Frankly, I think it's part of a bigger problem with our media's complete failure to give adequate historical context (or any, really) for the events that they cover. But that's a subject for another post.
What I'm going to do here is give a brief overview of the US role in Latin America. If you want a more detailed look into the US role in a specific Latin American country, one of my first posts on this blog explores the US role in Nicaragua during the 20th Century, focusing especially on the Nicaraguan Revolution and the subsequent US support of the Contras.
What I'll do here, however, is give a very broad overview, though I will zoom in a bit on a few key moments. Enjoy!
(A quick note about sources: usually I source my posts pretty thoroughly, but a lot of the stuff I'm talking through here is stuff I read/learned from graduate school. If you have any questions about the information I've provided here, or would like any book recommendations, feel free to ask!)
The Roots of US Involvement
"Man, I wish I got my own countries to colonize, like Europe does. The US always gets the cool stuff!"
For about a hundred years after the founding of the United States, the US could only look to powerful European countries/empires like Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and Russia with envy. The US gradually grew in size and power during these hundred-ish years, but they weren't an empire the way the big European powers were, and therefore didn't have access to the same amount of resources or cheap (forced) labor. This desire to expand is part of what led to the Mexican-American War, which is why we have the southwestern US today.
When it came to expanding beyond the continental US, however, there was a problem. The European countries had colonized much of Africa and Asia. Furthermore, the US hadn't developed a powerful enough military to carry out long-distance colonization of these far away places. It could only watch as these European powers continued to profit off of the fruits of African and Asian colonization.
"Luckily" for the US (but not for the people down south), Latin America was right at its doorstep! Most of Latin America had freed itself from Spanish and Portuguese control by the end of the late 1800s, yet few places were as developed as the US. The US therefore had its own potential areas to exploit. Even better, with Europeans being on the other side of the Atlantic, and focused on exploiting Africa and Asia, the US would have barely any competition!
Now, to be fair, there was mixed opinion on whether the US should actually do this or not. Some said they shouldn't because Latin Americans should be seen as fellow independence-minded people who, just like the US, overthrew European exploitation; some opposed it less out of idealism and more because they felt, on a practical level, the US couldn't sustain such a project; others said the US shouldn't simply because they were so racist against Latin Americans they thought mingling with them would degrade US society and spread disease. Some favored colonization out of a genuine, if misguided, desire to help; others openly only favored colonization because of a naked desire for profits. Many simply didn't care one way or the other.
The Spanish-American War
I just wish there were someone around in the late 1800s to write
"that ain't it chief" in the letters to the editor (the comment section of its day).
Unfortunately, the imperialist side won out when the last territories of the Spanish empire, particularly Cuba, started fighting for independence. There was a big push within the US to intervene in the conflict. A strong anti-Spanish campaign propagated by politicians and spread by newspapers vilified the Spanish to no end (though, to be fair, much of it was quite justified). Then, in February 1898, the USS Maine exploded in a Havana harbor, which ultimately sealed the deal (later investigations, however, showed that it was caused by a fire in the ammunition stocks of the ship, rather than Spanish mines).
A couple months later the Spanish-American War officially popped off between the two countries. It was a brief war that only lasted from April 21st to August 13th, when the US won. It marked not only the emergence of the US as an unofficial empire in nearby Latin America, but the end of Spain as a serious colonial power. Part of the reason the US gave for fighting was that it was trying to "free" Cuba and other Spanish holdings.
In a foreshadowing of future affairs, Cuba did not really have say in the post-war talks. Cuba was freed from being a Spanish colony, but became a "protectorate" (basically, a colony) of the United States. In 1901 the US forced Cuba to integrate the Platt Amendment into their constitution, which forbade it from entering into treaties which "compromise Cuban independence" (which would be judged, of course, by the US), guaranteed US interests on the island, and gave the US authority to overthrow any Cuban leaders that it saw fit. This last clause wasn't put there for show- the US intervened in Cuba multiple times from 1901 to the time of the Cuban Revolution in 1959.
The Banana Wars
One of my most disappointing memories of grad school
was learning these weren't the weapons used during the Banana Wars.
