Precarious Paths to Freedom ─ The United States, Venezuela, and the Latin American Cold War

Challenging the idea that US policy towards Latin America failed during the Cold War, the author examines its relations with Venezuela during the 1950s and 1960s and the fight against extremism and communism espoused by the Dominican Republic, Cuba, China, and the Soviet Union and the establishment of democracy in the Venezuela. He draws on government documents, memoirs, political tracts, interviews from officials and leaders, and periodicals to examine the role of Latin American agency in hemispheric and local sociopolitical issues, how Latin America should be placed within the larger narrative of the global Cold War, and what geographical and chronological scale is most appropriate for understanding the significance of the post-1945 hemispheric crisis. He challenges the idea that the Eisenhower administration had a policy of benign neglect toward Latin America and discusses the ideological and political struggle in the Caribbean Basin from 1959 to 1961 that allied Washington and Caracas against the Dominican Republic and Cuba, the growth of the Revolutionary Leftist Movement in Venezuela and the creation of the Venezuelan Communist Party and Armed Forces of National Liberation for terrorism and insurgency, the role of the Kennedy administration in confronting Caribbean communism, the confrontation between the Washington-Caracas partnership and the Cuban-Venezuelan leftist revolutionary movement, Washington's efforts against Venezuelan guerrillas, and the final collapse of the Venezuelan guerrilla movement. Annotation ©2016 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)