Peter H. Smith
For My Students
PREFACE, iX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS, Xi
Introduction: International Systems and U.S.-Latin American Relations, 1
I The Imperial Era
1. The European Game, 11
2. The Gospel of Democracy, 38
3. Mr. Roosevelt’s Neighborhood, 63
4. Latin America: Responses to Imperialism, 87
II The Cold War
5. Closing Ranks, 117
6. Making Friends, 143
7. Crushing Enemies, 164
8. Latin America: Fighting the Cold War, 190
III Age of Uncertainty
9. Hegemony by Default, 219
10. The New Economic Agenda, 249
11. Illicit Flows and Military Force, 284
12. Latin America: In Quest of Alternatives, 318
Conclusion: Structure and Change in U.S.-Latin American Relations, 353
APPENDIX: STATISTICAL TABLES, 371
NOTES, 383
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY, 397
INDEX, 405
This book is a personal statement.
It reflects my belief that historical perspective is absolutely essential
for the comprehension of contemporary international realities. Over the
past few years there has been much discussion, often naive and shortsighted, about the end of the Cold War and its presumably benevolent
impact on U.S.-Latin American relations. In my opinion we can assess
the novelty and significance of the current situation only by comparing it
with previous epochs-not only with the time of the Cold War itself but
also with the era stretching from the American Revolution up through
World War II.
It reflects my commitment to interdisciplinary scholarship. The analysis attempts to blend insights from political science and international relations with the study of diplomatic, intellectual, cultural, and political
history-of Latin America, the United States, and other parts of the world.
There has been remarkably little communication between these apparently
disparate fields. This volume seeks to draw some new connections.
It reflects my conviction that U.S. citizens-commentators, policymakers, investors, and others-must pay close attention to Latin American viewpoints. Too often the study of inter-American relations deteriorates into the study of U.S. foreign policy. One of my central arguments is
that there has existed a coherent logic, at times infernal and perverse, in
the conduct of U.S.-Latin American relations; an understanding of that
logic requires an understanding of Latin American feelings, attitudes, and
actions.
It expresses my appreciation for the task of intellectual synthesis, as distinct from original research. This book does not present an exhaustive
chronology of U.S.-Latin American relations. My goal is to offer a conceptual framework for the comprehension of changing patterns of interAmerican relations over a span of nearly two centuries, and to substantiate
that analysis with solid factual evidence. The result is interpretive history
(or, if one permits, historical political science). Of necessity, many topics
and episodes receive cursory description. As a scholar, I am acutely aware
that colleagues have published entire books on subjects that warrant only
a paragraph or single sentence here. As a writer, I have sought to achieve
the benefits of brevity without incurring costs of superficiality. (For the
sake of readability, I have placed all statistical tables in an appendix to the
text.)
Finally, the volume fulfills an obligation-to the students, undergraduate and graduate, North American and Latin American, who have
stimulated, provoked, challenged, and refined my thinking on U.S.-Latin
American relations. Over the past thirty years it has been my privilege to
work together with outstanding young men and women-at Dartmouth
College, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California, San Diego, and various
institutions throughout Latin America. To all of them I dedicate this
book.
Years of reading, observation, and reflection on U.S.-Latin American relations have left a mountainous accumulation of intellectual debts. Here I
can acknowledge only a few.
From the initial conception of this book Nancy Lane, of Oxford University Press, consistently offered support, advice, and encouragement.
Her successor, Gioia Stevens, was equally supportive through work on
this second edition.
A remarkable corps of students at the University of California, San
Diego worked with me throughout the process of research and writing.
Cynthia Alvarez, Ken Maffitt, Dan Nielson, Lara Slater, and Marc Stern
supplied crucial information on specific topics. Over extended periods
Carlos Cervantes, Julie Grey, Armando Martinez, and Antonio OrtizMena L.N. gathered multitudinous materials on an infinite variety of subjects with relentless efficiency and boundless cheer.
Gracious colleagues, among them Gary Gereffi, the late Joseph Grun-
wald, David A. Lake, Manuel Pastor, and Mark Spalding, were kind
enough to furnish helpful clues to sources, data, and ideas. Paul W. Drake
and Manfred Mols read the entire manuscript with care and a constructive
spirit, as did graduate students in my UCSD seminar on Latin American
politics; I have benefited greatly from their comments and suggestions.
I close on a personal note. During the course of this project Jennifer
L. Troutner became my closest friend, partner, counselor, critic, companion, comrade-at-arms, spouse, and mother of our two wondrous daughters, Sasha and Amanda. It is she who made the whole thing possible.
Relations between the United States and Latin America face unprecedented uncertainty. World events since 1989 have shattered long-held assumptions about international order. The ending of the Cold War-from
the collapse of the Berlin Wall to the liberation of Eastern Europe to the
implosion of the Soviet Union-has led to epochal rearrangements in the
distribution of power, terms of conflict, and patterns of alignment. Early
optimism about the creation of a “new world order” has given way to
widespread apprehension about ethnic strife, religious war, economic rivalry, and international chaos. As the United States has sought to define
its interests and its role in this fast-changing panorama, nations of Latin
America have attempted to identify their own options and alternatives. All
countries of the hemisphere confront perplexing questions: What is the
effect of the end of the Cold War on U.S.-Latin American relations?
What are the governing principles of inter-American relations? What will
happen in the years ahead?
Widespread expectations envision the hopeful possibility that the
United States and Latin America will be able to pursue shared interests in
a spirit of cooperation. The Cold War exercised an essentially distorting
influence on relationships within the hemisphere, according to this argument, and in its absence nations of the Americas can recognize and act
upon a natural harmony of interests. Increasing trade and investment will
lead to a convergence of economic purposes, the liberalization of markets
will promote political democracy, and the emergence of like-minded leaders will eliminate sources of unnecessary conflict between the United States and Latin America. As officials in Washington are wont to proclaim, the post-Cold War environment offers an unprecedented opportunity to forge a “community of democracies” throughout the Western
Hemisphere.
Are these predictions proving to be correct? Examination of this
question necessarily requires exploration of the Cold War itself. Otherwise there is no way of assessing the impact of its disappearance. From
the late 1940s to the late 1980s the United States and the Soviet Union
engaged in a bilateral struggle for power, and the U.S. government
launched an anticommunist crusade around the world. Within Latin
America the United States encouraged (or compelled) friendly governments to outlaw communist parties, to crush working-class movements,
and to maintain pro-U.S. foreign policies. On occasion the United States
resorted, overtly or covertly, to political or military intervention. Fear of
the “communist threat” may have been greatly exaggerated, as now appears in retrospect, but it had far-reaching consequences: it shaped Washington’s policy toward Latin America during the entire period. The U.S.-
Soviet contest also defined the parameters of plausible policy options for
Latin American countries.
The duration and pervasiveness of the Cold War also raise possibilities
about potential legacies: even though it is over, the Cold War might still
exert considerable influence on patterns of U.S.-Latin American relations. Is the post-Cold War environment fundamentally different from
the pre-Cold War period? In what ways? Or will the hemisphere simply
return to the status quo ante? Consideration of these questions requires
extended examination of the pre-Cold War period. Only then will it be
possible to identify long-term patterns of continuity and to pinpoint fundamental differences between U.S.-Latin American relations before and
after the Cold War.
Speculation over the changing nature of U.S.-Latin American relations thus provokes complex questions of historical causality. Of logical
necessity, it also requires exploration of apparently remote and distant
eras. One hesitates to invoke a shopworn cliche about the need to comprehend the present through the prism of the past. The fact is that it applies to this case.
Such concerns determine the structure of this analysis. To examine
long-term trends and transitions, the volume offers an interpretive synthesis of U.S.-Latin American relations from the late eighteenth century to the
present, from the Monroe Doctrine through the Cold War to the North
American Free Trade Agreement and beyond. It is my contention that
U.S.-Latin American relations have displayed recurring regularities. In
other words, the dynamics of the hemispheric connection reveal an underlying logic. Inter-American relations have not been the product of whimsy,
chance, or accident. Nor have they resulted from individual caprice or personal idiosyncrasy. They have responded to the interaction of national and
regional interests as interpreted within changing international contexts.
Accordingly, the goal of this book is to concentrate on the structural
relationship between the United States and Latin America. Rather than
focus exclusively on U.S. foreign policy or on Latin American developmental predicaments, I examine the linkages between the two. Three related questions will be central to this inquiry:
• What has been the stance of the United States toward Latin
America?
• What has been the response of Latin American countries? And
what have been the variations in response?
• What have been the consequent forms of interaction?
In this fashion I seek to reveal not only structural patterns in U.S.-
Latin American relations, but also the transformation of those patterns
over time.
Analytical Tools
To achieve such purposes, this study borrows concepts and approaches
from a variety of disciplines. One involves a focus on the nation-state.
This is a deliberate decision. Nowadays it is commonly argued that
economic imperatives and transnational forces are overwhelming classic
nation-states, that territorial boundaries are becoming meaningless, that
sovereignty is fading into irrelevance, and that governments, in consequence, are losing power and authority. There is some truth in these
claims. Yet there are two strong reasons for using the nation-state as the
basic unit of analysis. One is methodological: a consistent framework
greatly facilitates historical comparison over time. The second is substantive: governments establish economic policy, governments impose rules
and regulations, governments shape the contexts for transnational behavior, governments wage wars and make peace. The role of the state has undergone change, of course, and its impact has declined in certain areas,
but it has yet to wither away.’
From this starting point, the book draws upon central ideas in international relations-that relationships among nations constitute a “system,” a pattern of regularized interaction that entails and enshrines tacit
codes of behavior. These codes are analogous to the notion of an international “regime,” which political scientist Stephen Krasner has defined as
“implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations. Principles,” he continues, “are beliefs of fact, causation, and rectitude. Norms are standards of behavior defined in terms of
rights and obligations. Rules are specific prescriptions or proscriptions for
action. Decision-making procedures are prevailing practices for making
and implementing collective choice.”2 As currently applied, the idea of
regime usually applies to specific and limited issue-areas-such as trade,
environment, petroleum (“in a given area of international relations,” in Krasner’s phrase). In this study, by contrast, I am referring to norms and
principles that establish patterns of behavior within broad and general international systems, not just with regard to particular issues. Construed in
this fashion, the logical content of norms and principles for international
systems depends upon a variety of factors: the number of major powers,
the nature of resources available to them, and the scope of competition .-3
Within such contexts leaders and decision makers often pursue relatively long-term, consistent policies-“grand strategies,” in the argot of
international relations theory-to protect and promote the interests of
nation-states. Fundamental interests of nation-states are either geopolitical (the pursuit of military security) or economic (the pursuit of prosperity). These two sets of interests often overlap. Security interests are
typically advanced by governmental bureaucracies; in capitalist societies,
economic interests usually represent the goals of private sectors, which
might have direct or indirect representation within the apparatus of the
state. While national interests are often cloaked in the uplifting idiom of
moral purpose, it is the quest for geopolitical and economic advantagenot idealism-that provides the driving force behind foreign policy and
international behavior.
The articulation and pursuit of grand strategy requires some form of
cost-benefit calculation. Policy choices respond to logical evaluation of
likely outcomes, of predictable losses and gains. Within the context of the
prevailing international system and their own power capability, countries
and their leaders tend to behave in reasonable ways. There is method in
what often appears to be madness.
Yet the definition of strategy depends not only on the objective nature of prevailing conditions, but also upon the subjective perception of
those conditions by decision makers. Therefore I place significant emphasis on the social construction of reality-on general worldviews or weltanschauung. In the idiom of contemporary social science, rationality tends
to be “bounded” by ideology, sometimes seriously so. Prevailing assumptions are often unstated, partly because they are presumed to be selfevident, and they do not always lead to the explicit formulation of coherent doctrine. Ideological and attitudinal factors play a fundamental part in
international relations, however, and they require occasional excursions
into such fields as cultural studies and intellectual history.4
It is elites, not citizens, who forge national strategies and fashion foreign policies. For this reason it is essential to consider the ulterior motivations of policy-making groups within the nation-state and of nonstate actors as well. As often as not, public policy represents the interests of the
ruling classes, not the “nation” as a whole, and policy outcomes reflect
the power and effectiveness of dominant alliances. This factor is especially
pertinent to Latin America, where patterns of socioeconomic development resulted in wide discrepancies between social classes and their respective interests. As a general rule, dictatorial governments in Latin
America have tended to serve and support privileged elites. And even in democratic settings, official policy does not always represent the greatest
good for the greatest number of national citizens.
To understand internal dynamics within the Western Hemisphere, I
devote special attention to the distribution of power. Ever since the early
nineteenth century, the United States has been stronger and richer than
its Latin American neighbors. The nature and degree of this asymmetry
has varied over time, but it has been a pervasive and persistent reality. This
means, among other things, that the United States has almost always held
the upper hand: there has been little bargaining between equals, and the
sovereignty of Latin nations has been under constant threat. In this light
it seems wholly implausible to depict U.S. involvement in the region as
the result of suction into a “whirlpool,” as one leading authority has
done.5 Throughout recent history, the United States has enjoyed by far
the most freedom of action among countries in the Americas. And precisely for this reason, the study of U.S.-Latin American relations becomes
a meditation on the character and conduct of the United States: it provides an opportunity to examine, over time, how the United States has
chosen to apply and exercise its perennial predominance.
Overview
Systems and their codes are global in scope, embracing all nations in the
world arena. They are of relatively long duration; individual powers might
rise and fall, while rules of operation tend to stay the same. They are
nonetheless subject to change, especially if leading powers arrive at the
conclusion that maintenance of a given system will be more costly than its
alteration.6 For implementation they depend upon subjective perceptions, especially mutual perceptions of major powers, as well as upon objective realities.
My interpretation of inter-American relations stresses both the character and the transformation of international systems and their corresponding codes. Given the subject of this volume, however, I make no
pretense of examining all variations and types of international systems.?
Instead I focus on those systems that have provided relevant frameworks
for the conduct of U.S.-Latin American affairs.8
There have been, in my view, three broad systems that have guided the
management of inter-American relations. The first stretched from the
1790s to the 1930s, when the prevailing regime corresponded to the logic
of balance-of-power competition and multilateral rivalry. Imperialism-the
quest for land, labor, and resources-provoked rivalry between major European powers and defined the relationship between metropolitan centers
and subordinate colonial holdings. It was this logic that shaped the “great
war of the mid-eighteenth century,” culminating in the Seven Years’ War,
and it was this logic that determined the rules of international engagement
throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The United
States entered this contest shortly after achieving independence. U.S. lead ers would seek to extend territorial reach at the expense of former European colonies, to prevent other powers from challenging this expansion,
and to establish a sphere of uncontested influence within the Western
Hemisphere. In effect, the fledgling United States was working out the
logic of the eighteenth-century wars.
The second system lasted from the late 1940s through the 1980s,
corresponding to the Cold War. The prevailing logic of this regime reflected the preeminence of bilateral rivalry between the United States and
the Soviet Union on a global scale, intensified by mutual capacity for nuclear destruction. The Cold War altered the basis of inter-American relations, elevating the concept of “national security” to the top of the U.S.
agenda and turning Latin America (and other Third World areas) into
both a battleground and a prize in the conflict between communism and
capitalism, East and West, the Soviet Union and the United States. The
doctrine of “containment” led the United States to extend and consolidate its political supremacy throughout the hemisphere. By the early
1950s Washington laid down policy lines in accordance with the terms of
this regime, and they persisted through the 1980s.
Third is the contemporary era of the post-Cold War. The defining
characteristic of this period, in my judgment, is the absence of clear-cut
rules of the game. The United States has remained as the world’s only
military superpower, especially in the wake of the Soviet collapse, and
after the Gulf War of 1991 the United States appeared to enjoy a “unipolar moment.” At the same time U.S. relative strength appears to be declining in the economic arena, where the rise of Japan and Europe has
fostered multilateral competition. The distribution of military power does
not bear a clear relationship to the distribution of economic power. This
disjuncture creates uncertainty. It has also discouraged, and may even
have prevented, the articulation of a clear and coherent “grand strategy.”
Within the Western Hemisphere, by contrast, the United States has
acquired what might be called “hegemony by default.” The Soviets/
Russians have withdrawn (from the modest extent to which they were
ever there), Europeans have turned their attention elsewhere, Japanese
have been slow to enter the Americas.9 At the moment U.S. supremacy is
therefore uncontested and complete. And while Latin America is becoming less important as a political asset for the United States, it may be
becoming more important as an economic asset.
U.S.-Latin American relations are now unfolding within a context of
multiple power arrangements. On a global level, there exist unipolar supremacy with regard to security matters (though contemporary problems
are less and less amenable to military solutions) and a multipolar rivalry
with regard to economic matters. Within the Americas, however, the
United States wields unilateral hegemony. How these various configurations interact with each other is, of course, one of the central questions of
our time.
This broad shift in international contexts has continually shaped and revised the terms and nature of inter-American diplomacy. A central interpretation of this book thus takes counterintuitive form: the fundamental
determinants of U.S.-Latin American relations have been the role and activity of extrahemispheric actors, not the United States or Latin America
itself. In other words, the inter-American relationship has formed a subsystem with the global system as a whole.
Interests have varied over time. Among U.S. policymakers, the relative weight of economic and geopolitical motivations has undergone
cyclical change. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries economic considerations were more important; during the Cold War, political considerations were uppermost; now, in the post-Cold War period,
economic considerations once again are coming to the fore.
In response to the presence and power of the United States, Latin
America has conducted a persisting and creative search for policy options.
Leaders from the region-statesmen and politicians, economists and businessmen, students and revolutionaries, poets and essayists-all have attempted to define, expand, and implement the range of plausible alternatives. For the most part they have done so in a realistic fashion. U.S.
observers frequently comment, derisively, on the curious “psychology” of
Latin America, on its love-hate relationship with the United States and on
its emotional penchant for populistic nationalism. This condescension utterly misses a fundamental point: for weaker participants in an unequal
world, nationalism may be one of the few options available.
The area we know as “Latin America” is far from monolithic, however, and it stoutly denies facile generalization. There are elements that
countries and peoples of the region have in common, of course, and to
this extent these nations-states can be considered as a group. But there
are sharp distinctions among them as well-in population size, demographic composition, economic resources, geographical location, cultural
traditions, and political attributes. As a result they often have differing interests. And to put it most succinctly, some countries of Latin America are
stronger than others. These simple facts have spawned a wide range of intraregional relationships-associations, alliances, rivalries, wars. They have
also bestowed different countries with differing incentives and capabilities
for facing up to the United States.
Caveats and Limitations
This is a pretty ambitious book, but it does not quite do everything. First,
it does not offer a detailed examination of policy-making processes in the
United States or in Latin America, though it makes reference to this subject on occasion. Instead, my principal concern is with the ultimate content of policy, rather than with struggles over its formation. Of course
there is ample testimony that governmental decisions emerge from a welter of confusion, disorder, and bureaucratic intrigue-but if there exists a
broad commitment among all actors to an underlying strategy, or set of shared assumptions, this will tend to show up in the final result. Grand
strategies are more evident in the shape of policy rather than in its shaping, more apparent in deeds than in words.
Second, this book does not make firm predictions about the future. It
traces the evolution of inter-American relations from the past to the
present and lays a solid foundation for anticipation of the twenty-first
century-but it does not offer omniscient forecasts. Indeed, one of my
principal contentions is that uncertainty in the contemporary global arena
creates uncertainty within the hemispheric arena. The best we can do, I
think, is to develop alternative scenarios for eventual relationships between the United States and Latin America. Outright prediction is bound
to founder on the shoals of hard reality.
Third, this study does not culminate in policy “recommendations”
for the United States or for Latin America. It could be used as the basis
for developing recommendations, as I have elsewhere done.’° My experience is that advice of this sort tends to fall on deaf ears, however, and that
it has a notoriously brief shelf life. Besides, different readers could draw
different conclusions from the material presented in this volume, and for
me it is more important to encourage reflection and debate than to gain
adherents for specific views. The intent of this book is to engage, inform,
and provoke, rather than to settle and resolve.
In sum, I am painting here with a very broad brush. My central concerns focus on the character of international systems, on the distribution of
power, on the perception and pursuit of national interests, and on the resulting interaction between Latin America and the United States. My goal
is to uncover recurrent regularities within the inter-American relationship,
to identify long-term trends and transitions, to analyze continuity and
change. Only in this fashion will it be possible to assess the prospects for
U.S.-Latin American relations in this new era of uncertainty.
And by and by comes America, and our Master of the Game plays it
badly-plays it as Mr. Chamberlain was playing it in South Africa. It
was a mistake to do that . . . he played the Europeangame, the
Chamberlain game. It was a pity; it was agreat pity, that error; that
onegrievous error, that irrevocable error.
Mark Twain (1901)
Of all characters, I think, that of a conquering nation least becomes the
American people. . . . Shall she, like another Phaeton, madly ascend
the chariot of empire and spread desolation and horror over the world?
Speech in U.S. Congress (1803)
I have always wished that this country should exhibit to the nations of
the earth the example of agreat, rich, and powerful republic which is
not possessed by a spirit of aggrandizement.
Daniel Webster (1845)
Yes, more, more, more! . . . till our national destiny is fulfilled and
. . . the whole boundless continent is ours.
John L. O’Sullivan (1845)
Imperialism established a framework for the conduct of international relations throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a fledgling power, the United States took active and increasing part in the global
competition that provoked continuous rivalry between major European
powers and defined the relationship between metropolitan centers and
subordinate colonial holdings. Over time this imperial contest developed
an implicit logic that shaped the international system as a whole and the
roles of contending nations in particular. Recurrent episodes of conflict
led to rearrangements of power relations. Until the 1800s this system reflected both dominance and competition among leading powers of Europe, which continually sought to expand their holdings in Africa, Asia,
and the New World.
The United States entered this contest shortly after achieving independence (“playing the European Game,” as Mark Twain would acidly
observe). Having established national sovereignty, U.S. leaders would
seek to extend territorial reach over European colonies and prevent other
powers from challenging this expansion. As a result, U.S. relations with
Latin America during the nineteenth century represented a continuation
and culmination of European incursions into and struggles over the New
World that dated back to the late fifteenth century.
From the outset, in other words, the United States was an aspiring
imperial power. It entered the international arena as a relatively minor, almost insignificant actor; within a century the young nation became a formidable contender. The United States embarked on its imperial course
neither by impulse, miscalculation, or accident. Its behavior represented
long-term policy and national purpose. As historian William Appleman
Williams has observed, “Americans thought of themselves as an empire at
the outset of their national existence. . . . Having matured in an age of
empires as part of an empire, the colonists naturally saw themselves in the
same light once they joined issue with the mother country.”‘ In an ethical
sense, U.S. conduct was neither better nor worse than that of other ambitious powers. All played by the same rules of the game.
Once engaged in this contest, the United States adapted its policy in
accordance with conditions and circumstances particular to the New
World. While European powers engaged primarily in colonization of
overseas possessions, the United States tended to rely, first, on territorial
acquisition and absorption, and, second, on the establishment and preservation of informal spheres of influence. The means thus varied, but the
ends were much the same.
European Rivalry in the New World
European powers began to compete for control of the New World almost
immediately after Christopher Columbus announced his earth-shattering
“discovery” in 1492. Protesting Spanish claims to total monopoly over
the Americas, King Joao II of Portugal convinced the “Catholic kings” in
1494 to modify the original ruling of Pope Alexander VI and accept the
Treaty of Tordesillas, which ceded to Portugal dominion over the eastern
half of South America-much of present-day Brazil. Theoretically, Spain
and Portugal thus possessed exclusive title to the newly found territories.
According to the terms of papal endorsement, it was the religious obligation of Spain and Portugal to spread the Catholic gospel to the heathen.
So long as they fulfilled this missionary duty, Spain and Portugal would
have complete control of lands and peoples of the New World. From
1580 to 1640, when Portugal fell under Spanish control, this claim belonged to Spain alone.
The Iberian monopoly did not last long. Protestantism took hold
throughout much of Europe as a result of the Reformation, and its anti Catholic adherents saw no reason to respect the Treaty of Tordesillas or
any papal declaration. Seeking economic access to the riches of the New
World, merchants and buccaneers from rival European countries initiated
a thriving trade in contraband. According to then-prevailing mercantilist
theory, moreover, the goal of economic activity was to enhance the power
of the nation-state. The accumulation of power was to be measured
through the possession of precious bullion-that is, gold or silver. Mercantilist policymakers thus sought to run a favorable balance of trade,
with exports exceeding imports, since this would increase the storage of
coinage or bullion. (The emphasis on trade gave the doctrine its name.)
Mercantilist theory tended to assume that nations engaged in a “zerosum” game, with one state’s gain entailing a loss for another state. Discovery of the New World gravely threatened prevailing power relations,
since it placed massive and unforeseen quantities of gold and silver at the
disposal of Spain and its crusading Catholic monarchs, Charles I and
Philip II. Given the assumptions of the time, other powers had no choice
but to react.
By the mid-sixteenth century England emerged as Spain’s principal
rival. Legendary pirateers John Hawkins and Francis Drake made raids on
ports around the Caribbean. Philip II decided to retaliate by invading England. Drake roared into the harbor of Cadiz and destroyed a number of
ships, “singeing the beard of the king of Spain,” and the English fleet
then crushed the Spanish armada in 1588. War extended beyond Philip’s
death and peace finally came in 1609, when the Netherlands were divided
in two: the north was set free from Spain and became Holland; the south
remained under Spanish control and is now Belgium.
Spain’s setbacks in Europe were soon reflected in the New World.
The English settled at Virginia in 1607 and at Massachusetts in 1620.
The Dutch reached New York in 1612. The French began moving into
Canada in the 1620s. More significantly, from the standpoint of the era,
English, French, and Dutch settlements appeared in the Antilles-in the
middle of what had been up to then a Spanish lake. In 1630, moreover,
the Dutch seized control of the Brazilian northeast-with its extensive
sugar plantations-an acquisition that for Holland vastly overshadowed
the purchase of Manhattan Island a few years before. The Dutch remained in Brazil until 1654.
By the late seventeenth century Europe was seeking to establish an
effective counterweight to France. In 1700 Louis XIV’s efforts to impose
a family relative on the Spanish throne prompted a coalition of three
partners-England, Holland, and the Holy Roman Emperor-to respond
with a declaration of war. The War of the Spanish Succession dragged on
until 1713. At the war’s end Austria gained control of Milan, Naples,
Sicily, and Belgium; Philip V (Louis XIV’s nephew) was made King of
Spain, under the stipulation that the crowns of France and Spain would
never be held by the same individual; and England, the biggest winner, gained control of Gibraltar, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and-most important-the commercial contract (asiento) for the African slave trade
with Spanish colonies in the New World. This lucrative privilege gave
Britain a secure foothold in Spanish America.
Competition for empire intensified throughout the eighteenth century. A series of skirmishes stretched from 1739 to 1763 (with an uneasy
truce from 1748 to 1756) and comprised what has come to be known as
“the great war of the mid-eighteenth century.” The first part of the contest, usually known as the War of the Austrian Succession, ground to a
halt in 1748 when England and France reached agreement to restore the
status quo ante bellum. The second stage came with the Seven Years’
War, in which Britain and Prussia joined forces against the combined
strength of the Hapsburgs and Bourbons. This war had multiple fronts,
stretching from Europe to Canada to India. When the dust finally cleared
in 1763, the Treaty of Paris codified the results: Britain remained in India;
France ceded to Britain all French territory on the North American mainland east of the Mississippi River; France retained its slave stations in
Africa plus the cash-producing Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and
Martinique (leading one observer to exult, in classic confirmation of mercantilist economic doctrine, “We may have lost Canada, but we have retained Martinique!”); and Spain retained its North American holdings
west of the Mississippi and at the river mouth. The Seven Years’ War thus
achieved a new political and economic equilibrium. England replaced
France as the preeminent colonial power, a position she would extend and
consolidate through the pax britannica of the nineteenth century.
As England was celebrating its diplomatic triumph, Prime Minister
George Grenville took a series of steps to consolidate British rule in
North America and to improve imperial finances. His most notorious
measure was the Stamp Act, which in 1765 imposed taxes on all legal
documents, newspapers, pamphlets, and almanacs. Eventually, and in
many instances reluctantly, British colonists rose up in protest against
these impositions and against the monarchy. Proclaiming their independence in 1776, they finally achieved sovereignty and recognition in 1783.
The emergence of their new nation would have fundamental and farreaching impacts upon the international arena.
Imperial Order: The Rules of the Game
Imperialism entailed the policy, practice, or advocacy of the extension of
control by a nation over the territory, inhabitants, and resources of areas
that lay outside the nation’s own boundaries. Typically, nations engaged in
imperialistic behavior for two basic reasons: first, to gain access to economic benefits-such as land, labor, and minerals; and second, to increase
political strength and military capability-often through the improvement
of geopolitical position in relation to other contending powers. Almost always, the pursuit of imperial advantage evoked elaborate ideological justification ranging from the religious mission of sixteenth-century Spain to the civilizing mission of eighteenth-century France and the “white man’s burden” that would be borne by nineteenth-century England.
As it evolved over time, imperialism spawned an informal but coherent code of international rules. The keystone of this system was the idea
of a balance of power. First articulated by the Peace of Westphalia in
1648, this principle assumed that international politics would consist of
relations among nation-states. The ultimate purpose of a balance of
power was to prevent domination by any single European nation. In practice the principle led to a constantly shifting pattern of alliances and coalitions, as weaker nations often sought to achieve an appropriate balance by
combining their forces in opposition to the stronger ones. Alignments
would be based not on religion, ideology, culture, or values. They would
respond to momentary contingencies and power calculations.
Second, this international system supported the sovereignty of established European nation-states and accepted the state as the primary actor
in the global arena. Indeed, the whole idea of a “balance” among nations
tended to assume and assure their individual survival. By definition, equilibrium precluded the possibility of elimination or extinction. Of course
this stipulation applied only to recognized powers in Europe, not to other
parts of the world.
Third, and partly as a result of this understanding, European nations
focused much of their competitive energy on imperial expansion. Preservation of a balance among metropolitan powers tended to limit the scale
and scope of wars within the European theater. During the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries, battlegrounds shifted from the European continent itself toward the colonized areas. In effect, the extension of imperial
possessions provided nations with an opportunity to enhance their power
positions without having always to engage in direct hostilities with other
European states. Colonization created a “positive-sum” game, or so it
seemed at the time, a means of tilting the balance of power without upsetting the system as a whole.
Fourth, imperial holdings became integral elements in the calculation
of the power balance. Especially under the mercantilist doctrines of the
period, the ultimate rationale for imperial possessions was to strengthen
the economic and political position of the metropolitan state. European
powers consequently went to considerable lengths to maintain monopolistic control over their dominions, from Spain’s elaborate complex of legalisms and regulations to England’s maritime enforcement of its pax britannica. The point was not only to maximize direct exploitation of the
dominions. It was to make sure that no other rival power would seize part
of the booty and in so doing revise the prevalent balance of power.
Various methods existed for the pursuit of imperialistic advantage.
One was the conquest and incorporation of territory, leading to effective
enlargement of the boundaries of the nation-state. After the Peace of
Westphalia most European powers tended to shy away from this method,
at least in regard to each other’s terrain, since it threatened to violate the whole idea of a balance of power. And with regard to overseas territories,
the prospect of incorporation raised complex juridical and philosophical
questions about the relationship of colonial inhabitants to metropolitan
society. Even so, it became the policy of France to regard its imperial
possessions in Africa, Asia, and the New World as integral parts of the
nation-as departements d’outre mer, in theoretical possession of the legal
rights and obligations pertaining to the provinces of France.
A second technique involved subjugation and colonization. Through
this method, imperial dominions attained special status as subordinate appendages to the metropolitan nation and, usually, to its central government. While adding to the power of the metropole, colonization did not
lead to effective enlargement of national boundaries. Nor did it raise awkward questions about the rights or roles of colonial subjects. For such reasons this approach was favored by most European competitors in the imperial contest. The British empire and its contemporary remnants (the
so-called Commonwealth) offer perhaps the most notable and elaborate
example of this option.
A third alternative entailed the creation of a “sphere of interest,” or
sphere of influence, over which an imperial power would exert de facto
hegemony through informal means. This could stem from economic
domination or, in politics, the installation of client regimes or protectorates. One advantage of this approach was economy of effort: it did not
entail the enormous expenditures of military, administrative, and financial
resources that formal colonies required. (Indeed, there now exists substantial doubt about the net profitability of colonial possessions for European powers.) A central disadvantage was, of course, insecurity: precisely
because they were informal, spheres of influence were subject to intrusion
by rival powers. Stability could prevail only if major powers agreed to
recognize each other’s spheres of domination. Such was the case in
nineteenth-century Africa, where European rivals agreed to a “partitioning” of the continent, and to a lesser extent in turn-of-the-century China,
where European nations attempted to carve out exclusive spheres of influence. It also applied to locations where the ever-resourceful British constructed what have come to be known as “informal empires.”z
Enter the United States
The newly independent United States joined the contest for imperial extension soon after achieving constitutional stability in the late 1780s. Two
schools of thought quickly emerged with regard to foreign policy. One,
championed by George Washington, held that the United States should
avoid “entangling alliances” with European powers and should separate
itself as much as possible from the Old World. The other, associated with
Alexander Hamilton, argued that the United States should actively take
advantage of European conflicts: if the new nation were to develop a
powerful navy, he wrote, “a price would be set not only upon our friendship, but upon our neutrality. By steady adherence to the Union we may hope ere long to become the Arbiter of Europe in America; and to be
able to incline the balance of European competitions in this part of the
world as our interest may dictate” (emphasis added). Despite these differences, however, U.S. policymakers were in full agreement on one fundamental premise: European influence in the Americas should be reduced
and restricted. It was this concern that directed their attention toward
Spanish America. As Rufus King said of South America in a letter to
Hamilton in 1799: “I am entirely convinced if it [South America] and its
resources are not for us that they will speedily be against us.”
American statesmen employed several strategies to prevent this negative outcome. First was to insist, at least in the short run, that these
colonies remain in possession of Spain, which had the desirable quality of
being a weak and declining power. Spain presented no threat; France or
England, by contrast, would represent a powerful challenge. As a result,
the United States vigorously and consistently opposed the transfer of
Spanish dominions in the New World to any other European power.
Second, U.S. leaders would support campaigns for independence by
Spanish American colonies in the 1810s and 1820s. They reached this position after a substantial amount of controversy and debate. One concern
was that newly independent nations of Spanish America might forge
diplomatic and commercial ties with England or France. A second preoccupation was that the resulting nations would be susceptible to instability,
authoritarianism, and, as a result, extrahemispheric intervention. Another
was that it would be politically difficult for the United States to take territory away from sister republics in the hemisphere. In the end, the United
States faced little practical choice-and concluded that Spanish American
independence would promote long-term national goals. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in 1808, “We consider their interests and ours as the same,
and that the object of both must be to exclude all European influence
from this hemisphere.”
Third, U.S. policymakers sought to establish their own hegemony
within the region. Without the power to back up their statements, they
brazenly asserted that the continents of the Americas comprised a U.S.
sphere of interest-to the exclusion of European powers. As Secretary of
State John Quincy Adams declared, the United States was willing to leave
Great Britain in “indisputed enjoyment” of all her colonial possessions so
long as Britain would accept “every possibility of extension to our natural
dominion in North America, which she can have no solid interest to prevent, until all possibility of her preventing it shall have vanished.” In a
similar vein, Jefferson insisted that Europe comprised “a separate division
of the globe,” while “America,” he contended, “has a hemisphere to itself. It must have a separate system of interest which must not be subordinated to those of Europe. The insulated state in which nature has placed
the American continent should so far avail that no spark of war kindled in
the other quarters of the globe should be wafted across the wide oceans
which separate us from them.”
Claims to hemispheric hegemony became full-fledged policy with proclamation of the Monroe Doctrine in 1823. Partly aimed at czarist Russia’s territorial claims in the American northwest, the doctrine asserted that
the American continents “are henceforth not to be considered as subject
for future colonization by any European power.” It did not condemn colonization as a matter of principle; it inveighed only against colonization by
European powers in the Americas. Taking note of an apparent design by
the Holy Alliance to help Spain regain her colonies, President Monroe in
addition warned against reinstatement of monarchical rule:
We owe it, therefore, to candor, and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers, to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their political system to any portion
of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. . . . We could not
view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing [the newly independent
nations], or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European
power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.
In one sense this statement declared the United States to be the guardian
of independence and democracy throughout the hemisphere. But in another, more fundamental sense, it was an assertion of realpolitik. Not only
would the United States oppose colonization by Europe in America; it
would also oppose political alliances between newly independent nations
of Spanish America and European powers.
U.S. Imperialism I. Territorial Expansion
The first phase of U.S. imperialistic policy involved territorial acquisition
and absorption. Circumstances were propitious in the early nineteenth
century. England and France were distracted by internal strife and by continental wars. Spain was in a process of precipitous decline. New nations
in the hemisphere, especially in Spanish America, would be unable to
offer much resistance. As Thomas Jefferson prophesied as early as the
1780s, it would eventually become possible for the United States to take
over remnants of Spain’s once-formidable empire “peice by peice [sic].”
Pocketbook Diplomacy
The acquisition of Louisiana marked U.S. entry into the imperial contest.
In 1763 France lost its possessions west of the Mississippi to Spainfortunately for the United States, the weakest of the European powers. In
1795 the United States obtained commercial rights along the Mississippi
River. In 1800 Napoleon suddenly took title to Louisiana on behalf of
France. Thomas Jefferson expressed shock and dismay over this develop-
ment.3 “It completely reverses all the political relations of the U.S.,” he
declared. Shortly afterward Jefferson emphasized the importance of “one
single spot” on earth-the port of New Orleans-the possessor of which would necessarily become “our natural and habitual enemy.” The United
States and France were on a collision course.
England came to the rescue, at least indirectly, as British-French tensions threatened to erupt in war. A beleaguered Napoleon decided to sell
off the Louisiana territory: better it go to the United States, he must have
calculated, than to the English. By the terms of the 1803 purchase arrangement, the United States paid about $15 million in exchange for a massive
span of land, one that not only included the present-day state of Louisiana
but that almost doubled the territorial size of the then United States.
Florida came next, through a combination of guile and force. In
1817 Secretary of State John Quincy Adams opened talks with the Spanish minister, don Luis de Onis, after which General Andrew Jackson
seized Spanish forts at St. Marks and Pensacola. Instead of reprimanding
Jackson, as one might have expected, Adams demanded reparations from
Spain to cover the cost of the military expedition-allegedly undertaken
against Indians whom the Spaniards could not control. Unable to obtain
diplomatic support from Great Britain, the king of Spain agreed in 1819
to cede “all the territories which belong to him situated to the eastward
of the Mississippi and known by the name of East and West Florida.” In
return the U.S. government would assume the claims of its citizens
against the Spanish government in the amount of $5 million. This money
was to be paid to American citizens, not to the Spanish government: technically speaking, the United States did not “purchase” Florida, as is often
said. In addition Spain renounced her claim to territory north of the
forty-second parallel from the Rockies to the Pacific, while the United
States gave up its claims to Texas. America’s renunciation of interest in
Texas did not, of course, endure the test of time.
England’s refusal to support Spanish claims in the New World resulted from political calculations about the European theater. In the mid1820s, with French troops occupying parts of a much-weakened Spain,
British foreign minister George Canning began to worry about the possibility that France might assume control of Spain’s holdings in the New
World. That would upset the balance of power. To prevent this outcome
he extended diplomatic recognition to the struggling republics of Spanish
America, a gesture that earned accolades and gratitude throughout the
continent. But Canning’s motive was less than charitable, as he immodestly declared in 1826: “Contemplating Spain, such as our ancestors had
known her, I resolved that if France had Spain, it should not be Spain
with the Indies. I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old.” Rarely had the logic of the Imperial Era found such
pristine expression.
Military Conquest
In the 1820s Mexico won independence from Spain and jurisdiction over
the province of Texas, then a largely unpopulated wilderness. (Presum ably Mexico’s achievement of sovereignty freed the United States from its
1819 commitment to Spain.) After its long and bitter struggle for independence, Mexico was in a greatly weakened state. Economic production
was anemic, especially in the mining and agricultural sectors; governmental budgets ran consistent deficits, taxes were steadily raised, properties
were confiscated, old currencies were recalled and new ones issued; politics fell prey to chronic instability. Between 1821 and 1860 the country
had more than fifty presidents, approximately one per year, and the military comprised by far the nation’s strongest political force. Through this
turmoil there emerged the mercurial Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, hero
of Mexico’s rejection of Spain’s attempted reconquista in 1829 and of the
expulsion of French troops during the so-called guerra de los pasteles in
1838. Santa Anna would both precipitate and personify Mexico’s disintegration and vulnerability during its first quarter-century of independence.
Recognizing their inability to protect the country’s northern frontier,
Mexican leaders in the 1820s permitted colonists, most of them slaveholding planters from the United States, to settle in the province of
Texas. A group led by Stephen F. Austin agreed to profess the Roman
Catholic religion, to conduct official transactions in Spanish, and to abide
by Mexican law. Yet the colonists soon began chafing under Mexican rule.
They particularly complained about the fact that Texas was appended to
the state of Coahuila, where the provincial delegation was in a small minority, and demanded that Texas should become a state within Mexico,
with its own legislature and local government. Publicists in the United
States began to clamor for Texan independence. Afraid that its control of
Texas was slipping, the Mexican government attempted first to discourage immigration (by emancipating slaves in 1829) and then to prohibit it
altogether (through a proclamation in 1830). Shortly afterward Santa
Anna annulled the federalist constitution of 1824 and sought to concentrate effective power in the central government.
Texans rebelled in the name of independence. In March 1836 Santa
Anna overwhelmed Texan forces in the Battle of the Alamo; later, captured and defeated, he consented to the secession. When word of his capitulation reached Mexico City, nationalist intellectuals and politicians expressed outrage and disbelief. The Mexican legislature refused to receive a
peace commission from Texas or to extend recognition to the Lone Star
Republic.
The United States recognized Texas as a sovereign polity in 1837.
And in 1845, after the expansionist James K. Polk became president, it
annexed the republic of Texas. This was a direct affront to Mexico, which
still regarded Texas as an outlaw province of its own. Mexico and the
United States severed diplomatic relations.
A boundary dispute fanned the flames of contention. While North
Americans claimed that the southern border extended to the Rio Grande,
Mexicans insisted that the limit should end, as it always had, at the
Nueces River. In 1846 President Polk dispatched U.S. troops under Gen eral Zachary Taylor to the disputed area, in what many historians interpret as a deliberate move to provoke a fight. In hopes of relieving tension
the harried Mexican president, Jose Joaquin Herrera, agreed to receive a
diplomatic mission so long as the discussions “should appear to be always
frank, and free from every sign of menace or coercion.” Polk withdrew a
U.S. naval force from the coast of Veracruz but authorized the U.S. mission under John Slidell to discuss not only Texas but the acquisition of
New Mexico and California as well. As bitterness mounted in Mexico
General Mariano Paredes overthrew the hapless Herrera, installed himself
as president, and refused to accept Slidell’s credentials.
Polk was now looking for war. On May 9, 1846, he called a cabinet
meeting to discuss “definite measures” to be taken against Mexico. That
same evening news arrived of military hostilities at a place called Matamoros, on the southern bank of the Rio Grande. Seizing upon this excuse, Polk promptly called for war. In his message to Congress he praised
the United States for its “strong desire to establish peace” and condemned Mexico for treachery. The Mexican government had broken its
“plighted faith” by refusing to receive the Slidell mission, and had responded without reason when “Texas, a nation as independent as herself,
thought proper to unite its destinies with our own.” Tacitly confessing his
predetermination for war, Polk insisted that “the cup of forbearance had
been exhausted” even prior to the skirmish at Matamoros-which he described as a Mexican invasion of U.S. soil. “As war exists, and, notwithstanding all our efforts to prevent it, exists by the act of Mexico herself,”
Polk urged Congress to “recognize the existence of the war” and give
him full authority to wage the necessary campaigns.
Although the logic of his message was preposterous, Polk received
approval for his war. General Zachary Taylor swept into the city of Monterrey, rebels in California took sides with the United States, and in 1847
American troops under General Winfield Scott advanced from Veracruz
to Mexico City, seizing the capital after subduing the resistance of young
Mexican cadets. The following year, in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo,
Mexico was obliged to surrender a huge span of land-from New Mexico
and Colorado to California, as revealed in Figure 1, more than a million
square miles-in exchange for a modest $15 million. Several years later
the United States extended its holdings by obtaining an additional section
of New Mexico and Arizona through the Gadsden Purchase-a transaction remembered in Mexico for the application of American pressure, and
therefore known as “the imposition of Mesilla” (el tratado impuesto de la
Mesilla), so named after the valley that passed to U.S. hands.
Ironically, one eventual consequence of the U.S. defeat of Mexico was
a flagrant breach of the Monroe Doctrine. Humiliated by the “war of the
North American invasion” and unable to achieve a semblance of stability,
political conservatives in Mexico came to the unhappy conclusion that the
country could achieve national unity and strength only through a vigorous
reassertion of Hispanic, Catholic, and royalist tradition. They also main tained that Mexico would be able to resist further encroachments by the
United States only with protection from a European power-in this case
France. (It was in this context, incidentally, that the whole concept of
“Latin America” emerged: it was a deliberate effort by France to emphasize
its solidarity with nations of the region.) In the 1860s Mexican representatives conspired with European sponsors to bring an Austrian prince, Maximilian von Hapsburg, to occupy a newly created “imperial” throne. The illstarred reign of Maximilian and Carlota led to the exacerbation of an
already bitter civil war between “conservatives” and “liberals” in Mexico
and concluded with the emperor’s execution in 1867.
Figure 1. U.S. territorial acquisitions from Mexico, 1836-1853. [Source: Map
from Mexican Americans/American Mexicans by Matt S. Meier and Feliciano
Ribera. Copyright © 1972, 1993 by Matt S. Meier and Feliciano Ribera. Reprinted by permission of Hill and Wang, a division of Farrar, Straus & Giroux,
Inc. ]
Eyes upon Cuba
The United States coveted Cuba throughout the nineteenth century.
With its tobacco and sugar production, its thriving commerce, and especially-its strategic location in the Caribbean, “the pearl of the Antilles” offered numerous and tempting advantages. Over time, the United
States developed a two-pronged policy: one goal was to prevent the transfer of Cuba to any European power other than Spain; the other was to
take over the island directly.
Thomas Jefferson confidently regarded Cuba as a proper limit for
U.S. territorial expansion, proposing the erection of a sign at the southern tip of the island saying Nec plus ultra (“Not beyond here”). And as
Secretary of State John Quincy Adams viewed the hemisphere in 1823,
he observed that Cuba and Puerto Rico comprised “natural appendages
to the North American continent. . . . It is scarcely possible,” he wrote,
“to resist the conviction that the annexation of Cuba to our federal republic will be indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union
itself.” Eventually, Adams surmised, this would occur as a result of natural
forces:
. . . there are laws of political as well as physical gravitation; and if an apple
severed by the tempest from its native tree cannot choose but fall to the
ground, Cuba, forcibly disjoined from its own unnatural connection with
Spain, and incapable of self-support, can gravitate only towards the North
American Union, which by the same law of nature cannot cast her off from
her bosom.
In other words, the United States had only to await Cuba’s liberation
from Spain. Once that occurred, laws of political gravitation would bring
the island naturally and inevitably into the fold of the United States.
Campaigns for outright annexation surged in the 1840s and 1850s.
Celebrating the conclusion of the Mexican War, journalist John L. O’Sullivan wrote to Secretary of State James Buchanan in March 1848:
Surely the hour to strike for Cuba has come. . . . Fresh from our Mexican
triumphs, glories and acquisition, the inevitable necessity for which the
United States must sooner or later have Cuba, will force itself on the minds
of the Spanish Ministry. . . . We will give great moral force to the party
whose measure it will be, as contributing to prove to be the true American
party, the party entrusted by God and Nature with the mission of American
policy and destiny.
Having staked his presidency upon expansionist principles, President Polk
promptly authorized negotiations for the purchase of Cuba.
Complications ensued. A Venezuelan adventurer, General Narciso
Lopez, proposed to conquer the island and present it to the United States.
Though Lopez was defeated by Spanish forces, England and France expressed alarm over American filibustering and proposed a tripartite agreement to guarantee that Cuba would stay under Spain. Serving as secretary
of state under President Millard Fillmore, Edward Everett not only declined to participate but seized the opportunity to reflect upon the situation of the hemisphere. English and French acquisitions in Africa and elsewhere “have created no uneasiness on the part of the United States,”
Everett explained, just as U.S. accessions “have probably caused no uneasi ness to the great European powers, as they have been brought about by the
operation of natural causes, and without any disturbance of the international relations of the principal states.” To this extent, Europeans and
Americans were complying with the informal codes of the imperial contest.
