in Luanda beholden to the apartheid regime. And beyond Angola,
the tidal wave unleashed by the Cuban victory washed over southern Africa. Its
psychological impact, the hope it aroused, is aptly illustrated by two statements
from across the political divide in South Africa. In February 1976, as Cuban
troops were pushing the South African army back toward the Namibian border,
a South African military analyst wrote: ‘‘In Angola Black troops—Cubans and
Angolans—have defeated White troops in military exchanges. Whether the bulk
of the o√ensive was by Cubans or Angolans is immaterial in the color-conscious
context of this war’s battlefield, for the reality is that they won, are winning, and
are not White; and that psychological edge, that advantage the White man has
enjoyed and exploited over 300 years of colonialism and empire, is slipping
away. White elitism has su√ered an irreversible blow in Angola, and Whites who
have been there know it.’’∑∂ The ‘‘White Giants’’ had retreated for the first time in
recent history—and black Africans celebrated. ‘‘Black Africa is riding the crest of
a wave generated by the Cuban success in Angola,’’ noted the World, South
Africa’s major black newspaper. ‘‘Black Africa is tasting the heady wine of the
possibility of realizing the dream of total liberation.’’∑∑ There would have been
no heady dream, only the pain of one more defeat, had the Cubans not inter-
vened, defeating Washington, defeating Pretoria, and defying the Soviet Union.
The impact was more than psychological. Cuba’s victory had clear, tangible
consequences. It forced Kissinger to turn against the racist white regime in
Rhodesia and spurred Jimmy Carter to work tirelessly for majority rule there.∑∏
It also marked the real beginning of Namibia’s war of independence. As a South
African general writes, ‘‘For the first time they [the Namibian rebels] obtained
what is more or less a prerequisite for successful insurgent campaigning, namely
a border that provided safe refuge.’’∑π For twelve years—until the New York
agreements of December 1988—Pretoria refused to leave Namibia, and Cuban
troops helped the Angolan army hold the line against bruising South African
incursions into Angola.
Little has been written about those years. The major published source is the
memoirs of Reagan’s assistant secretary for Africa, Chester Crocker, who ex-
plains the outcome—the independence of Namibia—largely in terms of U.S.
patience, skill, and wisdom.∑∫ A di√erent explanation emerges from an analysis
of newly declassified Cuban and U.S. documents. In April 1987, the U.S. ambas-
sador reported from Pretoria that the South African government was ‘‘implaca-
bly negative’’ toward Namibian independence.∑Ω In the following September, the
South African Defense Force unleashed a major attack against the Angolan army
in southeastern Angola. By early November it had cornered the best Angolan
units in the small town of Cuito Cuanavale and was poised to destroy them. But
on November 15, Castro ordered the best units of his army and its most sophisti-
cated hardware to Angola. ‘‘By going there [to Cuito Cuanavale] we placed
128 piero gleijeses
ourselves in the lion’s jaws,’’ Castro explained. ‘‘We accepted the challenge. And
from the first moment we planned to gather our forces to attack in another
direction, like a boxer who with his left hand blocks the blow and with his
right—strikes.’’∏≠
On March 23, 1988, the South Africans launched their last major attack against
Cuito. Once again, they failed. ‘‘One should ask [the South Africans],’’ Castro
remarked, ‘‘why has your army of the superior race been unable to take Cuito,
which is defended by blacks and mulattoes from Angola and the Caribbean?’’∏∞
As Castro spoke, hundreds of miles west of Cuito, a large Cuban force was
advancing toward the Namibian border. ‘‘At any other time,’’ U.S. intelligence
reported, ‘‘Pretoria would have regarded the Cuban move as a provocation,
requiring a swift and strong response. But the Cubans moved with such dispatch
and on such a scale that an immediate South African military response would
have involved serious risks.’’∏≤ The South Africans warned that the Cuban ad-
vance posed a ‘‘serious’’ military threat to Namibia and could precipitate ‘‘a
terrible battle.’’∏≥ But they gave ground.
While Castro’s troops advanced toward the Namibian border, Cubans, An-
golans, South Africans, and Americans were sparring at the negotiating table.
‘‘Reading the Cubans is yet another art form,’’ Crocker noted. ‘‘They are pre-
pared for both war and peace. . . . We witness considerable tactical finesse and
genuinely creative moves at the table. This occurs against the backdrop of Cas-
tro’s grandiose bluster and his army’s unprecedented projection of power on the
ground.’’∏∂ Many factors forced Pretoria to accept an independent Namibia, but
it would not have happened without the Cubans’ prowess on the battlefield and
their skill at the negotiating table.
This prowess and skill reverberated beyond Namibia. As Nelson Mandela
said, the Cuban victory ‘‘destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white
oppressor . . . [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa. . . . Cuito
Cuanavale was the turning point for the liberation of our continent—and of my
people—from the scourge of apartheid.’’∏∑
Just as in the 1960s, when the hundreds of Cubans who went to fight in Africa
were accompanied by hundreds of technical aid workers, so the thousands of
Cubans who went to fight in Angola in 1975–76 were soon joined by thousands
of aid workers. And in the 1980s, the tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers who
went to Africa were accompanied by tens of thousands of aid workers, while tens
of thousands of scholarship students went to Cuba. Throughout, this important
aid was provided free of charge or on extremely lenient terms.
In July 1991 Nelson Mandela visited Havana and voiced the epitaph to the story
of Cuba’s aid to Africa during the Cold War. His words set o√ ‘‘a gusher’’ of
criticism in the United States. ‘‘We come here with a sense of the great debt that is
owed the people of Cuba,’’ Mandela said. ‘‘What other country can point to a
record of greater selflessness than Cuba had displayed in its relations to Africa?’’∏∏
Notes
1. This essay is based on my book Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and
Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002). To avoid long
notes, in this essay I cite the sources only of direct quotations. I have based the essay
primarily on archival research, interviews with protagonists, and the press of thirty
countries in the Western Hemisphere, Europe, and Africa. These sources are explained in
Conflicting Missions, 503–14. For a full list of relevant printed sources, see Conflicting
Missions, 515–38.
2. In colonial times there were two Congos, one ruled by Paris, the other by Brussels.
Upon becoming independent in 1960, both retained the name Congo, to which was
added the name of their respective capitals, Brazzaville and Leopoldville. In October 1971
the former Belgian Congo (Congo Leopoldville) became Zaire, and in May 1997 it
became the Democratic Republic of Congo. To avoid confusion, in this essay I refer to the
former French colony (Congo Brazzaville) as ‘‘the Congo’’ and refer to the former
Belgian colony as ‘‘Zaire.’’
3. José Ramón Machado Ventura, note to the author, Havana, July 12, 1995, 1.
4. Che Guevara, ‘‘Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria (Congo),’’ Dar-es-Salaam, De-
cember 1965 or early 1966, 13, Private Collection, Havana.
5. cia, Special Memorandum, ‘‘Implications of Growing Communist Influence in
urtz,’’ September 29, 1964, 11, National Security File Country File (hereafter cited as
nsfcf), box 100, Lyndon B. Johnson Library, Austin, Texas (hereafter cited as lbjl).
6. Guevara, ‘‘Pasajes,’’ 13–14.
7. Ibid., 12–13, 128, 14.
8. Quotations from cia, O≈ce of Current Intelligence, ‘‘Brazzaville’s Move to the Left,’’
October 30, 1964, 5, nsfcf, box 83, lbjl, and ‘‘Discurso pronunciado por Raúl Castro Ruz
en acto por el XX aniversario de la construcción de las columnas de combatientes
internacionalistas cubanos que cumplieron misiones en el Congo Brazzaville y el Congo
Leopoldville,’’ Havana, November 7, 1985, 7, Archives of the Central Committee of the
Cuban Communist Party, Havana.
9. Interview with Rolando Kindelán, Havana, March 11, 1996.
10. ‘‘Policy Planning Memorandum No. 1,’’ enclosed in Department of State to All
African Diplomatic Posts, Lisbon, London, Paris, Rome, December 2, 1971, Pol 1 Afr-US,
Subject-Numeric Files: 1963–73, Record Group 59, National Archives, College Park, Md.
(hereafter cited as na).
130 piero gleijeses
11. President Luís Cabral, Nô Pintcha (Bissau), January 22, 1977, 4–6.
12. Interview with Joâo Bernardo Vieira (Nino), Bissau, May 1, 1996.
13. Interview with Francisca Pereira, Bissau, April 25, 1996.
14. Interviews with Ulises Estrada, Havana, December 7, 1994, and with Oscar Cár-
denas, Havana, December 5, 1993.
15. Interview with Víctor Dreke, Havana, June 26, 1994. Dreke was Che Guevara’s
second-in-command in Zaire and headed the Cuban military mission in Guinea-Bissau
in 1967–68.
16. Interview with Robinson McIlvaine, Washington, February 5, 1996.
17. Interview with Paul O’Neill, Washington, February 20, 1992.
18. ‘‘Discurso pronunciado,’’ 2.
19. Lúcio Lara, ‘‘A história do mpla,’’ n.d., Private Collection, Luanda.
20. Rafael Moracén, ‘‘Diario de campaña de Humberto Vázquez Mancevo,’’ entry of
September 1965, Private Collection, Havana.
21. Interview with Rafael Moracén, Havana, June 21, 1994.
22. Robert Hultslander (cia station chief, Luanda, 1975), fax to Piero Gleijeses, Decem-
ber 22, 1998, 3.
23. For example, Jorge Dominguez, a prominent American expert on Cuba, writes that
‘‘Cuba, the United States and South Africa engaged in a classic action-reaction process of
escalation. . . . South Africa . . . was unnerved by the deployment of nearly five hundred
[Cuban] military instructors and other military personnel, especially in October [1975].’’
Journal of Cold War Studies, summer 2003, 136. Dominguez overlooks all the available
evidence and o√ers none of his own.
24. F. J. du Toit Spies, Operasie Savannah: Angola, 1975–1976 (Pretoria, 1989); Sophie du
Preez, Avontuur in Angola: Die Verhaal van Suid-Afrika se soldate in Angola, 1975–1976
(Pretoria, 1989).
25. See Jan Breytenbach, Forged in Battle (Cape Town, 1986), and They Live by the
Sword (Alberton, South Africa, 1990); Ian Uys, Bushmen Soldiers (Germiston, South
Africa, 1994); Helmoed-Römer Heitman, South African War Machine (Novato, Calif.,
1985); Willem Steenkamp, South Africa’s Border War, 1966–1989 (Gibraltar, 1989).
26. Spies, Operasie Savannah, 108.
27. P. W. Botha, April 17, 1978, Republic of South Africa, House of Assembly Debates,
Pretoria, col. 4852.
28. Cuban military instructors began to go to Ethiopia in April 1977. There were about
300 instructors by early December, when Cuban troops began arriving. By early January
1978, there were about 900 Cuban soldiers in Ethiopia, in addition to the approximately
300 instructors. The number of troops peaked at 12,000 by late March 1978. See Raúl
Castro to Fidel Castro, April 29, 1977, Centro de Información de las Fuerzas Armadas
Revolucionarias, Havana (hereafter cited as cifar); MemoConv, Mengistu, Raúl Castro
et al., January 10, 1978, 3, 6, Oficina Secreta, 2do Sec., Archives of the Central Committee
of the Cuban Communist Party, Havana; minfar, ‘‘Misiones internacionalistas cumpli-
das por Cuba—1963 a 1991,’’ July 1998, 52–59, Archives of the Central Committee of the
Cuban Communist Party.
29. Quotations from ‘‘National Policy Paper—Cuba: United States Policy,’’ draft, July
15, 1968, 16, Freedom of Information Act (hereafter cited as foia); and Department of
State, ‘‘Soviet Intentions toward Cuba,’’ March 1965, 3, nsfcf, box 33/37, lbjl.
30. Denney (inr) to SecState, ‘‘Cuban Foreign Policy,’’ September 15, 1967, 4, Pol 1
Cuba, Subject Numeric Files: 1963–73, Record Group 59, na.
31. National security advisor McGeorge Bundy, quoted in Gordon Chase, ‘‘Meeting
with the President, December 19, 1963,’’ Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–63,
vol. 11, 907.
32. cia, O≈ce of Current Intelligence, ‘‘Cuban Subversion in Latin America,’’ April 23,
1965, 4, nsfcf, box 31/32, lbjl; Hughes to SecState, ‘‘Che Guevara’s African Venture,’’
April 19, 1965, 1, nsfcf, box 20, lbjl; interview with Víctor Dreke, Havana, July 11, 1994.
For Castañeda’s assertions, see his Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara (New
York, 1997), esp. chaps. 8–9.
33. Denney (inr) to SecState, ‘‘Cuban Foreign Policy,’’ September 15, 1967, 5, Pol 1
Cuba, Subject—Numeric Files: 1963–73, Record Group 59, na.
34. Sherman Kent to Director of Central Intelligence, September 4, 1963, nsc 145-
10001-10126/205, John F. Kennedy Assassination Collection, Record Group 263, na.
35. Special National Intelligence Estimate, ‘‘Cuba: Castro’s Problems and Prospects
over the Next Year or Two,’’ June 27, 1968, 3, National Security Files, National Intelligence
Estimate, box 8/9, lbjl.
36. cia, Directorate of Intelligence, ‘‘Cuban Subversive Policy and the Bolivian Guer-
rilla Episode,’’ May 1968, 3, nsfcf, box 19, lbjl.
37. Special National Intelligence Estimate, ‘‘The Situation in the Caribbean through
1959,’’ June 30, 1959, 3, National Security Archive, Washington (hereafter cited as nsa).
38. National Intelligence Estimate, ‘‘The Situation in Cuba,’’ June 14, 1960, 9, nsa.
39. Department of State, Policy Planning Council, ‘‘Caribbean: Cuba’’ (draft outline),
February 13, 1964, 6, nsfcf, box 26/29, lbjl.
40. Hughes to SecState, ‘‘Cuba in 1964,’’ April 17, 1964, 10–11, foia.
41. Special National Intelligence Estimate, ‘‘Cuba: Castro’s Problems and Prospects
over the Next Year or Two,’’ June 27, 1968, 3, National Security File, National Intelligence
Estimate, box 8/9, lbjl.
42. ‘‘National Policy Paper—Cuba: United States Policy,’’ draft, July 15, 1968, 15 (quot-
ing Castro), foia.
43. Hughes to SecState, ‘‘Cuba in 1964,’’ April 17, 1964, 10–11, foia. Castro’s passionate
desire to improve the lot of the Cuban people had been recognized early by U.S. intel-
ligence, which noted in April 1959: ‘‘He is inspired by a messianic sense of mission to aid
his people.’’ Special nie, ‘‘The Situation in the Caribbean through 1959,’’ June 30, 1959, 3,
nsa. Similarly, Tad Szulc, by far the best biographer of Castro, stressed ‘‘the obsession
of Fidel Castro to do away with human, social and economic underdevelopment in
132 piero gleijeses
Cuba. . . . To eradicate underdevelopment . . . was, indeed, Castro’s magnificent obsession

from the beginning.’’ Szulc, Fidel: A Critical Portrait (New York, 1987, 593–94). Two more
recent works should be noted: Leycester Coltman’s The Real Fidel Castro (New Haven,
2003) has good insights but is marred by too many factual errors; and Ignacio Ramonet’s
Fidel Castro: Biografía a dos voces (Barcelona, 2006) is a lengthy interview with Fidel
Castro. It is useful as a statement by Castro of his views on a wealth of subjects, but it has
no analytical value—the author’s contribution is to ask questions and transcribe the
answers.
44. Quoted in Peter Kornbluh and James Blight, ‘‘Dialogue with Castro: A Hidden
History,’’ New York Review of Books, October 6, 1994.
45. Anatoly Dobrynin, In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War
Presidents (New York, 1995), 362.
46. Henry Kissinger, Years of Renewal (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999), 816.
47. See Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our
Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 234–36; and Gleijeses, Conflicting
Missions, 367–69.
48. Westad, The Global Cold War, 236.
49. Kissinger, Years of Renewal, 785.
50. The conventional view of Je√ersonian idealism overlooks Je√erson’s ability to
convince himself that the Louisiana Purchase included Texas and West Florida, against all
reasonable evidence. It ignores his opposition to the independence of Cuba (fueled by his
desire to annex the island), his eagerness to see Haiti crushed (fueled by his fear of its
successful slave revolt), and his pressure on General William Harrison to accelerate the
acquisition of Native American land in the Northwest, something that could be accom-
plished only by fraud and violence. The myth of Wilsonian idealism focuses on the
president’s rhetoric and his support for the rights of distant European countries but
overlooks or grossly distorts his record in the Caribbean and Central America.
51. On Haiti’s aid, which Spanish American and U.S. historians consistently overlook
or minimize, see Paul Verna, Pétion y Bolívar (Caracas, 1968); and Piero Gleijeses, ‘‘Haiti’s
Contribution to the Independence of Spanish America: A Forgotten Chapter,’’ Revista/
Review Interamericana, winter 1979–80, 511–28. For a comparative assessment of the
roles of Haiti, the United States, and England on behalf of Spanish American indepen-
dence, see Piero Gleijeses, ‘‘The Limits of Sympathy: The United States and the Indepen-
dence of Spanish America,’’ Journal of Latin American Studies, October 1992, 481–505.
52. The Nordiska Afrikainstitutet of Uppsala, Sweden, has recently published several
important volumes on this subject: Iina Soiri and Pekka Pertola, Finland and National
Liberation in Southern Africa (1999); Tore Linné Eriksen, ed., Norway and National
Liberation in Southern Africa (2000); Tor Sellström, ed., Liberation in Southern Africa—
Regional and Swedish Voices: Interviews from Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Af-
rica, Zimbabwe, the Frontline and Sweden (1999); Sellström, Sweden and National Libera-
tion in Southern Africa, 2 vols. (1999, 2002); Christopher Munthe Morgenstierne, Den-
mark and National Liberation in Southern Africa (2003). See also Piero Gleijeses, ‘‘Scan-
dinavia and the Liberation of Southern Africa,’’ International History Review, June 2005,
324–31.
53. Interview with Joseph Turpin, Bissau, April 30, 1996.
54. Roger Sargent, Rand Daily Mail (Johannesburg), February 17, 1976, 10.
55. World (Johannesburg), February 24, 1976, 4.
56. My comment about Carter is based on newly declassified documents from the
Jimmy Carter Library in Atlanta. I have also benefited from Professor Nancy Mitchell’s
pathbreaking manuscript ‘‘Race and Realpolitik: Jimmy Carter and Africa,’’ which will be
ready for publication in 2007.
57. Jannie Geldenhuys, A General’s Story: From an Era of War and Peace (Johan-
nesburg, 1995), 59.
58. Chester Crocker, High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighbor-
hood (New York: Norton, 1992). I am currently writing a book on U.S. and Cuban policy
in southern Africa during the Carter and Reagan years. The first results of my research
appear in my essay ‘‘Kuba in Afrika, 1975–1991,’’ in Heisse Kriege im Kalten Krieg, ed.
Bernd Greibner, Christian Müller, and Dierk Walter (Hamburg, 2006), 469–510. See also
my ‘‘Moscow’s Proxy? Cuba and Africa, 1975–1988,’’ Journal of Cold War Studies 8, no. 2
(spring 2006): 3–51. An incorrectly edited version of this article appeared in the spring
2006 issue; the editor has promised me that the full, correct version will appear in the
winter 2006–7 issue.
59. Perkins (U.S. ambassador, Pretoria) to SecState, April 17, 1987, foia.
60. ‘‘Transcripción sobre la reunión del Comandante en Jefe con la delegación de
políticos de Africa del Sur (Comp. Slovo) efectuada en el minfar el 29.9.88,’’ 16, cifar.
61. ‘‘Conversacion del Comandante en Jefe Fidel Castro Ruz, primer secretario del
comité central del Partido Comunista de Cuba y presidente de los Consejos de Estado y
de Ministros, con Anatoli L. Adamishin, viceministro de relaciones exteriores de la
URSS. Efectuada el día 28 de marzo de 1988,’’ 48, Archives of the Central Committee of
the Cuban Communist Party, Havana.
62. Abramowitz (Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Department of State) to Sec-
State, May 13, 1988, 1–2, foia.
63. General Jannie Geldenhuys, Chief of the South African Defence Forces, Star (Jo-
hannesburg), May 27, 1988, 1; Defense Minister Magnus Malan, Star, May 17, 1988, 1.
64. Amembassy Brazzaville to SecState, August 25, 1988, 6, nsa.
65. Nelson Mandela, July 26, 1991, Granma, July 27, 1991, 3.
66. Richard Cohen, ‘‘Mandela: A Mistake in Cuba,’’ Washington Post, July 30, 1991, 15;
Mandela, July 26, 1991, Granma, July 27, 1991, 3.
ARIEL C. ARMONY
Transnationalizing the Dirty War

Argentina in Central America
Toward the end of the 1970s and into the early 1980s, the military regime in
Argentina internationalized its apparatus for repression in Latin America. The
Argentine military transferred its experience in counterinsurgency to other
countries in the region as part of a crusade against Communism in the hemi-
sphere. A final phase of this extraterritorial campaign was the country’s par-
ticipation in the conflicts in Central America. The Argentine intervention in the
region began during the Nicaraguan civil war (1977–79) and immediately after-
ward provided training in counterinsurgency and military assistance to El Sal-
vador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The Argentine military program, conducted
by veterans of the Dirty War, reached its climax with the organization of the
Nicaraguan Contras.
The Argentine military played a fundamental role in the cycle of state-
sponsored violence in Latin America, o√ering Central American counterinsur-
gent regimes a viable ‘‘parainstitutional’’ model dedicated to the control of
internal fronts. Operating on the assumption that they had reached a high level
of professionalism in internal security, the Argentines transferred their experi-
ence in counterinsurgency to the armed forces in Central America. They gave
assistance through military instruction, intelligence, and the sale of weapons.
The Argentine military presence in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras—
where approximately three thousand former members of Somoza’s National
Guard took refuge immediately after the revolutionary triumph in Nicaragua—
notably facilitated the formation of an anti-Sandinista army composed of for-
mer members of the National Guard.∞
The Argentine crusade was nourished, and at the same time promoted, by a
wide transnational network of anti-Communism comprising government and
nongovernment actors. The Argentine anti-Communist crusade should be seen
as part of a transnational ideological network determined to destroy what was
t r a n s n at i o n a l i z i n g t h e d i r t y wa r 135
perceived as a multifaceted international enemy that threatened Western society.

This network combined anti-Communism and a counterrevolutionary project
with diverse illegal activities such as drug tra≈cking and money laundering. The
transnational anti-Communist component should be thought of as the counter-
part to equally transnational revolutionary networks. In this sense each ideolog-
ical camp achieved an important degree of self-coordination, creating unprece-
dented structures in the region. These structures played a key role in the conflict
between the ideological blocs that characterized the Cold War in Latin America.
Argentina, playing its traditionally aggressive role in foreign policy, warned
that the government of Jimmy Carter had left a vacuum in the hemispheric anti-
Communist struggle in the late 1970s, and took advantage of the opportunity to
assume a position of leadership in this fight. In response to what it considered to
be a hotbed of Communism, the Argentine military tried to expand its antisub-
versive extraterritorial campaign in Central America. It did so as an independent
force for right-wing repression. The administration of Ronald Reagan, com-
mitted to rolling back Communist expansionism, ‘‘bought’’ the clandestine Ar-
gentine military program early in 1981. Later that year, Reagan formally au-
thorized the cia to ‘‘support and conduct paramilitary operations against the
Cuban presence and Cuban-Sandinista support infrastructure in Nicaragua and
elsewhere in Central America.’’≤ According to this plan, the agency would ‘‘work
with foreign governments, organizations and individuals to build popular sup-
port that will be nationalistic, anti-Cuban and anti-Somoza.’’≥
The collaboration between Argentina and the United States was based on the
mutual belief that the so-called Third World was one of the battlefields in the
East-West conflict. Both countries maintained that this conflict demanded deci-
sive military action to counterbalance what was deemed to be Soviet expansion-
ism. Indeed, international Communism was believed to be the source of the
threats to national security in the hemisphere. Therefore the Reagan administra-
tion’s decision to use covert action as the most e≈cient method of destabilizing
the Sandinista government coincided with the Argentine objective of secretly
forming an army from units of Somoza’s exiled National Guard to carry out
guerrilla operations within Nicaraguan territory. This convergence of interests,
however, did not mean that Argentina would subordinate its autonomy in for-
eign policy matters to decisions made by the United States. Rather, cooperation
in Central America allowed both countries to advance their respective agendas.
While the cooperation between Argentina and the Reagan administration in
launching a counterrevolutionary force based in Honduras was rapid and e≈-
cient, the United States’ decision to support Great Britain in the conflict over the
136 ariel c. armony
Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) in 1982 a√ected Argentina’s commitment in

Central America. The impact of the covert Argentine intelligence program on
relations with the United States contributed to the military junta’s strategic
decision to invade the islands in the South Atlantic. Because the military leaders
in Buenos Aires considered the intervention of Argentine advisors in Central
America to be vital to U.S. policy, they falsely presumed that the United States
would remain neutral if Argentina occupied the Falkland Islands. Faced with the
disappointment of the U.S. decision to cooperate with its nato ally, the Argen-
tine military reduced its participation in the Contra program. Still, a group of
Argentine o≈cers continued to train anti-Sandinista forces until the end of 1984,
that is, after the fall of the Argentine military regime.
The Argentine crusade in Central America was a final step in the creation of
formal and informal transnational zones of collaboration and contact.∂ Such
contact zones are not located within a defined territory but represent areas
characterized by the exchange and circulation of ideas, links, and resources.∑ The
creation of Operation Condor in 1975 by Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay,
and Bolivia (later joined by Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru) represented the first
formal collaboration among the countersubversive structures in the region.
Established at Chile’s initiative, Condor was an integrated intelligence system
devised to combat ‘‘transnational subversive elements.’’∏ This network aimed at
coordinating e√orts to launch a multinational o√ensive against leftist organiza-
tions, not only in Latin America but also in Europe and the United States. The
countries that were integrated into Operation Condor achieved a high degree of
cooperation, which was unusual in the region. This cooperation included politi-
cal assassinations and the kidnapping and ‘‘transfer’’ of political refugees to their
countries of origin.
Argentina’s participation in the coup d’état in Bolivia in July 1980 represented
a further step in the creation of transnational spaces as part of the ideological
conflict in the hemisphere. The so-called Cocaine Coup combined East-West
geopolitical concerns with matters of strategic regional influence.π In July 1980
the Argentine military participated in the coup d’état led by the commander of
the Bolivian army, General Luis García Meza. This intervention was an impor-
tant step in the process of Argentine military expansion in the subcontinent.
According to General Jorge Rafael Videla, Argentina’s de facto president at the
time, the armed forces of that country helped to overthrow the civilian govern-
ment in order to prevent the emergence of a ‘‘Cuba in South America.’’∫ ‘‘It was
part of the game of the Cold War,’’ said a high-ranking naval o≈cer. ‘‘We had to
do the dirty work in Bolivia.’’Ω This military action was undertaken despite the
Carter administration’s stated opposition to the interruption of the democratic

process in Bolivia.
At the end of the 1970s, the unstable situation in Central America stimu-
lated the convergence of anti-Communist actors in support of the armed anti-
Sandinista movement. The multifaceted network of interactions between gov-
ernments and pressure groups centered mainly on the exchange of information,
the mobilization of economic and military resources, and the coordination of
operational plans. The result was a formidable transnational political nexus that
embraced groups such as the Liga Anticomunista Mundial (lam) and its Latin
American chapter, the Confederación Anticomunista Latinoamericana (cal);
the network of Cubans exiled to the United States (i.e., the terrorist organiza-
tions Omega 7 and Alfa 66, based in Florida); the Italian Masonic Lodge, Propa-
ganda Due (p-2); the Confederación de Asociaciones por la Unidad de las
Sociedades de América (causa); the political wing of the Unification Church of
Reverend Sun Myung Moon; Central American political parties such as the
Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (mln) of Guatemala and the Alianza Re-
publicana Nacionalista (arena) in El Salvador; paramilitary organizations such
as the Movimiento Costa Rica Libre (mcrl); organizations of the religious Right
with headquarters in the United States, such as the Evangelical Extension and
the Moral Majority; and economic and business groups of di√erent countries in
the region.∞≠ While motivated by a variety of interests, these organizations were
united by the common objective of defeating left-wing revolutionary forces
throughout the hemisphere.
The Argentine Case in the Light of the Cold War
Argentina’s decision to extend its influence beyond its borders—at times putting
it at odds with U.S. policy—necessitates a reconsideration of the role played by
Latin American states in the regional conflicts that took place within the frame-
work of the Cold War. Although much more limited in terms of its reach and
resources (and also less well studied), the Argentine case represents the anti-
Communist counterpart of Cuban activism in the Third World. The cases of
Argentina and Cuba reveal that certain Latin American states designed and
carried out forms of intervention in the Third World independently of the great
powers. In the process, the Argentine case sheds important light on the dy-
namics of the Cold War from the perspective of ‘‘Third World country to Third
World country,’’ thereby complementing Piero Gleijeses’s chapter in this volume
on Cuban intervention abroad.∞∞
138 ariel c. armony
These cases show that the United States and the Soviet Union should not be
considered as the only principal, external actors in Central America during the
Cold War. By the time of the revolutionary victory in Nicaragua, Soviet foreign
policy toward the region was being determined by a combination of pragmatism
and ideological considerations. The symbiosis between ‘‘imperial expansion-
ism’’ and ‘‘ideological proselytism’’ dated back to the 1920s, and although it
continued under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev, it was already showing signs
of decline.∞≤ If the Soviet Union did not wish to abandon the Sandinista move-
ment, neither was it willing to accept the burden of ‘‘another Cuba’’ in an area of
secondary importance to the Kremlin. Ideological considerations were balanced
by the concern to prevent a confrontation with the United States in an area that
Moscow identified as the strategic ‘‘backyard’’ of North America. In sum, the
Soviet Union behaved prudently with regard to the dramatic events in Central
America.∞≥
In contrast with the idea held by part of the anti-Communist bloc that ‘‘Soviet
expansionism’’ was a source for the revolutionary movement in Central Amer-
ica, Soviet foreign policy toward the region—particularly in Nicaragua—was
generally reactive. The Soviet Union increased its economic and military assis-
tance to Nicaragua in response to the aggression financed by the United States.
Until the mid-1980s, Soviet military assistance to Nicaragua was limited to
defending the revolution against the aggression of the Contras; it did not extend
to promoting insurrection in Central America. By contrast, Cuba promoted
policies in support of the revolutionary movements in the region, openly con-
tradicting the interests of the Kremlin.∞∂
For its part, the Carter administration emphasized its commitment to aban-
don what it perceived to be a ‘‘tradition of manipulation’’ of the Third World by
the United States; instead it sought to assume an attitude of open cooperation
with those countries. This new policy accorded Latin America a di√erent role.
The region was selected to serve as a laboratory for a sincere dialogue between
North and South, with the United States abandoning what Carter termed as
‘‘that inordinate fear of Communism which once led us to embrace any dictator
who joined us in that fear.’’∞∑ The key points of this policy were the negotiations
for a treaty for the Panama Canal, the commitment to human rights and the
democratization of the hemisphere, and the intention to improve relations with
Cuba. From the perspective of Washington, Latin America was a ‘‘gray area’’ on
the international geopolitical map, and therefore a suitable and safe place for the
U.S. government to put this innovative agenda into action.∞∏
Both the Soviet position regarding the region and the human rights policy of
the Carter administration suggest that the revolutionary phenomenon in Latin

America—whether ultimately its triumph or its downfall—was of more strategic
and ideological importance to countries such as Cuba and Argentina than to the
United States (at least momentarily) and the Soviet Union.∞π In other words, the
Kremlin favored a cautious approach toward the revolutionary regime in Nica-
ragua and the rebel movements in the region, while President Carter based his
policies on the perception that the Soviet threat was less intense in the second
half of the 1970s and on the possibility of finding a modus vivendi with the
triumphant coalition led by the Sandinistas.
In contrast, the Argentine military regime maintained a strongly militant atti-
tude toward the anti-Communist struggle. The Argentine government viewed
the tension with the United States as a clash between Carter’s lack of political
realism (resulting from the moral focus on which his foreign policy was based)
and Argentina’s need to combat and destroy a movement of armed struggle
backed by Cuba and the Soviet Union. Argentina’s military leaders held that in
the 1970s this movement had contributed to bringing their country to the brink
of national disintegration.∞∫
In direct contrast with the Carter White House, President Reagan’s ‘‘pragma-
tism’’ was perceived by the Argentine regime as a sound basis for mutual under-
standing. There were still discrepancies in the views of the two countries, but
their coincidences on international policy nurtured a flexible bilateral relation-
ship. Thus Argentina entered a partnership with the United States in the hemi-
spheric fight against Communism. According to General Miguel Angel Mallea
Gil, a close advisor to President Videla and military attaché to the United States
in the early 1980s, ‘‘A fundamental U.S. objective was to overthrow the Sandi-
nista regime. Thus . . . when two countries have a common goal, they under-
stand each other much better.’’∞Ω The leaders of the military regime perceived the
U.S.–Argentine alliance as the beginning of a new era in which Argentina was to
obtain international recognition for its victory over the Communist enemy. The
Argentines felt, for the first time in years, that they were recognized as U.S. allies.
‘‘The fight against subversion in Central America marked a period of honey-
moon between Argentina and the United States,’’ said a navy o≈cer with direct
contacts in the Pentagon. ‘‘It was a time of great prestige for Argentina.’’≤≠
The Argentine intervention against ‘‘international Marxism’’ in the hemi-
sphere was consistent with the generals’ assertion that their country had su√ered
‘‘a Soviet invasion via its Cuban surrogate.’’≤∞ According to one of the most
notorious Argentine ideologues of state terror, the country had been a battlefield
of an international confrontation that continued in Central America.≤≤ Despite
140 ariel c. armony
the military victory over the Montoneros and the Ejército Revolucionario del
Pueblo (erp) toward the end of 1977, the top-level military o≈cials in Buenos
Aires believed that the Argentine guerrilla groups operating outside the country
posed a threat that needed to be eradicated.≤≥ Consequently they considered
military action beyond the nation’s borders to be an essential, final phase in the
internal war against armed revolutionary organizations.≤∂
Although the armed forces had largely destroyed the military infrastruc-
ture of the Montoneros and the erp, the generals construed the ‘‘subversive-
terrorist’’ threat as a complex network of organizations comprising an armed
apparatus responsible for military actions and ‘‘a political apparatus of leader-
ship, propaganda and indoctrination.’’≤∑ According to a 1977 army intelligence
report, the strategy of the Montoneros and the erp had shifted toward prioritiz-
ing political action over armed struggle. This report underscored that the con-
frontation against the guerrilla organizations continued in the international
arena.≤∏
The Argentine military maintained that geographic limits could not be con-
sidered an obstacle in the defense of the West. The military high command
believed that the risks posed by the advance of Communism in Latin America
made it necessary to create a political and military front to defend the hemi-
sphere, one capable of confronting this new type of conflict.≤π Multilateral con-
ventional assistance against external aggression—such as that established by the
Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (tiar)—was considered inade-
quate for this new reality. Since the region was faced with the aggression of the
‘‘Marxist Communist International,’’ the concept of national borders was subor-
dinated to the ideological dimension. That is, from the military point of view,
the war against Communist armed revolution defined a new kind of confronta-
tion in which geographic boundaries would not circumscribe military opera-
tions into separate conflicts. If the Marxist enemy applied a global strategy that
ignored the notion of conventional frontiers, the response from the Western
bloc would adjust to this new reality.≤∫
As explained, Operation Condor was an initial, multinational response to a
perceived threat that went beyond national borders. According to Colonel Man-
uel Contreras, chief of Chile’s Directorate of National Intelligence (dina), the
rationale for this enterprise was to create a formal structure that would allow the
countries under attack to respond to an enemy that had developed ‘‘a leadership
structure that is intercontinental, continental, regional and subregional.’’≤Ω For
the anti-Communist forces, defeating an internationally organized enemy that
included Marxist terrorists, human rights organizations, political activists, and

pro-democracy groups required a new type of regional security agreement.
Consistent with this framework, the Argentines decided to fashion a program
of continental military expansion that aspired to halt the advance of—and even-
tually defeat—the revolutionaries in the hemisphere. Argentina’s foreign policy,
while strongly motivated by anti-Communist ideology, was also based on clear
political and economic pragmatism. A good example of this pragmatism—and
of its independence in foreign policy—was the decision of the Argentine military
government not to join the grain embargo against the Soviet Union, which was
imposed by the Carter administration in 1980 following the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan. Thus, at the same time that the Argentine military embarked on a
series of extraterritorial operations viewed through the lens of a global struggle
against Communism, they also remained steadfast in their decision to be one of
the main grain suppliers of the Soviet Union. Significantly, Argentina’s decision
not to join the embargo contributed to the eventual downfall of the sanctions
imposed by the United States.≥≠
The ‘‘Intelligence Community’’
Because of the ideological character of the conflict with the revolutionary en-
emy, the intelligence apparatus of the Argentine military government played a
key role in the repressive domestic campaign, and particularly in the extra-
territorial projection of the military regime. Toward the end of the 1950s, the
new hypothesis that counterrevolutionary warfare demanded a more wide-
spread and sophisticated use of intelligence services than did conventional war-
fare led to the development of the so-called comunidad informativa, or intel-
ligence community.≥∞ In the 1960s, the emphasis on counterinsurgent warfare
and the emergence of the first local guerrilla groups gave the internal intelligence
service a strategic role within the military structure. In the following decade, the
evolution of the intelligence apparatus led to its transformation into a clan-
destine arm of the state, with its own logistics, regulations, and functional
autonomy. Recently declassified documents from the U.S. Department of State
confirm the central role played by the intelligence services in both the domestic
and extraterritorial arenas during the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s. The
intelligence services, especially the Army Intelligence Battalion 601, exercised an
enormous influence over the decisions of the military government.≥≤ This unit
had a central role in the compilation of information, a high degree of autonomy,
142 ariel c. armony
and direct access to the ‘‘war bounty’’ obtained from the campaigns of kid-
nappings and ‘‘disappearances.’’ Therefore Argentina’s extraterritorial activities
were, on the whole, designed and implemented by the most violent and well-
equipped sector of the military apparatus.
Military intelligence paid special attention to the transnational links among
insurgent organizations. In particular, the military reports emphasized the im-
portance of the Junta Coordinadora Revolucionaria (jcr), an organization that,
according to military documents, was created to ‘‘prolong and awaken Marxist
subversion in the 1960s and infuse new objectives and stimuli.’’≥≥ The nucleus of
the jcr was formed by guerrilla organizations in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and
Bolivia.≥∂ The alliance among the guerrilla groups was o≈cially established in
1973, shortly before the military coup d’état that overthrew Salvador Allende in
Chile.≥∑ A secret military report stated that to attain its initial strategic objective
of a unified revolutionary vanguard movement in Latin America, the jcr estab-
lished contacts with insurgent organizations in Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, Vene-
zuela, Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, and the Dominican Repub-
lic.≥∏ It is worth noting that one of the Task Forces of the Battalion 601 was
exclusively dedicated to monitoring groups related to the jcr, and that an ana-
lytical section of the battalion was given the task of monitoring any suspicious
activities by the Soviets, Chinese, Cubans, and North Koreans in Argentina.≥π
The coordination needed for repression, and for the internationalization of
the Argentine counterinsurgent apparatus, required the development of auton-
omous intelligence units that would operate from bases located outside the
country, and the establishment of connections with transnational networks. As
part of its response to the internationalization of the insurgent apparatus, the
Argentine military command authorized the formation of a special intelligence
unit, the External Task Force, created as an extension of Intelligence Battalion
601. Its general headquarters was established in Florida, where the intelligence
unit coordinated shipments of armaments and military supplies, financial trans-
actions, intelligence operations, and counterinsurgency instruction, all in sup-
port of the Argentine counterrevolutionary program in Central America. Ac-
cording to the testimony given to the U.S. Senate Commission on Foreign
A√airs by Leandro Sánchez Reisse, a former agent of the Argentine Army Intel-
ligence, the cia—which had kept itself up to date on repressive operations
during the Dirty War in Argentina—continued to closely monitor the clan-
destine activities of Argentina in the United States.≥∫
Using front companies, the Argentines circulated millions of dollars in ac-
counts in the United States, Switzerland, the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands,
Liechtenstein, and Panama.≥Ω The acquisition of arms and military supplies was
undertaken through uno≈cial channels from such diverse sources as East Ger-
many, Great Britain, Taiwan, Thailand, and South Korea. The Argentines also
bought armaments from Cuban American suppliers and sent them to Central
America through Panama, among other routes.∂≠ The clandestine network cre-
ated by Argentine military intelligence served, in addition, as a channel for the
narcotics trade and money laundering, activities that went beyond the initial
objective of deterring the threat of Communism in the hemisphere.
The financial entities with which Argentine intelligence agencies were work-
ing outside the country were involved in other illegal activities, such as money
laundering for Colombian drug dealers, and they also played a key role in the
Iran-Contra operation during the Reagan administration.∂∞ Argentine intel-
ligence operations based in the United States also cooperated with the Pilot
Center of the Argentine Navy, based in Paris. The aim of this center was to
produce propaganda in support of the military regime, collect information on
opposition groups in Europe, and infiltrate human rights organizations.∂≤
The Operations in Central America
Argentina’s intervention in Central America extended to Nicaragua (during the

government of Somoza), El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. The Argentine
military participated as much in the internal repression in these countries as in
the war against the Sandinista regime. Because of institutional links and per-
sonal ties with various Central American leaders, as well as the rapid decision to
provide assistance to the counterrevolutionary struggle, Argentine military ad-
visors circulated easily from country to country in the Central American region,
facilitating the eventual establishment of the anti-Sandinista program.
The experience of counterinsurgency in Central America reveals a little-
studied aspect of the Cold War in Latin America: the existence of a hemispheric
military culture, resulting from transnational formative processes, both ideolog-
ical and technical, in which external influences (such as the United States and
France) teamed up with local sources for training and ideas. For this reason, it is
worth commenting on the importance of influences such as French counter-
revolutionary doctrine and U.S. national security policies in the formulation of
Argentina’s doctrine of national security—the underlying ideological compo-
nent of state-sponsored terror.
The United States emphasized technical training for ‘‘counterinsurgent’’ war-
fare and the necessity for the collective defense of the hemisphere against Com-
144 ariel c. armony
munist expansionism. The experience of the United States in the Vietnam War
provided an important source of know-how for the Argentine military concern-
ing counterinsurgency techniques.∂≥ The School of the Americas, located in the
Panama Canal Zone, played a critical role in circulating technical knowledge
for counterrevolutionary war; in addition, it helped establish continental anti-
Communist networks consisting of Latin American o≈cials who were trained
there in the 1960s and 1970s.∂∂ In spite of this influence, many Argentine o≈cials
—referring to the internal conflict in their country in the 1970s—proclaimed that
‘‘the United States did not understand that the subversive war was [fundamen-
tally] ideological.’’∂∑
The influence of the French current of thought has been less studied. The
doctrine that was developed during the wars in Indochina (1946–54) and Algeria
(1954–62) emphasized a global and ideological focus on the phenomenon of
insurgency. In this regard, French nationalist Catholicism exerted a decisive in-
fluence on the Argentine military.∂∏ This ideological tendency integrated French
military nationalism with the extreme currents of thought of ultraconservative
groups such as the Cité Catholique. The messianic undertones of the doctrine de
la guerre révolutionnaire reinforced the Argentine military’s perception that the
armed forces should play a cardinal role in the political community because of
their commitment to the central mission of the state—that is, the promotion of
the bien común, or common good. The notion of the common good was closely
tied to the theory that conceived of the state as an organic entity responding to
the ‘‘order of creation.’’∂π Therefore the mission of the armed forces was to de-
fend the nation from any attempt to undermine the natural moral order. In other
words, their mission defined them as the guardians of the ‘‘national being.’’∂∫
Militarily, the French had developed an important body of ideas about, and
techniques for, counterinsurgent warfare, especially regarding urban operations,
interrogation procedures (including the use of torture), and social control of the
population (including the ‘‘disappearance’’ of presumed enemies). In the context
of the counterrevolutionary war, torture was viewed as legitimate, given that it
facilitated the rapid retrieval of information required to penetrate the clan-
destine structures of revolutionary organizations. Moreover, torture was seen as
a morally acceptable option in view of the threat that subversives posed to the
very integrity of the state.∂Ω In places such as the province of Tucumán (where the
so-called Operativo Independencia was implemented) and in the city of Buenos
Aires, the Argentines modeled the methods used during their counterinsurgent
campaigns after those used by the French in Indochina and Algeria.∑≠
The Argentines disseminated this experience with their internal front
throughout the hemisphere. Many of the Central American o≈cers who had
been educated at Argentine military academies (the Colegio Militar and the
Escuela Superior de Guerra) in the early 1960s played an important part in
Central America’s repressive apparatus and in organizing the opposition to the
Sandinista regime. That is, the circulation of knowledge and personal relation-
ships (especially due to the intense personal loyalties resulting from socialization
and recruitment) were decisive in the counterrevolutionary alliance in the hemi-
sphere. The Argentines likewise took the methods of counterinsurgency directly
to Central America. The practical use of French military doctrine—especially
the premise that any distinction between combatants and the civilian popula-
tion was irrelevant—became evident in the organization and training of the
anti-Sandinista army, as, for example, when the Argentine advisors trained the
Miskitos in exile in the province of Gracias a Dios in Honduras.∑∞
The transmission of ideas and the construction of networks generated trans-
national political spaces of considerable influence in the 1970s and the early
1980s. The meetings of the Confederación Anticomunista Latinoamericana
(cal) o√er a clear illustration of the existence of these spaces. A brief look at the
list of participants at the Fourth Congress of the cal, held in Buenos Aires in
1980, is su≈cient to observe the extent of the transnational network of anti-
Communism. The congress was presided over by General Carlos G. Suárez
Mason, one of the principal ideologues of Argentine extraterritorial interven-
tion. Among the delegates to arrive in Buenos Aires were the president of the
lam, Woo Jae Sung; the Defense Minister for Paraguay, General Marcial Sa-
maniego; the Guatemalan death squad leader Mario Sandoval Alarcón; the Sal-
vadoran death squad leader Roberto D’Aubuisson; the Italian terrorist Stefano
delle Chiaie; advisors to the U.S. Republican senators Jesse Helms and James
McClure; and representatives from Alfa 66 and the Italian Masonic Lodge Pro-
paganda Due (p-2).∑≤
Di√erent sectors of civil society supported the crusade against Communism,
creating a kind of collaboration in which the barriers between the local and the
foreign ceased to exist. In general, these groups had a great capacity for mobiliz-
ing economic resources. For example, Argentine financiers and businessmen
contributed funds to the covert operations of Battalion 601 in Central Amer-
ica, and some of the most important corporations in Argentina, such as Bridas
and the Ledesma sugar refinery were involved in the broader extraterritorial
campaign.∑≥ Despite the anti-Semitism of the military government, an influen-
tial sector of the Jewish community in Buenos Aires gave financial support to
D’Aubuisson of El Salvador, one of the most important representatives of the
146 ariel c. armony
extreme Right in Central America. D’Aubuisson was directly associated with

paramilitary groups implicated in various political assassinations (among them,
that of Archbishop Oscar Romero), and was one of the key links to the Argen-
tine mission in El Salvador.∑∂
Nicaragua
After taking power in Argentina in 1976, the armed forces cultivated a close
relationship with the regime of Anastasio Somoza Debayle (1967–79). O≈cials
in the Nicaraguan National Guard received specialized instruction at Argentine
military and police academies; moreover, Argentina sold military equipment to
Nicaragua and provided advice to Somoza’s security forces on counterinsur-
gency. As the popular rebellion against Somocismo intensified, Argentina in-
creased aid to Nicaragua. The Argentine military regime attempted to thwart the
downfall of Somoza by providing covert military aid until the eve of the Sandi-
nista revolutionary triumph.
At the Conference of American Armies held in Managua in 1977, General
Roberto Viola and Admiral Emilio Massera secretly guaranteed Somoza’s gov-
ernment substantial support from Argentina for its e√orts against the guerrillas.
The Nicaraguan dictator was confident that a more powerful and reorganized
National Guard would defeat the Sandinista insurgents.∑∑ When President Car-
ter withdrew military aid to Nicaragua at the beginning of 1979, Argentina,
along with South Africa, Brazil, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Israel (which be-
came the principal military supplier for Somoza), took the place of the United
States.∑∏ The friendship between the Argentine military and Somoza’s regime
continued until the final days of Somoza’s government and beyond, when Ar-
gentina supported the remnants of the National Guard in Honduras.
As part of the operations to capture political dissidents in the rest of the
continent and in Europe, the Argentine military sent agents to Nicaragua in 1978
to identify Argentine guerrillas fighting in the Sandinista ranks. The objective
of the commando team from Argentina, which worked in conjunction with
Somoza’s National Security O≈ce (osn), was to capture exiled squadrons from
the erp and the Montoneros.∑π According to the testimony of an Argentine
advisor to the National Guard, the intelligence operations carried out in these
years used the same ‘‘nonconventional’’ techniques that had been used in Argen-
tina during the Dirty War, that is, torture, disappearances, and other repressive
extralegal activities.∑∫
After the fall of Somoza in July 1979, Brigadier General Rubens Gra≈gna,
commander in chief of the Argentine air force, commented that the loss of
a country to Marxism represented a serious threat to hemispheric security.
Gra≈gna emphasized that Argentina should take the lead in defending the
Western Hemisphere, since it had triumphed against subversive elements. ‘‘It is a
fact that there is no domestic policy without extraterritorial projection,’’ he
declared in a speech in September 1979.∑Ω This viewpoint, we have seen, was part
of a more general doctrine developed by military sectors with close ties to the
intelligence apparatus. These sectors were not ready to abandon the objectives of
the Dirty War, even when the ‘‘enemy’’ had been defeated within the national
territory.
Montonero leaders Mario Firmenich and Fernando Vaca Narvaja surfaced in
Managua, joining the triumphant Sandinistas in July 1979. At that time, Fir-
menich publicly stated that the Nicaraguan revolution ‘‘shows that there is a new
situation in the world, permitting us to surmise that for our continent the 1980s
will be the decade of liberation and the countero√ensive of the Latin American
people.’’∏≠ Firmenich’s flamboyant assertion was not backed by evidence of mili-
tary strength on the part of his organization (in fact, a countero√ensive in
Argentina led to the killing of more than a hundred Montonero cadres later that
year). In contrast, a commando team comprising erp veterans demonstrated
their active involvement in the revolutionary struggle by killing Somoza in
Asunción, Paraguay, in September 1980. The Argentine guerrillas, who had
fought alongside the Sandinistas in the final o√ensive against the Nicaraguan
dictator, joined the Sandinista security apparatus.∏∞
Following the toppling of Somoza, as a counterrevolutionary force was being
organized in Honduras, the Argentines o√ered instruction on counterinsur-
gency to various groups of former Nicaraguan National Guardsmen in Buenos
Aires. The aim of this activity was to create a corps of well-trained men who
could act as instructors for the Contras in the Honduran base camps, and then
as leaders in the field. The ultimate goal was to penetrate into Nicaragua and
create conditions for the growth of an anti-Sandinista insurrection.∏≤
The Nicaraguans and other Central Americans considered the Argentine
armed forces to be highly qualified in counterinsurgent warfare. Anti-Sandinista
commanders interviewed in Nicaragua emphasized the professionalism of the
Argentine instructors, highlighting the military expertise that accompanied in-
struction in political and ideological warfare. ‘‘The Argentine o≈cers’ ideas had
an important influence over the early ideological development of the contra
movement,’’ explained a former leader of the Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense
(fdn), the principal anti-Sandinista military organization. ‘‘Much like that of
148 ariel c. armony
the Cubans of Miami, the Argentine influence gave a more ideological tone
to the group, a tone of anti-Soviet, anti-Cuban, anti-Communist goals. They
began to transform what had originally been nationalistic goals tailored to
Nicaragua’s particular historical, social, and cultural situation.’’∏≥ This perspec-
tive was echoed in several interviews with former Contra commanders. As one
anti-Sandinista commander explained: ‘‘The Argentines emphasized their anti-
Communist fervor and their total support of our cause. They blamed the United
States for not having prevented Nicaragua from falling into the hands of Com-
munism.’’∏∂ Another Contra commander remarked, ‘‘They spoke of the origin of
Communism and of the fact that the Sandinista regime was its cornerstone in
Central America, and Nicaragua was the base for its expansion in the region.’’∏∑
In this way, the Argentines imparted a distinctly ideological tone to the anti-
Sandinista movement, thus internationalizing and ‘‘Sovietizing’’ the Nicaraguan
conflict.
By the end of the 1970s, support for the Sandinistas by various movements for
revolution and national liberation, and the participation of foreign states (e.g.,
Israel and Argentina) in Somoza’s counterinsurgent war, gave the Nicaraguan
conflict an important geopolitical dimension. After 1979, the e√orts of outside
forces to aid the Contra rebels in their fight against the Sandinista regime
accentuated the geopolitical aspect of the conflict. The increase in revolutionary
activity in El Salvador and Guatemala, and the growing participation of Hon-
duras and Costa Rica in the regional conflicts, converted Central America,
especially Nicaragua, into a proxy for a host of di√erent geopolitical confronta-
tions. Among the most noteworthy confrontations were the conflict between the
Argentine military regime and revolutionary organizations like the Montoneros
and the erp; the conflict that pitted Israel against the Palestine Liberation Orga-
nization (plo); and the conflict that opposed Cubans in exile against the Com-
munist regime of Fidel Castro.∏∏
The role of Israel in the anti-Communist crusade in Latin America deserves at
least a brief mention. When the Carter administration suspended all military
assistance to Argentina in 1978 in response to the regime’s violations of human
rights, Israel exported military equipment to Argentina (from combat planes to
missiles and equipment for internal security), and Mossad (the Israeli foreign
intelligence agency) sent advisors to train Argentine army o≈cials.∏π Israel also
shared military intelligence with the Argentine army—for example, when it
alerted Argentina that Montonero combatants were being trained in plo camps
in Lebanon for the ‘‘final countero√ensive’’ against the Argentine regime.∏∫
The Israelis cooperated with the Argentines in extraterritorial operations and,
simultaneously, directly supported the Central American security forces. For

example, Israeli military advisors assisted the Argentine military intelligence
units that were operating in Bolivia after the military coup in 1980, and the
Israeli Embassy in Costa Rica supplied fake passports to the Argentine advisors
who were working in Honduras.∏Ω Furthermore, Israel transferred equipment to
El Salvador for anti-guerrilla operations and played an important role in Guate-
mala, where it o√ered advice on intelligence and from 1975 onward served as the
principal provider of counterinsurgent technology to the Guatemalan army.
Israeli assistance in the elaboration of a counterinsurgency strategy in El Sal-
vador, Guatemala, and Honduras focused on improving the e≈ciency of the
local security forces, especially their intelligence activities. According to Israeli
instructors, the Central American security forces were ‘‘very emotional and
caused unnecessary deaths among the prisoners,’’ so they taught them more
e√ective methods of interrogation.π≠ The Israeli role in the Nicaraguan conflict
continued with the strengthening of the Contras operating from Honduras.
Once Argentina o≈cially withdrew from the anti-Sandinista operation follow-
ing the Falklands War, the cia fruitlessly tried to convince Israel to take charge of
the Contra support program, eventually taking full control itself.π∞
El Salvador
In mid-1979 the Argentine army sent advisors to El Salvador at the request of the
regime headed by General Carlos Humberto Romero (1976–79), who asked
Argentina for intelligence experts specialized in interrogation techniques and
the analysis of information. Argentina extended its military presence in this
country after the October 1979 civilian-military junta that replaced Romero fell
into the hands of the hard-liners and the civil war intensified. Although the most
fundamental aspects of the military intervention in El Salvador took place dur-
ing the government of Reagan, there were already Argentine advisors in El
Salvador at the end of the 1970s.π≤
From 1979 onward, Argentina supplied military equipment to the armed
forces in El Salvador. According to secret documents from the Argentine armed
forces, such transactions would strengthen the relations between Argentina and
El Salvador and ‘‘would also contribute to hardening its position in the widening
struggle against subversion, alongside other countries in the region.’’π≥ An exam-
ple of these arms transfers can be found in a document dated February 1982,
wherein Argentina’s Central Bank, in accordance with instructions from the
commander in chief of the army, authorized the General Directorate of Military
150 ariel c. armony
Industries to export light and heavy weapons, ammunition, and spare parts for
military equipment to El Salvador, in the amount of twenty million dollars.π∂
In the fall of 1981, the Reagan administration requested that the Argentine mil-
itary high command increase its assistance to the Salvadoran armed forces.π∑ The
Argentine generals ratified an agreement by which they would receive U.S. intel-
ligence and logistic support for a paramilitary covert operation to cut o√ alleged
Cuban-Nicaraguan arms support to El Salvador’s insurgent Frente Farabundo
Martí de Liberación Nacional (fmln).π∏ A few months later, General Antonio
Vaquero of Argentina announced in an o≈cial statement: ‘‘The strengthening
and consolidation of the relations now linking our armies have great impor-
tance. The Argentine Army—which along with the Navy and the Air Force,
supported by the Argentine nation, defeated terrorism—understands and values
the struggle of the Salvadoran Armed Forces and people, and will provide its
assistance, as much as feasible, to a friendly nation in a di≈cult situation.’’ In El
Salvador, Vaquero said, ‘‘two concepts of ways of life are at stake . . . on one hand,
respect for the dignity of mankind—God’s creations—and on the other, terror-
ism, men at the service of an atheistic, omnipotent state.’’ππ
In collaboration with the National Agency of Special Services of El Salvador
(ansesal), the Argentines trained Salvadoran o≈cials in the use of counter-
insurgency techniques. The South American advisors sought to reproduce the
antisubversive strategies employed during the Dirty War in Argentina, namely,
the destruction of opposition organizations using paramilitary operatives and
methods that worked their way from the noncombatant manpower to the lead-
ership at the center of the organization. The process followed the Argentine
pattern: kidnapping, torture, and the summary execution of prisoners after
interrogation, even when their political a≈liation was meaningless or inci-
dental.π∫ According to some sources, the Argentines also advised government-
sanctioned death squads with links to the Salvadoran security forces.πΩ The
Argentine advisors played a crucial role in El Salvador by sharing their experi-
ence in antiguerrilla warfare. ‘‘The Argentines are the only ones in the world
who fought an urban guerrilla war and won it,’’ said a death squad member. ‘‘So
they’re just naturally recognized as the best.’’∫≠
The case of Argentine involvement in El Salvador is another example of the
complex transnational network that served as a support for anti-Communist
activities in Latin America—a network that, to a large degree, was handled
independently of the United States. One example of this dynamic is the coordi-
nation of counterinsurgent activities with narco-tra≈cking and its role in the
political arena. For its decisive participation in the brutal uprising in 1980 that
carried García Meza to power in Bolivia, the Argentine government received

‘‘narco-dollars’’ from Roberto Suárez Levy, the main cocaine dealer in Bolivia
and a partner of García Meza. This money was used, in turn, by the high
command of the Argentine army to finance some of the military operations in El
Salvador.∫∞ Thus the case of El Salvador reveals how the transfer of counter-
insurgent technology by the Argentines was sustained by financing at the state
level (the sale of armaments) and outside the state (through illegal networks that
dominated the narcotics trade in certain countries in the region).
Guatemala
At the beginning of 1980, an Argentine military mission comprising army and

naval o≈cers arrived in Guatemala in response to the request from Romeo Lucas
García’s regime for assistance in counterinsurgent warfare. In collaboration with
military advisors from Israel and Chile, the Argentines instructed elite Guate-
malan forces in advanced intelligence techniques. Argentine military personnel
worked with the death squads that were protected by the government, specifi-
cally the Ejército Secreto Anticomunista (esa).∫≤ Numerous assassinations by
the armed forces and the police at the beginning of 1980 were attributed to this
organization, which was a paramilitary unit closely associated with Lucas García
himself. In addition, a squadron of Intelligence Battalion 601 based in Guate-
mala (and also operating in El Salvador and Honduras) collaborated with the
military regime in the repression of left-wing organizations.∫≥ The Argentine
task force, whose main mission was kidnapping Argentine political exiles in
Central America, was directly responsible for the assassination and disappear-
ance of Guatemalan political dissidents.
In October 1981, the Argentine and Guatemalan military authorities signed a
secret accord to increase Argentine participation in counterinsurgent opera-
tions. As part of this agreement, some two hundred Guatemalan o≈cials from
the army and the police force traveled to Buenos Aires to receive advanced
training in intelligence, including the use of interrogation techniques.∫∂ As in the
case of El Salvador, Argentine assistance to Guatemala also included the sale of
weapons. When the regime of Kjell Laugerud (1974–78) rejected U.S. military
aid because it considered the human rights policy of the Carter administration
to be an interference in the country’s domestic a√airs, Argentina, along with
Israel and a handful of other countries, significantly increased the sale of mili-
tary equipment to Guatemala and continued to do so as the two countries
strengthened their cooperation.∫∑
152 ariel c. armony
Argentine assistance to the Guatemalan army intelligence service played a

decisive role in the military’s success against the infrastructure of the urban
guerrillas. In July 1981 the Guatemalan military launched a broad counter-
o√ensive in the capital, where it successfully dismantled the rear guard of the
insurgency. Thanks to the technical knowledge acquired from the Argentines
and the Israelis, the security forces destroyed a local clandestine network of the
Organización del Pueblo en Armas (orpa). The Argentines introduced the use
of a computerized system to identify local clandestine guerrillas by tracing
telephone calls and ferreting out suspicious use of residential services, like high
electricity consumption.∫∏
The Argentine advisors also participated in the devastating rural o√ensive
initiated in August 1981. The scorched-earth policy applied between 1981 and
1983 involved a campaign to exterminate the indigenous population unparal-
leled in Guatemalan history. Interestingly, the expression ‘‘Dirty War,’’ which
was widely used to describe the era of the state terror campaign in Argentina,
was used routinely in press releases by high-ranking Guatemalan military sta√
from the end of 1981 onward. Army o≈cials used the term to explain to the press
that civilian deaths in counterinsurgency operations were an inevitable char-
acteristic of an unconventional military campaign to eradicate the guerrilla
movement.∫π
Honduras
Shortly after the Sandinista victory, Argentine agents began to organize and
train the scattered and poorly equipped bands of Nicaraguan National Guards-
men exiled in Guatemala. During the first months of 1981, Argentine o≈cials
supervised the transference of Contra base camps from Guatemala to Hon-
duras.∫∫ Colonel Gustavo Alvarez Martínez, chief of the Public Security Force in
Honduras (fusep), had o√ered his country to the director of the cia, William
Casey, as a base for anti-Sandinista operations. With U.S. assistance, Honduras
became a ‘‘safe haven’’ for the Contras and a platform for the war against the
Sandinista regime in Nicaragua.∫Ω
Government documents and other sources confirm the presence of Argentine
advisors in Honduras immediately after the triumph of the Sandinistas.Ω≠ The
presence of Argentine advisors in Honduras between 1979 and 1984 coincided
with the development of the national security doctrine under the leadership of
General Alvarez Martínez, who was educated in Argentina (Colegio Militar,
graduating class of 1961). Although the security force already had a paramilitary
structure before Alvarez came into power, he was responsible for professionaliz-
ing fusep’s repressive structure with the help of Argentine advisors.Ω∞
In this way, Honduras adopted the same unconventional military techniques
used in Argentina: clandestine detention centers, disappearances and summary
executions, compartmentalized task forces (dedicated to intelligence, interro-
gations, kidnappings, and executions), plainclothesmen using unmarked cars,
operations carried out in broad daylight without interference from the regular
security forces, and the liquidation of political prisoners by throwing them out
of military airplanes and helicopters.Ω≤ Even if the level of terror practiced by the
state in Honduras was very low in comparison with that in El Salvador and
Guatemala, from 1980 onward there was a notable increase in these repressive
practices.
In 1981, with Argentine assistance, Alvarez Martínez organized an elite coun-
terinsurgent unit within the fusep to coordinate repressive activities. The Ar-
gentines also trained personnel who would later operate as part of the infamous
Battalion 3-16, responsible for the majority of human rights violations in Hon-
duras.Ω≥ Furthermore, Argentine military advisors participated in operations
such as the capture, interrogation, and execution of Honduran union and stu-
dent leaders, those presumed to be Sandinista sympathizers, and refugees from
El Salvador.
During 1981, Argentine aid to Honduras—in the form of loans, armaments,
and training—showed a sustained increase. At the same time, the number of
Honduran o≈cials who received training in Argentine military academies (e.g.,
the Escuela Superior de Guerra and the Escuela de Inteligencia) increased. As re-
lations between the two countries deepened—accompanied by the development
of the Contra program financed by the United States—the Argentines and the
Hondurans paid special attention to collaboration in the area of intelligence.Ω∂
The participation of Argentine advisors in the development of Honduras’s
internal security apparatus and the mission of organizing the remnants of the
defeated Nicaraguan National Guard into an e≈cient fighting force against the
Sandinistas was an operation approved by the Argentine, Honduran, and U.S.
governments. A tripartite agreement signed in August 1981 determined that each
of the partners in the counterrevolutionary program would play a defined role:
the Argentines would contribute the organization, administration, and military
instruction; the cia would supply covert financial aid; and the Honduran gov-
ernment would provide the territory for the operational bases.Ω∑
The collaboration between Argentina and Honduras responded to directives
from the top-level military commanders of both countries.Ω∏ During the early
154 ariel c. armony
1980s, Honduras’s state-sponsored program of terror and the Contra operation

were shared endeavors. For example, toward the end of 1981, Argentine advisors
suggested that former Nicaraguan National Guardsmen should execute the pris-
oners held by the Honduran security forces in clandestine detention centers and
involve themselves in other political assassinations.Ωπ During the period of great-
est repression in Honduras, the Argentines provided the technical and organiza-
tional resources to keep both the Contra project and domestic state terror
running.
Conclusion
The Argentine plan to combat Communism beyond its national borders did not
develop to the degree to which it seemed destined at the beginning of the 1980s.
This was due to the United States’ support of Great Britain during the war in the
Falkland Islands. Washington’s decision broke Argentina’s commitment to Rea-
gan’s anti-Communist crusade in Central America. Although we can only spec-
ulate, if the armed conflict against the British had not intervened, it is possible
that the Argentines would have continued to play a central role in the Contra
war promoted by the Reagan administration. At any rate, the Argentine opera-
tion in Central America was not a marginal undertaking. Although the number
of troops sent to the region was relatively low, this was primarily because the
Argentine venture was a covert intelligence operation.
The crusade in Central America, sustained by a vast intelligence apparatus,
was intended to be a far-reaching policy with profound geopolitical conse-
quences for Argentina. This endeavor was independently designed by the Argen-
tine military and directly opposed the policy of the White House during the
Carter administration. Still, evidence indicates that U.S. intelligence knew of the
anti-Communist activities of the Argentines and, according to certain sources,
independently supported them—even before the Reagan administration decided
to sign on to the Argentine program in Central America.Ω∫ In spite of President
Carter’s e√orts to curtail the power and leverage of the cia, the agency supported
a hemispheric network of right-wing government o≈cials and independent
players united under a mandate of anti-Communism. The cia collaborated with
the Argentine military intelligence service as its operatives established a base of
operations in Florida to coordinate the counterrevolutionary program in Cen-
tral America.ΩΩ This early coordination was critical for the rapid implementation
of a U.S.-funded anti-Sandinista operation under Argentine supervision.∞≠≠
If Cuban policy in Africa reflected the revolutionary activism of Havana and
demonstrated Cuba’s clear objective to expand its influence in the Third World,
then the policy of the Argentine military regime demonstrated the articulation
between repression on a domestic level and participation in extraterritorial
operations aimed at destroying the ‘‘Communist enemy.’’∞≠∞ Furthermore, the
direct connection between the policy of counterinsurgency within and beyond
borders suggests that it would be more accurate to talk of a Dirty War coordi-
nated on a hemispheric level than of independent wars limited to defined na-
tional territories. This vision was clearly articulated by General Ramón Campos
in 1979 in a confidential conversation with the U.S. ambassador, in which the
general explained that Argentina’s armed forces had defeated subversion on the
local battlefield, but that the war continued on a continental level.∞≠≤ Solid
evidence of this idea can be found in the transnational networks that articulated
the di√erent phases of the counterrevolutionary project (that is, Operation
Condor, Bolivia, and Central America).
The Argentine military leadership’s principal motivations to launch an extra-
territorial campaign were geopolitical, strategic, and ideological. First, the Ar-
gentines viewed this e√ort as a continuation of the war that they had fought at
home. They were concerned with the emergence of ‘‘other Cubas’’ in the hemi-
sphere. In addition, the military viewed the presence of exiled Argentine guer-
rillas in Nicaragua as evidence of the continental, concerted nature of the revo-
lutionary apparatus. Although Argentine military intelligence ruled out the
possibility of a renewed military o√ensive against the Argentine regime out of
Nicaragua, some analysts argued that a Sandinista Nicaragua could serve the
exiled Argentine guerrillas as a platform for intelligence operations in South
America. Thus, whether justified or not, extraterritorial operations and inter-
national cooperation geared to counteract and destroy revolutionary and re-
form movements in the region served—in the eyes of the armed forces—as a
means of self-defense. Interestingly, as Piero Gleijeses points out in his chapter
in this volume, Castro’s strategy for defending the revolution from external
threats was the promotion of ‘‘other Cubas’’ wherever possible.
Second, the military leadership wanted to project Argentine influence interna-
tionally, particularly as a means to obtain the prestige and foreign recognition
that they thought they deserved for having crushed their domestic insurgency.
Decisive participation in a major conflict in the U.S. backyard o√ered the Argen-
tine military the chance to legitimate their anti-Communist war, which had been
berated by the international community because of Argentina’s human rights
record. A triumph against Communism in Central America would transform an
international pariah into a respected nation. As one Argentine naval o≈cer put
156 ariel c. armony
it: ‘‘It is possible that the U.S. military and intelligence services saw that what they
could not achieve in Central America had been accomplished by the Argentine,
Chilean, and Uruguayan armed forces in their own countries . . . using a success-
ful counterinsurgency model, which was later questioned and discarded as a
result of the debate about the disappeared ones. The United States was losing the
war in Central America. It was a war that the Americans could not win by them-
selves. Had they remained alone, there would have been another Vietnam.’’∞≠≥
Third, the Argentines were driven by a fervent anti-Communist ideology,
which depicted local conflicts as part of a global East-West confrontation. The
Argentine generals displayed a strong, messianic sense of mission. This variety of
anti-Communism, though influenced by France and the United States (espe-
cially in terms of know-how and technology of repression), had deep roots in
local fascism, racism, and illiberal thought.∞≠∂ While the Argentine crusaders
sought to defend ‘‘Western and Christian civilization’’ against ‘‘Communist to-
talitarianism,’’ their messianic endeavor was not driven by idealism—a reality
that became evident when the Argentine military turned its counterrevolution-
ary enterprise into a scheme for personal profit and corruption.
Argentina’s exporting of the Dirty War to Central America also needs to be
explained by a set of causal factors, both domestic and international. As Gilbert
Joseph stresses in his introductory chapter, geopolitical, strategic, and ideologi-
cal elements are not enough to account for the complex dynamic of the Cold
War in Latin America, especially when seen from a Latin American perspective.
The transnationalization of the Dirty War was possible because of the ‘‘exper-
tise’’ developed by the Argentine military. Argentines were confident that their
counterinsurgent methods worked. As General Alfredo Saint Jean stressed, ‘‘the
Argentine armed forces have acquired an internationally renowned expertise in
unconventional warfare and they are willing to o√er training and all kind of
cooperation to allied countries.’’∞≠∑ This perception was shared by Central Amer-
icans, including infamous leaders such as Roberto D’Aubuisson, who repeatedly
emphasized their admiration for the Argentines’ success against the guerrillas.
While exporting repressive know-how was probably a logical step for a coun-
try that had acquired this expertise, the contribution of manpower to Central
America might have served as a means to open new venues for experts of the
Dirty War who could become a destabilizing force at home.∞≠∏ The expansion of
Argentine involvement in Central America coincided with the closing of the
Dirty War at home; thus exporting personnel no longer needed in Argentina was
a win-win strategy for all parties involved. This is especially true when one
considers that the military intelligence services, which played a central role in
the repression campaign, had become an autonomous force of professional

agents who exercised major influence on the government’s political agenda. As a
memorandum from the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires noted in 1980, ‘‘the
policy-making levels of the goa [Government of Argentina] are prisoners and
victims of intelligence services here, particularly the Army’s 601 Battalion.’’∞≠π
The kidnappings of dissidents in other countries—as well as the participation of
the Argentine intelligence services in the coup in Bolivia—were actions that had
important consequences for Argentine foreign relations and showed the ex-
traordinary influence of the intelligence services on the political apparatus of the
military government.
At the international level, the existence of a vast anti-Communist network
was critical for the Argentine venture abroad. The Condor system was a fore-
runner of the Central American operation. Indeed, Argentine o≈cers in charge
of the Central American program (such as Colonel José Osvaldo Ribeiro)
played important roles in Condor.∞≠∫ In addition, a transnational entente of anti-
Communist forces converged to give a decisive impulse to the counterrevolu-
tionary campaign in Central America. This alliance opposed and sought to
annihilate e√orts to address vast political, social, and economic inequalities
throughout Latin America. The warfare launched by the Argentine armed
forces, not only against guerrilla organizations but also against labor unions,
peasant leagues, student organizations, and many other groups in civil society
perceived to be part of the ‘‘subversive’’ apparatus, cannot be seen in isolation
from the wave of revolutionary activity and popular demands for reform that
engulfed the region in the 1970s.
The intensification of social conflicts in Latin America is central to an under-
standing of the dynamics of repression in the region. The Cold War was not
‘‘imposed’’ on these countries, essentially because they responded to local and
regional socioeconomic and political dislocations, and their own actions, often
independent from those of the superpowers, shaped the nature and pace of the
Cold War. Although the United States played an influential role in the battles
waged in Latin America, it cannot be considered as the leading external actor in
regional conflicts. Argentina and other South American regimes (e.g., the mem-
bers of the Condor system) engaged in interventionist practices across Latin
America and other continents, pursuing their own policy interests even when
they did not coincide with those of the United States.
To understand the broader relevance of Argentina’s transnational repressive
activities, it is important to place them within the historical framework of
the global Cold War.∞≠Ω Argentina’s continental expansionism (as well as the
158 ariel c. armony
consolidation of a formidable repressive apparatus in South America) occurred

at a time when the Cold War dynamic was transitioning from a failed process of
U.S. rapprochement with the Soviet Union, promoted by the Carter administra-
tion, to a reintensification of the conflict between the superpowers, encouraged
by a belligerent ‘‘Reagan doctrine.’’ The Argentine military stepped in to coun-
terbalance the revolutionary tide in the region exactly at a point when the
revolutionary South assumed a decisive role in the Cold War, contributing to the
expansion of Soviet influence. The anti-Communist crusade of authoritarian
regimes such as Argentina and the aggressive U.S. posture vis-à-vis Soviet ex-
pansionism adopted by the Reagan administration—which placed the Contras’
armed struggle at the forefront of the decision to reassert U.S. global power—
represented a convergence of foreign policy interests between counterrevolu-
tionary forces in the South and the North. For the United States, Central Amer-
ica became a symbol of its ability to preserve the Western alliance. As President
Reagan pointed out, if Central America were to fall under Communist control,
‘‘our credibility would collapse, our alliances would crumble, and the safety of
our homeland would be put in jeopardy.’’∞∞≠
As is illustrated by the Argentine case (and can also be seen in cases such as
Chile, Bolivia, and Paraguay), the military regimes in Latin America were not
peons of the United States or mere proxies in charge of cia operations. On the
contrary, examples like the Argentine crusade in Central America reveal a pat-
tern of autonomy that prompts us to reconsider the key notions that until now
have structured the analysis of the Cold War in Latin America. To conclude,
therefore, it is important to highlight two concepts that emerge from the case
presented here.
The existence of its own style of anti-Communism, independent of that pro-
moted by the United States, and characterized by local objectives and patterns of
repression, as well as by layers of external influences, played a pivotal role in the
conflicts of the Cold War in Latin America. The Argentine military regime’s
autonomous decision to project itself beyond its borders and assume leadership
in the fight against Communism questions the validity of the idea that the
bipolar dynamic of the superpowers was the only axis around which conflicts in
the region revolved. It creates the need to adopt an analytical perspective that
allows us to think outside the rigid framework of bipolarity. An alternative
framework is helpful for understanding the di√erent uses of anti-Communism
(e.g., the promotion of lucrative illegal activities such as narco-tra≈cking) and
the impact that transnational networks had on both insurgent movements and
anti-Communist campaigns.
Transnational counterrevolutionary networks generated zones of contact and
cooperation in which state apparatuses, relations between national and inter-

national elites, civil society organizations, and economic groups came into play
with one another. These transnational networks were sustained by common
values and shared discourse, as well as by a fluid exchange of information, know-
how, and resources. The political spaces associated with these networks served
state and nonstate actors, simultaneously influencing domestic and interna-
tional spheres.∞∞∞ Although roughly sketched out in this chapter, such trans-
national contact zones are important for an understanding of the nature of
ideological confrontation in the hemisphere (which played out in terms of both
military and intelligence capability). An examination of transnational spaces
suggests a more complex Cold War dynamic—territorially as well as organiza-
tionally and ideologically—than the dynamic that emerges from studies based
on traditional notions of bipolarity.
The Cold War in Latin America should not be considered from a centripetal
perspective—that is, from the standpoint of an analytical hierarchy where coun-
tries in the region are seen only as peripheral actors, ‘‘intelligible only in terms of
the impact that center nations have on them.’’∞∞≤ On the contrary, it is more
accurate to conceptualize this historical period as part of an overlapping process
in which the barriers between the local and the foreign are removed, so that
contacts and exchanges between participants and structures produce sedimen-
tary e√ects that must be understood outside the framework of the bipolar con-
flict between the United States and the Soviet Union. The case of the Argentine
anti-Communist crusade illustrates the importance of ‘‘decentering’’ the analy-
sis in order to examine the sites of contact where encounters, conflicts, and
exchanges between ideologies (e.g., the di√erent tonalities and facets of anti-
Communism), technologies (e.g., of terror and repression), and human and
economic capital are produced.∞∞≥ As is shown in the case illustrated here, the
‘‘peripheral’’ countries developed plans of action and policies independently
from the superpowers and, in this way, shaped the conflicts that characterized the
post–World War II period. In this sense, transculturation, transnational dy-
namics, and geographically demarcated conflicts represent the di√erent manifes-
tations of a multipolar and multifocal confrontation that we are still unraveling.
Notes
I thank Gil Joseph and Daniela Spenser for their invaluable comments and ideas on this
article.
1. This figure is from the un High Commission for Refugees, cable exclusively from
Gerald B. Helman to the State Department, December 18, 1979, in the archive compiled
160 ariel c. armony
by the National Security Archive, Nicaragua: The Making of U.S. Policy, 1978–1990 (Alex-
andria: Chadwyck-Healey, 1991).
2. Executive O≈ce of the President, secret presidential finding from Ronald Reagan,
December 1, 1981, in National Security Archive, Nicaragua.
3. cia secret memorandum, ‘‘Scope of cia Activities under the Central America Find-
ing,’’ n.d., in Declassified Documents Reference System (Woodbridge: Research Publica-
tions, various years).
4. See Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New
York: Routledge, 1992); and Pratt, ‘‘Arts of the Contact Zone,’’ Profession 91 (1991): 33–39,
quoted in Gilbert M. Joseph, ‘‘Close Encounters: Toward a New Cultural History of U.S.-
Latin American Relations,’’ in Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History
of U.S.-Latin American Relations, ed. Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C. LeGrand, and
Ricardo D. Salvatore (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 5.
5. Joseph, ‘‘Close Encounters,’’ 5.
6. John Dinges, The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to
Three Continents (New York: New Press, 2003), chap. 7. See J. Patrice McSherry, Predatory
States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and
Littlefield, 2005). Quotation from Dinges, The Condor Years, 10.
7. U.S. Congress, testimony of Leandro Sánchez Reisse before the Subcommittee on
Terrorism, Narcotics and International Operations of the Senate Committee on Foreign
Relations, July 23, 1987, 154, in the author’s archives; conversation of the author with
former U.S. ambassador (designated to Latin America in the 1980s), June 23, 1993. See
Gregorio Selser, Bolivia: El cuartelazo de los cocadólares (Mexico City: Mex-Sur, 1982);
Peter Dale Scott and Jonathan Marshall, Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the cia in
Central America (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).
8. Videla, quoted in Sergio Joselovsky, ‘‘El ejército del ‘Proceso’ y su intervención en
Centroamérica,’’ in Humor (Buenos Aires, 1984), 63.
9. Interview by the author with retired admiral Alberto R. Varela, Buenos Aires,
August 17, 1993.
10. See chapter 5 of my book Argentina, the United States, and the Anti-Communist
Crusade in Central America, 1997–1984 (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997).
11. And see Gleijeses’s larger study, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and
Africa, 1959–1976 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 9.
12. Vladislav Zubok and Constantine Pleshakov, Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From
Stalin to Khrushchev (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996), 3–5, 280–81.
13. See Danuta Paszyn, The Soviet Attitude to Political and Social Change in Central
America, 1979–90 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000).
14. Ibid.
15. Speech by President Carter at the graduation ceremony at Notre Dame University,
May 22, 1977, in American Foreign Policy Current Documents, 1977–1980 (Washington:
U.S. Department of State, 1984), 6–7.
16. For an analysis of Latin America as a gray zone, see Lars Schoultz, National Security
and the United States Policy toward Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1987), 268–307.
17. Paszyn, The Soviet Attitude, 2.
18. Interview by the author with the retired general Miguel Angel Mallea Gil, Buenos
Aires, August 18, 1993.
19. Ibid.
20. Interview by the author with the retired captain Carlos H. Raimondi, Buenos
Aires, August 4, 1993.
21. General Santiago Omar Riveros, cited in Horacio Verbitsky, La última batalla de la
tercera guerra mundial (Buenos Aires: Legasa, 1984), 21.
22. General Ramón Camps, cited in Eduardo Luis Duhalde, El estado terrorista argen-
tino (Barcelona: Argos Vergara, 1993), 81.
23. See, for example, cable from the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, ‘‘Periodic Rights
Trends Reporting,’’ July 27, 1979, in the U.S. Department of State, Argentina Declassifica-
tion Project, 1975–1984, http://foia.state.gov.
24. Interview with Mallea Gil; Verbitsky, La última batalla, 127.
25. Poder Ejecutivo Nacional, Terrorism in Argentina, Buenos Aires, January 7, 1980. It
is important to note that, by the mid-1970s, the prt-erp (prt: Partido Revolucionario de
los Trabajadores) had a strong presence across the country. The organization doubled its
membership in 1970–71 and gained increasing popular support as a result of small,
propaganda-style guerrilla actions. From 1973—when Argentina elected a civilian gov-
ernment after years of authoritarianism—to 1975, the guerrilla organization experienced
an even more dramatic growth. By 1975, the organization boasted between five and six
thousand militants drawn from working-class neighborhoods, factories, and univer-
sities. There were prt-erp cells in more than four hundred of the most important
factories in the Greater Buenos Aires. The organization had a strong presence in many
cities and towns across the country, including key industrial centers such as Córdoba.
Pablo A. Pozzi, El prt-erp: La guerrilla marxista (Buenos Aires: eudeba, 2001), 21–25.
26. Army General Sta√ (emge), Intelligence Command II (hereafter cited as emge–Jef.
II), annex I (Intelligence), to the secret directive of the Commander-in-Chief of the
Army, no. 504/77, ‘‘Continuación de la ofensiva contra la subversión en el período
1977/1978,’’ signed by General Roberto Eduardo Viola, Buenos Aires, April 20, 1977, in the
archives of the Center for Legal and Social Studies (cels), Buenos Aires.
27. Mark Falco√, A Tale of Two Policies: U.S. Relations with the Argentine Junta, 1976–
1983 (Foreign Policy Research Institute, 1989), 43.
28. Donald C. Hodges, Argentina’s ‘‘Dirty War’’: An Intellectual Biography (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1991), 128–29; Verbitsky, La última batalla, 21; Duhalde, El
estado terrorista argentino, 81.
29. Quoted in Dinges, The Condor Years, 12.
30. Wolf Grabendor√, ‘‘¿De país aislado a aliado preferido? Las relaciones entre la
162 ariel c. armony
Argentina y los Estados Unidos: 1976–1981,’’ in El poder militar en la Argentina, 1976–1981,

