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Latin America-Europe Cold War Research Network

Research Initiative

LAandEurope1

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Europe and Latin America share a long and intimate history that is the basis for the relationship between them today. Political, economic, religious, military and cultural ideas have flowed between both regions for centuries. During the Cold War, Latin Americans of all political persuasions looked to Europe (East and West) for support and financial backing. Europeans also travelled to Latin America, found inspiration in the region and drew lessons from what they found there. Improvements in transportation, communication and intelligence techniques also spurred new transatlantic exchanges between governments, political parties and non-state actors.

It is therefore astonishing how little we know about the connections between Latin America, the Soviet Bloc and Western Europe in the late twentieth century. To a large extent, this has been the consequence of an exclusionary regional approach to history whereby twentieth century Europeanists have focused on the history of Europe and, even more so, Latin Americanists on Latin America.

Until recently, it was also the result of limited access to archival sources. However, in the last decade thousands of documents on the Cold War relationship between Latin America and Europe have been declassified. Scholars are therefore beginning to explore the interactions and linkages that existed between both regions.

To showcase new scholarship and promote further research on the relationship between Europe and Latin America during the Cold War, the Department of International History at LSE is leading a new international collaborative network. Coordinated by Dr Tanya Harmer, this research network aims to bring scholars working on transnational and international histories of Europe and Latin America together. It will advertise events and calls for papers related to the history of relations between Europe and Latin America during the late twentieth century. On this website, the network will also post news of new archival openings, online sources and publications.

Carlos Alzugaray Treto

Carlos Alzugaray Treto holds a PhD, Historical Sciences from the University of Havana (1997). His main area of expertise is in the history and theory of international relations. At present he is book review editor at Temas, a Cuban social science and humanities journal. He is also a member of the Social and Historical Literature Section of the Cuban Writers Association, affiliated with the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC). He served previously in the Cuban Foreign Service from 1961-1996 and as a Professor and Researcher at the Higher Institute for International Relations and the University of Havana in Cuba (1996-2012). His last diplomatic post was Ambassador, Head of Mission to the European Union. From 1992-1994 he was Adviser on Global Political Affairs to Foreign Ministers Ricardo Alarcón and Roberto Robaina. Between 2000 and 2004 he was Vice Rector and from 2004 to 2007 Department Head and Coordinator of Strategic Studies, Higher Institute of International Relations, Havana, Cuba. He has written 4 books and more than 75 academic essays. He has received several Cuban awards for his writing and teaching. In 2012 he won a competitive scholarship from CLACSO (Consejo Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales) for his project on the history and theory of regional integration and its implications for Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2013 he received recognition from the Casa de las Américas Literary Prize in Havana for his essay about Cuban-US diplomatic relations in 1959-1961. He has been a Visiting Professor or Scholar at Universities in Spain, Canada, the United States, Italy, and Mexico. In 2001 he was Marvin Weissberg Chair in International Relations at Beloit College, Beloit, Wisconsin. He has served in the Executive Committee of ALACIP (Asociación Latinoamericana de Ciencia Política) from 2002 to 2008. He also served as member, Cuban Academy of Sciences from 2002 to 2010. He is member of the Latin American Studies Association (LASA) and International Studies Association (ISA). His last two essays on subjects related with the symposium have been on “Cuban Revolutionary Diplomacy 1959-2009” for the Routledge Handbook on Diplomacy and Statecraft coordinated by Brian McKercher) and “Cuban Foreign Policy in theoretical and analytical perspectives” for the Routledge Handbook of Latin America in the World (forthcoming), coordinated by Jorge I. Domínguez and Ana Covarrubias. (alzuga@cubarte.cult.cu)

Fernando Camacho

Fernando Camacho received his PhD from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. After completing postdoctoral research at the Instituto de Estudios Avanzados (IDEA) at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile, he is currently working at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid as Assistant Professor. He has worked as a professor at universities in Stockholm, Uppsala and Dalarna (Sweden). He has also served as an invited professor at the University of Tehran and has taken part in various seminars and conferences in universities in Pakistan, Belgium, Germany, Azerbaijan, Spain and Chile. His doctoral thesis was entitled "Solidaridad y Diplomacia. Las relations entre Chile y Suecia durante tres experiencias revolutionaries 1964-1977." He is also the author of the book Suecia pro Chile. Una history visual del exilio y la solidaridad, 1970-1990 (2009). (fernando.camacho@uam.es)