Everett contended that the transfer of Cuba to any European power other
than Spain would disturb this equilibrium, however, since “it would indicate designs in reference to this hemisphere which could not but awaken
alarm in the United States.” The destiny of Cuba was therefore “mainly an
American question,” and the idea of a tripartite convention was wholly inappropriate:
The project rests on principles applicable, if at all, to Europe, where international relations are, in their basis, of great antiquity, slowly modified, for the
most part, in the progress of time and events; and not applicable to America,
which, but lately a waste, is filling up with intense rapidity, and adjusting on
natural principles those territorial relations which, on the first discovery of
the continent, were in good degree fortuitous.
While Europe should refrain from pronouncements or actions on Cuba,
the United States was unwilling to renounce all possibility of future
claims. The island was of such strategic importance, Everett insisted, that
annexation someday “might be almost essential to our safety.” In modern
parlance, Cuba was a national security issue.
The United States continued its search for opportunities. In 1854 the
otherwise undistinguished President Franklin Pierce instructed the U.S.
minister to Spain, Pierre Soule of Louisiana, to make a new offer to purchase the island or, if unsuccessful, to initiate efforts to “detach” Cuba
from Spain. Consequently plotting to overthrow the Spanish monarchy,
Soule received instructions to consult with U.S. ministers to England and
France. This ebullient threesome embodied its recommendations in a dispatch known as the Ostend Manifesto. The ministers began with a
solemn vow that the United States should make every effort to acquire
Cuba with Spanish “consent,” presumably through purchase. If this
could not be accomplished, however, “we shall be justified in wresting it
from Spain if we possess the power; and this upon the very same principle
that would justify an individual in tearing down the burning house of his
neighbor if there were no other means of preventing the flames from destroying the home.” As demonstrated by Haiti’s continuing intimidation
of the Dominican Republic, a slave revolt in Cuba could also pose a menace to racial purity.4 “We should,” the ministers continued,
be recreant to our duty, be unworthy of our gallant forefathers, and commit
base treason against posterity, should we permit Cuba to be Africanized and
become a second St. Domingo, with all its attendant horrors to the white
race, and suffer the flames to enter our own neighborhood shores, seriously
endanger or actually to consume the fair fabric of our Union.
To maintain the “fair fabric” of American society and to protect its shores
from hostile intrusions, the United States must acquire Cuba without delay. If Spain stubbornly rejected U.S. overtures, it would bear responsibility for the result. The Ostend Manifesto was an ultimatum.
Confronted by news leaks and anxious to maintain good public relations with Spain, the Pierce administration promptly disavowed the document. Yet the ensuing embarrassment proved to be short-lived: one of its
signatories, James Buchanan, became the next president of the United
States.
By the late 1850s the whole question of Cuba became embroiled in
domestic sectional controversy, as the North objected to the prospect of
admitting a new slave state. The U.S. Civil War and its outcome temporarily removed the issue from the political agenda. Cuba returned to
the forefront in the late 1860s, when rebels launched the Ten Years’ War
against Spanish colonial rule and prompted Ulysses S. Grant to proclaim
in 1869 what came to be known as the “no-transfer principle.” Casting a
nervous eye on England and France, the president huffed: “These dependencies are no longer regarded as subject to transfer from one European
power to another.” The issue faded with Spain’s defeat of rebels in the
Ten Years’ War. It was not until the 1890s that Cuba would recapture national attention.
U.S. Imperialism II: Commercial Empire
Toward the end of the nineteenth century the United States shifted its
strategy toward Latin America. After intense soul-searching and debate
over principles and methods of expansion, Washington turned principally
from the acquisition of territory to the creation of a sphere of interest, extending U.S. hegemony through an informal network of economic and
political relations. There were several reasons for this change. One was
demographic reality: these new areas were either unsuitable for European
immigration or already populated by peoples of indigenous, African, or
Iberian heritage. According to the racist doctrines of the era, to be explored in chapter 2, this made them unfit for incorporation into the predominantly Anglo-Saxon society of the United States. Second was a
reevaluation of the global imperial contest, with its growing emphasis on
commercial advantage instead of territorial reach. Third was a realization
that imperialism, in the European sense, was an expensive proposition: as
the British would discover in India and elsewhere, it required substantial
expenditures of military and administrative capacity. By the late nineteenth century it was becoming apparent that with foresight and fortune
it might be possible to obtain the benefits of imperialism without assuming all its costs.
United States leaders confronted two key challenges within the hemisphere. One was Europe’s political domination of the Caribbean Basin. In
the mid-1890s, as shown in Figure 2, the Caribbean was essentially a European lake. With the exception of Hispaniola (shared by Haiti and the
Dominican Republic),5 every single island was a European colony. Spain
still held possession of Cuba and Puerto Rico; Britain held Jamaica, part of the Virgin Islands, Grenada and several of the leeward islands, as well
as the mainland dominions of British Honduras and British Guiana;
France held Martinique, Guadeloupe, and French Guiana; the Dutch
held several islands, including St. Maartens, plus Dutch Guiana on the
northern fringe of South America. No wonder European leaders ridiculed
the Monroe Doctrine.
The second challenge came from Europe’s commercial position. The
United States had a strong presence around the greater Caribbean Basin,
especially in Cuba and Mexico, but Europe was preeminent in South
America (see Table Al in the statistical appendix). As of 1913 Great Britain
was the leading overall trade partner for Argentina, Chile, and Peru, and it
was the largest source of imports for Brazil. Germany and France both had
important commercial relations with Argentina and Brazil. Throughout
southern South America, the United States was a relatively minor source of
commerce-and of political influence. As writer and publicist William
Eleroy Curtis would exclaim to the U.S. Congress in 1886, the benefits of
economic growth in that southernmost region were going almost exclusively to “the three commercial nations of Europe”-England, France,
and Germany-which “have secured a monopoly of the trade of Spanish
America . . . [and] the Englishmen,” Curtis gravely warned, “have the
Brazilians by the throat.” In the 1890s Benjamin F. Tracy, secretary of the
navy, sounded a similar alarm: “Commercial supremacy by a European
power in . . . the Western Hemisphere means the exclusion of American
influence and the virtual destruction, as far as that state is concerned, of independent existence. With the great maritime powers it is only a step from
commercial control to territorial control.”
Investments offered a similar picture. During the nineteenth century
the United States, itself a debtor nation, was in no position to export
much capital to Latin America. England had taken up the slack, making
long-term investments in Brazil and Argentina-and following through
with spurts of new investment in the 1870s and the 1890s. By 1914
Britain alone held more than half of all foreign investments in Latin
America. France supplied substantial capital during the 1880s and after
the turn of the century; during the period 1910-13, in fact, over 45 percent of French overseas investments were directed toward Latin America.
Germany joined the race in the 1890s, and by the turn of the century
Latin American investments represented over one-third of all Germany’s
assets abroad.
In the meantime, U.S. policymakers insisted on the need to expand
export markets. As the post-Civil War economy continued its headlong
rush toward industrial growth, U.S. exports had grown from a minuscule
$392 million in 1870 to $1.3 billion by 1900. This was only a promising
start. “But today,” cried Senator Albert J. Beveridge of Indiana in 1899,
“we are raising more than we can consume. Today, we are making more
than we can use. Therefore, we must find new markets for our produce,
new occupation for our capital, new work for our labor.” The hope was that increased trade would sustain steady growth, thereby avoiding the
cycles of depression that had devastated the economy in 1873-78,
1882-85, and 1893-97.
To achieve this goal, polemicists and politicians called upon the U.S.
government to develop and sustain a clear-cut economic policy, rather
than laissez-faire reliance on the workings of the market. They argued
that it was up to the Department of State to represent American commercial and financial interests in foreign lands, especially in Latin America. As
the New York Commercial Advertiser asserted in 1898, we can now speak
of “a new Monroe Doctrine, not of political principles, but of commercial
policy. . . . Instead of laying down dogmas, it figures up profits.”
A Sphere of One’s Own: The Pan-American Community
In the late nineteenth century the United States began making vigorous
efforts to institutionalize its rising claim to hegemony within the Western
Hemisphere. In 1881 Secretary of State James G. Blaine, the “Plumed
Knight” from Maine, issued invitations for an international conference to
consider “the means of preventing war among the nations of America.”
(During 1865-70 countries of the Southern Cone had fought the long
and bitter Paraguayan War, and in 1879 Chile and Peru had initiated their
War of the Pacific.) As Blaine would later describe his intent, he had two
purposes in mind: “first, to bring about peace . . . ; second, to cultivate
such friendly commercial relations with all American countries as would
lead to a large increase in the export trade of the United States. To obtain
the second object the first must be accomplished.” To assuage concern
among Latin Americans and to distinguish the United States from England, Blaine explained that “Our great demand is expansion” but only of
trade, rather than of territory. What he was seeking, in other words, was
“what the younger Pitt so well called annexation of trade.”
After President James A. Garfield’s assassination Blaine was replaced
as secretary of state, and his successor, Frederick T. Frelinghuysen, expressed open skepticism about any meeting where Latin American nations
might outvote the United States. Yet Frelinghuysen supported the basic
idea of consolidating a U.S. sphere of influence: “I am thoroughly convinced,” he said in 1884, “of the desirability of knitting closely our relations with the States of this continent . . . in the spirit of the Monroe
Doctrine, which, in excluding foreign political interference, recognizes
the common interest of the States of North and South America.” Commenting on recently concluded reciprocity pacts with Spain for increased
trade with Cuba and Puerto Rico, Frelinghuysen expressed satisfaction
that the accord would bring “those islands into close commercial connection with the United States [and] confers upon us and upon them all benefits which would result from annexation were that possible.” The secretary also looked forward to a series of comparable agreements with
nations of Latin America that “opens the markets of the west coast of South America to our trade and gives us at our doors a customer able to
absorb a large portion of those articles which we produce in return for
products which we cannot profitably raise.” Like Blaine, Frelinghuysen
saw the principal goal of U.S. policy toward the region as expansion of
trade.
With Benjamin Harrison elected to the presidency in 1888, Blaine returned as secretary of state and took the opportunity to issue a second invitation for what had come to be known as a “Pan-American” conference.
The agenda included not only the preservation of peace within the hemisphere but also commercial development and economic integration. Topics ranged from construction of a Pan American railway to the adoption
of a common monetary standard. There was to be no contemplation of
political or military alliances. At the conference itself considerable discussion focused on the possible formation of a customs union-which would
oblige nations of the hemisphere to erect common tariffs on commercial
products from outside the region. The idea was voted down, however, as
delegates expressed concern over potential threats to national sovereignty.
The conference yielded scant material results. One was the creation of
a Commercial Bureau of the American Republics-parent of the Pan
American Union and, much later, the Organization of American States.
Another, indirect consequence was a series of bilateral reciprocity treaties
between the United States and nations of Latin America. Yet another outcome drew little notice at the time. During congressional debates over
reciprocity Eugene Hale, a U.S. senator from Maine, proposed a measure
that would have included Canada as well as Latin America in a common
zone for free trade in raw materials. The idea gained few adherents, and
Hale himself quietly withdrew it from consideration. It would reemerge
in the century ahead.
Obtaining John Bull’s Acquiescence
During the 1890s America’s principal rival in Latin America was Great
Britain. A number of episodes heightened tensions between the two powers. In the Chilean port of Valparaiso, for instance, two American sailors
from the vessel Baltimore were stabbed to death during a saloon brawl in
1891. At first unable to obtain full satisfaction from Chilean authorities,
President Benjamin Harrison threatened to take military action. But the
real issue was not so much financial indemnity; it was international power.
Chile was in the midst of political upheaval, and the United States and
Britain found themselves on opposite sides: Washington sided with the
existing government, while the British supported anti-American rebels.
The New York Tribune offered a clear view of the interests at stake:
The danger to the United States in these crises arises from the disposition of
Europeans to interfere, the while pretending that they are merely defending
their own commercial interests. In Chili and the Argentine, the most progressive commercial countries of South America, we have permitted England to obtain monopoly of trade. We have talked lustily about the “Monroe Doctrine” while Great Britain has been building ships and opening markets.
British subjects to-day hold a chattel mortgage over Chili and the Argentine.
. . . No American who wishes his country to possess the influence in commerce and affairs to which its position among nations entitles it can be
pleased with this situation.
The Baltimore affair was eventually settled in early 1892 when the
Chilean government paid $75,000 as indemnity, but the implications lingered on: the United States and Britain were wrestling for supremacy in
the Americas.
Subsequent encounters took place in Brazil and Nicaragua, but the
most serious British-American confrontation resulted from the Venezuelan crisis of 1895-96. The precipitating conflict was a boundary dispute
between Venezuela and British Guiana. At specific issue was control over
the mouth of the Orinoco River, the trade artery for the northern third of
South America. Venezuela requested international arbitration. Great
Britain responded by augmenting its claims-now to include a region rich
in gold deposits. Venezuela broke off diplomatic relations with England
and appealed to President Grover Cleveland in Washington.
The United States had two major interests in this controversy. One
was access to the Orinoco River. The other was political influence. In
February 1895 the U.S. Congress announced its opposition to the British
claims. In July 1895 Secretary of State Richard Olney couched a message
to Whitehall in unusually blunt and provocative language:
Today the United States is practically sovereign on this continent, and its fiat
is law upon the subjects to which it confines its interposition. Why? It is not
because of the pure friendship or good will felt for it. It is not simply by reason of its high character as a civilized state, nor because wisdom and justice
and equity are the invariable characteristics of the dealings of the United
States. It is because, in addition to all other grounds, its infinite resources
combined with its isolated position render it master of the situation and practically invulnerable as against any or all other powers.
This passage has earned for Olney a dubious reputation in the history of
inter-American relations. It is rarely remembered that after all this bluster
the note concluded with a call for peaceful arbitration.
The British foreign minister, Lord Salisbury, responded with two
separate messages. One refuted the assertion by Olney that the Monroe
Doctrine comprised a part of international law; the other consented to
the principle of arbitration. Ongoing crises in Europe, South Africa, and
the Middle East finally compelled Lord Salisbury to consent to the creation of an arbitration board-with two Americans, two British citizens,
and one Russian authority on international law. (No one had consulted
Venezuela in the meantime.) After protesting, Venezuela was reluctantly
allowed to have one member of the board.
By accepting arbitration, Great Britain was tacitly recognizing Olney’s claim to American preeminence throughout the Western Hemisphere. And
from that point forward, Britain would tend to align itself on the side of the
United States, using U.S. power whenever possible to protect British interests in Latin America. Through the Venezuelan controversy, the United
States had taken a major step toward the achievement of de facto hegemony in the Americas.
Securing the Caribbean
The Caribbean Basin remained a focal point for U.S. policy. As always
Washington was eager to reduce, if not eliminate, the European presence
in the area. The United States wanted to take advantage of promising opportunities for investment and trade. A related goal was the creation and
protection of shipping lanes for U.S. commerce. Also compelling was a
long-standing desire to construct a canal in Central America that would
establish a link between the east and west coasts of the United States and,
equally important, provide access to the alluring markets of the Far East.
In view of widely accepted military doctrine, this plan bore geopolitical
significance as well: as historian-publicist Alfred Thayer Mahan forcefully
argued in such magisterial books as The Influence of Sea Power upon History (1890), naval power was the key to international influence, which
meant that the United States required a two-ocean navy. A transisthmian
canal would make this possible.
Spanish-Cuban-American War
The Cuban question returned to the fore largely because of efforts by
anti-Spanish forces. The U.S. response to the depression of 1893 had
major repercussions on the island: when the protectionist tariff of 1894
removed provisions for reciprocity, the Cuban economy collapsed. Plantations discharged workers in 1894 and 1895, owing to loss of the North
American market, and rebellion quickly ensued. Led by the Maceo brothers in Cuba and inspired by writings of the exiled Jose Marti in New York,
Cuban forces mounted a determined drive for independence from Spain.
Chaos resulting from the military campaigns offered a short-lived pretext
for intervention by the United States. In 1896 Congress declared that the
U.S. government “should be prepared to protect the legitimate interests
of our citizens, by intervention if necessary.” By this time North Americans had invested more than $30 million in the island, including $8 million in mines and $12 million in plantations. A clamor for war was steadily
intensifying. William Randolph Hearst, the creator of “yellow journalism,” reportedly warned an overly scrupulous newspaper artist: “You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war.”
Resisting popular opinion, President Grover Cleveland refused to
intervene. In June 1895 the White House issued a declaration of neutrality, tacitly acknowledging a state of belligerency in Cuba. And in April 1896, going one step further, Secretary of State Olney offered to mediate the conflict. The move was rejected by Spain, which then sought support from other European powers to forestall U.S. intervention. Madrid’s
overture fell on deaf ears: Britain was reevaluating its American policies
in light of the Venezuelan crisis, France was unconcerned, and Russia
was attempting to consolidate its growing influence in Korea and
Manchuria.
As events unfolded, this became a triangular conflict-involving
Spain, the United States, and the Cuban independence movement. The
United States initially supported autonomy for Cuba under a reformed
colonial regime, but this was not acceptable to Spain or to the Cubans.
Spain wanted to maintain its empire, but this was not acceptable to the
Cubans or to Washington. And the Cubans fought for independence, but
this was not acceptable to Spain or the United States. In fact Madrid and
Washington firmly agreed on denial of power to the Cubans. As the
American consul wrote to the State Department in 1897, “All classes of
Spanish citizens are violently opposed to a real or genuine autonomy because it would throw the island into the hands of the Cubans-and rather
than that they prefer annexation to the United States or some form of
American protectorate.” He later observed that upper-class supporters of
the Cuban rebellion were apprehensive as well: “They are most pronounced in their fears that independence, if obtained, would result in the
troublesome, adventurous, and non-responsible class” seizing power.
By late 1897, with William McKinley as president, prospects for a negotiated settlement seemed fairly bright. Then struck two thunderbolts in
early 1898. First, the White House came into possession of a confidential
but careless letter from the Spanish consul, Dupuy de Lome, who delivered himself of the opinion that McKinley was a weak, venal, and vacillating politician. Second, an explosion ripped through the U.S. battleship
Maine in Havana harbor and took the lives of more than 260 American
seamen. McKinley responded with an ultimatum, demanding an immediate cessation of hostilities by Spain and full reparations for the sinking of
the Maine. As Madrid was preparing to accede, McKinley proceeded to
recommend war anyway- “in the name of humanity, in the name of civilization, on behalf of endangered American interests.” To his other terms
McKinley now added a call for Cuban independence, which he knew the
Spanish government could not accept.
As McKinley declared war on Spain, the question immediately arose
as to whether Washington should extend recognition to the rebel forces.
The president finally proclaimed, with uncommon clarity:
To commit this country now to the recognition of any particular government
in Cuba might subject us to the embarrassing conditions of international
obligation toward the organization so recognized. In case of intervention
our conduct would be subject to the approval or disapproval of such government. We would be required to submit to its direction and to assume to it
the mere relation of friendly ally.
Recognition of an independent government might impose unwelcome restrictions upon the United States. Like his predecessors, McKinley
wanted to preserve complete freedom of action in Cuba.
Under orders from Theodore Roosevelt, assistant secretary of the
navy, Commodore George Dewey promptly launched an attack on the
Spanish fleet at Manila harbor in the Philippines. The rambunctious
Roosevelt himself joined the fray, leading his “Rough Riders” in a muchpublicized assault upon Cuba’s San Juan Hill. The exhausted Spaniards
proved to be no match for their American opponents, and the “splendid
little war” lasted only a matter of months. According to the peace terms,
Cuba attained independence from Spain. The United States assumed outright control of Puerto Rico and Guam and, for a payment of $20 million, the Philippine Islands as well (in these specific cases the United
States established European-style colonies). What had started as a war to
liberate Cuba, in the eyes of many, became a war to expand the American
empire.
Cuba’s independence from Spain did not mean independence from
the United States. As the hostilities faded, Cuba fell under the direct administration of the U.S. War Department. And as Cuban leaders worked
to establish a government, the United States in 1901 attached to Cuba’s
new constitution the so-called Platt Amendment, permitting the United
States to intervene in the affairs of the island “for the preservation of
Cuban independence, and the maintenance of a government adequate for
the protection of life, property, and individual liberty.” This provision was
also ratified in a treaty of 1903. A sovereign nation in name, Cuba was in
fact a protectorate of the United States.
Taking Panama
Major powers had long contemplated the possibility of constructing a
canal through Central America that would connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, eliminate the need for time-consuming and dangerous voyages around Cape Horn, accelerate commerce and trade, and revise the
prevailing distribution of geopolitical influence. Initial plans dated back to
the seventeenth century. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the
United States and Britain sought to minimize friction resulting from their
own competing claims by concurring, in the Clayton-Bulwer treaty of
1850, that any such canal would be a joint Anglo-American project. Like
so many diplomatic accords, this one was made to be broken.
Attention focused principally on Nicaragua, whose lakes and rivers offered a promising site, and on Panama, a province of Colombia at the narrowest point on the isthmus. In 1878 the Colombian government authorized a French group under Ferdinand de Lesseps, builder of the Suez
Canal, to dig a route through Panama. United States engineers continued
to favor Nicaragua, and a North American firm received a contract to
begin excavation in that country. Then came the financial Panic of 1893,
when both groups ran out of money and quit.
Popular interest in Central America quickened as a result of the
Spanish-American War. As a bitter internal struggle within Colombia was
nearing its end in 1903, Washington dispatched troops to quell disorder
in Panama. The resulting crisis eventually led to the Hay-Herrin treaty,
an agreement that authorized the United States to build a canal in
Panama. The U.S. Congress eagerly approved the document-but the
Colombian legislature, unwilling to compromise national sovereignty, refused to go along.
The United States then fomented insurrection. With Roosevelt’s full
knowledge, Philippe Buneau-Varilla (the de Lesseps chief engineer)
started laying plans for a separatist rebellion in Panama. As the uprising
began, U.S. ships prevented Colombian troops from crossing the isthmus
to Panama City. Within days Washington extended recognition to the
newly sovereign government of Panama, and received Buneau-Varilla
(still a French citizen) as its official representative. United States Secretary
of State John Hay and Buneau-Varilla hastily signed a treaty giving the
United States control of a ten-mile-wide canal zone “in perpetuity . . .
as it if were sovereign.” A pliant Panamanian legislature soon approved
the document. As TR would reportedly boast: “I took the Canal Zone. “6
Opened in 1914, the canal immediately became a major international
waterway, and the Panamanian government began receiving steady annuities. The Canal Zone became a de facto U.S. colony, an area of legal
privilege and country-club prosperity that stood in sharp and conspicuous
contrast to local society. Outside the Zone, Panama developed the characteristics that typified Central America as a whole: dependence on agricultural exports (especially bananas), reliance on the U.S. market, and domestic control by a tightly knit landed oligarchy. Washington had
established a protectorate that would help promote, protect, and extend
its commercial empire. With the taking of the canal, the United States
completed its century-long efforts to gain territorial footholds around the
Caribbean Basin.
Recipe for Intervention
Effective maintenance of the U.S. sphere of influence required the exclusion of powers external to the hemisphere. In flagrant contravention of
the Monroe Doctrine, however, naval forces from Germany and Great
Britain launched an armed intervention against Venezuela in December
1902 to collect debts due their citizens. Italy soon joined the assault. As
fighting intensified the Argentine foreign minister, Luis Maria Drago,
urged Washington to proclaim its opposition to the use of armed force by
any European power against any American nation for the purpose of collecting debts. It was Drago’s intention, however naive, that this stipulation would become a multilateral inter-American policy, not a unilateral
U.S. assertion.
The Roosevelt administration was unhappy with the European incursion, especially after an arbitral court decided largely in favor of the interventionist powers, but was also cool to Drago’s idea of multilateral
consultation. In 1904 the president finally responded with a proclamation: “Any country whose people conduct themselves well,” Roosevelt
asserted,
can count upon our hearty friendship. If a nation shows that it knows how to
act with reasonable efficiency and decency in social and political matters, if it
keeps order and pays its obligations, it need fear no interference from the
United States. Chronic wrong-doing, or an impotence which results in a
general loosening of the ties of society, may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation, and in the western
hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may
force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power.
To avoid any pretext for intervention by Europe, in other words, the
United States would assume responsibility for maintaining order in the
hemisphere. And despite Drago’s hopes, the United States would act on a
unilateral basis.
This statement of policy became instantly known as the “Roosevelt
Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine. It was aimed at major extrahemispheric powers, assuring them that the United States would guarantee
order (and fulfillment of obligations on debts) throughout the region,
and also at the governments of Latin America, warning them that the
United States would take military action in the face of “wrong-doing or
impotence.” The United States thus proclaimed itself a hegemon.
Roosevelt’s bellicose stance gained widespread support from commentators and politicians throughout the United States. In 1909 one of
the most distinguished journalists of the era, Herbert Croly, argued that
hemispheric cooperation and solidarity would necessarily require interference and expansion:
In all probability no American international system will ever be established
without the forcible pacification of one or more centers of disorder. . . .
Any international American system might have to undertake a task in states
like Venezuela, similar to that which the United States is performing in Cuba.
. . . The United States has already made an effective beginning in this great
work, both by the pacification of Cuba and by the attempt to introduce a little order into the affairs of the turbulent Central American republics.
United States tutelage and power would bring development and democracy throughout the Western Hemisphere. Fittingly enough, Croly’s
book was entitled The Promise of American Life.
The mere proclamation of U.S. hegemony throughout the Western
Hemisphere did not, of course, bring it into effect. Throughout the early
twentieth century European interests would continue to play a major role
throughout the region. Great Britain maintained colonies in the
Caribbean and close commercial ties with Chile and especially Argentina.
Germany would attempt to lure Mexico to its side during World War I through the Zimmerman Telegram, offering to restore lands lost during
the “war of the North American invasion” in return for diplomatic and
logistical support.? With possessions of its own in the Americas, France
would nurture cultural and intellectual ties throughout the region. Ultimately, it was a chain of events and processes in the global arena at large,
not boisterous declarations of U.S. intent, that led to the eventual fulfillment of America’s hegemonic pretensions.
We must Consider that we shall be a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all
people are upon us.
John Winthrop (1630)
Cabalistic phrases [are designed to hold the citizenry] spell bound, as if
the lies of magic were realities and a syllable or two ofgibberish could
reverse all the laws of nature and turn human intelligence into
brutishness. One of these is “Our manifest destiny,” a shallow and
impious phrase. Who shall assure that it is not of the “Devil’s fetching.”
. . . Oh, miserable humbug of History!
National Intelligencer (1848)
A central tenet in America’s national creed has endowed the United States
with a political mission: spreading the gospel of democracy throughout the
world. During the nineteenth century this belief served to legitimize imperial behavior and dignify unseemly conquests, at least in the eyes of the beholders. Implicitly, the credo sustained the argument that Europe, monarchical and unrepublican, should stay out of the Western Hemisphere.
During the twentieth century it also provided a rationale for intervention
in the affairs of sovereign nations of Latin America.
The basic purpose of this intellectual activity was to provide an explanation and justification for U.S. imperialism, territorial and commercial.
Though ideas can acquire a life of their own, the driving goals of U.S.
policy toward Latin America were economic and political expansion. In
this context the role of ideology was to provide a cohesive interpretation of U.S. behavior, to imbue it with a higher purpose, and to present the issues at hand in satisfying and self-serving terms.
This was not merely an academic exercise. The persistent invocation
of the ideals of democracy represented efforts to redefine the substance of
conflict, to seize control of the agenda, to capture the terms of debate,
and to shape the outcome of the struggle itself. Ideology tends toward
simplification. By providing a “cognitive map” of reality, ideology reduces
complex issues to straightforward and usually simplistic terms that not
only provide a pleasing and coherent explanation but also suggest a prescription for action.
Regarding U.S. relations with Latin America, this rhetoric was aimed
at three main audiences. One consisted of domestic society. For national
leaders, the definition of U.S. policy as fulfillment of a higher mission
could assist in the mobilization of resources. Everything else being equal,
citizens preferred to believe that their efforts were serving some noble
purpose rather than material self-interest. Ideology could also provide
leaders with weapons for weakening and silencing domestic opposition.
Objections to official policy would not merely express disagreement on
tactics or strategy; they would constitute disloyalty.
The second audience consisted of rival powers, especially in Europe.
The deployment of ideological rhetoric served to emphasize the importance of the matter at hand, warning outside rivals that interference on
their part would tread on hallowed ground. Ideology underlined national
purpose and will. At the same time it presented would-be rivals with an
intellectual challenge. Unless they could produce an ideological rationalization of their own, one that was plausible if not superior, they would be
discouraged from action. Throughout history, of course, imperial powers
justified their actions in terms of a higher mission. Either they struggled
for monopoly over claims to a single shared mission, as in the case of sixteenth-century Portugal and Spain; or they confronted each other and
the international community with alternative declarations of purpose. In
either event, ideological disputation remained part and parcel of imperialistic rivalry and contestation.
A third audience consisted of the subjugated societies. In this context, the role of ideological indoctrination-epitomized by missionary activities and educational campaigns-was to engender a rationale for acceptance by local peoples of new power arrangements. The colonized
could interpret the new situation not so much as national (or societal)
defeat but as a march toward higher truth. Special emphasis was placed
on leadership groups and those who could serve as go-betweens (and
who would usually benefit handsomely as a result). Ultimately, the
achievement of voluntary acquiescence within the subordinate society
was crucial to imperial power and to the imposition of durable hegemony. Otherwise rule must rest on the perpetual use or threat of forcewhich was costly, inefficient, and counterproductive. Ideology was serious
business.
The Meaning of Manifest Destiny
Every nation has its own mythology. For the United States, the capstone
idea has defined American purpose as a quest for national greatness and
the promotion of political democracy. As Thomas Paine declared in Common Sense, his famous call for independence in 1776, “We have it in our
power to begin the world all over again.” This was not a modest claim. In
the eyes of British (and other European) observers of the time, such brash
expressions of self-importance must have looked preposterous.
America’s emerging ideology drew a fundamental distinction between
the New World and the Old, between America and Europe. These were to
be two separate spheres. An early exponent of U.S. views on the world,
Paine gave explicit formulation to this credo by stressing, first, the fact that
immigrants had crossed the ocean precisely to escape from Europe: “this
New World has been the asylum for the persecuted and the lovers of civil
and religious liberty from every part of Europe.” Second, Paine took notice
of geography, especially the Atlantic Ocean, observing that “even the distance at which the Almighty has placed England and America is a strong
and natural proof that the authority of the one over the other was never the
design of heaven.” And third, he combined historical with religious interpretation: “The time likewise at which the continent was discovered adds
weight to the argument, and the manner in which it was peopled increases
the force of it. The Reformation was preceded by the discovery of
America-as if the Almighty meant to open sanctuary to the persecuted.”
A central element in this mythology was belief in providential benediction. It was God in Heaven, not just earthly mortals, who endowed
American society with its virtues and its purposes. The pursuit of national
greatness therefore could not be a matter of choice. It was a sacred obligation. Just as sixteenth-century Spaniards persuaded themselves that
they were performing God’s will, so did eighteenth-century Americans
and their descendants. It was incumbent upon them to act as they did;
otherwise they could be committing sacrilege as well as treason.
This sense of heavenly mission led to an emphasis on national
uniqueness, a fundamental belief in the exceptionalism of the United
States. Not only was America distinct from Europe; as the bastion of
democracy, it stood apart from other nations as a City on a Hill. With regard to foreign policy, this conviction encouraged contradictory impulses.
On the one hand, it gave rise to the notion that the United States was exceptional, superior, a truly chosen land whose political ideals and institutions could (by definition) never flourish anywhere else. This was an isolationist idea. On the other hand, the sense of uniqueness shaped and
defined the political obligation to spread the gospel of democracy. This
was an activist idea. Imbued with this conviction, many American leaders
could not rest content with the construction of a working democracy at
home. They felt charged to extend the virtues of this idea to other parts of
the globe, thus carrying out the divine task of political civilization.
Territorial expansion in the nineteenth century required and reinforced a righteous definition for U.S. national purpose. As President
James K. Polk contested Britain’s claim to the Oregon territory and prepared for war in Mexico during the 1840s, a young newspaper editor
named John L. O’Sullivan invoked providential will. The U.S. claim, he
asserted in the New York Morning News, “is by the right of our manifest
destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which
Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of
liberty and federated self-government entrusted to us.” Cast in these
terms, it was America’s mission to democratize the continent.
Thus emerged the idea of “manifest destiny.” This was more than a
catchphrase or slogan. It was a concept that crystallized a sense of national purpose, providing both an explanation and a rationalization for
U.S. territorial expansion. The seizure of lands represented not avarice
but “destiny,” a Heaven-sent fate that mere mortals could neither prevent
nor ignore. This destiny was moreover clearly “manifest,” a self-evident
truth that was plain for all to see. Of course this assertion was not subject
to empirical proof or verification. It was held to be transparently true, and
it was therefore not a subject for argumentation.
O’Sullivan’s newspaper eagerly applied the implications of the doctrine to the Texas question. As debate mounted over the possible incorporation of Texas into the Union, the New York Morning News in 1845
blithely interpreted its annexation as a logical expression of historical
processes:
From the time that the Pilgrim Fathers landed on these shores to the present
moment, the older settlements have been constantly throwing off a hardy,
restless and lawless pioneer population, which has kept in advance, subduing
the wilderness and preparing the way for more orderly settlers who tread
rapidly upon their footsteps. . . . As their numbers increased, law and order
obtained control, and those unable to bear constraint sought new homes.
These latter have rolled forward in advance of civilization, like the surf on an
advancing wave, indicative of its restless approach. This is the natural, unchangeable effect of our position upon this continent, and it must continue
until the waves of the Pacific have hemmed in and restrained the onward
movement.
Thus did the Morning News resolve doubts about the validity of annexation. Tongue in cheek, the editorial also proffered an olive branch to
Mexico: if the country permitted itself to be overtaken by the “AngloSaxon race,” it, too, would become able to apply for admission to the
United States.
Recurring themes in these debates were the invocation of divine purpose and the spreading of democracy. As Illinois congressman John Wentworth is recorded to have said in 1845:
He did not believe the God of Heaven, when he crowned the American arms
with success [in the Revolutionary War], designed that the original States should be the only abode of liberty on the earth. On the contrary, he only
designed them as the great center from which civilization, religion, and liberty should radiate and radiate until the whole continent shall bask in their
blessing.
Expansion of the nation and the diffusion of democracy over the “whole
continent” represented God’s will and therefore the national mission. At
issue was not the acquisition of territory, land, and natural resources; it
was fulfillment of a divine plan.
Not surprisingly, there existed some uncertainty about precise
boundaries for the extension of this enterprise. Some commentators cast
longing eyes on Canada; others claimed that the United States should
take all of Mexico. As Daniel S. Dickinson of New York proclaimed in the
Senate, during deliberations over the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the
United States still had some way to go: “New territory is spread out for us
to subdue and fertilize; new races are presented for us to civilize, educate
and absorb; new triumphs for us to achieve for the cause of freedom.
North America presents to the eye one great geographical system. . . .
And the period is by no means remote, when . . . [North America] shall
be united . . . in one political system, and that, a free, confederated, self
governed Republic.” Others went even farther. Editor James Gordon
Bennett would assert in the New York Herald, in 1845, that “the arms of
the republic . . . must soon embrace the whole hemisphere, from the
icy wilderness of the North to the most prolific regions of the smiling and
prolific South.” Anglo-Saxons and their “free institutions” were plainly
on the march.
The prospect of manifest destiny encompassed significant subthemes.
One stressed the notion of America’s youth, in implicit contrast to the decrepit Old World of Europe. “Too young to be corrupt,” in the words of
the United States journal, “it is Young America, awakened to a sense of
her own intellectual greatness and her soaring spirit.” Fresh, eager, innocent, the United States was coming into its own as a power. Another subtheme challenged European principles of international law, codes that had
arisen to regulate intercourse among nations and to sustain the postWestphalian balance of power. Indeed, O’Sullivan explicitly dismissed “all
those antiquated materials of old black-letter international law” in his initial promulgation of the doctrine. Within the Western Hemisphere, in
short, the United States would not be constrained by classical rules of law.
They applied only to Europe, not to the Americas.
Yet another subtheme stressed not only democratic principles in abstract form but the particular virtues of states’ rights. According to O’Sullivan and his cohorts, governmental federation offered an ideal formula
for territorial expansion through the incorporation of new states, one at a
time: “How magnificent in conception!” O’Sullivan exclaimed. “How
beneficent in practice is this system, which associates nations in one great
family compact, without destroying the social identity, or improperly constraining the individual genius of any; and cements into elements of strength and civilization those very sources of difference which have
heretofore destroyed the peace of mankind!” New states could join the
Union without upsetting the structure of government. Added a writer in
the Democratic Review, the discovery of such a benevolent prescription
could only be “an emanation from Providence.” God spoke in clear as
well as mysterious ways.
Despite its vigor, the summons to manifest destiny contained a good
deal of ambiguity. One source of uncertainty concerned the question of
inevitability versus agency, passivity versus activism. To what extent was
the American future already foreordained, and therefore bound to occur
as the result of automatic processes? Or would it require decisive action
on the part of leaders and citizens? Characteristically, the issue acquired its
most explicit form in debates over the need for military action. In discussions over the Oregon question, John C. Calhoun, soon to oppose the
war with Mexico, gave clear expression to the passive school of thought:
Time is acting for us; and, if we shall have the wisdom to trust its operation, it
will assert and maintain our right with resistless force, without costing a cent
of money, or a drop of blood. . . . Our population is rolling toward the
shores of the Pacific with an impetus greater than what we realize.
After all, one might have argued, if the nation truly had a “destiny,” and a
“manifest” one at that, why not simply await its arrival?
On the other side, war hawks expressed no apprehensions about military intervention. Destiny was something to be seized, not passively
awaited. As hostilities mounted with Mexico, the definition of national
purpose broadened in scope. In his annual message of 1847 Polk declared
that U.S. action now had a political goal, the prevention of monarchy in
Mexico. That same year the Boston Times proclaimed that military conquest by the United States would bring untold benefits to Mexico:
The “conquest” which carries peace into a land where the sword has always
been the sole arbiter between factions equally base, which institutes the reign
of law where license has existed for a generation; which provides for the education and elevation of the great mass of people, who have, for a period of
300 years been the helots of an overbearing foreign race, and which causes
religious liberty, and full freedom of mind to prevail where a priesthood has
long been enabled to prevent all religion save that of its worship,-such a
“conquest,” stigmatize it as you please, must necessarily be a great blessing to
the conquered. It is a work worthy of a great people, of a people who are
about to regenerate the world by asserting the supremacy of humanity over
the accidents of birth and fortune.
Echoed Moses Y. Beach, editor of the New York Sun: “The [Mexican]
race is perfectly accustomed to being conquered, and the only lesson we
shall teach is that our victories will give liberty, safety, and prosperity to
the vanquished, if they know enough to profit by the appearance of our
stars. To liberate and ennoble-not to enslave and debase-is our mission.”
War thus offered the key to fulfillment of national purpose.
The greater the degree of military action, in other words, the more
expansive the definition of national purpose. At the outset of the Mexican War, the concept of manifest destiny applied to areas of Mexicoultimately from Texas to California-that would be taken from the country and incorporated into the United States. As U.S. troops hammered
their way into Mexico City, however, there emerged yet another intention, the liberation and democratization of Mexico. Years later a sophisticated and skeptical observer, James Russell Lowell, would neatly capture
this relationship: the deeper and deeper the military penetration, he wrote
in the Biglow Papers, “our Destiny higher an’ higher kep’ mountin’.”
Obstacles to Democracy: History and Character
Spreading the gospel of democracy would be no easy task, as U.S. leaders
clearly recognized. And in nineteenth-century perspective, Latin America
looked like unpromising soil. One line of reasoning focused on the trajectory of Latin America’s history, on the forces giving shape to what would
now be called political culture. Prominent among these were the character of Spain, the influence of Catholicism, and the effects of climate. And
absolutely crucial, as explained below, was the difficult question of race.’
A skeptical view of Latin America’s capacity for democracy came from
Thomas Jefferson as early as 1811, as he reflected on the wars for independence from Spain. “Another great field of political experiment is
opening,” Jefferson wrote to Dupont de Nemours, and yet
I fear the degrading ignorance into which their priests and kings have sunk
them, has disqualified them from the maintenance or even knowledge of
their rights, and that much blood may be shed for little improvement in their
condition. Should their new rulers honestly lay their shoulders to remove the
great obstacles of ignorance, and press the remedies of education and information, they will still be in jeopardy until another generation comes into
place, and what may happen in the interval cannot be predicted, nor shall you
or I live to see it. In these cases I console myself with the reflection that those
who will come after us will be as wise as we are, and as able to take care of
themselves as we have been.
It would take at least a generation to uproot the legacies of monarchism
and Catholicism. Jefferson was particularly harsh on the impact of the
Catholic Church. In 1813 he would surmise that “History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their civil
as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own
purposes.”
John Quincy Adams, eventual author of the Monroe Doctrine, advocated a constructive but cautious stance toward Spanish American independence. The promotion of democracy “by all the moral influence
which we can exercise, whether by example, of friendly counsel, or of persuasion, is among the duties which devolve upon us in the formation of our future relations with our southern neighbors.” Faced with pressure to
extend diplomatic recognition to the new republics, the secretary of state
expressed doubt that U.S. influence would have much positive effect: “I
wished well to their cause,” he carefully explained,
but I had seen and yet see no prospect that they would establish free or liberal institutions of government. . . . They have not the first elements of
good or free government. Arbitrary power, military and ecclesiastical, was
stamped upon their education, upon their habits, and upon all their institutions. Civil dissension was infused into all their seminal principles. War and
mutual destruction was in every member of their organization, moral, political, and physical. I had little expectation of any beneficial result to this country from any future connection with them, political or commercial.
The less the contact, the better for the United States. Intercourse could
only bring contamination.
A more optimistic assessment came from Henry Clay of Kentucky,
who consistently promoted the granting of diplomatic recognition to the
newly independent countries of the region. His argument had two contentions. One focused on the international arena, maintaining that new
governments throughout the region “would be animated by an American
feeling, and guided by an American policy,” even if dictatorial in form.
They would thus provide a bulwark against European influence. The
other focused on domestic political processes, holding that cooperation
would lead to democratization in Spanish America through a kind of
demonstration effect. By granting diplomatic recognition, Clay predicted,
We should become the center of a system which would constitute the rallying
point of human wisdom against all the despotism of the Old World. Did any
man doubt the feelings of the South toward us? In spite of our coldness toward them, of the rigor of our laws, and the conduct of our officers, their
hearts still turned toward us, as to their brethren; and he had no earthly
doubt, if our Government would take the lead and recognize them, that they
would become yet more anxious to imitate our institutions, and to secure to
themselves and their posterity the same freedom which we enjoy.
Recognition would lead to diplomatic cooperation, which would in turn
promote democracy. When all was said and done, however, Clay’s grandiose formula called for relatively modest measures by the United States.
Territorial expansion, especially the war with Mexico and anticipations of Cuba, required an activist doctrine. It was essential, in light of national mythology, for newly acquired lands and peoples to experience the
blessings of democracy. In 1854 one enthusiastic legislator justified a potential military takeover of Cuba as an uplifting missionary enterprise:
We absorb to elevate; we rule by bestowing on the governed a share of political power. Sir, we are destined to expand by assimilation, and by elevating
those who have been misgoverned and oppressed to the rank of freemen.
. . . We conquer that we may raise the conquered to an equality with ourselves; we annex to assimilate others with us on a higher scale of humanity.
Acquisition was thus an act of liberation for the “misgoverned and oppressed.” Once incorporated into the United States, they would be free
to climb upward to “a higher scale of humanity.” Others saw persisting
problems with the pearl of the Antilles. “The people of Cuba speak a different language,” one congressman later recounted, “they profess a different religion, and they are of different extraction from us; and our people have regarded them as aliens and outlaws from the pale of humanity
and civilization. . . . I think I have been at more respectable weddings
than it would be to bring her into the household [Laughter].”
In the late 1890s the imminence of the Spanish-American War
prompted denunciation of Spain’s historical record and, particularly, its
cruelty to native populations thus reviving the “black legend” espoused
by rival imperial powers in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As
one war hawk proclaimed:
Spain has been tried and convicted in the forum of history. Her religion has
been bigotry, whose sacraments have been solemnized by the faggot and the
rack. Her statesmanship has been infamy: her diplomacy, hypocrisy: her wars
have been massacres: her supremacy has been a blight and a curse, condemning continents to sterility, and their inhabitants to death.
This condemnation possessed a double edge. On the one hand, it provided a rationalization for war against Spain. On the other, it suggested
that the legacy of such perfidious rule would severely impede the installation of democracy. This confronted U.S. leaders with an unsolvable
dilemma: the worse the qualities of the opponent, the greater the need
for military intervention-and the less the chance for democratic rule.
Climate presented yet another obstacle. Carl Schurz and other respected authorities forcefully argued that the tropics were unfit for
democracy; instead they were conducive to laziness, licentiousness, and irresponsibility. When the U.S. Congress was considering how to deal with
new territorial acquisitions, Richard F. Pettigrew, senator from the temperate state of South Dakota, rejected annexation of Hawaii in 1898 on
the ground that “republics cannot live” in “tropical countries.” And in
subsequent debates on Puerto Rico, Representative James L. Slayden of
Texas took it upon himself to formulate pseudoscientific principles, observing that “The Tropics seems to heat the blood while enervating the
people who inhabit them.” People who live within twenty degrees of the
equator, Slayden solemnly concluded, “neither comprehend nor support
representative government constructed on the Anglo-Saxon plan.”
Obstacles to Democracy: The Problem of Race
More pervasive than concerns about historical formation and national
character were preoccupations about race. These issues were closely interrelated, since racial composition was interpreted as a central feature of national character. In the view of nineteenth-century Americans (and many of their descendants), the conviction was unshakeable: nonwhite peoples
were incapable of responsible self-government and were therefore unsuited to democracy.
The intellectual foundation for this conclusion rested not only on
racial prejudice, as it did, but also upon a hierarchical notion of competence that reflected and expressed God’s manifest will. At the top of this
pyramid were Anglo-Saxons, the hardiest and strongest of all whites:
“Out of all the inhabitants of the world,” one polemicist boasted in the
late nineteenth century, “a select stock, the Saxon, and out of this the
British family, the noblest of the stock, was chosen to people our country.” John W. Burgess, a well-known professor at Columbia University in
this same era, confirmed as indisputable fact the contemporary notion
that “there are vast differences in political capacity between the races, that
it is the white man’s mission, his duty, and his right to hold the reins of
political power in his own hands for the civilization of the world and the
welfare of mankind.”
Asians of pure heritage, Chinese and Japanese, fell in the middle of
this scheme; so did Spaniards and other southern Europeans. At the bottom were blacks and Indians, widely regarded as hopelessly beyond redemption. Mixed-bloods occupied an ambivalent position. Some observers regarded the mixture of races as a means of uplifting character and
quality over generations; others denounced it as a path to degradation
and perdition. In 1848 the Cincinnati Gazette expressed its considered
opinion that, in general, mixed races “unite in themselves all the faults,
without any of the virtues of their progenitors; as men they are generally
inferior to the pure races, and as members of society they are the worst
class of citizens.” Standards for judgment involved not only racial background; they also demanded racial purity.
War with Mexico raised the problem of racial assimilation in clear and
forceful fashion. Early in his career James Buchanan had denounced “the
imbecile and indolent Mexican race.” And as debate mounted in the late
1840s over ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the New York
Evening Post went straight to the heart of the problem:
The Mexicans are Indians-Aboriginal Indians. Such Indians as Cortez conquered three thousand [sic] years ago, only rendered a little more mischievous by a bastard civilization. The infusion of European blood whatever it is,
and that, too, infused in a highly illegitimate way, is not enough, as we see, to
affect the character of the people. They do not possess the elements of an independent national existence. . . . Providence has so ordained it, and it is
folly not to recognize the fact. The Mexicans are Aboriginal Indians, and
they must share the destiny of their race.
Whatever its longevity, European and Spanish influence was negligible. As
Indians, the Mexican people were beyond redemption-and therefore
suitable only for conquest and servitude.
At the same time, racist formulations provided arguments for opposi tion to the war. John C. Calhoun, that redoubtable champion of states’
rights and slavery, foresaw nothing but trouble in the annexation of
Mexico, proclaiming that “we have never dreamt of incorporating into
our Union any but the Caucasion race-the free white race. To incorporate Mexico, would be the very first instance of the kind, of incorporating
an Indian race. . . . I protest against such a union as that! Ours, sir, is
the Government of a white race.” Only the “free white race” was capable
of democratic government. The United States should therefore resist the
temptation to seize control of Mexico.
Departing from similar racist premises, others came to advocate a
compromise: their solution was to take as much land from Mexico with as
few people as possible. The purpose of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
was acquisition of territory, according to the Louisville Democrat, not incorporation of citizens:
Besides, we have by this treaty, not the best boundary, but all the territory of
value that we can get without taking the people. The people of the settled
parts of Mexico are a negative quantity. We fear the land, minus the people, is
not worth much. We think all Mexico will fall, piece by piece, into this government; but then it must first be settled by a different population, and the
union effected by other means than the sword.
