Download or read book Militarization And The International Arms Race In Latin America written by Augusto Varas and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-10-28 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Military conflicts and dictatorships in Latin America are the main consequences of the increasingly autonomous role of the armed forces in the region, asserts noted scholar Augusto Varas, and international factors related to the expansion of weapon industries in the North and the increasing flow of financial resources to Latin America are accelerating the arms race. Varas discusses the historical function of the armed forces in local politics, the new ideology of the "national security doctrine," and the process of conflict perception by the Latin American military. He also analyzes the inevitable relations between the arms race and the political role of the region's armed institutions. Using Chile as an example, he places these factors in context and illustrates how political crisis can escalate into a regional arms race. He then concludes with a discussion of the links between prospects for democracy in the region and demilitarization and disarmament.

Download or read book A Compact History of Latin America s Cold War written by Vanni Pettinà and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While not commonly centered in the Cold War story, Latin America was intensely affected by that historic conflict. In this book, available for the first time in English, Vanni Pettina makes sense of the region's diverse, complex political experiences of the Cold War era. Cross-fertilized by Latin American and Anglophone historiography, his account shifts from an overemphasis on U.S. interventions toward a comprehensive Latin American perspective. Connecting Cold War events to the region's political polarizations, revolutionary mobilizations, draconian state repression, and brutal violence in almost every sphere, Pettina demonstrates that Latin America's Cold War was rarely cold. In the midst of the tumult, some countries showed resilience and capacity to bend the disruptive dynamics to their advantage. Mexico, for example, drew on a mix of nationalism and anticommunism, aided by the United States, to achieve strong economic growth and political stability. Cuba, in contrast, used Soviet protection to shield its revolution from the United States and to strengthen its capacity to project power in Latin America and beyond. Interweaving global and local developments along an insightful analytical frame, Pettina reveals the distinct consequences of the Cold War in the Western Hemisphere.

Download or read book The Culture of Violence written by United Nations University and published by United Nations University Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 299 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: . These essays will provide new insights and focus for understanding internal violence and its cultural connections to a broad audience of scholars, policy makers, and students of international politics and culture.

Download or read book El terrorismo de estado written by Jorge A. Tapia Valdés and published by . This book was released on 1980 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book La Revolucion Bolivariana Democratiza Los DD Hh Basicos written by Carlos Gonz Lez Irago and published by Palibrio. This book was released on 2012-01-06 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sobre el libro: La Revolución Bolivariana es un proceso en marcha y está creando colectivamente y democráticamente, paso a paso, golpe a golpe un nuevo modelo de estado. El estado bolivariano es auténtico se fundamenta en la historia, las ideas solidarias de Simón Bolívar y la prioridad de los derechos humanos básicos de "seguridad y subsistencia" de todos los venezolanos sin exclusiones. Es revolucionario primero porque incorpora participativamente a un sector mayoritario de la población -incluyendo a los pobres y a los militares-- que habían sido históricamente marginados y excluidos de la política, la economía y la sociedad. Segundo, porque el nuevo modelo de "Seguridad y Subsistencia" es lo opuesto a su predecesor histórico: el modelo de "Seguridad Nacional" o "Pacto de Punto Fijo." La "Seguridad Nacional" fue impuesta desde los Estados Unidos durante la guerra fría a toda su área de influencia y ha causado estragos: guerras, muertes, torturas y la violación sistemática de los derechos humanos en Venezuela, en Latinoamérica y en muchas partes del mundo. Tercero, porque el modelo bolivariano ofrece una respuesta democrática y solidaria al capitalismo salvaje que propone el neo-liberalismo en la actualidad. Venezuela hoy nos ofrece algo radicalmente diferente, es "la posibilidad optimista" de una democracia nueva, solidaria, soberana, socialista, moderna, no dogmática y por qué no, ecológica.

