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Desarrollo Económico (Buenos Aires)

Print version ISSN 0046-001X

Abstract

ZANATTA, Loris. The rise and fall of the third position: Bolivia, Perón and the Cold War, 1943-1954.Translated byJudith Evans. Desarro. econ. (B. Aires) [online]. 2006, vol.1Selected edition, pp. 0-0. ISSN 0046-001X.

The doctrine of the Third Position drawn by Peron between 1946 and 1955 was an attempt to find an alternative to the opposition between the Liberal West and the Communist East. In practical terms, it resulted in the project to create a bloc of Latin-American nations independent both from Washington and from Moscow. Peron's project interpreted the region's peaking nationalist feelings and amounted to a challenge on the United States in the toughest phase of the Cold War. However, the Third Position soon revealed the limitations -economic weakness, diplomatic dilettantism- that led to its demise and sub-ordination to the iron logic of the Cold War. This article examines one of those limitations, scarcely explored by the literature: the hegemonic, even sub-imperialist aspect that the Third Position assumed in the eyes of Argentina's neighboring countries. This trait would eventually induce those countries to seek the protection of a strong and distant Empire, the United States, before submitting to the ambitions of a weaker, closer power, Peron's Argentina. This article reconstructs such political dynamics drawing on the competition between Washington and Peron for the control of Bolivia between 1943 and 1955 as an example.

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