Latin America@War

Helion and Company, 2017. — 89 p. In 1961 - two years after a revolution in Cuba overran the government of Fulgencio Batista - a group of Cuban exiles (backed by the CIA) landed on the beaches of the Bay of Pigs in an attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro from the new government. After three days of intense fighting on the beaches and swamps around the area, the invaders were...

Helion and Company, 2017. — 104 p. In July 1969, while the world was expectant about the upcoming first manned landing on the moon, two little-known Central American States crossed sabers in what was derogatorily coined by the media as 'The Soccer War'. Far from a simple out-of-hand sports passion, this conflict had its complicated origins back in the early 20th century when...

Helion and Company, 2018. — 98 p. When the Second World War erupted, Latin America - despite being initially neutral - became part of it. Brazil, with its large provision of goods to the Allied Powers, was soon a victim of the Axis submarines - leading to the urgent development of an anti-submarine aviation arm. As it was developed, it also sent a fighter squadron and an...

Helion and Company, 2018. — 82 p. The Chaco War 1932-1935 was probably the first “modern” conflict in Latin America where military aviation was widely used in all roles. Bolivia, as the reader will find out, had a very powerful military air force, but unfortunately for them and luckily for Paraguay, its high army command did not take advantage of it. On the other hand, the...

Helion and Company, 2018. — 88 p. In 1970, Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens, a physician and leftist politician, was elected the President of Chile. Involved in political life for nearly 40 years, Allende adopted a policy of nationalization of industries and collectivization – measures that brought him on a collision course with the legislative and judicial branches of the...

Helion and Company, 2018. — 78 p. During 1932, the occupation of the Colombian towns of Leticia and Tarapacá by Peruvian troops and civilians, in the Amazon region, led to a conflict that almost ended in a total war between both countries. Aviation played an important role on both sides, due to the complicated jungle environment, which makes any land movements almost...

Helion and Company, 2019. — 48 p. — ISBN 978-1-914377-58-7. In the first half of the 20th Century, there were several revolutions in Paraguay, starting in 1904, then 1908, 1911-12, 1922-23, 1936 and finally 1947. In 1922, a huge internal crisis in the Liberal Party led to a bloody revolution and for the first time in the history of the country, both sides decided to use aerial...

Helion and Company, 2019. — 232 p. This book introduces the reader to an unknown Ally of the Second World War. Few people remember that Mexico, like Brazil, took an active part in that conflict. This volume covers Mexican participation in the Second World War for the first time using photos, documents and testimony from official and personal archives. Mexican nationals or those...

Helion and Company, 2019. — 74 p. In the wake of the US invasion of Nicaragua in 1912, the country came under the rule of the Somoza family, which imposed a brutal and corrupt military dictatorship. A low-scale insurgency of students, supported by peasants and other anti-Somoza elements of the society developed already in the 1960s. By the 1970s, the country became embroiled in...

Helion and Company, 2019. — 64 p. This political and military history of Paraguay chronicles the dictatorship of General Alfredo Stroessner from 1954 to the coup that overthrew him in 1989. 1989 was a crucial year for Paraguay. After thirty-five years of dictatorship, General Alfredo Stroessner was overthrown by a coup d'etat. In this sweeping historical study, Paraguayan...

Helion and Company, 2019. — 72 p. Disputes between Ecuador and Peru are nearly 200 years old and revolve around the question of Ecuador’s territory extending beyond the Andes and into the Amazonian basin – or not. Based on diverse interpretations of the Real Cedulas (Royal Proclamations) Spain used to define its colonial territories in the Americas, they became the source of...

Helion and Company, 2019. — 90 p. The naval warfare of the last few decades appears dominated by operations of fast missile craft and a wide diversity of other minor vessels in so-called ‘littoral warfare’. On the contrary, skills and knowledge about anti-submarine warfare on the high seas – a discipline that dominated much of the World War II, and once used to be the reason...

Helion and Company, 2019. — 80 p. In 1979, the Sandinista government established itself in power in Managua, the capitol of Nicaragua. It found the country ruined by the long war against the Somosa dictatorship and natural disasters alike, and nearly half of the population either homeless or living in exile. Attempting to restructure and recover the underdeveloped economy,...

