Cold War shadows fall across Latin America as US-backed coups shatter democracies, spark brutal dictatorships, covert operations and revolutionary resistance.
Episode 1: Coups examines how 1960s Latin America experienced military coups in the shadow of the Cold War strategy of the United States.
It describes the Brazilian military’s 1964 overthrow of President Joao Goulart, driven by American fears of agrarian reform and “another Cuba”, which forced activists like Jean Marc von der Weid into exile.
In Chile, President Salvador Allende’s peaceful socialist experiment faced secret economic blockades before General Augusto Pinochet’s military coup in 1973 established his brutal regime.
This triggered Operation Condor in 1975, a coordinated campaign of political repression by regional right-wing dictatorships that assassinated Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier in Washington, DC, in 1976.
Meanwhile, Panama’s populist leader Omar