There are many studies of the Cold War and its impact on Latin America. This current volume is unusual and very welcome in that instead of concentrating at the level of the state, the focus shifts to examine specific events, institutions and parties in a variety of countries. Each chapter is the product of meticulous research and offers new insights in the way that the Cold War played out on the ground.
In addition to two general chapters by the editors, nine more range widely over a variety of topics and countries. The first examines the way that the Uruguayan police spied upon Pablo Neruda during his stay in that country in 1952 when the Communist Party was banned in Chile, and shows the extent of collaboration among the intelligence services of the Southern Cone well before the operations of Condor in the 1970s (though Neruda was in Uruguay for amorous rather than subversive reasons).
A discussion of the Peace Corps in Chile argues that although the overall programme did have the political intention of supporting the aims of the Alliance for Progress in combating the rise of the Left, in practice the volunteers in the field were far from following an overt anti-communist agenda. Indeed the largely Protestant volunteers directed their hostility more towards the Catholic Church. This chapter introduces a general theme of the book which is a judicious assessment of the influence of the United States, stressing the limitations of that influence and an awareness of the importance of domestic factors in shaping political outcomes. Against the primacy awarded in many accounts to the overwhelming influence of the United States in shaping events in Chile, Tanya Harmer in her contribution stresses the importance of Brazil in the coup and post-coup period, and the way that the Brazilian military regime served as a model for the Chilean junta.
The account of anti-communist propaganda in the 1964 electoral campaign in Chile illustrates the sheer hysteria of the campaign against communism; women were told that a victory for the Left would threaten their sacred role as housewives and mothers. Although the United States contributed large sums to the campaign the author argues that the anti-communism was a product of domestic factors rather than external pressure.
Two chapters look at the relationship between Chile and Italy. In the first, the author examines the role of the Italian Christian Democrats in the Chilean Christian Democratic (PDC) triumph of 1964. Although the Italian party stressed the importance of its contribution, support seems to have been limited to finance and encouragement, and it is not clear if there was any influence on the tactics or policy of the Chilean PDC.
It is a common theme in several chapters that interpretations of ‘the lessons of Chile’ were framed to fit a domestic agenda. The triumph of the PDC Chile would, it was hoped, strengthen the Italian CD party's claim to be the real alternative to communism and to conservatism (and would help in a bid for US support).
As with many similar parties of the Left in Europe, the Italian Communist Party debated long and hard on the ‘lessons of Chile’ following the 1973 coup. The Italian CP drew the lesson of the need to reinforce the trend towards Eurocommunism, and to avoid anything that might encourage US intervention in Chile into Italian politics. In the case of relations between Germany and Chile in 1973–1977, Joaquín Fermandois warns against an over-simplified view of the Cold War and its impact on Chile, and against the tendency of many countries, including the United States, to overestimate its influence in Chile. Relations between German politicians and their counterparts in Chile were never easy.
The story of Swedish solidarity with Chile mirrors what happened in many other countries as the Chilean experience became part of internal political debate between parties of the Left, and as Chilean exiles debated, and disagreed, about the reasons for the coup. There was no overall agreement among Chilean exiles or among foreign sympathisers as to the reasons for the fall of Allende or on the best way to combat the dictatorship.
The chapter on the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) in Chile argues that reducing it to a simple imitator of the Cuban model is not correct. Various currents, Trotskyists, anarchists, dissident communists, merged into a party that only later with the emergence of Miguel Enríquez as leader achieved a degree of consensus on tactics and policies. But for all the claims of the closeness of relations between Cuba and the MIR, the author stresses that the Cubans had much closer relations with the Socialist Party and the Communist Party than with the MIR.
The final chapter looks at the relations of the Chilean Communist Party with other countries and notably the privileged position of the Chilean Communist Party in the USSR. It examines the rather complicated, and sometimes strained, relations with Cuba. It also provides a very valuable account of the clandestine work of the CP during the dictatorship, and of the role of the CP in working with the numerous movements of solidarity with Chile in countries world-wide.
What general conclusions can we draw from this book? It is clear that the experience of Chile had a very important influence on shaping the strategies and tactics of the Left, not just in Latin America, but also in Europe. In his introductory chapter, Alfredo Riquelme argues that from the 1940s onwards events in Chile, notably the struggles between the communists and anti-communists were subject to intense international scrutiny, and that the election of Allende was seen as much of a threat to the western bloc as was the Czech socialism with a human face to the Soviet bloc. Few events in Latin America have had such a profound effect, on both the Right and the Left, as the Allende experiment and the Chilean coup. Few events produced such widespread international support, in which exiles played an important role. Few Latin American dictatorships received as much international condemnation as that of General Pinochet.
This book provides a fresh perspective on Chile and the Cold War, and the overall quality of the contributions is most impressive.
