University of Chicago Press
The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War
Key Metrics
- Greg Grandin
- University of Chicago Press
- Paperback
- 9780226306902
- 9.01 X 6.09 X 0.75 inches
- 1.05 pounds
- History > Latin America - Central America
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
After decades of bloodshed and political terror, many lament the rise of the left in Latin America. Since the triumph of Castro, politicians and historians have accused the left there of rejecting democracy, embracing communist totalitarianism, and prompting both revolutionary violence and a right-wing backlash. Through unprecedented archival research and gripping personal testimonies, Greg Grandin powerfully challenges these views in this classic work. In doing so, he uncovers the hidden history of the Latin American Cold War: of hidebound reactionaries holding on to their power and privilege; of Mayan Marxists blending indigenous notions of justice with universal ideas of equality; and of a United States supporting new styles of state terror throughout the region.
With Guatemala as his case study, Grandin argues that the Latin American Cold War was a struggle not between political liberalism and Soviet communism but two visions of democracy--one vibrant and egalitarian, the other tepid and unequal--and that the conflict's main effect was to eliminate homegrown notions of social democracy. Updated with a new preface by the author and an interview with Naomi Klein, The Last Colonial Massacre is history of the highest order--a work that will dramatically recast our understanding of Latin American politics and the role of the United States in the Cold War and beyond.
This work admirably explains the process in which hopes of democracy were brutally repressed in Guatemala and its people experienced a civil war lasting for half a century.--International History Review
A richly detailed, humane, and passionately subversive portrait of inspiring reformers tragically redefined by the Cold War as enemies of the state.--Journal of American History
Author Bio
Greg Grandin, who received his doctorate at Yale University under the direction of Emilia Viotti da Costa and Gilbert Joseph, previously taught at New York University for nineteen years.
He is the author of seven books, including The Blood of Guatemala, which won the Latin American Studies Association’s Bryce Wood Award for best book published on Latin America in any discipline, The Last Colonial Massacre, Empire’s Workshop, Fordlandia, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and the National Book Critics Award, The Empire of Necessity, which won the Bancroft and Beveridge awards in American history, Kissinger’s Shadow, and The End of the Myth, which won the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction and was a finalist in the history category.
Grandin is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Society of American Historians. He has co-edited, with Gil Joseph, A Century of Revolution, and, with Deborah Levenson and Elizabeth Oglesby, The Guatemala Reader. Grandin has published widely, in The Nation, where he is a member of the editorial board,the London Review of Books, the New Republic, NACLA’s Report on the Americas, and the New York Times, among other venues.
He is a regular guest on Democracy Now! A revised edition of Empire’s Workshop is forthcoming.
Source: Yale University
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