Helion and Company, 2019. — 80 p. In 1979, the Sandinista government established itself in power in Managua, the capitol of Nicaragua. It found the country ruined by the long war against the Somosa dictatorship and natural disasters alike, and nearly half of the population either homeless or living in exile. Attempting to restructure and recover the underdeveloped economy,...

Helion and Company, 2020. — 74 p. Based on diverse interpretations of the Real Ceduls (Royal Proclamations) by the Spanish monarchs of earlier centuries, the almost 200-year-old border dispute between Ecuador and Peru became one of the longest-running international armed conflicts in the Western hemisphere. Numerous attempts at a negotiated definition of the borders failed, and...

Helion and Company, 2020. — 82 p. The Year 1932 was not only the year in which the famous carnival of Rio de Janeiro was organized for the first time, or the giant statue of the Christ the Redeemer was placed on top of the Corcovado mountain ridge: tragically, it was also the year of the last civil war fought in Brazil. On 9 July 1932, about 35,000 men from two Brazilian...

Helion and Company, 2020. — 70 p. Trinidad has the distinction of contributing the highest number of recruits per capita to the cause of notorious ‘Islamic State’. The case of Trinidad and Tobago (usually abbreviated ‘Trinidad’) makes for an interesting study as on the face of it, a well-integrated Muslim population, a strong welfare state and an absence of political...

Helion and Company, 2020. — 74 p. The Chaco War was the first modern conflict in South America. Over time, it became the topic of many volumes published in both Bolivia and Paraguay - first by veterans, such as the commanders-in-chief, and the commanders of army corps', regiments or battalions, and by other ranks, in the form of personal memoirs or wider histories, and using a...

Helion and Company, 2020. — 82 p. When the Task Force of the Royal Navy started its southbound voyage, as the second major act during the Falklands/Malvinas War of 1982, its commanders assessed the Argentine submarines as the greatest threat. Even if limited in total size and scope, this threat was so conditioning that the conclusion was that it had to be neutralised at the...

Helion and Company, 2021. — 82 p. The series of sharp clashes between Ecuador and Peru of 1981 left the dispute between the two countries unresolved as there was still no definitive delimitation of the border. During the following years, both parties had to deal with a series of internal and external issues and, ultimately, these affected the planning and operational...

Helion and Company, 2021. — 90 p. All For One, One For All provides a contemporary perspective of the baptism of fire of one of the oldest, most resourceful and well-trained war fighting institutions in Latin America: the Argentine Navy. It offers a rare insight into the relationship between institutional culture and modern warfare, with specific reference to the...

Helion and Company, 2021. — 102 p. The year 1932 was not only the year in which the famous carnival of Rio de Janeiro was organized for the first time, or the giant statue of the Christ the Redeemer was placed on top of the Corcovado mountain ridge: it was also the year of the last civilian war fought in Brazil. On 9 July 1932, about 35,000 men from the federal states of Sao...

Helion and Company, 2021. — 102 p. The year 1932 was not only the year in which the famous carnival of Rio de Janeiro was organized for the first time, or the giant statue of the Christ the Redeemer was placed on top of the Corcovado mountain ridge: it was also the year of the last civilian war fought in Brazil. On 9 July 1932, about 35,000 men from the federal states of Sao...

Helion and Company, 2021. — 74 p. Ninety miles from the US coast of Florida, dictators and zealots ruled the island of Cuba for hundreds of years. The last half of the 20th century saw dictator Fulgencio Batista deposed by rebel leader Fidel Castro and his followers. Proclaiming himself a supporter of Cubanism not Communism, Castro’s nationalization of agriculture and...

Helion and Company, 2021. — 84 p. The Armed Forces of the English-speaking Caribbean have a rich, albeit brief history. This book covers their story from the post-Second World War West India Regiment to the independence of the former British Colonies in the 1960s and 1970s. The failed West India Federation led directly to the formation of the national armed forces of Jamaica,...

Helion and Company, 2022. — 74 p. From 1954 Paraguay was held in the grip of a Right-wing dictatorship under General Alfredo Stroessner. In the years that followed, a number of opposition groups resorted to armed struggle in order to achieve their aims. Government countermeasures were brutal, with torture and extra-judicial killings being routinely employed. COIN in Paraguay is...

