U.S. Interventions in Latin America

sunflower · 11-16-2007, 08:52 PM

1846
The U.S., fulfilling the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, goes to war with Mexico and ends up with a third of Mexico's territory.

1850, 1853, 1854, 1857
U.S. interventions in Nicaragua.

1855
Tennessee adventurer William Walker and his mercenaries take over Nicaragua, institute forced labor, and legalize slavery.

"Los yankis... have burst their way like a fertilizing torrent through the barriers of barbarism." --N.Y. Daily News

He's ousted two years later by a Central American coalition largely inspired by Cornelius Vanderbilt, whose trade Walker was infringing.

"The enemies of American civilization-- for such are the enemies of slavery-- seem to be more on the alert than its friends." --William Walker

1856
First of five U.S. interventions in Panama to protect the Atlantic-Pacific railroad from Panamanian nationalists.

1898
U.S. declares war on Spain, blaming it for destruction of the Maine. (In 1976, a U.S. Navy commission will conclude that the explosion was probably an accident.) The war enables the U.S. to occupy Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines.

1903
The Platt Amendment inserted into the Cuban constitution grants the U.S. the right to intervene when it sees fit.

1903
When negotiations with Colombia break down, the U.S. sends ten warships to back a rebellion in Panama in order to acquire the land for the Panama Canal. The Frenchman Philippe Bunau-Varilla negotiates the Canal Treaty and writes Panama's constitution.

1904
U.S. sends customs agents to take over finances of the Dominican Republic to assure payment of its external debt.

1905
U.S. Marines help Mexican dictator Porfirio Díaz crush a strike in Sonora.

1905
U.S. troops land in Honduras for the first of 5 times in next 20 years.

1906
Marines occupy Cuba for two years in order to prevent a civil war.

1907
Marines intervene in Honduras to settle a war with Nicaragua.

1908
U.S. troops intervene in Panama for first of 4 times in next decade.

1909
Liberal President José Santos Zelaya of Nicaragua proposes that American mining and banana companies pay taxes; he has also appropriated church lands and legalized divorce, done business with European firms, and executed two Americans for participating in a rebellion. Forced to resign through U.S. pressure. The new president, Adolfo Díaz, is the former treasurer of an American mining company.

1910
U.S. Marines occupy Nicaragua to help support the Díaz regime.

1911
The Liberal regime of Miguel Dávila in Honduras has irked the State Department by being too friendly with Zelaya and by getting into debt with Britain. He is overthrown by former president Manuel Bonilla, aided by American banana tycoon Sam Zemurray and American mercenary Lee Christmas, who becomes commander-in-chief of the Honduran army.

1912
U.S. Marines intervene in Cuba to put down a rebellion of sugar workers.

1912
Nicaragua occupied again by the U.S., to shore up the inept Díaz government. An election is called to resolve the crisis: there are 4000 eligible voters, and one candidate, Díaz. The U.S. maintains troops and advisors in the country until 1925.

1914
U.S. bombs and then occupies Vera Cruz, in a conflict arising out of a dispute with Mexico's new government. President Victoriano Huerta resigns.

1915
U.S. Marines occupy Haiti to restore order, and establish a protectorate which lasts till 1934. The president of Haiti is barred from the U.S. Officers' Club in Port-au-Prince, because he is black.

"Think of it-- ******s speaking French!" --secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, briefed on the Haitian situation

1916
Marines occupy the Dominican Republic, staying till 1924.

1916
Pancho Villa, in the sole act of Latin American aggression against the U.S, raids the city of Columbus, New Mexico, killing 17 Americans.

"Am sure Villa's attacks are made in Germany." --James Gerard, U.S. ambassador to Berlin

1917
U.S. troops enter Mexico to pursue Pancho Villa. They can't catch him.

1917
Marines intervene again in Cuba, to guarantee sugar exports during WWI.

1918
U.S. Marines occupy Panamanian province of Chiriqui for two years to maintain public order.

1921
President Coolidge strongly suggests the overthrow of Guatemalan President Carlos Herrera, in the interests of United Fruit. The Guatemalans comply.

1925
U.S. Army troops occupy Panama City to break a rent strike and keep order.

1926
Marines, out of Nicaragua for less than a year, occupy the country again, to settle a volatile political situation. Secretary of State Kellogg describes a "Nicaraguan-Mexican-Soviet" conspiracy to inspire a "Mexican-Bolshevist hegemony" within striking distance of the Canal.