When Teddy Roosevelt became president in 1901, he issued what he called the "Roosevelt Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine. For context, in 1823 president James Monroe and secretary of state John Quincy Adams drafted the Monroe Doctrine, which proclaimed that Europe couldn't create any new colonies in the Western Hemisphere and pledged US defense of any Latin American country facing European invasion. It never led anywhere- the few times anyone from down south asked for help the US did nothing because it didn't have the power to- but it was a nice gesture.
The "Roosevelt Corollary", on the other hand, claimed the US could police Latin America through interventions in cases of "wrongdoing or impotence."
Long story short, this led to multiple US interventions in places like Panama, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Honduras. Usually it was the marines that were sent. In some cases these interventions turned into occupations that lasted years, such as in the Dominican Republic (1916-1924), Nicaragua (1912-1933), Haiti (1915-1934), and Honduras (sporadically from 1903-1925). The US also intervened in Cuba multiple times, as mentioned above, and even intervened briefly in Mexico in 1916, during the Mexican Revolution. The US began to think of Latin America/the Caribbean as its "backyard."
These interventions were caused for a variety of reasons. Usually it was some sort of combination of supporting pro-US factions during times of conflict, trying to quash domestic conflicts to create stability for US business interests, and good ol' fashioned bullying to get Latin American governments to bend to US will. These interventions often squashed movements for democracy, civil rights, and other causes that could've helped create actual stability and prosperity for Latin Americans.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt became president, he ended the occupations in Latin America and instituted the "Good Neighbor" policy with Latin America. The US withdrew militarily from the region and treated its neighbors with far more diplomatic respect. Some historians attribute the Good Neighbor policy to genuine idealism, while others attribute it to more cynical causes, such as the idea that the US had already squashed enough social movements that they didn't need to stay occupying the region, or that it was done to get Latin America to side with the US if it entered WW2. Whatever the reason(s), the Good Neighbor policy allowed Latin America a break from US intervention.
The Cold War Begins
No jokes here, just two goons you've probably never heard of who were responsible
for shifting US policy toward Latin America in a way that led to unimaginable suffering.
Then the Cold War happened.
As most of us know, World War 2 ended with tensions between the US and Soviet Union on what exactly the post-war world order would look like. Both saw each other as an existential threat. President Truman looked to contain communism to keep it from spreading. In 1947 he created the CIA, National Security Council, and expanded/reorganized the US military. When, in 1949, the Soviet Union successfully tested an atomic bomb and the Chinese communists overthrew the Chinese national government, tensions only further escalated. The US was shook.
In 1952, Eisenhower won the presidential election. He actually had a moderate foreign policy vision by Cold War standards, but he also had two people in his cabinet who were fervent Cold Warriors. Head of the CIA Allen Dulles and secretary of state John Foster Dulles (pictured above) hated communism (or even just alleged "communists") more than they loved democracy or freedom. In 1953 they helped overthrow the democratically elected, non-communist prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddegh, for nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in 1951. They reinstalled the repressive shah (who would later be overthrown in the 1979 Iranian Revolution).
Then they turned their eyes to Guatemala.
Operation PBSUCCESS
"Surely the US, also being a democracy, will welcome me with open arms!"
In 1944 Guatemala had a mostly non-violent revolution that overthrew a US-backed military dictatorship. In its place, Guatemalans establish an electoral democracy. The first elected president was Juan Jose Arevalo, who helped further entrench democratic norms/institutions, legalized unions, instituted labor protections, and created literacy campaigns to help low-income and rural Guatemalans learn to read. The US didn't like him for overthrowing their guy, but recognized he wasn't a communist, much less a Soviet puppet.
Then, in 1950, Jacobo Arbenz (who had served as defense minister under Arevalo) won the presidency. He was to the left of Arevalo and expanded on what Arevalo had done, but he also had one big cornerstone of his campaign that hadn't been done before in Guatemala: land reform. In 1952, Arbenz passed Ley 900, which appropriated unused land from large estates and gave it to the poor. Much of the land was taken from the United Fruit Company, as it was the largest landholder in Guatemala.
(Fun side note: landowners were compensated for their land based on the amount they claimed the land was worth on their taxes. Because these landed elite purposefully undervalued their land to avoid paying fair tax rates, they received way less than the land was worth and were pissed about it).