In the long run, the United States could confidently await alteration of the
ethnic composition of Mexican society. With this accomplished the entire
country would fall, “piece by piece,” into the control of the United States.
Racial rearrangements would provide the key to imperial expansion.
Decades later the issue would again emerge. In reference to potential annexation of the Philippines, John W. Daniels, a senator from Virginia, expressed horror in 1899 over the prospect of assimilating “this mess of Asiatic pottage” into American society. Unfazed by such logic, annexationists
turned the racist argument to their own advantage. Filipinos were indeed
“a decadent race,” according to Senator Albert J. Beveridge, but this simply defined the nature of the imperialist challenge. After Rudyard Kipling’s
notorious ditty on the “White Man’s Burden” appeared in McClure’s Magazine in 1899, Teddy Roosevelt concluded that it was “very poor poetry
but made good sense from the expansion point of view.” As Roosevelt and
others saw it, the task was to provide tutelage for inferior races to prepare
them for eventual democracy and civilization:
The problem presented to us in the Philippine Islands is akin to, but not exactly like, the problems presented to the other great civilized powers which
have possessions in the Orient. There are points of resemblance in our work
to the work which is being done by the British in India and Egypt, by the
French in Algiers, by the Dutch in Java, by the Russians in Turkestan, by the
Japanese in Formosa.
Empires around the world were engaged in the task of uplifting inferior
races. In this respect, Roosevelt conceded, the United States was just like
any other imperial power.
As Beveridge asserted, the key political issue in the Philippines and
elsewhere went far beyond the design of constitutions or the creation of
competitive parties. “It is racial,” he said with finality:
God has not been preparing for the English speaking and Teutonic peoples
for a thousand years for nothing but vain and idle self-contemplation and
self-admiration. No! He has made us the master organizers of the world to
establish system where chaos reigns. . . . He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples.
Here was, indeed, the White Man’s Burden.
Fulfillment of divine obligation nonetheless raised a fundamental
question: how to incorporate the newly subjugated peoples. The prospect
of eventual citizenship ran directly into the problem of race. As Senator
Henry M. Teller of Colorado explained, “I would a great deal rather
make the Philippine Islands a colony, a province, a dependency, or whatever you may choose to call it, than to make their inhabitants citizens of
the United States . . . that they shall stand before the law on an equality
with all other citizens of the United States.” Cuba, with its large black
population, posed an even greater challenge. Southerners were especially
quick to express apprehensions. Benjamin F. Tillman, a rural populist
from South Carolina (fondly known as “Pitchfork Ben”), explained his
opposition to outright annexation after the Spanish-American War in
frankly racist terms:
It was not because we are Democrats, but because we understand and realize
what it is to have two races side by side that cannot mix or mingle without
deterioration and injury to both and the ultimate destruction of the civilization of the higher. We of the South have borne this white man’s burden of a
colored race in our midst since their emancipation and before.
The burden, he warned colleagues from the North, would be heavier
than they might expect.
Senators were listening. Orville H. Platt, author of the Platt Amendment, expressed fervent opposition to the incorporation of Cuba because
“The people of Cuba, by reason of race and characteristic, cannot be
easily assimilated by us. . . . Their presence in the American union, as a
state, would be most disturbing.” A few years later John W. Foster, who
had served as secretary of state in 1892-93, would draw a clear connection between domestic and foreign policies: “With the negro problem in
our Southern States pressing upon us for solution . . . do we desire to
aggravate the situation by adding a million more of the despised race to
our voting population?” Partly in response to such concerns, Cuba was
granted independence-of the most nominal kind-in 1902. There continued to be occasional talk of annexation or incorporation after a due
process of “Americanization,” but the racial barrier presented a persisting
obstacle. Commenting on an insurrection by Cuban blacks in 1911, one
observer noted that “Cuba may need us, but we do not need the Cubans. They, as a mass, are a degenerate race lacking in all the instincts of civic
pride or honor and utterly disregarding all moral obligations to themselves.” Better to keep a safe distance.
In the end, racism bore a paradoxical relationship to U.S. imperialism. On the one hand, prejudicial disdain for colored peoples offered justification for the forceful acquisition of influence and territory. Since the
resident nonwhite population was (by definition) unsuited to develop the
land and construct a civilized society, that obligation-that “burden”fell to members of the more highly endowed Anglo-Saxon race. On the
other hand, the presence of nonwhite peoples in newly dominated lands
posed the unwelcome possibility that they might have to be incorporated
into American society, thus altering its racial composition and lowering its
quality. Racism thus promoted imperialist expansion by the United States
but also restricted it as well.
It was largely because of these ideological contradictions that, by the
turn of the century, U.S. leaders turned away from the outright annexation of territory toward the construction of protectorates and colonies,
which offered a permanent source of influence; or toward periodic
episodes of military intervention, which provided regular (if intermittent)
sources of influence. A commercial empire did not necessarily require a
permanent military or administrative presence. By contrast, invasions and
protectorates would prove cost-effective.
Intervention for Democracy
Between 1898 and 1934 the United States launched more than thirty
military interventions in Latin America. (According to one quaint but
telling definition, a military intervention consists of the dispatch of armed
troops from one country to another “for other than ceremonial purposes.”) There were varied motivations for these actions. One was the
protection of U.S. economic interests, especially private loans to local
governments. Another was the assertion of geopolitical hegemony, in
keeping with the Roosevelt Corollary, thus assuring European powers
that they need not meddle in the hemisphere; during and after World War
I, protection of the Panama Canal assumed special importance. In all
cases, the perpetual rationalization was that the judicious application of
military force by the United States would lead to the promotion of
democracy throughout the region.
This component of U.S. policy focused exclusively on the greater
Caribbean Basin, including Mexico and Central America. As shown in
Table 1, the United States launched major operations during this period
in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua,
and Panama. (There were threats of intervention on other occasions as
well.) Some of these, as in Mexico, were relatively short-lived episodes.
Others led to military occupations of several years in duration. In
Nicaragua, American forces occupied the country almost constantly from 1909 to 1934; in Haiti, U.S. troops lingered from 1915 to 1934; in the
Dominican Republic, they established military rule from 1916 to 1924.
The basic goal of U.S. policy, as commentators repeatedly said at the
time, was to convert the Caribbean into an “American lake.”
Table 1. U.S. Military Interventions in the Caribbean Basin, 1898-1934
Source: Adapted from William Appleman Williams, Empire as a Way of Life (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1980), pp. 136-142, 165-167.
At the same time, Washington insisted that it was fulfilling a highminded political mission. The principal exponent of this view was
Woodrow Wilson, who eventually defined his purpose in World War I as
making the world safe for democracy. As for the hemisphere, Wilson would
exclaim: “We are the friends of constitutional government in America; we
are more than its friends, we are its champions.” And then he sternly
vowed: “I am going to teach the South American republics to elect good
men!” Viewing democracy as a universal possibility, the southern-born
Wilson was implicitly rejecting prejudicial theories about historical, religious, geographical limitations on the spread of political civilization.
Through instruction, example, and the judicious application of force, even
Latin Americans could learn the rules of democratic conduct.
Yet the conception of Latin American democracy, even for Wilson, had
clear-cut limits. This was a period, it should be remembered, of substantial
constraints on American democracy: women acquired the right to vote
only in 1919, organized labor was struggling to assert itself, and racial segregation meant the virtual exclusion of blacks from political life. And in
view of popular skepticism about the political capability of Latin American
peoples, the United States had precious little interest in promoting highly
participative politics throughout the region. Instead the preference, as political historian Paul W. Drake has pointed out, was for an “aristocratic re-
public.”2 The insistence was on the maintenance of law and order. The one
thing to avoid was mass-based social revolution. One of the nation’s leading diplomatic experts on the region, Adolf A. Berle, Jr., would sum up this
point succinctly: “I don’t like revolutions on principle.”
Most U.S. interventions displayed a consistent pattern. Military
forces would arrive amid considerable fanfare; depose rulers, often with minimal force; install a hand-picked provisional government; supervise
national elections; and then depart, mission accomplished. The political
key to these operations was the holding of elections-which, as tangible
signs of democracy at work, justified both the fact of intervention and the
decision to lift the occupation. United States supervision of these contests
was often overbearing, sometimes to the point of preselection of the winner, but the holding of elections was an essential step in the process. As
one U.S. ambassador explained to his bewildered British counterparts,
the United States would intervene as necessary in Latin America to “make
’em vote and live by their decisions.” If rebellions follow, “We’ll go in and
make ’em vote again.”
This sequence first took clear shape in 1906, when Teddy Roosevelt
used the Platt Amendment as justification for dispatching troops to Cuba
and installing William Howard Taft as provisional governor. The United
States undertook to annul the elections of 1905, enact electoral legislation, and monitor a vote in 1909. As TR defined the mission to Taft in
1907: “Our business is to establish peace and order on a satisfactory basis,
start the new government, and then leave the island.” The United States
followed a similar course in Panama, diligently overseeing elections in
1906, 1908, and 1912 (at this point dispatching troops for this purpose).
Nicaragua received the same treatment and provided an opportunity for
expostulation of U.S. policy toward the region as a whole. According to
an official declaration in 1912: “The full measure and extent of our policy
is to assist in the maintenance of republican institutions upon this hemisphere, and we are anxious that the experiment of a government of the
people, for the people, and by the people shall not fail in any republic on
this continent.” Tacit reminiscence of the rolling cadences in Lincoln’s
Gettysburg Address could only serve to emphasize the point.
There were efforts to enshrine promotion of democracy as hemispheric principle. In 1907 an Ecuadorean diplomat named Carlos Tobar
proposed the so-called Tobar Doctrine, under which American nations
would refuse recognition to de facto regimes that had entered office by
deposing constitutional governments. And in 1913 the United States
would propound the Wilson Doctrine, which went one step farther by
calling for the nonrecognition of all unconstitutional governments in
Latin America. The U.S. stand was resisted by former Argentine foreign
minister Estanislao Zeballos, among others, who saw it as a pretext for
continuing and arbitrary North American intervention in domestic affairs
of the region. Multilateralism did not flourish in this political arena.
Taking Sides: The Mexican Revolution
The outburst in 1910 of a revolutionary movement in Mexico was deeply
disturbing to Washington. American investors had profited handsomely
under the decades-old government of Porfirio Diaz, which had, under the
slogan of “peace and administration,” promoted economic growth and political stability. Mexico was a source of special concern to the United
States-because of its size, its importance, and its geographical proximity.
And as a result of its presence and power, the United States exerted considerable influence in Mexican affairs. Uncertain and hesitant, Washington first resisted the Mexican Revolution and then took halting steps to
direct its political course.
Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson (no relation to Woodrow) began
overtly meddling in Mexican national politics as early as July 1911. Expressing his contempt for the newly installed government of Francisco
Madero, the U.S.-educated idealist who had prompted the overthrow of
Diaz, Wilson complained bitterly of “disrespect for constituted authority
a defiance of the law . . . lack of respect for property rights, violence, and rapine. . . . The laboring classes have quit work,” the diplomat said, “and are making demands . . . a formidable opposition is
springing up against Mr. Madero [who] lacks in that decision of character, uniformity of policy, and close insight which is so essential.”
In September 1912 the United States officially protested crimes
against American citizens in Mexico. Ambassador Wilson avidly sought
Madero’s resignation from the presidency and threatened U.S. military
intervention in the event that he refused (President Taft would not, however, endorse this act of blackmail). Unchastened, the ambassador then
undertook negotiations with Madero’s counterrevolutionary opponents,
Victoriano Huerta and Felix Diaz. Shortly thereafter Huerta deposed and
murdered Madero. While not directly responsible for this assassination,
an accredited U.S. diplomat had campaigned actively against an elected
president of Mexico and expressed no palpable remorse over his demise.
This is not remembered as a happy chapter in U.S.-Mexican relations.
To its credit, the Taft administration withheld recognition from Victoriano Huerta. Woodrow Wilson continued this policy after his election
in November 1912, vowing: “I will not recognize a government of
butchers.” When Huerta refused to succumb to U.S. pressure, President
Wilson in April 1914 lifted an embargo on arms shipments to Mexican
rebels, secured British cooperation for economic sanctions against the
Huerta regime, and authorized a naval occupation of the port of Veracruz. His ultimate goal, Wilson proclaimed, was the installation of “an orderly and righteous government in Mexico.”
The action proved counterproductive, as political groups throughout
Mexico denounced the invasion as an unwarranted assault on national
sovereignty. Huerta resigned in July 1914, more as a result of his deteriorating military position than because of U.S. pressure, and Wilson seized
the face-saving opportunity to withdraw the troops from Veracruz. Perhaps as a result of this experience, Wilson began to comprehend the complexity of the Mexican situation and the logic behind its revolutionary imperative. A year later the U.S. president observed, “The first and most
essential step in settling the affairs of Mexico is not to call general elections. It seems to me necessary that a government essentially revolution ary in character should take action to institute reforms by decree before
the full forms of the constitution are resumed.” In Mexico, social justice
would become a necessary prelude to democracy.
At a later stage in the Mexican Revolution Wilson would dispatch another military mission. In March 1916 armed forces under Pancho Villa,
who was feeling betrayed by lack of U.S. support, conducted a raid on the
otherwise insignificant town of Columbus, New Mexico, killing eighteen
American citizens and burning the town beyond recognition. In retaliation Wilson launched a punitive expedition under General John J. (“Black
Jack”) Pershing, who scoured the unhospitable countryside for months in
an unsuccessful effort to apprehend the villainous Villa. The goal of this
expedition was not to overtake a government or oversee elections, however; it was simply to capture and punish Villa. In early 1917 the fruitless
expedition was withdrawn, and Pershing was rewarded for his failure with
promotion to leadership of U.S. forces in Europe after Wilson finally entered World War I.
United States military responses to the Mexican Revolution had three
related goals: inflicting punishment on transgressors Huerta and Villa, and
weakening their political position; protecting U.S. interests; and promoting political stability. What is perhaps most striking about these episodes, in
light of the high stakes involved, was the timidity of U.S. incursions. They
were profoundly offensive to Mexican patriots, understandably so, but they
were remarkably limited in scope. But as other countries in the Caribbean
were discovering, the pursuit of “dollar diplomacy” by the United States
could result in long-term military occupations.
Dollar Diplomacy I: The Dominican Republic (1916-24)
As implied by the Roosevelt Corollary, the United States expressed continuing concern over the prospect that European creditors would persuade their governments to take military action against financially delinquent countries of the Caribbean Basin in order to permit collection on
debts. In this sense, economic instability threatened U.S. designs on consolidation of an “American lake.” Military incursions by British, German,
or French forces would clearly undermine U.S. hegemony. To forestall
such possibilities, Washington encouraged U.S. banking concerns to assume the debts of these countries, usually in conformance with explicit
treaties, and promised to assist the financiers in the collection of their payments. A standard procedure was for U.S. representatives to take charge
of customshouses, which guaranteed timely payment on the rescheduled
debts; a common corollary was long-term military occupation.
The Dominican Republic became one site for this scenario. In 1903
the San Domingo Improvement Company, a New York-based concern,
purchased a public debt owed by the Dominican government to the
Netherlands and, according to the agreement, obtained the right to collect customs. When the Dominican president decided to appoint his own customs board, the American company appealed to the State Department. As a result of ensuing negotiations, the Dominican Republic
bought back its debt for $4.5 million-but if it was unable to pay, the
United States could appoint a financial agent to take over the customs.
When payments stopped, rumors began circulating that French and Italian vessels were on their way to collect their own debts by force. Accordingly, Secretary of State John Hay instructed the U.S. minister in Santo
Domingo, Thomas C. Dawson, to suggest to the Dominican government
that it “request” the United States to take over management of the customshouses. The Dominicans reluctantly assented, and Teddy Roosevelt
eventually reached an “executive protocol” in February 1907 stipulating
that the U.S. president would appoint a customs collector for the Dominican Republic, the U.S. government would afford military protection,
and the Dominican government would neither increase debts nor lower
taxes without the consent of the United States. Moreover, the American
receiver-general was to pay off the Dominican debt with $20 million borrowed through the brokerage firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co. To assure its
payments to Kuhn, Loeb, the United States was entitled “to collect customs for fifty years.” Under the terms of this 1907 agreement, the National City Bank of New York agreed to float a subsequent loan of $1.5
million to the Dominican government in 1914.
American financial control led to close political supervision. An uprising in 1911-12 led U.S. representatives to propose, for the sake of stability, the resignation of a provisional president. In September 1913
William Jennings Bryan, Wilson’s secretary of state, assured Dominican
rulers that the United States would uphold the country’s “lawful authorities.” If rebellious factions took power Washington would withhold
diplomatic recognition and impound the Dominican share of customs receipts. Amid mounting tension the American minister in Santo Domingo
arranged for new elections, which were held under the watchful eye of
U.S. naval warships.
In 1916 a major insurrection prompted the landing of U.S. marines.
The Dominican congress elected Francisco Henriquez y Carvajal as temporary president, but Washington refused to recognize his government
unless he signed a new treaty granting U.S. control not only of customs
but also of the treasury, the army, and the police. Henriquez y Carbajal
refused, customs payments stopped, and deadlock ensued. In November
1916 Captain H. S. Knapp, in command of the U.S. marines, declared
outright martial law. Knapp summarily ousted Dominican officials, dissolved the legislature, forbade elections, levied taxes, imposed censorship,
and declared himself “supreme legislator, supreme judge, and supreme
executor.” This was, in fine, a military dictatorship.
Under the U.S. regime additional bonds followed in 1921 and 1922.
Invoking the 1907 agreement, U.S. naval authorities took it upon themselves to assure American bankers that customs duties “shall be collected
and applied by an official appointed by the President of the United States and that the loan now authorized shall have a first lien upon such customs
duties.” Since the 1922 loan was repayable over a twenty-year period, this
implied that the United States would retain control of the Dominican
customshouses until 1942. After another election U.S. troops withdrew
from the country in 1924, but only when the new Dominican leaders
agreed to ratify the acts of the military government and to place the command of local armed forces under American officers.
Dollar Diplomacy II.• Nicaragua (1909-25)
A special consideration about Nicaragua was the ever-present issue of a
transisthmian canal. There were questions about financial stability and
American loans, as in the Dominican Republic, but the prospect of a
waterway tended to dominate the bilateral agenda. Even after completion of the Panama Canal, Washington continued to express interest in
Nicaragua-if for no other reason than to prevent an extrahemispheric
power from winning a rival concession. United States authorities were
also eager to secure a naval base in the Gulf of Fonseca. Nicaragua entailed security interests.
The Taft administration frequently conveyed displeasure over the rule
in Nicaragua of Jose Santos Zelaya, a Liberal who strongly resisted foreign
control in negotiations over a canal route. In 1909 the capricious Zelaya
ordered the execution of two North American adventurers. Secretary of
State Philander C. Knox denounced Zelaya as “a blot upon the history of
his country” and expelled Nicaragua’s ambassador from the United States.
The following year U.S. support for an anti-Zelaya revolt helped force the
president to resign. Nicaragua was in chaos; the treasury was empty; European creditors were clamoring for payment on their bonds.
In October 1910 the State Department appointed Thomas C. Dawson, fresh from his exploits in the Dominican Republic, as a special agent
to Nicaragua with instructions to rehabilitate the nation’s finances and
“to negotiate a loan secured by a percentage of the customs revenues to
be collected according to agreement between the two Governments, but
in such a way as will certainly secure the loan and assure its object.”
Brown Brothers offered to float the Nicaraguan loan. Aboard an American warship, anti-Zelaya leaders consented to the so-called Dawson Pact,
under which the United States would recognize their new Conservative government under several conditions: a constituent assembly would
elect Juan Jose Estrada president and Adolfo Diaz vice president; a
U.S.-Nicaraguan mixed commission would arbitrate outstanding financial questions; and a loan would be guaranteed by administration of the
customshouse in ways “satisfactory to both governments.” News about
the Dawson Pact unleashed a storm of controversy in Nicaragua, and the
nation’s constituent assembly promptly adopted a charter expressly
prohibiting such arrangements as the customshouse clause; under pres sure from Washington, Estrada dissolved the assembly and called for new
elections. Virulent protests forced Estrada to resign in favor of Adolfo
Diaz. To keep Diaz in office, the United States responded by dispatching
a warship.
By June 1911 a new bilateral agreement specified terms for authorization of $15 million in loans to Nicaragua, reaffirming U.S. control of
customs. Nicaragua also pledged not to alter customs duties without U.S.
approval. The first loan under this accord was floated in September, by
J. and W. Seligman and by Brown Brothers; 51 percent of customs receipts would go to themselves, for service on the debt, and 49 percent
would go to the government of Nicaragua. In December 1911 Colonel
Clifford D. Ham arrived to take charge of customs, in violation of the
constitution, and in May 1912 the American bankers assumed all liabilities for debts owed to a syndicate in London. In exchange for this favor
the New York financiers insisted on their right to “apply to the United
States for protection against violation of the provisions of this agreement
and for aid in the enforcement thereof.”
Liberals continued to reject Conservative rule. An uprising in July
1912 brought the arrival of U.S. troops under the colorful Smedley Butler
and then led to a full-scale intervention. United States marines crushed the
Liberal insurrection, established order, and oversaw elections-which were
won, not surprisingly, by the congenial Adolfo Diaz. For twenty out of the
next twenty-one years, U.S. marines would remain on Nicaraguan soil.
Combining concerns over debts and the canal route, the BryanChamorro treaty in February 1916 called for a $3 million payment by the
United States to Nicaragua in return for three concessions: (1) the exclusive right to construct a transisthmian canal, (2) a ninety-nine-year lease
on the Great Corn and Little Corn Islands and on a naval base in the Gulf
of Fonseca, and (3) a U.S. option to renew the naval base lease for an additional ninety-nine years. The $3 million would enable Nicaragua to pay
off a large share of current debt. And for the United States, according to
Colonel Ham, the Bryan-Chamorro agreement would forever eliminate
“the danger of a foreign power seeking and obtaining those concessions,”
while it also forged “an important link in the chain . . . of preparedness
and national defense, and the protection of our investment in the Panama
Canal.” In 1918 the two countries established a high commission on
finances-with two Americans and one Nicaraguan. In effect, the United
States created a protectorate in Nicaragua.
United States military occupation of Nicaragua led to conflict and
tension. In February 1921 a group of U.S. marines wrecked the offices of
a prominent newspaper. A clash in January 1922 resulted in the death of
four Nicaraguan civilians. After payments to U.S. bankers were completed
in 1924, Washington proceeded the next year to withdraw its troops,
which were replaced by a constabulary-a force that was created, trained,
and officered by Americans.
Dollar Diplomacy III: Haiti (1915-34)
As the crusading Wilson struggled with problems in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua, he came to launch a long-term occupation
in Haiti. The country was in disarray. With plantations long ago destroyed, wild coffee was the only export crop. The government had no
money and was borrowing from anyone that would lend. Between 1908
and 1915 there were seven presidents and about twenty uprisings and insurrections. When President Vilbrun Guillaume Sam was torn limb from
limb by a mob in Port-au-Prince in mid-1915, the U.S. marines invaded.
There were three reasons for the intervention. One had to do with
loans from the ubiquitous National City Bank of New York. The fiscal
agent for the Haitian government was Banque Nationale de la Republique d’Haiti, owned by the Banque de l’Union Parisienne, but the
National City Bank itself possessed a 5 percent share in a new loan of
1910-and served as agent for a number of German and French bondholders as well. National City thus had considerable influence within the
Haitian national bank. When the local government showed signs of
defaulting on payments, National City representatives persuaded the
Banque Nationale to withhold payments to the Haitian government-in
hopes of provoking U.S. intervention. After Haitian authorities responded by issuing paper currency, they tried to retrieve a $2 million deposit at the Banque Nationale. Bankers requested assistance from Washington, and U.S. marines aboard the cruiser Machias seized $500,000
and transported it for safekeeping to the National City Bank in New York.
A second motivation concerned foreign influence. France held the
largest share of Haitian debt and therefore possessed a clear incentive to
invade. At this point in World War I there was, as well, concern that Germany might attempt to take over Haiti. As Secretary of State Robert
Lansing explained to Congress, the U.S. action was “designed to prevent
the Germans from using Haiti as a submarine base.” In the event, of
course, both France and Germany were much too preoccupied with the
European theater to devote much time or attention to Haiti.
A third concern focused on the Panama Canal, the protection of
which was a national security interest. As in Nicaragua, U.S. authorities
took action in Haiti with an eye toward Panama.
Thus the U.S.S. Washington steamed into Port-au-Prince, oversaw elections, and assured the victory of the obsequious Philip Sudre
Dartiguenave. By August 1915 the State Department pressed by-nowfamiliar treaty terms on the new government: U.S. control of the customshouse, U.S. appointment of a financial adviser, a gendarmerie
manned by Haitians but commanded by U.S. officers, and U.S. control
over sanitation and public works. Haiti further agreed not to sell or surrender any territory “to any foreign government or power, not to enter
into any treaty or contract with any foreign power or powers that will impair or tend to impair the independence of Haiti.” And “should the ne cessity occur,” according to the document, “the United States will lend
an efficient aid for the preservation of Haitian independence and the
maintenance of a government adequate for the protection of life, property and individual liberty.” The treaty was to be in force for ten years, renewable for a second term “if, for specific reasons presented by either of
the high contracting parties, the purpose of the Treaty has not been fully
accomplished.” Within a year of its ratification it was extended to 1936.
Acting through the gendarmerie, the so-called Garde d’Haiti, the
United States erected an indirect form of military rule. In the midst of
constitutional debates, American officers of the gendarmerie dissolved the
national assembly in 1916 and arranged for new elections in 1917. When
the resulting assembly refused to ratify a U.S.-sponsored constitution, reportedly drafted by the assistant secretary of the navy, Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, the Garde dissolved the congress for a second time. To gain
approval for the constitution, U.S. authorities then arranged for a national plebiscite in June 1918-an utterly farcical exercise that resulted in
the charter’s approbation by a vote of 98,294 to 769.
There were puppet presidents, Dartiguenave (1915-22) and Louis
Borno (1922-30). But the real source of power came from the U.S.
marines. In the words of Paul Douglas, later a distinguished U.S. senator
from Illinois,
The American powers over Haiti are in reality almost complete. American approval is needed for the enactment of laws, the revenues of the country are
collected under the supervision of Americans, and the budget is drawn up by
the American financial adviser. The financial adviser scrutinizes all vouchers
and withholds payments that he believes to be not in conformity with the
principles of the budget or with efficient administration. The control over the
gendarmerie is in American hands, as are also the services of Health and Public Works, and Agriculture. Only Justice and Education are outside of American control.
Under the terms of additional loans, it became apparent that the United
States might retain control of the Haitian customshouse well into the
1940s.
Indirect rule by American forces promoted precious little progress.
United States-supported governments acquiesced in the imposition of
Jim Crow-style segregation rules and reinstituted the long-hated corvee
law, under which peasants could be drafted for road building. While accumulating a surplus on government accounts, thanks to careful management of customs receipts, U.S. authorities concentrated all their energies
on debt repayment, rather than investments in infrastructure and education. The United States failed to train a civil service, improve agriculture,
or change the political culture. “In fact,” as historian Robert Rotberg has
observed, “the marine occupation simply prepared Haiti for a renewal of
dictatorship and instability.”3
One justification for extension of the military occupation, and also
for the inattention to democracy, came from racist doctrine. In 1921 a U.S. diplomat carefully explained to his superiors key differences between Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which American marines
would evacuate in several years:
It is well to distinguish at once between the Dominicans and the Haitians.
The former, while in many ways not advanced far enough for the highest type
of self-government, yet have a preponderance of white blood and culture.
The Haitians on the other hand are negro for the most part, and, barring a
very few highly educated politicians, are almost in a state of savagery and
complete ignorance. The two situations thus demand different treatment. In
Haiti it is necessary to have as complete a rule within a rule by Americans as
possible. This sort of control will be required for a long period of time, until
the general average of education and enlightenment is raised. In the Dominican Republic, on the other hand, I believe we should endeavour to counsel
rather than control.
The political difficulty posed by such racist contentions was that they offered no prospect for a gracious exit by U.S. troops. Here again was the
principal conundrum of contemporary imperialism: how to exert effective
control with minimal administrative and military costs.
Ultimately, the United States would welcome the chance to withdraw
from Haiti. In 1930 Herbert Hoover appointed a joint U.S.-Haitian
commission that recommended Borno’s resignation and new elections,
won by Stenio Vincent (1930-36). A relieved Hoover then began to expedite withdrawal, and in 1934 Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered the
complete evacuation of U.S. forces. The financial mission nonetheless
stayed until 1941.
Promoting Democracy?
From the 1830s to the 1930s, despite high-minded rhetoric and ostensible nobility of purpose, not a single U.S. intervention led to installation
of democracy in Latin America. For Mexico, the political consequence of
military conquest and territorial dismemberment in the 1840s was the illstarred importation of a European emperor. (The country would subsequently endure civil war and decades of dictatorship, but largely as a result of internal factors rather than American interference. Similarly, U.S.
intrusions in the 1910s had relatively minor impact on the political course
of the Mexican Revolution.) Fate was no kinder to the islands of the
Caribbean. Under the vigilant eye of the Platt Amendment, Cuba oscillated between episodes of social protest and cosmetic pseudodemocracy
that, in the 1930s, would be followed by long-term authoritarian rule.
Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic would suffer comparable fates.
And Haiti, perhaps the most desperate instance of all, would embark on a
seemingly endless course of dictatorship when U.S. forces finally departed
after nineteen years of military occupation.
There were several explanations for this dismal record. One dealt
with the goals of U.S. policy. Stripped of rhetoric, Washington’s actions had geopolitical and economic motivations. A primary purpose was to assert U.S. influence throughout the greater Caribbean Basin and, in so
doing, to reduce if not eliminate the European presence. An additional
and related purpose was to protect the business investments, especially
the banking interests, that had become vital instruments of imperial expansion. A remarkably virulent condemnation of these unlovely motivations came in 1933 from none other than Smedley Darlington Butler, the
flamboyant U.S. marine who reflected back on his career:
I spent thirty-three years . . . being a high-class muscle man for Big , for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism. . . . I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of
Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I helped make Mexico and especially
Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1916. I helped make Haiti and
Cuba a decent place for the National City [Bank] boys to collect revenue in.
I helped in the rape of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street.
Butler was said to be embittered by his failure to become commandant of
the U.S. Marine Corps. He may also have felt that, in the absence of an
ennobling mission, he and his troops had been abused and deceived.
A second explanation for the failure to achieve democracy derived
from the methods employed by the United States. In keeping with the political myopia of the era, U.S. occupation forces made little effort to construct, strengthen, or bolster democratic practices or institutions. From
time to time they oversaw elections, sometimes patently fraudulent ones, as
much for the purpose of extricating themselves from unpleasant situations
as for the goal of promoting pluralistic competition. And in each of the
three countries with the longest U.S. occupations-Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti-Washington supervised the creation of local
constabularies that would eventually become the agents of dictatorial repression. Not only did the United States fail to promote democratic development in Latin America; it could even be argued, with considerable reason, that U.S. military interventions tended to retard the prospects for
political democracy.
Third, the paucity of U.S. efforts in this area stemmed from ambivalence. While Woodrow Wilson and his cohorts espoused the universal applicability of democracy, policymakers in Washington-and U.S. citizens
in general-had severe reservations about the political suitability, capability, and desirability of Latin American peoples. As a result of history, religion, and race, many Americans believed, Latin America was incapable
of sustaining true democracy. Rather than waste time and effort on illusory hopes, analysts commonly argued, it made more sense to concentrate
on law and order. The goal of stability thus came to replace the ideal of
democracy. And if stability required an iron hand, that was neither the
fault nor the responsibility of the United States.
From the early nineteenth century to the 1930s, in summary, the United States routinely deployed military power in the name of political
democracy. From the formulation of “manifest destiny” to the adoption
of Wilson’s democratic crusade, American policymakers, legislators,
scholars, and journalists justified the application of power as a means of
propagating the gospel of democracy. It was Herbert Hoover, of all
people, who would articulate the fundamental contradiction underlying
these efforts. During a goodwill tour of South America in 1928, the thenpopular president-elect promised that the United States would be respectful of national sensibilities and would endeavor to promote democracy in Latin America by example rather than by force. In fact, he said
somewhat disingenuously, suppression of neighboring nations would be
foreign to America’s political tradition. “True democracy is not and cannot be imperialistic.”
That is a new approach that I am talking about to these South
American things. Give them a share. They think they are just asgood as
we are and many of them are.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1940)
A new era of colonial ambitions, determined more by economic factors
than strictly political ones, isgoing to take charge of universal destinies.
Oswaldo Aranha (1935)
The decade of the 1930s stands out as a golden era of U.S. relations with
Latin America. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s proclamation of a
“Good Neighbor” policy marked an abrupt change in U.S. policy toward
the region. Washington withdrew military troops, refrained from intervention, and initiated a process of consultation and cooperation. The
United States began treating Latin American nations as sovereign entities,
rather than subordinates, as equal partners engaged in the collective promotion of hemispheric interests. This new stance promoted goodwill and
mutual respect among countries of the Americas, according to conventional accounts, and its practical consequence was the achievement of
nearly unanimous support for the United States throughout World War
II. Being a Good Neighbor turned out to be good policy.’
There is another way of viewing these events. Within the context of
the Imperial Era, the Good Neighbor policy can be seen not as a departure from past practices but as the culmination of trends in U.S. policy toward the region. In effect, FDR’s stance reflected a hardheaded sense of
realpolitik that promoted and protected the long-standing U.S. quest for hegemony throughout the hemisphere. In the name of nonintervention,
the Good Neighbor policy constituted yet another attempt to achieve,
impose, and consolidate American supremacy.
The Good Neighbor concept recognized that political intervention
and democratic proselytization a la Woodrow Wilson were ineffective,
that the costs were greater than the benefits. At a time when most European powers were reducing their involvement in the Americas, it was no
longer necessary or advantageous for the United States to engage in
heavy-handed intervention. And to an increasing extent, the United
States could apply economic leverage over countries in the hemisphere.
As a result, Washington could now extract voluntary cooperation from
Latin American governments through diplomatic and economic means.
Instead of seizing territory or creating colonies or nurturing protectorates, the United States was using new instruments in behalf of timehonored goals. In essence, the Good Neighbor policy would amount to a
declaration of triumph in the imperial contest.
The significance of the Good Neighbor policy derived from changes
in the global arena. As a result of World War I, which severely interrupted
commercial flows between Latin America and Europe, the economic influence of European powers was in marked decline. The United States
seized the opportunity to accentuate links to the region: between 1919
and 1929 direct U.S. investments in Latin America climbed from $1.987
billion to $3.519 billion, while portfolio investments (bonds and securities) increased from $419 million to $1.725 billion. The Depression intensified this pattern. Latin American trade with Europe dropped sharply
in the early 1930s and, despite the crisis in its own economy, the United
States moved in to fill the gap.
Another major factor was the imminence of war. The rise of Adolf
Hitler in Germany and his alliance with Benito Mussolini of Italy confronted Europe with the specter of fascism. Similarly, the emergence of
a military-led government in Japan posed a looming threat to all of Asia.
In this setting, extrahemispheric powers were hardly in a position to expand their influence in the Western Hemisphere-with the exception of
the Nazis, who made vigorous efforts to establish footholds in South
America. Most European nations had to concentrate their energies on
grave and immediate challenges, including Hitler’s military aggressions.
This left the United States with a relatively free hand in its dealings with
the hemisphere.
As a result of these developments, inter-American relations assumed
primary importance for the United States. In the language of a State Department document of 1933, “among the foreign relations of the United
States as they fall into categories, the Pan American policy takes first place
in our diplomacy.” Contrary to historical stereotype, the United States
did not adopt an isolationist stance toward all world regions throughout
the 1930s. While Washington refrained from major involvement in the
European theater and strident voices in support of “America First” called for strict isolationism, the United States steadily increased its level of
commitment and concern with regard to Latin America. In other words,
the United States was consolidating its own sphere of influence.
Crucibles: Nicaragua and Cuba
As often occurs, the inception of a new U.S. policy emerged from the selfevident failure of a prior policy. During the 1920s, as explained in chapter
2, the United States dispatched troops frequently to Central America and
the Caribbean, with long-term occupations in Haiti and the Dominican
Republic-for the ostensible purpose of promoting democracy and (especially) imposing economic order. None of these episodes proved to be an
unqualified success. It was the outcome of two other adventures, however, that marked a turning point in Washington’s views away from military intervention. The first, and more important, took place in Nicaragua.
Nicaragua, 1927-33
During the 1920s Washington was casting wary eyes on Mexico, still
emerging from its “Bolshevist” revolution of 1910. In 1923 the administration of Warren Harding agreed to provide diplomatic recognition to
Mexico only in exchange for assurances to U.S. investors, especially petroleum companies. Shortly afterward the Calvin Coolidge administration
expressed concern over prospects for large-scale land reform, while
American Catholics expressed vehement opposition to anticlerical tendencies within the revolution and the constitution of 1917. A source of
manifold dangers, Mexico also sought to take advantage of instability in
Nicaragua. Costa Rican officials reported to Washington that “Mexico is
attempting to develop a sphere of influence in Central America,” while
a State Department analysis argued that the government of Plutarco
Elias Calles was making “an unmistakable attempt . . . to extend Mexican influence over Central America with the unquestionable aim of ultimately achieving a Mexican primacy over the Central American countries.” The United States and Mexico thus found themselves on a
collision course.
Within Nicaragua, the United States continued to support the Conservatives against the Liberals. Coolidge had withdrawn U.S. marines in
1925 only after the patently fraudulent election of 1924 extended Conservative rule. With Americans gone the Liberals, who probably enjoyed
the majority of popular support, staged a rebellion in 1926. To promote
stability Washington persuaded Emiliano Chamorro to step down in favor
of Adolfo Diaz, who was then elected president by a pliant legislature.
The United States extended recognition to the trusty Diaz almost immediately; Mexico continued to recognize the would-be Liberal government
of archrival Juan Sacasa. In response, a State Department spokesman publicly charged that Mexico “was seeking to establish a Bolshevist authority in Nicaragua in order to drive a `hostile wedge’ between the United
States and the Panama Canal.”
As Diaz’ grasp on power weakened, President Coolidge dispatched
a contingent of U.S. marines in December 1926. Explaining his action
to Congress, Coolidge argued that conditions in Nicaragua “seriously
threaten American lives and property, endanger the stability of all Central
America, and put in jeopardy the rights granted by Nicaragua to the
United States for the construction of a canal.” Denouncing Sacasa’s
“Mexican allies,” Coolidge surmised that the Diaz government was unable to protect foreigners “solely because of the aid given by Mexico to
the revolutionists.” Concluded the president: “The United States can
not, therefore, fail to view with deep concern any serious threat to stability and constitutional government in Nicaragua tending toward anarchy and jeopardizing American interests, especially if such state of affairs
is contributed to or brought about by outside influences or by any foreign
power.”
European observers quickly denounced the U.S. intervention as
“frankly imperialist.” Responded the New York Times, with an air of sanctimonious defiance: “All that we do has at least the motive of aiding and
protecting the weaker republics on this continent, rather than of overriding or despoiling them. If this be Imperialism, make the most of it.”
A decision to arbitrate land and petroleum rights led to an easing of
U.S. bilateral tensions with Mexico. In Nicaragua, however, Liberal forces
continued their relentless advance on Managua. Faced with difficult
choices, Coolidge eventually assigned Henry L. Stimson to negotiate a
settlement that would permit a face-saving exit. Having no prior experience in Nicaragua- “So far as ignorance would free it from prejudices
or commitments,” he would later recall, “my mind was a clean slate”Stimson chose to supervise elections in hopes of bringing order to the
country. He also convinced Conservatives and Liberals to accept a powersharing arrangement. There were 5,500 U.S. marines on hand for the
election in 1928 of Jose Maria Moncada, a Liberal who had consented to
the Stimson compromise.
Governmental authority proved tenuous, however, so U.S. troops remained in Nicaragua. Cesar Augusto Sandino denounced the LiberalConservative bargain and took to the mountains, where he led an armed
rebellion. By April 1931 Stimson was forced to proclaim that the United
States was unable to assure “general protection of Americans” in Nicaragua. Attempts to capture Sandino merely made him a national hero.
United States troops supervised yet another presidential election in 1932,
but instability continued to mount. In recognition of this fact the United
States helped develop the Guardia Nacional, which promptly fell under
the leadership of Anastasio Somoza.
Armed intervention was not achieving its goals. As one American coffee planter in Nicaragua wrote to Stimson: “Today we are hated and despised and in danger of massacre any time the Marines are withdrawn. This feeling has been created by employing the American Marines to hunt
down and kill Nicaraguans in their own territory. This was a fatal mistake.
The intervention of the U.S. government in the internal affairs of
Nicaragua has proved a calamity for the American coffee planters doing
business in this Republic.”
Appointed by Herbert Hoover as secretary of state, Stimson decided
to withdraw the marines after the election of 1932. Asked if he would advocate the dispatch of American troops elsewhere in Latin America, Stimson replied: “Not on your life. . . . If we landed a single soldier among
those South Americans now, it would undo all the labor of three years,
and it would put me in absolutely wrong in China, where Japan has done
all of this monstrous work under the guise of protecting her nationals
with a landing force.”
In short, the seven-year episode in Nicaragua conveyed sobering
lessons for Washington. Its costs were painfully clear: 21 marines were
killed during 1927-28, and 135 U.S. soldiers had lost their lives by the
end of 1932. Financial costs were mounting as well: it took $1.5 million
dollars to mount the operation in 1927-28 alone (about $15 million in
1990s dollars), and by 1932 neither the White House nor Congress was
prepared to authorize the $750,000 required to sustain the U.S. presence. American troops withdrew in January 1933. Somoza had Sandino
murdered in February 1934. Two years later Somoza would take power
for himself.
Cuba, 1929-33
Cuba presented a different kind of challenge. From 1925 Gerardo
Machado y Morales had kept himself in power through an astute combination of bribery and repression. Reelected for a six-year term in 1929, he
reacted harshly to social agitation caused by the economic Depression. In
February 1931 Machado suspended constitutional guarantees, also shutting down the University of Havana.
Washington found itself obliged to respond to these developments.
Ironically enough, these policy deliberations were greatly complicated by
the fact that the Platt Amendment specifically authorized precisely the
kind of U.S. intervention that Stimson had come to oppose. Besides,
Machado had achieved for foreign investors the political and economic
stability that the amendment was designed to assure. Eventually, Washington decided that the amendment guaranteed “the protection of life,
property, and individual liberty” of foreigners only, especially Americans,
and not of anti-Machado Cuban nationals.
Consequently there would be no intervention. As Stimson would
later explain:
The attitude taken by these people in Cuba is similar to the attitude which is
almost constantly taken by factions in other Latin American countries when
the tension between them and their Government become acute. . . . If we complied with all these requests, our hands would be full indeed and, however much these factions might like it, we should make ourselves extremely
unpopular with every country in Latin America if we adopted such a course
of action.
Contending that a request for Machado to resign would be “a very serious intervention,” Stimson pondered the possibility of supervising an
election:
that would be even more of an intervention on our part. We have done it in
Nicaragua in order to bring to a termination a long period of civil war and
anarchy and, in that case, we only did it upon the request of all parties and
factions in Nicaragua. Even then, we found the expense and difficulty involved in such an operation, even in such a small country as Nicaragua, a very
serious burden. Under present conditions, it would be quite out of the question in Cuba.
It was the precedent of Nicaragua, as much as the reality of Cuba, that argued against direct U.S. action.
By the early 1930s, in summary, the practice of military intervention
appeared to have failed. There was need and opportunity to forge a new
approach. It was at this moment, and in this context, that Franklin Delano Roosevelt swept to victory in the presidential election of 1932.
The Good Neighbor Policy: Political Dimensions
Antecedents for a shift in U.S. policy date from the late 1920s. During his
1928 tour of South America, President-elect Herbert Hoover expressed
hope that countries of the hemisphere could learn to treat each other as
“good neighbors.” In a campaign article that same year in Foreign Affairs,
Franklin Roosevelt attacked the Republican Party for placing “money leadership ahead of moral leadership.” Turning to the Americas-“in many
ways, most important of all”-FDR expressed skepticism about U.S. actions in Haiti and the Dominican Republic and appealed for multilateral
approaches. “Single-handed intervention by us in the internal affairs of
other nations must end; with the cooperation of others we shall have more
order in this hemisphere and less dislike.” One practical consequence of increased goodwill, FDR surmised, would be increased trade with countries
of the region.
In his inaugural address of 1933 Roosevelt coined the phrase that
would define the lines of policy. “I would dedicate this nation to the
policy of the Good Neighbor,” he said, “-the neighbor who respects his
obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world
of neighbors.” Though vague in content, this formulation directly challenged isolationist sentiments that would continue to gain strength during the course of the Depression. And while the idea was initially intended for the world as a whole, it would acquire its most specific
meaning in relation to Latin America.
The cornerstone of the Good Neighbor policy was nonintervention.
This began to take shape at the inter-American meeting of 1933 at Montevideo, where delegates concurred in a resolution firmly asserting that
“No state has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of
another.” United States secretary of state Cordell Hull not only assented
to this language, but further explained that “the United States government is as much opposed as any other government to interference with
the freedom, the sovereignty, or other internal affairs or processes of the
governments of other nations.” As a result, Hull pledged, “no government need fear any intervention on the part of the United States under
the Roosevelt administration.”
This commitment became even more explicit at the Buenos Aires
conference of 1936, with the adoption of a formal protocol: “The High
Contracting Parties declare inadmissible the intervention of any one of
them, directly or indirectly, and for whatever reason, in the internal or external affairs of any other of the Parties.” The condemnation of intervention as “inadmissible” was strongly promoted by the Mexican delegation,
still apprehensive over differences with Washington in regard to Central
America. Understandably enough, Latin American representatives continued to fear the possibility of U.S. military action.
Nonintervention sharply modified the Monroe Doctrine. More particularly, it amounted to a rejection of the 1904 Roosevelt Corollary,
which had proclaimed that the United States possessed not only a right to
intervene-but also a moral duty (in cases of “impotence” or “chronic
wrongdoing”). According to the Buenos Aires protocol, military intervention was henceforth prohibited “for whatever reason.” At least on this
one issue, Franklin Roosevelt repudiated the legacy of cousin Theodore.2
By upholding the principle of national sovereignty, the doctrine of
nonintervention supported the juridical equality of states. Under Good
Neighbor precepts, large countries were supposed to respect the integrity
of smaller countries. As Latins came to say with pride: “Now there are no
little nations.” Moreover, nonintervention meant that force should no
longer be used for the protection of property or citizens abroad. It thus
overthrew Calvin Coolidge’s dictum that the U.S. government was
obliged to protect the property rights of U.S. citizens in foreign lands. In
effect, the Good Neighbor position held that U.S. citizens and investments overseas must obey the sovereign laws of host societies. In addition, the policy called for consultation among the states of the Americas.
At the 1936 meeting in Buenos Aires, delegates concurred in a resolution
that hemispheric states “shall consult together for the purposes of finding
and adopting methods of peaceful cooperation.” In translation, this
meant that the United States would no longer act in unilateral fashion.
And as a result, it was imagined, the hemisphere would become a cooperative community of states.
A final component was the principle of noninterference. Going much
further than the idea of nonintervention, which held that countries should refrain from the deployment of military force, noninterference
meant that nations should abstain from any form of meddling in the internal affairs of sovereign states-through coercion, enticement, manipulation, or other means that might range from unsought advice to economic pressure to the threat or show of force.
Cuba, 1933-36
The concept of noninterference evolved not from presidential declaration
but from the passage of events, especially in Cuba. Taking office as FDR’s
secretary of state, Cordell Hull immediately initiated diplomatic negotiations that led to abrogation of the Platt Amendment by May 1934. The
United States thus forfeited its long-standing right to intervention within
Cuba. But this did not imply total disengagement. On the contrary, Hull
replaced the threat of outright intervention with more subtle efforts to
direct the course of Cuban affairs.
The principal agent of this new approach was Sumner Welles, who
arrived as U.S. ambassador to Havana in May 1933. As opposition
mounted against the relentless rule of Machado, Welles took it upon himself to present the ruler with a five-point plan that included his taking a
leave of absence from office. Machado dissented but lost the support of
his army and departed Cuba in August. Subsequent conditions under
Carlos Manuel de Cespedes rapidly deteriorated, however, and Welles responded with a plan for new elections. And then, in September 1934,
rank-and-file army elements under Sergeant Fulgencio Batista imposed a
junta that included five civilians. Apoplectic as his plans unraveled, Welles
denounced the ruling leadership as representing “a group of the most extreme radicals of the student organization and three university professors
whose theories are frankly communistic.” This was not the first occasion,
and by no means the last, that U.S. officials would denounce the threat of
communism in the Western Hemisphere.
