Securing Central America Against Communism: The United States and the Modernization of Surveillance in the Cold War

In: Journal of Interamerican studies and world affairs, Band 41, Heft 1, S. 1-30

Abstract

The US.-sponsored programs of military and police collaboration with the Central American governments during the Cold War also contributed to the surveillance capacity of those states during the period when the Central American state formation process was being completed. Guatemala is used as a case study. Washington's contribution was framed by the conventional discourse of "security against communism" but also by an underlying technocratic ethos in which "modernization" and "security" were higher priorities than democratization.