The military rulers of Latin America throughout the Cold War are usually associated with "death squads" and "oligarchs." They're seen universally as self-interested bodyguards to local millionaires and American multinational corporations. This cartoonish stereotype is false. Since World War II, the Marxist Left and their allies have had a stranglehold on Latin American topics, so the military juntas keeping the Left from power have been excoriated by any means possible. These partisan, angry attacks have been taken as historical truth. They are not.The subtitle of this book, from the Latin, means "In times of war, the laws fall silent." This is a reference to the fact that all military governments without exception have come to power at a time of extreme crisis.

This forced them to take swift, decisive action lest their countries disintegrate. Few of these men sought power but were forced to act at the 11th hour.In this brief volume, the author calls on US government documents, classified at the time, to prove that the US was at war with these governments, urging them to adopt "liberal democracy" or else. The reason for this is obvious: military rulers are populist, often from the poorer classes, and very unpredictable. Military men have their own sources of funding and don't need millionaires like politicians do. Their record of mass nationalizations is impressive, and the US was quite aware of this. American capital hated these populist military leaders and sought only weak, dependent "Banana Republics" to more easily exploit. The military governments were heavily involved in social reform projects that the communists and the Americans derailed all over Latin America.

Now, finally, these leaders have someone telling their story for the first time.