ed. Peter Waldmann and Ernesto Garzón Valdez (Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1983), 159; Aldo
C. Vacs, ‘‘A Delicate Balance: Confrontation and Cooperation between Argentina and the
United States in the 1980s,’’ Journal of Interamerican Studies and World A√airs 31, no. 4
(1989): 33. See Aldo C. Vacs, ‘‘The 1980 Grain Embargo Negotiations: The United States,
Argentina, and the Soviet Union,’’ in Pew Case Studies in International A√airs (Wash-
ington, 1992).
31. Daniel H. Mazzei, ‘‘La misión militar francesa en la Escuela Superior de Guerra y
los orígenes de la Guerra Sucia, 1957–1962,’’ Revista de Ciencias Sociales, no. 13 (2002): 129.
Before shifting the emphasis to domestic security, the Argentine armed forces were
working principally from a hypothesis based on a conflict with Brazil and Chile. The
armed forces therefore mainly focused on collecting information on those countries.
Interview by the author with the retired general Eugenio Alfredo Dalton, Buenos Aires,
August 6, 1993.
32. U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, memorandum prepared by Townsend B. Friedman,
‘‘Hypothesis: The goa as Prisoner of Army Intelligence,’’ August 18, 1980, in U.S. State
Department, Argentina Declassification Project. The units for military espionage were
instructed to maintain a permanent exchange of intelligence with Battalion 601 and to
relinquish to it all nonidentified military equipment and documents captured from
the guerrillas by the security forces. emge–Jef. II, annex I, to the secret directive of
the Commander in Chief of the Army, no. 404/75, ‘‘Guerra contra la subversión,’’ signed
by General Roberto Eduardo Viola, Buenos Aires, October 28, 1975, 10, in the archives of
the cels.
33. emge–Jef. II, annex I, to the secret directive no. 404/75, ‘‘Resumen de los orígenes,
evolución y doctrina del prt/erp y la jcr,’’ signed by Colonel Carlos Alberto Martínez,
Vice Chief of Army Intelligence, Buenos Aires, October 28, 1975, 7, in the archives of
the cels.
34. Cable from the U.S. Department of State, ‘‘South America: Southern Cone Security
Practices,’’ July 20, 1976; report from the Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and
Research, ‘‘South America: Southern Cone Security Practices,’’ July 19, 1976, in the U.S.
Department of State, Argentina Declassification Project.
35. Dinges, The Condor Years, chap. 4.
36. emge–Jef. II, annex I, to the secret directive no. 404/75, ‘‘Resumen de los orígenes,’’
7–9.
37. Memorandum of the conversation with the U.S. ambassador in Buenos Aires,
‘‘Nuts and Bolts of the Government’s Repression of Terrorism-Subversion,’’ August 7,
1979, 8; ‘‘Memorandum’’ from the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires prepared by James J.
Blystone; ‘‘Reorganization of 601’’ and ‘‘Organizational Chart of ‘601,’ ’’ February 6, 1980,
in the U.S. State Department, Argentina Declassification Project.
38. U.S. Congress, testimony of Leandro Sánchez Reisse, 14–17, 26–27, 34–37, 111.
Concerning the activities of Battalion 601 in other countries (Brazil and Peru, for exam-
ple), see the following memorandums from the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires: ‘‘Conver-
sation with Argentine Intelligence Source,’’ prepared by James J. Blystone, April 7, 1980;
‘‘Meeting with Argentine Intelligence Service,’’ prepared by Blystone, June 19, 1980; and
‘‘A Source in Argentine Intelligence Services Reviewed the Following Subjects with Me,’’
prepared by Townsend B. Friedman, August 21, 1980, in the U.S. State Department,
Argentina Declassification Project. See also the cable from the U.S. Embassy in Buenos
Aires, ‘‘Argentine Citizens Missing in Peru,’’ July 24, 1980, in the U.S. State Department
Declassification Project.
39. Testimony of Sánchez Reisse, 18–19, 56.
40. Ibid., 52–54, 140; Scott and Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 49.
41. See testimony of Sánchez Reisse, 53–54, 113–15; R. T. Naylor, Hot Money and the
Politics of Debt (New York: Linden, 1987), 292; National Security Archive, The Iran-
Contra A√air: The Making of a Scandal, 1983–1899 (Alexandria: Chadwyck-Healey, 1990),
89–90, 113.
42. Testimony of Sánchez Reisse, 140; National Commission on the Disappearance of
Persons (conadep), Nunca Más (Buenos Aires: eudeba, 1984), 133–34.
43. Ramón J. A. Camps, ‘‘Apogeo y declinación de la guerrilla en la Argentina,’’ La
Prensa (Buenos Aires), January 4, 1981; David Pion-Berlin and George A. López, ‘‘Of Vic-
tims and Executioners: Argentine State Terror, 1975–1979,’’ International Studies Quar-
terly 35 (1991): 69–71.
44. Walter Goobar, ‘‘Escuela de dictadores,’’ Página 12, August 8, 1993.
45. Interview by the author with Colonel Miguel Angel Li Puma, Buenos Aires, August
18, 1993.
46. See the video documentary directed and produced by Marie-Monique Robin,
Death Squadrons: The French School (France, 2003).
47. Alfred Stepan, The State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1978), 31–32, 37.
48. Interviews by the author in Buenos Aires with the following retired army o≈cers:
General Teófilo Goyret, August 5, 1993; General Ernesto Víctor López Meyer, August 4,
1993; and Colonel Horacio P. Ballester, July 28, 1993. Carina Perelli, ‘‘From Counter-
revolutionary Warfare to Political Awakening: The Uruguayan and Argentine Armed
Forces in the 1970s,’’ Armed Forces and Society 20, no. 1 (1993): 28–29, 40n14; Gustavo
Gorriti, ‘‘Beyond the Epics of Failure: The Post-Utopian Left,’’ Journal of Interamerican
Studies and World A√airs 36, no. 1 (1994); Mazzei ‘‘La misión militar francesa,’’ 111–15.
Sectors of Catholic fascism in Argentina—such as the priest Julio Meinvielle—promoted
a strong anti-Communist and anti-Semitic current of thought that was directly influ-
enced by French doctrine and was intertwined with the doctrine of nonconventional
warfare against ‘‘subversion.’’ See Julio Meinvielle, in ‘‘Proyecto filosofía en español,’’
http://www.filosofiaorg/ave/001/a059.htm.
49. Mazzei, ‘‘La misión militar francesa,’’ 124–29.
50. Ibid., 112; Pierre Abramovici, ‘‘Argentine: L’autre sale guerre d’Aussaresses,’’ Le
Point, June 15, 2001.
51. Acdel Edgardo Vilas, Tucumán: El hecho histórico (‘‘The tactical plan that enabled
164 ariel c. armony
the victory against the People’s Revolutionary Army [erp] in 1975’’), pamphlet, n.d., p. 5;
Mazzei, ‘‘La misión militar francesa,’’ 124; Oscar R. Cardoso, ‘‘El último secreto del
Proceso: Apéndice sobre la experiencia Argentina,’’ in Christopher Dickey, Con los Con-
tras (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana-Planeta, 1987), 309; Wall Street Journal, March 5, 1985.
52. Interview by the author with Rogelio García Lupo, Buenos Aires, July 30, 1993;
Scott Anderson and Jon Lee Andersen, Inside the League (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986),
11, 75, 107, 147, 264; ‘‘Argentina Redraws the Ideological Map of South America,’’ Latin
America Weekly Report, September 19, 1980, 5; Verbitsky, La última batalla, 91–92; Scott
and Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 43, 46.
53. Nicaragua, Ministry of the Interior, General Directorate for State Security, secret
memorandum on the participation of the Argentine armed forces and intelligence ser-
vices in the aggression against Nicaragua, circa 1984, in the author’s archives; Verbitsky,
La última batalla, 93.
54. Memorandum on the conversation at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires concern-
ing the visit of Roberto D’Aubuisson to Buenos Aires, January 5, 1981, in El Salvador: The
Making of U.S. Policy, 1977–1984 (Alexandria: Chadwyck-Healey, 1989); Laurie Becklund,
‘‘Death Squad Members: Over the Edge,’’ in Los Angeles Times, December 19, 1983.
55. Duhalde, El estado terrorista argentino, 118; Roberto Bardini, Monjes, mercenarios y
mercaderes: La red secreta de apoyo a los Contras (Mexico City: Alpa Corral, 1988), 103–5.
56. Oscar R. Cardoso, Ricardo Kirschbaum, and Eduardo van der Kooy, Malvinas, la
trama secreta (Buenos Aires: Sudamericana-Planeta, 1983), 27; Joselovsky, ‘‘El ejército del
‘Proceso,’ ’’ 63.
57. Christopher Dickey, With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua (New
York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 54–55.
58. Interview with Carlos Alberto Lobo, in Siete Días, March 13, 1983, 74–76.
59. Discourses by Gra≈gna on August 10, September 24, and November 16, 1979, cited
in Verbitsky, La última batalla, 83.
60. Quoted in Foreign Broadcast Information Service-Latin America, July 23, 1979.
61. Interviews with Margarita Suzán, aide to Comandante Tomás Borge, in Managua,
June 25, 1993, and with a former Argentine guerrilla cadre, name withheld on request, in
Managua, June 28, 1993.
62. Interviews by the author in Managua with Abel Céspedes, July 7, 1993, and Mari-
ano Morales, July 7, 1993; interview with José Efrel Martínez Mondragón, in Elisabeth
Reimann, Confesiones de un Contra: Historia de ‘‘Moisés’’ en Nicaragua (Buenos Aires:
Legasa, 1986), 29, 31 35.
63. Edgar Chamorro, Packaging the Contras: A Case of cia Disinformation (New York:
Institute for Media Analysis, 1987), 6–7.
64. Interview with Morales.
65. Interview by the author with Oscar Sobalvarro García, Managua, July 7, 1993.
66. See Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League; and Bruce Ho√man, The plo and
Israel in Central America: The Geopolitical Dimension (Santa Monica: Rand, 1988).
67. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (sipri), World Armaments and
Disarmament Yearbook 1979 (London: Taylor and Francis, 1979), 204–5; Edward Schu-
maker, ‘‘Argentina Buying New Arms,’’ New York Times, June 6, 1982; Ignacio Klich,
‘‘Israel et l’Amérique Latine: La Pari d’un engagement accru aux cotés de Washington,’’
Le Monde Diplomatique, February 1983, 17. See Bishara Bahbah, Israel and Latin America:
The Military Connection (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986), 72–73, 123–24.
68. Juan Salinas and Julio Villalonga, Gorriarán, la Tablada y las ‘‘guerras de inteligen-
cia’’ en América Latina (Buenos Aires: Manguin, 1993), 181.
69. Latin American Weekly Report, September 11, 1981, 1, 5; Salinas and Villalonga,
Gorriarán, 142–43; Scott and Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 77, 217n79; transcription from
the videotaped testimony of Héctor Francés, December 6, 1982, 7, 10, in the author’s
archives.
70. Michael McClintock, The American Connection: State Terror and Popular Resistance
in Guatemala (London: Zed Books, 1985), 142, 169–71, 187–88, 191–94, 219; Anderson and
Anderson, Inside the League, 177; ‘‘Israel Adds Itself to the War against Nicaragua,’’
Soberanía, no. 8 (January 1983): 37.
71. Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Cockburn, Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the
U. S.-Israeli Covert Relationship (New York: Harper Collins, 1991), 223; Washington Post,
November 14, 1984; Scott and Marshall, Cocaine Politics, 8–13. Israel and Argentina
collaborated in a U.S. program to send undercover arms to Iran—part of Oliver North’s
‘‘enterprise’’ aimed at reequipping the Nicaraguan Contras. An Argentine air freight
company, Transporte Aéreo Rioplatense (tar), which belonged to high-ranking o≈cials
in the air force, transported Israeli military equipment to Iran. This military equipment
had been sold to Iran by an Israeli cover firm. This account is based on the following
sources: contract signed by José María Patetta (tar) and Stuart J. McCa√erty, Miami,
July 7, 1981, in the author’s archives; interview with García Lupo; Scott Armstrong et al.,
The Chronology: The Documented Day-by-Day Account of the Secret Military Assistance to
Iran and the Contras (New York: Warner Books, 1987), 7–8.
72. Personal communication between the former ambassador to El Salvador, Robert E.
White, and the author, February 29, 1996.
73. General Directorate of Military Industries (dgfm), ‘‘Financiación de venta de
material bélico a la República de El Salvador,’’ secret memorandum from General Au-
gusto J. B. Alemanzor to the Commander in Chief of the Army, General Leopoldo F.
Galtieri, January 18, 1982, in the author’s archives.
74. Central Bank of the Republic of Argentina (bcra), Directorate’s secret session,
‘‘Acta no. ‘S’ 2,’’ February 11, 1982. See also General Directorate of Military Industries,
memorandum 624/33, ref.: E.02940/82, February 1, 1982, both documents in the author’s
archives.
75. ‘‘Military Diplomacy Tilts Argentine Foreign Policy towards Washington,’’ Latin
America Weekly Report, September 11, 1981, 1.
76. ‘‘ ‘Che’ Galtieri Plans His Own Vietnam,’’ Latin America Weekly Report, October 9,
166 ariel c. armony
1981; ‘‘Viola’s Health Wanes and Galtieri Gets the U.S. Seal of Approval,’’ Latin America
Weekly Report, November 13, 1981, 1.
77. Quoted in Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League, 303, citing Noticias Argen-
tinas (Buenos Aires), February 24, 1982.
78. Becklund, ‘‘Death Squad Members’’; Craig Pyes, ‘‘ ‘The Doctor’ Prescribes Torture
for the Hesitant,’’ Albuquerque Journal, December 20, 1983; Duhalde, El estado terrorista
argentino, 146.
79. Becklund, ‘‘Death Squad Members’’; Duhalde, El estado terrorista argentino, 120–
21, 128.
80. Quoted in Becklund, ‘‘Death Squad Members.’’
81. Testimony of Sánchez Reisse, 44.
82. Guardian (London), December 29, 1981; Duhalde, El estado terrorista argentino,
122.
83. Nicaragua, Ministry of the Interior, secret memorandum.
84. On this aspect of the Argentine assistance to Guatemala, see ‘‘Argentina Redraws
the Ideological Map,’’ 6; Duhalde, El estado terrorista argentino, 122–23; Alejandro Dabat
and Luis Lorenzano, Argentina: The Malvinas and the End of Military Rule (London:
Verso, 1984), 80–81.
85. McClintock, The American Connection: Guatemala, 187–88, 191–94; Susanne Jones,
The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power (Boulder: Westview
Press, 1991), 120, 195.
86. ‘‘Testing Time for Military Solutions in Guatemala and El Salvador,’’ Latin Ameri-
can Weekly Report, November 6, 1981.
87. McClintock, The American Connection: Guatemala, 245, 263.
88. Dickey, With the Contras, 90–92; Peter Kornbluh, Nicaragua: The Price of Interven-
tion (Washington: Institute for Policy Studies, 1987), 127.
89. Confidential telegram from the Department of State to the U.S. Embassy in Teguci-
galpa, ‘‘Colonels Alvarez and López Grijalva [Grijalba],’’ May 21, 1981, in the author’s
archives. The activities of the Argentine advisors in Honduras (and other countries in the
region), as well as their link with the Honduran military, were described in detail by a
former agent from the Argentine intelligence (under the pseudonym of ‘‘Carlos’’) to Leo
Valladares in a telephone conversation that took place in Buenos Aires in October 1996.
Valladares was then the national commissioner for human rights in Honduras. See also
the following declassified documents (U.S. Department of Defense, intelligence reports):
‘‘Argentine-Chilean Assistance to Honduras,’’ 1981; Argentine Army Support to Hon-
duran Army,’’ September 24, 1981; and ‘‘Honduran G-2 Enroute to South America,’’ 1982,
in the author’s archives.
90. For example, in his testimony before the Penal Federal Court in Buenos Aires in
mid-1979, the Argentine intelligence agent Rafael López Fader declared that he was
commissioned by his country’s army intelligence command to act as a military advisor in
Honduras. López Fader, who remained in Central America until 1983, presented the
court with various documents to prove his testimony—photographs, a bank statement

from Tegucigalpa, and an id card that identified him as a civilian belonging to the Army
Intelligence. Juzgado Nacional en lo Criminal y Correccional Federal no. 5, case ‘‘Sivak,
Osvaldo Fabio, victim of kidnapping and extortion,’’ testimony of Rafael López Fader,
Buenos Aires, August 20, 1996, in the author’s archives.
91. Interview with Víctor Meza, in Anderson and Anderson, Inside the League, 224.
92. See the following sources: National Commissioner for the Protection of Human
Rights in Honduras, Honduras: The Facts Speak for Themselves (New York: Human
Rights Watch/Americas, 1994), 123, 164–65, 227; Americas Watch, Human Rights in Hon-
duras: Signs of ‘‘The Argentine Method’’ (New York, December 1982), 2–19; Anderson and
Anderson, Inside the League, 226.
93. Interamerican Court for Human Rights, testimony of Florencio Caballero, Octo-
ber 6, 1987; and sworn declaration of José Barrera Martínez, in National Commissioner
for the Protection of Human Rights, Honduras: The Facts, 160–99; Anderson and Ander-
son, Inside the League, 224–25; confidential telegram from the U.S. Department of State
to the U.S. Embassy in Tegucigalpa, ‘‘ATA Program: Evidence in Hernández Case,’’ May
13, 1987, in the author’s archives.
94. Department of Defense, ‘‘Argentine-Chilean Assistance’’; ‘‘Argentine Army Sup-
port’’; ‘‘Honduran G-2 Enroute.’’
95. Roy Gutman, Banana Diplomacy: The Making of American Policy in Nicaragua,
1981–1987 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 57.
96. Interview by the author with an o≈cial from the Argentine Foreign Service, based
in Central America from 1981 to 1982, who remains anonymous at his request, Buenos
Aires, August 11, 1993. This source confirmed the o≈cial relationship between the Argen-
tine military junta and the Honduran, Salvadoran, and Guatemalan governments con-
cerning the clandestine paramilitary programs in these countries. See the confiden-
tial cable from Thomas J. O’Donnell, U.S. Embassy in Nicaragua, to the Department of
State, March 1, 1980, in Nicaragua: The Making of U.S. Policy, 1978–1990 (Alexandria:
Chadwyck-Healey, 1991).
97. Sam Dillon, Comandos: The cia and Nicaragua’s Contra Rebels (New York: Henry
Holt, 1991), 99–101; Linda Drucker, ‘‘A Contra’s Story,’’ Progressive, August 1986, 25–
26; National Commissioner for the Protection of Human Rights, Honduras: The Facts,
133–34.
98. See, for example, the testimony of Sánchez Reisse.
99. Ibid.
100. Chamorro, Packaging the Contras, 5–6; and Dillon, Comandos, 341.
101. Gleijeses, Conflicting Missions, 392.
102. Cable from the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, ‘‘Human Rights: Ambassador’s
Session with General Camps,’’ July 26, 1979, in U.S. State Department, Argentina De-
classification Project.
103. Interview with Raimondi.
168 ariel c. armony
104. See, for example, Sandra McGee Deutsch and Ronald H. Dolkart, eds., The
Argentine Right: Its History and Intellectual Origins, 1910 to the Present (Wilmington, Del.:
SR Books, 1993).
105. Quoted in El Día (Mexico), March 19, 1981.
106. See the insightful review by Deborah L. Norden of my book Argentina, the United
States, and the Anti-Communist Crusade in Central America, 1977–1984, in American
Political Science Review 3, no. 2 (June 1999): 463–64.
107. U.S. Embassy, Buenos Aires, ‘‘Hypothesis: The goa as Prisoner of Army Intel-
ligence,’’ Townsend B. Friedman memorandum, August 18, 1980.
108. See McSherry, Predatory States, chap. 7.
109. See, for example, the discussion in Richard Saull, ‘‘El lugar del sur global en la
conceptualización de la guerra fría: Desarrollo capitalista, revolución social y conflicto
geopolítico,’’ in Espejos de la guerra fría: México, América Central y el Caribe, ed. Daniela
Spenser (Mexico City: Porrúa, 2004), 31–66.
110. Quote from Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents: Reagan, no. 19 (May 2,
1983): 614.
111. Margaret E. Keck and Kathryn Sikkink, Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Net-
works in International Politics (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 2–30.
112. Joseph, ‘‘Close Encounters,’’ 13–14.
113. Ibid., 14–16.
SETH FEIN
Producing the Cold War in Mexico

The Public Limits of Covert Communications
We live of course in a world not only of commodities but also of representation,

and representations—their production, circulation, history, and interpretation—are
the very element of culture. In much recent theory the problem of representation
is deemed to be central, yet rarely is it put in its full political context, a context
that is primarily imperial. Instead we have on the one hand an isolated cultural
sphere believed to be freely and unconditionally available to weightless theoretical
speculation and investigation, and, on the other, a debased political sphere, where the
real struggle between interests is supposed to occur. To the professional student of
culture—the humanist, the critic, the scholar—only one sphere is relevant, and, more
to the point, it is accepted that the two spheres are separated, whereas the two are
not only connected but ultimately the same.
—Edward Said, ‘‘Secular Interpretation, the Geographical Element and the
Methodology of Imperialism’’
In 1957 Mexico City was the site of funerals for two celebrities, each responsible
for the cultural production that marked twentieth-century Mexico: the painter
Diego Rivera and the movie star Pedro Infante.∞ It is unsurprising that one of
Mexico’s leading newsreels, Noticiario clasa, would feature segments about the
passing of these two icons of postrevolutionary culture. But it is surprising that
these images would be encountered, decades after their commercial exhibition,
not in the Filmoteca of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, where
one was accustomed to finding forgotten Mexican films, but buried in motion-
picture vaults containing the output of the (now defunct) United States Infor-
mation Agency (usia); that records regarding the newsreels’ production and
distribution could best be recovered not through research in Mexico City but
through a Freedom of Information Act request to the Department of State; and
that those who produced Noticiario clasa and its successor productions gave
172 seth fein
them a secret name, Project Pedro, unknown not only to the millions who
viewed them but even to the technicians who produced them. Perhaps it is not
so surprising, however, if we consider Project Pedro as part of the archive of U.S.
empire, an outpost of the formal system of extraterritorial control of informa-
tion institutionalized and globalized through Cold War.
Between East and West, Mexico and the United States
After World War II, Good Neighbor discourse became derivative of Cold War
strategy, and East-West relations replaced hemispheric essentialism as the inter-
national framework for U.S. propaganda in the Americas. Where Latin America
had provided a prewar laboratory for the development of the internationalist
ideology that globally underwrote the U.S. war e√ort, in the postwar period it
became (until the Cuban revolution) a screen onto which U.S. foreign policy
and Cold War culture projected extrahemispheric concerns, generated by inter-
national relations in Europe and Asia.≤ The Korean War and nsc-68’s globaliza-
tion of containment changed the Cold War everywhere in every way. In the
Americas, for example, until the 1950s the United States Information Service
(usis) continued to distribute materials produced for Good Neighbor objectives
during World War II. After Korea, usis began to distribute more ideologically
charged, anti-Communist materials, but ones that were derivative of foreign
policies developed for other areas of the world rather than composed for inter-
American communication.≥
In the 1950s, Washington’s great global fear—from Cairo to Paris, Bandung to
Mexico City—was neutrality. This fear produced the idea of the Third World, as
it was initially conceived in the decade’s opening years, to take hold—a world
between East and West—before its most widely understood meanings moved
from political to socioeconomic terms in the 1960s.∂ A principal question posed
by usia’s 1956 ‘‘Barometer Study on Public Opinion’’ in Mexico elucidates Wash-
ington’s anxieties about the unwillingness of people to choose sides in the Cold
War: ‘‘At the present time do you personally think that Mexico should be on the
side of the Communist powers, on the side of the anti-Communist powers or on
neither side?’’ The aggregate response confirmed Washington’s worries: 71 per-
cent of the 1,455 respondents, from across Mexico’s largest twenty-three towns
and cities, answered, ‘‘Neither side.’’∑
Washington’s secret production of Mexican newsreels drew upon both a long
history of cross-border involvement in Mexico City’s film industry and contem-
porary practices of transatlantic cultural Cold War. usia’s secret newsreel work
p r o d u c i n g t h e c o l d wa r i n m e x i c o 173
in Western Europe, for example, provided an operational model for its work
in the Western Hemisphere. Specifically, the agency’s ‘‘newsreel operation in
France’’ was the exemplar for initial e√orts in Brazil as well as Mexico. As
antifascism morphed into anticommunism and covert international informa-
tion initiatives replaced public ones, Washington’s two key World War II ca-
balleros, Brazil and Mexico, remained the main mass-media producers and
targets for Washington’s inter-American propaganda. Hence, the East-West cul-
tural Cold War reverberated in the Americas, where many of its discursive
patterns and international communications techniques had been first rehearsed
during the Second World War. This was part of a global sequence in the 1950s:
Cold War projects in the Americas would, in turn, provide test cases for deter-
mining ‘‘the possibilities and/or limitations of such a [newsreel] program in the
Far East or the Near East.’’ New U.S. foreign policies, then, would move from
East to West, from Europe through the Americas to Asia as Washington glob-
alized its early Cold War international information interventions in the Korean
War’s wake. In Washington’s view, the medium was the message. As Project
Pedro’s Washington implementer initially thought about such work in 1954: ‘‘It
is my feeling that newsreels in themselves carry a certain credibility as a sort of
documentary in the entertainment field. They are presented by ‘less interested’
parties than are presentations by us [usia/usis]. Consequently I consider that in
the commercial field this is perhaps the single most important vehicle for carry-
ing our propaganda objectives without its being recognized as such by the
viewer.’’∏ This early thinking about the project viewed subsidized Mexican news-
reels in transnational terms that would project Washington’s mission into the
rest of Spanish-speaking Latin America; Mexican newsreels would provide a
region-wide system for audiovisually disseminating Washington’s Cold War
throughout Central and South America.π (This never happened, as Project
Pedro was produced and distributed within strictly national boundaries.)
Concerns about Soviet mass-media incursions that exploited Third World
neutralism were both context and pretext for usia’s covert work to transnation-
alize its film presence in the Americas. Turner Shelton, director of the agency’s
Motion Picture Service, explained to its Latin American bureau in 1955 that
transnationalized newsreel production in Mexico o√ered a unique opportunity
to wage cold war within the Americas as Washington focused its attention
elsewhere, even as intelligence about the area ‘‘reports that the Soviet Embassy
in Mexico has recently aided in the establishment of a firm for the distribution
of Russian films in Mexico and Central America. This is another demonstration
of what the opposition is up to, using Mexico as a base for operations. In our dis-
174 seth fein
cussion last October, we agreed on the desirability of using the newsreel device
in Brazil and Mexico. The Brazilian program is moving along very well. . . . I
think it is highly desirable to proceed with the planning and development of this
project for Mexico.’’∫ Consequently, in May 1956, the usia director Theodore
Streibert asked the agency’s general counsel to authorize plans for Project Pedro,
the agency’s code name for its attempt to take control of a Mexican newsreel.
To implement the project, usia turned to an expatriate Hollywood executive,
Richard K. Tompkins, who had overseen earlier agency e√orts at covert produc-
tion of anti-Communist film propaganda in Mexico City, the era’s world capital
of Spanish-language filmmaking. As Streibert explained: ‘‘This project involves
dealing with a ‘front man’ . . . for purchase of a half-interest in one of the two
leading newsreel companies in Mexico . . . and for performance by him of
the production aspects of the newsreel operation, including the integration of
Agency footages into the reels.’’Ω
Washington’s and Hollywood’s complex relations with Mexican film pro-
ducers between World War II and the Cold War contributed to both the notable
opportunities and the limits that Project Pedro encountered in its actual opera-
tion in Mexico. Cross-border commercial collaboration forged in the interests
of antifascism broke down after the war as the U.S. industry, freed from the
coercive structure of instrumental wartime dependence on Washington, sought
to contain (or co-opt) its southern competitor’s international growth. However,
even as commercial relations became less harmonious, links between Holly-
wood and the Mexican industry, both behind and on the screen, persisted and
facilitated Washington’s anti-Communist mission. Tompkins personified those
film industry connections across the antifascist/anti-Communist divide as well
as Hollywood’s commercial and political, informal and formal, connections to
U.S. transnational and international relations. In the early 1950s, he had oper-
ated Latin America’s most important film studio, Mexico City’s Estudios Churu-
busco, built during World War II by a transnational partnership between Holly-
wood’s Radio Keith Orpheum (rko), headed at the time by Tompkins’s uncle N.
Peter Rathvon and Mexico’s leading mass-media magnate, Emilio Azcárraga
Vidaurreta.∞≠
Tompkins’s prior Washington-backed anti-Communist film projects in Mex-
ico—production of two cartoon series and a feature film—had mobilized Mexi-
can resources to reach spectators throughout the Americas. By contrast, Project
Pedro focused primarily on Mexican moviegoers. As with those earlier Cold War
projects, the impetus for covert control of a Mexican newsreel came from usis
o≈cials in Mexico City who sold their plan to the agency’s audiovisual planners
in Washington. As the new program commenced, the embassy’s top usis o≈cial,
Public A√airs O≈cer (pao) Jack McDermott, expressed his enthusiasm to the
agency’s film chief: ‘‘I consider this an extremely important project. If it is
successful it will reach a highly significant element in Mexico with messages
carrying our objectives. I believe that the proposed grant of approximately
$68,000 is fully justified in our e√ort to advance U.S. objectives in Mexico.’’∞∞
In fact, Project Pedro’s first-year costs would finally approach $100,000, once
Tompkins finally succeeded in obtaining control of an established national en-
terprise, which was not easily accomplished.∞≤
Project Pedro was part of a wider field of national projects in Latin America—
notably in Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Brazil (where Washington operated
within a national film culture that rivaled Mexico’s in a nation it considered to
be of strategic importance). In each of these countries, usia directly aided
national newsreels. These nationally distinct programs attempted to compensate
locally for what usia neglected to do centrally in the 1950s owing to the relatively
minor position Latin America held in the global formulation of U.S. foreign
policy. As usia film chief Shelton expressed it to the embassy’s public a√airs
o≈cer during Project Pedro’s first months of production: ‘‘One of the principal
reasons for establishing the Pedro project was the fact that there is a great dearth
of material available here on matters relating to Mexico or, for that matter, Latin
America in general. I think you can well understand that the newsreels of the
world (and we have access to practically all of them) cover that which is most
news-worthy, and it is true, I believe you will agree, that Mexico and Latin
America, in general do not occupy a very important place in the overall news-
making activities of the world today. This, of course, operates as a severe limiting
factor on the material with any significance to Mexico which is available to us.’’
Hence, from Washington’s perspective, Project Pedro’s value would be prin-
cipally not as an outlet for international footage but as a transnational producer
of Mexican news within a Cold War frame. ‘‘I think you should use every single
means at your disposal,’’ Shelton advised usis in Mexico City, ‘‘to persuade
Tompkins to cover as many local happenings as possible which have some
significance because this will, of course, enhance the value of the reel. We can, of
course, supply a very considerable amount of general news material composed
of events that happened around the world, but I believe that the thinking so far
has been that we should stick as closely as possible to events having some
relation to Mexico and Latin America.’’∞≥
Unlike its other American newsreel relationships, which simply received in-
ternational footage shot by U.S. companies, Project Pedro involved Washing-
176 seth fein
ton’s covert ownership of a national entity. The particular history of the U.S.
presence within Mexican film production—a presence that since World War II
mixed commerce and propaganda, Hollywood and U.S. foreign policy—facili-
tated that intervention. And that history converged with that of commercial U.S.
newsreels at home and in the world in the mid-1950s. As Project Pedro began, in
the late 1950s, many of the dominant U.S. newsreels were ceasing production, as
living rooms replaced movie theaters as the site of audiovisual news consump-
tion. In fact, the two major newsreels that survived into the late 1960s, Hearst
and Universal, did so because of usia contracts to produce information for the
areas of the world where television had not yet achieved hegemony.∞∂ While they
receded nationally, U.S. newsreels also declined internationally throughout the
decade. As a usis assessment noted, ‘‘American newsreels are on their way out in
Mexico.’’ Between 1955 and 1958 the number of U.S. productions exhibited went
from five to two, and the remaining pair, mgm and Universal, were winding
down their operations. The embassy concluded that ‘‘for all practical purposes
the propaganda impact of American newsreels in Mexico has vanished.’’ This
vacuum stimulated Washington’s desire to engineer a Mexican alternative to the
commercial representation of its view of the world presented by U.S. companies,
since ‘‘Mexican newsreels . . . remain the only e√ective film medium for reach-
ing 35mm [i.e., commercial] audiences in Mexico.’’ As was the case across media
and across the world, usia moved in Mexico to work directly in an area where
it deemed the commercial presence of U.S. information inadequate to wage
cold war.∞∑
Project Pedro developed at a moment of notable national as well as international

change in Mexican mass communications. Not only were U.S. newsreels de-
creasingly visible, but Mexican television production and reception were grow-
ing rapidly. Between 1956 and 1958, the estimated number of Mexican tele-
vision sets in operation more than doubled (from 170,000 to 375,000), as did
the estimated audience they served (from 1 million to 2.25 million within a
national population of around 30 million).∞∏ usia frequently placed material
on Mexican tv but did not directly produce any programs on a regular basis for
the tightly controlled monopoly. U.S. corporate sponsorship of Mexican news
was, however, present from the outset of tv production in 1950, when General
Motors began to underwrite Mexico City Channel 4’s nightly fifteen-minute
newscast.∞π
Despite television’s rapid development in Mexico, relative to the rest of Latin
America, it did not displace motion pictures as the dominant form of audio-
visual mass communication in the 1950s. Moviegoers encountered eight na-

tionally distributed weeklies that, like the rest of Mexican mass media, were
privately owned by members of the political establishment (or their cronies)
and depended on o≈cial patronage. Moreover, like the era’s feature films, news-
reels operated within the representational parameters established by the state
party’s culture.∞∫ This was as much a matter of internal producer behavior as
of external state intervention by the censors who worked in the Secretaría
de Gobernación (Interior Ministry). Newsreels shared with feature films a close
relationship to political power not only behind the screen but on it. There
they reconfigured the dominant images as well as messages of narrative cinema,
which itself was a regular topic, as newsreels spent much celluloid highlight-
ing the nation’s film industry, particularly the comings and goings of its movie
stars. In doing so, Mexican newsreels reproduced the celebrity culture, evi-
dent in print and radio as well as film, that transformed popular entertainers
into o≈cially sanctioned symbols of national identity and projected politicians,
especially the president, in the glamorized language of film culture (see figures 1
and 2). The president’s activities—opening public works projects, attending
political functions, meeting with visiting leaders from other nations—domi-
nated Mexican newsreels’ political reporting. The culture of celebrity produced
by Mexico’s mass media merged politics and entertainment in the nation’s capi-
tal city.
If the president was the nation’s political metonym, Mexico City was its
geocultural synecdoche. Like so many of the feature films that they preceded on
Mexican movie screens in the 1950s, newsreels highlighted Mexico City as a
modern metropolis, the showcase of contemporary architecture, cosmopolitan
night life, popular entertainment, and, above all else, the mass-culture industries
that projected the capital city’s culture nationally as lo mexicano.∞Ω Mexico City
was the production site for all of Mexico’s national newsreels, and they all
conflated the nation with the capital city.≤≠ Project Pedro’s productions contrib-
uted to this overrepresentation of national metropolis. Mexico City simulta-
neously served as political stage, textbook, and museum, exemplar of modern
work, consumption, and leisure. Moreover, Mexico City exercised national cul-
tural authority behind the screen, through the Federal District’s strict regulation
of the content and commerce of public entertainment in the country’s largest
motion-picture market and singular site of industrial film production.≤∞
As Project Pedro completed its fourth month of production, the embassy’s
pao, its top usis o≈cial, indicated how the agency could best provision footage
to supplement (less ostensibly political) locally produced material in order to
1. President Adolfo Ruiz Cortines speaking at 1957 Freedom of the Press Day celebration.
Noticiario clasa 810 (reproduced at the National Archives).
2. Dolores del Río at 1957 luncheon honoring Mexican film industry. Noticiario clasa
800 (reproduced at the National Archives).
project the Cold War in a topical register calibrated for Mexican consumption:
‘‘What then is wanted? In general terms, items that have genuine interest, events
that show progress, international cooperation, or with human appeal. What are
some of these? Some footage of braceros working under good conditions to
o√set the publicity which has shown only the seamy side. Mexicans preferably,
or even Latin-Americans, at various cultural, commercial or scholastic pursuits
in the U.S. They may be artists, students, researchers, or important visitors.
American business firms with branches in Mexico bring Mexicans to the U.S. for
training as executives. Footage in this field is ideal to show the benefits of
American capital operating abroad.’’ Regarding direct references to the Cold
War, Jack McDermott suggested scenes showing Washington working for social
progress more than against the Soviet Union: ‘‘Since the Agency is placing heavy
emphasis on People’s Capitalism, the Geophysical Year and Atoms for Peace,
events related to these broad headings ought to be covered on a regular basis.’’
References to Moscow should respond to specific Soviet information initiatives
—for example, ‘‘adverse propaganda regarding [nuclear] fallout’’—or directly
dramatize the Kremlin’s work to undermine the U.S.-led cause of world peace:
‘‘Coverage of a un Security Council or General Assembly meeting on those
occasions when Russian delegates are shown obstructing the work of peace or
arms control are good newsreel standbys.’’≤≤ From Project Pedro’s outset, the
embassy constantly demanded more international footage about Cold War con-
cerns elsewhere in the world or production of special material in the United
States it deemed of interest to Mexican spectators. For example, in one instance,
usis was livid that, ‘‘despite a specific request by wire for coverage on the visit of
Cantinflas [Mexican movie star Mario Moreno] to Washington[,] not one foot
was received. Cantinflas is a national hero and since he made an obvious hit on
his visit, Mexico could have exploited the occasion to great advantage. It is
di≈cult to understand why the Agency passed up this opportunity.’’≤≥
Project Pedro unfolded within a deeply developed national film culture that
informally as much as formally imposed its own representational rules enforced
by the intricate personal and discursive interactions between o≈cial Mexico and
commercial mass-culture producers and consumers. Beyond usis’s explicit rec-
ognition that waging audiovisual cold war in Mexico meant antineutralism
more than it did anti-Communism, McDermott’s request for the agency to
supply specific ‘‘message material’’ implicitly expressed a contradiction in Proj-
ect Pedro’s operation: Mexicanized production—which conformed to state reg-
ulation, audience expectations, and business practices—could not produce what
Washington considered e√ective propaganda. Indeed, binational relations with
180 seth fein
Mexico presented particular challenges to Washington’s bipolar globality. This

was due not only to the centrality of the history of conflict with the United States
to o≈cial and popular conceptions of Mexican identity but also to contempo-
rary cross-border issues. Most notably the Eisenhower administration’s 1954
implementation of Operation Wetback (the militarized repatriation of undocu-
mented workers) was a source of public resentment, arguably more significant
for Cold War relations than, for example, Mexico’s unwillingness to endorse
U.S. diplomacy in Guatemala, preceding the cia’s overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz.≤∂
Producing Project Pedro
Tompkins first focused on one of the most well-regarded (if financially shaky)
Mexican concerns, España-México-Argentina (ema), producer of the news-
oriented Noticiero mexicano and the magazine-format Cine selecciones. Prin-
cipally owned by General Juan F. Azcárate, a politically well-connected for-
mer military o≈cer and diplomat, ema had particularly close relations to the
state. While all commercial newsreels in Mexico depended on various levels of
o≈cial patronage, the government had directly subsidized ema’s operations
since World War II, regularly using Noticiero mexicano as a commercial out-
let for o≈cial images and messages not only nationally but also in the United
States, where the company had established distribution throughout the Spanish-
speaking Southwest.≤∑ An ema product, secretly controlled by usia, could be
used to reach Mexicans (and Mexican Americans) within the United States
(where the agency was legally prohibited from distributing its materials) as well
as in Mexico. ema’s equally impressive history of international distribution
southward fit well with usia’s secondary desire that Project Pedro replicate
the cross-border circulation of its other anti-Communist Mexican film activi-
ties, notably Tompkins’s cartoons and a feature film—Dicen que soy comunista
(1951)—made with Washington funds. These had e√ectively drawn on Mexico’s
international standing as a major film producer to export U.S. messages through
Mexican movies. Likewise, usia believed that ‘‘newsreels with Mexican attribu-
tion would have value outside the country and that arrangements for distribu-
tion should take into account desirable outlets in neighboring areas.’’≤∏
Tompkins’s agreement with usia demanded that he conceal his Washington
connections from his local partners and the host state as well as the Mexican
public. It directed him to ‘‘negotiate, in the name of his controlled company, the
‘Dibujos Animados, s.a.,’ and ostensibly as sole interested party,’’ for the right to
control ema’s weekly productions.≤π This presented problems, since the deal’s
structure had to appear to abide by the postwar Mexican law that required
majority national ownership in designated industries. Owing to its prominence
as the leading producer of national culture and internationally recognized sym-
bol of national achievement, the film industry was, in fact, the first of the sectors
legally declared as critical to Mexican sovereignty. Tompkins’s attempt to engage
a prestanombre (a Mexican citizen to front for U.S. capital) was a widespread
practice, but Project Pedro’s ideological (rather than strictly market) objectives
and Washington’s demands that its own control be absolute as well as covert
necessitated complicated contractual maneuvers both between Tompkins and
his Mexican associates as well as between usia and Tompkins. usia, not Tomp-
kins, would ultimately control production: ‘‘It is clearly understood and stipu-
lated that the U.S. Government shall be the owner-in-fact of the entire 531 shares
of stock thus to be acquired, and the use of such ownership and the operation of
the Company shall be in accordance with the Government’s wishes.’’≤∫
The agency’s plans for Project Pedro required absolute control of newsreel
content. Direct ownership of local production distinguished Project Pedro from
usia’s other unattributed newsreel projects. Unlike its extensive Project King-
fish—through which the agency assembled newsreel footage shot by U.S. com-
mercial contractors into productions distributed in Asia and Africa—Project
Pedro would produce the Cold War in Mexico. The weight of two decades of
national development of an industrial film culture gave rise to this imperial
objective and need. To produce e√ective messages for Mexico, ones that would
supposedly nudge national discourse toward the United States, demanded both
recognition and subversion of Mexican newsreel culture. This duality under-
mined the deal with ema. Tompkins and Azcárate agreed to financial terms but
parted ways over editorial authority. This was the nonnegotiable issue for usia.
In search of a new entree to national production and distribution, Tompkins
turned his attention to Noticiario Nacional, s.a., a company jointly owned
by Gabriel Alarcón, who controlled the mammoth Cadena de Oro network
of movie theaters, and the político Luis Manjarrez, senator from the state of
Puebla. Underlining the always present connections between politics and pri-
vately owned mass communications in midcentury Mexico, Alarcón’s fortunes
had grown through his alliance with Puebla’s dominant political boss, Maxi-
mino Avila Camacho (1891–1945), who served as secretary of communications
and public works in the presidential administration of his younger brother,
Manuel (1940–1946), during World War II.≤Ω
Less financially sound than ema, Noticiario Nacional was desperate for new
capital. The debt-ridden Alarcón welcomed Tompkins’s overture, but the em-
182 seth fein
bassy paused at the additional funds required by its frontman to make the deal.≥≠
Despite the contract’s cost, usis considered the company a more attractive
opportunity than ema, because its long-running main product Noticiario clasa
was ‘‘the oldest production of its kind in the Republic of Mexico—and the only
one locally produced which . . . maintained its ‘news’ tenor,’’ while many of its
competitors had shifted to feature magazine formats more suitable for lighter
subject matter.≥∞ As much as the quality of its production, usis valued Noticiario
clasa’s extensive exhibition, noting that it ‘‘has among the best distribution
arrangements of any Mexican newsreel.’’ In arranging access to that national
audience, the new agreement between usia and Tompkins reproduced the basic
structure of the ema deal but involved a more complex corporate arrangement
whereby a separate Mexican company, Impulsora Anahuac, s.a., headed by
Tompkins (and which included Alarcón, Manjarrez, and del Villar as o≈cers),
would actually own Noticiario Nacional. Meanwhile, that company’s board
would be reconfigured in public records to include Tompkins in a seemingly
secondary position.≥≤
The covert control that Tompkins achieved over a major newsreel satisfied
Washington. usia’s Motion Picture Service’s chief outlined its benefits to the
agency’s general counsel, who had to approve the contract: ‘‘Two features in
particular distinguish this arrangement from the prior ones in desirability: first,
because, for the first time we have a written agreement signed by the indigenous
principals that commit them to go forward with the operation; second, because
we are dealing through a new ‘holding’ corporation, which . . . is already orga-
nized (incorporated), and need only be activated. Additionally it is worthy of
note that the newsreel now to be controlled (‘Noticiario clasa’) is considered to
be by far the best in Mexico, and it is the one [former pao] Mr. Anderson
initially tried to ‘infiltrate’ when he first went to Mexico (the company produc-
ing this reel has heretofore been too well o√ financially to be interested in any
overtures).’’ Compared to earlier options, Shelton judged that ‘‘ou[r] control
(through Tompkins) of the operation will be implemented and strengthened in
several ways: As ostensible owner of 50% of the company, and as Chairman of
the Board with statutory veto authority of such o≈ce, Mr. Tompkins will be able
to exert all practical control on both companies and their operations.’’≥≥
In e√ect, the new system involved a double prestanombre. Tompkins’s com-
pany, Impulsora Anahuac, would control Noticiario Nacional, which would
ostensibly continue to operate under Alarcón’s leadership. At worst this ar-
rangement risked revealing a link to Tompkins, who was, in any case, a well-
established member of the Mexican filmmaking community, but his own links
to usia would remain contractually hidden. An additional advantage of the deal

was Cadena de Oro’s distribution of Cine mundial, produced by Productores
Unidos, s.a. Emilio Azcárraga Milmo operated Productores Unidos, which was
part of his father’s (Emilio Azcárraga Vidaurreta’s) mass-media empire, which
had long-standing links of its own to U.S. radio and motion-picture concerns, as
well as to Washington.≥∂ Through Tompkins’s arrangement, usia would be able
to place footage with Cine mundial as well as with a biweekly regional newsreel,
Actualidades del norte, that Alarcón produced for circulation in the eighty the-
aters he operated in and around Monterrey, Mexico’s northeastern industrial
capital.≥∑
Project Pedro commenced operation in February 1957. usis noted that ‘‘it was
immediately apparent that Noticiario Nacional had been greatly mismanaged,’’
and the embassy engaged Arthur Andersen and Co. to audit its new enterprise.
Surveying local operations, Noticiario Nacional’s (usis-imposed) general man-
ager, Cantwell Brown, determined that increased investment was necessary, since
production quality would have to be immediately improved to stabilize the firm’s
finances: ‘‘Upon contact with the various advertising agencies who represent the
largest volume of potential for the operation, it was found that the reputation of
the Company and the popularity of the vehicle itself was so poor that a complete
lack of confidence existed.’’ This was a crucial problem, since Mexican newsreels
paid fees for exhibition and funded production strictly through sponsorship.
Because there were no plans for funding beyond the agency’s initial investment,
after which Project Pedro was to function self-su≈ciently, it was imperative that
it soon attract new advertisers. Brown outlined a plan for establishing a commer-
cially viable operation that closely related upgrading output on the screen to
increasing management’s control behind it. ‘‘Immediate improvement of the
content and tenor of the News Reel to enhance its popularity’’ was the key to
profitable propaganda. This would allow for necessary ‘‘build up of distribution
and exhibition, especially to include more first run houses in Mexico City.’’
However, to begin more e≈cient production of messages, it was immediately
necessary to implement ‘‘proper accounting procedures and internal opera-
tions,’’ which would require ‘‘personnel changes,’’ including ‘‘a reduction in
union payroll’’ and more management control of ‘‘job specification.’’ Also, as
production quality rose, Brown planned to raise fees for ads and install a com-
mission system for selling spots that would ‘‘stimulate customer confidence and
secure more business.’’ He also recommended development of a 16 mm version
of Noticiario clasa for provincial distribution in venues unequipped for 35 mm
projection. Finally, and unrealistically, the company intended to lobby the Fed-
184 seth fein
eral District’s authorities to expand the permissible number of ads per reel.
While in its first six months of operation Noticiario Nacional lost over 200,000
pesos (US$16,000), the embassy considered the fact that the deficit could now be
reliably reported, through its new biweekly accounting practices, as a sign of
progress. More impressively, exhibition expanded despite its financial deficits.≥∏
During Noticiario Nacional’s first six months of usis management, it slightly
more than doubled its national presence, eventually reaching 288 screens. By the
end of 1957, its production was shown weekly in 307 theaters nationally, 53 of
which were in Mexico City. Noticiario clasa had added a dozen theaters in the
capital, eight of which were first-run outlets that quadrupled the newsreel’s
screen time among the city’s leading film venues. The company boasted that ‘‘of
these eight 2 are of the best in the City.’’ In addition to the eight movie palaces it
obtained through ‘‘agreement with Cadena de Oro,’’ Noticiario Nacional had
negotiated ‘‘separate contracts for Palacio Chino and the Versalles,’’ two more
leading downtown theaters. Tompkins credited usia’s international footage for
Noticiario clasa’s expanded exhibition. Since March, ‘‘foreign material of inter-
national origin was inserted,’’ based not strictly on its intended ideological e√ect
but in anticipation of ‘‘genuine and universal interest’’ that had palpable public
appeal. Brown concluded that ‘‘the vehicle has been improved gradually until
now it is of interest to theatergoers, not merely tolerated by them.’’ He calculated
that it now ‘‘has a propaganda impact of 1,643,540 persons per week.’’≥π
Although usis o≈cials expressed satisfaction at the newsreel’s improved qual-
ity and expanded audience, they (correctly) doubted that it would soon pay for
itself (even if Tompkins achieved all their recommendations for cutting costs
and expanding revenue). The main problem was that only 38 percent of possible
advertising time was currently sold, while ‘‘the weekly cost of getting out the
newsreel is some $43,000 [pesos] on top of which there was another $8,000
[pesos] to be paid to the four Mexican businessmen who fronted as the opera-
tion’s management. If the newsreel sold all of its advertising spots, it would take
in only $49,500 [pesos, or US$3,960 ].’’ usis estimated that it would be at least six
months until ‘‘even a break-even condition’’ could be achieved.≥∫ In fact, it
would never break even. This was a problem for Mexican newsreels generally,
not just Project Pedro’s. As Noticiario Nacional reported: ‘‘Federal District de-
cree insertions in the news reel are limited to four spots and one publicity item.
This places a definite ‘top’ on potential income from the operation.’’≥Ω
The state’s regulation of newsreel ads ensured dependence on extracommer-
cial (usually political) sources of revenue in exchange for representation. Such
contrived ‘‘news’’ segments regularly provoked public incredulity and antipathy:
‘‘The definition of ‘indirect publicity’ appears to be rather flexible, incidentally,

and very often the number of such items exceeds by far the o≈cial figure of one.
Audiences are extremely sensitive to material of the ‘indirect’ variety, and such
items are often met with loud whistles, the Mexican equivalent of the Bronx
cheer. But more often than not the patience of the Mexican audience is strained
to the breaking point, and the public indulges in the not too diverting, but
somewhat consoling, game of trying to guess who paid for what—and did he get
his money’s worth.’’∂≠ Just as all Mexican newsreels depended on various forms
of o≈cial and uno≈cial subsidies from Mexico City sources, so Project Pedro
depended on Washington’s secret payments to meet its costs. In its case, its extra-
commercial relations produced expanded international coverage that seemed
actually to enhance its reception, as long as it did not appear didactically ideo-
logical (which, in fact, it rarely did).
usia’s o≈cial mission did not include covert operations. Selling democracy
secretly was publicly ruled out when the agency was formed in 1953. Nevertheless
usia did regularly produce materials without attribution. If publicly challenged,
legally it would have to admit its involvement. In fact, its objective in Mexico
(and elsewhere) was to work covertly from within apparently sovereign national
mass media. usis was aware of the risks this posed to Washington’s very interests
in sponsoring Project Pedro, the international image of the United States as a
beacon of freedom in the Cold War. The embassy’s pao believed that usia could
survive public fallout from the disclosure that it provided unattributed newsreel
material to a Mexican firm, but it would have more di≈culty countering revela-
tions of its secret ownership of a Mexican company: ‘‘The fact that the usis in
Mexico was in reality the majority stockholder in a firm engaged in the produc-
tion and showing of newsreels, if it became known, would occasion serious
embarrassment to the U.S. Government. The newsreels themselves would be
discredited and since the ownership of stock in such a corporation in Mexico is
illegal, the corporation itself would be seriously damaged. . . . It is noted that the
production of movies is one of the so-called seven restricted industries in Mex-
ico.’’∂∞ To avoid such disclosure, usis assiduously operated Project Pedro as a
Mexico City enterprise that abided by local regulations. Regarding Tompkins’s
position, Shelton pointed out, ‘‘I think the pertinent point is that as far as
Project Pedro is concerned . . . Tompkins is not the majority stockholder. His
ownership is exactly equal to that of the other proprietary group. His control is
by virtue of tacit agreement and o≈ces held. He does not have ‘stock control’ of
the company’s a√airs. Since Mexican nationals own 50% of the stock, the corpo-
rate structure is legal and the stock ownership of Tompkins (an American
186 seth fein
national) is fully disclosed. Therefore it would be our thought that disclosure of

the Agency’s ‘control’ of Tompkins, except of course as the publicity might a√ect
its business success, could not a√ect the corporation.’’∂≤
In Mexico, as much as anywhere else in the world, the agency succeeded in
penetrating a locally legitimate national mode of cultural production through
implementation of ‘‘gray propaganda,’’ covertly produced and distributed infor-
mation that did not attribute its connection to the agency. O≈cially, it did not
engage in the ‘‘black propaganda’’ (covert misinformation and psychological
warfare) that was the domain of the cia (whose international subsidization of
intellectuals and mass media is better known to, if still inadequately researched
by, historians of Cold War Europe).∂≥ As a former usia deputy director ex-
plained in his history of the agency: ‘‘Unattributable material . . . is that which is
prepared and disseminated in such a way as to obscure or mislead the audience
as to its origins. usia does not engage in this kind of propaganda, leaving it to
the Central Intelligence Agency.’’∂∂ In Project Pedro’s case, the distinction was in
practice nonexistent. In fact, in one instance, the cia challenged usia to prove
that Project Pedro (and another plan, ‘‘Project T,’’ for Tompkins to produce an
anti-Communist feature film) were ‘‘within the responsibility boundaries’’ sepa-
rating the two agencies’ respective missions. In advising Ambassador Robert Hill
about how to handle the bureaucratic dispute over ‘‘the two covert film projects
of usis in Mexico,’’ McDermott explained that ‘‘the U.S. Government owns no
stock nor any interest in a Mexican firm. It has a contract with the American
[Tompkins] to supply footage for the newsreel and retains control of the news-
reel’s content,’’ but the ‘‘stock ownership aspect . . . no longer exists,’’ owing to
Project Pedro’s financial restructuring in August 1958, and therefore did not
trespass on the cia’s terrain.∂∑
Project Pedro’s successful competition for national advertising was critical to
its operation as a Mexican concern. Its most conspicuous national sponsors were
corporate holdovers from Noticiario Nacional’s operation under Alarcón and
came from the same Puebla-based economic clique that was closely tied to
national politics and economics since Avila Camacho’s presidency during World
War II. Banco Comercial Mexicano, owned by Manuel Espinosa Yglesias, and
José García Valseca’s publishing empire each sponsored short introductory seg-
ments above the newsreel’s title. García Valseca’s Novedades newspaper was a
close state-party collaborator that quietly published stories planted by the pri (as
well as a key recipient of usia material).∂∏ Mexican newsreels frequently adver-
tised a≈liations to particular print media. ema’s Noticiero mexicano, for exam-
ple, publicized its alliance with the major daily El Universal. Noticiario clasa’s
opening credits announced its alliance with García Valseca’s sports magazine
Esto. As was generally the case, the sponsoring publication had no actual edi-
torial role in a given newsreel’s production; it simply paid a fee for the advertising
that the newsreel provided. Esto was Noticiario clasa’s second largest sponsor,
and the newsreel frequently featured its exploits, as well as those of a≈liated
publications, in its ‘‘news’’ segments. Other major Mexican retail and manufac-
turing concerns—such as Corona Beer, Cadillac shoes, and Pal nail polish—
sponsored Project Pedro’s newsreels. Transnational U.S. companies were also
regular advertisers, not due to Project Pedro’s covert connection to Washington
but because of their commercial interests in Mexican consumption; they adver-
tised with nationally owned reels as well.∂π Coca-Cola was by far Project Pedro’s
largest source of advertising revenue. Goodyear, Kodak, and Jeep were among
the other prominent U.S. multinationals that regularly purchased Project Pedro
advertising spots in Noticiario clasa and its successor productions.∂∫
Some of the principal figures operating behind the screen showed up on
it. Noticiario clasa projected segments, for example, about the social activities
of the Alarcón and Azcárraga clans.∂Ω One issue conspicuously brought to-
gether the international and the national when it showed Emilio Azcárraga V.—
the dominant figure in midcentury Mexican mass communication and one of
Washington’s key covert collaborators—being named Executive of the Year for
1957 by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in Mexico.∑≠ Ambassador Hill’s ac-
tivities, his appearances with President Ruiz Cortines, and his airport arriv-
als in Mexico City were the only regularly conspicuous representation of the
embassy.∑∞
Project Pedro did subtly intervene in national politics in a way that con-
formed to general newsreel practices of highlighting favored politicians. Across
the two sexenios it spanned, the last third of Adolfo Ruiz Cortines’s administra-
tion (1952–58) and the first half of Adolfo López Mateos’s (1958–64), one gov-
ernment figure, greatly favored by U.S. foreign policy, remained Project Pedro’s
most prominent national political figure (following the two presidents them-
selves). usis newsreels regularly featured Antonio Ortiz Mena, Ruiz Cortines’s
director of the federal government’s Social Security Institute and subsequently
López Mateos’s treasury secretary. Ortiz Mena appeared frequently not only at
each president’s side but also o≈ciating independently at public events and
meeting with prominent U.S. o≈cials to discuss economic issues between the
two neighbors. A proto-técnico (forerunner of the type of politician that came to
188 seth fein
dominate the pri’s last two decades of presidential hegemony), Ortiz Mena’s
singular on-screen presence projected Washington’s support for a pro-U.S. poli-
tician who it hoped would eventually assume the presidency.∑≤
The intensity of usia’s e√ort to control Noticiario Nacional’s everyday opera-
tion matched that applied to maintaining the company’s appearance as a Mexi-
can concern. Just as Noticiario Nacional presented a front for Tompkins’s own
domestically registered company, Impulsora Anahuac, the expatriate’s firm pro-
vided a Mexican front for usia. Tompkins agreed to clear every single substantive
decision about production with the embassy’s usis sta√, who, in turn, regularly
informed the agency’s motion-picture chief about actual local production. At
least two members of a Newsreel Review Board—comprised of the post’s pao, the
deputy pao, information o≈cer, and films o≈cer—reviewed each issue and
forwarded a report to Washington. In addition, the embassy shipped a 35 mm
print of every exhibited edition to the agency for its own review (unintentionally
preserving an audiovisual record of Project Pedro of use to historians). usia also
required Tompkins to submit a quarterly ‘‘progress report’’ about the enterprise’s
operation that combined ‘‘narrative and statistical’’ assessments.∑≥
usia’s evaluation of Noticiario clasa scrutinized the newsreel’s content as much
as its finances. One such report made by Shelton, at the end of 1957, typically
evaluated narrative structure and topical content of six consecutive entries. The
agency’s motion-picture chief favorably noted the high degree of regularity in
form from edition to edition, combining various quantities of sequences com-
prised of footage about international events, ‘‘supplied by the [usia’s] newsreel
pool,’’ with national footage, usually about events in and around Mexico City,
which ‘‘included everything from boxing and beauty queens to public works
projects.’’ The report further noted: ‘‘Indirectly, it can be said that the U.S. was
referred to in at least one story in every issue. A direct reference was made in all
but one issue and in one an indirect reference was made. Peaceful uses of atomic
energy [were] referred to in three di√erent issues, all three of the stories con-
cerned had an international connotation.’’ There was locally shot footage of
‘‘Ambassador R. Hill arriving in Mexico and later presenting his credentials, and
Dr. Milton Eisenhower’s visit to Mexico.’’ Like numerous other such reports, this
one judged ‘‘the technical quality of the reel to be good,’’ praising its editing,
narration, and overall ‘‘composition.’’ However, the report’s final analysis of
ideological impact echoed similarly qualified assessments across Project Pedro’s
four years of operation: ‘‘Content-wise the reel would be classified as national in
character except for the pool supplied material which would add an occasional
touch of international coverage.’’∑∂
usia dissatisfaction over the lack of locally produced political messages per-
sisted throughout Project Pedro’s operation and continued to generate tensions
between Washington and Mexico City over their Mexican newsreels’ content.
Two years after Project Pedro began, usia’s exasperated Motion Picture Service
director regularly sent the same kind of critique to the agency’s Mexico City
proconsul that he had since production began: ‘‘The real program value of
projects such as the Mexican newsreel is achieved through materials shot in the
local country in support of U.S. objectives in that country. . . . It is not the intent
to completely ‘carry’ the reel through stories that we supply. It is for this reason
that we have been so insistent that usis work with the local producer to see that
materials of program value are photographed in Mexico; and that a usis sta√
member work with the producer on editing and writing the material to insure
that we get the maximum benefit from materials photographed.’’∑∑
Unhappy about Project Pedro’s performance during its first ten months of
operations, usia ordered both a new audit of its finances and a usis assessment
of its ‘‘performance from a non-fiscal point of view.’’∑∏ McDermott supported
continuation of Tompkins’s undertaking, even though ‘‘it will require additional
subsidization for another year before it becomes completely self-supporting.’’
He blamed the financial failure on ‘‘undue optimism’’ and ‘‘a lack of su≈cient
knowledge of newsreel operation here.’’ But the pao believed that Project Pedro’s
future ‘‘depends in large measure on Washington,’’ on usia’s ability to provide
better footage, not on drastic changes in Mexico City operations.∑π
Based on this evaluation, usia continued to fund Project Pedro, making
significant new disbursements in the first half of 1958. However, by the summer,
unable to pay its bills, including its debt to Alarcón, Tompkins’s Impulsora
Anahuac went into liquidation, and Noticiario Nacional released its final issue
of Noticiario clasa after two decades of production. But this was not Project
Pedro’s last reel. In fact, U.S. o≈cials in Washington and Mexico City saw
Impulsora Anahuac’s demise as an opportunity to start a new enterprise from
scratch that would draw on the previous year and a half ’s experience as it
implemented reforms to improve management and content (and to exchange
usia’s position as a secret owner to a potentially less embarrassing role as a secret
contractor).∑∫ Despite its shortcomings, Project Pedro o√ered a unique angle of
access, otherwise unavailable to the United States in Mexico. In assessing the
overall situation of Mexican newsreel production and consumption, as Noti-
ciario Nacional dissolved, usis noted that Mexico o√ered few opportunities for
consistent control of any of the nationally run operations, many of which fre-
quently swapped footage ‘‘with European reels—including those behind the Iron
190 seth fein
Curtain.’’ Even if Washington was able to displace such Eastern bloc arrange-
ments, by expanding distribution of its own footage (already regularly accepted
by two privately operated concerns, including Azcárraga’s Cine mundial ), ‘‘usis
would not, of course, be in a position to control the contents of the entire reels,
just as it cannot control the entire contents of newspapers like Excélsior or
Novedades or [Azcárraga’s] Radio Station xew or any of the scores of news-
papers, magazines and radio stations it deals with’’ in Mexico.∑Ω
In fact, broadcast culture, not only radio but also television, provided critical
intertexts for Project Pedro’s reformulation. Concerned about declining au-
dience for its Sunday night El mundo en marcha radio show, in 1958 usia
commissioned a public-opinion study of the weekly current-events program’s
reception. Broadcast from ‘‘Mexico’s leading radio station, xew,’’ in Mexico City,
the show was relayed across the rest of the Azcárraga-operated national network
of forty-four stations. Its opening and closing motto—‘‘The world marches
on!’’—deliberately echoed the similar signature line of the March of Time film
series produced by Henry Luce’s communications empire between the mid-
1930s and mid-1950s. The pseudo-newsreel had had close relations to the Good
Neighbor policy, especially with regard to production about Mexico.∏≠ The sur-
vey compared audience attitudes toward radio news to competing forms of
current-events-oriented mass media. It indicated that radio remained the most
influential form of Mexican mass communication about national and interna-
tional events: informants placed its di√usion ahead of newspapers and its au-
thoritativeness above that of newsreels, which had wide exposure but were
viewed more as entertainment than journalism. The report recognized that
television’s daily impact would eventually supersede radio’s but had not yet done
so, owing to the still-prohibitive cost of receivers. Nevertheless, millions of
Mexicans had regular contact with tv culture, and its presentation of current
events suggested the same authority that radio commanded. With specific re-
gard to El mundo en marcha, the study concluded that the covertly operated usis
radio program, produced under contract by J. Walter Thompson of Mexico,
remained a credible source of information even though some respondents com-
plained that certain international events and issues went underreported com-
pared to competing mass media that more critically covered the United States.∏∞
When usis o≈cers in Mexico City reconfigured Project Pedro’s finances and
form, they cited its well-regarded radio program by naming its new newsreel El
mundo en marcha. In doing so, usis signaled its newsreel’s link to broadcast
culture as well as to Luce’s film series. El mundo en marcha was an audiovisual
hybrid that brought television-style news production into Mexican movie the-
aters just as U.S. and Mexican corporate and state interests sought to expand tv
in Mexico. Its electronic-inflected introductory soundtrack and its staccato nar-
ration contributed to this e√ect. El mundo en marcha’s eventual employment of
Telesistema’s ubiquitous newscaster Jacobo Zabludovsky as its editorial director
and narrator made explicit the connection between small screen and big, and
the link was formal as well as personal. Before El mundo en marcha, Mexican
newsreels buried the narrator’s name along with that of the other technical sta√
in the concluding credits. Borrowing from television, El mundo en marcha
established its identity as being intertwined with that of its celebrity journalist at
each issue’s start. Zabludovsky had been present at the birth of commercial
Mexican television in 1950 when he produced and hosted the nation’s first
newscast, sponsored by General Motors.∏≤ Too, before going to work for Tomp-
kins in 1960, Telesistema’s star had already performed at the Cold War nexus of
Washington and Mexican mass media. In October 1957 he hosted a prime-time
Channel 4 special (secretly authored by usia) that used the occasion of the
United Nations’ twelfth anniversary to concentrate attention on recent Soviet
actions in Hungary.∏≥
By the time Zabludovsky added his name and voice to El mundo en marcha,
he had, then, accumulated significant social capital in print and radio as well as
tv. The redeployment of that capital by Tompkins on Mexico’s movie screens
attracted the host state’s attention. The second-in-command of the Interior
Ministry’s o≈ce of cinema a√airs, Carment Báez, privately expressed her ad-
ministration’s approval of the national newscaster’s appointment: ‘‘We wish to
congratulate the R. K. Tompkins Company and the management of the newsreel
‘El mundo en marcha’ for having acquired the services of Mr. Jacobo Zablu-
dovsky as Editorial Director. . . . [My o≈ce] has taken due note of this step and
will be collaborating closely with ‘El mundo en marcha,’ which will be held up to
the other newsreels as an example of what a good newsreel should be and how to
inform the Mexican public properly.’’∏∂ In fact, by the beginning of 1960, El
mundo en marcha was widely considered to be ‘‘the leading Mexican weekly
newsreel.’’ Its distribution had climbed to 358 theaters nationally.∏∑
Changes on the screen came with changes behind it. R. K. Tompkins y Aso-
ciados, s.a., openly owned and operated El mundo en marcha while retaining
access to its predecessor’s wide distribution through Cadena de Oro. Alarcón,
however, was no longer a partner in production. Tompkins’s new company paid
him a flat exhibition fee ($9,000 for the first six months of operation) conform-
ing to usual industry practice. Regarding content, Washington finally agreed in
writing to provide ‘‘message material’’ as requested by Mexico City, but it in-
192 seth fein
sisted that Tompkins’s uncle, former rko chief N. Peter Rathvon—who had long
experience facilitating Washington’s covert production of foreign films in Eu-
rope as well as the Americas—take over everyday management of his nephew’s
newsreel.∏∏ This was part of the agency’s e√ort to impose ‘‘closer supervision by
usis’’ of Project Pedro to implement ‘‘a planned systematic approach to coverage
and use of local stories that can further program objectives.’’∏π
The new format’s aggregate success did not, however, resolve the ongoing
struggle between Washington and Mexico City over content. Unsatisfied with
usia’s response to its general requests for coverage about certain topics, the
embassy began making ‘‘hard and specific requests for footage.’’ These solicita-
tions ranged from coverage of activities of prominent Mexicans in the United
States—such as a lecture by the historian Edmundo O’Gorman at the University
of Indiana, the composer Carlos Chávez’s term as the Charles Eliot Norton
Chair in Poetics at Harvard, an Albuquerque concert by the Mexican Symphony
Orchestra, the mass-media magnate (and Project Pedro collaborator) Emilio
Azcárraga’s reception of an award at Columbia University, and Mexico’s eques-
trian jumping team’s competition in Washington—to that of specific Cold War
geopolitics, including resumption of nuclear testing by the Soviet Union, the
crisis over Formosa, the pullout of U.S. forces from Lebanon, and British Prime
Minister Harold Macmillan’s visit to Moscow.∏∫
Evaluating El mundo en marcha’s first three months of operation, Tompkins
defended its use of Mexican material and blamed Washington for not supplying
su≈cient foreign footage: ‘‘Local coverage has been good, in fact more extensive
than competitive reels. The ‘international’ material supplied has been disap-
pointing, both by reason of the material selected and because such timely mate-
rial as has been provided consistently arrives to hand so late as to be unusable.’’∏Ω
Rathvon and McDermott also regularly blamed the agency for a lack of ‘‘message
material’’ to interpolate with El mundo en marcha’s local production. But Shel-
ton defended his unit’s work, citing its comparative success elsewhere: ‘‘We have
this same kind of project going in numerous other countries all over the world,
and in these countries the newsreel is generally considered to be one of the most
e√ective of all program vehicles.’’π≠ He advised Rathvon: ‘‘We had always ex-
pected that the reel would never carry more than 1/3 international stories, and
that at least 2/3 of every issue would be Mexican material.’’ usia had increased
its delivery of international footage to ease Project Pedro’s initial reorganiza-
tion under the former Hollywood executive, but Washington expected a more
Mexican-centric Cold War production for the future.π∞
There were, in fact, obstacles to usia’s objectives that were endemic to Project
Pedro’s operation within the highly regulated Mexican film industry. For one,
cost remained an issue. As the embassy’s pao explained: ‘‘The operators, while
willing to cover such outstanding events as the Acapulco meeting of the two
presidents [López Mateos and Eisenhower], and any items we request within the
Federal District, have placed limitations on coverage anywhere in Mexico unless
reimbursed for travel expenses.’’π≤ Also, changes in the Federal District’s regula-
tion of newsreel advertising, which in 1959 reduced the number of twenty-
second spots from five to four, challenged Project Pedro’s attempts to achieve
self-su≈ciency, forcing it to continue to depend on Washington subventions.
Summing up these challenges, a year after starting El mundo en marcha, Rath-
von reported that ‘‘due to the growing reputation of the reel we might well be
able to maintain it on at least a break-even basis were it not for the arbitrary and
harassing action of the government of the Federal District in regulating all the
news reels and revistas. . . . It is too early to judge our chances of breaking
even next year, but you can readily see the di≈culty we would be in without
outside support.’’ El mundo en marcha’s production chief suspected that rival
print media might have been behind the new e√orts to squeeze the finances of
newsreels. In any case, the change forced newsreels to search for more ‘‘infor-
mal’’ funding whether from national or, in Project Pedro’s case, international
patrons.π≥
Beyond the impact of its commercial regulation, the state’s o≈cial censorship
also limited Project Pedro’s editorial autonomy. For example, footage of ‘‘Vice
President Nixon’s welcome in Washington following his South American tour
was not used by clasa because the Mexican Government film censor’s o≈ce
removed all Nixon footage from all newsreels distributed in Mexico.’’ This ban
included ‘‘scenes of the Vice President’s reception in Uruguay and Argentina
which, though they showed no violence, arrived here after the Lima and Caracas
receptions. . . . The Directorate General of Cinematografía informed usis ‘extra-
o≈cially’ that the footage had been deleted in order to avoid any unfavorable
reactions among theatre audiences in Mexico,’’ where Nixon had made a suc-
cessful o≈cial visit in 1956.π∂ Here was an irony of Mexican mass culture: the
authoritarian state’s control of content forced it to anticipate public opinion.
Widespread recognition that the state determined what was privately exhibited
meant that film censors expected that spectators viewed newsreels as signs of
o≈cial sentiment. In this case, as in others, the Mexican state was unwilling to
sanction a commercially produced presentation that seemed too pro-American.
The pri’s own reliance on anti-Communism in the late 1950s to suppress domes-
tic opposition—for example, by imprisoning dissident labor leaders as foreign-
194 seth fein
directed subversives—demanded that the state perform its Cold War sovereignty
through independence from Washington’s foreign policies.π∑
Rituals of pri rule also dictated specific changes. Government censors, for
example, banned El mundo en marcha’s experiment with diegetic sound, instead
of the usual voice-over narration, in its coverage of Ruiz Cortines’s 1958 Informe
(state of the nation) address. usis reported: ‘‘The live sound footage was deleted
by the Government’s censorship o≈ce . . . on the grounds that theatre audiences
might register disapproval.’’ Apparently it felt the aural e√ect would reduce the
president’s aura.π∏ In another case, government censors cut footage of Ambas-
sador Hill’s attendance at the annual commemoration of the Niños Héroes, the
legendary boy cadets who sacrificed their lives in defending Mexico City from
invading U.S. forces in September 1847. The scene had included important
Mexican politicians seated near the ambassador and hence violated ‘‘a Presiden-
tial directive forbidding closeups in newsreels of politicians, all of whom seem to
be vying for position in the interregnum’’ between López Mateos’s July election
and December inauguration. But this was not the only material that state cen-
sors deemed beyond the pale for that week’s issue: they also banned footage of
devastating floods, prompting a usis o≈cial to comment that ‘‘ ‘newsreel’ is
hardly the term to use in describing this kind of product in Mexico.’’ππ His
observation revealed also a perhaps half-conscious recognition that ‘‘U.S. pro-
paganda’’ was hardly the term to describe Project Pedro’s output.
The state’s quotidian control of content a√ected all Mexican newsreels, not
just Project Pedro. But it a√ected Project Pedro di√erently, since its objectives
strove for Cold War significance according to Washington’s ideological agenda,
not Mexico City’s. Still, the most important force limiting what Project Pedro
projected in Mexican movie theaters was not state interventions but public
reception. In explaining why so few locally produced Project Pedro segments
ventured into Cold War politics, an unusually astute agency analyst pointed out
that ‘‘there are very definite limitations on what can be done locally and used to
further program objectives. Not the least of these is the suspicion that Mexican
audiences have toward local stories carried by their newsreels since almost all
such stories are but thinly disguised paid advertisements.’’π∫ Freedom from the
need to impose such unpopular stories helped El mundo en marcha achieve its
favorable reception, even as its lack of Cold War messages frustrated its Wash-
ington benefactors. Hence what had made Project Pedro an increasingly popular
product with growing national distribution—how much it combined the best
parts of other Mexican newsreels with general-interest international footage—
rendered it ine√ective propaganda in Washington’s eyes. While the newsreel’s
3. Mexican newsreels prominently projected bullfighting and other sports events that
often generated ‘‘sponsorship fees’’ for ‘‘incidental product placement, usually a beer
or soft drink,’’ such as in this scene. Noticiario clasa 828 (reproduced at the National
Archives).
Mexicanized content and form preserved its covert relationship with usia, they
also minimized the agency’s influence on production. This communications
conundrum frustrated a usia assessor: ‘‘My position has never yet been clearly
outlined as to how far usis can control, suggest, or define our stake in this oper-
ation, partly due, of course, to the shrouds imposed on our relationship.’’ Of
particular concern, as his mid-1960 agency evaluation of El mundo en marcha’s
content and form observed, was its seemingly pointless overproduction of trivial
segments about social diversions (see figure 3): ‘‘It should also be noted that out
of the average reel of 699 feet, 249 feet is on sports—mostly bullfights, local
boxing and soccer. Possibly this is due to something in relation to their need for
placing their advertising plugs; but to my mind it is definitely a√ecting the use of
your clips sent from the United States.’’πΩ
Washington never understood why so much of what was shot in Mexico City
seemed apolitical. Rathvon explained that the very aspects of El mundo en
marcha’s content that usia criticized, namely, its representation of popular
196 seth fein
culture and social amusements, were what provided the newsreel its public
credibility: ‘‘The local footage has been predominant and we have won accep-
tance as a Mexican reel. Although it is not always easy to find entertaining
material we have done an increasingly e√ective job. The emphasis on sports and
bullfights is not simply filler. It is what the Mexican theatre-goers want and
expect.’’∫≠ Message footage had to come from New York, because it could not be
adequately constituted from Mexican material. To do this better, McDermott
urged Shelton’s Motion Picture Service ‘‘to install an Assignments Editor,’’ as
had other usia mass-media branches, to oversee production and distribution of
footage for specific usis clients. Such coordination was necessary because ‘‘ma-
terials shot in Mexico cannot form the bulk of the reel for program objectives.
We have and shall continue to catch any item of program value in Mexico. But
there aren’t enough of them to carry the reel week in and week out.’’ The
problem regarding ‘‘program objectives’’—that is, Cold War content—‘‘is and
always has been the lack of su≈cient program material from your shop delivered
in time to be of program value.’’∫∞ This meant specially requested footage, not
general material distributed globally, ‘‘since this would be self-defeating in a
country like Mexico which is strongly nationalistic, and obviously suspicious of
a reel that could be suspected of too much lending from usis.’’∫≤
How much Project Pedro served U.S. foreign policy would remain a baΔing
question for its Washington and Mexico City patrons. Despite both its ideologi-
cal shortcomings and the fact that usia footage ‘‘is also gratefully accepted by
other newsreels with no charge,’’ the unusual access Project Pedro provided
Washington led the embassy’s pao to ‘‘reluctantly recommend,’’ in February
1959, that Ambassador Hill support subsidizing Tompkins’s operation for an
additional year: ‘‘We do control this newsreel as to content and they are pleased
to carry what we want. Other newsreels use whatever of the o√ered footage they
desire. Such control is good for any special occasion that might arise.’’∫≥ As we
will see, it was in fact the broader field of Mexican public culture reproduced by
Project Pedro’s competitors that limited usis’s ability to shape Tompkins’s in-
creasingly popular production.
Projecting Project Pedro
As the struggles between Mexico City and Washington make clear, what ap-
peared on the screen is notable for how closely it conformed to the broader field
of Mexican newsreel production. Project Pedro contended with the production-
consumption matrix generated by its intertextual relationship to other Mexican
newsreels, formal and informal state restrictions regarding content, and its an-
ticipation of the expectations of national spectators. Its form and content con-
verged with more than diverged from that of its competition. As it changed from
Noticiario clasa to El mundo en marcha, and as each of those products under-
went revisions, Project Pedro never satisfied the aspirations of its U.S. govern-
ment conceivers. Its success at entering the Mexican newsreel field as a legitimate
product of national communication rendered it an inadequate form of anti-
Communist propaganda. Here the transnational was at odds with the inter-
national; the Mexicanization of U.S. resources within the local environment of
political and cultural production in Mexico City diminished Project Pedro’s
ability to ‘‘Americanize’’ Mexican mass media and to propagate Washington’s
foreign policy.
In practice, most of Project Pedro’s e√ect was negative. It controlled what was
not seen more than it imposed what was. Across its entire operation, for exam-
ple, segments about the Soviet Union were notably rare, compared to reports
about the competition’s stories. This conformed to the logic of Mexican foreign
policy in the late 1950s and early 1960s that ostentatiously touted its international
independence from the United States to compensate for Mexico’s rightist poli-
cies at home and its increasingly close economic relations with its northern
neighbor. Direct references to the Soviet Union appeared only occasionally, such
as Khrushchev’s infamous anti-U.S. diatribe at the United Nations in 1961, an-
nual commemorations of Moscow’s suppression of the 1956 Budapest uprising,
or images of East Germans fleeing to the West before the Berlin Wall’s con-
struction.∫∂ Regarding U.S. foreign policy, the emphasis was unsurprisingly on
nonmilitary, technological achievements and the progress they promised to the
rest of the world. Most notable among these was the Eisenhower administra-
tion’s Atoms for Peace initiative that sought to erase destructive associations of
U.S. atomic power by demonstrating the progressive ends to which Washington
intended to direct nuclear energy globally.∫∑ In one of Project Pedro’s few direct
references to U.S. military power, El mundo en marcha covered the Acapulco
visit of the nuclear submarine Paul Revere, which had recently seen action
in Korea.∫∏
U.S. leadership in science was a dominant theme of agency-supplied footage.
Following the Soviet Union’s successful October 1957 Sputnik launch, U.S. space
exploration became a prominent Project Pedro presence, not simply as a fre-
quent news topic. Noticiario clasa even reconfigured its opening sequence at the
end of 1957 to associate its dissemination with satellite communication. Anima-
tion depicted a rocket launched from a map of Mexico; the scene then shifted to
198 seth fein
an aerial view of the country, and finally of Earth from outer space as the
soundtrack produced wan electronic beeps supposedly emanating from an or-
biting satellite. The new title read, ‘‘noticias nacionales e internacionales
del satelite,’’ and the newsreel was retitled Satélite, although satellite com-
munication had no role in its distribution.∫π
In Sputnik’s wake, the representational practices of U.S. foreign policy cen-
tered on extraterrestrial achievement (matching the new orientation of domes-
tic educational and science policy) by depicting the U.S. response, its Explorer
satellite, to the Soviet challenge.∫∫ Through outer space, Project Pedro connected
Mexican development to U.S.–Mexican relations. El mundo en marcha, for
example, prominently featured the opening of a space tracking station in Guay-
mas, Sonora.∫Ω The segments emphasized the Sonoran installation as a national
site of technological advancement operated by Mexicans in the service of world
progress. Hence the manned Mercury missions of the early 1960s became a
source not only of U.S. advancement but also of Mexico’s, facilitated by tech-
nological transfer from the United States. In this case, El mundo en marcha
relocalized the Cold War in the provinces and in the U.S.–Mexican borderlands
as it remapped Mexico’s place in global history through the nation’s contribu-
tion to extraterrestrial exploration as a scientific ally of the United States. In a
more terrestrial cross-border moment, U.S.–Mexican relations, transnational
capital, and Mexican popular culture converged when, in a spot sponsored by
Coca-Cola of Mexico, Noticiario clasa featured the 1957 Little League World
Series victory of the Mexican team from Monterrey. Footage of the clinching
game was followed by that of a White House reception where the Mexican
players met President Eisenhower (see figure 4).Ω≠
International events appeared in usia-supplied newsreel footage described by
locally developed narration. Often Third World flash points provided oppor-
tunities to represent the United States as supportive of postcolonial nation-
states. In the Suez crisis’s wake, for example, Noticiario clasa focused on Ralph
Bunche’s role in directing the United Nations’ involvement in resolving the
Middle East conflict. Beyond underlining cases where U.S. foreign policy sup-
ported decolonization or noninterventionism in the postcolonial world, the
mobilization of Bunche’s visage (in Ghana as well as in Egypt and Jordan)
sought to demonstrate that the United States was a meritocracy that had pro-
duced one of the world’s most famous diplomats, an African American leading
the work of the United Nations.Ω∞ Like contemporary overt usia productions
distributed globally, Project Pedro also went to great lengths to project progress
in U.S. race relations and the professional achievements of African Americans
4. Monterrey’s 1957 Little League World Series champs’ visit to the White House o√ered
a cross-border opportunity for Project Pedro. Noticiario clasa 823 (reproduced at the
National Archives).
within the United States. In the 1960s usia propaganda would ‘‘discover’’ the
Latino presence within the United States in order to advance its leadership of the
Western Hemisphere, but in the late 1950s African Americans still stood for all
people of color in the United States in the audiovisual competition for Third
World hearts and minds.Ω≤ Other international episodes that threatened U.S.
prestige among nations of the so-called nonaligned world could not be entirely
erased. In early 1961, for example, Patrice Lumumba appeared as Zabludovsky
flatly narrated that the ‘‘ex-Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo had
been shot while trying to escape from prison.’’Ω≥ More typical were seemingly
innocuous segments about Laotian peasants struggling against Communist in-
cursions from Vietnam.Ω∂
While it is notable how rarely images from contemporary Cold War battle-
grounds appeared, there are instances that jar conventional teleologies. Through
the footage distributed globally by usia and interpolated by Project Pedro’s
newsreels, we can recover liminal moments in the history of U.S. foreign policy
during the Cold War and of the power of national forces of production to shape
200 seth fein
the content of Washington’s transnationally produced propaganda. At the outset

of 1959, for example, El mundo en marcha critically compared the arrival of
ousted Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista in Mexico to his initial exile there
twenty years earlier. Over images of Cubans denouncing their former leader and
proudly displaying a portrait of their new one (Fidel Castro), the narration
describes positively the revolution’s triumph.Ω∑ A later segment about Castro’s
April 1959 visit to the United States includes footage of prorevolutionary street
demonstrations punctuated by a final shot of an English-language sign that
states ‘‘We love you Fidel.’’Ω∏
More significant, and predictable, than El mundo en marcha’s initially favor-
able Castro coverage is its virtual noncoverage of Cuba after U.S.–Cuban re-
lations took a decisively negative turn. The absence of anti-Castro propaganda
between April 1959 and April 1961 reveals much about Project Pedro’s local
operation. El mundo en marcha neither reproduced Mexican mass media’s gener-
ally favorable coverage of the revolutionary regime, including Mexico’s friendly
diplomacy with Castro’s government, nor expressed Washington’s increasingly
open hostility to Havana. Just as the newsreel’s national operation curtailed
negative reporting about Cuba, its usia connection prevented any positive rep-
resentations. But in the aftermath of the Kennedy administration’s Bay of Pigs
fiasco, usis invoked Cold War politics to pressure U.S. multinationals in Mexico
to withdraw their ads from competing newsreels that favorably covered Havana.
In late summer 1961, the embassy’s pao ‘‘called in all the USA advertising com-
panies and advertisers, and told them he thought it inappropriate that they
should be the principal financial support of two Communist-owned newsreels
in Mexico; they agreed to withdraw all advertising from those Reels; in re-
distributing that advertising, ‘Pedro’ received enough financing so that for the
first time it showed a profit for several weeks in August and September.’’Ωπ
Following its coverage of Castro’s first visit to the United States, El mundo en
marcha’s next, and final, mention of Cuba was unavoidable. In the immediate
aftermath of the Bay of Pigs invasion, it projected Ambassador Adlai Stevenson
defending the United States in the United Nations Security Council against
Cuba’s accusations that it had covertly directed the counterrevolutionary in-
vasion.Ω∫ Kennedy’s admission of U.S. involvement, days later, unsurprisingly
received no play at all. Coverage of the Cuban Missile Crisis did not produce a
dilemma for El mundo en marcha, because by 1962 Project Pedro no longer
existed.
Long considered cost ine√ective, the program persistently eluded the expecta-
tions of the o≈cials who commissioned its production. This was particularly
perplexing for those who oversaw the program from Washington, since Project
Pedro seemed to have the most favorable conditions of all usia’s transnational
audiovisual operations: ‘‘The Agency has never been at all satisfied with the
finished product—neither as to what it contains or how it handles its content.
This is a real anomaly. No one questions the sincere loyalty of the Americans
associated with the Reel (Tompkins and his wife, and his uncle, N. P. Rathvon,
semi-retired, who used to own rko), and ims sends it more and better footage
from New York than any of the 50 or so other Reels in the world that we have
working arrangements with. Somehow, at usis level, liaison dissolves and there
is no e√ective control or guidance.’’ Motion Picture Service o≈cials speculated
about whether or not Project Pedro had been sabotaged by usis o≈cers in
Mexico City who possibly resented the direct connections between the Mexican
newsreel operations and Washington or the fact that the project was a legacy of
an earlier usis regime.ΩΩ
While never grasping Project Pedro’s inherent contradictions, derived from
the particular context of Mexican state and culture industries, usia did recog-
nize that the endeavor’s demise meant the end of a uniquely positioned outpost
of empire: ‘‘Our present situation, organizationally, is ideal, and was achieved
over a period of several years at considerable cost and di≈culty, using devious
means and four corporate organizations. If the project is killed, these American
owners would be unable to operate without our subsidy and would be unwilling
to operate in the ‘local manner,’ as described above, and so would sell the Reel.
Once sold, the loss would be irretrievable and we could not expect to re-establish
our position. Our present Reel has a good local standing and is not known to
have any USA Government connection.’’ El mundo en marcha had even recently
‘‘received a commendation from the government’s movie control o≈ce, saying it
was an example to the other newsreels of what such a vehicle should be.’’ Al-
though usia regularly provided footage to another Mexican producer, it would
never have in Mexico the editorial license, however limited, that Project Pedro
provided.∞≠≠
Despite Project Pedro’s declining costs, by the end of 1960 the embassy’s pao,
McDermott, had turned against the enterprise. He appealed to the agency’s
Latin American area o≈ce in a campaign against the Motion Picture Service’s
desire to continue subsidization of Tompkins’s newsreels.∞≠∞ Throughout 1961,
McDermott insisted that the Motion Picture Service’s director, Turner Shelton,
who believed that Project Pedro was a critical counterweight to ‘‘Communist-
controlled’’ Mexican newsreels, ‘‘go to Mexico himself and investigate thor-
oughly why ‘Pedro’ is ine√ective (if not actually counterproductive).’’∞≠≤ At the
202 seth fein
same time, McDermott successfully lobbied the Kennedy administration’s new

ambassador to Mexico, Thomas Mann, to kill Pedro.∞≠≥ He explained that the
newsreel’s failure was due not to usis mismanagement but to the di≈culties of
profitably producing propaganda within a Mexican newsreel given local condi-
tions, especially of state regulation. He objected to Shelton’s urgent advocacy of
Project Pedro’s continuation: ‘‘Turner makes the point that if this is killed we
leave the field to the Commies. Such is not the case. There are seven newsreels in
action, two of which [including ema’s] are controlled by the outfit which uses
Bloc footage. Two others would continue to use our footage, but at no cost to
us. . . . He has a fetish about these classified projects and has probably wasted
more money than any other element in the Agency.’’∞≠∂
If, in the end, the local context of its production limited Project Pedro’s
impact as propaganda, foreign policy determined the timing of its termination
in September 1961.∞≠∑ By then, the Americas lay at the center of Washington’s
conceptualization of Cold War public diplomacy. The kind of inattention to the
region that had prompted the need to formulate transnational production of
propaganda within Mexico was replaced by the Alliance for Progress and Wash-
ington’s reassertion of the Western Hemisphere idea as central to its global
strategy. Project Pedro, however, stands less between the Eisenhower and Ken-
nedy administrations as it does more generally between the 1950s and 1960s in
how it allows us to see the transitions under way in Washington’s approach to
the hemisphere, between the cia’s overthrow of Arbenz and the Cuban revolu-
tion’s overthrow of Batista; between Vice President Nixon’s vexed visit to Caracas
in 1958 and President Kennedy’s triumphal tour through the same city in 1962;
between the Cold War’s reverberations in the Americas and the Americas as a
principal area of Cold War confrontation; between a foreign policy that ap-
proached the Third World with a conservative strategy of containment and one
characterized by liberal rhetoric advocating social change.∞≠∏
All these changes can be summarized by the change in international com-
munications as film gave way to television or (as McLuhan put it) as the hot gave
way to the cool medium for expression and dissemination of the U.S. message in
the Americas and in the rest of the world.∞≠π However, while the completion of
that transition from large screen to small was most visibly marked by Edward R.
Murrow’s appointment as the Kennedy administration’s director of usia (and
the simultaneous bestowal of cabinet-level status to that post), its initiation
preceded liberalism’s return to the White House. In 1960 the Eisenhower admin-
istration developed a regionwide approach to news production for the Americas
with its inauguration of a weekly fifteen-minute, unattributed newscast pro-

duced in separate Spanish and Portuguese and broadcast throughout the Ken-
nedy and Johnson administrations.
Between Culture and Politics
In viewing Project Pedro in a transnational context, as part of the history of the

