Dimensions of US-Latin American Military Relations

1978 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriel Marcella
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
American Military ◽  
Military Relations

Civil-Military Relations in Colombia: A Societal Explanation

1981 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-146 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Mark Ruhl
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Military Government ◽  
American Military ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Military Regimes ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Civilian Authority

In spite of the reestablishment of civilian democracy in Ecuador and Peru, military government continues to be the norm in Latin America. In recent years, many scholars have examined the rise of military regimes in the region in order to gain a better understanding of the dynamics of civil-military relations. Few analysts, however, have studied civil-military relations in the handful of nations where civilian government has persisted. The purpose of this analysis is, therefore, to contribute to a broader understanding of Latin American military behavior by attempting to explain the Colombian armed forces’ atypical obedience to civilian authority.

Professionalization and Politicization as Mativational Factors in the Brazilian Army Coup of 15 November, 1889

1976 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-125
Author(s):  
William S. Dudley
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Institutional Development ◽  
South American ◽  
Contemporary History ◽  
American Government ◽  
American Military ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Society ◽  
Military Relations

One of the clearest trends in Latin American government during the past decade has been the establishment of military dictatorships in many South American countries, some of them long-term. Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru and Uruguay have all had this experience. In efforts to explain this phenomenon, many scholars have delved into the political history of civil-military relations in Latin American society since 1930. A recent penchant for contemporary history, promoted in part by the availability of funds for policy-oriented research, has stimulated this concern. In the process, however, the deeper historical roots of the institutional development of the Latin American military have been neglected.1

normally only gradually, and this situation is not universally the case. There is growing understanding of the need for security arrangements which underpin the economic and political co-operation whose value is so clear to most decision-makers. Those who wish to see greater co-operation from the Latin American states in the non-proliferation and arms control fields should attempt to understand these phenomena and make a greater effort to bring the Latin Americans along. The North can help a great deal in educating key members of the civilian elites in these countries about defence matters. This would go a long way to easing some of the issues of civil-military relations mentioned. Showing more transparency ourselves in the working of arms control groupings can help to reduce concerns in these countries about their ability to resist excessive northern pressures if they accept the objectives sought by those countries in such groups. Working with nascent but interested elements of civil society, from universities and research centres for example can help to build the constituency for these objectives in key countries. And efforts to show the military that collaboration does not necessarily mean the end of a legitimate degree of armed forces influence in the security area and more widely in foreign policy, and that arms control does not necessarily imply ruin for them and their families, need to be made and indeed should be more closely studied in order to address these real concerns. There is thus a good deal which can be done. But culture remains formative and vital to states and individuals. These societies are the result of a lived historic experience and only an understanding of the very real security concerns they have will allow us to obtain more support from them in security fields which are, as in the past, still offering great challenges globally and regionally.

2012 ◽  
pp. 193-196
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Arms Control ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
The North ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military ◽  
Research Centres

Beyond Transitions to Democracy in Latin America

1992 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 665-684 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcelo Cavarozzi
Keyword(s):  
Political Violence ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
Foreign Debt ◽  
The United States ◽  
South American ◽  
Capital Investments ◽  
American Military ◽  
Transitions To Democracy ◽  
Industrialised Countries

Transitions into democracy: convergence and distinct pathsIn mid-1982 Mexico's Minister of Finance, Jesús Silva Herzog, arrived in the United States and announced that his country was not going to continue paying its foreign debt. Silva Herzog's declaration was soon followed by debt defaults in many other Latin American countries, marking the beginning of the region's most serious economic crisis in this century. This crisis involved the partial breakdown of Latin America's financial and trade linkages to the world economy; the cessation of new credit money paralleled an interruption in the flow of capital investments, amounting to a total reversal of the financial patterns of previous decades. (The level of foreign investment, especially in manufacturing and mining, had been relatively high since the mid-1950s, albeit with significant differences from country to country).The debt crisis coincided, not incidentally, with a convergence of the political trajectories of five of the region's more industrialised countries: Mexico, Brazil, and the three Southern Cone nations of Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay. All five governments – the South American military dictatorships and Mexico's stable authoritarian PRI regime – experienced periods of political turbulence closely related both to the severe economic disruptions and to other domestic and international influences.One of the remarkable aspects of this 1982 political convergence was that it came after the ‘long decade’ of the 1970s, during which the governmental routes of the five countries had been extremely divergent. In Argentina, for example, instability, militarism and political violence had intensified, starting in 1969; these phenomena then spread to its traditionally more democratic neighbours, Chile and Uruguay.