"That intervention is not now, never was, and never will be a set policy of the United States is one of the most important facts President-elect Hoover has made clear." --NYT, 1928

1929
U.S. establishes a military academy in Nicaragua to train a National Guard as the country's army. Similar forces are trained in Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

"There is no room for any outside influence other than ours in this region. We could not tolerate such a thing without incurring grave risks... Until now Central America has always understood that governments which we recognize and support stay in power, while those which we do not recognize and support fall. Nicaragua has become a test case. It is difficult to see how we can afford to be defeated." --Undersecretary of State Robert Olds

1930
Rafael Leonidas Trujillo emerges from the U.S.-trained National Guard to become dictator of the Dominican Republic.

1932
The U.S. rushes warships to El Salvador in response to a communist-led uprising. President Martínez, however, prefers to put down the rebellion with his own forces, killing over 8000 people (the rebels had killed about 100).

1933
President Roosevelt announces the Good Neighbor policy.

1933
Marines finally leave Nicaragua, unable to suppress the guerrilla warfare of General Augusto César Sandino. Anastasio Somoza García becomes the first Nicaraguan commander of the National Guard.

"The Nicaraguans are better fighters than the Haitians, being of Indian blood, and as warriors similar to the aborigines who resisted the advance of civilization in this country." --NYT correspondent Harold Denny

1933
Roosevelt sends warships to Cuba to intimidate Gerardo Machado y Morales, who is massacring the people to put down nationwide strikes and riots. Machado resigns. The first provisional government lasts only 17 days; the second Roosevelt finds too left-wing and refuses to recognize. A pro-Machado counter-coup is put down by Fulgencio Batista, who with Roosevelt's blessing becomes Cuba's new strongman.

sunflower · 11-16-2007, 08:53 PM

1934
Platt Amendment repealed.

1934
Sandino assassinated by agents of Somoza, with U.S. approval. Somoza assumes the presidency of Nicaragua two years later. To block his ascent, Secretary of State Cordell Hull explains, would be to intervene in the internal affairs of Nicaragua.

1936
U.S. relinquishes rights to unilateral intervention in Panama.

1941
Ricardo Adolfo de la Guardia deposes Panamanian president Arias in a military coup-- first clearing it with the U.S. Ambassador.

It was "a great relief to us, because Arias had been very troublesome and very pro-Nazi." --Secretary of War Henry Stimson

1943
The editor of the Honduran opposition paper El Cronista is summoned to the U.S. embassy and told that criticism of the dictator Tiburcio Carías Andino is damaging to the war effort. Shortly afterward, the paper is shut down by the government.

1944
The dictator Maximiliano Hernández Martínez of El Salvador is ousted by a revolution; the interim government is overthrown five months later by the dictator's former chief of police. The U.S.'s immediate recognition of the new dictator does much to tarnish Roosevelt's Good Neighbor policy in the eyes of Latin Americans.

1946
U.S. Army School of the Americas opens in Panama as a hemisphere-wide military academy. Its linchpin is the doctrine of National Security, by which the chief threat to a nation is internal subversion; this will be the guiding principle behind dictatorships in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Central America, and elsewhere.

1948
José Figueres Ferrer wins a short civil war to become President of Costa Rica. Figueres is supported by the U.S., which has informed San José that its forces in the Panama Canal are ready to come to the capital to end "communist control" of Costa Rica.

1954
Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán, elected president of Guatemala, introduces land reform and seizes some idle lands of United Fruit-- proposing to pay for them the value United Fruit claimed on its tax returns. The CIA organizes a small force to overthrow him and begins training it in Honduras. When Arbenz naively asks for U.S. military help to meet this threat, he is refused; when he buys arms from Czechoslovakia it only proves he's a Red.

Guatemala is "openly and diligently toiling to create a Communist state in Central America... only two hours' bombing time from the Panama Canal." --Life

The CIA broadcasts reports detailing the imaginary advance of the "rebel army," and provides planes to strafe the capital. The army refuses to defend Arbenz, who resigns. The U.S.'s hand-picked dictator, Carlos Castillo Armas, outlaws political parties, reduces the franchise, and establishes the death penalty for strikers, as well as undoing Arbenz's land reform. Over 100,000 citizens are killed in the next 30 years of military rule.