Welles pursued several courses of action. First, he urged Washington
to intervene. The cautious Hull rejected this advice, warning that “if we
have to go in there again, we will never be able to come out and we will
have on our hands the trouble of thirty years ago.” Second, Welles persuaded the State Department to withhold recognition of the new government, eventually led by Ramon Grau San Martin, a university professor,
on the grounds that the regime was incapable of maintaining law and
order. In the meantime, Welles continued to denounce the Grau San
Martin administration as “an undisciplined group of individuals of divergent tendencies representing the most irresponsible elements in the city
of Havana with practically no support whatsoever outside the capital.”
Despite FDR’s claim that the U.S. decision on nonrecognition was
wholly impartial, it was, of course, a highly partisan act-yet it failed to
topple the government. Third, Welles courted and supported domestic
opposition to the new regime, proclaiming in September 1934 that “a social revolution” was in progress against the government. His successor
as ambassador, Jefferson Caffery, openly encouraged Batista to overthrow Grau. Shortly thereafter Grau resigned and was replaced by Carlos
Mendieta. Greatly relieved by this turn of events, the United States followed with swift diplomatic recognition. From that point onward, nonrecognition was abandoned as a diplomatic weapon.
No longer meddling outright in Cuban affairs, the United States
continued to express its interests and its preferences. When Mendieta suspended constitutional guarantees in mid-January 1935, Caffery interpreted the move as strictly anticommunist: “The Mendieta government
has been fighting for its life against the communistic elements, and, although it has strengthened its position in the country by its recent firm
attitude, the communists have by no means given up hope and will continue to be a menace for some time to come.” After presidential elections
in 1936, won by Miguel Mariano Gomez, the U.S. government continued its close communications with Fulgencio Batista, inviting him
to Washington in 1938 for high-level discussions with FDR as well as
Cordell Hull and others. Such displays of tacit support no doubt influenced Batista’s decision to run for the presidency in 1940.
From 1933 to 1936, in other words, U.S. diplomats made persistent
attempts to interfere in Cuban politics-and eventually chose to desist.
This does not quite mean that all their efforts met with failure. As one
Mexican diplomat recalled, the succession of threats and enticements during this period was “one of the most effective and skillful interventions
ever carried out by the American government.” But from Welles’ blustering to Caffery’s persuasion, the methods for exerting U.S. pressure underwent visible change. Open interference was no longer part of the
diplomatic arsenal.
By the end of the 1930s, much of Latin America fell under the sway
of long-lived dictatorships: Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez in El Salvador, Jorge Ubico in Guatemala, Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, Fulgencio Batista in Cuba, and Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua.
Somewhat conspicuously, these regimes emerged precisely in those countries where the United States had intervened or intermeddled to the
greatest degree. As FDR is alleged to have said of Somoza during a visit
to Washington in 1940: “He’s a son of a bitch, but at least he’s our son of
a bitch.” More serious, and more damning, was the comment of Victor
Raul Haya de la Torre, the aspiring young reformist from Peru, who proclaimed in 1938 that FDR had made himself “the Good Neighbor of
tyrants.”
The Good Neighbor Policy: Economic Dimensions
Roosevelt’s policy toward Latin America entailed not only political accommodation but also economic influence. During the 1930s Washington reached the conclusion that military intervention-even political intermeddling-was costly, ineffective, and counterproductive. Economic
leverage was something else again. The first inkling of this strategy came
in the form of reciprocity, which called for straightforward exchange: the
United States would grant political benefits to Latin America in anticipation of favors to come, particularly economic benefits. Washington expressed continuing concern about the treatment of U.S. nationals and
their property, especially $5 billion in investments ($1.5 billion in portfolios, $3.5 billion in direct investments). From the U.S. perspective, active
defense of economic interests of U.S. nationals abroad “would not constitute intervention in the internal affairs of another state. It would be simply a matter of protection.” Such claims were, of course, utterly inconsistent with nonintervention principles.
Promoting Trade
Upon taking office the Roosevelt administration promptly started to fashion instruments for stimulating economic recovery and, in the Americas,
extending economic influence. In 1933 FDR maintained that the stimulation of trade was “the most important item in our country’s foreign
policy,” and as secretary of state he appointed Cordell Hull, a zealous
proponent of trade liberalization. Hull believed that commercial opening
would not only expand U.S. exports and stimulate production, but that,
as a general principle, it would diminish tendencies toward conflict and
strengthen prospects for world peace. He also detected geopolitical advantage in the consolidation of commercial ties: the political lineup followed the economic lineup, according to his oft-quoted homily, and
Washington could greatly enhance its international position through the
artful pursuit of trade policy.
After a hesitant start, the Roosevelt administration began to implement Hull’s approach. In 1934 the government established an ExportImport Bank to extend commercial loans to U.S. exporters. That same
year Congress approved the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (as FDR
affixed his signature to the bill, Hull would recall that “each stroke of the
pen seemed to write a message of gladness on my heart”). In effect, the
legislation authorized the negotiation of bilateral agreements for trade
liberalization, which Hull interpreted as the mutual reduction of tariffs
and, if possible, the unconditional extension of most-favored-nation status. Paradoxically, the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act of 1930 strengthened
Washington’s bargaining position, since the reduction or elimination of
its protectionist barriers offered major incentives to U.S. trading partners.
Latin America became a starting point and testing ground for U.S.
commercial strategy. The region offered a strong potential market. Between 1929 and 1932 American exports to Latin America declined by
78 percent; recuperation of these sales would help promote U.S. recovery. Moreover, imports from Latin America-which dropped by 68 percent between 1929 and 1932-would not displace American goods. On the contrary, over 80 percent of these goods were raw materials used in
manufacturing (for industrial production) or noncompetitive foodstuffs
(such as coffee, cocoa, and bananas). Under these conditions customs duties and excise taxes were mutually disadvantageous. And for Hull, especially, successful agreements to liberalize trade with Latin America could
set a precedent for negotiations with Europe and other parts of the world.
“In carrying out our policies toward Latin America,” he later recalled, “it
was never my wish to make them exclusively Pan-American.”
True to his convictions, Hull went to the Montevideo conference
of 1933 with the avowed intention to “introduce a comprehensive economic resolution calling for lower tariffs and the abolition of trade restrictions.” The administration simultaneously initiated bilateral trade
discussions with Argentina, Brazil, and Colombia. In view of Colombia’s
dependence on the U.S. coffee market, one-sided negotiations with Bogota promptly led to the signing of an advantageous treaty for the United
States; “it actually costs us nothing,” in the revealing judgment of a State
Department memorandum. Passage of the Trade Agreements Act in
1934 required subsequent revisions that led to considerable tension, and
it was not until 1936 that the two governments exchanged ratification.
Ever gracious, Colombia’s exhausted foreign minister expressed appreciation for the Good Neighbor policy with its “new criterion in the diplomatic sphere, and commercial relations based on liberal principles which
consecrate the operation of the most-favored-nation clause.”
With its tariff legislation in place, Washington next turned to Cuba.
As a result of the Depression, the island’s sugar income in 1933 had declined to 30 percent of its 1929 level (and merely 12 percent of the 1924
level). Cuba badly needed secure access to the U.S. market; for its part,
the United States sought protection for its $1.5 billion in investments.
Once the “communistic” Grau San Martin was out of power, Washington
promptly reached a trade agreement with the Mendieta administration.
The final compact was a purely bilateral affair, with no mention of mostfavored nation provisions, but it effectively lowered reciprocal duties.
Also in 1934 Congress fixed quotas among domestic and foreign suppliers for the U.S. sugar market, granting Cuba a 28 percent share.
Soon afterward Washington reached a series of commercial agreements with nations of Central America: Honduras in 1935, Guatemala
and Costa Rica in 1936, El Salvador in 1937. As with Colombia and
Cuba, these negotiations revealed a common pattern: the United States
managed to reach trade agreements only with countries that were heavily
dependent on U.S. markets for agricultural (usually monocultural) exports. During the course of the decade Washington was unable to conclude agreements with Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Mexico.
By far the most dramatic trade negotiations focused on Brazil, the
world’s fifth-largest supplier to the United States and the source of 60 to
65 percent of its coffee imports. Even more significantly, Brazil was a cor nerstone for Adolf Hitler’s attempts to augment Germany’s political and
economic presence throughout Latin America. During the 1930s Germany launched an economic offensive in the Americas, aggressively promoting the sale of German industrial products in exchange for raw materials from Latin America. Under bilateral arrangements, Germany would
often arrange to pay handsome prices for imports with “compensation
marks,” a special currency that could only be used to purchase German
goods in return (this was, fumed Cordell Hull, “a cut throat doubledealing method of trade”). From 1936 to 1939 imports from Latin
America came to 7 percent of Germany’s total, while German exports to
Latin America climbed to over 14 percent of the regional total. Ominously,
too, Germany held military instructorships in over half the countries of
Latin America. As one U.S. charge reported back to Washington, Nazi
Germany was “conducting a well organized and astute campaign . . .
to discredit in every way possible American efforts on this continent.”
Because of its size, location, and importance, Brazil became a central
object of this U.S.-German rivalry. For Germany it represented not only a
substantial market but also an important source of raw materials, especially cotton (which could be used in the manufacture of explosives).
Moreover, the country had a sizable Germanic community, consisting of
around 100,000 German nationals and 800,000 German-Brazilians or
teuto-brasileiros. Seeking to maximize its own commercial exports and its
political room for maneuver, the Brazilian government managed to steer
an artful middle course. In 1935 the Getulio Vargas administration announced a Reciprocal Trade Agreement with the United States, which
placed over 90 percent of Brazilian imports on its duty-free list; the following year it reached a secret “gentlemen’s agreement” with Nazi Germany. Between 1933 and 1938 the German share of Brazilian imports
climbed from 12 percent to 25 percent, while the German share of Brazilian exports jumped from just over 8 percent to nearly 20 percent.
United States politicians took notice of the Third Reich’s campaign.
In the spring of 1938 New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia sounded a
public alarm:
For the maintenance of our economic well-being, for the preservation of
peace, it is vital that we take immediate steps to eliminate this new growing
sore on the soil of the Western Hemisphere. In this way, we may lay the foundation of peace and security for our world of the future. A united people in
the Western Hemisphere, without invasion of the sovereign rights of any
government. The Americas for the Americans.
Shortly afterward an experienced U.S. businessman speculated about the
commercial implications of German penetration of the Western Hemisphere: “Markets would be closed to our exporters. Political, naval and
aviation concessions would be linked to commerce. We should soon find
a European `sphere of influence’ creeping up toward us from the south, and outposts of the Empire appearing closer and closer to the Panama
Canal.” President Roosevelt added his own commentary on the possibility of Axis influence in Latin America: “Do you think that the United
States could stand idly by and have this European menace right on our
own borders? Of course not. You could not stand for it.”
As a result of governmental policy, the United States steadily improved its commercial position in the hemisphere. By 1938 the United
States had become the leading overall trade partner for every major country of Latin America-with the sole exception of Argentina, which continued to sell large quantities of high-quality beef in the British market,
and with the partial exception of Chile (Table A2). Germany was making
substantial headway, especially in the ABC countries, but it was nowhere
predominant. In South America, as well as in the Caribbean Basin, the
United States was gaining the upper hand.
In the end, it was neither diplomatic pressure nor neighborly sentiment that blunted the German offensive in South America. It was the
eruption of World War II and, more particularly, the British naval blockade against Hitler’s vessels. Commerce with Germany ground to a virtual
halt. “What the commercial policy of the United States failed to achieve
with its relentless opposition to the expansion of our compensation
trade,” one Rio de Janeiro newspaper remarked in 1940, “the war brutally realized from one moment to the next.”
Applying Leverage
In its promotion of U.S. economic interests, the Roosevelt administration
encountered serious challenges from Latin American governments against
American oil companies. The first conflict erupted in Bolivia, where the
government in March 1937 annulled its concession to the Standard Oil
Company and confiscated its properties. The decree alleged that the company had defrauded the government by failure to pay taxes and by the illegal exportation of oil to Argentina in 1925-26. Technically speaking the
governmental decision was not an expropriation, for which compensation
might have been offered, but an outright cancellation, which would not
entail any compensation at all.
The announcement immediately led to wrangling in the Bolivian
courts. By February 1938 Sumner Welles, now assistant secretary of state,
decided to advocate some form of arbitration, explaining to a Bolivian
representative that “the only way in which public opinion in this country
was going to support the `Good Neighbor’ policy as a permanent part of
our foreign policy would be for the policy to be recognized throughout
the continent as a completely reciprocal policy and not one of a purely
unilateral character.” In March 1938 Standard Oil filed a suit under
protest after consultation with the Department of State, which promised
to support a claim for arbitration once legal remedies were exhausted in Bolivia. A year later the Bolivian Supreme Court decided unanimously
that Standard Oil did not possess a legal status in Bolivia which entitled it
to sue the government.
As the U.S. Department of State pondered its next steps, Cordell
Hull issued a blunt warning that:
in this dangerous, chaotic world situation there was never such a ripe plum
dangled before a hungry person than Latin America appears to be to . . .
lawless nations, hungry as wolves for vast territory with rich undeveloped
natural resources such as South America possesses; that it is all-important for
the American nations to pursue a lawful, friendly and reasonable course with
each other; and that the dollars and cents involved in the oil seizure were
small compared to the great injury that would result to Bolivia, as well as to
my own and other countries, if that sort of an act should go uncorrected and
the friendship between the two countries should be seriously impaired.
The allusion to Germany was as transparent as the threat to Bolivia itself.
The petroleum dispute was being drawn into the worldwide arena.
In June 1939 the Department of State offered to act as intermediator.
Subsequent news leaks from Bolivia scuttled this idea, and the United
States retaliated by applying two forms of economic pressure: first, the
United States tried to prevent Bolivia from obtaining help from immediate
neighbors (an effort that was partly successful with Paraguay but less so
with respect to Argentina, which continued to purchase Bolivian oil); second, and more important, the United States blocked loans and technical assistance. To emphasize this point, heads of the Reconstruction
Corporation and the Export-Import Bank told the U.S. Senate that they
would refuse to make loans to “a country that is confiscating our property.”
Affected by this economic pressure, Bolivian officials began seeking a
way out of the impasse by August 1940. And as World War II approached, U.S. diplomats began to fear inroads by Germany-implicated
in a plot to overthrow the Bolivian government in July 1941-and soon
began drawing up plans for a resumption of economic assistance. Under
these changed circumstances, Bolivia and Standard Oil eventually agreed
upon a settlement in January 1942: a payment of $1.5 million (plus 3
percent interest) for sale of the company to the Bolivian state under conditions “freely entered into.” A check arrived on April 22. Washington
achieved its goal.
The second challenge came in Mexico. Disputes over wages and
working conditions in the foreign-owned oil industry led to a strike in
May 1937. Unions found support for their position from the federal
Board of Conciliation and Arbitration, a mixed-member body on which
the Mexican government held the balance of power between workers and
management, and in March 1938 the Mexican Supreme Court upheld
the board ruling. Foreign companies refused to comply, however, rejecting the offer of a guarantee from President Lazaro Cardenas against further tax or wage demands. On March 18, 1938, a frustrated Cardenas an nounced expropriation of Dutch, British, and U.S. companies. Delirious
crowds throughout Mexico expressed jubilant support for the government action, and the newspaper El Nacional captured the popular mood:
“First, political independence, then internal emancipation, today the inexorable rupture of this umbilical cord which ties us to imperialism. . . .
The country writes its history with its own blood.”
The stakes in this conflict were high. The total value of oil lands came
to approximately $500 million. The U.S.-held concession was worth
about $200 million, and U.S. direct investments amounted to $60 million. Given interests of this magnitude, the Mexican crisis was bound to
set a precedent for U.S. policy.
The American position took time to evolve. Shortly after Cardenas’
announcement, Cordell Hull issued an ultimatum, demanding to know
“what specific action with respect to payment for the properties in question is contemplated by the Mexican government, what assurance will be
given that payment will be made, and when such payment may be expected.” Apprehensive about the tone of this missive, U.S. ambassador
Josephus Daniels exceeded customary bounds of diplomatic discretion
and urged the Mexicans to consider the note as “not received.” He also
reported to Washington that Mexico would be willing to pay compensation. Daniels’ bold action endangered his career and cost him the confidence of Hull and Welles, but it managed to prevent a damaging break in
U.S.-Mexican relations.
The United States renounced the use of force but was quick to apply
economic pressure. Barely one week after the expropriation the Department of Treasury terminated a 1936 agreement for the purchase of 5 million ounces of silver each month from Mexico at slightly above the world
price. This was an important blow to Mexico: exports of silver were almost as large as for oil, and the purchase arrangement represented a significant source of revenue for the Mexican government. After a threemonth hiatus, Treasury resumed the purchase of Mexican silver on a
day-to-day basis at the world level. On balance, suspension of the silver
deal had more symbolic than practical impact.
More significant were efforts by the oil companies to prevent the export of Mexican oil. In open collusion, the companies sought to obstruct
the acquisition of tankers and the purchase of drilling equipment. The result was a highly effective boycott on Mexican petroleum in major markets, including the United States. In May 1939 the U.S. State Department endorsed the boycott on Mexican oil, issuing a statement that it
would be “undesirable” for U.S. government agencies to purchase Mexican oil and encouraging Latin American governments to take a similar
stand. (For its part, Mexico responded by making deals with Axis powers:
as war approached, Mexico was earning about $1.2 million per month
from petroleum exports, over half from Germany and Italy.) United
States government lending agencies also refrained from making loans to
Mexico between August 1937 and November 1941.
The Dutch and British governments and all the oil companies-with
the exception of Sinclair, which was breaking ranks to negotiate its own
agreement-called for arbitration by an international tribunal. In 1939
FDR, too, wrote directly to Cardenas with a proposal for international
arbitration. After Mexico rejected this overture, favoring instead a twoperson bilateral commission, Welles proposed arbitration again. It was the
fall of France in mid-1940 that ultimately led the United States to accept
the Mexican position. Under pressure from the War Department, in fact,
the State Department consented to the idea of a two-person commission
in late 1941. “In the event the United States is attacked and must enter
the war,” one U.S. official noted, “Mexico’s oil resources might be of importance from the point of view of national and even hemispheric defense.” For the United States it thus became urgent not only to settle the
controversy but also to maintain Mexico’s capacity for production. The
decision came in April 1942, just after the creation of a joint U.S.-Mexico
defense commission: Mexico would pay to U.S. companies compensation
of $24 million plus 3 percent interest since the date of expropriation, for a
total of $29 million.
The third instance of petroleum politics occurred in Venezuela,
where the United States applied lessons that it may have learned in Bolivia
and Mexico. After the death of long-time dictator Juan Vicente Gomez in
1935, the Venezuelan labor movement began to assert its independence
and power-achieving an eight-hour day, rights to collective bargaining,
and the imposition of export taxes on petroleum-steps that the oil companies would normally oppose. At the same time, the government of
Eleazar Lopez Contreras granted new concessions to Socony and Standard Oil of New Jersey. In view of the Mexican crisis there was no effective threat of governmental expropriation. On the contrary, the Venezuelan goal was to capture market share-thus taking advantage of the
boycott on Mexican oil.
In an effort to prevent recurrence of the Bolivian or Mexican scenario, the Department of State in 1940 decided to consult with U.S. oil
companies on strategies for negotiation and representation. Discussions
followed from December 1942 through March 1943 on provisions of a
new Venezuelan law that raised the royalty on petroleum from a range of
7.5-11 percent to a uniform 162/3percent, established a new base for calculation of taxes, and reduced customs exemptions. In this the oil companies freely concurred. Washington thus secured another wartime goal:
maintaining the flow of petroleum to allied forces.
Extending Assistance
The Roosevelt administration began to shift its policy on economic assistance toward Latin America in 1939. Prior to that time the United States
had used economic assistance as a carrot-and-stick, withholding loans from
Bolivia and Mexico in order to protect American investments in petroleum. As war loomed on the international horizon, however, Washington started
to emphasize hemispheric security instead of economic interests.
In the absence of centralized coordination, changes in U.S. foreign
economic policy faced substantial inertia and resistance. Harry Dexter
White, a monetary expert in the Treasury Department, encouraged Roosevelt to “use our great financial strength to help safeguard future peace
for the United States, and to make your ‘Good Neighbor’ policy really effective.” Unless the United States were to embark on “a program of assistance to Latin-American countries on a scale appropriate to the problem
with which we are faced,” White continued, “Latin America will gradually
succumb to the organized economic and ideological campaign now being
waged by aggressor nations.” Eventually the president concurred, indicating in a speech to the Board of Governors of the Pan American Union in
April 1939 that the United States would “give economic support, so that
no American nation need surrender any fraction of its sovereign freedom
to maintain its economic welfare.” Implicitly contradicting then-current
U.S. policy toward Mexico, a State Department memorandum contended
in June 1939: “Our national interests as a whole far outweigh those of the
petroleum companies.” Economic assistance would be used to keep Latin
American nations on the U.S. side in case of war.
In 1939 the State Department began laying plans for a commercial
cartel that would handle Latin American exports and take up slack caused
by the closing of European markets. The idea met resistance in Latin
America, but Washington eventually backed off for reasons of its own: it
feared a backlash in Asia, since Japan would be likely to demand comparable commercial hegemony over China, and it came to the conclusion that
the scheme was unworkable. As U.S. trade official Will Clayton noted:
“Cartels must be world cartels-not Hemisphere cartels.” The United
States decided to continue its reliance on bilateral arrangements.
Also in 1939 the Export-Import Bank initiated transactions with
governments, thus greatly enlarging its role. By late 1940 the bank was
making substantial loans for broad-based development projects. Especially significant was support for construction of the Volta Redonda steel
mill in Brazil. Bernard Baruch, ever the businessman, expressed skepticism about the wisdom of this venture: “After the property is developed,”
he wondered aloud, “will they pull a Mexican stunt on us?” But Washington went ahead with the loan, and the Eximbank embarked on an ambitious lending program throughout the war: $45 million to Brazil, $5 million to Chile, $5 million to Uruguay, $2 million to Nicaragua, $400,000
to Paraguay. William Culbertson, former ambassador to Chile, observed
the appearance of a new kind of diplomacy: “to use Federal funds in order
to conserve and develop the economic life of the Latin American countries, I presume with the idea in mind that we are to keep them lined up
politically for the purpose of economic defense of the hemisphere. You
are really witnessing the entrance of the American Government into the
field of political loans.”
While flows of aid increased at this time, the U.S. government displayed considerable uncertainty over the proposed creation of an InterAmerican Bank. At the Panama Conference of 1939, without a firm U.S.
commitment, Sumner Welles could state only that “the United States
Government wishes to cooperate with all other American Republics in the
efforts of each to develop the resources of its country along sound economic and non-competitive lines and when desired to assist them through
the services and facilities of its privately owned banking system as well
as its Government-owned agencies when the latter have funds available
for such purposes.” Latin American delegates called for multilateral
approaches, in contrast to the bilateral methods of the Eximbank, and
Mexican diplomats espoused the “creation of an inter-American financial
institution of a permanent character.”
Plans for a bank proceeded, but without provisions for enabling Latin
American governments to repay any loans they might acquire. What the
Latins wanted was access to U.S. commercial markets. Without enhanced
trade, said Dr. Pedro Larranaga of Peru, the result would be counterproductive: “Why obscure the meaning of this solution, which instead of giving the Americas a new independent and neutral credit structure is merely
going to increase our indebtedness to the United States?” Latin American
representatives objected to a February 1940 draft proposal that insisted
on government guarantees for loans to Latin American private citizens,
gave a veto power to the United States in voting rules, and provided no
assurance about commercial access to the U.S. market. At the same time,
U.S. bankers and financiers expressed skepticism about the creation of
an official, governmentally sponsored agency. “I hope,” said Bernard
Baruch, that “our Latin-American efforts will not have too much government action, but rather more by individuals.” The proposal then died in
committee. In 1947 President Harry S. Truman finally withdrew the convention from the U.S. Senate.
The Good Neighbor Policy: Cultural Dimensions
The Good Neighbor policy rested on ideological foundations, as the
Roosevelt administration continually emphasized the mythical unity of
the New World and its differences from the Old World. While Europe was
falling prey to totalitarian dictatorship, according to this litany, nations of
the Americas stood for justice and democracy. “We and the other American Republics have distinguishing ideals and beliefs which bind us together in contrast with other non-American powers,” insisted a State Department memorandum of 1939; among these were “faith in republican
institutions, loyalty to democracy as an ideal, reverence for liberty, acceptance of the dignity of the individual and his inviolable personal rights,
belief in peaceable adjustment of disputes . . .” Invoking what historian
Arthur P. Whitaker has described as “the Western Hemisphere idea,” U.S.
officials maintained that the New World was culturally unified, ideologi cally unique, and politically superior to other realms of the globe.3 It
stood apart from Europe-and, by implication, was under the leadership
and guidance of the United States.
United States representatives pressed this argument in forum after
forum. At the Pan-American gathering in Montevideo in 1933, the
American delegation supported a series of resolutions designed to advance “mutual knowledge and understanding of the peoples of the
Americas.” At Buenos Aires in 1936, U.S. delegates supported the Declaration of Principles of Inter-American Solidarity and Cooperation, which
proclaimed that American republics shared a “common likeness in their
form of democratic government.” And at Panama in 1939, the United
States sponsored a resolution recommending that “in view of the democratic ideal which prevails in the American hemisphere,” it was necessary
“to eradicate from the Americas the spread of doctrines that tend to place
in jeopardy the common inter-American democratic ideal.” Alien doctrines were unwelcome. In keeping with the Monroe Doctrine, Washington must lead the fight against extrahemispheric ideologies.4
In this diplomatic effort, cultural connections received high-level attention. The assumption was that mutual respect arising from a sympathetic understanding of history, literature, and the arts would not only
bind together countries of the hemisphere but would also promote trade
and commercial cooperation. For such reasons the Roosevelt administration established a cultural division in the Department of State “to promote mutual progress and understanding in the Americas.” And it was to
counteract the growing Axis menace that FDR created, in August 1940,
the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA) and
placed it under the leadership of the youthful Nelson Rockefeller. Invested with a broad mandate, OCIAA oversaw economic cooperation,
cultural exchange, and public information; its primary purpose was to
counter “subversive, insidious, destructive Nazi propaganda.” The budget for the OCIAA’s first year of operation was $3.5 million; by the end
of the war it was $45 million. As Rockefeller reflected in 1945: “The
United States came in with a program of truth in answer to enemy lies.”
From the outset, the OCIAA worked with a broad range of media. It
distributed articles to magazines and newspapers throughout the hemisphere. OCIAA produced and distributed the magazine En Guardia in
Spanish and Portuguese, on sale at newsstands and sent without charge to
about 40,000 prominent Latin Americans each month. OCIAA sponsored art exhibitions, musical concerts, and literary translations (but not
of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, which it deemed inappropriate).
The office cooperated with major radio networks, enticing the industry
through tax benefits to increase its number of short-wave broadcasts and
to improve the quality of programs aired to Latin America. By 1941 U.S.
news broadcasts expanded from a handful of shortwave programs a week,
mostly in English, to eighteen reports in Spanish and eight in Portuguese.
OCIAA purchased advertising space in pro-U.S. newspapers announcing the time, wavelength, and call letters of American broadcasts, and blacklisted Latin American radio stations that carried pro-Axis programs.
It was in the motion picture industry that OCIAA had its most remarkable influence. As explained by the director of the agency’s film department, John Hay (“Jock”) Whitney:
The Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs has a share in the
task of imparting the full force of the meaning of freedom and sovereignty to
a quarter of a billion people in the Americas. The menace of Nazism and its
allied doctrines, its techniques and tactics, must be understood from Hudson
Bay to Punto Arenas. Wherever the motion picture can do a basic job of
spreading the gospel of the Americas’ common stake in this struggle, there
that job must and shall be done.
To pursue this goal OCIAA installed in Hollywood a consultant to the
Motion Picture Association who could offer advice on scripts, censor
films, and encourage distribution of movies that would display “the truth
about the American way.” In effect, OCIAA became the clearinghouse
and censor for all films sent to Latin America.
The OCIAA was highly effective. It successfully opposed distribution
in Latin America of a film entitled Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, starring
Jimmy Stewart, because of its adverse commentary on the U.S. political
establishment. It persuaded Twentieth Century Fox to spend $40,000 to
remove potentially offensive scenes from Down Argentine Way (1940),
which featured one Argentine character as a gigolo, depicted another with
a Mexican accent, and revolved around an allegedly crooked horse race at
the Buenos Aires Jockey Club. And it urged the producers of Juarez
(1939), a cinematic classic comparing Mexico’s Benito Juarez with Abraham Lincoln, to eliminate a scene in which an American diplomat notified
Napoleon III that France must get out of Mexico because of the Monroe
Doctrine, thus minimizing the role of Mexican resistance. In a variety of
ways, Rockefeller and Whitney urged Hollywood to reiterate the messages of hemispheric solidarity.
The industry responded with alacrity. During 1941 alone Twentieth
Century Fox produced The Road to Rio, RKO came out with They Met in
Argentina, MGM released Simon Bolivar. Twentieth Century Fox would
go on to film a whole series of Charlie Chan adventures in South
America. Perhaps the biggest hit came from the Disney Studio, which
created an animated feature film, Saludos Amigos (1943), in which a baby
Chilean airplane gallantly brought mail across the Andes and a dapper
Brazilian parrot, Jose Carioca, continually got the best of a bewildered
Donald Duck.
There were several reasons for Hollywood’s cooperation. One was
political: leading movie producers, many of them Jewish, strongly opposed Nazism and objected to U.S. calls for isolationism. Another was
creative, particularly musical: in the words of one executive, swing music
of the big-band era was on the way out and “the rhumba stuff is jumping into the number one position in American taste.” Third, and perhaps
most critical, was the need for a new export market. As World War II
closed off commercial access to Europe and Japan, there was no alternative to Latin America. Political imperatives and economic calculations
thus neatly converged, creating a powerful partnership between Hollywood and Washington.
As reported by historian Allen Woll, “Hollywood’s attitude toward
the Latin countries suddenly bordered on reverence.”5 No longer did
U.S. films depict Latins as uncouth greasers or ignorant peasants. The
picture Juarez, with Paul Muni, presented the Mexican leader as a hero of
epic proportions. There were lighthearted forms of approval as well. In
They Met in Argentina (1941), for example, gauchos on the pampas sang
the same song as had the American hero as a youth in Texas. And in That
Night in Rio (1941), Don Ameche warbled a tune called “Chica Chica
Boom Chic” with touchingly ludicrous lyrics:
It sounded more like a speech at the Pan American Union than a Hollywood song, but it seemed to accomplish its purpose.
Rockefeller’s OCIAA was not reluctant to propose specific themes.
“Right now,” its oversight committee urged at one point, “we need to
create `Pan-Americana,’ a noble female figure, bearing a torch and cross,
subtly suggesting both the Virgin Mary and the Goddess of Liberty.”
What they got instead was pulsating music and throbbing sensuality, from
the song-and-dance routines of Brazil’s Carmen Miranda to the passionate outbursts of Lupe Velez, who gained renown as “the Mexican spitfire.” Throughout U.S. popular culture, Latin America came to be seen as
provocative, thrilling, cooperative-and desirable. Hollywood films drew
mixed reactions in Latin America, even after OCIAA-sponsored amendments, but on balance they strengthened popular support for U.S. foreign policy. According to a State Department memorandum on OCIAA’s
overall activity as of 1942: “It was the greatest outpouring of propagandistic material by a state ever.”
Sizing Up the Neighborhood
The crowning achievement of Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy was
hemispheric solidarity during World War II. During the quest for this
goal, however, the precepts of nonintervention and noninterference
posed dilemmas for U.S. policymakers. Assistant Secretary Welles expressed opposition to the idea of open intervention against pro-Fascist governments in Latin America. But after the defeat of Poland and Hitler’s
assault on the Netherlands, Ambassador Hugh Wilson took note of the
problem:
We have assumed defense of the hemisphere and at the same time we have
nothing south of the Caribbean Sea which will aid us in making such an assumption definitive. We have neither landing fields nor sea bases, nor have we
any such control of policy of the individual states which would prevent them
from inviting trouble. Our underwriting of the defense of the hemisphere,
while, I think, an indispensable step in the defense of this nation, is nevertheless a blank check for bad behavior or irresponsible action on the part of the
States of South America.
Then Wilson posed the key question: “How can we find an answer to this
difficulty which is compatible with the Good Neighbor Policy?” In other
words, how could the United States forestall Axis influence on the basis
of noninterference?
The fall of France in mid-1940 led to intense concern over the fate of
overseas territories in the Americas, such as Guadeloupe and French
Guiana, now in danger of Nazi takeover. The State Department promptly
drafted a no-transfer resolution that passed unanimously in the Senate
and by an overwhelming vote (380-8) in the House. Cordell Hull also
notified Berlin that “the United States would not recognize any transfer,
and would not acquiesce in any attempt to transfer, any geographic
region of the Western Hemisphere from one non-American power to
another non-American power.” German foreign minister Ribbentrop
replied with an appeal for equal treatment, noting that England and
France still had colonies within the Western Hemisphere, but Hull retorted that the Monroe Doctrine proscribed not the possession of historic
colonies but their transfer from one European power to another.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 raised immediate questions about the hemispheric response. During World War I
only eight Latin American states, most U.S. protectorates, declared war
on Germany; the majority assumed neutrality. Within days of Pearl Harbor, however, all nine Central American and Caribbean republics (as before, virtual U.S. protectorates) declared war on Japan. Colombia,
Venezuela, and Mexico promptly severed relations with the Axis. Shortly
thereafter the 1942 Meeting of Ministers of Foreign Affairs of the American Republics sought to reinforce solidarity in the war effort. Two countries were decidedly unenthusiastic: Chile, which feared Japanese hit-andrun attacks along its coastline, and Argentina, which harbored strong
pro-Axis sympathies. Delegates nonetheless supported a resolution asserting that “The American Republics . . . recommend the rupture of their
diplomatic relations with Japan, Germany, and Italy, since the first of
these states has attacked and the other two have declared war upon an
American country.” Peru, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Paraguay quickly complied, and Oswaldo Aranha of Brazil announced his country’s adhesion in a dramatic closing session. Looking back on the Rio meeting, a U.S. observer opined that “It was excellent statesmanship-and damned fine
showmanship, too.”
Chile and Argentina struggled to maintain neutrality-a position
which had the disadvantage, however, of providing diplomatic haven for
Nazi agents. Chile eventually succumbed to U.S. threats to cut off economic assistance and broke relations with the Axis in January 1943. Argentina’s insistence on neutrality eventually prompted the United States
to withdraw the U.S. ambassador, withhold diplomatic recognition, and
threaten economic sanctions-which failed to gain support from the
British, who relied heavily on imports of beef and wheat. On the eve of
Allied victory, in March 1945, Argentina finally agreed to declare war on
Germany and Japan. Hemispheric solidarity was at last complete.
In retrospect, Franklin Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy was not so
much a departure from past practice as an adaptation and extension of it.
The United States continued to pursue hegemony within the Western
Hemisphere, in keeping with the imperialist codes of the international
system, but now employed new tactics in response to changing circumstances. Instead of relying on Teddy Roosevelt’s “big stick,” on military
force and intervention, the United States could now rely on economic
strength and diplomatic persuasion. The policy was not an exercise in
charity. After undoing the Platt Amendment and withdrawing troops
from Nicaragua and Haiti and the Dominican Republic, for instance,
Washington continued to interfere in Cuban and Nicaraguan politics and
to retain control over customshouses on Hispaniola to protect returns
on American investments. “In actuality,” one scholar has written, “the
United States abrogated what was obsolete and retained what it considered vital to the national interest.”7 Tactics had changed, but goals were
much the same.
With its emphasis on hemispheric unity-and on consolidation of a
U.S. sphere of influence-the Good Neighbor policy came to be seen as a
cloak for isolationism during the 1930s. Its ideological emphasis on the
uniqueness of the Americas, and on differences with Europe and Asia, appeared to justify indifference to world affairs. As Congressman Joe Henricks (D-Florida) proclaimed in late 1939: “The future of the United
States lies to the south, and if we bend our efforts to effecting closer relationships with Latin America we will never worry about getting entangled
with the petty quarrels of old Europe.” But if the United States was relatively passive in Asia and Europe, it was highly activist with regard to
Latin America. Hemispheric affairs assumed topmost priority in U.S. foreign policy, and leading figures in U.S. diplomatic circles-from Cordell
Hull to Sumner Welles and Adolf Berle-devoted great energy and attention to relations with Latin America. It is only in European (or Asian)
perspective that U.S. policy during this period might be construed as isolationist; in the perspective of the Americas, it most decidedly was not.
To be sure, the “Western Hemisphere idea” declined sharply after World War II. United States policy took on a global cast, with strong
commitments to European affairs, and the postwar world witnessed new
kinds of division-between communist and noncommunist, North and
South. In this context the notion of hemispheric solidarity became irrelevant and obsolete. As will be shown in chapters 9-12, it is only now, in
the 1990s, that the concept is regaining significance and currency.
An epitaph for the Good Neighbor era came from Philip Jessup, a
professor at Columbia University who made a tour of Latin America in
1941. “A decade of the good neighbor policy has helped enormously to
overcome the results of mistaken policies of the past,” Jessup reported,
“but the postwar situation will be a great challenge to our intelligent selfrestraint. We shall meet that challenge successfully because the government and people of the U.S. are irrevocably committed to the sound conclusion that the old stupid type of imperialist policy can never be used
again.”
I have lived inside the monster and know its entrails-and my weapon
is only the slingshot of David.
Jose Marti (1895)
Each day the United States advances farther in its imperialistic
pretensions against Latin America. We cannot stand by with folded
arms. We must devise our own master plan for resisting United States
aggression.
Joaquin Walker Martinez (1906)
I will not sell myself, nor will I surrender. I must be conquered.
Augusto Cesar Sandino (1927)
Participation by the United States in the global imperial contest had serious implications for Latin America. As political and intellectual leaders
throughout the region attempted to forge strategies for national development, they needed to take explicit account of the inexorable expansion of
U.S. power. Around the turn of the nineteenth century, from the American Revolution through the Wars of Independence, there existed a genuine sense of confraternal solidarity between statesmen of North America
and Latin America, bound by their common cause against European rule.
Yet the subsequent U.S. quest for hemispheric hegemony, increasingly
successful from the 1830s to the 1930s, presented Latin America with a challenging combination of incentives, restrictions, and opportunities.
This new situation seemed a bitter pill: having cast off colonial bonds to
Spain and Portugal, at considerable cost, Latin America now had to confront a rising imperial power within the Western Hemisphere.
What could Latin America do in response? What strategic options
were available to countries of the continent? What was possible and plausible to do? The range of feasible alternatives for Latin America embraced
not only diplomacy, geopolitics, and foreign policy. It also included
schemes for economic development, political change, and intraregional
cooperation. Not surprisingly, the breadth of these programs often provoked substantial internal disagreement, and for this reason the struggle
over Latin America’s destiny reached far into the domestic political arena.
The continental predicament also provoked intellectual discourse and
ideological debate, entering realms of popular culture. This is not to exaggerate the role of the United States: a great deal of conflict and contention in Latin America reflected purely domestic interests, forces, and
purposes, especially as peoples of the region struggled to establish national and collective identities in the wake of independence. The centurylong extension of U.S. power would nonetheless have fundamental ramifications for countries of the region.
Capitulation offered one expedient solution. Latin Americans could
align themselves with U.S. power and/or succumb to U.S. pressure in
hopes of salvaging as much as possible; this option was especially tempting for social oligarchies and political elites needing external support in
order to survive. This reaction became especially commonplace in countries around the Caribbean Basin, where the United States established
neocolonial protectorates in the wake of military intervention. Tomas
Estrada Palma in Cuba and Adolfo Diaz in Nicaragua, among others, realized that their political fortunes depended directly on U.S. sponsorship.
The extension of U.S. economic influence, through trade and investment,
provided additional incentives for collaboration. Juan Vicente Gomez in
Venezuela and a host of lesser-known executives in Central America made
personal fortunes by consenting to lucrative contracts with U.S. petroleum, banana, and mining companies. Corruption could help pave the
way for empire. A tacit rule thus emerged: the more informal the U.S.
penetration, the greater the likelihood of local collaboration.
Yet most Latin American leaders made efforts to resist, or at least deflect, the rise of U.S. power. With the exception of extremely small minorities (and occasional secessionist movements), virtually all sectors of
Latin American society opposed the forcible seizure and incorporation of
territory throughout the nineteenth century; even Mexico’s faithless
Santa Anna claimed to have succumbed to U.S. pressure only under
duress, and only scattered voices in turn-of-the-century Cuba called for
outright annexation by the United States. Similarly, military intervention
and the imposition of protectorates between 1898 and 1934 provoked widespread condemnation and denunciation. The expansion of economic
influence created a more equivocal circumstance, allowing local elites to
benefit from complicity with the United States without explicit endangerment to political sovereignty, but it also met with apprehension and concern throughout the region. In all its various forms, U.S. imperialism
confronted Latin America with a real and rising threat.
Over time, Latin American leaders developed a range of responses to
the realities of U.S. power. Ultimately, they faced distinct choices:
• They could attempt to unify themselves, thus creating a continental counterweight to the United States.
• They could attempt to strengthen ties with (and seek protection
from) European powers.
• They could attempt to establish subregional hegemony, thus challenging the United States or sharing power with it.
• They could fashion doctrines of international law that would impose constraints on the United States.
And in addition, more as an expression of feeling than as a strategy, they
could formulate nationalistic cultures of resistance. These options were
not all mutually exclusive, and they would appear in a variety of combinations, settings, and times. They reflected realistic appraisals of and reactions to the changing configurations of power throughout the Imperial
Era. As such, they revealed an underlying, systematic logic in the conduct
of U.S.-Latin American relations.
Option 1: The Bolivarian Dream
The ideal of Latin American unity captured the continental imagination
from the outset of independence. It was none other than Simon Bolivar,
El Libertador, who first gave expression to this hope. In his famous “letter
from Jamaica,” written in 1815 at the height of the struggle for independence from Spain, Bolivar expounded on the possibility of forging Spanish America into a single new nation:
It is a grandiose idea to think of consolidating the New World into a single
nation, united by pacts into a single bond. It is reasoned that, as these parts
have a common origin, language, customs, and religion, they ought to have a
single government to permit the newly formed states to unite in a confederation. But this is not possible. America is separated by climatic differences,
geographic diversity, conflicting interests, and dissimilar characteristics. How
beautiful it would be if the Isthmus of Panama could be for us what the Isthmus of Corinth was for the Greeks!
“Surely,” he continued,
unity is what we need to complete our work of regeneration. . . . I shall tell
you with what we must provide ourselves in order to expel the Spaniards and to found a free government. It is union, obviously; but such union will come
about through sensible planning and well-directed actions rather than by divine magic.
In practical terms, Bolivar at this point envisaged the formation of three
Spanish American federations: Mexico plus Central America; northern
Spanish South America, including Peru and Bolivia; and southern South
America. But the ultimate goal, what became known as the “Bolivarian
dream,” was the unification of all Spanish America.’
External pressure provided motivation for the movement. Throughout the 1820s there persisted the fear that Spain, with help from the Holy
Alliance, would attempt to regain its empire in America. In December
1824 the government of Colombia, led by Bolivar, extended formal invitations to a conference to be held in Panama (then a Colombian
province) for the purpose of establishing a Spanish American union. As
preparations continued, Bolivar exulted that the upcoming congress
“seems destined to form a league more extensive, more remarkable, and
more powerful than any that has ever existed on the face of the earth.”
Delegates finally convened in mid-1826, but with representation from
only four states: Mexico, Colombia, Peru, and the Central American federation. (Brazil and the United States were invited, over Bolivar’s own
objections, but to his relief Brazil declined the invitation and the U.S.
delegates never attended the meeting.) The congress reached agreement
on a treaty “to uphold in common, defensively and offensively, if necessary, the sovereignty and independence of all and every one of the confederated powers of America against all foreign domination.” But the threat
from Spain was subsiding, a spirit of nationalism within Spanish America
was increasing, and the United States was not yet challenging Mexico.
Only Bolivar’s Colombia actually ratified the document.
The first attempt at unity thus ended in failure. It was perhaps this outcome, as much as the dissolution of Gran Colombia (a confederation of
Colombia, Ecuador, and Venezuela), that led Bolivar to sketch out “a few
sure conclusions” while en route to exile in November 1830: “first,
America is ungovernable for us; second, he who serves a revolution
ploughs the sea. . . . [and] the Europeans will not deign to conquer us.”
Yet the Panama Congress managed to bring together official representatives from a geographical area stretching from Mexico to Peru, it reached
agreement on a compact for mutual defense, and, most of all, it placed the
question of unification on the continental agenda. By giving credence to
the dream, Bolivar ignited aspirations that would long endure.
The spread of U.S. power provoked additional appeals for Spanish
American unity. Expressing fear of the United States and opposition to the
Monroe Doctrine, Juan Bautista Alberdi, later president of Argentina,
wrote in 1844 a Memoria sobre . . . un Congreso General Americano that
called for an “American union” for the peaceful settlement of disputes, creation of a common coinage, and the elimination of trade barriers through out Latin America. A few years later the U.S.-Mexican war added a sense of
urgency to such demands. North Americans are the “Islamites” of the
nineteenth century, fumed Mexico City’s El Universal in 1853, and they
can be stopped only by “an alliance of all peoples of Hispanic origin.”
A second Latin American conference took place in Lima in 1847-48.
The gathering came in response to two threats: renewed Spanish designs
upon the west coast of South America, and U.S. incursions into Mexico.
Official delegates took part on behalf of Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Peru; Venezuela, Argentina, Brazil, and the United States all declined. (Mexico, then under military siege, was unable to dispatch a delegation.) The conference agreed on a mutual defense treaty, as had the
Panama Congress more than twenty years before, but it was never ratified
by the signatories. The only practical achievement was approval of a consular convention among those countries in attendance.
Largely in reaction to William Walker’s infamous filibustering in
Nicaragua, there followed a third meeting in 1856 that was attended by
Chile, Ecuador, and Peru. Delegates approved a continental treaty-later
adhered to by Bolivia, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, Mexico, and
Paraguay-to respect the integrity of national territories, to refrain from
hostile acts, and to adopt uniform procedures for trade and commercial
law.
A fourth gathering, in Lima again, took place in 1864-65. By this
time Latin America was facing multiple pressures from abroad: in 1861
Spain had retaken Santo Domingo; having occupied the Chincha islands
(off Peru) in 1864, Spain was at war with both Chile and Peru; and
France was supporting a European monarchy in Mexico. In response
Chilean patriots formed a Sociedad de la Union Americana de Santiago,
published a two-volume set of documents on the movement for unification, and depicted the United States as a major source of danger. Warned
Francisco Bilbao: “The United States extends more each day the predatory hunt which it has already undertaken. We see fragments of America
falling into the Saxon jaws of the voracious serpent. Yesterday, Texas.
Soon, northern Mexico will accept a new sovereign,” and, eventually,
all of Spanish America could be reduced to a U.S. protectorate. Representatives came from Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador,
Guatemala, Peru, and Venezuela; reflecting their desires to maintain close
ties with Europe, Argentina and Brazil declined to attend. Peru explored
the possibility of inviting the United States but met with disapproval.
Delegates approved a resolution denouncing Spain’s seizure of the Chincha islands, but produced no treaties of any kind.
The Lima conference was perhaps the last institutional embodiment
of Bolivar’s exalted dream. Subsequent efforts would founder on the lack
of complete consensus among countries of the region, and, in particular,
on the historic rivalry between Chile and Argentina. Ambivalence about
Brazil posed yet another obstacle, since it was unclear whether the project
should embrace a Luso-American nation or focus only on Spanish America. Nonetheless the idea of regional unification would appear, time
and again, throughout the twentieth century. It would remain a fundamental aspiration of the region.
Option 2: External Powers
Complications in the quest for unity encouraged a search for alternatives.
One of the most straightforward options for confronting the United
States was to seek protection from one of its major rivals. This tactic was
entirely consistent with rules of the prevailing imperial contest, and it offered weaker states (in Latin America) the opportunity of aligning themselves with stronger nations (in Europe) to counter the influence of the
United States. As shown in chapter 1, several European states were pressing for advantage in the Western Hemisphere throughout the nineteenth
century. The task was persuading them to embrace the Latin American
cause.
Pax Britannica?
Simon Bolivar recognized the opportunity. In his conception there was
one nation that presented itself as an exceptionally desirable ally, patron,
and protector-a nation with colonial possessions in the Caribbean, territorial holdings in Central and South America, and extensive commercial
and financial interests throughout the region: Great Britain, which offered the additional advantage of being the preeminent power in the
nineteenth-century world. From the outset, Bolivar’s plans for continental unification included the explicit hope that Great Britain would join the
confederation. As he wrote to General Santander in March 1825, while
preparing for the upcoming Panama congress: “Believe me, my dear General, we shall save the New World if we come to an agreement with England in political and military matters. This simple sentence ought to tell
you more than two whole volumes.” And as time for the congress approached, Bolivar emphasized his hopes: “Should Great Britain agree to
join it as a constituent member, the Holy Alliance will be less powerful
than this confederation. Mankind will a thousand times bless this league
for promoting its general welfare, and America, as well as Great Britain,
will reap from it untold benefits.” Bolivar’s reasoning was crystal-clear: a
British protectorate over Spanish America would discourage attempts at
reconquest by the Holy Alliance, it would protect the newly independent
region from the expansionist United States, and it would utterly demolish
the Monroe Doctrine.
