In recent years, scholars of Latin America’s Cold War had taken great strides in providing new ways of understanding how the interconnections between state and non-state actors shaped the conduct of the Cold War across the region. As part of the ideological, discursive, and practical arsenal of these actors, different articulations of internationalism seem central to the creation and sustainment of these and other cross-border relationships, as well as the material vehicles that facilitated them, the communities they fostered, and the consequences of such collaborations. This panel explores the role of that internationalisms played in Latin America’s Cold War, as a testament to the region’s “convergent conflicts” and the importance that governments, activists, revolutionary and counterrevolutionary organizations placed on garnering support for their causes beyond national borders. The panel aims to provide a broader picture of how mechanisms of political collaboration across the ideological spectrum were predicated on ideological affinities, pragmatic alliances, ideas of solidarity, interpersonal relationships, and even ties of kinship. The panel also addresses the limits of the internationalisms examined by each of the presenters and both the convergence and tensions that these ideas, ties, and projects held with respect to nationalisms, national aims, and national identities. Altogether the panelists’ contributions address interconnections between different regions of the Americas, including the Southern Cone, Mexico, Central America, and the United States, aiming to “decenter” the latter's oversized role in the Cold War without dismissing its importance as a sponsor, ally, or enemy of the internationalist bonds built by Latin Americans.

The various cases tackled in this panel shed light on national, international, and transnational dimensions of Latin American internationalisms from the early 1960s to the 1980s: the anticommunist bonds between the Southern Cone and Central American far Right (Avery); the South-South diplomacy conducted by Latin American multilateral organizations (Jarquín); the anticommunist solidarity cultivated by Cuban exiles in Mexico (Herrán-Ávila); and the internationalist outreach to fellow leftists by the FMLN in El Salvador (Oñate-Madrazo). Altogether, these presentations showcase novel research projects that connected state and non-state, "treetops" and "grassroots" actors and how they understood and fought their Cold Wars in ways that show the power of Latin American internationalisms to shape the history of the period.