Latin American Nations Most Susceptible to Communism?

I admit I’m a bit out of my depth when it comes to Latin American history and politics, so please bear with me.

Working on a continued Cold War TL in which one element is that a number of Latin American nations are absorbed into the communist camp (in addition to OTL examples like Cuba and Nicaragua, I have Peru, Argentina, El Salvador, Venezuela, and Mexico going red, though I know at least two of those are somewhat unlikely and rely on extraordinary circumstances).

With a PoD of 1945, how many Latin American nations could concievably have been flipped red? Among them, which stood out the most vulnerable to a communist takeover, or at the very least adopting a pro-Soviet foreign policy? I know Chile had Allende, but I'm still having Pinochet overthrow him in 1973. Brazil, I know, had a leftist President that got overthrown, as did Guatemala. Guatemala also had a 30 year civil war that might have produced some sort of takeover.

Anything I'm missing? What nations would have been most likely to fall to communism?
 
I don't see Argentina going communist but i can see Peron leaning towards the communist bloc.

That one is one of the "extraordinary circumstances" in the timeline. They launch an invasion of Chile in 1978 that was only barely averted OTL; the resulting war lasts four years and ultimately ends in a Chilean victory. The hundreds of thousands of deaths, the damage wrought on the Argentinian economy, and the humiliating concessions Argentina is forced to cede Chile after the war results in a revolution that overthrows the military government. In the aftermath, a pro-Soviet leftist faction is able to take control of the revolutionary government and declares a People's Republic.

But I do agree that Peron could have leaned towards the Soviet sphere (perhaps if the US had been more hostile toward his regime), though from what I can tell he was relatively anti-communist when it came to domestic Argentinian politics.
 
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Mexico would never be able to go communist because it’s right next to the U.S. who would probably install a puppet government to prevent this. Venezuela and Colombia could go red. I find it to be maybe interesting if somehow Brazil goes red. Imagine that. Maybe Argentina could go communist.
 
Anything I'm missing?

Without meaning the least disrespect, alignment towards the Soviet Union and rule by a Soviet inspired or Maoist inspired parliamentary party is radically different to the variety of revolutionary left wing tendencies amongst the working class and declassed intelligentsia. During radical social transformations the difference between Soviet parliamentary parties and revolutionary communism tends to be exacerbated. This is true whether the radical social transformation is initiated and significantly influenced by either a revolutionary working class and its apparatuses; or, whether the initiation and significant influence is by a militarised party conducting a guerrilla people's war towards a conventional military victory over an existing state apparatus.

"Its complicated."

For an example, consider the Vietnamese revolution, north and south, amongst the rural proletariat and its tenuous connection to the Viet Minh / National Front for Liberation / Vietnamese Workers' Party and their military apparatuses.

yours,
Sam R.
 
IMHO, if you want Argentina to go red, you need to keep Peron out of power. Doable, maybe, just in time, since he became president in 1946. Make the October 17th march fail - Farrell keeps him imprisoned. Social tensions blow, the Farrell regime falls and the new one kills thousands of protesters. Absent an alternative, the working class turn towards some ATL nationalist communist movement/leader.
 
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Anything I'm missing? What nations would have been most likely to fall to communism?

Colombia is a pretty obvious one. Uruguay maybe could have been taken over by these guys in the early seventies if the CIA had done less to intervene. The government of Costa Rica was actually allied with the local communist party during the civil war it faced in 1948, and the US tacitly supported the rebels for this reason, so a government victory in that war might have brought Costa Rica closer to the Soviets. On a similar note, the anti-government forces in the 1947 Paraguayan Civil War were allied to the communists, and probably would've won had Peron not intervened in the government's favor.
 
Colombia is a pretty obvious one. Uruguay maybe could have been taken over by these guys in the early seventies if the CIA had done less to intervene. The government of Costa Rica was actually allied with the local communist party during the civil war it faced in 1948, and the US tacitly supported the rebels for this reason, so a government victory in that war might have brought Costa Rica closer to the Soviets. On a similar note, the anti-government forces in the 1947 Paraguayan Civil War were allied to the communists, and probably would've won had Peron not intervened in the government's favor.
Paraguay was at the top of my list.
 
Chile, Colombia and Peru:

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.
 
I admit I’m a bit out of my depth when it comes to Latin American history and politics, so please bear with me.

Working on a continued Cold War TL in which one element is that a number of Latin American nations are absorbed into the communist camp (in addition to OTL examples like Cuba and Nicaragua, I have Peru, Argentina, El Salvador, Venezuela, and Mexico going red, though I know at least two of those are somewhat unlikely and rely on extraordinary circumstances).

With a PoD of 1945, how many Latin American nations could concievably have been flipped red? Among them, which stood out the most vulnerable to a communist takeover, or at the very least adopting a pro-Soviet foreign policy? I know Chile had Allende, but I'm still having Pinochet overthrow him in 1973. Brazil, I know, had a leftist President that got overthrown, as did Guatemala. Guatemala also had a 30 year civil war that might have produced some sort of takeover.

Anything I'm missing? What nations would have been most likely to fall to communism?
all of them?Yah really, when historically the so called "free countries" under a capitalism banner(mostly the USA) have constantly intervened and Fucked the situation in your country, Banana wars, American Filibuster, invasions, military interventions, Trade sanctions, Sponsored massacres and destabilization of your country political situation, the communist, as an alternative tend to look really really attractive, specially if another Great power is ready to support your position against your aggressor, thing that no other power was ever offered
 
Colombia is actually not that obvious, and it was far less obvious with a 1945 PoD - at that point all Labour and peasant organised structures were coopted by a social-democratic Liberal Party, and the Conservative Party had a stranglehold over the armed forces and the Police that heavily persecuted members of the Liberal Party (and even moreso with Communists). It was not until the National Front and the 1970 elections that Communist guerrillas became truly strong.

FARC taking over in 2003 or 2004, or a negotiated compromise between a Serpa or Garzón Government and FARC turning Colombia Bolivarian would be your best bet. But a 1950s Communist coup is very unlikely.
 
If by "Communists" you include Trotskyists, Bolivia has always intrigued me as being (along with Sri Lanka) one of the few countries where Troskyists afteer World War II played a major role in national politics. Indeed, some Trotskyists have claimed that the Trotskyist POR could have come to power in Bolivia in 1952. https://web.archive.org/web/2006050...ary-history.co.uk/supplem/bolivia/villa10.htm But Robert J. Alexander argues (IMO persuasively) that their power at this time was more apparent than real. http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/writers/alex/works/in_trot/bolivia.htm

There is a possibility that at some time or other Juan Lechin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Lechín_Oquendo could have become president of Bolivia. But as Alexander notes, Lechin was never really a Trotskyist, even in his younger years: "The Trotskyist nature of the Pulacayo Thesis in no way meant that the Miners Federation had come under the control of the POR. The MNR continued after the congress, as before it, to have a majority on the Executive Committee of the organization, with Juan Lechin continuing as its executive secretary. What occurred was that Juan Lechin, never a man particularly interested or versed in revolutionary theory, turned over the elaboration of this essentially philosophical and political document to his POR allies--an action which in later years he came to regret, because it gave rise to recurring but unfounded charges that he himself was a Trotskyist."
 
I could see a divived Mexico. The place just has way too many people for a foreign-imposed puppet gouvernment to hold onto power without a U.S. garrison that would constantly be fighting Vietnam Mark 2. Eventually they'd ever negotiate a deal or unilaterally abandon everything, but some northern provinces to ensure no land border with the Peoples Democratic Republic of Mexico.
 
I assume that a Maoist insurgency could have taken power in places like Guatemala and El Salvador (a sea of rural peasantry ruled by a tiny feudal elite), presumably the leadership in those countries thought so too, hence the massacres and repression.
 