Download or read book A Lexicon of Terror written by Marguerite Feitlowitz and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1999-10-07 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "We were all out in la charca, and there they were, coming over the ridge, a battalion ready for war, against a schoolhut full of children." Tanks roaring over farmlands, pregnant mothers tortured, their babies stolen and sold on the black market, homes raided in the dead of night, ordinary citizens kidnapped and never seen again--such were the horrors of Argentina's Dirty War. Now, in A Lexicon of Terror, Marguerite Feitlowitz fully exposes the nightmare of sadism, paranoia, and deception the military dictatorship unleashed on the Argentine people, a nightmare that would claim over 30,000 civilians from 1976 to 1983 and whose leaders were recently issued warrants by a Spanish court for the crime of genocide. Feitlowitz explores the perversion of language under state terrorism, both as it's used to conceal and confuse ("The Parliament must be disbanded to rejuvenate democracy") and to domesticate torture and murder. Thus, citizens kidnapped and held in secret concentration camps were "disappeared"; torture was referred to as "intensive therapy"; prisoners thrown alive from airplanes over the ocean were called "fish food." Based on six years of research and moving interviews with peasants, intellectuals, activists, and bystanders, A Lexicon of Terror examines the full impact of this catastrophic period from its inception to the present, in which former torturers, having been pardoned and released from prison, live side by side with those they tortured. Passionately written and impossible to put down, Feitlowitz shows us both the horror of the war and the heroism of those who resisted and survived--their courage, their endurance, their eloquent refusal to be dehumanized in the face of torments even Dante could not have imagined.

Download or read book The Handbook of Latin American and Caribbean Intelligence Cultures written by Florina Cristiana Matei and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2022-06-27 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook of Latin American and Caribbean Intelligence Cultures explores the contemporary efforts of Latin American and Caribbean nations to develop an intelligence culture. Specifically, it analyzes these countries’ efforts to democratize their intelligence agencies (i.e. to develop intelligence services that are both transparent and effective) to convert the former military regimes’ repressive security apparatuses into democratic intelligence communities—a rather paradoxical task, considering that democracy calls for political neutrality, transparency, and accountability, while effective intelligence services must operate in secrecy. Indeed, even the most successful democracies face this conundrum of democracy and intelligence; Latin America and the Caribbean region is not alone in facing this challenge. The legacy of the repressive military regimes or brutal civil wars—which have inspired in the public a general disdain toward intelligence services due to the grave human rights abuses—coupled with politicians’ persistent lack of interest or expertise in intelligence matters complicate the region’s quest for a proper balance between the competing demands of democracy and intelligence. This volume details the attempts of the region’s countries to overcome these obstacles and pursue democratic intelligence institution building—transforming the legal basis for intelligence; establishing democratic control and oversight mechanisms; and fostering intelligence openness, transparency, and outreach.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Political Ideologies written by Michael Freeden and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-08-15 with total page 751 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive volume to offer a state of the art investigation both of the nature of political ideologies and of their main manifestations. The diversity of ideology studies is represented by a mixture of the range of theories that illuminate the field, combined with an appreciation of the changing complexity of concrete ideologies and the emergence of new ones. Ideologies, however, are always with us. The Handbook is divided into three sections: The first is divided into three sections: The first reflects some of the latest thinking about the development of ideology on an historical dimension, from the standpoints of conceptual history, Marx studies, social science theory and history, and leading schools of continental philosophy. The second includes some of the most recent interpretations and theories of ideology, all of which are sympathetic in their own ways to its exploration and close investigation, even when judiciously critical of its social impact. This section contains many of the more salient contemporary accounts of ideology. The third focuses on the leading ideological families and traditions, as well as on some of their cultural and geographical manifestations, incorporating both historical and contemporary perspectives. Each chapter is written by an expert in their field, bringing the latest approaches and understandings to their task. The Handbook will position the study of ideologies in the mainstream of political theory and political analysis and will attest to its indispensability both to courses on political theory and to scholars who wish to take their understanding of ideologies in new directions.