United States within Mexico, we must not conflate the history of the research
about the newsreels’ production with their history as culture. What happened
behind the screen is only part of the story. Just as important for the scholar of
international history, for the scholar of Mexico and the United States, is what
happened on the screen and what happened around it. As Edward Said observed
about the contemporary study of imperial culture: ‘‘The problem of representa-
tion is deemed to be central, yet rarely is it put in its full political context, a
context that is primarily imperial. Instead we have on the one hand an isolated
cultural sphere believed to be freely and unconditionally available to weightless
theoretical speculation and investigation, and, on the other, a debased political
sphere, where the real struggle between interests is supposed to occur.’’ Leaving
aside the question of whether Said’s own work always followed the project he
imagined, it is di≈cult to deny the value of his conclusion that such a division of
scholarly spheres does exist and is a false dichotomy, that the political and the
cultural ‘‘are not only connected but ultimately the same.’’∞≠∫ Just as the history
of these films, distributed weekly between 1957 and 1961, is part of the exogenous
history of the United States, it is part of Mexico’s endogenous history: the
context in which their meanings were produced, that is, where their public
history as culture (not to be confused with their secret history as instruments of
cultural diplomacy) was made. To avoid that sphere is to avoid confronting the
presence of Infante and Rivera and to ignore how the broader field of Mexican
mass culture ultimately determined not only the newsreels’ audiovisual produc-
tion but also the production of their meanings, of their public consumption.
Perhaps we need to posit here a notion of cultural empire without cultural
imperialism; that is, echoing Ranajit Guha’s conclusions about colonialism in
South Asia, we need to note conceptually the dissonance between imperial
institutions and social power on the ground.∞≠Ω
Project Pedro’s history demonstrates both the limits of U.S. power in the Cold
War as well as the limits to conventional historiographic constructions of that
power. History and historiography are, of course, always mutually constitutive.
204 seth fein
So too are the representational machinery of U.S. foreign policies and those
polices themselves. If Washington ultimately waged cold war to convince na-
tional societies across the globe to follow its leadership, then the production of
propaganda cannot be viewed as a mere sideshow, a reel derivative of a more real
story or as the soft derivative of hard policies. In other words, the reel is real.
And the images projected on the screen reproduced the forces of production
behind, around, and in front of it.
This is true in the present as well as in the past. In the post–Cold War as in the
Cold War, U.S. foreign policy seeks to control the everyday representation of the
world transnationally. In the Cold War, bipolarity forced U.S. methods under-
ground, as it feared charges of imperialism while managing its empire in the
name of freedom, of anti-Communism and anti-imperialism. In the post–Cold
War, unipolarity allows the United States to operate openly as it imposes impe-
rial infrastructure in the name of free markets and democracy. Like the usia’s
production of Project Pedro in the Cold War, post–Cold War Washington’s
Broadcasting Board of Governors (bbg) has overtly imposed an Arab-language
satellite television network for the Middle East, Al-Hurra (‘‘the free one’’), to
challenge the popularity of Al-Jazeera and other transnational networks that
challenge U.S. foreign policy (while also revisiting earlier covert arrangements,
such as Project Pedro, by purchasing access to seemingly independent Middle
Eastern media, especially in Iraq). In so doing, it demonstrates the longevity,
across the supposed Cold War/post–Cold War divide, of U.S. foreign policy’s
desire to engineer information internationally, even as it trumpets free markets
as the way to free ideas.∞∞≠ (More recently, in July 2005, the governments of
Venezuela, Uruguay, Cuba, Bolivia, and Argentina inaugurated Telesur, their
own Latin American public information tv network, also aligned with Brazilian
broadcasting, to challenge extraregional corporate news, especially cnn en Es-
pañol, with transnationalist mass communication organized to counter U.S.
hegemony and foster international integration. This has provoked calls for the
bbg, the usia’s broadcasting successor, to develop new television programming
to challenge Telesur’s anticipated leftist, anti-U.S. orientation.)∞∞∞ As Middle
Eastern publics ignore Al-Hurra, Washington is relearning in the post–Cold
War what it learned during the Cold War: imperial designs are often frustrated
by local receptions. Arjun Appadurai’s observation about methodology for the
study of globalization holds true for investigation of Cold War as well as post–
Cold War transnational culture when it demands ‘‘examination of how locality
emerges in a globalizing world, of how colonial processes underwrite contem-
porary politics, of how history and genealogy inflect one another, and of how
global forces take local form.’’∞∞≤
Keeping such globality in mind, the so-called new international history of the
Cold War should not mean—as it too often does—the reification of established
historiographies by fetishizing the declassification of new documents overdeter-
mined by existing master narratives. If the Cold War was indeed a global phe-
nomenon, it needs to be studied everywhere in varied ways, by raising new
questions about previously understudied social as well as geocultural sites while
reading ‘‘old’’ sources with new eyes. Power can only be understood if its study is
not presupposed based on a myopic assertion of grand strategy as international
history. Yet international history is crucial to understanding grand strategy, since
the only way to mark power’s presence is to chart its absence, and the only way to
understand its everyday articulation is to look beyond established actors. In other
words, it is far from the overrepresented areas of Cold War conflict where the
global history of the Cold War needs most to be studied—for example, in the
public sphere of various nations—not as a sideshow (a derivative of other,
supposedly discrete, military, diplomatic, or economic force fields) but as a main
attraction, not necessarily as a subset of U.S. or Soviet or Chinese history, but as
Laotian, Ethiopian, or Mexican histories. Such research should foreground new
frameworks for contemplating the past, rather than merely mine for new sources
(to settle old scores) in already well-drilled topical veins. Of course, one of the
ironies of empire is that some of the best sources about life ‘‘out there’’ are stored
within imperial bureaucracies. As in Project Pedro’s case, this work might depend
on (foia) declassification, but the demand for documents should be guided not
simply by muckraking ambitions—overdetermined by calcified historiographies
that reify methodological conventionality across political positions—but by chal-
lenges about the very definition of Cold War history itself. Accordingly, as we tell
new stories from new sources, we also need to examine old ones with new eyes,
ones that see beyond both disciplinary and national borders.
However, to interpret imperial remnants imaginatively means to read sources
from positions beyond where they have been originally produced and conven-
tionally consumed. To do this, Cold War historiography must continue to move
not only toward culture but also toward the world. It should, to poach from
Chakrabarty, provincialize the United States.∞∞≥ International history must be
placed in a transnational frame, one that, in Project Pedro’s case, views the
history of Mexico as part of the history of the United States and the history of
the United States as part of Mexico.
206 seth fein
Notes
A di√erent version of this essay appeared in Diplomatic History 28, no. 5, a special issue
dedicated to Walter LaFeber. I thank David Langbart, of the National Archives and
Records Administration for help in locating my sources and the State Department’s foia
team for their declassification. I also thank my fellow members of the Little Summit—
Amy Chazkel, Joanne Freeman, Christopher Hill, and Pablo Piccato—for their keen
comments on an initial rendering of this work, Karen Garner for hers about a later one,
and Virginie Marier for critical readings of multiple renditions.
1. Noticiario clasa, 834 and 803, Records of the United States Information Agency,
National Archives Record Group 306 (narg 306), Motion Picture and Sound Recording
Branch (mpsrb).
2. On the role of the Americas in the development of cultural diplomacy, see Frank
Ninkovich, The Diplomacy of Ideas: U.S. Foreign Policy and Cultural Relations, 1938–1950
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). On the Cold War in the Americas, across
time, see David Green, The Containment of Latin America: A History of the Myths and the
Realities of the Good Neighbor Policy (Chicago: Quadrangle Press, 1971); Stephen G. Rabe,
Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism (Chapel Hill: Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press, 1988); and Gaddis Smith, The Last Years of the Monroe
Doctrine, 1945–1993 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994).
3. See Seth Fein, ‘‘Everyday Forms of Transnational Collaboration: U.S. Film Propa-
ganda in Cold War Mexico,’’ in Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of
U.S.-Latin American Relations, ed. Gilbert Joseph, Catherine LeGrand, and Ricardo
Salvatore (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998); and Gerald K. Haines, The American-
ization of Brazil: A Study of U.S. Cold War Diplomacy in the Third World, 1945–1954
(Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1989).
4. On the political idea in its African and Asian contexts, see H. W. Brands, The Spec-
ter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third World, 1947–1960
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1989). On its development as a social category,
see Arturo Escobar, Imagining Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third
World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Robert A. Packenham, The De-
pendency Movement: Scholarship and Politics in Development Studies (Cambridge: Har-
vard University Press, 1992); Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World: Political
Development Ideas in Foreign Aid and Social Science (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1973).
5. ‘‘Barometer Study on Public Opinion: Preliminary Report,’’ 3, usia O≈ce of Re-
search, Country Project Files (1951–64), Box 72, narg 306.
6. ‘‘Newsreel Coverage in Central America,’’ Anthony Guarco to Turner B. Shelton, 1
December 1954, usia Accession 62C185, Box 11, author’s State Department Freedom of
Information Act case no. 200004119 (hereafter, sd-foia).
7. ‘‘Newsreel Coverage in Central America,’’ John S. Connolly to Shelton, 30 Novem-
ber 1954 and ‘‘Mexican Newsreel Project,’’ Oram to Shelton, 12 April 1955, usia Acc.
62C185, Box 11, sd-foia.
8. ‘‘Mexican Newsreel Project,’’ Shelton (ims-usia) to Frank H. Oram (iaa-usia),
March 31, 1955, usia Acc. 62C185, Box 11, sd-foia.
9. ‘‘Delegation of Limited Contractual Authority to T. B. Shelton,’’ Theodore C. Strei-
bert to Clive L. Duval, May 11, 1956, ‘‘Mexican Cartoons: Project Pedro’’ folder 2, usia
General Counsel’s Motion Picture Rights and Permissions files (hereafter, mprp), narg
306 (mpsrb).
10. On Tompkins and Estudios Churubusco, see Seth Fein, ‘‘Transcultured Anticom-
munism: Cold War Hollywood in Postwar Mexico,’’ in Visible Nations: Latin American
Cinema and Video, ed. Chon Noriega (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2000). On World War II and Hollywood in Mexico, see Seth Fein, ‘‘Myths of Cultural
Imperialism and Nationalism in Golden Age Mexican Cinema,’’ in Fragments of a Golden
Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico, 1940–2000, ed. Gilbert Joseph, Anne Rubenstein,
and Eric Zolov (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001); and Seth Fein, ‘‘Transnationali-
zation and Cultural Collaboration: ‘Mexican’ Cinema and the Second World War,’’ Stud-
ies in Latin American Popular Culture 17 (1998). On the postwar decline in commercial
relations between the two industries, see Seth Fein, ‘‘From Collaboration to Contain-
ment: The International Political Economy of Mexican Cinema after the Second World
War,’’ in Mexico’s Cinema: A Century of Films and Filmmakers, ed. Joanne Hershfield and
David Maciel (Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1999).
11. McDermott to Shelton, January 30, 1957, ‘‘Mexican Cartoons: Project Pedro’’ folder
2, mprp, narg 306 (mpsrb).
12. See Shelton to McDermott, January 29, 1958; ‘‘Amendment No. 5 (Agreement No.
IA-2428) ‘Project Pedro,’ ’’ April 21, 1958, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
13. Shelton to McDermott, May 29, 1957, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
14. Raymond Fielding, The American Newsreel, 1911–1967 (Norman: University of
Oklahoma Press, 1972), 308–9.
15. ‘‘Motion Pictures: Newsreels in Mexico,’’ usis Mexico City to usia, July 11, 1958, 1–
2, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
16. ‘‘Television Facts Summary: Latin America Area,’’ S-42-58, O≈ce of Research,
Special Reports 1953–63, Box 15, narg 306.
17. José Luis Gutiérrez Espíndola, ‘‘Información y necesidades sociales: Los noticiarios
de Televisa,’’ in Televisa: El quinto poder, ed. Raúl Trejo Delarbre (Mexico City: Claves
Latinoamericanas, 1985), 65–66; Fernando Mejía Barquera, La industria de la radio y la
televisión y la política del estado mexicano, vol. 1 (1920–1960) (Mexico City: Fundación
Manuel Buendía, 1989), 162–95.
18. On the ideological relationship between the Mexican state and mass culture, see
Roger Bartra, Blood, Ink, and Culture: Miseries and Splendors of the Post-Mexican Condi-
tion, trans. Mark Alan Healey (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002); Claudio Lomnitz-
Adler, Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism (Minneapolis: Uni-
208 seth fein
versity of Minnesota Press, 2001); and Carlos Monsiváis, ‘‘Notas sobre la cultura mexi-
cana en el siglo XX,’’ in Historia general de México, ed. Daniel Cosío Villegas (Mexico
City: El Colegio de México, 1988).
19. On the transition from countryside to cityscape as the dominant national repre-
sentation in Mexican cinema, see Jorge Ayala Blanco, La aventura del cine mexicano en la
época de oro y después (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 1993), 93–107.
20. See Ricardo Pérez Montfort, ‘‘El discurso moral en los noticieros fílmicos de 1940 a
1960,’’ in Los archivos de la memoria, ed. Alicia Olivera de Bonfil (Mexico City: Instituto
Nacional de Antropología e Historia, 1999).
21. José Agustín, Tragicomedia mexicana 1: La vida en México de 1940 a 1970 (Mexico
City: Planeta, 1990), 136–40.
22. McDermott to Shelton, June 12, 1957, 1–2, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
23. McDermott to usia, May 16, 1957, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
24. This was expressed in Mexican film by the director Alejandro Galindo’s Espaldas
mojadas! (Wetbacks!) (1953), the release of which was delayed for two years at the behest
of the State Department, which worked to have the film suppressed throughout Latin
America. See Fein, ‘‘Transcultured Anticommunism.’’ On Operation Wetback, see Juan
Ramón García, Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocumented
Workers in 1954 (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980); and Julian Samora, Los Mojados: The
Wetback Story (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1971). On U.S.–Mexican
relations in the 1950s, see Olga Pellicer de Brody and Esteban Mancilla, Historia de la
revolución mexicana, 1952–1960: El entendimiento con los Estados Unidos del desarrollo
estabilizador, vol. 23 (Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1978).
25. See, for example, General Juan F. Azcárate, President ema, to Adolfo Ruiz Cortines,
February 24, 1954; and September 2, 1953, expediente 523.3/14; and Carlos González
(ema) to Ruiz Cortinés, July 25, 1957, exp. 151.3/1811, Ramo Ruiz Cortines, Fondo Presi-
dentes, Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City.
26. ‘‘Mexican Newsreel Project,’’ Shelton (ims-usia) to Frank H. Oram (iaa-usia),
March 31, 1955. On Dicen que soy comunista, directed by Alejandro Galindo, see Fein,
‘‘Transcultured Anticommunism,’’ 93–100.
27. ‘‘Agreement and Terms of Grant between the United States of America and Richard
Kelsey Tompkins,’’ June 4, 1956, 2, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
28. Amendment No. 1, Agreement No. IA-2428, October 17, 1956, 1–2, 4–6; and ‘‘Check-
list for P.A.O., Project ‘Pedro’ Amendment of 10/17/56,’’ usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-
foia.
29. ‘‘Motion Pictures: Newsreels in Mexico,’’ July 11, 1958, 3. On Alarcón’s relationship
to Avila Camacho, see Andrew William Paxman, ‘‘William Jenkins, the Private Sector and
the Modern Mexican State’’ (M.A. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2002), chaps.
5 and 6; and Wil Pansters, Politics and Power in Puebla: The Political History of a Mexican
State (Amsterdam: cedla, 1990), 62–63.
30. McDermott to Shelton, January 18, 1957, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
31. ‘‘Report to Mr. R. K. Tompkins on Operations of Noticiario Nacional, s.a. and
Impulsora Anahuac, s.a.,’’ from Cantwell Brown, January 7, 1958, 1, usia Acc. 66a274,
Box 84, sd-foia.
32. ‘‘Amendment No. 3, Agreement No. IA-2428, ‘Project Pedro,’ ’’ January 31, 1957,
usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
33. ‘‘Project Pedro: Amendment No. 3 to Grant Agreement IA 2428(1/31/57),’’ Turner
B. Shelton to Frank C. Tribbe, February 11, 1957, 2, ‘‘Mexican Cartoons’’ folder 2, mprp
files, narg 306 (mpsrb).
34. José Luis Ortiz Garza, La guerra de las ondas: Un libro que desimiente la historia
‘‘oficial’’ de la radio mexicana (Mexico City: Planeta, 1992); José Luis Ortiz Garza, México
en guerra: La historia secreta de los negocios entre empresarios mexicanos de la comunica-
ción, los nazis y E.U.A. (Mexico City: Planeta, 1989).
35. ‘‘Agreement entered into by Mr. Emilio Azcárraga M., representing ‘Productores
Unidos,’ s.a. and Mr. Luis C. Manjarrez, representing ‘Noticiario Nacional,’ s.a. and Mr.
Gabriel Alarcón Chargoy,’’ September 24, 1956, ‘‘Mexican Cartoons; Project Pedro’’ folder
2, mprp files, narg 306 (mpsrb).
36. ‘‘Memorandum on Operations of Noticiario Nacional, s.a.,’’ Cantwell C. Brown,
August 28, 1957, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
37. Ibid., 2; ‘‘Report to Mr. R. K. Tompkins on Operations of Noticiario Nacional, s.a.
and Impulsora Anahuac, s.a.,’’ January 7, 1958, 5.
38. Unsigned memo to McDermott, September 2, 1957, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-
foia.
39. ‘‘Memorandum on Operations of Noticiario Nacional, s.a.,’’ August 28, 1957, 1.
40. ‘‘Motion Pictures: Newsreels in Mexico,’’ July 11, 1958, 2–3.
41. ‘‘ocb Paper ‘Principles to Assure Coordination of Gray Activities,’ ’’ McDermott
(usis-Mexico) and Winston M. Scott (ocb Designee), November 19, 1957, 2, usia Acc.
66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
42. Shelton to McDermott, July 22, 1958, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia. Under-
lining in original.
43. See Volker R. Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe: Shepard
Stone between Philanthropy, Academy, and Diplomacy (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2001); David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy
during the Cold War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004); Christopher Lasch, ‘‘The
Cultural Cold War: A Short History of the Congress for Cultural Freedom,’’ in Towards a
New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History, ed. Barton J. Bernstein (New York:
Random House, 1968); Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The cia and the
World of Arts and Letters (New York: New Press, 1999).
44. Thomas C. Sorensen, The Word War: The Story of American Propaganda (New
York: Harper and Row, 1968), 65.
45. McDermott to Hill, December 10, 1958, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
46. Stephen R. Niblo, Mexico in the 1940s: Modernity, Politics, and Corruption (Wil-
mington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1999), 349.
47. On this transnational presence, see Julio Moreno, Yankee Don’t Go Home! Mexican
210 seth fein
Nationalism, American Business Culture, and the Shaping of Modern Mexico, 1920–1950
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003).
48. ‘‘Report of Gross Income from Space Sales by Category,’’ in ‘‘Report to Mr. R. K.
Tompkins on Operations of Noticiario Nacional, s.a. and Impulsora Anahuac, s.a.,’’
January 7, 1958, 12.
49. Noticiario clasa, 834, 848, narg 306 (mpsrb).
50. Noticiario clasa, 802 narg 306 (mpsrb).
51. Noticiario Clasa, 815, 818, 823, 838, 847, 856; El mundo en marcha, 9, 56, narg 306
(mpsrb).
52. On Ortiz Mena’s role in U.S.–Mexican relations under López Mateos, see Olga
Pellicer de Brody and Mancilla, Historia de la revolución mexicana, 1952–1960, 259–67;
Agustín, Tragicomedia mexicana, 196–200. On his proximity to the pri’s presidential
nomination in 1958, see Juan José Rodríguez Prats, El poder presidencial: Adolfo Ruiz
Cortines, 2nd ed. (Mexico City: Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 1992), 236.
53. ‘‘pao’s Checklist for ‘Project Pedro,’ 31 January 1957,’’ sd-foia.
54. ‘‘Content analysis of Not. Clasa.’’ Shelton to Garro, December 27, 1957, ‘‘Mexican
Cartoons: Project Pedro’’ folder 2, mprp, narg 306 (mpsrb).
55. Shelton to McDermott, March 23, 1959, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
56. Shelton to McDermott, n.d. (c. late January 1958); ‘‘Memorandum of Questions
Prepared by Frank Tribbe,’’ n.d (c. late January 1958), usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
57. McDermott to Shelton, January 24, 1958, 2, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
58. ‘‘Amendment No. 6, Agreement IA-2428, ‘Project Pedro,’ ’’ August 11, 1958, usia
Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
59. ‘‘Motion Pictures: Newsreels in Mexico,’’ usis Mexico City to usia, July 11, 1958, 3–
4, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia. Case 200004119.
60. ‘‘El Mundo en Marcha no. 302, Walter Thompson de México, s.a., Depto. de Radio
y Televisión, 17 August 1957,’’ usia Acc. 66a274, Box 91, sd-foia; ‘‘ocb Paper ‘Principles to
Assure Coordination of Gray Activities,’ ’’ McDermott (usis-Mexico) and Winston M.
Scott (ocb Designee), November 19, 1957, 3, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia. March of
Time had a long history of collaborating with the U.S. foreign policy in Mexico; see Seth
Fein, ‘‘Hollywood, Mexico–United States Relations, and the Golden Age of Mexican
Cinema’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1996), 283–90; on Luce’s film opera-
tion, see Raymond Fielding, The March of Time, 1935–1951 (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1978).
61. ‘‘A Study of Audience Opinions of the ‘El mundo en marcha’ and Exposure to
Advertising Media,’’ November 1958, International Research Associates, S.A. de C.V.,
Mexico City, File mx5805, Box 74, usia O≈ce of Research, Country Project Files, 1951–64,
narg 306.
62. Claudia Fernández and Andrew Paxman, El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga y su imperio
Televisa (Mexico City: Grijalbo, 2000), 162, 54–58. Zabludovsky would continue to be the
face of Mexican tv news for decades, hosting the Televisa monopoly’s prime-time broad-
casts into the 1990s.
63. ‘‘ocb Paper ‘Principles to Assure Coordination of Gray Activities,’ ’’ McDermott

and Winston M. Scott (ocb Designee), November 19, 1957, 5, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84,
sd-foia.
64. Carment Báez to R. K. Tompkins y Asociados, s.a. de C.V., January 6, 1961,
‘‘Mexican Cartoons: Project Pedro,’’ folder 4, mprp, narg 306 (mpsrb).
65. ‘‘Report on Story Usage, Mexican Newsreels,’’ usis–Mexico City to usia, January
6, 1960, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
66. ‘‘Amendment No. 6, Agreement IA-2428, ‘Project Pedro,’ ’’ August 11, 1958, 5–6; ‘‘30
September 1958 Agreement between usia and R. K. Tompkins y Asociados,’’ sd-foia. In
addition to his work in Mexico, Rathvon supervised covertly funded film production in
Europe, including a 1956 film, secretly funded by the cia, based on George Orwell’s
Nineteen Eighty-Four ; see Tony Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War: The State,
Propaganda, and Consensus (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001), 104–14.
67. Daniel Garcia (ims) to Shelton, November 25, 1958, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-
foia.
68. ‘‘Motion Pictures: Newsreel Guidance,’’ usis-Mexico, October 9, 1958, usia Acc.
66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
69. ‘‘Project Pedro: Quarterly Progress Report,’’ R. K. Tompkins, November 14, 1958,
usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
70. Shelton to McDermott, March 23, 1959, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
71. Shelton to Rathvon, April 20, 1959, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
72. McDermott to Shelton, April 6, 1959, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
73. Rathvon to Shelton, September 10, 1959, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
74. ‘‘Motion Pictures: clasa Newsreel,’’ McDermott (usis–Mexico City) to usia,
August 14, 1958, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
75. Agustín, Tragicomedia mexicana, 176.
76. ‘‘Motion Pictures: el mundo en marcha Newsreel,’’ usis–Mexico City to usia,
September 8, 1958, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
77. ‘‘Motion Pictures: el mundo en marcha Newsreel,’’ usis–Mexico City to usia,
September 26, 1958, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia; El mundo en marcha 56 was the
a√ected issue.
78. Daniel Garcia (ims) to Shelton, November 25, 1958, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-
foia.
79. ‘‘Mundo en Marcha Newsreel,’’ Robert E. Macaulay to McDermott, August 22,
1960, sd-foia.
80. Rathvon to Shelton, May 5, 1959, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
81. McDermott to Shelton, April 6, 1959, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
82. ‘‘Report on Story Usage, Mexican Newsreels,’’ usis–Mexico City to usia, January
6, 1960, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
83. ‘‘Newsreel Contract Amendment,’’ McDermott to Ambassador Hill, February 17,
84. El mundo en marcha, 21, 55, 153, 155, 156, 157, narg 306 (mpsrb).
212 seth fein
85. Noticiario clasa, 810, 816 narg 306 (mpsrb).

86. El mundo en marcha, 109 narg 306 (mpsrb).
87. Noticiario clasa, 830 narg 306 (mpsrb).
88. Robert A. Divine, The Sputnik Challenge: Eisenhower’s Response to the Soviet Satel-
lite (New York: Oxford University Press), 1993.
89. El mundo en marcha, 149, 152.
90. Noticiario clasa, 823.
91. Noticiario clasa, 800, 802, 806.
92. On the presence of race in U.S. foreign policy in this period, see Mary Dudziak,
Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2000); Penny M. Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and
Anticolonialism, 1937–1957 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), chap. 7; Von Eschen,
Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Cambridge: Harvard
93. El mundo en marcha, 130, narg 306 (mpsrb).
94. El mundo en marcha, 55, 56, 57, 140, narg 306 (mpsrb).
97. ‘‘Project Pedro,’’ Frank Tribbe to Irwin (General Counsel’s O≈ce) October 12, 1961,
1, ‘‘Mexican Cartoons: Project Pedro’’ folder 2, mprp, narg 306 (mpsrb).
99. ‘‘Project Pedro,’’ Frank Tribbe (General Counsel’s O≈ce) to Irwin (igc), July 26,
1961, 2, ‘‘Mexican Cartoons: Project Pedro,’’ folder 2, mprp, narg 306 (mpsrb), underlin-
ing in original.
100. Ibid., 2–3.
101. McDermott to John P. McKnight, Jr. (usia Assistant Director, Latin America),
September 27, 1960, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
102. McDermott to McKnight, July 5, 1961, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
103. McDermott to McKnight, August 4, 1961; McKnight to McDermott, August 11,
104. ‘‘Newsreel Project,’’ McDermott to Thomas Mann, July 18, 1961, usia Acc. 66a274,
Box 84, sd-foia.
105. ‘‘Termination Settlement Agreement,’’ September 30, 1961; Murrow to usis–
Mexico City, September 26, 1961, usia Acc. 66a274, Box 84, sd-foia.
106. Stephen Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts
1999); Michael E. Latham. Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and ‘‘Na-
tion Building’’ in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2000).
107. Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man (New York:
McGraw Hill, 1964).
108. Said, ‘‘Secular Interpretation, the Geographical Element and the Methodology of
Imperialism,’’ in After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements, ed.
Gyan Prakash (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 34.
109. Ranajit Guha, Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997).
110. For an analysis of how Bush II foreign policy perpetuates a longer twentieth-
century history of imperial designs, see Walter LaFeber, ‘‘The Bush Doctrine,’’ Diplomatic
History 26, no. 4 (fall 2002). On U.S. mass communication and 9/11, see LaFeber, Michael
Jordan and the New Global Capitalism, new and expanded edition (New York: Norton,
2002), chapter 7. On Al-Hurra and U.S. foreign policy, see Seth Fein, ‘‘The Medium
Shapes the Message,’’ Yale Global Online, May 7, 2004, http://yaleglobal.yale.edu. On the
Pentagon’s use of U.S. contractors, such as the Lincoln Group, to arrange print and
audiovisual placement of Washington-made mass media, see Je√ Gerth, ‘‘Military’s In-
formation War Is Vast and Often Secretive,’’ New York Times, December 11, 2005. Greg
Grandin has recently shown the instrumental links between U.S. imperialism in Latin
America at the end of the twentieth century and in the Middle East at the outset of the
twenty-first; see Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the
New Imperialism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006).
111. See, for example, ‘‘U.S.: Nascent Telesur to Be Countered by U.S. Broadcasts,’’ Latin
American Weekly Report, July 26, 2005.
112. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Min-
neapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998) 18; see also Seth Fein, ‘‘Culture across
Borders in the Americas,’’ History Compass (2003), http://www.history-compass.com/
Pilot/northam/NthAm — CulturesArticle.htm.
113. See Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Histori-
cal Di√erence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).
ERIC ZOLOV
¡Cuba sí, Yanquis no!

The Sacking of the Instituto Cultural México–Norteamericano
in Morelia, Michoacán, 1961
On April 18, 1961, one day after a U.S.-sponsored invasion force landed on the
shores of Playa Girón, Cuba, in what was ultimately a failed e√ort to topple
Fidel Castro’s regime, the Instituto Cultural México–Norteamericano in More-
lia, Michoacán, was ransacked and its contents set ablaze by an angry group of
several hundred high-school-age student protesters, mostly from the nearby
prestigious Colegio de San Nicolás de Hidalgo. This was not the only, nor by any
means the largest, protest in Mexico against the United States during the Bay of
Pigs invasion. That same day in Mexico City, tens of thousands of demonstrators
converged on the downtown square (Zócalo), while in Guadalajara, Puebla, and
other provincial cities, pro-Cuban solidarity demonstrations similarly erupted.∞
Across the country, students, teachers, intellectuals, workers, and leftist political
leaders angrily denounced the invasion. With accusations of direct involvement
by the United States, ‘‘¡Cuba sí, yanquis no!’’ became the battle cry adopted by
protesters everywhere.
The intensity of this solidarity with Cuba—and the equally intense and often
violent reactions triggered in response—indicated more than simply a struggle
over the outcome of the Cuban revolution per se. Rather, the explosive conflicts
triggered by the Bay of Pigs invasion reflected the release of mounting social and
ideological tensions brewing within Mexican society. These tensions were di-
rectly related to actions taken by President López Mateos, whose coming to
power coincided with the rise of Fidel Castro at the start of 1959 and whose
policies and political rhetoric reflected a classic ‘‘zigzag’’ approach that encom-
passed both a strident nationalism and systematic repression. The Cuban revo-
lution exacerbated and ultimately helped crystallize those ideological tensions,
though it by no means ‘‘caused them,’’ as many observers in the United States
would later charge. Thus the ‘‘battle for Cuba’’ that erupted in the spring of 1961
was fraught with violence and emotion precisely because it symbolized Mexico’s
¡ c u b a s í , ya n q u i s n o ! 215
own ideological battleground as the nation disputed the proper course of its
revolutionary project, the nature of its leadership role vis-à-vis Latin America,
and its relations with the United States at a decisive moment in the Cold War.
This essay revisits the protests in Morelia and looks to situate the events
surrounding the sacking of the Cultural Institute within the broader political
and cultural context of relations between Mexico, Cuba, the United States, and
the Soviet Union during this period. For reasons of space, the scope of the
present discussion cannot address the full complexities of this historical narra-
tive. A full retelling, for example, would require a broader analysis of the role of
the ‘‘new’’ political forces that emerged (on both the right and the left), largely in
response to the impact of the Cuban revolution on Mexican political thought. It
would also require a careful discussion of the intricate diplomatic balancing act
carried out by the Mexican government, which simultaneously defended the
Cuban revolution’s right to exist while operating in tandem with U.S. security
concerns to suppress and keep track of pro-Cuban activities within Mexico. And
it would necessitate a fuller accounting of the strategic goals and tactical deci-
sions made by the Soviet Union, which also played a delicate balancing act in its
relations with Mexico during this period.
Because the story takes place in Michoacán, the ‘‘cradle of cardenismo,’’ a
central aspect of this discussion concerns the role of former president Lázaro
Cárdenas, whose ‘‘resurrection’’ as a vocal advocate of the Left was tied directly,
though not solely, to events in Cuba. The revolutionary clout wielded by Cár-
denas, both within Mexico and throughout Latin America, dramatically raised
the stakes of the o≈cial government party’s—Partido Revolucionario Institucio-
nal (pri)—position with respect to Cuba. Indeed, Cárdenas’s outspoken pres-
ence should be recognized as a leading reason why Mexico bucked U.S. diplo-
matic pressures in refusing to sever relations with the island. By 1961, his name
was publicly shouted alongside the ‘‘Vivas!’’ exclaimed for Cuba and Castro, and
throughout Mexico, if not all of Latin America, Cárdenas’s name once more
become synonymous with the defense of revolutionary principles and a defiance
of U.S. policies toward the region.
Thus while for many observers in the United States, the attack on the Cultural
Institute signified the manifestation of Soviet-backed subversion—exposing the
‘‘vulnerability’’ of Mexico to Communist takeover—for the Mexican govern-
ment what was at stake was the containment not of Communism but of car-
denismo. By exploring the unfolding logic behind the assault on the institute
and o≈cial responses to the attack, we can gain a much fuller appreciation for
the ways in which the Cold War was manifested as a struggle for the ongoing
216 eric zolov
process of a centralization of authority within Mexico, and the containment of

competing nationalist discourses. Containing cardenismo coincided with U.S.
Cold War security concerns, despite the fact that the United States viewed the
nature of the threat through the strategic lens of global struggle.
Mexican Nationalism and the Defense of the Cuban Revolution
The inextricable connection that would forever link Mexico with the fate of the
Cuban revolution came when Lázaro Cárdenas made the historic decision to
attend Cuba’s first July 26 celebration in the summer of 1959, just seven months
after Castro’s triumph. Appearing on the podium next to Castro—in a photo
that would become a celebrated image for the Left, and a vilified one for the
Right in the years ahead—Cárdenas underscored the fundamental similarity
between the two nations’ revolutionary processes. ‘‘The agrarian reform in Mex-
ico received the most virulent attacks from the enemies of anti-feudal struggle,’’
Cárdenas reminded his audience. Now Cuba, in attempting to implement its
own agrarian reforms, was experiencing a ‘‘defamation that has contributed
to the creation of a black legend’’ against Castro’s revolutionary government.
‘‘Their tactic is not new,’’ Cárdenas stressed with evident reference not only to
the nation’s former ruling class but to foreign economic interests more gener-
ally. ‘‘The adversaries of social reforms used it many years ago against our
country.’’ In words that resounded throughout Mexico and beyond, he added,
‘‘We Mexicans know well that revolutions are not imported or exported. We
respect the integrity of emancipation movements in other countries, as we have
asked for respect for the Mexican Revolution.’’≤ Notably, Cárdenas also sum-
moned the image and language of Good Neighbor diplomacy, quoting Franklin
Roosevelt’s policy of ‘‘mutual respect.’’ Latin American nations had the ‘‘right
and capacity to live freely and independently, without intervention nor even
o≈cial advisement from our [the United States’] part.’’≥ These words ‘‘from the
great Northamerican citizen,’’ Cárdenas reminded his audience, ‘‘constitute a
testimony and historical commitment.’’∂
In fact, despite his forceful language when speaking alongside Castro, Cár-
denas had been careful not to impugn the United States directly. The U.S.
ambassador to Cuba, Philip Bonsal, himself found little in the speech to con-
demn. In a meeting with the former Mexican president shortly afterward, Bon-
sal noted that Cárdenas ‘‘spoke favorably of the present state of U.S.–Mexican
relations and expressed friendly statements toward [U.S.] Ambassador [to Mex-
ico, Robert] Hill.’’ Bonsal further reported that Cárdenas ‘‘expressed appropri-
ately anti-Communist sentiments’’ and quoted him as saying ‘‘that it was essen-
tial that the peoples of Latin America have the closest and most cooperative
relations with the United States, especially in view of the critical state of world
a√airs.’’∑ Regarding Cárdenas’s evident support of the Cuban revolution, Bonsal
excused these actions by stating somewhat condescendingly that ‘‘as an elderly
revolutionary [he] is inclined to take a fatherly attitude toward the foibles,
excesses, and mistakes of his younger contemporaries here.’’∏
Bonsal’s remarks, however, failed to anticipate the repercussions of Cárdenas’s
trip to Cuba on the Mexican public, as well as for Latin Americans more gener-
ally. As ‘‘an elderly revolutionary,’’ Cárdenas had bestowed legitimacy on Castro
as the unassailable leader of Cuba’s social transformation. Equally important, by
linking Cuba’s battles with those of Mexico, Cárdenas cast himself as spokesman
of a movement to see through Mexico’s own unfulfilled revolutionary goals.
Writing in an issue of el espectador (which featured on its cover the recently shot
photograph of Cárdenas alongside Castro), Jaime García Terrés argued:
There is no question that our views have been shaken by the certainty that [with Cár-
denas’s speech in Havana] one was listening anew, after so many years of pure bu-
reaucracy, of a socially sterile and mechanized politics, to a voice of a man who,
conscious of his national importance, has something to say, and he says it far afield
from the old diplomatic formulas of mere courtesy, far away from the cautious and
static ‘‘realism’’ that our last regimes have defined and nurtured.π
Cárdenas stood firmly and publicly by the Cuban revolution, even as it grew
increasingly radical in response to U.S. diplomatic, economic, and eventually
military e√orts to undermine it. This position ultimately played an important
role in ensuring Mexico’s diplomatic defense of Cuba within the Organization of
American States, in open defiance of the United States. In turn, it catalyzed a
mounting ideological divide within Mexican society centered not only on the
course of Mexico’s own revolutionary process but also on the nature of Mexico’s
alliance with the United States, one that emphasized Pan-American solidarity
and friendship in the face of mounting U.S. hegemony over the region. During
the Bay of Pigs invasion, this ideological divide became an open breach.
A Call to Arms
The same afternoon that news of the Bay of Pigs invasion reached Mexico, some
five thousand students gathered on the main esplanade of the National Univer-
sity (unam) in the nation’s capital to listen as organizers from the Frente Estu-
diantil de Defensa de la Revolución Cubana (Student Front in Defense of the
Cuban Revolution) provided the latest information and read messages of soli-
218 eric zolov
darity from around the country. The most significant of those messages was
undoubtedly that of Lázaro Cárdenas: ‘‘We summon you,’’ his message said in a
highly formalized Spanish, ‘‘to adopt the most energetic attitude in the face of
this cowardly aggression by the imperialists, of which the sister republic of Cuba
is now victim.’’∫ Coming from the mouth of one of the nation’s most revered
leaders of the Mexican revolution, his words amounted to nothing less than
marching orders. Certainly everyone was aware of the significance of this his-
toric moment in the struggle for Latin American independence. Cuba’s future,
and perhaps Mexico’s as well, hung in the balance. That afternoon, the au-
ditorium at the School of Economics of unam was transformed into a site
of pandemonium as more than one thousand students—‘‘some with arms in
hand’’—signed up to fight alongside Castro. Elsewhere on campus and at the
Instituto Politécnico Nacional (ipn) across the city an additional fifteen hundred
students similarly enrolled to fight.Ω Across the country, hundreds of ad hoc
recruitment centers sprang up. Loosely a≈liated with the Partido Popular So-
cialista (headed by Vicente Lombardo Toledano), these groups of volunteers
were dubbed the ‘‘Pancho Villa Brigades,’’ invoking the heroic escapades of the
only Latin American invasion of the United States.∞≠ The national media soon
carried the sensational news that Cárdenas would leave immediately for the
island to ‘‘put himself at the orders of the Cuban people.’’∞∞ Though ultimately
prevented from doing so by order of President López Mateos, on the following
day Cárdenas faced a crowd estimated at more than thirty thousand people in
the central square of Mexico City.∞≤ In an impassioned speech lasting over
twenty-five minutes, he brought those present to a hushed, respectful silence.
‘‘Cuba does not need foreign forces to defend it,’’ he declared in obvious refer-
ence to the fact that his trip—and that of the brigadistas—had been blocked.
‘‘What Cuba urgently needs is the moral support of Mexico and of all Latin
America. We must give her that, because Cuba is in the midst of a struggle of
great impact for all of the nations of this continent.’’∞≥ Meanwhile, in Morelia,
Michoacán, the Instituto Cultural México–Norteamericano had already been
ransacked and burned, an unequivocal sign that the battle over the terms of Pan-
American solidarity was very real indeed.
The Cultural Institute in Morelia
One of seven existing Binational Centers operating in Mexico and funded by the
United States Information Service (usis) in 1961, Morelia’s recently established
Instituto Cultural México–Norteamericano played an important part in the
larger strategy of U.S. cultural diplomacy toward Mexico.∞∂ According to the

handbook for country public a√airs o≈cers (cpaos, the people assigned by usia
to coordinate cultural relations abroad), the principal objectives of the Bina-
tional Centers were to facilitate cultural activities ‘‘as a service to the commu-
nity[,] . . . as a means of strengthening understanding between the United States
and the people of the host country,’’ and to ‘‘demonstrate American interest in
local culture.’’
The special value of the Binational Centers lies in their status as autonomous, local
organizations and in the fact that their boards of directors and memberships include
influential nationals. Because of this local sponsorship, the programs of the bnc o√er
the cpao an e√ective means of accomplishing certain usis objectives. This is true es-
pecially in those areas in which any overt activities connected with foreign govern-
ments are viewed with suspicion.∞∑
In Morelia’s case, the Cultural Institute also provided an important counter-

weight to the radical nationalist discourse emanating from the prestigious Cole-
gio de San Nicolás de Hidalgo and the nearby University of Michoacán. ‘‘There
should be a direct potential advantage to the [country] post, such as the exis-
tence of an important university nearby, to justify the creation of a bnc,’’ a later
handbook states.∞∏ Morelia clearly met these conditions.
Echoing the language of Good Neighbor diplomacy, the goals of Morelia’s
Cultural Institute were to provide ‘‘educational facilities so that the neighboring
countries of Mexico and the United States might better understand one another
in terms of culture, customs, and aspirations.’’∞π To this end, the center hosted a
variety of events ‘‘such as concerts, expositions, lectures, theatrical productions,
ballet, parties, regional dances, conversation club, library ladies club, chess,’’ as
well as other activities.∞∫ Its library, located in a room o√ of one corner of the
building’s interior patio, boasted over three thousand books and magazines, in
addition to a sizable collection of phonographic records. One of the main
functions of bncs generally was the teaching of English, and the Cultural In-
stitute was highly regarded within the community for its rigorous English-
language program. It was common, in fact, for the University of Michoacán and
the area’s Normal School (also located in Morelia) to ‘‘send their students and
instructors to learn [English] there.’’∞Ω Alfonso Espitia, who taught at the Cole-
gio de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, just around the corner from the institute (and
where the protesters who later attacked the building originated), spoke highly of
the institute’s language classes: ‘‘We used to say that [in secondary school] they
taught us ‘Tarzan English,’ you know really primitive. So, if you truly wanted to
220 eric zolov
learn English you went to the Institute.’’≤≠ Thus, as the city’s most visible repre-
sentation of a direct U.S. presence, the Instituto embodied, materially and dis-
cursively, a projection of Pan-American cooperation deemed by usis to be
integral to the larger goals of Cold War cultural diplomacy: to forge a set of
shared cultural reference points that would facilitate a deeper appreciation of
how the pursuit of ‘‘liberty’’ motivated U.S. actions throughout the world. In
successfully taking on the propagandizing roles envisioned by usis, however, the
institute also became a direct target of anti-American protests.
Since its founding in 1955, the institute ‘‘had been stoned . . . by the students’’
on various occasions,≤∞ and supporters of the center acknowledged that there
was a ‘‘certain resistance’’ by those who feared the institute ‘‘would be utilized as
a center for proselytizing and propaganda.’’≤≤ Advocates for the institute later
argued that such resistance dissipated as people ‘‘united to give it their support’’
and once the institute’s ‘‘true purposes were seen, that is, that it was dedicated
solely and exclusively to the teaching of the English and Spanish languages and
to the organization of cultural events, such as concerts, literary discussions,
social evenings, admission-free showings of film documentaries open to the
public, etc.’’≤≥ Yet it was only natural that cultural activity became coded accord-
ing to the residents’ perceptions of the United States as a global power. Thus
while the goals and purpose of the institute were to create a cultural bridge that
would transcend (and heal) political divisions between the United States and
Mexico, while laying an ideological foundation for appreciating the logic of U.S.
actions internationally, in practice cultural dissemination through the institute
was inherently politicized.
Student Activism and the Colegio de San Nicolás de Hidalgo
As the first European-founded university system in the New World, the Colegio
de San Nicolás was originally established in Páztcuaro, Michoacán, in 1540 by the
Spanish bishop Vasco de Quiroga. By the end of the sixteenth century, the
Colegio had relocated to Valladolid (present-day Morelia), where it remains.
Quiroga’s utopian ideas about protecting and educating the region’s indigenous
peoples left an important moral imprint, ideas that were transmitted by the
Colegio throughout the colonial period. ‘‘He was a product of the Renaissance,’’
recalled Alfonso Espitia about Quiroga and the milieu of the Colegio. ‘‘And that
ideology was passed down to us, it was a seed that’s formed us, the ideology called
nicolaismo, after Saint Nicolás.’’≤∂ During the nineteenth century the school
became identified ‘‘with radical anticlericalism, socially modern ideas, and re-
lentless nationalism,’’≤∑ values that would continue to influence the school’s ethos
in the twentieth century and especially in the postrevolutionary period, when the
Colegio played an important role in the reformist projects emanating from the
revolution.≤∏ Students were continuously reminded of their duty to uphold the
principles of the nation’s Founding Fathers, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla and José
María Morelos, both alumni of the Colegio (Hidalgo went on to become the
school’s rector as well). As the Colegio’s ‘‘Juramiento Nicolaita’’ (School Oath)
emphasized:
To be a nicolaita is to carry in one’s heart the spiritual example of struggle [lucha]

and sacrifice, that most beautiful lesson given to us by our father mentor, don Miguel
Hidalgo, because only he who gives has the right to receive. Because liberty is not im-
plored, but conquered. . . . We swear to work and to fight [luchar] in the vanguard
for the people of Mexico, for its liberty and progress, to hold up high and virtuous al-
ways the glorious ‘‘nicolaita tradition.’’≤π
Virgilio Pineda Arellano, a student leader at the Colegio in 1961, described the
school’s creed: ‘‘The students believed that they were the vanguard of the peo-
ple,’’ he reflected. ‘‘We always needed to denounce what was wrong with the
government and what was happening in the countryside. For example, when the
price of corn went down, we were in front of the government plaza and in the
streets denouncing it.’’≤∫ This ethos was furthermore su√used with an anti-
imperialist Boliviarian nationalism, expressed by Espitia as a duty ‘‘to recover a
collective sense of hispanidad, and to confront the Monroe Doctrine, Manifest
Destiny, the United States.’’≤Ω If the Instituto Cultural was conceived as a vehicle
for disseminating a certain vision of Pan-Americanism—one based in Franklin
Roosevelt’s discourse of the Good Neighbor, to be sure, but also grounded in the
fundamental assumptions of the U.S. role as ‘‘protector’’ of Latin America—the
Colegio disseminated a Latin American vision of Pan Americanism, one that
emphasized the heroic anti-imperialism of Hidalgo, Bolivar, Martí—and now
Castro.
Another crucial factor that shaped the historical context for the attack on
the Cultural Institute was the deeply rooted, preexisting tensions embedded
within Morelian society between religious conservatives and secular nationalists.
Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, these opposing social forces had often come
into open conflict over questions of land, education, health, and other state-
sponsored reforms. Michoacán was an important battleground during the post-
revolutionary period, and the legacy of those battles engendered a body politic
that beneath the surface of a consensual revolutionary discourse was in fact still
222 eric zolov
highly contested. Martín Tavira, who taught a course on the Mexican revolution
‘‘using the methodology of historical materialism,’’ recalls the ongoing ideologi-
cal divisions between the socialist-inflected environment of the Colegio and the
more conservative social context of Morelia: ‘‘In that period, it was a very
conservative society, and, well, we were seen as dangerous communists; they said
we were the enemies of religion and that we were aligned with Lucifer.’’≥≠
The Cuban Revolution in Morelia
Similar to what had occurred in other provincial capitals throughout the coun-
try after 1959, Morelia became an important center for activity in support of the
Cuban revolution. ‘‘We viewed the Cuban revolution as the hope and solution
for the problems of Latin America,’’ noted Pineda, echoing a sentiment felt
across Mexico and, indeed, Latin America as a whole.≥∞ ‘‘I was really young at the
time,’’ Martín Tavira reflected, explaining the energetic response set in motion
by the Cuban revolution:
There was a lot of political organizing going on throughout the university, which was
very politicized. We went to conferences, roundtables, get-togethers, meetings, et
cetera, all in order to defend the Cuban revolution. We were very passionate de-
fenders of the Cuban revolution. . . . [Morelia] was one of the most active centers for
all of this. There was a lot of information, meetings, and of course in the university
we were educating ourselves about the revolution every day. We organized discus-
sions, we argued, and there were conferences, both here and outside of Morelia. At
that time . . . before the invasion at the Bay of Pigs, Fidel Castro hadn’t yet declared
the revolution as socialist; we still saw the Mexican revolution as democratic and
anti-imperialist. We never spoke of the [Cuban revolution] as socialist: it was a revo-
lution to liberate Cuba from foreign monopolies, and a democratic revolution so that
the Cuban people had liberty. We spoke about how Cuba . . . was similar to what had
happened during the Mexican revolution. But to label the Cuban revolution as com-
munist, well that was a baseless insult.≥≤
Alfonso Espitia further elaborated on the cultural climate that emerged in the
context of the Cuban revolution: ‘‘Everyone sympathized with Cuba. We knew
the songs of Carlos Puebla, the troubadour of the revolution, by heart. . . . We
read Cuban poetry, Cuban literature; we got together to read the First Declara-
tion of Havana.’’≥≥
Proud of their state’s heroic contributions to Mexico’s revolutionary identity
during the 1920s and 1930s, and emboldened by Lázaro Cárdenas’s openly criti-
cal stance against U.S. imperialism in the hemisphere, a delegation of over three
thousand students, professors, workers, and peasants headed to Mexico City to
participate in the Conferencia Latinoamericana por la Soberanía Nacional, la
Emancipación Económica y la Paz (Latin American Conference for National
Sovereignty, Economic Emancipation, and Peace) held in Mexico City from
March 5 to March 8, 1961. Organized by the World Peace Movement (a group the
United States viewed as a ‘‘communist front’’) and referred to at one point as the
‘‘Bandung Latinoamericana,’’ the meeting was headed by three prominent Latin
Americans: Lázaro Cárdenas, Domingo Vellasco (Brazil), and Alberto T. Casella
(Argentina).≥∂ Pineda, who had traveled to Cuba the year before as an o≈cial
delegate to the First International Organization of Youth, led a group of over one
hundred students from various divisions of the University of Michoacán and the
Colegio. Tavira headed yet another group of students from the youth organiza-
tion of the Partido Popular Socialista.≥∑
Although the national press imposed (or, more likely, was instructed to carry
out) a virtual information blackout with respect to the conference, in Morelia
the event made front-page news. The city’s two principal newspapers—El He-
raldo Michoacano and La Voz de Michoacán—provided extensive coverage of
events and of the role of local activists, including Pineda and Tavira. ‘‘As a
whole,’’ wrote Horacio Quiñones in La Voz de Michoacán, ‘‘it can be said that
never in history has such a numerous and brilliant group of continental talent
been assembled.’’≥∏ Casella, Argentina’s minister of finance and former rector of
the University of La Plata, was quoted as saying that the conference ‘‘will give the
world, and especially the new government of the United States, a realistic version
of the thinking of Latin American countries.’’≥π Describing ‘‘an enthusiasm sim-
ply without parallel,’’ where musical groups and ‘‘posters filled with the most
diverse slogans’’ provided a festive ambience, another reporter from La Voz de
Michoacán appeared genuinely overawed as he sought to convey the powerful
emotional and progressive spirit of what clearly seemed a transcendental event:
‘‘The shouts, the cheers, the frequent acclamations impregnated the atmosphere
with ‘something’ that is not easy to summarize.’’≥∫
Without question, the emotional and historical ties that bound Mexico, as
host of the conference, and Cuba, as the obvious model for Latin America’s
future, animated the delegates and provided the event with an underlying axis of
solidarity that permeated the meetings. This became apparent on the first day,
when flags of the di√erent Latin American nations were paraded during the
opening ceremonies. As the flags of Mexico and Cuba passed, ‘‘one heard the
resounding and imposing chants of ‘Cuba sí, yanquis no’ ’’ and even ‘‘México sí,
224 eric zolov
yanquis no.’’≥Ω The leading role taken by Lázaro Cárdenas as organizer of the
conference further highlighted these ties. Describing the spontaneous standing
ovation given as he entered to inaugurate the events, La Voz de Michoacán noted
that Cárdenas ‘‘has converted into the world’s paladin of human togetherness.’’∂≠
The Cold War, as far as the delegates were concerned, had been forced on Latin
America by the United States, which had introduced ‘‘military pacts [that] have
burdened our nations with the weight of military arms while placing limits on
our sovereignty and economic development.’’∂∞
In an e√ort to build on the energy generated by the events and break through
this silence, Cárdenas embarked on a speaking tour from March 14 to 20 that
took him to four important states—Querétaro, Guanajuato, Jalisco, and Michoa-
cán—where he helped lead ‘‘meetings and gatherings at which he spoke of the
successes of the Cuban Revolution while harshly criticizing the errors and devia-
tions of the Mexican Revolution.’’∂≤ Significantly, he timed his tour to end in
Morelia to commemorate the twenty-third anniversary of Mexico’s expropria-
tion of foreign oil companies in 1938. Throughout his tour, Cárdenas spoke
forcibly about the need to generate a movement to implement the goals of the re-
cent conference, while denouncing Mexico’s ‘‘monopoly press [prensa grande]’’
for failing to carry the messages of the conference. By reiterating ‘‘a virile defense
of the Cuban people,’’ he also underscored in the public mind-set the direct
relationship between Mexico, Cuba, and his own leadership.∂≥ A quarter-page
announcement of his arrival in Morelia featured a drawing in profile of Cárdenas
looking down benevolently on Latin America: ‘‘Cárdenas, who today has been
converted into the leader of Latin America, initiates works toward the improve-
ment of all of the Spanish-speaking countries who long for their development,
national sovereignty, and peace,’’ wrote the Heraldo Michoacano.∂∂ Several days
later, Cárdenas conducted an impromptu interview with a reporter from La Voz
de Michoacán at a hotel in Morelia. Accompanied by a small cohort of members
from the recent conference, including a number of Cuban delegates, Cárdenas
critiqued the recently announced Alliance for Progress as ‘‘ill-timed, since the
nations of Latin America have awoken and do not want help but comprehension
and equal treatment.’’∂∑ Cárdenas attacked the underlying anti-Communist dis-
course of U.S. policy toward Latin America, arguing that ‘‘anti-Communism has
been a phrase . . . developed to fight against any popular or liberation move-
ment.’’∂∏ Moreover, he emphasized that the full program of the Mexican revolu-
tion needed to be implemented ‘‘to carry it through to its ultimate conse-
quences.’’ Nevertheless, he stressed that this should be done nonviolently—for
the contrary ‘‘would mean the destruction of all that has been created in these
last fifty years of Revolution.’’
In sum, Cárdenas’s visit to Morelia tied together the three central themes that
set the stage for the attack on the institute less than three weeks later: Mexico’s
ties of solidarity to Cuba; the imperialist intentions of U.S. policy toward Latin
America; and Cárdenas’s own role as a leader of the movement to ‘‘liberate’’
Latin America—Mexico included—from outside and oligarchic domination.
For the students and professors of the Colegio San Nicolás de Hidalgo, their
duty to defend the Cuban revolution was fully understood.
While Cárdenas reminded Mexicans of their own, still unfulfilled revolution-
ary aspirations, the heroic unfolding of the Cuban revolution provided a mirror
into which young Mexicans were able to gaze and relive, however vicariously,
their nation’s history of anti-imperialist struggle. For young political activists,
especially, Cuba was the inspiration to imagine a romanticized future of revolu-
tionary possibility for Mexico and beyond. ‘‘The fact that Castro was only thirty-
three years when he took power and that most of the leadership was so young,
well, that was clearly an inspiration for us,’’∂π Virgilio Pineda later explained.
Cárdenas had legitimized that imaginary by explicitly drawing comparisons
between the two nations’ revolutionary processes. Thus, in e√ect, not to defend
Castro and the Cuban revolution was to go against Cárdenas himself and all that
he stood for; it was to condone the ossification of Mexico’s own revolutionary
process. When the Cuban revolution appeared threatened with annihilation
during the Bay of Pigs, there could be no question regarding where the progres-
sive youth of Morelia—and the nation—must stand. ‘‘For us,’’ Pineda said, ‘‘it
was imperative to defend the Cuban revolution and Castro at all cost.’’∂∫
The Sacking of the Cultural Institute
Word of the invasion at the Bay of Pigs spread quickly in Morelia. ‘‘Of course
we heard everything by radio, and the conservative forces were saying that
the Cuban revolution was finished,’’ Tavira remembered.∂Ω On the evening of
April 17, a meeting of the entire academic community was held at the Casa del
Estudiante Nocolaita, the cultural extension of the Colegio de San Nicolás lo-
cated two blocks from the Binational Center. A series of planned actions were
agreed on, and a recruitment center was established to register local briga-
distas.∑≠ By the end of the evening, a ‘‘Sociedad de Amigos de Cuba’’ had also
been created, headed by Angel Baltázar Barajas (leader of the Federación de
226 eric zolov
Maestros Universitarios), Raúl Galván (leader of the Consejo Estudiante Nico-

laíta), Virgilio Pineda (head of the Federación de Estudiantes Universitarios),
and two professors—Ramón Martínez Ocaranza and Alberto Lozano Vázquez.∑∞
By all accounts, Morelia that night was brewing with political activity. Ac-
cording to a report filed by an agent of Mexico’s Dirección General de Investiga-
ciones Políticas y Sociales (dgips), beginning around 8 p.m. a group of students
from the Colegio took to the streets of downtown Morelia ‘‘shouting ‘vivas’ for
Castro Ruz and General Lázaro Cárdenas.’’∑≤ Evidently belonging to a U.S. tour-
ist, a car with Ohio license plates parked in front of the Hotel Virrey de Mendoza
‘‘was stoned.’’∑≥ That same evening, Eugene Kenney, the American executive
director of the Cultural Institute, witnessed a group of students painting anti-
American slogans on the sidewalk; in an ominous sign for Kenney of local
authorities’ indi√erence, he later noted that nearby ‘‘policemen in uniform
watched but did not interfere.’’∑∂ More significantly, Kenney also claimed to have
received the first of what would be several direct warnings: ‘‘Professors at the
University of San Nicolás were making plans for an assault on the Institute.’’∑∑
The following morning, the front page of La Voz de Michoacán featured the
by-now-famous photograph of Cárdenas and Castro from 1959, over the caption
‘‘Once again they will be together today in Havana’’ (figure 1).∑∏ Describing Cuba
as ‘‘attacked by yanqui imperialism,’’ the newspaper highlighted in glowing
terms the course of events that had unfolded at the Casa del Estudiante the night
before; elsewhere the paper listed the address of the local recruitment o≈ce for
brigadistas. Morelia’s second news daily, El Heraldo Michoacano, slightly to the
right ideologically of La Voz de Michoacán, likewise publicized in not unfavor-
able terms news of that day’s planned protests. Featured on the front page was
the text of a letter written by the Federación de Maestros Universitarios de
Michoacán, which read in part: ‘‘We assert that the Cuban people’s revolution-
ary struggle has never separated from the common destiny of the nations of
Latin America, whose progressive development demands as an essential condi-
tion the total liquidation of imperialism.’’∑π Neither paper carried any mention
of a rumored attack on the Cultural Institute. The streets of Morelia were already
filled with the staccato chanting of ‘‘¡Cuba sí, yanquis no!’’ as ‘‘student brigades
ran through the neighborhoods, streets and markets of the city, improvising
small meetings at which they explained to the public the problem of Cuba.’’∑∫
At 11 a.m. that morning an overflowing, boisterous crowd of several hundred
students and professors (one report cited ‘‘thousands’’) congregated in the in-
terior patio of the Colegio to constitute a General Assembly, as called for by
the meeting the night before. Among the announcements was one by Baltázar
1. On the day of the Bay of Pigs invasion, former president Lázaro Cárdenas
publicly stated that he would go to Cuba to fight alongside Fidel Castro in
defense of the revolution. Anticipating this action, La Voz de Michoacán ran
this earlier famous photograph from Cárdenas’s historic visit to the island in
July 1959. This time, however, Cárdenas was prevented from going to Cuba
by order of President Adolfo López Mateos, who similarly blocked e√orts by
the popularly organized ‘‘Pancho Villa Brigades.’’ La Voz de Michoacán,
April 18, 1961.
228 eric zolov
Barajas of the Federación de Maestros stating that the faculty union ‘‘has de-
cided to contribute to the cause of Fidel Castro with a day of pay.’’∑Ω Shortly
thereafter, in an indication that a tectonic shift was occurring in terms of Pan-
American sentiment, Ramón Martínez Ocaranza, a poet and professor of litera-
ture at the Colegio, openly denounced the United States as ‘‘caballeros de la
muerte,’’∏≠ literally ‘‘horsemen of death,’’ but a phrase that has several layers of
meaning in Spanish. For example, caballero is also the term for ‘‘gentleman,’’ and
the phrase itself no doubt evoked a certain apocalyptic imagery.
One of the final speakers that morning was Nicandro Mendoza, who would
later be singled out as a ‘‘leader’’ in the attack on the Cultural Institute. Men-
doza’s biography as a student activist was already well established: as former
head of the Federación Nacional de Estudiantes Técnicos, he had led the student
strike at the Instituto Politécnico Nacional in Mexico City during 1955–56, for
which he was imprisoned on charges of ‘‘disolución social.’’ Following his release
from the Lecumberri penitentiary in late 1958, he was in e√ect ‘‘exiled’’ to More-
lia, where he resumed his medical studies at the University of Michoacán.∏∞
According to El Heraldo Michoacano, on the day of the General Assembly,
Mendoza arrived at the Colegio ‘‘in the company of a large contingent from the
School of Medicine and related organizations, hoisting the Cuban flag.’’∏≤ La Voz
de Michoacán provides a further description of Mendoza’s actions, noting that
his dramatic entrance was accompanied ‘‘by harsh words’’ in which Mendoza
‘‘denounced the North American government and invited everyone present to
take to the streets to explain to the public the meaning of struggle [lucha], which
in these moments Cuba faced in its fight against imperialism and traitors.’’∏≥
Mendoza has admitted to being present at the meeting, as well as to speaking to
the crowd. ‘‘But that was all: I gave my point of view [only briefly] because I was
in a di≈cult situation [because of the terms of my exile]. Then the kids, they did
their thing.’’∏∂ According to Mendoza, following his presentation, he left the
Colegio and went home. When the assembly broke up, however, many of those
present flooded into the streets and quickly marched the short distance to the
Cultural Institute. It was 12:10 p.m.
Morning classes had finished at the institute, and the building was mostly
empty. Several Mexican sta√ members, two visiting U.S. citizens (Norvelle
Sannebeck, a retired Foreign Service o≈cer, and his wife), Kenney and his wife,
and an eight-year-old child were all that remained inside. Outside, a throng of
students—‘‘the majority . . . of secondary-school age’’∏∑ —had gathered, many
‘‘armed with every-day implements,’’∏∏ which a U.S. Embassy report later identi-
fied as including ‘‘long lengths of iron pipe and cans of gasoline.’’∏π They began
shattering windows and pounding on the entrance ‘‘to the shout of ‘Cuba sí,
yanquis no!’ ’’∏∫ Within minutes, a group broke through the baroque wooden
doors and entered the building. A portrait of President Kennedy hanging in the
entranceway was taken down and trampled, ‘‘as he is singled out for being
responsible for the invasion of Cuba,’’ explained La Voz de Michoacán without
apology on the following day.∏Ω An American flag was also set on fire, prompting
a brief altercation between a passing U.S. national and a group of students.π≠
Moving beyond the destruction of Kennedy’s picture and the burning of the
flag, the mob proceeded to liquidate the institute’s cultural resources, in particu-
lar its prized book, record, and film collection. These aspects of the institute
embodied its most cherished ideal: that cultural relations would solidify a foun-
dation of Pan-American friendship. Destroying these cultural objects was thus a
powerfully symbolic act that underscored the desire by protesters to purge
Morelian society of its ‘‘good neighborly’’ association with the United States,
which the invasion of Cuba had clearly desecrated. Two massive bonfires were
formed, one in the street in front of the institute and the other in the building’s
interior courtyard:
In bonfires fueled by the assortment of items, there were metal desks, typewriters, a
film projector, tape recorder, microphone, sound amplifier, speakers, bookshelves,
books, desk-chairs, tables, paper archives, phonographic records, 16mm films, and
other objects. One unidentified student rescued the projector and brought it to the
School of Fine Arts [in front of the Institute]. Another student, witnessing this, took
it back and threw it into the fire.π∞
This last act of retrieval and return is especially striking, for while one student
apparently recognized the irrationality of destroying a piece of equipment that
might be salvaged, he (or she?) was simultaneously reproached by another
protester who insisted on the very rationality of the cultural cleansing. The
institute was not looted; it was cleansed through violence.
Kenney, who was rumored to be a cia spy (a charge impossible to prove one
way or the other), became a special target of this desire to purge.π≤ When a group
of students came upon the newly furnished quarters used by Kenney and his
wife as an apartment in the rear of the institute, they unleashed their anger by
‘‘turning over beds, mattresses, and bureaus, flipping the gas stove, shattering
glass, and causing other destruction.’’π≥ The executive director and other occu-
pants of the institute reportedly fled by ‘‘making their way through the roof to a
neighboring house.’’ ‘‘Only this method of escape prevented serious physical
harm to them,’’ the U.S. Embassy report later concluded.π∂ Not mentioned in the
230 eric zolov
report, however, was the fact that the students had been somewhat discriminat-
ing in their assault on personal property. Thus El Heraldo Michoacano pointed
out that when confronted by several Mexican employees, ‘‘they persuaded the
students not to destroy individuals’ property and that which didn’t belong to the
Institute.’’π∑
The attack on the institute had taken less than fifteen minutes. By the time the
army arrived, the students had dispersed down the center streets of the city,
some in pursuit of the American who had tried to take back the U.S. flag, others
in the direction of a local park. A crowd of local residents, alarmed by the sight
of the institute in flames, quickly gathered to help extinguish the fires that
threatened to engulf the entire building. That evening a massive crowd of stu-
dents and professors departed from the Colegio, this time to converge on the
city’s central square. La Voz de Michoacán described the composition of this
crowd as augmented by ‘‘several hundred workers and city employees,’’ as well
as ‘‘campesinos and factory workers.’’π∏ ‘‘Amongst those present,’’ El Heraldo
Michoacano noted, ‘‘students, both males and females, roused the crowd with
cheers and well-known chants such as ‘Cuba sí, yanquis no.’ ’’ππ
Addressing the multitude, Martínez Ocaranza, the professor of literature
whose visceral words lashing out at the United States had helped set the tone for
the assault on the institute earlier in the day, once more summoned language
that aimed to annihilate the premise of Pan-American cooperation. In an in-
famous phrase immortalized in poetic verse, Ocaranza lashed out at the United
States as a raza maldita—a cursed race. Ocaranza had written a poem, ‘‘Raza
Maldita,’’ the day before, ‘‘motivated by the North American attempt to invade
Cuba, and dedicated to [the Cuban poet] Nicolás Guillén.’’π∫ Ocaranza would
later note that it was directly influenced by Rubén Darío’s famous ‘‘Oda a
Roosevelt,’’ itself written in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, when
U.S. hegemony over Latin America became increasingly manifest.πΩ As director
of the Soviet Union’s own ‘‘Cultural Institute’’ in Morelia, Ocaranza made little
e√ort to hide his embrace of Communism and his explicit ties with the Soviet
Union (where he would later travel to receive medical treatment). Yet as Tavira
recalls, in 1961 Ocaranza ‘‘didn’t have political influence anymore; he was simply
a respected professor. The students liked him, they respected him.’’∫≠
Unfortunately it has been impossible thus far to locate a surviving copy of the
poem itself, but its tenor and subject matter quickly became a source of contro-
versy. El Heraldo Michoacano singled out the poem in an article about the day’s
events by noting: ‘‘In grotesque fashion, Ramón Martínez Ocaranza read a
composition he called ‘poetry’ . . . and that alluded to the North American
people in especially denigrating terms, which brought him applause from a

certain number of those present.’’∫∞ Martín Tavira, who had spoken onstage with
Ocaranza that evening, further recalled the incident:
Ocaranza read a few verses, which turned out to become quite celebrated. That’s be-
cause he said, and who knows—he was quite shaken up, enraged [by the invasion]—
but in one verse he referred to the United States as ‘Children of dirty pigs’ [Hijos de
puerca en chiquero] and each verse ended with ‘Stu . . . pid!’ [Men . . . so!]. . . . There
was a lot of criticism because some people said that the whole idea of ‘razas malditas’
wasn’t exactly a progressive Marxist position. It was more racial: Why ‘raza’ and why
‘maldita’? There aren’t any ‘cursed races’; there was North American imperialism,
and that was something that didn’t have anything to do with the North American
people.∫≤
For his vitriol and Communist a≈liations, Ocaranza would later be singled out
as an instigator and Soviet coconspirator in the attack on the institute.
The evening’s demonstration finally ended around 8 p.m. with student leaders
urging the audience to sign up ‘‘to fight for Castro in Cuba.’’∫≥ It had been a long
day, exhilarating and victorious for some, destructive and menacing for others.
Kenney, for one, had furtively left town with his wife on a second-class bus en
route to Guadalajara.∫∂ Although no further violence occurred, ‘‘rumors of
threats against American nationals continued to circulate in the city.’’∫∑ Inter-
spersed with the celebratory news that the mercenary forces at Playa Girón had
been defeated, Cuban state radio broadcast news about the Bay of Pigs protests
in Mexico and the sacking of Morelia’s Cultural Institute, hailed in Cuba as
victories against yanqui imperialism. The broadcast, which was widely heard in
Mexico, validated for many the idea that Mexico’s own revolutionary spirit was
alive and well.∫∏
The Ensuing Investigation
A scathing U.S. Embassy investigation into the attack on the Cultural Institute
highlighted two alarming security issues. The first was that local police and
military protection of the institute had been utterly lacking, while local political
authorities appeared inexplicably sympathetic to the protesters themselves. The
second was the discovery that o≈cials from the Soviet Embassy had in fact been
present in Morelia the night before and had evidently met with local Commu-
nists involved in the attack the following day. Had there in fact been a broader
conspiracy at work, despite the appearance of the attack as a spontaneous pro-
232 eric zolov
test of U.S. actions in Cuba? For many in the United States, including at the
highest levels of authority, this appeared to be the case. Moreover, the apparent
tolerance of such ‘‘Communist activity’’ by provincial political figures tied to the
ruling pri raised troubling concerns about the commitment of Mexico as a Cold
War ally. From the perspective of the regime in Mexico City, on the other hand,
the question was less one of Soviet subversion than of confronting the dangers
posed by an unchecked movimiento cardenista. Ultimately, although their inter-
pretation of the causes of unrest di√ered, the two governments shared a funda-
mental goal: to strengthen the powers of Mexico’s central political authority and
security apparatus. Finding a Soviet conspiracy was thus a highly suitable solu-
tion for both sides.
The direct attack on U.S. citizens and property (the building was technically
registered under Kenney’s name) prompted an investigation by the Protection
and Welfare O≈ce of the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City. Led by the twenty-nine-
year-old vice consul Diego Asencio, the team arrived in Morelia a few days later,
where they encountered an atmosphere still rife with protest and anti-American
sentiment.∫π As Asencio recently recounted in an interview with the author:
When we arrived [in Morelia], since I was there to protect American citizens I figured
I better arrive sort of openly, and I went in and registered at one of the local hotels.
And I would say within about one-half hour or an hour [we] started receiving threat-
ening phone calls. In fact, one of the things that they were saying was that there was
going to be a demonstration the next day in the town square and they were going to
hang me there. This obviously concerned me a bit, and I called on the mayor and
told him about this, and he said that he thought that as soon as the United States
stopped its internationally provocative acts all this would go away—and suggested I
get the hell out of town. Then I went to see the governor and didn’t have much luck.
He also suggested it would be a good idea for me to leave. I told him since I was there
to look after American citizens that it would hardly be seemly for me to run out
of town.
The investigating team’s encounter of indi√erence if not tacit endorsement of

anti-American feelings at the highest levels was reinforced in their interview
with Kenney, who was adamant that local and federal authorities had failed to
protect the institute from the threat of violence or to halt the students once the
attack had commenced. ‘‘No help of any kind arrived,’’ Asencio’s report suc-
cinctly notes, based on Kenney’s description of events, a point reiterated many
times throughout the document.∫∫ According to Kenney, only after his per-
sonal secretary ‘‘called her brother who communicated with General Felix Ireta
[Viveros], Commanding General of the [21st] Military Zone,’’ did federal army
forces finally arrive to restore order.∫Ω
Kenney also conveyed to Asencio’s team that he had received several advance
warnings regarding a probable attack on the institute. This included a visit that
same morning by ‘‘two representatives of the Agente del Ministerio Público
Federal . . . [who] advised him that they had been told that the Institute would
be attacked at noon.’’ As Raymond Leddy, the interim chargé d’a√aires for the
U.S. Embassy who submitted Asencio’s report to the State Department, noted:
I pointed out [to Mexican Foreign Minister Tello] that police protection had been
utterly lacking, although the authorities most certainly knew of the plans, as is evi-
denced by the visit of two police agents to the Institute two hours before the attack
began—as well as by the notorious fact that no such demonstration could occur in
the small town of Morelia without the full knowledge of the authorities.Ω≠
The tardy and limited response by the military, moreover, runs counter to a
national pattern of increasing use of the army throughout the 1950s to suppress
civil protest and unrest.Ω∞ As La Voz de Michoacán later reported, ‘‘Notably, the
army acted with completely good sense, avoiding friction with the students and
withdrawing [from the area] immediately afterward.’’Ω≤ Equally surprising, de-
spite being publicly identified in the press for their alleged roles in the violence,
high-profile figures such as Nicandro Mendoza and Martínez Ocaranza were
never arrested. Nor does there appear to have been a general crackdown in the
immediate wake of the protests (unlike the repression that was carried out by
security forces elsewhere in the country).Ω≥
Several important factors help to explain these seeming contradictions. First
was the expressed tradition of revolutionary politics in Michoacán that imbued
public discourse and thus placed public o≈cials ‘‘naturally’’ on the side of Cuba
during the Bay of Pigs invasion. Despite its relative tranquillity during the armed
phase of the Mexican revolution (1910–20), by the 1930s Michoacán epitomized
the conflicts as well as utopian goals heralded by the radical wing of the revolu-
tion.Ω∂ That Lázaro Cárdenas was directly responsible for pushing these reforms
(first as governor, later as president) further entrenched the state’s open identi-
fication as the embodiment of revolutionary nationalism. Thus Nicandro Men-
doza not only received refuge in Morelia following his release from prison in
1958 but also discovered in Michoacán’s governor at the time, David Franco
Rodríguez—himself a close political ally of Cárdenas—a benefactor and protec-
tor. In the aftermath of the attack on the Cultural Institute, Franco Rodríguez
called on Mendoza to learn of his role in the melee. ‘‘I told him [that I had done]
234 eric zolov
nothing,’’ Mendoza recalled in an interview. ‘‘He answered that, in that case I

shouldn’t worry, that nothing will happen. . . . He knew me well, since he had
brought me to Morelia. He told me that he had given orders to see that the
[institute] would be repaired. ‘I’m not going to accuse anyone, and this is a
political matter,’ and that was it.’’Ω∑
A second related factor was the nearly sacrosanct position of the Colegio
within Michoacán and, especially, Morelian society. The school’s deep historical
links to various facets of Mexican national identity, and the fact that it was a
nearly universal gateway for social and political advancement within the state,
provided an added normative layer of immunity for students and professors that
went beyond the legal rights of university autonomy, common to public univer-
sities throughout Mexico. Governor Franco Rodríguez, for instance, was a grad-
uate of the Colegio and the university and thus had close ties to the academic
and student community. As Tavira suggested, ‘‘He wouldn’t have dared to arrest
anyone for [the attack on the institute].’’ To be a ‘‘Nicolaita’’ was an identity not
easily forsworn. Perhaps more to the point, the cultural importance of the
Colegio was so pervasive that the political costs of repressing student activism
would be unduly high for any o≈cial.
A third factor was directly related to the continued influence that Cárdenas
exerted on Michoacano political culture. As evidenced by the celebratory cover-
age in the local media of the Conference for National Sovereignty, Economic
Liberation, and Peace, hosted by Cárdenas, and the sensationalist coverage of
Cárdenas’s position on the Bay of Pigs crisis, the former president wielded
tremendous influence over state politics. Unleashing repression against the pro-
Cuban demonstrations in Morelia would have been tantamount to condemning
Cárdenas’s own defense of Cuba and would have signaled an important rupture
with the legacy of cardenismo in Michoacán. That response was still several
years away. Once the influence of Cárdenas was curtailed nationally after 1963
there was a brutal unleashing of state repression at the local level, culminating in
the army’s takeover of the Colegio and university in 1966 and the imprisonment
of numerous activists, including Ocaranza.Ω∏
If the political authorities resisted challenging the student protesters in 1961
for personal and practical reasons, this should not be taken as a sign of the
military’s ine√ectiveness, as Asencio himself soon discovered. The army’s re-
gional commander proved more than eager to demonstrate to Asencio that he
was both capable and willing to suppress the student-led disorders, if given the
proper orders. Confronted with the indi√erence and outward hostility of the
governor and other o≈cials, Asencio sought out the military commander (most
likely Ireta Viveros), whom Asencio described as ‘‘an old Indian, a general who
was from the Cárdenas period.’’Ωπ Asencio informed Viveros about the threaten-
ing phone call he received after arriving in Morelia—in which the caller said
Asencio would be hung by the protesters in the town plaza. In response, the
general invited Asencio to have lunch the next day on the plaza itself, reassur-
ing him that ‘‘the Mexican army will be respected.’’ Asencio recalled what hap-
pened next:
So we went to lunch, and [the protesters] had orators with a pa system damning
everything in sight, and after listening to this for a while [the general] said, ‘‘Have
you heard enough?’’ And I said, ‘‘I think so.’’ So he had a line of troops that cleared
the plaza, and we sat there having lunch by ourselves, which was kinda fun.Ω∫
The political clout exercised by the United States could not have been clearer:
although Asencio was but a young vice consul, the local military commander
was eager to impress him with a display of the military’s ultimate control over
politics.
Obviously the military had the capability to repress the protesters but had
chosen or, perhaps more accurately, had been instructed not to exercise that
capability. The clearest explanation for this is that Michoacán remained a car-
denista enclave at the highest political levels, making it less beholden than other
states to the central directives of the pri.ΩΩ Undermining Cárdenas’s political
influence both nationally and in Michoacán thus became a central goal of the
Minister of Gobernación, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, who shortly thereafter gained
the pri’s nomination for the 1964 elections (guaranteeing his presidential vic-
tory). Unlike López Mateos, Díaz Ordaz did not identify himself with the Cár-
denas wing of the ruling party. With less to lose politically, Díaz Ordaz pursued
the more ardent supporters of Cárdenas while establishing dominance over
Michoacán politics—both of which he did with a vengeance.
Finding a Soviet Smoking Gun
Establishing a link between the Soviet Union and ‘‘Communist-inspired agita-

tors’’ was a well-established practice used by the Mexican government when it
needed to justify political repression of dissidents. As recently as 1959, several
o≈cials from the Soviet Embassy had been expelled following accusations of
Soviet logistical support for striking Mexican railway workers. Thus finding a
Soviet smoking gun in the case of Morelia was a discovery too good to be true—
yet how true was it?
236 eric zolov
The question of whether or not the assault on the institute was in fact pre-
meditated—and to what extent, if any, the Soviet Embassy was directly involved,
as both U.S. and Mexican o≈cials would later assert—remains one of the fas-
cinating, and still unresolved, aspects of the story. What we know of the story is
this: On the same evening that the U.S. Embassy team arrived at a local hotel,
Asencio received an anonymous phone call instructing him to review the guest
registry from another hotel several days earlier. ‘‘And there I discovered the three
o≈cers of the Soviet Embassy,’’ Asencio later explained. ‘‘We tore the page out of
the registry.’’∞≠≠ Shortly thereafter, the names of the Soviet o≈cers and their
alleged connections to local activists were disseminated nationally by Excélsior,
whose anti-Communist credentials were by then well established. According to
Excélsior, First Secretaries of the Soviet Embassy Yuri Aleksandrov and Yev-
geni Bochkov, and a ‘‘non-diplomatic member of the Soviet Embassy,’’ Valentin
Bakulin, checked into the Posada Vista Bella on April 17, the night before the
attack on the institute.∞≠∞ Although no further substantiation was provided for
the claim, the article stated that the three o≈cials were absent from their hotel
rooms between 8:30 p.m. and 1:30 a.m., during which time ‘‘the three function-
aries met with the brother of a bureaucrat from the state government, and
established contact with communist-leaning student leaders, the same ones who
sacked and burned [the institute].’’∞≠≤ Nicandro Mendoza was singled out in the
article as ‘‘one of the student leaders interviewed by the Russian function-
aries.’’∞≠≥ This charge was echoed by El Heraldo Michoacano, which, in dis-
seminating the story first published by Excélsior, now identified Mendoza as
having ‘‘headed the attack against the [institute].’’∞≠∂
The evidence establishing a Soviet presence allowed Mexican and U.S. o≈cials
to claim the attack was premeditated and thus to frame the incident as part of a
larger Cold War conspiracy. This was a position that served both U.S. and
Mexican security aims, but how verifiable was the link itself ? No corroborating
evidence beyond the initial claims was ever presented; the ‘‘smoking gun’’ was
simply the fortuitous presence of the o≈cials themselves. In fact, none of the
reports found in the papers of the Dirección General de Investigaciones Políticas
y Sociales (dgips) sent from Morelia mentioned anything about the Soviet
connection. A report filed on the morning of April 18, for example, discusses the
rampage and other events of the previous day yet fails to note any of the alleged
‘‘interviews’’ between Mendoza and the Soviet o≈cials, as asserted in the Excél-
sior article.∞≠∑ Asked later about these events, Mendoza emphatically denied the
accusations: ‘‘According to the newspaper, I had arrived in the Santa María
neighborhood, which tourists frequent, in a car accompanied by one of the
diplomats. That’s not true; all of that is false.’’∞≠∏
One also needs to question the logic underlying the claim itself that the
Soviets would receive any possible gain by targeting the Cultural Institute. It is
conceivable, even likely, that the three Soviet Embassy o≈cials discussed with
local Communist activists the significance of the Cuban situation. However,
hatching the idea, much less providing logistical or moral support, for attacking
the Cultural Institute seems unlikely.∞≠π Mendoza’s later testimony furthermore
suggested another possibility altogether: that the presence of the diplomats was
purely circumstantial. As Mendoza relates:
Three or four years later there was a banquet held in Morelia, and by sheer coinci-
dence the [same] diplomats were there. They told me that in fact they had been in
Morelia back then, but on vacation and not something organized. Because they asked
me if I was the one who had gotten mixed up in all of that and I told them that yes,
but that I had nothing to do with it [the attack]. . . . I never knew [those o≈cials] be-
fore, I only met them afterwards.∞≠∫
As Asencio himself recently argued, ‘‘I’m not about to suggest that they [the
Soviet o≈cials] were there to promote an anti-American riot or anything, but
there was no question that they were there in immediate juxtaposition to the
riot.’’ He added, somewhat flippantly, that ‘‘from the standpoint of our policy
[it] was kind of a fun juxtaposition.’’∞≠Ω
Notably, before the release of the information about the Soviet presence, the
local press in Morelia had interpreted these events as a manifestation of sponta-
neous outrage, not a Communist conspiracy. Instead, the students were chas-
tised for the wantonness of their destruction. An article printed the following
day in El Heraldo Michoacano, for example, blamed ‘‘emotional students pro-
pelled by that unstoppable sentiment of youth’’ while simultaneously underscor-
ing that the institute was ‘‘also Mexican and in fact, the name of the Institute
begins precisely with the word mexican’’ (figure 2).∞∞≠
As for the alleged role of Mendoza, given his history and close a≈liation with
left-wing politics, he was a natural scapegoat. As Virgilio Pineda, who knew
Mendoza well, put it: ‘‘Of course, whenever something happened [Mendoza]
was the first one to be singled out—because of his background. But I don’t think
he had anything to do with the attack on the institute itself. He was just an easy
target for the press and the authorities.’’∞∞∞ Asked about the unresolved question
of premeditation, Martín Tavira (who was present at the General Assembly the
morning of the attack) stated emphatically that it ‘‘wasn’t planned, it was spon-
taneous on the part of the students.’’ According to his recollection of what
transpired, ‘‘The Institute was a target because we considered it a symbol of a
North American presence here in Morelia. . . . Look, I believe that it was the
238 eric zolov
2. ‘‘Because there is no local [consulate] of the United States in Morelia, the criminal
assault was directed at a Cultural Institute by youth who study.’’ ‘‘Cartón de Danny,’’
El Heraldo Michoacano, April 19, 1961, 1.
masses infuriated about the invasion.’’ Tavira continued, ‘‘There was a psychol-
ogy of the infuriated masses who said with a single voice, ‘let’s go,’ and everyone
went and destroyed that thing.’’∞∞≤ Asencio’s later assessment overlaps, without
concurring entirely. The attack was ‘‘spontaneous in the sense that it was a
reaction to the Bay of Pigs,’’ he said, ‘‘but premeditated in the sense that a bunch
of guys decided to go and do it. Whether the Russians were part of that group,
well who knows.’’
Realigning the U.S.–Mexican Strategic Relationship
Ever since the Cuban revolution, fears were stoked by conservative elements of
the U.S. press alleging Mexico’s ‘‘vulnerability’’ to a Communist takeover. Now
the recent protests (and evident antipathy by certain o≈cials in the face of U.S.
concerns) seemed to confirm these fears. A letter by one resident sent to Vice
President Johnson on behalf of ‘‘Americans living in Mexico City’’ expressed a
sense of frustration and outrage that the United States had failed to respond
more forcefully in light of events in Morelia. Accompanied by a news clipping
from a California newspaper describing the attack on the Cultural Institute, the
letter demanded to know why ‘‘there was no formal protest made by our govern-
ment’’ following the destruction of the institute. ‘‘The situation is alarming!’’ the
letter concludes. ‘‘When are we going to take a stand?’’∞∞≥ This sentiment was
echoed in numerous other letters from constituents to their representatives in
the United States. ‘‘Is anything being done regarding Communism in Mexico?’’
one letter writer from California asked not long after the protests. ‘‘Will we next
have to fortify our southern border because of Communism?’’∞∞∂ Meanwhile in
Michoacán a local ‘‘Americans in Morelia Committee’’ was quickly formed.
Acting with logistical support from Kenney, U.S. residents ‘‘distributed hand
bills and arranged for announcements to be made asserting that the damage to
the Binational Center was the result of Communist agitation.’’∞∞∑
Within the U.S. State Department, a similar sense of alarm had also devel-
oped. Briefing military o≈cers at the U.S. National War College only three days
after the Bay of Pigs protests rocked Mexico, Melville Osborne, the State De-
partment’s newly assigned o≈cer in charge of Mexican a√airs, suggested the
current situation in Mexico ‘‘can be interpreted as a powder keg.’’∞∞∏ Osborne
noted that the political reemergence of Cárdenas threatened to exploit urban
and rural discontent in Mexico precisely at a moment when the Cuban revolu-
tion was inspiring by its example a repudiation of traditional hemispheric se-
curity alliances:
I pointed out [at the War College] the apparent shift in relative strength between the
traditionally strong Mexican President and the leftist elements that prey on agrarian
discontent and on disillusioned city elements as shown by the boldness of Cárdenas
in standing up to López Mateos in a power struggle. I ended with the comment
that we could not a√ord to be complacent with regard to Mexico for shifts in power
relationships could come within the next five to ten years that could be decisive to
our security.∞∞π
Caught o√-guard by the outburst of anti-American sentiment in a country

that o≈cially professed its close friendship for the United States, Osborne ur-
gently demanded a comprehensive analysis of the situation. ‘‘What was and still
is wanted,’’ he instructed Eugene McAuli√e (first secretary of the American
Embassy in Mexico City), ‘‘is not a summary of recent and/or historical events
240 eric zolov
but an essay on what makes Mexico tick.’’∞∞∫ The incoming Democratic admin-
istration in Washington sidelined Osborne’s request, but a new management
style and strategic approach to U.S.–Mexican relations were about to get under
way nevertheless.
On May 2, Thomas Mann, a career diplomat who would shortly become one
of the architects of Latin American policy during the Kennedy-Johnson period,
arrived in Mexico City to begin his transition as the new U.S. ambassador to
Mexico.∞∞Ω That same day, the investigative report assembled by Asencio was sent
to the State Department. That night Raymond Leddy, counselor for the Em-
bassy, visited Mexico’s interior minister, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz, explicitly to dis-
cuss what had occurred in Morelia. Leddy explained that he had previously met
with Foreign Minister Manuel Tello several days before, who had promised
Leddy that an investigation was being conducted into the attack. He now pre-
sented Díaz Ordaz with a copy (according to Leddy’s report, translated into
Spanish) of the embassy’s own investigation. What Díaz Ordaz read was a
scathing critique of how local political authorities had permitted the demon-
strations and attack on the institute to take place, while security forces failed to
act. Such permissiveness had allowed ‘‘Communist elements, under the leader-
ship of identified Communists in Morelia, [to engage] in the wanton and un-
provoked destruction of a cultural entity enjoying the open support of both
Governments.’’∞≤≠
Díaz Ordaz concurred that the attack was reprehensible, but he cleverly re-
directed the focus of the critique away from political negligence (with its implicit
questioning of loyalties and authority) toward the broader concern of pro-
fessionalization of the nation’s security forces. ‘‘The elements composing the
police,’’ Leddy reported that Díaz Ordaz conveyed to him, ‘‘are inadequately
trained, poorly equipped and improperly directed.’’∞≤∞ Coincidentally, Díaz Or-
daz informed Leddy, he had been ‘‘going over the same day catalogues of tear
gas equipment,’’ and he ‘‘hoped to acquire some such articles of police defense
from United States’ companies which manufacture them.’’∞≤≤ In contrast to For-
eign Minister Tello, whom Mann described as having an ‘‘ ‘Alice in Wonder-
land’ approach to the dangers which the Sino-Soviet Bloc presents to the whole
inter-American system,’’∞≤≥ Díaz Ordaz clearly spoke the same language of anti-
Communism as the United States. He openly denounced ‘‘Communist agitators
as ‘the common enemy’ ’’ of both governments, after which Leddy reassured
him that the United States was ‘‘well aware of the problems he faces and [is]
entirely sympathetic.’’∞≤∂
The Bay of Pigs protests marked an important turning point in the consolida-
tion of a U.S.–Mexican security relationship that would predominate into the

1960s. What is central to understand here is that while the United States initially
showed deep concern and even mistrust toward Mexico for that country’s out-
ward support for the Cuban revolution, ultimately Mexico and the United States
shared a common fear of social unrest and the desire for political stability.∞≤∑ For
the United States, this unrest manifested itself as Soviet-inspired Communism
and thus required closer collaboration between the two nations’ security forces,
and a demonstrated willingness to enforce order at the expense of domestic
political considerations. For Mexico, on the other hand, the unrest was less
Soviet inspired than homegrown and emanated principally from the forces
mobilized by Lázaro Cárdenas’s critique of the course of the Mexican revolution.
In August 1961 these forces came together in the Movimiento de Liberación
Nacional (mln), whose nationalist platform promoting economic sovereignty,
independent trade unionism, and other reforms posed, for a brief period, a
genuine opposition movement to the ruling party. During 1961–63, as the pri
launched its bid for the 1968 Olympics and sought to ensure a smooth political
transition during the 1964 elections, mln supporters across the country were
hounded and imprisoned; by 1964, the reformist movement Cárdenas had in-
spired had collapsed in the face of repression, internal divisions, and ultimately
Cárdenas’s own decision to adhere to the dictates of the pri.∞≤∏
Conclusions
In the weeks that followed the assault on the Cultural Institute, letters of protest
and at least two di√erent petitions signed by people who had studied at the
institute or had taken advantage of its resources were sent to the media and local,
state, and federal o≈cials.∞≤π One plea, written by a resident whose ‘‘highest
grade of studies is primary school,’’ encapsulated the wider appeal that President
López Mateos ‘‘intervene in the prompt resolution of this problem . . . so that we
can again enjoy the benefits that the Institute [has] given us.’’∞≤∫ The hegemonic
discourse of Pan-American friendship had not been irrevocably shattered, as
Ocaranza and others had perhaps believed; the majority of residents in Morelia
wanted their institute back. Anxious not to accept the appearance of a symbolic
defeat, usis was more than eager to comply. In early 1962 the center was re-
opened once more under the direction of Eugene Kenney. Prompted by the
concern that its present structure was not ‘‘a su≈cient counter to organized
Communist bloc activities in the key state of Michoacan,’’ the embassy rec-
ommended increasing available resources and, significantly, providing for the
242 eric zolov
United States to ‘‘fly [its] flag over [the] building,’’ as a later memo succinctly
stated.∞≤Ω
The student mobilization set in motion by the Bay of Pigs protests fed into a
broader politicization of Morelian society in the months that followed the attack
on the Cultural Institute. A conservative backlash inevitably followed, which
coincided with the centralization of political authority under President Díaz
Ordaz. Together, these twin processes plunged Morelia into a period of extreme
political repression for which many paid a direct and heavy price. Alberto Cira,
who was a student at the Colegio at the time but had stood clear of the protests,
sought to encapsulate the tragic implications of the period for a provincial
society torn apart by its own ideological divisions:
People didn’t even know what was happening. Everyone was shaken up, scared. This
city has always been very conservative and Catholic, and Communism was seen as
something coming from the Devil. Some people supported the students, but most
were against them. Either way, [the radical protest] wasn’t helpful. People reacted out
of ignorance or fear, but it didn’t help the movement any.∞≥≠
As the university system swung sharply to the left under the rectorship of Eli
de Gortari, the centralizing forces in Mexico City became determined to bring
Michoacán to heel. Franco Rodríguez, the state’s pro-Cárdenas governor, was
soon replaced by the anti-cardenista Agustín Arriaga Rivera, who su√ered no
qualms in repressing radical elements throughout the state. ‘‘A militant fascist
and admirer of yanqui imperialism,’’ one author writes in recalling the period,
Arriaga Rivera ‘‘nurtured his spirit in the most ruinous class of McCarthy-
ism.’’∞≥∞ Cárdenas himself quietly succumbed to the authority of the pri political
machine by late 1963; his endorsement of Gustavo Díaz Ordaz for president and
subsequent silence toward the ensuing repression by the regime marked Cár-
denas, too, as a figure of the system.∞≥≤
Meanwhile, the institute continued to be a reference point for anti-American
protest. Barely a month after reopening, it was ‘‘painted with tar and lettered as
follows: ‘Neither Yankees nor salt. Yankees, we do not want salt and water in the
Mexicali Valley. Long live Cuba.’ ’’∞≥≥ Not long after, on the eve of President
Kennedy’s visit to Mexico in June 1962, an unidentified group of youths ‘‘pos-
sibly of communist a≈liation’’ again attempted to set the institute on fire. This
time, however, ‘‘the damage was contained by the ready presence of firefighters.’’
Still, the attackers succeeded in leaving their mark: ‘‘Go Home Kennedy’’ had
been painted on the outside walls of the building.∞≥∂
Despite these attacks, the Cultural Institute persevered. The tone conveyed by
a 1971 usis inspector general’s report is clearly one of triumph rather than
setback: ‘‘Having survived two physical destructions by students of the Univer-
sity in Morelia, the bnc . . . is the U.S. ‘presence’ in the heart of the poten-
tially most explosive political region of Mexico.’’ The report concluded, perhaps
overly optimistically, ‘‘Today almost any explosion on the part of students will
come out of and not be blown into the Center.’’∞≥∑ In fact, the institute was
subject to yet another assault in 1980, when fifty-two students succeeded in
physically holding the building over a two-day period. Though eventually ‘‘de-
parting peacefully,’’ the students once more left the center ‘‘in disarray,’’ although
with ‘‘no damage apparent.’’∞≥∏ The fact that the building’s contents were not
destroyed arguably signified a fundamental shift in the ideological valence of the
institute’s cultural role in Morelia. Alberto Cira, the institute’s current Mexican
executive director, recalls that the students ‘‘were ousted, not rudely or brutally
but rather asked to leave. They didn’t do anything more, just stayed [in the
building] and then left. And after that some of them even came here to study.
The Institute won them over.’’∞≥π
Morelians seem eager to forget the unbridled ideological passions of 1961.
Except for a cryptic reference to his poem ‘‘Raza Maldita,’’ Ocaranza, for exam-
ple, skips over in his autobiography the Bay of Pigs events of 1961, and the poem
itself was never republished in any of his numerous anthologies. While several
participants were willing to recall for me their memories of what had happened,
others were less amenable or refused to be interviewed. Perhaps they did so out
of embarrassment; recounting an attack on a local symbol of Pan-American
friendship that, after all, has endured, and for an American interviewer no less,
may have struck people as inappropriate. But there may also be a more funda-
mental reason: to recall the assault no doubt reminds Morelians of the painful
ideological divide that lies not far beneath the surface of an otherwise tranquil
community identity. For those who faced physical repression during this period,
moreover, there may also exist a lingering fear of possible reprisals. Despite the
nearly half century that has gone by, the scabs from this particular set of wounds
are still evidently tender.
Today the Cultural Institute is an important and integral element of Morelia’s
cultural and academic life. On any given day, the center is filled with activity, and
the library, more than twice its original size, plays an important role in the
educational character of the community. The Colegio de San Nicolás de Hidalgo
is still around the corner; many students continue to take English classes at the
institute. In fact, it is still called the Instituto Cultural México–Norteamericano
de Morelia. There is no U.S. flag flying above or inside the building. Aside from
244 eric zolov
the large collection of English-language materials, all that remains of a U.S.

