Comparative Questions?

1. How do Neruda’s poems (Document 31-2) complicate your understanding of the Cold War? Was the Cold War an ideological struggle, as President Truman claimed, or were other forces at work as well?
2. What factors were most important in shaping U.S. policy in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s? What light do Neruda’s poems (Document 31-2) and developments in Castro’s Cuba shed on this question?
3. How might Bolívar (Document 27-1) have responded to the UN Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples (Document 31-1)? Would he have agreed, for example, that “inadequacy of political, economic, social or educational preparedness should never serve as a pretext for delaying independence”?
4. Compare and contrast the documents relating to decolonization and dependence in this chapter with those relating to nineteenth-century imperialism in Chapters 25 and 26. What similarities and differences do you note?