Download or read book Conflict and Compliance written by Sonia Cardenas and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-03-18 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International human rights pressure has been applied to numerous states with varying results. In Conflict and Compliance, Sonia Cardenas examines responses to such pressure and challenges conventional views of the reasons states do—or do not—comply with international law. Data from disparate bodies of research suggest that more pressure to comply with human rights standards is not necessarily more effective and that international policies are more efficient when they target the root causes of state oppression. Cardenas surveys a broad array of evidence to support these conclusions, including Latin American cases that incorporate recent important declassified materials, a statistical analysis of all the countries in the world, and a set of secondary cases from Eastern Europe, South Africa, China, and Cuba. The views of human rights skeptics and optimists are surveyed to illustrate how state rhetoric and behavior can be interpreted differently depending on one's perspective. Theoretically and methodologically sophisticated, Conflict and Compliance paints a new picture of the complex dynamics at work when states face competing pressures to comply with and violate international human rights norms.

Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Latin American Security written by David R. Mares and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-07-16 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new Handbook is a comprehensive collection of cutting-edge essays on all aspects of Latin American Security by a mix of established and emerging scholars. The Routledge Handbook of Latin American Security identifies the key contemporary topics of research and debate, taking into account that the study of Latin America’s comparative and international politics has undergone dramatic changes since the end of the Cold War, the return of democracy and the re-legitimization and re-armament of the military against the background of low-level uses of force short of war. Latin America’s security issues have become an important topic in international relations and Latin American studies. This Handbook sets a rigorous agenda for future research and is organised into five key parts: • The Evolution of Security in Latin America • Theoretical Approaches to Security in Latin America • Different 'Securities' • Contemporary Regional Security Challenges • Latin America and Contemporary International Security Challenges With a focus on contemporary challenges and the failures of regional institutions to eliminate the threat of the use of force among Latin Americans, this Handbook will be of great interest to students of Latin American politics, security studies, war and conflict studies and International Relations in general.

Download or read book The Chilean Political Process written by Manuel Antonio Garreton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book focuses on Chilean politics, the processes that have shaped them, and their relation to Chilean society, analyzing the Chilean military regime from 1973 until 1987 and addressing the authoritarian capitalist nature of the military regimes in the Southern Cone during the 1960s and 1970s.

Download or read book The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere written by William Michael Schmidli and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2013-07-03 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the first quarter-century of the Cold War, upholding human rights was rarely a priority in U.S. policy toward Latin America. Seeking to protect U.S. national security, American policymakers quietly cultivated relations with politically ambitious Latin American militaries—a strategy clearly evident in the Ford administration's tacit support of state-sanctioned terror in Argentina following the 1976 military coup d’état. By the mid-1970s, however, the blossoming human rights movement in the United States posed a serious threat to the maintenance of close U.S. ties to anticommunist, right-wing military regimes.The competition between cold warriors and human rights advocates culminated in a fierce struggle to define U.S. policy during the Jimmy Carter presidency. In The Fate of Freedom Elsewhere, William Michael Schmidli argues that Argentina emerged as the defining test case of Carter’s promise to bring human rights to the center of his administration’s foreign policy. Entering the Oval Office at the height of the kidnapping, torture, and murder of tens of thousands of Argentines by the military government, Carter set out to dramatically shift U.S. policy from subtle support to public condemnation of human rights violation. But could the administration elicit human rights improvements in the face of a zealous military dictatorship, rising Cold War tension, and domestic political opposition? By grappling with the disparate actors engaged in the struggle over human rights, including civil rights activists, second-wave feminists, chicano/a activists, religious progressives, members of the New Right, conservative cold warriors, and business leaders, Schmidli utilizes unique interviews with U.S. and Argentine actors as well as newly declassified archives to offer a telling analysis of the rise, efficacy, and limits of human rights in shaping U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War.

