Latin America's Radical Left: Rebellion and Cold War in the Global 1960s

Cambridge Latin American Studies #107

by Aldo Marchesi

This book examines the emergence, development, and demise of a network of organizations of young leftist militants and intellectuals in South America. This new generation, formed primarily by people who in the late 1960s were still under the age of thirty, challenged traditional politics and embraced organized violence and transnational strategies as the only ways of achieving social change in their countries during the Cold War. This lasted for more than a decade, beginning in Uruguay as a result of the rise of authoritarianism in Brazil and Argentina, and expanding with Che Guevara's Bolivia campaign in 1966. These coordination efforts reached their highest point in Buenos Aires from 1973 to 1976, until the military coup d'etat in Argentina eliminated the last refuge for these groups. Aldo Marchesi offers the first in-depth, regional and transnational study of the militant left in Latin America during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s.

Genres: History, Politics

Kindle Edition

Published October 4, 2017

Reviews

[Ed Lahner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed how magazines and other publications were deployed across the book to illustrate the revolutionary culture of the region. Also lots of interesting examples of Leftist intellectual theory from the time with some definitely less convincing than others. Cough, cough Regis Debray…

[Rohit · Rating 3 out of 5]

A high-level and rather dry overview of left-wing guerrillas in the "Southern Cone" of Latin America in the 1960s-1980s.

The book mainly focuses on the relations between different armed revolutionary factions in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, and their relations with Cuba. There isn't a whole lot here with regards to the inner workings of the group or their actual activities, other than side notes about this or that attack on a military barracks, or some police raid. The narrative was sometimes hard to follow without a previous understanding of these groups and the wider political context.

However, it was still interesting to get this overview of how closely various armed factions worked together, and the second chapter on the role of Cuba in supporting these groups, and divisions between Cuba and the Soviet Union on foreign policy, was fascinating. Its maybe lost on many that there were serious disagreements between traditional Soviet-backed communist parties, and newer Cuban-backed revolutionary groups, on political and strategic questions; or that there was a lot of serious intellectual work put into developing a distinctly Latin American current of Marxism-Leninism by people like Marta Harnecker.

[Christopher Hull · Rating 4 out of 5]

An in-depth fully researched academic study of the topic. Has a lot to say about the origins of social discontent in Latin America from 1960s onwards, and the actions and co-operation of radical left-wing groups in different countries. A little too wordy and expansive in places, but the study offers a thorough analysis throughout.