The Socialist Dream of South America

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Clarissa

March 4, 2016

The US spent the entire 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s trying to prevent the countries of Central and South America from experimenting with socialism. In the process, the US embroiled itself in ridiculous scandals, sponsored brutal dictatorships, wasted a ton of resources and lost face more times than anybody can count.

Then the US got tired of this silly game and let South Americans play out their socialist fantasy. Of course, that fantasy soon revealed itself to be completely bankrupt on every level. It had only persisted for so long because the US worked so hard to stave it off. The whole stupid thing could have died decades ago if it has been allowed to run its natural course.

The only reason why the South American socialist fantasy managed to exist for so long is, paradoxically, that the US believed that socialism could actually work. Had the US been true to its declared belief that socialism was doomed to fail, it would have let it fizzle out on its own much sooner.

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One response to “The Socialist Dream of South America”

J. Otto Pohl

March 5, 2016

In many senses this is true. But, during the Cold War socialism appeared to be much more successful than it actually was. The USSR had industrialized and become a military super power that had defeated Nazi Germany. In places like Kyrgyzstan literacy went from 2% in 1917 to over 90% by the 1960s. Cuba with Soviet aid looked to emulating Soviet social and economic success and providing a model for excluding US capital and political influence in Washington DC’s backyard. In part the US government greatly exaggerated the threat of the USSR and its allies to US interests. However, there was a kernel of truth in the fact that at the time the USSR and later Cuba had provided alternative models to capitalism that appeared to have impressive and rapid economic and social gains. For a place like Afghanistan, the Uzbek SSR looked good to many of the secularized and educated elite at this time. Like wise for a lot of Latin Americans and Africans, mostly intellectuals, Cuba looked good. The most successful strategy might have been to just let them see how flawed those models were. But, lack of complete knowledge on this made it a risk that the US didn’t want to take.

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