Quando começa a Guerra Fria na América Latina?: um olhar a partir dos programas estadunidenses de auxílio técnico

Natália Abreu Damasceno

doi:10.5007/2175-7976.2025.e105344

Authors

Natália Abreu Damasceno Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0808-5953

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7976.2025.e105344

Keywords:

Cold War, Latin America, Technical assistance

Abstract

This article discusses and calls into question conventional milestones of the beginning of the Cold War in Latin America. In accordance with a broader notion of Global Cold War, as stated by Westad (2005) and Pettinà (2018), our perspective seeks to overcome the understanding of political and military great events as definitive references of the global struggle between capitalism and communism. Bibliographic review and the analysis of documents concerning US technical assistance programs for Latin American republics show that the ideia that the Cold War arrived to the hemisphere after the Cuban Revolution in 1959 or after the United States involvement in the 1954 Guatemalan coup is inconsistent. By displacing interpretative lens away from episodic historical perspectives, it becomes possible to comprehend how Cold War pressures and tensions operated in several fronts, destabilizing and channeling political, economic, social and cultural aspects in Latin America as part of long process of US regional hegemony consolidation. In this present analysis, we observed the noted phenomenon through the investigation of United States technical assistance programs to Latin American countries, highlighting the ways they favoured US private capital and ideological and economic allignment to Washington’s anticommunists interests.

Author Biography

Natália Abreu Damasceno, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

Doutora em História pela Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Professora Substituta da Universidade Federal de Sergipe, Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas, Departamento de História, São Cristóvão, SE, Brasil

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