The Liberator’s scheme was not as farfetched as it might in hindsight
seem. English statesmen were acutely concerned about the prospect of
U.S. hegemony within the Western Hemisphere. In December 1824 the
prime minister, the 2nd Earl of Liverpool, wrote one of his colleagues: “I
am conscientiously convinced that if we allow these new states to consoli date their system and their policy with the United States of America, it
will in a very few years prove fatal to our greatness, if not endanger our
safety.” The foreign minister, George Canning, expressed particular unease over U.S. ambitions toward Cuba: “The possession by the United
States of both shores of the channel through which our Jamaica trade
must pass . . . would amount to a suspension of that trade, and to consequent total ruin.” Latin America was thus of considerable interest to the
British and their imperial policy. Congratulating himself on his master
stroke of gaining British recognition for the newly independent countries
of Spanish America, Canning summarized the outlook succinctly: “The
fight has been hard,” he wrote in 1826, “but it is won. The deed is done.
Spanish America is free; and if we do not mismanage our matters sadly,
she is English, and Novus saeclorum nascitur ordo.”
Canning nonetheless resisted Bolivar’s overtures, dispatching only a
British observer (rather than conference delegate) to the Panama congress. For the remainder of the century Britain chose to protect its growing economic interests in Latin America through diplomatic pressure and,
on occasion, military operations. Indeed, British vessels blockaded the
port of Buenos Aires in 1846-47 and the port of Rio de Janeiro in 1894;
British troops entered Venezuela and Nicaragua in the 1890s; and British
authorities maintained tight hold on valued colonial possessions throughout the Caribbean. On mainland Latin America, however, Britain relied
upon commercial and financial prowess to consolidate an “informal empire.” By the mid-1890s the British foreign office consented to Washington’s resolution of the Venezuelan crisis, tacitly accepting America’s claim
to hemispheric hegemony, and a few years later Britain took refuge behind Teddy Roosevelt’s corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. In the end,
Latin America was simply not important enough to tempt Britain into
open alliance with countries of the region. At least as envisioned by Bolivar, the pax britannica would never come to pass.
Opposition to Pan Americanism
The U.S. promotion of Pan Americanism in the 1880s met stiff resistance
throughout the hemisphere. In literary journals and diplomatic forums,
in private and public arenas, spokesmen for Latin America developed
three related reasons for opposition to Washington’s plan: apprehension
about the rise of U.S. power, resentment of the Monroe Doctrine, and insistence on retaining ties to Europe.
As preparations were under way for the first Pan American conference
in Washington, the Cuban writer and patriot Jose Marti in 1889 urged
Latin America to proceed with caution:
Never in America, from its independence to the present, has there been a matter requiring more good judgment or more vigilance, or demanding a clearer
and more thorough examination, than the invitation which the powerful
United States (glutted with its unsaleable merchandise and determined to ex tend its dominion in America) is sending to the less powerful American nations
(bound by free and useful commerce to the European nations) for purposes of
arranging an alliance against Europe and cutting off transactions with the rest
of the world. Spanish America learned how to save itself from the tyranny of
Spain; and now, after viewing with judicious eyes the antecedents, motives,
and ingredients of the invitation, it is essential to say, for it is true, that the time
has come for Spanish America to declare its second independence.
The congress, Marti warned, was meant to usher in “the frank and forthright achievement of an era of United States dominion over the nations of
America.”
During the conference itself, delegates from Latin America sought
ways to resist demands by the United States. They fought successfully
against James G. Blaine’s pet proposal for a customs union, which, in the
words of one assessment, entailed “the proposition of excluding Europe
from the advantages accorded to its commerce. . . . The present convocation has as its object the erection of an American Zollverein.” Moreover, they maintained, the setting of tariffs was a prerogative of national
sovereignty. Insistence on self-determination was thus identified with
maintenance of commercial ties to Europe. The plan for a customs union
met an early death in a conference committee, which came out with a
lukewarm recommendation in favor of bilateral or reciprocity treatiessigned by the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia, and
Venezuela, over a minority dissenting report from Chile and Argentina.
And as the conference was preparing to adjourn, in April 1890, Argentine
representative Roque Saenz Pena (later his country’s president) uttered
an elegant demurral to demands for hemispheric solidarity. “What I lack
is not love for America,” declared the future president, “but suspicion
and ingratitude towards Europe. I cannot forget that in Europe are Spain,
our mother; Italy, our friend; and France, our elder sister.” Instead of
“America for the Americans,” he proclaimed, the congress should uphold
the principle of “America for all humanity.”
Condemnation of the Monroe Doctrine went hand-in-hand with
celebration of the European connection. As early as the mid-1820s,
Diego Portales of Chile issued a stern admonition about Monroe’s pronouncement: “Be careful,” he wrote, “of escaping one domination at the
price of falling under another. We must distrust those who take advantage
of the work of our champions of freedom, without having helped us in
any way.” Alberdi of Argentina would later urge Spanish American states
to forge commercial links to Europe, “so as to defend themselves against
Brazil and the United States. Their peril is in America; their safeguard in
Europe.” And at a 1916 financial conference, Chilean representative Armando Quesada Acharan emphasized the value of the European connection: “Closer economic ties between the United States and Latin America
must not, in any way, interfere with the maintaining and increasing of
economic relations with Europe.” Reformers and nationalists would con tinue to denounce the Monroe Doctrine, its corollaries, and its applications well into the twentieth century.
The Pan American movement and the Monroe Doctrine thus became
twin symbols of U.S. preponderance. In the 1920s the Argentine sociologist Jose Ingenieros neatly summarized the challenge for Latin America:
We are not, we do not want to be any longer, we could not be Pan Americanists. The United States is to be feared because it is great, rich, and enterprising. What concerns us to is find out whether there is a possibility of balancing its power to the extent necessary to save our political independence
and the sovereignty of our countries.
For Washington, keeping Europe out of the hemisphere meant keeping
Latin America under U.S. control; for Latin America, the protection of
national sovereignty required the maintenance of ties with Europe.
Hispanidad and Francophilia
A frequent corollary of this general position stressed the importance of
Latin America’s cultural, social, and intellectual connections with Europe,
rather than the United States. During the nineteenth century the quest
for self-identity meant not indigenismo, a movement that would emerge
later in the twentieth century, but appreciation of European ancestries. In
practice this pattern took two forms: hispanidad, or glorification of things
Spanish, and unabashed Francophilia.
Veneration for Spain implied a celebration of Catholic, conservative
values that placed dignity, status, and manners above talent and tangible
accomplishment, religious faith above mundane achievement, dogma
above curiosity, the traditional over the novel, the graceful and artistic
over the functional and practical. In 1845 former president Joaquin Pinto
of Chile stressed the Hispanic legacy in declaring that “we will never utilize the methods of democracy as practiced in the United States of
America, but rather the political principles of Spain.” And in the wake of
Mexico’s calamitous mid-nineteenth-century war with the United States,
conservative writer-politician Lucas Alaman spoke disdainfully of a conflict that had resulted from the ambitions “not of an absolute monarchy,
but of a republic which claimed to be in the vanguard of nineteenthcentury civilization.” Alaman went on to condemn U.S. culture as derivative, a place where religion was mixed with commercial spirit, where the
cult of individualism led to systematic disregard for morality, order, and
good customs. By contrast, he wrote,
We are not a people of merchants and adventurers, scum and refuse (hez y
desecho) of all countries, whose only mission is to usurp the property of the
miserable Indians, and later to rob the fertile lands opened to civilization by
the Spanish race. . . . We are a nation formed three centuries ago, not an
aggregation of peoples of differing customs.
In due course Alaman and his conservative associates would turn for salvation toward France, importing ill-starred Emperor Maximilian from the
House of Hapsburg.
Democracy and capitalism came under attack as vehicles for the promotion of alien and materialistic values. Uruguayan writer Jose Enrique
Rodo penned a consummate statement of this position in Ariel, a turn-ofthe-century essay that extolled the lofty morality of Spanish America and
denounced the grasping materialism of the United States. Invocation of
Hispanic virtue intensified during and after the Spanish-American War,
which provoked widespread fear of U.S. imperial ambitions. Although the
motherland might suffer defeat, one Chilean proclaimed, “Spanish valor
was still worth more than all the gold of the United States.” United States
materialism came in for particular scorn. If Argentina were never to be
anything more than a colossal estancia, crisscrossed by railroads and
bursting with wealth, said Juan Agustin Garcia, “I would rather live in the
most miserable corner of the earth where there still lives a feeling for
beauty, goodness, and truth.”
For these generations, France represented the center of civilization and haute couture. Boulevards in bustling capitals, from Mexico
City to Buenos Aires, were copies of the Champs Elysees. Stately mansions were erected in imitation of Parisian models. Opera houses, even
in such removed locations as the Amazonian city of Manaus, were carbon copies of L’Opera. Oligarchs took vacations in France and sent
their sons to study at the Sorbonne. When Victor Hugo died in 1885,
Sud America in Buenos Aires devoted its entire front page to recapitulating his career.
Such insistent evocation of European legacies had several implications
for Latin America’s ruling elites. One was to stress their cultural superiority over the United States. Another was to deemphasize the importance
of the economic realm, where the United States was rapidly increasing its
advantage. Third was to demonstrate the continuing affinity between
Latin America and Europe and, by so doing, to affirm the foundation for
joint political collaboration.
Option 3: Rivalry and Subregional Hegemony
A third strategic option was for individual countries of Latin America to
achieve subregional hegemony and compete on a more or less equal basis with the United States.2 Nationalism thrived on visions of grandeur.
This aspiration was in fact unavailable to small nations around the Caribbean Basin, where the United States was steadily gaining the upper
hand over Europe, or to Mexico, humiliated and dismembered by the war
of 1847-48. By virtue of geographical location, size, and resources, only
two nations could seriously entertain such an ambition: Argentina and
Brazil.
Argentina’s Manifest Destiny
During the late nineteenth century, Argentina saw itself as similar to the
United States and therefore its natural rival. The winning of the American
West had its counterpart in Argentina’s Conquest of the Desert and settlement of the pampa, routinely referred to in presidential statements as nue-
stro “Far West” (with deliberate employment of the English phrase). Both
countries received mass waves of immigrants from Europe between 1870
and 1910. In keeping with racist assumptions of the day, Argentine leaders
took pride in the Caucasian composition of its ethnic stock, which made it
feel comparable to the United States and vastly superior to neighbors with
large indigenous or black populations. Geopolitically, too, many Argentines believed that location in the southern cone of South America placed
the country in a natural position to impose subregional hegemony.
It was in this sense that Domingo Sarmiento, the great reformer of the
nineteenth century, evolved his own view of the United States. Initially a
Francophile, he became disenchanted with Europe and at one point embraced the Monroe Doctrine. While serving as minister to Washington,
from 1865 to 1868, he even appeared to accept U.S. claims to manifest
destiny: “It is the province of the United States,” he once told an American
audience, “the highest mission intrusted by Providence to a great people,
that of conducting others through the new paths opened by mankind to
advance firmly to their great destinies.” As Argentina gained political stability and enjoyed rapid economic growth, however, Sarmiento’s attitude
changed from awe to rivalry. His final written words, in 1888, presented his
compatriots with a prediction and a challenge: “We shall reach the level of
the United States. We shall be America as the sea is the ocean. We shall be
the United States.”
Many of Sarmiento’s colleagues were supremely confident. The
Buenos Aires newspaper La Prensa anticipated that Argentina could
achieve both political democracy and economic prosperity. “The Argentine Republic ought to aspire to grow like the United States,” declared its
editors in 1886, “and not in the manner, and with the elements, of
France, England, and Germany.” Thus appeared the elements of a national strategy, or at least of a national aspiration: Argentina would be to
South America what the United States had become in North America.
Each would enjoy continental hegemony; in tandem, they would dominate the hemisphere.
For Argentina this project did not imply alliance or collaboration
with the United States. On the contrary, Argentine leaders intended to
maintain extremely close ties to European powers, especially to England.
These European connections would assert and emphasize Argentina’s distance and independence from Washington. As rivals of the United States,
both Europe and Argentina would have a natural interest in diplomatic
and economic partnership.
Foreign observers gave further credence to the dream. After a brief
visit, journalist William Eleroy Curtis predicted in 1888 that “the Argentine Republic will some day become a formidable rival of the United
States.” A French economic geographer, M. E. Vavasseur, wrote in 1890:
“The Argentine Republic, which occupies in the temperate zone of South
America a position analogous to that of the United States in North
America, may dream, if not of equal power, at least of a similar future.” To
complete the picture, some Argentine commentators even developed a vision of “manifest destiny,” analogous to pretentious claims made on behalf
of the United States. As the only white, prosperous, and democratic nation
on the continent, Argentina would have an obligation to spread the gospels
of development through South America: according to La Prensa in 1893,
Argentina has “a great civilizing mission in the New World.”
Predictably enough, Argentine leaders looked upon Brazil with a
mixture of fear and contempt. According to one nationalist just after the
turn of the century: “The natural enemy of all the Hispanic-American nations is Brazil. It is our born enemy. . . . Speaking a different language,
differently oriented in culture and politics, entirely different because of
the mixture with the Negro race . . . Brazil forms a foreign element
within our body.” Racist criteria thus assured Argentina of social superiority over its principal rival on the continent.
By the early twentieth century Argentina seemed to be heading for its
predestined greatness. In the late 1920s it was ranked as the seventh richest country in the world. It was also one of the world’s most democratic
nations, having institutionalized a system of genuinely competitive elections in 1912. Ably, and energetically, Argentina successfully resisted the
U.S. drive toward regional hegemony in a variety of diplomatic settings.
Political and economic setbacks during the 1930s began to unravel the
dream, however, and it would later come apart at the seams. The notion
of Argentina’s manifest destiny may look, in retrospect, like a quaint historic artifact; but for generations of argentinos, from the 1860s to the
1930s, it offered a vision of national greatness.
God Is a Brazilian
The other country aspiring to emulate the United States was Brazil. Even
during the colonial period, love of land and a sense of natural majesty had
inspired a feeling of greatness, as suggested by the titles of such books as
Ambrosio Fernandes Brandao’s Dialogos das Grandezas do Brasil (1618)
and Andre Joao Antonil’s Cultura e Opulencia do Brasil (1711). Indeed,
the beauty and vastness of the land gave rise to the not-always tongue-incheek assertion that “God is a Brazilian.” In 1838, with an independent
monarchy in place, the Visconde de Sao Leopoldo, president of the recently founded Brazilian Geographical and Historical institute, offered an
optimistic prediction: “Everything points to the fact that Brazil is destined to be not accidentally, but by necessity, a center of enlightenment and civilization and an arbiter of the politics of the New World.” Sargento
Albuquerque echoed this theme in 1917: “The historic and political superiority of Brazil is manifest: united, colossal, irreducible. . . . It is destined to occupy in South America within a century the same preponderant place that the United States occupies in North America.”
Noting with asperity the condescension expressed by Argentines,
Brazilians responded with their own contempt. “Whether the [Argentines] like it or not,” in the words of one Brazilian, “we have already
proved the superiority of our organizational talents by systematizing juridic, economic, and intellectual forces, while the Hispanic inferiority becomes obvious in the fragmentation of states all more or less weak, all
more or less turbulent.” The Baron of Rio Branco, Brazil’s legendary
diplomat, likewise condemned “those political evils which so greatly hurt
the South American nations. There is nothing more ridiculous and extravagant than the manifestations of dictators, the pronouncements, the
revolutions for possession of power, the military demagoguery.”
In contrast to Argentina, which sought alliances in Europe, Brazil
cultivated close connections with the United States. Rio Branco once explained that Brazil “prides itself on the spontaneous and affirmed friendship of that American nation and its great president [Cleveland]. There is
no friendship more coveted in the world.” And in 1906, just before the
third Pan American conference, he expressed public support for the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary. These principles guaranteed
that the Americas “cannot be touched by any European greed or conquest,” in his words, “because the Monroe Doctrine is not an abstraction.
It has for its base the prodigious ascendancy of the United States.” Rio
Branco continued:
Latin America has nothing to fear from Anglo-Saxon America. The United
States is a nation of English origin and principles and therefore beneficial for
the civilization of other people because the sentiment of individualism is so
much a part of their race that English or North American imperialism, if it
should manifest itself, never would be of the same type as German or Latin
imperialism which seeks to destroy and annihilate everything, contorting
everything, in order to create from the incompatibilities and irreconcilables
the same kind of country in all the regions of the world. Nothing, absolutely
nothing, in the policies of the United States would be able to cause uneasiness to the national sensitivity of the other American countries. Just the opposite, these nations find in the preponderance of the first nation of the continent support for their causes and aspirations.
United States power was a benefit for Latin America, not a threat to sovereignty. In a world of major-power rivalries, Washington would shield
the region from continental Europe.
Thus the Brazilian strategy took shape. Brazil would gain ascendancy
in South America, following the U.S. model, and would forge a partnership with the United States. In effect, the two countries would establish a
joint condominium over the Western Hemisphere. They would sustain their greatness and subregional superiority through mutual collaboration.
For Brazil, and especially for Rio Branco, emulation of the United States
had practical meaning as well. Like its partner to the north, Brazil was
busily engaged in expanding its territorial reach, usually at the expense of
increasingly resentful neighbors. Under Rio Branco’s leadership, Brazil
proclaimed the doctrine of uti possidetis and triumphed in successive territorial disputes over Argentina, France, Bolivia, and Peru. All in all, Rio
Branco managed to delineate 9,000 miles of frontier and to add nearly
115,000 square miles to the national domain. It seemed only fitting that,
as expansionist powers, Brazil and the United States should give support
to one another.
Dreams of Brazilian grandeza have since foundered on hard times.
Political instability, economic stagnation, and persistent poverty have created uncertainty and apprehension about the nation’s future. Because of
its vast natural and human resources, however, there still lingers the idea
that Brazil is a great power of the future, a sleeping giant, a nation destined for fulfillment. Coequal partnership (or rivalry) with the United
States may seem like an unlikely prospect, perhaps for the next generation, but it remains a vital part of national mythology.
Option 4: Doctrines and Diplomacy
A fourth alternative for Latin America took the form of a quest for protection under international law. Legal codes represented a positive asset
for weaker nations in their dealings with stronger powers. Theoretically,
international law obliged all countries to abide by universal principles of
conduct. Since the rules applied to all members of the international community, great and small, the rules imposed constraints upon the powerful.
Within the context of inter-American relations, therefore, international
law came to be seen as a means of curtailing the United States.
International jurisprudence was undergoing intense development
during this era. In practice, the expansion of imperial holdings and pursuit of major-power rivalries reflected raw demonstrations of power; in response, idealists sought to strengthen the corpus and meaning of international law. The Permanent Court of International Arbitration was
established at The Hague in 1899. And nearly thirty years later, in 1928,
U.S. secretary of state Frank P. Kellogg and his French counterpart, Aristide Briand, would announce their own grand faith in legal principles:
through the Pact of Paris, they proposed to outlaw the use of war as an
instrument of national policy. It was a touching declaration, overwhelmingly naive in retrospect, but a fitting expression of the hopes and contradictions prevailing in the world arena at this time.
A principal contribution of Latin American jurists was the doctrine of
sovereign immunity from external intervention. First formulated in the
mid-nineteenth century by Andres Bello of Chile and by Carlos Calvo of
Argentina, the basic idea insisted upon the absolute equality of sovereign states-regardless of size, position, or power. As a logical result, courts of
one country should not be subject to appeal in cases involving rights of
foreign nationals. Out of this emerged what came to be known as the
Calvo clause, typically applied to foreign (especially U.S.) companies with
investments in Latin America: the foreign party would agree to the settlement of disputes by courts of the host country and forswear any right of
appeal for special assistance from its own government.
In support of this principle, Venezuela offered a proposal at the first
Pan American conference denouncing diplomatic representation for economic claims by foreign nationals. As reported out of committee-with
the support of Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, and Guatemala-the resolution
stipulated that foreigners were “entitled to enjoy all the civil rights enjoyed by natives,” but no more than that: “A nation has not, nor recognizes in favor of foreigners, any other obligations or responsibilities than
those which in favor of the natives are established, in like cases, by the
constitution and by the laws.” The conference adopted the majority report by a vote of 15-1, with the United States alone in opposition.
Equally revealing were the terms of debate, where the U.S. representative
sharply criticized the concept of an “American” or hemispheric international law. Stressing the differences between Europe and the Americas,
Latin American delegates were attempting to fashion a special body of international law for the Western Hemisphere; the United States insisted
that there could only be a single and universal code of conduct.3
Another central issue at the 1889-90 conference concerned a U.S.
proposal for compulsory arbitration of legal disputes. Latin American
delegates regarded the plan with suspicion, as an effort to circumvent national courts through international tribunals or panels that would inevitably reflect the interests of the United States. In particular, Chileans
feared that such a mechanism would deprive them of hard-won spoils
from the War of the Pacific (1879-83). More generally, Jose Marti condemned the project as a transparent scheme to create a hemispheric institution under Washington’s control. Manuel Quintana offered an eloquent statement of the Latin American view:
In the eyes of international American law there are neither great nor small
nations. All are equally sovereign and independent, all equally worthy of consideration and respect. The arbitration proposed is not, consequently, a compact of abdication, of vassalage, or of submission. Before as well as after its
conclusion, all and each of the nations of the Americas will preserve the absolute direction of their political destinies, absolutely without interference by
the others.
At this point the proposal for final arbitration included a “point of independence,” allowing any country to exclude from arbitration any matter
appearing to endanger its own vital interests, but even this watered-down
version did not gain the approval of the conference. Latin America thus
upheld the principles of sovereignty and equality of nations.
The question of international arbitration resisted resolution. Essentially, Latin America upheld the sovereignty and integrity of national
courts; the United States held out for international arbitration in cases of
dispute. The two sides reached a compromise at the 1902 Pan American
conference, in Mexico City, accepting the idea of voluntary arbitration
through the international court at The Hague. Latins agreed because adherence would be voluntary; Americans consented because the world
court would apply principles of universal law, not a regional or hemispheric doctrine. Also at the Mexico conference, Brazil proposed creation
of a legal panel to begin work on a specifically regional or inter-American
system of arbitration, on private international law, and on a code of public
international law “to govern the relations between American republics.”
Essentially, Latin Americans were attempting to find a way to enshrine
the principles of national sovereignty and nonintervention; the United
States wanted to preserve the rights of intervention, then recognized
under some circumstances by international law. The impasse continued
for years.
Another key development in legal circles emerged from the Venezuelan crisis of 1902-3 (during which Great Britain, Germany, and Italy
began taking military action in order to collect outstanding debts). As reported in chapter 1, the foreign minister of Argentina, Luis Maria Drago,
dispatched a note to U.S. secretary of state John Hay proposing “that the
public debt gives no place for armed intervention, and less still to the material occupation of the soil of American nations by a European power.”
Revealingly, Drago invoked both the Monroe Doctrine and the principle
of national sovereignty, concepts that would soon be at odds with each
other. Hay responded noncommittally and the Europeans soon consented to arbitration in their dispute with Venezuela. There the matter
rested until 1904, when Teddy Roosevelt laid bare the implicit contradiction in Drago’s proposition by announcing his “corollary” to the Monroe
Doctrine, proclaiming that the United States would act as hemispheric
policeman in cases of “chronic wrong-doing or impotence.” Quickly
sensing the danger, La Prensa denounced Roosevelt’s proclamation as
“the most serious and menacing declaration against South American integrity which has come out of Washington.”
After William Howard Taft’s election as president, however, the
United States decided to support a diluted version of Drago’s proposal
at a 1907 conference on international law at The Hague. United States
delegates agreed that the use of force should be in principle prohibited
for the collection of “contract debts claimed from the government of
one country by another,” but insisted that force could be admissible if
countries refused to abide by the results of arbitration. Latin Americans greeted the Hague protocol with justifiable skepticism. Not a
single South American country agreed to it. Several countries ratified itMexico, Panama, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Haiti, and El Salvador-and
only Panama (a U.S. protectorate) and Mexico (under Porfirio Diaz) without reservation. Years later, in 1931, postrevolutionary Mexico denounced the convention and gave notice of its intent to withdraw.
World War I interrupted these legal and diplomatic maneuvers. At a
1923 Pan American conference in Santiago, Alejandro Alvarez, a distinguished Chilean jurist, renewed the debate by taking a clear position on
the existence of a unique body of inter-American law. “The States of
America,” Alvarez proposed,
even before reaching a mutual agreement, have proclaimed certain regulations or principles different and even contradictory to those ruling in European countries, and which these latter are compelled to respect in our Continent, for instance, nonintervention and the nonoccupation of territories of
the States of America by ultra-continental countries.
Firmly supporting the doctrine of nonintervention, the American Institute of International , a private organization, drafted a resolution for
a 1925 meeting which stipulated: “No Nation has the right to interfere in
the internal or foreign affairs of an American Republic against the will of
that Republic. The sole lawful intervention is friendly and conciliatory action without any character of coercion.” With U.S. troops still stationed
in Haiti and poised for a return to Nicaragua, Washington was cool to
these proposals.
The minuet continued. In 1927 a legal conference at Rio discussed a
resolution that “No State has the right to interfere in the internal affairs
of another.” The next year, at a Pan American conference in Havana,
chief U.S. delegate Charles Evans Hughes disputed this idea:
What are we going to do when government breaks down and American citizens are in danger of their lives? Are we to stand by and see them killed because
a government in circumstances which it cannot control and for which it may
not be responsible can no longer afford reasonable protection? . . . now it is
a principle of international law that in such a case a government is fully justified
in taking action-I would call it interposition of a temporary character-for
the purpose of protecting the lives and property of its nationals.
In effect, Hughes was recasting the Roosevelt Corollary, justifying “interposition of a temporary character” as a principle of international law.
In the early 1930s Argentina launched an aggressive diplomatic offensive against the U.S. position. Under its flamboyant foreign minister,
Carlos Saavedra Lamas, Argentina pressed repeatedly for an absolute
statement of prohibition against intervention. Seeking to mediate the
Chaco War (between Bolivia and Paraguay), Saavedra Lamas in September 1932 unveiled a proposal for an Anti-War Treaty condemning “wars
of aggression,” denying territorial acquisitions or occupations by force,
and prohibiting all forms of intervention, “either diplomatic or armed.”
The key clause was, of course, the absolute stricture against intervention.
On the eve of the 1933 Pan American conference, in Montevideo,
Saavedra Lamas induced six Latin American nations to accede to his proposal. It now had the standing of an actual treaty, backed by multilateral calls for accession. The newly inaugurated administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, about to embark on its Good Neighbor policy, agreed not
only to support the Anti-War Treaty but also to approve a resolution that
“No State has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another.” Thus triumphant, Saavedra Lamas presided over the commissiontechnically associated with the League of Nations-that brought an end to
the Chaco War. For this accomplishment, and for his Anti-War Treaty, he
received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1936.
Cultures of Resistance
An additional development in Latin America during this period was the
formulation of cultural and rhetorical codes for resisting U.S. power in
the hemisphere. This was not a strategic option or policy guideline so
much as an expression of popular feeling, the adoption of a general
stance, and the construction of a national and regional discourse. Yet
these “cultures of resistance” grew in complexity and intensity from the
mid-nineteenth century through the early twentieth century. They would
have considerable impact on the tenor and tone of inter-American relations. In time, they would also provide both a basis and a resource for
populist and nationalist movements throughout the region.
The creeds of resistance contained a series of interlocking assumptions.
To uphold the sovereignty of young and fragile republics in Latin America
was to be a nationalist. To be a nationalist was to be anti-imperialist. To be
anti-imperialist, as U.S. power grew, was to become anti-American, antigringo, and anti-yanqui. Paradoxically, however, nationalism also implied
solidarity with other countries of Latin America: victims of a common
enemy, according to this view, they must band together for the sake of mutual support. In one form or another this outlook appeared in virtually
every part of the region, finding particularly acute expression in countries
most directly affected by the application of U.S. power: Mexico, Cuba, and
Nicaragua. Not coincidentally, each of these countries eventually underwent social revolution.
Mexico: War and Invasion
Mexico felt the presence of its neighbor in frequent, profound, and often
painful ways. Most deeply etched in the national memory are recollections of the “war of the North American invasion,” the mid-nineteenth
century military conflicts that resulted in the loss of nearly half the country’s territory. For Mexicans this episode began in the 1820s, when the
newly independent republic granted permission for colonists under Moses
and Stephen Austin to settle in what was then the northern province of
Texas. When Texans began demanding self-government, the U.S. government lent moral support to the rebels by dispatching a military expedition
into Mexican territory. This itself was cause for war; but when Mexico de sisted, the United States responded by recognizing Texan independence
and then, in the mid-1840s, by approving its annexation as a state. This
was not, in the Mexican outlook, an accidental series of spontaneous
events, but the expression of long-held expansionist ambitions. As Jose
Vasconcelos would write in his Breve historia de Mexico, “the Texas
colonists were the advance guard for yankee imperialism.”
As recounted in chapter 1, boundary disputes persisted in the 1840s.
Under Mexican rule the western frontier of Texas had stretched to the
Nueces River, well north of the Rio Grande, but U.S. authorities began
disputing this fact. In 1846 troops under General Zachary Taylor moved
across the Nueces, in defiance of Mexican sovereignty, and a U.S. naval
force moved near the coast of Veracruz. Mexico’s embattled president
Jose Joaquin Herrera agreed to talks about the Texas question, but U.S.
emissary John Slidell scuttled the negotiations by proclaiming his intent
to discuss not only Texas but also the purchase of New Mexico and California. In frustration General Mariano Paredes overthrew Herrera and
canceled the Slidell negotiations. One thoughtful Mexican observer left
this record of the affair:
While the United States seemed to be animated by a sincere desire not to
break the peace, their acts of hostility manifested very evidently what were
their true intentions. Their ships infested our coasts; their troops continued
advancing upon our territory, situated at places which under no aspect could
be disputed. Thus violence and insult were united: thus at the very time they
usurped part of our territory, they offered us the hand of treachery, to have
soon the audacity to say that our obstinacy and arrogance were the real
causes of the war.
In May 1846 Polk went on to declare war against Mexico, and U.S.
troops swiftly overwhelmed Mexican forces. In 1847 General Winfield
Scott invaded Mexico City, where young cadets fought to the death in defense of their country and, in an act of heroic bravado, hurled themselves
off a parapet in Chapultepec rather than surrender the national flag. The
ninos heroes came to symbolize the noble struggle of Mexico against
impossible odds, obtaining a place of mythic honor in the pantheon of
Mexican patriots. The disastrous defeat at the hand of the United States
carved a deep scar on Mexico’s national soul.
Additional traumas came through the Mexican Revolution, when the
United States would intervene in a variety of ways. Even as Francisco
Madero was in the process of ousting Porfirio Diaz, U.S. representatives
reported widespread anti-Americanism. Consul Samuel E. Magill at
Guadalajara reported to Secretary of State Philander Knox in 1911 that
“the anti-American sentiment is almost universal among rich and poor
alike.” Consul Charles M. Freeman at Durango wrote that “this district is
95% anti-American, and that is a most conservative estimate for I have yet
to meet a Mexican who has any love for the people of the United States as
a whole.” M. S. Largey, a banking and mining operator, returned to the United States in 1913 with a report that “the great masses of the population hate Americans with an intensity that is awful to contemplate.” The
logic was ineluctable: virtually by definition, a nationalist movement in
quest of social justice would have to be anti-American.
There existed a constant, understandable fear that the United States
would take advantage of rising unrest in Mexico. As Madero mounted his
drive against Diaz, commentators expressed apprehension about U.S.
troop movements along the northern border and naval operations off the
coast. Posters and billboards summoned compatriots to resist: “Death to
the Yankees!” “Down with Gringos!” “Kill Diaz and his Yankee friends.”
Once in office, the mild-mannered Madero dismissed U.S. workers from
the Mexican railroad system out of fear that they might comprise a fifth
column. Anticipating a U.S. invasion, in April 1912 the newspaper El
Tiempo called for the Mexican people to rise up, repel the aliens, and
make sure that “each bullet fired goes to strike the heart or the forehead
of the profaner of our soil.”
Conservatives joined in this chorus as well. After Woodrow Wilson
refused to recognize the administration of Victoriano Huerta (following
the assassination of Madero), a pro-Huerta spokesman claimed that a resistance movement in Sonora was in fact the first step in a plan formulated
by Teddy Roosevelt and “Yankee bankers” to partition Mexico into small
republics that would then be at the mercy of the United States. In 1914
Wilson authorized a naval occupation of the port of Veracruz, after
Mexico had refused to fire a twenty-one-gun salute of respect; bloody
confrontations led to at least 200 Mexican dead and 300 wounded, compared with 19 American deaths and 71 additional casualties.
Later in the revolution, as the Wilson administration began to favor
the forces of Venustiano Carranza, an outraged Pancho Villa massacred
fifteen American citizens at Santa Ysabel in January 1916. Two months
later he conducted a daring cross-border raid on the town of Columbus,
New Mexico, resulting in the death of eighteen Americans. As noted in
chapter 2, Wilson responded by mobilizing 150,000 militia along the
southern frontier and dispatching 12,000 troops under General John Pershing to pursue and punish Villa. Pershing never came close to capturing
Villa in the mountains of Chihuahua, U.S. troops were routed in a battle
at Carrizal, and after ten months of frustration the expedition returned to
the United States. For his successful defiance of the gringos, Villa would
become a national hero.
Thus did Mexico develop its culture of resistance, a fierce pride in
lo mexicano and resentment of U.S. depredations. In 1924 a Catholic
priest, Jose Cantu Corro, spoke of underlying strength in the national
character. Because of its Indian and Spanish strains, he wrote in Patria y
raga, “there throbs in our heart the spirit of El Cid and of Cuauhtemoc.”
Continued Cantu Corro: “Mexico must not be for foreigners; no, a thousand times no. . . . Mexico, idolized Motherland, nest of affections,
mansion of happiness, noble Republic; Mexico, my Motherland, let the Saxons never assault your soil, nor implant their false religion, nor tarnish
your flag.”
Cuba: Inside the Monster
One of the most revered patriots in Cuban history is Jose Marti. A passionate advocate of Cuban independence from Spain, a writer, publicist,
and essayist, Marti went into exile in the United States from 1880 to
1895. While acknowledging respect for the United States, he expressed
continual apprehension about its annexationist tendencies and its longstanding designs upon Cuba. In a reference to Francis Cutting, one of the
most noted militants in the American Annexationist League, Marti once
observed that “We love the land of Lincoln just as we fear the land of
Cutting.” What he condemned most was ultraguilismo, as he called it,
the policy of “extending over much of the earth the wings of the American eagle.”
In Marti’s view, the U.S. drive toward empire had an economic basis.
American producers were in desperate need of new markets:
The manufacturers of North America . . . have come to produce more articles than the country needs, but arc unable, as a result of the cost of production . . . to place their excess production in foreign markets, [and] today
they urgently and actually need to display and sell their surplus at low cost in
the nearby American markets; and with their additional production, in the
absence of a corresponding demand to absorb it, the surplus will continue to
accumulate on top of the current surplus. People here, thus, need someone
to display their products. People there need someone to explain and point
out to them the appropriateness and advantages of their purchases. La
America is a timely answer to both needs.
Here was precisely the problem. For Marti, U.S. imperialism was not a
whimsical impulse or a partisan cause. It was a fundamental requirement
for continued development of the North American economy.
Equally hazardous, in Marti’s eyes, was the power and presence of
pro-annexationist forces in Cuba. As he explained in 1882:
There is still a greater danger, perhaps greater than all others. In Cuba there
has always been an important group of cautious men, quite bold in their rejection of Spanish domination, but yet quite reserved in endangering their
own personal comfort to combat it. This kind of man, aided by those who
would enjoy the benefits of freedom without paying its high price, vehemently favors the annexation of Cuba to the United States. All these shy, irresolute men, all these shallow observers, so attached to their possessions, are
tempted to support this solution, which they believe to be cheap and easy. In
this way they satisfy their patriotic conscience and appease their fears of real
patriotism. But, since this is human nature, we must not look upon their
temptations with stoic contempt, we must stop them.
Marti thus formulated an enduring element in Latin America’s emergent
political culture: the detection and identification of turncoats, of pro-U.S. traitors ready to forswear national dignity for the sake of personal and private gain. This would be a persistent theme in the continental culture of
resistance.
In a fashion reminiscent of Bolivar, Marti summoned progressive elements throughout the region to the dream of unification. It was essential,
he wrote in a famous essay entitled “Nuestra America,” for Latin American nations to acknowledge their common cause with Cuba: “The urgent
task for our America is to reveal itself for what it is, united in purpose and
soul, rapidly triumphant over its suffocating past, its hands stained only by
blood spent in the struggle against [colonial] ruins, blood from the veins
pricked by our masters. The disdain of a powerful and unknowing neighbor is the greatest danger for our America . . . because this ignorance
could inspire greed.” Regional unification faced an intimidating array of
internal obstacles and external threats, mainly from the United States; all
the more reason to realize Bolivar’s noble dream.
Marti expressed continuous fear that, once the Spaniards were
ousted, the United States would attempt to annex Cuba. “Every day,” he
wrote in 1895,
my life is in danger. I am in danger of giving up my life for my country, for
my duty-as I understand it and must execute it-so that Cuba’s independence will prevent the expansion of the United States throughout the Antilles, allowing that nation to fall, ever more powerfully, upon our American
lands. Everything I have done, everything I will do, is toward this end. It has
been a silent and indirect process, for there are things which must be kept
hidden if they are to take place. . . . I have lived inside the monster and
know its entrails-and my weapon is only the slingshot of David.
The independence of Cuba, he insisted once again, was essential to the
sovereignty and integrity of the remainder of Latin America.
Once back in Cuba, Marti met an early death upon the battlefield.
The “pearl of the Antilles” lost one of its most devoted and capable leaders, and Latin America gained a martyr for the continental cause.
Nicaragua: Origins of Sandinismo
Nicaragua was long the object of imperial intrigue. As early as the seventeenth century, European powers began to contemplate the possibility of
constructing a transisthmian canal through Nicaragua, thus connecting
the Atlantic with the Pacific; in the mid-nineteenth century the United
States and Britain agreed to keep the project to themselves. After a filibustering expedition in the 1850s William Walker, an American citizen, proclaimed himself to be the president of Nicaragua. In response to an insult
(and an outstanding debt) the United States occupied the country from
1909 to 1925, controlling national politics through local minions. In
1926, after a fraudulent election, the United States invaded again. This
time a young guerrilla leader named Augusto Cesar Sandino took to the hills in order, in his words, “to fight the Yankee piracy.” He organized an
effective military unit, which he called the Army in Defense of the Sovereignty of Nicaragua, and he adopted a powerful slogan: Patria y Libertad.
In letters and testimonials, Sandino described American soldiers and
leaders in scathing terms. His prose dripping with vituperation, he referred in April 1927 to “drug-dependent Yankees.” Months later he
wrote of “Yankee cowards and criminals,” and went on to denounce “the
adventurous Yankees, who are trampling Nicaragua’s sovereignty under
foot.” In December 1927 he railed against “Yankee imperialism” once
again, openly decrying “the monstrousness of the crimes committed by
the patricides and Nordic punitive army upon the Nicaraguan people.”
On occasion he ridiculed the “blond beasts” and “blond pirates” from
the north; at times he criticized “Wall Street magnates” and “North
American piratical assassins.” Sandino aimed his scorn not only at the
U.S. government and military. Though he welcomed support from some
groups in the United States, such as the All-America Anti-Imperialist
League, he concluded by January 1930 that “the North American people
support and will always support the expansionist policies of their unprincipled governments.” “The North American people,” he observed in another communique, “are as imperialistic as their own leaders.”
Sandino reserved his sharpest criticism, however, for traitorous
groups within Nicaragua. Shortly after initiating his campaign, Sandino
claimed that partisan divisions had divided national society into three
groups: “Puritanical and honorable Liberals,” meaning himself and his
followers; “Chicken Liberals (or eunuchs),” meaning Jose Maria Moncada and others who agreed to abide by the U.S.-sponsored election pact
of 1928; and “Sell-outs of their country, in other words, Conservatives.”
Time and again he heaped scorn on the political leaders who collaborated
with U.S. occupation forces: Moncada, Adolfo Diaz, and Emiliano
Chamorro, “the unholy trinity of miserable sell-outs of their country.”
And against these forces, the guerrilla leader vowed unending resistance:
“We swear before the symbol of the fatherland to die rather than to sell ourselves or to surrender to the offers of the invaders, oligarchs, and traitors who
for so many years have trafficked with the Nation’s honor”
His avowed mission was the achievement of national sovereignty.
“My obsession,” Sandino said in September 1927, “is to repel with the
dignity and pride of our race every imposition that, with the cynicism derived from strength, the assassins of weak nations are imposing upon our
country, and you may be firmly convinced that as long as I possess bullets,
I will make them understand that their audacity will cost them dearly.” In
view of the strength of the opposition, victory could come only through
force. Antedating Mao Zedong’s later dictums in China, Sandino proclaimed in October 1927: “Freedom is not won with flowers! It is with
bullets that we must drive the enemy from power! The revolution is synonymous with purification!”
As did Marti for Cuba, Sandino asserted that the cause of Nicaragua was the cause of all Latin America. Invoking the struggles “of all the Latin
American peoples against the imperialist policies of the Anglo-Saxon
colossus” in May 1928, he maintained that his cause “is also the cause of
Latin America.” Later in the year he warned leaders of Latin America
about U.S. ambitions to reduce the entire region to the status of “an
Anglo-Saxon colony.” And like Marti, he sought to reawaken the Bolivarian dream. In March 1929, after drafting a proposal for a continental congress to “assure the sovereignty and independence of our twenty-one
Indo-Hispanic republics and friendship between the America of our race
and the United States of America, upon a basis of equality,” Sandino developed a multipoint “plan for the realization of Bolivar’s highest dream”:
Profoundly convinced, as we are, that North American capitalism has arrived
at its last stage of development, transforming itself as a result into imperialism; and that it no longer has any respect for theories of right and justice, ignoring the inexorable principles of independence of the divisions of the Latin
American nationality, we view as indispensable, and even more so, unde-
layable, the Alliance of our Latin American states as a way to maintain that independence before the designs of U.S. imperialism, or before that of any
other power that may wish to subject us to its interests.
“There is nothing more logical, nothing more decisive or vital,” Sandino
asserted, “than the fusion of our twenty-one states of our America into
one unique Latin American nationality.” Calling for the abolition of the
Monroe Doctrine, establishment of a Latin American court, organization
of a continental army, regional control of the Panama Canal, and other
collaborative measures, Sandino addressed his appeal to heads of government throughout the region. “We are proposing an alliance,” he assured
them, “and not a confederation.” He was also seeking a gesture of continental solidarity in his struggle against the U.S. marines.
Despite his radical-sounding appeals to the working classes and furious condemnations of imperialism, Sandino was not a Marxist. (Indeed,
he stoutly resisted attempts at socialist indoctrination.) He displayed, instead, a mystical faith in religion and in God. But there would be, he predicted, no messianic arrival during the twentieth century. Instead:
What will happen is the following: the oppressed people will break the chains
of humiliation, with which the imperialists of the earth have sought to keep
them in backwardness. The trumpets that will be heard will be the bugles of
war, intoning the hymns of the freedom of the oppressed peoples against the
injustice of the oppressors. The only thing that will be submerged for all time
is injustice, and Love, king of Perfection, will remain, with his favorite
daughter, Divine Justice.
Partly in recognition of Sandino’s political and military strength, Franklin
Delano Roosevelt withdrew U.S. forces from Nicaragua in 1933. The
next year Anastasio Somoza masterminded the assassination of Sandino,
and then proceeded to install a dictatorial regime conspicuous for its brutality, venality, and nepotism. It was hardly surprising that, decades later, youthful leaders of a guerrilla movement against the Somoza dynasty
would christen themselves as Sandinistas.
Continental Solidarity
Calls for pan-Latin American solidarity steadily mounted in response to
U.S. power. Despite the unattainability (and perhaps implausibility) of the
Bolivarian dream, writers and essayists took frequent note of common
cause against the United States. Even in Brazil, perhaps the most proAmerican country in the region, Eduardo Prado attacked “the absorbent,
imperialist, and tyrannical policies of North American diplomacy” as early
as 1893, concluding bitterly: “There is no Latin American nation that
has not suffered in its relations with the United States.” Jose Enrique
Rodo (of Uruguay) and Ruben Dario (of Nicaragua) would sound antiAmerican themes around the turn of the century, a tradition soon followed by Manuel Pesqueira (of Mexico).
In 1912 an articulate and irascible Argentine, Manuel Ugarte, wrote
a letter congratulating Woodrow Wilson on his election to the presidency
and enumerating a long list of grievances that Latin Americans held in
common. “We desire,” he lectured the president-elect,
that Cuba be freed from the painful weight of the Platt Amendment; we desire that there should be granted to Nicaragua the ability to dispose of their
soil, leaving to the people to depose those who govern them with the aid of a foreign army, if they deem it necessary; we desire that the status of Porto Rico
[sic] be settled in accordance with the rights of humanity; we desire that the
abominable injustice committed against Colombia be repaired so far as possible; we desire that Panama which today suffers the consequences of a temporary displacement be ceded the dignity of a nation; we desire that the pressure being exerted on the port of Guayaquil shall cease; we desire that the
archipelago of the Galapagos be respected; we desire that liberty be conceded
to the heroic Filipinos; we desire that Mexico shall not always see suspended
above her flag Damocles’s sword of intervention; we desire that the disorders
of Putumayo shall not serve as a pretext for diplomatic dexterities; we desire
that the companies which go beyond their authority shall not be supported in
their unjust demands; we desire that the Republic of Santo Domingo be not
suffocated by unjust oppression; we desire that the United States abstain
from officiously intervening in the domestic politics of our countries and that
they discontinue the acquisition of ports and bays on this continent; we desire that measures of sanitation shall not serve to diminish the sovereignty of
nations of the Pacific; we ask, in short, that the star spangled banner cease to
be a symbol of oppression in the New World.
It was a stirring challenge, more effective in rallying Latin America than in
deterring the United States. During his first term in office Woodrow Wilson, the professorial idealist, would send U.S. troops headlong into Cuba,
Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.
Dollar diplomacy gave further impetus to the drive for cultural and po litical unity in Latin America. In 1925 a prominent Mexican philosopher,
Jose Vasconcelos, would proclaim that the mestizo combination, or “cosmic race,” provided Latin America with a social identity, a legacy different
from North America, and an inherently virtuous ethnic stock. And from an
entirely different quarter, outgoing president Arturo Alessandri of Chile
would in 1926 express frustration with U.S. diplomacy: “During my five
years in office, I worked to give true life to Pan-Americanism,” he reflected
bitterly. “But now I will devote all the energies that remain to me in preaching that. . . . We [Latin American republics] must arise, and together, in
union, proclaim: Latin America for the Latin Americans.”
During the 1920s and 1930s, anti-U.S. argumentation began to acquire a sharp analytical edge. A young Peruvian reformer, Victor Raul
Haya de la Torre, would sound a clarion call for the continental solidarity
of “indo-America” in its “international struggle against Yankee imperialism in Latin America” as he launched his program for the Alianza Popular
Revolucionaria Americana (APRA), the keystone for the Aprista party in
his native country. Around the same time his brilliant compatriot, Jose
Carlos Mariategui, developed an explicitly Marxist analysis of social and
racial inequities in a famous tract, Siete tesis de interpretation de la reali-
dad peruana (1928). Spreading out from intellectual circles, Marxism
would eventually become a major component of the continental cultures
of resistance.
In Retrospect
Notwithstanding constancy of effort, Latin America had relatively little
success in curtailing the rise of U.S. imperial power. Conspicuously ineffective were attempts to establish subregional hegemony, as on the part of
Argentina and Brazil, which simply lacked the necessary capabilities for
such an enterprise. Equally ineffective were efforts to induce extrahemispheric powers to step into the hemisphere and provide protection for nations of Latin America. European policymakers gradually relaxed their resistance to U.S. advances during the course of the nineteenth century,
and by the early twentieth century most became willing to allow Washington to guarantee their loans, investments, and commerce. As major
powers accepted U.S. participation in the worldwide imperial contest, in
other words, they became increasingly prepared to regard Latin America
as Washington’s backyard.
The Bolivarian pursuit of continental unification produced ambiguous results. In one sense, the ideal proved a quixotic failure: despite several attempts, leaders of the region were unable to create any kind of
meaningful organization. But in another sense, the notion had significant
impact: it drew upon beliefs in common origins, it defined a sense of collective purpose, and on occasion it played a crucial political role. Its diplomatic significance was especially apparent in the decades-long promotion
of hemispheric international law, most notably in regard to doctrines of sovereignty and nonintervention. To a considerable extent, inculcation of
these provisions in FDR’s Good Neighbor policy represented a triumph
for Latin America and a vindication of its quest for solidarity. Of course
this outcome was only as meaningful as international law itself, but at the
time it represented a remarkable achievement.
