Coups d'État in Cold War Latin America

A history of US imperialism in Central America.

We are launching a new issue focused on grasping the extent and the history of U.S. foreign intervention — how does the U.S. conceive of its role in the world, what has it done to maintain that role, and what has or hasn’t changed over time. A new foreign policy consensus seems to be rapidly emerging, and, per usual, the most helpful thing to do is to slow down and try to understand the context of the moment we are in. This is our second interview of the series.

This interview with Kevin Coleman and Sebastián Carassai was conducted and condensed by franknews. You can pre-order their book, Coups d'État in Cold War Latin America, 1964–1982, here.

Do you both mind starting by introducing yourselves and your backgrounds?

Kevin: My name is Kevin Coleman. I am an associate professor of history at the University of Toronto. I work on US imperialism in Central America and over the past several years I've become particularly interested in right-wing Christianity in the region. My first book was on the United Fruit Company in Honduras. I directed Stolen Photo (2024), a documentary film on the 1928 massacre of banana workers in Colombia that was coproduced by Señal Colombia/RTVC.

Sebastián: I am a history professor at the University of Buenos Aires, specializing in 20th-century Latin America, with a particular focus on Argentina. I have written a book on the middle classes during the 1970s, during Argentina’s last military dictatorship, and another on the relationships between Argentines and Islanders in the four decades leading up to the 1982 Falklands War, which will be published by Cambridge University Press next year. My other main area of interest is intellectual history, and I am currently working on a project tracing the history of the idea of populism in Latin America.

Really interesting. Do you want to lay out what you tried to accomplish in your book – Coups d'État in Cold War Latin America – and why you found it important to break down the Cold War in Latin America country by country?

Sebastián: This project arose from a need. Nearly eight years ago, Kevin and I thought it would be interesting to bring together, in a single volume,a perspective on the last wave of coups in Latin America during the Cold War. In the existing literature, the differences and particularities between these coups are overlooked. We realized that the best way to highlight the specificity of each case was to establish a common set of questions and invite distinguished specialists on each country to answer it.

We chose to focus on the coups of the late Cold War, from 1964 to the early 1980s, because we saw them as decisive in shaping the democratic processes that followed the last wave of dictatorships. Both of us believe that present-day Latin America is difficult to understand without considering the legacy inherited from these last wave of dictatorships.

Are there ways to group the coups – I think in the book you referred to some as developmental and some as market-liberalizing. Is there a spectrum these events fall on?

Kevin: We see these coups as falling on a spectrum. At one end, we have the coup in Peru, a developmentalist coup in 1968. At the other end, we had a market-liberalizing coup in Chile in 1973.

To start with the first pole—the Peruvian case—General Juan Velasco Alvarado was in power from 1968 to 1975. He nationalized foreign property, including the International Petroleum Company, and implemented a massive land reform program. These were great structural reforms — massive interventions that had the potential to create a more equal society. The goal was partly to break the power of the old landed oligarchy, to boost economic development, and free the Peruvian economy from its dependence on the United States.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have the Chilean coup of 1973. General Pinochet led this effort to dismantle the reforms that the Unidad Popular government had put in place. It was the brutal imposition of a neoliberal restructuring of society and the economy, giving capital enormous freedom while suppressing dissent.

So we have these two extreme cases, and in between, we can find where others fit.

Got it. Shifts in economic order seem to underlie both of these cases, and I think it is important to set the economic underpinning for Latin America during this time. Can you talk about what was going on and about the US legacy of economic influence?

Kevin: Yeah, the beginning of the Cold War in Latin America is marked by the import substitution industrialization model, also known as the ISI model. By the end of the Cold War, the reigning economic orthodoxy shifted to neoliberalism. So, there is a shift, during the Cold War, between these two economic models.

Originally, from 1880 to 1929, Latin America's economic model was basically to export natural resources and agricultural commodities–bananas, coffee, beef, silver, copper, and other unfinished goods. This approach worked reasonably well to bring in dollars but it also created highly unequal societies. And then, the 1929 stock market crash and financial crisis forced a change in this model – exporting raw materials and importing finished goods from the U.S. and Europe was no longer viable. This was accelerated during World War II because the U.S.’s manufacturing was focused on the war effort. So, Latin American manufacturing expanded to shift and focus on domestic manufacturing—cement, shoes, cars, buses, and more industries began to develop. That prompted two reactions: nationalists began advocating for macroeconomic populism, the state ownership of manufacturing facilities, and price controls. And free-market liberals called for reduced state intervention and increased free trade.

And then by the 1960s, it became clear that economic growth was not going to happen on little national islands, you needed international trade. Initiatives like the Central American Common Market and the Latin American Free Trade Association emerged to break down trade barriers, reduce tariffs, and phase out support for failing industries.

The Cuban Revolution of 1959 was in some sense a consequence of this highly uneven development. The rise of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara Latin Americanized the Cold War and intensified tensions in Latin America. With support from the United States, militaries throughout the region became convinced they were better suited than civilians to manage economies and societies. By the 1970s (and even earlier in cases like Argentina in 1966, Honduras in 1963, and Bolivia in 1964), transnational capital, combined with military interventions to undermine constitutional orders across the region.

Can you explain what “transnational capital combined with military interventions” – means?

Kevin: The classic example is 1954 in Guatemala, the United Fruit Company. The role of the fruit company itself in the coup remains unclear, but what's absolutely clear is that the United States played the decisive role in overthrowing the democratically elected government of Árbenz. The U.S. spread propaganda that Árbenz was a communist because he was implementing land reform, offering to buy land that the United Fruit Company owned but wasn't cultivating. This attempt at land reform led the US government, the CIA, to conduct a psyop campaign to overthrow Árbenz.

Got it – ok, let's back up a bit and get into some of what you just said. You mentioned the Cuban Revolution, and in your book, you write that historicizing the Cold War in Latin America requires decentering the USSR and instead emphasizing the impact of the Cuban Revolution. Can you explain that?

Sebastián: So, the Cold War between the United States and the USSR turned into a hot war in several regions, including Latin America. From the Cuban Revolution onward, the Cold War became particularly intense in the region. During the Missile Crisis in 1962, for example, the United States and the USSR were on the brink of nuclear war.

The United States did everything possible to prevent Latin American societies from embracing Cuba's socialist socioeconomic model, but Cuba became a powerful symbol for many young people across the subcontinent. As we mention in our introduction, an Argentine activist in the sixties and later a key intellectual figure named Oscar Terán described the influence of the Cuban Revolution on leftist youth as “devastating.” By this, he meant that if you were young and middle class in an important city in Argentina, especially in a university setting, it was almost impossible to remain untouched by the "hurricane" blowing from Havana.

Although this may be an exaggeration, it effectively illustrates our argument. Rather than the USSR, Cuba became the symbol of the possibility of another world. It represented a path beyond capitalism, and various groups of revolutionary youth from different Latin American countries traveled there to train and prepare for their own revolutions.

And what mechanisms did the US employ to stop leftist ideology from spreading?

Sebastián The US adopted different strategies depending on the context and the administration. Kennedy launched something called Alliance for Progress, because he believed that Latin American nations needed support through peaceful means. It was a massive economic, political, and social assistance program, channeled through agencies like the Inter American Development Bank.

Initially, the Alliance for Progress aimed to promote democracy, not just economic development. However, when democratic processes brought to power leaders deemed unreliable and hostile to US interests, the military emerged as a more trustworthy alternative to prevent a “second Cuba.” From the 1960s onward, the US helped military officers across Latin America shift their strategic priorities. Instead of focusing on potential armed conflicts with neighboring countries, such as Brazil and Argentina or Chile and Bolivia, for example, they increasingly framed their mission in terms of the Cold War struggle between capitalism and communism. The armed forces were trained for unconventional warfare, not against another army, but what they called “subversion.” Subversion was a vague term that encompassed everything from armed guerilla groups to individuals merely suspected of communist or anti-capitalist sympathies – musicians, artists, intellectuals, journalists, or anyone perceived as a threat. They didn’t need to have weapons.

The School of Americas was key in this process. Thousands of military personnel were trained there, not only in combat techniques but also in ideological indoctrination on how to confront the “internal enemy.” This idea was crucial because it meant that the enemy could be your neighbor, your kid’s teacher, even a priest. The enemy was not visible, you had to find them.

So the military didn’t feel loyal to a party or the government, they felt loyal to an ideology above all?

Sebastián: Well, I think that their primary loyalty was to what they understood as Western and Christian civilization. They viewed this as a fundamental struggle between two opposing ways of understanding the world and life. On one side was Western and Christian civilization; on the other was the communist ideology represented by the USSR, Cuba, and their influence in Latin America.

Kevin: This manifests in the connection between dictatorships and the Christian Right, often through moral panics. Ben Cowen describes this in Brazil, where the military dictatorship targeted priests aligned with peasants and workers, accusing them of introducing communist ideology to these communities. They claimed these priests weren't religious, and that they were destroying the church from within. You see this again in Argentina, in Chile, in El Salvador, and in Guatemala.

These dictatorships targeted the progressive sector of the church. They saw themselves as defending Western Christian civilization, which played out by supporting conservative evangelicalism. Neo-Pentecostalism emerged in the late to mid-Cold War, and the dictatorships simultaneously encouraged these groups, bringing military leaders and televangelists together in stadiums, while repressing the progressive Catholics and even the emergent progressive Protestants.

