World war II changed the world in many ways. The world was in a strange place especially after the United State dropped an atomic bomb on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan in order to pay the Japanese back for their attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. To be honest the idea that a country has the power to destroy a city with the blink of an eye and cause long lasting damaged scared many other countries of the world. The United states was at the top of everyone’s list as a country not to mess with and as I just said the United states was feared for the power they held. So, as history goes when someone has a new powerful weapon and they are feared what do other people do? They get try to obtain that weapon for themselves. One country that was at the top of the list was the USSR or Russia and I believe they soon had their own atomic weapon. However, the atomic bomb was not the only thing developing in Russia. The other thing that was developing was this idea from this man Karl Marx and that idea was communism and even though the United States was feared for their use of the atomic bomb, the United States feared the idea of communism. Which sort of leads us to the Cold War and as most people should know it wasn’t a war at all but, more or less Russia and the United States playing spy games to see who was going to set off the next nuclear attack. Along with the United States government going on a proverbially “witch hunt” for people in the United States that could be communist and in that same aspect potential spies for the USSR. This so called “war” affected the world greatly but, one of the most influenced parts influenced by the Cold War was Latin America. It changed the government, the police, the military, factory workers, farmers, and surprisingly grandmothers and mothers. So, I am going to talk about that a little bit.
As stated before Latin America and her countries were greatly effected by the Cold War. Just like in the United states many government officials in Latin America were afraid of communism and people who could be communists because it could throw the whole system out of whack. What also lead to this paranoia was the revolutionary guerilla fighters that were believed to be influenced by communist Russia. Along with one country that definitely got on board with communism was Cuba and they seemed to do well for a poor country and farmers who were poor because of the industrialization era during World War II started to like how things were going in Cuba and the government saw this as a big problem for everyone. So, to fight these guerilla fighters, sniff out communist acts, and keep farmers and really everyone in line the government took the action of making committees called juntas. These juntas were compromised of only generals and admirals of the military. While the Juntas were in partial control of the country it was no hold bars. People were killed, raped, kidnapped, and tortured for having communist ideas or for even being associated with a person who was a communist or being a suspected communist. Gangs even started to form not to combat these acts of inter-country terrorism but to join in and the government was essentially saying if it keeps communism away, we don’t care. What these acts of terrorism to their own citizens did was it kept outside terrorism out because, nobody would want to go there and even attempt an act of terror the thought process is if the government does these kind of things to their own people what would they do to an terrorist from another country. Also, what it did is it made the country be controlled by fear of being murdered, raped, kidnapped, or tortured instead of constitutional law and many people were too scared to do anything. That was until a group of mothers and some grandmothers took a stand against these crimes against the people. There main problem was all the kidnappings and it was a lot of these women’s children and if they no one else was going to do anything to save their children then the thought they should so these women every week on the same time on the same day would go and stand and march around a plaza that was central to many big movements and government affairs and this movement was the Las Madres de Plaza de Mayo. This movement was eventually disbanded from the plaza and into churches, but they still had a huge effect because it brought to light issues in these Latin American countries and soon this movement gained support from people in the United States. However, this was the only real movement because everyone else was too afraid.
The Cold War era of the world was a strange time new weapons, new radical ideas, and conspiracies. It was a time of fear and uneasiness and picking sides and hoping no one would pull the trigger. As you can tell Latin America was a place of little hope and was possibly one region of the world that was the most effected by the Cold War because it was so close and influenced greatly by one of the main powers in the struggle.
References
Chasteen J.C. (2016). Born in Blood & Fire: A Concise History of Latin America 4th edition. New York, NY. W. W. Norton & Company.
Navarro M. The Personal is Political. Article.
Latin America 