Brands, Hal. Latin America's Cold War. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012.

== Summary ==
Brands’
book reconstructs the history of Latin America’s Cold War through a
multinational and multilayered lens (including the highest echelons of superpower
diplomacy to the everyday negotiation of social and political relationships)
Her argues that the global, the regional and the local interacted
in shaping Latin America’s Cold War. The upheaval that afflicted
Latin American during the postwar period was the result of foreign
intervention, internal instability, and ideological extremism on both Left and
Right. The Cold War in Latin America was not a single conflict but a series of
overlapping conflicts and their interaction is what made the period so
tumultuous. The four key themes (overlapping conflicts) that defined this time
period were: the clashes over domestic arrangements and internal power
structures; the tension regarding the boundaries of U.S. power in the region; the
emergence of the “Third World”; and the zero-sum game between the U.S. and the
Soviet Union. During the 1960s, concepts such as National security Doctrine led
to military regimes; liberation theology and urban unrest informed the growth
of popular protest, and the emergence of dependency theory heightened
North-South conflict in diplomacy. These tensions drove the diplomatic
upheavals of the 1970s and the dueling Left and Right extremisms. The radical
change that did come to South America was not the result of revolutionary
Leftist triumph, but an outcome of military coups and counterrevolutionary
‘dirty wars.’ The 1970s also saw the pronounced feeling of empowerment on the part
of Latin American countries because of the rise of the Détente and resulting
power vacuums created by the U.S. as a result of retrenchment (break down of
Bretton Woods and the oil shocks of 1973-4).  During the
1970s and 1980s, the region saw furthe revoluion as well as profound social-structural changes, with
the decline of certain military regimes and the adoption of neo-liberal
reforms. Yet, despite this perceived victories on the part of the U.S., Brands
concludes that the “limits of Latin American democracy and the uneven effects
of neoliberal reforms ensured that sociopolitical conflict remained ubiquitous,
while radical populism, drug shipments, and illegal immigration emerged as new
bogeys in inter-American affairs.” (7)
Example: By the end of the 1970s the successful Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua reignited larger leftist ambitions in the region. It also brought about further violence throughout much of Central America and further intervention from the U.S., Cuba, and the Soviet Union that created an endless cycle of violence within the region.
See also: Christine Klein, Cold War Orientalism; and Andrew Rotter, Comrades at Odds