The United States has a long and bloody history of invasion, occupation, extraction, and exploitation in Latin America. But the history of US empire isn’t just the history of violent conquest — it’s also the history of those who fought against it.

Steven Striffler’s Solidarity: Latin America and the US Left in the Era of Human Rights surveys the history of the US Left’s engagement with Latin America. Striffler argues that “progressive forays into internationalism provide particularly revealing points of entry for understanding the US left as a whole.” The contemporary diagnosis is grim.

His sweeping research reveals an uneven history of domestic opposition to US imperialism. Tensions between notions of US empire as a fundamentally benevolent force whose excesses must be contained, or as an agent of capitalism “that delivers extreme levels of inequality and violence to the hemisphere,” have shaped US–Latin American solidarity for centuries.