"This is the first instance in history where a Communist government has been replaced by a free one." --Richard Nixon

1957
Eisenhower establishes Office of Public Safety to train Latin American police forces.

1959
Fidel Castro takes power in Cuba. Several months earlier he had undertaken a triumphal tour through the U.S., which included a CIA briefing on the Red menace.

"Castro's continued tawdry little melodrama of invasion." --Time, of Castro's warnings of an imminent U.S. invasion

1960
Eisenhower authorizes covert actions to get rid of Castro. Among other things, the CIA tries assassinating him with exploding cigars and poisoned milkshakes. Other covert actions against Cuba include burning sugar fields, blowing up boats in Cuban harbors, and sabotaging industrial equipment.

1960
The Canal Zone becomes the focus of U.S. counterinsurgency training.

1960
A new junta in El Salvador promises free elections; Eisenhower, fearing leftist tendencies, withholds recognition. A more attractive right-wing counter-coup comes along in three months.

"Governments of the civil-military type of El Salvador are the most effective in containing communist penetration in Latin America." --John F. Kennedy, after the coup

1960
Guatemalan officers attempt to overthrow the regime of Presidente Fuentes; Eisenhower stations warships and 2000 Marines offshore while Fuentes puts down the revolt. [Another source says that the U.S. provided air support for Fuentes.]

1960s
U.S. Green Berets train Guatemalan army in counterinsurgency techniques. Guatemalan efforts against its insurgents include aerial bombing, scorched-earth assaults on towns suspected of aiding the rebels, and death squads, which killed 20,000 people between 1966 and 1976. U.S. Army Col. John Webber claims that it was at his instigation that "the technique of counter-terror had been implemented by the army."

"If it is necessary to turn the country into a cemetary in order to pacify it, I will not hesitate to do so." --President Carlos Arana Osorio

1961
U.S. organizes force of 1400 anti-Castro Cubans, ships it to the Bahía de los Cochinos. Castro's army routs it.

1961
CIA-backed coup overthrows elected Pres. J. M. Velasco Ibarra of Ecuador, who has been too friendly with Cuba.

1962
CIA engages in campaign in Brazil to keep João Goulart from achieving control of Congress.

1963
CIA-backed coup overthrows elected social democrat Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic.

1963
A far-right-wing coup in Guatemala, apparently U.S.-supported, forestalls elections in which "extreme leftist" Juan José Arévalo was favored to win.

"It is difficult to develop stable and democratic government [in Guatemala], because so many of the nation's Indians are illiterate and superstitious." --School textbook, 1964

1964
João Goulart of Brazil proposes agrarian reform, nationalization of oil. Ousted by U.S.-supported military coup.

1964
The free market in Nicaragua:

The Somoza family controls "about one-tenth of the cultivable land in Nicaragua, and just about everything else worth owning, the country's only airline, one television station, a newspaper, a cement plant, textile mill, several sugar refineries, half-a-dozen breweries and distilleries, and a Mercedes-Benz agency." --Life World Library

1965
A coup in the Dominican Republic attempts to restore Bosch's government. The U.S. invades and occupies the country to stop this "Communist rebellion," with the help of the dictators of Brazil, Paraguay, Honduras, and Nicaragua.

"Representative democracy cannot work in a country such as the Dominican Republic," Bosch declares later. Now why would he say that?

1966
U.S. sends arms, advisors, and Green Berets to Guatemala to implement a counterinsurgency campaign.

"To eliminate a few hundred guerrillas, the government killed perhaps 10,000 Guatemalan peasants." --State Dept. report on the program

1967
A team of Green Berets is sent to Bolivia to help find and assassinate Che Guevara.

1968
Gen. José Alberto Medrano, who is on the payroll of the CIA, organizes the ORDEN paramilitary force, considered the precursor of El Salvador's death squads.

1970
In this year (just as an example), U.S. investments in Latin America earn $1.3 billion; while new investments total $302 million.

1970
Salvador Allende Gossens elected in Chile. Suspends foreign loans, nationalizes foreign companies. For the phone system, pays ITT the company's minimized valuation for tax purposes. The CIA provides covert financial support for Allende's opponents, both during and after his election.

sunflower · 11-16-2007, 08:53 PM

1972
U.S. stands by as military suspends an election in El Salvador in which centrist José Napoleón Duarte was favored to win. (Compare with the emphasis placed on the 1982 elections.)

