ABSTRACT
E. Bradford Burns and Julie A. Charlip (2002: 200), distinguished historians of Latin America, provide a less philosophical definition of revolution as “the sudden, forceful, and violent overturn of a previously relatively stable society and the substitution of other institutions for those discredited.” The revolutionary upheavals in Mexico and Cuba, which we examined in Chapter 11, were heavily influenced by nationalism and produced long-lasting rule by a single political party. In this chapter,
we look at more recent uprisings that were, like these two revolts, heavily inspired by nationalism. Furthermore, as in the case of Cuba, these movements, mostly in Central America, were influenced by Marxism as well. However, unlike these other two cases, the ultimate outcome of these conflicts would be regimes that aspired to polyarchy. Institutional change came to Central America, then, but to what extent have these regimes addressed freedom and the “social question”? Does the quenching of revolutionary fires in Central America indicate that the Latin American left no longer dreams of revolution in the terms defined by Burns and Charlip?