Here's the problem as I see it (not necessarily constrained by POD mentioned in OP).
*Latin America had a pretty strong aprista tradition which sought to adapt Marxism to Latin American conditions, ending up as the Latin American counterpart to Western European social-democratic parties. This was in the face of Orthodox Marxists who believed, much like with Russia, that Marxism (and thus the communist utopia) could never be achieved there because it was too backward (aided by the fact that Marx said very little about Latin America and what few things he did say were pretty negative, if not racist, towards Latin Americans). Thus, it follows that Marxism originally was a fringe movement largely among European immigrants, so therefore the Southern Cone became fertile ground for Marxist-inspired socialist and communist movements. Aprismo, by contrast, contradicts Orthodox Marxism by stating that the revolution can still happen in Latin America - it just needs adaptation, and in this case it involves a broad alliance including indigenous and peasant communities (early echoes of Maoism in this case, IMO). Note, here, that aprismo is not the only movement that sought to reinterpret foreign ideas to peculiar conditions - arielismo, for example, sought to change perceptions of the Hispanic legacy in an almost Romantic mood after decades of demonizing Spain and Spanish culture, although it never developed a political base. Aprismo as a movement began to moderate and move towards social-democratic currents due to the nature of Latin American politics and the retention of an older, medieval corporatist framework - in order to gain access to the system (waiting for its "turn") it had to defang itself. If you want to change aprismo's fortunes on this score and create more populist democratic-socialist regimes (although not communist, after WWII they would be seen by Washington, gripped in McCarthyite hysteria, as "communist" but probably workable, à la Yugoslavia) you'd have to prevent the aprista parties from moderating, putting them all in the same boat as the Peruvian party in terms of oppression, only to lead to replications of the Mexican Revolution throughout Latin America where the aprista party comes out on top. (In this sense, the broad movement in Venezuela against the dictator Pérez Jiménez could be seen in this vein, although it led to a predictable alternation between the Christian democrats and the aprista Democratic Action, as would the formation of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and its dominance by the PPD, although like in Venezuela it just led to a regular democracy instead of a socialist state because the PPD faced little if any persecution unlike most in the Puerto Rican nationalist movement.)
Further info: The sub-section on the Apristas under the section of "The major movements" here, as well as Harry Kantor's seminal study on aprista ideology
*Alternatively, along similar lines, have Mariátegui's Marxist views become more widespread throughout Latin America, forming a basis for reception of Communism (cf. <http://isj.org.uk/jose-carlos-mariategui-latin-americas-forgotten-marxist/>, <https://isreview.org/issue/96/mariategui-and-latin-american-marxism>)
*If we limit ourselves strictly to the POD, then we have a problem in that the few exceptions of Communism in Latin America are those that prove the rule in Latin America, which is that Communism doesn't really work all that well in Latin America, and most regimes that were daubed as "Communist" by the US and the Latin American political Right were anything but Communist - most of them were boiler-plate standard democratic regimes that wanted to follow the same path the US did a couple of decades earlier (Guatemala is a case in point here). Communism in Latin America never really was a mass movement but was more a middle- to upper-middle class movement of young people, supposedly in defense of the lower classes but was anything but (the lower classes knew better and preferred to remain with the devil they knew, in general). Thus it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to flip Latin American countries during the Cold War period towards the "Reds"; that Cuba and Nicaragua managed to do so at all IOTL was basically due to strokes of good luck and could be easily reversed early on. (Likewise, Mexico is a no-no for flipping Red since the príista establishment would not allow it - the Communists were co-opted early on and served as nothing more than window-dressing for the PRI.) Leaving aside Cuba and Nicaragua, if you want to make Communism more palpable for Latin America and break out of its shell, you have to make Communism Latin American, in which case it paradoxically ceases to be Communist - at least by "normal" definitions. (If you define Communism as what developed in the USSR, there's much of it which is basically impractical except the tyrannical neo-Tsarist control that the Kremlin had over its people, which could be replicated in Latin America in manners long familiar to the population since the days of Spanish colonialism - not so much in Brazil, which marched to its own drum.) Communism would thus need to make a similar adaptation akin to what Marxism in general did pre-WWII by figuring out what could be used, and in this case the only Latin American country I can see which could be susceptible to Communism - since it was the birthplace of trying to adapt Marxism to Latin American conditions, not to mention the left-wing military dictatorship IOTL and because Communist rhetoric is more appealing to poor countries in similar situations to Tsarist Russia - is Peru. Not Cuba. Not the Southern Cone (Communist rhetoric doesn't work well in highly developed countries - not even Argentina, the most corporatist of the Latin American countries and thus saw an earlier breakdown of the system before everyone else). Not Colombia. If you want to make Communism work in Latin America, start with Peru - particularly if the Apristas are repressed to such a degree that they no longer are a viable moderate option, leading to more radical solutions becoming more appealing. If it becomes "successful", then you may have a few other poor Latin American countries go along with it. If it does not - then you have a Venezuela-like situation several decades early, with the rest of Latin America very glad to get rid of that Communist cancer and bring Peru back to normalcy.
 
But I do agree that Peron could have leaned towards the Soviet sphere (perhaps if the US had been more hostile toward his regime), though from what I can tell he was relatively anti-communist when it came to domestic Argentinian politics.
Perón was too anti communist for that to happen.
 
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