The first tool of analysis to think about how different middle and high school textbooks portray events from the Cold War in Latin America takes the shape of a heat map. This tool requires direct interaction to understand how frequently different Latin American countries are discussed in the surveyed textbooks. It helps to orient ourselves to Latin America as a region, both in its relationship to the United States as well as the locations of its individual countries. Feel free to play around, hover your mouse over each shaded country, and explore a quantitative approach to this project’s research question.
 

How should I understand this tool?

This visual presentation is an easy way to understand how all of these textbooks consider countries within Latin America as important to the United States' Cold War. Looking at the range of regions between gray (unmentioned), yellow (mentioned infrequently), and red (mentioned unanimously), the quantitative count demonstrates the disparity at which different countries are acknowledged within these textbooks. Cuba and Nicaragua are mentioned in every textbook analyzed and arguably for quite obvious reasons. Cuba played a large part in United States policy during the Cold War due to its close proximity to the United States and its alliance with the Soviet Union. The Cuban Revolution sparked immediate and persistent fear and frustration that Cuba would become a fully communist country, which made the United States orchestrate a failed invasion attempt. Therefore, the United States had to act to contain and ultimately extinguish communism. Cuba also participated in the Cuban Missile Crisis that brought the Cold War to the brink of nuclear war. Many of these events are associated with President Kennedy and the rollercoaster of successes and failures he had during his abridged presidency.

Nicaragua is mentioned frequently in these textbooks because of the Iran-Contra Affair that transpired during President Reagan’s second term. Despite the prior Congressional law that had banned the funding of the Nicaraguan Contras, the right-wing rebel group that opposed leftism, President Reagan’s administration facilitated a complicated selling of arms to Iran whose profit directly supported the Contras. While still unknown whether President Reagan himself was directly implicated in this illegal trade, it tarnished the record of his administration. 

Cuba and Nicaragua illustrate the persistent and aggressive actions the United States took in order to prevent the spread of communism, and this map depicts that these textbooks deem these regions the most important.

Why does this matter?

Other major events that the United States spearheaded during the Cold War, motivated by the constant and pervasive fear of communism, are not unanimously mentioned in these textbooks. The CIA-supported coup d’état in Guatemala that uprooted the Ten Years of Spring is only referenced in six out of the eight textbooks, the active role that the United States government played in installing General Augusto Pinochet for a seventeen-year dictatorship is only regarded in half of the textbooks, and the human rights violations that plagued Argentina and Brazil during the Cold War are only mentioned in one. This gap begs the questions: How does United States history remember and justify its actions of the past? How does the United States choose to remember the violation of human rights during the Cold War? Why do Cuba and Nicaragua dominate the Cold War in Latin America coverage when other nations were equally shaped by the United States' interventions?

The utility of this map equally showcases the countries completely erased from the Cold War narrative. The Dominican Republic spent a large portion of the Cold War trying to stabilize after the death of United States-supported dictator Rafael Trujillo. Countries like Honduras and Paraguay faced many human rights violations that disappeared, kidnapped, and tortured thousands of victims, yet these countries are not given a space in these tertiary sources. If these textbooks do not include other Latin American nations, when will students learn about the direct consequences of United States interference on Latin American soil? This silence is a theme that persists throughout this project and throughout the textbooks examined that are being used as references to teach students about the Cold War.