Crisis, Realignment, and the Dawn of the Post–Cold War World, 1975–1991
A. Postcolonial Crises and Asian Economic Expansion, 1975–1990
I. Revolutions, Depressions, and Democratic Reform in Latin America
1. The success of the Cuban Revolution both energized the revolutionary left throughout Latin America and led the United States to organize its political and military allies in Latin America in a struggle to defeat communism.
2. In Brazil a coup in 1964 brought in a military government whose combination of dictatorship, use of death squads to eliminate opposition, and use of tax and tariff policies to encourage industrialization through import substitution came to be known as the “Brazilian Solution.” Elements of the “Brazilian Solution” were applied in Chile byte government of Augusto Pinochet, whose CIA-assisted coup overthrew the socialist Allende government in 1973 and in Argentina by a military regime that seized power in1974.
3. Despite reverses in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, revolutionary movements persisted elsewhere. In Nicaragua the Cuban-backed Sandinista movement overthrew the government of Anastasia Somoza and ruled until it was defeated in free elections in1990. In El Salvador the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) fought guerrilla war against the military regime until declining popular support in the 1990s led the rebels to negotiate an end to the armed conflict and transform themselves into a political party.
4. The military dictatorships established in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina all came to an end between 1983 and 1990. All three regimes were undermined by reports of kidnapping, torture, and corruption; the Argentine regime also suffered from its invasion of the Falkland Islands and consequent military defeat by Britain.
5. By the end of the 1980s oil-importing nations like Brazil were in economic trouble because they had borrowed heavily to pay the high oil prices engineered by OPEC. The oil-exporting nations