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  • Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968: Volume XXXI, South and Central America; Mexico
  • Stephen G. Rabe
Foreign Relations of the United States, 1964-1968: Volume XXXI, South and Central America; Mexico. Edited by David C. Geyer and David H. Herschler. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, 2004. Pp. xlv, 1171. Notes. Sources. Index.

The Lyndon Baines Johnson administration successfully waged Cold War in Latin America. The Johnson administration encouraged the overthrow in 1964 of President João Goulart by the Brazilian military and, in 1965, dispatched U.S. troops to the Dominican Republic to prevent the return to power of the former president, the leftist Juan Bosch. The administration thereafter covertly spent massive amounts of money to ensure the election of the Dominican conservative, Joaquín Balaguer. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) also actively intervened in elections in British Guiana (Guyana), Bolivia, and Chile to arrange the election of candidates friendly to U.S. interests and to block the path to power via democratic means of Cheddi Jagan, Juan Lechín, and Salvador Allende. The administration's counterinsurgency efforts included training the murderous Guatemalan military and aiding a Bolivian Ranger battalion in the capture of Ernesto "Che" Guevara in 1967. The Johnson administration further continued the Eisenhower and Kennedy administration policies of diplomatically isolating Fidel Castro's Cuba. By 1968, the CIA could boast that leftist insurgencies no longer posed major threats to Latin American governments. [End Page 270]

Scholars studying the intrusive U.S. role in Latin America during the Johnson years should begin with this beautifully edited volume and the companion volume (Volume XXXII), which presents documents on Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Guyana. The 548 documents in this volume contain astonishing revelations. U.S. officials were inexplicably shocked that the Brazilian military trampled on the basic human rights of Brazilians. The Chilean Christian Democrat and future president, Eduardo Frei Montalva, joked about the CIA funds that were filling his campaign coffers. When international concern arose in 1968 over the Guatemalan military's wholesale slaughter of Mayan Indians, the U.S. ambassador advised the Guatemalan security forces to "bury the bodies" of the summarily executed. He observed that leaving the bodies to be found produced "a bad psychological effect" (p. 233). Such reasoning led one appalled U.S. official in Guatemala City to ask: "Is it conceivable that we are so obsessed with insurgency that we are prepared to rationalize murder as an acceptable counter-insurgency weapon?" (p. 240). These documents indeed reveal the obsessive U.S. fear of communism in Latin America in the 1960s.

Stephen G. Rabe
University of Texas at Dallas
Richardson, Texas
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