AHC: A long-lasting Communist dictatorship in South America

Your best bets are:
Chile 1973 - Head of the Army René Schneider is not murdered by right-wing extremists, leading to respect for the Constitution on part of the Armed Forces during the first years of Allende's government. This allows Allende to win the Presidency and endure his first years without military coups, eventually the situation polarizes and Allende begins creating worker militias to guarantee his government after some lower-ranking generals make sabre-rattling statements against his government. Allende consolidates power in a Constitutional referendum that allows him to run for reelection, and eventually consolidate his power. POD may lead to a different type of military coups or civil war.

Peru - Late 1980s early 1990s - Have Shining Path's guerrilla war against the Peruvian government be more successful, by 1990 Shining Path controlled a small area in the central region of Peru but exerted wide influence over half the country, with terrorist attacks, sabotage, "trials" and executions of "enemies of the revolution", and so on. If you make the Fujimori economic reforms less successful in fighting hyperinflation, and make Shining Path more tolerant of traditional Peruvian indigenous culture, the guerrilla movement could have enjoyed more support, and less hostility from ordinary Peruvians who organized Autodefensas (Paramilitary groups) to fight them back in the countryside. As a plus side, Peru was already purchasing most of its military equipment from the Soviet Union, so a full diplomatic alignment with the Soviets wouldn't be hard to imagine if the Cold War was still going on.

Colombia - 1998 - 2002 - This moment was the peak of Colombia's FARC, with direct control of roughly half of Colombia's territory. The Pastrana government's attempt to negotiate a peace settlement with the FARC made him look weak and ineffective and led to more territorial gains for the guerrillas. If you butterfly away the Uribe government or have the US withdraw military aid over some disagreement or over human rights abuses, it is not hard to imagine FARC gaining control over the territory and completing a military takeover, particularly if Venezuela gives them support. The US is certain to get involved at one point though, they are not going to tolerate an openly drug-dealing communist dictatorship right on their footstep. Again, as in the Peru scenario above, you'd probably need the Soviet Union to still exist in some capacity to provide a deterrent for US intervention.

w1-colombia-z-20131223.jpg
 
Pushing Bolivia's Nationalist Revolutionary Movement closer to the Soviet Union after 1952 might do the trick (if the United States doesn't decide to topple Paz Estensorro when he starts getting cozy with the Reds).
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
What were Paz Estensorro's ideological influences and beliefs?

what was the range of ideology among Bolivian MNR factions in 1952?

if b olivia turned pro Soviet left, the US would certainly try to undermine it. However Bolivia is a more distant, larger and more mountainous country than Guatemala. the attitudes of Peron's Argentina, Vargas' Brazil and Paraguay, Chile and Peru would matter as much as Truman's or Eisenhower's in shaping the fate of a "Red Bolivia"
 
The situation is simply that as long as there is a non-communist, or for that matter just right-wing faction, the US, at least after they let Cuba slipped away, will always back that faction with whatever it takes. In most instances that is the government, so you don't get an insurgency winning. If the government looks to left wing, the US will back a military coup, or if absolutely necessary a right-wing insurgency.

Cuba is a complicated situation,but basically they got nukes from Russia on the island and the US had to agree to lay off Cuba to get them off. Something like Cuba is probably a one time deal. Every other instances, its coup or insurgency. Venezuela is post cold war and the Americans prefer to play in the Middle Eastern sandbox.

There are too elements to getting away with this. The main one is that the country can't be that important. The USSR got a lot of dictators in Africa to proclaim their devotion to socialism in return for various forms of military and technical assistance, but at end of the day having a bunch of "democratic republics" in Africa and similar hellholes didn't do the USSR much good and everyone knew it. That means Ecuador and, even better, Paraguay, are the best candidates. Remember the US lost it over Chile. Brazil is right out, probably also Argentina, and Peru is iffy. OTOH Suriname was allied with the Soviet bloc for awhile and maybe qualifies, it was not important enough to really matter.