presence is a small plaque featuring the institute’s o≈cial emblem, mounted at
the building’s entrance: the flags of the two countries, harmoniously crossed as a
symbol of enduring Pan-American solidarity and friendship.
Notes
Funding for research was generously provided by grants from the National Endowment
for the Humanities, Fulbright–García Robles, and the O≈ce of the Provost of Franklin
and Marshall College. I wish to extend my appreciation to the people of Morelia, Micho-
acán, who supported me in my investigations, in particular to Víctor Vargas of the
Universidad Latina de América and Lic. Mónica Vázquez García. Special thanks also go
to Michael Manning of the Public Diplomacy Historical Collection in Washington.
Earlier drafts of this paper have benefited from the generous comments of Ariel Rodrí-
guez Kuri, Christopher Boyer, Barbara Keys, Van Gosse, David Rains, and the editors of
the collection.
1. ‘‘Panorama Nacional,’’ Política, May 1, 1961, 5–22. In Guadalajara the U.S. Consulate
and Binational Center were similarly attacked, but without significant damage. In con-
trast to what unfolded in Morelia, students originating from the University of Guadala-
jara were repelled not only by local police but by right-wing shock squads organized by
students of the Autonomous University of Jalisco. ‘‘Disturbio en Guadalajara,’’ Excélsior,
April 19, 1961, a5. For the sake of fluidity, I will be using the terms ‘‘America’’ and ‘‘United
States’’ interchangeably, though where possible the latter is preferred. Unless otherwise
noted, all translations from Spanish are my own.
2. Lázaro Cárdenas, ‘‘Discurso con motivo del VI aniversario de la iniciación del
Movimiento Revolucionario 26 de Julio,’’ July 26, 1959, in México y Cuba: Dos pueblos
unidos en la historia, vol. 2, ed. Boris Rosen Jélomer (Mexico: Centro de Investigación
Científica Jorge L. Tamayo, 1982), 497.
3. Ibid., 498.
4. Ibid.
5. Philip Bonsal (Havana, Cuba) to Department of State, August 4, 1959, rg59, 812.41/
8-459, National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (hereafter
cited as nara).
6. Ibid.
7. Jaime García Terrés, ‘‘Un poco de aire fresco,’’ el espectador 1, no. 4 (August 1959): 32.
8. ‘‘Panorama Nacional,’’ 7. Cárdenas’s original text read: ‘‘Os conminamos para que
adoptéis la más enérgica actitud contra la cobarde agresión de que es víctima la hermana
República de Cuba en estos momentos, por parte de los imperialistas.’’
9. Ibid.
10. Although it has been di≈cult to learn more precisely about the history of the
brigades, this term was used frequently in the Mexico City press, and Lombardo Tole-
dano was publicly associated with their defense. In the end, the brigades were largely
ephemeral, as the Mexican Constitution prohibits citizens from joining a foreign army.
In 1960 the Partido Popular (pp) underwent a name change to become the Partido
Popular Socialista (pps). Founded in 1948 under the leadership of Toledano, during the
late 1950s the pp became an important vehicle for political mobilization among broad
sectors of Mexican society who felt that the pri was straying from its foundational
goals of nationalist state capitalism. Despite Toledano’s essentially collaborative political
relationship with the pri, grassroots members of the pp (pps) often embraced the
party’s radical discourse in ways that ran counter to the more conservative maneuverings
of the party’s national leadership. See Barry Carr, ‘‘The Fate of the Vanguard under a
Revolutionary State: Marxism’s Contribution to the Construction of the Great Arch,’’ in
Everyday Forms of State Formation: Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern
Mexico, ed. Gilbert Joseph and Daniel Nugent (Durham: Duke University Press, 1994),
326–52.
11. ‘‘Cárdenas a Cuba,’’ La Voz de Michoacán, April 18, 1961, 1. See also ‘‘Declaraciones a
la prensa sobre la agresión a Cuba, Mexico, D.F., 18 de abril de 1961,’’ in Rosen Jélomer,
Mexico y Cuba, 500–501. Seeking to put an immediate halt to this dynamic, López Mateos
ordered the army to prevent Cárdenas from boarding a plane to Cuba. Enrique Krauze,
Biography of Power: A History of Modern Mexico, 1810–1996, trans. Hank Heifetz (New
York: HarperCollins, 1997), 649.
12. Crowd estimates vary, with a high of between 70,000 and 80,000 (cited by Política)
and a low of between 15,000 and 20,000 (cited by Excélsior). The pro-government news-
paper Novedades placed the crowd at 30,000, while upi estimated 25,000. For descrip-
tions of the protests, see ‘‘Panorama Nacional,’’ Política, May 1, 1961, 5–22; ‘‘Cárdenas
Defendió a Fidel Castro Anoche, en un Mitin en el Zócalo,’’ Excélsior, April 19, 1961, a1.
13. ‘‘Panorama Nacional,’’ 11. For the full speech, see Jélomer, Mexico y Cuba, 501–5.
14. Morelia’s bnc appears to have been a ‘‘Class A’’ center, meaning that it received the
highest level of funding and attention. usis was also known as the United States Informa-
tion Agency (usia). In October 1999, following the end of the Cold War, the usia was
dissolved as a distinct bureaucratic entity and its duties folded into the State Department.
15. United States Information Agency, Country Public A√airs O≈cer Handbook (Wash-
ington: United States Information Agency, 1962), 115–17.
16. United States Information Agency, Country Public A√airs O≈cer Handbook (Wash-
ington: United States Information Agency, 1967), 114.
17. ‘‘Si no hay garantias no abrirá el destruido instituto,’’ El Heraldo Michoacano, April
29, 1961, 2.
18. ‘‘Petition to Adolfo López Mateos,’’ May 12, 1961, Gallery 3, Adolfo López Mateos
Papers, 559.1/2, Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City, Mexico (hereafter cited as
agn). The same petition (translated into English) can be found in ‘‘Petitions to Reopen
246 eric zolov
Morelia Binational Center,’’ May 19, 1961, rg59, Box 1052, 511.11G3/8-1160, nara. This
latter reference will be used for future citations.
19. American Embassy [Mexico City] to Department of State, ‘‘Morelia Binational
Center,’’ February 15, 1962, rg59, Box 1052, 511.121/7-761, nara.
20. Alfonso Espitia, personal interview, May 9, 2002, Morelia, Michoacán. At the time
of the attack, over five hundred students were registered for language classes, including
fifteen from the United States who were studying Spanish (‘‘Petitions to Reopen Morelia
Binational Center’’).
21. ‘‘Diplomáticos rusos hablaron con los que destruyeron el Instituto en Michoacán,’’
Excélsior, April 26, 1961, a41.
22. ‘‘Petitions to Reopen Morelia Binational Center.’’
23. Ibid.
24. Espitia interview, May 9, 2002, Morelia, Michoacán. See also James Krippner,
‘‘Invoking ‘Tato Vasco’: Vasco de Quiroga, Eighteenth–Twentieth Centuries,’’ The Ameri-
cas 56, no. 3 (January 2000): 1–28.
25. Ana María Kapelusz-Poppi, ‘‘Physician Activists and the Development of Rural
Health in Postrevolutionary Mexico,’’ Radical History Review 80 (2001): 38.
26. Ana María Kapelusz-Poppi, ‘‘Rural Health and State Construction in Post-
revolutionary Mexico: The Nicolaita Project for Rural Medical Services,’’ The Americas
58, no. 2 (October 2001): 261–83.
27. While it is unclear whether this same juramiento was practiced in 1961, it is safe to
presume that a similar discourse of the school’s ‘‘historic responsibility’’ permeated the
student body.
28. Virgilio Pineda Arellano, personal interview, May 8, 2002, Morelia, Michoacán.
29. Ibid.
30. Martín Tavira, personal interview, May 9, 2002, Morelia, Michoacán. In 1958, when
he was twenty-five years old and finishing a law degree at the University of Michoacán
(teaching classes at the Colegio to help pay his way), Tavira ran unsuccessfully as a
candidate for diputado from Morelia on the Partido Popular ticket. Later, as secretary
general of the powerful Federación de Maestros, Tavira noted that he and the other
ranking leadership of the teachers’ organization were all members of the pps, ‘‘not out of
any sense of clientelism [corporatismo], but because we shared the same [ideological]
leaning throughout the university.’’
31. Pineda Arellano interview, May 8, 2002, Morelia, Michoacán. Pineda took over the
presidency of the Federación Estudiantil de la Universidad Michoacana (feum) in 1960
from Salvador Tamayo. That same year he participated as the ‘‘o≈cial representative’’ of
the student body at the First International Organization of Youth, held in Havana.
32. Tavira interview, May 9, 2002.
33. Espitia interview, May 9, 2002.
34. The World Peace Movement was founded in Paris in 1949. In 1952 a Mexican
branch of the organization was established under the name Comité Impulsor por la Paz,
which was later changed to Comité Mexicano por la Paz. For the phrase ‘‘Bandung
Latinoamericano,’’ see Horacio Quiñones, ‘‘Trascendencia de la conferencia latino-
americana,’’ La Voz de Michoacán, March 5, 1961, 4.
35. ‘‘Todo Listo para la Conferencia Pro Paz,’’ La Voz de Michoacán, March 5, 1961, a1.
36. Quiñones, ‘‘Trascendencia de la conferencia latinoamericana,’’ 4.
37. Ibid.
38. Francisco López Castañeda, ‘‘¡Paz con libertad!’’ La Voz de Michoacán, March 7,
1961, a1.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. ‘‘Conclusiones de la Conferencia Latinoamericana Pro Paz en el D.F.,’’ La Voz de
Michoacán, March 10, 1961, a1. For a perspective from the United States, see ‘‘U.S. Is
Denounced by Latin Leftists,’’ New York Times, March 6, 1961, a2; and ‘‘Cárdenas Stirs
Political Storm,’’ New York Times, April 26, 1961, a32.
42. Carlos Maciel, El movimiento de la liberación nacional: Vicisitudes y aspiraciones
(Sinaloa: University of Sinaloa, 1990), 73.
43. ‘‘Encendido mensaje de Cárdenas al pueblo Michoacano,’’ La Voz de Michoacán,
March 19, 1961, a1.
44. El Heraldo Michoacano, March 18, 1961, a14.
45. ‘‘México requiere de una radical transformación de sus sistemas,’’ La Voz de Mi-
choacán, March 21, 1961, a1.
46. Ibid.
47. Pineda Arellano interview, May 8, 2002.
48. Ibid.
50. ‘‘Maestros, estudiantes, oberos y campesinos michoacános protestan por el ataque
a Cuba,’’ La Voz de Michoacán, April 18, 1961, 1.
51. The exact role of this organization was never explicitly defined; presumably it
would help coordinate solidarity e√orts and serve as a conduit for information.
52. ‘‘Información Telefónica de Michoacán,’’ April 18, 1961. Departamento de Inves-
tigaciones Políticas y Sociales (dips), Gallery 2, Box 1980, Folder 16 (‘‘Michoacán, Estado
de’’), agn.
53. Ibid.
54. American Embassy (Mexico City) to Department of State, ‘‘Destruction of
Mexican-U.S. Institute for Cultural Relations,’’ May 2, 1961, rg59, Box 1052,
511.11G3/8-1160, nara.
55. Ibid.
56. ‘‘Cárdenas a Cuba.’’
57. ‘‘Los maestros universitarios condenan la intervención de EEUU en Cuba,’’ El
Heraldo Michoacano, April 18, 1961, 1.
58. ‘‘Incendiaron el edificio del Instituto Mexicano–Estadounidense de Morelia,’’ La
248 eric zolov
Voz de Michoacán, April 19, 1961, 1. One article cited the numbers as ‘‘hundreds,’’ though
another states ‘‘several thousand.’’
59. ‘‘Mitin en San Nicolás donde se preparó la violenta incursión,’’ El Heraldo Michoa-
cano, April 19, 1961, 1.
60. Ibid.
61. Nicando Mendoza Patiño, personal interview, July 14, 2003, Mexico City. Mendoza
graduated from the University of Michoacán in 1965 with a degree in medical surgery.
Specializing in pharmacology, he subsequently continued his studies at unam, the Uni-
versity of Chile, the University College of London, and the University of London. He was
recently appointed chair of the Department of Pharmacology at unam, where he has
taught since 1966. See also his biographical entry in Humberto Musacchio, Diccionario
Enciclopédico de México, vol. 2 (Mexico: Andrés León, 1995), 1213.
62. Ibid.
63. ‘‘Incendiaron el edificio del Instituto Mexicano–Estadounidense de Morelia.’’
64. Mendoza Patiño interview, July 14, 2003.
65. ‘‘Incendiaron el Instituto de Estados Unidos,’’ El Heraldo Michoacano, April 19,
1961, 1.
66. Ibid.
67. ‘‘Destruction of Mexican-U.S. Institute for Cultural Relations.’’
68. ‘‘Incendiaron el Instituto de Estados Unidos.’’
70. According to the embassy investigation, the American was struck simply for ‘‘at-
tempt[ing] to rescue [the flag].’’ ‘‘Destruction of Mexican-U.S. Institute for Cultural
Relations.’’ La Voz de Michoacán portrayed the incident in a slightly di√erent light,
describing the American as the aggressor for having punched the student burning the
flag, ‘‘wounding him in the face, at which point various students set upon the North
American with considerable fury.’’ ‘‘Incendiaron el Edificio del Instituto Mexicano–
Estadounidense de Morelia.’’
72. Information about Kenney is extremely scant. He appears to have been a
government-contracted employee, though there is no clear biographical record of his
participation in the government. Martín Tavira recalls that there was much talk ‘‘about
the famous Eugene Kenney, who was said to be a spy’’ (Tavira interview, May 8, 2002).
According to Diego Asencio, in charge of the U.S. Embassy’s investigation of the sacking
of the institute, Kenney was well known to Luís Echeverría (second in command after
Díaz Ordaz at the Ministry of Gobernación), who ‘‘was not a fan of Kenney’’ (Diego
Asencio, telephone interview, January 10, 2003.) Kenney died in July 1982 with his last
known residence listed as the Mexican Consulate, Mexico City.

78. María Teresa Perdomo, Ramón Martínez Ocaranza: El poeta y su mundo (Morelia,
Michoacán: Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, 1988), 66. Born in 1915,
Ocaranza came from the same town in Michoacán as Lazaro Cárdenas, Jiquilpan. He
joined the Communist Party in 1934 and taught at the Colegio, from which he had
graduated, since 1951. An exhaustive search to locate this poem has unfortunately proven
fruitless.
79. Ocaranza, Autobiografía (Morelia, Michoacán: Universidad Michoacana de San
Nicolás de Hidalgo, 1981), 19.
84. ‘‘Destruction of Mexican-U.S. Institute for Cultural Relations’’; ‘‘Diplomáticos
Rusos Hablaron.’’
86. Martín Tavira recalls that ‘‘Radio Havana disseminated only a few hours later’’
news of the attack. See also ‘‘Varios rusos provocaron el asalto e incendio en Morelia,’’
Excélsior, April 23, 1961, 2D.
87. Asencio was in Mexico from 1959 to 1962. Following the investigation, he became head
of the Protection and Welfare O≈ce; he later became ambassador to Brazil (1983–86).
89. Ibid. Press reports largely confirmed this account. La Voz de Michoacán, for
instance, reported that General Ireta Viveros arrived at the scene at 12:30 (approxi-
mately twenty minutes after the start of the tumult) ‘‘accompanied by two o≈cials.’’ Ireta
Viveros subsequently called on ‘‘a section’’ of the 51st Battalion, ‘‘which arrived moments
later.’’ ‘‘Incendiaron el Edificio del Instituto Mexicano–Estadounidense de Morelia.’’
90. Ibid.
91. Sergio Aguayo, Mexico 1968: Los archivos de la violencia (Mexico: Grijalbo/
Reforma, 1998); Sergio Aguayo, La Charola: Una historia de los servicios de inteligencia en
México (Mexico: Grijalbo, 2002).
93. Ocaranza, for example, left that summer for the Soviet Union; Mendoza was
allowed to run in the pending elections as a diputado on the pps ticket. (He lost to the pri
in an o≈cial vote tally of 24,437 to 585.) A thorough review of arrest reports from the
municipal archives in Morelia failed to find any of the names associated with the protests,
and interviews also corroborated the lack of any arrests in the immediate aftermath of
the attack.
94. See for example, Marjorie Becker, Setting the Virgin on Fire (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1995).
250 eric zolov

96. Pablo G. Macias Guillén, Luces y sombras: Testimonios nicolaitas (Morelia, Mi-
choacán: Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, 1981), 105–216; Martínez
Ocaranza, Autobiografía, 107–15.
97. Asencio interview, January 10, 2003.
98. Ibid.
99. During this same period, Jalisco and Puebla also faced a radicalization of politics
around the question of support for Cuba, yet in both cases the police and military were
unleashed on leftist student protesters. Asencio noted as much in recalling that ‘‘the
governor in Puebla was much more supportive than the governor in Michoacan. He was
very helpful in showing us around, pointing out that he was fully in control and that
nothing was going to happen, and so forth’’ (Asencio interview, January 10, 2003).
100. Ibid.
101. ‘‘Varios rusos provocaron el asalto e incendio en Morelia.’’
102. Ibid.
103. Ibid.
104. ‘‘Versión de México sobre los sucesos del 18 de abril.’’
105. ‘‘Información telefónica de Michoacán.’’ (The original papers may have been
destroyed, lost, or filed elsewhere.)
107. In spite of, or perhaps due to, the fact that the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City was
the largest in Latin America, one must keep in mind that maintaining healthy diplomatic
ties with Mexico was essential to the Communist bloc’s propagandizing e√orts in the
Western Hemisphere. Cole Blasier, The Giant’s Rival: The ussr and Latin America (Pitts-
burgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1987), 22–27.
109. Asencio interview, January 10, 2003.
110. ‘‘Comentarios del pueblo sobre el incendio de ayer,’’ El Heraldo Michoacano, April
19, 1961, 1.
111. Pineda Arellano interview, May 8, 2002.
113. Elizabeth Harris to Vice President Johnson, May 1, 1961, rg59, Box 1052, 511.11G3/
8-1160, nara.
114. Letter from Congressman Teague (Calif.) to Dean Rusk, June 30, 1961, rg59, Box
1512, 712.001/6-161, nara.
115. Joint Embassy-usis Mexico, ‘‘Mexican-North American Cultural Institute of Mi-
choacán in Morelia,’’ May 23, 1961, rg59, Box 1052, 511.11G3/8-1160, nara.
116. Melville Osborne (State Department) to Eugene McAuli√e (U.S. Embassy, Mexico
City), (‘‘Confidential’’), rg59, Box 9, ‘‘35: Political Reports (General),’’ Mexico Papers,
nara.
117. Ibid.
118. Ibid. Osborne’s letter was never sent. A handwritten note in the margins of the
letter indicates that the letter was in fact shown to an embassy o≈cial, Cole, although this
may have taken place in Washington. The most obvious explanation for this is likely the
fact that a major shake-up in the State Department’s Mexican division was about to
occur because of the Democrats’ recent entry into power. In Washington, Osborne was
about to be replaced by Robert M. Sayre.
119. Walter LaFeber, ‘‘Thomas C. Mann and the Devolution of Latin American Policy:
From the Good Neighbor to Military Intervention,’’ in Behind the Throne: Servants of
Power to Imperial Presidents, 1898–1968, ed. Thomas J. McCormick and Walter LaFeber
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993), 166–203.
120. ‘‘Destruction of Mexican-U.S. Institute for Cultural Relations,’’ May 3, 1961, rg59,
Box 1052, 511.121/5-361, nara.
121. Ibid.
122. Ibid.
123. Edwin E. Vallon to Mr. Coerr (‘‘Secret’’), June 7, 1961, rg59, Box 9, ‘‘350: Political
A√airs—General,’’ Mexico Papers, nara.
124. ‘‘Destruction of Mexican-U.S. Institute for Cultural Relations,’’ May 3, 1961.
125. Thomas Mann to Robert Sayre, ‘‘Notes on the Mexican Scene (Confidential),’’
June 13, 1961, rg59, Box 9, ‘‘320: Int’l Political Relations (General), Jan–July,’’ Mexico
Papers, nara.
126. Maciel, El Movimiento de Liberación Nacional; Olga Pellicer de Brody, ‘‘La revolu-
ción cubana en México,’’ Foro Internacional, April–June 1968, 360–83. To the disappoint-
ment of his followers, Cárdenas endorsed Díaz Ordaz as o≈cial candidate of the pri for
the 1964 elections, thus signaling loyalty to an increasingly conservative political regime
Cárdenas himself had helped to consolidate. For a discussion of the contested meanings
of cardenismo, see Ilán Semo, ‘‘El cardenismo: Gramática del sobreviviente,’’ Historia y
Gráfica 3 (1994): 77–95.
127. ‘‘Petitions to Reopen Morelia Binational Center,’’ May 19, 1961, rg59, Box 1052,
511.121/5-361, nara.
128. Letter to President (from Gerardo Ponce de León), May 3, 1961, Gallery 3 (‘‘Adolfo
López Mateos’’), 559.1/2, agn. There were at least two separate petitions to López Mateos
asking that the institute be reopened.
129. American Embassy (Mexico City) to Department of State, ‘‘Morelia Binational
Center,’’ February 15, 1962, rg59, Box 1052, 511.121/7-761 (1960-63).
130. Alberto Cira, personal interview, May 7, 2002, Morelia, Michoacán.
131. Macias, Luces y sombras, 126.
132. Despite his retreat, Cárdenas is still closely identified with the purest ideals of
revolutionary solidarity whether in Morelia or in Havana (where a park is named after
him).
252 eric zolov
133. Mexico City to Secretary of State, ‘‘Joint Embassy-usis Message,’’ March 14, 1962,
rg59, Box 1052, 511.121/7-761 (1960–63). This act of protest referenced an intensifying
dispute over salinity levels of the Colorado River which flowed into Mexico from the
United States.
134. ‘‘Instituto México–Norteamericano de Morelia, Michoacán,’’ Dirección Federal
de Seguridad, 29 June 1962, Legajo 1, Exp. 100-14-3, Hoja 177, Gallery 1, agn. The report
noted: ‘‘Students from the University of ‘San Nicolás’ have asserted they had nothing to
do with this incident, though they plan a protest for tomorrow at 11 a.m. to denounce the
visit by the President of the United States of North America.’’
135. Binational Centers Permanent Record [File Cards], Public Diplomacy Historical
Collection, Washington.
136. Ibid.
137. Cira interview, May 7, 2002.
STEVEN J. BACHELOR
Miracle on Ice
Industrial Workers and the Promise
of Americanization in Cold War Mexico
You know what a miracle is. Not what Bakunin said. But another world’s intrusions
into this one. Most of the time we coexist peacefully, but when we do touch there’s
cataclysm. . . . Where revolutions break out spontaneous and leaderless, and the soul’s
talent for consensus allows the masses to work together without e√ort, automatic
as the body itself. And yet, seña, if any of it should ever really happen that perfectly,
I would also have to cry miracle. An anarchist miracle. Like your friend. He is too
exactly and without flaw the thing we fight. In Mexico the privilegiado is always, to a
finite percentage, redeemed—one of the people. Unmiraculous.
—Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
In November 1969, three days after Mexico’s Day of the Dead celebrations,
members of the state’s secret security agency opened fire on six thousand pro-
testers at Chrysler’s Toluca plant, situated along the southwestern edge of the
capital city’s industrial fringe. The violence—the first open strife at a U.S. firm in
Mexico since the consolidation of revolutionary rule—left a half dozen critically
wounded, two men disabled, and a popular working-class movement targeted
for elimination. One of the era’s most dramatic yet least known calls for indus-
trial democracy, the conflict went unmentioned in media on both sides of the
border. Nor did attention come in the next days as Chrysler blacklisted five
hundred alleged subversives, dispatched guardias blancas (terror squads) to pa-
trol the factory floor, and imposed the firm’s production manager as union
head, a post he held for a quarter century before passing it to its present-day
occupant, his eldest son. Then followed daily firings, routine reprisals against
insubordinates, and two more shootings of supposed ‘‘Communists.’’ Thus be-
gan, in workers’ telling, a ‘‘reign of terror’’ directed ironically against working
people who sought to secure union democracy and economic security—the very
ideals they believed were embodied in the promise of Americanization.∞
254 steven j. bachelor
Next to the magnitude and severity of repression seen elsewhere during Latin
America’s Cold War, the incidents at Chrysler obviously pale. Ford executives in
Argentina, for instance, not only identified dissidents for state authorities dur-
ing that country’s ‘‘dirty war’’ but also willfully apportioned space at Ford’s
Buenos Aires facility to serve as a clandestine detention and torture center.≤ The
events at Chrysler also closely parallel the Mexican regime’s familiar protocol for
crushing dissent: first ignore, then try to co-opt, and finally, if necessary, vio-
lently repress. Indeed, at first glance, the violence that erupted at Chrysler seems
but a ripple in Cold War Mexico’s otherwise conventional tale of ‘‘tranquil’’ and
‘‘highly cordial labor relations,’’ a hallmark that proved the basis of Mexico’s
‘‘miraculous’’ postwar economic boom.≥
Nonetheless, the insurgence at Chrysler bears great significance. More than
any sector of Latin America’s working class, autoworkers ‘‘represent[ed] the
aspirations for change of their societies at large’’ during the postwar years and
led the era’s largest and most important battles for economic and social justice.∂
The auto industry also served as the centerpiece of Mexico’s model of import
substitution industrialization, an economic strategy widely adopted across Latin
America that aimed to reduce dependence on foreign industry through the
promotion of domestic manufacturing.∑ The industry also occupied a strategic
position in the international economic order that U.S. capitalists and state au-
thorities carved out in the postwar period. In this sense, promoting automobile
manufacturing in Latin America accorded well with U.S. foreign policy, par-
ticularly the Kennedy administration’s Alliance for Progress, which sought to
unleash the power of U.S. capitalism as a means not only of combating Commu-
nism but also of remaking the region in the image of the United States.∏ With the
1961 inauguration of the Alliance for Progress (an ‘‘Alliance for Profits,’’ in one
contemporary economist’s view), U.S. foreign policy in Latin America widened
from a simple strategy of containing Communism to ‘‘one characterized by
liberal rhetoric advocating social change’’ through direct U.S. investment.π Per-
fectly encapsulating this visionary zeal, in 1961 gm president Frederick Donner
announced that ‘‘multinational corporations represent a new kind of capital-
ism’’ that would usher in ‘‘social progress’’ and ‘‘elevate the Mexican nation.’’∫
Despite charges to the contrary, Mexican autoworkers were hardly Commu-
nists. Mexican presidents regularly referred to them as loyal pillars of the coun-
try’s ‘‘o≈cial’’ (state-subsidized) union movement, celebrating them as ‘‘symbols
of the harmony and mutually beneficial relationship that exists between U.S.
capital and Mexican labor.’’Ω Henry Ford II called their ‘‘readily apparent suc-
cess,’’ which included among the best blue-collar wages in the country, a ‘‘crucial
miracle on ice 255
step in Mexico’s steady advance to modernization.’’∞≠ Even Walter Reuther,

an obsessive anti-Communist, deemed Mexican autoworkers his staunchest
Latin American ally in his global campaign against the ‘‘red menace.’’∞∞
Today, as neoliberals sing the praises of Mexico’s position in a flourishing
global assembly line, the insurgent movement at Chrysler and its violent defeat
have been forgotten, even erased. Chrysler executives, for example, o≈cially
cling to a spotless, seventy-five-year record free of labor conflict, attributing the
era’s multiple protests and factory occupations to ‘‘outside agitators and pro-
vocateurs from other firms.’’∞≤ Scholars too have tended to misconstrue the
insurgence, Mexico’s largest since the 1930s. Specialists of Mexican labor have
either dismissed the insurgence as a brief interruption in the state’s corporatist
control over the working class or wistfully romanticized it as an example of
valiant but inevitably doomed resistance to the twin behemoths of American
imperialism and Mexican authoritarianism.∞≥ Also relying upon a corporatist
analytical framework, diplomatic historians have similarly tended to misread
working-class politics, which they typically reduce to organized labor’s func-
tional position in Latin American society. These scholars have also tended to
posit a false dichotomy between nationalism and cultural imperialism, failing to
capture the transnational dimensions of global-local encounters and the com-
plicated, even contradictory, meanings of Americanization in Latin America.∞∂
Thus these works render little if any of the actual political and social substance of
the Cold War’s manifold engagements, begetting in the case of Mexico a schol-
arly literature that the field’s eminent authority contends is plagued by a ‘‘gen-
eral abstract quality . . . a sense almost of timelessness.’’∞∑
Focusing on workers at the U.S. Big Three (Ford, gm, and Chrysler), this essay
goes beyond earlier analyses of Cold War Mexico. It reveals how working people
fashioned a popular, democratic movement, born in the promise of the Ameri-
can dream, which challenged the realities of state and corporate dominion over
the social forces unleashed by modernity. Foremost it shows how working peo-
ple borrowed from U.S. institutions, values, and practices in ways that threat-
ened both o≈cial conceptions of Mexican citizenship and key facets of U.S.
imperial rule in Mexico. The essay further argues that as this insurgent move-
ment grew in size and intensity and linked the exigencies of the shop floor to
broader questions of global economic justice, authorities—long accustomed to
paternalist forms of rule—turned increasingly to tactics of violence and repres-
sion. Thus, as happened elsewhere in Latin America between 1960 and 1980,
repression in Mexico became the elite’s favored tool to crush popular e√orts to
democratize industrial and urban life. In this sense, the violence of 1969 at
Chrysler marked not only the birth of an insurgent movement that would rock
Mexico for the next decade. It represented also a fundamental turning point
in Mexico and the United States’ postwar political economy, an epochal shift
from an economic model of ‘‘cooperative capitalism’’ toward a neoliberal one
founded on capital mobility and labor flexibility. Although this economic re-
ordering was formalized in 1994 with the North American Free Trade Agree-
ment (nafta), its roots can be found a quarter century earlier, in the success that
state and corporate authorities, relying on means ranging from simple redbait-
ing to outright terror, had in crushing popular movements meant to democra-
tize economic life. This, then, is the Cold War’s most enduring legacy in Mexico:
the triumph, over widespread opposition, of an economic model based on fluid
finance capital, deterritorialized markets, and flexible modes of accumulation.
Manufacturing Miracles
At the 1962 groundbreaking for Chrysler’s Toluca complex, company president

Gastón Azcárraga, the brother of the media mogul and Mexico’s richest man
Emílio Azcárraga, declared that the site would serve ‘‘not only as a workplace to
earn our livings, but as a gathering place to raise our collective standards and
become more humanitarian.’’∞∏ The site would soon employ six thousand wage
earners, drawn largely from the surrounding colonias populares, then absorbing
nearly twenty thousand migrants a month from the countryside.∞π The area also
boasted newly inaugurated Ford and gm factories, then their respective firms’
most technologically sophisticated facilities in all of Latin America. The plant
openings came on the heels of the passage of the Mexican state’s 1962 Integration
Decree, which required all automakers to convert from assembly operations to
full-scale domestic manufacturing of motor vehicles by the end of 1964.
The heart of the regime’s strategy of import substitution industrialization,
automobile manufacturing promised to spark a ‘‘second’’ industrial revolution
in Mexico, not unlike that seen in Detroit in the 1920s. Domestic manufacturing,
Mexican o≈cials reasoned, would reduce trade deficits by replacing foreign-
made goods with those produced domestically. At the time, automobile imports
constituted a hefty 10 percent of Mexico’s entire import bill, which was itself
growing by nearly 20 percent per annum.∞∫ Motor-vehicle manufacturing also
promised to jump-start Mexico’s slowing economy. Between 1949 and 1955, the
country’s gross domestic product grew by a staggering 18 percent. Between 1955
and 1959, however, that figure grew by only 7 percent.∞Ω
miracle on ice 257
For the U.S. Big Three, the Latin American market represented a potentially
enormous new market of consumers to counter lagging sales in the United
States. There, first-time vehicle buyers had become almost entirely supplanted
by replacement-vehicle purchasers, and for the first time in decades, automakers
were facing declining rates of profit.≤≠ By contrast, executives predicted that in
Mexico the automobile market would expand by an astonishing 5 to 10 percent
per year over the next two decades. As U.S. automakers concluded, the Mexican
market (and Latin America’s more broadly) was ‘‘essential to our global strategy
of capturing market share.’’≤∞
Obviously, such success rested on stable industrial relations, on which auto-
makers prided themselves. Not since the unionization drives of the 1930s, when
Mexican workers at the U.S. Big Three won closed shops at their respective firms,
had a single labor strike aΔicted the industry. Since then, automobile unions had
remained important fixtures within the state-subsidized labor movement, whose
leaders were closely allied with the ruling party and possessed a virulent strain of
anti-Communism that considered any independent or leftist ideology a ‘‘virus of
disintegration’’ demanding immediate eradication. Like virtually all organized
labor in Mexico, unions within the automobile industry remained ‘‘under the
domination of a small camarilla of trade union leaders’’ who ensured labor
discipline and political support for the ruling party.≤≤ Drawn almost entirely
from outside the workforce, these entrenched union bosses, known as charros,
served as both company-paid overseers of day-to-day shop-floor relations and
well-remunerated delegates to the state-controlled, national-level labor con-
federations.≤≥ Rarely did these union bosses convene government-mandated
union assemblies or union elections. They tended to rule instead through infor-
mal, paternalistic practices and their close, personal ties to corporate executives
and state o≈cials. So successful were their e√orts in stripping unionism of any
real strength that a survey conducted at Ford in the early 1960s found that the
majority of workers were unaware they even belonged to a union.≤∂ At gm,
charros at least held the occasional union assembly, typically using them to
trumpet their support for the ruling party. Also, with the control over hiring
practices that Mexico’s federal labor law gave union locals, charros fared well in
contracting only those who passed background checks into any suspicious politi-
cal sympathies. Not surprisingly, then, in 1964, just as the auto industry prepared
to launch full-scale manufacturing operations, the avowedly anti-Communist
International Conference of Free Unions gave Mexico a perfect rating for politi-
cal and labor stability.≤∑ Similarly, the U.S. State Department—which, as Eric
Zolov shows in his contribution in this volume, remained greatly concerned

about Communist infiltration into local politics—maintained that Communist
influence in Mexico’s trade union movement was virtually absent.≤∏
Industrial workers, U.S. o≈cials concluded, acquiesced to the machinations of
state-allied labor bosses. This passivity, however, had di√erential consequences.
On the one hand, it made for extraordinary labor stability, the pride of auto-
makers and Mexican authorities alike. On the other hand, it translated into what
U.S. automakers believed to be an ideologically docile workforce, easily led and
manipulated by powerful labor leaders. This, according to U.S. executives, left
Mexican wage earners potentially ‘‘vulnerable to demagoguery and Communist
influence.’’≤π To counter such vulnerabilities, automakers introduced a multitude
of company programs designed to mold wage earners in the image of an ide-
alized ‘‘American’’ workforce. Obviously, in Mexico, where anti-Americanism
resided in the bedrock of nationalist sentiment, such initiatives could evince
none of Henry Ford’s outright jingoism and bigotry. Instead, his son Henry Ford
II accentuated the ‘‘social progress’’ that would come from ‘‘incorporating Mexi-
can working-class and peasant youths into factory activities.’’≤∫ gm president
Frederick Donner put the promise of U.S. factories even more plainly: ‘‘Mexico
can have the assurance that it will find in gm complete cooperation and reciproc-
ity. Mexicans deserve a better future. Our company will provide that impulse,
and Mexico will serve as a dignified example for the whole free world.’’≤Ω In a
sense, Donner took his predecessor Charles Wilson’s famed adage a step further:
what was good for gm was now also good for the entire world.
This corporate impulse took the form of ‘‘good corporate citizenship,’’ a term
still used by the Big Three in Mexico. Within the workplace this included wages
five times the average, generous welfare benefits, and scholarships for wage
earners’ children. The firms also sponsored recreational activities, particularly
sports leagues, which according to executives served to ‘‘showcase U.S. sports-
manship and teamwork.’’ They also funded courses in English for their em-
ployees, stressing its role as ‘‘the language of the future.’’≥≠
These corporate e√orts extended as well beyond the factory walls. gm, for
instance, underwrote the nightly news on the state-owned television channel
and sponsored an annual ‘‘Parade of Progress’’ at Chapultepec Park, during
which visitors were treated to festivities and the company’s latest lineup of
automobiles.≥∞ Ford established a manager of civic a√airs to publicize its ‘‘good
corporate citizenship’’ and oversee its multiple outreach projects. These in-
cluded a national manual arts program for school-age children, meant to ‘‘o√er
routes to find one’s vocation.’’ By 1970, a decade into the program, it counted
miracle on ice 259
750,000 school-age participants and took credit for ‘‘diminishing drop-out rates
and juvenile delinquencies in the areas it targeted.’’≥≤ By far Ford’s largest civic
project was the Escuelas Henry Ford initiative, begun in 1962. This project
represented a commitment by the firm to partner with the Mexican government
to ‘‘build primary schools in regions with Ford facilities and to make available
the educational resources that will combat Mexico’s deficiencies.’’ By 1967, the
program had sponsored more than fifty schools, including five within the Mex-
ico City’s industrial periphery.≥≥
The Big Three also facilitated and encouraged contact between Mexican and
U.S. autoworkers. Not only did they uphold the United States as the epitome of
progress; each year they sponsored trips for workers to visit Detroit, where they
could see that progress firsthand. Executives also teamed with heads of the
afl-cio to provide leadership grants, which brought local labor leaders to De-
troit for training in union organizing. Automakers also facilitated contacts be-
tween Mexican autoworkers and the United Auto Workers (uaw) and its head,
Walter Reuther. Reuther was the era’s most visible ‘‘symbol and spokesman for
one particularly attractive version of American life.’’≥∂ In automakers’ view, he
was the individual most responsible for bringing stability to an industry that had
historically been the site of heated rank-and-file activism and labor discord.
Reuther reasoned that uaw strength in Mexico would serve both as a bulwark
against potential Communist infiltration of the labor movement and as a coun-
ter to the creeping threat of ‘‘wage dumping.’’ Without international organizing,
Reuther argued, ‘‘we will be isolated and divided, weak and defenseless in the
face of the growing power of international capital to exploit us separately.’’≥∑
Reuther’s gospel of the ‘‘politics of productivity’’ and the ‘‘revolutionary power
of economic abundance’’ closely paralleled the Kennedy administration’s Al-
liance for Progress. According to its charter, the Alliance aimed ‘‘to improve and
strengthen democratic institutions through the application of the principle of
self-determination by the people.’’≥∏ U.S. ambassador to Mexico Thomas Mann,
who in 1967 would head the Automobile Manufacturers Association, considered
his and the United States’ role to be to determine ‘‘how we can best help promote
economic and social progress in Mexico.’’ The ‘‘orderly evolution’’ of American
business was subsumed under Walt Rostow’s highly influential ‘‘modernization’’
theory, which teleologically posited that U.S. investments would universally
promote a ‘‘collective culture of free will’’ that would propel the developing world
through the ‘‘stages of economic growth’’ until it reached U.S. standards. Such
notions were so firmly held that, during his o≈cial tour of the United States, only
the second by a Mexican president, Gustavo Díaz Ordaz pronounced that Mexico
was prepared to follow the United States’ lead, since ‘‘Mexico ha[d] now reached
its take-o√ stage.’’≥π As pursued by working people in Mexico, however, this
supposed takeo√ would bring contradictory and unforeseen consequences.
The American Dream à la Mexicana
Asked whether he was ever a Communist, Clemente Zaldívar, fired from and
blacklisted by gm in 1966 for being a ‘‘militant agitator beholden to Commu-
nists,’’ laughed. ‘‘A Communist? Me? Not at all. I don’t even know what that is.’’
Asked whether he was anti-American or anti-Mexican, other accusations levied
against him, Zaldívar turned more serious. ‘‘Look,’’ he explained, ‘‘We were
never anti-gringo or anti-Mexicano. Yes, we wanted a more American life, but to
us that was progress; that was making a better Mexico.’’≥∫
In his twelve years at gm, Zaldívar seemed to possess all the characteristics his
employer maintained made a ‘‘good employee’’: ‘‘a√able and anxious to learn,
active in community a√airs, and committed to promoting security and well-
being.’’≥Ω When not putting in overtime hours in the metal finishing department,
Zaldívar played on company sports teams (even leading the soccer squad to a
city championship), regularly attended English language courses, and partici-
pated in the inaugural meeting of the Reuther-headed World Automobile Coun-
cil. Hailing from Santa Julia, one of Mexico City’s roughest slums, but by 1966
residing in a suburban home on the edge of the capital’s first bedroom commu-
nity, Zaldívar embodied the ‘‘modernizing’’ impulse promoted by U.S. and
Mexican authorities.
In 1963, however, Zaldívar emerged as a vocal member of Grupo Democrá-
tico, a faction of autoworkers who militated, in their words, to ‘‘revive sin-
dicalismo in order to bring the best benefit to Mexico.’’∂≠ The group, which
authorities labeled a ‘‘small minority being directed by Communists,’’ formed in
the specific context of the automobile industry’s shift to full-scale manufactur-
ing.∂∞ The 1962 Integration Decree gave automakers just twenty-nine months to
convert from assembly to manufacturing operations. This entailed rapid and
unprecedented changes in work relations. Productivity skyrocketed more than
100 percent, and the workforce tripled in size between 1960 and 1965.∂≤ With
these changes came increased injuries, daily speedups, and closer managerial
scrutiny—an environment that workers said was ‘‘more suited to a burro.’’∂≥ In
this setting, the industry’s long-standing paternalist strategies of labor control
proved ine√ective.∂∂ Zaldívar and others found the reigning charro, Raúl Sán-
miracle on ice 261
chez del Castillo, to be entirely unresponsive to workers’ changing concerns. By

1963 they had launched a campaign to oust him from o≈ce. Posting notices
around the plant, they denounced Sánchez del Castillo’s ‘‘ineptitude and dis-
regard for the rights of workers.’’∂∑ They also urged employees to demand and
then attend union meetings, which, when infrequently convened by Sánchez del
Castillo, drew less than 30 percent of the membership.
‘‘Now is the time and ours is a movement of transcendence,’’ democratistas
proclaimed in August 1963. gm had recently broken ground in Toluca, where in
December 1964 it would open Latin America’s largest and most technologically
advanced automaking facility, capable of producing twenty thousand vehicles a
year. Moreover, union elections were scheduled for that month, giving wage
earners an opportunity to vote out of o≈ce their reigning charro, who six
months earlier had renegotiated the union contract without any input from
the membership. Never had so much excitement surrounded a union election
within the auto industry. The democratistas had invited the press to observe,
hoping its presence might help prevent electoral fraud. ‘‘Our working-class
brothers are counting on us to make this a victory for sindicalismo,’’ they an-
nounced.∂∏ Once tallied, the votes revealed the democratistas to be the clear
winners. Sánchez del Castillo responded by leading his supporters (primarily
employees from the parts warehouse and not the production facility) out of the
meeting hall in protest. The next morning, they appeared before federal authori-
ties, denouncing the election as having been conducted ‘‘in a completely disor-
dered and arbitrary way.’’∂π In a rare victory for rank-and-file workers, state
o≈cials, after interviewing every wage earner who cast a ballot, ruled the demo-
cratistas to be the legitimate winners.
Taking Americanizing discourses at their word, democratistas saw meaning-
ful participation in industrial life as the foremost promise of progress. Accord-
ingly, they began articulating new demands that challenged state-controlled
unionism. Assuming o≈ce in August 1963, Zaldívar announced to workers that
‘‘unions are for making demands, not supplicating. This union belongs to you;
we are your representatives.’’ He also underscored the example of the uaw,
whose ‘‘success has come through lengthy union struggle and working-class
conquista.’’∂∫ In their first contract negotiations with gm, democratistas made a
host of new demands, all of which they explained their counterparts in the U.S.
had long enjoyed. For one thing, they insisted on having real contract negotia-
tions, in contrast to the typical closed-door talks presided over by entrenched
charros. And the issues they wanted to be placed on the table reached further
into managerial prerogatives than ever before. For instance, they demanded the
right to decide how the transition to full-scale manufacturing would be carried
out on the shop floor. Stressing that they knew their departments better than the
engineers brought in to supervise the transition to full-scale manufacturing,
workers worried that company plans would make their already-burdensome
workload ever more onerous. They also asserted the right to participate in
setting production quotas, the pace of production, and the percentage of work-
ers employed in di√erent wage categories. These last demands had been inspired
by Walter Reuther himself, who not only made available to Mexican auto-
workers translated copies of Detroit-area union contracts but also enlisted their
help in his project to analyze every contract gm had ever signed worldwide.
Studying these, Mexican workers concluded that ‘‘the company is exploiting
Mexican labor and taking all the profits to the ‘other side.’ ’’∂Ω As one journalist
who covered the emerging movement similarly observed, gm was ‘‘not creating
new industry but, rather, taking advantage of new labor in new places.’’∑≠
Democratistas sought to unite autoworkers across the entire industry. ‘‘Look
at the power of the uaw,’’ explained one activist. ‘‘We need a single union for the
whole industry, like theirs. Only then can we expect to challenge the farce that is
charrismo.’’∑∞ As they had done at gm, democratistas leafleted at the city’s other
automobile plants, inviting wage earners to join their oppositional campaign.
They also began distributing their own newsletter, El Eco, which was designed
to counter state-controlled media depictions. The death in July 1965 of Luis
Quijano, the charro at Chrysler who had been in charge since 1942, helped
their e√orts. In his absence, employees immediately held union elections, which
brought to power an insurgent group committed to ‘‘union democracy and
social justice.’’∑≤ Once in o≈ce, they reminded authorities that ‘‘we are together
making the step to social progress and modernization.’’∑≥
To autoworkers, modernization also meant popular participation in urban
life, particularly as Mexico City exploded demographically and spatially in the
wake of its economic miracle. In the 1960s alone, nearly two million migrants
from the countryside flocked to the capital, making housing one of working
people’s most prominent concerns.∑∂ In 1965 autoworkers joined with hundreds
of other industrial laborers to call on the government to pass legislation that
would require employers with over one hundred employees to provide for their
workers’ housing.∑∑ This, they maintained, was not only explicit in the Ley
Federal del Trabajo but also implicit in the collective promise of modernization.
Rhetorically, U.S. automakers pledged their support for such a plan, promising
miracle on ice 263
to help employees purchase land around the automobile factories. Still, workers
observed that ‘‘all their promises remain in their inkwells.’’ ‘‘The company has
lied to us again, so we must address these social issues ourselves,’’ concluded
democratistas.∑∏
Pooling their resources, some six hundred union members at gm purchased
land in 1965 to construct a workers’ colonia—the first of its kind in Mexico.
Nestled in the rolling hills ten miles north of the capital’s city center, the site
was ideally suited to workers’ modernizing impulses. The neighborhood bor-
dered Ciudad Satélite, Mexico City’s first bedroom community, constructed for
middle-class residents fleeing the irruption of rural poor into the capital. By the
time construction of the workers’ colonia began in 1965, the area boasted a Pizza
Hut, a Tastee Freez, a Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise, a Lions Club, and a
U.S.-style supermarket. Workers’ plans called for single, unattached homes on
large lots, with front and back yards, two-car garages, and spacious green-
belts. These dwellings stood in marked contrast to the unadorned multistory
apartment complexes the government was then building for working-class and
middle-class residents in the capital. Further reflecting workers’ cosmopolitan
sensibilities, the colonia’s tree-lined streets bore names such as Calle Wash-
ington, Calle California, and Avenida Norteamérica; the neighborhood as a
whole was dubbed Colonia Las Américas.
This project also reflected modernization’s highly gendered dimension. Shaped
by bourgeois gender ideologies, modernization implied a rigidly defined sexual
division of labor, one in which men would fill the ranks of the industrial work-
ing class and women would be consigned to the domestic sphere or jobs specifi-
cally coded ‘‘female.’’ Exercising vast economies of scale, automobile manufac-
turers o√ered unprecedented benefits and ‘‘family’’ wages, su≈cient to provide
for a dependent wife and children. U.S. automakers, in fact, preferred hiring
such workers, believing them to be more responsible and loyal, and they actively
promoted a vision that equated modernity with bourgeois notions of mother-
hood. These ideals, however, clashed with the realities of life in Colonia Las
Américas and other newly sprouting working-class neighborhoods in Mexico
City’s industrial periphery. As Las Américas was founded outside formal gov-
ernment institutions, state authorities proved reluctant to extend municipal
services to the neighborhood. A year after moving in, residents still lacked
uninterrupted running water, sanitation services, and electricity—despite mak-
ing repeated demands for them. This burden obviously fell disproportionately
on women, who attended to such concerns while their husbands did wage work
outside the home. As one female resident recalled, ‘‘We wanted a modern com-
munity, but there was nothing modern about all that trash out on the street
baking in the sun.’’∑π
Like their husbands in the workplace, women in the neighborhood began
militating for meaningful participation in controlling the social forces un-
leashed by modernization. Calling themselves ‘‘Las Madres de Las Américas,’’
the women staged a number of demonstrations, calling on authorities to answer
their demands for improved living conditions within Mexico City’s industrial
fringe. For instance, in 1967 more than three hundred women assembled on
Calle Washington, carrying banners and large barrels filled with rank refuse, and
marched to the o≈ce of the mayor, who had consistently refused to meet with
the women. Forcing their way into his o≈ce, they proceeded to empty the bar-
rels of garbage. State-controlled newspapers suggested the women were ‘‘surly
malcontents’’ who needed better supervision from their husbands.∑∫
Las Madres de Las Américas were hardly the only ones making such demands.
They were part of an expanding community movement in the 1970s headed
by working-class women. Like their male counterparts in the workplace, such
women sought to realize what they considered to be the promise of moderniza-
tion. Their demands included adequate schooling for the large number of chil-
dren residing within Mexico City’s industrial fringe. As one female activist
explained, the ‘‘insu≈cient number of schools threatens to destroy our fami-
lies.’’∑Ω For example, in 1973, following a brutally crushed strike at the Ford
plant in Tlalnepantla, female residents demanded not only the construction of
additional schools but also fundamental changes to Escuela Ford, the largest
school in the area. Foremost, they expressed displeasure with the school’s cur-
riculum, which included teaching students that Henry Ford ‘‘was a man of
simple pleasures who never flaunted his wealth and who believed that char-
ity would not resolve the problem of misery.’’∏≠ They also found fault with
the school’s name. Instead of honoring Henry Ford, parents proposed the school
be named Escuela Emiliano Zapata, after the famed revolutionary. In September
1974, parents took their proposal to the municipal authorities, who listened
to their request but were unmoved: ‘‘Escuela Ford is the only name the school
can have, as Ford paid for its construction.’’∏∞ When, a year later, these same
women joined in demonstration with five thousand families from Tlalnepantla,
they encountered a far more severe response. Again issuing demands for ade-
quate schools, housing, and municipal services, they faced a contingent of
armed soldiers, who beat them with clubs and rifle butts. At least seven women
were critically wounded. For working people in Mexico, such responses would
miracle on ice 265
become ever more common, prompting one participant ruefully to observe,

‘‘We don’t live; we merely survive.’’∏≤
Deep Freeze
While healing from the wounds he su√ered at the hands of government authori-
ties in November 1969, Vicente Herrera discovered during his hospitalization
that Chrysler had fired him, ending his decade-long tenure with the firm. ‘‘We
are no longer in need of your services,’’ his dismissal papers tersely read. Her-
rera’s injuries, coupled with the firm’s subsequent blacklisting of him, kept him
from finding other gainful employment.∏≥ Sadly, Herrera’s story was not unique;
although disabled by his injuries, he was otherwise simply one of more than five
hundred Chrysler workers fired within days of the shootings at Toluca.
The issue that sparked the conflagration was the transfer of more than one
thousand wage earners from Chrysler’s Mexico City facility to its Toluca plant,
about sixty miles from the city center. The transfers ended the workers’ mem-
bership in their Mexico City union and relegated them to the union in Toluca,
where their wages were half those previously earned. Moreover, the Toluca
plant’s union was controlled by a charro, whom wage earners accused of selling
employment spots, personally pocketing union dues, refusing to convene union
meetings, and openly collaborating with authorities to remove dissidents. Like
their counterparts at gm, however, Chrysler workers’ demands extended to a
wide range of concerns, embracing a vision of ‘‘social justice’’ rooted in labor
internationalism and Mexico’s 1910 revolution.∏∂ As wage earners explained,
‘‘The fake union is making a joke out of our real union and our Revolutionary
heritage. This is not what our Revolution was fought for.’’∏∑
Following the November 1969 shootings, workers planned their next protest
for January 21, 1970. The protest included a march by several thousand from the
Chrysler plant to the state governor’s o≈ce in Toluca. There o≈cials refused to
meet with the dissidents, o√ering instead to respect the outcome of a new union
election. Workers met and elected rank-and-file worker Rafael Martínez, whom
the company quickly fired and the government subsequently arrested for ‘‘steal-
ing’’ from Chrysler.∏∏ Meanwhile Chrysler organized its own closed-door elec-
tion, in which Hugo Díaz, the company’s production chief, was declared the
union head. State labor o≈cials immediately approved the election and rejected
workers’ petitions for an inquiry into voter fraud.
Already considered a harsh production chief, Hugo Díaz established a ‘‘re-
gime of repression and terrorism’’ at the two Chrysler plants.∏π Cooperating
closely with management (of which he remained a member), Díaz hired pisto-
leros (armed guards) and guardias blancas to combat dissidence. Company
soccer teams, which in earlier years had helped foster working-class solidarity,
became ‘‘converted into armed shock forces for managers’’ to intimidate and
terrorize employees.∏∫ Díaz even established a state police substation within the
plant to facilitate the identification and removal of ‘‘militants.’’ Employees also
charged that Díaz hired scabs (esquiroles) to apprise him of labor activism
among wage earners outside the plant.
When, eighteen months after the first shootings at Chrysler, authorities for-
mally responded to the strife, they did so by denouncing the dissidents as
‘‘Communists’’ who were ‘‘threatening the fiber of the Mexican nation.’’ Such
claims only served to legitimize ongoing violence being unleashed on workers.∏Ω
In 1972, two more shootings occurred at Chrysler’s Toluca plant, both of which
authorities refused to acknowledge. Workers responded by mounting more pro-
tests, including numerous occupations of the headquarters of the nation’s largest
labor confederation.
Autoworkers joined with laborers in other strategic mass-production indus-
tries. Over the next eight years, they launched what became the largest, most
extensive strike wave in Mexican history. Prominent groups within this insur-
gence included electrical workers, who formed a dissident faction called La
Tendencia Democrática (the Democratic Tendency), which brought together
workers at some 120 di√erent workplaces, uniting more than 100,000 dissident
unionists.
Scholars have tended to understand this insurgence in connection with Presi-
dent Echeverría’s apertura democrática (democratic opening), crediting in-
creased labor activism to a change in presidential labor policy.π≠ Under Echever-
ría, the regime projected an ostensibly ‘‘populist’’ image and welcomed the
creation of ‘‘independent’’ unions while simultaneously repressing dissent. For
instance, Echeverría repeatedly denounced multinational corporations as ‘‘vo-
racious imperialists [who] foster national dependence’’ while simultaneously
dispatching the army to help employers crush opposition.π∞ Among the most
violent of these episodes was his use of the army in 1976 to crush a nationwide
strike launched by electrical power workers. Autoworkers discerned the appar-
ent political contradiction, labeling the armed men ‘‘o≈cial assassins for Mexi-
can ‘progress’ ’’ who have ‘‘destroyed the companies’ pretensions of bringing
social advancement.’’π≤
Within the automobile industry, employers tended to respond to the mul-
tiple strikes by quickly o√ering wage increases in order to resume production.
miracle on ice 267
But wage increases failed to resolve the endemic class conflict, which revolved
around issues more fundamental than remuneration. More often, these disputes
were settled through state repression and corporate recalcitrance. For gm work-
ers, this was made painfully clear in 1980 when they launched what would
become one of the longest strikes in Mexican history. As participants explained,
‘‘This movement is the direct result of di≈cult relations that began in 1965, when
the company and the government assumed an intransigent attitude toward our
civic rights.’’π≥ As they did in 1965, autoworkers demanded the right to organize a
democratic union at gm’s newest plant, in the northern state of Coahuila, where,
once again, a corrupt union boss created a bogus union and signed a collective
contract before a single employee had been hired. Following a protracted strug-
gle, authorities succeeded in crushing the movement through intimidation and
outright fraud. The movement’s death knell came when company executives and
state o≈cials bribed a former union leader to sign doctored documents that
acceded to management’s requests. For authorities, what was at stake was up-
rooting the community strength that the modernizing miracle helped beget. By
di√using the limited strength that Mexico City’s working class had amassed over
the previous decade, state and corporate authorities merely continued the ‘‘cre-
ative destruction’’ that Josef Schumpeter has argued stands at the heart of indus-
trial capitalism.π∂
Desmadre, Dismothernity
Roger Bartra has written: ‘‘We can no longer critique Mexican culture in the
name of modernity, of a liberal-inspired modernity that raises up the banner of
‘progress.’ We have to critique modernity from the standpoint I call dismoder-
nity, or better yet—taking a cue from desmadre, Mexican slang for disorder—
dismothernity.’’π∑ Bartra’s insight applies particularly well to Mexico’s automo-
bile industry, which promised ‘‘social progress’’ but became associated with a
labor regime built on repression and human rights violations. Today the popular
struggles that marked the late 1960s and 1970s have hardly receded, despite the
Cold War’s end and free trade’s triumph. In fact, Ford workers in Mexico City
continue to militate for democratic union representation. Exercised numerous
times since 1982, Ford’s more recent tactics to crush democratic opposition
involve shutting down its plants, dismissing the entire workforce, and reopening
its doors with a new workforce (sans dissidents) and significantly lower wages
and fewer benefits. For instance, 1990 saw repeated factory occupations, demon-
strations calling for legitimate union elections, and even kidnappings and as-
sassinations of activists. Ultimately, in January 1991, state and corporate authori-

ties conducted their own closed-door union elections, which human rights
observers concluded denied ‘‘the fundamental rights of Ford workers to choose
their union representatives.’’ Even the Partido Acción Nacional, a right-wing
party that rarely condemns multinational corporations, squarely blamed the
ongoing violence on Ford authorities.π∏
Just three weeks after the November 1969 shootings at Chrysler, U.S. State
Department o≈cials predicted that the coming decade in Mexico would witness
an impending ‘‘clash between growing discontent and forces of resistance [that]
will result in the overt use of force in support of and against the established
political system. And the United States, which is the prime inspiration for those
Mexicans who seek change but is also closely linked with what many consider
the status quo, may be increasingly vilified by both sides.’’ππ Their words proved
prescient. Autoworkers like Vicente Herrera and Clemente Zaldívar, who sought
to fulfill both the legacy of the Mexican revolution and the promise of Ameri-
canization, faced vilification from both a Mexican regime committed at least
rhetorically to revolutionary nationalism and corporate authorities committed
to U.S. economic hegemony. Their fates highlight not only what Roger Rouse
has called globalization’s ‘‘unresolved tension between ever-more reactionary
states and the largely liberatory possibilities opened up by transnational forces
and arrangements,’’ but also the violent means to which state and corporate
authorities went to stem the promise unleashed by Americanization.π∫
Notes
1. Vicente Herrera, interview by the author, Estado de México, March 4, 1997; Soli-
daridad (Mexico City), February 1970; El Día (Mexico City), February 2, 1971; Justicia
Social, August 1974; Angel Fojo de Diego, ‘‘Estudio de un conflicto industrial: El caso
Automex’’ (MS, Centro de Estudios Sociológicos, El Colegio de México, 1973); Kevin J.
Middlebrook, ‘‘The Political Economy of Mexican Organized Labor’’ (Ph.D. diss., Har-
vard University, 1981), 306–7.
2. Larry Rohter, ‘‘Ford Motor Is Linked to Argentina’s ‘Dirty War,’ ’’ New York Times,
November 27, 2002, sec. A, late edition.
3. Ian Roxborough, ‘‘Mexico,’’ in Latin America between the Second World War and the
Cold War, 1944–48, ed. Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), 190.
4. James P. Brennan, ‘‘Clasismo and the Workers: The Ideological-Cultural Context of
‘Sindicalismo de Liberación’ in the Cordoban Automobile Industry, 1970–1975,’’ Bulletin
of Latin American Research 15 (1996): 293.
miracle on ice 269
5. On import substitution industrialization, see Antonio L. Aspra, ‘‘Import Substitu-

tion in Mexico: Past and Present,’’ World Development 5 (January–February 1977): 111–23;
René Villareal, ‘‘The Policy of Import-Substitution Industrialization, 1929–1975,’’ in Au-
thoritarianism in Mexico, ed. José Luis Reyna and Richard S. Weinert (Philadelphia: ishi
Press, 1977), 67–107.
6. Not for nothing was Walt Rostow, chief proponent of modernization theory, a key
economic planner of the Alliance for Progress. For a perceptive reading of the teleology
embedded in such modernizing narratives, see María Josefina Saldaña-Portillo, The
Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the Age of Development (Durham: Duke
7. The phrase ‘‘Alliance for Profits’’ is from Clark W. Reynolds, The Mexican Economy:
Twentieth-Century Structure and Growth (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 186.
On the Alliance for Progress, see Stephen Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World:
JFK Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1999), 8. Also see Michael E. Latham, Modernization as Ideology: Ameri-
can Social Science and ‘‘Nation Building’’ in the Kennedy Era (Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2000).
8. Quoted in Victor G. Reuther, The Brothers Reuther and the Story of the uaw: A
Memoir (Boston: Houghton MiΔin, 1976), 401; and La Prensa (Mexico City), January 12,
1965.
9. El Universal (Mexico City), March 18, 1958.
10. Ford International Archive (hereafter cited as fia), Dearborn, Mich., International
File, Accension AR-74-18056.
11. Secretaría de Trabajo y Previsión Social, Registro de Asociaciones (hereafter cited as
stpsra), exp. 10/6298, leg. 4, July 1964. Also see Nelson Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous
Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor (New York: Basic Books,
1995).
12. Leopoldo Silva, interview by the author, Mexico City, October 31, 1996.
13. This points up what Mary Louise Pratt has identified as the scholarly literature’s
tendency either to historicize subalterns as the ‘‘victims qua survivors’’ of Western im-
perialism or to romanticize them as pristine beings seemingly untouched by history. In
either depiction, she contends, subalterns are condemned to destruction. See her Im-
perial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992).
14. Two important exceptions that highlight the ambiguities and contradictions of
‘‘Americanization’’ in Latin America are Julio Moreno, Yankee Don’t Go Home: Mexican
Nationalism, American Business Culture, and the Shaping of Modern Mexico, 1920–1950
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); and Michel Gobat, Confronting
the American Dream: Nicaragua Under U.S. Imperial Rule (Durham: Duke University
Press, 2005).
15. Peter Smith, ‘‘Mexico since 1946,’’ in Cambridge History of Latin America, ed. Leslie
Bethell, vol. 7 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 83. The literature in this
vein is vast; representative works include Ruth and David Collier, Shaping the Political
Arena (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); and Hobart A. Spaulding, Organized
Labor in Latin America: Historical Case Studies of Urban Workers in Dependent Societies
(New York: Harper and Row, 1977). An important contribution that transcends such
analytical dichotomies is Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine LeGrand, and Ricardo Salvatore,
eds., Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.–Latin American
Relations (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).
16. Chrysler de México, Sobre ruedas: La historia de Chrysler en México (Mexico City:
privately printed, 1993), 72; Provincia (Estado de México), January 13, 1963.
17. Luis Unikel, La dinámica del crecimiento de la Ciudad de México (Mexico City:
Fundación para Estudios de la Población, 1972), 24.
18. Douglas C. Bennett and Kenneth E. Sharpe, Transnational Corporations versus the
State: The Political Economy of the Mexican Auto Industry (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1985), 100; Clark Reynolds, ‘‘Why Mexico’s ‘Stabilizing Development’ Was Actually
Destabilizing with Some Implications for the Future,’’ World Development (1978): 1007.
19. Diario Oficial, August 25, 1962.
20. Jerry Heasley, The Production Figure Book for U.S. Cars (Osceola, Wis.: Motor-
books International, 1977).
21. Ford Motor Company, ‘‘A Study of Automotive Manufacturing in Mexico’’ (Mex-
ico City: privately printed, April 1960); General Motors Corporation, ‘‘General Motors
Corporation in the World Automobile Market’’ (Detroit: privately printed, May 1962),
36; Diario Oficial, August 25, 1962.
22. Roxborough, ‘‘Mexico,’’ 190.
23. Corrupt, state-allied union bosses were known as charros after the fondness of the
government-imposed union head Jesús Díaz de León for charrería (rodeo). A first-
person account of ‘‘the charrazo’’ (the government’s substitution of independent union
heads with compliant labor bosses) is the account by the removed head of the Sindicato
de Trabajadores Ferrocarrileros de la República Mexicana, Luis Gómez Z., Sucesos y
remembranzas (Mexico City: Editorial Secapsa, 1979). For a historical analysis, see Kevin
J. Middlebrook, The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State, and Authoritarianism in
Mexico (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), 107–55.
24. Richard U. Miller, ‘‘Labor Organizations in a Developing Country: The Case of
Mexico’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1966), 123.
25. The News (Mexico City), January 26, 1965.
26. U.S. National Archives, Record Group 59, 1960–63, Box 1511, Folder 712.00 (W)/7–
761.
27. Flora Lewis, ‘‘Why There is Anti-Americanism in Mexico,’’ New York Times Maga-
zine, July 6, 1952, 10.
28. fia, International File, Accension AR-74-18056.
29. El Universal (Mexico City), January 14, 1964; Novedades (Mexico City), January 15,
1965.
miracle on ice 271
30. Noticiero gm (newsletter of General Motors de México), April 1959.

31. Seth Fein, ‘‘New Empire into Old: Making Mexican Newsreels the Cold War Way,’’
Diplomatic History 28 (November 2004): 715n42; also see his chapter in this volume.
32. Ford de México, Apuntes para una historia de la industria automotriz (Mexico City:
privately printed, 1977).
33. Secretaría de Educación Pública (hereafter cited as sep), Box 54, exp. IV/161 (IV-
120/4205), April 1973.
34. Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man, 334.
35. Ibid., 339.
36. Quoted in Saldaña-Portillo, The Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas, 49.
37. Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, National Security File, Country File v.
11, 1/66–2/67, April 14, 1966; Thomas C. Mann, Oral History Interview I by Joe B. Frantz,
November 4, 1968.
38. Clemente Zaldívar, interview by the author, Estado de México, July 18, 1997.
39. Noti-gm (January–March 1955).
40. stpsra, exp. 10/6298, leg. 4, August 1962.
41. The News (Mexico City), February 6, 1965.
42. Kevin J. Middlebrook, ‘‘Union Democratization in the Mexican Automobile In-
dustry,’’ Latin American Research Review 24 (spring 1989): 69–93; fia, Industrial Archive,
Ford Data Book, unnumbered record from November 1965.
43. stpsra, exp. 10/6298, leg. 4, December 6, 1964.
44. Middlebrook, The Paradox of Revolution, 233.
45. stpsra, exp. 10/6298, leg. 4, September 17, 1962.
46. stpsra, exp. 10/6298, leg. 4, August 21, 1963.
47. stpsra, exp. 10/6298, leg. 4, August 22, 1963.
48. stpsra, exp. 10/6298, leg. 4, November 13, 1963.
49. stpsra, exp. 10/6298, leg. 4, January 5, 1965.
50. Siempre (Mexico City), February 1965.
51. stpsra, exp. 10/6298, leg. 4, July 18, 1964.
52. Justicia Social, August 1971.
53. stpsra, exp. 10/5441, leg. 3, February 1968.
54. Luis Unikel, La dinámica del crecimiento, 24.
55. Expresiones (Tlalnepantla, Estado de México), March 4, 1965.
57. Irma Vargas, interview by the author, Estado de México, July 20, 1997.
58. Avance (Tlalnepantla, Estado de México), July 12, 1967.
59. El Día (Mexico City), August 26, 1973.
60. sep, Box 54, exp. IV/161 (IV-120/4205), April 1973.
61. Ibid., September 1974.
62. El Día, July 17, 1975, August 11, 1975.
63. Vicente Herrera, interview by the author, Estado de México, August 25, 1997.
64. Justicia Social (Mexico City), July 1971.

66. Solidaridad (Mexico City), February 1971.
67. Líder (Mexico City), December 15, 1971.
68. Ibid.
69. El Universal (Mexico City), January 4, 1971; stpsra, exp. 10/5441, leg. 3, January
1971.
70. Jorge Basurto, En el régimen de Echeverría: Rebelión e independencia (Mexico City:
Siglo Veintiuno Editores, 1983); Ilán Bizberg, Estado y sindicalismo en México (Mexico
City: El Colegio de México, 1990). Two notable exceptions are Middlebrook, Paradox of
Revolution; and Ian Roxborough, Unions and Politics in Mexico: The Case of the Auto-
mobile Industry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984).
71. El Universal, September 18, 1973.
72. El Día, November 22, 1976; Uno Más Uno (Mexico City), December 17, 1977.
73. Quoted in Valentina Cerda de López, ‘‘Historia de una huelga: gm y la lucha de 106
días’’ (Licenciatura thesis, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1983), 16.
74. Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper,
1950).
75. Roger Bartra, Blood, Ink, and Culture: Miseries and Splendors of the Post-Mexican
Condition (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), 9.
76. Quoted in Dan LaBotz, Labor Suppression in Mexico Today (Boston: South End
Press, 1992), 158.
77. United States National Archive, Record Group 59, 1967–69, Pol. 2 Mex., Box 2337,
November 24, 1969.
78. Roger Rouse, ‘‘Thinking Through Transnationalism: Notes on the Cultural Politics
of Class Relations in the Contemporary United States,’’ Public Culture 7 (1995): 59.
STEPHEN PITTI
Chicano Cold Warriors

César Chávez, Mexican American Politics,
and California Farmworkers
Few political earthquakes rocked the twentieth-century United States like the
one that hit California’s San Joaquin Valley on September 16, 1965.∞ As ethnic
Mexican communities throughout the United States celebrated their ties to
Mexico in fiestas patrias, a thousand Mexican immigrants and Mexican Ameri-
cans gathered to vote whether or not to strike in local agriculture. Organizers of
a group that called itself the National Farm Workers Association (nfwa) dis-
tributed strike authorization cards to area residents who arrived at Our Lady of
Guadalupe church in the small town of Delano ‘‘in a holiday mood.’’ nfwa
leaders had decorated the hall with pictures of Zapata, with the California
socialist Jack London’s ‘‘definition of a scab,’’ and with the black thunderbird
and red background of the nfwa flag.≤ After a local Mexican musician played an
introductory set, the meeting began with a prayer. nfwa o≈cial Gil Padilla then
took the stage to explain that Mexicans needed to decide whether to support the
Filipino farmworkers who had voted the week before to walk out of local grape
fields. Their key complaint was low wages, but the Filipino strikers had also
made clear that they demanded the right to a labor union that would represent
them in future disputes with California growers. Local Mexican and Mexican
American workers, many of them immigrants, rose to support the strike resolu-
tion in the church hall. Some recalled participating in the bloody California
labor struggles of the 1930s, while others testified about their solidarity with
more recent labor activism in Mexico. Reminding the crowd that Mexicans
elsewhere had gathered that day to celebrate common national struggles, nfwa
president César Chávez urged Californians to remember Father Hidalgo’s sacri-
fice in bringing down the Spanish empire, and he encouraged local workers to
commit to yet ‘‘another struggle for the freedom and dignity which poverty
denies us.’’ The workers madly applauded Chávez’s call to strike, and within
several days the nfwa had gathered some twenty-seven hundred authorization
cards signed by local residents.≥
274 stephen pitti
The strike in California agriculture reverberated far beyond the fields of the
San Joaquin Valley, one of the richest agricultural regions in the world. The
conflict would continue until July 1970 and would engage thousands of workers
and millions of other residents of the United States, Canada, Europe, and the
Philippines who responded to union calls to boycott California grapes to pres-
sure intransigent growers who refused to bargain with union leaders. In time,
the strike by the nfwa and the Filipino-dominated union, a group known as the
Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (awoc), would also transform the
direction of the entire U.S. labor movement and the relationship between Mexi-
can Americans and institutions such as the Catholic Church. It would reshape
discussions in the United States about Mexican immigrants, who had been
represented since the early twentieth century as ‘‘laborers, but never citizens,’’
and who since World War II had often been considered a threat to national
security, a group with questionable political allegiance that reminded policy-
makers that the U.S. border with Latin America remained dangerously porous
and open to radical political ideas from the South. Finally, the strike would
jump-start the Chicano movement from California to Texas to the Midwest, as
young Mexican Americans who identified with the exploited, and insurgent,
farmworkers organized their own vibrant challenges to U.S. society in the era of
the Vietnam War.
In writing a history of the labor pains that birthed modern Latino politics in
the United States, I argue here for the importance of Mexican immigrant and
Mexican American political agendas in California from the late 1940s until 1970,
and argue for the central importance of anti-Communism in framing those
agendas. During that era, the grape strikers made clear, Latino residents ad-
vanced many civil rights and labor causes. U.S. military involvement in Korea
and Vietnam, and church-based religious activism, gave shape to many Latino
political struggles, and many Mexican and Mexican American participants wor-
ried that Soviet interests might influence domestic developments in the rural
United States. Fears of Communist subversives, and unsubstantiated concerns
that foreign radicals might enter the United States from Mexico disguised as
farmworkers to foment revolution in the United States, helped define the ‘‘im-
migration problem’’ in the minds of many U.S. residents. Those fears predict-
ably served to legitimize antilabor, and often racist, attempts to block Mexican
and Mexican American political advancement during the 1950s and 1960s, but
they also inspired anti-Communist attempts to grapple with rural poverty. In
California, low-wage Mexican immigrant and Mexican American workers, who
benefited little from the much-hyped U.S. postwar economic prosperity, con-
c h i c a n o c o l d wa r r i o r s 275
fronted destructive redbaiting, changes in U.S. foreign policy, the rise of the New
Right in California, and the persistence of Mexican nationalism en el extranjero
(‘‘outside of Mexico’’). But they also profited from a new interest in civil rights,
and in rural poverty, by New Left activists, and they struggled to translate anti–
Vietnam War e√orts to farmworker communities.
Postwar Americanism
Founded in 1962, the National Farm Workers Association had generated tre-
mendous enthusiasm among mexicanos and Mexican Americans in California
for nearly three years before its strike declaration in September 1965. Its orga-
nizing success depended on the long-standing negligence, even hostility, of tra-
ditional labor organizations in postwar California to Mexican immigrants, and
to the poverty of farmworkers employed by the enormous agricultural opera-
tions that defined seasonal labor relations throughout rural communities of the
state’s enormous Central Valley. Most Mexican American political organizations
throughout the United States had steered clear of labor issues during the 1950s
to focus on voter registration, urban renewal, naturalization, and educational
advancement—projects that enabled cooperation with liberal Democrats, which
avoided suggesting any political debt to Latin America, and which stressed
Mexican Americans’ mainstream aspirations as U.S. citizens. In Texas, the most
active Mexican American organization from the late 1940s into the mid-1960s
had been the American gi Forum, in which the medical doctor Héctor Gar-
cía and other military veterans stressed that the national allegiance and sacri-
fice they had shown in battle, and their commitment to ‘‘freedom’’ over totali-
tarianism, had earned their community the right to equal education in postwar
Texas. Prominent contemporary organizations in California such as the Mexi-
can American Political Association (mapa), the Community Service Organiza-
tion (cso), and Mexican American Democratic Clubs had emerged within the
anti-Communist pressures of the Taft-Hartley Act, the Internal Security Act,
and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Those organizations drew
membership from Mexican American veterans of World War II and Korea and
adopted political positions meant to emphasize their allegiance to the U.S. Con-
stitution and their loyalty to Washington. By the early 1960s, as Chávez and
other rural Mexican Americans attempted to organize farmworkers, Latino vet-
erans in urban California were making their way into the American gi Forum,
which had arrived in California with the thousands of Tejanos who entered the
state seeking West Coast jobs during the 1950s and 1960s. Forumeers typically
276 stephen pitti
contended that ‘‘all Americans should know of the great contributions made by
the Mexican-American soldiers. . . . In this way they can better understand to-
day’s brother American and lessen the few remaining stigmas harbored against
the Spanish-speaking people to help promote a better democracy for all who live
in America.’’∂
Organizations such as cso and mapa represented themselves during the 1950s
as politically moderate, devoted to the U.S. Constitution, devoid of Mexican in-
fluences, and ‘‘adamantly opposed . . . [to] any form of totalitarianism whether it
be Communism or Fascism.’’∑ At the founding convention of the national cso in
1954, Edward Roybal noted that ‘‘in the list of twenty-one men who embraced
communism after the Korean conflict there wasn’t a single Spanish name on that
list. This is a great tribute to us, the Spanish-speaking people, a great tribute to
our American heritage.’’ But Roybal and other Mexican Americans also recog-
nized that charges of Communist a≈liation could be used to repress Mexican
Americans’ political involvement. Invoking Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s ‘‘Four
Freedoms’’ speech of the previous decade, Roybal urged Mexican Americans to
demand their own ‘‘freedom from fear: From the fear that after we get our
organization going, that after our children can go into academic life that they
will not be dragged down before an unfair un-American committee [huac], and
freedom from the fear that after they become teachers that they can teach
unesco in the schools of our country.’’∏ Few Latinos in any state adopted a more
confrontational political agenda than this one during the mid- to late 1950s,
as political groups confronted a national security context that raised suspi-
cions about ‘‘aliens’’ and threatened suspected Communists with deportation or
imprisonment.π
Before the organization of the nfwa in 1962, only the prominent Mexican
immigrant Ernesto Galarza had struggled consistently since World War II to
unionize local Mexican and Mexican American farmworkers in California.∫ An
ardent anti-Communist who was suspicious of ‘‘reds’’ and devoted to the Amer-
ican Federation of Labor, Galarza urged liberals to see rural California as an
important site for addressing Communist infiltration of the United States. He
noted that tens of thousands of Mexican immigrants had arrived since World
War II as undocumented ‘‘wetback’’ workers in U.S. agriculture, and he specu-
lated that foreign radicals might disguise themselves as members of that migrant
workforce in order to cross into the United States. In May 1947, Representative
John McDowell, a member of the House Un-American Activities Committee,
announced that Communists were already arriving en masse from Mexico and
that ‘‘thousands of Army planes that could be used for the purpose [of patrolling
the border] are sitting around idle.’’ Thanks in part to Galarza’s lobbying, the Los
Angeles Daily News reported several years later about the ‘‘powerless’’ U.S. Bor-
der Patrol o≈cials who recognized that ‘‘alien Communist agents are filtering
across the Mexican border. . . . in the guise of farm workers recruited from
Mexico to aid in harvesting crops in ripening fields and groves from California
to Texas.’’Ω
The disinterest of California State Federation of Labor o≈cials in agricultural
workers, and in Mexicans, ensured that Galarza would have little success orga-
nizing farmworkers, but a new labor organization known as the Agricultural
Workers Organizing Committee (awoc) began to achieve considerable success
after 1959 and would leave its mark on the grape strike that broke in 1965.
Centered in the Northern California city of Stockton, awoc drew heavily from
the e√orts of the liberal Catholic priests Thomas McCullough and Donald
McDonnell, who worked closely with both national labor o≈cials and local
Filipino organizers. Subsidized by the American Federation of Labor–Con-
gress of Industrial Organizations (afl-cio), and promoted by afl-cio president
George Meany, this rural union’s drive owed its existence to the federation’s
involvement with labor movements abroad. According to Franz Daniel, assis-
tant director of organization for the afl-cio, in the immediate aftermath of the
Cuban Revolution, afl-cio president George Meany ‘‘just got tired of going to
international conventions and being needled by labor people from smaller,
poorer foreign countries, who could point out that at least they had organized
farm workers, while the American labor movement hadn’t. He set up awoc to
get them o√ his back.’’∞≠ Many rural Californians, particularly Filipino immi-
grants, threw their support behind the new organization, and student activists at
UC Berkeley predicted that awoc would destroy the ‘‘caste system’’ and ‘‘feudal-
ism’’ that defined regional agriculture.∞∞ The union’s opponents in turn ques-
tioned whether awoc in fact took its cues from foreign governments. In early
1961, Catholic growers joined prominent church o≈cials in California in lam-
basting the involvement of Fathers McCullough and McDonnell in a labor
dispute near the border city of Calexico, California. The priests’ e√orts to help
unionize Mexican immigrant laborers, detractors emphasized, amounted to
‘‘communism-in-fact’’ if not ‘‘communism-in-theory.’’∞≤
When California’s most prominent Mexican American community organizer
of the 1950s, César Estrada Chávez, decided to leave the Community Service
Organization and create the National Farm Workers Association in 1962, he
brought to rural labor organizing his own commitment to anti-Communism
and entered a social movement field in which questions about patriotism and
278 stephen pitti
national belonging had proved central to unions since before World War II. As
the leading member of the cso during the 1950s, Chávez had opposed the e√orts
of Mexican and Mexican American ‘‘radicals’’ whom he believed worked for the
Soviet Union rather than the state’s working-class residents. In 1956 he had
helped oust a cso member active in the Asociación Nacional Mexicana Ameri-
cana (anma), a political organization sponsored by the Mine-Mill Union that
had been on the attorney general’s ‘‘subversive list’’ since 1952, who had sent
other cso members copies of the Communist Daily Worker in the mail. In Los
Angeles, Chávez had opposed e√orts by perceived ‘‘Stalinists and Trotskyites’’—
apparently Mexican American members of local cio organizations—to take over
the cso. He also joined other moderate Mexican Americans who were reluctant
to identify with e√orts by cio unionists to abolish the McCarran-Walter Act, the
much-hated 1952 law under which many left-leaning activists were persecuted.∞≥
With his liberal, anti-Communist credentials intact, Chávez relied on his vast
experience as a community organizer and his many personal contacts through-
out rural California to establish a strong nfwa network after 1962. He steered
clear of labor unions, defining his e√orts in opposition to an awoc dominated,
he believed, by urban outsiders who ‘‘had never seen a potato grow.’’ Chávez
trusted his own experience as a farmworker and his contacts with Latino Catho-
lics who had been active members of churches throughout rural California.
Organizing among co-religionists and Mexicans, urging forward Catholics de-
voted to achieving God’s justice on earth, he worked to establish a workers’
credit union and to help farmworkers resolve immigration and welfare prob-
lems. Leaders of the association contrasted their own identities as rural Mexican
Americans with those of the afl-cio labor leaders who were directing awoc’s
e√orts. Urging opposition to the rival union among California farmworkers,
Chávez gained hundreds of members at awoc’s expense, and he explained to a
friend in 1962 that his strategies mirrored the international scene: ‘‘The real joke
is that I have [awoc] where Russia has us. I don’t want neither Peace nor War.
And that is a hell of a fix [for awoc] to be in.’’∞∂ In this context, the nfwa
summoned potential members with bread-and-butter demands that carried no
taint of ideological radicalism:
You, who complains about the conditions at work.

You, who is unhappy with your wages.
You, who wants a better tomorrow for your children.
You, who is worried that your wages won’t be enough to support your
family.
You, who sees that your life is di≈cult and your work is draining.
You, who demands justice for the worker.
You, who asks to be treated with respect and dignity.
You, who wants to do something to improve your living conditions.
It’s for you!
Join your Association.∞∑
While Chávez found in 1962 that California agricultural ‘‘workers are not so
hot for strikes and unions as they have come to know them,’’ he followed awoc’s
lead in relying heavily on church supporters.∞∏ The decline of left-wing labor
unionism in California after World War II had made churches Mexicans’ pri-
mary ‘‘point of contact with the whites’’ in many places. Chávez knew, more-
over, that despite occasional redbaiting of liberal priests, the clergy’s promotion
of anti-Communist purges of left-wing unions in California during the late
1940s had sealed the Church’s reputation for antiradicalism.∞π A handbill dis-
tributed to churchgoers in the San Francisco Bay area, for instance, had urged
Catholics to ‘‘speak with their priest and learn from him the dangers of voting
for the union controlled by the Communist Party and Russia.’’∞∫ Church support
of Chávez’s e√orts during the early 1960s enabled the nfwa to stress its own anti-
Communist credentials. Farmworker organizers rallied members behind the
papal encyclicals that urged workers to enter into associations to work in com-
mon. They made clear that their group was an ‘‘association’’ rather than a
traditional union, and they expressed hope that Catholic growers in particular
would voluntarily treat agricultural employees with greater respect and dignity.
Members of the nfwa a≈rmed that ‘‘as Christians and workers we wish to
realize the ideals of the Church in our lives and in the world in which we live,’’
and they trumpeted statements by Pope Paul VI about the value of agricultural
labor, and about ‘‘the right to demand working conditions in which physical
health is not endangered, morals are safeguarded and young people’s normal
development is not impaired.’’∞Ω
Summoned by these theological calls on behalf of rural Californians, hun-
dreds of clergy—including the Christian Brother Leroy Chatfield, who became
Chávez’s right-hand man—worked full-time for the union throughout the 1960s
and 1970s, encouraged to do so by the teachings of the Second Vatican Council,
by the spirit of liberation theology, and by Chávez’s own interest in ecumenism.
Protestants provided even more critical assistance in the early days of the strike.
Characteristic was Wayne C. Hartmire Jr., director of the California Migrant
Ministry, a group that had struggled to assist farmworkers during their cycles of
280 stephen pitti
seasonal unemployment. Hartmire argued that ‘‘if the Church is to give flesh to
its faith, then Christians must put the institution and their own bodies on the
line in support of the workers. It is everyman’s right to expect that the Church in
California and elsewhere will be willing to take risks for the sake of a servant
ministry to men in need—a ministry that insists on social justice—even at cost.’’
Over the course of the late 1960s, such ideas shaped the emergence of new
ecumenical coalitions throughout the country, which worked with the farm-
workers to achieve social change. From Seattle to Montreal, a diverse array of
religious congregations supported ufw boycotts, and the assistance of Catholics,
Protestants, and Jews became critical in places like Washington, where leaders
wrote ‘‘letters to Jewish caterers asking them to honor the boycott in their
purchases.’’≤≠
‘‘Huelga, Baby’’
While many outside supporters of the farmworker movement took their cues
from religious principles, the nfwa mobilized strikers after 1962 by combining
the moral urgency of theological teachings with a Mexican cultural nationalism
adapted to rural California. When Chávez urged fellow Mexicans to follow the
lead of Hidalgo, Zapata, and other national luminaries to inaugurate a second
Mexican Revolution in the state’s fields and orchards, the nfwa charted a new
course in Mexican American politics, as other postwar organizations had dis-
tanced themselves from Mexican political traditions since the 1940s.≤∞ Farm-
worker activists at once claimed to take many of their cues from past Mexican
struggles, and they demanded attention as aggrieved members of the U.S. na-
tional community. News of the African American civil rights movement in the
U.S. South shaped those calls. ‘‘How have the Negroes won their battles?’’ a
Mexican American farmworker asked other rural Californians in the summer of
1965. ‘‘They have united before the dogs, the fire hoses, police brutality and
electric cattle prods. . . . We the farm workers have the same weapons—our
bodies and our courage.’’≤≤ Just months before Mexican Americans took their
first strike vote, the African American civil rights movement had changed course
after riots in Watts highlighted the growing anger of black youth toward a
rhetoric of racial integration, and a new discourse of Black Power rejected the
equal participation of whites in the movement. By September 1965, the nfwa
had begun to draw strength from a parallel interest in ‘‘Brown Power’’ among
Mexican Americans, and from African American solidarity with Latino farm-
workers in California. New interest in battling race- and class-based discrimina-
tion prompted the Industrial Union Department of the afl-cio to declare in

1966 that ‘‘Negro militancy has been an unescapable lesson of life to the Mexican
people.’’ By early 1967, African American supporters of la causa in Delano were
seen marching with signs reading ‘‘Black Power says Huelga, Baby.’’≤≥
The newspaper established by Chávez and other nfwa members in 1964
echoed African American militancy even as it combined religious calls for re-
form with spirited demands for a new Mexican Revolution among the state’s
rural workers. Chávez named the organization’s Spanish-language monthly
newsletter El Malcriado, ‘‘the brat’’ or ‘‘the troublemaker,’’ in deference to simi-
lar publications popular among Mexican immigrants after 1910 and into the
1920s.≤∂ Taking his cues from the working-class press in Mexico, he included
cartoons about social inequality in California agriculture meant to communi-
cate with nonliterate residents of the state, and he even wrote the Mexico City–
based artist Rius to inquire if he might ‘‘supply . . . any cartoons pertaining to
farm labor’’; Rius encouraged the fwa to use his cartoons from the Mexican
press but had little interest in making special contributions to the California
e√ort. The farmworker and illustrator Alex Zermeño, who designed El Mal-
criado’s first cover, instead created the recurring characters Don Sotaco, Patron-
cito, El Coyote, and other figures to satirize powerful growers and labor contrac-
tors. To celebrate the work of the nfwa, Zermeño drew attention to the dirty
backroom deals between California’s agribusiness and government elites that
had kept ethnic Mexicans and other farmworkers in poverty for decades. His
cartoons, like many of the articles in El Malcriado, urged worker militancy in the
name of ethnic and national pride, and with the aim of achieving full economic
citizenship for rural Californians in the years after 1965.≤∑
Residents of the Central Valley responded. Community institutions and busi-
nesses that served Latino farmworkers, including funeral homes and ‘‘little stores
all up and down the valley,’’ sponsored and distributed the publication, provid-
ing the association another ‘‘foot in the door in all these little towns.’’≤∏ In early
1965, nfwa readers of El Malcriado who worked at a rose nursery in the town of
McFarland left their jobs for four days to demand higher wages. When the Tulare
County Housing Authority raised its rents from $18 to $25 a month shortly
thereafter, the nfwa organized a strike against those monthly payments and a
march that forced the local courts to overrule the rent increase. Buoyed by a
sense that they were beginning a new civil rights movement in California, sixty-
seven Delano grape workers then struck the J. D. Martin ranch in August 1965 to
demand a wage increase and union recognition. In the meantime, Filipino
members of awoc were expressing their own anger that wages and working
282 stephen pitti
conditions had not improved despite the abolition of the Bracero Program.
Noting that wages for local workers were lower than those paid to imported
Mexican workers in the year before, a thousand Filipinos walked out of Delano
grape orchards on September 8, 1965, seeking higher rates of pay and union
recognition. After the nfwa voted to join them, Chávez’s greatest fear was that
involvement in a large strike might transform his young organization into yet
another bureaucratic and self-interested Cold War labor union.≤π
The religious and nationalist nature of ethnic Mexican rural militancy be-
came clear six months into the grape strike, in March 1966, when the nfwa orga-
nized a three-hundred-mile march from Delano to the state capital in Sacra-
mento to publicize union demands and galvanize support among rural workers.
In organizing and describing their peregrinación, or ‘‘pilgrimage,’’ Chávez and
other unionists emphasized that theirs was a Mexican campaign based heavily
on Catholic principles of social justice. Appalled at such a nontraditional ap-
proach to unionization, awoc director Al Green refused to support the march
and told Chávez that ‘‘this is a trade union dispute, not a civil rights movement
or a religious crusade.’’ But as nfwa members set o√ for Sacramento behind the
banner of Our Lady of Guadalupe, patroness of the Americas, marchers per-
formed a class politics of mexicanidad that a≈rmed their place within Mexico’s
revolutionary tradition. Men like strike captain Robert Bustos proudly displayed
large Emiliano Zapata buttons pinned to their shirts and announced that ‘‘if we
had him, we’d already have won [the strike].’’ César Chávez a≈rmed that it
mattered little whether ethnic Mexican strikers had been born in Mexico or the
United States, since ‘‘the Mexican American is also a child of the Revolution.’’
Participants danced at night to a mariachi featuring songs of the Mexican Revo-
lution, such as ‘‘La Adelita.’’ El Malcriado urged strikers to remember ‘‘Father
Hidalgo and Emiliano Zapata, and the other great heroes of the past who
dedicated their lives to freeing their people from tyranny and injustice.’’ It cele-
brated the Mexican workers of California ‘‘fighting for justice just as their fa-
thers fought for justice in Mexico between 1910 and 1920.’’≤∫
As unionists marched to Sacramento, where they participated in the largest
Mexican American political rally that California had seen since the 1930s, they
kicked dust in the eyes of Mexican American activists who had avoided such
direct political protests, downplayed any personal connection to Mexico, and
a≈rmed the basic soundness of the U.S. political system since World War II. The
guiding intellectual statement of the march became the ‘‘Plan de Delano,’’ a
twelve-hundred-word call to arms written in Spanish and English by the strike
supporter Luis Valdez, whose approach to the civil rights movement had been
shaped by his 1964 visit to Cuba with other New Left activists in the Fair Play for
Cuba Committee.≤Ω Read aloud each night to marchers and their supporters at
evening rallies throughout rural California, the Plan de Delano brought forth
the urgency of contemporary revolution and evoked past calls to arms in Mex-
ico: the Plan de Ayala, the Plan de Iguala, the Plan de San Diego, the Plan de San
Luís Potosí, and more. This plan a≈rmed:
We are conscious of the historical significance of our Pilgrimage. It is clearly evident

that our path travels through a valley well known to all Mexican farm workers. We
know all of these towns of Delano, Madera, Fresno, Modesto, Stockton, and Sacra-
mento, because along this very same road, in this very same valley, the Mexican race
has sacrificed itself for the last hundred years. Our sweat and our blood have fallen
on this land to make other men rich. The pilgrimage is a witness to the su√ering we
have seen for generations. . . . Across the San Joaquin Valley, across California, across
the entire Southwest of the United States, wherever there are Mexican people, wher-
ever there are farm workers, our movement is spreading like flames across a dry
plain. Our pilgrimage is the match that will light our cause for all farm workers to
see what is happening here, so that they may do as we have done. The time has come
for the liberation of the poor farm worker.≥≠
When Valdez’s text was read aloud to strike supporters in places like Stockton,
local journalists reported that ‘‘the language was Spanish but the message was
clear—the nfwa has the support of San Joaquin County’s Mexican American
community.’’≥∞
In providing a new framework for thinking about ethnic Mexican labor and
civil rights, Valdez established a revolutionary language that defined Mexican
American youth activism and cultural production over the following decade.
The Chicano politics that emerged after 1966 often interpreted Mexican and
Mexican American history by way of Cuba, with poster art and murals celebrat-
ing the United Farm Workers in ways that sanctified Zapata and other Mexican
heroes and visually evoked Che and Castro without linking the farmworkers
directly to those Communist icons.≥≤ Many Mexican Americans had expressed
hostility toward the leader of the Cuban Revolution since the early 1960s. One
Mexican American had bemoaned the course of Cuban politics by 1962, noting
that ‘‘the barefaced and bloody mockery which the Cuban dictator has pulled
and is pulling by way of treacherous promises about freedom and justice, with
which he fools not only the Cuban people, but also the rest of the world, is the
greatest farce of our times.’’≥≥ The first Chicano movement mural completed in
the United States, painted by Antonio Bernal on Luis Valdez’s Teatro Campesino
284 stephen pitti
o≈ce in Del Rey, California, included the revolutionaries César Chávez, Mal-
colm X, Pancho Villa, and Emiliano Zapata, but no contemporary Latin Ameri-
cans.≥∂ Luís Valdez and other leaders of the farmworker movement expressed
great interest in supporting new cultural workers who might help the union
define la causa and energize farmworkers and their supporters. Eager to ‘‘devise
a way of getting the printed word, the art, out to the people,’’ Chávez convinced
priests in the Franciscan Order to donate a million-dollar printing press to the
union in 1970, anticipating that ‘‘we can do a lot of work by just giving workers
the message through art. . . . Imagine what they’ll do with a poster! They [the
workers] will take it and tack it at home and they’ll see it there for the next ten
years!’’ As Chávez had hoped, artists who supported the movement created
dozens of images in the union’s print shop, including popular images of Zapata
alongside the declaration ‘‘Viva la Revolución.’’≥∑
The turn to cultural nationalism, and the representation of the farmworker
movement as a Mexican revolutionary cause, eventually alienated many Filipino
workers and some Anglo American supporters, but it did draw considerable new
support from other segments of the New Left and mobilized the widest coalition
of Mexican American support seen in the twentieth century. La causa soon
changed the political assumptions, and the political styles, of every major Mexi-
can American organization in the United States. Groups in California such as the
cso and the American gi Forum ceased declaring that Latino problems could be
resolved within traditional political channels, or simply by urging workers to
place greater value on achieving a high school or college education.≥∏ In 1964 the
chairman of the American gi Forum had stated: ‘‘We seek that which all people
who have a full belly and relative economic security seek. . . . We want to sit at the
conference table with our peers, plan and organize . . . for the benefit of the entire
community and especially in the areas a√ecting the Mexican-American commu-
nity.’’ With the farmworker movement, and the Plan de Delano, Mexican Ameri-
cans reconsidered such political goals and forums. The American gi Forum
resolved in 1966 to ‘‘direct all divisions to support the grape strikers . . . in all
actions direct or indirect in their e√orts to secure their social economic uplift-
ing.’’ Dan Campos, chairman of the California Forum, urged members ‘‘to
participate in the March; provide food or transportation to Marchers; or con-
tribute any source of financial help.’’≥π
Solidarity with farmworkers became a matter of great symbolic and actual
concern for thousands of ethnic Mexicans in the state after 1965. The grape strike
‘‘achieved a victory for Mexican-American unity,’’ urban residents claimed, and
many indicated that it had awakened them to problems of discrimination and

poverty that they had previously ignored. ‘‘The sombrero will never again rest
lightly on the eyes of California,’’ it seemed, and many came to view their racial
and national a≈liations di√erently thanks to the nfwa’s march to Sacramento.
Supporters in the Mexican American Political Association (mapa), an organiza-
tion tied to the Democratic Party, now found in rural California a parallel to the
Deep South’s racism against African Americans. Members of mapa thus called a
photograph of a Delano grape grower with his dog a ‘‘symbol of oppression . . .
which has come to symbolize Southern ‘justice,’ [that] is very much in evidence
in the Delano strike area.’’ Rural California was Mississippi West, many believed,
and Chicanos in the barrios would soon follow African American militants in
revolting against the racial discrimination of U.S. institutions. mapa emphasized
that ‘‘the entire Spanish-speaking community of the state of California’’ would
win their struggles if they emulated ‘‘the negroes in Harlem.’’≥∫
Activists associated with the New Left also rushed to support the nfwa during
the summer and fall of 1965. Many young radicals placed faith in the nfwa
because it seemed so di√erent from the stodgy afl-cio labor unions that sup-
ported the Johnson administration and the Vietnam War. While awoc ‘‘fat cats’’
smoked cigars at union conventions in Miami Beach, the nfwa seemed com-
mitted to shaping a mass democratic movement and to ensuring that farm-
workers could lead their own organization. The Communist journalist Sam
Kushner of the People’s World wrote admiringly about the grape strike, and a
member of Students for a Democratic Society (sds) from Berkeley saw in the
struggle the beginning of a Latin American revolution in California’s fields:
nfwa’s willingness to experiment is a reflection of César Chávez’s attitudes toward

conducting a strike and toward organizing. He compares the conduct of the strike to
guerrilla warfare (appropriate enough since guerrilla, as he points out, is the diminu-
tive of the Spanish word for war—guerra—and came into use to describe Zapata’s lit-
tle wars).≥Ω
Other young activists involved in leftist youth organizations at UC Berkeley,

San Francisco State, and other colleges and universities in the state met to
discuss whether ‘‘César Chávez [is] really a radical . . . or only a good liberal,’’
and whether students ‘‘might become involved in some major fashion that
would have a radicalizing influence on . . . the strike.’’ Chávez and other mem-
bers of the nfwa cultivated the support of those interested in civil rights by
speaking at Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (sncc) conferences,
286 stephen pitti
by receiving hundreds of sympathetic supporters who visited Delano to o√er

support, and by creating summer internship opportunities for college and high
school students.∂≠
Chávez believed that support was critical because the political and economic
strength of local growers made traditional strikes ine√ective in California agri-
culture. To broaden support for strikers outside the Delano area, and to avoid
having the huelga squashed by alliances of growers and local politicians, the
organization called for a national boycott of California grapes. That approach
became the key to the union’s eventual success in the Delano strike, and pursu-
ing that course resulted from the union’s reading of Cold War legislation in-
tended to curb radicalism in U.S. unions. The anti-Communist Taft-Hartley Act
of 1947, which had established non-Communist loyalty oaths for most union
members in the United States, had also outlawed most boycotts for unions
covered by the Wagner Act, the New Deal legislation that protected collective
bargaining rights. Because agricultural unions had been exempted from the
Wagner Act since the 1930s, leaders of the nfwa learned, the lack of protections
for farmworkers had paradoxically given them one significant point of leverage:
the chance to halt consumption of California grapes in the nation’s super-
markets without fear of penalty. ‘‘We know that the whole question is a question
of power,’’ Chávez later told reporters in explaining the importance of the grape
boycott. ‘‘We cannot match our puny power with the tremendous power that
can be generated by the growers and the distributors and all the people who are
together against us . . . and so we need to have the right to boycott.’’∂∞
Thousands of volunteers helped organize grape boycotts throughout the
United States in response to farmworker demands, and participation in ‘‘No
Grapes’’ campaigns pitted many Latinos and their supporters against political
conservatives who supported the growers. By 1970 the organization would claim
boycott committees in thirty-one North American cities and volunteer organi-
zations in over two hundred others, and the boycott would become the primary
focus of union attention. The organization’s first target was the Schenley Corpo-
ration, the region’s second largest grape grower and producer of popular wines
and liquors such as Cutty Sark, Ancient Age, I. W. Harper, Old Charter, Roma,
and Cresta Blanca. Holiday sales dropped precipitously because of union pres-
sure, and Schenley recognized the nfwa as the sole bargaining agent in April
1966. Chávez’s attention turned to table grapes, but because consumers could
not easily tell which grower produced fruit sold in open supermarket con-
tainers, the union would later call a general boycott of that product. Richard
Nixon branded that campaign illegal under Taft-Hartley, and California gover-
nor Ronald Reagan, honorary chairman of the ‘‘counterboycott’’ committee,

‘‘announced that he was eating more grapes than ever, attributed his good health
and looks to them, and lost no opportunity in his travels about the country to
denounce the boycott as illegal, immoral, and fattening.’’ With conservative
Republicans leading the campaign in favor of California growers, the campaign
on behalf of the farmworkers ‘‘made bedfellows of New York socialites and Black
Panthers,’’ and other members of U.S. society who supported grape pickers as
part of a broader commitment to oppose the rise of the New Right.∂≤
Vietnam and 1968
The involvement of activists eager to bring down Nixon, Reagan, and similar
Republican enemies nonetheless created new tensions within the nfwa, as non-
farmworker supporters and other outsiders pressed issues and pursued strate-
gies that troubled many rural Californians. Urban activists and boycott volun-
teers frequently linked their support of the nfwa to a broader critique of
the Cold War United States and excoriated the Johnson administration for its
handling of the Vietnam War. While leaders of the nfwa expressed private
opposition to U.S. involvement in Indochina by early 1966—Chávez would later
declare that an antiwar stance was ‘‘the only one that a serious Roman Catholic
could take’’—they aimed in the early years of the grape strike to steer clear
of open critiques of U.S. foreign policy. Antiwar protesters had disrupted the
afl-cio’s annual convention in December 1965, a few months after the Delano
strike began, leading seventy-one-year-old afl-cio president George Meany to
holler, ‘‘Throw the kookies out!’’ Because Vietnam remained a source of deep
division within labor and religious circles, ufwoc (United Farm Workers Orga-
nizing Committee) leaders avoided association with the antiwar cause.∂≥ Throw-
ing their lot in with the afl-cio and the Catholic bishops, and with Chá-
vez, most prominent Mexican American political organizations in the United
States remained vocal supporters of Johnson and of the Vietnam War until well
after 1968.∂∂
The farmworker union’s tacit acceptance of the war in Vietnam also devel-
oped from the sensibilities of its ethnic Mexican members. Chávez recognized
that most rural Mexican Americans took U.S. patriotism and anti-Communism
seriously, and that they looked with suspicion on demonstrations by urban
youth against the war. A 1965 Thanksgiving Day parade in East Los Angeles,
organized by the East Los Angeles Veterans Council ‘‘in support of America’s
fighting men in Vietnam,’’ made such support clear, as attendees heroized Ser-
288 stephen pitti
geant Isaac Camacho, a fellow Mexican American and ‘‘the first American to
escape from the Viet Cong.’’∂∑ César Chávez later recounted:
When we started the [Delano] strike, many volunteers were in and out. Some of the
volunteers were for ending the Vietnam War above all else, and that shocked the
workers because they thought that was unpatriotic. Once, when there was a group
more interested in ending the war, I let them have a session with the farm workers.
After a real battle, the volunteers came to me astounded. ‘‘But they support the war!’’
they said. ‘‘How come?’’ I told them farm workers were ordinary people, not saints.∂∏
Sta√ed by ‘‘ordinary people,’’ the boycott remained a fragile coalition. Thus,

in the summer of 1966, when the city of San Francisco held a Huelga Day to
support the recently renamed ufwoc (a merger of the nfwa and awoc, with
Chávez as elected president), the farmworker union urged its Bay Area support-
ers in advance ‘‘to make their signs about the farm worker struggle, not about
the war in Vietnam or calls to ‘ban the bomb.’ ’’∂π
Chávez and others knew that a≈liation with student and civil rights groups
interested in racial justice, in protesting U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and in
Marxism threatened also to paint the nfwa red in the eyes of government
o≈cials and many consumers. As members of the W. E. B. Du Bois Clubs (sup-
ported by the Communist Party of the United States) made their way to Delano
to support Mexican and Filipino farmworkers, local fbi informers (many of
them likely growers or farm managers) declared that nfwa organizing amounted
to ‘‘race hatred,’’ a Latin Americanization of the Black Power radicalism that had
captured national attention since the summer of 1965. Many other observers
claimed that outside agitators were controlling Chávez and the farmworkers, and
a state Un-American Activities Committee reported with alarm that the Soviets
had taken note of the labor activities in the San Joaquin Valley. As committee
members noted, Pravda’s reporting on the 1966 national convention of the
Communist Party of the United States had included mention of the organiza-
tion’s ‘‘work among the agricultural laborers and national minorities—one mil-
lion Puerto Ricans and five million Americans of Mexican descent’’—and the fact
that after a Mexican delegate pleaded for financial help, ‘‘the convention dele-
gates immediately—right there in the hall—began mustering the means of aiding
the strikers.’’∂∫ Convinced that Soviets or Cubans or Black Panthers were behind
the Delano revolt, members of the John Birch Society issued the fiercest anti-
Communist attacks on the organization after September 1965. In 1966 Gary
Allen’s ‘‘The Grapes: Communist Wrath in Delano’’ addressed fears that the
worker struggle was part of a much larger Communist plot to take over the
United States: ‘‘From Selma, to Watts, to Berkeley, to Delano . . . is a straight line
on your road to revolution.’’ Allen called union leaders ‘‘revolutionary generals
without armies.’’ Chávez was beloved by Communists; Luis Valdez had emerged
as ‘‘the Che Guevara of Chávez’s revolution’’; and those actually in charge in-
cluded Bettina Aptheker, ‘‘the flower of the Berkeley rebellion,’’ and the openly
gay poet Allen Ginsberg.∂Ω
Even as they depended on the help of young activists associated with the
New Left, Chávez and other agricultural organizers accordingly responded that
theirs remained a moderate enterprise aimed at achieving ‘‘first-class citizen-
ship’’ rather than social revolution. ‘‘It’s a good old-fashioned American union.
We want bread. We want to be paid for our jobs,’’ Chávez declared. He denied
any relationship to Communism or socialism. ‘‘To the best of my knowledge
none of my associates have a≈liation with Communist or Communist-front
groups,’’ he announced during the first weeks of the strike. ‘‘I don’t ask a man his
politics or his religion when he comes to work with us. We do warn everyone
who comes to help us that we do not want them coming with political hangups
or hidden agendas.’’ The fbi, which had begun an inquiry into Communist
activity in rural California in June 1965, concluded in early 1966 that while ‘‘it is
apparent that there is considerable communist interest in this farm workers
strike . . . it appears that, at present, the actual communist influence is only
marginal at best.’’∑≠ But such conclusions proved unsatisfactory to union oppo-
nents who warned the fbi that the newspaper El Malcriado was revolutionary ‘‘a
la Castro’’; to spokespersons paid by California growers who called Chávez a
‘‘little nitwit revolutionist’’ and declared that ‘‘every Communist, every misfit
and every traitor flocks to the revolution’’; and to residents of Delano who
viewed the strike as an e√ort ‘‘to sow distrust, racial and religious discord and
economic disaster.’’ Some farmworkers also considered nfwa organizers radicals
or worse. One declared that ‘‘I will not join your Communist outlaw bunch of
Puerto Ricans, Russians, Australians, Mexicans that has tried to take over we all
by force & violence of destruction. We DiGiorgio workers are well satisfied with
our wages. None of us have gone out on strike it was you foreigners & agitators
with your ungodliness. We will defeat you in every way we can.’’∑∞ In response to
such charges, El Malcriado o√ered to pay a large reward for information lead-
ing to the conviction on libel charges of anyone who referred to union members
as ‘‘communists’’ or ‘‘communist-led.’’ Such bluster was meant to a≈rm the
union’s anti-Communist credentials, but in the end the widespread support of
290 stephen pitti
religious o≈cials made it di≈cult for ufwoc opponents to convince other

observers that the ufwoc was an un-American enterprise. ‘‘It was like calling the
Pope a Red,’’ one grower admitted.∑≤
In part because they claimed the support of antiwar Catholics, Chávez and the
union made their critiques of U.S. involvement in Vietnam public by the sum-
mer of 1966, nearly a full year before Martin Luther King’s April 1967 sermon at
Riverside Church in New York urged civil rights activists to confront the war
head on. In a 1966 El Malcriado cartoon and editorial entitled ‘‘Your Son and the
Draft,’’ the union articulated an antiwar position it hoped would make sense to
local farmworkers. The single-frame cartoon featured a grower’s son ready to
leave Delano with his new car, a tennis racquet, and a suitcase labeled Stanford
University; a farmworker standing nearby embraced his son, who was about to
leave on an army bus bound for Vietnam. ‘‘We hope they change the draft laws
and make them fair,’’ the newsletter’s editors wrote. ‘‘Actually, we hope that they
end the draft completely. War is always bad for farm workers. This present awful
mess in Viet Nam is especially bad. We are not even o≈cially ‘at war.’ The draft
should not be necessary in peace time. And we wouldn’t have the war or the
draft if we didn’t go meddling in other peoples’ business.’’∑≥
Despite this and other antiwar statements, Chávez and the ufwoc issued only
muted critiques of the U.S. role in Vietnam until the last months of 1968, as
unionists continued to worry that more active opposition to Johnson’s foreign
policies would distract from the business of striking and picketing, or that
strong antiwar statements would alienate organizations such as the American gi
Forum and mapa, and political leaders such as congressmen Henry B. García
(D-Tex.) and Edward Roybal (D-Calif.), from la causa. In early 1967, César
Chávez began to support the Freedom Budget movement, an e√ort by union-
ists, civil rights leaders, and antipoverty activists, including luminaries such
as Michael Harrington, Martin Luther King, and Reinhold Niebuhr, that chal-
lenged U.S. o≈cials to pull out of Vietnam and devote new resources to elimi-
nating domestic poverty by 1975. Chávez was one of only three prominent
Mexican Americans to support the ‘‘domestic parallel to the Marshall plan
aid given to Europe after World War II,’’ and he wrote the introduction to a
Spanish-language pamphlet explaining the proposal. But in most ways, the
union shunned the antiwar limelight.∑∂
The escalation of anti-Vietnam protests and the new militant Chicano youth
activism that accompanied those events set a new stage for farmworker political
organizing in 1968. As Mexican American and other activists made strident
public demands for an end to Vietnam, some declared their a≈liation with the
North Vietnamese as Third World people, and tens of thousands participated in

mass marches to protest both the high casualty rates of minority soldiers abroad
and the Cold War logic that supported U.S. imperialism in Southeast Asia and
Latin America. Many such protests linked the cause of California farmworkers
with e√orts to cease military aggression abroad. One Chicano writer summoned
his carnales, or ‘‘blood brothers,’’ to recognize that ‘‘the government that seeks to
induct you into military service is the same one that allows and promotes
discrimination in employment, low wages for farm workers, one-sided and
prejudicial educational programs, urban redevelopment, and a thousand other
oppressive conditions.’’
And then, they ask you to go defend and perpetuate this system with your life. Qué
creen que somos? [What do they think we are?] burros? Those Gabachos even
ask you to impose this system of oppression upon the people of Vietnam, Santo
Domingo, Bolivia, and many other countries, as well as upon our own people. Her-
manos, the peoples of those countries are not our enemies. Our enemies are the
racists and greedy gabachos [white people], and their Tacos [Mexican American
‘‘uncle toms’’], who grow richer every day on the sweat, tears, yes, and on the blood
of chicanos, blacks, and other minorities. our war for freedom is here not in
Viet Nam.’’∑∑
In this new context, Ernesto Galarza and others warned that increased mili-
tary spending threatened Great Society programs. ‘‘As long as the priority in our
nation is on war and killing,’’ he emphasized, ‘‘Mexican Americans and all other
children will su√er.’’ Many more decried the use of nonwhites as ‘‘carne de
cañón’’ (cannon fodder) and declared that the war ‘‘is a direct attack on us.’’
Students took the lead in antiwar protests, as two former ufwoc organizers,
Ramses Noriega and Rosalío Muñoz, established the National Chicano Mora-
torium Committee in Los Angeles, one of the nation’s most active antiwar
organizations. On September 16, 1969, Muñoz declared his ‘‘independence of the
Selective Service System’’ and ‘‘accuse[d] the government of the United States of
America of genocide against the Mexican people.’’ The following August, some
thirty thousand ethnic Mexicans demonstrated against the war in a Los Angeles
rally organized by the Moratorium Committee.∑∏
But as Vietnam radicalized young Chicanos and pulled Mexican American
organizations into new debates about national service, and about the racial
discrimination of draft boards and other U.S. institutions, the ufwoc struggled
to channel New Left energies into the grape boycott without losing the support
of more moderate consumers throughout the United States. Chávez focused
292 stephen pitti
considerable attention during and after 1968 to retain the mantle of labor radical
and religious leader in ways that would appeal to a wide array of ethnic Mexi-
can audiences—both farmworkers and urbanites—as well as non-Latinos. This
meant opposing calls by some Chicano activists for violent revolt against the
U.S. system, calls inspired by an urge to identify with Latin American revo-
lutionaries in Cuba, Bolivia, and elsewhere. Reies López Tijerina, a Mexican
American Pentecostal minister and former farmworker who idolized Castro,
had emerged as a leading spokesperson for new and dynamic e√orts to retake
lands and power in the United States stolen by ‘‘gringos’’ in the mid- to late
nineteenth century. Tijerina, whom historian Rodolfo Acuña later called ‘‘a
mixture of Don Quixote and Ché,’’ told supporters in New Mexico that ‘‘Castro
put the Gringos o√ his island and we can do the same.’’ Aligning his movement
with broader anticolonial struggles, he argued that Mexican Americans in the
Southwest like ‘‘most nations are against the United States.’’ Anticipating the
escalation of global struggles by U.S. racial minorities and residents of the Third
World, Tijerina predicted that ‘‘there will be a great destructive war, and when it
comes to that day, we will not be blamed.’’ Shocking established Mexican Ameri-
can organizations by urging Chicanos to ‘‘kill the Gringos,’’ Tijerina earned the
wrath of ufwoc leaders by criticizing the union for allowing non-Mexicans,
such as head counsel Jerry Cohen, to take leadership positions. ‘‘These [Jewish]
people have been exploiting the Chicanos for a long time,’’ Tijerina argued.∑π
While Tijerina’s call to arms and oppositional rhetoric inspired many young
Mexican Americans during the late 1960s, they also galvanized opposition to
revolutionary Brown Power. On the political right, Tijerina’s activities inspired
the creation in California of the Spanish Surname Citizens for George Wallace.∑∫
Political moderates and many leftists also became troubled by Tijerina’s de-
mands. Faced with the New Mexican leader’s anti-Semitism and idealization of
violent struggle, and aware that some farmworkers, frustrated with the slow
pace of the strike, had shown new interest in taking up arms against California
growers and labor contractors, Chávez in 1968 dedicated himself to a≈rming the
importance of nonviolent resistance in civil rights e√orts. The union had quietly
foregrounded that philosophy since 1965, proclaiming in El Malcriado at the
beginning of the strike that ‘‘we will never use violence against people or prop-
erty.’’ The union had drawn supporters on the basis of that message, including
one Northern California Rabbi who called Chávez ‘‘a modern day, non-violent
Emiliano Zapata.’’∑Ω But farmworkers and union o≈cials involved in the nfwa
and awoc knew that California agriculture had seen great violence between
workers since the early twentieth century, and by 1968 some activists supported a
measure of retribution against ‘‘scabs’’ who crossed union picket lines. Larry
Itliong, the most prominent Filipino labor leader in the strike, noted that while
he supported nonviolence as a political philosophy, he also knew firsthand that
the threat of bodily injury could prove useful in labor disputes. Remembering
earlier strikes involving Filipino workers, Itliong admitted that ‘‘if somebody
point[ed] a strikebreaker [out] to us, we just, no questions asked, [took] him in
the alley and beat the shit out of him. That’s what we used to do. . . . It scared
them, it scared them.’’∏≠
Nonviolence as a political tactic had been debated in the union since the be-
ginning of the grape strike, but it took on far greater importance in response to
Tijerina. In February 1968, Chávez undertook a twenty-five-day fast in a Delano
gas station, which began with his statement that ‘‘violence is exploding today,
not only in the dark alleyways and midnight streets, and in the hearts and minds
of people, it is out in the open market place and is being planned in the public
forum. Maybe we here in Delano can light the first small candle that in turn will
dispel the darkness of fear, hatred, and distrust that has descended on America
and on the world.’’∏∞ He declared that his was an act of Catholic penance, not a
hunger strike, intended to refocus the movement’s energies. More than three
weeks later, Chávez had lost forty pounds but had gained new support through-
out the United States. Martin Luther King had telegrammed to commend him
‘‘for your bravery, salute you for your indefatigable work against poverty and
injustice, and pray for your health and continuing service as one of the out-
standing men of America.’’∏≤ Newspapers such as Los Angeles’ La Opinión, the
leading Spanish-language daily in the United States, had opined against Ti-
jerina’s ‘‘militant doctrines’’ while lauding Chávez’s commitment and the cause
of the farmworkers as being critical to Mexican American fortunes. The New
York Times journalist Homer Bigart later wrote admiringly about ‘‘Cesar Chá-
vez, the gentle, introspective, sad-eyed director of the California grape strike,’’
and called him ‘‘totally unlike . . . the fiery Tijerina.’’∏≥
As Chávez and others in the farmworker movement distanced themselves
from Tijerina and other revolutionaries who seemed to represent violent strug-
gle, they appealed to liberal Democrats rather than Third World internationalists
in 1968. This meant keeping a distance from Latinos who declared their ‘‘natural
bond of solidarity with all the peoples of the world struggling for liberation,’’ or
with young Central Americans in San Francisco radicalized by their reading of
Che Speaks. It meant instead claiming centrists such as the presidential candidate
and anti-Vietnam spokesman Robert F. Kennedy as primary allies.∏∂ The alliance
between Chávez and Kennedy angered many Chicano activists who saw the
294 stephen pitti
Democratic Party as a key source of Mexican Americans’ problems, but Chávez’s

willingness to work with Kennedy and other party leaders undoubtedly did bring
Mexican Americans new national attention. Kennedy’s March 1968 campaign
speech to ten thousand Mexican American supporters in Los Angeles stressed
‘‘peace in Vietnam,’’ the importance of farmworker unionization, and the cre-
ation of new opportunities for urban residents that would allow ‘‘young Mexican
Americans not only to be heroic soldiers, but also great engineers, educators,
men of science.’’ In the meantime, aligning himself with Kennedy gave Chávez a
platform for criticizing new Chicano cultural nationalists who seemed to aban-
don labor- and class-based critiques and downplay the possibility of interethnic
cooperation.∏∑
In the view of Chávez and many of his supporters, a nonviolent commitment
to pursuing social justice after 1968 remained both a radical and a reasoned
response to conditions in California agriculture. ‘‘I think we’re as radical as they
come,’’ Chávez declared in 1969. ‘‘I think that we’re more radical than many
groups that have the title of being radical. . . . A guy who very quietly . . . says ‘I’m
not afraid not to have any income’ and then goes out and begins to work full
time using all his energies and talents, completely devoted to a cause without
deviating one fraction from it but just doing the necessary sacrifices, it would be
hard for anyone to convince me that that’s not more radical than all the other
talk. That’s really radical. . . . You can’t stop people like that.’’∏∏ In 1968 the union
decided to pull back from its operations in rural California and push harder to
organize a national boycott of California grapes, an e√ort meant to pressure the
recalcitrant growers who had refused to hold union elections and had at times
denied the existence of a strike in regional agriculture. Roughly two hundred
farmworkers traveled to cities throughout the United States and Canada to urge
consumers and stores to boycott the fruit that year. They picketed stores, spoke
with shoppers, and distributed handbills explaining the grape strike, and ap-
pealed, in their words, ‘‘to the conscience of the American people’’ in nearly
every major city of North America, emphasizing that a nonviolent approach to
the agricultural conflict required the support of everyday consumers.∏π
From 1968 to 1970, Chávez and the California farmworkers became darlings
of those who saw the ufwoc as inheritors of a much celebrated liberal and faith-
based tradition of political organizing. The organization relied on enthusiastic
support from labor unionists interested in civil rights, and from antiwar activists
who linked justice in California’s fields to ending U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
After the assassination of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy in 1968,
prominent members of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the
Democratic Party provided the union strong support. Coretta Scott King stood
behind the ufwoc, a≈rming that African Americans and Mexican Americans
‘‘have the same problems, we are all part of that part of society that has been
exploited’’; and Ethel Kennedy and Edward Kennedy returned frequently to
California after 1968 to remind Democrats of Bobby Kennedy’s contribution to
the farmworker movement and to support union organizing and legislative
e√orts.∏∫ They also confronted the California administration of Governor Ron-
ald Reagan, and members of Lyndon Johnson’s cabinet, who had not responded
to the union’s requests for support. In May 1968, for instance, three hundred
union supporters burst into the San Francisco Hilton to interrupt a speech by
U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, carrying signs that decried the ‘‘U.S. De-
partment of Injustice’’ and chanting ‘‘Don’t Buy Grapes.’’ In October forty
union supporters in New York City, including city councilman Ed Koch, dem-
onstrated outside Nixon’s campaign headquarters on Park Avenue to protest the
Republican candidate’s support of California growers, and after Nixon’s Novem-
ber election the union urged supporters to send the President-elect mashed
grapes in envelopes addressed to the White House.∏Ω
But the distance that the ufwoc established between itself and the rhetoric of
many protesters in 1968 also earned the union the distrust of many Latinos and
others. Typical was David Sánchez of the Brown Berets, a Chicano youth organi-
zation created in Los Angeles and modeled on the Black Panthers, who made
clear in 1969 that members of his group both ‘‘admire[d] César Chávez for his
advocacy of nonviolence’’ and insisted that radical change required a readiness
to solve political problems ‘‘by any and all means necessary.’’ ‘‘If those Anglos in
power are willing to [give Chicanos their rights] in a peaceful and orderly
process, then we will be only too happy to accept this way,’’ he told the journalist
Rubén Salazar of the Los Angeles Times. ‘‘Otherwise, we will be forced to other
alternatives.’’π≠ Che and Tijerina remained powerful, positive symbols of re-
sistance for many Latinos in the Vietnam era. At the same time, other Latinos
worried that ufwoc activities would be enough to bring violent bloodshed to
rural parts of the state. In the agricultural town of Salinas, California, the re-
gion’s leading Spanish-language newspaper, edited by a Cuban American exile
committed to overthrowing Castro, worried openly about pro-ufwoc state-
ments by Oakland’s Black Panther Party, an organization that he believed was
likely controlled by Fidel himself. Despite Chávez’s e√orts to distance himself
from such revolutionary violence, detractors in the John Birch Society con-
tinued after 1968 to accuse the ufwoc of ‘‘adding revolutionary racism to labor
agitation’’ and of seeking ‘‘control of America’s food supply.’’ Those who resisted
296 stephen pitti
the grape boycott and continued to purchase California fruit were deemed
heroes in the fight for free enterprise and democratic governance. ‘‘The House-
wives [who refused to boycott grapes] have proved what a few alert citizens can
do to keep ‘agrarian reform,’ Communist style, from getting a foothold in our
country,’’ wrote the western director of public relations for the John Birch
Society in December 1968. Moreover, the John Birch Society o≈cial declared,
‘‘ ‘We shall overcome’ translates to Spanish as Venceremos—the battle cry of Fidel
Castro’s Communist revolution in Cuba.’’π∞
Not surprisingly, it was the Nixon administration that gave farmworkers and
their supporters a new cause around which they could rally within months of
the beginning of the Republican’s first term. Union protests of the war escalated
at the end of 1968 when leaders discovered that the Department of Defense had
purchased over two million pounds of grapes to send to Vietnam, nearly qua-
drupling the 571,500-pound average of the previous two years. The vice presi-
dent of ufwoc and others accused Nixon of bailing out the growers who strug-
gled to sell their grapes because of the union boycott, and he called the dod
purchases ‘‘another form of federal subsidy for anti-union growers who would
destroy the e√orts of the poor to build a union.’’ Chávez and other activists
responded in 1969 and 1970 with the ‘‘Grapes of War’’ campaign, a new e√ort to
link the boycott with the antiwar movement by way of the military-agricultural
complex. ‘‘Government sources [are] subsidizing scab grapes,’’ Chávez claimed,
and farmworker supporters picketed military bases in Sacramento and Fort
McPherson, Georgia, and even at the U.S. Embassy in faraway Bombay, India,
where sta√ members Susan and Jim Drake organized a delegation of antiwar
activists.π≤ The union organized a Moratorium Day in Delano, and its pamphlets
insisted that ‘‘the United States military forces have no right to move in and
begin destroying a segment of people involved in a civil war.’’ Boycott volunteers
at grocery stores throughout the United States and Canada urged consumers
to recognize that buying California grapes meant supporting grower e√orts to
put down Mexican and Filipino farmworkers, as well as Nixon’s war e√orts in
Southeast Asia: ‘‘Don’t help the Pentagon bust the grape strike!’’π≥
In this context, Chávez emerged by 1969 as a major antiwar spokesperson on
the West Coast. The movement against U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia had
gathered much greater support among Mexican Americans, creating new divi-
sions within groups such as the American gi Forum. It also prompted the
creation of groups such as the ‘‘Americans of Mexican Descent, Mothers for
Peace’’ in Sacramento, which wrote Governor Ronald Reagan and federal o≈-
cials, saying that ‘‘the Mexican American mothers of America supply the largest
percentage of young men to the service because our families are larger than the
average American family and because all too often, we are financially unable to
send our sons to college which would keep them out of the Draft. We contend
the war is merely an excuse to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.’’π∂
Chicano soldiers in Vietnam wrote Chávez letters of support and promised to
protest the serving of grapes in Indochina. Nearly two years after the start of the
‘‘Grapes of War’’ campaign, when the union declared a new strike in the North-
ern California lettuce fields of the Salinas Valley, antiwar protests became even
more useful to the movement when the ufwoc discovered that Dow Chemical—
producer of napalm and defoliants—was one of the major investors in Salinas
Valley agribusiness.π∑ With this in mind, Chávez spoke at a major rally against
the war in Los Angeles in 1971. ‘‘What causes our children to take up guns to fight
their brothers in lands far away?’’ he asked the crowd. ‘‘Thousands and thou-
sands of poor, brown and black farm workers go o√ to war to kill other poor
farm workers in S.E. Asia,’’ a problem that Chávez claimed had emerged from
the social violence haunting rural California. ‘‘All the growers carry gun racks
and guns in their trucks,’’ Chávez said, and ‘‘the police all carry guns and use
them to get their way. The security guards (rent-a-cops) carry guns and night-
sticks. The stores sell guns of all shapes and sizes.’’ Mexican masculinity had also
created an appetite for war among some Mexican Americans, Chávez argued.
‘‘Some husbands prove to their children that might makes right by the way they
beat on their own wives. . . . Most of us honor violence in one way or another.’’
Facing a culture of violence in rural California and struggling to end the war in
Vietnam, the union president declared that ‘‘nothing less than organized, disci-
plined non-violent action that goes on every day will challenge the power of the
corporations and the Generals.’’π∏
Such talk not surprisingly confirmed the union’s reputation as an un-
American organization among its many detractors during the last two years of
the grape strike. When Chávez’s oldest son, Fernando, declared himself a con-
scientious objector in April 1969, the organization received at least one angry
letter from a Mexican American serviceman who called the union president and
his son ‘‘the lowest Mexicans that I have ever heard of ’’ and declared that ‘‘your
son doesn’t have the balls to spend 2 years of his life for the freedom you and the
rest of your family enjoy.’’ππ A group called the Consumer Rights Committee,
funded by California growers and directed by the advertising company that had
shaped the conservative Republican Barry Goldwater’s 1964 presidential cam-
paign, directed e√orts to fight the grape boycott throughout the United States
and Canada. Growers noted that many ‘‘old-line Communists’’ had involved
298 stephen pitti
themselves in the grape strike, and they accused Chávez of adopting ‘‘a racist
approach’’ and of ‘‘leaning heavily on revolutionary symbols from historic Mex-
ican class struggles.’’ The Mexican American Alfred Ramírez, a staunch ufwoc
opponent, decried ‘‘Chávezi Communazi Forces,’’ linked Chávez to the Black
Power spokesperson Stokely Carmichael, and sold bumper stickers reading
‘‘Heil Hitler or Huelga! The Message Is the Same.’’ The grower and union neme-
sis John Giumarra Sr. imagined California’s rural labor struggle in international
terms: ‘‘What do I do if Ho Chi Minh comes in and says, ‘I represent your
workers?’ Do I let him in? Do I make my people join his union? It’s the biggest
snowjob, the biggest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.’’π∫
American Revolutions
Tens of thousands of U.S. residents believed that Chávez and the ufwoc were
anything but a hoax by 1970, when an independent marketing firm reported that
millions had boycotted grapes in support of California farmworkers. The coali-
tion that had gathered around the union since 1965 brought many labor and
church groups together for the first time, inspiring wonder in some observers.
After one farmworker march in Texas, the president of the state afl-cio mar-
veled that ‘‘organized labor and the church marched beside a rag-tag army of
students, many of whom were anti-clerics, most of whom thought labor was
getting too fat, and it has done all of us good.’’ At a 1969 march near the U.S.-
Mexico border, the African American civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy de-
clared that ‘‘I am a Mexican American too. I grew up on a farm, only we did not
pick grapes, we picked cotton. We made cotton king. My father and mother were
not adequately paid for their labor but I’ll be dogged if we’re not going to see
you’re adequately paid for your labor.’’ Others saw in the farmworkers a measure
of hope for the labor movement, or for the Catholic Church, which had done
little for decades to work on behalf of Latinos and other U.S. residents margin-
alized by racism or social class.
Liberal faith in Chávez and the farmworkers was ratified with a labor victory
in the spring of 1970, when representatives of the National Conference of Catho-
lic Bishops finally brokered the first agreement between the ufwoc and Cali-
fornia growers. Bringing 85 percent of the state’s crop under contract signaled a
resounding victory for the union, but it was followed within days by a new set
of complications when lettuce growers in the Salinas Valley made clear that
they had negotiated sweetheart deals with Teamster Union o≈cials to keep the
ufwoc out of Northern California lettuce. The new round of fights with growers
that began in mid-1970 and escalated with the renegotiation of the 1970 grape
contracts three years later pulled Chávez and the union into an intensely violent
decade defined by di≈cult public relations and rampant labor violence. Growers
and Teamsters redbaited the union and at times physically assaulted ufwoc
members in the name of anti-Communism. In 1973, Teamsters armed with bats
and chains screamed at opposing ethnic Mexican unionists, ‘‘You support the
Communist Party!’’ and to priests, ‘‘You should be dressed in red, not black!’’
Hundreds of farmworkers and ufw organizers risked physical assault by union
opponents convinced of the union’s Communist sympathies during the early
1970s, but many of those same organizers also soon heard similar accusations
from their own union leaders. With the end of U.S. involvement in Vietnam,
Chávez and his executive board became more fearful of leftist sta√ members—
nearly all of them non-Latinos—who they suspected were trying to use the
union to foment an openly violent encounter between growers and workers in
rural California. Worried about radical infiltrators, Chávez and other union
leaders carried out a massive sta√ housecleaning from 1975 to 1977. In working to
purge Marxists from the union, ufw leaders echoed the anti-Communist e√orts
of the cso in the 1950s and followed more recent Chicano organizations such as
the Brown Berets, whose leader David Sánchez took a strong stand against
Maoists in that group. But those tactics soon threatened to destroy the union
from within and cripple its outside support. Redbaiting brought the union
considerable critique from the political Left after 1975. Dennis Ryan, an Iowa
City ufw boycott volunteer, wrote various U.S. magazines to declare that ‘‘César
Chávez has become a fascist dictator of the ufw and is now making statements
that sound like . . . fascist, anti-communist labor fakers.’’ Marc Grossman, a
confidant of Chávez, responded that ‘‘many people joined in support of the ufw
for their own purposes. We now say if any s.o.b. comes in with his own political
or social agenda and tries to impose that agenda on the union, we will kick
him out.’’
The ufw entered the 1980s in worse shape than it had been in the early 1970s,
but the organization’s reputation as a thoroughly American and anti-
Communist outfit enabled many past members, including some who had been
purged, to make important new inroads in other U.S. religious and labor or-
ganizations. After the bishops agreed to mediate the labor dispute with growers
in 1969, many Latino Catholics, emerging as a significant demographic force
throughout the country, had been radicalized in their local parishes. The change
was most evident in Southern California, where immigration from Latin Amer-
ica had transformed Los Angeles into the largest archdiocese in the U.S., and
300 stephen pitti
where groups of Latinos issued new demands. Protesting the Church’s o≈cial
stand on the Vietnam War, demanding greater support for the farmworkers, and
seeking greater resources for barrio churches, a group called Católicos por la
Raza stressed that ‘‘to identify and fight the problems of the Church is to serve
Her.’’ They confronted their city’s conservative, anti-Communist cardinal Fran-
cis McIntyre, a leader who since 1948 had ousted liberal priests, opposed Vati-
can II, and come under increased attack for his failure to stand beside clergy who
marched in favor of the civil rights movement. Members of Católicos por la
Raza rallied on Christmas Eve 1969 on the steps of McIntyre’s newly built and
opulent St. Basil’s on the west side of Los Angeles. As o√-duty sheri√s attacked
the group, the archbishop instructed the congregation inside to sing ‘‘O Come,
All Ye Faithful’’ ‘‘to drown out the noise of protest,’’ and he subsequently com-
pared the demonstrators to ‘‘the rabble at Christ’s crucifixion’’ who deserved
forgiveness ‘‘for they know not what they do.’’
Pressure from Católicos por la Raza led to McIntyre’s retirement a month later,
and ethnic Mexicans in other states who were inspired by the farmworkers soon
proved themselves just as successful in changing their churches. At the consecra-
tion of the former migrant farmworker Patricio Flores as bishop of San Antonio,
Texas, Chávez spoke out in favor of the democratization of the Catholic hier-
archy. While television audiences in Los Angeles and Mexico City watched,
Chávez, Bishop Sergio Méndez Arceo of Cuernavaca (who had condemned the
government’s role in Tlatelolco), and the ‘‘large numbers of la raza’’ in attendance
‘‘applauded enthusiastically’’ that an ethnic Mexican had been named bishop, a
further sign that the ufw revolution was reshaping more than rural labor rela-
tions. By the 1980s, activists involved in the ufw grape strike and boycott from
1965 to 1970 were proving instrumental in providing ‘‘sanctuary’’ to Central
American political refugees fleeing U.S.-sponsored violence in El Salvador and
Guatemala. The politicization of religious clergy and laity in the United States by
ufw campaigns, and the attention that those campaigns drew to Latinos, and to
the U.S.-Mexico border region, helped define that critical response within the
domestic United States to U.S. Cold War activities in the Reagan era.
In no small part because its anti-Communist protagonists had built vital
coalitions with religious and community groups, the grape strike and boycott
reshaped and reanimated the U.S. labor movement in the years after 1970, when
many U.S. residents who were committed to improving the economic and polit-
ical rights of working people a≈rmed that ‘‘labor’s real glory days are still
ahead.’’ Thanks to the attention that Chávez and other union leaders paid to
organizing the unorganized, reaching out to Latinos in the United States, and
working cooperatively with faith-based communities, student groups, and civil
rights organizations, the ufw led many new e√orts to reenergize labor’s ranks.
As revolutionaries who had come of age during the Cold War, members of the
farmworker movement expanded and deepened the reach of the afl-cio. One
major e√ort to organize domestic workers in California began in 1977 in the
backyard of Chávez’s house, and the former ufw members who pursued that
cause relied heavily for the next two decades on training and resources from the
farm labor union. Other former ufw members proved critical to the urban and
suburban unionization drives of the 1980s and 1990s that targeted Latino jani-
tors and other service workers. Following a model defined among California
farmworkers after 1965, leaders of the Justice for Janitors campaign declared that
union representation and fair treatment were basic civil rights, and they pro-
moted alliances with churches, Latino organizations, and other civic institutions
to draw attention to janitors’ often forgotten work at places like Apple Com-
puter, Intel, and other high-tech firms. With this in mind, afl-cio president
John Sweeney called farmworkers ‘‘the moral center of the labor movement’’
during the 1990s, and he urged member unions to follow the ufw’s example in
developing new organizing campaigns.
As Mexican Americans, Mexican immigrants, Central American refugees,
and others rallied on behalf of this ‘‘new labor movement,’’ their e√orts, in the
words of Mike Davis, have made places like ‘‘the Los Angeles area the major
R&D center for 21st-century trade unionism.’’πΩ Following the ufw’s established
model, many labor organizers now emphasize that the nation’s low-wage work-
ers still dream of higher pay, full U.S. citizenship, and real democracy on the job
site. Most union leaders continue to distance themselves from any taint of
radical influence and claim to speak from within U.S. national culture, from a
common Americanism and a deep respect for the U.S. political system. As the
ufw launched its own new unionization drives, announced plans to construct
hundreds of a√ordable homes for farmworkers, and ran electoral campaigns to
send sympathetic politicians to Sacramento and Washington during the early
twenty-first century, its leaders became increasingly interested in their organiza-
tion’s long forty-year history. Although millions of other U.S. residents, both
immigrants and the native born, claim little comparable understanding of the
group’s political struggles, union and civil rights activists know full well that the
rural revolt begun in September 1965 continues to shape Latino futures in the
United States.
302 stephen pitti
Notes
1. Several terms used in this essay deserve clarification. I refer to ‘‘Mexican Americans’’
to denote U.S. citizens of Mexican descent, and to ‘‘Mexican immigrants’’ to refer to
mexicanos in the United States who remained Mexican nationals. ‘‘Ethnic Mexican’’ is the
umbrella term that refers to both Mexican Americans and Mexican immigrants. ‘‘Lati-
nos’’ include ethnic Mexicans and other U.S. residents of Latin American descent. The
labor organization discussed at great length in the following pages merits a note of its
own, since it went by di√erent names at di√erent times. The group started by César
Chávez began as the Farm Workers Association (fwa), and members later called it the
National Farm Workers Association (nfwa); the organization was renamed the United
Farm Workers Organizing Committee (ufwoc) when it merged with the Agricultural
Workers Organizing Committee; and for more than thirty years it has been called the
United Farm Workers (ufw).
2. In colorful early-twentieth-century prose, London had excoriated scabs, whom he
called ‘‘a two-legged animal with a corkscrew soul, a water-logged brain, a combination
backbone of jelly and glue . . . a traitor to his God, his country, his wife, his family and his
class.’’ See Eugene Nelson, Huelga! The First Hundred Days of the Great Delano Grape
Strike (Delano: Farm Worker Press, 1966), 26.
3. Agenda of September 16, 1965, in ufw President’s Collection, Wayne State Univer-
sity, Box 13, Folder 20; Jacques Levy, César Chávez: Autobiography of La Causa (New York:
Norton Books, 1975), 184; Eugene Nelson, Huelga, 26.
4. Edward Roybal, text of speech in the Minutes of the Founding Convention, Com-
munity Service Organization, March 20, 1954, in Herman Gallegos Papers, Green Li-
brary, Stanford University, Box A-16; Senate Resolution No. 204, June 11, 1957, State
Journal, in Herman Gallegos Papers, Box A-13; letter from Ed Levin ‘‘to whom it may
concern,’’ n.d., in ufw Presidential Papers, Box 2, Folder 2; Raúl Morín, Among the
Valiant (Alhambra, Calif.: Borden, 1963), 11.
5. ‘‘What Is the cso?’’ (pamphlet), in Herman Gallegos Papers, Box A-13.
6. Minutes of the Founding Convention of the cso, March 20, 1954, in Herman
Gallegos Papers, ‘‘Letter from Marion Gra√ ’’ file.
7. The film Salt of the Earth, for instance, a chronicle of Mexican American labor and
civil rights activism in southern New Mexico, had led to the 1953 deportation of the
Mexican actress Rosaura Revueltas and threats of violence against the miners who par-
ticipated in the film’s production. Accusations by the Catholic Legion of Decency that the
film endorsed violent revolt ensured that it would screen in only ten theaters nationwide.
For more on union e√orts involving Mexican Americans, and opposition to Left-led
unions from the 1930s into the 1950s, see Zaragosa Vargas, Labor Rights Are Civil Rights:
Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America (Princeton: Princeton Univer-
sity Press, 2005).
8. The discussion of Galarza’s career in the National Farm Labor Union, later known
as the National Agricultural Workers Union (nawu), draws from Stephen Pitti, The Devil
in Silicon Valley: Race, Mexican Americans, and Northern California (Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 2003).
9. Washington Daily News, May 22, 1947; Los Angeles Daily News, February 19, 1951.
10. Joan London and Henry Anderson, So Shall Ye Reap: The Story of César Chávez and
the Farm Workers’ Movement (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1970), 46.
11. Student Committee on Agricultural Labor, ‘‘Why Care about Farm Labor?’’ (un-
published pamphlet, 1960), in Social Protest Collection, Bancroft Library, University of
California, Berkeley, Carton 10, Folder 15.
12. Letter from William F. Rogers to Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco,
January 9, 1961, in Donald McDonnell Papers, Archives of the San Francisco Arch-
diocese, Menlo Park, California, Box 2, File ‘‘1961.’’
13. Chávez activity report, March 21, 1956, in Fred Ross Papers, Green Library, Stanford
University, Box 1, Folder 23; Ross activity report, July 30, 1957, in Fred Ross Papers, Wayne
State University, Box 2, Folder 18.
14. Letter from Chávez to Ross, August 7, 1962, in Fred Ross Papers, Wayne State
University, Box 3, Folder 9.
15. El Malcriado, December 1964.
16. Letter from Chávez to Ross, August 7, 1962, in Fred Ross Papers, Wayne State
University, Box 3, Folder 9.
17. Walter Rochs Goldschmidt, As You Sow: Three Studies in the Social Consequences of
Agribusiness (Montclair, N.J.: Allanheld, Osmun, 1978), 67.
18. ‘‘La Verdad’’ (pamphlet, [1947?]), in Ernesto Galarza Papers, Green Library, Stan-
ford University, Box 13, Folder 7.
19. Farm Worker Association Statement of Purpose, in Herman Gallegos Papers, Box
3, Folder 5.
20. National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor, Farm Labor Organizing, 1905–1967
(New York: National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor, 1967), 50; Margaret Rose,
‘‘From the Fields to the Picket Line: Huelga Women and the Boycott, 1965–1975,’’ Labor
History 31, no. 3 (1990): 287; ‘‘Birmingham, a City,’’ Commonweal, May 17, 1963, 212–13.
21. The organization’s Mexicanist politics did not encourage the nfwa’s interest in
working with the Mexican state or with contemporary institutions in Mexico. California
farmworkers had commonly blamed Mexican o≈cials for sending low-wage braceros to
undermine wages and working conditions in California since the end of World War II,
and nfwa leaders knew that Galarza had tried unsuccessfully to form political alliances
with Mexican labor unions during the 1940s and early 1950s. El Malcriado, April 15, 1965.
22. The Movement (San Francisco), August 1965, 1.
23. Andrew Kopkind, ‘‘Poverty Politics in California,’’ New Republic, February 18, 1967;
Ralph Guzmán, ‘‘Mexican-Americans on the Move,’’ Agenda 2 (July 1966): 1–8.
24. Letter from Chávez to Ross, March 23, 1965, in Fred Ross Papers, Wayne State
304 stephen pitti
University, Box 3, Folder 12; Carlos Reyes Guerrero, ‘‘Silent No More: The Voice of a Farm
Worker Press, 1964–1975’’ (Ph.D. diss., Claremont Graduate University, 2003), 100.
25. Letters from Chávez to Eugene Nelson, December 10, 1964, from Eugene Nelson to
Chávez, December 26, 1964, and from Eugene Nelson to Chávez, January 9, 1965, in ufw
President’s Collection, Part 1, Box 46, Folder 10.
26. Guerrero, ‘‘Silent No More,’’ 100.
27. Jerald Barry Brown, ‘‘The United Farm Workers Boycott and Grape Strike, 1965–
1970: An Evaluation of the Culture of Poverty Theory’’ (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University,
1972), 122–25.
28. San Francisco Chronicle, April 7, 1966; Dinuba Sentinel, March 24, 1966; San Fran-
cisco Chronicle, April 7, 1966; Bakersfield Californian, March 19, 1966; El Malcriado,
March 17, 1966.
29. Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New
Left (New York: Verso, 1993), 183.
30. ‘‘Plan de Delano,’’ El Malcriado, March 17, 1966, 11, 14.
31. Stockton Record, April 4, 1966.
32. George Vargas, ‘‘A Historical Overview/Update on the State of Chicano Art,’’ in
Chicano Renaissance: Contemporary Cultural Trends, ed. David R. Maciel, Isidro D. Ortiz,
and María Herrera-Sobek (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000), 201.
33. El Excéntrico (San Jose), October 5, 1962.
34. Vargas, ‘‘A Historical Overview,’’ 197.
35. Transcript of boycott organizers’ meeting in Seaside, September 24, 1970, in Jacques
Levy Papers, Beinecke Library, Yale University, Box 3, Folder 2.
36. Letter from Héctor B. García of the American gi Forum to Fay Bennet, January 5,
1959, in National Sharecroppers Fund, Wayne State University, Series I, Sub-series C,
General Files, Box 5, Folder 5.
37. ‘‘Augustín ‘Teen’ Flores, National Chairman of the American gi Forum,’’ Mexican-
American Review (San Diego), December 1964; resolution of the American gi Forum,
February 19, 1966, in nfwa Papers, Wayne State University, Box 5, Folder 6; letter from
Dan Campos to American gi Forum, March 18, 1966, in nfwa Papers, Box 5, Folder 6.
38. Voice of the Spanish-Speaking People, March 1, 1966.
39. sds Regional Newsletter (San Francisco), January 24, 1966.
40. Ibid., February 6 and 22, 1966.
41. Notes on a Delano press conference, April 9, 1969, in Jacques Levy Papers, Box 3,
Folder 4.
42. nfwa leaders relied heavily on young activists a≈liated with Students for a Demo-
cratic Society and similar organizations to picket grocery stores throughout the United
States that stocked California grapes. London and Anderson, So Shall Ye Reap, 137, 160–
61; ‘‘A Singular Success,’’ Bay State Banner, August 6, 1970, 4.
43. Letter from Chávez to Local Board No. 101, August 4, 1969, in ufw President’s
Collection, Box 26, Folder 12.
44. Albert Vetere Lannon, Fight or Be Slaves: The History of the Oakland–East Bay
Labor Movement (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2000), 150.
45. Voice of the Spanish-Speaking People, November 11, 1965.
46. César Chávez, 197.
47. Un-American Activities in California: Reports, committee report (Sacramento:
State Printing O≈ce, 1961), 61–62.
48. Ibid.; telegram to J. Edgar Hoover, March 14, 1966, in fbi file on César Chávez and
United Farm Workers et al.; ‘‘The Periscope,’’ Newsweek, March 14, 1966.
49. Gary Allen, ‘‘The Grapes: Communist Wrath in Delano,’’ American Opinion, June
1966, 12.
50. John Barbour, ‘‘The California Grape Boycott: Bitter War with No End in Sight,’’
San Jose Mercury-News, January 25, 1970, 1f; Gerard E. Sherry, ed., Farm Labor Problems
(the Anguish of Delano) (1966); ‘‘Memorandum regarding proposed march sponsored by
Congress of Racial Inequality,’’ March 10, 1966, in fbi File on César Chávez and United
Farm Workers et al.
51. Letter from ‘‘a resident wishing for a friendly settlement’’ to Vizzard, October 19,
1965, in James L. Vizzard Papers, Green Library, Stanford University, Box 29, Folder 10;
Fresno Bee, May 19, 1966; Harry Bernstein, ‘‘Fears of ‘Witch Hunt’ in Grape Strike False,’’
Los Angeles Times, July 24, 1966; union postcard, author unknown, in Fred Ross Papers,
Stanford University, Box 12, Folder 1.
52. Harry Bernstein, ‘‘Duel in the Sun: Union Busting, Teamster Style,’’ Progressive,
July 1973, 17; confidential memo of the Los Angeles fbi, January 21, 1966, in fbi File on
César Chávez and United Farm Workers et al.
53. El Malcriado, August 26, 1966.
54. César Chávez, preface to ‘‘Presupuesto de Libertad’’ (unpublished pamphlet, 1967),
in Bayard Rustin Papers, Yale University, Microfilm Reel 14.
55. La Raza Yearbook, May 11, 1968, quoted in George Mariscal, Aztlán and Viet Nam:
Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War (Berkeley: University of California, 1999),
188. For an excellent account of Chicano opposition to the Vietnam War, see Lorena
Oropeza, Raza Si! Guerra No! Chicano Protest and Patriotism during the Viet Nam War
Era (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005).
56. People’s World (San Francisco), May 13, 1967; The Forumeer, August 1971; ‘‘Porque
nos oponemos a la guerra en Indochina’’ (flyer, 1971), in ‘‘San Jose State Folder,’’
Cambodia–Kent State Strike Collection, Bancroft Library, University of California,
Berkeley; La Palabra de MASC, December 18, 1968; El Vocero (San Jose), April 1972, May
1972; Mariscal, Aztlán and Vietnam, 188, 196–97.
57. Richard Gardner, Grito! Reies Tijerina and the New Mexico Land Grant War of 1967
(New York: Harper and Row, 1971), 214; Rodolfo Acuña, Occupied America: The Chicano’s
Struggle toward Liberation (San Francisco: Canfield Press, 1972), 241; Brown, ‘‘The United
Farm Workers Grape Strike and Boycott,’’ 176–77. On nationalism and internationalism
in the Chicano movement, see George Mariscal, Brown-Eyed Children of the Sun: Lessons
306 stephen pitti
from the Chicano Movement, 1965–1975 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press,
2005).
58. ‘‘Spanish Surname Citizens for Wallace,’’ press release, February 22, 1968, in ufw
President’s Collection, Part 1, Box 47, Folder 7.
59. Davis (Calif.) Enterprise, April 11, 1966.
60. Jacques Levy, interview with Larry Itliong, April 4, 1969, in Jacques Levy Papers,
Series I, Box AV, Tape 3.
61. El Malcriado, September 15, 1965; ufw Press Release, February 23, 1968, in ufw
President’s Collection, Box 5, Folder 7.
62. New York Times, March 11, 1966; El Malcriado, March 15, 1968; London and Ander-
son, So Shall Ye Reap, 184.
63. La Opinión, February 29, 1968; New York Times, April 20, 1969.
64. ‘‘Chicanos and the Draft,’’ El Alacrán, March 29, 1970, 4.
65. La Opinión, March 25, 1968; Margo Hornblower, ‘‘Picking a New Fight,’’ Time,
November 25, 1996, 64–65; Brown, ‘‘The United Farm Workers Grape Strike and Boy-
cott,’’ 177.
66. Levy, interview with Chávez, February 3, 1969, in Jacques Levy Papers, Series I,
Folder 1.
67. Ronald B. Taylor, ‘‘The Boycott and the NLRA,’’ The Nation, May 12, 1969, 591–92.
68. London and Anderson, So Shall Ye Reap, 153, 165, 184; Rose, ‘‘From the Fields to the
Picket Line,’’ 285–86; ‘‘Mrs. King Supports César Chávez,’’ Sacramento Observer, Decem-
ber 24, 1970.
69. Teletype memorandum from San Francisco fbi O≈ce to fbi Director, May 30,
1968, in fbi File on César Chávez and United Farm Workers et al.; teletype from New
York fbi O≈ce to Director, October 25, 1968, and teletype from Pittsburgh fbi O≈ce to
Director, November 25, 1968, in fbi File on César Chávez and United Farm Workers et al.
70. Rubén Salazar, ‘‘Brown Berets Hail ‘La Raza’ and Scorn the Establishment,’’ Los
Angeles Times, June 16, 1969.
71. Rex T. Westerfield, ‘‘Sour Grapes: The Move to Control Our Food Supply,’’ Ameri-
can Opinion, December 1968, 54, 66.
72. Brown, ‘‘The United Farm Workers Grape Strike and Boycott,’’ 139–40; New York
Times, June 27, 1969; ‘‘Demonstration at Fort McPherson,’’ November 5, 1969, in fbi File
on César Chávez and United Farm Workers et al.
73. ‘‘How Long Must the War Go On?’’ (flyer, October 1969), in ufwoc Papers, Wayne
State University, Box 10, Folder 30; ‘‘Planned Demonstration by Sympathizers of ufwoc,’’
memorandum, August 12, 1969, in fbi File on César Chávez and United Farm Workers
et al.
74. Letter from Americans of Mexican Descent, Mothers for Peace to Ronald Reagan,
October 15, 1969, in ufwoc Papers, Box 10, Folder 30.
75. ‘‘O√ Dow,’’ flyer, in fbi File on César Chávez and United Farm Workers, et al.
76. Chávez speech at Exposition Park, May 2, 1971, in ufw President’s Collection, Part
2, Box 1, unfiled material.
77. Letter from Fred Jaso to Chávez, May 1969, in ufw President’s Collection, Box 3,
Folder 2.
78. Consumers’ Rights Committee, ‘‘The Public’s Stake in the Anti-consumer Grape
Boycott,’’ n.d., in Victor Salandini Papers, Green Library, Stanford University, Box 11,
Folder 1; ‘‘Farmers Organize New Group to Defeat Chávez Movement,’’ October 2, 1970,
in Alfred Ramírez, Planned Famine in America? A Letter to an Employee of the Purex
Corporation (privately published pamphlet, 1970); Barbour, ‘‘The California Grape Boy-
cott.’’
79. Mike Davis, Magical Urbanism: Latinos and the Reinvention of the U.S. City (New
York: Verso, 2001), 145.
VICTORIA LANGLAND
Birth Control Pills and Molotov Cocktails

Reading Sex and Revolution in 1968 Brazil
Shortly after the 1968 Brazilian release (and box o≈ce success) of the Hollywood
film Bonnie and Clyde, the real-life version hit the national press in the form of
Sílvia, an attractive blonde university student and bank robber, said to sport
stylish bangs, miniskirts, a 45-caliber machine gun, and surgical gloves. For
months a string of assaults on banks and armored cars in the cities of São Paulo,
Rio de Janeiro, and Belo Horizonte had headlined the newspapers and con-
founded the police. Some believed the thieves were linked to an international
criminal cartel, while others thought they must be domestic ‘‘terrorists’’ of either
the Left or the Right, because since the 1964 imposition of military dictatorship,
underground armed opposition groups and right-wing vigilante squads had
recently appeared on the scene.∞ In either case, the wave of bank robberies
provoked considerable alarm and no small degree of prurient curiosity about
the ‘‘mysterious blonde’’ reported to have participated in some of them. The
media’s interest in this Brazilian Bonnie only further increased in November of
that year, when a young man was arrested following the latest such robbery.
According to the police, he not only admitted to having participated in the event
but also revealed the robbery’s political raison d’être by exposing the involve-
ment of the regime opponent and Communist leader Carlos Marighella and a
blonde woman named Sílvia.
With this confession, both the revision of the previous months’ many hold-
ups and an intensified and decidedly sexualized scrutiny of Sílvia began. From
rumors of a triangular romantic relationship between her, Marighella, and an-
other woman, to colorful descriptions of her physical appearance, mass media
coverage of Sílvia focused predominantly on her sexuality. Reporting on police
e√orts to identify her, for example, Veja magazine evoked a sirenic figure:
The shape and measurements, the dimples and legs of a blonde they’ve never seen are
being permanently and rigorously analyzed by investigators from a suburban pre-
b i r t h c o n t r o l p i l l s , m o l o t o v c o c k ta i l s 309
cinct. In Marechal Hermes, Rio de Janeiro, the police have already reached the con-
clusion that the young woman Sílvia, wanted as an assistant to Carlos Marighella in
bank robberies, has ‘‘round legs,’’ and ‘‘smooth arms,’’ is tall and ‘‘very cool.’’ . . . The
suburban investigators have also discovered that the blonde assailant has a ‘‘slightly
hoarse’’ voice, is ‘‘very pretty,’’ and uses a wig. ‘‘Why do women like that have to get
involved in this rubbish?’’ asks a desolate young police o≈cer, who says he already
knows ‘‘even the girl’s brand of perfume.’’≤
While the magazine’s playful description of the investigators’ vigor may owe
much to journalistic flair, the sentiment of erotic pursuit that pervades this
passage exemplifies the broad wave of sexualized representations of militant
women that marked 1968 Brazil. Nor were such portrayals confined to media
productions. Following the early morning raid of a prohibited meeting of uni-
versity students, for example, the police held a press conference to show o√ the
‘‘subversive’’ materials they had apprehended. There they directed journalists to
tables loaded with careful displays of Molotov cocktails, slingshots, Communist
literature, knives, a few pistols, and, among all of this, several boxes of birth
control pills.≥ Soon thereafter, when police invaded the dormitories of the Uni-
versity of São Paulo, they repeated the scene with more contraceptive contra-
band.∂ The display of the pills provided a double message to the attentive jour-
nalists and their readers: not only did young women get involved in these
confrontational and dangerous activities (for only women take birth control
pills), but they came prepared to do more than just discuss politics. In the vision
of the police-sponsored press conference, Molotov cocktails and female student
sexuality posed equally alarming risks to the established order.
The stories of dangerous and alluring revolutionaries such as Sílvia or ‘‘sexual
subversives’’ like those at the raided student meeting highlight my central prem-
ise here: that the Cold War in Brazil was marked by profoundly gendered battles.
Particularly throughout the internationally turbulent year of 1968, as students
and others proposed radical social and political transformation, their e√orts
provoked and resulted in specifically gendered and sexualized concerns. Thus
political struggles involving youth, especially female youth, repeatedly became
characterized in latent or explicitly sexual ways. Shortly after the March 1968
police shooting and death of the student Edson Luis de Lima Souto and the
resulting intensification of student mobilizations, a variety of materials depict-
ing images of armed and sexually provocative women began to appear in main-
stream, middle-class publications like the photo magazines Manchete and Reali-
dade and newspapers such as the Jornal do Brasil and the Estado de São Paulo.
Meanwhile members of various state security forces, as well as other federal
310 victoria langland
o≈cials, alluded—sometimes privately, but also publicly—to the supposed sex-

ual promiscuity of politically active students.∑ They made such statements in
reference not only to women like Sílvia who were directly involved in armed
leftist activities but also to those who participated in the relatively more moder-
ate university-based student movements. In short, women’s sexuality as a politi-
cal issue and sexualized views of women political activists merged as one.
Indeed, within the context of cold warriors’ fears that an international Com-
munist movement furtively labored to undermine social and cultural traditions
as a step toward political and economic domination—an e√ort that only seemed
confirmed by the wave of youthful protests that burst forth across the globe that
year—birth control pills could appear as explosive as Molotov cocktails. The
combination of increased political participation by female students with the
radicalization of student politics and strategies, especially their recent turn to-
ward violence, created serious social and political anxieties. Moreover, changes
in the sexual behavior of these young, middle-class, and predominantly white
women, especially their burgeoning use of birth control pills—a product with a
particularly racialized history in Brazil—added fuel to the fire of these social and
sexual issues. Thus, in part, we need to see the many references to fears of
unrestrained female sexuality as one particularly graphic expression of these
social anxieties, and thus as a window onto the gendered dimensions of the Cold
War in 1968.
At the same time, however, these sexualized representations must also be
understood as a repressive response to the internal dissent o√ered by students
and members of the underground opposition. In other words, the production of
these images (verbal and pictorial) was not only an expression or reflection of
Cold War attitudes but also a recurring salvo in the struggle between the student
movements and the military and media cold warriors—a resounding voice in
their violent ‘‘dialogue.’’∏ As Seth Fein has eloquently argued about Mexican
newsreels secretly produced by the U.S. government during the 1950s, represen-
tations must be seen as inhabiting an indivisible cultural and political sphere. ‘‘If
ultimately Washington waged Cold War to convince national societies around
the globe to follow its leadership, then the production of propaganda cannot be
viewed as a mere sideshow, a reel derivative of a more real story or as the soft
derivative of hard policies. In other words, the reel is real.’’π So too must the
sexualized responses to women’s political activism in 1968 Brazil be seen as
inseparably cultural and political, produced in an attempt not only to limit
oppositional political activism itself but also to shut down the very political
identities that allowed for such activism. Moreover, far from being merely repre-
sentational phenomena, these depictions of political women can be seen to have

had important material consequences, influencing the treatment of women
political prisoners and contributing to the late-1968 military crackdown on
opposition activities.
After briefly explaining the rise of the student movements and the armed
underground in Brazil in 1968, I trace the participation of women within these
interconnected movements and examine the issues and debates around young
people’s increased sexual experimentation. Young men and women provoked
considerable public discussion both through their increasing use of violent
tactics and through their challenging of sexual boundaries. The sense of social
apprehension unleashed by these new behaviors found expression in main-
stream media representations of women activists, and so later in the essay I
examine several sets of relevant images, from descriptions of student meetings to
published clothing advertisements. The messages behind these images also ap-
pear in the personal testimonies of formerly incarcerated women, o√ering evi-
dence of the physical dimensions of this symbolic struggle. Meanwhile the re-
sulting climate of intense sexual and political anxiety helps explain the events
precipitating the December imposition of Institutional Act No. 5. In fact, it is
only through a gendered understanding of the period that we can adequately
comprehend the deepening of authoritarian rule and the intensification of mili-
tary repression. I conclude by suggesting that the Brazilian case is not unique, as
sex and revolution marked the way women activists were read across many Cold
War terrains.
The Student Movement and the Armed Underground
On the morning of October 13, 1968, Brazilians awoke to find two astonishing
headlines competing for attention in the national newspapers. In one, news
of the police raid of the aforementioned student meeting, the Annual Congress
of the União Nacional dos Estudantes (une, National Union of Students) in
Ibiuna, São Paulo, hit the front pages with a bang. Early reports initially pro-
claimed over 1,200 arrested, while the capture of nationally recognizable figures
like the student leaders Vladimir Palmeira and José Dirceu, and the dismal
photographs of masses of wet and miserable students, only added to the already
dramatic elements of the disastrous student gathering.∫ At the same time that
students in the interior of São Paulo state were facing arrest, in the second big
story that day, a U.S. Army captain living in the city of São Paulo met sudden
death. A Vietnam veteran, Captain Charles Chandler died instantly when an
unidentified man sprayed his car with machine gun fire as Chandler backed out
of his driveway. Before fleeing the scene, the attacker scattered leaflets that left
little doubt of the political motivation behind the killing. Proclaiming to have
served ‘‘revolutionary justice’’ against a war criminal currently training counter-
revolutionaries in Brazil, the flyers marked his death as the work of the under-
ground armed Left.
Although coincidental, the simultaneity of these two events highlights the
intensity of this period in Brazil, in which both the aboveground student move-
ment and the growing underground armed organizations provoked consider-
able consternation among government o≈cials, who began to see little di√er-
ence between the two. Military o≈cials repeatedly proclaimed that students
were uniquely susceptible to ‘‘outside’’ influences, and that an international
Communist movement was behind the recent spate of student demonstrations.
In one internal document, agents stated:
The successive agitations that are causing tumult in the student area around the
country, causing serious threats to the culture and education of young people, are the
consequences of a subversive plan previously elaborated by the Communist Party. . . .
Communist elements . . . infiltrated into [the student organizations] are promoting
intense political propaganda.Ω
In fact, two days after Chandler’s death, the secretary for public security, Heli
Lopes Meireles, proclaimed an explicit connection between Chandler’s murder
and the une congress. ‘‘Because the language used in the publications we ap-
prehended in Ibiuna was similar to that in the pamphlets found near Chandler’s
body, they [the students] could be implicated in this criminal assault,’’ he de-
clared.∞≠ In fact, the une and its leaders played no part in the Chandler murder.
Instead those responsible hailed from the Vanguarda Popular Revolucionaria
(vpr, Popular Revolutionary Vanguard), an armed group that, according to
Thomas Skidmore, ‘‘hoped that by ‘executing’ (their term) Chandler they would
dramatize the U.S. role as the indispensable prop to the military regime.’’∞∞
Nevertheless, Brazilian (and some U.S.) o≈cials continued to associate Chan-
dler’s death with the student movement.∞≤
Notwithstanding Meireles’s error in blaming the une for Chandler’s death,
there nevertheless existed a subtle relationship between the aboveground, if
illegal, university organizations like the une, and the new underground move-
ments of the Left such as the vpr and the organization headed by Carlos Mari-
ghella, the Aliança de Libertação Nacional (aln, Alliance for National Lib-
ration). While in the 1950s and early 1960s the illegal but fully functioning
Brazilian Communist Party (pcb) served as the principal leftist organizing force
in Brazil, beginning in 1961 and intensifying after the 1964 coup, a plethora of
subdivisions emerged as members critiqued their party’s lackluster response to
the military’s usurpation of the presidency and disagreed on how best to con-
front the new situation. In addition to the vpr and aln, scholars have calculated
that leftist activists formed at least thirty-seven underground organizations in
this period, of which all but a handful advocated armed struggle as a means to
end military rule and usher in socialism.∞≥ These organizations, along with the
aboveground student groups, constituted the two main and often reciprocal
channels through which young people opposed the military regime in 1968.
Both foci of political activity were multiple and variable, and neither can be
collapsed into the other. Nevertheless, important ties existed between the two.
Some students organized simultaneously for their clandestine organization and
their student group; others left school to dedicate themselves full-time to under-
ground activity; still others involved themselves only in university-level activity
but accepted and even supported the influence of those from the clandestine
groups. As the historian and former student activist Daniel Aarão Reis Filho has
noted, ‘‘It would be di≈cult, in 1968, to find a student leader who was not
associated with a leftist party.’’∞∂ Such alliances were extremely fluid, with many
young people claiming a≈liation with several di√erent organizations over time,
and often also acting in concert with other groups.
Although specific information about membership within these organizations
is, for obvious reasons, nearly impossible to determine, the sociologist Marcelo
Ridenti has used judicial records to make quantitative estimates about the vari-
ous groups of people accused of participating in an underground group.∞∑ From
these records we learn that roughly 30 percent of those tried for participation in
clandestine leftist organizations were students. If one adds to that figure individ-
uals who had just left school (because they either graduated, took a leave, or
dropped out) and, on a smaller scale, high school students, the figures approach
50 percent, and within certain groups the percentage reaches even higher.∞∏
While the new militant organizations on the left must be recognized as more
than purely student-based movements, students nevertheless formed a primary
foundation of support.
In fact, students created some of these clandestine organizations, such as
the Rio de Janeiro/Guanabara–based Revolutionary Movement of October 8
(mr-8), so named in honor of Che Guevara, killed on October 8, 1967. This
group had its origins around 1966, when several slates of candidates for leader-
ship in student organizations throughout various states, including Guanabara
and Rio de Janeiro,∞π began campaigning as ‘‘Dissidents,’’ in other words, dis-

senting members of the pcb. Throughout 1966 and 1967 the Dissidents grew
significantly in size and influence within the student movement. When fierce
state repression later eliminated most university-based student organizations,
the Dissidents from Rio de Janeiro and Guanabara (di-rj and di-gb, respec-
tively) transformed themselves into mr-8.∞∫
As the example of mr-8 makes clear, a highly porous border divided under-
ground leftist organizing and aboveground university-level activity. While the
majority of those involved in student demonstrations of 1968 did not participate
in the clandestine armed contingents, their e√orts within the more overt, albeit
often illegal, student movement constituted an important part of the opposition
struggle, one that grew significantly from 1964 to 1968 both in size and in
militancy. Clearly not everyone who was involved in the student movement
agreed on the tactic of armed struggle: at the largest protest march of 1968,
nicknamed the ‘‘March of the 100,000,’’ factions within the crowd competed
with each other in chanting, ‘‘Only an organized people can defeat the dictator-
ship’’ or ‘‘Only an armed people can defeat the dictatorship.’’ Nevertheless,
candidates from the clandestine organizations were routinely elected into lead-
ership positions, and the most famous and revered student leaders of 1968 all
belonged to clandestine parties. The ties between the underground movement
and the student movement ran deep.
Women Students in Love and War
Women students participated actively in both the clandestine armed movements

and the university-based student mobilizing. As occurred with other social
movements of the 1960s, contemporary gender expectations contributed to
male students’ assuming the bulk of public leadership positions; thus of the
‘‘famous and revered’’ student leaders mentioned earlier, all but a few were men.
Nevertheless, within the expectations of Brazilian middle-class society at the
time, the extent and profundity of young women’s political participation were
radical indeed. Within the larger political scenario of military rule, women were
virtually nonexistent in the military itself, and they played little role in national
politics, save for moments when they rea≈rmed their positions as wives and
mothers. One important example of this was the pre-coup, pro-military ‘‘March
of the Family, with God, for Liberty.’’ Although publicly portrayed as a demon-
stration led by housewives, later investigation found the event to have been
heavily organized by a conservative (and male-directed) think tank.∞Ω In con-
trast, returning to Ridenti’s research, of those accused of participating in the

clandestine leftist organizations in general, 16 percent were women, while for
those suspected of armed guerrilla activity in particular, the figure is actually
higher: 18.3 percent.≤≠ These women were predominantly students. Among fe-
male defendants for whom an occupation was listed, 73 percent were either
students, teachers, or college-educated professionals.≤∞ As for the university-
based student movements, photographic evidence and oral histories testify to
women’s ample participation, while quantitatively, a reasonable estimate can be
made from the mass arrests at the October 1968 une congress in Ibiuna.≤≤ Of the
712 student prisoners, 156, or 22 percent, were women.≤≥ In contrast, of the
approximately 300 participants at the 1966 une congress, 30 of them, or 10
percent, were women.≤∂ Judging only by participation in these congresses, this
represents an overall increase in participation between 1966 and 1968 of 137
percent for students in general, and a whopping 420 percent for female stu-
dents. Thus 1968 in Brazil witnessed not simply an immense rise in student
mobilization but a veritable explosion in the political participation of young
women.
As young people as a whole became more involved in violent political action,
so too did women. As noted, the figures for women charged with participation
in leftist guerrilla groups are actually higher than for those accused of involve-
ment with the clandestine Left in general. It must be noted that these figures do
not apply exclusively to 1968 but incorporate 1969 and the early 1970s as well,
when the bulk of armed actions took place. Nevertheless, the organization and
training for these maneuvers began in the late 1960s, and by 1968 some groups
(like that of Carlos Marighella and ‘‘Sílvia’’) began staging bank robberies and
other expropriatory actions to fund their future activities. By 1968, then, one can
see a developing climate of increased clandestine violence—one that includes
female as well as male participants—even if most of the actions would not take
place until the following years.
Throughout 1968 activists within the aboveground university-based move-
ment also began to adopt a decidedly more aggressive strategy, of which women
students were definitely a part. Since 1964 the police had gradually begun using
more drastic means to quiet dissenting students, and by 1968 they were employ-
ing mounted cavalry, tear and nausea gas, electrically charged nightsticks, water
cannons, and gunfire. Whereas in 1966 and 1967 students generally sought to
avoid the mounting physical repression unleashed against them by police, in
1968 they made a tactical decision to confront the state security forces as best
they could. The sociologist Maria Ribeiro do Valle argues that this change on the
part of the student movement did not come lightly but stemmed from a pro-
longed internal political discussion, one especially influenced by the March 1968
shooting death of the student Edson Luis de Lima Souto.
In the historic reconstruction of the dynamic episodes of ’68 emerges violence. . . .