Ultimately it was the formulation of cultures of resistance that left the
most enduring legacy. Throughout this historical era Latin America’s
search for self-identity became profoundly, inextricably, and necessarily
entwined with its relationship to the United States. The rise of U.S.
power, and its application to the region, left no other choice for Latin
Americans. They could embrace the U.S. claim to hegemony, as many of
them did, they could tolerate the U.S. role, as more of them did, or they
could resist advances by the Colossus of the North, as most of them did.
The unavoidable reality of U.S. power led some pensadores to denigrate
American culture and to celebrate Latin America’s lofty appreciation for
faith, beauty, and nobility; it prompted others to issue urgent appeals for
support and solidarity; it led still others to compose trenchant critiques of
U.S. imperialism and its underlying purposes. Resistance to the United
States became an integral part of national and continental self-assertion.
This connection would persist in times to come.
Soviet Communism is not only the gravest threat that ever faced the
United States, but the gravest threat that has ever faced what we call
western civilization or, indeed, any civilization that was dominated by
a spiritual faith.
John Foster Dulles (1953)
Conditions in Latin America are somewhat comparable to conditions
as they were in the mid-thirties when the communist movement was
getting started. . . . Well, if we don’t look out, we will wake up some
morning and read in the newspapers that there happened in South
America the same kind of thing that happened in China in 1949.
John Foster Dulles (1953)
Foreign affairs! That’s for people who don’t have to work for a living.
American blue-collar worker (ca. 1954)
The Cold War altered the logic of inter-American relations, elevating the
protection of “national security” to the top of the U.S. foreign policy
agenda and turning Latin America (and other developing areas) into both
a battleground and prize in the conflict between communism and capitalism, East and West, the USSR and the United States. In response to Soviet
challenges, the United States sought to extend and consolidate its political
supremacy throughout the hemisphere. Launching an anticommunist crusade, the United States institutionalized military and political alliances with
nations of the region; offered to collaborate with authoritarian regimes so
long as they were anticommunist; encouraged (or compelled) friendly governments to crush leftist labor movements and to outlaw communist parties; and orchestrated the military overthrow of an elected government on
the ground that it was “soft” on communism. Fear of a “Soviet menace” in
the Americas was greatly exaggerated, but it nonetheless had crucial implications for U.S. policy. By the mid-1950s Washington laid down policy
lines that would continue through the 1980s.
United States as Superpower
World War II transformed global arrangements and elevated the United
States to the status of a superpower. By the late 1930s the United States
had a very small military establishment, with only 185,000 combat-ready
troops; no military alliances at all; and, after the withdrawals from Haiti
and Nicaragua, no troops on foreign soil. The centerpiece of U.S. foreign
policy was Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor stance toward Latin America and
cultivation of a “sphere of influence” within the Western Hemisphere,
but not in other parts of the world. In the Atlantic and Pacific theaters,
the United States was a relatively unimportant actor.
This would suddenly change. One consequence of World War II was
to weaken classic European powers-not only the defeated Axis countries, but triumphant Allies as well. Overall, the fighting and associated
devastation took the lives of approximately 55 million people, at least 35
million in Europe. The Soviet Union alone lost more than 21 million soldiers and civilians. Poland and Germany (including Austria) suffered 6
million deaths each; Yugoslavia, 1.6 million; France about 600,000;
Britain around 400,000. Whole cities were destroyed and thousands of
villages reduced to rubble. With England a partial exception, economic
production on the European Continent (outside of coal mining and agriculture) had ground to a virtual halt.
At the same time World War II greatly strengthened the United
States. Despite the sacrifice of servicemen, there were no bombings of
U.S. cities, no occupations of U.S. territory. Economic production
climbed to unprecedented levels: it was wartime mobilization, in fact, that
lifted the United States out of the Depression of the 1930s. At war’s end
the United States enjoyed a position of extraordinary economic preponderance. By 1947 the United States accounted for one-third of the
world’s total exports and nearly one-half of the world’s industrial output.
The Roosevelt and Truman administrations applied this leverage to establish foundations for a postwar economic order, one that would avoid
repetition of the Depression by promoting trade and stabilizing monetary
exchange. As Harry Truman explained, “A large volume of soundly based
international trade is essential if we are to achieve prosperity in the United
States, build a durable structure of world economy and attain our goal of
world peace and prosperity.”
Moreover, the war altered international alignments and the structure
of relative power. The United States did not enter the war until December 1941, nearly a year and a half after the Nazi conquest of France, and
did not cross the English Channel until June 1944. Until that time the
Soviet Union bore the brunt of the land war with Germany, and, as the
Red Army pushed toward Berlin, the USSR slowly gained control of Eastern Europe. Joseph Stalin succinctly summarized the political implications of these military developments: “Whoever occupies a territory,” he
once proclaimed, “also imposes on it his own social system.”
In the Pacific theater, as well, the United States did not have troops
on the most important land masses-China, Korea, and Japan. Atomic
bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki cut the campaigns short in August
1945, leading to Tokyo’s unconditional surrender. Allied forces under
U.S. leadership promptly occupied Japan and South Korea, but not China
or North Korea. In keeping with Stalin’s dictum, this would have profound results on politics.
In addition to its economic and military power, the United States possessed a monopoly on a new instrument of warfare-the atomic bomb. To
consolidate its advantage, Washington built a stockpile of these deadly
weapons, each capable of destroying a city at a time. The U.S. arsenal contained 7 atomic bombs in 1946, 13 in 1947, 50 in 1948, nearly 300 by
1950, and around 1,000 in 1953. In 1950 the government initiated development of the even more powerful hydrogen bomb, carrying out the first
test in 1952. Nuclear capacity gave the postwar United States an enormous
sense of power. First, it appeared to offer an efficient and inexpensive key to
military security without the need for military mobilization. Second, it was
thought, the bomb conferred on the United States both the right and the
duty to control processes of change throughout the world. Naively, and
hopefully, the United States thus entered the nuclear age.
The United States retained its military dominance in years to come.
By the late 1960s the United States had 2 million soldiers in the armed
forces, forty-eight military alliances with other countries, and 1.5 million
troops stationed in 119 countries of the world. It was, beyond doubt, the
strongest power on earth.
Cold War: The Rules of the Game
Unilateral triumph soon gave way to bilateral tension. Stalin tightened his
grip on Poland. In March 1946 Winston Churchill denounced the lowering of an “iron curtain” in the midst of continental Europe and called for
liberation from communist rule. In 1948 there came a Soviet-sponsored
coup in Czechoslovakia; later in the year Stalin sought to cordon off
the occupied city of Berlin, which required a months-long airlift of food
and supplies by the Allies. In 1949 the USSR announced successful detonation of its own atomic bomb, thus shattering America’s postwar monopoly. On front after front, the Soviet Union appeared to provoke confrontation with the United States.
What would Washington do? The answer came in 1947, when President Harry S. Truman decided to support the government of Greece in
its struggle with a leftist insurgency. As heir to the anti-Nazi partisan
movement, it should be noted, this insurrection reflected political realities
evident throughout the Continent. During the war, centrist and monarchist leaders generally fled their countries for the relative safety of Great
Britain; those who remained to lead the resistance-fabled as la resistance
in France-tended to come from the political left. And not surprisingly, in view of their heroic sacrifices, they strongly resisted claims by conservative
exile leaders to reclaim power at war’s end.
In response to the crises in Turkey and Greece, the American president launched what became known as the Truman Doctrine in a momentous address to Congress: “I believe it must be the policy of the United
States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by
armed minorities or by outside pressures.” This phrasing implied a remarkably capacious mandate. It committed the United States to assist
“free peoples” (however defined) in struggles against external or internal
foes. This called for both defense against outside threats and intervention
against domestic challenges. In effect, the Truman Doctrine proclaimed
that the United States would assume the role of global policeman.
In fact the doctrine-and the policy that it defined-rested on a series
of crucial assumptions. One was that the Soviet Union was seeking to
conquer the world in the name of international communism. A second
was that these Soviet ambitions would produce a long and continuous
struggle with the capitalist world, not a military conflagration but a “cold
war.” And this conflict, as George F. Kerman wrote in 1947, would require from the United States “the adroit and vigilant application of
counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political
points, corresponding to the shifts of Soviet policy.” Washington’s principal goal, in other words, would be to halt the spread of communism. The
policy thus came to be known as one of containment.
This strategy initially focused on Europe. One key component was a
massive program of economic assistance, launched as the Marshall Plan in
1947. Since communism thrived amid despair and poverty, in Washington’s official view, economic recovery would bolster the forces of capitalism and democracy. In support of this belief the United States provided
$19 billion in foreign aid to Western Europe in 1945-50. A second pillar
of the policy was the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military pact established in 1949. Its principal effect was to commit U.S. military forces to the defense of Western Europe. In the phrase of Senator
Tom Connally, “The Atlantic Pact is but the logical extension of the principle of the Monroe Doctrine.” United States power now stretched far
beyond the limits of the Western Hemisphere.
During the 1950s the doctrine of containment extended to Asia as
well. American occupation forces quickly built up Japan as a pro-U.S. bulwark in the fight against international communism. Concern mounted
rapidly after the “loss” of China in 1949 to revolutionaries under Mao
Zedong, an event that gave rise to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s infamous
accusations against “traitors” in the U.S. State Department. The invasion
of South Korea by North Korea in 1950 provoked a three-year conflict
ending in a virtual stalemate, reestablishing the line of demarcation between North and South at the 38th parallel.
Developments in Asia had several fundamental implications for U.S.
policy. One was abandonment of the idea of “liberation.” First in Korea and later in Europe, the United States came to acknowledge the practical
limits of containment-tacitly accepting the existence of a Soviet sphere
of influence in 1956, when Western powers failed to provide support for
an anti-Soviet uprising in Hungary. Second was a conviction within U.S.
society and government that the communist movement was worldwide,
coherent, and monolithic-led by Moscow, in close collaboration with
Beijing. Third was a perception of the entire world as a single theater;
events in Europe and Asia were inextricably linked together by the fact of
global struggle. Fourth was unremitting hostility toward the Soviet
Union, the People’s Republic of China, and all their “stooges” or “puppets” (whether or not they were consciously acting on behalf of communist goals). Finally, the invasion of South Korea supported the view that
communist tactics would consist not only of internal subversion, as in
Greece, but also of outright military aggression. This led to the formation
in 1954 of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), in principle
(if not in practice) a Pacific counterpart to NATO, and it also prompted
an intensive rearmament campaign that lasted throughout the 1950s.
In paradoxical ways, the waging of the Cold War led to a series of
tacit understandings or rules of the game. Each side strove mightily to establish military superiority over the other, yet there existed no plausible
chance of military victory. In view of the potential for nuclear retaliation,
neither side could take the risk of attacking the other. The United States
and the USSR thus found themselves locked in a nuclear standoff, accumulating arsenals they could never use. Instead they could merely resort
to threats, saber-rattling, and ever-larger military budgets. In a conventional sense, the Cold War promised neither victory nor peace.
Each side defined its purpose in the name of high and principled
causes. The Soviet Union sought to extend communist influence in support of social solidarity and economic justice. The United States positioned itself as leader of the “free” and democratic world. Despite the
grandeur and intensity of this ideological conflict, however, both powers
tended to accept each other’s established sphere of influence.
There could be constant conflict-but always on the periphery, not in
the central arena. The principal contenders never fought among themselves; they assigned that task to clients and/or surrogates. In the 1950s
hostilities thus erupted in Korea, Iran, and Lebanon. Such struggles were
assumed to represent a “zero-sum” game, in which one side’s gain would
be another’s loss. Even more worrisome was the U.S. notion of a
“domino theory,” in which the loss of one country would immediately
and automatically endanger its neighbors. Conflicts within or among
small countries were therefore resistant to negotiation; because they entailed symbolic contests between the superpowers, neither side had much
interest in accommodation.
By the 1960s Washington explicitly extended the doctrine of containment to what became known as the Third World. As President John F.
Kennedy would say: “The great battleground for the defense and expan sion of freedom today is the southern half of the globe . . . the lands of
the rising peoples.” The United States and the Soviet Union thus engaged in competition for political allegiance among the poorer regions of
the world. The principal target for U.S. policy would be so-called wars of
liberation, a diagnosis that eventually led to a decade-long involvement in
Vietnam. Around this same time, as we shall see, U.S. policy sharpened its
focus on Latin America as well.
The Cold War bore some resemblance to traditional balance-ofpower politics and spheres of influence, but there were important differences as well. One defining feature of the post-World War II era was the
bipolar structure of world power, whereas the historic quest for a balance
of power relied upon a multipolar system. The Cold War was utterly
dominated by two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union.
“Not since Rome and Carthage,” U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson
once claimed, “had there been such a polarization of power on this
earth.”
A second key characteristic was the emphasis on ideological factors.
To be sure, traditional powers justified the subjugation of other peoples
in the name of religious conversion or cultural mission or some other uplifting purpose. But the intensity of East-West ideological competition, of
the contest between Karl Marx and Adam Smith, provided a special ingredient to the Cold War. In a world of modern communications, this was
not only an academic contest for intellectual superiority. It became a bitter debate over the meaning of social order, the direction of historical
change, and the future of the world community; ultimately, and fundamentally, it was a struggle for the allegiance of society at large. Ideology
magnified the stakes of competition.
Third was its worldwide scope. While the principal actors never
challenged each other in direct military fashion, their frequent use of
surrogates-and their constant invocation of ideology-extended their rivalry to all corners of the globe. There was a brief moment after World
War II, as historian Thomas Paterson has pointed out, when Washington
contemplated the possibility of creating explicit spheres of influence for
the United States and the USSR.’ By the late 1940s and early 1950s,
however, policymakers saw the entire world as consisting of a single theater; no countries or regions were exempt from participation. Unlike classic big-power contests, this was not confined to a specific area or based
upon territorial acquisition. It was a geopolitical and ideological contest
that covered the world as a whole.
Partly because of its breadth, the Cold War provoked systematic tension between the superpowers and their allies (or client states). Often
haughtily, policymakers in both Moscow and Washington presumed and
asserted that only they, not their allies, could truly understand the nature
of the global conflict under way; only they could comprehend the challenges and stakes. To the undisguised irritation of the British and French, especially, this conviction fostered the idea that only the United States
could accurately ascertain genuine threats to the West. And within the
Western Hemisphere, it implied that Washington possessed an inherently
superior perspective on international matters; U.S. policymakers could
identify, analyze, and eradicate communist threats more effectively than
local leaders. Such presumptuousness not only offended Latin Americans,
including reformers and dedicated anticommunists; it could also result in
grievous miscalculations by the U.S. government.
Policymaking during the Cold War became a special prerogative of
political and bureaucratic elites. The U.S. Congress quickly reached a bipartisan consensus on foreign policy that prevailed from the late 1940s
through the 1980s. Encouraged by the Red-baiting tactics of Joseph McCarthy and alarmed by the realities of Soviet power, the American public
fervently supported anticommunist positions. Partly in response to this
unanimity, governmental elites-political appointees (usually from the
East Coast establishment), career foreign service officers, and longtime
legislators-assumed control of the policy-making apparatus. The business community played occasional but supportive roles, displaying neither
the initiative nor the power wielded during the foregone era of “dollar
diplomacy.” Organized labor entered the international arena, also in
staunch support of official policy, as did other interest groups from time
to time. Throughout this era, however, responsibility for and control of
U.S. foreign policy rested almost exclusively within the political and bureaucratic apparatus.2 The center of decision making was neither in corporate boardrooms nor on the electoral hustings, it was in the nation’s
capital-and the name of the city, “Washington,” became synonymous
with the sinews of power.
Ultimately, the waging of the Cold War was bound to result in frustration. The doctrine of containment called for vigilance, persistence, and
sacrifice, but it could not bring victory in any classic sense of the term.
From the late 1940s through the 1980s it was nonetheless the Cold War,
with its curious logic, that defined and enforced the rules of the game for
international competition.
The Cold War in Latin America
Latin America commanded significant attention from U.S. policymakers
during and just after World War II. In December 1943 the Joint Army
and Navy Advisory Board established its Western Hemisphere Defense
Program. The State Department pressed Latin countries to join the
Allied cause throughout the course of the war. At the founding of the
United Nations, in 1946, U.S. diplomats accorded special attention to
the region-which at that time controlled nearly two-fifths of the votes in
the General Assembly (twenty out of fifty-one). Latin America also offered U.S. producers a major export market and site for direct invest ment. In 1946-47 one-quarter of U.S. exports flowed to Latin America;
in 1950 U.S. investments in the region amounted to more than one-third
the country’s global total of $12 billion overseas.
As World War II drew to a close, Washington seems to have envisioned a continuation of (or reversion to) the Good Neighbor policyincluding its assertion of hemispheric hegemony. “I think that it’s not
asking too much to have our little region over here which never has bothered anybody,” Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson once remarked. His
assistant John J. McCloy agreed, casting an eye across the Atlantic and insisting that “we ought to have our cake and eat it too; that we ought to
be free to operate under this regional arrangement in South America,
[and] at the same time intervene promptly in Europe.”
In 1945 a top State Department official, Charles Bohlen, offered
both a reinterpretation and reassertion of the doctrine of nonintervention. “While we do claim the right . . . to have a guiding voice in a certain limited sphere of the foreign relations of Latin America,” the diplomat explained, “we do not attempt on the basis of that right to dictate
their internal national life or to restrict their intercourse with foreign nations, except in that limited sphere”-that is, “the politico-strategic aspect of their foreign relations.” At this point, Washington assumed the
right to place constraints on the foreign policy of Latin American countries but not upon their domestic politics.
In this spirit the United States endorsed Latin America’s push for an
endorsement of regional security organizations at the founding conference of the United Nations in 1946. Article 51 of the UN charter thus
provided a juridical basis for the Rio Pact of 1947, a mutual defense treaty
between Latin American nations and the United States. There would be
differing views on the significance of this development. Secretary of War
Stimson interpreted Article 51 as a preservation of “the unilateral character of the Monroe Doctrine,” since the United States could take action in
Latin America without being “at the mercy of getting the assent of the
Security Council.” Latin Americans, by contrast, imagined that Article 51
would encourage the formation of a regional security agreement that
could provide protection for existing governments and, at the same time,
place constraints on the United States. In essence, their hope was that international organization could accomplish the goals they had earlier pursued through international law.
The principle of nonintervention received further expression at the
founding meeting of the Organization of American States in Bogota in
1948. Seeking to bolster their autonomy, Latin American delegates won
approval of key language in Chapter 15: “No state or group of states has
the right to intervene, directly or indirectly, for any reason whatever, in
the internal or external affairs of any other state.” This stipulation expressly prohibited not only armed intervention, so common in the prewar
period, but also “any other form of interference or attempted threat.”
Thus the United States continued to forswear the use of force in its rela tions with Latin America and to cultivate cooperation in the name of
hemispheric unity. As historian Steven Rabe has remarked, both the Rio
Treaty and the OAS “reflected the spirit of the Good Neighbor policy.”3
Global crises turned U.S. official attention away from Latin America.
From Greece to Berlin, events in Europe came to dominate the Washington agenda; the fall of China and hostilities in Korea focused concern on
Asia as well. One of the most experienced Latin American specialists at
the State Department, Adolf A. Berle, noted growing lack of interest in
the region with dismay. “Men [in high office] who know the hemisphere
and love it are few,” he said in 1945, “and those who are known by the
hemisphere and loved by it are fewer still.” By 1949 the situation had
grown still worse: complaining about “sheer neglect and ignorance,”
Berle declared that “we have simply forgotten about Latin America.”
Gradually, however, the Cold War came to the Americas, and the
United States braced itself to contend with communist threats. At first the
Truman administration made a relatively calm and realistic assessment of
the situation. A national security memorandum observed that “communism in the Americas is a potential danger, but that, with a few possible
exceptions, it is not seriously dangerous at the present time.” Under these
conditions, the document warned, the United States should be concerned about counterproductive consequences of authoritarian rule. Anticommunist compacts ran the risk of legitimizing repression “against all
political opposition, Communist or otherwise, by dictatorial governments, with the inevitable result of driving leftist elements into the hands
of the Communist organization.” Fearing such a backlash, the Truman
administration even took steps to defeat a proposal at the 1948 conference of the OAS to create “a multilateral inter-American anti-Communist
agreement.”
Another level-headed evaluation of Latin America appeared in a 1950
article in the well-known journal Foreign Affairs by State Department
specialist Louis Halle, writing under the pseudonym “Y.” Seeking to explain the persistence of dictatorship within the region, Halle assertedwith considerable condescension-that Latin American nations had not
yet come to maturity. “Democracy is not an absolute condition, to be assumed by a people as one puts on an overcoat. It is political maturity. Like
all maturity, it is various in its degrees and manifestations, and it is produced by the slow process of maturation. You cannot impose it by force,
you cannot acquire it by decree or legislative enactment, you cannot produce it out of a hat by exhortation. It must be cultivated lovingly, tirelessly over the generations.” The historical record showed a long-term
trend toward democracy, in Halle’s estimation, and the United States
should contribute to this process by cultivating partnership with Latin
American nations, by according them respect, and by providing economic
assistance. “The very fact that these nations are, in so many respects,
younger than we, and much weaker, should persuade us to maintain an
attitude of noblesse oblige.” Most remarkable is Halle’s exposition of obsta- Iles to democratic development, a list that included poverty, illiteracy, social insecurity, and, in somewhat circular fashion, “a tradition of political
behavior marked by intemperance, intransigeance [sic], flamboyance and
the worship of strong men.” Conspicuous by its absence was any reference to foreign agitation, Marxist influence, Soviet pretension, or communism as a whole.
But 1950 also marked a turning point in American attitudes toward
the region. In May President Truman approved a National Security
Council memorandum on “Inter-American Military Collaboration” insisting that “the cold war is in fact a real war in which the survival of the
free world is at stake.” (The following year Congress voted $38.2 million
for direct military assistance to Latin America; in 1952 the figure climbed
to $51.7 million.) In late 1950 an official statement declared that “U.S.
security is the objective of our world-wide foreign policy today,” and
“U.S. security is synonymous with hemisphere security.”
Cold War calculations also provoked reinterpretation of nonintervention. In an extraordinary display of intellectual acrobatics, Assistant Secretary of State Edward Miller explained the U.S. position in 1950. Early interventions by the United States might be regrettable, he said, but they
were justified by the Monroe Doctrine. Under the terms of the Rio Pact
and the OAS there could now be only collective, not unilateral, action:
“The fact is that the doctrine of nonintervention [under the Good Neighbor policy] never did proscribe the assumption by the organized community of a legitimate concern with any circumstances that threatened the
common welfare. On the contrary it made the possibility of such action imperative. Such a collective undertaking, far from representing intervention,
is the alternative to intervention. It is the corollary of nonintervention”(emphasis added). Warning about the prospects of “communist political aggression,” Miller went on to call the Rio Pact “a Monroe Doctrine of our
inter-American community.” Thus did the United States begin to stake its
claim: members of the Rio Pact and/or the OAS could, as collective bodies, legitimately decide to intervene within the affairs of a member state.
This would not violate the doctrine of nonintervention. A prime justification for such action would be “communist political aggression.”
Around this same time George Kerman, chief architect of the containment policy, offered his conception of the goals of U.S. policy in
Latin America:
1. The protection of our [sic!] raw materials,
2. The prevention of military exploitation of Latin America by the enemy,
and
3. The prevention of the psychological mobilization of Latin America against
us.
Communists “represent our most serious problem in the area,” Kerman
insisted, and they “have progressed to the point where they must be regarded as an urgent, major problem.” Under no circumstances could they be allowed to take power. “The final answer might be an unpleasant one,”
Kerman conceded, “but . . . we should not hesitate before police repression by the local government. This is not shameful since the Communists are essentially traitors. . . . It is better to have a strong regime in
power than a liberal one if it is indulgent and relaxed and penetrated by
Communists.” Danger to U.S. security came not only from declared
Marxists but also from their unwitting accomplices. Eternal vigilance
must be extended to the Americas.
Electoral politics intensified public concern about communist threats
within the hemisphere. During the 1952 presidential campaign Dwight
D. Eisenhower, the Republican candidate, accused the Truman administration of disregarding Latin America and creating “terrible disillusionment” throughout the region. Economic distress was “followed by popular unrest, skillfully exploited by Communist agents there.” “Through
drift and neglect,” Eisenhower charged, the Truman administration had
turned a Good Neighbor policy into “a poor neighbor policy.”
At his congressional confirmation hearings John Foster Dulles, soon
to be Eisenhower’s secretary of state, claimed that communists in Latin
America were determined “to destroy the influence of the so-called
Colossus of the North in Central and South America.” The president’s
brother, Milton S. Eisenhower, echoed this sentiment in a November
1953 report on conditions in the region:
The possible conquest of a Latin American nation today would not be, so far
as anyone can foresee, by direct assault. It would come, rather, through the
insidious process of infiltration, conspiracy, spreading of lies, and the undermining of free institutions, one by one. Highly disciplined groups of communists are busy, night and day, illegally or openly, in the American republics, as
they are in every nation of the world. While many persons may now think of
Latin America as not being in the line of attack in the modern world struggle, success by the communists in these nations could quickly change all the
maps which strategists use in calculating the probabilities of the future.
Himself a university president, Milton offered a philosophic rumination
on the incompatibility of East and West: “The greater the differences in
the cultures of nations, the more arduous cooperation becomes. This
is the basal difficulty between the communist countries of the East, with
their rejection of God and their adherence to a militant dialectic materialism, and the West with its long adherence to the cardinal principles of the
Judeo-Christian philosophy.” There could be no dealing with communists. They would have to be purged, hounded, driven, and excluded
from the hemisphere.
Early in his administration President Eisenhower endorsed a policy
statement in favor of “orderly political and economic development” in
the region. Stressing the importance of international support to eliminate
the “menace of internal Communist or other anti-U.S. subversion,” NSC
144/1 conveyed considerable disdain for Latin leaders and their inability to comprehend the nature of the threat. The implication, of course, was
that the United States might have to go it alone.
Courting Dictators
A central goal of U.S. policy was to foster and strengthen anticommunist
regimes in Latin America. This often led to acquiescence in dictatorship.
Just after World War II, in fact, Latin America experienced a broad surge
of democratic rule. Civilian governments gained strength in Chile, Costa
Rica, and Colombia. Relatively free elections took place in Ecuador,
where Jose Maria Velasco Ibarra won the presidency in the wake of a
popular uprising; in Cuba, where Ramon Grau San Martin (once again)
emerged triumphant; in Peru, where Jose Luis Bustamante y Rivero was
victorious; and, perhaps most important, in Venezuela, where the Accion
Democratica party finally managed to win the presidential election of
1947. In the meantime dictatorships abandoned power in Guatemala,
where Juan Jose Arevalo took over from a military junta; in Brazil, where
elections took place in December 1945; and in Argentina, where a sharp
increase in popular participation characterized the presidential elections of
1946. While these shifts toward democracy were for the most part incomplete, they represented significant departures from the blatant repressions
of the past.
There were several key features in these political transitions. One was
the appearance of “progressive” political parties or movements dedicated
to social reform (the Autenticos in Cuba, the Apristas in Peru, Accion
Democratica in Venezuela, even Peronistas in Argentina). A second was
participation of the political left, including the communist left. During
the war Latin America’s communist parties joined in antifascist activities,
and at war’s end they benefited from the temporary prestige of the Soviet
Union; because they increasingly tended to act as integral parts of national popular movements, rather than as members of an international
network, communist parties were legalized or at least tolerated in virtually
every country. Their total membership, less than 100,000 in 1939,
reached close to 400,000 by 1947. A third feature was the political mobilization of organized labor; by the war’s end about 3.5-4.0 million workers were unionized throughout the region. Fourth was a shift in ideological discourse, with a notable emphasis on the virtues and superiority of
Western-style “democracy” as a result of the Allied triumph over Nazism.
As this process of democratization began, the United States found itself in an awkward position. During the course of the war, as historian
Leslie Bethell has pointed out, “Washington actively cooperated with all
stable, cooperative regimes in Latin America, dictatorships and democracies, that opposed the Axis powers.”4 A 1944 cable from U.S. ambassador
Walter Thurston captured the dilemma as it applied to El Salvador, still
under the authoritarian grip of Maximiliano Hernandez Martinez:
Our pronouncements such as the Atlantic Charter and the Declaration of
Four Freedoms (the latter blazoned by us throughout El Salvador in the
form of posters) are accepted literally by the Salvadorans as endorsement of
the basic democratic principles we desire to have prevail currently and universally. . . . It is difficult for them to reconcile these pronouncements with
the fact that the United States tolerates and apparently is gratified to enter
into association with governments in America which cannot be described as
other than totalitarian. . . .
The principal defect of a policy of nonintervention accompanied by propaganda on behalf of democratic regimes is that it simultaneously stimulates
dictatorships and popular opposition to them. Moreover, by according dictators who seize or retain power unconstitutionally the same consideration extended to honestly elected presidents we not only impair our moral leadership but foment the belief that our democratic professions are empty
propaganda and that we are in fact simply guided by expediency.
It is of course unthinkable that we should revert to the folly of intervention-but it seems to be evident that our present policy is not satisfactory, especially in the Caribbean and Central American areas.
World War II was fought in the name of democracy, of course, but the
exigencies of military security required (or seemed to require) collaboration with nondemocratic regimes.
Faced with this contradiction, Washington began a subtle shift in
policy. In 1944 Norman Armour, acting director of the Office of American Republic Affairs, wrote to U.S. ambassador Boaz Long in Guatemala,
when General Ubico’s successors seemed disinclined to proceed with
elections:
This problem of support for democratic processes is not an easy one and was
discussed at some length in the staff meeting this morning. The idea was advanced that we might have President Roosevelt or the Secretary include in an
early address a statement more or less along the following lines: “We wish to
cultivate friendly relations with every government in the world and do not
feel ourselves entitled to dictate to any country what form of government
best suits its national aspirations. We nevertheless must naturally feel a greater
affinity, a deeper sympathy and a warmer friendship for governments which
effectively represent the practical application of democratic processes.”
Dictatorships would get cool recognition, but democracies would receive
warm approval. By treading this fine line, U.S. policy could reconcile support for democracy with respect for nonintervention.
Preference for democracy gained momentum the following year. At
the Chapultepec conference of February-March 1945, the U.S. delegation led Latin America in declaring “fervent adherence to democratic
principles.” In May 1945 an official document prepared by prominent
diplomat Spruille Braden recommended “aloof formality” toward dictatorships, including termination of financial assistance and military aid.
In October 1945 Eduardo Rodriguez Larreta, the foreign minister of Uruguay, proposed that Pan American nations consider taking multilateral action against any member states violating elementary human rights;
within a month James F. Byrnes, the U.S. secretary of state, gave his endorsement to this doctrine.
In the immediate postwar environment it was fascism, not communism, that was seen as the principal challenge to democracy in Latin
America-and to U.S. interests. Accordingly the United States focused
attention on South American countries with pro-Axis tendencies. Argentina, which joined the Allied cause only at the last minute, came in for
special criticism. United States diplomats were especially exercised over
the emergence of a nationalist, populist, working-class movement in that
country and spared no efforts to derail Juan Peron’s bid for the presidency in 1946. Briefly appointed as ambassador to Argentina, Spruille
Braden campaigned openly and avidly against Peron. According to peronista publicists, the ambassador’s antics offered Argentine voters with a
clear-cut choice: “Braden or Peron!” By a stunning 54 percent majority,
the electorate favored Peron.
Abruptly, the political cycle then turned from democracy toward authoritarian rule. Military coups took place in Peru, where Manuel Odria
seized power (and repressed the APRA party) in October 1948; in
Venezuela, where Marcos Perez Jimenez overturned a democratic government in November 1948; and in Cuba, where Fulgencio Batista reasserted control in 1952. In Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza took steps to
perpetuate his one-man rule. In Colombia, meanwhile, a state of siege in
November 1949 led to a decade-long closure of congress. By the end of
1954 there were only four democracies remaining in Latin America, even
by generous standards for classification: Uruguay, Costa Rica, Chile, and
Brazil.
The turn toward dictatorship primarily reflected political reactions by
Latin America’s dominant classes (and their military forces) against progressive movements for social reform. Changing U.S. policy appeared to
support this turn toward the right, however, especially as Washington
began to mount its assault on communist influence. In 1947 the United
States renewed licenses for arms sales to the ruthless regime of Rafael
Leonidas Trujillo Molina in the Dominican Republic; refused to provide
support (moral or otherwise) to a fledgling “Caribbean Legion” of exiled
democrats; and finally came to terms with Peronist Argentina. As James
Reston of the New York Times aptly noted that same year, “The administration is concentrating not on catching fascists but on stopping communists.” The wheel had come full circle.
Continuing its accommodation with right-wing authoritarians, the
State Department in 1948 granted prompt diplomatic recognition to
coupmasters Odria of Peru and Perez Jimenez of Venezuela (and, after
some hesitation, to Somoza of Nicaragua). A few years later, as though to
rub salt in the wounds of democratic opponents, the United States bestowed the Legion of Merit on both dictators, who had proclaimed them selves firm anticommunists. The bemedaling of Perez Jimenez took place
in a particularly ostentatious ceremony in Caracas in October 1954. It
was an occasion that Venezuelans would not forget.
As Cold War perceptions hardened in Washington, the United States
placed increasing emphasis on ties with Latin American military establishments. As President Eisenhower argued, apparently with reference to a
potential conventional war (rather than a nuclear exchange), it was important to strengthen armed forces throughout the region because “we
can’t defend South America if this Communist war starts.” By mid-1954
Congress approved $105 million in military aid for Latin America. In fact
the strategic benefits were slight, notwithstanding Eisenhower’s military
judgment, but the anticipated political benefits were substantial. As U.S.
Army Chief of Staff J. ton Collins explained, “The Latin American officers who work with us and some of whom come to this country and see
what we have and what we can do are frequently our most useful friends
in those countries.”
As was so often the case, Secretary of State John Foster Dulles had
the last word on this issue. “Do nothing to offend the dictators,” he instructed U.S. diplomats throughout the region; “they are the only people
we can depend on.” In the cause of anticommunism, the Eisenhower administration nurtured exceptionally close relations with Perez Jimenez,
Batista, and Trujillo. The consummate expression of this policy came in
1955, when Vice President Richard M. Nixon offered a toast to Batista
and compared him with Abraham Lincoln.
Cleaning House
The U.S. embrace of dictatorship in Latin America did not reflect a value
judgment in favor of authoritarianism over democracy. It represented,
instead, a cold-blooded calculation: that dictatorial regimes would be
more predictably and efficiently anticommunist than other types of governance, including democratic systems. This analysis went far beyond
Charles Bohlen’s 1945 expression of U.S. concern only with the
“politico-strategic” aspect of Latin America’s foreign policy, and plunged
Washington deep into the internal affairs of hemispheric states. As the
Cold War unfolded, the United States and military rulers in Latin
America joined together in a three-part crusade to stanch the influence of
communists through: (1) virtual elimination of Latin American communist parties, (2) assertion (or reassertion) of state control over labor
movements, and (3) diplomatic exclusion of the Soviet Union from the
Western Hemisphere.
The first assault declared the existence of communist parties to be
against the law. Throughout Latin America support for communist parties peaked in 1944-47, partly as a result of euphoria over the Allied victory and partly as a result of democratization. Overall membership
climbed to 375,000-some say as high as half a million-while many citi zens and voters cast ballots for communist candidates in local and national elections. In Chile, for instance, Gabriel Gonzalez Videla of the
Radical Party won the presidency in 1946 with the support of the Communist Party, which took 17 percent of the total vote in the next year’s
municipal elections; in Brazil, as well, the Partido Comunista Brasileiro
(PCB) won 10 percent of the vote in elections of 1945 and 1947. Communist parties polled an aggregate of well over a million votes to elect
their candidates to local, state, or national offices in more than half of the
twenty republics. In Cuba, Ecuador, and later in Chile, communists received cabinet positions and took active part in the formulation of national policies.
Upper-class strata and conservative groups in Latin America regarded
this trend with fear and distaste. In democratic and pseudodemocratic political arenas, they mounted challenges against communist parties for
leadership of labor and student organizations and for electoral support.
Most effective were two movements with working-class foundations of
their own: the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) in Mexico and
the Partido Laborista (later Peronista) in Argentina. In campaigns and
contests throughout the region, centrist and rightist groups denounced
communist parties for their identification with Stalin, their allegiance to
an international movement, and their abstract ideology. And with the advent of the Cold War, reactionary forces throughout the region found a
strong and willing ally in their confrontation with the left: the United
States.
As a result of this collaboration, there began a concerted campaign to
outlaw communist parties (many of which had been previously outlawed
in the 1920s and 1930s as well). In one country after another-in Brazil
in May 1947, in Chile in April 1948, and in Costa Rica in July 1948communist parties were declared to be against the law even though they
had played by the rules of the democratic game. Elected party members
were removed from the cabinet and from congress in Chile in 1947 and
from congress (as well as state and municipal assemblies) in Brazil in
1948. Before the end of 1948 the communist movement had again been
outlawed in eight nations of the region, including Nicaragua and Peru; in
Mexico the party was technically legal but unable to register for elections.
“By 1956,” as one historian has noted, “most Communists had been removed from public office, the party had been stricken from the electoral
lists, and Communist propaganda outlets had been closed or restricted in
fourteen of the twenty countries.”5
In the face of this onslaught, communist party membership underwent a sharp decline. Between 1947 and 1952 total enrollment fell
by nearly half-from nearly 400,000 to less than 200,000-and stayed
around that level for the remainder of the 1950s. This pattern was particularly evident in Brazil, Chile, Cuba, and Peru. The only major country
to show an increase in party membership was Argentina, where Communist Party stalwarts helped lead the fight against the Peronist dictator ship-only to find themselves under the grip of a military regime in
1955-58 (Table A3). For all practical purposes, communist parties had
ceased to exist in much of Latin America.
Emasculation of communist parties represented a clear triumph for
the United States. It also offered an opportunity for dictators in Latin
America: outlawing communist parties was a quick and certain way to
curry favor from Washington. By one count, there were a dozen authoritarian regimes in Latin America by 1954-and all but one (Peron’s Argentina) had banned communist parties. Prosecution of the Cold War
thus entailed not so much protection from extrahemispheric threats as
penetration into the domestic realm of national politics.
The crackdown extended to labor unions as well as to political parties. The industrial working class was presumably more receptive to leftist
appeals than other sectors of Latin American society (as Marx himself
would have predicted), and communist organizers sought to establish
their institutional base among the labor movement. Postwar governments
took stern measures in response: in Brazil, the Dutra administration introduced new legislation to bring labor under state control in 1946; in
Chile, the government helped break a crucial strike by coal miners in
1947; in Mexico, the ruling PRI crushed independent labor leaders and
installed pliant collaborators in the so-called charrazo of 1948. Similar
events took place in Cuba, Costa Rica, and elsewhere. Throughout the
region labor confederations in the postwar period were intervened, marginalized, disbanded, or placed under state control.
The United States joined this campaign directly, through the appointment of labor attaches to embassy staffs, and indirectly, through the
anticommunist efforts of the American Federation of Labor. Under the
leadership of George Meany and the remarkable Serafino Romualdi-
the gregarious, rotund, Italian-born deputy in charge of Latin American
operations-the AFL launched a militant campaign against the World
Federation of Trade Unions, regarded as a “communist front organization,” and its regional affiliate, the Confederation de Trabajadores de
America Latina (CTAL), established in 1938 under the leadership of
Mexican labor leader Vicente Lombardo Toledano, whom Romualdi denounced in 1943 as a “well-known follower of the Communist Party
line.” The CTAL represented a broad front of democratic forces throughout the region, especially during the war, and it accordingly accepted the
participation of communist groups. Bitterly denouncing the whole idea of
collaboration with communists, Romualdi firmly declared the CTAL to
be “the Communist front designed to control the Latin American labor
movement.”
In close collaboration with the U.S. government, and with the active
support of the State Department, Romualdi set out to organize an anticommunist movement that could challenge both the WFTU and the
CTAL. His tireless efforts came to fruition in January 1948 with the creation of the Confederacion Interamericana de Trabajadores (CIT). Under the presidency of Bernardo Ibanez of Chile, himself a Christian Democrat, the CIT affiliated itself with the International Conference of Free
Trade Unions (ICFTU) in 1949 and changed its own name in 1950 to
the Organizacion Regional Interamericana de Trabajadores (GRIT).
Drawing on strong international support, plus fervent backing from
Washington, ORIT and its local affiliates steadily took over the labor
movement in Latin America. In his memoirs, Romualdi narrates a tale of
unceasing struggle against communist influence among working-class
syndicates in Bolivia, El Salvador, Colombia, Guatemala, Chile, Brazil,
and Venezuela (Peru was out of danger, he reported, only because of the
anticommunist APRA party and the charismatic leadership of Victor Raul
Haya de la Torre). By the mid-1960s ORIT had reached 28 million workers grouped in fifty-two affiliated organizations located in thirty-nine republics, territories, and possessions of the hemisphere.
Training of labor leaders became a high priority. The early 1960s witnessed the creation of the American Institute of Free Labor Development
(AIFLD), which Romualdi directed from 1962 to 1965. Within a few short
years over 40,000 men and women attended AIFLD field program courses.
In 1966 ORIT and the ICFTU also founded the Inter-American Labor Institute in Cuernavaca, Mexico, under the presidency of Bernardo Ibanez.
The goal, of course, was to assure that future generations of labor leaders
would resist the blandishments of communist publicists and agitators.
Yet another component of hemispheric Cold War strategy was diplomatic isolation of the USSR. The idea was to seal the Americas off from
Soviet influence and thus to prevent its contamination by Marxist
thought or Leninist agents. In a sense, a diplomatic cordon around Latin
America would amount to reassertion of the Monroe Doctrine.
Prior to World War II, in fact, only three Latin American nations
granted de jure recognition to Soviet Union: Mexico (1924), which then
severed relations again in 1930; Uruguay (1926), which ruptured relations
in 1935 partly at the behest of Brazil; and Colombia (1935), with Bogota
the only host to a Soviet diplomatic mission anywhere in the region until
1942. At the wartime urging of the United States, however, thirteen nations recognized the USSR between 1942 and 1945. By 1946 the Soviet
Union enjoyed diplomatic relations with fifteen out of twenty Latin American republics, with resident missions in eight countries of the region.
Then came the Cold War. By the mid-1950s all but three of the fifteen governments that had recognized the Soviet government severed relations with the USSR. “In each case,” as analyst Rollie Poppino has said,
“a specific grievance was cited as justification for the action taken. In most
instances, however, the decision to cut formal ties with the Communist
power reflected broad anti-communist policies being adopted by the
Latin American governments, at least in part to win favor with the United
States.”6 Brazil and Chile broke relations in 1947; Colombia followed
suit in 1948; Venezuela (under Perez Jimenez) and Cuba (under Batista)
did the same in 1952. Guatemala became a special case in 1954.
Economic ties with the Soviet bloc were no stronger than political
links. Latin America’s trade with communist countries surpassed the paltry sum of $200 million (out of a total of $15 billion) for the first time in
1954; by 1962 the value of trade had risen to $1 billion, still only 5 percent of the total of $20 billion. In commerce, as well as in diplomacy, the
United States for the most part succeeded in keeping the Soviet Union
out of the Western Hemisphere. Cold War policies insulated the Americas
from alien, dangerous, subversive Soviet influence.
Intervention in Guatemala
United States tactics of supporting anticommunist regimes, suppressing
leftist parties, containing labor movements, and restricting diplomatic relations were remarkably successful. During the post-World War II period
Latin America was, for the most part, safely and securely aligned with the
United States. Still to be determined, however, was the U.S. reaction to
installation of an allegedly “communist” government within the Western
Hemisphere. How would Washington respond?
The answer unfolded in the otherwise unlikely context of Guatemala,
where Colonel Jacobo Arbenz Guzman won the presidency through free
elections in 1950. A center-left reformist, Arbenz proclaimed three objectives for his administration: “to convert our country from a dependent
nation with a semi-colonial economy to an economically independent
country; to convert Guatemala from a backward country with a predominantly feudal economy into a modern capitalist state; and to make this
transformation in a way that will raise the standard of living of the great
mass of our people to the highest level.” Key to this program was agrarian
reform. Enacted in June 1952, the bill empowered the government to expropriate only uncultivated portions of large plantations. All lands taken
were to be paid for in twenty-five-year bonds bearing a 3 percent interest
rate, and the valuation of land was to be determined according to its taxable worth as of May 1952. During its eighteen months of operation the
agrarian reform distributed 1.5 million acres to some 100,000 families.
The expropriations included 1,700 acres owned by Arbenz himself, who
had become a landowner through the dowry of his wife.
Almost immediately, Arbenz and the agrarian reform ran into implacable opposition from the United Fruit Company and from the U.S.
government. For its banana production La frutera held enormous tracts
of land in Guatemala, 85 percent of which was unused-or, as the company maintained, held in reserve against natural catastrophes. And in calculating tax obligations, UFCO consistently undervalued its holdings. On
the basis of tax declarations, the Guatemalan government in 1953 offered
UFCO $627,572 in bonds in compensation for a seized portion of property; on behalf of the company, the U.S. State Department countered
with a demand for $15,854,849!
Washington was deeply involved. Some of the ties were personal. Sec retary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother, CIA director Allen
Dulles, both came from a New York law firm with close links to United
Fruit. The company’s Washington lobbyist was Thomas Corcoran, prominent lawyer who was on close terms with President Eisenhower’s trusted
aide and undersecretary of state, Walter Bedell Smith, himself once interested in a management position with UFCO.
More important than personal ties, however, was the anticommunist
crusade. UFCO publicists and the Dulles brothers accused the Arbenz
regime of being “soft” on communism, branding it a threat to U.S. security and to the free world at large. They cultivated fears that defeat in
Guatemala might lead to a Soviet takeover of the Panama Canal. They
warned that if Guatemala fell, then the rest of Central America might go
as well. But the principal issue was agrarian reform. Such writers as Daniel
James in The New Leader warned that communists would use the program as a stepping-stone to gain control of Guatemala. (“The battle of
the Western Hemisphere has begun,” he wrote at one point. “We enter
upon a new era in our history. We face, for the first time, the prospect of
continuous struggle against Communism on a hemispheric scale. . . .
Such is the ultimate meaning of Moscow’s first attempt to conquer an
American country, Guatemala.”) Whatever Arbenz may have intended,
from the U.S. viewpoint he was merely a “stooge” for the Russians.
Calls for action quickly mounted. In March 1953, just two months
after Eisenhower’s inauguration, now-retired diplomat Spruille Braden
challenged the new administration to take decisive action. In a blunt defiance of logic he insisted that the suppression of communism, “even by
force, in an American country, by one or more of the other republics,
would not constitute an intervention in the internal affairs of the former.”
Concluded Braden: “It is necessary to fight fire with fire!”
United States policy soon began to take shape. President Eisenhower
warned Guatemalan foreign minister Guillermo Toriello that because the
United States was “determined to block the international communist
conspiracy,” he “couldn’t help a government which was openly playing
ball with communists.” The newly dispatched U.S. ambassador, John
Peurifoy, offered a succinct impression of his first meeting with Arbenz:
“If the president is not a Communist he will certainly do until one comes
along.”
At an OAS meeting at Caracas in March 1954 John Foster Dulles
pressed delegates to support a resolution that “the domination or control
of the political institutions of any American state by the international
communist movement . . . would constitute a threat” to the entire
hemisphere and would require “appropriate action in accordance with existing treaties.” His reference was to the Rio Treaty of 1947, which permitted collective action if two-thirds of OAS members concurred that the
political independence of any member state was threatened by “an aggression which was not an armed attack.” As Dulles explained, the United
States wanted to extend “the Monroe Doctrine to include the concept of outlawing foreign ideologies in the American Republics.” And as Assistant Secretary John Moors Cabot observed, there was no need to demonstrate conscious intent to serve the Soviet cause: “It is our position that
anyone traveling in the interests of communism is in fact part of the
whole subversive program of international communism.”
Latin American diplomats immediately realized that the U.S. resolution sought to establish a pretext for action against Guatemala. After two
weeks of intense debate, the resolution carried by a vote of 17-1-2 (only
Guatemala was opposed; Mexico and Argentina abstained). Its impact
was greatly softened by an amendment that called for OAS consultations
instead of immediate action. Thus the resolution lost its teeth. In summary, opined long-time diplomat Louis Halle, the message of Caracas was
“that there was more fear of U.S. interventionism than of Guatemalan
communism.”
Even so, the Arbenz government concluded that the United States
was preparing to intervene. The regime cracked down on domestic opposition and turned to Eastern Europe for small arms, which were en route
by May. Meanwhile the U.S. government was demanding, in increasingly
blunt language, compensation for U.S. property in Guatemala, meaning,
of course, United Fruit.
