Democracy, Dictatorship, and Drug Smuggling: Latin America in the Cold War

The Cold War is often framed as a superpower conflict defined by ideological struggles between Left and Right. This perspective, however, overlooks how the Cold War in the Global South was anything but “cold.” This course highlights Latin America’s experience as a consequential and complex theater of the global conflict. It illustrates how issues seemingly externally imposed were also distinctively Latin American, as a variety of state and non-state actors advanced nuanced rationales for democracy, revolution, and dictatorship. For example, alongside the stories of revolutionaries and diplomats, we will trace the history of drug smugglers who combined tremendous violence with elaborate economic and political projects that profoundly shaped the outcomes of Cold War state-building. While surveying the region broadly, the course is anchored in case studies in Cuba, Guatemala, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, illustrating key patterns from the 1910s through the 1990s.