This biography of Beatriz Allende (1942-1977) - revolutionary doctor and daughter of Chile's socialist president, Salvador Allende - portrays what it means to live, love, and fight for change. Inspired by the Cuban Revolution, Beatriz and her generation drove political campaigns, university reform, public health programs, internationalist guerrilla insurgencies, and government strategies. Centering Beatriz's life within the global contours of the Cold War era, Tanya Harmer exposes the promises and paradoxes of the revolutionary wave that swept through Latin America in the long 1960s. Drawing on exclusive access to Beatriz's private papers, as well as firsthand interviews, Harmer connects the private and political as she reveals the human dimensions of radical upheaval. Exiled to Havana after Chile's right-wing military coup, Beatriz worked tirelessly to oppose dictatorship back home. Harmer's interviews make vivid the terrible consequences of the coup for the Chilean Left, the realities of everyday life in Havana, and the unceasing demands of solidarity work that drained Beatriz and her generation of the dreams they once had. Her story demolishes the myth that women were simply extras in the story of Latin America's Left and brings home the immense cost of a revolutionary moment's demise.

Fidel Castro described Salvador Allende's democratic election as president of Chile in 1970 as the most important revolutionary triumph in Latin America after the Cuban revolution. Yet celebrations were short lived. In Washington, the Nixon administration vowed to destroy Allende's left-wing government while Chilean opposition forces mobilised against him. The result was a battle for Chile that ended in 1973 with a right-wing military coup and a brutal dictatorship lasting nearly twenty years. Tanya Harmer argues that this battle was part of a dynamic inter-American Cold War struggle to determine Latin America's future, shaped more by the contest between Cuba, Chile, the United States, and Brazil than by a conflict between Moscow and Washington. Drawing on firsthand interviews and recently declassified documents from archives in North America, Europe, and South America--including Chile's Foreign Ministry Archive--Harmer provides the most comprehensive account to date of Cuban involvement in Latin America in the early 1970s, Chilean foreign relations during Allende's presidency, Brazil's support for counterrevolution in the Southern Cone, and the Nixon administration's Latin American policies. The Cold War in the Americas, Harmer reveals, is best understood as a multidimensional struggle, involving peoples and ideas from across the hemisphere.

This volume showcases new research on the global reach of Latin American revolutionary movements during the height of the Cold War, mapping out the region's little-known connections with Africa, Asia, and Europe. Toward a Global History of Latin America's Revolutionary Left offers insights into the effect of international collaboration on the identities, ideologies, strategies, and survival of organizers and groups.Featuring contributions from historians working in six different countries, this collection includes chapters on Cuba's hosting of the 1966 Tricontinental Conference that brought revolutionary movements together; Czechoslovakian intelligence's logistical support for revolutionaries; the Brazilian Left's search for recognition in Cuba and China; the central role played by European publishing houses in disseminating news from Latin America; Italian support for Brazilian guerrillainsurgents; Spanish ties with Nicaragua's revolution; and the solidarity of European networks with Guatemala's Guerrilla Army of the Poor. Through its expansive geographical perspectives, this volume positions Latin America as a significant force on the international stage of the 1960s and 70s. It sets a new research agenda that will guide future study on leftist movements, transnational networks, and Cold War history in the region.