This was the final straw for the US. In 1954, Arbenz was overthrown in a CIA-orchestrated coup. The consequences were far-reaching for both Guatemala and the US. For Guatemala, this created a spiraling of conflict in the country, as Guatemalans didn't take too kindly to their democratically elected government being replaced with a dictatorship. They fought back, assassinating the US-chosen dictator in 1957, but the US insisted on appointing more military dictators. This created a civil war in Guatemala that started in 1960 and didn't end until 1996. Yes, that's right, nineteen ninety-friggin-six. We'll get back to that later.
For the US, this (along with the 1953 coup in Iran) gave the US false confidence in coups. I say "false confidence" because these coups only succeeded exactly because both places were not Soviet-connected communist countries run by militant ideologues. Both Mosaddegh and Arbenz tried to de-escalate things, rather than militantly stand their ground; later investigations showed zero ties of either administration to the Soviets. When the US actually ran into militant ideologues backed by the Soviets during later interventions, including the 1961 Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba, they often completely ate shit.
Revolution vs Reform
"Three cheers for scruffy beards!"
In 1959 the Cuban Revolution succeeded in overthrowing US-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. Long story short, Fidel Castro and his "barbudos" (bearded ones) came to power. I'm not gonna talk in detail about Fidel's leadership here, as I already wrote a blog post a couple years back examining his complicated legacy. For the purpose of this post, the main effect of the Cuban Revolution across Latin America was that it inspired much of the poor, the Indigenous, the working class, and the educated, for it showed that overthrowing US imperialism was possible (much of Latin America during this time was still ruled by US-backed dictatorships). This optimism was called "fidelismo."
JFK came into office during the beginning of fidelismo. JFK himself decided that these US-backed tyrants had to get their acts together. Because of that he passed the Alliance for Progress, a large aid package for Latin American leaders in exchange for creating plans to help improve conditions for their citizens. He believed reform would prevent revolution.
This noble thought failed, however, because it did nothing to fix the power structures of Latin America. Military dictators with backing from the landed elite and Catholic church ran most of these countries, and spent most of the money on vanity projects (if not outright pocketing it) rather than on the promised programs. The only real exceptions were Chile and Venezuela, which were both social democracies with pretty stable democratic institutions at the time. They were used as models for the policy despite its overall failure, which allowed LBJ to continue it. Nixon, however, ended the program.
Luckily for the US, Cuba wasn't very good at spreading revolution yet. It made the mistake of buying into its own hype- Che really thought it was mostly just their group who overthrow Batista, rather than there being a number of factions from which Fidel just happened to come out on top. From Che's analysis he developed "foco theory", the idea that a small group of revolutionaries can spark a greater flame of revolt. This approach failed in Latin America, as Cuba naively thought it could just start revolutions abroad rather than assist already well-established revolutionary movements who had popular support (something they'd catch onto later, which greatly helped their success rate).
Basically, 1960s idealism petered out for both the US and Cuba in their own ways.
The Cold War Rises
"Sometimes, a [blatant disregard for human life] rises."
When Nixon came into office in 1968 he threw full support, including propaganda campaigns and military assistance, behind Latin American tyrants. He did so without apology or any efforts to help average Latin Americans. He also possibly helped directly overthrow the democratically elected socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende, in 1973- there is debate as to whether the US facilitated the coup or just cheered from the sidelines. Either way, they threw their full support behind the dictator Agosto Pinochet when he came to power.
When Carter came into office in 1976, he brought human rights into his foreign policy more than basically any Cold War president had, other than perhaps late-stage JFK. He drastically reduced aid to countries with human rights issues, openly called for democracy in Latin America, and even chose not to intervene against revolutionary movements that had began popping up. Unfortunately for Carter, 1979 was a rough year for the US. The Iranian Revolution overthrew the US-backed shah and took Americans hostage, the Sandinistas overthrew the US-backed dictatorship of Anastacio Somoza to establish socialist democracy, and the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan.
The Iranian and Nicaraguan revolutions were inevitable and just happened to succeed during the Carter administration. Republicans actively undermined/delayed the Iran hostage crisis in order to make Carter look weak. The Afghanistan invasion would prove to be an disaster for the Soviets, much like Vietnam was for the US. At the time, though, this spelled doom for the Carter presidency. Reagan, who campaigned as the Cold War-iest of Cold Warriors, won the presidency in 1980. His administration looked at human rights and democracy with the same level of apathy that people online view anti-piracy warnings.