1973
U.S.-supported military coup kills Allende and brings Augusto Pinochet Ugarte to power. Pinochet imprisons well over a hundred thousand Chileans (torture and rape are the usual methods of interrogation), terminates civil liberties, abolishes unions, extends the work week to 48 hours, and reverses Allende's land reforms.

1973
Military takes power in Uruguay, supported by U.S. The subsequent repression reportedly features the world's highest percentage of the population imprisoned for political reasons.

1974
Office of Public Safety is abolished when it is revealed that police are being taught torture techniques.

1976
Election of Jimmy Carter leads to a new emphasis on human rights in Central America. Carter cuts off aid to the Guatemalan military (or tries to; some slips through) and reduces aid to El Salvador.

1979
Ratification of the Panama Canal treaty which is to return the Canal to Panama by 1999.

"Once again, Uncle Sam put his tail between his legs and crept away rather than face trouble." --Ronald Reagan

1980
A right-wing junta takes over in El Salvador. U.S. begins massively supporting El Salvador, assisting the military in its fight against FMLN guerrillas. Death squads proliferate; Archbishop Romero is assassinated by right-wing terrorists; 35,000 civilians are killed in 1978-81. The rape and murder of four U.S. churchwomen results in the suspension of U.S. military aid for one month.

The U.S. demands that the junta undertake land reform. Within 3 years, however, the reform program is halted by the oligarchy.

"The Soviet Union underlies all the unrest that is going on." --Ronald Reagan

1980
U.S., seeking a stable base for its actions in El Salvador and Nicaragua, tells the Honduran military to clean up its act and hold elections. The U.S. starts pouring in $100 million of aid a year and basing the contras on Honduran territory.

Death squads are also active in Honduras, and the contras tend to act as a state within a state.

1981
The CIA steps in to organize the contras in Nicaragua, who started the previous year as a group of 60 ex-National Guardsmen; by 1985 there are about 12,000 of them. 46 of the 48 top military leaders are ex-Guardsmen. The U.S. also sets up an economic embargo of Nicaragua and pressures the IMF and the World Bank to limit or halt loans to Nicaragua.

1981
Gen. Torrijos of Panama is killed in a plane crash. There is a suspicion of CIA involvement, due to Torrijos' nationalism and friendly relations with Cuba.
1982

A coup brings Gen. Efraín Ríos Montt to power in Guatemala, and gives the Reagan administration the opportunity to increase military aid. Ríos Montt's evangelical beliefs do not prevent him from accelerating the counterinsurgency campaign.

1983
Another coup in Guatemala replaces Ríos Montt. The new President, Oscar Mejía Víctores, was trained by the U.S. and seems to have cleared his coup beforehand with U.S. authorities.

1983
U.S. troops take over tiny Granada. Rather oddly, it intervenes shortly after a coup has overthrown the previous, socialist leader. One of the justifications for the action is the building of a new airport with Cuban help, which Granada claimed was for tourism and Reagan argued was for Soviet use. Later the U.S. announces plans to finish the airport... to develop tourism.

1983
Boland Amendment prohibits CIA and Defense Dept. from spending money to overthrow the government of Nicaragua-- a law the Reagan administration cheerfully violates.

1984
CIA mines three Nicaraguan harbors. Nicaragua takes this action to the World Court, which brings an $18 billion judgment against the U.S. The U.S. refuses to recognize the Court's jurisdiction in the case.

1984
U.S. spends $10 million to orchestrate elections in El Salvador-- something of a farce, since left-wing parties are under heavy repression, and the military has already declared that it will not answer to the elected president.

1989
U.S. invades Panama to dislodge CIA boy gone wrong Manuel Noriega, an event which marks the evolution of the U.S.'s favorite excuse from Communism to drugs.

1996
The U.S. battles global Communism by extending most-favored-nation trading status for China, and tightening the trade embargo on Castro's Cuba.

VKMHVM2 · 11-16-2007, 09:09 PM

Holy cow! And that's just Latin America!

sunflower · 11-16-2007, 09:11 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by VKMHVM2

Holy cow! And that's just Latin America!

And only through 1996...they've had lots and lots of practice, haven't they?

sunflower · 11-16-2007, 09:14 PM

This is an article about the country of my family's origin, the Dominican Republic.

Intervention Spin Cycle
By Norman Solomon
Baltimore Sun
April 26, 2005

Forty years ago, on the morning of April 26, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson spoke with a top State Department official about fast-moving events in the Dominican Republic. A popular rebellion was on the verge of toppling a military junta and restoring the country's democratically elected president, Juan Bosch, to power. "This Bosch is no good," Mr. Johnson said. "He's no good at all," replied Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Mann, who added: "If we don't get a decent government in there, Mr. President, we get another Bosch. It's just going to be another sinkhole."

