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Soviet Union [USSR] Central and South America
Latin America, like sub-Saharan Africa, had been a relatively
low priority in Soviet foreign policy, although in absolute terms
interactions between the Soviet Union and Latin America had
increased tremendously since the early 1960s. Until the Khrushchev
period, Latin America was generally regarded as in the United
States sphere of influence. The Soviet Union had little interest in
importing Latin American raw materials or commodities, and most
Latin American governments, traditionally anticommunist, had long
resisted the establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviet
Union.
A transformation of the Soviet attitude toward Latin America
began in 1959 when Fidel Castro overthrew Cuba's long-time
dictator, Fulgencio Batista. Castro gradually turned the island
into a communist state and developed such close ties with the
Soviet Union that Cuba was, by 1961, considered by the Soviet Union
as its first "fraternal party state" in the Western Hemisphere.
Castro initially advocated armed revolutionary struggle in
Latin America. However, after armed struggle failed to topple the
government of Venezuela in 1965, the Soviet leadership stressed the
"peaceful road to socialism." This path involved cooperation
between communist and leftist movements in working for peaceful
change and electoral victories. The "peaceful road" apparently bore
fruit in 1970 with the election of Salvador Allende Gossens, the
candidate of the leftist Popular Unity coalition, as president of
Chile. Despite Allende's advocacy of close ties with the Soviet
Union, the Soviet Union was slow in providing economic assistance
essential to the survival of the regime, and in the midst of
economic collapse Allende died in a bloody coup in 1973. His ouster
resulted in a partial renewal of Soviet support for Castro's
position that armed force is necessary for the transition to
communism. Brezhnev himself conceded at the 1976 Twenty-Fifth Party
Congress that a "revolution must know how to defend itself." The
Soviet Union funneled weaponry and economic assistance through Cuba
to various insurgent groups and leftist governments in Latin
America. The Soviet Union used Cuba as a conduit for military,
economic, and technical assistance to Grenada from 1979 to 1983.
The United States government claimed that guerrillas operating in
El Salvador received extensive assistance from Nicaragua, Cuba,
Vietnam, and Libya and that Nicaragua and Cuba funneled Soviet and
East European matériel to the Salvadoran guerrillas.
Direct Soviet activities in South America have mostly involved
diplomacy, trade, culture, and propaganda activities. Peru was the
only South American state to purchase sizable quantities of
military weaponry from the Soviet Union, and for many years about
125 Soviet military advisers were stationed there. Peru's military
relationship with the Soviet Union began in 1968, when General Juan
Velasco Alvarado seized power. In February 1969, Peru established
diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, and one month after
Allende's ouster in Chile in September 1973, the first Soviet
weapons arrived in Peru. Major transfers occurred after 1976, when
Peru received fighter-bombers, helicopters, jet fighters, surfaceto -air missiles, and other relatively sophisticated weaponry. The
Soviet Union had also been one of Peru's major trade partners, with
some Peruvian exports being used to pay off Peruvian debt to the
Soviet Union. Argentina in the 1980s was the Soviet Union's second
largest trading partner among the noncommunist developing countries
(India was the largest). In turn, the Soviet Union was a major
importer of Argentine grain, meat, and wool.
Some Western analysts have posited a differentiated Soviet
policy toward Latin America, which stresses military and subversive
activities in Central America and diplomatic and economic (stateto -state) relations in South American. The range of instruments of
influence used in Central America and South America, while varying
in their mix over time, nevertheless indicated that all
instruments, including support for subversive groups and arms
shipments to amenable governments, had been used in Central America
and South America in response to available opportunities,
indicating shifting emphases but a basically undifferentiated
policy toward Latin America. The main policy goal in Soviet
relations with Latin America was to decrease United States
influence in the region by encouraging the countries of the region
either to develop close ties to the Soviet Union or to adopt a
nonaligned, "anti-imperialist" foreign policy. The Soviet Union was
cautious in pursuing this goal, seeking to maintain a low public
profile in its relations, and was hesitant to devote major economic
or military resources to countries in the region, with the
exception of Cuba. As part of the reorientation of Soviet Third
World policy toward better relations with Western-oriented Third
World states, Gorbachev emphasized the establishment of better
trade and political relations with several Latin American states.
Evidence of this new emphasis was Gorbachev's visit to Cuba in
April 1989 and Foreign Minister Shevardnadze's visits to Mexico,
Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay in 1986-87. While in Cuba, Gorbachev
and Castro signed a friendship and cooperation treaty, indicating
continued Soviet support to Cuba.
Data as of May 1989
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