Necesitan un Oliver North

2020

2019

Journal of Conflict Studies, 1987

This article attempts to analyze the "contra" war, an ongoing struggle between the government of Nicaragua and counter-revolutionary forces who have the moral and financial backing of the U.S. government. The unfolding of this five-year old war is considered by detailing the U.S. government strategy in concert with the development of the counter-revolutionary forces both politically and militarily. The effect of the five-year war on Nicaragua's people and its economy will be explored sector-by-sector, and a prognosis for the future will be offered.

2013

Cold War History, 2024

In the diplomatic reports of representatives arriving in Central America from South America, it is common to find some notes that caught their attention once they were on the ground. Among the issues highlighted were the density of exchanges between the continents; the evervigilant geopolitical role of the US; and the widespread tradition of mutual interventionism. In short, it was a unique region where at times the 'gringos do not understand anything' of that 'surprising Central American brotherhood that kicks each other's feet while still embracing each other'. 1 Regional politics and international relations were so 'intricate', with their 'wheeling and dealing', 2 that the 'Cold War' seemed to have been 'invented' in that area. 3 The outstanding thing about Gerardo Sánchez Nateras's The Last Revolution is that it manages to engage with several of these issues, connecting the geographical specificity of that part of the Americas with the current state of the field of studies of the Latin American Cold War. The book, structured in eight chapters and an epilogue, and preceded by a concise prologue by Vanni Pettinà, reconstructs the international plot that allowed the revolutionary victory and the overthrow of the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua in July 1979. In the introduction, Sánchez Nateras summarises the book's fundamental argument: that the Sandinista victory cannot be understood without considering the 'important role' played by the 'international scene' (p. 15). It was an 'unusual' case: the story of 'how a coalition of Latin American countries sought to prevent the advance of communism in Latin America and how a guerrilla movement was able to exploit these fears to foment a revolution'(p. 15). To this end, the author shows how an inter-American system in transition gave regional actors a wider margin of autonomy, allowing countries such as Venezuela, Panama, Mexico or Cuba to 'pursue' their 'own regional projects' (p. 16). In the end, he continues, this decentralised view of the revolutionary victory shows that Latin Americans were able to influence events so significantly that their actions carried more weight 'than dozens of meetings in Washington' (p. 16). The first chapter, 'Latin America and the New World', deals with the Latin American 'small détente' to explain the beginning of the revolution as it laid the foundations for the internal conflict in Nicaragua to become a 'profound regional conflict' (p. 35). Carlos Andres Perez, president of Venezuela, played a central role largely because the international price of oil tripled. Sánchez Nateras's analysis is correct for not overlooking the continuity of the 'social democratic internationalism' of this 'charismatic man', making 'sure of his importance' (p. 37). When exiled in Costa Rica, Perez had been part of the clandestine network of opponents to the dictatorships of the Circum-Caribbean Area and was in charge of the 'non-regular' affairs of Costa Rican president José Figueres Ferrer (p. 38). These were compelling reasons that explain why Venezuela perceived the Central American-Caribbean region as 'its Mare Nostrum' (pp. 41-2). This gives a broader understanding of Perez's strategy: the democratisation of the continent and 'controlling the abuses committed by the

Cold War History, 2018

This paper seeks to understand the construction of a broad alliance between the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), a socialist inspired guerrilla group, and various Latin American liberal and authoritarian governments, mainly Venezuela, Costa Rica, Panama and Cuba, between 1977 and 1979. I will seek to understand the construction of this unusual partnership, as well as the deep conflicts and mistrust that existed between the parties during the revolutionary upheaval in Nicaragua. This process will be examined by analysing the way Cold War politics and Latin American regional tensions shaped the events leading to the Sandinista revolution. This paper tells the story of how some Latin American countries sought to avoid radical change and ended up supporting a revolution instead. It will study the reasons why Venezuela, Panama, and Costa Rica ended up supporting the Sandinista National Liberation Front against the wishes of the United States. In doing so, they built a new political paradigm that envisioned the end of the bipolar conflict. The article will further show the impact of the Carter Administration's policy of nonintervention, and later on multilateralism, and its profound impact on the Nicaraguan regional crisis. Of particular importance will be the study of the process of radicalisation of Venezuela, Panama, and Costa Rica in the context of an increased attempt by the American government to exercise non-intervention in Latin America, and the gradual, and in a certain way reluctant, involvement of Cuba in the crisis. The purpose of this work is to study how these dynamics fostered the decomposition of the bipolar paradigm in inter-American relations and the creation of a new political configuration in the region. The history of the American government's involvement in the Nicaraguan Revolution has been extensively studied by historians. 1 However, the United States was only one of the actors in the revolutionary drama. While the non-interventionist desire of the United States

