Latin America and the Global Cold War

If US foreign relations scholars once claimed the phrase “the US and the world” to describe the evolution of their field, it is now clear that historians invested in examining Latin America's international and transnational history have established “Latin America and the world” as a distinctive area of scholarship. Many pioneers of this new field, which expands and decenters our understanding of Latin Americans' global interactions, are to be found in this excellent and ambitious volume edited by Thomas Field Jr., Stella Krepp, and Vanni Pettinà. Bringing together 15 scholars from Europe and the Americas, Latin America and the Global Cold War comprises 14 chapters, an introduction by the editors, and an afterword by Odd Arne Westad. This edited collection has been eagerly awaited, and the wait has been worth it.The focus of the volume is on Latin Americans' twentieth-century interactions with people and processes beyond the Americas. It mixes diplomatic, transnational, and local history. In doing so, it aims to bring Latin America, “on its own terms, into the emerging Global South historiography” (p. 7). While accounting for and engaging with the significance of US power, the volume also intends to help scholars “globalize Latin American history while provincializing the study of superpowers like the United States,” as Robert Karl is acknowledged as suggesting during discussions that launched this project (p. xi). This is a refreshing and exciting endeavor. Globalizing histories of the region is not just a question of examining how its countries and inhabitants projected themselves beyond the Americas. As Field shows in his own chapter on the internal consequences and ramifications of world affairs in Bolivia, it is also about the intersection of the global and the local (p. 57). Similarly, Miriam Elizabeth Villanueva's excellent chapter on Panamanian efforts to mobilize support for winning back control of the Canal Zone combines insights into Omar Torrijos's global diplomacy with a granular study of local drama groups in remote areas of Panama working to spread information about the struggle for independence and the inspiration that they drew from Polish and Argentine theater.As is common with edited volumes, Latin America and the Global Cold War does not present a single, unified argument. It presents a series of different windows on a complex and at times contradictory story of the region's relationship with the world in the Cold War era. The book's intention is to zoom in on Latin America's place within the Third World or global South. But it also includes chapters by Eline van Ommen on Western European ties with Nicaragua, Vanni Pettinà on Soviet-Mexican relations, Tobias Rupprecht on Latin American intellectuals' engagement with the Soviet Union, and Michelle Getchell on Cuba's complex juggling act between the Soviet Union and the Non-Aligned Movement. Overall, readers will learn of multiple engagements and entanglements between Latin America, Asia, Africa, and Europe (Eastern and Western). The different chapters—including Eugenia Palieraki's insights on Algerian-Chilean networks, Christy Thornton's discussion of Mexican-led multilateral projects to remake the world's economy, Sarah Foss's study of Guatemalan development projects, and Eric Gettig's chapter on Third World institution building—reveal the breadth and variety of Latin American interactions with the world.However, Latin America and the Global Cold War also reveals a lot about the region's exceptionalism and the underlying problems that it had engaging with the world beyond the Americas. As Field noted in a recent podcast interview, some readers, perhaps expecting to find more of a celebration of Latin America's global connections, have been disappointed to learn of such limitations. As Miguel Serra Coelho notes in his chapter, India's ambassador to Brazil observed that the two countries were “in a parallel condition” but that “parallels don't meet” (p. 22). Curiosity and interest, in many cases, did not necessarily translate into meaningful connection and collaboration. Readers of this volume will also learn about historical resistance to Latin America's inclusion in Third World groupings. Stella Krepp's invaluable insights into Brazilian diplomats' suspicions about other areas of the global South are mirrored by Eric Gettig's superb study of revolutionary Cuba's early efforts to integrate Latin America into the Third World and the resistance that it faced both inside Latin America and beyond, which in turn pushed Cuba to embrace a more radical global Tricontinentalism.As it turns out, 2020 was a good year when it came to edited volumes and special issues on the Cold War in Latin America, demonstrating the growth and maturity of a field that Gilbert Joseph and Daniela Spenser had to bring “in from the cold” just over a decade ago. From Andra Chastain and Timothy Lorek's inspiring volume Itineraries of Expertise: Science, Technology, and the Environment in Latin America's Long Cold War to Michelle Chase and Isabella Cosse's Radical History Review issue “Revolutionary Positions: Gender and Sexuality in Cuba and Beyond,” our understanding of Cold War Latin America has evolved considerably. Latin America and the Global Cold War sits very well with these other pathbreaking collections. It is a must-read book for anyone interested in following the intellectual expansion and breadth of Cold War studies in relation to the region (or indeed the global contours of the conflict). But perhaps more significantly, as alluded to above, it signals the concrete emergence of a field that reaches beyond the Cold War to explore Latin America's complex relationship with the world

Economic history · Historiography · International relations · Latin Americans · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Scholarship · Sociology · History · International Relations in Latin America · Law

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