Coups d'État in Cold War Latin America, 1964–1982

Sebastián Carassai, Kevin Coleman

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781009344845
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

The latest series of coups d'état in Latin America has left an enduring impact on the region's contemporary landscape. This book employs a comparative methodology that illuminates distinct national contexts, scrutinizing the fundamental causal factors that precipitated coups in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Honduras, Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, El Salvador, and Guatemala. The essays answer the following questions: when was a given transfer of power defined as a coup d'état? What were the objectives in overthrowing an existing regime? What role did the US government play, as well as local political actors? What were the various options considered by different sectors within each country? What kinds of resistance did the coups face? What were their sources of support? By comprehensively exploring these questions across each national case, this book dismantles the belief that the coups can be grouped into a single category, and marks the culmination of an era in the subcontinent.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Imprints page
• Table of Contents
• List of Contributors
• Introduction: Coups d'État in Cold War Latin America, 1964-1982
• 1 ''Deus, Pátria, Família'' across the Decades: Moralism, Authoritarianism, and the Brazilian Military Coup of 1964
• 2 The Limits of Superpower: US Developmentalists and the Local Origins of Bolivia's 1964 Coup
• 3 The Velasco Revolution in Peru, 1968-1975
• 4 The Making of a Reformist Coup: General López Arellano and Land Reform in Honduras, 1972-1975
• 5 The Uruguayan Coup d'État in Historical Perspective: An Ever Longer Path toward Authoritarianism
• 6 Chile 1973, September 11: Politics, Protest, and the Making and Unmaking of the Democratic Road to Socialism
• 7 ''They're Leaving and Never Coming Back!'': From the Return of Peronism to the Return of the Military in Argentina, 1973-1976
• 8 El Salvador 1979: Reform or Repression
• 9 Coups and Communism in Guatemala: General Efraín Ríos Montt, 1982-1983
• Afterword: The Dictatorships and Their Afterlives
• Notes
• Index