The students act, increasingly, in the direction of a revolutionary violence for the
radical transformation of society, while the hard-liners [of the military regime], [use]
all the weapons at their disposal to reclaim and redefine the ‘‘revolution’’ of ’64. . . .
The beginning of this ‘‘combat’’ between these two opposing conceptions of revolu-
tion takes to the streets in March of ’68.≤∑
Thus after March 1968 students began deliberately arming themselves for
street protests with makeshift weapons like Molotov cocktails, rocks and corks
hurled in slingshots, or simple sticks and stones, while others stationed them-
selves in high-rise buildings in the cities’ downtown areas, from which they
could throw heavy objects. In her research, Martha Huggins reveals that student
demonstrators also scattered marbles on sidewalks to trip up police and even
armed themselves with iron spears and tear gas.≤∏ And at least one newspaper
noted that students also took to breaking up old acetate records, as the pieces
could be ‘‘thrown great distances with precision.’’≤π A June 1968 student flyer
demonstrated students’ concerted e√orts in this direction as it encouraged its
readers:
If there is repression, get into the fights. Throw paper weights, bottles, sticks and
stones. But act in groups, because when we’re organized we do things better and with
more security.≤∫
This sentiment is also echoed by Olga D’Arc Pimentel, a student leader in 1968
from the city of Goiânia, who later recalled:
We decided to change tactics. You’re going to oblige us? Then let’s go, now everyone
is going to go prepared. And we all did. The girls with bags underneath the skirts of
their uniforms, full of rocks. Then when the army would start to line up, there came
that rain of rocks. It was crazy.≤Ω
Changes in tactics by both the students and the police made student demonstra-
tions after March 1968 increasingly fierce events. In all, the year witnessed twelve
deaths during street demonstrations: four students, seven bystanders, and one
police o≈cer.≥≠
Although this change in tactics certainly represented a shift for the student
movement in general, the fact that female students actively participated in the
transformation proved even more unusual, for they had not traditionally en-
gaged in much countero√ensive before this time. Only four years earlier, for
example, on the day of the coup, a mixed group of students and artists went to
the une building in Rio de Janeiro to try to protect it from imminent attacks.
While some of the men armed themselves with weapons, it fell to the women of
the group to bring first-aid supplies, hidden inside their purses, in case anyone
was hurt.≥∞ We can compare that to the women Olga recalled who carried rocks
under their skirts, or to the June 1968 U.S. Embassy reports of young people who
brought sticks rolled up in newspapers and the ‘‘unusually large number of girls
[who] took part, many carrying stones in [their] handbags.’’≥≤ The increased use
of violence by students was a change for all of them, but for women it was a
particularly marked di√erence.
Besides becoming more politically militant, students in 1968 began breaking
down boundaries with another kind of activity as well: sex. As for young people
in other parts of the world, the climate of cultural and political change in the late
1960s led to considerable questioning of long-standing values concerning sex-
uality, while the technological advance of the birth control pill allowed young
couples to act on their beliefs with much less risk of pregnancy. As the historians
Maria Hermínia Tavares de Almeida and Luiz Weis have noted:
A good number of the young people who entered the university after the late ’50s had
to confront in their skins and souls the question of fidelity and of sex before
marriage—in short, ‘‘free love,’’ to use an expression which even then was beginning
to become clichéd. . . . The 1960s in Brazil witnessed a peculiar conjuncture. On the
one side, power was forcefully taken over by a portion of those Brazilians for whom
‘‘the dissolution of customs’’ was part of an insidious subversion engineered by the
international communist movement. On the other, for the children of the post-war
baby boom who were reaching adulthood, the order of the day was ‘‘questionings,’’ as
we also used to say, of the disdainfully labeled ‘‘bourgeois marriage,’’ understood
as the supra-sum of hypocrisy and of the inequality of erotic opportunities between
the sexes.≥≥
From this perspective, the political dimensions of these seemingly personal

sexual choices were apparent to all.
That this striving against hypocrisy did not necessarily result in the equal
freedom of sexual expression sought by progressive young women is made clear
by the fact that even within the Left, old sexual standards died hard, or not at all.
Many young male activists echoed the student Vinícius Caldevilla, who later
admitted: ‘‘Many of us embarked on ambiguous projects, dating some ‘pretty’
girl from the Paineira or Paulistano [Country] Club and at the same time
carrying on burning passionate a√airs with colleagues from the university, polit-
ical militants.’’≥∂ Nor is this to say that all or even most university students were
engaged in more open sexual activities. Marília Carneiro remembers the advice
of her friend Heloísa Buarque: ‘‘We have to act like we put out for guys, but we
don’t have to put out for guys.’’≥∑ Even if these explorations did not constitute the
sexual revolution that some people either feared or hoped for, 1968 nevertheless
marked a moment of broad sexual questioning, one felt throughout society. This
can be seen in the sexual audacity of plays like the tropicalist Roda Viva, which
included a shocking scene between a guardian angel and Our Lady, or in the
lyrics of the controversial Caetano Veloso song, ‘‘It’s Prohibited to Prohibit’’:
The mother of the virgin says no / And the announcement on tv / And it was
written / On the gate / And the teacher lifts his finger / And besides the door there’s
the doorman / Yes / And I say no / And I say no to no / And I say it’s prohibited to
prohibit.
Whether most young people actually engaged in socially forbidden sexual be-
haviors or simply debated the nature of these taboos in song or discussion,
sexual boundaries that had previously been honored, or at least tolerated, were
suddenly in flux.
Within the Cold War context alluded to by Tavares and Weis, these new sexual
ideas and behaviors of young people provoked vociferous public debates and
fears. A flurry of articles on topics such as sex education, abortion, birth control,
and the wearing of bikinis filled the pages of newspapers and magazines. In
‘‘Nudism and Sex: Is the World Implanting a New Morality?’’ (an article in
Manchete magazine), for example, the authors lamented this new ‘‘revolution of
sex, . . . a type of atomic bomb, of highly explosive material, destined to destroy
society and subvert customs.’’ Like the numerous analyses of heightened student
political activity at the time that pointed to deleterious ‘‘foreign’’ influences as a
causal factor, the source of this revolution, the article argued, was the advertising
and media images emanating from the more industrialized countries. Their
e√ects were felt the world over, especially by the young:
The young people who scorn or pretend to scorn everything else, come back to this
[sexual pleasure]. Many dispense with devoted feelings and dedicate themselves to
brief relations, in the style already called snacks [in English in original], an analogy to
quick meals taken at luncheonette counters. Before sex was the slave of love. Today
it’s love which tends to become the slave of sex.≥∏
Exaggerated or not, such articles were not uncommon and reflected the pro-
found sense of unease that young people’s sexual explorations provoked.
Unsurprisingly, much like the question of women’s participation in violent
political action, with sex too a considerable discrepancy existed between ex-
pected behavior for men and women, expectations intimately tied to the social
and racial background of the protagonists. As noted, even within the Left, sexual
standards varied greatly for men and women. Female students’ sexual experi-
mentations threw into disarray not only gendered values but constructions of
class and race as well. Virginity until marriage, for example, was imperative for
middle-class daughters, while their brothers’ sexual experiences were both toler-
ated and accepted—so long as they limited themselves to certain social classes of
women. And in racially stratified Brazil, this generally meant women of color.
Thus Alfredo Syrkis, an underground activist in this period, later recalled un-
abashedly the dawning recognition of his own privileged and exploitative role
when it came to sex:
Until a short while ago, my sexual life was limited to the holy hand job and sporadic
adventures with the little domestic maids in my building. One of them, an agile black
woman with large breasts, took my virginity from me not long ago. . . . My last
‘‘alienated fuck’’ was near the end of ’68. . . . I remember a conversation with Minc
one day. . . . [He said] ‘‘What’s good is for us to have sex with our girlfriends, with
someone we like.’’ At the time the statement sounded perverse to me. ‘‘Man, our
girlfriends are someone we have to respect, we can’t screw them like that . . . as if they
were a whore or junk,’’ I thought. But as time passed it began to make sense. It was
one of those spheres of the revolution that we have to make happen inside of our-
selves. On that evening, already half sloshed, I decided that having trysts with the
maids was counterrevolutionary.≥π
Syrkis’s ‘‘alienated’’ experiences parallel Anne McClintock’s analysis of class

and gender in Victorian England, where domestic workers played similarly
significant roles in defining the boundaries of gender expectations and appro-
priate female sexuality. Explaining that elite children grew up learning to recog-
nize important class di√erences through the female figures they encountered in
the home, particularly their mothers and maids, McClintock notes that sexual
distinctions and class distinctions went hand in hand. While mothers may have
held ultimate authority for household a√airs, to their working-class nannies fell
the responsibility for the day-to-day care of children, including disciplinary
actions and, not uncommonly for their male charges, some form of sexual
initiation as well. Hence, she argues, ‘‘The Victorian splitting of women into
whores and Madonnas, nuns and prostitutes, has its origins, then, not in univer-
sal archetype, but in the class structure of the household.’’ In short, she adds,
‘‘gender is not a separate dimension of identity to which one adds, accumu-
latively, the dimension of class. Rather, gender is an articulated category, con-
structed through and by class.’’≥∫ Her observations help illuminate a similar
situation in Brazil, where poor, black, female domestic workers were (and still
are) a mainstay in middle- and upper-class homes, and where, in 1968, to be a
middle-class woman implied, among other things, whiteness and sexual absti-
nence. The burgeoning sexual consciousness and behavior of young women
students did not simply shake up societal notions of what young people (or even
simply women) should or should not do, but, more specifically, threatened
social expectations of middle- and upper-class women. For these privileged
daughters to flirt with sexual ‘‘promiscuity’’ threatened established ideas of
gender, race, and class.
In fact, the history of birth control in Brazil intimately connects with race,
class, and revolution. One cannot understand what it meant for female univer-
sity students to start taking the birth control pill and using other forms of
contraception without first recognizing this background. Despite much internal
debate, the military regime allowed the introduction of family planning pro-
grams in Brazil via a variety of U.S. agencies, most especially through the Socie-
dade Civil do Bem Estar Familiar no Brasil (bemfam, the Society for the Welfare
of the Family in Brazil), begun in 1965 with private funds from a branch of
International Planned Parenthood.≥Ω Hoping to avoid ‘‘new Cubas,’’ many of
these programs primarily targeted the poor, brown-skinned residents of the
Northeast, where, it was thought, there were too many people and too few
resources, breeding the conditions for Communist rebellion. After a 1967 news-
paper exposé accused U.S. evangelical missionaries of sterilizing hundreds of
indigenous Amazonian women, the Brazilian Congress created a parliamentary
commission to study family planning. Although the report was never finished,
the interviews undertaken, published several years later, reveal a definite linkage
between family planning, racism, and fears of political instability bred by mate-
rial inequalities. Said the director-treasurer of bemfam, Glycon de Paiva, for
example:
My problem is to avoid the aggravation of this situation [of excess population imped-
ing development]. Those people are not influencing the country’s economy. Those
people are weighing down entirely on the shoulders of others. Something needs to be
done to enrich society. And I can’t conceive of that enrichment when the country an-
nually, via the uterus, receives 2.6 million new people to do what with? . . . What
wage-earning ability can I give to these uneducated individuals, with a reduced vo-
cabulary of 250, 300 words? Those people seem to me to be heavy on the social sys-
tem. They’re weighing down the Brazilian economy like waste. I’m not going to kill
them. I just want biology to do it.∂≠
While this 1967 brand of eugenics did not become federal policy—indeed, it
was not until 1977 that the national government would institute any form of
state-sponsored family planning—it does reflect prevailing ideologies among
powerful advocates of birth control.∂∞ In this vision, poverty could best be
controlled not through e√orts at wealth redistribution or social welfare policies
but via the gradual eradication of poor people themselves. The recent African
national wars of liberation and the Vietnam conflict loomed large in this view as
examples of the political instability wrought by ‘‘excess’’ population. Hence the
medical professor Samyr Hellou told the committee:
I see this as a worldwide plan. . . . In my understanding, the liberation movements of

the underdeveloped world have been verified through demographic explosion. . . .
We know that in the continents where a demographic explosion—and here we’re all
afraid to use that expression—has been verified, most of the inhabitants are com-
prised of people twenty-five years old or younger. . . . These liberation movements
are undertaken precisely by those young people. . . . How do we block this movement
of people in the underdeveloped world? It seems to me that it’s through controlling
the birth rate, preventing the demographic explosion. . . . I don’t see any other final-
ity for controlling birth rates. Why do it in an underinhabited country except to im-
pede the demographic explosion and facilitate its slow and gradual occupation by
foreign groups?∂≤
Not only did Hellou see family planning as a way to prevent the revolution of
young people, but in his final question he makes a subtle reference to Bra-
zil’s history of encouraging European immigration in an attempt to ‘‘whiten’’
the population. This racist underpinning to his plan of blocking reproduction
across the underdeveloped world merely uncovers what is latent in Paiva’s state-
ment, and the two together help us understand the racialized nature of the
debates around birth control.
Paradoxically, while bemfam and others would make some inroads in pro-
moting family planning among the northeastern poor, where birth control
would first take o√ was among the predominantly white, wealthy, young women
of the urban centers, as they had both access to, and the financial means for, oral
contraceptives. Not only did this fact throw into question racist assumptions
about white women’s supposedly reserved sexuality and leave unresolved the
‘‘problem’’ of black birth rates, but, as we have seen, urban students’ questioning
of sexual norms and their concomitant participation in increasingly militant
political activities went hand in hand. In this context, the introduction of oral
contraceptives, rather than curbing potential revolution, seemed to promote it
on numerous levels, while the racialized elements of white women’s behavior
magnified their transgression to new levels.
In short, women students in 1968 Brazil were breaking many boundaries.
They became more politically active, including taking a role in violent political
action in both the clandestine movements and the student movement. They also
began to question certain sexual taboos, whether via heated discussion of the
merits of virginity, marriage, and so forth, or through the actual step of acquir-
ing oral contraceptives and initiating sexual activity. And by 1968, these same
young women, with their male colleagues, picked up the discourse of revolu-
tionary change. The sense of social apprehension unleashed by these new be-
haviors found expression in media representations of women activists.
Radical Women in Print and Image
The Hollywood movie Bonnie and Clyde became such an overwhelming sensa-
tion in Brazil in 1968 that, besides filling theaters, it also spurred unprecedented
sales of berets, fabrics, and 1930s-style clothing. The Arthur Penn film, in which
Faye Dunaway plays Bonnie Parker, an attractive blonde woman who abandons
her waitressing job and elderly mother to join Clyde Barrow (Warren Beatty) for
a life of sexual adventure, bank robberies, and police shootouts, owes much of its
success to the anxieties of, and parallels with, life in 1968 Brazil. Like Bonnie,
many young women were actually and metaphorically leaving their families
behind as they rejected middle-class feminine values of domesticity, passivity,
and obedience, choosing instead to involve themselves in increasingly violent
political mobilizations. The social concerns this spurred can be read not only in
the success of the movie but in the myriad and multiple ways in which render-
ings of radical women activists began to appear in the mainstream press.
These images were decidedly sexual. Thus journalists looking for a good story
and police seeking to admonish parents and their rebellious children described
une gatherings as lascivious spaces, unsupervised and unrestrained, where fe-
male sexuality was at once a potentially dangerous weapon and a source of
vulnerability. At the same time, fashion spreads and advertisements pro√ered
fantasies of two types of provocative women: those who were armed and slightly
dangerous, or those unarmed, seemingly innocent young women whose per-
secution by o≈cial-looking men marked them as tantalizingly subversive. When
actual female participants in the armed struggle were reported, this eroticized
preoccupation only continued. In these ways, the press and police marshaled
constructed images of the sexualized woman to combat radical politics.
Students who attended gatherings like the 1968 une congress found them-
selves not only subject to arrest but also the focus of much speculation regarding
their sexual behavior. Major activities like une congresses and the occupation of
university buildings meant that male and female students slept overnight in
unsupervised locations, sometimes for a week or longer. Journalists who cov-
ered these events invariably reported on the nighttime arrangements, often
alluding to their impropriety. Thus in Ibiuna great mention was made of the fact
that, owing to lack of space, some students were found sleeping in an unused
pigsty (the congress took place on a farm). Perhaps more shocking was the
police report on those who avoided the pigsty: ‘‘Boys and girls were piled up
together in the house, sleeping in canvas beds or on the floor.’’∂≥ Even Security
Secretary Meireles chimed in, declaring that at the une congress ‘‘there was total
promiscuity. Boys and girls lived in the same tents, in the same pigsties [and]
barnyard.’’∂∂ Dismissing criticism from the parents of women students that they
su√ered police mistreatment in jail, he sco√ed: ‘‘Don’t worry, parents, because
we didn’t abduct your daughters. If they were taken prisoner, it’s because they
were at the Congress.’’∂∑ At another overnight occurrence, students took over the
Faculty of Philosophy of the University of São Paulo, where they remained for
several weeks, forming study and discussion groups and holding impromptu
courses on current events. A reporter who visited the students gave scant atten-
tion to these academic activities but duly described ‘‘the hotel’’—the fifth-floor
classroom where students slept stretched out on the floor or on tables pushed
together. Furthermore, the reporter cautioned, ‘‘Not everyone sleeps in the
hotel. Some scatter about the building seeking more tranquil places with their
girlfriends.’’∂∏ To emphasize this idea, an accompanying photograph showed a
young couple sitting on top of each other on a single chair with the caption
‘‘During the occupation there aren’t just courses and discussions. There’s also
enough time for romance [para namorar].’’∂π In the context of cold warriors’
suspicion of the student movements as being uniquely vulnerable to Commu-
nist influence, such a focus on students’ supposed amorous activities signaled
further, and complementary, reasons for alarm.
Sometimes stories about students’ sexual lives mushroomed into their own
news. At the same São Paulo occupation, students held a press conference to
announce that they had uncovered a spy for the Department of Political and
Social Order (dops, a major arm of the state security forces) in the form of an
attractive female student named Heloísa Helena Magalhães. Nicknamed the
‘‘Golden Apple,’’ and said to possess a police id card that certified her abilities
with pistols and revolvers, she was supposedly discovered only after having
become a short-lived girlfriend to the São Paulo student leader José Dirceu.
Students at the press conference claimed that she had been forced into spying by
powerful dops agents who took advantage of her rural upbringing and assumed
naiveté; hence, the students declared, they decided to personally ‘‘return’’ her to
the care of her parents. Representatives of dops, meanwhile, denied the tale,
claiming that although she had done small bureaucratic jobs for them, her closer
involvement with the student movement was entirely her own doing. What is
most significant here is not so much why Magalhães became a spy, but the media
frenzy that surrounded her and the general way she was presented in the press:
namely, as a young woman who slept her way to Dirceu. This not only helped to
confirm the image of student gatherings as places of sexual promiscuity but also
served to highlight the dangers of unrestrained female sexuality. As Magalhães’s
nickname—the Golden Apple—suggests, her sexuality was clearly a form of
entrapment, a weapon she used to snare the beguiled, and unsullied, Dirceu.
Of course, we must also read Magalhães’s story as one in which she herself was
at risk. Parents often worried that their daughters’ political activities would get
them into sexual trouble. Their concerns were not unfounded, given that sexual
activity presented di√erent consequences to women than men, most acutely in
the form of pregnancy, but also in the continued social stigma (even within the
Left, as we saw) for sexually active women. That parents ought to better super-
vise their daughters’ activities clearly seems to be part of the message the police
were trying to send when they displayed birth control pills to the press. Army
Chief of Sta√ Antonio Carlos Murici made a similar type of warning when he
told the Jornal do Brasil in 1970 that young women typically got involved in
subversive activities by way of young men who, after winning them away from
their families, would ‘‘incriminate’’ them so that they could not return.∂∫ In the
same interview, Murici branded ‘‘young terrorists’’ as being very promiscuous
and categorically stated that rates of venereal disease and illegitimate births
among them were high.
That such a vision of women activists permeated beyond military leaders’
press statements is evidenced by the reaction of women’s families to their ac-
tivities. Violeta, a woman who left the student movement to go underground
with her leftist organization, recalled the reaction of her mother when she told
her she was leaving:
I spent more than seven months preparing my departure from my family, because I
was and am a person who’s very tied to the family. My mom said I was going to end
up coming home pregnant and penniless. I said I wasn’t going for that, but to do
politics. Except that I did return penniless, fleeing from the police and pregnant.∂Ω
The unequal consequences of sexual activity for women notwithstanding, in

visions of this type, oft repeated, women’s political motivations and aspirations
become subsumed and erased by a focus on sex. From the display of birth
control pills at the une conference to the idea that women joined clandestine
groups via love a√airs, the message sent by the police and press at once dismissed
women’s political activities as poorly disguised sexual acting out while also,
contradictorily, proclaiming that their political activities and sexual activities
inevitably intertwined, thus warning parents and others to be wary of this
double-pronged danger.
In addition to these kinds of news stories, societal concerns about the rise
of militancy and sexual activity among young white females began to be ex-
pressed in the realm of the imaginary as well. Beginning around April 1968,
just as student protests were heating up in Brazil and around the world, sex-
ualized portrayals of armed and/or persecuted women inundated the pages of
Brazilian magazines. At the same time that reports of student activities decried
the violence in which young people participated, stories and advertisements in
the mainstream press began to freely reproduce violent fantasies against young
female bodies. That these images suddenly appeared helps demonstrate the
prevailing climate of social and political upheaval, and a closer reading of the
imagery of these publications facilitates our understanding of representations as
a form of repressive response, one that helped fashion the space from which
actual female activists would also be read. As we will see later, this popular
imaginary vision would have material consequences for women activists and for
Brazilian society as a whole.
Faye Dunaway’s performance in Bonnie and Clyde clearly inspired some of
these media representations, such as the fashion spread ‘‘Bonnie Attacks in São
Paulo.’’∑≠ A half-dozen models—all white and most blonde—grace the pages,
bedecked not simply in the allusive wool berets and neck scarves of the movie’s
costuming, but more importantly, holding that most conspicuous of fashion
accessories: the steel pistol.
The strategic placement of guns in manicured white hands and near red-
lipsticked mouths creates a provocative asymmetry between feminine vulner-

ability and the latent threat of violence. The casual attitude of the Bonnie in fig-
ure 1 sends signals of seductive power. In figure 2, although the pistol-packing
women stare commandingly at the camera, the reader is reassured that power
can easily become helplessness, despite the gun, as the women raise their hands
and their weapon in coquettishly wide-eyed fright, surprise, or surrender. And in
a clear reference to the contemporary, in figure 3, a masculinized Bonnie, armed
and wearing a three-piece suit, gazes protectively at her companion. Sporting the
middle-class version of the hippie style—long hair, beads, and no bra, though
with perfectly matching pumps—the second figure seems naively oblivious to
her surroundings. This combination blends movie-inspired nostalgia for the
past with commentary on the present: the armed radical and the hippie were two
increasingly common figures, both associated with young students.
Figures reminiscent of the Bonnie Parker character came up in other places,
too. In an advertisement for Castrol motor oil (figure 4), the bereted young
woman eases a drop of oil into her rifle.∑∞ It ‘‘reduces wear and tear,’’ she explains
to the attentive gangster-looking man in the background. Far from being men-
acing, her weapon is converted directly into a phallic sexual symbol, one further
emphasized by the single drop of lubricant and the man’s sultry stare. The
Bonnie Parker–like figure flirts with subversion much in the same way that she
flirts with the man.
Other scenarios strayed from the Bonnie-as-bank-robber image and instead
conveyed a decidedly revolutionary look, such as an advertisement for Mazelle, a
brand of fabric (figure 5).∑≤ ‘‘Mazelle declares war on common things,’’ reads the
dripping red gra≈ti. The by-now ubiquitous anti-dictatorship slogans painted
on city walls around the country are here converted into a playful backdrop for
this bourgeois rebellion. Like the models in the Bonnie in São Paulo fashion
spread, these poster girls are carefully made up in the coifed and pantyhosed
style of the feminine, middle-class woman, yet their grip on the black metal
machine guns adds an air of sexual danger and mystique. Again, they pose no
actual threat, as the ‘‘war’’ they declare is not against any system or anyone (any
man), but on rather ‘‘common things.’’
In addition to these advertisements featuring sexy, armed women, media
images in 1968 emphasized another kind of insurrectionary fantasy: that of the
persecuted woman. In this scenario, the attractive and usually blonde women,
while unarmed, are still portrayed as somehow transgressive, meriting both
their pursuit and capture.∑≥ In figure 6, we have no doubt why the trench-coated
man with the machine gun would stalk these two women: they are clearly
1. The Bonnie Parker image inspired
fashion spreads like this one. Manchete,
May 11, 1968.
2. The caption in the lower right-hand

corner assures readers that while the
revolver is only a toy, the hats are for
real. Manchete, May 11, 1968.
3. Past and present blend in
this 1930s-style vision of two
contemporary figures: the armed
radical and the hippie. Manchete,
May 11, 1968.
4. This Bonnie Parker combines

sexy armed robbery with prudent
home economics. Realidade, April
1968, 10.
labeled ‘‘contraband’’ and look as if they have just emerged from the wooden
crates behind them. As illicit goods, they are at once prohibited and in great
demand. The red-haired woman on the left is dressed in a seeming Parisian
style and French colors, and the blonde woman wears the green and yellow of
Brazil. ‘‘Contraband: you don’t need to go look for it on the other side of the
ocean,’’ the caption tells us. By the time this ad was published (November 1968),
not only had the May 1968 student uprising in France ignited comparisons with
student activities in Brazil, but by then government complaints of ‘‘outside
influence’’ on Brazilian students (by the likes of Herbert Marcuse, Che Guevara,
international Communism in general, and so forth) were well known. These
miniskirted French and Brazilian young women symbolized the intrigue sur-
rounding women student activists as well as the fantasy of physical intervention:
the armed man will reclaim them both, hijacking them back for the nation.
A similar motif can be seen in a series of advertisements produced for Karibê,
a clothing line (figures 7–8).∑∂ Again young, middle-class, blonde women are
pursued by quasi-o≈cial-looking men. In this case their subversive crime seems
to be dressing elegantly. According to the text, not only are they to be identified
by their stylish clothes, but the military-sounding name given to the search for
them is ‘‘Operation Elegance.’’ ‘‘You can ‘pursue’ these Karibê creations in the
stores,’’ states the text at the bottom of the page. ‘‘In Operation Elegance, with
Karibê it’s mission accomplished!’’ The comparisons with contemporary events
are unmistakable. At the same time that these advertisements were appearing in
magazines, dops o≈cers aggressively pursued student and underground leaders,
infiltrating their meetings and keeping close tabs on their activities.
In fact, by this point the ‘‘pursuit’’ of suspected subversive students and others
was becoming not only a common occurrence but a decidedly menacing one as
the state security forces began implementing a systematic practice of torture
against political opponents. Although the bulk of tortures and deaths occurred
in 1969 and the early 1970s, after the state intensified its authoritarian powers and
the armed guerrilla movements increased their activities, these practices had
their origins in the early postcoup period. The historian Thomas Skidmore
writes: ‘‘Government torture of political suspects in the Northeast, for example,
had begun within days of the 1964 coup, well before any guerrillas appeared. It
recurred thereafter and intensified in 1968.’’∑∑ Nor was the public unaware of
these occurrences. Before the later imposition of strict censorship rules, in 1968
accusations of torture still made it into the press, such as the April cover story in
Última Hora, in which two brothers showed the burns they received from
electric shocks, and told of being held incommunicado and tortured for seven
5. In this revolutionary-looking
advertisement, the models declare
war against ‘‘common things.’’
Manchete, May 11, 1968, 177.
6. The blue, red, and white of the

woman on the left and the green
and yellow of the woman on the
right suggested recent comparisons
with French and Brazilian student
unrest. Manchete, November 23,
1968, 133.
7. Images of persecuted
women appeared in this series
of fashion advertisements.
Note the shoulder holster
on the man with the pointer.
Realidade, May 1968, 41.
8. Here the detective tells the

conductor, ‘‘Come on, man!
It’s impossible not to notice
them; they’re superelegant!’’
Realidade, June 1968, 33.
days at an army barracks.∑∏ Meanwhile opposition politicians like Márcio Mo-

reira Alves tried to publicize the abuses by reading denunciations and evidence
of torture into the public record at congressional meetings.∑π By the end of
1968, Amnesty International had marked Brazil as a country requiring special
attention.
Coming directly from this context appeared a series of ads published succes-
sively in May, June, and July 1968 (figures 9–11).∑∫ ‘‘They want to put an end to
Marieta,’’ ‘‘Marieta was ravished,’’ and ‘‘Marieta is su√ering terrible pressures,’’
read the three captions. The photographs evoke a clandestine criminal world in
which gangster types threaten the fictional Marieta with a pistol in their hide-out
or torture her with machine-shop tools. Meanwhile the accompanying text
explains that the young, blonde Marieta, ‘‘the symbol of women’s good taste,’’
refuses to renounce her love for Bergamo, a brand of furniture. Despite the best
e√orts of an anonymously labeled ‘‘them,’’ including ‘‘bribery, threats, pressures,
kidnapping . . . She resists it all. Such is the power of love.’’ Here again we see a
woman portrayed as becoming involved in a violent underground world because
of a love a√air—be it metaphorically with the masculine-sounding ‘‘Bergamo,’’
or more literally with a material object, with furniture and its consumption.
Perhaps more significant, however, are the influences from contemporary
events and the eroticized manner in which Marieta’s imminent physical su√er-
ing is displayed. The climate of intimidation and torture confronting political
activists in 1968 had so permeated mainstream culture that the very premise of
these ads reflects it. The specific language of the text also draws from what was
quickly becoming a new shared vocabulary. In the second advertisement, for
example, Marieta is described as incomunicável, or incommunicado. In the
growing system of state-sponsored torture, keeping suspects isolated from fam-
ily or lawyers for the first several days became standard practice, as they could be
tortured and interrogated before their colleagues realized they had been de-
tained, and hence could reveal information about upcoming meetings that
would lead to further arrests. As understanding of the situation grew, words like
incomunicável became a part of daily life, and activists soon learned to organize
heavily in the early days after an arrest in order to minimize this period of abuse.
Finally, I must call attention to the sexualized way in which Marieta’s torture is
portrayed. Because she is surrounded by men, vulnerable and dressed in a very
feminine style, the reader is asked to see her plight not as criminal or even
significant but as provocative and alluring. This pervasive eroticization of wom-
en’s militant actions and even of the reprisals against them would haunt women
activists and deafen others to their political voices.
9. This series of advertisements shows the fictional character Marieta su√ering increasingly severe
maltreatment for refusing to renounce her love for Bergamo furniture. Realidade, May 1968, 20–21.
10. Marieta manages to sneak a note to ‘‘Bergamo,’’ saying that her own liberty does not matter, and
‘‘the most important thing is that you continue in the boldness of your lines, your perfect finishing,
your resistance and durability.’’ Realidade, June 1968, 20–21.
11. In the final scene of the triptych, sadistic fantasies are unleashed on Marieta, but the power of
love enables her to ‘‘resist bravely.’’ Realidade, July 1968, 20–21.
While these advertisements arose from within the broader Cold War context
of revolutionary underground organizations and aboveground student move-
ment opposition to the military regime, at the time they were first published, no
women had yet publicly participated in an armed revolutionary action. That
would first happen on August 1, 1968, when Renata Guerra de Andrade, a
member of the vpr, helped to hold up a São Paulo bank. By the time the holdup
took place, a space within the popular imagination from which to understand
Renata and the others who followed her had already been carved out. Tropes
with which to read them had already been created. In fact, life really did imitate
art, or at least mass culture, as not only did this same intense focus on female
activists’ sexual desirability remain, but the women themselves became as anon-
ymous and caricatured as the models in the magazines. While male revolution-
aries became household names, most of the women (there are one or two nota-
ble exceptions) who participated in armed movements received nicknames such
as the ‘‘Bela do Terror’’ (Beauty of Terror), the ‘‘Loura dos Assaltos’’ (Blonde of
the Assaults) and the ‘‘Loura da Metralhadora’’ (the Machine Gun Blonde). Even
within the Left, the image of the blonde revolutionary woman became a lasting
one. Fernando Gabeira (one of the best-known figures involved in the armed
struggle, as his memoirs were dramatized in the film Four Days in September)
later remembered the influence this image played in his decision to join the
underground movement:
The newspapers stimulated our fantasies. They published gaudy descriptions [of
clandestine life]: young men with nerves of steel (we still made it onto the police
pages then); blondes who’d pull a machine gun out of their colorful wraps.∑Ω
Renata Guerra de Andrade herself later commented: ‘‘The most talked-about

action was the robbery of the Banco Mercantil of Itaim. Because I appeared in
that one, people saw me. That was where I turned into ‘the blonde terrorist.’ The
funny thing is that I was never blonde.’’∏≠ Renata was a brunette who used a black
wig, but reports still repeatedly described her as blonde, as if the Faye Dunaway
image were too firmly ingrained to see her otherwise. Moreover, although the
newspapers repeatedly published her picture with the caption ‘‘a bela do terror,’’
she claimed, they never stated just what terror she was supposed to have sparked.
‘‘The accusations made against me in the newspapers were really very few. The
big deal really was the fact that I was a woman. . . . I never, never was accused of
having done anything. Fundamentally my case was about my having been one of
the first women to be discovered.’’∏∞ Following the by-now-well-established pat-
tern, Renata’s political beliefs or actions did not merit discussion; instead it was
her desirability and her (imagined) blondeness that attracted attention.
Congruent with the outward political showdown taking place in Cold War
Brazil, a gendered crisis was occurring below the surface. As women activists
challenged a host of sexual, racial, class, and gender boundaries, they sparked
deep-seated concerns within the state, their parents, and the middle class more
generally. These anxieties ultimately found expression in fantastical media por-
trayals of activist women. Thus for several months in 1968, a rush of heavily
sexualized images of armed and/or persecuted women suddenly began appear-
ing in magazines and newspapers. Such images both paralleled interpretations
of currently active women students and helped to create a template from which
to read the armed actions that were soon to follow. Propagated in 1968, these
popular conceptions of politically active women would arise again in gender-
specific torture and abuse of women political prisoners by the state security
forces. Indeed, it is only through this kind of gendered understanding of the
period that we can adequately comprehend the deepening of authoritarian rule
and intensification of military repression beginning in December 1968.
Fighting Bodies, Fighting Words
By examining personal testimonies of women who were incarcerated, we can see

that the same tropes used for explaining and minimizing women’s activism in
the pages of newspapers and magazines in 1968 found their way onto their
bodies and lives in the cells of political prisons. ‘‘Though pain has no gen-
der, sexual di√erence became important in the torture chamber,’’ wrote Jean
Franco.∏≤ Speaking of the Argentine case, she argued: ‘‘Whereas the torture of
men often presented them with the challenge to behave like a man and die or to
become like a woman to survive, the treatment of women prisoners was rooted
in sadistic fantasies.’’∏≥ Sadistic fantasies may indeed have inspired the torture of
some or even many women prisoners in Brazil, but I want to demonstrate that
the particular forms of abusive treatment they received stemmed not from the
individual psychoses of their torturers but from a much more systemic fantasy—
the ‘‘normal’’ way these politically active women were already read and under-
stood within mainstream Cold War society.
We have seen that, above all, women’s political activities were interpreted in
sexual ways, from eroticized visions of women with guns in fashion magazines
to assumptions that female students got involved in politics via the attentions of
men. The same held true with female prisoners. One woman explained the way
security o≈cers perceived them: ‘‘Either you came to politics as an apprentice,
because you had a husband or a boyfriend, or you came to sleep with everyone,
to see if you could catch someone. Or, then, because you weren’t really a woman,
you were a dyke, a lesbian, that whole story.’’∏∂ Women’s political ideologies,
aspirations, and even self-will went unacknowledged, and the only possible
explanation for their activities was a deviant sexuality.
Thus, much like the ‘‘Machine Gun Blonde’’ of the newspapers, many former
female prisoners later recalled that their own names and identities were seldom
used, substituted instead by particularly sexual appellations. ‘‘Terrorist Doll!’’
the soldiers would scream at one woman as they passed by her cell.∏∑ ‘‘They use
an expression which is constant,’’ stated another. ‘‘They don’t use your name,
they always use puta comunista [communist whore].’’∏∏ In this way the women’s
alleged sexual and political deviancy were discursively combined. Moreover, as
explained by the former political prisoner Shizuo Osawa, who as a Nikkei (a
Brazilian of Japanese descent) experienced particularly racialized treatment,
blonde women were singled out. In an interview with the historian Je√rey
Lesser, Osawa said, ‘‘I su√ered a lot. . . . That was the problem. . . . When they
began talking about a Japanese [involved in the armed struggle], then any Japa-
nese who fell into their hands would pay for the actions of all of them. Like the
blonde woman, who created that myth of the blonde bank robber, then any
blonde who fell into the police’s hands was lost: they were tortured more.’’∏π That
Osawa would have noticed the treatment extended to blonde prisoners attests to
the fact that a physical characteristic such as blondeness was noted and probably
discussed. If we understand blondeness in this context as both a racialized and a
sexualized characteristic—that is, as a shorthand designation of white female
sexual availability and desirability, an idea emphasized in the magazine images,
nicknames, and descriptions of women activists like Renata Guerra de Andrade
—then the singling out of blonde women prisoners signifies a further example of
women’s overall sexualization.
Indeed, the sexuality of female activists in general became a focus for emo-
tional, physical, and psychological abuse. Women and men both su√ered naked
beatings and varying forms of genital torture, but women’s sexuality often be-
came the primary focus of abuse, a situation intensified by the fact that torturers
and prison guards were nearly exclusively men. One woman tells of being nick-
named the ‘‘fiancée’’ of one of her torturers. In the extensive passage quoted
here, we can see how her treatment at the soldiers’ hands emphasized her
powerlessness not only as a prisoner but also as a woman surrounded by men.
The soldiers would come to the cell and scream ‘‘Terrorist Doll.’’ They said they were
going to throw some dice to see who would be the first in line. One night, passed out
from exhaustion and the parrot’s perch [a form of torture], I fell asleep in the cell.
Suddenly, in the dark, an uproar on the stairs, screaming inside the station. I woke up
with them already invading, turning things over, swearing, one already giving blows,
another tying me up with a cord. They took me up the stairs. . . . And there were al-
ready some guys touching my body with their hands, saying they were going to marry
me. One of them became my fiancé. . . . It was a crazy scene, a corridor full of soldiers
on both sides, me passing by with that band [of men]. The guy grabbing on to me
said, ‘‘I’m going to marry her,’’ and suddenly they began to hum the wedding march,
the soldiers themselves, ‘‘la la la la la la la la la la la,’’ and me passing by as the tor-
turer’s fiancée to be raped in the torture room upstairs. . . . Him holding on to me, he
and the others touching me, grabbing me. My breasts, my hips, everything, for me to
believe that upstairs would be the rape. Suddenly they threw me in a room. There
were twenty of them there, I don’t know how many. It was all set up. The electro-
shock machine, the chair. . . . When I went in the torture room my ‘‘fiancée’’ tore o√
my clothes and, naked, they tied me to the chair and poured water on my body to
augment the e√ect of the electroshock.∏∫
The woman’s story calls up patterns recounted by other survivors as well.

Threats of rape and gang rape were constant in women’s recollections, and
though many women are loath to discuss these experiences, it is clear that many
soldiers went beyond threats. Emotional and psychological jokes about women’s
desirability and social eligibility also occurred with considerable regularity. Tor-
ture focused on women’s sex in terms of motherhood as well—pregnant women
were beaten on the abdomen in attempts to dislodge their fetus, and other forms
of abortions and miscarriages were induced. One woman recalls a torturer
placing electroshock wires inside her vagina and announcing, ‘‘Now you’re
going to give birth to electricity.’’∏Ω In short, the overwhelmingly predominant
emphasis on activist women’s sexuality in public spaces like media reports and
police statements to the press parallels the way they were perceived and treated
within the confines of political imprisonment.
The social anxieties discussed so far had another impact beyond that experi-
enced by individual women; they also played an important role in one of the
most significant developments of military rule: the imposition of Institutional
Act No. Five (ai-5, Ato Institucional Número 5). Announced on Friday, Decem-
ber 13, 1968, ai-5 marked the most authoritarian regulation the regime would
ever decree, a radical extension of four previous institutional acts. With this
measure, the president could intervene in states and municipalities, bypassing

the limits set in the Constitution. He could also declare a state of siege without
the approval of Congress. The political rights of any citizen could be suspended
for ten years; any municipal, state, or federal elected o≈ce could be revoked; and
habeas corpus rights for political prisoners were immediately abolished. Finally,
ai-5 granted the president the power to suspend congresses, legislatures, and
councils of any branch of government at any time and for an indefinite period.
President Costa e Silva immediately did so through Supplementary Act Number
38, which shut down the National Congress. For students this change meant the
all-out persecution of suspected subversion, so that by the end of 1969, most
aboveground student organizations had been virtually shut down, and more
students than ever turned to clandestine struggle as their only political option.
The immediate cause behind the act lay in a defiant vote by the Chamber of
Deputies on the day before, in which that body rejected a petition to revoke the
parliamentary immunity of congressional deputy Márcio Moreira Alves. Alves, a
former journalist recently turned politician, formed part of a vocal opposition
group within Congress that had for many months been highlighting particular
abuses of the regime, criticizing them from the floor of Congress, reading re-
ports of their activities into the congressional record, and so forth. Their com-
bination of rhetorical banter and incessant interruption of majority members’
speeches made them a rather unpopular coterie within the staid chamber and
earned them the nickname ‘‘the Immature Group.’’ While undoubtedly an-
noyed, military leaders originally tolerated this group until November 1968,
when they began attempts to prosecute Alves for speeches he had delivered
months earlier. His comments, they stated, were ‘‘highly o√ensive to the Armed
Forces and [delivered] with the obvious intent of demoralizing them, aiming to
struggle against democratic order and national institutions.’’π≠ Under the re-
cently established National Security Law, an insult to the Armed Forces con-
stituted a crime punishable by suspension of political rights and imprison-
ment.π∞ Yet because congressmen enjoyed parliamentary immunity from such
prosecutions, for the government to seek punishment, Congress would have to
vote to suspend his immune status, a by no means simple proposition despite
the legislature’s weakened state. By ‘‘o√ering up Alves’ head,’’ as so many depu-
ties and journalists phrased it, the chamber would be risking its own skin too,
setting a dangerous precedent for individuals’ removal. Or, as one deputy put it,
‘‘Damocles’ sword would hang over all our heads.’’π≤
To understand how this congressional showdown arose and why Alves’s words
proved so threatening to the military requires closely examining the speeches in
question while remembering the highly charged atmosphere of the time. Alves
delivered these statements in response to the August 29 invasion of the University
of Brasilia, in which federal police openly dragged students and professors out of
their seminars, beating them in the hallways and destroying classrooms and
laboratories. At the time, the violence provoked a national outcry, and in the days
that followed, many congressmen from both the pro-government and opposi-
tion parties denounced these events and called for investigations. Many signed a
formal protest. Thus Alves was not alone in his denunciations. Indeed, some of
these speeches were downright vitriolic. Congressional deputy Oswaldo Zanello
called the police ‘‘inhuman and savage, barbarous and bestial,’’π≥ while Deputy
Father Vieira inveighed:
If yesterday the shameful blot of slave ships stained our consciences, today we are hu-
miliated and ashamed by the Dantesque portrait of military garrisons, where beasts
imbued by hate and drugged with vengeance and sadism brutally step on students
and children. . . . [Meanwhile] the government, like Pilate, cynically washes its hands
and says it’s not guilty of the innocent blood spilt profusely in our public plazas and
universities.π∂
The speech Alves delivered on September 2 at first appears to be only one

vehement protest among many—one that, save for its striking symbolism, was
not much di√erent from those that came before or those that followed. As a
member of the Education Commission, which was presently studying much-
needed reforms of the university system, Alves began by saying, ‘‘The continued
violence practiced against students and against universities has made any kind
of debate about higher educational reforms utterly impossible.’’ Pointing to a
photograph from the Jornal do Brasil of a soldier’s boot smashing a University of
Brasilia laboratory, he proclaimed, ‘‘This is the exact portrait of the current
government’s university policy.’’ Like others who had spoken that day, Alves
voiced his concern that those who ordered and carried out the atrocities be
made responsible, punctuating his call by listing a string of similar events for
which no one had ever been punished and directing to the ‘‘leaders of govern-
ment’’ nine lists of questions the regime needed to address. Besides asking who
was responsible and who would be punished, Alves’s last string of queries proved
most provocative: ‘‘When will the hemorrhage of the Nation be stopped? When
will troops stop machine-gunning people in the street? When will a boot, bust-
ing down the door of a laboratory, stop being the government’s proposed uni-
versity reform?’’π∑ Although provocative, his words do not appear more of an
a√ront than those of other speakers that day.
Rather, as Alves continued his verbal protests that day and revisited the issue
on the following morning, his direct appeals to women and his veiled references
to military sexuality ultimately provoked the generals’ outcry. To close his com-
ments on September 2, Alves read into the congressional record a letter that had
been published in the newspaper Correio Braziliense. Written by ‘‘the Mothers
and Wives of Brasilia,’’ who claimed that ‘‘the hour has come for us to make
public our agony and disgust at the scenes of savagery and unspeakable violence
that once again have bloodied the University of Brasilia,’’ they too denounced
the aggression and called for peace. ‘‘What we Mothers and Wives have always
wanted is simply to see our sons and husbands studying and working in peace
and safety within a Brazil that pays attention to the protests of an idealistic and
intelligent youth,’’ they wrote. In addition to reading the text of the letter, Alves
ensured that all 168 names of the women who signed, many among them the
wives of congressional deputies in the pro-government arena party, were also
recorded. Judging by the enthusiastic applause that followed, his speech, far
from appearing scandalous to his fellow congressmen, enjoyed an exceedingly
warm reception.π∏
Although rhetorically powerful on its own, Alves’s reading of the women’s
letter and names gained added significance the following day when he returned
to the theme. In contrast to his first oration, in which he requested that the
government do something about the violence, in the latter speech Alves directed
his concerns to ‘‘the people,’’ especially women. Acknowledging that ‘‘all the
social classes’’ rejected the recent violence, and that women had begun to take
more active roles in its denunciation, he encouraged them to go a step fur-
ther. With Independence Day fast approaching (September 7), an important
holiday usually marked by heavily militaristic parades of soldiers, boy scouts,
and schoolchildren, Alves suggested that people refuse to participate, in a ‘‘boy-
cott of militarism.’’ More importantly, he alluded to extending the protest to a
sexual boycott of military men, stating:
Still speaking of women, this boycott can also spread to the girls, those who dance
with the cadets and date the young o≈cers. [They must] refuse entrance into their
homes to those who threaten the Nation; they must refuse to accept those who keep
silent, and, thereby, serve as accomplices. Dissent in silence advances nothing. . . . It is
possible to resolve this farce, this ‘‘democratatorship,’’ through a boycott. While those
silent ones don’t speak out, any and all contact between civilians and military per-
sonnel should cease, because only in that way will we make this country return to
democracy.ππ
Newspapers the following day mentioned some of the deputies’ speeches,

including Alves’s and Father Vieria’s, but paid little attention to any of them.
Two days later, however, unbeknownst to Alves, Army Minister General Aurélio
de Lyra Tavares complained to President Costa e Silva about Alves’s words.
Fifteen days after this, the other two arms of the High Military Command—the
ministers of the air force and navy—reiterated these complaints. Meanwhile
copies of Alves’s speeches (with a few slight but significant modifications) cir-
culated among the barracks.π∫ While Alves su√ered no immediate action, he
quickly surmised from the threats and curses of anonymous callers that his
comments had provoked strong reactions, and he and his wife began carrying
guns and hired a security guard for their home.πΩ Finally, on November 6, a
petition signed by the three ministers reached the Judiciary Committee of the
Chamber of Deputies, requesting that Alves’s parliamentary immunity be re-
voked, and a protracted battle with the Congress began.
Of all the damning speeches delivered during those days, the military found
only Alves’s so o√ensive that they sought to try him for it. Why? Maria Helena
Moreira Alves argues that hard-line military o≈cers who were already planning
to increase authoritarian controls ‘‘found the speech particularly useful for their
purposes . . . [as it] was bound to elicit a furious emotional response in the
barracks, thus preparing the ground for widespread military support for a new
show of force. That such preparation was their intention is indicated by the fact
that the hard-line o≈cers made thousands of reprints of the speech and had it
distributed in all the barracks in the country.’’∫≠
Thomas Skidmore concurs, stating that hard-line military o≈cers sought an
excuse to remove Alves and other antigovernment congressmen of whom they
had long disapproved. ‘‘His speech, so unimportant in itself . . . gave the hard-
line military an opportunity to radicalize o≈cer opinion against the castelistas’
fragile constitutional structure.’’∫∞ Márcio Moreira Alves himself similarly says
that he was simply the pretext for the military ‘‘to grab whatever portions of
dictatorial power they had neglected to seize in 1964.’’∫≤ Judging by past events,
however, the military had many other methods of increasing its control, such as
forcibly removing troublesome congressmen from o≈ce or imposing new insti-
tutional acts and supplementary laws. Perhaps they never considered that their
request would meet with such resistance from the other opposition members in
Congress and assumed that the whole a√air would be handled quickly and
quietly. But this does not explain why, once the storm of protest within Congress
and the press arose, the military continued to press for this drastic measure. Nor
should one assume that the military might have been afraid that people would
actually take Alves’s suggestion to boycott the September 7 celebrations seriously,

as the proceedings against him did not begin until weeks after the Independence
Day parades were long over (and well attended). Whether or not his other
suggested boycott was followed is, of course, impossible to confirm.
Rather, it was Alves’s words themselves—delivered within the context of
intense sexual anxiety we have just examined—that transgressed the invisible
boundary between accepted criticism and dangerous insubordination. ‘‘The
question of whether a clear act of insubordination has occurred is not a simple
matter, for the meaning of a given action is not given but is socially constructed,’’
writes James Scott.∫≥ And in this moment of heightened political and sexual
anxieties around youth, the specter of a congressional deputy proposing such an
emasculating a√ront to the military became intolerable, regardless of whether or
not the boycott ever materialized. Alves’s very suggestion that women should
withhold sex from their military companions struck directly at the soldiers’
masculinity and, consequently, their political authority. Thus, while for Thomas
Skidmore, Alves’s speech may have seemed ‘‘so unimportant,’’ a gendered under-
standing of August 1968 suggests that it actually proved quite powerful. Only
within a context of heightened sexual anxiety could his words have had the
impact they did.
Thus, after weeks of debates, an attempted filibuster, and an ensuing exten-
sion of the congressional session, on December 11 the chamber president moved
to end discussion and call the vote the next day. Newspapers that morning fully
expected the measure to revoke Alves’s immunity to pass, with most estimates
guessing the vote would be around 190 to 170. Whether from conviction or
intense party pressure, most majority deputies pledged to support the measure.
What happened instead shocked everyone; at the last minute, in an intensely
ritualized procedure, the deputies denied the request. The discussion had been
closed the day before, and only three people were allowed to speak: the majority
leader, the minority leader, and Alves. Following their brief words, the deputies
one by one entered a booth and cast a secret ballot. With 369 deputies voting, the
process took two hours and forty minutes—the slowest in the chamber’s history.
Despite the periodic cheers when well-known opposition figures cast their bal-
lots, once the votes began to be counted, the floor—and the gallery of over one
hundred visitors—fell deathly silent. Within ten minutes of counting, the re-
gime’s loss already started to become clear. One hundred seventy-eight votes
were needed to defeat the measure, and as the total reached 150, everyone in the
house rose to his or her feet. When the figure hit 178 a cry arose, as people began
cheering, laughing, and hugging each other. A young woman in the gallery
started to sing the national anthem, and others immediately joined in. Soon the
song swept over the house, and over the clanging bell of the majority leader, who
in vain demanded silence. The final results: 216 votes against the measure, 141 for
it, and 12 blank votes—a resounding victory for Congress and a symbolic defeat
for the military.∫∂
While the deputies congratulated one another, Alves slipped quickly into
hiding. The night of December 12 passed tensely as people braced themselves for
the government’s response. President Costa e Silva held late-night meetings with
military o≈cials, members of congress and the cabinet while radio and tele-
vision stations received specific orders prohibiting them from reporting on the
case or the ensuing crisis. Military and police forces were ordered into an imme-
diate state of alert, and armored tanks moved briefly onto Brasil Avenue in
Brasilia, then were quickly withdrawn. One army commander told journalists
they were simply troops returning from military exercises, but an inside source
admitted ‘‘a small problem with military discipline.’’∫∑ Such a climate lasted well
into the next day as the closed-door meetings continued, until, that evening,
Minister of Justice Gama e Silva read an o≈cial announcement over the radio
and put an end to the speculation and rumors. ‘‘Clearly subversive acts,’’ he
proclaimed, ‘‘stemming from the most distinct cultural and political sectors,
prove that the juridical instruments which the victorious Revolution granted to
the Nation for its defense, development and well-being, are serving as the means
to combat it and destroy it.’’∫∏ With this, the military government promulgated
Institutional Act No. 5, plunging the nation into a period of even deeper politi-
cal, cultural, and military repression.
Conclusion
The pattern I have attempted to demonstrate—whereby the political actions of

young women came to be seen nearly exclusively in sexual terms—is rooted
firmly in the historical situation of 1968 Brazil. In a moment of already intense
political and cultural upheaval, when military leaders and other cold warriors
repeatedly expressed fears that an international Communist movement sought
to undermine the nation through its youth, middle-class female students began
to challenge many previously held boundaries. They involved themselves in
radical political action—including violent action—and began exploring and ex-
ploding social proscriptions against sexual experimentation. The social anxieties
this spurred can be read in the sudden rush of media images involving armed,
alluring women, whether in advertising constructions made from artists and
models or in fantastical descriptions of real-life women. These many references

shed light on the gendered dimensions of Cold War fears that both provoked
and reflected this response, exposing the sexually loaded climate that helped lead
to ai-5. In such a context, the mocking speech delivered by Márcio Moreira
Alves threatened the masculinity and authority of the military institution itself,
and the generals responded with force, shutting down Congress and instituting
the most brutal period in the fifteen-year history of their regime.
At the same time, gendered and sexualized representations served as an im-
portant repressive tool in cold warriors’ responses to the radical political trans-
formations proposed by young activists. Emphasizing young women’s political
activities as both stemming from, and resulting in, deviant sexuality at once
silenced their political voices, distorted the meaning of their movement, and
alerted parents and others to be doubly cautious about their potential involve-
ment. Moreover, women activists were increasingly imprisoned and tortured in
these years, and their physical treatment inside the cells paralleled their repre-
sentations outside: objectified into sexually deviant creatures, their sexuality
became the primary focus of physical and emotional abuse.
Despite the specificity of the Brazilian situation, this general manner of read-
ing women sexually was not specific to the Brazilian Cold War but faced radical
women activists in many areas. One need only consider the fetishization of the
female members of the Black Panther Party, the erotic speculations around Che
Guevara’s colleague Tania, and much of the media coverage surrounding Patty
Hearst to recognize that Cold War battles had gendered and sexualized hues,
inseparably cultural and political, with far-reaching consequences.
Notes
1. See, for example, ‘‘Isso é um assalto (político?),’’ Veja e Leia, October 23, 1968, 18–19;
and ‘‘O novo bandido,’’ Veja e Leia, November 6, 1968, 22.
2. ‘‘Pernas de Loira,’’ Veja e Leia, November 27, 1968, 18.
3. Zuenir Ventura, 1968, o ano que não terminou: A aventura de uma geração (Rio de
Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira, 1988), 35; and Fernando Gabeira, O que é isso com-
panheiro? (Rio de Janeiro: codecri, 1979), 85.
4. Arquidiocese de São Paulo, Brasil Nunca Mais: Um relato para a história, 20th ed.
(Petrópolis: Editora Vozes, 1987), 136.
5. I use the term ‘‘state security forces’’ as a shorthand way of describing the multiple
and changing law enforcement bodies that involved themselves with the student move-
ment, such as the federal police, the militarized police, the various branches of the armed
forces, and special repressive organizations such as dops (Departmento de Ordem Polí-
tico e Social) and the São Paulo–based doi-codi (Departamento de Operações Internas–
Centro de Operações de Defesa Interna). When appropriate, I specify which agency
participated in a particular action, but to speak about the general attitude of these forces
together, I employ the phrase ‘‘state security forces.’’ For more information on the roles
of these various forces, see Martha K. Huggins, Political Policing: The United States and
Latin America (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998).
6. I refer here to Maria Ribeiro do Valle’s argument that conflicts between students and
police throughout 1968 amounted to a violent form of dialogue, mediated through the
press, a result of the political impossibility of other forms of expression. Maria Ribeiro do
Valle, 1968, o diálogo é a violência: Movimento estudantil e ditadura militar no Brasil
(Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 1999).
7. Seth Fein, ‘‘From New Empire to Old: Making Mexican Newsreels the Cold War
Way,’’ Diplomatic History 28, no. 5 (November 2004): 745–46.
8. See, for example, ‘‘Polícia prende Vladimir e mais 1239 no Congresso da ex-une,’’
Jornal do Brasil, October 13, 1968, 1.
9. Estado de Guanabara, Secretaria de Segurança Pública, Departamento de Ordem
Política e Social, Divisão de Operações, Serviço de Buscas, Seção de Buscas Especiais,
Informe No. 192, Assunto: Movimento Estudantil, 28 de junho de 1968, in Departamento
de Ordem Política e Social, Setor Estudantil, Pasta No. 38, Arquivo Público do Estado do
Rio de Janeiro (hereafter cited as dops, Pasta No. 38, aperj].
10. ‘‘Polícia paulista liga Congresso da ex-une a terrorismo e assassinato,’’ Jornal do
Brasil, October 16, 1968, 12.
11. Thomas E. Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–1985 (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1988), 87.
12. According to Veja, William Wight, U.S. consular-general in São Paulo, proclaimed
a connection between the two. ‘‘O terror condenou o Americano à morte,’’ Veja, Octo-
ber 16, 1968, 25.
13. See Daniel Aarão Reis Filho and Jair Ferreira de Sá, Imagens da Revoluçøao: Docu-
mentos políticos das organizações clandestinas de esquerda dos anos 1961–1971 (Rio de
Janeiro: Editora Marco Zero, 1985); Marcelo Ridenti, O fantasma da Revolução Brasileira
(São Paulo: Editora da Universidade Estadual Paulista, 1993); and Mita Arquidiocese de
São Paulo, Perfil dos atingidos, vol. 3, Projeto ‘‘Brasil: Nunca Mais’’ (Petrópolis: Vozes,
1988).
14. Daniel Aarão Reis Filho and Pedro de Moraes, 68: A paixão de uma utopia, 2nd ed.
(Rio de Janeiro: Fundação Getulio Vargas, 1998), 26.
15. It is obvious that accusations against individuals for participation may or may not
reflect their actual involvement; that the state security system could not successfully have
prosecuted all clandestine groups or all types of members within them evenly; and that,
in general, judicial records are clearly not transparent indicators of clandestine activity.
Nevertheless, Ridenti’s painstaking analysis of these thousands of pages of documents is

without doubt the most comprehensive set of figures we have for understanding these
underground and often short-lived organizations.
16. Ridenti, O fantasma da Revolução Brasileira, 204–6.
17. In 1966 the city of Rio de Janeiro lay within the small state of Guanabara, while the
state of Rio de Janeiro encompassed the much larger surrounding area. This system was
changed in 1969, consolidating the two regions into one state called Rio de Janeiro, with
its capital the city of the same name.
18. di-rj and di-gb were separate student organizations, and it was actually di-rj that
created mr-8 in 1969. But when the state security forces shut down the organization and
publicly announced the end of mr-8, di-gb rebaptized itself with the same name in a
concerted e√ort to demoralize the government.
19. Solange de Deus Simões, Deus, pátria e família: As mulheres no golpe de 1964
(Petrópolis: Vozes, 1985); Maria Inês Salgado de Souza, Os empresários e a educação: O
IPES e a política educacional após 1964 (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1981).
20. Ridenti, O fantasma da Revolução Brasileira, 196–206.
21. Ibid.
22. Again, this is not necessarily the best indicator of female student participation
more generally, since women students were probably less able than their male counter-
parts to travel away from home to a secret location, for many days, unsupervised, and
among colleagues of both sexes. If anything, I would expect higher percentages of women
in the other une-related activities where overnight travel was not required. Nevertheless,
the Ibiuna figures point to a real degree of dedication on the part of the female students
who attended.
24. Arthur José Poerner, O poder jovem: História da participação politicá dos estudantes
brasileiros, 4th ed. (São Paulo: Centro de Memória da Juventude, 1995), 270.
25. Ribeiro do Valle, 1968 O diálogo é a violência, 24.
26. She cites an October 1968 memorandum of the U.S. Agency for International
Development for this information. See Huggins, Political Policing, 142.
27. ‘‘A passeata, antes dos tiros,’’ Correio da Manhã, October 24, 1968, 11.
28. ‘‘Nota dos Estudantes ao Povo de Guanabara,’’ June 1968, in dops, Pasta No. 38,
aperj.
29. Olga D’Arc Pimentel, in Aarão Reis and de Moraes, 68: A paixão de uma utopia, 153.
30. Nilmário Miranda and Carlos Tibúrcio, Dos filhos deste solo: Mortos e desaparecidos
políticos durante a ditadura militar. A responsabilidade do Estado (São Paulo: Fundação
Perseu Abramo, 1999), 543.
31. Heloísa Buarque de Holanda, Impressões de viagem: CPC, vanguarda e desbunde,
1960/79 (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1981).
32. Telegram from American Embassy, Rio de Janeiro, to Secretary of State, June 19,
1968, Subject: Student Demonstrations, Subject-Numeric File 1967–1969, Political and

Defense, Political A√airs and Relations, Brazil, 13-2, State Department Central File, Rec-
ord Group 59, National Archives at College Park, College Park, Md. (hereafter cited as
sdcf, rg59, nara).
33. Maria Hermínia Tavares de Almeida and Luiz Weis, ‘‘Carro-zero e pau-de-arara: O
cotidiano da oposição de classe média ao regime militar,’’ in História da vida privada no
Brasil: Contrastes da intimidade contemporânea, ed. Lilia Moritz Schwarcz (São Paulo:
Companhia das Letras, 1998), 399.
34. Ibid., 370.
35. Ventura, 1968 O ano que não terminou, 37.
36. ‘‘Nudismo e sexo: Os jovems estão implantando uma nova moral?’’ Manchete,
December 14, 1968, 146.
37. Alfredo Syrkis, Os carbonários: Memórias da guerrilha perdida, 3rd ed. (São Paulo:
Global, 1980), 101–2.
38. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial
Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995), 87–95.
39. Délcio da Fonseca Sobrinho, Estado e população: Uma história do planejamento
familiar no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro: Rosa dos Tempos, 1993); Sonia E. Alvarez, Engendering
Democracy in Brazil: Women’s Movements in Transition Politics (Princeton: Princeton
40. Fonseca, Estado e população, 110.
41. Such a view did, in fact, become state policy in São Paulo in the early 1980s,
however. Under Governor Paulo Maluf, the Pró-Família program was created to dis-
tribute birth control pills to women in poor neighborhoods. The governor’s special
advisory committee on community issues ‘‘further suggested that people of color should
be the primary targets of state population policy—or else the Black population would
come to predominate electorally and otherwise in the state of São Paulo’’ (Alvarez,
Engendering Democracy, 183).
42. Fonseca, Estado e população, 111.
43. ‘‘O Congresso interrompido,’’ Veja e Leia, October 16, 1968, 15.
45. Ibid.
46. Dirceu Soares, ‘‘A Faculdade está ocupada,’’ Realidade, August 1968, 56.
47. Ibid.
48. Cited in telegram from Boonstra, American Embassy, Rio de Janeiro, to Secretary of
State, Washington, Subject: Political Prisoners, July 22, 1970, Subject-Numeric File 1970–
1973, Political and Defense, Political A√airs and Relations, Brazil, 29, sdcf, rg59, nara.
49. Ana Maria Colling, A resistenica da mulher à ditadura militar no Brasil (Rio de
Janeiro: Rosa dos Tempos, 1997), 51.
50. Printed in Manchete, May 11, 1968, 92–95.
51. Printed in Realidade, April 1968, 10.

52. Printed in Manchete, May 11, 1968, 177.
53. Printed in Manchete, November 23, 1968, 133.
54. Printed, respectively, in Realidade, May 1968, 41; and June 1968, 33.
55. Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 125.
56. Telegram from American Embassy, Brasilia, to Secretary of State, April 24, 1968,
Subject: Torture Accusations Apparently True, Subject-Numeric File 1967–1969, Political
and Defense, Political A√airs and Relations, Brazil, 13-2, sdcf, rg59, nara.
57. Márcio Moreira Alves, A Grain of Mustard Seed: The Awakening of the Brazilian
Revolution (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Press, 1973), 17.
58. Printed, respectively, in Realidade, May 1968, 20–21; June 1968, 20–21; and July
1968, 20–21.
59. Gabeira, O que é isso companheiro?, 86–87.
60. Luiz Maklouf Carvalho, Mulheres que foram à luta armada (São Paulo: Editora
Globo, 1998), 37.
61. Albertina de Oliveira Costa et al., eds., Memorias das mulheres do exilio (Rio de
Janeiro: Paz e Terra, 1980), 208.
62. Jean Franco, ‘‘Gender, Death, and Resistance: Facing the Ethical Vacuum,’’ in Fear
at the Edge: State Terror and Resistance in Latin America, ed. Juan E. Corradi, Patricia
Weiss Fagen, and Manuel Antonio Garreton (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1992), 107.
63. Ibid., 109.
64. Colling, A resistenica da mulher, 84.
65. Maklouf Carvalho, Mulheres que foram à luta armada, 93.
66. Colling, A resistenica da mulher, 84.
67. Shizuo Osawa, interview by Je√rey Lesser, Rio de Janeiro, January 25, 2002. Many
thanks to Je√ Lesser for generously sharing this portion of his interview with me.
68. Maklouf Carvalho, Mulheres que foram à luta armada, 94.
69. Ibid., 56.
70. Flamarion Mossri, ‘‘Comissão concede dia 10 liçenca contra Márcio,’’ Jornal do
Brasil, December 8, 1968, 36.
71. I refer here to the first Law of National Security of March 11, 1967, not to be
confused with the September 29, 1969, National Security Law. For more information on
this legislation, see Maria Helena Moreira Alves, State and Opposition in Military Brazil
(Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985), 118.
72. Unírio Machado, in Anais da Câmara dos Deputados, vol. 35, November 1968, 83.
73. Brasil, Congresso, Anais da Câmara dos Deputados: 2a Sessão Legislativa Ordinária
da 6a Legislatura, sessões de 2 a 6 de setembro de 1968, vol. 23 (Brasilia, 1968), 130.
74. Ibid., 570.
75. Ibid., 159–65.
76. It is not clear in the congressional record who decides how the events are recorded
and on what basis, but following each speech there is a small note about the floor’s
response. In most cases the note reads (very good). Sometimes it might say (very good,
very good), and in extreme cases it says (very good, very good, applause). Following Alves’s
speech of September 2, 1968, the marks read (very good, very good, applause, the speaker is
complimented), leading me to believe that it enjoyed quite a resounding reception.
77. Anais da Câmara dos Deputados (Brasilia), vol. 23, 423–33.
78. The copies read, ‘‘the girls who dance with the cadets and frequent the young
o≈cers.’’ The substitution of ‘‘frequent,’’ a word typically used to describe visiting stores
or restaurants, for the more general word ‘‘date’’ seems an allusion to prostitutes or
mistresses, and hence a more obvious reference to withholding sex.
79. Alves later claimed that the delay was caused by the visit of Queen Elizabeth to
Brazil in October. ‘‘It might, after all, seem unbecoming to . . . start a major political crisis
while the government was playing host to such a universal symbol of stability and lawful
rule as British royalty.’’ Alves, A Grain of Mustard Seed, 14.
80. Alves, State and Opposition in Military Brazil, 94.
81. Skidmore, The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 80.
82. Alves, A Grain of Mustard Seed, 1.
83. James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 205.
84. ‘‘Câmara nega a licença e canta Hino Nacional,’’ Jornal do Brasil, December 13,
1968, 5.
85. ‘‘Militares prevêem para hoje edição de Ato Institucional,’’ Jornal do Brasil, Decem-
ber 13, 1968, 4.
86. Preamble to Institutional Act No. 5.
CARLOTA MCALLISTER
Rural Markets, Revolutionary Souls, and

Rebellious Women in Cold War Guatemala
On a Sunday morning in early July 1979, Guatemalan army troops drove a truck
into the weekly market of a small rural Mayan village called Chupol, intending
to forcibly press any young men they could find there into military service.
Having successfully accomplished such missions in the past, the soldiers were
surprised by the resistance they encountered on this occasion. As they began
their roundup, women wielding large sticks and torches surrounded the truck,
throwing rocks and threatening to kill the intruders if they did not leave Chupol
at once. Local leaders of the Committee for Peasant Unity—the political wing of
Guatemala’s largest guerrilla group, the Guerrilla Army of the Poor—had orga-
nized the women’s action as a forceful repudiation of the Guatemalan state’s
incursions into indigenous communities. The action achieved its purpose: fear-
ing for their lives, the soldiers retreated without any new conscripts, leaving the
triumphant Chupolenses alone to celebrate.
Is this event part of the Cold War? Some events that took place in Guatemala
do appear in standard Cold War histories: for example, the 1954 overthrow
of Guatemala’s democratically elected president Jacobo Arbenz, planned and
backed by the cia, has been called ‘‘one of the best known and most important
episodes in Washington’s Cold War policies.’’∞ This description of the coup,
however, implies that it counts as a Cold War event only because high-level
American government policymakers participated in its planning and execution,
painting the Cold War as a kind of strategy game for the world’s best and
brightest men. Several excellent recent histories of Guatemala lay out the real-
world consequences of this game by documenting the profound reshaping of
everyday life under the U.S.-backed anti-Communist regimes that ruled the
country after 1954.≤ But with the exception of Greg Grandin’s recent account of
peasant mobilization in the Alta Verapaz, even these works do not include
people like Chupol’s angry women as players in Cold War geopolitics.
r u r a l m a r k e t s , r e vo l u t i o n a ry s o u l s 351
Yet as R. G. Saull has argued, the Cold War was waged not only between the
superpowers but also through worldwide struggles over the constitution of
social and economic life.≥ Ideologically committed to the separation of the state
from the sphere of production, U.S. cold warriors saw their struggle against
Communism as one to expand the reach of the invisible hand of the market
around the globe. In classical economic theory, the market is a ‘‘coordination
device’’ for resolving transactions among buyers and sellers possessed of dif-
ferent interests in the form of a price that both parties judge as fair.∂ In a per-
fect market system, American cold warriors imagined, the pricing mechanism
would advance U.S. interests without requiring Americans to exercise actual
political authority by ensuring that everyone’s interests were best served by
capitalism. Victory over Communism, therefore, depended on opening markets
around the world.
To function, markets need buyers and sellers with access to what Michel
Callon calls ‘‘calculative agencies.’’ To calculate, he argues, agents require on the
one hand the information necessary to evaluate their interests in economic
terms, and on the other the will to interact with one another as well as with the
objects of their transactions exclusively in the service of economic interests.∑ For
Callon, calculative agencies are properties neither of individual psyches nor of
particular cultural configurations, but rather of a ‘‘web of relations and connec-
tions’’ that establishes certain contingencies as the kind of certainties about the
state of the world and the nature of actors that can be used in calculations.∏ This
web of relations includes not only other human beings but also the nonhuman
objects and spaces, such as physical marketplaces, with and within which the
market operates.
Callon’s insistence on the embeddedness of market economics in real-world
markets is helpful for considering how Chupolenses became agents of Cold War
struggles. Modernization theory, which identified the so-called Third World’s
rural area as the market’s essential outside, linked cold warriors in Washington
to poor rural peasants in countries like Guatemala by locating the vanguard of
the battle against Communism in their calculative agencies. To incorporate
Third World rural people into the theoretical space of the perfect market system,
would-be modernizers had to create the material and social conditions neces-
sary for making market-based calculations. In the process, they radically trans-
formed the rural areas in which they intervened. In some places, such as Chupol,
these transformations allowed rural residents to discover and act on interests
quite di√erent from those that modernization theory imputed to them.
I seek here to explain this phenomenon by tracing the relationship between
352 c a r l o ta m c a l l i s t e r
Chupol’s marketplace and ‘‘the market’’ of Cold War modernization theory. The
market where Chupol’s women staged their uprising was the product of a series
of engagements between the local, the national, and the global to which cold
warriors came late. Cold warriors’ attempts to make this place operate accord-
ing to the laws of ‘‘the market,’’ however, did not so much misconstrue this
history as create the conditions under which new engagements between these
di√erent levels became possible, incorporating the women into Cold War games
by marking their distance from Washington and its policymakers. Stories like
that of the uprising are critical to understanding the history of the Cold War, I
argue, because they show that it is also necessarily Guatemala’s—and Chupol’s—
history.
Third World Cold War: Development as Anti-Communism
The notion of the ‘‘rural area’’ as a discrete space governed by a distinct social
and economic logic is an artifact of the mid-twentieth-century reconfiguration
of global relations of power that set the Cold War in motion. After World War II,
Arturo Escobar argues, a new field, development economics, emerged to explain
the inequalities in wealth between national economies that persisted in defiance
of the predictions of classical economic theory. By introducing the evolutionary
notion of ‘‘development’’ into economic theory, this new science framed agrar-
ian regions as historically backward spaces, grouping poor nations into a single
Third World that had to overcome its own rural nature, and locating the knowl-
edge necessary to do so in wealthy First World nations.π The development
paradigm, for Escobar and other development critics, thus recuperated colonial
relations of power from the collapse of the colonial system by making continued
interventions in the Third World’s ‘‘rural area’’ a scientific necessity.∫ Such inter-
ventions, James Ferguson argues, in turn worked like an ‘‘anti-politics machine’’
on Third World rural areas, producing ‘‘alongside the institutional e√ect of
expanding bureaucratic state power . . . the conceptual or ideological e√ect of
depoliticizing both poverty and the state.’’Ω
The invention of the anti-politics machine coincided with the emergence of
the United States as a superpower and helped the United States to consolidate its
superpower status. Development critics, however, rarely remark on the Cold
War roots of the development paradigm. Escobar, for example, argues that Cold
War geopolitics was one of the factors that ‘‘lent legitimacy’’ to the development
paradigm, rather than a constitutive feature of that paradigm.∞≠ In their concern
to demonstrate that the actual antipolitical e√ects of development interventions
virtually never correspond to those intended by development planners, these

studies dismiss the explanatory value of understanding the motivations behind
development planning in general. For Ferguson, who does not mention the
Cold War, the ‘‘logic’’ of development ‘‘transcends the question of planners’
intentions,’’ geostrategic or otherwise.∞∞
Planners’ intentions, however, should be considered one of the anti-politics
machine’s integral mechanisms. Development economics, as Timothy Mitchell
shows, depended on the prior formation of ‘‘the economy’’ as the domain
comprising the material substrate of all other varieties of human endeavor—
politics, society, religion, and so forth.∞≤ In its inert materiality, the economy
‘‘became arguably the most important set of practices for organizing what ap-
pears as the separation of the real world from its representations, of things from
their values, of actions from intentions, of an object world from the realm of
ideas’’—the separations necessary for making economic calculations.∞≥ The eco-
nomic sciences, including development economics, perform these separations
by structuring interventions in the economy. Enacted in the anti-politics ma-
chine, development planners’ intentions and their notions of intentionality are
thus critical for enabling calculative agencies in the Third World’s rural areas.∞∂
The Third World rural calculations enabled by the anti-politics machine,
in turn, enact a Cold War agenda, as Walt Rostow explains in his canonical
1960 treatise on modernization theory, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-
Communist Manifesto. For Rostow—who served in the Kennedy (1961–63) and
Johnson (1963–1968) administrations in addition to theorizing about the Cold
War—moral transformation is the key to bringing poor nations to ‘‘take-o√,’’
the shift from dependence on agriculture to dependence on industry. For take-
o√ to happen, governments must construct the ‘‘social overhead capital, most
notably in transport,’’ that will lay the foundations for industrial society,∞∑ but
Rostow was considerably more interested in ‘‘the view taken of human motiva-
tion’’ in agrarian societies (149). To reach take-o√, ‘‘men must come to be valued
in the society not for their connexion with clan or class . . . but for their
individual ability to perform certain specific, increasingly specialized functions’’
(19). Likewise, man must cease to ‘‘regard his physical environment as virtually a
factor given by nature and providence, but [rather] as an ordered world which,
if rationally understood, can be manipulated in ways which yield productive
change’’ (19). Finally, ‘‘the population at large must be prepared to accept train-
ing for—and then to operate—an economic system whose methods are subject
to regular change’’ (20). Eventually, these transformations will bring former
agricultural societies into the ‘‘age of high consumerism’’ (134). By enabling
calculative agencies, development brings the Third World’s rural areas into ‘‘the
market’’ of high capitalist theory.
In producing this link, development becomes anti-Communism and vice
versa: ‘‘The test of our own economies—and of the non-Communist world as a
whole—lies not in the Soviet economic performance, but in our ability to fulfill
the ambitions of our own peoples,’’ Rostow notes (103). The final purpose of
modernization, therefore, is to ‘‘demonstrate that the underdeveloped nations—
now the main focus of Communist hopes—can move successfully through the
preconditions into a well-established take-o√ within the orbit of the democratic
world, resisting the blandishments and temptations of Communism’’ (134). Any
rural place where calculative agencies can be made to operate should thus be
understood as a space under U.S. geopolitical influence.
Guatemala as Cold War Showcase
Guatemala was ripe for modernizing in the 1950s: it was an agrarian society
whose wealth derived from the export of a very limited range of agricultural
commodities (co√ee, bananas, and to a lesser extent cattle, sugar, and cotton).
This plantation economy formed in the late nineteenth century, when German
entrepreneurs showed Central America that co√ee could be an immensely prof-
itable crop. Liberal governments seeking to take advantage of this windfall intro-
duced a series of legal reforms that ‘‘forever altered rural life’’ in Guatemala in
three ways.∞∏ First, changes in property law transferred ownership of much of
Guatemala’s best land—its fertile coastal piedmont and lower highlands—from
indigenous communities to foreign and Ladino (nonindigenous Guatemalan)
entrepreneurs, who consolidated their holdings into a small number of vast
estates. Second, coercive measures including labor laws to prevent ‘‘vagrancy’’
among the propertyless ensured that newly dispossessed indigenous commu-
nities would provide a steady stream of workers for the new plantations. Third,
the abolition of colonial protections for indigenous communities permitted
Ladinos to take up residence in these communities, where they quickly seized
control of municipal government and used it to mobilize indigenous labor. In
just a few decades, these policies concentrated 72 percent of Guatemala’s arable
land in the hands of 2 percent of landowners—the least equitable distribution of
land in Latin America—and channeled the rhythms of rural indigenous life into
a cycle of forced seasonal migration from the highlands to the tropical coast.∞π
Thus Guatemala in the 1950s was also an agrarian society in the Rostovian sense
that much of its capital was reproduced by unfree rural labor (itself reproduced
in noncapitalist peasant households) and that much of its surplus was wasted on
reproducing ascriptive social identities.
The doomed Arbenz government sought to build the Guatemalan nation by
introducing programs to liberate the rural area from these phenomena. Building
on the reforms of his predecessor, who had abolished forced labor and intro-
duced new educational programs aimed at the indigenous population, Arbenz
introduced an agrarian reform law in 1952. This law, Decree 900, aimed to
reverse Guatemala’s rural ‘‘backwardness’’ by expropriating land left fallow by
large landholders and giving it in usufruct to tenant farmers, sharecroppers,
and agricultural laborers, transforming them into petty agrarian capitalists and
potential customers for Guatemala’s fledgling industries. Other initiatives in-
cluded extensive investment in transportation infrastructure, including a new
highway to the Atlantic (a route previously served only by railroad) and a new
Caribbean port.∞∫
On the surface, these programs were eminently compatible with plans like
Rostow’s for development. Indeed, according to Jim Handy, Arbenz’s economic
initiatives were largely ‘‘based on the recommendations made in an International
Bank for Reconstruction and Development [the World Bank’s predecessor] sur-
vey,’’ of which Rostow might well have approved.∞Ω Nonetheless, Arbenz’s re-
forms raised multiple red flags in the United States and among Guatemalan
elites. In a country politically dominated by large landowners, and where the
largest landowner was the U.S.-owned United Fruit Company, both Decree 900
and the new infrastructure, which competed with the United Fruit Company’s
prior monopoly on transportation along these routes, directly attacked en-
trenched national and transnational interests.≤≠ The prominent position Arbenz
granted to José Manuel Fortuny, leader of the Communist-a≈liated Guatemalan
Workers’ Party, and particularly to Fortuny’s role in writing Decree 900, raised
fears about the government’s plans for the future.≤∞ Decree 900’s establishment
of new peasant and community organizations to oversee expropriations and its
granting of usufruct rather than title to the land it redistributed—measures that
Fortuny intended as a means of ‘‘introduc[ing] a progressive element into a
capitalist reform’’—gave weight to their fears.≤≤ Finally, the geopolitical moment
also worked against Arbenz, for China’s peasant revolution had recently ‘‘stirred
deep misgivings in Washington policymaking circles’’ by suggesting that Com-
munists could find a foothold in susceptible rural hearts and minds as well as on
the European front lines.≤≥ Arbenz’s attention to agrarian matters was thus
perceived as a sign that his nationalism was a front for the most dangerous sort of
internationalism: in a 1953 report to the National Security Council, the Bureau of
Interamerican A√airs characterized Decree 900 as a law ‘‘designed to produce

social upheaval.’’≤∂
Fears about Arbenz’s intentions helped frame the 1954 coup against his gov-
ernment as a world-historical anti-Communist triumph rather than the over-
throw of a particular regime and made Guatemala’s need for modernization
seem imperative. In 1955, members of the U.S. House of Representatives sought
development aid for the post-coup government by arguing that Guatemala was
‘‘a political, social, and economic laboratory,’’ whose fate ‘‘will be a major factor
in determining the future course of Latin American a√airs.’’≤∑ Rostow himself
recognized that keeping rural areas free of Communism required not merely a
shift in attitudes toward marketing but also ‘‘a change translated into working
institutions and procedures’’ for marketing.≤∏ In the wake of the coup, Guate-
mala became a ‘‘pilot project’’ for the introduction of such institutions and
procedures to the Third World: between 1954 and 1960, Guatemala received 15
percent of all U.S. foreign aid to Latin America.≤π
The aid served two purposes: first, strengthening Guatemala’s internal se-
curity forces to increase their vigilance against potential Soviet interference; and
second, implementing developmental policies designed to create ‘‘a climate in
which Communism will not thrive.’’≤∫ The post-coup government’s plans for
creating this climate in some ways resembled Arbenz’s plans for creating a na-
tion: the showcase project of the late 1950s, for example, was the Inter-American
Highway (the name of the Pan-American Highway in Central America), a road
Arbenz had planned to build until the United States cut o√ aid to his govern-
ment in 1951.≤Ω Likewise, although the new regime restored most of the land
expropriated under Decree 900 to its previous owners, it also implemented its
own, more limited, agrarian reform. Under U.S. guidance, however, the strategy
these tactics served had changed: post-coup development sought to build mar-
kets, not national industry. The new government channeled its infrastructural
investments through the private, not the public, sector, and the majority of those
who received land under its agrarian reform were ‘‘relatively well-o√ Ladinos’’
already making capitalist use of the land.≥≠
Greg Grandin argues that the post-coup closure of political space and reversal
of Arbencista dreams deeply alienated peasants in the Alta Verapaz region from
the post-coup state, eventually driving them into peasant-based insurgencies.≥∞ I
wish, however, to add nuance to this account by suggesting that the post-coup
anti-Communism also had productive e√ects. A novel set of institutions and
programs that targeted the rural area and specifically the moral and social life of
its inhabitants through interventions in education, housing, literacy, commu-
nity development, and public health emerged alongside the repression of Ar-
benz’s policies and supporters.≥≤ Poorly funded in comparison with the state’s
large infrastructural projects, these entities nonetheless had an ambitious pur-
pose, namely, disciplining Guatemala’s rural agencies for the new economy. The
Socio-Educativo Rural, which trained rural teachers to educate their charges in
hygiene, nutrition, crochet, and the like, exemplified such interventions, work-
ing to ‘‘change the negative attitudes of our people for favorable attitudes.’’≥≥
Stephen Streeter has argued that most of these programs were profoundly un-
suited to Guatemalan rural life and soon petered out.≥∂ Nevertheless they helped
frame rural Guatemala as a discrete space with distinct interests, and thus as a
place demanding particular kinds of intervention. Under certain conditions, as I
will show for Chupol, such attentions did not alienate rural Guatemalans from
the state but instead incorporated them far more tightly in its networks.
The Cold War Church and Indigenous Guatemala
The Catholic Church responded to the anti-Communist demand for interven-

tion in the rural area more successfully than the state, for its historical claim on
Guatemala’s hinterland was far stronger than that of the central government.
During the conquest of Mesoamerica, the Church had secured its place in the
Spanish Crown’s new territories by a≈rming that Indians had souls that re-
quired spiritual guidance. As the Indians’ ‘‘defenders,’’ clergy were the only
nonindigenous people regularly permitted to live in indigenous communities
under colonial law. The Church thus ‘‘e√ectively was the state in rural areas’’ for
hundreds of years.≥∑
At the time of the coup, the Church’s ability to assert this claim on the rural
area was weak, for nineteenth-century liberal regimes had stripped the Church
of its Guatemalan privileges and properties, imposing ‘‘perhaps the longest and
most severe restriction that the Catholic Church has su√ered in Latin Amer-
ica.’’≥∏ By the 1950s, few clergy remained to administer the sacraments outside
Guatemala City, and few Guatemalans missed receiving them. With fanatically
anti-Communist Archbishop Mariano Rossell y Arellano at its helm, however,
the Church’s situation was gradually improving. In the 1940s, Rossell had begun
to seek new social relevance for the Church by creating new entities for the
cultivation of anti-Communist—and, with Arbenz in power, antigovernment—
sentiment.≥π One was Catholic Action, a movement originally founded by Pope
Pius XI to encourage laypeople to help the Church spread the Good Word as a
means of counteracting the corrosive forces of modernity, Protestantism, and
secularism. Subsequent popes had held up Catholic Action as a bulwark against

Communism as well. Following their lead, Rossell issued a pastoral letter in 1946
urging all Guatemalans ‘‘who feel the waves of evil striking Nations in order to
drag them into the abyss, and who long to consecrate their lives to the good
cause’’ of their nation’s salvation, to join the movement.≥∫ Without a strong
institution behind it, however, Catholic Action initially found few joiners.
Rossell’s influence improved during the campaign leading up to the coup
against Arbenz. In 1953 Rossell sent the revered image of the Black Christ of
Esquipulas, Guatemala’s most visited pilgrimage site, on an anti-Arbenz excur-
sion around the countryside, and in April 1954 he issued a pastoral letter calling
explicitly for a ‘‘sincere crusade against Communism.’’≥Ω After the coup, such
activities allowed the Church to claim it had played an important role in Ar-
benz’s undoing, showing Rossell that he could best serve God and himself by
using the Church’s pastoral techniques to serve Cold War plans for Guatemala.
Conveniently for Rossell, the lone reminder of the Church’s glorious past in
1950s Guatemala happened to be the rural phenomenon of indigenous spiri-
tuality. Catholicism had retained some of its sway over Indian souls even after
the Church itself abandoned indigenous communities: in the absence of clergy,
indigenous people simply transformed the lay fraternities, or cofradías, that had
traditionally cared for saints’ images into ‘‘Indian institutions that served chiefly
Indian purposes.’’∂≠ The cofradías presided over costumbre (custom), a nomi-
nally Catholic religious practice that replaced priests with an indigenous geron-
tocracy and emphasized agricultural rites over the orthodox liturgy.∂∞ Much like
the colonial Church, moreover, the cofradías also exercised their authority in
political matters, collecting the indigenous labor that municipal governments
demanded, but resisting these demands when they became excessive. Under
their power, indigenous people gained a measure of protection from liberal
impositions, but also a means of a≈rming their dignity as spiritual beings in the
face of soulless Ladino rule.
Rossell decided to enlist indigenous souls as well as rural hearts and minds for
take-o√, transforming the Church into an essential partner for the post-coup
state. In a lecture at the Third Catholic Congress on Rural Life, held in Panama
in 1955, Rossell acclaimed rural life as ‘‘one of the principal aspects of the titanic
struggle now waged by the militant City of God . . . against the diabolical city
now incarnate in the seduction of Communism.’’∂≤ During the colonial period,
he argued, the peasant and the Church had forged an alliance for the defense of
Indian lands; liberal attacks on Church lands were in fact designed to facilitate
their attacks on Indian lands. The Communists had used agrarian reform to try
to win Indian loyalties away from the Church, and had almost succeeded, be-
cause a ‘‘peasant without land is already halfway and unconsciously within the
orbit of Communist seduction.’’∂≥ But when ‘‘the divine spell of a crucifix [the
Black Christ of Esquipulas] reconquered an entire nation’’ in spite of such ruses,
it revealed the continuing allegiance of peasants to the Church.∂∂ Warning that
land distribution in post-coup Guatemala was still not exactly ‘‘Christian,’’∂∑
Rossell concluded that the Church would have to resume its role as defender of
the Indians to keep rural Guatemalans on the right track.
The post-coup government rewarded the Church in the 1955 constitution by
restoring its rights to own property and provide religious education.∂∏ The
Vatican was likewise disposed to help Rossell minister to Guatemala’s Cold War
spiritual needs by sending new religious personnel to expand the Church’s in-
stitutional reach. Foreign clergy had begun to arrive in Guatemala in the late
1940s in response to the Vatican’s call for Catholics in wealthy nations to ‘‘save
Guatemala from Communism,’’∂π but after the coup, this trickle became a flood.
In the early 1940s, religious personnel in the country numbered 120 in total,
virtually all Guatemalans; by 1966 there were 531 priests, 96 monks, and 805 nuns
in Guatemala, of whom 434, 96, and 705, respectively, were foreigners.∂∫
To accommodate the influx, new dioceses and parishes opened throughout
the country, mostly in the rural, indigenous communities Rossell had identi-
fied as the front line of the battle against Communism. The predominantly
European and North American priests sent to minister to indigenous commu-
nities, however, had little notion of what they would encounter there: ‘‘They did
not understand the cultural or religious reality of the places they were sent to
work. . . . Their idea of the pastoral was entirely spiritual,’’ charges one account
of their arrival.∂Ω Many reacted violently: the indigenous misery and Ladino
racism that prevailed in the highlands as well as what they saw as costumbrista
paganism appalled them. Worse still, they felt that the Church’s long-standing
practice of accommodating costumbre was complicit in the lamentable state of
Guatemala’s rural a√airs.
Their solution to these problems was to bring Rossell’s Catholic Action move-
ment to indigenous Guatemala. Kay Warren argues that Catholic Action is
premised on a set of oppositions between body and soul, external and internal
worlds, and material and spiritual phenomena.∑≠ For the foreign priests, cos-
tumbre exhibited an imbalance along all three of these axes, privileging the
bodily pleasures of drink and sex; the external world of processions and display;
and the materiality of fireworks, candles, and flowers in worship. By inverting
these emphases, they trusted, Catholic Action would turn indigenous souls
inward and upward, modernizing the procedures through which they made
their spiritual choices and curing the spiritual confusion that kept them poor.∑∞
To reach indigenous souls, however, the priests first had to break the earthly
power of the cofradías by leveling the material distinctions that costumbre had
institutionalized among indigenous people and between indigenous people and
Ladinos. Clergy used their international connections to channel a flow of funds
and training into modernizing their communities’ economies. North Americans
often had links with usaid, which gave funds to cooperatives, peasant leagues,
and credit providers; and to the Peace Corps, which provided training and labor
for specific local projects such as the construction of schools. Europeans brought
substantial funding from the Christian Democrats as well as Misérior, the Ger-
man bishops’ grant-making foundation, to their community projects.∑≤ By the
late 1960s, priests in many communities were deeply involved in parishioners’
e√orts to set up agricultural cooperatives, savings and loans institutions, com-
munity betterment committees, peasant leagues, and rural schools and markets.
In just two decades, such interventions substantially improved material condi-
tions in many highland communities.
Harnessing modernization to evangelization served the Church’s purposes
well: in the decades after the coup, the growth of Catholic Action was ‘‘almost
prodigious,’’∑≥ while the power of the cofradías waned. By reconstructing the
domain of indigenous religious belief, moreover, the priests wrought a revolu-
tion in aspects of indigenous life now defined as external to religion. To replace
the gerontocracy, the priests had singled out particularly worthy members of
Catholic Action as ‘‘leaders’’ of their communities in a political as well as spiritual
sense. By 1967, usaid had trained 74 rural Catholic Action members to organize
agriculture-related ‘‘interest groups,’’ and the Christian Democrats had trained
some 160 more.∑∂ Formed by initiatives that required literacy skills as well as
competence in Spanish, these leaders tended to be younger and have more
formal education than costumbrista authorities and were thus better equipped
to deal with Ladinos on Ladino terms. As Ricardo Falla has shown, the earliest,
most enthusiastic, and most prominent indigenous Catholic Action converts
also tended to be those who worked as traveling merchants rather than those
more committed to working the land.∑∑ In overthrowing the spiritual authority
of the cofradías, therefore, Catholic Action also lent authority to political and
economic behaviors quite foreign to those sanctioned by costumbre, radically
transforming the grounds on which indigenous identity was constructed.
In thus opening up the rural area to Cold War evangelization, ironically,
Rossell lost control over the Guatemalan Church. Schisms began to open, on the
one hand between members of religious orders and the regular clergy, and on
the other between international theologies and the traditions of Guatemalan

Catholicism. At the Vatican II Council, the Guatemalan bishops voted against
most proposed reforms,∑∏ and their response to John XXIII’s new charter for the
Church was to issue familiar warnings about Communism and calls for a land
reform based on the God-given right to private property.∑π Nevertheless the
bishops could not prevent foreign arrivals from following the Church’s ever
more progressive theological inclinations.
Religious, whose funding came from their orders rather than a parish, were
particularly disinclined to respect the political limits the regular hierarchy sought
to impose. In the early 1970s, the Jesuit Landívar University began to o√er courses
in Bible study inspired by liberation theology to rural indigenous leaders identi-
fied through church networks. In the mid-1970s, members of Guatemala City’s
Jesuit Center for Research and Social Action began to travel to the highlands
departments of Chimaltenango and the Quiché, forming similar study groups
with local Catholic Action leaders outside regular parish and diocesan activities,
sometimes against the wishes of local priests and bishops.∑∫
In 1978 the members of one of these study groups, based in Santa Cruz del
Quiché, came together to form the Committee for Peasant Unity (cuc), the
group that later organized Chupol’s market uprising. Robert Carmack describes
the cuc as ‘‘more ideological than any previous Indian organization had been.’’∑Ω
The cuc’s first newsletter supports this assertion, calling the group ‘‘an organi-
zation of all workers in the countryside, of individuals, associations, leagues,
committees who want to fight valiantly to get rid of oppression, using our
strength united with the forces of all the other exploited people of Guatemala.’’∏≠
Indeed, although the cuc represented itself as an autonomous grouping, the
national leadership of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor participated in the deci-
sion to create the organization. However, neither socialist ideology nor clan-
destine guerrilla ties made the cuc less indigenous: on the contrary, the organi-
zation essentially gave political form to the ambit for indigenous political action
that Catholic Action had carved out. In the cuc, indigenous soul-searching led
to action on indigenous economic reality, bringing the Catholic Church’s appro-
priation of modernization theory full circle.
State, Church, and Market in Cold War Chupol
Chupol, one of sixty-four cantons or hamlets that make up the rural hinterland
of the township of Chichicastenango in the highland department of the Quiché,
is an eminently rural place. The canton’s population is entirely indigenous and,
as Chupolenses put it simply, ‘‘poor,’’ two characteristics strongly associated with
rural residence in Guatemala. Chichicastenango is also a classic example of what

