ABSTRACT

One of the greatest difficulties facing any scholar of Latin American war and society—or perhaps broader Latin American history—is how to understand the centuries-long drift of tendencies toward military dictatorships or militarized state control, which permeates Latin America in many periods and across regions. Indeed, military control has been at the core of Latin American state building, internal relations, and often identities, and this despite a relative lack of involvement in major foreign wars. While struggling with Latin America’s repetitive economic and political crises, scholars have sought the origin(s) of militarization in any given society, or across Latin America more broadly. Have the many iterations come from the same historical source, a continuation of colonial institutions and ideologies? Or have they been more a product of coincidences of geography and various external influences and impositions, such as foreign loans and interventions, over time?