Copyright by Michelle Denise Reeves 2014
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Copyright by Michelle Denise Reeves 2014 The Dissertation Committee for Michelle Denise Reeves Certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Extracting the Eagle’s Talons: The Soviet Union in Cold War Latin America Committee: Mark A. Lawrence, Supervisor Henry W. Brands Hal Brands Jonathan Brown Charters Wynn Extracting the Eagle’s Talons: The Soviet Union in Cold War Latin America by Michelle Denise Reeves, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2014 Dedication This dissertation is dedicated to my family. Without their love and support, I’d never have been able to make it this far. Acknowledgements It would be impossible to name all the people who have helped me in this journey. Nevertheless, I hope that the thanks I can proffer here will be the first step toward repaying the many debts (intellectual, financial, and otherwise) that I have incurred over the years. This dissertation would not have been possible without the generous financial support of the U.T. History Department, the American Councils for International Education, and the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. I owe a significant intellectual debt to Tom Devine and Tom Maddux, who mentored me through the M.A. program at California State University Northridge. Archivists in New York, Washington, D.C., and Moscow made my research trips more pleasant and productive. Many thanks to my dissertation committee members – H.W. Brands, Hal Brands, Jonathan Brown, Charters Wynn, and especially my adviser, Mark Lawrence, whose unflagging support has carried me through this whole process. I couldn’t have asked for a better adviser, and I hope he knows how grateful I am. I am also grateful for the support of Marilyn Lehman and Jackie Jones, who both evinced a great deal of faith in me as a scholar and helped me navigate the sometimes maddeningly complex university bureaucracy. I would also like to thank my fellow students for their companionship and support, especially that provided by my good friend Merry Zide, whose peerless editorial abilities more than once improved my work. Finally, I owe the greatest debt to my family, without whose love and support none of this would have been possible. A special thanks to Wilson Getchell, who somehow managed to live with me (yet not strangle me) while I wrote this dissertation. v Extracting the Eagle’s Talons: The Soviet Union in Cold War Latin America Michelle Denise Reeves, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2014 Supervisor: Mark Atwood Lawrence While the Cold War in Latin America has been examined from a variety of angles, the scholarship on Soviet-Latin American relations is thin, outdated, and based almost totally on published sources. Moreover, much of the literature is replete with misconceptions about the nature of the Soviet approach to the Western Hemisphere and the relationship between Moscow and its regional allies. Using a case study approach, and based on substantial research in the archives of the former Soviet Union, this dissertation argues that Moscow’s approach to Latin America was more cautious and pragmatic than ideological and messianic. Rather than attempting to extend their control over the region, the Soviets instead sought to pry Latin American regimes away from dependence on the United States and to encourage the region to adopt a non-aligned foreign policy. To a degree heretofore not sufficiently appreciated, this approach involved the clever use of international organizations, particularly the United Nations and the Non-Aligned Movement. Moreover, Latin American communists and Soviet sympathizers were hugely influential in shaping Moscow’s perceptions of the region and its relationship to the United States, and in pressuring Soviet leaders to provide more support to their regional allies. vi Table of Contents Introduction: The Cold War in Latin America ........................................................1 Soviet-Latin American Relations....................................................................4 Arbenz's Guatemala ......................................................................................13 Castro's Cuba ................................................................................................15 Allende's Chile..............................................................................................17 The Sandinistas' Nicaragua...........................................................................18 A Note on Sources ........................................................................................19 Chapter One: Guatemala, the USSR, and the United Nations...............................22 U.S. Foreign Policy: National Security or Economic Imperialism?.............25 The Inter-American System and "Hemispheric Solidarity"..........................32 Communism in Latin America......................................................................36 The Post-Coup Propaganda Battle................................................................47 U.S. Policy in the Post-Coup Period.............................................................60 Chapter Two: "The Arms of the Soviets": Revolutionary Cuba and the USSR ...67 Appeasing Washington, Wooing Moscow: The Early Days ........................77 Mikoyan in Havana.......................................................................................88 The Organization of American States vs. the United Nations......................93 The Bay of Pigs...........................................................................................104 Conclusion ..................................................................................................113 Chapter Three: Nuclear Fallout: The USSR and Cuba from the Missile Crisis to Rapprochement ...........................................................................................115 The Fallout from Operation Anadyr ...........................................................116 Paths to Power: The Sources of Cuban-Soviet Acrimony..........................126 The Death of Che and Cuban-Soviet Rapprochement................................149 Conclusion ..................................................................................................161 vii Chapter Four: The Soviet Union and the Chilean Solidarity Campaign .............162 "No More Cubas": Soviet Policy toward Allende's Chile ..........................165 UP Foreign Policy: "Ideological Pluralism" and Non-Alignment..............169 The International Solidarity Campaign.......................................................176 The Role of the Chilean Exile Community.................................................187 The Quest for Legitimacy: The Chilean Response.....................................192 Conclusion: Human Rights vs. Soviet Self-Interest ...................................196 Chapter Five: The Soviet Union and the Nicaraguan Revolution .......................202 The Triumph of the Sandinistas..................................................................203 Moscow and the FSLN ...............................................................................212 Gorbachev's "New Thinking" and Central America...................................238 Conclusion ..................................................................................................249 Conclusion ...........................................................................................................251 The United Nations in the Cold War ..........................................................255 Implications for U.S. Policy........................................................................257 Bibliography ........................................................................................................263 viii Introduction: The Cold War in Latin America America’s sphere of influence, “our own backyard,” “empire’s workshop,” “beneath the United States” – all refer to Latin America and in doing so emphasize the hegemonic – indeed, imperial – role of the United States in hemispheric relations. Since the days of the Monroe Doctrine, the United States has assumed the mantle of guarantor of order and stability in the Western Hemisphere, and has engaged in political and military interventionism that has frequently proved counterproductive to the maintenance of such order and stability. Nevertheless, this nomenclature is indicative of an approach to the study of U.S.-Latin American relations that inadequately accounts for the motivations and decisions of actors other than U.S. policymakers. Analyses that focus exclusively on U.S. foreign policy do not always do justice to internal and regional developments in Latin America, nor do they assign sufficient agency to actors other than the Norteamericanos. Ironically, historians on the political left, who often claim to recover the voices of victimized Latin Americans, tend to be more guilty of this tendency than those on the right, who more often seek to absolve the United States of its sins by assigning responsibility for the violence that rocked the Western Hemisphere during the Cold War to the Latin Americans and the Soviets. With the clarity of hindsight, we now know that the Soviet threat was in fact far less menacing than it seemed at the time, when visions of a red tide washing over the Western Hemisphere spooked