Valerio Giannattasio

Valerio Giannattasio is Assegnista di Ricerca (Research Fellow) in Latin American History at the University of Naples "L'Orientale", Ph.D. in "Modern and Contemporary European History" and Teaching Assistant in "History and institutions of the Americas." He has also been a visiting professor at the University of Santiago de Chile, where he gave a course on the relations between Chile and Italy during the twentieth century. His lines of research have focused on the topics of Italian emigration in Argentina and Latin America during the fascist period, as well as on propaganda of the government of Mussolini among the Italian community in Argentina. He is currently working on cultural diplomacy and US propaganda in Chile and Argentina during the period 1953-1969, with particular attention to the reception of these measures in the two South American countries. Some of his publications include: “Naturaleza, sociedad y política: representación y comprensión de América Latina en la Italia fascista”, in Cultura Latinoamericana, 14 (II), Bogotà, Planeta, 2011, pp. 97-124; with Raffaele Nocera (Edts) 1810-1910-2010: l'America Latina tra indipendenza, emancipazione e rivoluzione, volume monografico, in Rivista Italiana di Studi Napoleonici, anno XLI/Nuova Serie 1-2/2008, Napoli, ESI, 2012, pp. 416; “Buenos Aires capital independiente”, in A. De Francesco – L. Mascilli Migliorini – R. Nocera (coord.), Entre Mediterráneo y Atlántico. Circulaciones, conexiones y miradas, 1756-1867, Santiago de Chile, Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2014, pp. 457-476.

Tanya Harmer

Tanya Harmer is a specialist on the Cold War in Latin America with a particular interest in the regional, inter-American dynamics of the struggle and its links to broader developments in the Third World. Her most recent research has focused on the international history of Chile during the presidency of Salvador Allende (1970-73), Brazilian Cold War interventions in the Southern Cone of Latin America, US relations with the Chilean dictatorship and the influence of the Cuban revolution in Latin America after 1959. She is currently writing a biography of Beatriz Allende and Latin America’s 1960s revolutionary generation. Her future project is to write a global history of the Cold War in Latin America (t.harmer@lse.ac.uk)

James G. Hershberg

James G. Hershberg is Professor of History and International Affairs at George Washington University; former director of the Cold War International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and now editor of the CWIHP book series; and author of Marigold: The Lost Chance for Peace in Vietnam (Washington, DC and Stanford, CA: Wilson Center Press/Stanford University Press, 2012) and James B. Conant: Harvard to Hiroshima and the Making of the Nuclear Age (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1993), as well as numerous articles on cold war and nuclear history. He is currently working on a book on Cuba, Brazil, and the Cold War. (jhershb@gwu.edu)

Albert Manke

Albert Manke is senior researcher and lecturer of Iberian and Latin American History at the Institute for Iberian and Latin American History of the University of Cologne. Since August 2013 he is one of the two directors of the University of Cologne Forum "Ethnicity as a Political Resource: Perspectives from Africa, Latin America, Asia, and Europe" within the framework of the German Excellence Initiative. Albert Manke studied History, Spanish Philology and Philosophy in Cologne and Paris. His PhD thesis dealt with the defense of the Cuban revolution by the National Revolutionary Militias, 1959-1961 (to be published). For that project he conducted extended archival and field research (oral history) in Cuba, the USA, Spain, and other countries. Currently he is working on a postdoc research project concerned with Chinese migration to Latin America from colonial times to the republican era, focusing especially on transpacific transculturation, agency and ethnic identity building. (amanke@uni-koeln.de)

James Mark

James Mark is professor of history at the University of Exeter. He is author of The Unfinished Revolution. Making Sense of the Communist Past in Central-Eastern Europe (Yale University Press, 2010), and co-author of Europe’s 1968. Voices of Revolt (OUP, 2013) and Che in Budapest. Global Revolution in the Eastern Bloc (in preparation). He is currently running a Leverhulme Trust-funded project '1989 after 1989: Rethinking the Fall of State Socialism in Global Perspective' and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (UK) funded project, 'Socialism Goes Global: Cold War Connections between the "Second" and "Third Worlds"'. (j.a.mark@exeter.ac.uk)

Kaeten Mistry

Kaeten Mistry is lecturer in American History at the University of East Anglia, specialising in U.S. foreign relations, the international history of the cold war, and intelligence. Previously, he was a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Warwick and IRCHSS Fellow at University College Dublin. He studied at the University of Birmingham, University of California, Los Angeles, and University of Padua, as well as holding visiting fellowships at NYU, Bologna, and Oxford. His first book, The United States, Italy and the Origins of Cold War: Waging Political Warfare, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2014. He has published articles in journals including Diplomatic History, Cold War History, Modern Italy, and Ricerche di Storia Politica, as well as guest editing a special issue of Intelligence and National Security. He is currently working on two projects, the first on dissenting voices to U.S. foreign relations in the twentieth century, the second, exploring the rise of transnational national security whistle-blowers since the 1970s. (k.mistry@uea.ac.uk)

