Allendes Chile and the Inter-American Cold War - Tanya Harmer (2011).epub

Publication Date: October 10, 2011 | Series: The New Cold War History

Fidel Castro described Salvador Allende's democratic election as president of Chile in 1970 as the most important revolutionary triumph in Latin America after the Cuban revolution. Yet celebrations were short lived. In Washington, the Nixon administration vowed to destroy Allende's left-wing government while Chilean opposition forces mobilized against him. The result was a battle for Chile that ended in 1973 with a right-wing military coup and a brutal dictatorship lasting nearly twenty years.

Tanya Harmer argues that this battle was part of a dynamic inter-American Cold War struggle to determine Latin America's future, shaped more by the contest between Cuba, Chile, the United States, and Brazil than by a conflict between Moscow and Washington. Drawing on firsthand interviews and recently declassified documents from archives in North America, Europe, and South America--including Chile's Foreign Ministry Archive--Harmer provides the most comprehensive account to date of Cuban involvement in Latin America in the early 1970s, Chilean foreign relations during Allende's presidency, Brazil's support for counterrevolution in the Southern Cone, and the Nixon administration's Latin American policies. The Cold War in the Americas, Harmer reveals, is best understood as a multidimensional struggle, involving peoples and ideas from across the hemisphere.

Review
"A first-rate work of international history."
-International Affairs

"Harmer's is an insightful contribution to the study of Chile and of bilateral and multilateral relations in the Americas."
-Latin American Perspectives

"Tanya Harmer, in Allende's Chile and the Inter-American Cold War, wants to set aside arguments over who was at fault for any particular Cold War episode. Instead, she considers the broader context."
-London Review of Books

"Writers will look to Harmer's book as a model for scholarship on the inter-American experience."
-Journal of American History

"An important new contribution to the study of international relations during the Allende years."
-Journal of Latin American Studies

"[A] carefully researched, creative, highly original, well-crafted, well-written, thoughtful insertion of Chile's story into the global and inter-American history of the Cold War. Of the hundreds of volumes on my bookshelves on Chile, I would not want to be without this one. No serious student of the Popular Unity government in Chile should fail to read Harmer's account."
-American Historical Review

"A nuanced, multidimensional perspective on the Allende years in Chile. . . . Since the narrative is well written as well as dramatic, the book is well adapted not only for general readers but also for professionals and university students at various levels. Recommended. All readership levels."
-Choice

"Although a diplomatic history, Allende's Chile will appeal to historians in several disciplines. Those interested in militarism and the military's role in Latin America can benefit from the work.... Hopefully, Harmer's challenge to transcend mono-national perspectives will be taken up by the wider scholarly community."
-H-War

"An insightful contribution to the study of Chile and of bilateral and multilateral relations in the Americas."
-Latin American Perspectives

"Tanya Harmer has written an exemplary work of international history. Deeply researched and well argued, this book promises to contribute significantly to scholarship on the Cold War, U.S. foreign policy, and Latin American studies and, in turn, spark additional fruitful research and debate."--James G. Hershberg, George Washington University


From the Inside Flap
Drawing on firsthand interviews and recently declassified documents from archives in North America, Europe, and South America, Harmer provides the most comprehensive account to date of Cuban involvement in Latin America in the early 1970s, Chilean foreign relations during Allende's presidency, Brazil's support for counterrevolution in the Southern Cone, and the Nixon administration's Latin American policies. Harmer argues that this battle was part of a dynamic inter-American Cold War struggle to determine Latin America's future.


Hardcover: 384 pages
Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (October 10, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0807834955