No End in Sight: The Unwinding and Afterlife of the Cold War in Latin America

Light continental breakfast with coffee and tea provided

Greg Grandin, Yale University

Moderator: Marcela Echeverri, Yale University

With the unwinding of the Cold War, counterrevolutionary violence and state repression did not simply disappear. New democracies often coexisted with entrenched security apparatuses, while paramilitaries, death squads, and authoritarian enclaves adapted to changing times. At the same time, the explosion of drug trafficking, organized crime, and private security forces reshaped everyday life, blurring the lines between state and non-state violence. How should we understand the persistence ofviolence as both a political tool and a social condition? To what extent did neoliberal reforms—through austerity, privatization, and the retreat of the welfare state—depoliticize violence by casting it as criminal or apolitical? How do we make sense of the fragmented landscape in which repression, crime, and insecurity became constant companions of democratic life? And to what extent do today’s criminalized or privatized forms of violence recycle the structures and practices of Cold War counterinsurgency?

Isabella Cosse, Universidad Nacional de San Martín

Tanya Harmer, London School of Economics

Ponciano del Pino, Universidad Diego Portales

Gladys McCormick, Syracuse University

Moderator: Alison Bruey, University of North Florida

The unwinding of the Cold War in Latin America was propelled by the rise of new social movements that redefined the terms of democratic life. Feminists, Indigenous and Black movements, unions, peasant organizations, human rights activists, environmental groups, neighborhood associations, among others, pressed beyond the narrow confines of electoral politics—this time not through arms, but in the streets—to demand recognition, rights, and new forms of participation. These movements transformed “civil society” into both a political category and a terrain of struggle, celebrated as engines of democratic deepening even as they revealed sharp limits to inclusion. How did these movements build on historical struggles for social and economic justice in Latin America, and in what ways did they depart from them? How did they expand the frontiers of democracy, and how were their agendas constrained or co-opted by neoliberal reforms and fragile institutions? To what extent did the language of rights, multiculturalism, and civil society depoliticize deeper conflicts over inequality, sovereignty, and redistribution?

Paul Joseph López Oro, Bryn Mawr College

Claudio Barrientos, Universidad Diego Portales

Meg Weeks, University of Florida

Polly Lauer, University of Montana

Moderator: Juan Arboleda, Johns Hopkins University

Alma Guillermoprieto, Journalist and author

Carlos Fernando Chamorro, Nicaraguan journalist in exile

Moderator: Julia Preston, Journalist and author

Conference participants and invited guests only.  Heirloom is located at 1157 Chapel Street in New Haven inside The Study at Yale hotel.

Please be in the Omni Hotel lobby prior to 9:00 AM for an on time departure.  A bus will take conference participants directly from the Omni Hotel to Fairfield University for the day.

The unwinding of the Cold War was seen as an opportunity to modernize the state and dismantle entrenched forms of clientelism long considered defining features of Latin American politics. At the same time, new channels for recognition and participation were urgently demanded to give voice to those excluded from earlier projects of democracy. In the decades since, the region has continued to oscillate between technocratic efforts to rationalize and depoliticize governance and populist experiments that mobilized popular discontent to reassert the centrality of the state. Yet efforts to decentralize power in the 1980s and 1990s often reinforced, rather than eliminated, clientelism at the local level, underscoring the failures to fully modernize the state. How should we understand the persistence of clientelism, especially in light of enduring tensions between local patronage networks and national projects of technocratic reform? Did technocratic management depoliticize democracy, or did it generate the very frustrations that fueled populist mobilizations? And to what extent have new populisms advanced popular inclusion, or merely reinforced authoritarian tendencies under the guise of mass participation? Are the populisms of the post–Cold War era a continuation of Latin America’s democratic-populist tradition, or a departure from it?

Adrián Lerner, Cambridge University

Alejandro Velasco, New York University

Marian Schlotterbeck, University of California, Davis

Mateo Jarquín, Chapman University

Moderator: Gilbert Joseph, Yale University

The unwinding of the Cold War in Latin America unfolded amid a profound economic crisis. Hyperinflation, spiraling debt, and the imposition of structural adjustment programs shaped political transitions as much as the fall of dictatorships. If earlier revolutionary, populist, and developmentalist projects sought to secure national autonomy, the “lost decade” of the 1980s revealed how fragile that sovereignty remained in the face of global finance, U.S. pressure, and international institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. How did the debt crisis and neoliberal reforms constrain the horizons of democratization? To what extent did efforts to modernize economies—through austerity, privatization, and deregulation—undermine popular participation and deepen inequality? And how should we understand the ongoing struggle for economic independence, from the currency crises of the 1980s to contemporary battles over extractivism, debt restructuring, and dollarization?

Mariana Díaz Chalela, Boston University

Louise Walker, Northeastern University

Aldo Marchesi, Universidad de la República

J. T. Way, Georgia State University

Moderator: Jennifer Adair, Fairfield University

Mary Nolan, New York University

Barbara Weinstein, New York University

Priya Lal, Boston College

Steve Hahn, New York University

Moderator: Jennifer Adair, Fairfield University

Dinner for conference participants and invited guests only.  Barcelona Wine Bar is located at 4180 Black Rock Turnpike in Fairfield, Connecticut.  Bus transportation will be provided.

Rebecca Herman, University of California, Berkeley

Michelle Chase, Pace University

Christy Thornton, New York University

Monica DeHart, University of Puget Sound

Moderator: Aldo Marchesi, Universidad de la República

Since the end of the Cold War, Latin America has played a crucial yet often overlooked role in the shaping of the global order. During the 1990s, U.S. dominance seemed uncontested, and the region was drawn into a unipolar world shaped by Washington’s economic and security agendas. In the decades since, however, the emergence of a multipolar order has transformed Latin America’s place in global politics. The growing presence of China has challenged U.S. hegemony, offering new trade, investment, and diplomatic partnerships, while Russia has reasserted itself as a strategic actor in the hemisphere. Regional integration projects and experiments in South–South cooperation, alongside participation in BRICS and other multipolar initiatives, have signaled efforts to expand autonomy within this shifting landscape. How has Latin America both shaped and been constrained by the making of the post–Cold War order? To what extent has the region’s renewed strategic importance—in extractive industries, migration, and great-power rivalry—exposed the fragility of that order and accelerated its unmaking, especially under Trump’s effort to impose its own Donroe doctrine? And does the language of a “new Cold War” clarify Latin America’s position in today’s world, or obscure the deeper continuities that still bind the region to its Cold War past?

Eline van Ommen, University of Leeds

Anthony Rossodivito, Coastal Carolina University

Seth Fein, Historian and Documentary Filmmaker, Seven Local Film

Felix Santiago-Martínez, Yale University

Moderator: Gilbert Joseph, Yale University

Elizabeth Jelin, CONICET/IDES

Moderator: Marcela Echeverri, Yale University