Mexico, Gilberto Bosques and the Refugees

2000 ◽  
Vol 57 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Friedrich Katz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Latin American ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Military ◽  
Latin Americans ◽  
North Americans ◽  
Promised Land ◽  
Mexican Government ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right

In the eyes of many North Americans, Mexico is above all a country of immigration from which hundreds of thousands hope to pass across the border to find the promised land in the United States. What these North Americans do not realize is that for thousands of Latin Americans and for many U.S. intellectuals, Mexico after the revolution of 1910-1920 constituted the promised land. People persecuted for their political or religious beliefs—radicals, revolutionaries but liberals as well—could find refuge in Mexico when repressive regimes took over their country.In the 1920s such radical leaders as Víctor Raúl Haya De La Torre, César Augusto Sandino and Julio Antonio Mella found refuge in Mexico. This policy continued for many years even after the Mexican government turned to the right. Thousands of refugees from Latin American military dictatorships in Argentina, Chile, and Uruguay fled to Mexico. The history of that policy of the Mexican government has not yet been written.

Military Government in Latin America, 1959–1990

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian E. Loveman
Keyword(s):  
Latin American ◽  
Transitional Justice ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Military Government ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Foreign Policies ◽  
The Government ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

Latin America’s armed forces have played a central role in the region’s political history. This selective annotated bibliography focuses on key sources, with varying theoretical, empirical, and normative treatments of the military governments in the region, from the Cuban Revolution (1959) until the end of the Cold War (1989–1990). The article is limited to those cases in which military governments or “civil-military” governments were in power. This excludes personalist dictatorships, party dictatorships, and civilian governments in which the armed forces exercised considerable influence but did not rule directly. No pretense is made of comprehensiveness or of treating the “causes” of military coups (a vast literature) and of civil-military relations under civilian governments. Likewise, the closely related topics of guerrilla movements during this period, human rights violations under the military governments, US policy and support for many of the military governments, and the transitions back to civilian government (including “transitional justice”) are not covered in depth, but some of the selections do treat these topics and direct the reader to a more extensive literature on these subjects. Long-term military governments, with changing leadership in most cases, controlled eleven Latin American nations for significant periods from 1964 to 1990: Ecuador, 1963–1966 and 1972–1978; Guatemala, 1963–1985 (with an interlude from 1966–1969); Brazil, 1964–1985; Bolivia, 1964–1970 and 1971–1982; Argentina, 1966–1973 and 1976–1983; Peru, 1968–1980; Panama, 1968–1989; Honduras, 1963–1966 and 1972–1982; Chile, 1973–1990; and Uruguay, 1973–1984. In El Salvador the military dominated the government from 1948 until 1984, but the last “episode” was from 1979 to 1984. Military governments, though inevitably authoritarian, implemented varying economic, social, and foreign policies. They had staunch supporters and intense opponents, and they were usually subject to internal factionalism and ideological as well as policy disagreements. The sources discussed in this article reflect that diversity.

Growing Participation in Peace Operations and Conflict Resolution in Latin American Countries

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kai Michael Kenkel
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Policy Coordination ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
American States ◽  
The Right ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Latin American Countries

Latin American states have become major providers of troops for UN peacekeeping operations (PKOs) since the early 2000s. MINUSTAH (Mission des Nations Unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti), the UN mission in Haiti, 55% of whose troops were from the region, was a major watershed for local security cooperation and PKO contributions. Led by Brazil, these states were able to develop a specific approach to peacebuilding that reflects regional strengths and experiences, rooted in minimizing the use of force and bringing successful domestic development policies to bear abroad. This approach also reflects the common security and intervention culture that underpins policy in the region. Two states in particular have taken on a role as major providers of peacekeeping contingents. Tiny Uruguay, with a population of 3 million people, has maintained over 2,000 troops deployed on UN PKOs (more than 10% of its armed forces) since 2005. While Uruguay’s motivations are mostly economic—UN reimbursements exceed the country’s costs—Brazil’s ascendance as a major peacekeeping provider during MINUSTAH was part of a larger emerging-power foreign policy project. Participating in peacebuilding allowed the country to provide security through actions in the development realm, bridging a key gap in many rising states’ capabilities, and to mount an incipient challenge to the Western-led peacebuilding paradigm. The remaining states of Latin America show considerable diversity in their peacekeeping engagement, with many others sending small or token contributions and some no troops at all. Latin American states’ involvement in PKOs cannot be understood without looking at their interaction with patterns of civil–military relations in the region. In the case of such states, the effect of peacekeeping participation on civil–military relations, while a key point in need of monitoring, has not been decisive, as other factors prevail. Finally, PKOs have served as the locus for a significant increase in policy coordination and cooperation in the defense arena in the region. As the UN moves toward stabilization operations which privilege counterterrorism measures over the peacebuilding paradigm that is a strength of Latin American countries, PKOs may lose attractiveness as a foreign policy avenue in the region. Additionally, the swing to the right in recent elections may serve to reduce the appeal of a practice which came to the fore under previous left-wing governments.

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