Cuba now

[First paragraph]The Cuba reader: the making of a revolutionary society. PHILIP BRENNER, WILLIAM M. LEOGRANDE, DONNA RICH, and DANIEL SIEGEL (eds.). New York: Grove Press, 1989. xxxv + 564 pp. (Paper US $14.95). Cuba: the test of time. JEAN STUBBS. London: Latin America Bureau, 1989. xvii + 142 pp. (Paper UK £3.95). Cuba: politics, economics and society. MAX AZICRI. London: Pinter Publishers Ltd., 1988. xxiii + 276 pp. (Cloth US $35.00, Paper US $12.50). Cuba libre: breaking the chains? PETER MARSHALL. Boston: Faber & Faber, 1987. viii + 300 pp. (Cloth US $18.95). The closest of enemies: a personal and diplomatic account of U.S.-Cuban relations since 1957. WAYNE S. SMITH. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 1987. 308 pp. (Paper US $8.95). Imperial state and revolution: the United States and Cuba, 1952-1986. MORRIS H. MORLEY. New Rochelle, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. ix + 571 pp. (Paper US $16.95, Cloth US $59.50). From confrontation to negotiation: U.S. relations with Cuba. PHILIP BRENNER. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1988. x + 118 pp. (Cloth US $30.00, Paper US $9.95).Nineteen eighty-eight marked the completion of the Cuban revolution's third decade. Several events that year suggested that Cubans might finally look forward to a lessening of the island's international isolation, if not its domestic economic woes. The revolution had survived eight years of hostility from the Reagan administration. Washington's attempts to secure international censure of Cuba on human rights grounds had culminated in the visit of a United Nations delegation, at Havana's invitation and with relatively little damage to Cuba's image. Fidel Castro's visits to Ecuador and Mexico to attend the inaugurations of two Latin American presidents underscored Cuba's reinsertion into the hemispheric community. Finally, Cuban military successes against South African troops in Angola and Cuba's role in the subsequent negotiations over Angola and Namibia were a source of pride.

Download Full-text

Chile-US Relations

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History ◽

10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.391 ◽

2019 ◽

Author(s):

Patrick William Kelly

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Human Rights ◽

Cold War ◽

Latin American ◽

Reagan Administration ◽

The United States ◽

Global Culture ◽

Human Rights Abuses ◽

Neoliberal Restructuring ◽

The Cold War

The relationship between Chile and the United States pivoted on the intertwined questions of how much political and economic influence Americans would exert over Chile and the degree to which Chileans could chart their own path. Given Chile’s tradition of constitutional government and relative economic development, it established itself as a regional power player in Latin America. Unencumbered by direct US military interventions that marked the history of the Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico, Chile was a leader in movements to promote Pan-Americanism, inter-American solidarity, and anti-imperialism. But the advent of the Cold War in the 1940s, and especially after the 1959 Cuban Revolution, brought an increase in bilateral tensions. The United States turned Chile into a “model democracy” for the Alliance for Progress, but frustration over its failures to enact meaningful social and economic reform polarized Chilean society, resulting in the election of Marxist Salvador Allende in 1970. The most contentious period in US-Chilean relations was during the Nixon administration when it worked, alongside anti-Allende Chileans, to destabilize Allende’s government, which the Chilean military overthrew on September 11, 1973. The Pinochet dictatorship (1973–1990), while anti-Communist, clashed with the United States over Pinochet’s radicalization of the Cold War and the issue of Chilean human rights abuses. The Reagan administration—which came to power on a platform that reversed the Carter administration’s critique of Chile—reversed course and began to support the return of democracy to Chile, which took place in 1990. Since then, Pinochet’s legacy of neoliberal restructuring of the Chilean economy looms large, overshadowed perhaps only by his unexpected role in fomenting a global culture of human rights that has ended the era of impunity for Latin American dictators.

Download Full-text