The Noncommunist Boom

This chapter examines the influence of Cold War liberalism on Mexican public intellectual Carlos Fuentes (1928–2012) between the Cuban Revolution and the end of the Cold War. Fuentes’ ideological trajectory from social democracy to neoliberalism mirrored that of many other Latin American intellectuals and was the result of two distinct factors: Cold War liberalism’s late arrival to Latin America and internal divisions within the Latin American left over the Cuban Revolution, the “dirty wars,” and the economic malaise of the long 1970s. In particular, Fuentes’ political writings show how the elitist drive of Cold War liberalism facilitated the ascent of neoliberalism by reframing political debate around the proper limits of state power rather than social transformation.