The reviewers also identify a number of shortcomings in Miller's work. Significantly, they fault him for inadequately engaging with the existing literature on U.S.-Latin American relations generally, and U.S.-Venezuelan relations specifically. Velasco finds that "[f]or readers familiar with the long sweep of Cold War historiography, and of Venezuelan historiography in particular, Miller not so much offers a new argument than retreads an earlier one in which Venezuela figured prominently as a successful case in efforts to establish liberal democracy in the region." Velasco goes on to argue that "Miller tends to reproduce and even deepen claims from that literature that … eventually collapsed in the 1990s and after." In particular, he is critical of "a strong whiff of hagiography in Miller's treatment of Betancourt." Krepp agrees with Velasco that Miller relies on a narrow definition of democracy to substantiate his claim of Venezuelan exceptionalism. Other reviewers criticize Miller's engagement with the recent literature on Latin America's Cold War. Krepp and Kirkendall in particular conclude that his engagement with the recent literature on U.S.-Latin American relations is lacking, and fault him for inadequately contextualizing the Venezuelan experience in that larger story. However, Karl is more positive in this regard, finding that while Miller did not fully succeed in contextualizing the Venezuelan story, he started that process.

Cold War History

This article explains how the Contra war was shaped by interaction between revolutionaries and counterrevolutionaries both before and after Nicaragua's 1979 revolution. In successfully carrying out the overthrow of the Somoza government, the Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) built a multilayered revolutionary coalition out of the fractured Nicaraguan politics created by the Cold War developmental state. In response to the FSLN's successful solidarity politics, the U.S. government from the beginning of the revolution through the Contra war in the 1980s applied a diverse set of tactics that drew inspiration from the successes of Nicaragua's revolutionary practice in order to undermine the revolution. This adaptive response helped radicalise Nicaragua's revolution, widened support for the Contra war despite adverse U.S. and global public opinion, and made possible the unraveling of the Iran-Contra Affair.

Latin American Perspectives, 1996

Journal of Latin American Studies

fomenting peasant opposition to the Sandinistas (and support for the Contras). Similarly, he shows that the introduction of guerrilla warfare tactics in late  and , and the use of Batallones de Lucha Irregular (Unconventional Warfare Battalions, BLIs), helped to secure the Sandinistas' military victory. But he fails to mention that the BLIs were composed almost entirely of conscripts, and that the use of compulsory military service in these years was one of the Sandinistas' most divisive and bitterly opposed policies. The second half of the book focuses on events in the United States, and the impact of the FSLN's advocacy work. Perla provides a series of statistical analyses of coded data. He argues that the FSLN gained considerable 'standing' within the US media; and that the FSLN was successful in ensuring that the framing of the Contra conflict in the mainstream media ran counter to the President's preferred narrative. Working from opinion polls, he then suggests that the periods when this counter-narrative was more prevalent correlate with periods when public opposition to the Contra War was more pronounced. Finally, Perla presents data which demonstrates that members of Congress with larger numbers of solidarity organisations in their districts consistently voted against Contra aid in greater numbers than their peers, arguing that this demonstrates the decisive impact of the Central America solidarity movement. Throughout the book, Perla relies on a comparison between Nicaragua and other cases of 'rollback' in the Reagan era: Afghanistan, Cambodia and Angola. He suggests that the fact that Congress consistently supported aid for these other interventions is clear proof that it was the FSLN's advocacy efforts, and not alternative factors such as Vietnam syndrome, which ensured that Reagan's intervention in Nicaragua was unsuccessful. Given the centrality of this point to the overall argument, a brief summary of these other cases of intervention would have been welcome, and might have revealed some important differences. In Afghanistan, Angola and Cambodia the presence of substantial numbers of foreign troops from Communist countries made US intervention much easier to justify to Congress. Moreover, in both Afghanistan and Angola third countries-Pakistan and South Africa respectivelyplayed a significant role in the intervention, quelling congressional fears about the extent of CIA involvement. In Nicaragua, Argentina was originally meant to play a similar role, a hope that was thwarted as a result of the Falklands War. Arguably, the relative strength of solidarity with Central America was not only the result of activists' agency. The proximity of the United States and Nicaragua, and the considerable migration that had occurred between the two nations, created far more fertile conditions for the kind of cultural interchange necessary for activism. But these caveats do not detract from the fact that, as Perla shows, the raw unmediated testimony of victims of the Contra War had a considerable impact in the United States, thanks to the countless speaker tours and brigades organised by solidarity activists in Nicaragua and the United States. This book is a very welcome contribution to the scholarship on the Contra War, one that is sure to spark considerable and fruitful debate.