Unable to obtain OAS sponsorship for direct intervention, the Eisenhower administration turned to covert action. The CIA organized an
exile force under an obscure renegade Guatemalan colonel named Carlos
Castillo Armas. A rebel column of several hundred men was assembled
across the border in neighboring Honduras. They were equipped and directed by the CIA, which set up and operated a rebel radio station and
provided a few World War II fighter planes to strafe Guatemala City.
Under attack by these planes and convinced that a large army was approaching the capital, Arbenz lost his nerve and gave up. Upon leaving
office, however, he delivered a blistering resignation speech: “The United
Fruit Company, in collaboration with the governing circles of the United
States,” Arbenz proclaimed, “is responsible for what is happening to
us….”
In whose name have they carried out these barbaric acts? What is their banner? We know very well. They have used the pretext of anticommunism. The
truth is very different. The truth is to be found in the financial interests of
the fruit company and the other U.S. monopolies which have invested great
amounts of money in Latin America and fear that the example of Guatemala
would be followed by other Latin American countries.
The president disappeared behind the walls of the Mexican embassy, and
the Castillo Armas rebels rolled into the capital virtually unopposed.
The Eisenhower administration exulted in its Guatemalan triumph.
In July the White House held a reception for top CIA officials, to whom
the president offered his gratitude: “Thanks to all of you. You’ve averted
a Soviet beachhead in our hemisphere.” The redoubtable George Meany, ever the anticommunist, expressed satisfaction in similar language: “The
American Federation of Labor rejoices over the downfall of the Communist-controlled regime in Guatemala, brought about by the refusal of the
Army to serve any longer a Government that had betrayed the democratic
aspirations of the people and had transformed the country into a beachhead of Soviet Russia in the Western Hemisphere.”
In Latin America, however, the U.S. action sparked dozens of protests. In Mexico, students and workers marched against the United States
at rallies in marketplaces and the university. In Honduras, students held a
demonstration to denounce “Wall St. interests.” In Panama, students
staged a twenty-four-hour strike. In Cuba, demonstrators hurled stones at
offices of United Press International and the North American Electric
Company. In Argentina, the national congress passed a resolution backing
Arbenz; in Uruguay, the congress enacted a resolution condemning the
U.S. “aggression”; and in Chile, the Chamber of Deputies voted 34-15
to denounce the U.S. operation. While the Guatemalan intervention provoked nationalist and antiimperialist outcries throughout the region, the
U.S. mainstream weekly Life magazine offered its own interpretation of
the protests: “World communism was efficiently using the Guatemalan
show to strike a blow at the U.S. . . . in the form of Red-run anti-U.S.
demonstrations which loudly supported Guatemala and waved the bloody
shirt of Yankee imperialism from Mexico City to Santiago.”
Under a temporary military junta, the new government of Guatemala
reversed the expropriation of United Fruit lands and, even more brazenly,
wiped out the banana workers’ union. Summoned to help reorganize the
Guatemalan labor movement, even the hard-line Serafino Romualdi
could barely contain his consternation, reporting that “it is generally accepted that the decree dissolving the banana workers’ union and the railway workers’ union . . . was issued at the insistent request of the American companies,” United Fruit and its subsidiary International Railways
of Central America. Within a year, union membership dropped from
100,000 to 27,000.
In addition the regime established a National Committee of Defense Against Communism, followed by a Preventive Penal Against
Communism-establishing the death penalty for “crimes” that could be
construed as “sabotage,” including union activities. The National Committee had the right to place citizens under arrest without charges for up
to six months; those under suspicion could not hold public office or own
radios. By November 1954, only months after the coup, the National
Committee had the names of 72,000 persons on file; its professed goal
was 200,000. And as part of its ideological crusade, the Guatemalan junta
commanded the banning and burning of such “subversive” books as Les
Miserables, by the same Victor Hugo whose death had caused such
mourning among intellectuals in fin de siecle Buenos Aires, as well as novels by the Nobel Prize-winning author Miguel Angel Asturias.
On September 1, 1954 the junta stepped down and Castillo Armas as sumed power alone. To legitimize his authority he staged a mock plebiscite
the following month: 485,531 favored his continuation as president, 393
were opposed, 655 had no answer. He then reestablished ties with the
Catholic Church, brought Guatemala back into the OAS, and lifted prohibitions on foreign oil concessions. Eventually assassinated in 1957, Castillo
Armas left a dolorous legacy. As later described by one of the CIA operatives who took part in the Arbenz overthrow, “Castillo Armas was a bad
president, tolerating corruption throughout his government and kowtowing to the United Fruit Company more than to his own people. The
United States could have prevented this with the vigorous exercise of
diplomatic pressure on Castillo Armas to assure that he pursued social reform for the many rather than venal satisfaction for a few. Instead, Washington breathed a collective sigh of relief and turned to other problems.”
Actually, U.S. indifference would not last for long. As the Cold War
spread throughout Latin America, Guatemala plunged into a 36-year-long
civil war. This became a murderous time and place. Military governments
joined with the historic oligarchy to wage unremitting war on peasants,
indigenous communities, political opponents, and guerrilla groups. Paramilitary death squads, most notorously Mano Blanca (“White Hand”)
and Ojo por Ojo (“An Eye for an Eye”), sowed a reign of merciless terror.
In a country with less than 4 million inhabitants (as of 1960), violence
and repression led to the death or disappearance of more than 200,000
citizens-over 90 percent at the hands of pro-government forces. In avid
pursuit of its anticommunist goals (plus a retroactive justification for its
campaign against Arbenz), the United States threw its wholehearted support behind the right-wing authoritarians. The degree of this collaboration would become apparent only in the 1990s, especially after a Guatemalan truth commission released a massive 3,500-page report that
painstakingly documented the source and extent of human-rights abuse.
During a state visit in March 1999 President Bill Clinton went so far as to
offer a public apology: “For the United States,” the president said, “it is
important that I state clearly that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was
wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake.” He was
greeted with heartfelt applause.
The Nixon Trip
Through the mid-1950s the Eisenhower administration continued to regard its Latin American policy with self-satisfaction. In late 1957 John
Foster Dulles assured a group of journalists that “we see no likelihood at
the present time of communism getting into control of the political institutions of any of the American Republics.” And in February 1958 Allen
Dulles of the CIA admitted to Congress that there might be “soft points”
within the region, but nonetheless concluded that communism in Latin
America was not “a situation to be frightened of as an overall problem.”
It was with confidence, then, that Vice President Nixon undertook a
tour through South America in May 1958. Originally planned as a courtesy call at the inauguration of newly elected Arturo Frondizi in Argentina, the trip gradually expanded into a two-and-a-half-week tour of
eight countries. On “a bleak and drizzly day,” Nixon later recalled, he and
Patricia Nixon left Washington’s National Airport on what was shaping
up as a tedious and time-consuming exercise in diplomatic protocol.
To his evident surprise, Nixon met an unruly reception. In Uruguay,
the first stop on his tour, the vice president noticed a mild demonstration
against U.S. imperialism. A defiant Nixon then went straight to the university, the hotbed of leftist ideology, and engaged a crowd of students in
spirited but friendly debate. In Argentina, too, Nixon spoke to labor
groups and to university students-engaging in a confrontation with Gregorio Selser, “a well-known Communist newspaper writer” (actually,
Selser was a widely respected social scientist)-and emphasizing the danger of communist threats to the region. In neighboring Paraguay, still in
the iron grip of General Alfredo Stroessner, Nixon saluted the government for its “strong opposition . . . to Communism.” So far so good.
In Peru things started to change. The night before a scheduled visit
to the University of San Marcos, in Lima, Nixon received warnings of
possible violence. “It was apparent that the Communists, after the failure
of their efforts to disrupt my tour in Uruguay, Argentina, or Bolivia, had
decided to make an all-out effort to embarrass me and the United States
at San Marcos University, an institution so well known throughout Latin
America that whatever happened there would be front-page news everywhere.” As Nixon decided whether to keep his appointment, a crowd
kept up a steady chant outside his hotel: Fuera Nixon, Fuera Nixon,
Fuera Nixon. Approaching the students at San Marcos, Nixon claimed to
pick out the leaders-“the usual case-hardened, cold-eyed Communist
operatives”-and then retreated when the crowd began throwing stones.
Back at his hotel he encountered another angry mob, and “one of the
most notorious Communist agitators in Lima” spit directly in his face.
Having directly challenged the demonstrators, Nixon would look back
upon the visit to Lima as a personal triumph.
Ecuador and Colombia provided pleasant interludes, and then Nixon
headed for Caracas. Only five months before, the detested right-wing
dictator of Venezuela, Marcos Perez Jimenez-recipient of the Legion
of Merit from the Eisenhower administration for his anticommunist
efforts-had fled the country and, together with his notorious chief of
secret police, found exile in the United States. En route to Caracas Nixon
heard rumors of plans for huge anti-American manifestations and even an
assassination plot: as Nixon would later remember, “the Communist high
command in South America had made a high-level decision to regain the
ground they had lost in Lima by mounting a massive pay-off demonstration in Caracas.”
Venezuelans lost no time in expressing their anger over U.S. policy. A taunting, jeering crowd greeted the Nixons at the airport. The motorcade
to the city ran into a blockade, and a mob surged toward the Nixons’ automobile. Rocks filled the air, and, as Nixon graphically recalled, “The
spit was flying so fast that the driver turned on his windshield wipers.”
The crowd rocked the car, threatening to turn it over, but then the driver
managed to escape. Heading for the U.S. embassy, Nixon remembered,
“I felt as though I had come as close as anyone could get, and still remain
alive, to a firsthand demonstration of the ruthlessness, fanaticism and determination of the enemy we face in the world struggle.”
Astonished by these expressions of popular hostility, Washington
immediately denounced the anti-Nixon demonstrations as the result of
communist agitation. Nixon himself expressed “no doubt that the riots
were Communist-planned, Communist-led, and Communist-controlled.”
Senator Homer Capehart, Republican of Indiana, proclaimed that the vice
president’s reception was “a 100 percent Russian penetration.” Bourke
Hickenlooper, Republican senator from Iowa, said that it revealed a
“world-wide pattern of Communist stimulus.” Concurred Serafino Romualdi, leader of the anticommunist OBIT: the anti-Nixon demonstrations “clearly indicated a prearranged plan of unquestionable Communist
organization and direction.”
Parameters for Policy
The Nixon tour prompted an immediate (but incomplete) reassessment
of U.S. policy toward Latin America. Nixon himself suggested that Washington distance itself from authoritarian rulers, explicitly recommending a
“formal handshake for dictators; an embraso [sic!] for leaders in freedom.”
By February 1959 Eisenhower appeared to accept the spirit of this idea,
despite resistance from John Foster Dulles, approving gestures of “special
encouragement” toward representative governments. The following year
Eisenhower even endorsed a plan to persuade the ruthless Rafael Trujillo
to step down from the presidency of the Dominican Republic.
Opposition to dictatorship was, however, equivocal at most. In the
midst of a discussion about military assistance, for which the United States
sent approximately $400 million during the 1950s, Christian Herter,
Dulles’ successor as secretary of state, framed the key rhetorical question:
“Is the country on our side?” In view of communist threats, he asserted, “a
more urgent value-security and survival-must take precedence over an
absolute commitment to the promotion of democracy.” Unless they were
becoming fragile, unpopular, or inconvenient, anticommunist dictators
could expect continuing support from Washington.
A second reassessment concerned economic assistance. In the wake
of his South American tour, Nixon declared: “We must develop an economic program for Latin America which is distinctively its own. . . .
There must be a new program for economic progress for the hemisphere.” The proposal met with time-honored skepticism throughout the U.S. government. As one frustrated embassy official blurted out in 1959,
looking back on the $129 million in economic assistance that Washington
had granted to Bolivia since 1953: “We don’t have a damn thing to show
for it. We’re wasting money. The only solution to Bolivia’s problems is to
abolish Bolivia.”
With cautious hesitation, Eisenhower moved ahead. In 1959 the
United States supported the creation of an Inter-American Development
Bank (IDB), thus realizing one of the early visions for a Pan American
community. And in July 1960 the government announced in Bogota a
Social Progress Trust Fund with $500 million earmarked for health, education, housing, and land reform throughout the region, to be administered through the new IDB. By the end of his term, observers noted,
Eisenhower had forged a two-pronged policy toward Latin America: the
1954 Declaration of Caracas, with its renunciation of Marxism, and the
1960 Act of Bogota, with its assault on poverty and underdevelopment.
At long last, the United States was seeking to eradicate what it took to be
the underlying causes as well as the political expressions of communism in
the hemisphere.
Even so, the Eisenhower policy left deep scars on the inter-American
relationship. In Guatemala, the Cold War had prompted the United
States to launch its first military intervention in the region since the
1920s. Most Latin American democrats regarded the Arbenz overthrow
as ill-considered, intrusive, and counterproductive. “As you know,” a saddened President Jose Figueres of Costa Rica wrote to Adolf A. Berle in
1954, “reaction throughout Latin America has been bad. Intervention is
considered a worse evil than communism, especially since intervention is
never applied to foster a democratic cause.”
The U.S. can win wars, but the question is can we win revolutions.
Henry Cabot Lodge (1959)
There are three possibilities in descending order of preference: a decent
democratic regime, a continuation of the Trujillo regime, or a Castro
regime. We ought to aim at the first but we really cannot renounce the
second until we are sure that we can avoid the third.
John F. Kennedy (1961)
The Cold War precipitated an incessant search by the United States for allies in Latin America. Geopolitical dimensions of the U.S.-Soviet competition obliged both of the superpowers to seek allies, friends, and clients
throughout the world, especially in unaligned parts of the globe. Enlistment of new partners not only increased the relative strength of each side,
but, if the inscription could be portrayed as voluntary, it also testified to
the presumed superiority of the rival social systems. The extension of economic assistance by Washington offered an excellent means for making
friends, through the dispensation of material benefits, and a promising
method for weakening foes, since the alleviation of poverty would presumably undercut the social base of communist movements. From the
1960s through the 1980s Washington threw its support behind anticommunist regimes in other ways, welcoming the advent of military regimes
in Brazil and Argentina and aligning itself with right-wing dictatorships
throughout the hemisphere.
The 1960s marked the explicit extension and adaptation of the U.S.
strategy of “containment” to the Third World. (According to this hierar chical lexicon, the “first” world contained industrialized capitalist democracies, principally Western Europe and the United States; the “second”
world comprised the communist bloc, especially the USSR and Eastern
Europe; the “third” world was a residual category, embracing all countries not included in the first or second worlds.)’ Despite this subjective (and rather presumptuous) classification, it was apparent that Third
World countries shared common characteristics. In economic terms, they
were poor, disadvantaged, and dependent; many, with small populations,
lacked both the consumer market and the human resource bases vital for
self-sustaining development. In political terms, especially in Asia and
Africa, many had been European colonies or protectorates prior to World
War II, and they earned their independence through a variety of means:
often through peaceful negotiation, but in some cases, like India, after
decades of resistance, and in others, like Vietnam, after armed struggle.
Consequently they were profoundly suspicious of the Western “first”
world, they were fiercely proud of their sovereignty, and they were intent
on improving their socioeconomic circumstance. During the Cold War,
with its struggle for geopolitical and ideological supremacy, these countries also marked a critical arena for U.S.-Soviet rivalry.
Countries of the Third World began to seek common political cause
in the mid-1950s, with the foundation of the Non-Aligned Movement,
and soon found strength in numbers: in time, more than 100 members of
the movement could dominate international forums like the UN General
Assembly. In the 1960s they joined together in a quest for economic development, with the establishment of the United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the creation of the Group of
77 (G-77). In the 1970s a few of its members, partners in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), managed to use their
control over strategic commodities to extract major economic concessions from the industrialized world. From the viewpoint of the United
States, such assertions of power were made all the more dangerous by the
prevalence of political instability, which appeared to invite left-wing subversion. As Secretary of State George Shultz would say in 1983: “The
fault line of global instability runs strongly across the continents of the
Third World. This instability is inimical to our security.”
Despite sharp contrasts with Asia and Africa, Latin America clearly belonged to this emergent Third World. With the conspicuous exception of
small island nations in the Caribbean, most of Latin America had achieved
political independence in the 1820s. With the painful exception of Haiti,
most countries of the region were considerably more prosperous-or less
poor-than sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. And as a result of their
proximity to the United States, leaders of Latin America would find it difficult to claim neutrality in the Cold War and/or to play the two superpowers off against each other. Nonetheless Latin America pertained to this heterogeneous category-if only through a process of elimination, since it
could not be regarded as part of the first or second worlds-and regional spokesmen would frequently assert solidarity with other “less developed”
areas around the globe. By the outbreak of the Cold War, Latin America
had already endured a long and instructive relationship with the United
States; as a result of lessons learned from this experience, Latin America
could claim leadership among newly independent nations in the developing areas.
The rise of the Third World presented the United States with a pressing challenge. What kind of policy should Washington use for dealing
with these emergent areas? And how should it apply to Latin America?
The need was urgent and, in light of the Cold War, the stakes seemed
very high. What was needed was a doctrine, a general strategy for the promotion of U.S. interests in the face of communist threats.
Social Science, Ideology, and Foreign Policy
The formulation of a long-term strategy emerged from an unusual convergence of academic talent and political purpose. Drawing heavily on a
group of “action intellectuals” based primarily at Harvard and MIT, the
Kennedy administration developed and implemented a doctrine for U.S.
policy toward the Third World. Eventually known as “modernization
theory,” the argument rested on complex logic and dubious premises.
From time to time it also revealed overtly partisan purposes (one of its
charter documents, Walt Rostow’s famous essay on “The Stages of Economic Growth,” carried the subtitle “An Anti-Communist Manifesto”).
Espoused by some of the nation’s most prominent social scientists, including Gabriel Almond, Max Millikan, Lucian Pye, and Samuel P. Huntington, modernization theory provided a programmatic basis and intellectual rationale for U.S. actions throughout the 1960s and much of the
1970s.
An underlying assumption was that the diffusion of political democracy throughout the developing world would serve and protect U.S. national interests. If governments were freely elected, it was believed, they
would support the United States in its titanic struggle with the Soviet
Union. Given an opportunity to express an opinion, in other words, citizens around the world would necessarily and inevitably choose to join
and support the “free world.” The idea that people might voluntarily
choose socialist or communist rule seemed utterly preposterous. Communism, everyone knew, could spread only by conquest, conspiracy, or subversion. Democratic elections would lead to democratic governments that
would support the U.S. side in the Cold War.
The operative question then became: how to promote political
democracy? Modernization theory found ready and congenial answers in
processes of economic and social development. In its most essential form,
the argument posited simple causal connections. Economic development
would create middle-class sectors that would in turn espouse political
democracy, either as a tactical means of gaining power or as an expression of enlightened values (this distinction did not seem to matter at the time).
Rather than provoking class struggle between the proletariat and bourgeoisie, as Marxists held, industrial development would lead to reform,
transformation, and social harmony. The greater the level of economic
modernization, in other words, the greater the likelihood of democratic
politics. According to David E. Bell, head of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in the 1960s, there existed an “overwhelmingly” positive historical relationship between economic growth
and political democracy, a correlation that bore optimistic implications for
the Third World: “while there is no guarantee that improved political institutions will follow in any automatic way,” Bell asserted, “it seems clear
that without economic progress the chances for strengthening democratic
processes in the less developed countries would be greatly diminished.”
Even in this understated formulation, economic development was a necessary if not sufficient condition for the emergence of democracy.
Economic development was therefore extremely desirable, in Washington’s eyes, and it could be promoted by U.S. foreign aid. During the
1940s and 1950s the Marshall Plan had comprised a crucial element in
U.S. efforts to contain communist advances in post-World War II Europe. In the 1960s, analysts thought, foreign assistance could perform a
similar function throughout the Third World. Of course there was a
world of difference between stimulating a recovery of formerly advanced
European economies and achieving the development of never-industrialized societies, but this discrepancy seemed trivial at the time. Central to
the prevailing model of structural change was the idea, associated with
Walt Rostow, of an economic “take-off.” Countries underwent uniform
stages of economic growth, according to this theory, and fulfillment of
sufficient conditions propelled countries through a “take-off” phase into
self-sustaining growth and continuing development. Foreign aid would
not have to go on forever. Its task was to help countries reach the moment of take-off. Once that was done, the process of development would
become more or less automatic, and Washington could apply its resources
to other needy causes or nations.
Unlike classical economists (and conservatives in the Eisenhower administration), Kennedy’s “new frontiersmen” insisted that governmental
planning was essential to achieve self-sustaining development. Unfettered
forces of the market could lead to economic distortions and social imbalances. Instead, governments would have to design and implement policies
to ensure that economic modernization would alleviate social inequities
and benefit popular masses. Thus modernization called for comprehensive country programming, not just blueprints for capital projects or injections of private capital. The state, as well as the market, would play a
central role in the promotion of development. As a result, U.S. foreign
aid came to rely on government-to-government agreements.
As formulated by “the best and the brightest” recruits in Kennedy’s
administration, the modernization paradigm quickly seized Washington. It enjoyed academic respectability, it offered bright hopes for the future,
and it established clear guidelines for policy. Intellectually, it issued a rebuttal to Leninist notions about imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism; politically, it envisioned a convergence of interests between the
United States and the Third World. Promote economic development and
you promote democracy-which, by definition, would advance U.S. interests in the struggle with the Soviets.
Modernization theory was fraught with ambiguity. Perhaps the most
telling failure, evident in academic writings as well as official declarations,
was its inadequate definition of political “progress” or “development” or
“modernization.” At times the concept referred to democratization-that
is, to the progressive expansion of meaningful participation in the quest
for political power by growing sectors of the population. At other times,
and with frequency, it referred to stability-that is, to the continued
preservation of political regimes and the imposition of law and order.
These were not only differing notions. They could also be in direct conflict with each other.
As appropriated by the U.S. government, modernization theory was at
bottom an antirevolutionary doctrine. It stressed the benefits of guided,
gradual, evolutionary change. It emphasized the need for peaceful reform,
rather than violent upheaval. It called upon Third World governments to
accept and promote change to assure their own survival. As John F.
Kennedy declared on one occasion: “Those who make peaceful revolution
impossible make violent revolution inevitable.” According to rigorous definition the idea of “peaceful revolution” represented a contradiction in
terms, but Kennedy nonetheless made his point: gradual reform would
provide the antidote to radical revolution. “If the only alternatives for the
people of Latin America are the status quo and communism,” Kennedy
once insisted, “then they will inevitably choose communism.”
Revolution itself was held to be a bad thing. It would upset the social
order, destroy political institutions, unleash nationalist sentiments, and
invite left-wing takeovers. These concerns gave rise to a widespread conviction, virtually an article of faith by the 1960s, that Latin America stood
on the brink of massive revolution (it was “one minute to midnight,” in
the hackneyed language of the time). The prospect of social upheaval
contained two forms of political danger. One was that revolutionary leaders would turn out to be Marxists, dedicated agents or pliant “puppets”
of the Soviet Union who would align their governments with the communist bloc. Another was that revolutionaries might be well-meaning
idealists but they would provoke political instability, thus opening their
movements and their governments to communist subversion. Either way,
uprisings by the “have-nots” seemed threatening to the United States.
In addition to opposing revolution, U.S. strategy made strenuous efforts to prevent the rise of any leftist movements. Under Kennedy, Washington tended to favor reformist governments of the political center (or
center-left); under Nixon, Washington tended to favor status quo govern ments of the political center-right (or extreme right). But Kennedy and
Nixon agreed on one thing: implacable opposition to the left and to radical tendencies. Prevention of revolution and suppression of the left would
provide time and opportunity for processes of socioeconomic modernization to unfold, for countries to attain the stage of economic take-off and
self-sustaining change. Thus it was Kennedy who urged the development
of counterinsurgency strategies within the Pentagon, and it was Kennedy,
as well, who established the antiguerrilla unit known as the Green Berets.
The ultimate application of modernization theory, in conjunction
with the doctrine of containment, came in Vietnam. As Vice President
Lyndon B. Johnson reported after a trip to the region in 1961: “The
basic decision in Southeast Asia is here. We must decide whether to help
these countries to the best of our ability or throw in the towel in the area
and pull back our defenses to San Francisco and a `Fortress America’ concept.” Proclaimed presidential adviser Eugene Rostow in 1964, as the
U.S. Congress approved the fateful Gulf of Tonkin resolution: “It is on
this spot that we have to break the liberation war-Chinese type. It we
don’t break it here we shall have to face it again in Thailand, Venezuela,
elsewhere. Vietnam is a clear testing ground for our policy in the world.”
The Third World, analysts claimed time and again, was like a row of
dominoes; if Vietnam fell, according to elementary laws of physics, others
would necessarily collapse. The U.S. commitment in Vietnam swelled
from 1,400 advisers in 1961 to 541,500 troops in 1969. By 1967 there
had been more bombardments in Vietnam than in the European theater
during World War II; by 1970, more conventional bombs had been
dropped over Vietnam than in the prior history of humankind. Over
58,000 U.S. soldiers were killed, and millions of Vietnamese were killed
or maimed. In 1975 the United States finally withdrew the last of its
troops in defeat. Ho Chi Minh, nationalist and communist, had achieved
his nation’s liberation.
Elsewhere in the developing world, U.S. policy evolved according to
a two-track strategy: strict opposition to leftist movements, with paramilitary or even military means, and long-term promotion of socioeconomic
development and of centrist reform. The idea was relatively clear: foreign
aid would lead to economic development, which led to political stability,
which led to eventual democracy. The anticipated results were uniformly
benign: more democracy, less communism, greater national independence and greater political stability. All these outcomes would be good
for the United States.
Foundations for Development:
The Alliance for Progress
Latin America’s economic relations with the United States turned disadvantageous in years just after World War II. As wartime suppliers of pricecontrolled commodities to the Allied cause, Latin countries accumulated $3.4 billion of credits-only to discover that the United States would
promptly raise prices on its capital-goods exports. “In effect,” as historian
Steven Rabe has written, “Latin America made a $3-billion non-interest
bearing loan to the United States and could not collect on the principal.”2
Nor was there much assistance in the offing for the region. Quashing any
hopes for a Pan American “Marshall Plan,” Secretary of State George Marshall told delegates at the 1948 founding meeting of the Organization of
American States that “it is beyond the capacity of the United States government itself to finance more than a small portion of the vast development
needed. The capital required through the years must come from private
sources, both domestic and foreign. . . . As the experience of the United
States has shown, progress can be achieved best through individual effort
and the use of private resources.” A year later his successor, Dean Acheson,
lectured to Latin Americans that the United States “has been built by private initiative, and it remains a land of private initiative.” Industrialization,
continued Acheson, was not necessarily a sign of positive development, and
countries should not look to Washington for support: “I cannot stress too
strongly that progress will come most rapidly in countries that help themselves vigorously.” The emphasis should be on trade, not aid, and on the
benefits of direct foreign investment.
In exchange for its solidarity with the United States in World War II,
Latin America obtained scant material recognition. Between 1945 and
1952, the era of the Marshall Plan, the entire region received less economic
aid from the United States than did Belgium and Luxembourg. The Mutual Defense Assistance Act of 1949 authorized expenditures of $1.3 billion; not a penny went to Latin America. Between 1948 and 1958, under
Truman and Eisenhower, Latin America received only 2.4 percent of U.S.
foreign economic aid. Asked why Washington was paying such short shrift
to the region, veteran diplomat Louis Halle responded with customary
candor: “The United States no longer desperately needs Latin America.”
The fallout from Richard Nixon’s 1958 tour of South America began
a shift in priorities. In January 1956 Juscelino Kubitschek, the new president of Brazil, had attempted to persuade Eisenhower that the “way to
defeat leftist totalitarianism” was “to combat poverty wherever it may be
encountered.” Two weeks after the Caracas episode, in 1958, Kubitschek
followed up with a letter to Eisenhower, later explaining to U.S. officials
that “the problem of underdevelopment will have to be solved if Latin
American nations are to be able more effectively to resist subversion and
serve the Western cause.” For these reasons, the Brazilian proposed a
twenty-year development program with $40 billion in economic assistance, to be known as Operation Pan America. Nixon himself advocated
“a new program for economic progress in the hemisphere” after his tour
of South America, but Eisenhower took only halting steps.
The 1959 triumph of the Fidelista movement in Cuba created a new
sense of urgency. From the outset, long before Fidel Castro declared himself to be a Marxist-Leninist, the United States regarded his regime with apprehension and disdain. Castro’s nationalist rhetoric, his confiscation of
U.S.-held companies, and program for land reform-reminiscent of the
Arbenz plan in Guatemala-provoked a predictably negative response in
U.S. policy circles. Compounded by fears of the “communist threat,” the
Cuban Revolution became utterly intolerable. To Washington, it was
both an insult and a challenge.
Forming the Alliance
It was in response to the Cuban Revolution that newly elected President
John F. Kennedy, an ardent and eloquent Cold Warrior, would launch a
bold and new initiative. At a glittering White House reception in March
1961, less than two months after his inauguration, Kennedy observed to
Latin American diplomats that “we confront the same forces which have
imperiled America throughout its history-the alien forces which once
again seek to impose the despotisms of the Old World on the people of
the New.” To meet this challenge Kennedy proposed a ten-year effort, an
Alliance for Progress or Alianza para [el] Progreso,3 that would promote
economic growth, social development, and political democracy. “We propose to complete the revolution of the Americas,” Kennedy proclaimed,
to build a hemisphere where all men can hope for a suitable standard of living, and all can live out their lives in freedom and dignity. To achieve this
goal political freedom must accompany material progress. . . . Let us once
again transform the American continent into a vast crucible of revolutionary
ideas and efforts-a tribute to the power of the creative energies of free men
and women, an example to all the world that liberty and progress walk hand
in hand. Let us once again awaken our American revolution until it guides
the struggle of people everywhere-not with an imperialism of force or fear,
but the rule of courage and freedom and hope for the future of man.
It was a stirring address, appearing to mark a dramatic and fundamental
reorientation of Washington’s policy toward Latin America.
At a historic meeting in August 1961 at Punta del Este, Uruguay,
representatives from the United States and Latin America (minus Cuba)
gathered to put Kennedy’s sweeping vision into practice. A charter established a series of goals for the decade of the sixties:
• Raising per capita income “to attain, at the earliest possible date,
levels of income capable of assuring self-sustaining development”with minimum growth rate targets of 2.5 percent per capita per year.
• Social reform, especially focused upon “unjust structures of land
tenure and use.”
• Diversification of trade-by broadening the range of export products and overseas markets.
• Industrialization and increased employment.
• Enhanced education, including the elimination of adult illiteracy
by 1970.
• Price stability, so as to avoid either inflation or deflation.
By accelerating development through the 1960s, the Alliance for Progress
would bring Latin America through its “take-off’ stage for economic
growth. This would yield social and political benefits both for the region
and for the United States.
Delegates at Punta del Este also designed a series of measures for
achieving these lofty goals. First was a requirement for participating countries to draw up comprehensive plans for national development. These
plans were, moreover, to be submitted for approval or amendment by an
inter-American board of experts (“the nine wise men,” as they promptly
came to be known, Walt Rostow among them). This procedure represented a major step for state activism in economic affairs. Said Felipe
Pazos, director of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin
America (ECLA/CEPAL): “Planning represented a break with the mentality of an earlier generation which accepted Latin American poverty as a
natural consequence of Latin inferiority.”
The second measure was an insistence on redistributive reform.
Changes in tax codes should demand “more from those who have most.”
Even more important was a call for land reform. This proved to be a crucial issue. In the early 1960s nearly half the population of Latin America
lived in the countryside; as a general rule, 5 to 10 percent of the people
owned 70 to 90 percent of the land. Imbued with symbolic and cultural
value, land represented a key to subsistence, prosperity, and stability; a
significant change in ownership patterns would necessarily entail a major
social transformation. As political scientist Tony Smith has pointed out,
the United States attempted comparable changes only in postwar Germany and in Japan. “Only in countries occupied after World War II had
the United States tried anything so bold.”4
Third was a U.S. commitment for sustained and large-scale economic
assistance. The ambitions of the alliance were to channel $20 billion in
foreign assistance within a single decade to Latin America, “with priority
to the relatively less developed countries.” Of this amount $10 billion was
to come from official sources and $10 billion from private sources; the expectation was that this infusion would trigger additional investments by
Latin American governments and businesspeople. In the August 1961 declaration from Punta del Este, Washington agreed to shoulder its responsibility, promising to provide “a major part of the minimum of $20 billion, principally in public funds, which Latin America will require . . . in
order to supplement its own efforts.” The Kennedy administration was
committing the United States to a multiyear, multibillion-dollar effort in
the Americas. This was utterly unprecedented.
From Washington’s point of view the ultimate purpose of the Alliance for Progress was explicitly political. As stated in the Declaration to the
Peoples of America, which accompanied the Charter of Punta del Este, a
principal goal of the alliance was “to improve and strengthen democratic
institutions through application of the principle of self-determination by
the people.” It was furthermore a “basic principle” that “free men working
through the institutions of representative democracy can best satisfy man’s aspirations, including those for work, home and land, health and schools.
No system can guarantee true progress unless it affirms the dignity of the
individual which is the foundation of our civilization.” In keeping with the
tenets of modernization theory, socioeconomic development in Latin
America would improve and strengthen political-democracy..
As was so often the case, President Kennedy offered the most clearcut explanation of U.S. motivations. “Latin America is seething with discontent and unrest,” he observed. “We must act to relieve large-scale distress immediately if free institutions are to be given a chance to work out
long-term solutions.” The point, in other words, was to bolster reformist
democratic regimes and to forestall revolutionary threats. Such centrist
parties as Accion Democratica in Venezuela and Christian Democracy in
Chile offered desirable models for political reform and leadership. Support for the center would prevent the rise of the left.
The Alliance for Progress led to an immediate and substantial increase in U.S. aid to Latin America. Bilateral economic assistance nearly
tripled between FY 1960 and FY 1961, thereafter climbing to well over
$1 billion in the mid-1960s (Figure 3). Under Kennedy and Johnson,
Latin America received nearly 18 percent of total U.S. aid, compared with
just 3 percent under Truman and 9 percent under Eisenhower. According
to one U.S. official, the United States supplied $1.4 billion per year to
Latin America from June 1962 through June 1967; when private investments and other international sources are included, the total for new investments rose to $3.3 billion per year.5 United States bilateral aid
dropped sharply in the late 1960s, especially after Richard Nixon won the
presidential election of 1968, but the cumulative amount of assistance
was nonetheless substantial. According to another calculation, the total amount of economic aid during the decade of the alliance came to $22.3
billion.6
Figure 3. U.S. bilateral aid to Latin America, 1946-1974. [ Source: Data in Samuel
L. Baily, The United States and the Development of South America, 1945-1975 (New
York: Franklin Watts, 1976), p. 74.]
Yet these impressive increases in gross transfers did not necessarily
mean that Latin America was receiving major net transfers of resources for
investment and development. During the 1960s Latin American countries had to pay significant amounts to first world countries, especially to
the United States, for service on accumulated debt. In addition, foreign
enterprises in Latin America tended to repatriate profits back to their
home country-especially, again, the United States-and profit remittances frequently exceeded quantities of new investment. As William T.
Dentzer, deputy U.S. ambassador to the OAS, explained to the House
Committee on Foreign Affairs in March 1969: “High gross official capital
flows to Latin America under the Alliance have been necessary to help
Latin America deal with the problems she had accumulated previously.
When you look at net capital flows and their economic effect, and after all
due credit is given to the U.S. effort to step up support to Latin America,
one sees that not that much money has been put into Latin America after
all. “7
Accomplishments and Limitations
Nonetheless, the 1960s witnessed a marked acceleration in economic
growth for Latin America. Regional output expanded by 2.4 percent per
capita per annum during the 1960s, nearly matching the alliance goal of
2.5 percent, and per capita growth was on a steady rise-reaching 2.7
percent in the latter half of the decade, and climbing to 3.8 percent in
1970-74. Compared with 2.1 percent in the 1950s, this growth was a
major achievement. It stemmed from several factors: the successful implementation of strategies for “import-substitution industrialization,” the
continuing strength of major trading markets (especially in the United
States), and the stimulation of private investments. Expansion of the industrial sector, especially in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico, proved to be
the driving force behind the region’s growth. Economic performance varied widely across nations: Mexico made strong and steady progress, Brazil
and Colombia made significant gains during the second half of the 1960s,
Argentina and Venezuela held their ground, while Chile and Peru slipped
downward; comparable variation took place within Central America,
where Costa Rica moved upward and El Salvador and Nicaragua, after a
very promising start, slumped toward the end of the decade (Table A4).
Overall, seven countries actually reached the target of 2.5 percent per
capita per year, twelve nations fell short of the goal, and two countries,
Haiti and Uruguay, actually suffered declines in GDP per capita. Foreign
assistance under the Alliance for Progress played a relatively minor part in
this picture. But with regard to regional rates of per capita growth, according to its own criteria, the alliance nonetheless proclaimed the nearfulfillment of a central goal.
Social reform presented a more discouraging picture. It proved impossible to eliminate adult illiteracy within the decade, as alliance planners
projected, but access to secondary and higher levels of education showed
a notable increase; in some countries, the number of people going on to
higher education doubled or even tripled. Housing projects expanded but
could not keep up with population growth, and overcrowding continued
to proliferate in urban slums. Provision of potable water and sewage systems became the focus of major efforts, especially in urban areas, but with
modest impacts on general welfare. Perhaps the most poignant indicator
of public health concerned infant mortality, which the alliance vowed to
reduce by one-half within five years. Infant mortality rates declined nearly
everywhere (with the exception of Guatemala), but not a single country
was able to reach its target under the alliance (Table A5).
The most intractable issue was, predictably, agrarian reform. As former OAS official Ronald Scheman has written, “The agricultural sector
was the problem child of the Alliance.”s Of more than 15 million peasant
families living in Latin America at the beginning of the 1960s, fewer than
1 million benefited from any kind of land reform policy. Determined to
maintain their base of power, traditional elites mounted effective resistance to land-reform programs. The ideal of social reform also came into
conflict with another of the alliance’s declared goals, the increasing of
production. When push came to shove, efficiency triumphed over justice.
Requiem for Failed Expectations
The Alliance for Progress represented an earnest and high-minded attempt by the United States to make friends in Latin America-quite literally, in the sense of creating the friends, as well as forming the friendships.
There were several basic reasons for its eventual failure. First, perhaps, was
the modesty in levels of economic aid. A ten-year injection of $20 billion
in a single world region sounded like a massive enterprise, which it was in
many respects, but it also amounted to approximately $10 per capita per
year. There were limits to what this could achieve.
Second, planners misread social facts of the region. They confidently
assumed that Latin America’s emerging middle classes would uphold
democracy as a matter of moral principle and idealistic conviction. This
presumption turned out to be wrong. For in Latin America, the so-called
middle classes-those whose lifestyle bore essential resemblance to that of
middle classes in the United States-belonged to the upper strata of society. They found very little in common with workers in the cities or peasants in the countryside. Lacking in ideological conviction, opportunist at
times, Latin America’s middle sectors tended to identify their interests
with the upper classes. Revealingly enough, it was the middle classes that
provided moral and political support for military rulers in Brazil, Argentina, and elsewhere. They did not comply with the prescriptions of the
Alliance for Progress.
Third, designers of the alliance misunderstood the relationship between social change and political conflict. It was their anticipation that
transformation of Latin American society could come about within a context of political stability (it was their idea, as one analyst has noted, that
“all good things go together”). The reality, in contrast, was that upperclass sectors would fight to maintain their privilege and power. This determination was especially evident with regard to land reform, which explicitly called for a redistribution of resources from top to bottom.
Ultimately, Washington lost its nerve and backed off from its promises.
Agrarian reform, the U.S. government believed, might stir up radical sentiments and play into the hands of communist subversives. Better to leave
things as they were.
Finally, alliance planners assumed that social and political change
would enhance the strength of a reformist center. This expectation was
mistaken for at least two reasons. First, Washington overestimated the significance and ubiquity of reformist forces in Latin America. Accion
Democratica in Venezuela and Christian Democracy in Chile were viewed
as attractive models, but these types were relatively rare; there was nothing quite comparable in Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, or most other countries of the region. Second, social change and conflict did not usually
benefit moderate reformist tendencies. These processes often led to a political polarization that fortified extremes of left and right, rather than the
center, thus weakening the prospects for gradual reform. They also undermined a central conviction, especially apparent during the Kennedy
era, that the United States would have clear and simple political choices:
Washington could circumscribe the left, contain the right, and nurture an
enlightened center. Unhappily, this option turned out not always to be
available.
Holding the Line: Dictators as Friends
The most striking failure of the Alliance for Progress occurred within the
political realm. Instead of promoting and consolidating reformist civilian
rule, the 1960s witnessed a rash of military coups throughout the region.
There were six golpes in 1962-63 alone, within the early years of the alliance: in Argentina (March 1962), Peru (July 1962), Guatemala (March
1963), Ecuador (July 1963), the Dominican Republic (September 1963),
and Honduras (October 1963). Subsequent overthrows led to the installation of new styles and longer-term dictatorial regimes that sought to
bring about fundamental transformations in society rather than mediation
of disputes through short-term periods of intervention. Military coups in
Brazil (April 1964) and Argentina (June 1966) imposed repressive and
far-reaching machineries that became archetypes for what came to be
known as “bureaucratic-authoritarian” regimes; another coup in Peru
(October 1968) installed military leadership with a nationalist outlook
and a reformist social agenda. By the end of 1968 dictators were holding sway in Argentina, Brazil, Peru, Paraguay, and most of Central America;
Bolivia and Ecuador were controlled by the military; and Mexico remained under the rule of its unique, dominant-party, civilian-led, but unmistakably authoritarian regime.
United States reaction to these developments evolved over time.
John F. Kennedy took particular and somewhat personal umbrage at the
overthrow of centrist reformers, precisely the type of leadership that he
hoped to nurture and support with alliance programs. Washington accordingly mounted a strong diplomatic offensive in response to the 1962
coup in Peru, where the military intervened to prevent an electoral victory by Victor Raul Haya de la Torre and his Aprista party. Kennedy
suspended diplomatic relations, cut off economic aid, ordered technical
personnel not to go on their jobs-and considered suspension of the Peruvian sugar quota. As the president announced in a news conference:
“We are anxious to see a return to constitutional forms in Peru. . . . We
feel that this hemisphere can only be secure with free and democratic governments.” Washington received precious little support for its position
from Latin American governments-Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico
protested against the “intervention,” while the Chilean foreign minister
warned the United States against being “more royalist than the king”but the Peruvian junta departed from power after supervising another
election in 1963. This time, however, the Apristas were not permitted
to win.
Similarly, Kennedy expressed considerable displeasure with the overthrow of Ramon Villeda Morales, a moderate civilian who was elected to
the presidency of Honduras in 1957. In keeping with the mandate of the
Alliance for Progress (and, ironically, with the legacy of Guatemala’s Jacobo Arbenz), Villeda Morales designed and promoted a project for land
reform. His proposal inspired the wrath of traditional aristocrats as well as
the armed forces, of course, and they ousted him from office in October
1963. Kennedy had sharp words for the new ruling junta, but took no
meaningful action.
In reaction to this rash of coups, the U.S. State Department began to
soften its opposition to military rule in Latin America. On this subject Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs Edward M. Martin
composed a key policy statement in October 1963: “We all have respect
for motherhood and abhor sin. We may observe, however, that while
motherhood has prospered, so has sin. In an increasingly nationalistic
world of sovereign states, a U.S. frown doesn’t deter others from committing what we consider to be political sins.” Military coups had serious
negative consequences. In Martin’s assessment, they “thwart the will of
the people, destroy political stability and the growth of the tradition of respect for democratic constitutions, and nurture communist opposition to
their tyranny.” Yet the United States could not prevent them from occurring. Under these circumstances, he continued, the U.S. government
should engage the ensuing authoritarian regimes in positive ways and en courage the military “to assume the more constructive peacetime role of
maintaining internal security and working on civic action programs.”
We must use our leverage to keep these new regimes as liberal and considerate of the welfare of the people as possible. We must support and strengthen
the civilian components against military influences and press for new elections as soon as possible so that these countries once again may experience
the benefits of democratic legitimacy.
“I fear,” he wrote in conclusion,
there are some who will accuse me of having written an apologia for coups. I
have not. They are to be fought with all the means we have available. Rather
I am insisting . . . that democracy is a living thing which must have
time and soil and sunlight in which to grow. We must do all we can to create
these favorable conditions, and we can and have done much. But we cannot
simply create the plant and give it to them; it must spring from seeds planted
in indigenous soil.
Seeking middle ground between “impatient idealists” and “defeatist cynics,” Martin attempted to define a realistic and pragmatic approach for
U.S. policy. Within two and a half years after its lofty proclamation, the
Alliance for Progress was obliged to tolerate military dictatorship as a persisting fact of political life in Latin America.
The U.S. stance took a sharp turn toward the right after Kennedy’s
assassination in November 1963. From his own personal experiences
in Mexico and Texas, Lyndon B. Johnson concluded that JFK’s policy
toward Latin America was “a thorough-going mess.” Skeptical about
prospects for social reform and disdainful of political idealists, Johnson
was adamant about the need to avoid a “second Cuba” in the hemisphere. A victory for communism in Brazil, he thought, would confront
the United States with “another China.” It was time for the United States
to get tough.
Abruptly dismissing Martin and Teodoro Moscoso, chief administrator of the Alliance for Progress, Johnson united both State Department
and AID functions in the person of Thomas C. Mann, assistant secretary
of state for economic affairs in the last years of the Eisenhower administration and ambassador to Mexico. A self-styled “country lawyer” from
southwest Texas, Mann embodied Johnson’s approach toward the region.
(“I know my Latinos,” Mann was once reported to have said. “They understand only two things-a buck in the pocket and a kick in the ass.”) In
March 1964 he convoked a three-day meeting of U.S. ambassadors to
Latin America and, in an off-the-record statement, announced the administration’s new line. What subsequently became known as the Mann Doctrine propounded four basic objectives: (1) promotion of economic
growth with absolute neutrality on questions of social reform, (2) protection of U.S. private investments, (3) display of no preference, through aid
or other means, for representative democratic institutions, and (4) opposition to communism. In effect, Mann discarded cherished ideas of the Alliance for Progress, especially its insistence on social reform and political democracy. Indeed, Mann expressed no political or moral reservations
about cooperation with military governments. In his view, so long as a
government was not communist-controlled, or in danger of becoming so,
it would be acceptable to the United States.9
The Mann Doctrine found virtually immediate application in Brazil,
where military officers overthrew the center-left government of Joao
Goulart on April 1, 1964. Concerned about the possibility of a sharp leftward turn by the wavering Goulart, the U.S. government was fully aware
of the military conspiracy and even offered assistance (which was never
needed). Within hours of the coup, President Johnson dispatched a
congratulatory telegram expressing “warmest good wishes” to the titular
president of the new regime, stating that “the American people have
watched with anxiety the political and economic difficulties through
which your great nation has been passing, and have admired the resolute
will of the Brazilian community to resolve these difficulties within a
framework of constitutional democracy and without civil strife.” Johnson’s message thus adopted the transparently specious argument that
Goulart had voluntarily “vacated” the presidency of Brazil, so the constitutional requirements for succession were maintained. Plainly enough,
the U.S. government was establishing a rationale to justify the coup.
Even after the regime began to reveal its brutal side, U.S. Ambassador Lincoln Gordon continued to extoll its political virtues. In a speech
on May 5, at the Higher War College of Rio de Janeiro, Gordon proclaimed that the Brazilian change of government “can indeed be included
along with the Marshall Plan proposal, the Berlin Blockade, the defeat of
Communist aggression in Korea, and the resolution of the missile crisis in
Cuba as one of the major turning points in world history in the middle of
the twentieth century.” As Brazil adopted a strongly pro-U.S. foreign
policy, Washington showed its appreciation in tangible ways. Between
1964 and 1968 Brazil received more than $1.5 billion in military and
economic aid, nearly 25 percent of the U.S. total for Latin America.
Encouraged by the denouement in Brazil, Mann offered a public description of the new U.S. policy in a commencement address at Notre
Dame in June 1964. The United States sought to strengthen democratic
government and to discourage military intervention, he said, and Washington would promote the return to democracy in cases where coups
occurred. But the practice of democracy, Mann continued, was not just
a question of civilian rule. It also entailed respect for rights of expression and organization. As a result, Mann contended, the United States
should:
encourage democracy in a quiet, unpublicized way and on . . . [a] day-today basis; broaden the scope of collective action in the hemisphere; [make] a
careful evaluation of each case of the use of force to overthrow a government; if as a result of this evaluation it is decided not to recognize a regime, it
should be made clear that nonrecognition is tied to a breach in established international conduct; and if it is decided to recognize a government, it
should be made clear that recognition in no way constitutes approval.
In translation: the United States would offer diplomatic recognition to
military regimes that were not in flagrant defiance of minimal standards of
international conduct. Washington would henceforth deal with dictators
on a practical, pragmatic, and realistic basis.
