Salvador Allende
Elected President of Chile in 1958, Salvador Allende was a socialist-Communist leader whose party, unlike most Communist parties of the era, did not advocate violent rebellion. He was a popular leader who won again in 1964 despite CIA support of his rival. After another victorious election in 1970, the US government did its best to cut off financial support to the Alende government, and he was eventually overthrown by a CIA-backed coup led by General Augusto Pinochet.
Juan Alvarez
A tough Mexican caudillo, Juan Alvarez became President after Santa Anna’s departure in 1855. Some regarded him as a figurehead.
Jacobo Arbenz
Arbenz was the second reformist President in Guatemala. He succeeded the mildly socialist Arévalo and nationalized land and resources formerly controlled by the United Fruit Company and similar foreign-owned businesses. This confirmed the worst fears of the US based fruit and raw materials company operating in Central and South America. This represented a radical change in diplomatic relations between Guatemala and the USA.
Juan José Arévalo
Arévalo was the first reformist President in Guatemala. He won a democratic election and advocated for human rights and supported better pay for United Fruit Company workers. The corporate owners and US politicians reacted with shock and terror. He was succeeded by Jacobo Arbenz
Juana Azurduy
A noted cavalry captain who led a charge in which she personally captured a Spanish battle flag, Juana Azurduy was born in Bolivia in 1780. She was thrown out of a convent at age 17, married a fellow supporter of Quechua culture, and was a lifelong revolutionary supporting independence.
Simón Bolívar
Simón Bolívar was a revolutionary general born in Venezuela. He fought for Latin American independence and his campaign began in Caracas, attacked Bogotá, and captured both Caracas and Quito. Later in his career, Bolívar became more authoritarian. The nation of Bolivia is named after him.
Bolívar resented the notable non-participation in the revolution of many of the indigenous and slave peoples of Latin America, however he went out of his way to discourage women’s participation. He tolerated Juana Azurduy but did not promote her or advance her career.
Jorge Luis Borges
A blind author from Argentina, Borges began his work as a translator but gained international acclaim as a writer of short stories featuring gauchos and poor people from Buenos Aires.
Tamara “Tania” Burke
Tamara Burke was a German-born revolutionary who became committed to Communist-inspired rebellion in Latin America. Because of her language skills she frequently served as a translator for Che Guevara and his contemporaries.
Lázaro Cárdenas
An unexpected candidate for the Revolutionary party in Mexico, Cárdenas campaigned aggressively with his vision for a more modern and prosperous nation. He visited even some of the most remote villages on horseback, promising the rural parts of the nation a more equal share in the nation’s coming prosperity. Unlike many politicians, he did not forget the rural areas once he was elected President. He supported the working class by defending the rights of labor organizations.
Fidel Castro
A Cuban revolutionary who led the country for decades, Fidel Castro organized a successful rebellion in Cuba after its annexation by the USA. His government, while nominally Communist, succeeded in advancing medical and agricultural technology and presided over record levels of sugar production. He had a highly antagonistic relationship with the US Government.
Hugo Chávez
Hugo Chávez of Venezuela was a former Army officer who, as President, channeled large amounts of wealth to poor Venezuelans in exchange for their political support.
Pablo Escobar
A Powerful narco-terrorist whose criminal operations made him wealthy and influential, Escobar led an organized crime cartel credited with corrupting and destroying the Colombian city of Medellín.
Jorge Eliécer Gaitán
A populist leader from Colombia, Gaitán was an outstanding orator with humble roots. He never became President but his assassination in 1948 triggered one of the greatest urban riots in Latin American history.
Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Born in Chile and a doctor by training, “Che” Guevara developed a strong desire to help the impoverished victims of neocolonial industry. He came to believe that only violent revolution in support of Communist ideals would be a sufficient mechanism for social change.
Victor Raúl Haya de la Torre
Haya de la Torre was a populist leader who became the president of Peru. He ran on a nationalist and anti-imperialist platform and was able to inspire the personal loyalty of many Peruvians much like the earlier caudillo leaders did.
Miguel Hidalgo
A priest by profession, Father Miguel Hidalgo was a Mexican revolutionary leader. He presented the conflict between the European and the Mexican people as a need to defend Mexico against Peninsular usurpers (both Spanish and French). His rhetoric succeeded in uniting him (despite his recent European heritage) with other Mexican people of indigenous and mixed descent. The appeal to nativism was one of the things that helped maintain Mexican social structure and culture after the revolution.
Carolina Maria de Jésus
Carolina Maria de Jésus was a Brazilian slum dweller and single mother with a second-grade education. However, she could read and write. Her diaries were published and became an international sensation that also provided a ticket out of the slums for herself and her family.
Benito Juárez
An indigenous Zapotec villager who studied law and eventually became the President of Mexico on a liberal platform, Benito Juáarez was a contemporary and friend of Abraham Lincoln who defied popular racist stereotypes.
Frida Kahlo
Frida Kahlo was a Mexican surrealist painter who gained popularity in the 1930s. She specialized in self-portraiture and frequently wore indigenous peasant costumes. She is credited with advancing the popularity of “Day of the Dead” art. Due to an accident in her youth she was bedridden throughout much of her career and suffered from bouts of extreme pain throughout her life. The pain contributed in part to her surrealist approach.
