Precarious Paths to Freedom

The United States, Venezuela, and the Latin American Cold War

Aragorn Storm Miller

• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780826356871
• eBook ISBN: 9780826356888
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

Miller analyzes US-Venezuelan relations during the 1950s and 1960s as a case study for the broader political dynamics of the hemisphere and beyond during the critical period of the global Cold War. He addresses the perception that US foreign policy toward Latin America was an overwhelming failure in which initiatives intended to promote democracy and modernization, and to insulate the hemisphere from the ideological struggles of the global Cold War, reaped only authoritarian regimes, uneven and sluggish economic growth, and abstract debates over capitalism and communism that distracted attention from Latin America's pressing socioeconomic problems. Precarious Paths to Freedom demonstrates that Washington rather achieved success by cultivating a partnership with a democratizing Venezuela. From 1958 onward US policymakers identified Venezuela as the crucial bulwark against political extremism and as the ideal partner in the creation of a modernized, prosperous, and pro-US Latin America.

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1: New Looks and New Nationalisms, 1956–1959
• 2: The Contest for a New Political Order: The Last Stand of the Caribbean Right Wing and the Triumph of Liberal Nationalism, 1959–1961
• 3: Contesting Liberalism: Kennedy, Betancourt, and the Newest Left in Latin America, 1960–1963
• 4: Sharpening Swords and Ideas: Washington, Caracas, and the Deepening Insurgency, 1964–1965
• 5: A Coalescing Center and Splintering Radicalism, 1966–1967
• 6: “It Is Difficult to Take Up Arms, but at Times More Difficult to Release Them”: The Twilight of the Guerrilla War, 1967–1968
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover