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Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War: Some Reflections on the 1945–8 Conjuncture

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Leslie Bethell  and
Ian Roxborough
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Extract

The importance of the years of political and social upheaval immediately following the end of the Second World War and coinciding with the beginnings of the Cold War, that is to say, the period from 1944 or 1945 to 1948 or 1949, for the history of Europe (East and West), the Near and Middle East, Asia (Japan, China, South and East Asia), even Africa (certainly South Africa) in the second half of the twentieth century has long been generally recognised. In recent years historians of the United States, which had not, of course, been a theatre of war and which alone among the major belligerents emerged from the Second World War stronger and more prosperous, have begun to focus attention on the political, social and ideological conflict there in the postwar period – and the long term significance for the United States of the basis on which it was resolved. In contrast, except for Argentina, where Perón's rise to power has always attracted the interest of historians, the immediate postwar years in Latin America, which had been relatively untouched by, and had played a relatively minor role in, the Second World War, remain to a large extent neglected. It is our view that these years constituted a critical conjuncture in the political and social history of Latin America just as they did for much of the rest of the world. In a forthcoming collection of case studies, which we are currently editing, the main features of the immediate postwar period in Latin America, and especially the role played by labour and the Left, will be explored in some detail, country by country.1 In this article, somewhat speculative and intentionally polemical, we present the broad outlines of our thesis.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , May 1988 , pp. 167 - 189
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1988

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References

1 The volume, edited by Leslie Bethell and Ian Roxborough, will include essays on Brazil by Leslie Bethell, Mexico by Ian Roxborough, Cuba by Harold Sims (University of Pittsburgh), Guatemala by James Dunkerley (Queen Mary College, London), Costa Rica by Rodolfo Cerdas (Centro de Investigación y Adiestramiento Político Administrative, San José, Costa Rica), Venezuela by Steve Ellner (Universidad de Oriente, Puerto de la Cruz, Venezuela), Peru by Nigel Howarth (University of Auckland, New Zealand), Bolivia by Laurence Whitehead (Nuffield College, Oxford), Chile by Andrew Barnard (Institute of Latin American Studies, London), and Argentina by Mario Rapoport (Universidad de Buenos Aires). It will be published by Cambridge University Press in 1989. Of the countries not included for separate treatment we are confident that Colombia, Ecuador and Uruguay, possibly Paraguay and Haiti, even Nicaragua in many respects fit the ‘model’ presented here. But in these cases much of the basic research still needs to be done.

We have benefited not only from reading preliminary drafts of all these essays but also from the discussions with their authors, especially James Dunkerley and Laurence Whitehead, and other colleagues, especially Alan Angell and Callum McDonald, at various seminars and at a conference funded by the Nuffield Foundation at the Institute of Latin American Studies, London, in October 1987.

2 Quoted in Dozer, D. M., Are We Good Neighbours? Three Decades of Inter-American Relations, 1930–60 (Gainesville, 1959), p. 213.Google Scholar

3 Claudin, Fernando, The Communist Movement. From Comintern to Cominform (London, 1975), p. 309.Google Scholar Compare this with the similarly spectacular increase in the membership of the two senior Communist parties in the developed capitalist world: the French party grew from 300,000 members in 1939 to almost a million in 1946, the Italian party from only 5,000 in 1943 to 2 million in 1946. Compared to the absolute size of the French and Italian parties, of course, even the largest of the Latin American parties (the Brazilian, the Cuban and the Chilean) were still quite small.

4 Fuchs, J., Argentina, su desarrollo capitalista (Buenos Aires, 1966), pp. 260, 268Google Scholar; Ramírez, B. Torres, México en la Segunda Guerra Mundial (Mexico, D. F., 1979), p. 299Google Scholar; Merrick, T. and Graham, D., Population and Economic Development in Brazil (Baltimore, 1979), p. 158.Google Scholar

5 Doyon, L., ‘Conflictos Obreros Durante el Régimen Peronista (1946–55)’, Desarrollo Económico (1977), p. 440Google Scholar; Martins, L., ‘Sindicalismo e classe operária’, in Fausto, B. (ed.), História Geral da Civilização Brasileira, vol. 10 (São Paulo, 1981), p. 535Google Scholar; Montoya, M. Urrutia, The Development of the Colombian Labor Movement (New Haven, 1969), p. 183Google Scholar; Baily, S., Labor, Nationalism and Politics in Argentina (New Brunswick, N.J., 1967), p. 101Google Scholar; Alba, V., Politics and the Labor Movement in Latin American (Stanford, 1968), pp. 211, 258.Google Scholar

6 This important aspect of the intellectual history of Latin America in the 1940s will be explored in the chapter on Economic Ideas and Ideologies in Latin America since 1930 by Joseph Love in a forthcoming volume of The Cambridge History of Latin America, edited by Leslie Bethell.

7 Edward J. Rowell, labour attaché at the United States embassy in Rio de Janeiro from 1944 to 1948, commented ironically in February 1947 on how confusing this could be for the independent observer of the labour scene in Brazil: there was to be sure on the one hand ‘the unquestioned participation and influence of communist leaders’ but with on the other ‘a trade union programme which is sympathetic to trade union status and activities as recognised by Western democracies’. Rowell, Monthly Labor Report no. 25 (February 1947), 8 April 1947, RG59 State Department, 850.4, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

8 See Green, David, The Containment of Latin America. A History of the Myths and Realities of the Good Neighbour Policy (Chicago, 1971), p. 343Google Scholar; Pach, Chester Joseph Jr., ‘The Containment of US Military Aid to Latin America, 1944–1949’, Diplomatic History, 6 (1982) p. 226.Google Scholar

9 Pach, , ‘Containment…’, p. 242.Google Scholar See also Rabe, Stephen G., ‘Inter-American Military Cooperation 1944–51’, World Affairs 137 (1974).Google Scholar

10 See Pollard, Robert A., Economic Security and the origins of the Cold War, 1945–1950 (New York, 1985), p. 201Google Scholar; Trask, Roger R., ‘The Impact of the Cold War on United States–Latin American Relations, 1945–1949’, Diplomatic History 1 (1977), pp. 279–80.Google Scholar

11 Quoted, in Pollard, , Economic Security, p. 212.Google Scholar

12 New York Times, 15 08 1947, p. 8.Google Scholar

13 Pollard, , Economic Security, p. 213Google Scholar; see also Rabe, Stephen G., ‘The Elusive Conference. US Economic Relations with Latin America, 1945–52’, Diplomatic History 2 (1978), p. 293.Google Scholar