Stella Krepp

Latin America and the Global Cold War analyzes more than a dozen of Latin America’s forgotten encounters with Africa, Asia, and the Communist world, and by placing the region in meaningful dialogue with the wider Global South, this volume produces the first truly global history of contemporary Latin America. It uncovers a multitude of overlapping and sometimes conflicting iterations of Third Worldist movements in Latin America, and offers insights for better understanding the region’s past, as well as its possible futures, challenging us to consider how the Global Cold War continues to inform Latin America’s ongoing political struggles.

Contributors: Miguel Serra Coelho, Thomas C. Field Jr., Sarah Foss, Michelle Getchell, Eric Gettig, Alan McPherson, Stella Krepp, Eline van Ommen, Eugenia Palieraki, Vanni Pettinà, Tobias Rupprecht, David M. K. Sheinin, Christy Thornton, Miriam Elizabeth Villanueva, and Odd Arne Westad.

Abstract:

Even though the inter-American system is the oldest of its kind, created long before the European Union was even conceived, it has received very little attention in scholarship. This is might seem surprising at first glance, but it is due to the fact that the OAS has not always been considered a success story and because research on international institutions is notoriously difficult, because of their multilateral character and linguistic diversity.
The envisaged monograph is the first to tell the history of inter-American relations  understood as both U.S.-Latin American relations as well as intra-Latin American relations − through the prism of the Organization of American States. Relating crucial events of the U.S.-Latin American relationship from the Good Neighbor Policy in the 1930s and the creation of the inter-American system to the Cuban crisis, U.S. interventions, human rights and decolonisation in the 1970s and subsequent democratisation in the 1980s, the book challenges the perception of the OAS as a handmaiden for U.S. interests in the region. Even though it ultimately charts the decline of the Western Hemisphere as a cohesive unit, this is not a history of failure. The OAS played a pivotal role in Latin American crises and despite not living up to its expectations, it ultimately provided the impetus for Latin American cooperation in other alternative fora such as the Mercosur and ALBA.
As a successor to the Pan American Union of 1889, the OAS is a regional organisation that deals with the peaceful solution of conflicts and collective security, akin to the European Union. It originally comprised twenty-one members  twenty Latin American republics and the United States but has grown in number to encompass thirty-four member-states. Based on archival material from the United States and Latin America in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese, the provides a re-evaluation of inter-American relations from the 1940s until the 1990s and delivers a timely response to calls for new research that incorporates Latin American voices , uses multi-archival sources , and can thus introduce a multisided narrative of the Cold War.

Table of Contents

Introduction
I. From the Western Hemisphere to the West: Global Politics and the Construction of Regions
II. A Time of Hope: The Founding of the Post-War Regional System
III. ‘Economics Cannot be Separated from Politics’: Brazil, Cuba, and the Quest for Development, 1955-61
IV. The Backlash: From the Cuban Exclusion to Direct Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1962-65
V. Decolonisation, Human Rights, and the Case of Nicaragua in the 1970s
VI. ‘The Malvinas Were, Are, and Will Be Argentine’: The Falklands War and Beyond, 1982
Conclusion: A Short Rebirth and Long Decline

Were Latin Americans thus a challenge to the liberal international order? Yes and no. Latin Americans were fierce advocates of structural reform of the global economic order. In that sense, Latin Americans, and Brazilians particular, had a radical agenda. Yet, in political terms, they were not proponents of a radical restructuring: they believed in capitalism, albeit in a version tamed by the state, and identified with Western and liberal values.

Even  though  Latin  American  diplomats  had  been  central  actors  in  the  debate  surrounding  human  rights  in  the  nascent  years  of  the  United  Nations,  the  predominant  preoccupation  in  the  1950s 
centred  on  development.  Latin  American  politicians  generally  framed  development  as  “social  progress,”  arguing  that  political  and  civil  rights  were  meaningless  unless  basic  needs  were  met.  Nonetheless,  this  decidedly  materialist  approach  to  human  rights  is  complicated  when 
considering how, within months of each other in 1959, both the Inter-American Development Bank and  the  Inter-American  Commission  of  Human  Rights  were  founded.  Looking  at  debates  in  the  Organization  of  American  States  (OAS),  this  paper  relates  the  fundamentally  uneasy  relationship  between human rights and development in the inter-American system in the 1950s and early 60s.

his paper examines the development of the conflict, which ultimately culminated in the Falklands/Malvinas War of 1982, in Latin America. Utilising sources from the Organization of American States and recently declassified Brazilian documents from the National Archive and the Foreign Ministry, the paper relates the specific Latin American perspective on the conflict and highlights what role the South Atlantic occupied in the regional and national imaginaries of Latin Americans.

