“Ni Con Unos Ni Con Otros”: the anti-imperialist and anti-totalitarian movement for democracy in Latin America, 1940–1960

In 1950, exiles from all across Latin America met in Havana for a congress. The event's purpose was to unite those striving for a democratic Latin America, free from US imperialism and Soviet totalitarianism. This current of opinion was not marginal: it was enthusiastically backed by millions of voters in largely free elections across the continent. However, very little has been written on democracy in Latin America, particularly during the period explored in this paper, 1940–1960. Recent scholarship on the period has instead focused on the ideological struggle between capitalism and socialism. In this paper, I highlight two democratic congresses held in Latin America in 1950 and 1960, under the title Conferencia Interamericana Pro Democracia y Libertad. The conferences served as a forum to delineate a common definition of democracy for the continent, and to explore how it could take hold in Latin America. This paper thus reveals an ideological current independent from the superpowers, which tried to democratise the region against what participants identified as the twin evils of imperialism and totalitarianism.