ABSTRACT
Socialism as a state regime in Latin America, has, as in Africa, been shaped by its colonial legacy, albeit of an earlier period, but much more by the immediate hegemonic effect of the United States’ political and economic strategies aimed at its perceived ‘backyard’, Latin America. This made it particularly difficult for ‘revolutionary’ socialist regimes to establish a functioning state, as they had to overcome not only the inherent contradictions and flaws of the principles of MarxismLeninism as regime-operating principles, but also active countermeasures by the US to prevent ‘Moscow’ from taking a foothold in the Americas. Ideology and political antagonisms during the Cold War were such that any political movement ‘to the left’ was considered a potential Trojan Horse for Sovietism’s global ambitions (McCaughan, 1997), and if just outside the United State’s territory, this was seen as political-ideological teasing, as illustrated by US responses to the Nicaraguan Sandinista revolution, for instance (Weber, 1981; Smith, 1993).
