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 s'''tructures; 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