Second, it has to be a military dictator who has already seized power, not necessarily in the name of socialist principles, who then decides for whatever reason that allying with the Soviet Union is better than allying with the US. He may decide the local resource barons are not co-operating enough and have to be slapped down and have their property confiscated. The local opposition has already been eliminated, so the most the US can do is fund a weak contra style insurgency. They might try to talk a neighboring country into invading, but will run into a problem that South American militaries are built more to control the local population than to fight wars with other countries (Brazil and Argentina being partial exceptions). Peru did have a military junta that pursued a fairly left wing agenda for awhile.

I really thing Paraguay is the best bet for something like this.
 
That said, Brazil if Vargas had lived longer, and had not established democratic institutions, and instead constructed a "new state" and handed power to a like minded successor, is an interesting possibility. Brazil might just be strong enough to withstand the American/ CIA counterattack. But they would have to find a way to get rid of their locally grown oligarchs first.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Something like Cuba is probably a one time deal.

Well, the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua also "slipped through" US vigilance, at least for its initial 11 or 12 year lifespan.

, Brazil if Vargas had lived longer,

Interesting idea and potential evolution of Brazil, although the method of a final turn to communism would have to be creative. Brazil strikes me as large and populous enough that if its own anti-communists are too weak in the favor of pro-communists (not that we got close to this in OTL) US military intervention is not going to be enough to prop up anticommunists in the long run.

So far the discussion has focused on Communist takeovers in the classic Cold War period and post-cold War period. But what about the prior period, from 1917-1945?

In particular, Brazil comes up again for this era:

"Vargas's attention [in the 30s] focused on the rise of two nationally based and highly ideological European-style movements, both committed to European-style mass-mobilization: one pro-Communist and the other pro-fascist—one linked to Moscow and the other to Rome and Berlin. The mass-movement intimidating Vargas was the Aliança Nacional Libertadora (ANL), a leftwing popular front launched in 1935 of socialists, communists, and other progressives led by the Communist Party and Luís Carlos Prestes, known as "cavalier of hope" of the tenente rebellion (though not a Marxist at the time). A revolutionary forerunner of Che Guevara, Prestes led the futile "Long March"
through the rural Brazilian interior following his participation in the failed 1922 tenenterebellion against the coffee oligarchs."


....H.B. Nuckwahler mentioned earlier 1950s Bolivia, which intrigued me.

I recall one classmate of mine discussing comparisons being made between Victor Paz Estensorro's Bolivia and Jacobo Arbenz's Guatemala, with the subtext of "why was the former able to get away with his revolution and nationalization [of the tin-mining industry] and why was the latter unable to get away with his revolution and nationalization [of United Fruit Company lands]?" Some of the reasons elaborated either in the class readings or by the professor seemed to boil down to Estensorro having better social skills, with him able to converse more easily with American representatives while playing golf with them, while Arbenz had only non-existent to awkward personal interactions with American representatives.

I really think Paraguay is the best bet for something like this.

Probably so, because of its small size, distance and isolation. Brazil or Argentina could probably crush it, but only if willing to make the effort, which could well seem excessive.

Great observations by Salem_Saberhagen early in the thread. In fact it's kind of interesting how mellow the US was about the rise of left-populist regimes across most of the continent in this century, compared with Cold War standards at least. Thinking of at one time or another, Chavez, Humala, Evo Morales, Lula, Mrs. Kirchner, somebody in Ecuador I think. It seemed like in the 2000s, only Colombia and Chile (and Paraguay? and Uruguay?) were solidly anti-leftist.

Expanding the focus northward to include Central America and the Caribbean, it is interesting how little Chavism caught on there. Sure, Ortega played left-populism when back in power, but when FMLN politicians won office in El Salvador they didn't really go anti-American. This is a bit of a flip-flop from the Cold War when the two Communist regimes, Cuba and Nicaragua, that "slipped through" US containment were geographically and politically more intimate with the US than South American countries.
 
Your best bets are:
Chile 1973 - Head of the Army René Schneider is not murdered by right-wing extremists, leading to respect for the Constitution on part of the Armed Forces during the first years of Allende's government. This allows Allende to win the Presidency and endure his first years without military coups, eventually the situation polarizes and Allende begins creating worker militias to guarantee his government after some lower-ranking generals make sabre-rattling statements against his government. Allende consolidates power in a Constitutional referendum that allows him to run for reelection, and eventually consolidate his power. POD may lead to a different type of military coups or civil war.