He funded the Contras (counter-revolutionary forces) in Nicaragua by illegally selling arms to Iran. It's worth noting there was nothing remotely democratic about the Contras- they were made up of people from the Anastacio Somoza dictatorship who had zero popular support among the general Nicaraguan population. He also funded military dictatorships in Guatemala and El Salvador, among other places, despite their numerous, horrific atrocities. Rapes, murdering of children, and cruel acts of torture were the norm for these regimes. In some cases, entire villages were wiped out, with no exceptions made for children, the disabled, or elderly.
The Aftermath
Shit, man, let's get some kittens in here to balance out the horror a bit.
By the end of the Cold War in 1991, Latin America was exhausted. Especially Central America. While South America suffered greatly under US-backed dictatorships in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and elsewhere, those countries generally had more wealth, institutional stability, and other such advantages that helped lessen the long-term damage from these dictatorships. Many people in these countries felt more like these dictatorships were an era of disruption, and the end of the Cold War signaled a return to normalcy (though, that said, hundreds of thousands were killed and/or disappeared, and many more tortured or threatened, so the effects shouldn't be taken lightly, either).
Central America was in shambles, however. The civil war in El Salvador continued until 1992, while Guatemala's continued until 1996. The Contras only backed down in Nicaragua because the US had strong-armed Nicaragua into voting for opposition candidate Violeta Chamorro in 1990 instead of Sandinista candidate Daniel Ortega in exchange for ending support for the Contras. Honduras, while not wrecked by civil war, was used by the US as a base of operations during the Cold War, and the CIA violently suppressed dissent. Panama was like Honduras up until its government grew so corrupt and unstable that it began to interfere with US interests, which caused Regan to turn on its leader, Noriega.
Only Costa Rica was spared, thanks in part to its strong democratic tradition that had miraculously found a peaceful middle ground between independence from the US while not agitating it.
To use Guatemala as a specific example of what Central America looked like, it's estimated that during the civil war about 200,000 people were killed. That is a horrible number by itself, but even more horrible when put into the context of how small the country is. The population of Guatemala in 1996 was about 10 million. A UN truth commission found that 93% of the human rights violations conducted during the civil war were carried out about the military regime; only 3% were carried out by the leftist liberation movements, with the extra 4% carried out by other groups.
Poverty and Violence
I'm, uhh, gonna stick to this kitten thing if y'all don't mind.
The end of the Cold War in Central America, or even Latin America as a whole, didn't end all conflict. Mostly, it lessened the US role in the region. It's hard to say to what exact extent the US has played a role in the post-Cold War Latin America, as it's still too close to the present day for the Freedom of Information Act to disclose what we've done in recent years. Still, it seems certain that it has played far less of a role without the threat of Soviet-backed communism to scare it into action.
Central Americans were left with a lot of questions. How do we rebuild basically every institution of our society? How will we govern, when we've known nothing but subjugation for so long? What do we do with the people who served in these despotic, murderous regimes? How do we create functional economies when so much people, resources, and ideas have been lost to violence for so long? How do we go about healing psychologically from such traumatic experiences?
That's not something you recover from overnight. These problems meant a power vacuum, which the drug cartels have taken advantage of. On top of that, even in places where the drug cartels haven't reached, poverty is still extremely common. These conditions, brought about in large part by the US role during the Cold War, are what sparked today's refugee crisis.
Closing Thoughts
A Guatemalan protest opposing government corruption in 2015.
On yet another note, I don't wannna imply that it's only been despair for Central America, either. Most of these countries have become democracies in aftermath of the Cold War. Many of them have built institutions that, while fragile and under-resourced, still show a level of progress despite the daunting challenges faced in the early 1990s. Brave organizers have launched campaigns on everything from accountability projects against former despots, to commissions to find disappeared people, to political causes to help people. There have even been former human rights activists and liberation movement leaders who have run for elected office.
The situation in Central America isn't hopeless. The people of Central America aren't helpless. Still, there are serious problems that the US helped create. We need to recognize that reality, and think about that when we think about the refugees coming here from Central America. "Tough luck, isn't my problem" doesn't apply here.
Thanks for reading.
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