In the twenty years since the publication of Odd Arne Westad’s Global Cold War, historical research on the Cold War has increasingly taken stock of the experiences of actors across all three continents of the Global South. Drawing on archival sources from Latin America, Africa, and Asia, recent work in Global South history incorporates peripheral agency without ignoring hierarchical structures of superpower conflict. At its best, emerging research on the Global Cold War reveals previously forgotten South-South dynamics, both within each continent and across postwar Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Unfortunately, despite recent interest in contemporary Global South history, scholarship often remains divided by region, with scarce engagements of comparative historical research.

This panel employs comparative national and regional history to bring unknown stories of the Global Cold War into dialogue with one another across the South Atlantic divide. The papers address themes that cut across Cold War bipolarism, analyzing transborder multilateral and bilateral negotiation that illuminate complex power dynamics between strong and weak global actors within both camps of the Global Cold War. Specifically, the papers explain the importance of doing research on liminal zones, where lines blur between states and transnational state actors. Specific protagonists include Global North publishers, Caribbean drug traffickers, African health officials, and mercenaries of every race and creed.

Renata Keller’s work describes political valences behind the transformation of a Cuban exile, who went from sympathizing with the revolution in the early 1960s to becoming a CIA-linked narcotics kingpin in Mexico. Thomas Field analyzes shifting Cold War loyalties as Bolivian officials navigated a fierce scramble by American and European publishers for the right to publish the sought-after Che Guevara diary in 1968. Alessandro Iandolo explains ideological and practical disputes that arose when Guinean health officials encountered powerful aid benefactors from the Soviet Union. Finally, Alan McPherson analyzes the underbelly of Iran-Contra’s Costa Rican front, which attracted transnational mercenaries from across the Americas.

Commenting on the papers is Julia Irwin, an expert in contemporary transnational history who brings to the panel experience describing overlapping state and nonstate priorities as international development organizations interacted with actors from all three continents of the Global South. Together, panel participants reveal fresh avenues of comparative Global South history, which promise to produce exciting new knowledge on the diversity of experiences across the complex hierarchies of the contemporary world.