Alexandre Moreli

Alexandre Moreli is coordinator of the Center for International Relations at Fundação Getulio Vargas (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), where he is an Assistant Professor in International History. Moreli holds a PhD from the Université Paris I – Panthéon-Sorbonne and his research interests cover the field of South-North transatlantic relations, Anglo-American rivalries and Euro-American policies towards Latin America (and vice versa) in the broader context of the new post-Second World War order. His main current research projects are a history of Brazilian global outreach since 1945 and a study on the creation of the post-war international aviation system. He was a visiting scholar at Columbia University (2009) and at Universidade Nova de Lisboa (2010). (alexandre.moreli@fgv.br)

Iwa Nawrocki

Iwa Nawrocki is a doctoral candidate in History at Princeton University working on transnational Latin American history. Her dissertation analyses why a group of Brazilian liberation theologians sought out contacts with the socialist world in the final decade of the Cold War. She is particularlyinterested in the meaning of transnational Christian-Marxist dialogue for the liberation theology project and for the Latin American Left more broadly. She holds a M.A. in History from Princeton University and a Joint Honors B.A. in History and Philosophy from McGill University. (nawrocki@princeton.edu)

Raffaele Nocera

Raffaele Nocera is a Researcher and Professor of Latin American History at the Department of Human and Social Science at the Universidad de Napoles "L'Orientale". He holds a PhD and his research focus on Chilean political history, inter-American relations and Italian foreign policy in Latin America. His publications include, Stati Uniti e America Latina dal 1945 a oggi (Carocci, 2005), Chile y la guerra, 1933-1943 (LOM-DIBAM, 2006), Stati Uniti e America Latina dal 1823 a oggi (Carocci, 2009), with Claudio Rolle Crus (ed.), Settantatré. Cile e Italia, destini incrociati (Think Thanks, 2010), and with Angelo Trento, America Latina, un secolo di storia. Dalla rivoluzione messicana a oggi (Carocci, 2013). (raffaelenocera@gmail.com)

Carlo Patti

Carlo Patti is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Federal University of Goiás, in Goiânia (Brazil), and earned his Ph.D. in History of International Relations at the University of Florence in 2012. As an international historian he has a deep interest in the history of the Brazilian foreign policy during and after the Cold War. Based on a multi-archive research and on oral history, his doctoral dissertation “Brazil in Global Nuclear Order” analyzes the Brazilian nuclear ambitions in the last sixty years and its repercussions on the international regime of nuclear non proliferation. Patti’s recent publications include analyses on the former Brazilian president Lula’s nuclear diplomacy and on the Brazilian nuclear history. He’s currently turning his doctoral dissertation into a book. He has been a visiting scholar at the Syracuse University (2010) and a post-doctoral fellow at Fundação Getulio Vargas (2012-2013), University of Brasilia (2013), and Catholic Pontifical University of Rio de Janeiro (2013-2014). Between January and August 2014, he coordinated the Country Desks Unit at the BRICS Policy Center of Rio de Janeiro. (patti.carlo@gmail.com)

Dr. Vanni Pettinà

Vanni Pettinà is Assistant Professor at the Center for Historical Studies of El Colegio de México where he teaches Latin American International History. Dr. Pettinà holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Florence in Italy, a MA in Latin American Studies and a Ph.D. in Contemporary History from the University Complutense of Madrid. In 2012 he was a Kluge Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Library of Congress and in 2013 an AECID Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Historical Studies at El Colegio de México. Dr. Vanni Pettinà has also taught at the London School of Economics and Political Science, UNAM, and the Ortega Y Gasset Research Institute. He is author of a book, Cuba y Estados Unidos, 1933-1959. Del Compromiso Nacionalista al Conflicto (Madrid: Los Libros de la Catarata, 2011), several articles on US-Cuban relations and Mexican contemporary history in scholarly journals such as the Journal of Latin American Studies, Cold War History, Revista de Indias, Culture and History as well book chapters in different edited volumes published in Spain, Latin America and the US. Dr. Pettinà has also been visiting researcher at several international institutions such as the LSE, NYU, Georgetown and the Center for Teaching and Economic Research in México City (CIDE). Dr. Pettinà’s scholarly interests range widely and include US-Latin American relations history, Latin American contemporary and international political history, the history of U.S. foreign policy after 1947, and the global history of the Cold War. His current research focuses on the international dimensions of Mexico’s developmental project between 1947 and the late 1970s.