Two days after that phone conversation, thousands of U.S. Marines landed on the beaches of Santo Domingo. By then, the White House spin machinery was in high gear. When the president went on television to declare that the military action was necessary to rescue U.S. citizens, he didn't mention that nearly all of them had already been evacuated before the Marines arrived.

Mr. Johnson maintained that "99 percent of our reason for going in there was to try to provide protection for these American lives and the lives of other nationals." But the Dominican Republic's military rulers had not cited any need for such protection in their written request for U.S. intervention.

More than two months later, at a closed session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Mann testified that Washington had asked its ambassador in Santo Domingo to see if the Dominican regime would "be willing to give us an additional message which places the request squarely on the need to save American lives."

While new waves of U.S. troops reached Santo Domingo, the public explanations for the invasion gradually shifted. On April 30, during a second televised speech, Mr. Johnson referred to "signs that people trained outside the Dominican Republic are seeking to gain control."

On May 2, LBJ pulled out the rhetorical stops, telling TV viewers that "what began as a popular democratic revolution, committed to democracy and social justice, very shortly moved and was taken over and really seized and placed into the hands of a band of Communist conspirators." But the evidence for Communist involvement was as flimsy as the claim about needing to save American citizens.

Most American politicians and media commentators readily accepted the official line, along with the reported death toll of 31 U.S. troops and 3,000 Dominicans, many of them civilians. Four decades later, the invasion is scarcely remembered in the United States. Yet there's a familiar ring to its story line, featuring a disingenuous administration and a deferential press corps selling the public on the dire need for an invasion. Key facts were lost in the kind of exculpatory fog that often prettifies the nation's view of its own military actions.

In March 1999, Newsweek flatly reported that "America has not started a war in this century." Many politicians - including avowed liberals - eagerly falsify history in a similar spirit to juice up their rhetoric. When Howard Dean was a candidate for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination, his campaign put out a broadside that denounced "a Bush-Cheney policy where, for the first time in American history, we commit to war before exhausting our efforts to commit to peace." Such statements pander to nationalistic conceits at the expense of candor. They apply perfume to the past and tacitly endorse a low threshold for war in the future.

The invasion of the Dominican Republic turned out to be the first in a modern series of U.S. military interventions that produced quick victories overseas and evident satisfaction at home. The sudden and overwhelming arrival of U.S. troops in Santo Domingo was a prototype for the lightning-strike invasions of Grenada and Panama in the 1980s.

Beyond the Western Hemisphere, larger-scale military actions ensued against Iraq in 1991, Yugoslavia in 1999 and Afghanistan in 2001, all followed by victorious celebrations back in the United States. Only defeat (Vietnam) or stalemate (post-invasion Iraq) have seemed to give the Washington establishment pause. The most tangible constraints appear to be military rather than political or ethical.

In their phone conversation two days before the Marines landed, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Mann were already planning the post-invasion government of the Dominican Republic. A tape recording of the discussion conveys large doses of imperial arrogance. "We're going to have to really set up that government down there," the president said, "and run it and stabilize it some way or other."

Forty years later, it's easy to imagine similar conversations in the present-day Oval Office.

VKMHVM2 · 11-16-2007, 09:18 PM

List of U.S. foreign interventions since 1945

U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II

Actual number of democracies created: 0

Kanadesaga · 11-16-2007, 09:35 PM

Welcome to Amerika!!

We talk a good game, sell that bs to the whole world. But our actions are far from the rhetoric.

the majority of those little excursions into Latin America had a company or corporation somewhere in the genesis of it.

sunflower · 11-16-2007, 09:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kanadesaga

Welcome to Amerika!!

We talk a good game, sell that bs to the whole world. But our actions are far from the rhetoric.

the majority of those little excursions into Latin America had a company or corporation somewhere in the genesis of it.

Absolutely correct. Rich, fertile lands, ready for the pillaging.

The adventures in the middle east should be no surprise to anyone.

Kanadesaga · 11-16-2007, 10:57 PM

Ever since 1848, the Southern nations of America have been our playground. Look at Cuba until Castro. But Chiquita and Dole and Delmonte all profited from American Military intervention into whatever country was needed to "see the light"

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