Malinche or Malintzin
One of several slaves given to the invading Spaniards, Malintzin spoke Nahuatl and several other indigenous languages. She was instrumental in the capture of Moctezuma and later became a mistress of Cortés.
Gabriel García Marquez
A Colombian writer, Marquez was one of the most prominent Latin American authors of the 20th Century. He travelled frequently to Cuba and was a friend of Fidel Castro.
Rigoberta Menchú
Rigoberta Menchú won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for drawing international attention to the atrocities of the “dirty war” in Guatemala. She was of Quiché Mayan origin.
Carmen Miranda
Carmen Miranda, despite not having actually been born in Brazil, was a Brazilian celebrity who helped to promote Brazilian costume, culture, and dance. She became a celebrity in the United States and helped to promote the samba and the Carnival.
Evo Morales
A Bolivian nationalist leader, Evo Morales created a new constitution that enfranchised Bolivia’s poor indigenous minorities.
Tomás Cipriano de Moscera
Moscera was a caudillo leader in Colombia who briefly became President.
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was a Chilean poet and Nobel Laureate. He is considered one of the world’s most popular poets of the 20th Century.
Eva Peron
An actress who married Juan Peron, Eva Peron is credited with being the driving force behind Peron’s populist appeal. She became the First Lady of Argentina and is fondly remembered by many due to her charitable work and her tireless crusade on behalf of the poor. The musical play “Evita” is based loosely on her life story.
Juan Peron
An Argentine president who rose to power based on popular appeal, Peron became more authoritarian after the death of Eva and was eventually deposed. However, his influence survived his term of office. Leftist “Peronist” supporters continued to resist the military dictatorship and “dirty war”, in which people disappeared by the thousands.
Augusto Pinochet
In 1973, with significant backing from the United States, Augusto Pincohet led a successful but violent military coup against Salvador Allende of Chile. He established a military dictatorship, closed the Chilean Legislature, and authorized the slaughter of anyone who spoke out against his policies.
Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera was a Mexican painter known chiefly for his murals and his marriage to Frida Kahlo.
Juan Manuel de Rosas
Juan Manuel de Rosas was a caudillo leader in Argentina. Immensely popular and socially dominant, he cultivated a cult of personality while in office.
Augusto César Sandino
Sandino, a native of Nicaragua, was a guerrilla leader who protested US political intervention in Latin America and particularly its annexation of Cuba and Puerto Rico, which he described as “imperialism”. He was assassinated on the orders of Anastasio Somoza, who organized a military coup that ushered in a family dynasty.
José de San Martín
A revolutionary general from the southern part of South America and a contemporary of Simón Bolívar, José de San Martín trained an army of Argentine and Chilean revolutionaries. He crossed the Andes and, in a surprise attack similar to the tactics used by Bolívar, crushed the Chilean royalists. He eventually deferred to Bolívar, leaving for Europe once the two armies met and the revolutionary victory was complete.
Antonio López de Santa Anna
A successful general turned politician, Santa Anna began his career as a Royalist but developed more of a Mexican nationalist approach. He fought against the United States, notably at the Battle of the Alamo. He later became President of Mexico.
Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva
A long-time President of Brazil, “Lula” was a metalworker and union organizer by trade who spent twenty years developing a nationalist party that advocated social development, prior to having been elected.
Xica de Silva
Xica was born in the diamond fields of Brazil to an African mother and a Portuguese father. She became the notorious but influential mistress of the Portuguese king’s diamond contractor. Wealthy and influential, she became a diplomatic back channel to the diamond contractor and leveraged her influence into an enhanced social status, so that one of her sons (who was not the diamond contractor’s) had an opportunity to study at European universities. She successfully flouted the established social structure of the time so as to acquire enough wealth to live independently even though Brazilian women of her era, particularly when they were of partial African descent, lacked the same social and economic rights as men.
Anastasio Somoza
He was the first of several Somoza family leaders in Nicaragua, having engineered the assassination of Sandino and organized a military coup.
Getúlio Vargas
Vargas was a multi-term President of Brazil who came to power in the “revolution” of 1930. He briefly seized dictatorial power in 1937 and was repeatedly re-elected to office. He oversaw the transition of the Brazilian economy away from coffee and raw materials into an industrial power, and his first term coincided with the Great Depression in the United States which created an economic opportunity for Brazilian industry and trade. He was a populist leader despite his occasional dictatorial activities.
José María Velasco Ibarra
An orator with extraordinary popular appeal, Velasco Ibarra was elected President of Ecuador five times. His platform varied from left to right since he was primarily a populist leader, but his terms of office generally ended with expulsion by the military.
Pancho Villa
Pancho Villa was a Mexican nationalist general whose military career began in the northern state of Chihuahua. His party and populist initiative, which relied on heavy support from the working class and rural people, became known as the Constitutionalist movement.
Emilio Zapata
Emilio Zapata was a Mexican revolutionary whose Zapatista rebellion opposed the NAFTA free trade agreement.