Jadwiga E. Pieper Mooney

Jadwiga E. Pieper Mooney teaches Latin America history, global/comparative history and the history of gender at the University of Arizona in Tuscon, USA. She has researched citizen rights in Chile with focus on gender in her book titled, The Politics of Motherhood: Maternity and Women's Rights in Twentieth-Century Chile (Pittsburgh University Press, 2009). She has also written about heath and rights, forced sterilisation, human rights violations in the Americas and transnational activism of women during the Cold War. Her research projects include a project about the history and politics of Chilean exile in Germany and a study about the Federación Democrática Internacional de Mujeres (FDIM). Currently, Pieper Mooney is working on a book about the life of the medical doctor Benjamín Viel and the politics of health in the Twentieth Century. (jpieper007@gmail.com)

Anita J. Prażmowka

Professor Anita Prazmowska

Anita J. Prażmowka is Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. Author of several books on Polish history and Polish foreign policy during the Second Worold War. Recently published Civil War in Poland, 1942-48. Her biography of Władysław Gomułka will be published by I.B. Tauris in 2015. Presently working on a project ‘Military supplies to fraternal capitalist countries during the Cold War. A case study of Poland’s support for Angola 1976-82. (a.j.prazmowska@lse.ac.uk)

Alessandro Santoni

AlessandroSantoni

Alessandro Santoni received his PhD (Dottorato di ricerca in storia politica dell'etá contemporanea) from the Universitá di Bologna. He is currently a researcher and professor of European Contemporary History at Instituto de Estudios Avanzados (IDEA) of the Universidad de Santiago de Chile. His publications include the book Il PCI e i giorni del Cile. Alle origini di un mito politico (Carocci, Roma 2008), re-edited in Chile with the title El comunismo italiano y la vía chilena. Los orígenes de un mito político (RIL, Santiago, 2011). (alessandro.santoni@usach.cl)

Balint Tolmar

Balint Tolmar is a PhD student at the Central European University in Budapest. He is currently researching labor flows between socialist Hungary and other members of the COMECON. (tolmar_balint@ceu-budapest.edu)

Olga Ulianova

Olga Ulianova is the director of the American Studies Doctoral Programme at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH) and a senior researcher at its centre for advanced studies: the Instituto de Estudios Avanzados (IDEA). She obtained her PhD in History at Lomonsov Moscow State University and has received research grants from FODECYT, the Ford Foundation, CEPAL and CEP. Her principal areas of investigation include the Cold War in Latin America, the history of non-state actors in contemporary politics and the history of East European and Central Asian relations with Latin America. Olga Ulianova has published widely on a range of topics relating to these issues and is currently working on a multivolume edited collection of declassified documents related to the Soviet Union's role in Chile in the twentieth century. (olga.ulianova@usach.cl)

Michal Zourek

Michal Zourek (Poděbrady, 1985) holds a PhD in Ibero-American Studies from the Charles University in Prague. At present, he is a lecturer at the Institute of Technology and Business in České Budějovice. The field of his interest is modern history of Latin America. He researched in Chile (one-year stay) and Argentina (two-year stay). He is the author of the book Checoslovaquia y el Cono Sur 1945–1989. Relaciones políticas, económicas y culturales durante la Guerra Fría, which will be published at the end of 2014. The main objective of the work is to interpret unpublished Czech and foreign archives. In 2015 his work Dějiny Uruguaye, the first book about the history of Uruguay in Czech, will come out. (zourek@centrum.cz)

Upcoming Events

Coming soon

Past Events

9-10 June 2016, Thursday & Friday, Instituto Mora, Mexico

International Conference: Intellectual Cultures of Revolution in Latin America: A Transnational Perspective

Convenors: Dr Tanya Harmer (LSE) and Alberto Martín Alvarez (Instituto Mora)

Latin American left-wing armed organisations shared repertoires of action, strategies, symbols and ideologies. Socialism, revolution and armed struggle became identities of these groups, which became important political actors during the last decades of the 20th century. Despite strong political and ideological similarities between left-wing organisations, our understanding of the processes of construction and diffusion of this “intellectual culture of revolution” in Latin America is still limited. Some authors ascribe the diffusion of ideas regarding radical change in the Global South to the predominant role of local revolutionary intellectuals who studied in European or North American universities. However, the evidence coming from Latin America points to a much more complex phenomenon. The culture of revolution comprised an amalgamation of local revolutionary traditions and global intellectual influences. Meanwhile, the direct interaction between left-wing organisations and activists from different countries appears to have been of fundamental importance in the construction of a transnational imagined community of regional and global scope.

