The United States, Brazil, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 (Part 1)

2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-20 ◽  
Author(s):  
James G. Hershberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cuban Missile Crisis ◽  
Fidel Castro ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Prestige

Though virtually ignored in the historiography, Brazil played an intriguing role in the politics and diplomacy of the Cuban missile crisis and in U.S. Cuban relations during the Kennedy administration. In the years after Fidel Castro took power, successive Brazilian governments tried secretly to mediate between the United States and Cuba as the two countries' mutual confrontation intensified. Newly available U.S., Brazilian, Cuban, and other sources reveal that this role climaxed during the missile crisis, as John F. Kennedy clandestinely sought to employ Brazil to transmit a message to Castro. In turn, Brazil, which was also promoting a Latin American denuclearization scheme at the United Nations as a possible method to resolve the crisis, sought to broker a formula for U.S. Cuban reconciliation that would heighten the prestige of its own “independent” policy in the Cold War. Ultimately, these efforts failed, but they shed light on previously hidden aspects of both the missile crisis and the triangular U.S. Cuban—Brazilian relationship. Thefirst part of this two—part article sets the scene for an in—depth look at the Cuban missile crisis, which will be covered in Part 2 of the article in the next issue of the journal.

The United States, Brazil, and the Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962 (Part 2)

2004 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 5-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
James G. Hershberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cuban Missile Crisis ◽  
Fidel Castro ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Shed Light ◽  
The Prestige

Though virtually ignored in the historiography, Brazil played an intriguing role in the politics and diplomacy of the Cuban missile crisis and in U.S. Cuban relations during the Kennedy administration. In the years after Fidel Castro took power, successive Brazilian governments tried secretly to mediate between Washington and Havana as their mutual confrontation intensified. Newly available U.S., Brazilian, Cuban, and other sources reveal that this role climaxed during the missile crisis, as John F. Kennedy clandestinely sought to employ Brazil to transmit a message to Castro. In turn, Brazil, which was also promoting a Latin American denuclearization scheme at the United Nations as a possible means of resolving the crisis, sought to broker a formula for U.S. Cuban reconciliation that would heighten the prestige of its own “independent”policy in the Cold War. Ultimately, these efforts failed, but they shed light on previously hidden aspects of both the missile crisis and the triangular U.S. Cuban-Brazilian relationship. This is the concluding part of a two-part article.

scholarly journals The “Cuban Question” and the Cold War in Latin America, 1959–1964

2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 114-151
Author(s):  
Tanya Harmer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cuban Revolution ◽  
Cuban Missile Crisis ◽  
American System ◽  
American States ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Insight Into

This article explains how Latin American governments responded to the Cuban revolution and how the “Cuban question” played out in the inter-American system in the first five years of Fidel Castro's regime, from 1959 to 1964, when the Organization of American States imposed sanctions against the island. Drawing on recently declassified sources from Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, and the United States, the article complicates U.S.-centric accounts of the inter-American system. It also adds to our understanding of how the Cold War was perceived within the region. The article makes clear that U.S. policymakers were not the only ones who feared Castro's triumph, the prospect of greater Soviet intervention, and the Cuban missile crisis. By seeking to understand why local states opposed Castro's ascendance and what they wanted to do to counter his regime, the account here offers new insight into the Cuban revolution's international impact and allows us to evaluate U.S. influence in the region during key years of the Cold War.

Revisiting the 1954 Coup in Guatemala: The Soviet Union, the United Nations, and “Hemispheric Solidarity”

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Denise Getchell
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
Soviet Bloc ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Good Neighbor ◽  
The Cold War

This article reevaluates the U.S.-backed coup in 1954 that overthrew Guatemala's democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán. The coup is generally portrayed as the opening shot of the Cold War in the Western Hemisphere and a watershed moment for U.S.–Latin American relations, when the United States supplanted its Good Neighbor Policy with a hardline anti-Communist approach. Despite the extensive literature on the coup, the Soviet Union's perspectives on the matter have received scant discussion. Using Soviet-bloc and United Nations (UN) archival sources, this article shows that Latin American Communists and Soviet sympathizers were hugely influential in shaping Moscow's perceptions of hemispheric relations. Although regional Communists petitioned the Soviet Union to provide support to Árbenz, officials in Moscow were unwilling to prop up what they considered a “bourgeois-democratic” revolution tottering under the weight of U.S. military pressure. Soviet leaders were, however, keen to use their position on the UN Security Council to challenge the authority of the Organization of American States and undermine U.S. conceptions of “hemispheric solidarity.” The coup, moreover, revealed the force of anti-U.S. nationalism in Latin America during a period in which Soviet foreign policy was in flux and the Cold War was becoming globalized.

