The Global Cold War and its Broader Implications
This series of papers explores the Cold War in the Americas, from its global origins to its deep impact in Latin America. The essays trace how U.S. containment policies fueled coups, repression, and human rights abuses, while also highlighting stories of resistance and the human cost of ideological conflict.
The Cold War: An Introduction
This paper surveys the global Cold War from 1947 to 1991, showing how U.S.-Soviet rivalry shaped politics, culture, and society worldwide for generations. From the Truman Doctrine and NATO to McCarthyism, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Space Race, and Vietnam, it illustrates how containment policies brought decades of paranoia, propaganda, and proxy conflicts.
The Cold War in Latin America: U.S. Intervention, Authoritarianism, and the Price of Anti-Communism
This essay reveals how Cold War containment translated into coups, covert action, and repression in Latin America. It details the overthrow of Guatemala’s Jacobo Árbenz, U.S. destabilization of Chile, and the broader support of military dictatorships allied with U.S. corporate interests. The result was the systematic undermining of democracy in the name of anti-communism.
Operation Condor and the U.S. Complicity in Latin America’s Dirty Wars
This essay investigates Operation Condor, the transnational network of South American dictatorships that carried out kidnappings, torture, and assassinations of tens of thousands of dissidents during the 1970s and 1980s. Drawing on declassified evidence, it reveals U.S. awareness and tacit encouragement of Condor’s atrocities, implicating Henry Kissinger and the Nixon administration.
Exile, Gender, and Resistance: Reading the Cold War Through Beatriz Allende
Showcasing Tanya Harmer’s biography of Beatriz Allende, this paper presents a feminist microhistory of Cold War era Latin America. It captures the intersection of politics, exile, and personal cost, showing how women shaped revolutionary networks yet faced unique burdens under patriarchal and repressive systems. Beatriz’s life illustrates the human toll of U.S. intervention, Chilean dictatorship, and the shattered hopes of socialist democracy.