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"Their leaders and members are surrounded by a menacing atmosphere of strict surveillance, tapping of telephone calls, telex services and correspondence in general."

So concluded an ecumenical delegation to Paraguay in 1988, describing the suffocation of civil society under the 34-year dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. Within the year, Stroessner would be deposed in a coup and forced into exile in Brazil. The groups which brought the ecumenical delegation in -- the Comité de Iglesias para Ayudas de Emergencia (CIPAE), and the...

The period following World War II was particularly turbulent in Venezuela. Between 1945 and 1958, the nation experienced four coups d’état, its first democratic election, and the rise and fall of a dictator. Correspondence and reports in PHS’s Venezuela collections reveal the thoughts of Americans experiencing these events first- hand—thoughts as varied and contradictory as those of Americans regarding the current unrest in Venezuela.

By the mid-twentieth century, the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. mission to Venezuela was well-established; it employed...