Mesoamericanists call the ‘‘ceremonial center’’ pattern of settlement, meaning
that most Chichicastecos, including Chupolenses, live on ancestral plots of land
where they grow corn and other subsistence crops, traveling to the township’s
small urban center only on market days or ritual occasions. Maxeños, as indige-
nous Chichicastecos are called, are thus even more ‘‘rural’’ than indigenous
people in other communities. Chupol’s historical distinction among its rural
neighbors, moreover, was its extreme remoteness from urban life: four or five
hours’ walk from town, Chupol is one of the cantons farthest geographically and
culturally from the center. For modernization theory, places like Chupol repre-
sent the market’s final frontier. The impact of development interventions on
Chupol, however, reveals Chupol’s relationship with the market to be older and
more complex than a modernization theorist might imagine.
Arbenz’s reforms had virtually no e√ect on the canton—the township of
Chichicastenango witnessed no petitions for land under Decree 900—and few
Chupolenses remember Arbenz’s name or his presidency.∏∞ Two factors account
for this failure to take advantage of agrarian reform. First, although Chupolenses
are by no means rich in land—indeed, archival records reveal they have long
complained about land shortages—they live in a community where small land-
holdings are the norm. Chichicastenango is one of Guatemala’s largest town-
ships, but also one of its highest and coldest. Much of its territory lies above two
thousand meters, and daytime temperatures range from 12 to 18 degrees Celsius
(53.6 to 64.4 degrees Fahrenheit) year-round.∏≤ The crops that thrive in such a
climate are corn, beans, and apple trees, not tropical exports. For nineteenth-
century agrarian entrepreneurs, therefore, the highlands of Chichicastenango
were simply not worth the trouble of stealing: no properties large enough to be
a√ected by Decree 900 were ever formed within the township, so that Maxeños
were spared the massive dispossession experienced by indigenous communities
elsewhere in the country.∏≥
Second, although many Maxeños were at some point forced to join the mas-
sive seasonal migrations to the coast to harvest export crops, they always had
another—vastly preferred—moneymaking option available to them: petty trade.
Located in the center of Guatemala’s western highlands, Chichicastenango has
hosted one of the most important markets in the region since before the Con-
quest, and Maxeños themselves have long served as the region’s designated
traveling salesmen. Even in 1937, dark days when agents of the plantations were,
in ethnographer Ruth Bunzel’s words, waiting ‘‘like a multiple Circe’’ with loans
and liquor to entrap Maxeños into debt labor,∏∂ at least half of the township’s
men described their profession as ‘‘trader’’ (comerciante) on o≈cial registers.∏∑

Being a trader in those years meant traipsing for hundreds of kilometers around
the mountains with up to 150 pounds of goods on one’s back, so the preference
that Maxeños felt for trading over plantation work was not due to its relative
ease. Rather, as Chupolenses who have engaged in both kinds of labor note, the
virtue of trading is that it gives one the freedom to determine one’s own pace
and schedule. Paradoxically, therefore, Chupolenses’ prior experience with mar-
keting may have left them indi√erent to Arbenz’s attempts to make them agrar-
ian capitalists and thus to the abrupt termination of these e√orts.
Cold War modernization, in contrast, articulated with this experience to
produce profound changes in Chupol. Its first e√ects were entirely unintended:
the Cold War came to the canton in the form of the Inter-American Highway,
which was built through the community in 1956 for reasons to do with Chupol’s
terrain, not Chupolenses’ needs. But simply by virtue of lying in the highway’s
path, Chupolenses suddenly gained access to a means of transport for their
goods other than their own backs, one that further improved when third-class
bus lines began to run on the highway in the mid-1960s. The village’s merchants
found their formerly Herculean trading trips significantly eased and discovered
both new places to sell and new goods—mostly cheap, industrial manufactures
like shoelaces, disposable pens, plastic toys, et cetera—in the capital city, now
only two hours away. By expanding their commercial possibilities, the Inter-
American Highway thus definitively freed Chupolenses from hated plantation
work. Rushing in droves to take advantage of this opportunity, many men had
accumulated what they call ‘‘capitals’’ (capitales) in goods they claim were worth
up to 15,000 quetzals (then, US$15,000) by the mid-1970s. Instead of hiking
around the highlands, moreover, these men spent most of their time in the
capital, where they were forced to learn Spanish to engage with the Ladinos and
indigenous people from other linguistic communities they encountered while
peddling their wares.
Chupolense salesmen who experienced these changes felt themselves liberated
not only from the threat of the plantations but also from the chains of prejudice
and ignorance they believed had hampered the development of their historic
genius for trading. They describe the import of these changes in terms that
would make a modernization theorist proud. ‘‘Here [in the capital] it depends
on one’s own spark,’’ one salesman told me. ‘‘You have to be brave enough to say,
‘Will you buy from me? I have a cheap watch. . . .’ And you have to know what
price to put on things.’’ ‘‘Now there’s respect between indigenous people and
Ladinos,’’ another explained, ‘‘because everyone comes here for the same thing:
to buy.’’∏∏ To the extent that Chupolenses were ‘‘penny capitalists,’’ Cold War
development interventions transformed them into exemplary Rostovians, hon-
ing their ability to calculate their own and others’ interests in market terms.∏π
More deliberate than the highway’s construction were the Church’s interven-
tions in Chupol. Chichicastenango, owing to its central location and relative
proximity to Guatemala City, was one of three parishes in the Quiché that
maintained a priest throughout the liberal era. After the 1954 coup, it became
something of a regional showcase for the revitalized Church. In 1955 the parish’s
status was raised to ad nutum Santae Sedis, meaning that its priest could be
dismissed or moved only by the pope. By the late 1950s, it had three priests in
residence. An executive committee for Catholic Action formed in 1954, and as
might be predicted for a community of traveling merchants, parish membership
in Catholic Action grew quickly.∏∫
Chupolenses say that true religion arrived in the canton in the 1960s, when a
Spaniard named Father Felipe González became parish priest. According to
Sebastián, a prominent Catholic Action leader from the canton next to Chupol
and the son of an important cofradía member, Father Felipe explained the
purpose of the Christian life. Unlike those who preached only sterile doctrine,
Father Felipe spoke about racism and poverty, telling his flock that all people
were children of God, made in his image, and that out of respect for God’s
dignity and justice, ‘‘It is not possible that we let them discriminate against us.’’
Other Chupolenses echo Sebastián, saying that the priest taught them that ‘‘we
are all children of God; we all have rights,’’ and that to please their Father they
would have to claim those rights.
As important as his pastoral message for bringing religion to Chupol was
Father Felipe’s decision to construct four ‘‘missionary centers’’ (centros misio-
neros) in the parish’s rural area, to hold regular masses for the rural area’s
Catholic Action converts. He chose Chupol as the site of one of these centers; its
new church would welcome parishioners from seventeen neighboring cantons.
Chupolense Catholics believe that their canton earned this honor by convert-
ing to Catholic Action more quickly and enthusiastically than the rest of the
township.∏Ω Cristóbal, another Chupolense Catholic Action leader who was ap-
pointed to the committee that organized the construction of the center, recalls
that ‘‘in Chupol the Catholics were always asking for masses . . . but they had to
hold them in private houses.’’
But Chupolenses realized that the center also served as a remedy for the
marginality imposed on Chupolenses by their distance from town. Its con-
struction was thus an act of justice as well as a reward for just behavior, as
Cristóbal’s wife, Ana, whom Father Felipe placed in charge of building mate-
rials, explained to me.
Since the Father worked here [in Chichicastenango], and a representative from each
canton had to come on Saturdays, the Father thought, the people who are old . . .
can’t stand [the trip], they can’t come here anymore, so the Father thought it would
be better for us to make a center so that for the people who can’t come to Chichi any-
more, they can go there, to the center.
The priest chose the site for the church, on top of a hill by the side of the
highway, because there was already a costumbrista prayer chapel there, and
because he ‘‘saw that this place was a center,’’ according to Ana. The diocese put
up the money to buy the land, and Father Felipe called on all the cantons that
would use the center to contribute money and labor to the project. Catholic
Action members from all seventeen cantons heeded the priest’s call: old and
young, men and women, built the center together. (Costumbristas insist that
even they participated, although both Ana and Cristóbal deny this claim.)
To give Chupolenses their due, however, a church was not enough. Indeed,
according to Cristóbal, the construction of the church was only a pretext for
building a market: ‘‘Father Felipe would say, don’t think you’re just going to stay
like this, life will get harder in the future and so you have to build yourselves a
market here, so you can do your marketing here in Chupol.’’ Building the
market was undeniably a stroke of genius on the priest’s part, for it provided an
ecumenical space in which costumbre and Catholic Action could engage. At first
only Catholics were willing to open stalls in this market, but as others in the
community began to see people shopping in it, they came too. ‘‘Now, it’s for
everybody, not just Catholic Action, but everybody. It’s a center,’’ Ana pointed
out. Provided with a physical market in which to engage one another, Chupo-
lenses could engage in market relations at home as well as on the road.
Insurgent Modernizers: Chupol’s Market as Revolutionary Center
In constructing a space for ‘‘the market’’ in Chupol, however, Father Felipe

transformed Chupolenses’ relationships with the other spaces in which they
participated. In a township with a ceremonial center, life is supposed to revolve
around urban space, where power is concentrated. In the 1930s, Maxeño author-
ity, as described by the ethnographers Ruth Bunzel and Sol Tax, was embodied
in the fourteen cofradías that cared for Chichicastenango’s church and per-
formed services for the Ladino municipality through the institution of the
indigenous mayoralty. In the cofradías, Bunzel claims, church and state were
united, a union physically represented in the architecture of Chichicastenango’s
central plaza, where the indigenous municipality is separated from the church
only by a narrow street.π≠
On Thursdays and Sundays, this plaza also hosts Chichicastenango’s market.
When Tax and Bunzel were doing fieldwork, no rural Maxeño, and few rural
Maxeñas, would have voluntarily missed a market day, however long the walk to
town. Even Maxeños with no stand in the plaza used it as a place to shop,
socialize, hear community news, and drink. For both ethnographers, the town-
ship’s convergence on this space of power represents the ur-Maxeño moment.
Tax claims that ‘‘just as the town is more than a town, so Sunday is more than a
Day; it is a multitude of climaxes, a sort of temporal nerve-center of the scattered
organs of Chichicastenango life.’’π∞ Likewise, for Bunzel, the central dynamic of
Maxeño life is this market-driven alternation ‘‘between the monotony of the
canton and the excitement, joyfulness, and color of the town, for [the town] is
more than a center; it is the heart through which all life in the region flows.’’π≤
But for whom did this heart beat? Archival evidence suggests that Chichi-
castenango’s primordial rhythm—and thus the town’s symbolic importance—
is in many respects an artifact of the nineteenth-century liberal reforms that
allowed Ladinos into indigenous communities. Correspondence between the
Quiché military governor’s o≈ce and the Ladino municipality in Chichicaste-
nango from the late 1800s reveals that Maxeños, like their indigenous counter-
parts across the highlands, employed a wide variety of foot-dragging techniques
to resist the new demands the liberal reforms placed on their labor, including
sabotage, petitioning for release, and running away. In Chichicastenango, how-
ever, the easiest way to escape was to hide in the township’s inhospitable rural
area behind the back of the indigenous mayoralty.
Correspondence between Juan Rodríguez, the Ladino mayor of Chichicaste-
nango for several terms between 1880 and 1900, and the military governor of the
Quiché testifies to the success of this tactic. In 1883, for example, Rodríguez
complained that he was unable to finish a cattle census: ‘‘The town is extremely
large, and worse so because of the coldness and indi√erence presented by the
Naturals’ Authority, from whom I should have some hope of support, but find
none.’’ In 1885 his lieutenant wrote that he asked the indigenous mayoralty to
gather two hundred men to work on the railroads, despite the military gover-
nor’s order: ‘‘Now that it is around four in the afternoon I have gone back to ask
this same Mayoralty if said people were already gathered; they have answered me
that only those they have already collected, who number forty, will go.’’ The
indigenous mayoralty could protect its constituents as long as it could keep the
rural area safe from prying Ladino eyes. Rodríguez recognized this in 1897 when
he explained his many defeats in his struggles with indigenous authorities by
complaining about the size and climate of Chichicastenango’s rural extensions.π≥
Such uses of rural space for thwarting the rapacious demands of Chichicaste-
nango’s Ladino authorities suggest that the urban center was in fact the arena of
state and Ladino, not Maxeño, power. For Maxeños, indeed, the plaza repre-
sented a threat as well as a meeting place, for plantation agents and Ladino
o≈cials haunted such spaces. Pace Bunzel and Tax, therefore, it seems that
Maxeños’ 1930s journeys through the ‘‘heart’’ of Chichicastenango could be as
frightening as they were life giving, and likewise that Maxeño canton life was less
‘‘monotonous’’ than carefully protected against outsiders.
Chupolenses were thus rural inhabitants of a place where rural residence
constituted an act of resistance to state control. In opening a new space for
Chupolenses to exercise their calculative agencies, Father Felipe’s market al-
lowed them to incorporate this act of resistance into their calculations. Laboring
on the center, Chupolenses and their rural neighbors found themselves volun-
tarily working to fulfill their own most pressing needs instead of being forced to
toil on Ladino and state projects that brought them no benefit. With their labor,
moreover, they managed to transform what had been one rural place among
many into an alternative temporal and spatial ‘‘nerve center’’ to Chichicaste-
nango, in this case an entirely indigenous center that allowed indigenous people
to prosper while permitting only a minimum of other distinctions to prevail
among them. For Sebastián, the head of the center’s construction committee,
the center made the racist legacy of the nineteenth-century liberal reforms
visible:
Here in the center we are all equal, no one is greater and no one is less, but all people
are the same. So why—because then I understood—when you go to the civil registry
in Chichi [and say], ‘‘Sir, I’ve come to register a birth certificate,’’ [they answer], ‘‘All
right, wait for me outside for a bit, outside please.’’ So then you’re out there, stand-
ing, in the sun. And then sometimes other people come, who are Ladinos: ‘‘Come in
sir, how can we help you? Please, sit down.’’ And all the while, you stand there. Maybe
you have to wait there for an hour, an hour and a half, and then you go in again: ‘‘I
already told you, sir, that you should wait for me for a bit. I told you, wait for me,
please!’’ . . . As though we weren’t people! So that’s when I understood that it’s
true, they haven’t taken us into account. . . . As though one were worth more and the
other less!
By bringing Chupolenses into ‘‘the market,’’ modernization helped them to

become better capitalists. By building a market in Chupol, however, moderniza-
tion mediated by evangelization helped them to challenge the racist foundation
of Guatemalan agrarian capitalism. Thus, Cristóbal notes, ‘‘a very combative
religion began’’ in Chupol.
The devastating earthquake (7.5 on the Richter scale) that struck Guatemala’s
highlands on February 4, 1976, helped Chupolenses transform this new under-
standing of their interests into a project that would further them. In Chichicaste-
nango, 40 percent of the township su√ered material damage in the earthquake;π∂
in Chupol, which lies close to the earthquake’s epicenter, most residents’ houses
—one-room adobe structures with tile roofs—fell down, and many families
su√ered human losses. Two weeks after the disaster, Chichicastenango’s munici-
pal council formed an emergency commission to deal with the ‘‘grievous situa-
tion’’ the earthquake had caused.π∑ Father Felipe, a member of the commission,
proposed that Chupol’s church serve as a center for aid distribution and named
Sebastián as ‘‘warehouse-keeper,’’ thereby cutting both the municipal govern-
ment and the army out of Chupol’s reconstruction.
The church’s conversion into an aid warehouse confirmed Sebastián’s claim
that the center represented and promoted the welfare of the community as a
whole, regardless of religious or other di√erences. Asked to draw a mural de-
picting the community’s history, Chupolense participants in a 1999 church-
run mental-health workshop—only some of whom were Catholics—repre-
sented 1976 as a stream of objects, including clothing, metal roofing sheets, corn,
cooked beans, nails, and boards, issuing from the doors of a church. Sebastián
also used his new position of authority to strengthen this claim, following the
example set by the center’s construction and organizing people into collective
work groups. The somewhat plaintive comments of one costumbrista partici-
pant in the mental-health workshop suggest how the process of rebuilding the
community inexorably swept Catholics and costumbristas alike into Sebastián’s
network: ‘‘They asked for our help. They built houses collectively [en común] . . .
what could we do but join?’’
Meanwhile Sebastián’s growing influence over the center made him a tar-
get for other parties interested in gaining access to communities like Chupol.
Shortly after the earthquake, the Jesuits invited Sebastián to participate in one of
their liberation theology seminars—which he found very inspiring—and he later
joined one of the study groups organized by indigenous Catholic Action leaders
in Santa Cruz del Quiché. In 1978 he was invited to the cuc’s inaugural meeting,
which he failed to attend because, ironically, he was on a sales trip. In turn,
Sebastián transmitted his evolving political commitments down the new hier-
archy the center had created. The list of early cuc members in Chupol is essen-
tially a list of prominent Catholic Action members, topped by those who worked
on the church construction committee.
At first, according to Cristóbal, the cuc was little more than a ‘‘joining bonus’’
(promoción de entrada) for Catholics. It is not clear that even Sebastián himself
initially knew of the cuc’s ties to guerrillas, but in any case its political agenda
was kept clandestine: ‘‘When we spoke about the cuc, the organization of the
cuc, we didn’t, shall we say, identify it as the cuc,’’ Cristóbal notes. Indeed, early
cuc proselytizing hardly di√ered from Father Felipe’s preaching: ‘‘People came
and spoke, always about the Bible, but also about injustices and why they were
this way.’’ Early cuc meetings also took place in church buildings, either the
center or a prayer chapel in a neighboring canton. Following Father Felipe in
linking spiritual questions to earthly problems helped the new organization
assume the mantle of ecclesiastical authority.
On the advice of the cuc’s national leadership, Sebastián also turned to
ecumenical developmentalism as a way of reaching out to non-Catholics.
We looked for the way to get in with people. The first idea they gave us was [to ask]
how do we make friends with people? So what are the community’s problems? For
example, at that time, like right now, in April, May, and June, is when the chickens
have accidents. Ay! Tons of chickens die! So [the cuc] gave us shots to vaccinate the
chickens. We charged people money for the shots, but only three cents a person. But
the money we collected wasn’t for the organization, but for the community. If we
gathered 20, 30, 40 quetzals, we gave it to the Betterment Committee for the commu-
nity’s benefit. So then we can explain to people that we’re not taking this money, but
rather leaving it here.
Drawn by such economic appeals, Chupolenses flocked to the cuc: within a

year, almost every household in the village had joined. Asked now why they
chose to participate, most Chupolenses simply state, ‘‘The organization helps
the poor,’’ or ‘‘The organization defends our rights,’’ phrases that speak to the or-
ganization’s success in linking its own interventions to Father Felipe’s sermons.
The cuc’s decisive appropriation of Chupolense hearts and minds, however,
came when it chose the market Father Felipe had built to stage its defense of
indigenous, rather than divine, interests. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the Guate-
malan army began to recruit the soldiers it needed for its increasingly bloody
counterinsurgent campaigns by kidnapping indigenous men. Chupol’s center,
built precisely at this moment, had inadvertently provided the state with a
convenient place to find conscripts: in the early 1970s, a number of Chupolense

men who are now in their fifties were kidnapped in the market and forced to do
military service. Chupolense cuc leaders began to argue that defending the
rights Father Felipe had helped the community discover meant keeping the
army out of Chupolenses’ hard-won gathering place, an argument that once
again spoke to both costumbristas and Catholics.
But it was women who felt the imperative to defend Chupol’s market most
powerfully, because they experienced the army’s attacks on the market as attacks
against their households. In Chupol, labor is strictly divided by gender: women
work in the home, while men cultivate the corn their family eats as well as
providing their household with the cash it needs for other foodstu√s, clothes,
and so forth. Men’s part in this exchange has higher value and is more di≈cult to
replace: men are considered the ‘‘heads’’ (ujolom racho’ch) of a household whose
other members are imagined as a body needing guidance. As heads, men also
own their family’s property, even when that property is part of their wives’
inheritance rather than their own. Thus woman-headed households tend to suf-
fer economically. As their families’ heads, moreover, men are also their house-
holds’ political representatives to the outside world. Speaking to strangers and
expressing definitive opinions in their presence make Chupolense women un-
comfortable, and until the late 1980s, women did not attend community meet-
ings. Even now that women do participate, community authorities (all men)
tend to silence them or dismiss their opinions. Without someone to represent
them, women are targets for men’s aggression.
Men who go on sales trips even for weeks at a time may be physically absent,
but they are morally present in the sense that they are doing their part for the
household economy. Men who left for a year or two to labor for the Guatemalan
state, in contrast, e√ectively abandoned their families. Beginning with their
kidnapping, moreover, the Guatemalan army deliberately brutalized its con-
scripts. Kept in their barracks by real and threatened violence, new recruits
learned first that they had the right to kill and second that they had no choice
but to kill when so ordered. Indigenous recruits received additional training
designed to shame them about, and distance them emotionally from, their in-
digenous roots, and thus to make them capable of ‘‘murdering people like their
own families,’’ as one informant reported to Michael McClintock.π∏ Chupolense
women felt that the army’s violent and racist indoctrination techniques not only
made it di≈cult for men to come home but also disposed them to be abusive
toward their families if they did.
Maneuvers like the market uprising thus allowed the cuc to claim that within
its embrace, ‘‘No one was greater, and no one was less,’’ fulfilling, as neither
modernizers nor the Church had been able to, the market’s promise. In helping
women use the market to take action against the state as women, the cuc
advanced the decay of the gerontocracy that Catholic Action had set in motion.
More importantly, it demonstrated that any su≈ciently organized group, no
matter how weak and politically unprepossessing its individual members, could
defend its own interests. Perhaps it is this sense of empowerment that makes
memories of this cuc action so pleasurable for Chupolenses: men and women
alike snicker gleefully as they recall how the intruders ‘‘left with their tails
between their legs that day.’’ Among Chupolense women, the uprising is also
constitutive of their sense that they are subjects possessed of the rights whose
existence Father Felipe had revealed. When asked why they joined the organiza-
tion, women cite its struggle against forcible recruitment as well as its work on
behalf of the poor. This particular struggle, in the words of one woman who
participated in the uprising, was ‘‘a fight against discrimination against women,’’
not least because it allowed women, for the first time, to behave as political
actors. In short, to the extent that Chupolenses were something other than
penny capitalists—namely, Catholics, indigenous people, and gendered mem-
bers of households—modernization made them de facto enemies of capitalism.
The matrix of Chupol’s market transformed Cold War anti-Communism into
Cold War revolutionary action.
Despite the triumph of the uprising, Chupolenses, like hundreds of thou-
sands of other rural Guatemalans, su√ered enormously for their involvement in
the Cold War. Shortly after the uprising, the cuc and the Guerrilla Army of the
Poor o≈cially merged, incorporating almost every Chupolense, willing or not,
into an organization whose goal was immediate military action. For many,
guerrilla warfare—or logistical support for guerrilla warfare, which is what the
rural indigenous ‘‘social base’’ generally provided—represented a further exten-
sion of the rural politics they had developed over successive Cold War interven-
tions. Nevertheless, U.S. cold warriors and their Guatemalan friends had an-
other means of ensuring their calculations would prosper when the market
failed to do so: genocidal violence. The soldiers returned to Chupol’s market in
late October 1981 and stayed for good: Chupol’s church was used as an army base
and ‘‘killing center’’ until 1985, and almost two decades later, a platoon of sol-
diers stationed in a new base just o√ the highway still occupies Chupol. The
army’s counterinsurgent tactics against Chupolenses included wholesale mas-
sacres of men, women, children, and old people, as well as the systematic rape of
women, indiscriminate violence that inverted and made a mockery of the egali-
tarian forms of popular mobilization represented in the uprising. ‘‘Liberated’’ by

Cold War modernization, Chupolense intentions were not free to determine the
consequences of modernizing interventions any more than their oppressors’
intentions had been able to; Chupol’s oppressors, however, had the power to
enforce their intentions on their side.
Conclusion
Rostow had an explanation for ‘‘failed’’ cases of modernization like Chupol. In a

1961 address, o√ended by rural hearts and minds in Cuba, Vietnam, Laos, and
the Congo that refused to feel and think as he had intended them to, he blamed
‘‘the e√orts of the international Communist movement to exploit the inherent
instabilities of the underdeveloped areas of the non-Communist world.’’ππ As I
have shown, however, Rostow’s charge does little to explain why Chupol’s angry
mothers behaved as they did. Any influence the ‘‘international Communist
movement’’—if the cuc or the Guerrilla Army of the Poor can even be described
in these terms—had on these women was both very recent and highly mediated
by local histories and local leaders at the time of the uprising. It was not the
instability of Chupol’s situation, moreover, that allowed these organizations to
disrupt Rostow’s plans, but on the contrary certain very durable features of that
situation.
Instead, the key to understanding Chupol’s flouting of Rostow’s expectations
can be better located in the nature of those expectations. In Rostow’s calcula-
tions, the ‘‘rural market’’ figured as an abstract economic entity, devoid of
empirical content and thus subject to laws Rostow had already mastered. The
uprising happened in Chupol’s rural market, however, because it was a concrete
historical formation. By building a market in Chupol, the Cold War Church
helped Chupolenses further their nineteenth-century projects for escaping the
racialized Guatemalan state, despite or even through Cold War e√orts to shore
up that state. As Rostow might have wished, this market helped Chupolenses
‘‘understand,’’ in Sebastián’s words, their own reality, but what they understood
was that indigenous people were worth the same as Ladinos and deserved the
same treatment. Equipped with this understanding, they could also bring it to
bear on oppressive relations among indigenous people, like those between men
and women. For Cold War calculations to take e√ect in Guatemala, the uprising
shows, those making the calculations had to account for the interests of the soul
and the family as well as the pocketbook, allowing those interests to become not
only Guatemalan but also indigenous, and thus something for which they failed
to account. Cold warriors like Rostow set this process of understanding in

motion at the price of mastery over its outcome.
Notes
The research for, and writing of, this essay were supported by the Wenner-Gren Founda-
tion, the Fulbright Institute for International Education, the Harry Frank Guggenheim
Foundation, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada. I am grateful
for the comments of Elizabeth Ferry, Sarah Hill, Daniela Spenser, Gilbert Joseph, and
two anonymous reviewers for Duke University Press.
1. Walter LaFeber, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America (New
York: W. W. Norton, 1984), 111.
2. See Stephen M. Streeter, Managing the Counterrevolution: The United States and
Guatemala, 1954–1961 (Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 2000);
Piero Gleijeses, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–
1954 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991); and especially Greg Grandin, The Last
Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2004); as well as Charles D. Brockett, ‘‘An Illusion of Omnipotence: U.S. Policy toward
Guatemala, 1954–60,’’ Latin American Politics and Society 44, no. 1 (2002): 91–126.
3. Richard Saull, ‘‘El lugar del sur global en la conceptualización de la guerra fría:
Desarrollo capitalista, revolución social y conflicto geopolítico,’’ in Espejos de la guerra
fría: México, América Central y el Caribe, ed. D. Spenser (Mexico City: Porrúa, 2004).
4. Michel Callon, ‘‘Introduction: The Embeddedness of Economic Markets in Eco-
nomics,’’ in The Laws of the Markets (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), 3.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid., 12.
7. Arturo Escobar, Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third
World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 74–75.
8. See also James Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine: ‘‘Development,’’ Depoliticiza-
tion, and Bureaucratic Power in Lesotho (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1994); James C. Scott, Seeing like a State: Why Certain Schemes to Improve the Human
Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999); Frederick Cooper and
Randall Packard, eds., International Development and the Social Sciences: Essays on the
History and Politics of Knowledge (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998); and
Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-politics, Modernity (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2002).
9. Ferguson, Anti-politics Machine, 256.
10. Escobar, Encountering Development, 34.
11. Ferguson, Anti-politics Machine, 255.
12. Mitchell, Rule of Experts, 82.
13. Ibid., 6.
14. There were, of course, Third Worldist, Marxist, and Marxian critiques of develop-
ment that had other developmentalist goals—import substitution industrialization, for
example. Opinions are divided about whether to consider these essentially variations of
modernization theory or alternatives to it. I do not engage these theories here, however,
because I am not addressing nationalist e√orts to develop, which tended to be grounded
in such theories, but rather First World to Third World interventions, which almost
never were.
15. W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto, 3rd
ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 26.
16. David McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 1760–1940 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univer-
sity Press, 1994), 161. McCreery provides a detailed account of this history.
17. Jim Handy, Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in
Guatemala, 1944–1954 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 82.
18. Ibid.; Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 155–56.
19. Handy, Revolution in the Countryside, 39.
20. Stephen Schlesinger and Stephen Kinzer, Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the
American Coup in Guatemala (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1982).
21. See Nick Cullather, Secret History: The cia’s Classified Account of Its Operations in
Guatemala, 1952–1954 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999).
22. Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 151.
23. Melvyn P. LeΔer, The Specter of Communism: The United States and the Origins of
the Cold War, 1917–1953 (New York: Hill and Wang, 1994), 87.
24. Cited in Cullather, Secret History, 35.
25. Cited in Streeter, Managing the Counterrevolution, 137.
26. Ibid., 149.
27. Ibid., 109.
28. Operations Coordinating Board, Analysis of Internal Security Situation in Guate-
mala (Pursuant to nsc Action 1290-d), June 1, 1955, Record Group 59, Box 19, State
Department Participation in ocb, National Archives, College Park, Md., 5.
29. Streeter, Managing the Counterrevolution, 121. For the cuto√ of U.S. funding, see
Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 227.
30. Streeter, Managing the Counterrevolution, 144, 152.
31. Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre.
32. Ibid., 143.
33. Diario de Centroamérica, Desarrollo integral de las comunidades rurales en Guate-
mala (Guatemala City: Editorial del Ministerio de Educación Pública, 1956), 15.
34. Streeter, Managing the Counterrevolution, 156.
35. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 130.
36. Richard Adams, Crucifixion by Power: Essays on Guatemalan National Social Struc-
ture, 1944–1966 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970), 269.
37. Gleijeses, Shattered Hope, 213.

38. Mariano Rossell y Arellano, Carta pastoral del excelentísmo y reverendísimo Señor
Don Mariano Rossell Arellano, Arzobispo de Guatemala, sobre la Acción Católica (Guate-
mala: Tipografía Sánchez and de Guise, 1946), 1.
39. Mariano Rossell y Arellano, ‘‘Carta pastoral del 4 de abril de 1954,’’ in El calvario de
Guatemala: Paginas de horror y crimen (Guatemala City: Tipografía Nacional, 1955), 321.
40. McCreery, Rural Guatemala, 137.
41. Kay Warren, The Symbolism of Subordination: Indian Identity in a Guatemalan
Town, 2nd ed. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989), 87.
42. Mariano Rossell Arellano, Conferencia del excelentísimo y reverendísmo Monseñor
Mariano Rossell Arellano, Arzobispo de Guatemala, en el Tercer Congreso Católico de la
Vida Rural el 21 de abril de 1955 en la Ciudad de Panamá (Guatemala City: Tipografía
Sánchez and de Guise, 1955), 2.
43. Ibid., 19.
44. Ibid., 15.
45. Ibid., 2.
46. José Luis Crea, ‘‘The Process and the Implications of Change in the Guatemalan
Church’’ (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1988), 127.
47. Cited in Diócesis del Quiché, El Quiché: El pueblo y su iglesia, 1960–1980 (Santa
Cruz del Quiché: Diócesis del Quiché, 1994), 37.
48. Adams, Crucifixion by Power, 283.
49. Diócesis del Quiché, El Quiché, 49.
50. Warren, Symbolism of Subordination, 105.
51. Ibid., 96.
52. Diócesis del Quiché, El Quiché, 62.
53. Ibid., 39.
54. Brian Murphy, ‘‘The Stunted Growth of Campesino Organizations,’’ in Adams,
Crucifixion by Power (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970), 473.
55. Ricardo Falla, Quiché Rebelde (Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria de Guate-
mala, 1978).
56. Adams, Crucifixion by Power, 290.
57. Episcopado de Guatemala, Carta pastoral del Episcopado guatemalteco sobre los
problemas sociales y el peligro comunista en Guatemala (Guatemala: Unión Tipográfica,
1962).
58. See Yvon LeBot, La guerra en tierras mayas: Comunidad, violencia, y modernidad en
Guatemala (1970–1992) (Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992); and María
del Pilar Hoyos de Asig, Fernando Hoyos ¿Dónde estás? (Guatemala City: Fondo de
Cultura Editorial, 1997).
59. Robert Carmack, ‘‘The Story of Santa Cruz Quiché,’’ in Harvest of Violence: The
Maya Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis, ed. R. Carmack (Norman: University of Okla-
homa Press, 1988), 51.
60. Comité de Unidad Campesina, ‘‘Presentación,’’ Voz del Comité de Unidad Campe-
sina: Periódico informativo del cuc, April 15, 1978, 1.
61. A group of Chupolenses did participate in a claim on a finca in neighboring
Tecpán, but they did not lead the drive to file the claim and were marginalized by
the group of Tecpanecos who did. At one point the Tecpanecos even tried to exclude
the Chupolenses from participating. See Carlota McAllister, ‘‘Good People: Revolution,
Community, and Conciencia in a Maya-K’iche’ Village in Guatemala’’ (Ph.D. diss., Johns
Hopkins University, 2003), 220–21.
62. Municipalidad de Santo Tomás Chichicastenango, Diagnóstico y Plan del De-
sarrollo del municipio de Santo Tomás Chichicastenango (Guatemala City: funcede,
1995), 16.
63. As in, for example, Alta Verapaz, as described in Grandin’s The Last Colonial
Massacre, where the land is ideal for co√ee growing and where indigenous communities
had been almost entirely stripped of their land and their inhabitants converted into a
propertyless rural proletariat by the end of the nineteenth century.
64. Ruth Bunzel, Chichicastenango (Guatemala City: Editorial José de Pineda Ibarra,
1981), 42.
65. Censo de Vialidad, Primer semestre 1937, Legajo 2087, Archivo General de Cen-
troamérica, Guatemala City, Guatemala.
66. This essay is based on a total of seventeen months’ fieldwork in Chupol and with
Chupolenses in Guatemala City, conducted in several periods over the years between
February 1997 and January 2001, as well as on archival research. The primary method I
used during fieldwork was participant observation; I lived with a Chupolense family and
took part in all manner of community activities, including those organized by di√erent
churches and popular organizations as well as more familial events. I also conducted a
survey of twenty-five households, as well as numerous informal interviews and fewer
formal interviews. Only some of the interviews are taped, in accordance with the ex-
pressed desires of my respondents. All comments attributed to Chupolenses within this
essay come from interviews or conversations that took place during the time of my
fieldwork. All the names of my interlocutors, except for Sebastián, who gave me permis-
sion to use his name, have been changed.
67. Sol Tax, Penny Capitalism: A Guatemalan Indian Economy (Washington: Smith-
sonian Institute of Social Anthropology, 1953).
68. Diocésis del Quiché, El Quiché, 42n.
69. I have no quantitative data that could support or challenge this assertion because I
was denied access to parish archives.
70. Bunzel, Chichicastenango, 210.
71. Sol Tax, ‘‘Notes on Santo Tomás Chichicastenango, 1947’’ (microfilm, University of
Chicago Library Microfilm Collection), 815.
72. Ibid.
73. All correspondence in Jefatura Política 2 (El Quiché), Box 11b (Chichicastenango),
Archivo General de Centroamérica, Guatemala City, Guatemala.
74. Benedicto Revilla, Guatemala: El terremoto de los pobres (Madrid: Ediciones sed-
may, 1976), 73.
75. Actas municipales de Chichicastenango, 129–76 (quotation on p. 120).
76. Ibid.
77. W. W. Rostow, ‘‘Guerrilla Warfare in Underdeveloped Areas,’’ in The Viet-Nam
Reader: Articles and Documents on American Foreign Policy and the Viet-Nam Crisis, ed.
M. G. Raskin and B. B. Fall (New York: Vintage Books, 1967), 110.
AR
Part IV
FINAL REFLECTIONS
DANIELA SPENSER
Standing Conventional Cold War

History on Its Head
Over the last decade or so, studies of the Cold War have mushroomed globally.
In from the Cold hopes to contribute to this ongoing intellectual ferment. Yet
rather than proposing new paradigms for Cold War history—in this case, for
Latin America—the volume shifts the focus of attention away from the bipolar
conflict, the preoccupation of much of the so-called new Cold War history, to
showcase research and discussion centering on the grassroots, where social,
political, and cultural conflicts actually brewed. Thus the contributors focus
their attentions on villages and towns both above ground and ‘‘underground,’’
on statehouses and diplomatic boardrooms manned by Latin American and
international governing elites, on the relations among states regionally, and
only rarely on the dynamics between the two great superpowers themselves. In
the process, the volume seeks to contribute more generally to the study of the
Cold War in the global South. The book reinforces Odd Arne Westad’s claim
‘‘that the most important aspects of the Cold War were neither military nor
strategic, nor Europe-centered, but connected to political and social develop-
ment in the Third World.’’∞
So what do we now know after we have incorporated Latin America more
meaningfully into Cold War studies? Bringing the study ‘‘in from the cold,’’ as it
were, we have taken pains to transcend dichotomizing paradigms of interpreta-
tion while including often marginalized human subjects at the fulcrum of the
story. We have placed national interests, state policy, and the international econ-
omy into the political-cultural realm, in which the state’s power is deployed or
contested through representations, symbolic systems, and new technologies,
recognizing that the exercise of power not only flows from the policies and
interventions of states but also works through language and symbolic systems in
everyday practices.
This collection contributes to a conceptualization of the Cold War that is
382 daniela spenser
attuned to the logic of Latin American history and does not merely replicate the
standard timeline of the postwar world. Unlike Europe and Asia, which were
engulfed in the hardening of bipolar conflict following the breakdown of the
wartime alliance, during the war and its aftermath some parts of Latin America
experienced a democratic spring that featured participation by labor and the
Left in politics, social and economic improvements for the poorer sectors of
society, and heightened popular expectations for state-administered economic
justice and national inclusion. Initially the United States encouraged this demo-
cratic e√ervescence, but as the Cold War gathered force elsewhere, the reifying
logic of the conflict began to harden in Latin America as well. The democratic
resurgence was aborted by direct or indirect pressure from the United States and
by the repression exercised by local elites. Local elites were well practiced in
marginalizing society’s lower strata and now sought to benefit politically and
economically from a close alliance with the United States in an era promising an
unprecedented expansion of the international economy.
What followed were new cycles of radical and revolutionary projects and
repression as elites and popular classes participated in local, regional, and na-
tional political contests over land, labor, and the control of markets, natural
resources, and state power. These struggles and the leftist and rightist ideologies
that fueled them transcended national borders and attracted the attention of one
or both of the superpowers. Whereas the United States sought to contain the
popular upsurge in Latin America, which was encroaching on U.S. interests, the
Soviet Union saw the popular struggles as an opportunity to weaken its adver-
sary in its own backyard. The result was an international civil war that pitted the
United States against the Soviet Union and opposed di√erent views of social
citizenship and of the shape that the state’s relations to society should take. This
contest between revolutionary and counterrevolutionary forces could become
ferociously violent, but its most gruesome and well-documented details are not
a principal focus of this volume. What the book does demonstrate is the degree
to which Latin America became part of the history of the United States, and the
United States part of the history of Latin America, with the Soviet Union alertly
poised in the background, ready to capitalize on opportunities that might arise.
The essays collected here draw on a variety of new sources culled from oral
testimonies and truth commissions, and from the archives of the superpowers
and their satellites—major actors like Cuba, Argentina, and Brazil—but also
from repositories in countries such as Mexico, whose role in the Latin American
Cold War is less easily categorized. Unfortunately, the release of new documents
has often led prematurely to claims of ‘‘new’’ histories of the Cold War (most
c o l d wa r h i s t o ry o n i t s h e a d 383
notably where the history of Communism and espionage is concerned), e√ec-

tively fetishizing the process of documentary disclosure in order to reinforce
existing master narratives.≤ The volume’s contributors believe that the Cold War
as a global phenomenon should be studied in a variety of ways, particularly by
raising new questions about understudied social and cultural subjects and by
reading ‘‘old’’ and ‘‘new’’ sources alike with fresh eyes. That said, we recognize
that the declassification of documents under pressure from civil society in both
Latin America and the United States has had an enormous impact on the shift of
power inside the countries concerned. Declassification has helped to bring as-
sassins to justice, advanced accountability for human rights abuses, restored
memories of the ravaged past, and thus brought back to Latin Americans histo-
ries that had been denied by secrecy. The ongoing recovery of archives and
memory in Latin America has made possible new departures for a truly global
understanding of Cold War history. The declassification of new documents has
also been an eminently democratic process, since many of the formerly secret
findings have been digitized and are now accessible on the Internet.
New documents have helped to redress the balance between fact and myth
regarding the involvement of the Soviet Union in Latin America. The Soviet
archives have demonstrated that the Soviet Union was rather oblivious to the
Western Hemisphere until the outbreak of the Cuban revolution in 1959. After
its victory in World War II and the expansion of its influence in eastern, central,
and southern Europe, the Soviet Union still showed less interest in Latin Amer-
ica than it had after the triumph of the Bolshevik Revolution.≥ The Kremlin
cautiously approached Cuba’s revolutionaries, knowing full well the geopolitical
realities in play. Indeed, it was not until the disastrous émigré invasion at Playa
Girón, in April 1961, that Soviet perceptions about U.S. strength in Latin Amer-
ica changed. The placement of long-range missiles in Cuba in the summer of
1962 stemmed from the belief that a global shift of power in favor of the Soviet
Union and socialism had occurred. The missile crisis of October 1962 unfolded
as it did because the Soviet Union sought to act on that assumption. The United
States, of course, refused to accept the presence of nuclear arms and the exten-
sion of Soviet military power in its ‘‘backyard.’’
Was the world on the brink of war in October 1962? It was, but not solely
because of the Soviet Union. Newly released Cuban documents and the encoun-
ter in 1992 (on the thirtieth anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis) between
Robert McNamara, former secretary of defense, and Fidel Castro have revealed
that after the United States gave Khrushchev an ultimatum to withdraw the
weapons, the Soviet leader ordered their evacuation without remonstrations. At
384 daniela spenser
the time, Khrushchev—and McNamara—were unaware that Cuba’s political and

military leaders would have ordered the use of the missiles had the United States
invaded the island, and had the Soviet military personnel stationed there pos-
sessed the key and given it to the Cubans to activate these nuclear weapons.
The manner in which the Soviets withdrew the arms left a profound scar on
Cuban-Soviet relations while bolstering Cuba’s determination to defend itself by
any means available. Indeed, Cuban support for armed conflict in Latin America
during the 1960s should be seen as one of the consequences of the Caribbean
crisis. The other unexpected outcome was the humiliation of the Soviet Union
before the entire world because it was forced to renege on its previous pledge to
defend Cuba militarily. Contrary to the traditional historiography, Soviet docu-
ments, particularly those from the International Department of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party, show that following the crisis, the Soviet
Union supported armed conflict in Latin America owing to its fear of losing
Cuba—or, worse still, the fear that Cuba might turn to the Chinese Communists
for aid.
The Caribbean crisis and its aftermath illustrate the degree to which Cuba
could act independently of the Soviet leadership, as well as the limits of that
autonomy. Cuba continued to support armed struggle in Latin America until
the Soviet Union began to tighten the screws on its supply of oil and other goods
that were fundamental to the Cuban economy. But if it could not support
liberation movements in Latin America, Cuba was determined to step up its
involvement in Africa. We now know from the cia and the intelligence branch of
the State Department that when U.S. policymakers lambasted Castro as a Soviet
puppet, Castro openly criticized the Soviet Union’s limited aid to Third World
governments and liberation movements. Aided as well by newly released East
European sources—Czech, German, and Hungarian—we have come to appreci-
ate that the Soviet Union joined the Cuban e√ort to support liberation move-
ments, not the other way round.
One of the new chapters in the story line of the Cold War is Cuban involve-
ment in Africa for reasons of self-defense, idealism, and racial justice. It also
confirms Cuba’s independence from Moscow. As long as Washington persisted
in its aggression against Cuba, the best defense was not to counterattack, which
would have been suicidal, but to wage an o√ensive elsewhere in the Third World,
gaining friends and eroding U.S. influence in the process. Thus Cuba defended
itself by attacking its aggressor, not where it was strong, in Latin America, but
where it was weak, in Africa. Cuba was vulnerable and had to be cautious, but it
enjoyed an enormous prestige among the opposition forces struggling against
colonial or illegitimate governments in Africa, where there was significantly less

risk of clashing directly with the United States.
The Cuban intervention—or ‘‘revolutionary mission’’—in Africa had unex-
pected windfalls. In helping to win the war in Angola and Namibia and by
preventing South Africa from dominating the region, the joint success of Cuban,
Angolan, and Namibian troops humbled the United States and weakened the
apartheid regime in South Africa. This is not to say that Cuba could have
expended this formidable e√ort without the economic and military support it
received from the Soviet Union or without the shield, however fragile, that
Moscow extended against the U.S.’s aggression. Nonetheless this economic and
military dependence did not translate into being a Soviet client, at least not
in Africa.
Parallel to Cuba’s spreading of revolution, Argentina transnationalized its
apparatus for repression to stymie it. Despite Argentine military aid to the
regime of Anastasio Somoza, in 1979 the Sandinista revolution triumphed in
Nicaragua. The fall of the Somoza dynasty, believed to have occurred because a
weak and inept Carter administration let it happen, convinced the Argentinean
military that hemispheric security was in grave danger. Even though the Argen-
tine military government had defeated insurgent groups within Argentina itself,
it believed that the insurgents’ existence beyond the nation’s borders required
attention as well. For the Argentine military caste, Communism and subversion
were global phenomena that had to be eradicated, no matter their location,
for the sake of the common good and preservation of the moral and social order.
In the process, Central America—particularly Nicaragua—became a center for
diverse geopolitical confrontations, pitting the Argentine military against the
guerrilla organizations it had defeated at home but confronted in Central Amer-
ica, Israel against the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Cubans in exile
against the regime of Fidel Castro.
In its crusade to transnationalize the dirty war, the Argentine military ex-
ported arms, counterinsurgency doctrine, and expertise in the practice of state
terror. To advance its goals, the military counted on a well-constructed network
of like-minded Latin American, North American, and Asian anti-Communists,
and also on conservative sectors of domestic civil society. In the process, the
military established a wide international network, which included the sharing of
logistical information and the ideas and techniques of counterinsurgency war, as
well as an illegal trade in arms, drugs, and money laundering independent of the
United States. From the experience of French counterinsurgency warfare in
Algeria and the U.S. experience in Southeast Asia, Argentina’s generals adopted
386 daniela spenser
the lesson that any distinction between combatants and the civilian population
should be erased and that national borders had to subordinated to the ideologi-
cal dimension of the East-West confrontation. The enormous military power
that went into combating the insurgency typically proved stronger than the
ideology, willpower, and strength of insurgent left guerrilla movements.
The Cold War was fought on many fronts. Whereas the first part of the book
traces the ‘‘Latin Americanization’’ of the conflict on the state level, the second
part focuses on everyday contests over culture and the representation of the
Cold War in Latin America. Here, too, without denying the geopolitical domi-
nance of the superpowers, the contributors focus attention on other actors who
have hitherto been marginalized in the historical record. Several authors exam-
ine in rich detail a transnational cultural and labor history of the Cold War.
The period we now know as the Cold War era was often violent and traumatic
in Latin America; an account of the way events have been represented, lived
through, and remembered is a critical part of that story. In reengaging the
Cold War in Latin America, this volume gives particular attention to the hege-
monic projects that were a significant component of the United States’ anti-
Communist crusade. Clearly these e√orts did not always produce the desired
results. It was easier for the United States to militarily topple governments it did
not like than to win the hearts and minds of a nation’s population through
cultural and labor diplomacy or modernization projects.
The United States used culture industries to promote its economic and diplo-
matic initiatives and to convince Latin Americans that the ‘‘American way’’ was
the best route to the future. In Mexico, for instance, the United States was
concerned about the unwillingness of the governing elite to explicitly choose
sides in the Cold War, as well as with the Soviet Union’s attempts to exploit Third
World neutralism in the local mass media. To counter both, Washington de-
ployed the United States Information Agency to make its presence felt through
the medium of film. Project Pedro was the agency’s initiative to take control of a
Mexican newsreel in order to propagate Washington’s anti-Communist mission
in Latin America. The newsreel began operations in February 1957, showcasing
the United States’ leadership in science, its support for decolonization and
nonintervention in the postcolonial world, and the progress it was making in
domestic race and ethnic relations. Thus newsreel programs focused on the
professional achievements of African Americans and on initiatives to improve
working conditions for Mexican braceros, even as they took the Kremlin to task
for undermining the U.S.-led cause of world peace.
Even so, the project failed in its mission, in part because Mexico’s authori-
tarian but nationalistic state exercised substantial control over the content of
newsreels and banned footage it deemed unfavorable to Mexico’s image. Fur-
thermore, the Mexican media were not amenable to negative representations of
Cuba, and anti-Castro propaganda was deemed unacceptable—all of which
compromised Washington’s ideological agenda. But the most important factor
that limited the project’s impact in Mexican movie theaters was not state inter-
vention but public reception. Mexican audiences were suspicious of stories that
smacked of paid advertisements, demanding content that was authentically
Mexican and largely apolitical. Representations of popular culture and social
amusements made the newsreel credible in the public eyes, whereas the ‘‘mes-
sage’’ footage that came from New York and infused programs with the desired
Cold War content did not play with Mexican theatergoers. Ultimately the Mexi-
canization of U.S. resources in the political and cultural environment of Mexico
City diminished Project Pedro’s ability to Americanize Mexican mass media and
propagate Washington’s foreign policy. The project was abandoned in 1961.
It may not have been a coincidence that as Project Pedro played out unsuc-
cessfully, the Cuban revolution was exerting an enormous influence on the
Mexican population, quickening the pace of internal political developments
there. Witness the anti-American riots that took place in Morelia, Michoacán,
and other Mexican cities when Cuba was attacked by a U.S.-orchestrated force at
Playa Girón (the Bay of Pigs) in April 1961. At that moment, the young and
energetic island revolution served as an invidious comparison for Mexicans,
indicting the cynical regime that had emerged out of their own revolution.
Mexicans’ spontaneous defense of Cuba’s revolution in Morelia was simulta-
neously a critique of the Mexican revolution’s unfulfilled promises and an im-
plicit endorsement of Mexico’s own democratic spring during the presidency of
Lázaro Cárdenas in the 1930s. Thus the sacking and burning of the Instituto
Mexicano–Norteamericano, in Lázaro Cárdenas’s home state of Michoacán,
gave vent to popular outrage at a moment when the former president and
Mexican revolutionary icon had himself become a vocal supporter of the Cuban
revolutionary process.
The sacking of the cultural institute in Morelia highlights the fact that the
Cold War narrative for Latin America reads di√erently when viewed through a
local lens. From the U.S. government perspective, the attack on the institute
reflected the expansion of the Soviet Union in the Western Hemisphere follow-
ing the successful Cuban revolution. From the perspective of people in Morelia,
the attack was motivated by long-standing national sentiment, catalyzed and
radicalized by the Cuban revolution, not by Communism. The people who
388 daniela spenser
attended classes in the institute were rather ambivalent about its destruction:
probing into the memory of the event revealed the sentiment that not every-
thing American was associated with imperialism. The institute itself symbolized
upward social mobility at a time when closer association with North American
commerce and industry, and Mexico’s identity as a stable and reliable neigh-
bor and ally, were regarded to be part and parcel of Mexico’s ‘‘miraculous’’
postwar economic boom. Without question, the unleashing of U.S. capitalism
after World War II was a strategy of combating Communism and refashioning
Mexico and Latin America in the image of the United States; but that was not
apparent or troubling for most Mexicans, who even today regard the period
nostalgically as a ‘‘golden age’’ of postwar consumption.
The virtues of the American way of life were di√used in many di√erent ways
throughout Latin America in the era of the Alliance for Progress, not least
through labor diplomacy. Repeatedly, U.S. industrial and agricultural entrepre-
neurs, with the support of their government, encouraged Mexican employees on
both sides of the Rio Grande to embrace American values and liberalism. Their
initiatives touted good salaries, decent housing, welfare benefits such as com-
pany pensions, employee training, paid holidays, and education for workers’
children—all of which were intended to forestall labor conflict. Whether they
were autoworkers at a Chrysler plant in Mexico or farmhands in California,
Mexican workers took these messages to heart. However, when the promises
made by employers did not necessarily materialize into tangible or sustained
benefits, workers organized to demand their fulfillment. This course of action
surprised management and set workers on a collision course with their Ameri-
can employers and the Mexican authorities, for in the Cold War era, labor
insurgency was automatically labeled as Communist. Rather than redressing
labor demands, American employers of the 1960s embraced the Mexican prac-
tice of creating employer-controlled unions and dismissing labor leaders as
Communists. Such company unions o√ered no real representation and brought
their members few benefits. A U.S. automobile manufacturer in Mexico City
stood by in 1969 as workers were shot defending the American dream that
employees had been encouraged to nurture at the workplace.
Whether the rhetoric of democracy and freedom was embraced by auto-
workers in Mexico City, or Mexican laborers in rural California, U.S. govern-
ments and employers found it di≈cult to live up to the values and promises
trumpeted at home and abroad during the 1960s. The Bracero Program, imple-
mented from 1942 to 1964, became yet another transnational arena in the Cold
War and was disbanded in the face of serious ethno-racial and labor concerns on
the part of agricultural workers. The labor contract program that brought Mexi-
cans into California’s fields had a negative impact on rural wages in the U.S.
Southwest, as Mexican men were willing to work for less than domestic workers,
to the great benefit of regional employers. Under such conditions, the growers
were able to avert unionization by discontented workers and even turn the new
arrivals into strikebreakers. All the while, the U.S. government portrayed the
Bracero Program as a model of anti-Communism and hemispheric unity, em-
phasizing that Mexican guest workers were taught the methods of modern
agriculture that would serve to build a more modern and democratic Mexico.
Ultimately, however, deplorable working conditions and the e√orts of the
workers’ dynamic Chicano leadership, which appropriated the ideological dis-
course of the U.S. government for the benefit of the rank and file, sealed the fate
of the Bracero Program. In their quest for better working conditions in Califor-
nia’s fields, rural workers came together under the able leadership of César
Chávez. Using Mexican cultural idioms and icons, even as they mingled with
domestic antiwar protesters and benefited from an increasing popular con-
sciousness for ethnic and racial equality, California’s agricultural workers fur-
thered their goals by organizing around the principles of civil rights, ethnic
diversity, and the well-being of an expanded American society. Predictably, in
keeping with their Cold War mind-set, government o≈cials and employers
reflexively characterized the farmworkers’ e√orts and other protest movements
of the day as Communist. Nevertheless, given the antipathy directed toward the
Bracero Program, which, the farmworkers alleged, betrayed the interests of
working people on both sides of the border, its cancellation was relatively easy.
For their part, right-wing opponents of the program used the specter of Com-
munists crossing the U.S. border as another argument for its abolition, one that
also enabled them to discredit the multicultural and multiracial labor move-
ment at home.
Throughout Latin American history, the political Right in power has often
been merciless with the opposition. The tenets of the Cold War provided repres-
sive governments with unique opportunities to defend their rule. The manner in
which the Brazilian military regime handled student and urban guerrilla move-
ments showcases other Cold War–era uses of cultural representation and power
—particularly the masculine state’s repression of women’s resistance and politi-
cal participation. Whereas in the authoritarian milieu of Mexico and the more
‘‘liberal’’ political culture of the United States demands from below were labeled
as Communist, under Brazil’s dictatorial military regime of the 1960s, con-
frontations between the state and its opponents were also represented in gen-
390 daniela spenser
dered and sexualized terms. In a strait-laced environment of traditional gender

and sexual propriety, the military government and mainstream media regarded
the participation of young women in student politics and guerrilla movements
as a breakdown of society’s moral and social norms, which threatened the
authority of the regime. Seen in these terms, good women turned bad through
sex; they engaged in public a√airs because of depravation. Stigmatized accord-
ingly by the press, they ‘‘deserved’’ and received brutal treatment upon incar-
ceration. This eroticization of the actions of women militants and the perverse
punishments meted out to them were meant to deafen others to their political
expression and to smear the opposition to military rule as being part of an
international Communist conspiracy that sought to morally undermine the
nation through its youth.
Unlike Mexico, which began implementing its revolutionary reforms before
the Soviet Union existed, the nations of Central America attempted to bring
about structural economic, social, and political changes when the Cold War
climate was engulfing the world and its polarizing logic was transforming the
region. Frustrations emanating from aborted reformist projects fueled revo-
lutionary movements, which were often influenced by the Cuban revolution
and aided by the Fidelista regime. The Soviet Union occasionally assisted these
movements with logistical support and military training. The United States, in
concert with local elites, reacted to the political e√ervescence in Central America
in di√erent ways at di√erent times. Counterinsurgency measures were com-
bined with modernization projects to urbanize and integrate local populations
into the global market, emphasizing models of good citizenship. However, most
modernization projects did not bear the expected fruits, in part because they
were not delivered in the form of a comprehensive financial package, such as the
one featured in the Marshall Plan, which brought the European economy back
to its feet after World War II. Given the enormous economic, social, and ethnic
disparities within countries, and given the prevalence of undemocratic and
repressive governments, the money delivered failed to alleviate the needs of the
population or, worse, did not reach the targeted sectors at all. The result was that
social and political discontents continued to simmer, despite the e√orts to ad-
vance modernization and construct good citizens.
In the final chapter of part III, we encounter a scenario of Cold War resistance
and repression in a Maya village in Guatemala during the late 1970s; here indige-
nous women armed with sticks, rocks, and torches stood up to soldiers who had
arrived to press the village’s young men into military service. These women and
men, conscious of their rights and their capacity to resist encroachment on
them, represent another unanticipated outcome of the development strategies

designed by Cold War architects to contain Communism. In their e√orts to
integrate rural Guatemala into the capitalist world system according to the logic
of the Alliance for Progress, theorists of modernization failed to foresee that the
construction of the Pan-American Highway next to the village, or the creation of
a local market, could endow the villagers with a di√erent worldview from the
one they envisioned for them. Thus ‘‘high modernist’’ development planners in
the United States and Guatemala were neither prepared nor equipped to under-
stand how indigenous culture and a suddenly more socially oriented Catholic
Church could transform both marketplace and religion into tools for challeng-
ing the terribly exploitative and racist structures of Guatemala’s dominant so-
ciety and economy. Of course, the other face of the Alliance for Progress was
Cold War security, reflected in an escalation of arms shipments and military
training. Ultimately, when Guatemala’s counterinsurgency war heated up in the
late 1970s and the state came calling for indigenous conscripts to fight the
guerrilla units that had been organized in the area, the Maya women’s mobiliza-
tion for dignity and resistance proved futile.
As scholars take stock of the trajectory of the Latin American Cold War in this
and other recent works, what remains to be done to understand it better? To
begin with, we need to explore other Cold War arenas as systematically and
creatively—locally, nationally, and transnationally—as we have done for Mexico
and some parts of Central America and the Caribbean. Here I have in mind
high-profile hot spots such as the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, El Salvador,
and Grenada; relatively neglected cases such as Venezuela, Bolivia, and Peru; and
the entire region subsumed by the Operation Condor network. What remains to
be done is defined not by geography but by the depth of inquiry and research.
We need to get a better hold on the specificity of Latin America in the global
Cold War. When we examine di√erent societies’ positioning in the bipolar
conflict, the roles—enthusiastic, ambivalent, and inadvertent—played by Latin
American governments and elites, and also by diverse components of the political
opposition, in the complex and changing trajectory of the conflict will emerge
more clearly. Ideological a≈liations were often tempered by historical con-
tingency, making strange bedfellows and pitting actors against one another for
temporary advantage in confrontations that were otherwise beyond their capac-
ity to influence. In our e√ort to continue exploring local cold wars in as much
specificity and depth as some authors have undertaken in this book, we must
incorporate a burgeoning testimonial literature in Mexico, Central America, and
the Southern Cone that documents the dynamics of guerrilla movements and
392 daniela spenser
dirty wars, enables an analysis of women in arms as comrades and sexual partners
of men in arms, and furthers new studies of the role of the family and of personal
interactions and bonds in such extraordinary times. Nor should we cease to pay
attention to ethnicity and religion, variables that Cold War ideologues often
attempted to deny or minimize, but which were central to many political and
social movements in Latin America and the rest of the Third World.∂
The history of the Latin American Cold War will also profit from a deeper
understanding of the multiple connections and networks, horizontal and verti-
cal, linking relevant actors and agencies within the region and beyond. For
example, we desperately lack a study of Cuba’s role in Latin America that pos-
sesses the same depth as Gleijeses’s treatment of Cuba’s mission in Africa. Here
the dearth of Cuban sources has been a major impediment, but this obstacle
might be partially overcome by oral histories and the identification of alterna-
tive primary sources in the countries involved. Similarly, despite several recent
studies, the full extent of the transnational network of right-wing repression that
was Operation Condor still remains to be teased out by historians.
Finally, much research needs to be done to bring the study of the Soviet
Union’s projection in Latin America up to the level that has been reached for
Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, but only for Cuba in the Western Hemi-
sphere. The material is plentiful in Soviet archives and those of its former
Eastern European allies. However, we need to avoid the misconception that the
Soviet system was a monolith obeying one iron chain of command. We need to
better understand the institutional dynamics of the Soviet bureaucracy, par-
ticularly the functioning of its foreign policy apparatus, which was distinct from,
and often subordinate to, the Committee for State Security (or kgb, in its
Russian acronym), but lacked coordination with it. By learning from our col-
leagues in the field of Soviet studies, we will better equip ourselves to distinguish
slogans from reality and to appreciate that there was competition among the
state and party agencies, with each one asserting its primacy in the state.∑
We have yet to explore the richness of the archives in the former Soviet bloc,
which presently manifest greater openness than the Russian archives, and cer-
tainly the Cuban archives. Here Piero Gleijeses’s research in the archives of the
former German Democratic Republic represents a most promising start. The
first round of research in the Eastern European archives shows, for instance, that
although the Soviet leadership held sway over each country of the bloc and
required its acquiescence to a broader unity, there was no unanimity with regard
to the countries’ attitudes toward the Third World.∏ After all, the aid that each
ally was required to deliver came at the expense of its already undernourished
national economy. Furthermore, when deliveries of aid in military hardware

were discovered by the Western press or intelligence services, the reputation of
these Eastern governments su√ered in the West, with whom they traded and
maintained diplomatic relations. Thus we may find that not all Warsaw Pact
countries were willing to share the burden of aid to the Latin American national
liberation movements.
Research in the Bulgarian as well as the Soviet and Czechoslovak archives has
shed light on arms deliveries to, and intelligence training in, Sandinista Nica-
ragua and the other isthmian countries engulfed in the guerrilla wars of the
1980s.π That is hardly surprising. What needs to be established in such research is
the negotiation that went on behind closed doors between Central America’s
guerrilla, Communist, and labor leaders and the political-military branches of
each Eastern European government. Only then will we better understand the
cycles of Soviet and Eastern bloc engagement with Latin America in relation to
major Cold War watersheds such as the Vietnam War and the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan, and vis-à-vis the very di√erent regimes that Brezhnev and Gor-
bachev, Nixon and Reagan, represented.
A particularly valuable source surfaced in the 1990s: a fond (record group)
89, which was created in the Russian State Archives of Contemporary History
(rgani). The documents that make up this record group include yearly transfers
of monetary aid to worldwide Communist parties and some leftist labor unions
between 1955 and 1989. This important source has yet to be explored for most of
the Latin American countries, although it has yielded some useful material for
Chile.∫ Of course, there still remains the unique opportunity to interview key
actors from the Cold War era, such as Nikolai Leonov, vice director of the kgb
between 1983 and 1991, vice director of the Department for Analysis and Infor-
mation between 1973 and 1982, and second in command of the kgb’s Depart-
ment for Latin America between 1968 and 1972. Interviewed in 1998 in the
Centro de Estudios Públicos in Santiago de Chile, Leonov’s testimony under-
scored that Latin America was not a place where the Soviet Union sought to
provoke a revolution but rather ‘‘a hunting ground rich in opportunities for
e√orts that might be carried out against the United States.’’Ω Chile under the
Unidad Popular government, for example, provided an opportunity to show the
world that socialism could triumph via the ballot box. In 1971 a substantial
amount of Soviet aid to Chile reflected that optimism. By 1973, however, fear of
Allende’s demise had replaced such confidence, and the weapons and financial
aid that had been earmarked for Chile were canceled.∞≠ Another glimpse into the
kgb, which is otherwise closed to researchers, is the recently published second
394 daniela spenser
volume of Vasili Nikitich Mitrokhin’s smuggled handwritten notes from the

intelligence bureau’s archives. The notes showcase Soviet intelligence priori-
ties around the globe, including Latin America, and reveal the understand-
ing that, ultimately, the course of world history would be determined in the
Third World.∞∞
It should come as no surprise that In from the Cold constitutes more than a
detached narrative and analysis of the Latin American Cold War. If the con-
tributors’ essays sympathize with, and occasionally betray a touch of moral
outrage for, the victims of repression, it is because the e√ects of the Cold War in
Latin America were often devastating. When seeking reform or revolution, Latin
American countries responded to local and regional socioeconomic and politi-
cal dislocations, which the superpowers tried to turn to their advantage with
greater or lesser success. Whereas the Soviet Union no longer exists and the old
bipolar conflict is over, the legacy and consequences of the defeat of the era’s
nationalist reformers and revolutionary Left is manifest in Latin America today.
Indeed, can we even say that the Latin American Cold War has ended?
There is certainly continuity between the Cold War and post–Cold War period
in the unsettled state of U.S.–Cuban relations. These relations respond as much
to the lobbying of Miami’s Cuban community as to the U.S. government’s
unswerving opposition to the hemisphere’s last (and greatly diminished) Com-
munist regime. And the United States has manufactured a new enemy in the
person of the Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, for today, as during the Cold
War, U.S. foreign policy seeks to control the flow of capital, goods, and labor, only
now in the name of global civilization. Its unipolar dominance allows the United
States to operate relatively freely, imposing an imperial infrastructure in the
name of free markets and democracy while labeling actors that stand in its way
rogue nations, terrorists, narcotra≈ckers, antidemocrats, and harborers of
weapons of mass destruction. The Cold War also continues in memories of a rav-
aged past—memories that fester in large part owing to the fact that many of the
bosses of once-formidable security forces still enjoy a measure of immunity, not-
withstanding e√orts by victimized families to bring such perpetrators to justice.
All in all, the Latin American Cold War failed to solve the social, political, and
economic problems over which its right- and left-wing participants contended.
In material terms, the majority of countries in the hemisphere ended up as poor
as they were before the conflict. The global struggle impoverished the region
even further, for the manner in which superpower antagonism played itself out
in Latin America dealt a serious blow to popular democracy and the defense of
human rights. Without the Cold War, Latin America would be a very di√erent
place today.
Notes
1. Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making
of Our Times (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 396.
2. See John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, In Denial: Historians, Communism and
Espionage (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003).
3. Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II: The kgb and
the World (London: Allen Lane, 2005), 4.
4. Westad, The Global Cold War, 400; and see the chapters in this volume by McAllister
and Pitti.
5. Moshe Lewin, The Soviet Century (New York: Verso, 2005), 348–49.
6. Daniela Spenser, ‘‘Operation Manuel: Czechoslovakia and Cuba,’’ Cold War Inter-
national History Project e-Dossier no. 7, 2003, http://cwihp.si.edu.
7. See, for example, Jordan Baev, ‘‘Bulgaria and the Armed Conflict in Central Amer-
ica, 1979–1989,’’ unpublished paper, 2001.
8. Lora Soroka, comp., Archives of the Communist Party and Soviet State: Guide to the
Microfilm Collection in the Hoover Institution Archives; Fond 89: Communist Party of the
Soviet Union on Trial (Palo Alto, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 2001); and see the series
of articles published in Estudios Públicos by Olga Ulianova, Eugenia Fediakova, Arturo
Fontaine Talavera, and Ximena Hinzpeter Kirberg, which can be consulted at http://
www.cepchile.cl.
9. Nikolai Leonov, ‘‘La inteligencia soviética en América Latina durante la guerra fría,’’
Estudios Públicos 73 (summer 1999): 39.
10. Ibid., 56.
11. Andrew and Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive II, 1–24.
Selective Bibliography
Archives
argentina
Argentina Center for Legal and Social Studies, Buenos Aires (cels)
brazil
Arquivo Público do Estado do Rio de Janeiro
—Departamento de Ordem Política e Social
cuba
Archives of the Central Committee of the Cuban Communist Party, Havana
Centro de Información de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias, Havana (cifar)
europe
Archive of the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party
Archive of New Documents, Warsaw, Poland
National Archives of Hungary
State Central Archive of the Czech Republic
g uat e m a l a
Actas Municipales de Chichicastenango, Guatemala
Archivo General de Centroamérica, Guatemala City, Guatemala
mexico
Archivo General de la Nación, Mexico City (agn)
—Dirección General de Investigaciones Políticas y Sociales
—Ramo Presidentes Adolfo López Mateos
—Ramo Presidentes Adolfo Ruiz Cortines
398 selective bibliography
Secretaría de Educación Pública (sep)

Secretaría de Trabajo y Previsión Social–Registro de Asociaciones (stpsra)
u n i t e d s tat e s
Archives of the San Francisco Archdiocese, Menlo Park, California
—Donald McDonnell Papers
Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley
—Cambodia–Kent State Strike Collection
—Social Protest Collection
Beinecke Library, Yale University
—Jacques Levy Papers
Binational Centers Permanent Record (File Cards), Washington
—Public Diplomacy Historical Collection
California State Archives, Sacramento, California
—Earl Warren Papers
Ford International Archive, Dearborn, Michigan (fia)
Green Library, Stanford University, Stanford, California
—Ernesto Galarza Papers
—Fred Ross Papers
—Herman Gallegos Papers
—James L. Vizzard Papers
—Victor Salandini Papers
Jimmy Carter Library, Atlanta, Georgia
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division
—Volkogonov Collection
Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, Austin, Texas (lbjl)
—National Security File, Country File
—National Security File, National Intelligence Estimate
National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (nara)
—Country Project Files, Motion Picture and Sound Recording Branch, Record Group
306
—Country Project Files, Motion Picture Rights and Permissions Files, Record Group
306
—Country Project Files, O≈ce of Research, Special Reports 1953–63, Record Group
306
—Country Project Files (1951–64), Record Group 306
—John F. Kennedy Assassination Collection, Record Group 263
—National Security File, National Intelligence Estimate
—Pol 1 Afr-US, Subject-Numeric Files: 1963–73, Record Group 59
—Pol 1 Cuba, Subject-Numeric Files: 1963–73, Record Group 59
selective bibliography 399
—State Department Central Files, Record Group 56

—State Department Central Files, Record Group 59: Mexico Papers, 1960–63, 1967–69
—State Department Central Files, Record Group 286
National Security Archive, Washington (nsa)
—Archive of the President of the Federation of Russia
—Argentina Declassification Project, 1975–84
—Guatemala Collection
—Panama Collection
University of Chicago Library, Microfilm Collection
Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan
—Fred Ross Papers
—National Sharecroppers Fund
—National Farm Workers Association (nfwa) Papers
—United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (ufwoc) Papers
—United Farm Workers Presidential Papers
Published Documents
American Foreign Policy Current Documents, 1977–1980. Washington: U.S. Department of
State, 1984.
Argentina Forensic Anthropology Team, Annual Report 2002. The eaaf website may be
viewed at www.eaaf.org.ar.
Arquidiocese de São Paulo. Brasil Nunca Mais: Um relato para a história. 2nd ed. Pe-
trópolis: Editora Vozes, 1987.
Bayard Rustin Papers, 1942–86. Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America.
Microfilm.
Brasil. Congresso. Anais da Câmara dos Deputados. Vols. 23, 53. Brasilia, 1968.
Chrysler de México. Sobre ruedas: La historia de Chrysler en México. Mexico City, 1993.
Comité de Unidad Campesina. Voz del Comité de Unidad Campesina: Periódico infor-
mativo del cuc, April 15, 1978.
Diario de Centroamérica. Desarrollo integral de las comunidades rurales en Guatemala.
Guatemala City: Editorial del Ministerio de Educación Pública, 1956.
Diócesis del Quiché. El Quiché: El pueblo y su iglesia, 1960–1980. Santa Cruz del Quiché:
Diócesis del Quiché, 1994.
Ford de México. Apuntes para una historia de la industria automotríz. Mexico City:
privately printed, 1977.
Ford Motor Company. ‘‘A Study of Automotive Manufacturing in Mexico.’’ Privately
printed, April 1960.
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963. Vol. 11. Washington: U.S. Department of
State, 1984.
From Madness to Hope: The 12-Year War in El Salvador: Report of the Commission on the
Truth for El Salvador. United Nations Document S/25500, 1993.
‘‘General Motors Corporation in the World Automobile Market.’’ Privately printed, May
1962.
Guatemala: Memoria del Silencio: Informe de la Comisión para Esclarecimiento Histórico.
9 vols. Guatemala City: ceh, 1999. Distributed by F&G Editores, http://hrdata.aaas
.org/ceh.
‘‘Memorandum on the Conversation between Mikoyan and the Cuban Leaders, Havana,
5 November 1962.’’ Cold War International History Project Bulletin, no. 5 (spring 1995):
101–9, 159.
Municipalidad de Santo Tomás Chichicastenango. Diagnóstico y Plan del Desarrollo del
Municipio de Santo Tomás Chichicastenango. Guatemala City: funcede, 1995.
National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor. Farm Labor Organizing, 1905–1967. New
York: National Advisory Committee on Farm Labor, 1967.
National Commission on the Disappearance of People (conadep). Nunca Más. Buenos
Aires: eudeba, 1984.
National Commissioner for the Protection of Human Rights in Honduras. Honduras:
The Facts Speak for Themselves. New York: Human Rights Watch/Americas, 1994.
National Security Archive. El Salvador: The Making of U.S. Policy, 1977–1984. Alexandria:
Chadwyck-Healey, 1989.
———. The Iran-Contra A√air: The Making of a Scandal, 1983–1899. Alexandria: Chadwyck-
Healey, 1990.
———. Nicaragua: The Making of U.S. Policy, 1978–1990. Alexandria: Chadwyk-Healey,
1991.
Nunca Más: The Report of the Argentine National Commission on the Disappeared. New
York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1986. Nunca Más: Informe de la Comisión Nacional sobre la
Desaparición de Personas. Buenos Aires: Editorial Universitaria, 1984. www.nuncamas
.org/index.htm.
Oficina de Derechos Humanos del Arzobispado de Guatemala. Guatemala: Nunca más.
Guatemala City: odhag, 1998.
Poder Ejecutivo Nacional. Terrorism in Argentina. Buenos Aires: Poder Ejecutivo Nacio-
nal, 1980.
Ramírez, Alfred. Planned Famine in America? A Letter to an Employee of the Purex
Corporation. Pamphlet, 1970.
Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation. 2 vols. Trans.
Philip E. Berryman. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1993. www
.derechoschile.com.
Republic of South Africa. House of Assembly Debates. Pretoria, col. 4852.
United States Information Agency. Country Public A√airs O≈cer Handbook. Washington:
United States Information Agency, 1962.
Periodicals
brazil
Correio da Manhã
Jornal do Brasil
Manchete
Realidade
Veja e Leia
europe
Guardian (London)
mexico
Avance (Tlalnepantla, Estado de México)
El Día
Diario Oficial
Expresiones (Tlalnepantla, Estado de México)
Justicia Social
Líder
The News (Mexico City)
Novedades
Noticiero gm (newsletter of General Motors de México)
La Prensa
Provincia (Estado de México)
Siempre
Solidaridad
El Universal
Uno Más Uno
u n i t e d s tat e s
El Alacrán (Long Beach, California)
Albuquerque Journal
Bakersfield Californian (Bakersfield, California)
Bay State Banner (Oakland, California)
Commonweal (New York)
Davis Enterprise (Davis, California)
Dinuba Sentinel (Dinuba, California)
El Excéntrico (San Jose, California)
The Forerunner (San Jose, California)
Fresno Bee (Fresno, California)
Los Angeles Daily News
Los Angeles Times

El Malcriado (Delano, California)
Mexican-American Review (San Diego, California)
The Movement (San Francisco)
New York Times
Newsweek (New York)
La Opinión (Los Angeles)
La Palabra de MASC (San Jose, California)
People’s World (San Francisco)
Sacramento Observer (Sacramento, California)
San Francisco Chronicle
San Jose Mercury-News (San Jose, California)
sds Regional Newsletter (San Francisco, 1966)
Somos Aztlán (Boulder, Colorado)
Stockton Record (Stockton, California)
El Vocero (San Jose, California)
The Voice of the Spanish-Speaking People (Los Angeles)
Wall Street Journal
Washington Daily News
Washington Post
others
Granma (Cuba)
Nô Pintcha (Bissau)
La Prensa (Buenos Aires)
Rand Daily Mail (Johannesburg)
Star (Johannesburg)
World (Johannesburg)
Secondary Sources
Abramovici, Pierre. ‘‘Argentine: L’autre sale guerre d’Aussaresses.’’ Le Point, June 15, 2001.
Acuña, Rodolfo F. Occupied America: A History of Chicanos. New York: Harper and Row,
1988.
Adams, Richard, ed. Crucifixion by Power: Essays on Guatemalan National Social Struc-
ture, 1944–1966. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970.
Aguayo Quezada, Sergio. La charola: Una historia de los servicios de inteligencia en México.
Mexico City: Grijalbo, 2001.
———. México, 1968: Los archivos de la violencia. Mexico City: Grijalbo-Reforma, 1998.
Agustín, José. Tragicomedia mexicana 1: La vida en México de 1940 a 1970. Mexico City:
Planeta, 1990.
Allen, Gary. The Grapes: Communist Wrath in Delano. Belmont, Mass.: American Opin-
ion, 1966.
Almada, Martín. Paraguay: La cárcel olvidada, el país exiliado. Asunción: Intercontinental
Editora, 1993.
Álvarez, Sonia E. Engendering Democracy in Brazil: Women’s Movements in Transition
Politics. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
Americas Watch. Human Rights in Honduras: Signs of ‘‘The Argentine Method.’’ New
York: Americas Watch, 1982.
Anderson, Henry P. The Bracero Program in California, with Particular Reference to
Health Status, Attitudes, and Practices. New York: Arno Press, 1976.
Anderson, Scott, and Jon Lee Anderson. Inside the League. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1986.
Andrew, Christopher, and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Mitrokhin Archive II: The kgb and the
World. London: Allen Lane, 2005.
Antunes, José Freire. A guerra de Africa (1961–1974). 2 vols. Lisbon: Temas e Debates,
1996.
Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapo-
lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.
Armony, Ariel C. Argentina, the United States, and the Anti-Communist Crusade in Cen-
tral America, 1977–1984. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1997.
Armstrong, Scott, et al. The Chronology: The Documented Day-by-Day Account of the
Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Contra. New York: Warner Books, 1987.
Aspra, Antonio L. ‘‘Import Substitution in Mexico: Past and Present.’’ World Develop-
ment 5 (January–February 1977): 111–23.
Ayala Blanco, Jorge. La aventura del cine mexicano en la época de oro y después. Mexico
City: Grijalbo, 1993.
Ayerbe, Luis Fernando. Los Estados Unidos y la América Latina: La construcción de la
hegemonía. Havana: Casa de las Americas, 2001.
Bahbah, Bishara. Israel and Latin America: The Military Connection. New York: St. Mar-
tin’s Press, 1986.
Bardini, Roberto. Monjes, mercenarios y mercaderes: La red secreta de apoyo a los Contras.
Mexico City: Alpa Corral, 1988.
Bartra, Roger. Blood, Ink, and Culture: Miseries and Splendors of the Post-Mexican Condi-
tion. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
Basurto, Jorge. En el régimen de Echeverría: Rebelión e independencia. Mexico City: Siglo
Veintiuno Editores, 1983.
Bau, Ignatius. This Ground Is Holy: Church Sanctuary and Central American Refugees.
New York: Paulist Press, 1985.
Becker, Marjorie. Setting the Virgin on Fire. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Bennett, Douglas C., and Kenneth E. Sharpe. Transnational Corporations versus the State:
The Political Economy of the Mexican Auto Industry. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1985.
Berger, Mark T. ‘‘U.S. Power, North American Knowledge and the Cold War.’’ Journal of
Iberian and Latin American Studies 2, no. 1 (1997): 41–63.
Berghahn, Volker R. America and the Intellectual Cold Wars in Europe: Shepard Stone between
Philanthropy, Academy, and Diplomacy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Bernstein, Harry. ‘‘Duel in the Sun: Union Busting, Teamster Style.’’ The Progressive, July
1973, 17–20.
Bestard Pavón, Elías, and Alicia Céspedes Carrillo. ‘‘La colaboración de Cuba con los
países de África Subsahariana (1959–1988).’’ M.A. thesis, Instituto Superior de Rela-
ciones Internacionales, Havana, 1989.
Bethell, Leslie, and Ian Roxborough. ‘‘The Impact of the Cold War on Latin America.’’ In
Origins of the Cold War: An International History, ed. Melvyn P. LeΔer and David
Painter, 293–316. New York: Routledge, 1994.
Bethell, Leslie, and Ian Roxborough, eds. Latin America between the Second World War
and the Cold War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Bissell, Richard M., Jr., Jonathan E. Lewis, and Frances T. Pudlo. Reflections of a Cold
Warrior: From Yalta to the Bay of Pigs. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
Bizberg, Ilán. Estado y sindicalismo en México. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1990.
Blasier, Cole. The Giant’s Rival: The ussr and Latin America. Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 1987.
Blight, James G., and Philip Brenner. Sad and Luminous Days: Cuba’s Struggle with the
Superpowers after the Missile Crisis. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2002.
Blight, James G., and Peter Kornbluh. Politics of Illusion: The Bay of Pigs Invasion Re-
examined. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Reinner, 1998.
Bonner, Raymond. Weakness and Deceit: U.S. Policy and El Salvador. New York: Times
Books, 1984.
Brands, H. W. The Specter of Neutralism: The United States and the Emergence of the Third
World, 1947–1960. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.
Brennan, James P. ‘‘Clasismo and the Workers: The Ideological-Cultural Context of
‘Sindicalismo de Liberación’ in the Cordoban Automobile Industry, 1970–1975.’’ Bul-
letin of Latin American Research 15, no. 3 (September 1996): 293–308.
Brenner, Philip, and James G. Blight. ‘‘Cuba, 1962: The Crisis and Cuban-Soviet Rela-
tions; Fidel Castro’s Secret 1968 Speech.’’ Cold War International History Project Bul-
letin, no. 5 (spring 1995): 1, 81–85.
Breytenbach, Jan. Forged in Battle. Cape Town: Saayman and Weber, 1986.
———. They Live by the Sword. Alberton, South Africa: Lemur-Paru, 1990.
Brockett, Charles D. ‘‘An Illusion of Omnipotence: U.S. Policy toward Guatemala, 1954–
1960.’’ Latin American Politics and Society 44, no. 1 (2002): 91–126.
Brown, Jerald Barry. The United Farm Workers Grape Strike and Boycott, 1965–1970: An
Evaluation of the Culture of Poverty Theory. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1972.
Brown, Timothy C. The Real Contra War: Highlander Peasant Resistance in Nicaragua.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2001.
Buarque de Holanda, Heloisa. Impressões de viagem: CPC, vanguarda e desbunde, 1960/

79. São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1981.
Buhle, Paul M., and Edward Rice-Maximin. William Appleman Williams: The Tragedy of
Empire. New York: Routledge, 1995.
Bunzel, Ruth. Chichicastenango. Guatemala City: Editorial José de Pineda Ibarra, 1981.
Burr, William. The Kissinger Transcripts: The Top-Secret Talks with Beijing and Moscow.
New York: New Press, 1999.
Buzzanco, Robert. ‘‘What Happened to the New Left? Toward a Radical Reading of
American Foreign Relations.’’ Diplomatic History 23, no. 4 (fall 1999): 575–608.
Cabral, Luís. Crónica da libertaçâo. Lisbon: Ediçôes O Jornal, 1984.
Calavita, Kitty. Inside the State: The Bracero Program, Immigration, and the INS. New
York: Routledge, 1992.
Callon, Michel. ‘‘Introduction: The Embeddedness of Economic Markets in Economics.’’
In The Laws of the Markets, 1–57. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
Cárdenas, Lázaro. ‘‘Discurso con motivo del VI Aniversario de la Iniciación del Movi-
miento Revolucionario 26 de Julio’’ (July 26, 1959). In México y Cuba: Dos pueblos
unidos en la historia, vol. 2, ed. Boris Rosen Jélomer. Mexico City: Centro de Investiga-
ción Científica Jorge L. Tamayo, 1982.
Cardoso, Oscar R. ‘‘El último secreto del Proceso: Apéndice sobre la experiencia ar-
gentina.’’ In Con los Contras, ed. Christopher Dickey. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana-
Planeta, 1987.
Cardoso, Oscar R., Ricardo Kirschbaum, and Eduardo van der Kooy. Malvinas, la trama
secreta. Buenos Aires: Sudamericana-Planeta, 1983.
Carmack, Robert. ‘‘The Story of Santa Cruz Quiché.’’ In Harvest of Violence: The Maya
Indians and the Guatemalan Crisis, ed. R. Carmack. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1988.
Caro Hollander, Nancy. Love in the Time of Hate: Liberation Psychology in Latin America.
New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1997.
Carr, Barry. ‘‘The Fate of the Vanguard under a Revolutionary State: Marxism’s Contri-
bution to the Construction of the Great Arch.’’ In Everyday Forms of State Formation:
Revolution and the Negotiation of Rule in Modern Mexico, ed. Gilbert Joseph and
Daniel Nugent, 326–52. Durham: Duke University Press, 1994.
Castañeda, Jorge. Compañero: The Life and Death of Che Guevara. New York: Knopf, 1997.
———. La vida en rojo: Una biografía del Che Guevara. Mexico City: Alfaguara, 1997.
———. Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the Cold War. New York: Knopf,
1993.
Castro, Fidel. History Will Absolve Me. New York: Center for Cuban Studies, n.d.
Caute, David. The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy during the Cold
War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Cerda de López, Valentina. ‘‘Historia de una huelga: gm y la lucha de 106 días.’’ Licen-
ciatura thesis, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, 1983.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Di√er-

ence. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Chamorro, Edgar. Packaging the Contras: A Case of cia Disinformation. New York: In-
stitute for Media Analysis, 1987.
Chang, Jung, and Jon Halliday. Mao: The Unknown Story. London: Jonathan Cape, 2005.
Chávez, Ernesto. ‘‘Mi Raza Primero’’ (My People First!): Nationalism, Identity, and Insur-
gency in the Chicano Movement of Los Angeles, 1966–1978. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2002.
Cockburn, Andrew, and Leslie Cockburn. Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the
U. S.-Israeli Covert Relationship. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.
Colina la Rosa, Juan, et al. ‘‘Estudiantes extranjeros en la Isla de la Juventud.’’ Manuscript.
Havana, 2005.
Collier, Ruth Berins, and David Collier. Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the
Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America. Princeton: Princeton Uni-
versity Press, 1991.
Colling, Ana Maria. A Resistenica da mulher à ditadura militar no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro:
Rosa dos Tempos, 1997.
Coltman, Leycester. The Real Fidel Castro. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003.
Cooper, Frederick, and Randall Packard, eds. International Development and the Social
Sciences: Essays on the History and Politics of Knowledge. Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1998.
Copelman, Dina M., and Barbara Clark Smith. ‘‘Excerpts from a Conference to Honor
William Appleman Williams.’’ Radical History Review 50 (winter 1991): 39–70.
Corradi, Juan E., Patricia Weiss Fagan, and Manuel Antonio Garretón, eds. Fear at the
Edge: State Terror and Resistance in Latin America. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1992.
Courtois, Stephane, et al. The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Cox, Michael. ‘‘The 1980s Revisited, or the Cold War as History—Again.’’ Paper presented
to the Nobel Symposium 2002, Oslo, Norway, June 17, 2002.
Crea, José Luis. ‘‘The Process and the Implications of Change in the Guatemalan
Church.’’ Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, 1988.
Crocker, Chester. High Noon in Southern Africa: Making Peace in a Rough Neighborhood.
New York: Norton, 1992.
Cullather, Nick. Secret History: The cia’s Classified Account of Its Operations in Guate-
mala, 1952–1954. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.
Da Fonseca Sobrinho, Délcio. Estado e população: Uma história do planejamento familiar
no Brasil. Rio de Janeiro: Rosa dos Tempos, 1993.
Da Silva Catela, Ludmila. ‘‘La casa, la calle, el estado . . . : Democratización de la
información vs. resguardo de la intimidad.’’ Puentes 1, no. 1 (August 2000): 54–64.
Dabat Alejandro, and Luis Lorenzano. Argentina: The Malvinas and the End of Military
Rule. London: Verso, 1984.
Dale Scott, Peter, and Jonathan Marshall. Cocaine Politics: Drugs, Armies, and the cia in
Central America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.
Danner, Mark. The Massacre at El Mozote: A Parable of the Cold War. New York: Vintage
Books, 1994.
Davis, Mike. City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles. New York: Verso, 1990.
———. Magical Urbanism: Latinos Reinvent the U.S. City. New York: Verso, 2001.
De Oliveira Costa, Albertina, et al., eds. Memorias das mulheres do exilio. Rio de Janeiro:
Paz e Terra, 1980.
Debray, Régis. Las pruebas de fuego: Las críticas de las armas. vol. 2. Mexico City: Siglo
XXI, 1975.
Deutsch, Sandra McGee. Las Derechas: The Extreme Right in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile,
1890–1939. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.
Deutsch, Sandra McGee, and Ronald H. Dolkart, eds. The Argentine Right: Its History and
Intellectual Origins, 1910 to the Present. Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1993.
Dickey, Christopher. With the Contras: A Reporter in the Wilds of Nicaragua. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1987.
Diez Acosta, Tomás. Octubre del 62: Un paso del holocausto. La Havana, 1999, electronic
version.
Dillon, Sam. Comandos: The cia and Nicaragua’s Contra Rebels. New York: Henry Holt,
1991.
Dinges, John. The Condor Years: How Pinochet and His Allies Brought Terrorism to Three
Continents. New York: The New Press, 2003.
———. ‘‘Green Light–Red Light: Henry Kissinger’s Two-Track Approach to Human Rights
during the ‘Condor Years’ in Chile and Argentina.’’ In Argentina–United States Bilat-
eral Relations: An Historical Perspective and Future Challenges, ed. Cynthia J. Arnson.
Washington: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2003.
Divine, Robert A. The Sputnik Challenge: Eisenhower’s Response to the Soviet Satellite.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Dobrynin, Anatoly. In Confidence: Moscow’s Ambassador to America’s Six Cold War Presi-
dents (1962–1986). New York: Random House, 1995.
Doyle, Kate. ‘‘Death Squad Diary: Looking into the Secret Archives of Guatemala’s
Bureaucracy of Murder.’’ Harper’s Magazine, June 1999, 50–53.
Drucker, Linda. ‘‘A Contra’s Story.’’ Progressive, August 1986.
Du Preez, Sophie. Avontuur in Angola: Die verhaal van Suid-Afrika se soldate in Angola,
1975–1976. Pretoria: J. L. van Schaik, 1989.
Dudziak, Mary. Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000.
Duhalde, Eduardo Luis. El estado terrorista argentino. Barcelona: Argos Vergara, 1993.
Eriksen, Tore Linné, ed. Norway and National Liberation in Southern Africa. Sweden:
Nordiska Afrikainstitutet of Uppsala, 2000.
Escobar, Arturo. Encountering Development: The Making and Unmaking of the Third
World. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Espinosa Martín, Ramón. La batalla de Cabinda. Havana: Ediciones Verde Olivo, 2000.
Falco√, Mark. A Tale of Two Policies: U.S. Relations with the Argentine Junta, 1976–1983.
Philadelphia: Foreign Policy Research Institute, 1989.
Falla, Ricardo. Quiché Rebelde. Guatemala City: Editorial Universitaria de Guatemala,
1978.
———. The Story of a Great Love: Life with the Guatemalan ‘‘Communities of Population in
Resistance.’’ Washington: epica, 1998.
Fein, Seth. ‘‘From Collaboration to Containment: The International Political Economy
of Mexican Cinema after the Second World War.’’ In Mexico’s Cinema: A Century of
Films and Filmmakers, ed. Joanne Hershfield and David Maciel. Wilmington: Schol-
arly Resources, 1999.
———. ‘‘From New Empire to Old: Making Mexican Newsreels the Cold War Way.’’ Diplo-
matic History 28, no. 5 (November 2004): 703–48.
———. ‘‘Hollywood, Mexico–United States Relations, and the Golden Age of Mexican
Cinema.’’ Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1996.
———. ‘‘Transcultured Anticommunism: Cold War Hollywood in Postwar Mexico.’’ In
Visible Nations: Latin American Cinema and Video, ed. Chon Noriega. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
———. ‘‘Transnationalization and Cultural Collaboration: ‘Mexican’ Cinema and the Sec-
ond World War.’’ Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 17 (1998): 105–28.
Feitlowitz, Marguerite. A Lexicon of Terror: Argentina and the Legacies of Torture. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1998.
Ferguson, James. The Anti-politics Machine: ‘‘Development,’’ Depoliticization, and Bu-
reaucratic Power in Lesotho. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1994.
Fernández, Claudia, and Andrew Paxman. El Tigre: Emilio Azcárraga y su imperio Tele-
visa. Mexico City: Grijalbo, 2000.
Fielding, Raymond. The American Newsreel, 1911–1967. Norman: University of Okla-
homa Press, 1972.
———. The March of Time, 1935–1951. New York: Oxford University Press, 1978.
Fojo de Diego, Ángel. ‘‘Estudio de un conflicto industrial: El caso Automex.’’ Centro de
Estudios Sociológicos, El Colegio de México, Mexico. Mimeographed, 1973.
Fontaine, Pascal. Europe—a Fresh Start: The Schuman Declaration, 1950–90. Luxem-
bourg: O≈ce for O≈cial Publications of the European Communities, 1990.
French, John. The Brazilian Workers’ ABC: Class Conflict and Alliances in Modern São
Paulo. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.
Friedman, Max Paul. ‘‘Retiring the Puppets, Bringing Latin America Back In: Recent
Scholarship on United States–Latin American Relations.’’ Diplomatic History 27, no. 5

