On September 11, 1990, U.S. President George H.W. Bush announced the dawn of a New World Order. He promised that this new world would be “Freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice, and more secure in the quest for peace.” Yet, Bush’s promise of tranquility came slowly, if at all, to Latin America. As U.S. and Latin American leaders worked in concert to strengthen democracy and institute market reforms following the fall of the Berlin Wall in late 1989, the aftershocks of the Cold War reverberated across the region. Though it elicited less attention than earlier in the decade, El Salvador’s civil war raged on, leaving many scarred and dead bodies strewn across the country. Meanwhile, in Panama, the coming of the new millennium brought with it the long-awaited transfer of the Panama Canal from the United States to Panama. Yet, as this panel illustrates, for all the talk in the early 1990s about the post-Cold War era representing a “unipolar moment,” with the United States as the unequivocal leader of the world, a plethora of voices put forth their own vision for Latin America in the new world order. In addition to foreign diplomats and politicians, these debates included grassroots activists, representatives from international organizations and NGOs, and ordinary citizens. Thus, the post-Cold War era in the region is best understood as one of contestation and collaboration.

What would a new world order look like in Latin America? First and foremost, after decades of conflict and foreign interference, Latin Americans sought an end to the violence. Yet, peace without justice promised only a brief respite from the bloodshed. Thus, the arduous negotiations between the government of El Salvador, the leftwing revolutionaries of the Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación Nacional, and myriad other actors from across the globe, sought a more expansive blueprint for peace. Moreover, as Eline van Ommen shows in her paper, Salvadoran refugees turned to prefigurative politics by returning home to rebuild their communities in a more democratic fashion. Yet, continued U.S. assistance to the Salvadoran government served as a stumbling block to reconciliation. Brian Mueller contends that the murder of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and her daughter at El Salvador’s Central American University spurred U.S. politicians and grassroots activists to not only seek out the perpetrators of these crimes and bring them to justice but use the investigation as a pretense for ending U.S. support for the Salvadoran government. While El Salvador became a Cold War battleground, U.S. President Jimmy Carter affixed his signature to the Panama Canal Treaty in 1977. In doing so, he hoped to accelerate the transition to a post-Cold War era, much to the chagrin of critics then and later who claimed that the agreement signified American retreat and weakness. Aileen Teague looks at how this debate played out in the final decade of U.S. control of the canal, showcasing the strange bedfellows who came together to obstruct the transfer of the canal.