Chapter 12 Summary

CHAPTER 12

The Cold War ended between 1989 and 1991, peacefully in Eastern Europe, violently in southern Africa and Afghanistan. From the late 1970s into the 1990s, and sometimes beyond, Latin America was perhaps the bloodiest theater of the late Cold War and its aftermath. The protagonists were, superficially, like before: left-wing guerrillas, perhaps with Soviet and/or Cuban support, versus conservatives and militaries backed by Washington. But local actors increasingly diverged from the guidelines of their external supporters, with funding or affiliation no longer guaranteeing conformity.

This phenomenon of entropy was visible in the Catholic Church, where some Latin American priests and believers, disquieting the conservative Church hierarchy, developed a socially and politically activist current of Catholicism known as Liberation Theology, dedicated to applying Scriptural lessons to confront and overcome poverty and injustice in this world.

Liberation Theology, along with Marxism, inspired Nicaragua's Sandinista movement, the only left-wing revolutionaries to win power outside Cuba. While accepting Cuban and Soviet aid, the Sandinistas tried to avoid their predecessors' mistakes and excesses, with limited success; they nevertheless faced a US-funded counter-revolutionary war before surrendering power after losing an election in 1990. Leftist movements in El Salvador and Guatemala, meanwhile, elicited counterinsurgencies that plumbed new depths of brutality even in this troubled region. Central America's wars ended in the 1990s with peace accords and elections – and little reckoning with the conflicts' legacies or root causes.

Andean revolutionaries likewise diverged from Cuba's model. Colombia's FARC and ELN began in the 1960s as Cuban-style Marxist guerrillas, but diversified into kidnapping and drug trafficking (as did their paramilitary enemies), activities that eroded their modest support, leaving them vulnerable to a counterinsurgency that forced them to a negotiated demobilization in the 2010s. Peru's Shining Path drew inspiration from Maoist China rather than Havana or Moscow, and waged a bloody, utopian, and fruitless revolutionary war that terrorized the Peruvian countryside.

The Cuban model itself came under strain when Soviet subsidies disappeared after 1990. Amidst economic hardship, the government has slowly relaxed a few social and economic restrictions while maintaining rigid political control; the partial normalization of relations with Washington and an ongoing transition in its leadership create hope for a better future.