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CHAPTER 10
The period from the end of World War II through the 1970s saw profound changes in the global South. The Cold War pitted alliances led by the capitalist United States and communist Soviet Union against each other, and decolonization in Africa and Asia produced an emerging "Third World," where scores of new states drew inspiration and material aid from one or, often, both superpowers while seeking their own, independent development paths. Latin America's reformists and revolutionaries of the Left likewise sought to address what they saw as the problematic legacies of liberalism and imperialism in their region. They did so along a variety of paths.
Many followed the model of the Mexican Revolution -- constitutionalism, land reform, government-affiliated labor unions, and nationalizing foreign-owned property in key sectors. Along these lines, reformist-revolutionaries in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Guatemala achieved real if incomplete gains in democratization and social and economic development and inclusion before succumbing to corrupt stagnation, military coup, and counter-revolutionary invasion, respectively. Costa Rica, in almost uniquely favorable circumstances, established a stable, progressive democracy that still endures.
The Cuban Revolution of 1959 offered a new and controversial model. Having won power promising democracy and social and economic reform, Fidel Castro's revolutionary government turned sharply leftward, defying the United States and becoming a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship allied with Moscow. Cuba inspired a new generation of Latin American leftists, including several world-renowned literary figures, with its improved and universally-accessible health care and education, its socialization of property, and its support for revolutionaries throughout Latin America and Africa; critics instead highlighted its economic difficulties and violations of human rights.
Some South Americans followed other paths. Aging populist movements in Brazil and Argentina failed to govern as effectively as they once had. Caught between a radical, Cuban-inspired Left and their longtime conservative opponents, getulismo and peronismo both fell to military coups. After decades of peaceful participation in electoral politics, Chile's Marxists led by Salvador Allende finally won election to the presidency in 1970. But caught, likewise, between more radical revolutionaries and unforgiving domestic and foreign capitalists, Allende's government fell into economic crisis and, in 1973, a bloody military coup. Not all militaries proved reactionary, however; military governments in Peru and Ecuador adopted many left-leaning reforms, with mixed success.