V o L u m e I : a d

Moving into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, the two

regions’ commonality has significantly diverged. Latin America’s political

pendulum has swung between authoritarianism and democracy. North Amer-

ica’s political system, in general, has remained stable and become gradually

more egalitarian. In economic terms, during its colonial era Latin America

was the wealthier region; however, with the industrialization of the late nine-

teenth century, North America quickly surpassed its southern neighbors.

The first major U.S. foreign policy pronouncement regarding Latin Amer-

ica was the Monroe Doctrine (1823), which declared the Western Hemisphere

off-limits to further European colonialism. Viewed by many as a cornerstone

of U.S. foreign policy, the doctrine was cast in negative terms, emphasizing

what outside powers could not do in the Western Hemisphere. But it was

nonetheless reinterpreted by subsequent U.S. leaders in more proactive

terms, providing justification for U.S. intervention in Latin American affairs.

A second turning point occurred in the 1880s, when American officials, most

notably Secretary of State James G. Blaine, called for increased economic

cooperation between the two regions.

Increasing U.S. investments in Latin America spawned anti-American

sentiments. U.S. military intervention, and later cultural imperialism, con-

firmed the worst fears of the Latin American nationalists south of the Rio

Grande River. Nineteenth-century military intervention, with only one major

exception (the U.S. intervention in Brazil in 1893), was confined to the

Caribbean region. Washington employed its military forces first in the brief

Spanish-American War of 1898. By 1903 the United States had offered sup-

port to rebels in Panama (then a renegade province of Colombia), which they

accepted, helping them to achieve independence from the South American

nation. This also facilitated the construction of the Panama Canal, a U.S.

project.

During the Great Depression, sources of capital and finished goods from

the industrialized countries were unavailable. To jump-start their own in-

dustrialization, the Latin American nations implemented a policy of import-

substitution industrialization by raising tariffs on imported items. This flew in

the face of what had come to be known in Washington as the inter-American

system: a free flow of capital, goods, and ideas between North and South

America that would foster harmonious relations between the regions.

Even though U.S. leaders disliked Latin American economic policies

that restricted the flow of trade and investment, President Franklin D. Roo-

sevelt, in his first inaugural address on 4 March 1933, promulgated the Good

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U.S. Interventions in Latin America

Where

Objective

Year

Guatemala

Ousted Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán

1954

Cuba

Undermined the government

1961–2

British Guyana

Undermined the government

1960s

Chile

Undermined the government

1970s

Nicaragua

Attempted to destabilize the nation

1979

Grenada

Sent troops to forestall communist insurgency

1983

Panama

Invasion of the country

1989

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Neighbor policy. Because various U.S. military interventions in Latin Amer-

ica had strained relations between North and South America by the 1920s,

Roosevelt very much wanted to strengthen ties between the regions. The

backbone of the Good Neighbor policy was Roosevelt’s nonintervention

pledge, and it seemed to usher in a new era of friendly relations between the

two regions. Moreover, hemispheric solidarity during World War II increased

Latin American acquiescence to heavier doses of U.S. cultural imperialism

via such media as radio and movies. In retrospect, this period proved to be

the high point of hemispheric solidarity.

As the Cold War intensified in the aftermath of World War II, Washing-

ton began to fear communist insurgencies taking root in the hemisphere. In

1947 the United States and Latin American nations signed an alliance, the

Rio Pact, to ensure that the Americas would remain anticommunist. In 1948,

the Organization of American States (OAS) implemented the Rio Pact, pro-

viding collective security for the Americas. In addition, President Harry S.

Truman increased U.S. bilateral assistance to Latin America that had first

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Americas

A nurse with the Servicio Cooperativo Interamericano de Salud Publico, a cooperative Point Four Program, visits a

family in La Paz, Bolivia, in February 1951. (National Archives and Records Administration)

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been given during World War II. The Point Four Program assisted Latin

America and other third world areas with infrastructure needs.

Fearing a communist takeover, Washington reneged on the Good Neigh-

bor policy with a covert Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) intervention in

Guatemala in 1954 that organized and supported a band of anticommunist

military leaders who opposed Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán’s regime. Arbenz, who

was portrayed as a communist—or at the very least, a communist sympa-

thizer—was ultimately forced from power that same year. The U.S. effort

in Guatemala proved to be a harbinger in that the CIA went on to employ

covert activity in the 1960s in Cuba and British Guiana (later Guyana), and

in the 1970s in Chile, all in an attempt to undermine governments that

allegedly threatened American interests.

With Fidel Castro’s 1959 rise to power in Cuba, the Latin American Left

grew in prominence. Traditionally, the Left worked to stimulate and focus

antiyanqui (anti-U.S.) sentiment, and the 1960s proved no different. Castro,

who declared in December 1961 that he was a communist, stated categori-

cally that he would attempt to foment revolution in Latin America and other

third world areas. The United States responded to Castro’s threats by break-

ing relations with Cuba in January 1961, initiating a propaganda campaign

against Castro, secretly trying to undermine his government, invading with a

paramilitary force of Cuban nationals in the April 1961 Bay of Pigs debacle,

and placing a total trade embargo on Cuba. Cuba soon proved to be a Cold

War flash point with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, which brought the

world to the brink of nuclear war.

To prevent the spread of hemispheric communism, the administration

of John F. Kennedy organized the Alliance for Progress, a multilateral assis-

tance effort aimed at Latin America to promote economic, social, and politi-

cal reforms. Although not the first assistance program aimed specifically at

the Latin American region—the Inter-American Development Bank dated

back to 1958—the program proved historic in its size and goals. Through the

program, the Latin American countries agreed to pledge an investment of

$80 billion, while the United States pledged $20 billion in aid over the next

decade. Observers disagree on why the goals of the program were not

achieved, and by the late 1960s the Alliance for Progress had played itself

out. Despite this failure, the U.S. policymakers’ ideas of granting assistance

to promote social and economic reforms and to promote democracy lived on.

The Caribbean Basin Initiative of 1981–1982, although it relied significantly

less on grant aid, demonstrated that U.S. leaders shared the same assump-

tions regarding growth and stability as their 1960s predecessors.

Even as American officials saw security threats in a number of Latin

American nations in the 1960s, economic relations remained an important

part of the North American-Latin American relationship. The pre–World

War II conflict between Latin American economic nationalism and U.S. free

trade reemerged with a new intensity after World War II. Even before the

end of the war, at an important inter-American conference held in the castle

of Chapultepec in Mexico City in March 1945, Latin American and U.S.

delegates clashed over whether the free flow of goods and services should

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