The Organization of American States has been simultaneously been chided as a Cold War instrument of the United States and as a useless organization that is ‘not worth a damn, except window dressing’, in Lyndon B. Jonson’s famous words. This paper discusses regional organizations, specifically the OAS, and explores the question of agency, institutional restraints, and the role of US power in shaping decisions. The OAS is an exceptional regional organization, not only as the oldest of its kind, but also because it comprises members from the Global North and the Global South

Were Latin Americans thus a challenge to the liberal international order? Yes and no. Latin Americans were fierce advocates of structural reform of the global economic order. In that sense, Latin Americans, and Brazilians particular, had a radical agenda. Yet, in political terms, they were not proponents of a radical restructuring: they believed in capitalism, albeit in a version tamed by the state, and identified with Western and liberal values.

Even though Latin American diplomats had been central actors in the debate surrounding human rights in the nascent years of the United Nations, the predominant preoccupation in the 1950s centred on development. Latin American politicians generally framed development as “social progress,” arguing that political and civil rights were meaningless unless basic needs were met. Nonetheless, this decidedly materialist approach to human rights is complicated when considering how, within months of each other in 1959, both the Inter-American Development Bank and the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights were founded. Looking at debates in the Organization of American States (OAS), this paper relates the fundamentally uneasy relationship between human rights and development in the inter-American system in the 1950s and early 60s.

Latin America and the Global Cold War analyzes more than a dozen of Latin America’s forgotten encounters with Africa, Asia, and the Communist world, and by placing the region in meaningful dialogue with the wider Global South, this volume produces the first truly global history of contemporary Latin America. It uncovers a multitude of overlapping and sometimes conflicting iterations of Third Worldist movements in Latin America, and offers insights for better understanding the region’s past, as well as its possible futures, challenging us to consider how the Global Cold War continues to inform Latin America’s ongoing political struggles.

‘We have to enunciate the Monroe Doctrine in its exact terms: AMERICA PARA LOS AMERICANOS’, a 1948 Colombian report proclaimed, addressing the birth of the Organization of American States. This included a strong call for decolonization in the Americas, so the authors, as one of the key responsibilities of the newly created OAS was to help ‘liquidate colonial empires’. By the end of World War II, there were only a few colonies left in the Americas, and the British Caribbean islands made up the biggest group of them. Colonized during the 16th century, British Caribbean historic experiences had mirrored those of colonial Latin America. Yet unlike Latin American states, most of which reached independence in the aftermath of the Atlantic revolutions in the early 19th century, the British Caribbean independence trajectory was more in line with the global decolonization wave during the 1960s.  Tracing the history of decolonization within the inter-American system from the Declaration of Panama to the admission to the OAS of newly independent British Caribbean states Trinidad and Tobago and Barbados in 1967 as well as Jamaica in 1969, the paper relates the forgotten story of the second wave of decolonization in the Americas. The admission to the OAS coincided with a major structural during the late 1960s and both events would prove transformative for the organization.  However, relations between old and new members were often uneasy. While Latin Americans were early and vocal supporters for decolonization, their rhetoric was at times also self-serving, as countries such as Guatemala and Argentina used the language of decolonization to advance their territorial interests in Belize and the Falklands. Highlighting the tensions between two generations of decolonization, the paper not only challenges a colonial-postcolonial divide, but also explores how the OAS enabled a unique inter-American way to frame decolonization.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Latin American economists and policy-makers consistently challenged what they perceived as ‘embedded orthodoxism’ in US foreign relations and, in extension, in international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank. Crucial for this was the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, a regional institution that would become immensely influential in development economics, yet whose economic ideas inaccurately have often been conflated with dependency theories. From its inception in 1948, their attempt to formulate a distinct vision of liberal capitalism that centred on development and state intervention defied orthodox views prevalent in US policy circles and academia.
Based on sources from U.S. and Brazilian archives, as well as ECLA and OAS (Organization of American States) documents, the paper relates how the ECLA shaped debates on economics first in inter-American relations and later in international fora such as the United Nations. The creation of the UNCTAD represented a major victory for Latin American governments, in particular as Raúl Prebisch would move from the ECLA to become its Secretary-General. By the late 1960s, with the advent of military dictatorships, Latin American economists grew disenchanted with global efforts, and economic thinking radicalised increasingly. Consequently, a new generation of economists, most prominently represented by Fernando Henrique Cardoso, took over the reins at the ECLA. In 1972, the UNCTAD III conference in Santiago de Chile, hosted by the government of Salvador Allende, seemed to herald a new era of Latin American engagement with economic questions. Yet, the same year, the institution faced an existential crisis, as under the Pinochet regime, the ECLA experienced a crackdown, with economists imprisoned, tortured or even disappearing. In sum, the ECLA provides a fascinating prism to not only trace the changes in development thinking, but to relate how engagement with the Global South waxed and waned in Latin America.

Although Latin America countries formed part of the Non-Aligned Movement and actively participated in its conferences, the region has largely been ignored by scholars interested in the Third World. Looking specifically at the case of Brazil in the late 1950s until the mid-1960s this paper attempts to shed light on the role of Latin America within the movement, and addresses why, despite the identification of common goals such as development and the renegotiation of the global economic order, Latin American countries failed to become an integral part of the movement.