The Long Cold War in Central America

Session Submission Type: LASA Section Presentation

Abstract

The papers in this panel apply to Central America the concept of the “Long Cold War.” In their 2010 edited volume, A Century of Revolution, Gil Joseph and Greg Grandin used that term to frame their challenge to the traditional historiography of the cold war in Latin America. They demonstrated the value in transcending the confining chronological boundaries that limited the study of the relationship between state power and international rivalries to the US-USSR rivalry after WWII. The Central American conflicts of the 1980s assumed a central position in the historiography of that rivalry, but the issues of anti-imperialism and the contests for state power can be traced back to the first half of the twentieth century. The papers in this panel apply new research to explore the meaning of the Long Cold War in Central America.

Sub Track

• Section Presentation

Session Organizers

• Hector Lindo-Fuentes, Fordham University

• Erik K Ching, Furman University

Chair

• Hector Lindo-Fuentes, Fordham University

Individual Presentations

• The “Ligas Patrióticas” and subaltern transnational networks in Central America 1912-1914 - Hector Lindo-Fuentes, Fordham University

• El Salvador Encounters the Russian Revolution, 1917-1932 - Erik K Ching, Furman University

• Los Voluntarios: The Dialectics of Insurgency & Counterinsurgency in the Mountains of Las Segovias, Nicaragua, 1928-1929 - Michael J Schroeder, Lebanon Valley College

• “Cambiando la mente del pueblo”: los “libros comunistas” y la guerra fría cultural en Guatemala - José Edgardo Cal Montoya, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala

• Time in the Courtroom: Rethinking Periodization during the Long Cold War in El Salvador - Aldo V Garcia Guevara, Worcester State University

Discussant

• Jeffrey L Gould, Indiana University