Download or read book Handbook of South American Governance written by Pia Riggirozzi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-14 with total page 729 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Governance in South America is signified by strategies pursued by state and non-state actors directed to enhancing (some aspect of) their capabilities and powers of agency. It is about the spaces and the practices available, demanded or created to ‘make politics happen’. This framework lends explanatory power to understand how governance has been defined and practiced in South America. Pía Riggirozzi and Christopher Wylde bring together leading experts to explore what demands and dilemmas have shaped understanding and practice of governance in South America in and across the region. The Handbook suggests that governance dilemmas of inequitable and unfulfilled political economic governance in South America have been constant historical features, yet addressed and negotiated in different ways. Building from an introduction to key issues defining governance in South America, this Handbook proceeds to examine institutions, actors and practices in governance focusing on three core processes: evolution of socio-economic and political justice claims as central to the demands of governance; governance frameworks foregrounding particular issues and often privileging particular forms of political practice; and iterative and cumulative processes leading to new demands of governance addressing recognition and identity politics. This Handbook will be a key reference for those concerned with the study of South America, South American political economy, regional governance, and the politics of development.

Download or read book In the Shadow of the Generals written by Martin Mullins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-11-30 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Providing an in-depth study of the construction of foreign policy in developing countries, Martin Mullins takes an original line of both a post-positivist methodology and an acceptance of the importance of the realism in foreign policy formation in the Southern Cone countries from the early 1980s to the present day. This carefully constructed work highlights the case of Chilean foreign policy in the 1990s in order to examine the adoption of realism in its policy formation, in contrast to the strong historical narratives of Argentina and Brazil. The volume focuses on the nuances of foreign policy making through a comprehensive study of political culture that underlines the links between domestic and foreign policy sets in the region.

Download or read book Civil Military Relations in Post Conflict Societies written by Orlando J. Pérez and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras are four Spanish speaking countries in Central America that possess uniformed military institutions. These four countries represent different approaches to reforms of civil-military relations, and embody varying degrees of success in both institutional democratization and the managing of security forces. In this book, Orlando J. Pérez expertly examines the competing theories of civil-military relations in Central America to advance our understanding of the origins, consequences and persistence of militarism in Latin America. Divided into four parts, Pérez begins by proposing a theoretical framework for analyzing civil-military relations, including an analysis of how U.S. foreign and military policy affects the establishment of stable civilian supremacy over the armed forces. Part Two examines the institutional and legal structures under which civil-military relations are carried out revealing in Part Three the reorientation of the missions and roles performed by the armed forces in each country. The concluding part analyzes the role beliefs of members of the military and public opinion about the armed forces in relation to other institutions. Combining both qualitative and quantitative data, Pérez bridges the gap between structural and cultural analyses for a more comprehensive understanding of the links between micro and macro level factors that influence civil-military relations and democratic governance.

Download or read book Confronting Past Human Rights Violations written by Chandra Lekha Sriram and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2004-08-12 with total page 403 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines what makes accountability for previous abuses more or less possible for transitional regimes to achieve. It closely examines the other vital goals of such regimes against which accountability is often balanced. The options available are not simply prosecution or pardon, as the most heated polemics of the debate over transitional justice suggest, but a range of options, from complete amnesty through truth commissions and lustration or purification to prosecutions. The question, then, is not whether accountability can be achieved, but what degree of accountability can be achieved by a given country.

Download or read book Repertoires of Terrorism written by Andreas E. Feldmann and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2024-06-25 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do armed groups employ terrorism in markedly different ways during civil wars? Drawing on more than a decade of fieldwork, Andreas E. Feldmann examines the disparate behavior of actors including guerrilla groups, state security forces, and paramilitaries during Colombia’s long and bloody civil war. Analyzing the varieties of violence in this conflict, he develops a new theory of the dynamics of terrorism in civil wars. Feldmann argues that armed groups’ distinct uses—repertoires—of terrorism arise from their particular organizational identities, the central and enduring attributes that distinguish one faction from other warring parties. He investigates a range of groups that took part in the Colombian conflict over the course of its evolution from ideological to criminal warfare, demonstrating that organizational identity plays a critical role in producing and rationalizing violence. Armed parties employ their unique repertoires as a means of communication to assert their relevance and territorial presence and to differentiate themselves from enemies and rivals. Repertoires of Terrorism is based on an extensive data set covering thousands of incidents, as well as interviews, archival research, and testimony. It sheds new light on both armed groups’ use of violence in Colombia’s civil war and the factors that shape terrorist activity in other conflicts.