(November 2003): 621–36.
Furiati, Claudia. Fidel Castro: La historia me absolverá. Barcelona: Plaza and Janés, 2003.
Fursenko, Aleksandr, and Timothy Naftali. ‘‘One Hell of a Gamble’’: Khrushchev, Castro
and Kennedy, 1958–1964. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997.
Gabeira, Fernando. O que é isso companheiro? Rio de Janeiro: codecri, 1979.
Gaddis, John L. The Cold War: A New History. New York: Penguin, 2005.
———. ‘‘The Emerging Post-Revisionist Thesis on the Origins of the Cold War.’’ Diplomatic
History 7, no. 3 (summer 1983): 171–90.
———. ‘‘The Long Peace: Elements of Stability in the Postwar International System.’’ Inter-
national Security 10, no. 4 (spring 1986): 99–142. Reprinted as the final chapter in
Gaddis, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1987.
———. Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Se-
curity. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982.
———. ‘‘The Tragedy of Cold War History.’’ Diplomatic History 17, no. 1 (winter 1993): 1–16.
———. The United States and the Origins of the Cold War. New York: Columbia University
Press, 1972.
———. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. New York: Oxford University Press,
1997.
García, Eduardo. ‘‘Rescued Police Files Hold Guatemala’s Dark Secrets.’’ Reuters, July 22,
2005.
García, Juan Ramón. Operation Wetback: The Mass Deportation of Mexican Undocu-
mented Workers in 1954. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1980.
García Márquez, Gabriel. ‘‘The Solitude of Latin America (Nobel Lecture, 1982).’’ In
Gabriel García Márquez and the Powers of Fiction, ed. Julio Ortega and Claudia Elliott.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988.
García Terrés, Jaime. ‘‘Un poco de aire fresco.’’ el espectador 1, no. 4 (August 1959).
Gardner, Richard. Grito! Reies Tijerina and the New Mexico Land Grant War of 1967. New
York: Harper and Row, 1971.
Garton Ash, Timothy. The File: A Personal History. New York: Random House, 1997.
Geldenhuys, Jannie. A General’s Story: From an Era of War and Peace. Johannesburg:
Jonathan Ball, 1995.
Gill, Leslie. The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the
Americas. Durham: Duke University Press, 2004.
Gindin, Jonah, and Kirsten Weld, eds. ‘‘In the Name of Democracy: U.S. Intervention in
the Americas Today.’’ Special issue. nacla Report on the Americas 40, no. 1 (January-
February 2007).
Gleijeses, Piero. Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
———. ‘‘Haiti’s Contribution to the Independence of Spanish America: A Forgotten Chap-

ter.’’ Revista/Review Interamericana 9, no. 4 (winter 1979–80): 511–28.
———. ‘‘Kuba in Afrika, 1975–1991.’’ In Heisse Kriege im Kalten Kriege, ed. Bernd Greiner,
Cristian Müller, and Dierk Walter. Hamburg: Hamburger Ed., 2006.
———. ‘‘The Limits of Sympathy: The United States and the Independence of Spanish
America.’’ Journal of Latin American Studies 24, no. 3 (October 1992): 481–505.
———. ‘‘Moscow’s Proxy? Cuba and Africa, 1975–88.’’ Journal of Cold War Studies 8, no. 2
(spring 2006): 3–51.
———. ‘‘Scandinavia and the Liberation of Southern Africa.’’ International History Review
27, no. 2 (June 2005): 324–31.
———. Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
———. ‘‘Truth or Credibility: Castro, Carter, and the Invasions of Shaba.’’ International
History Review 18, no. 1 (February 1996): 70–103.
Gobat, Michel. Confronting the American Dream: Nicaragua under U.S. Imperial Rule.
Durham: Duke University Press, 2005.
Goldschmidt, Walter Rochs. As You Sow: Three Studies in the Social Consequences of
Agribusiness. Montclair, N.J.: Allenheld, Ossmun, 1978.
Gómez Z., Luis. Sucesos y remembranzas. Mexico City: Editorial Secapsa, 1979.
González, Mónica. La Conjura: Los mil y un días del golpe. Santiago: Ediciones B Grupo
Zeta, 2000.
Gorriti, Gustavo. ‘‘Beyond the Epics of Failure: The Post-Utopian Left.’’ Journal of Inter-
american Studies and World A√airs 36, no. 1 (spring 1994): 157–76.
Gosse, Van. Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left.
New York: Verso, 1993.
Gould, Je√rey. To Lead as Equals: Rural Protest and Political Consciousness in Chinandega,
Nicaragua, 1912–1979. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990.
Grabendor√, Wolf. ‘‘¿De país aislado a aliado preferido? Las relaciones entre la Argentina
y los Estados Unidos: 1976–1981.’’ In El poder militar en la Argentina, 1976–1981, ed.
Peter Waldmann and Ernesto Garzón Valdez. Buenos Aires: Galerna, 1983.
Grandin, Greg. Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the
New Imperialism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006.
———. ‘‘Imperial Overstretch.’’ Harper’s Magazine, December 2004, 89–93.
———. ‘‘The Instruction of Great Catastrophe: Truth Commissions, National History, and
State Formation in Argentina, Chile, and Guatemala.’’ American Historical Review 110,
no. 1 (February 2005): 46–67.
———. The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2004.
———. ‘‘O√ the Beach: The United States, Latin America, and the Cold War.’’ In A Com-
panion to Post-1945 America, ed. Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy Rosensweig, 426–45.
New York: Blackwell, 2002.
Grandin, Greg, and Gilbert M. Joseph. A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counter-
insurgent Violence during Latin America’s Long Cold War. Durham: Duke University
Press, forthcoming.
Green, David. The Containment of Latin America: A History of the Myths and the Realities
of the Good Neighbor Policy. Chicago: Quadrangle, 1971.
Green, John W. ‘‘Sibling Rivalry on the Left and Labor Struggles in Colombia during the
1940s.’’ Latin American Research Review 35, no. 1 (2000): 85–117.
Green, Linda. Fear as a Way of Life: Mayan Widows in Rural Guatemala. New York:
Columbia University Press, 1999.
Gri≈th, Robert. ‘‘The Cultural Turn in Cold War Studies.’’ Reviews in American History
29, no. 1 (March 2001): 15–57.
Griswold del Castillo, Richard, and Richard A. García. César Chávez: A Triumph of Spirit.
Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1995.
Gross, Liza. Handbook of Leftist Guerrilla Groups in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1995.
Guerra, João Paulo. Descolonizaçâo Portuguesa: O regresso das carabelas. Lisbon: Pub-
licaçôes Dom Quixote, 1996.
Guerrero, Carlos Reyes. ‘‘Silent No More: The Voice of a Farm Worker Press, 1964–1975.’’
Ph.D. diss., Claremont Graduate University, 2003.
Guevara, Ernesto Che. Pasajes de la guerra revolucionaria: Congo. Ed. Aleyda March.
Barcelona: Grijalbo, 1999.
Guha, Ranajit. Dominance without Hegemony: History and Power in Colonial India. Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Gutiérrez Espíndola, José Luis. ‘‘Información y necesidades sociales: Los noticiarios de
Televisa.’’ In Televisa: El quinto poder, ed. Raúl Trejo Delarbre. Mexico City: Claves
Latinoamericanas, 1985.
Gutman, Roy. Banana Diplomacy: The Making of American Policy in Nicaragua, 1981–
1987. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.
Guzmán, Ralph. ‘‘Mexican Americans on the Move.’’ Agenda 2 (July 1966): 1, 8.
Haines, Gerald K. The Americanization of Brazil: A Study of U.S. Cold War Diplomacy in
the Third World, 1945–1954. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1989.
Handy, Jim. Revolution in the Countryside: Rural Conflict and Agrarian Reform in Guate-
mala, 1944–1954. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Hawley, Ellis W. ‘‘The Politics of the Mexican Labor Issue, 1950–1965.’’ Agricultural
History 40, no. 3 (1966): 157–76.
Hayner, Priscilla. Unspeakable Truths: Confronting State Terror and Atrocity; How Truth
Commissions around the World Are Challenging the Past and Shaping the Future. New
York: Routledge, 2001.
Haynes, John Earl, and Harvey Klehr. In Denial: Historians, Communism and Espionage.
San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2003.
———. Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America. New Haven: Yale University Press,
1999.
Heasley, Jerry. The Production Figure Book for U.S. Cars. Osceola, Wis.: Motorbooks
International, 1977.
Heimer, Franz-Wilhelm. Der Entkolonisierungskonflikt in Angola. Munich: Weltforum
Verlag, 1979.
Heitman, Helmoed-Römer. South African War Machine. Novato, Calif.: Bison Books,
1985.
Ho Chi Minh. Selected Works. 3 vols. Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1960–
62.
Hodges, Donald C. Argentina’s ‘‘Dirty War’’: An Intellectual Biography. Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1991.
Ho√man, Bruce. The plo and Israel in Central America: The Geopolitical Dimension.
Santa Monica: Rand, 1988.
Hogan, Michael J. America in the World: The Historiography of U.S. Foreign Relations since
1941. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985.
———. ‘‘The ‘Next Big Thing’: The Future of Diplomatic History in a Global Age.’’ Diplo-
matic History 28, no. 1 (January 2004): 1–21.
Hogan, Michael J., and Thomas G. Paterson, eds. Explaining the History of American
Foreign Relations. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Holden, Robert H. ‘‘Constructing the Limits of State Violence in Central America:
Towards a New Research Agenda.’’ Journal of Latin American Studies 28, no. 2 (May
1996): 442-46.
———. Armies Without Nations: Public Violence and State Formation in Central America,
1821–1960. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Horowitz, David, ed. Containment and Revolution: Western Policy towards Social Revolu-
tion, 1917 to Vietnam. London: Anthony Blond, 1967.
Horton, Lynn. Peasants in Arms: War and Peace in the Mountains of Nicaragua, 1979–1994.
Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 1998.
Hoyos de Asig, María del Pilar. Fernando Hoyos ¿Dónde estás? Guatemala City: Fondo de
Cultura Editorial, 1997.
Huggins, Martha K. Political Policing: The United States and Latin America. Durham:
Duke University Press, 1998.
‘‘ ‘Imperialistics’/‘Kill the Empire! (Or Not).’ ’’ Special section, New York Times Book
Review, July 25, 2004, 11–13, 23.
James, Daniel. Doña María’s Story: Life History, Memory, and Political Identity. Durham:
———. Resistance and Integration: Peronism and the Argentine Working Class, 1946–1976.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Jian, Chen. Mao’s China and the Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2001.
Jiménez Rodríguez, Limbania. Mujeres sin frontera. Havana: Editora Política, 2005.
Johnston, Paul. Success While Others Fail: Social Movement Unionism and the Public
Workplace. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1994.
Jones, Susanne. The Battle for Guatemala: Rebels, Death Squads, and U.S. Power. Boulder:
Westview Press, 1991.
Joselovsky, Sergio. ‘‘El ejército del ‘Proceso’ y su intervención en Centroamérica.’’ Humor
(Buenos Aires), circa 1984.
Joseph, Gilbert M., ed. Reclaiming the Political in Latin American History: Essays from the
North. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.
Joseph, Gilbert M., Catherine LeGrand, and Ricardo Salvatore, eds. Close Encounters of
Empire: Writing the Cultural History of U.S.–Latin American Relations. Durham: Duke
Joseph, Gilbert M., Ann Rubenstein, and Eric Zolov, eds. Fragments of a Golden Age: The
Politics of Culture in Mexico since 1940. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.
Kagan, Robert. ‘‘Benevolent Empire.’’ Foreign Policy, no. 111 (summer 1998): 24–35.
Kapelusz-Poppi, Ana María. ‘‘Physician Activists and the Development of Rural Health
in Postrevolutionary Mexico.’’ Radical History Review 80 (2001).
———. ‘‘Rural Health and State Construction in Post-revolutionary Mexico: The Nicolaita
Project for Rural Medical Services.’’ The Americas 58, no. 2 (October 2001): 261–83.
Kaplan, Amy, and Donald E. Pease, eds. Cultures of United States Imperialism. Durham:
Keck, Margaret E., and Kathryn Sikkink. Activists beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in
International Politics. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1998.
Kennan, George F. American Diplomacy, 1900–1950. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1951.
Kissinger, Henry. Years of Renewal. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1999.
Klehr, Harvey, et al. The Soviet World of American Communism. New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 1998.
Klich, Ignacio. ‘‘Israel et l’Amérique Latine: La Pari d’un engagement accru aux cotés de
Washington.’’ Le Monde Diplomatique, no. 347 (February 1983).
Klubock, Thomas Miller. Contested Communities: Class, Gender, and Politics in Chile’s El
Teniente Copper Mine, 1904–1951. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.
Knight, Alan. ‘‘Empire, Hegemony and Globalization in the Americas.’’ nacla Report on
the Americas 39, no. 2 (September–October 2005): 8–12.
Kopkind, Andrew. ‘‘Poverty Politics in California.’’ New Republic, February 18, 1972.
Kornbluh, Peter, and James Blight. ‘‘Dialogue with Castro: A Hidden History.’’ New York
Review of Books 41, no. 16 (October 6, 1994): 45–49.
Kornbluh, Peter. Nicaragua: The Price of Intervention. Washington: Institute for Policy
Studies, 1987.
———. The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability. Rev. ed. New
York: New Press, 2004.
Kramer, Mark. ‘‘Ideology and the Cold War.’’ Review of International Studies 25, no. 4
(October 1999): 539–87.
Krauze, Enrique. Biography of Power: A History of Modern Mexico, 1810–1996. New York:
HarperCollins, 1997.
Krippner, James. ‘‘Invoking ‘Tato Vasco’: Vasco de Quiroga, Eighteenth–Twentieth Cen-
turies.’’ The Americas 56, no. 3 (January 2000): 1–28.
Kushner, Sam. Long Road to Delano. New York: International, 1974.
LaBotz, Dan. Labor Suppression in Mexico Today. Boston: South End Press, 1992.
LaFeber, Walter. ‘‘The Bush Doctrine.’’ Diplomatic History 26, no. 4 (fall 2002): 543–58.
———. Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America. New York: W. W.
Norton, 1984.
———. ‘‘Thomas C. Mann and the Devolution of Latin American Policy: From the Good
Neighbor to Military Intervention.’’ In Behind the Throne: Servants of Power to Im-
perial Presidents, 1898–1968, ed. Thomas J. McCormick and Walter LaFeber, 166–203.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993.
Lancaster, Roger N. Life Is Hard: Machismo, Danger, and the Intimacy of Power in Nica-
ragua. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
Langley, Kyle. The Sparrow and the Hawk: Costa Rica and the United States during the Rise
of José Figueres. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1997.
Lannon, Albert Vetere. Fight or Be Slaves: The History of the Oakland–East Bay Labor
Movement. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2000.
Lasch, Christopher. ‘‘The Cultural Cold War: A Short History of the Congress for Cul-
tural Freedom.’’ In Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History, ed.
Barton J. Bernstein. New York: Random House, 1968.
Latham, Michael E. Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and ‘‘Nation
Building’’ in the Kennedy Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
LeBot, Yvon. La guerra en tierras mayas: Comunidad, violencia, y modernidad en Guate-
mala (1970–1992). Mexico City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1992.
LeΔer, Melvyn P. ‘‘Bringing It Together: The Parts and the Whole.’’ In Reviewing the Cold
War: Approaches, Interpretations, Theory, ed. Odd Arne Westad, 43–63. London: Frank
Cass, 2000.
———. ‘‘The Cold War: What Do ‘We Now Know’?’’ American Historical Review 104, no. 2
(April 1999): 501–24.
———. ‘‘Inside Enemy Archives: The Cold War Reopened.’’ Foreign A√airs 75, no. 4 (July–
August 1996): 120–35.
———. ‘‘The Interpretive Wars over the Cold War, 1945–1960.’’ In American Foreign Rela-
tions Reconsidered, 1890–1993, ed. Gordon Martel, 106–24. New York: Routledge, 1994.
———. ‘‘New Approaches, Old Interpretations, and Prospective Reconfigurations. Diplo-
matic History 19, no. 2 (spring 1995): 173–96.
———. The Specter of Communism: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1917–
1953. New York: Hill and Wang, 1994.
LeGrand, Catherine. ‘‘The Colombian Crisis in Historical Perspective.’’ Canadian Journal

of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 28, nos. 55–56 (2003): 165–210.
LeoGrande, William M. Our Own Backyard: The United States and Central America,
1977–1992. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
Levenson-Estrada, Deborah. Trade Unionists against Terror: Guatemala City, 1954–1985.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
Lévesque, Jacques. The ussr and the Cuban Revolution: Soviet Ideological and Strategical
Perspectives, 1959–1977. New York: Praeger, 1978.
Levy, Jacques E. César Chávez: Autobiography of La Causa. New York: Norton, 1975.
Lewin, Moshe. The Soviet Century. New York: Verso, 2005.
Lewis, Flora. ‘‘Why There Is Anti-Americanism in Mexico.’’ New York Times Magazine,
July 6, 1952, 10.
Lichtenstein, Nelson. The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of
American Labor. New York: Basic Books, 1995.
Lomnitz-Adler, Claudio. Deep Mexico, Silent Mexico: An Anthropology of Nationalism.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
London, Joan, and Henry Anderson. So Shall Ye Reap: The Story of César Chávez and the
Farm Workers’ Movement. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1970.
Lundestad, Geir. ‘‘Empire by Invitation? The United States and Western Europe, 1945–
1952.’’ Journal of Peace Research 23, no. 3 (1986): 263–77.
———. ‘‘Moralism, Presentism, Exceptionalism, Provincialism, and Other Extravagances
in American Writings on the Early Cold War Years.’’ Diplomatic History 13, no. 4 (fall
1989). Reprinted in Lundestad, The American ‘‘Empire’’ and Other Studies of U.S.
Foreign Policy in a Comparative Perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Mabeko Tali, Jean-Michel. Dissidências e poder de estado: O mpla perante si própio (1962–
1977). 2 vols. Luanda: Nzila, 2001.
Macías Guillén, Pablo G. Luces y sombras: Testimonios nicolaitas. Morelia, Michoacán:
Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, 1981.
Maciel, Carlos. El movimiento de la liberación nacional: Vicisitudes y aspiraciones. Sinaloa:
University of Sinaloa, 1990.
Maklouf Carvalho, Luiz. Mulheres que foram à luta armada. São Paulo: Editora Globo, 1998.
Manz, Beatriz. Paradise in Ashes: A Guatemalan Journey of Courage, Terror, and Hope.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.
Mariscal, George. Aztlán and Viet Nam: Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War.
Mariscal, Jorge. ‘‘Left Turns in the Chicano Movement, 1965–1975.’’ Monthly Review 54,
no. 3 (July–August 2002): 59–69.
Martínez Ocaranza, Ramón. Autobiografía. Morelia, Michoacán: Universidad Michoa-
cana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, 1981.
Mastny, Vojtech. The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity: The Stalin Years. New York: Oxford
Mayer, Arno J. Dynamics of Counterrevolution in Europe, 1870–1956: An Analytical Frame-

work. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.
———. The Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions. Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 2000.
Mazzei, Daniel H. ‘‘La misión militar francesa en la Escuela Superior de Guerra y
los orígenes de la Guerra Sucia, 1957–1962.’’ Revista de Ciencias Sociales, no. 13 (2002):
105–37.
McAllister, Carlota. ‘‘Good People: Revolution, Community, and Conciencia in a Maya-
K’iche’ Village in Guatemala.’’ Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 2003.
McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest.
New York: Routledge, 1995.
McClintock, Michael. The American Connection. Vol. 2, State Terror and Popular Re-
sistance in Guatemala. London: Zed Books, 1985.
McCreery, David. Rural Guatemala, 1760–1940. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994.
McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. New York: McGraw
Hill, 1964.
McSherry, J. Patrice. Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin Amer-
ica. Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005.
———. ‘‘Tracking the Origins of a State Terror Network: Operation Condor.’’ Latin Ameri-
can Perspectives 29, no. 1 (January 2002): 38–60.
Mejía Barquera, Fernando. La industria de la radio y la televisión y la política del estado
mexicano, vol. 1 (1920–1960). Mexico City: Fundación Manuel Buendía, 1989.
Menchú, Rigoberta. Me llamo Rigoberta Menchú y así me nació la conciencia. Mexico
City: Siglo XXI, 1985.
Menjívar, Cecilia, and Néstor Rodríguez, eds. When States Kill: Latin America, the U.S.,
and Technologies of Terror. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.
Menjivar, Cecilia. Fragmented Ties: Salvadoran Immigrant Networks in America. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2000.
Middlebrook, Kevin J. The Paradox of Revolution: Labor, the State, and Authoritarianism
in Mexico. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995.
———. ‘‘The Political Economy of Mexican Organized Labor.’’ Ph.D. diss., Harvard Uni-
versity, 1981.
———. ‘‘Union Democratization in the Mexican Automobile Industry.’’ Latin American
Research Review 24, no. 2 (spring 1989): 69–93.
‘‘Military Diplomacy Tilts Argentine Foreign Policy towards Washington.’’ Latin Ameri-
can Weekly Report, September 11, 1981.
Miller, Richard U. ‘‘Labor Organizations in a Developing Country: The Case of Mexico.’’
Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, 1966.
Miranda, Nilmário, and Carlos Tiburcio. Dos filhos deste solo: Mortos e desaparecidos
politicos durante a ditadura militar. A responsabilidade do Estado. São Paulo: Fundação
Perseu Abramo, 1999.
Mitchell, Nancy. ‘‘Jimmy Carter and Africa: Race and Realpolitik in the Cold War.’’
Manuscript.
Mitchell, Timothy. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-politics, Modernity. Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2002.
Moniz Bandeira, Luiz Alberto. De Martí a Fidel: A Revoluçâo Cubana e a América Latina.
Rio de Janeiro: Civilizaçâo Brasileira, 1998.
Monsiváis, Carlos. ‘‘Notas sobre la cultura mexicana en el siglo XX.’’ In Historia general
de México, ed. Daniel Cosío Villegas. Mexico City: El Colegio de México, 1988.
Moreira Alves, Márcio. A Grain of Mustard Seed: The Awakening of the Brazilian Revolu-
tion. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Press, 1973.
Moreira Alves, Maria Helena. State and Opposition in Military Brazil. Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1985.
Moreno, Julio. Yankee Don’t Go Home: Mexican Nationalism, American Business Culture,
and the Shaping of Modern Mexico, 1920–1950. Chapel Hill: University of North Caro-
lina Press, 2003.
Morgenstierne, Christopher Munthe. Denmark and National Liberation in Southern Af-
rica. Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet of Uppsala, 2003.
Morín, Raúl. Among the Valiant. Alhambra, Calif.: Borden, 1963.
Murphy, Brian. ‘‘The Stunted Growth of Campesino Organizations.’’ In Crucifixion by
Power, ed. Richard Newbold Adams. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1970.
Musacchio, Humberto. Diccionario Enciclopédico de México. Vol. 2. Mexico City: Andrés
León, 1995.
Naylor, R. T. Hot Money and the Politics of Debt. New York: Linden, 1987.
Nelson, Eugene. Huelga! The First Hundred Days of the Great Delano Grape Strike. De-
lano: Farm Worker Press, 1966.
Neptune, Harvey R. Caliban and the Yankees: Trinidad and the United States Occcupation.
Niblo, Stephen R. Mexico in the 1940s: Modernity, Politics, and Corruption. Wilmington,
Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1999.
Ninkovich, Frank. The Diplomacy of Ideas: U.S. Foreign Policy and Cultural Relations,
1938–1950. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
Njolstad, Olav, ed. The Last Decade of the Cold War: From Escalation to Conflict Transfor-
mation. London: Frank Cass, 2004.
Oglesby, Elizabeth. ‘‘Desde los cuadernos de Myrna Mack: Reflexiones sobre la violencia,
la memoria y la investigación social.’’ In De la memoria a la reconstrucción histórica, ed.
Beatriz Manz et al. Guatemala City: avancso, 1999.
Olcott, Jocelyn. ‘‘Las Hijas de Malinche: Gender and State Formation in Post-revolutionary
Mexico.’’ Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2000.
Ong, Aihwa. Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline. Albany: suny Press, 1987.
Oropeza, Lorena. Raza Sí! Guerra No! Chicano and Chicana Experiences of the War.
Ortiz Garza, José Luis. La guerra de las ondas: Un libro que desmiente la historia ‘‘oficial’’
de la radio mexicana. Mexico City: Planeta, 1992.
———. México en guerra: La historia secreta de los negocios entre empresarios mexicanos de la
comunicación, los nazis y E.U.A. Mexico City: Planeta, 1989.
Packenham, Robert A. The Dependency Movement: Scholarship and Politics in Develop-
ment Studies. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992.
———. Liberal America and the Third World: Political Development Ideas in Foreign Aid and
Social Science. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973.
Pansters, Wil. Politics and Power in Puebla: The Political History of a Mexican State.
Amsterdam: cedla, 1990.
Pastor, Robert A. ‘‘A Discordant Consensus on Democracy.’’ Diplomatic History 17, no. 1
(winter 1993): 117–28.
Paszyn, Danuta. The Soviet Attitude to Political and Social Change in Central America,
1979–90. New York: St. Martin’s, 2000.
Pavlov, Yuri. Soviet-Cuban Alliance, 1959–1991. Miami, Fla.: North-South Center Press,
1966.
Paxman, Andrew William. ‘‘William Jenkins, the Private Sector and the Modern Mexican
State.’’ M.A. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 2002.
Pearcy, Glen, Peter Matthiessen, and Luis Valdez. Fighting for Our Lives: The United
Farm Workers’ 1973 Grape Strike. Keene, Calif.: National Farm Worker Service Center,
1974.
Pellicer de Brody, Olga. ‘‘La revolución cubana en México.’’ Foro Internacional, April–
June 1968, 360–83.
Pellicer de Brody, Olga, and Esteban Mancilla. Historia de la revolución mexicana, 1952–
1960: El entendimiento con los Estados Unidos del desarrollo estabilizador. Vol. 23. Mex-
ico City: El Colegio de México, 1978.
Perdomo, María Teresa. Ramón Martínez Ocaranza: El poeta y su mundo. Morelia, Mi-
choacán: Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo, 1988.
Perelli, Carina. ‘‘From Counterrevolutionary Warfare to Political Awakening: The Uru-
guayan and Argentine Armed Forces in the 1970s.’’ Armed Forces and Society 20, no. 1
(fall 1993): 25–49.
Pérez Montfort, Ricardo. ‘‘El discurso moral en los noticieros fílmicos de 1940 a 1960.’’ In
Los archivos de la memoria, ed. Alicia Olivera de Bonfil. Mexico City: Instituto Nacio-
nal de Antropología e Historia, 1999.
Pike, Frederick B. Hispanismo, 1898–1936: Spanish Conservatives and Liberals and Rela-
tions with Spanish America. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1971.
Pion-Berlin, David, and George A. López. ‘‘Of Victims and Executioners: Argentine State
Terror, 1975–1979.’’ International Studies Quarterly 35, no. 1 (March 1991): 63–86.
Pitti, Gina Marie. ‘‘To ‘Hear about God in Spanish’: Ethnicity, Church, and Community
Activism in the San Francisco Archdiocese’s Mexican American Colonias, 1942–1965.’’
Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 2003.
Pitti, Stephen J. The Devil in Silicon Valley: Northern California, Race, and Mexican
Americans. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003.
Pons, Silvio, and Federico Romero, eds. Reinterpreting the End of the Cold War. London:
Frank Cass, 2005.
Pozzi, Pablo A. El prt-erp: La Guerrilla Marxista. Buenos Aires: eudeba, 2001.
Pratt, Mary Louise. ‘‘Arts of the Contact Zone.’’ Profession 91 (1991): 33–39.
———. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York: Routledge, 1992.
Rabe, Stephen G. Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism.
———. The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist
Revolution in Latin America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
———. U.S. Intervention in British Guiana: A Cold War Story. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2005.
Radosh, Ronald, Mary R. Habeck, and Grigory Sevostianov, eds. Spain Betrayed: The
Soviet Union in the Spanish Civil War. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001.
Ramonet, Ignacio. Fidel Castro: Biografía a dos voces. Barcelona: Debate, 2006.
Randall, Stephen J. ‘‘Ideology, National Security, and the Corporate State: The Histo-
riography of U.S–Latin American Relations.’’ Latin American Research Review 27, no. 1
(winter 1991): 205–17.
Reimann, Elisabeth. Confesiones de un Contra: Historia de ‘‘Moisés’’ en Nicaragua. Buenos
Aires: Legasa, 1986.
Reis Filho, Daniel Aarão, and Jair Ferreira de Sá. Imagens da Revolução: Documentos
políticos das organizações clandestinas de esquerda dos anos 1961–1971. Rio de Janeiro:
Editora Marco Zero, 1985.
Reis Filho, Daniel Aarão, and Pedro de Moraes. 68: A paixão de uma utopia. 2nd ed. Rio
de Janeiro: Fundação Getulio Vargas, 1998.
Reuque Paillef, Rosa Isolde. When a Flower Is Reborn: The Life and Times of a Mapuche
Feminist. Ed. Florencia E. Mallon. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
Reuther, Victor G. The Brothers Reuther and the Story of the uaw: A Memoir. Boston:
Houghton MiΔin, 1976.
Revilla, Benedicto. Guatemala: El terremoto de los pobres. Madrid: Ediciones sedmay, 1976.
Reynolds, Clark W. The Mexican Economy: Twentieth-Century Structure and Growth.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970.
———. ‘‘Why Mexico’s ‘Stabilizing Development’ Was Actually Destabilizing, with Some
Implications for the Future.’’ World Development, no. 6 (1978): 1005–17.
Ribeiro do Valle, Maria. 1968, o diálogo é a violência: Movimento estudantil e ditadura
militar no Brasil. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp, 1999.
Ridenti, Marcelo. O fantasma da Revolução Brasileira. São Paulo: Editora da Universidade
Estadual Paulista, 1993.
Risquet Valdés, Jorge. ‘‘Angola: El camino de la victoria.’’ Temas, nos. 37–38 (April–
September 2004): 159–67.
———. El segundo frente del Che en el Congo: Historia del batallón Patricio Lumumba.
Havana: Casa Editora, 2000.
Rodríguez Prats, Juan José. El poder presidencial: Adolfo Ruiz Cortines. Mexico City:
Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 1992.
Rogers, William D., and Kenneth Maxwell. ‘‘Fleeing the Chilean Coup: The Debate over
U.S. Complicity.’’ Foreign A√airs 83, no. 1 (January–February 2004): 160–65.
Roorda, Eric P. The Dictator Next Door: The Good Neighbor Policy and the Trujillo Regime
in the Dominican Republic. Durham: Duke University Press, 1998.
Rose, Margaret. ‘‘From the Fields to the Picket Line: Huelga Women and the Boycott,
1965–1975.’’ Labor History 31, no. 3 (1990): 271–93.
———. ‘‘Women in the United Farm Workers: A Study of Chicana and Mexicana Participa-
tion in a Labor Union, 1950 to 1980.’’ Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles,
1988.
Rosemblatt, Karin. Gendered Compromises: Political Cultures and the State in Chile, 1920–
1950. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
Rosen, Fred. ‘‘Introductory Essay.’’ In ‘‘Empire and Dissent,’’ special issue, nacla Report
on the Americas 39, no. 2 (September–October 2005): 4–7.
Rosenberg, Tina. The Haunted Land: Eastern Europe after Communism. New York: Ran-
dom House, 1995.
Rossell y Arellano, Mariano. ‘‘Carta pastoral del 4 de abril de 1954.’’ In El calvario de
Guatemala: Páginas de horror y crimen. Guatemala City: Tipografía Nacional, 1955.
———. Carta pastoral del excelentísmo y reverendísimo Señor Don Mariano Rossell Arellano,
Arzobispo de Guatemala, sobre la Acción Católica. Guatemala: Tipografía Sánchez and
de Guise, 1946.
———. Conferencia del excelentísimo y reverendísmo Monseñor Mariano Rossell Arellano,
Arzobispo de Guatemala, en el Tercer Congreso Católico de la Vida Rural el 21 de abril de
1955 en la Ciudad de Panamá. Guatemala City: Tipografía Sánchez and de Guise, 1955.
Rostow, W. W. ‘‘Guerrilla Warfare in Underdeveloped Areas.’’ In The Viet-Nam Reader:
Articles and Documents on American Foreign Policy and the Viet-Nam Crisis, ed. M. G.
Raskin and B. B. Fall. New York: Vintage Books, 1967.
———. The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1990.
Rouse, Roger. ‘‘Thinking through Transnationalism: Notes on the Cultural Politics of
Class Relations in the Contemporary United States.’’ Public Culture 7, no. 2 (winter
1995): 353–402.
Roxborough, Ian. Unions and Politics in Mexico: The Case of the Automobile Industry.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984.
Said, Edward. ‘‘Secular Interpretation, the Geographical Element and the Methodology
of Imperialism.’’ In After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displace-
ments, ed. Gyan Prakash. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.
Salazar, Rubén. Border Correspondent: Selected Writings, 1955–1970. Ed. Mario T. García.
Saldaña-Portillo, María Josefina. The Revolutionary Imagination in the Americas and the
Age of Development. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.
Salgado de Souza, Maria Inês. Os empresários e a educação: O IPES e a política educacional
após 1964. Petrópolis: Vozes, 1981.
Salinas, Juan, and Julio Villalonga. Gorriarán, la Tablada y las ‘‘guerras de inteligencia’’ en
América Latina. Buenos Aires: Manguin, 1993.
Samora, Julian. Los Mojados: The Wetback Story. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1971.
Saull, Richard. Rethinking Theory and History in the Cold War: The State, Military Power
and Social Revolution. London: Frank Cass, 2001.
Scarry, Elaine. The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1987.
Schlesinger, Stephen, and Stephen Kinzer. Bitter Fruit: The Untold Story of the American
Coup in Guatemala. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982.
Schoultz, Lars. Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy towards Latin America.
Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998.
———. National Security and United States Policy toward Latin America. Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1987.
Schrecker, Ellen, ed. Cold War Triumphalism: The Misuse of History after the Fall of
Communism. New York: New Press, 2004.
Schumpeter, Joseph A. Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper, 1950.
Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1990.
———. Seeing like a State: Why Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have
Failed. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
Sellström, Tor. Liberation in Southern Africa—Regional and Swedish Voices: Interviews
from Angola, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Zimbabwe, the Frontline and Swe-
den. Sweden: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet of Uppsala, 1999.
———, ed. Sweden and National Liberation in Southern Africa. 2 vols. Sweden: Nordiska
Afrikainstitutet of Uppsala, 1999 and 2002.
Selser, Gregorio. Bolivia: El cuartelazo de los cocadólares. Mexico City: Mex-Sur, 1982.
Semo, Ilán. ‘‘El cardenismo: Gramática del sobreviviente.’’ Historia y Gráfica 3 (1994): 77–95.
Shaw, Tony. British Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda, and Consensus.
London: I. B. Tauris, 2001.
Skidmore, Thomas E. The Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, 1964–1985. Oxford: Oxford
Smith, Gaddis. The Last Years of the Monroe Doctrine, 1945–1993. New York: Hill and
Wang, 1994.
Smith, Peter. ‘‘Mexico since 1946: Dynamics of an Authoritarian Regime.’’ In Cambridge

History of Latin America, vol. 5, ed. Leslie Bethell, 321–96. Cambridge: Cambridge
Smith, Tony. ‘‘A Pericentric Framework for the Study of the Cold War.’’ Diplomatic
History 24, no. 1 (fall 2000): 567–91.
Soares, Dirceu. ‘‘A Faculdade esta ocupada.’’ Realidade, August 1968, 56.
Soiri, Iina, and Pekka Pertola. Finland and National Liberation in Southern Africa. Swe-
den: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet of Uppsala, 1999.
Solange de Deus Simões. Deus, pátria e família: As mulheres no golpe de 1964. Petrópolis:
Vozes, 1985.
Sorensen, Thomas C. The Word War: The Story of American Propaganda. New York:
Harper and Row, 1968.
Soroka, Lora, ed. Archives of the Communist Party and Soviet State. Fond 89: Communist
Party of the Soviet Union on Trial. Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2001.
Spaulding, Hobart A. Organized Labor in Latin America: Historical Case Studies of Urban
Workers in Dependent Societies. New York: Harper and Row, 1977.
Spenser, Daniela, ed. Espejos de la guerra fría: México, América Central y el Caribe. Mexico
City: Miguel Ángel Porrúa, 2004.
Spies, E. J. du Toit. Operasie Savannah: Angola, 1975–1976. Pretoria: S. A. Weermag, 1989.
Starn, Orin. Nightwatch: The Politics of Protest in the Andes. Durham: Duke University
Press, 1999.
Steenkamp, Willem. South Africa’s Border War, 1966–1989. Gibraltar: Ashanti, 1989.
Stepan, Alfred. The State and Society: Peru in Comparative Perspective. Princeton: Prince-
ton University Press, 1978.
Stephanson, Anders. ‘‘Ideology and Neorealist Mirrors.’’ Diplomatic History 17, no. 2
(spring 1993): 285–95.
Stephen, Lynn. Zapata Lives! Histories and Cultural Politics in Southern Mexico. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2002.
Stern, Steve. Battling for Hearts and Minds: Memory Struggles in Pinochet’s Chile, 1973–
1988. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.
———. Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London 1998. Durham: Duke Univer-
sity Press, 2004.
———, ed. Shining and Other Paths: War and Society in Peru, 1980–1995. Durham: Duke
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (sipri). World Armaments and Disar-
mament Yearbook 1979. London: Taylor and Francis, 1979.
Stoll, David. Rigoberta Menchú and the Story of All Poor Guatemalans. Boulder, Colo.:
Westview Press, 1999.
Stonor Saunders, Frances. The Cultural Cold War: The cia and the World of Arts and
Letters. New York: New Press, 1999.
Streeter, Stephen M. Managing the Counterrevolution: The United States and Guatemala,
1954–1961. Athens: Ohio University Center for International Studies, 2000.
Suri, Jeremy. ‘‘Explaining the End of the Cold War: A New Historical Consensus?’’
Journal of Cold War Studies 4, no. 4 (fall 2002): 60–92.
Syrkis, Alfredo. Os carbonários: Memórias da guerrilha perdida. 3rd ed. São Paulo: Global,
1980.
Szulc, Tad. Fidel: A Critical Portrait. New York: Avon Books, 1987.
Taibo, Paco Ignacio, II. Ernesto Guevara, también conocido como el Che. Mexico City:
Planeta, 1996.
Talbott, Strobe, ed. Khrushchev Remembers: The Last Testament. London: Andre Deutsch,
1974.
Taubman, William. Khrushchev: The Man and His Era. New York: W. W. Norton, 2003.
Tavares de Almeida, Maria Herminia, and Luiz Weis. ‘‘Carro-zero e pau-de-arara: O
cotidiano da oposição de classe média ao regime militar.’’ In História da vida privada
no Brasil: Contrastes da intimidade contemporânea, ed. Lilia Moritz Schwarcz. São
Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1998.
Tax, Sol. Penny Capitalism: A Guatemalan Indian Economy. Washington: Smithsonian
Institute of Social Anthropology, 1953.
Taylor, Ronald B. Chávez and the Farm Workers: A Study in the Acquisition and Use of
Power. Boston: Beacon Press, 1975.
Thelan, David. ‘‘The Nation and Beyond: Transnational Perspectives on United States
History.’’ Journal of American History, December 1999, 976–86.
Tinsman, Heidi. Partners in Conflict: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the
Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950–1973. Durham: Duke University Press, 2002.
Ulloa Bornemann, Alberto. Surviving Mexico’s Dirty War: A Political Prisoner’s Memoir.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007.
Unikel, Luis. La dinámica del crecimiento de la Ciudad de México. Mexico City: Funda-
ción para Estudios de la Población, 1972.
Uys, Ian. Bushmen Soldiers. Germiston, South Africa: Fortress Publishers, 1994.
Vacs, Aldo C. ‘‘A Delicate Balance: Confrontation and Cooperation between Argentina
and the United States in the 1980s.’’ Journal of Interamerican Studies and World A√airs
31, no. 4 (1989): 23–59.
———. ‘‘The 1980 Grain Embargo Negotiations: The United States, Argentina, and the
Soviet Union.’’ Pew Case Studies in International A√airs, no. 118. Washington: Institute
for the Study of Diplomacy, Georgetown University, 1992.
Vargas, George. ‘‘A Historical Overview/Update on the State of Chicano Art.’’ In Chicano
Renaissance: Contemporary Cultural Trends, ed. David R. Maciel, Isidro D. Ortiz, and
María Herrera-Sobek. Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2000.
Vargas, Zaragosa. Labor Rights Are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth
Century America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005.
Ventura, Zuenir. 1968, o ano que não terminou: A aventura de uma geração. Rio de Janeiro:
Editora Nova Fronteira, 1988.
Verbitsky, Horacio. The Flight. New York: New Press, 1996.
———. La última batalla de la tercera guerra mundial. Buenos Aires: Legasa, 1984.
Verna, Paul. Pétion y Bolívar. Caracas, 1968.
Villareal, René. ‘‘The Policy of Import-Substitution Industrialization, 1929–1975.’’ In
Authoritarianism in Mexico, ed. José Luis Reyna and Richard S. Weinert, 67–107.
Philadelphia: ishi Press, 1977.
Von Eschen, Penny M. Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–
1957. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Walker, Thomas, ed. Reagan vs. the Sandinistas: The Undeclared War on Nicaragua.
Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1987.
Warren, Kay. The Symbolism of Subordination: Indian Identity in a Guatemalan Town.
Austin: University of Texas Press, 1989.
Weinstein, Allen, and Alexander Vassiliev, eds. The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in
America—the Stalin Era. New York: Modern Library, 1999.
Westad, Odd Arne, ed. Brothers in Arms: The Rise and Fall of the Sino-Soviet Alliance,
1945–1963. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.
———. The Global Cold War, Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2005.
———. ‘‘The New International History of the Cold War: Three (Possible) Paradigms.’’
Diplomatic History 24, no. 4 (fall 2000): 551–65.
Westerfield, Rex T. Sour Grapes: The Move to Control Our Food Supply. Belmont, Mass.:
American Opinion, 1968.
Wilkinson, Daniel. Silence on the Mountain: Stories of Terror, Betrayal, and Forgetting in
Guatemala. Boston: Houghton MiΔin, 2002.
Williams, Philip J., and Knut Walter. Militarization and Demilitarization in El Salvador’s
Transition to Democracy. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997.
Winn, Peter. Weavers of Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism. New
York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
Zubok, Vladislav, and Constantine Pleshakov. Inside the Kremlin’s Cold War: From Stalin
to Khrushchev. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1966.
Zuenir Ventura. 1968, o ano que não terminou: A aventura de uma geração. Rio de Janeiro:
Editora Nova Fronteira, 1988.
Electronic Sources
Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico. Summary speech by Christian Tomuschat,
coordinator, at the presentation of the report ‘‘Guatemala: Memoria del Silencio,’’
Guatemala City, February 25, 1999. www.c.net.gt/ceg/doctos/tomu0225. Access by
permission only.
conadep files. www.derhuman.jus.gov.ar.

La Plata archives. www.comisionporlamemoria.org.
Meinvielle, Julio. ‘‘Proyecto filosofía en español,’’ http://www.filosofiaorg/ave/001/a059
.htm.
Memoria Abierta. www.memoriaabierta.org.ar, and www.sitesofconscience.org/eng/
memoria.htm.
National Security Archive. http://www.gwu.edu/&nsarchiv.
National Security Archive, fortieth anniversary web page. http://www.gwu.edu/&nsarchiv
/nsa/cuba — mis — cri/index.htm.
Rio de Janeiro dops. http://www.aperj.rj.gov.br/fs — acervogfundo.asp.
São Paulo deops. http://www.arquivoestado.sp.gov.br/deops.htm.
Spenser, Daniela. ‘‘Operation Manuel: Czechoslovakia and Cuba.’’ Cold War Interna-
tional History Project e-dossier no. 7, 2003. http://cwihp.si.edu.
Terror Archive website (o≈cially the Centro de Documentación y Archivo para la De-
fensa de los Derechos Humanos, of the Corte Suprema de Justicia de Paraguay).
www.unesco.org/webworld/paraguay/documentos.html.
Wyatt, E. Mark. Interview transcript with the former cia o≈cial, February 15, 1996.
www.gwu.edu/&nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-3/wyatt1.html.
Contributors
Ariel C. Armony is the Audrey Wade Hittinger Katz and Sheldon Toby Katz Distin-
guished Teaching Associate Professor of Government at Colby College. His areas of
expertise include democracy and democratization, civil society, citizenship, and inter-
American relations. He is the author of The Dubious Link: Civic Engagement and Democ-
ratization and Argentina, the United States, and the Anti-Communist Crusade in Central
America, 1977–1984.
Steven J. Bachelor is an assistant professor of history at Fairfield University. He received

his Ph.D. in history at Yale University and is currently completing a book manuscript
entitled Miracle to Maquila: Mexico in the American Century.
Thomas S. Blanton is the director of the independent nongovernmental National Se-

curity Archive at George Washington University, Washington, and the series editor of the
Archive’s Web (CD, book, and microform of declassified documents). He is the author of
White House E-Mail: The Top Secret Computer Messages the Reagan-Bush White House
Tried to Destroy (1995), the coauthor of The Chronology (1987), and a contributor to
Litigation under the Federal Open Government Laws and Atomic Audit: The Costs and
Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons since 1940 (1998).
Seth Fein teaches international and transnational history at Yale. His book Transnational
Projections: The United States in the Golden Age of Mexican Cinema is forthcoming from
Duke University Press. He is now working on a book and a film about television and U.S.
foreign policy in Latin America in the 1960s.
Piero Gleijeses is a professor of American foreign policy at the School of Advanced

International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. His publications include Conflict-
ing Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959–1976, which was awarded the 2003
Robert Ferrell Prize of the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations; Shattered
Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944–1954; and The Dominican
428 contributors
Crisis: The 1965 Constitutionalist Revolt and American Intervention. He is currently writ-
ing a book on Cuban and U.S. policy in southern Africa from 1976 to 1994.
Gilbert M. Joseph is the Farnam Professor of History and International Studies, and the
recent director of Latin American and Iberian Studies at Yale University. His most recent
books are Fragments of a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico Since 1940, coedited
with Anne Rubenstein and Eric Zolov (2001), and Reclaiming the Political in Latin Ameri-
can History: Essays from the North (2001)—both published by Duke University Press. He
is currently working on a book that examines transnational lives and cultural encounters
in the American Century.
Victoria Langland is an assistant professor of history at the University of California,

Davis. She is currently finishing a book manuscript entitled ‘‘Speaking of Flowers: Stu-
dent Movements and Collective Memory in Authoritarian Brazil’’ and is a coeditor, with
Elizabeth Jelin, of Monumentos, memoriales y marcas territoriales (Siglo XXI, 2003).
Carlota McAllister is an assistant professor of anthropology at York University in To-

ronto, Canada. She is currently preparing a book on her work in Chupol entitled ‘‘The
Good Road: Conscience and Consciousness in a Postrevolutionary Guatemalan Village’’
and beginning new research on environmental activism in the Chilean Patagonia.
Stephen Pitti is a professor of history and American studies and the director of the
Ethnicity, Race, and Migration Program at Yale University. He is the author of The Devil
in Silicon Valley: Race, Mexican Americans, and Northern California (2002) and is work-
ing on a biography of César Chávez that will be published by Yale University Press.
Daniela Spenser is a senior researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Supe-

riores en Antropología Social in Mexico City. Her recent edited books include La Inter-
nacional Comunista en México: Los primeros tropiezos (2006), En busca de una nación
soberana: Las relaciones internacionales de México, siglos XIX y XX (2006), and Espejos de
la guerra fría: México, América Central y el Caribe (2004). She is currently writing a book
on the early years of the Mexican Communist Party.
Eric Zolov is an associate professor of history at Franklin & Marshall College. He is the
author of Refried Elvis: The Rise of the Mexican Counterculture (1999) and coeditor of
Rockin’ Las Americas: The Global Politics of Rock in Latin/o America (2004), Fragments of
a Golden Age: The Politics of Culture in Mexico Since 1940 (2001), and Latin America and
the United States: A Documentary History (2000). His current research focuses on the
impact of the Cuban revolution on Mexican political culture and U.S.-Mexican relations
during the ‘‘long 1960s.’’
Index
Aarão Reis Filho, Daniel, 313 Angola, 112, 117–19, 123–28; Cuban intervention
Abernathy, Ralph, 298 in, 118, 385
Africa, 10, 98, 105, 112, 120, 122, 181; communist Anti-Communism, 21, 24, 135, 137, 145, 179, 204,
subversion in, 116 216, 224, 240, 257; crusade, 4, 134, 139, 148,
African Americans, 198–99, 295, 386; civil 154, 158, 386; ideology, 141, 156; Mexican film
rights movement, 280, 298 activities and, 180; mission, 174; network,
Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee 144, 157; pri and, 193; propaganda, 174, 186,
(awoc), 274, 277–79, 281–82, 285, 292 197; purges, 279; revolutionary action, 37;
Alarcón, Gabriel, 181–83, 186–87, 189, 191 triumph, 356. See also Communism
Albright, Madeleine, 58 Aptheker, Bettina, 289
Alekseev, Aleksandr, 88, 102 Aragonés, Emilio, 89, 93
Alfa 76 (terrorist organization), 138, 145 Arana Osorio, Carlos, 55
Algeria, 26, 112–13, 115, 122–23, 144, 385 Arancibia Clavel, Enrique, 63–64
Aliançã de Libertação Nacional (aln, Alliance Arbenz, Jacobo, 16, 23, 25, 350, 355–56, 362–63
for National Liberation, Brazil), 312–13 Argentina: apparatus for repression, 134, 142;
Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (arena, El crusade in Central America, 136, 156, 158;
Salvador), 137 foreign policy, 141; guerrillas, 140, 146, 147,
Allen, Gary, 288–89 155; human rights abuses, 58; intelligence
Allende, Salvador, 105, 142, 393; parliamentary agencies, 143, 149, 152, 155; military and
solution of, 25 counterinsurgency assistance by, 143, 146,
Alliance for Progress, 26, 202, 224, 254, 259, 388, 149, 151, 153, 385; military regime, 136, 139, 141,
391 148–49, 150–52, 155, 158; Peronism, 21; U.S.
Almada, Martín, 63 collaboration with, 135, 139
Álvarez Martínez, Gustavo, 152–53 Armed movement, 99, 105
American Federation of Labor, 22, 276; and Army Intelligence Battalion 601 (Argentina),
Congress of Industrial Organizations 64, 141–42, 145, 151, 157
(afl-cio), 277–78, 281, 285, 287, 298, 301, Arriaga Rivera, Agustín, 242
359 Arzú, Álvaro, 54
American gi Forum, 275, 284, 290, 296 Ascencio, Diego, 232–34, 236–38, 240
Americanization, 197, 253, 255, 261, 268 Asociación Nacional Mexicana Americana
Amnesty International, 332 (anma), 278
430 index
Authoritarianism, 19 Cabinda, 116–17

Autoworkers, in Mexico, 253–59, 260–68 Caldevilla, Vinícius, 317
Ávila Camacho, Maximino, 181 Calexico, 277
Azcárraga, Gastón, 256 California: Migrant Ministry, 279; State
Azcárraga Milmo, Emilio, 183 Federation of Labor, 277
Azcárraga Vidaurreta, Emilio, 174, 183, 187, Campos, Dan, 284
190, 192 Cárdenas, Lázaro, 215–18, 222–27, 233–35, 239,
241–42, 387
Baltázar Barajas, Ángel, 225, 228 Caribbean crisis, 14, 77–79, 84, 87, 92, 95, 104–
Bank of Reconstruction and Development, 5, 384. See also Cuban Missile Crisis
355 Carmichael, Stokely, 298
Bartra, Roger, 267 Carneiro, Marília, 318
Batista, Fulgencio, 112, 200 Carter, Jimmy, 15, 59–60, 127, 135, 137–39, 141,
Battalion 3-16 (Honduras), 153 146, 151, 154, 158, 385
Bay of Pigs, 9, 200, 214, 217, 222, 225, 231, 233– Casablanca, 112
34, 238–40, 242–43. See also Playa Girón Casella, Alberto T., 223
Beck, János, 91 Casey, William, 152
Benin, 119 Castañeda, Jorge, 28, 121
Bernal, Antonio, 263 Castro, Fidel, 5–6, 13, 21, 83–86, 88, 97, 100–102,
Bethell, Leslie, 20–22 104–5, 112, 115–16, 119–23, 125, 127–28, 155,
Big Three (Ford, gm, Chrysler), 255, 257–59 214, 215, 218, 222, 225, 228, 283, 295–96, 383–
Binational Centers, 218–19, 225, 239 84; attempt to assassinate, 9, 121; with Lázaro
Black Book of Communism, 49–50 Cárdenas, 216–17, 226–27; declaration of
Black Christ of Esquipulas, 358–59 November 1, 1962, 92; Khrushchev and, 89,
Black Panthers, 287–88, 295; party, 344 90; regime, 50, 94, 148, 385, 390; as Soviet
Black Power, 280–81, 288, 298 puppet, 120, 384; travel to Moscow, 94–95;
Bolivia, 1980 military coup, 136, 149, 157 visit to United States in 1959, 200
Bolivian Communist Party, 102–3 Castro, Raúl, 114, 116–17, 119
Bolshevik Revolution, 383 Catholic Action, 357–61, 364–65, 368–69,
Bonnie and Clyde, 308, 322, 325 371
Bonsal, Philip, 216–17 Catholic Church, 64, 274, 298, 357, 361, 391;
Bracero Program, 282, 388–89 hierarchy, 22; human rights o≈ce, 54, 64
Brazil, turbulence in 1968, 309–11, 315, 322, 329, Central Africa, 114
343 Central America: armed struggle in, 106;
Brazilian Communist Party (pcb), 313, 314 counterinsurgency regimes in, 19, 134;
Brazil Nunca Mais report, 65 counterrevolutionary campaign in, 157;
Brezhnev, Leonid, 95, 125, 138, 393 right-wing regimes in, 27; U.S. policy, 15
Brezhnev Doctrine, 104 Central American Peace Accords, 5
Brown, Cantwell, 183–84 Central Committee of the Communist Party
Brown Berets, 295, 299 (Soviet Union), 87, 100, 103
Brown Power, 280, 292 Central Intelligence Agency (cia), 14, 16, 22,
Bunche, Ralph, 198 24–25, 48–49, 54, 59, 96–97, 100–101, 113, 117,
Bunzel, Ruth, 362, 365–66 135, 152–54, 186, 202, 350, 384; Board of
Bustos, Robert, 282 National Estimates, 121; international
index 431
history, 28; spying of, 229; view of Castro Committee for Peasant Unity (Comité de
and Che, 120–22 Unidad Campesina, cuc, Guatemala), 350,
Central Valley, 275, 281 361, 368–70, 372
Chamber of Commerce (U.S.), in Mexico, Committee for State Security (kgb), 392–94
187 Communism: conspiracy of, 237, 390; in
Chandler, Charles, 311–12 Guatemala, 24; infiltration, 258–59, 276;
Chatfiel, Leroy, 279 international movement, 310, 312, 343, 372;
Chávez, César, 273, 275, 277–82, 284–300, 389 system of, 50; struggle against, 141, 145, 351,
Chávez, Fernando, 297 358, 359. See also Anti-Communism
Chávez, Hugo, 6, 394 Communist Party of the United States, 288
Chicanos, 7, 291; as activists, 290, 292–93; Community Service Organization (cso), 275–
leadership by, 389; movement of, 274, 283; as 78, 284, 299
soldiers, 297 Confederación Anticomunista
Chichicastenango, 361–62, 364–68 Latinoamericana (cal), 137, 145
Chile: human rights abuses, 56–58; 1973 coup, Confederación de Asociaciones por la Unidad
56 de las Sociedades de América (causa), 138
Chilean Communist Party, 100 Conferencia Latinoamericana por la Soberanía
Chimaltenango, 361 Nacional, la Emancipación Económica y la
China, People’s Republic of, 8, 56, 77, 87, 93, 99, Paz (Latin American Conference for
100, 105, 355 National Sovereignty, Economic
China and Soviet Union confrontation, 98 Emancipation, and Peace), 223, 234
Chrysler Corporation, 253–56, 262, 265–66, Congo Brazzaville, 112–15, 119, 199
268, 388 Congress of the Communist Parties of Latin
Chupol, 350–52, 357, 361–65, 368–72 America, 100
Cira, Alberto, 242–43 Consumer Rights Committee, 297
Cité Catholique, 144 Contras, 15, 134, 138, 147, 149, 158; commanders,
Citizenship, 4, 19, 23, 258, 382, 390 148; in Honduras, 152, 154; program of, 136
Ciudad Satélite, 263 Contreras, Manuel, 140
Civil do Bem Estar Familiar no Brasil Costa e Silva, Artur, 338, 341, 343
(bemfam, Society for the Welfare of the Costumbre (custom), 358, 365
Family in Brazil), 320–21 Counterinsurgency: model for, 156; operations,
Clandestine detention centers, 153–54 151–52; regimes, 24–25; warfare, 144, 385
Clark, Ramsey, 295 Crocker, Chester, 127–28
Clinton, Bill, 52, 54, 57–8 Cuba: economy, 113; foreign policy, 88, 123;
Coca-Cola, 187, 198 government, 84, 86, 94, 126; intelligence,
Cohen, Jerry, 292 100–101; invasion, 82, 229; policy for Africa,
Cold War: cultural diplomacy during, 219; 114, 122, 126, 155, 384, 392
evangelization, 360; historiography, 17, 47–8, Cuba and Soviet Union, relations of, 87, 93–94,
205; history, 17, 47, 49, 68, 97, 205, 381, 383; 97, 101, 103, 105, 384
modernization, 363, 372; studies, 8, 12, 18, 28, Cuban Communist Party, 93
381 Cuban Coordinating Committee, of U.S.
Colegio de San Nicolás de Hidalgo (Mexico), National Security Council, 96
214, 219–20, 222, 225, 230, 234, 243 Cuban Missile Crisis, 8–9, 77–78, 80–94, 102,
Colegio Militar (Argentina), 145, 152 104, 200, 383. See also Caribbean crisis
432 index
Cuban Revolution, 4, 23, 28, 78, 80, 93, 102, 105, Donner, Frederick, 254, 258
203, 277, 283, 383, 387, 390; in Morelia, 222, Doyle, Kate, 61, 67
225 Du Preez, Sophie, 118
Cuito, 128 Du Toit Spies, F. J., 118
Cultural history, 17, 19, 29
Cultural imperialism, 255 Eastern Europe, 7, 13–14, 50–51, 392
Cultural Institute, 215, 219, 221, 226, 228, 230– East and West: conflict of, 12, 135, 156, 386, 393;
33, 237, 239–40, 242–43 relations of, 79, 136, 172
Culture and power, 18, 203 Echeverría, Luis: apertura democrática, 266
Czech intelligence, 100–101 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 16, 49, 113, 180, 193,
197–98, 202
D’Arc Pimentel, Olga, 316 Eisenhower, Milton, 188
D’Aubuisson, Roberto, 145–46, 156 Ejército Guerrillero de los Pobres (egp,
Davis, Mike, 301 Guerrilla Army of the Poor, Guatemala), 350,
Debray, Regis, 99 361, 371–72
Decree 900 (Guatemala), 355–56, 362 Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (erp,
De Gortari, Eli, 242 Argentina), 140, 146–48
Delano, 273, 281, 285–86, 288–89, 293, 296; Plan Ejército Secreto Anticomunista (esa), 151
de Delano, 282–84 El Mozote massacre, 52–3
De Lima Souto, Edson Luis, 309, 316 El Salvador: armed forces, 150; civil war, 5;
De Lira Tavares, Aurélio, 341 security apparatuses, 25
Delle Chiaie, Stefano, 145 Escobar, Arturo, 352
Democracy, 20, 204, 262; industrial, 253; liberal, Escuela de Inteligencia (Argentina), 153
12, 23; popular, 394; social, 22–24, 28; Escuela Superior de Guerra (Argentina), 145,
transition to, 27 153
Democratic Party (U.S.), 285, 294–95 España-México-Argentina (ema), 180–82, 186,
De Paiva, Glycon, 320 202
Departamento de Ordem Politica e Social do Espinosa Yglesias, Manuel, 186
Estado (dops or deops, Brazil), 65, 324, 329 Espitia, Alfonso, 219–22, 225
Department of Defense (U.S.), 296 Estado Mayor Presidencial (emp, Guatemala),
Dependency theory, 14, 19 62
Desaparecidos (disappeared persons), 25, 50, Ethiopia, 119
57–58, 62 External Task Force (Argentina), 142
Devine, Michael, 54
Díaz, Hugo, 265–66 Falkland Islands War (Islas Malvinas), 50, 57,
Díaz Ordaz, Gustavo, 235, 240, 242, 259 135–36, 149, 154
Dinges, John, 64, 68 Federación Nacional de Estudiantes Técnicos
Dirceu, José, 311, 324 (Mexico), 228
Dirección Federal de Investigaciones Políticas y Federal Bureau of Investigation (fbi), 22, 288–
Sociales (dgips, Mexico), 226, 236 89
Directorate of National Intelligence (dina, Filipinos, as farmworkers, 277, 282, 284, 288,
Chile), 25, 140 293, 296
Dirty War (Argentina), 134, 142, 146–47, 150, Firmenich, Mario, 147
152, 155–56 First Declaration of La Havana, 222
index 433
First International Organization of Youth, 223 Grossman, Marc, 299

Ford, Henry, 264 Guanabara, 313–14
Ford, Henry, II, 254, 258 Guantánamo, 90–91
Ford Motor Company, 254–59, 264, 267–68 Guatemala: civil patrols, 26; civil war, 5; death
Fortuny, José Manuel, 355 squad diary, 61–62; National Police archives,
Franco, Jean, 335 62; 1954 coup, 16, 23, 49; postwar democratic
Franco Rodríguez, David, 233–34, 242 spring, 21; right-wing regimes, 27; security
Fraternities (cofradías), 358, 360, 365 apparatuses, 25; social democratic
Freedom of Information Act (foia), 51, 53, 58, revolution, 28; as state, 372
171, 205 Guerra de Andrade, Renata, 334–36
Frente Estudiantil de Defensa de la Revolución Guerrillas, 26, 53, 99, 101, 113, 115, 135, 149, 285;
Cubana (Student Front in Defense of the groups, 61, 78, 141–42, 315; movements, 100–
Cuban Revolution, Mexico), 217 101, 103, 105–6, 152, 329, 386, 389–91
Frente Farabundo Martí de Liberación Guevara, Ernesto (‘‘El Che’’), 89, 90–91, 93–94,
Nacional (fmln), 150 283, 289, 295, 313, 325, 344; in Africa, 113–14,
Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense (fdn), 147 116, 121; in Bolivia, 102, 103
Fukuyama, Francis, 13 Guinea-Bissau, 112–16, 119, 126, 119
Gabeira, Fernando, 334 Harbury, Jennifer, 61

Gaddis, John, 12–13, 16, 18–19 Harriman, Averell, 95, 96
Galarza, Ernesto, 276–77, 291 Harrington, Michael, 290
Galván, Raúl, 226 Hartmire, Wayne, 279–80
García, Héctor, 275 Hellou, Samyr, 321
García Márquez, Gabriel, 3 Helms, Jesse, 145
García Meza, Luis, 136, 151 Herrera, Vicente, 265, 268
García Terrés, Jaime, 217 Hill, Robert, 58, 186–88, 194, 196, 216
García Valseca, José, 186–87 Hogan, Michael, 14
General Motors Corporation, 176, 191, 254, Honduras, 134–35
256–58, 260–63, 267 House Un-American Activities Committee
Geopolitics, 11, 156 (huac), 275, 288
German Democratic Republic, 112, 120, 143, 392 Hughes, Thomas, 121
Gilderhus, Mark, 9 Human rights, 138, 395; abuses of, 52, 53, 57, 58,
Ginsberg, Allen, 289 68, 148, 153, 268
Gleijeses, Piero, 138, 155, 392
Globalization, 172 il-28 bombers, 84–85
Goldwater, Barry, 297 Imperial culture, 18, 203
González, Felipe (priest), 364–65, 368–71 Infante, Pedro, 171, 203
Good Neighbor, 172, 190; diplomacy, 216, 219, Institutional Act No. Five (ai-5, Ato
221 Institucional Número 5), 337–38, 343–44
Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, 187 Instituto Cultural México-Norteamericano,
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 393 214, 218, 221, 243, 387. See also Binational
Gordon Mein, John, 55 Centers; Cultural Institute; Morelia
Gra≈gna, Rubens, 146–47 Instituto Politécnico Nacional (ipn, Mexico),
Grandin, Greg, 4, 9, 22–24, 26–27, 350, 356 218, 228
434 index
Inter-American highway, 356, 363, 391 Laugerud, Kjell, 151

Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance Leddy, Raymond, 240
(tiar), 140 LeΔer, Melvyn, 10–14
International Conference of Free Unions, 257 LeoGrande, William, 15
International Department of the Central Leonov, Nicolai, 393
Committee of the Communist Party (Soviet Letelier, Orlando, 63
Union), 99, 106, 384 Ley Federal del Trabajo (Mexico), 262
Iran-Contra scandal, 15, 143 Liberalism and socialism, 28
Ireta Viveros, Félix, 233, 235 Lombardo Toledano, Vicente, 218
Israel, 126, 148–49 Lopes Meireles, Heli, 312
Itlion, Larry, 293 López Mateos, Adolfo, 187, 193–94, 214, 218,
227, 235, 239, 241
Jesuit Center for Research and Social Action, López Tijerina, Reies, 292–93, 295
361 Lozano Vázquez, Alberto, 226
John XXIII (pope), 361 Lucas García, Fernando Romeo, 151
John Birch Society, 295–96 Luce, Henry, 190
Johnson, Lyndon B., 98, 113, 123, 203, 239, 253, Lumumba, Patrice, 194
285, 287, 295 Lundestad, Geir, 48
Junta Coordinadora Revolucionaria (jcr), 142
MacCone, John, 96
Kabila, Laurent, 113 Machado Ventura, José Ramón, 113
Kennedy, Edward, 295 Madres and Abuelas of Plaza de Mayo, 57–58
Kennedy, Ethel, 295 Magalhães, Heloisa Helena, 324
Kennedy, John F., 16, 49, 82–86, 89, 92, 95–97, Mallea Gil, Miguel Ángel, 139
113, 123, 200, 202–3, 229, 242, 254, 259, 353; Malvinas war (Falkland Islands), 50, 57, 136,
death, 98; Johnson period and, 240; portrait, 149, 154
229 Mandela, Nelson, 128–29
Kennedy, Robert F., 293–95 Manjarrez, Luis, 181–82
Kenney, Eugene, 226, 228–29, 231–33, 239, 241 Mann, Thomas, 202, 240, 259
Khrushchev, Nikita, 78–87, 89, 91, 95–97, 105, Marcuse, Herbert, 329
383–84; Castro and, 83–84, 89–90; downfall, Marighella, Carlos, 308, 309, 312, 315
87; at United Nations, 197 Marshall Plan, 22, 48, 290, 390
King, Coretta Scott, 295 Martínez, Rafael, 265
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 290, 293–94 Martínez Ocaranza, Ramón, 226, 228, 230–31,
Kissinger, Henry, 25, 56, 58, 118, 124–25, 127 233–34, 241, 243
Kodak, 187 Massera, Emilio, 146
Kohler, Foy, 95 Maxeños, 362–63, 366–67. See also
Korean War, 172–73, 274, 276 Chichicastenango; Chupol
Kosygin, Aleksei, 103 McCullough, Thomas, 277
Kundera, Milan, 51 McDermott, Jack, 175, 179, 186, 189, 192, 196,
201–2
LaFeber, Walter, 15 McDonnell, Donald, 277
Landívar University, 361 McDowell, John, 276
Lara, Lucio, 116 McIntyre, Francis, 300
index 435
Meany, George, 277, 283 Namibia, 117, 127–28; Cuban intervention in,
Méndez Arceo, Sergio, 300 385
Mendoza, Nicandro, 228, 233–34, 236–37 Narcotics trade, 143, 151
Menem, Carlos, 63 National Agency of Special Services of El
Mexican American Democratic Clubs, 275 Salvador (ansesal), 150
Mexican American Political Association National Agrarian Reform Institute (Cuba), 86
(mapa), 275–76, 285, 290 National Chicano Moratorium Committee, 291
Mexican Americans, 273–78, 280, 282–84, 290– National Farm Workers Association (nfwa),
92, 294–98 273–83, 285–89, 292
Mexican Communist Party, 67 National Front for the Liberation of Angola
Mexican Revolution, 216, 222, 224, 265, 268, 282 (fnla), 117–8
Mexico: authoritarianism, 255, 268, 386–87; National Guard (Nicaragua), 134–35, 146, 153
government, 215, 259; postrevolutionary National liberation movements, 77, 80, 87, 102
culture, 171 National Security Archive, 9, 23, 25, 51, 53–55,
Meyer, Lorenzo, 67 57, 59, 63–64, 67
Michoacán, 214–15, 220–21, 233–35, 240, 242, 387 National Security Council (U.S.), 96, 355
Middle East, 10, 20, 204, 392 National Security Law (Brazil), 338
Mikoyan, Anastas, 82, 84–5, 91–2 National Security O≈ce (osn, Nicaragua), 146
Missile crisis. See Cuban Missile Crisis National Union for the Total Independence of
Mitrokhin, Vasili Nikitich, 394 Angola (unita), 117–18
Money laundering, 143, 385 Neoliberalism, 27, 255
Monje, Mario, 102–3 Neruda, Pablo, 3
Monroe Doctrine, 6, 221 Neto, Agostinho, 116–17
Montoneros, 140, 146–48 New Deal, 21, 286
Moon, Sun Myung, 138 New Left, 23–24, 28, 275, 283–85, 289, 291;
Moracén, Rafael, 116–17 historians, 14, 16, 18–19; revisionism and, 12, 16
Morales, Evo, 7 New Right, 275, 287
Moreira Alves, Márcio, 332, 338–44 Nicaragua, civil war in, 5, 134
Moreira Alves, Maria Helena, 341 Niebuhr, Reinhold, 290
Morelia, 214–15, 218–19, 222–25, 232, 234–43. Nixon, Richard, 286–87, 295–96, 393
See also Michoacán Noriega, Manuel, 59
Moreno ‘‘Cantinflas,’’ Mario, 179 Noriega, Ramses, 291
Morocco, 113, 126 North America Free Trade Agreement (nafta),
Mossad, 148 256
Movimiento Costa Rica Libre (mcrl), 138 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (nato),
Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (mln, nuclear missiles in Turkey and, 81, 83, 87, 91
Guatemala), 138 North Vietnam, 120
Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (mln, Noticiario Nacional, 181–84, 186, 188–89
Mexico), 241 Nunca Más report (Argentina), 50, 57
Movimiento Popular para la Liberación de
Angola (mpla), 116–19, 126 O’Gorman, Edmundo, 192
Mozambique, 113, 119 Old Left, 20, 23–24
Muñoz, Rosalío, 291 Olympics (1968), 241
Murici, Antonio Carlos, 324 Omega 7 (terrorist organization), 138
436 index
O’Neill, Paul, 116 Popular liberalism, 29

Operation Condor, 25, 63–64, 136, 140, 155, 157, Populism, 29
390, 392 Portugal, 117
Operation Elegance, 329 Prats, Carlos, 63
Operation Manuel, 101 Pretoria, 117–19, 125, 127–28
Operation Wetback, 180, 276 Project Pedro, 172–77, 179, 181, 183–94, 196–205,
Organización Revolucionaria del Pueblo en 386–87
Armas (orpa, Guatemala), 152 Projeto Integrado (proin, Brazil), 65–66
Organization of American States (oas), 56, 80, Propaganda, Inter-American, 173
125, 217 Propaganda Due (P-2), 138, 145
Ortiz Mena, Antonio, 187–88 Public Security Force (fusep, Honduras), 152–
Osawa, Shizuo, 336 53
Osborne, Melville, 239 Puebla, Carlos, 222
Putin, Vladimir, 6
Padilla, Gil, 273
Palestine Liberation Organization (plo), 385 Quiché, 361, 364, 366, 368
Palmeira, Vladimir, 311 Quijano, Luis, 262
Panama Canal, 60, 138, 144; Treaty of, 59 Quiñones, Horacio, 223
Pan-American friendship, 220, 221, 229, 230,
241, 243–44 Rabe, Stephen G., 16, 49
Pancho Villa Brigades, 218, 227 Radio Keith Orpheum (rko), 174, 192, 201
Paraguay: Archive of Terror, 63 Ramírez, Alfred, 298
Partido Africano da Independencia da Guiné e Rathvon, Peter N., 174, 192–93, 195, 201
Cabo Verde (paigc), 114–5, 126 Reagan, Ronald, 6, 15, 52, 135, 149–450, 154, 158
Partido Guatemalteco del Trabajo (pgt), 23–4, Reuther, Walter, 259, 262–63
355 Revolutionary Movement of October 8 (mr-8,
Partido Popular Socialista (Mexico), 218, 223 Brazil), 313–14
Partido Revolucionario Institucional (Mexico), Revolutionary movements, 138
28, 66, 194, 215, 232 Ribero, José Osvaldo, 157
Pastor, Robert, 16 Rio de Janeiro, 65, 314, 317
Paul VI (pope), 279 Ríos Montt, Efraín, 3
Pavlícek, Vladimir, 90 Risquet, Jorge, 114–15
Peace Corps, 360 Rivera, Diego, 171, 203
People’s Republic of China, 8, 56, 77, 87, 93, 99, Rockefeller, Nelson, 19
100, 105, 355 Rodríguez, Carlos Rafael, 86, 90–92
Pereira, Francisco, 115 Rodríguez, Juan, 366–67
Pérez Esquivel, Adolfo, 65 Rogers, William, 123
Pilot Center of Argentine Navy, 143 Romero, Carlos Humberto, 149
Pineda Arellano, Virgilio, 221–23, 225–26, 237 Romero, Oscar, 146
Pinochet, Augusto, 56–57, 63, 68 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 216, 221, 276
Pius XI (pope), 359 Roosevelt, Theodore, 6
Plan de Delano, 282–84 Rosel y Arellano, Mariano, 357–60
Playa Girón, 80–81, 214, 383, 387. See also Bay of Rostow, Walt, 259, 353–55, 372–73
Pigs Roxborough, Ian, 20–22
index 437
Roybal, Edward, 276 Soviet Union: armed forces, 96; bureaucracy,

Ruiz Cortines, Adolfo, 187, 194 390; conspiracy, 232; diplomacy, 98;
Russian State Archives of Contemporary expansionism, 135, 158; foreign policy, 79, 138;
History (rgani), 392–93 government, 13, 83; humiliation, 77, 87;
Ryan, Dennis, 299 intelligence agencies, 97, 394; leadership, 78,
80, 92, 99, 104, 384, 392; mass media
Sacramento, California, 282 incursions, 177; power, 14, 383; records, 8;
Saint Jean, Alfredo, 156 system, 48, 392
Salinas Valley, 297–98 Soviet Union and Cuba, relations of, 15, 77, 82,
Sánchez, David, 295, 299 84, 87, 94, 97
Sánchez del Castillo, Raúl, 260–61 Soviet Union and United States, relations of, 4,
Sánchez Reisse, Leandro, 142 10, 81, 90, 96, 104, 159, 382
Sandinistas, 6, 106, 147, 155, 393; Communism Soviet Union military support: in Chile, 393; in
and, 148; regime, 50, 139, 143, 145, 148; Cuba, 88; of guerrilla movements, 101, 103–4;
revolution, 138, 385 in Latin America, 77–78, 99, 101, 103, 105–6;
Sandoval Alarcón, Mario, 145 of mpla, 116; in Nicaragua, 138; in Venezuela,
San Joaquin Valley, 273–74, 283, 288 99
São Paulo, 65, 309, 311, 323–25, 334 State Department (U.S.), 22, 56, 58, 63, 116, 120,
Savimbi, Jonas, 117 141, 239, 257, 268, 384
Secretaría de Gobernación (Interior Ministry, Stockton, California, 277
Mexico), 66, 177 Stoll, David, 28
Secretaría de Inteligencia del Estado (side, Streibert, Theodore, 174
Argentina), 25 Stroessner, Alfredo, 63
Senate Commission on Foreign A√airs (U.S.), Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee
142 (sncc), 285
Serviço Nacional de Informações (sni, Brazil), Students for a Democratic Society (sds,
25 Berkeley), 285
Shelton, Turner, 173, 175, 182, 185, 188, 192, 196, Suárez Levy, Roberto, 151
201–2 Suárez Mason, Carlos G., 146
Sino-Soviet bloc, 240; conflict within, 98, 104 Suez crisis, 198
Socialism, 77, 79–80, 84, 87, 104, 289 Sung, Woo Jae, 146
Somoza, Anastacio, 112, 146–47, 385 Syrkis, Alfredo, 319
Soumialot, Gaston, 113 Sweeney, John, 301
South Africa, 117–18, 125–28, 385; parliament
of, 119 Taft-Hartley Act, 275, 286
Southeast Asia, 10, 20, 291 Tanzania, 114
Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Tavira, Martín, 222–23, 230–31, 234, 237–38
294 Tax, Sol, 365–66
Southern Cone: counterinsurgency regimes in, Teamsters Union, 299
19 Tello, Manuel, 233, 240
South Vietnam, 118 Tendencia Democrática, 266
Soviet bloc, 79, 94, 392, 393 Third World, 11, 14, 16, 77, 79, 81, 98, 102, 104,
Soviet embassy: in Cuba, 91; in Mexico, 173, 231, 120–22, 135, 137–38, 155, 172–73, 198–99, 202,
235–37 291, 293, 351–53, 356, 381, 384, 386, 392, 394
438 index
Tlalnepantla, 264 and, 253, 256–59, 260–63; military aid, 22, 26,
Tompkins, Richard, 174–75, 180–86, 188–89, 151; military intervention, 101; patriotism,
191–92, 196, 201 287; policymakers, 15–16, 119, 384; political
Torrijos, Omar, 59–60 system, 282, 301; press, 238; propaganda, 172,
Tricontinental Conference, 101 194; rapprochement with Soviet Union, 158;
Truth commissions, 47, 50–51, 60; Argentina’s residents, 274, 298, 300–301; science
National Commission on the Disappearance leadership, 197, 386; security concerns, 216;
of Persons (conadep), 52, 64; Chile’s Retting society, 274, 287; South Africa gambit, 119
Commission, 50; El Salvador’s Commission United States and Cuba, relations of, 5, 123, 138,
on the Truth, 50, 52–53; Guatemala’s 200, 394
Historical Clarification Commission, 50, 54, United States and Mexico: border region, 298,
60–61; Mexico’s Fiscalía Especial para 300; Cold War alliance, 28; relations of, 198,
Movimientos Sociales y Políticos del Pasado 216, 240; security concerns, 241
(femospp), 66 United States and Soviet Union rivalry, 4, 10,
81, 159, 382
União Nacional dos Estudantes (une, National Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
Union of Students, Brazil), 311–12, 315, 317, (unam), 171, 217–18
322–23, 325 U.S. Agency for International Development
Unidad Popular (Chile), 393 (usaid), 63, 360
United Auto Workers (uaw), 259, 261–62 U.S. Chamber of Commerce, in Mexico, 187
United Farm Workers (ufw), 280, 283, 299, U.S. Congress, 6, 15, 52
300–301 U.S. Constitution, 276
United Farm Workers Organizing Committee U.S. Department of Defense, 296
(ufwoc), 287–88, 290–92, 294–99 U.S. embassy: in Argentina, 58, 157; in Brazil,
United Fruit Company, 355 317; in El Salvador, 53; in Guatemala, 55; in
United Nations, 198; Security Council, 200 Mexico, 228–29, 231–33, 236, 239
United States: aggression, 78, 95, 102, 125, 385; U.S. Information Agency (usia), 171, 173–76,
alliance with Argentina, 139; backing of anti- 180–86, 188–92, 194–96, 198–201, 204, 219,
Communist regimes, 15, 350; capitalism, 254, 386
388; citizens, 228, 232, 274–75; cold warriors, U.S. Information Service (usis), 172–77, 179,
351–52, 371; cultural diplomacy, 15, 219; 182–87, 189–91, 194–96, 200–201, 218, 220,
declassified records, 15, 47, 53, 56, 61, 67; 241, 243
development model, 15; economic U.S. Senate Commission on Foreign A√airs,
prosperity, 274; evangelical missionaries, 142
320; 48; flag, 230, 243; foreign aid, 22, 356; U.S. State Department, 22, 56, 58, 63, 116, 120,
foreign policy, 9, 14, 19, 22, 48, 173, 175, 194, 141, 239, 257, 268, 384
196–98, 204, 275, 285, 287, 356, 394;
government, 6, 12, 52, 56–57, 87, 138, 181, 185, Vaca Narvaja, Fernando, 147
310, 387–89; hegemony, 24, 98, 203–4, 217, Vaky, Viron, 25, 55–56
231; imperialism, 6, 12, 14, 48–49, 59, 172, 223, Valdez, Luis, 283–84, 289
225, 291; intelligence agencies, 22, 54, 59–60, Vanguarda Popular Revolucionaria (vpr,
120–21, 124, 128, 155–56; interests, 6, 118, 351, Popular Revolutionary Vanguard, Brazil),
382; labor movement, 274, 290–91, 293–301; 312–13, 334
limits of power, 203; Mexican autoworkers Vaquero, Antonio, 150
index 439
Vatican II Council, 361 Wilson, Charles, 258

Vellasco, Domingo, 223 World Automobile Council, 260
Veloso, Caetano, 318 World Peace movement, 223
Venezuelan Communist Party, 99–100 World systems theory, 19
Videla, Jorge, 26, 136, 139 World War II, 3, 4, 10, 19–20, 22, 126, 172–74,
Vieira (priest), 339, 341 176, 180, 275–77, 279, 282, 290, 352, 383, 390
Vietnam War, 7, 12, 15, 26, 101, 144, 156, 199, 274,
285, 287–88, 290–91, 297, 300, 321, 393 xew (radio station), 190
Viola, Roberto, 146
Zabludovsky, Jacobo, 191, 199
Wallace, George, 292 Zaire, 115, 122, 126
Warsaw Pact, 83, 95, 104, 393 Zaldívar, Clemente, 260–61, 268
Westad, Odd Arne, 124–25 Zanello, Oswaldo, 339
Western hemisphere, 16, 50, 77–78, 81, 112, 120, Zermeño, Alex, 281
147, 173, 199, 383, 387, 392 Zhou En-lai, 56
Williams, William Appleman, 14, 16
Gilbert M. Joseph is the Farnam Professor of History and International
Studies and the recent director of Latin American and Iberian Studies at
Yale University.
Daniela Spenser is a senior researcher at the Centro de Investigaciones y

Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social in Mexico City.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

In from the cold : Latin America’s new encounter with the Cold War
/ edited by Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser.
p. cm. — (American encounters/global interactions)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn-13: 978-0-8223-4102-4 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn-13: 978-0-8223-4121-5 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Latin America—History—20th century.
2. Cold War—Influence. I. Joseph, G. M. (Gilbert Michael)
II. Spenser, Daniela.
f1414.2.i53 2007
980.03%3—dc22 2007029293

Joseph y Spenser - 2008 - in From The Cold Latin America's New Encounter Wi

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Joseph y Spenser - 2008 - in From The Cold Latin America's New Encounter Wi

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Latin American history/Cold War studies

In from the Cold

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data appear on the

This book was published with the assistance

I New Approaches, Debates, and Sources

What We Now Know and Should Know: Bringing Latin America

II Latin America between the Superpowers: International Realpolitik,

III Everyday Contests over Culture and Representation in the Latin

Miracle on Ice: Industrial Workers and the Promise of

Standing Conventional Cold War History on Its Head

Selective Bibliography 397

Gilbert M. Joseph and Daniela Spenser

What We Now Know and Should Know

How do we account for such cataclysmic violence? To be sure, the Latin

This volume, which represents a collaboration among eleven North American,

The Cold War and Latin America: Perspectives from

Reassessing the Latin American Cold War from Within

Gaddis’s bullet verdict on Guatemala, invoking as it does the correlation of

that is, to transcend frayed, dichotomizing paradigms of interpretation that

new approaches but then ‘‘demonstrating why older conceptual frameworks

We should not minimize the diversity and contentiousness that characterized

the Catholic hierarchy, and segments of the middle class—independent of U.S.

counterinsurgent regimes resided in a deadly combination of ‘‘rational, precise

counterinsurgent technologies with a brutal brand of local repression that en-

Deﬁnitive answers to these questions no doubt require much more research

del sur global en la conceptualización de la guerra fría: Desarrollo capitalista, revolución

Recovering the Memory of the Cold War

Paczkowski and Karel Bartosek), presents a complex, archivally based, histo-

numbers seem to have made no di√erence in Kissinger’s policy of support, and

possible to write comparative histories of Latin American repression, of military

14. From Madness to Hope.

Electronic Brieﬁng Book no. 11, at www.gwu.edu/&nsarchiv/nsaebb/nsaebb11. Did the

Catela, ‘‘La casa, la calle, el estado . . . : Democratización de la información vs. resguardo

The Caribbean Crisis

Making the Decision

The Humiliation of the Soviets

In conclusion, Khrushchev asserted, ‘‘I am of the opinion that we won.’’ Cuba

The Cuban Trauma

To harmonize the agreement with Cuban sentiment, the members of the

of Cuban territory, while he considered that the objectives should be military

ing to Kennedy by withdrawing the missiles in order to save Cuba from an

The Soviet Union and the Armed Struggle

It was the attitude toward armed combat as a method of eradicating injustice

intelligence turned to the representative of Czech intelligence in Havana for help

stop, despite the sensitivity of an operation that contradicted the policies of

would be able to resist a beating by imperialism. They negotiated new commer-

the armed struggle in Central America, encouraged by the triumphant revolu-

The View from Havana

returned to Havana with seventy-six wounded Algerian ﬁghters and twenty

aware of the mpla’s implacable hostility to apartheid and of the movement’s

Cuba. . . . To eradicate underdevelopment . . . was, indeed, Castro’s magniﬁcent obsession

Transnationalizing the Dirty War

perceived as a multifaceted international enemy that threatened Western society.

Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas) in 1982 a√ected Argentina’s commitment in

Carter administration’s stated opposition to the interruption of the democratic

The Argentine Case in the Light of the Cold War

the Carter administration suggest that the revolutionary phenomenon in Latin

included Marxist terrorists, human rights organizations, political activists, and

The ‘‘Intelligence Community’’

The Operations in Central America

Argentina’s intervention in Central America extended to Nicaragua (during the

extreme Right in Central America. D’Aubuisson was directly associated with

simultaneously, directly supported the Central American security forces. For