Alfonso Salgado

Alfonso Salgado Muñoz

Historian of Latin America / Historiador de América Latina

I am a historian of modern Latin America currently working at Columbia University. Most of my writings have focused on the history of the Chilean Left during the Cold War, with an emphasis on the intersection of ideology and everyday life. The subjects I have written about range from the social and emotional lives of young Communists to Government attempts to cultivate a revolutionary ethos through radio broadcasting. All in all, I have published 15 peer-reviewed articles, 8 chapters in edited volumes, and about a dozen shorter pieces (book reviews, critical studies and translations of primary sources, etc.).

I am currently embarking on a completely different research project and writing my first book manuscript, tentatively titled True Socialism or Chaos: American Social Democrats in Cold War Latin America. My book examines the involvement of the Socialist Party of America south of the border from the late 1930s to the early 1970s, using institutional records, periodical publications, and the personal papers of three socialist “experts” on Latin America. It probes the networks created by these globetrotter activists, follows their steps in Lázaro Cárdenas’ Mexico, Rómulo Betancourt’s Venezuela, Fidel Castro’s Cuba, and Salvador Allende’s Chile, and analyzes their interactions with institutions such as the U.S. State Department, the AFL-CIO, and the Socialist International. It is a story of hope and fear, one in which the struggle for democracy and socio-economic reform was undergirded by pervasive anti-communist anxieties.

You can contact me at as3918@columbia.edu