Latin America in the first half of the 20th century was feeling the impact of outside events not only on its economy but also politically, by the spread of imported ideologies and through the examples both of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the United States and of emerging totalitarianisms of the left and right in Europe. The European anarcho-syndicalism that had provided a model for many of Latin America’s earliest radical cadres declined sharply in importance after World War I. Henceforth, the left consisted of socialist parties of generally moderate bent, inspired in large part by European social democracy; breakaway socialists who admired the Russian Revolution of 1917 and proceeded to found communist parties in their own countries; and, not least, such strictly Latin American expressions as the Mexican agrarian reform movement. Socialist parties were strongest in the Southern Cone, the Chilean briefly gaining a share of national power as a member of a Popular Front government elected in 1938. The communists were also strong in Chile but first entered a national administration in Cuba, after Batista had been elected president with their support in 1940. Once the Soviet Union entered World War II in 1941, communist parties in several other countries, including Brazil and Nicaragua, formed alliances with local strongmen, but they nowhere became a true mass party, and an exaggerated fear of Bolshevism on the part of Latin American elites meant that the communist parties were subject to widespread repression except during the war itself.

Some other political organizations were frankly influenced by European fascism, but in most countries their membership was numerically insignificant. The chief exception was Brazil, whose green-shirted Integralistas (Ação Integralista Brasileira) emerged as the largest single national party in the mid-1930s until involvement in a foolhardy coup attempt led to their suppression. Hence the influence of fascism was more often exercised through homegrown authoritarians who were attracted to certain aspects of it but carefully avoided any open embrace. Vargas was one such leader, who, after suppressing the Integralistas, put the finishing touches on his own dictatorial regime, officially dubbed Estado Novo or “New State.”

Good Neighbor Policy and World War II

One reason Latin American nations avoided an overly close association with fascism was a desire not to offend the dominant power of the hemisphere, the United States. During the 1920s it had already begun a retreat from the policy of active intervention in Latin America. This policy, adopted in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War and the United States’ open support of Panamanian secession from Colombia, had featured the creation of formal and informal protectorates over many Caribbean and Central American states. Franklin D. Roosevelt completed the shift. His domestic policies were much admired in Latin America and in some cases copied by moderate reformists, but his Good Neighbor Policy won the warm approval of almost all Latin American rulers, since it entailed formal renunciation of the right of intervention in favour of peaceful cajoling and assorted economic, military, and technical aid programs. These programs were launched on the eve of World War II to help hemispheric neighbours prepare for the emergency. They were expanded after the start of the conflict, whose economic impact on Latin America was generally comparable to that of World War I but more intense because of the earlier and deeper involvement of the United States. The war emergency naturally gave still further impetus to the development of national industries to replace scarce imports.

The Good Neighbor approach proved far more effective in promoting U.S. hegemony than the occasional dispatch of gunboats. In 1938 Roosevelt calmly accepted Mexico’s expropriation of the petroleum installations of U.S. and British companies, and he was rewarded several times over when Mexico loyally cooperated with the United States in World War II, even sending an air force squadron to serve in the Philippines. The one other Latin American country to send forces overseas was Brazil, which put an expeditionary force in Italy. In general Latin America’s wartime collaboration left little to be desired. In the end all countries not only broke relations with the Axis powers but declared war, though Argentina took the latter step only at the last possible moment, in March 1945.