Generals vs. Presidents; Neomilitarism in Latin America

New York: Frederick A. Prager, 1964. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Hardcover. Good. vi, 160, [2] pages. Footnotes. Bibliography. Index. Cover has some wear and soiling. Sticker on fep. Edwin Lieuwen (February 8, 1923 - May 25, 1988) was an American historian, professor, and author. His area of expertise was focused on Latin America. His work was a major precursor to the establishing of the Latin American Institute. After his return from the Netherlands, he worked for three years as a policy analyst at the United States State Department for three years. In 1957 he was appointed as chairman to the history department as the University of New Mexico. Lieuwen found himself in an academic circle that included France Vinton Scholes as the authority on Latin American studies. His work established the Latin American studies program which would later become the Latin American Institute. He wrote for the Kirkus Review, The Journal of Economic History, Foreign Affairs, and several other academic journals. He was considered an expert in several Latin-American fields including oil in Venezuela. An award was named after Lieuwen by the Rocky Mountain Council for Latin American Studies for exceptional teaching and studies into Latin American policy and relations. It was not the intention of the author to "rant against militarism". Rather, it as recognized that the intervention of the armed forces in Latin American politics was an objective fact of political life. Therefore, the focus of this work was upon analysis and understanding of the then present day militarism. To this end, the emphasis was on those seven countries that had recently experienced military coups (Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Brazil) and upon two more in which the military played a rather unique role (Venezuela and El Salvador). In all these nine countries, there was a process, or had recently been a process, a struggle between civilian and military rivals for political control, and in all of them a most serious social crisis existed. Those countries contained over half of Latin America's population and land area and the bulk of its natural resources. Those countries were battlegrounds in the struggle between Communism and democracy.