For la Patria: Politics and the Armed Forces in Latin America (review)

For la Patria: Politics and the Armed Forces in Latin America. By Brian Loveman. Latin American Silhouettes: Studies in History and Culture. Wilmington, Del: Scholarly Resources, 1999. xxvii, Photographs. Illustrations. Maps. Tables. Figures. Glossary. Bibliography. Index. Cloth, $60.00. Paper, $23.95.

Drawing largely on secondary sources, Brian Loveman has written a careful history of Latin American militaries and their involvement in civilian affairs. His work is impressive for its breadth. Loveman begins with the origins of the military's self-perception in the reconquista and the colonial period, and then uses nationalism and nation building as unifying concepts to show how the military adapted its old ideals to the nineteenth century. With this approach, Loveman successfully illustrates the extent to which the experience of Latin American militaries paralleled each other into the modern era. For example, in his section on foreign military missions, Loveman carefully explains why military modernization was accompanied by the armed forces' increasing use of apolitical and often antidemocratic rhetoric throughout Latin America.

Loveman's impressive knowledge of twentieth-century civil-military relations lends the latter half of the book special depth. Chapters six, seven, and eight capture the naïveté and paternalism that colored the U.S. relationship with Latin America throughout the cold war. This ignorance sometimes permitted Latin American militaries to manipulate the U.S. to achieve institutional goals. With the end of the cold war, regional armies believed that they had been victorious. Loveman describes how these armies justified their earlier abuses during authoritarian rule, while they also rethought their role in the new international context. At the same time, U.S. interest in Latin America waned rapidly after 1989 as authoritarian regimes abandoned power to democracies. Loveman perceptively explains why Latin American militaries are coming to see the United States, their former ally, as their new enemy. This fear of the United States--as well as the United Nations and nongovernmental organizations (a.k.a. NGOs)--is a truly regional perception that unites military officers from Argentina to El Salvador. It is also the most important change in military thought since the onset of the cold war.

Like the best recent scholarship on the Latin American military, Loveman examines these armed forces without either accepting the wealth of myths that these militaries have created around themselves, or depicting them as monolithic institutions. His work provides insight into the internal divisions, personal foibles, ideological contests, and pervasive corruption that shaped military affairs. Loveman also discusses important subjects such as military terror without allowing his work to degenerate into a polemic. This careful, dispassionate approach creates a reflective study that sheds light on key topics such as state formation and political modernization.

For all its assets, however, this book could have been strengthened by more information comparing Brazil's history with that of Spanish America. For example, in his brief reference to the creation of the Brazilian empire, Loveman seemed to equate the political chaos that followed independence in Spanish America with the experience of Brazil. This section might instead have contrasted how Portuguese America gained its independence with the violent process in neighboring republics, to explain Brazil's relative stability. In the broader context of his work, however, this is only a minor caveat. Loveman's book is a perceptive, jargon-free, carefully organized, and well-written study that should become a staple in undergraduate classes on Latin American politics.

Shawn C. Smallman
Portland State University

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