Toward a Global History of Latin America’s Revolutionary Left ed. by Tanya Harmer and Alberto Martín Álvarez

Abstract

Reviewed by: Toward a Global History of Latin America’s Revolutionary Left ed. by Tanya Harmer and Alberto Martín Álvarez Álvaro Ramírez Harmer, Tanya, and Alberto Martín Álvarez, editors. Toward a Global History of Latin America’s Revolutionary Left. U of Florida P, 2021. Pp. 301. ISBN 978-1-68340-169-8. Toward a Global History of Latin America’s Revolutionary Left is an in intriguing book that sheds new light on the Revolutionary Left, a movement that emerged in the 1960s in Latin America characterized by armed struggle, revolution, national liberation, anti-imperialism, and anti-capitalism. In the Introduction, the editors, Tanya Harmer and Alberto Martín Álvarez, lament the neglect in historical writing regarding this faction and place part of the blame on conservative national tendencies of Latin American historiography and the peripheral role historians have assigned to Latin America in recent histories of the globalized world. Therefore, Harmer and Álvarez underscore the need for new, more inclusive historical accounts elucidating the transnational interconnections which the Revolutionary Left maintained with similar movements in the international arena. The present compilation is a big step in that direction. The book is comprised of two sections. Part I, “Latin America’s Revolutionary Left in the Age of the Tricontinental,” spotlights the relations Cuba cultivated with the Soviet Bloc, China and Latin America. To this end, Michal Zourek’s “Czechoslovakia and Latin America’s Guerrilla Insurgencies,” emphasizes the important logistical support this Eastern Bloc country offered the Castro regime through Operation Manuel, set up to facilitate Latin American revolutionaries trained in Cuba to travel back to their home countries, thus revealing Czechoslovakia’s key role in fomenting Cuban-style revolution in Latin America. In “Revolutionary Diplomacy and the Third World,” Blanca Mar León gives a detailed account of the Cuban efforts to hold in Havana the First Tricontinental Conference in 1966. She highlights the skillful diplomatic maneuvering that went into acquiring the support of key Third World leaders and to fend off old-guard politicians, such as Lázaro Cárdenas, who were trying to derail the Cubans. In the “The Brazilian Far Left, Cuba, and the Sino-Soviet Split, 1963,” James G. Hershberg guides us through the internecine relations of the [End Page 313] Revolutionary Left in Brazil in 1963. We follow the machinations of the rivalry that ensued between Luis Carlos Prestes and Francisco Julião due to their opposing methods of obtaining the triumph of communism in Brazil; the first promoting the peaceful coexistence policy backed by Moscow, the second calling for armed revolt in the guise of the Cuban Revolution promoted by Castro and Beijing. The disarray of the Marxist movements operating in Brazil is made obvious. They come across as wanting to be players in a political chess game but are shown to be nothing more than peon pieces moved by the hand of Cuba, Moscow, and China. Other global connections are accentuated in the book’s second part, titled “Latin America’s Revolutionary Left and Europe.” Gerardo Leibner weaves an excellent argument in “The Italian Communist Party between ‘Old Comrades in Arms’ and the Challenges of the New Armed Left.” He notes the fine line the Italian Communist Party had to walk as it maintained tenuous relations with Latin American communist factions who vied for its support, which the PCI withdrew after Che’s guerrilla tactics began to radicalize young Italian groups who had broken off from the PCI. Leibner marks an interesting reversal in the flow of political influence: to use Emir Rodríguez Monegal’s words, it was “el retorno de las carabelas,” as young, European radicals adopted tactics perfected in Latin America, much to the chagrin of the Old Left who proposed a policy of peaceful coexistence and a legal political road to power. In “The Influence of Latin America’s Revolutionary Left in Europe,” Eduardo Rey Tristán delineates the significant role of European publishers Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, François Maspero, Nils Andersson, and Klaus Wagenbach in the dissemination of New Left ideology emanating out of the Algerian War and Cuban Revolution on both sides of the Atlantic. Focusing mainly on the publishers’ background, Rey Tristán establishes them...