Reexamines the Cold War in Latin America by shifting the focus away from superpower decision-making and exploring the many ways in which Latin American leaders and ordinary people used, manipulated, shaped, and were victimized by the Cold War.

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 si, Yanquis no: The Sacking of the Instituto Cultural Mexico-Norteamericano in Morelia, Michoacan, 1961 / Eric Zolov 214
Miracle on Ice: Industrial Workers and the Promise of Americanization in Cold War Mexico / Steven J. Bachelor 253
Chicano Cold Warriors: Cesar Chavez, 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

Gilbert M. Joseph is Farnam Professor of History and International Studies at Yale University. He is the editor of Reclaiming the Political in Latin American History: Essays from the North and a coeditor of The Mexico Reader; Fragments of a Golden Age; Crime and Punishment in Latin America; Close Encounters of Empire; and Everyday Forms of State Formation, all also published by Duke University Press.

Daniela Spenser is Senior Research Professor at the Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social in Mexico City. She is the author of The Impossible Triangle: Mexico, Soviet Russia, and the United States in the 1920s, also published by Duke University Press.