Interesting you bring this up. We have spent a good amount of time at the border and have been struck by the outsized role the Catholic churches play in supporting migrants, and the poor. Can you explain briefly how this progressive faction of the Catholic Church became what it is and what role it played during this era?

Kevin: So, Pius XII basically made accommodations with the Nazis and Mussolini that protected the church as an institution but diminished its moral leadership. After Pius XII's death, John XXIII surprised the world by calling for a Vatican council. There was a need for the church to open up to the world, it had become too closed in on itself, too interested in practices of piety. It needed to reach out to neighbors, and come out in concern for the poor, and begin to distance itself from despotic regimes. So Vatican II was this watershed that introduced an enormous number of changes in the church. This rippled out and unfolded in a very interesting way in Latin America. In 1968, the Latin American bishops met in Medellin and they named institutionalized violence as a violence of depriving others of the food and land that they need to live and flourish.

A big part of the church in Latin America got involved with this, but there were sharp divisions. The traditionalists clung to pre-Vatican II practices. They still wanted the Mass in Latin. They thought it was a disgrace that priests could take off their clerical collars and wear blue jeans and walk around the community This led to the emergence of far-right Catholic movements like Tradition, Family and Property, which emerged in Brazil in opposition to the Second Vatican Council.

So, you have these two countervailing tendencies within the church that start to come to a head. In Central America, this conflict within the church and societies that considered themselves to be Catholic resulted in the assassination of Archbishop Romero in 1980 and six other Jesuits in 1989. Romero and the Jesuits had been labeled subversives, as enemies of the Salvadorian State because they were aligning themselves with the peasants that dispossessed the people of El Salvador who were fleeing the violence and moving to the United States.

US policy also reinforced this. By the time Ronald Reagan came around, he undid Carter’s policy of human rights, and there was full US support for targeting these people. The Reagan Administration accused Maryknoll nuns from the United States of collaborating with the guerrillas because they were running food back and forth between the capital and the rural areas.

What remains the same in US policy between countries, and between administrations, and what changes?

Kevin: The same set of factors can lead to contradictory responses from the United States. Here's an example of it. In 1954 in Guatemala, the democratically-elected Árbenz government was implementing land reform. The CIA overthrew Árbenz in a brutal coup. Skip forward to 1972 in Honduras. General López Arellano overthrew a pseudo-democratic government with the explicit aim of implementing land reform and the United States tacitly backed it. So those are two opposite policies towards the aim of implementing land reform. In the first case, it was deemed communist. The second one, it was considered a way to save the society from dissolving into civil war.

But, US policy is directed by US presidents who are elected with their own politics. Eisenhower got to put his appointees in the Department of Defense and the Department of State. And so did Kennedy. And so did Carter. So Eisenhower's policy toward Latin America led to the toppling of Arbenz in 1954. Kennedy's policy toward Latin America led to the kind of support for López Arellano's coup in 1972. That’s just one example.

So when Kissinger saw that Jimmy Carter had announced a human rights policy,, he told the military junta that had just seized power in Argentina that Carter was going to be sworn in soon, so “You guys better do what you need to do and do it quickly." He gave the green light to massive amounts of repression. Carter then tried to correct course after Nixon's violent policies by emphasizing human rights. But that slows down within a coupld years. And then, Reagan, by the end of the Cold War, completely reversed Carter's human rights policy and turned a blind eye to any abuses committed by rightist regimes – you see that play out in Guatemala and El Salvador with tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, of people killed

Sebastián: I would like to add a distinction between Carter and Reagan – I would say that Carter’s presidency had two distinct phases. In the early years, he implemented a policy that prioritized support for governments that respected human rights. This marked a shift from the Nixon administration to Carter’s- moving away from a foreign policy driven by interests, convenience, or ideology toward one grounded in principles.

However, in the second half of his administration, Carter’s approach changed. U.S. policy once again prioritized ideology over principles. With the Sandinista victory in Nicaragua and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the focus of U.S. foreign policy returned to the Cold War, particularly the fight against communism. Military regimes in El Salvador and Guatemala benefited from this shift, receiving military and economic support despite their human rights violations. I would argue that, by the latter part of his presidency, Carter's policies become more similar to Reagan's. These two administrations are often seen in stark contrast, as black and white, but the reality is more complex.

Rings true today. As historians, do you have thoughts on how present-day US migration policy should think about the political intervention of the past?

Kevin: There's been an absolutely clear connection in the case of Central America that US policy has fueled migration out from these countries. On the whole, US policy made these countries unlivable. The Central American cases are crystal clear – across Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Honduras. The US interrupted the democratic spring in Guatemala. The US supported the counterinsurgency in El Salvador, which led to a massive exodus from these countries. We took away the right not to migrate. The right to just stay where people are and have a decent standard of living is not available to large swathes of the populations of Central America, particularly in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Guatemala.