Helion and Company, 2022. — 104 p. “Handbrake!”: the codeword that was shouted aboard Royal Navy ships upon the detection of an emission from the Thomson-CSF/EMD Agave radar of the Argentine Super Étendard, which carried the dreaded AM-39 Exocet missiles. Argentina had bought these aircraft and their weapons from France in 1980, assigning them to the re- established 2nd Naval...

Helion and Company, 2022. — 92 p. In 1983, the United States launched a military operation to remove the military junta that had taken over the Caribbean island of Grenada. This operation, code-named Urgent Fury, was held out by the Regan Administration as a major military success and a victory against communism. In some ways it was. In others it was a foregone conclusion, a...

Helion and Company, 2022. — 74 p. Revolución Libertadora – or the Liberating Revolution –is the name by which the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina is known after overthrowing the constitutional president, Juan Domingo Perón, closing the National Congress, deposing the members of the Supreme Court, the provincial and municipal authorities and university and...

Helion and Company, 2023. — 102 p. One of the three Guianas, Suriname is the only Dutch-speaking country in South America. These fertile lands were colonized by various European nations, with the Dutch capturing many plantations in what is now Suriname during the Second Anglo-Dutch War. The Treaty of Breda in 1667 established Dutch permanent rule in Dutch Guiana. In the...

Helion and Company, 2023. — 90 p. A severe social and political crisis in El Salvador during politicians, religious figures and activists through strikes but organised the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMNL) and launched an armed insurrection against the government in early 1981. Within months, the FMLN established itself in control over two departments – which it...

Helion and Company, 2023. — 74 p. Revolución Libertadora – or the Liberating Revolution –is the name by which the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina is known after overthrowing the constitutional president, Juan Domingo Perón, closing the National Congress, deposing the members of the Supreme Court, the provincial and municipal authorities and university and...

Helion and Company, 2023. — 92 p. A severe social and political crisis in El Salvador during the 1970s resulted in widespread disturbance of daily life, political violence, repression and the outbreak of an insurgency. In March 1981, the government ran a large sweep operation along the border with Honduras in the north, accompanied by the use of scorched earth tactics and...

Helion and Company, 2023. — 106 p. Azules y Colorados’ is the name originally used to designate two parties in hypothetical scenarios during an exercise. In 1962-1963, it provided the name for a series of armed confrontations between two branches of the Argentine Armed Forces. Both took place during the de facto presidency of José María Guido and aimed to settle the struggle...

Helion and Company, 2023. — 114 p. The Beagle conflict was a territorial dispute between Argentina and Chile over the determination of the layout of the eastern mouth of the Beagle Channel, which affected the sovereignty of the islands located south of the channel, and east of Cape Horn and its adjacent maritime spaces. The first antecedents of the confl ict date back to 1888,...

Helion and Company, 2023. — 102 p. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War the Western Allies – led by the US – soon found themselves at odds with the Communist Bloc dominated by the Soviet Union. In the well-known phrase coined by Winston Churchill, an ‘Iron Curtain’ had descended across Europe. In the shadow of this Iron Curtain a conflict of ideologies erupted,...

Helion and Company, 2023. — 88 p. In the early morning darkness of 19 March 1969, troops from Britain’s 2nd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment (2 PARA) and Royal Marines, clambered into the small landing craft and helicopters aboard HMS Minervaand HMS Rothesay. Their objective, under ‘Operation Sheepskin’, was to invade the small Caribbean island of Anguilla through both an...

Helion and Company, 2024. — 94 p. The Beagle Channel lies at the southernmost tip of South America and sovereignty over a number of islands there was hotly disputed between Argentina and Chile for much of the twentieth century. Navigation rights to this channel connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans were of considerable strategic value. In 1978, this dispute came within...

Helion and Company, 2024. — 92 p. In the decades before Mexico joined the Allies in the Second World War, Mexican military aviation saw a rapid growth and intense involvement in rebellions, internal strife, and in operations against armed banditry. Aviation was introduced to military service in Mexico during the Revolutionary period of 1910–1920 and the bloody showdown between...