His subject is one of the least-known episodes of World War II. Fearful of Nazi influence in Latin America, the United States, acting through J. Edgar Hoover’s F.B.I. and the State Department, compiled a list of suspected Axis sympathizers and then pressured compliant governments to intern those named, often on the basis of sketchy or dubious intelligence. Anti-Fascist refugees from Germany and Italy, along with the descendants of immigrants from those countries and Japan, were snared in that net and frequently imprisoned together with real Nazis. There were other abuses: corrupt government officials and covetous neighbors would sometimes falsely accuse prosperous émigrés, hoping to gain control of their expropriated businesses and homes. “The system of blacklists gave power to the weak, and the weak are the majority,” one character in “The Informer” muses bitterly. “That was life during those years: a dictatorship of weakness. The dictatorship of resentment,” in which there were thousands “who accused, who denounced, who informed.” Read more here. Semana International delivers news about Colombia in English. Find more in our home..