*Photos*

26-27 February 2016, Friday and Saturday, LSE

Department of International History and the Cold War Studies Project at LSE IDEAS: Global Histories of Latin America's Revolutionary Left

Convenors: Dr Tanya Harmer and Dr Alberto Martín Alvarez (Instituto Mora). Event linked to the established New Left Network led by Alberto Martín Álvarez and Eduardo Rey Tristán.

Our knowledge of Latin America’s revolutionary left after the Cuban Revolution in 1959 is growing. New archives, oral histories and published testimonies have driven history forward and encouraged new research. However, we still know relatively little about the global dimensions of the revolutionary left (or New Left) in Latin America. We know that revolutionary left-wing militants shared feelings of solidarity, collective belonging and common purpose across continents. Members of Latin America’s revolutionary left also travelled to Europe (East and West), Africa, Asia, and North America, where they found inspiration, and participated in revolutionary developments. We also know that Latin America’s revolutionary left received moral, intellectual, cultural and financial support from counterparts and sympathetic groups abroad. Yet where and how these relationships and networks originated, how they functioned and with what consequences is less clear.

This international conference was funded by a British Academy Newton Mobility Grant, the École des Hautes Études Hispaniques et Ibériques (Casa de Velázquez) and the LSE’s Research Committee RIIF Seed Fund.

*Photos*

LatinEast2014

11 November 2014, Tuesday, 9:00-16:00, Karl Polanyi Center for Global Social Studies, Corvinus University of Budapest

LatinEast Conference

Organizer: Béla Soltész

The LatinEast Conference at the Karl Polanyi Center for Global Social Studies of the Corvinus University of Budapest aimed to provide a forum for PhD students and young researchers who work with topics which are relevant and comparable in both of the above mentioned geographical regions: Latin America and Eastern (= post-socialist) Europe.

Based on the notion of a hierarchically built world system in which both regions hold a similar, semi-peripheral position, the presentations focused on identifying the similar structures within which certain social processes have evolved, either in convergent or divergent directions.

Presentations at the LatinEast conference had a comparative approach, i.e. making constant references to the relevance and possible linkages of the topic to both Latin America and Eastern Europe.

The objectives of this first conference were the following:

1. To take stock of the existing scholarly interest (manifested in PhD thesis topics, articles etc., already written or to be written by the participants) and establish a network of knowledge;
2. To identify the relevant topics which should be further elaborated, and
3. To evaluate the intellectual challenges, both in terms of conceptual framework and methodology, which are present when comparative analysis of the two regions isundertaken.

After the conference, a joint research plan will be drafted by the participants, i.e. a set of recommendations on what specific areas should be included in the knowledge pool and what specific topics should be further elaborated. Also, participants can join a mailing list in order to facilitate communication.

LAandEuropeCW

10 September 2014, Wednesday, International Symposium, AHILA, Berlin

Latin America and Europe during the Cold War

This symposium brought together 15 historians from around the world in 4 panels to examine the relations between Latin America, the Soviet bloc and Western Europe. On one level, it examined the formal relations between governments and political parties. On another level, it investigated the transnational networks and contacts that emerged between both regions as a result of solidarity movements, religious groups, feminist networks and travel. Beyond showcasing new research, the symposium laid the foundations for the establishment of a new LSE-led network aimed at understanding, and disseminating sources on, the relationship between Europe and Latin America during the Cold War.

For details of the programme, please click here.

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2015

The Ibero-American Centre (IAC) and the Department of International Relations and European Studies (IRES) at Metropolitan University Prague are pleased to announce a Call for Papers for the upcoming conference, “Cultural Cold War - Eastern European Propaganda in Latin America”. The conference will take place on 13 November 2015, at Metropolitan University Prague in the Czech Republic. The deadline for submission is June 30, 2015. More information can be found here.

Michal Zourek's book, Czechoslovakia y el Cono Sur. Relaciones políticas, económicas y culturales durante la Guerra Fría has now been published in Prague. Details in Czech, including book cover can be found here.

Carlo Patti has been awarded a Newton Advanced Fellowship for a two-year project with the University of Bristol on the Cuban Missile Crisis in a global perspective.

Alberto Manke will be presenting his new research on the relationship between Cuba and China at LASA 2015 in Puerto Rico.

Dr Tanya Harmer awarded a British Academy Newton Mobility Award

Dr Tanya Harmer has been awarded a British Academy Newton Mobility Award worth £9,962 to lead a collaborative research project with Dr Alberto Martín Álvarez at the Instituto Mora in Mexico City on "Transnational and Global Histories of Latin America's Revolutionary Left." The project will centre around two international conferences in 2016 on Latin American left-wing movements' transnational and global connections during the Cold War.