Marinera with the Yankees

2018 ◽  
pp. 91-124
Author(s):  
Iñigo García-Bryce
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Latin American ◽  
State Department ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Asylum ◽  
Student Leader ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The U.S

This chapter explores Haya’s changing relationship with the United States. As an exiled student leader he denounced “Yankee imperialism” and alarmed observers in the U.S. State Department. Yet once he entered Peruvian politics, Haya understood the importance of cultivating U.S.-Latin American relations. While in hiding he maintained relations with U.S. intellectuals and politicians and sought U.S. support for his embattled party. His writings increasingly embraced democracy and he maneuvered to position APRA as an ally in the U.S. fight fascism during the 1930s and 40s, and then communism during the Cold War. The five years he spent in Lima’s Colombian embassy awaiting the resolution of his political asylum case, made him into an international symbol of the democratic fight against dictatorship. He would always remain a critic of U.S. support for dictatorships in Latin America.

scholarly journals De-centring Managua: post-earthquake reconstruction and revolution in Nicaragua

Urban History ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 663-685
Author(s):  
DAVID JOHNSON LEE
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Urban Development ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Modernization Theory ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The City ◽  
Earthquake Reconstruction

ABSTRACT:The reconstruction of Managua following the 1972 earthquake laid bare the contradictions of modernization theory that justified the US alliance with Latin American dictators in the name of democracy in the Cold War. Based on an idealized model of urban development, US planners developed a plan to ‘decentralize’ both the city of Managua and the power of the US-backed Somoza dictatorship. In the process, they helped augment the power of the dictator and create a city its inhabitants found intolerable. The collective rejection of the city, the dictator and his alliance with the United States, helped propel Nicaragua toward its 1979 revolution and turned the country into a Cold War battleground.

The United Nations and the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Getchell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
International Policy ◽  
Wrong Side ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War

The United States was heavily involved in creating the United Nations in 1945 and drafting its charter. The United States continued to exert substantial clout in the organization after its founding, though there have been periods during which U.S. officials have met with significant opposition inside the United Nations, in Congress, and in American electoral politics, all of which produced struggles to gain support for America’s international policy goals. U.S. influence in the international organization has thus waxed and waned. The early postwar years witnessed the zenith of American prestige on the global stage. Starting in the mid- to late 1950s, as decolonization and the establishment of newly independent nations quickened, the United States began to lose influence in the United Nations owing to the spreading perception that its alliances with the European colonial powers placed it on the wrong side of history. As U.N. membership skyrocketed, the organization became more responsive to the needs and interests of the decolonizing states. During the 1970s and early 1980s, the American public responded to declining U.S. influence in the United Nations with calls to defund the organization and to pursue a unilateral approach to international challenges. The role of the United States in the United Nations was shaped by the politics of the Cold War competition with the Soviet Union. Throughout the nearly five decades of the Cold War, the United Nations served as a forum for the political and ideological rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union, which frequently inhibited the organization from fulfilling what most considered to be its primary mission: the maintenance of global security and stability. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the peaceful end of the Cold War, the United States enjoyed a brief period of unrivaled global hegemony. During this period, U.S. officials pursued a closer relationship with the United Nations and sought to use the organization to build support for its international policy agenda and military interventionism.

Argentina-US Relations

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Hoyt
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Southern Cone ◽  
World War ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Developed Nations

Relations between the United States and Argentina can be best described as a cautious embrace punctuated by moments of intense frustration. Although never the center of U.S.–Latin American relations, Argentina has attempted to create a position of influence in the region. As a result, the United States has worked with Argentina and other nations of the Southern Cone—the region of South America that comprises Uruguay, Paraguay, Argentina, Chile, and southern Brazil—on matters of trade and economic development as well as hemispheric security and leadership. While Argentina has attempted to assert its position as one of Latin America’s most developed nations and therefore a regional leader, the equal partnership sought from the United States never materialized for the Southern Cone nation. Instead, competition for markets and U.S. interventionist and unilateral tendencies kept Argentina from attaining the influence and wealth it so desired. At the same time, the United States saw Argentina as an unreliable ally too sensitive to the pull of its volatile domestic politics. The two nations enjoyed moments of cooperation in World War I, the Cold War, and the 1990s, when Argentine leaders could balance this particular external partnership with internal demands. Yet at these times Argentine leaders found themselves walking a fine line as detractors back home saw cooperation with the United States as a violation of their nation’s sovereignty and autonomy. There has always been potential for a productive partnership, but each side’s intransigence and unique concerns limited this relationship’s accomplishments and led to a historical imbalance of power.

Hawk in the Cold War Twilight

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Bashevkin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
The United States ◽  
The United Nations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Left Feminism

Chapter 3 considers Jeane Kirkpatrick’s influence during the early 1980s as the first woman ambassador from the United States to the United Nations. Kirkpatrick built a reputation as an outspoken diplomat with a visceral belief in America’s greatness. She supported a muscular but prudent defense of US interests well before her cabinet appointment. As the only woman in President Ronald Reagan’s initial cabinet, Kirkpatrick helped to ensure that the foreign policy directions of his first presidency reflected her views. Critical of left feminism prior to her time in executive office, Kirkpatrick served a Republican administration that won office thanks to support from an electorate that held similar views.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document