History of Latin America: Cold War, Development, and Repression

These flashcards provide a vocabulary-based review of the lecture notes covering Latin American history, focusing on the Cold War era, economic development theories, and significant political shifts.

Cold War (Latin America context)

A historical period from 1947 to 1989 characterized as a rupture or fracture that interrupted democratization and industrialization processes in the region due to the impact of ideological and geopolitical bipolar components.

Potosí

A location in present-day Bolivia featuring vast silver deposits that transformed the Iberian crowns into dominant powers and served as the metabolic engine of early modern globalization.

The Great Divergence

A historiographical thesis by Kenneth Pomeranz arguing that Western Europe pulled ahead of China in the 17th century largely due to the colonial windfall of American silver and agricultural resources.

Latin American Boom

A literary movement in the 1960s and 1970s featuring writers such as Gabriel García Márquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, and Carlos Fuentes who addressed themes of political power and literary modernism.

Mexican Revolution (1910)

Arguably the first great social revolution of the 20th century, involving a massive popular upheaval of peasants and indigenous communities demanding land reform against the Porfirian oligarchic order.

Raúl Prebisch

An Argentine structuralist economist and leader of CEPAL who challenged liberal free trade assumptions and developed the Prebisch-Singer thesis.

Prebisch-Singer Thesis

An economic theory arguing that the terms of trade systematically disadvantage countries exporting primary commodities relative to those exporting manufactured goods.

Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI)

A protectionist trade and economic policy advocating for the replacement of foreign imports with domestic production to reduce foreign dependency.

CEPAL (UNECLAC)

The United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America, founded in 1948, which served as the intellectual home for developmentalist and structuralist economic thinking.

Foco Theory

A revolutionary strategy developed by Ernesto Che Guevara and Régis Debray suggesting that a small armed vanguard in rural areas could create the necessary conditions for social revolution.

The Global Cold War (2005)

An influential book by Odd Arne Westad that framed the Cold War as a clash of conflicting modernities (capitalism vs. socialism) and highlighted the agency of Third World actors.

Provincializing Europe

A concept coined by Dipesh Chakrabarty asserting that European political modernity is a specific regional history rather than a universal template for all human history.

Orientalism

A 1978 work by Edward Said arguing that Western representations of the East were not neutral but a discourse of power that justified imperial domination.

Conflicting Missions (2002)

A study by Piero Gleijeses that reconstructed the history of Cuban military missions in Angola to demonstrate Cuba as an autonomous geopolitical actor.

Machismo

A structural ideology of masculine pride and dominance that permeated Latin American political life, even within progressive and revolutionary movements.

Good Neighbor Policy

A US foreign policy initiated by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 that aimed to stabilize inter-American relations by renouncing direct military intervention.

Lázaro Cárdenas

The Mexican President (1934-1940) who implemented the 1917 Constitution's promises through large-scale land reform and the 1938 nationalization of the oil industry.

Popular Fronts

Broad anti-fascist political coalitions, encouraged by the Comintern after 1935, which saw communist parties joining reformist governments in countries like Chile and Costa Rica.

Montevideo Convention (1933)

An inter-American agreement that formally illegalized direct intervention as a tool of international relations, representing a significant juridical reversal of US policy.

Truman Doctrine (1947)

The formalization of anti-communism as the organizing principle of American foreign policy, which triggered the illegalization of communist parties across Latin America.

George Kennan

A US diplomat whose containment strategy focused on the Eurasian landmass, leading to the strategic neglect of Latin America except when communist threats appeared.

Volcker Shock

A 1979 policy by the US Federal Reserve to dramatically raise interest rates, which caused existing variable-rate debt in Latin America to become enormously expensive overnight.

Chicago Boys

A group of Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago who implemented radical free-market neoliberal principles under the Pinochet dictatorship.

Operation Condor

A coordinated programme of cross-border state terror and assassination utilized by South American military dictatorships to eliminate political opponents.

Deteriorating Terms of Trade

A structural economic trend where the prices of primary commodities fall over time relative to manufactured goods, leading to economic stagnation for commodity exporters.

Salvador Allende

The world's first democratically elected Marxist president, who led Chile from 1970 until he was overthrown and died during the military coup of September 11, 1973.

UNCTAD

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, established in 1964 and first led by Raúl Prebisch to advocate for a restructuring of global trade.