Peru - Late 1980s early 1990s - Have Shining Path's guerrilla war against the Peruvian government be more successful, by 1990 Shining Path controlled a small area in the central region of Peru but exerted wide influence over half the country, with terrorist attacks, sabotage, "trials" and executions of "enemies of the revolution", and so on. If you make the Fujimori economic reforms less successful in fighting hyperinflation, and make Shining Path more tolerant of traditional Peruvian indigenous culture, the guerrilla movement could have enjoyed more support, and less hostility from ordinary Peruvians who organized Autodefensas (Paramilitary groups) to fight them back in the countryside. As a plus side, Peru was already purchasing most of its military equipment from the Soviet Union, so a full diplomatic alignment with the Soviets wouldn't be hard to imagine if the Cold War was still going on.

Colombia - 1998 - 2002 - This moment was the peak of Colombia's FARC, with direct control of roughly half of Colombia's territory. The Pastrana government's attempt to negotiate a peace settlement with the FARC made him look weak and ineffective and led to more territorial gains for the guerrillas. If you butterfly away the Uribe government or have the US withdraw military aid over some disagreement or over human rights abuses, it is not hard to imagine FARC gaining control over the territory and completing a military takeover, particularly if Venezuela gives them support. The US is certain to get involved at one point though, they are not going to tolerate an openly drug-dealing communist dictatorship right on their footstep. Again, as in the Peru scenario above, you'd probably need the Soviet Union to still exist in some capacity to provide a deterrent for US intervention.

w1-colombia-z-20131223.jpg
For Peru:

If you wanna bolster Shining Patg support, then no Velasco's agrarian reform. Though personally, I'd very much rather have the MRTA take over instead of Shining Path.
 
That's also broken out as "Tupac Amaru"? right?
Yes. The Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement.

They were no good guys by any stretch. But between them and both the actual Peruvian Government and Shining Path, I don't see how they could have done worse than either of them...
 
191
Interesting how two of your three are actually post-Cold War.




Interesting how these were post-Cold War too.

So apparently not much chance between 1917 and 1973 (except in Cuba).

The 1910-20 Mexican Civil War has possibilities. The new regime had a lot of Communist type ideas- land reform and severe anti-clericalism. PRI never carried some of the more radical ideas of its revolutionary period but with some tweaking may be possible. In OTL PRI preached "state capitalism" everyone else would call it socialism. Its an enduring one party state like classical communism

Chile was definitely headed to confrontation- if the coup failed, Allende showed all the signs of entrenching a dictatorship. In the aftermath of a failed coup he could have swept away the opposition
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Chile was definitely headed to confrontation- if the coup failed, Allende showed all the signs of entrenching a dictatorship.

Interesting. A dictatorship it failed. Also a dictatorship if it never was tried [ie, the Rene Scheider stays alive and prevents military plots?]
 
That said, Brazil if Vargas had lived longer, and had not established democratic institutions, and instead constructed a "new state" and handed power to a like minded successor, is an interesting possibility. Brazil might just be strong enough to withstand the American/ CIA counterattack. But they would have to find a way to get rid of their locally grown oligarchs first.

Hmm, it would take more than that, IMO, much more. Communism was a urban phenomenon in Brazil, and Brazil only became majorly urban in 1965. You need either some sort of rural socialist/communist movement much earlier than OTL(late 50's-early 60's, IIRC), or a crushing of the oligarchies that doesn't leave a credible replacement, to allow communism to take over.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Pushing Bolivia's Nationalist Revolutionary Movement closer to the Soviet Union after 1952 might do the trick (if the United States doesn't decide to topple Paz Estensorro when he starts getting cozy with the Reds).

@H. B. Nuckwahler:
Where did you get this idea from? It sounds interesting. I know very little about Bolivia in the 1950s.
 
Last edited:
That said, Brazil if Vargas had lived longer, and had not established democratic institutions, and instead constructed a "new state" and handed power to a like minded successor, is an interesting possibility. Brazil might just be strong enough to withstand the American/ CIA counterattack. But they would have to find a way to get rid of their locally grown oligarchs first.

That's not happening with Vargas, the best way for Brazil to have a long lasting dictator is to have Vargas to refuse to take power as a dictator, be couped and replaced with Francisco Campos (that was a axis sympatizer)
 
Top