Session Abstract

This panel approaches U.S.-Latin American relations during the 20^th century as simultaneously imperial and transnational histories. While older approaches tended to emphasize U.S. power and reduce the agency of Latin Americans, recent works have shifted towards transnational approaches and topics that tend to underplay or ignore the role of U.S. power. In response, our panel examines the relationship, tensions, and intersection between imperialism and the development of common politics, economics, and cultures.

Because the multitude of U.S.-Latin American histories cannot be generalized, this panel offers different ways to make sense of the alternative histories of U.S.-Latin American relations. Through political, economic, and cultural contact zones, the presenters explore the changing meanings of sovereignty; the various forms of U.S. imperialism from geo-strategy to cultural diplomacy; the varying local responses by Latin Americas, including resistance, collaboration, and adaptation; and the rise of transnational discourses and ideas, including progressive social politics, development, and human rights regimes.

In addition, because U.S.-Latin American relations are historical, our panel addresses different periods of inter-American politics. The panel begins with the 1920s in Mexico, when modernizing revolutions challenged the pre-1919 foundations of U.S. foreign policy. The 1930s are also explored, when the U.S. became a Good Neighbor, as well as the subsequent rise of the U.S. as a political, economic, and cultural preponderant power after World War II. Inter-American politics during the Cold War and the emergence of alternative discourses of modernization are also addressed. The panel closes with politics after the Cold War.

The presenters nonetheless address these questions and periods in different ways and with varying arguments. Lisa Ubelaker presents a study of local political cultures in Brazil and Argentina through U.S. advertising. From the Good Neighbor Policy to the post-War, local cultures, economics, and politics converged in the coordination and dissemination of U.S. advertising to Latin America. In turn, these coordinated campaigns became a part of local cultural politics. The following two papers explore how local officials conceived the role of the U.S. in their developmental projects. In the case of Brazil, Rafael Ioris shows how the historic alliance between the U.S. and Brazil came under stress due to shifting commitments by the U.S. during the Cold War. In response, Brazilian officials developed alternative views of Brazilian development. As counterpoint, José Luis Ramos examines Mexican agronomy to explore how U.S. and Mexican social reformers collaborated in a shared transatlantic progressivism amidst U.S.-Mexican political tensions caused by the Mexican Revolution, challenging interpretations of U.S.-Mexican history. Finally, Ann Schneider considers how the recent international turn toward accountability for human rights violations has shaped aspects of U.S. immigration law and invoked competing narratives of U.S.-Latin American histories. Taken together, this panel argues for a U.S.-Latin American history that at once accounts for the transnational without avoiding the imperial, and yet examines the imperial without ignoring the common histories of the Americas.