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
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)
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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