Mann stipulated one key exception to this policy of nonintervention.
“The question of our relations with Communist regimes in this hemisphere is, of course, a separate subject. . . . It raises separate questions,
such as our inherent right of self-defense and measures, under existing
treaties, to deal with situations which threaten the peace and security of
the hemisphere.” While the United States would not take action against
dictatorships of the right, it reserved the option of deposing left-wing
regimes. Intervention would thus be allowable in order to forestall communist rule.
The U.S. posture toward military regimes thenceforth oscillated between passive acceptance and outright endorsement. Washington saw little convincing reason to denounce or oppose authoritarian rule. In June
1966, perhaps emboldened by the Brazilian example, the Argentine
armed forces ousted Arturo Illia, installed a general in the presidency,
abolished legislative bodies, outlawed political parties, expressed abhorrence for international communism, and embarked on a conservative economic program; the Johnson administration warmly welcomed the new
government. In the meantime the United States approved loans to the
tyrannical government of Francois (“Papa Doc”) Duvalier in Haiti, continued to support the Somoza dynasty in Nicaragua, and cooperated with
the autocratic Stroessner regime in Paraguay.
Washington’s acceptance of dictatorship became even more explicit
under Richard M. Nixon, one of whose first acts as president after the
1968 election was to commission political rival Nelson Rockefeller to
conduct a study of U.S.-Latin American relations. Rockefeller’s expansive
entourage made four trips through the region, conferred with more than
3,000 leaders, endured frequent anti-U.S. demonstrations, and submitted
its final report in August 1969. “The United States has allowed the special relationship it has historically maintained with the other nations of the
Western Hemisphere to deteriorate badly,” stated the report. This deterioration stemmed from several causes, in the commission’s view, including “narrow special interests,” competing foreign-policy priorities, “wellintentioned but unrealistic rhetoric,” and a “paternalistic attitude. . . .
The United States has talked about partnership,” in the view of the commission, “but it has not truly practiced it.” Partly as a consequence, Latin
America presented a disturbing picture. Expectations were rising but
population growth, urbanization, unemployment, nationalism, radicalism, and anti-U.S. sentiment were commonplace: “The seeds of nihilism
and anarchy are spreading throughout the hemisphere.” Emerging forces for social change included women (“by and large, a middle-of-the-road
influence”) and the Roman Catholic Church, although, like young people in general, the idealistic priesthood was “vulnerable to subversive
penetration.” Indeed, the potential for Castroite and Marxist infiltration
was powerful: “Clearly, the opinion in the United States that communism
is no longer a serious factor in the Western Hemisphere is thoroughly
wrong.”
In the face of these challenges, the Rockefeller group found one
strong and positive influence: the Latin American military. As the commission proclaimed, “a new type of military man is coming to the fore
and often becoming a major force for constructive social change in the
American republics. Motivated by increasing impatience with corruption,
inefficiency, and a stagnant political order, the new military man is prepared to adapt his authoritarian tradition to the goals of social and economic progress.” Implicitly referring to the maverick regime in Peru, the
report went on to observe that military governments “have an intrinsic
ideological unreliability and a vulnerability to extreme nationalism. They
can go in almost any doctrinal direction.” The question, therefore, was
whether they would favor the United States-“Or will they become radicalized, statist, and anti-U.S.?” To prevent this undesirable outcome, the
commission called for more training of Latin American officers in U.S.-
sponsored programs, more contact and cooperation, and more types of
military assistance. As a general proposition, the commission opined, it
made much more sense to collaborate with Latin American military rulers
“than to abandon or insult them because we are conditioned by arbitrary
ideological stereotypes.”
In sum, the Rockefeller commission argued that the United States
should be willing to cooperate with authoritarian regimes throughout the
region. Despite the virtues of democracy, the commission said, Washington should engage in pragmatic partnership: “We must recognize that the
specific forms or processes by which each nation moves toward a pluralistic system will vary with its own traditions and situation. We know that
we, in the United States, cannot determine the internal political structure
of any other nation, except by example.” Even more to the point: “The
United States cannot allow disagreements with the form or the domestic
policies of other American governments to jeopardize its basic objective
of working with and for their people to our mutual benefit.”
Cooperation with dictators would therefore continue to be a basic element in U.S. policy toward Latin America in years to come. The Nixon administration formed close relations with the ruling generals in Brazil, and
in 1973, as will be recounted in chapter 7, Nixon warmly welcomed a military takeover in Chile. In 1976 President Gerald Ford granted prompt
recognition to an antidemocratic junta in Argentina. In the meantime
Washington worked together with dictatorial regimes throughout most of
Central America.
A partial exception to this rule came under Jimmy Carter, the only Democrat to occupy the White House during the remainder of the Cold
War. Driven by the president’s moral convictions and spurred by an activist Congress, the U.S. government launched a major campaign on behalf of human rights that led to the denial of economic and military assistance to regimes in Guatemala, Chile, and Argentina that were flagrantly
abusing their citizens. And in 1979, as a Sandinista rebellion spread
throughout Nicaragua, the Carter administration withdrew its support
from Anastasio Somoza and allowed his tyrannical regime to come to an
end. It is to be observed, however, that Carter was willing to overlook
human-rights violations in countries outside the hemisphere that were
viewed as crucial to U.S. security, mostly notably Iran under the shah and
the Philippines under the Marcos family. To this degree, even the Carter
administration ratified a long-standing principle in U.S. Cold War policy:
to oppose dictators in Latin America only if they (1) became a serious embarrassment to Washington, (2) ran a risk of being overthrown by radical
or “communist” movements, or (3) both. In such cases the United States
would typically seek to persuade the ruler to cede power to a trusted centrist, who (with support from Washington) could prevent a victory by
communists. The idea was not so much that dictatorship was inherently
bad; it was fear that the alternative would be much worse.
Carter’s policy on human rights, cautious as it was, came in for critical excoriation. In a well-known essay entitled “Dictatorships and Double
Standards,” first published in 1979, neoliberal analyst Jeane Kirkpatrick
denounced the Carter administration for withdrawing support from the
shah of Iran and Somoza in the face of popular challenges. Because of a
naive belief in the feasibility of democratic politics, Kirkpatrick charged,
the Carter team allowed both countries to fall under the grip of hostile,
totalitarian movements. In her own words:
The rise of violent opposition in Iran and Nicaragua set in motion a succession of events which bore a suggestive resemblance to one another and a suggestive similarity to our behavior in China before the fall of Chiang Kai-shek,
in Cuba before the triumph of Castro, in certain crucial periods of the Vietnam War, and more recently, in Angola. In each of these periods, the American effort to impose liberalization and democratization on a government
confronted with violent internal opposition not only failed, but actually
assisted the coming to power of new regimes in which ordinary people
enjoy fewer freedoms and less personal security than under the previous
autocracy-regimes, moreover, hostile to American interests and policies.’0
In both contexts, misconceived American policies had brought about precisely the situations they sought to avoid.
The practical implication of Kirkpatrick’s argument was clear: the
United States should support traditional authoritarian regimes so long as
they promote the cause of anticommunism. The consequence of Carter’s
high-minded mistakes was, she proclaimed in yet another essay, a serious
threat to U.S. security: “The deterioration of the U.S. position in the
hemisphere has already created serious vulnerabilities where none previ ously existed, and threatens now to confront this country with the unprecedented need to defend itself against a ring of Soviet bases on its
southern flanks from Cuba to Central America.” Once again, eternal vigilance would be the price of liberty. In the name of national security,
Washington should back its friends and challenge its true foes.
The Search for Political Allies
During the Cold War, the cultivation of ideological allegiance was an essential part of the geopolitical calculus between the rival superpowers. In
its quest for advantage, the United States repeatedly stressed the claim
that its alliances were based on voluntary preference, in contrast to the
forced “captivity” imposed by the Soviet Union. This led Washington to
entice prospective allies with material and other incentives, especially economic aid. And in consideration of hard-headed realpolitik, it seemed essential for the United States to assure itself of support from Latin American governments. Not only did the region pose a potential security threat
because of geographical proximity. Historically, too, it had become a U.S.
sphere of influence, a putative “backyard” for the United States. If Washington proved unable to maintain friendly relations within its own neighborhood, according to this perspective, it would have difficulty keeping
partners in other parts of the world.
As a result, the United States showed a tendency to vacillate in its
dealings with dictatorial regimes in Latin America. For a brief time
around the end of World War II, Washington expressed strong opposition
to authoritarian rule in the Americas. In the late 1940s and throughout
the 1950s Presidents Truman and (especially) Eisenhower showed conspicuous willingness to consort with dictatorial governments so long as
they were anticommunist. In the early 1960s President Kennedy and his
cadre of academic advisers attempted to nurture, and even to create, reformist alternatives to dictatorship and (especially) leftist revolution;
in the 1970s President Carter took a similar though less activist stance.
In the late 1960s, and then again by the 1980s, Washington ceased its
quest for democratic alternatives and supported dictatorial rulers who
(1) expressed anticommunist beliefs and (2) backed U.S. foreign policy.
Throughout this entire period, the overriding consideration in Washington’s outlook was the strengthening of its position vis-a-vis the Soviet
Union. Whatever their qualities as statesmen, rulers of Latin America
were needed as allies and friends.
As construed by the Kennedy brain trusters, the Alliance for Progress
represented an extremely ambitious attempt by the United States to cultivate democracy and to nurture democratic leaders in Latin America. The
governing assumption, fortified by prevailing social science theory, was
that economic development would lead to social change that would result
in political democratization-and foreign aid could set the whole process
in motion. The envisioned result would be moderate, reformist, elected politicians who, by their action and example, would discredit the temptations of socialist revolution and strengthen the legitimacy of U.S. leadership throughout the hemisphere.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, world events took their toll on
U.S. policy. The U.S.-Soviet rivalry intruded directly (but briefly) in the
hemisphere in October 1962, when the Kennedy administration faced
down the Khrushchev regime during the Cuban missile crisis. And the
Cold War expanded and intensified during the course of the 1960s and
1970s, most notably in Vietnam. Latin America lost relative importance
for the United States. The lofty goals of the Alliance for Progress seemed
less urgent as well as unattainable.
Eventually, the United States came to embrace, or at least to accept,
dictatorial governments throughout the region. In keeping with the timehonored maxim of international politics-an enemy of my enemy is my
friend-the United States worked closely with authoritarian rulers who
proclaimed themselves to be anticommunist. In the long run it was the
perceived exigency of global issues, rather than a concern with Latin
America, that gave shape to U.S. policy.
I don’t see why we should have to stand by and let a countrygo
communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.
Henry Kissinger (1970)
The enduring test for Americans is not whether we have the will to use
[our] power but the skill to avoid having to.
New York Times (1983)
If the Soviet Union can aid and abet subversion in our hemisphere,
then the United States has a legal right and a moral duty to help resist
it. This is not only in our strategic interest; it is morally right.
Ronald Reagan (1984)
Throughout the Cold War the United States considered the installation
in Latin America of radical regimes-socialist, Marxist-Leninist, or “leftist” in any way-to be utterly intolerable. Any such development would
represent an advance for the communist cause and, in the zero-sum calculus of the time, a vital loss for the West. In view of Soviet strategy, with its
presumed domination of clients and puppets, the presence of a socialist
government would represent an intrusion of extrahemispheric power
within the Americas-and violate the Monroe Doctrine. Acceptance of
this outcome could weaken the credibility of the United States as the
leader of the West and as a rival for the USSR. In the eyes of Cold Warriors, the consolidation of any left-wing regime in the Western Hemisphere would have dire and dangerous implications for U.S. national security and for the global distribution of power.
It was therefore essential to resist this possibility. As shown in chapters
5 and 6, the United States developed strategies in the 1950s and 1960s to
prevent such unfavorable denouements. On occasion, however, Washington found itself face-to-face with what it regarded as an unacceptably “leftist” regime within the hemisphere. In such cases U.S. policymakers felt
obliged to take action-which meant overthrowing the government in
question. Exigencies of the Cold War thus led the United States to adopt a
tacit but consistent policy of political intervention in Latin America.
American officials routinely attempted to justify each episode as singular,
exceptional, and nonprecedential, as in the case of Guatemala in 1954, but
U.S. interventions occurred with relentless regularity-from Cuba in 1961
to the Dominican Republic in 1965 to Chile in 1973 to Grenada in 1983
and to Central America throughout the 1980s.
Cuba, Castro, and the Bay of Pigs
The Cuban Revolution confronted the United States with the gravestand most enduring-challenge of the Cold War period. Its economy dependent on sugar exports, its society controlled by a narrow-minded elite,
its politics governed by disorder and venality, its history marked by U.S.
interference and intervention, Cuba was preparing for upheaval. In
March 1952 Fulgencio Batista seized power in order to stave off likely
electoral defeat, an action that prompted Fidel Castro, a would-be candidate for a congressional seat, to launch a paramilitary assault against
the dictatorship on July 26, 1953. Captured and imprisoned, Castro delivered his famous “History Will Absolve Me” speech, and was released
as part of a general amnesty in 1955. Exiled to Mexico, he organized
an invasion of Cuba; routed in his abortive December 1956 landing, Castro withdrew to the hills and developed a guerrilla force (the 26th of
July Movement, named in commemoration of the 1953 attack). In July
1957 Castro released his “Sierra Maestra Manifesto,” focusing largely on
questions of political reform, and his movement steadily gained popular support. Through 1958 the Batista government came apart at the
seams; on January 1, 1959 Fidel Castro and his M-26 took the reins of
power.
Washington had greeted early signs of unrest against the Batista dictatorship with proclamations of support for the ruler. Arthur Gardner,
Eisenhower’s first ambassador to the island, expressed his opinion that “I
don’t think we ever had a better friend [than Fulgencio Batista] . . . he
was doing an amazing job.” And Gardner’s successor, Earl E. T. Smith,
explained solidarity with Batista in classic Cold War terms: “Our two nations I feel will always be the closest of friends and allies in the common
fight against communism.”
As the Batista regime began to weaken, Washington opted in the late
1950s for an alternative course: batistianismo sin Batista-keeping the
regime intact but changing topmost personnel. William Wieland, head of the Caribbean desk at the State Department, later explained the U.S.
predicament:
Our problem . . . was a desire to see an effective solution to Cuba’s political
strife that would ensure a democratic transition and the support of the bulk of
the Cuban people [and] that would have eliminated any major threat from the
violence which was at that time being waged by the Castro forces. . . .
Castro was at that time still a small figure in the cast. … We were not thinking of dictating on the type of government.
The principal goal was prevention of a Fidelista triumph. As Wieland
would recall: “Fidel Castro is surrounded by commies. I don’t know
whether he himself is a communist. . . . [But] I am certain he is subject
to communist influences.”
United States analysts were busy hatching conspiracies right up to the
collapse of the Batista regime. William Pawley, a tough-minded businessman and ex-ambassador, remembered a meeting in Miami in November
1958: “What do you do about this Cuba problem? . . . Everything we
were doing was wrong. I told them that we should now try to save the
peace, see if we can go down there and get Batista to capitulate to a caretaker unfriendly to him but satisfactory to us, whom we could immediately recognize and give military assistance to in order that Fidel Castro
should not come to power.” The following month a policy group at the
Pentagon concluded that Castro was “not the right man” for Cuba-or
for the United States-but failed to produce any clear alternatives. Soon
it would be too late.
After Fidel Castro made his triumphant entrance into Havana, Washington greeted his government with undisguised hostility. As anti-Castro
emigres flocked to Florida and other destinations, the American media
provided negative coverage to “popular” trials and executions of batistiano collaborators. When Castro visited the United States in April 1959,
Eisenhower refused to meet with him-and delegated Vice President
Nixon to be an intentionally uncongenial host. Government officials
railed loudly against Cuba’s agrarian reform, which entailed the confiscation (albeit with compensation) of U.S.-owned sugar estates. As hostility
mounted in Washington, Castro turned toward the Soviet Union. In early
1960 Cuba signed an economic agreement with the USSR, which
promised to purchase 450,000 tons of sugar in 1960 and a million tons
per year for the following four years-and to lend 100 million pounds
sterling to the struggling young government.
Eisenhower promptly reacted. In March 1960 the president endorsed
a CIA recommendation for “A Program of Covert Action against the
Castro Regime.” The plan included four points: strengthening the political opposition outside Cuba, launching “a powerful propaganda offensive,” conducting espionage within Cuba, and promoting “the development of a paramilitary force outside of Cuba for future guerrilla action.”
By October 1960 the CIA was training 400-500 Cubans (in Guatemala) for the purpose of overthrowing Castro’s government. Shortly thereafter
the Eisenhower administration decided to prepare for an outright invasion, instead of merely supporting a guerrilla underground, and in November 1960 the program began training a paramilitary force of about
1,000 attackers. Estimates that an invasion force of this size would be sufficient rested on either (or both) of two assumptions: first, the arrival of
rebels would draw instant and widespread support from the Cuban populace; second, an amphibious landing would establish an opportunity for
U.S. armed forces to intervene.
The U.S. presidential campaign of 1960 further intensified America’s
resolve, as candidates Nixon and Kennedy both sought to demonstrate
anti-Castro credentials. (In this Kennedy had the upper hand, since Vice
President Nixon was unable to reveal government plans then under way.)
Activity continued through the November election, with a new training
program for guerrillas undertaken in Louisiana. The Cuban exile organization was broadened to include moderate opponents of Castro as well as the
prestigious figure of Jose Miro Cardona, who had served as Fidel’s first premier in 1959-60. In January 1961, just as JFK was about to assume the
presidency, Eisenhower severed diplomatic relations with Cuba. In March
1961 Kennedy launched the Alliance for Progress, as described in chapter
6, and on April 3, as part of the same overall strategy, the White House
published a white paper asserting that: “The present situation in Cuba confronts the western hemisphere and the Inter-American System with a grave
and urgent challenge . . . [and] offers a clear and present danger to the
authentic and autonomous revolution of the Americas.” Among the Washington elite, only Senator William J. Fulbright had the courage to counsel
caution: “The Castro regime is a thorn in the flesh,” the lawmaker pointed
out, “not a dagger in the heart.”
Plans for an invasion went ahead. The CIA placed sixteen B-26 planes
at the disposal of the rebel force. The detachments moved from
Guatemala (then under Miguel Ydigoras Fuentes) to Nicaragua (under
the Somoza dynasty). On April 14 they embarked on ships for Cubaafter receiving a final word of encouragement from Luis Somoza, who
challenged them to bring back hairs from Castro’s beard. Throughout
this operation, the United States was not only undertaking an intervention against a revolutionary regime in the Caribbean; it was also tightening links to right-wing dictatorships in Central America.’
Early on the morning of April 15 a detachment of B-26 planes based
in Nicaragua (painted with Cuban markings by the CIA) made a brief sortie against key airfields in Cuba. Military damage was slight, but the attack prompted Castro to crack down on dissidents, real and imagined.
Over the next couple of days, Castro arrested approximately 100,000 suspects, including all bishops, many journalists, and the vast majority of the
CIA’s 2,500 agents and their 20,000 sympathizers. In effect, the air raid
smashed all chances that an opposition underground might rise up to assist the invasion. At a mass rally in Havana on April 16, Castro referred for the first time to his revolution as socialist and concluded with a vow:
Patric o muerte, venceremos.
At 3:15 a.m. on the morning of April 17, Castro received news that
an invasion force was attempting to land at the Bay of Pigs, on the southcentral coast of the island. (The choice of this site for disembarkation
seemed curious, since it was a hotbed of pro-Fidelista sentiment: as
chronicler Hugh Thomas has remarked, “It would have been hard indeed
to have found a region in Cuba in which a rebellion could have been less
easily inspired among the local people.”)2 Moving quickly to the invasion
site, Cuban forces reacted with power and efficiency. At dawn two T-33
jet trainers and a Cuban B-26 began to attack landing craft and ships,
sinking the Houston and causing the Rio Escondido to explode. As Cuba’s
air force chased away supply ships, the hapless invaders awaited help from
the United States. An indecisive Kennedy hesitated to authorize air strikes
from the U.S. carrier Essex lying off Cuba, instead permitting only six unmarked jets to provide cover for a B-26 attack from Nicaragua (in actual
fact, the jets never left the Essex at all). Eventually Cuban forces took
1,180 prisoners-out of the 1,297 who had landed-and held them
for a year and a half, to the great embarrassment of the United States.
Castro eventually agreed to release the prisoners in exchange for medical
supplies.
The Bay of Pigs would have far-reaching implications. At a cost of
$45 million, it represented a humiliating failure for U.S. strategy. It
boosted Castro’s political stature in Cuba, Latin America, and the developing world. And it helped drive him and his revolution toward the Soviet Union; it was in December 1961, not before, that Castro declared his
lifelong allegiance to Marxist-Leninism.
The Bay of Pigs would also affect the Cold War as a whole. In October 1962 the Soviet Union began to install medium-range missiles in
Cuba, apparently to deter yet another U.S. attack. Kennedy responded
with a naval blockade, and after several days of nuclear confrontation
Nikita Khrushchev consented to withdraw the missiles-in exchange, it
appears, for a U.S. commitment to desist from further invasions. The
Cuban Revolution, U.S.-Cuban relations, and the U.S.-Soviet rivalry
thus brought the world to the brink of nuclear holocaust. Paradoxically
enough, this episode encouraged both superpowers to pursue eventual
detente-and to restrain their rivalries in the Third World.
None of this would prevent the United States from its unrelenting
opposition to Cuba’s maximum leader. The CIA steadfastly pursued a variety of efforts to eliminate Castro, including premeditated assassination.
According to the 1975 report of the Senate Select Committee on Governmental Operations, there came to light
concrete evidence of at least eight plots involving the CIA to assassinate Fidel
Castro from 1960 to 1965. Although some of the assassination plots did not
advance beyond the stage of planning and preparation, one plot, involving
the use of underworld figures, reportedly twice progressed to the point of sending poison pills to Cuba and dispatching weapons to commit the deed.
Another plot involved furnishing weapons and other assassination devices to
a Cuban dissident. The proposed assassination devices ran the gamut from
highpowered rifles to poison pills, poison pens, deadly bacterial powders, and
other devices which strain the imagination.3
These plots took place under three successive presidents: Eisenhower,
Kennedy, and Johnson. Despite their comic-opera quality, these were serious attempts to eliminate a head of state through deliberate acts of murder. They also represented an exceedingly primitive form of political
analysis. According to this view, the problem with Cuba was neither social
injustice nor batistiano brutality nor the tortured history of U.S.-Cuban
relations. The problem was Fidel Castro: eliminate El Lider and all would
be well. This was hardly a constructive approach to the reality of social
revolution.
The Dominican Invasion
Fidel Castro, the Cuban Revolution, and the Bay of Pigs made profound
impressions on Washington’s assessment of political tendencies in Latin
America. The United States became grimly determined to prevent “another Cuba” in the Western Hemisphere-an obsession that fastened itself,
in particular, on the Dominican Republic. Superficial parallels between the
situations seemed intriguing. Both Cuba and the Dominican Republic had
suffered long bouts of political interference by the United States and could
therefore be expected to harbor anti -Yanqui sympathies. Both economies
were dependent on the cultivation of sugar (largely for export to the U.S.
market) on large-scale plantations whose oppressed and downtrodden
work forces could be susceptible to clamors against social injustice. And,
perhaps most telling, both countries had long been under the heel of brutal dictators, Batista in Cuba and Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. After
Castro’s triumph, in fact, Washington became deeply concerned that the
Trujillo regime would provoke a left-wing opposition and ultimately a
communist takeover, a fear that prompted the stoutly anticommunist
Eisenhower administration to withdraw support from the dictator and to
explore means of removing him through assassination.4
After Trujillo fell victim to a gunshot assault (by a Dominican) on
May 30, 1961, the Kennedy administration was quick to take action.
Washington immediately dispatched a naval task force to the vicinity of
Santo Domingo to discourage (or prevent) leftists from moving into the
political vacuum, and it kept a close eye on subsequent events. The
United States was especially supportive of the Council of State which governed the country in 1962-63, bolstering the regime with substantial
amounts of economic aid, assistance to the national police, development
of a “public safety corps” for riot control, and building a counterinsurgency capacity within the national army. As U.S. ambassador John Bartlow Martin would later recall, the preoccupation with a leftist threat in the Dominican Republic was pervasive: “A Castro-Communist takeover
was the one thing the United States government, and the American people, would not tolerate.”
The Council of State oversaw general elections in December 1962
that gave the presidency to Juan Bosch of the Dominican Revolutionary
Party (PDR). Inaugurated in February 1963, Bosch was a respected journalist and intellectual who was committed to social reform and political
change. Bosch was not, however, an especially gifted politician, and he
proceeded to alienate most key sectors of Dominican society-including
the military, the business community, and out-of-office politicians. By
September 1963, these groups came together in support of a military
coup. Offering little resistance, Bosch went off to Puerto Rico.
The Dominican golpe led to installation of a fragile, civilian triumvirate that sought to impose order on the polarized nation. In late 1963 the
presidency passed to Donald Reid Cabral, the relatively moderate foreign
minister. On April 24, 1965 a group of younger, disgruntled military officers in league with elements of Bosch’s PDR rose up against the government of Reid Cabral. As his position weakened, a desperate Reid inquired
if the U.S. government might come to his aid through military intervention. Washington declined the invitation, and a political split within the
Dominican armed forces came to dominate the scene: calling themselves
“constitutionalists,” one group demanded the reinstatement of Bosch
and a return to constitutional government; calling themselves “loyalists,”
another faction of pro-Trujillistas sought to reconstitute some kind of
military-dominated junta. The two groups set up rival governments and
prepared for serious battle.
The United States government defined its position with care. First,
the Johnson administration never gave any serious consideration to the
prospect of returning Bosch to the presidency, since he was regarded as
being leftist, weak, and unreliable. Second, Washington was disinclined to
uphold the cause of Reid Cabral and his unpopular junta. By a process of
elimination, the United States thus arrived at its policy preference: installation of a provisional junta that would hold a new round of elections (to
be won by someone other than Bosch).
Initially, the U.S. embassy and State Department believed that Dominicans would reach this same conclusion on their own. As “constitutionalist” prospects improved, however, Washington threw its support to
the right-wing “loyalist” side. United States authorities expressed pious
concern about law and order and the protection of American lives. More
important, they were worried about the presence of leftists and suspected
communists in the pro-Bosch camp. Within days the U.S. ambassador reported that radio broadcasts from the rebel side were exhibiting a “definite Castro flavor” and that communist groups, well-armed and organized, were poised to take advantage of the chaos.
As pro-Bosch forces gained ground, the loyalists formed a new junta
under Colonel Pedro Benoit-but failed to stem the tide. By 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 28 a besieged Benoit telephoned the U.S. embassy
to request a detachment of 1,200 U.S. marines “to help restore peace.”
An hour later Benoit submitted a formal written request (in English)
emphasizing that the pro-Bosch movement “is directed by Communists
and is of authentic Communist stamp, as shown by the excesses committed against the population, mass assassinations, sacking of private property, and constant incitations to fight [that are] broadcast by Radio Havana.” The document failed even to mention the need for protection of
U.S. citizens.
Events then moved with lightning speed. Lyndon Johnson huddled
with his advisers and instantly approved the landing of 500 marines. By
6:00 p.m., when the president signed his formal authorization, U.S.
forces had already occupied parts of Santo Domingo. By 8:00 p.m.
William Raborn, sworn in that same day as new director of the CIA, was
warning congressional leaders about the communist threat and explaining
that President Johnson had taken action against a “Moscow-financed,
Havana-directed plot to take over the Dominican Republic.”
The United States undertook an extraordinary buildup of military capacity. For six days after the initial invasion an average of 243 flights
landed at the San Isidro airport-an average of one every six minutes
around the clock. Within ten days there were nearly 23,000 American
troops on Dominican soil, almost half as many as were then serving in
Vietnam. Almost 10,000 additional troops stood ready just off the Dominican coast and thousands more were on alert at U.S. military bases.
(Once again, the specter of Cuba deeply affected Washington: believing
that the inadequate use of military force led to failure at the Bay of Pigs,
Johnson’s advisers were determined to avoid this same mistake.) The goal
was to prevent a leftist takeover. As General Earl Wheeler stated to Lt.
General Bruce Palmer, Jr., who would take command of American troops
on the ground: “Your announced mission is to save American lives. Your
unstated mission is to prevent the Dominican Republic from going Communist. The President has stated that he will not allow another Cuba.
. . . You are to take all necessary measures . . . to accomplish this mission.” And as Secretary of State Dean Rusk would publicly say, “What
began in the Dominican Republic as a democratic revolution was taken
over by Communist conspirators who had been trained for and had carefully planned that operation. Had they succeeded in establishing a government, the Communist seizure of power would, in all likelihood, have
been irreversible.” Assistant Secretary of State Thomas C. Mann echoed
this claim, asserting that a large U.S. military presence was necessary “in
view of the clear and present danger of the forcible seizure of power by
the Communists.”
The factual basis for the U.S. government’s allegations proved to be
exceedingly weak. At one point the State Department released a list of
fifty-eight so-called communist conspirators within the pro-Bosch movement. The criteria for designating “communists” were unstated and am biguous, and inspection showed that the roster contained only fifty-five
names, not fifty-eight, due to double listing; that several other individuals
were ill, out of the country, or in jail; and that still others could not have
been available for revolutionary activity. On another occasion, too, the
CIA reported that Francisco Caamano Deno, military leader of the proBosch uprising, had been seen in the company of two Europeans-who,
the CIA intimated, might be communist agents from afar. Of course they
could just as well have been Swedish tourists, but that was beside the
point: in Washington’s view, Reds were lurking everywhere.
Ever the politician, Johnson sought to prevent diplomatic isolation of
the United States by engaging the Organization of American States in the
Dominican operation. On April 29, the day after the landing, the council
of the OAS met in special session at the request of the United States and
asked the papal nuncio in Santo Domingo to keep them informed of developments. That same night the OAS asked all parties to accept a ceasefire. By May 6, a meeting of foreign ministers endorsed a U.S. proposal to
request governments of member states to take part in the formation of
what became euphemistically known as the Inter-American Peace Force.
Although seven nations eventually sent modest contingents, the peacekeeping operation was totally under U.S. control. Throughout the summer of 1965, as in an earlier era, the Dominican Republic was governed
through military occupation by the United States.
The OAS played an instrumental role in supporting U.S. policy, and
lost credibility throughout the hemisphere as a result. One OAS study
group confirmed the claim that communists were active within the Dominican Republic. An ad hoc committee of the OAS also helped persuade
constitutionalists and loyalists to agree to the Act of Santo Domingo,
which formalized a cease-fire and established a security zone within
the city. And while a three-person commission dispatched by the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights was able to document at least
forty-two cases of political executions by the loyalist forces, the OAS included a provision for total amnesty as part of an overall Act of Reconciliation. On September 3 the OAS oversaw the installation as president
of the unobtrusively moderate Hector Garcia Godoy. Within a year he
would be succeeded by Joaquin Balaguer, a longtime collaborator of
none other than Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, and Bosch was removed
from the political scene. The United States got what it wanted.
Chile: Allende Overthrown
Several years later, electoral politics in Chile would confront the United
States with yet another undesirable outcome. Results of a three-way presidential race in 1970 bore considerable resemblance to previous national
patterns-with left, right, and center each earning about one-third of the
votes-but on this occasion the center and right failed to join forces to assure victory in the election. In consequence a modest plurality of 36.6 percent went to Salvador Allende, leader of the Unidad Popular movement with backing from both socialists and communists. Jorge Alessandri, of the right-wing National Party, won 34.9 percent; Radomiro
Tomic, of the centrist Christian Democrats, garnered only 27.8 percent.
The Chilean constitution stipulated that in cases of elections without majority winners there was to be a runoff in a joint session of both houses in
the national congress. And according to long-standing civic tradition, the
legislature would decide in favor of the candidate with the most votes.
Even more clearly than with Bosch in the Dominican Republic, the
prospect of an Allende presidency in Chile presented Washington with its
worst-case scenario-a free and fair election that gave power to the left.
Cold War ideology construed this as a logical impossibility: communists
could come to power only through force of one kind or another, either
conquest or subversion; given the opportunity, free-thinking citizensespecially within the Western Hemisphere-would always cast their ballots against left-wing radicals. Even worse, from Washington’s standpoint,
electoral processes in Chile were so notoriously efficient that there was no
point in claiming that Allende had triumphed through fraud.
Henry Kissinger, then head of the National Security Council under
Richard M. Nixon, sprang quickly to action. Bringing together the Forty
Committee (with representatives from the CIA, the State Department,
the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Department of Defense), Kissinger excoriated the people of Chile for their political “irresponsibility” and oversaw the formation of a two-part strategy to prevent the Chilean congress
from ratifying the Allende electoral victory. Track I, as it came to be
known, involved maneuvers to reinstate Eduardo Frei, the outgoing
Christian Democrat who was constitutionally prevented from direct reelection. According to one variation on this scheme, Frei would resign
in favor of a military government, which would promptly call new
elections-in which Frei could become the candidate of a center-right
coalition. According to another, more promising version of the “Frei
gambit,” the congress would vote in favor of Jorge Alessandri, not Allende, and soon after his inauguration Alessandri would call for the new
elections to be won by Frei. All that was needed was influence over the
Chilean legislature. Toward this end the Forty Committee established a
bribery fund of $250,000.
Track II entailed outright promotion of a military coup. A right-wing
group in Chile called Patria y Libertad began pressing for a golpe right
after the election, promptly receiving $38,500 from the CIA on behalf of
its efforts. Over the opposition of the U.S. ambassador, Edward Korry,
President Nixon threw his support behind Track II. In mid-September
1970 the president demanded measures to “make the economy scream”
in order to provoke a coup. As Richard Helms, director of the CIA,
would later recall: “The President came down hard. He wanted something done and he didn’t much care how. . . . If I ever carried a marshal’s baton out of the Oval Office, it was that day.”s Proclaimed a subse quent CIA cable: “It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end utilizing every appropriate resource.”
Seeking to protect its investments in Chile, International Telephone
and Telegraph offered $1 million in support of the CIA’s attempts to prevent Allende from taking office. The Council of the Americas, a business
organization, volunteered another $500,000. By the time the CIA responded to these offers ITT had decided to withdraw because it could
not muster sufficient backing from other U.S. companies, most of which
felt they could continue to operate under an Allende government.
The CIA continued on its own. In a confidential assessment, an
agency memorandum sized up the situation: “(1) The U.S. has no vital
national interests within Chile. There would however be tangible economic losses. (2) The world military balance of power would not be significantly altered by an Allende government. (3) An Allende victory
would, however, create considerable political and psychological costs,”
including a threat to “hemispheric cohesion” and “a definite psychological advance for the Marxist idea.” In its efforts to reduce these “psychological and political costs”-and to control the direction of Chilean
politics-the agency would spend no less than $8 million between 1970
and 1973.
One persistent obstacle to Track II was the resolute opposition of
General Rene Schneider, the Chilean army commander-in-chief who
stoutly adhered to constitutional principles. For a successful coup, said
Ambassador Korry, Schneider “would have to be neutralized, by displacement, if necessary.” Apparently in response to this assessment, the CIA
began to contemplate means of removing Schneider through assassination. It also made contact with a group that planned to kidnap the general, take him to Argentina, and demand that Frei resign and dissolve the
congress before it could designate Allende as president-elect. The U.S.
military attache in Santiago promised $50,000 in cash and delivered a
supply of submachine guns in support of this effort.
As things turned out it was a different group that actually kidnapped
Schneider. The commander-in-chief was gravely wounded while resisting
his abduction, however, an event that sent shock waves throughout the
country. In deference to popular will and Chilean traditions, a horrified
Alessandri urged his congressional supporters to cast their ballots for
Unidad Popular, and in late October the legislature ratified Allende’s
presidential victory. Schneider died the next day and received a hero’s
funeral.
Undaunted by this development, the United States mounted a bitter
campaign against the Allende government. One reason, perhaps, was protection of U.S. business interests. American corporations had more than
$1 billion invested in Chile; ITT plus Anaconda and Kennecott, two copper companies, had especially sizable holdings. Corporate executives were
fearful of nationalization. Despite the protection of the Hickenlooper Amendment, providing for the automatic termination of economic assistance to countries that failed to take “appropriate steps” toward compensation of expropriated firms, mining companies were feeling especially
vulnerable. Unlike other investors, they could not pick up their assets and
move them someplace else.
There were political interests as well. Of minor importance were two
clandestine intelligence stations in Chile that had been monitoring the
Soviet submarine fleet in the South Pacific. More significant, from the
viewpoint of the Nixon White House, was anticipation of a domino effect. As Kissinger declared at one point, “I have yet to meet somebody
who firmly believes that if Allende wins there is likely to be another free
election in Chile.” And on another occasion, he ruminated on the consequences of an Allende regime:
In a major Latin American country you would have a Communist government, joining, for example, Argentina, which is already deeply divided, along
a long frontier, joining Peru, which has already been heading in directions
that have been difficult to deal with, and joining Bolivia, which has also gone
in a more leftist, anti-U.S. direction. . . . So I do not think we should delude ourselves that an Allende takeover in Chile would not present massive
problems for us, and for democratic forces in Latin America, and indeed to
the whole Western Hemisphere.
An Allende “takeover,” in Kissinger’s words, would thus lead to the longterm installation of a Marxist regime that would conspire to spread its influence throughout the Americas.
Kissinger harbored yet another fear. According to Roger Morris, a
policy aide at the NSC, Kissinger held a complex view of Chile. “I don’t
think,” Morris later recalled, that
anyone in the government understood how ideological Kissinger was about
Chile. I don’t think anybody ever fully grasped that Henry saw Allende as
being far more serious a threat than Castro. If Latin America ever became
unraveled, it would never happen with Castro. Allende was a living example
of democratic social reform in Latin America. All kinds of cataclysmic events
rolled around, but Chile scared him. He talked about Eurocommunism [in
subsequent years] the same way he talked about Chile early on. Chile scared
him.
The real problem, in other words, was not that Allende would establish
dictatorial control; it was that he would hold free and fair elections in
1976, thus confirming the proposition that socialism could rise and govern through democratic means. It was this, the essence of the via chilena,
that posed such a threat to Kissinger and to the United States. And it was
for precisely this reason that Washington could not permit Allende to
succeed.
Once Allende took office, the Nixon administration developed a multifaceted campaign to destabilize politics in Chile. One component consisted of what Allende himself would label an “invisible financial and eco nomic blockade.” On November 9, shortly after Allende’s inauguration, a
national security memorandum outlined the U.S. intent: “Within the
context of a publicly cool and correct posture toward Chile,” the United
States would undertake to “maximize pressure on the Allende government to prevent its consolidation and limit its ability to implement policies contrary to U.S. and hemisphere interests.” This involved a shutdown of U.S. economic assistance ($70 million per year in the late 1960s,
under the Alliance for Progress), opposition to international credits, discouragement of private investment, and examination of means to disrupt
the world copper market. The document also proposed the application of
diplomatic pressure “to assure that other governments in Latin America
understand fully that the United States opposes consolidation of a Communist state in Chile hostile to the interests of the United States and
other hemisphere nations, and to the extent possible encourages them to
adopt a similar posture.”
A second part of the U.S. campaign entailed covert support for electoral opposition to the Unidad Popular government. In January 1971 the
Forty Committee approved the expenditure of $1.2 million by the CIA to
finance opposition parties in the April municipal elections (which turned
out to be a triumph for Allende). The committee also authorized $500,000
for Christian Democrats and, later in the year, another $150,000 for opposition candidates in various electoral runoffs.
Through the rest of 1971 and 1972 the CIA continued to finance antiAllende elements, including the well-known conservative newspaper El
Mercurio. In May 1972 break-ins occurred at the Chilean embassy in
Washington and at three residences of Chilean officials in New Yorkperpetrated by those who would later gain fame as the Watergate plumbers!
United States funds may also have supported a strike by independent
truckers in October 1972, a protest activity that began as a complaint by
private drivers against a government announcement that it would set up a
state-run trucking firm. Especially devastating in an economy so dependent on road transportation, the truckers’ strike drew support from a broad
cross-section of workers and employees. Another truckers’ strike, in mid1973, appears to have received at least indirect funding from the CIA.
For the March 1973 midterm elections the Forty Committee approved expenditures of more than $1.4 million in support of opposition
candidates and parties. The result was inconclusive. Buffeted by declining
foreign exchange and runaway inflation, Unidad Popular took just 44
percent of the vote-higher than its 1970 percentage, in fact, but lower
than its 1971 performance. By contrast, combined forces of the opposition won 56 percent-and claimed an outright victory. As polarization intensified, the absence of a clear electoral mandate tended to paralyze the
Unidad Popular government.
The military was in the meantime moving over to the opposition. In
June 1973 a detachment from the Second Armored Regiment attempted
to rescue a captain imprisoned for plotting against the government along with Patria y Libertad; ostentatiously driving tanks through downtown
Santiago (and politely stopping for red lights en route!) the rebels eventually withdrew their demands but made their political point. In August
1973 the moderate army commander stepped down, making way for the
ascendancy of Augusto Pinochet. On August 22 the congress adopted a
partisan resolution denouncing the Allende government for “habitually”
violating the constitution and national laws, and called upon the armed
forces to “put an immediate end to all the de facto situations . . . which
violate the constitution and the law.”
Finally, on September 11, naval units seized the port city of Valparaiso at 7:00 a.m. The city of Concepcion fell by 8:15. In Santiago, air
force planes began bombing the presidential palace by 11:55 a.m. Most
defenders of the palace surrendered by 1:30 p.m. At 4:00 p.m., the armed
forces announced that Salvador Allende had committed suicide.
A brutal crackdown followed. The day after the coup the head of the
air force proclaimed the need for Chile to extirpate “the cancer of Marxism.” Members of the Allende government were rounded up and placed
under detention; thousands of alleged leftists were detained, questioned,
and tortured in the national soccer stadium; sweeps were conducted
through working-class districts of Santiago and other cities. At least 3,000
Chileans were killed or disappeared in the aftermath of the golpe-and
this by a conservative count. Soldiers ransacked the headquarters of socialist and communist parties, imposed a strict curfew, dissolved labor
unions, and took over once-proud universities.
In retrospect, it appears that the overthrow of Allende was due more
to the escalation of political and social conflict within Chile than to the efforts of the United States. It is undeniably true, however, that the United
States was making strenuous efforts to undermine and overthrow the Allende regime. It is also true that the U.S. government greeted Allende’s
overthrow with gleeful enthusiasm. Kissinger and Nixon were ecstatic.
Jimmy Carter, with his concerns about human rights, expressed reserve
toward Pinochet, but the Reagan administration quickly abandoned this
position and embraced the anticommunist regime. Assistant Secretary of
State for Inter-American Affairs Langhorne Motley would proclaim in
early 1985: “The democracies of the western world have a debt of gratitude to the people and government of Chile for what they did in 1973
. . . the destiny of Chile is in good hands, Chilean hands.”
Eventually, however, the United States elected to abandon Pinochetas it had abandoned Trujillo, Batista, and Somoza in the past. The central
reason for this switch was fear of “another Nicaragua,” a concern that polarization in Chile would lead to instability and pave the way for a leftist
takeover. As Washington sought to take credit for the “new wave of
democracy” sweeping Latin America, as President Reagan claimed in
1984, the Pinochet regime became something of an embarrassment. Into
this context came Harry Barnes, named ambassador to Chile in 1985,
who promptly and publicly established contact with the political opposi tion and human-rights groups. As a sign of its turnaround, the United
States introduced a resolution at the 1986 meeting of the UN Human
Rights Commission expressing “profound concern” over human rights
abuses in Chile and urging the Pinochet government to “proceed vigorously” in the investigation of “torture, deaths, kidnappings, and other
violations of human rights.” But the fundamental basis for the U.S. position was not celebration of democracy itself-it was preoccupation with
the left. As archconservative analyst Mark Falcoff proclaimed in congressional testimony, “If the way to democracy is closed and the democratic
forces destroyed, there is no doubt that before the end of this century,
Chile will be a Marxist-Leninist state, allied to the Soviet Union.” Or, as
explained in 1986 by the equally strident Elliott Abrams, assistant secretary of the state for inter-American affairs: those who supported indefinite
perpetuation of Chile’s military dictatorship were “playing the game of
the Communists.” Such assertions were dubious at best, but the unstated
message was clear: Pinochet had outlived his usefulness. In 1988 the
U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy openly threw its support to the “no” vote in a plebiscite on continuation of Pinochet’s rule.
The opposition triumphed, the old man stepped aside, and Washington
escaped from its entanglement.
The Seizure of Grenada
The triumph of Ronald Reagan over Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election
campaign brought a marked change in the tone and style of U.S. foreign
policy. Reagan lost little time in announcing a hard line toward what he
perceived as the communist threat. “I know of no leader of the Soviet
Union,” he said shortly after his inauguration in 1981, “since the revolution and including the present leadership, that has not more than once repeated in the various Communist Congresses they hold, their determination that their goal must be the promotion of world revolution and a one
world Socialist or Communist state-whichever word you want to use.”
Denouncing the Soviet bloc as an “evil empire,” Reagan would later consign socialism to the “ash can of history” in a speech to the British parliament in mid-1982. Shortly afterward the Reagan administration announced the initiation of its “Star Wars” project, a fanciful effort to
construct an impermeable shield in outer space that would completely
protect the United States from the threat of nuclear attack-thus overturning the long-standing anticipation of “mutual assured destruction”
that was the military underpinning of superpower detente. One way or
another, Reagan made clear his intention of challenging Soviet and socialist authority throughout the world.
The new president and his associates quickly sought to demonstrate
this resolve within the Western Hemisphere. Justifying U.S. assistance to
a military government in El Salvador (about which more below), Secretary of State Alexander Haig explained that guerrilla opposition to the ruling junta in that tiny country did not merely represent demands for social justice and political democracy. Instead it was, he said in February
1981, a “well-orchestrated international Communist campaign designed
to transform the Salvadoran crisis from the internal conflict to an increasingly internationalized confrontation. . . . This effort involves close coordination by Moscow, satellite capitals and Havana, with the cooperation
of Hanoi and Managua. It is a repetition of the pattern we have already
seen in Angola and Ethiopia, and, I may add, elsewhere. It is a threat, in
our view, not just to the United States but to the West at large.”
An opportunity for action finally came in 1983 in a most unlikely
place-the English-speaking nation of Grenada, with a total population of
90,000 scattered over three small islands in the Caribbean Sea. Established as a British crown colony in 1877, Grenada acquired “associate
statehood” in 1967 and full independence in 1974. In legal terms Grenada nominally remained a monarchy, with a resident governor general
representing Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II in her capacity as queen of
Grenada, but in practice it was a sovereign nation.
Political life in the 1950s and 1960s fell under the spell of Eric Matthew Gairy-“Hurricane Gairy,” an energetic, charismatic, volatile, and ultimately megalomaniac leader with personal interests in self-aggrandizement and unidentified flying objects. As Grenada’s first prime minister,
Gairy promptly set out to repress his rivals, to enhance his wealth, and to
pursue his quixotic fascination with the occult. Opposition appeared with
the foundation in 1972 of a movement called JEWEL (Joint Endeavour for
the Welfare, Education and Liberation of the People). A year later this
group joined forces with the Movement for the Assemblies of the People to
create the “New Jewel Movement.” Led by Maurice Bishop and Bernard
Coard, the NJM began to espouse a vaguely Marxist-Leninist ideology in
the mid-1970s. And in March 1979, while Gairy was in New York attempting to persuade the United Nations to establish an agency for the investigation of UFOs, the New Jewel Movement seized power in a nearbloodless coup. A celebrating populace happily chanted a sardonic refrain:
The gregarious and popular Bishop became prime minister in what soon
came to be known as the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG); the
intense and taciturn Coard became minister of finance.
Despite its rhetorical flourishes, the PRG pursued a moderate path. It
sought to increase tourism. A labor code established the legality of unions
and led to a sharp rise in union membership. To diversify the economy,
dependent on the export of agricultural goods (principally nutmeg), the
PRG sought to develop the country’s infrastructure-improving roads
and cultivation techniques-and to explore new methods of marketing
and packaging. While Bishop and his advisers expanded the role of the
state within a mixed economy, they did not impose a socialist regime. They never confronted the question of land reform, for instance, the issue
that had toppled Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala in 1954. Their only radical
stance came in the realm of foreign policy, where they proclaimed an alliance with Cuba and other socialist states. At bottom, the PRG under
Bishop was national-democratic, reformist, and anti-imperialist.
It was this moderation, in fact, that led to the implosion of the PRG.
Bernard Coard and his wife, Phyllis (both educated in the United States),
became increasingly critical of Bishop for his willingness to compromise.
In September 1983 a split within the PRG yielded a proposal for joint
leadership by Bishop and Coard. After some equivocation Bishop denounced the plan; Coard and his supporters then placed Bishop under
house arrest. A crowd of citizens released Bishop from confinement, but
in a display of stupidity and cruelty, the Coard faction executed Bishop on
October 19. Within hours, the People’s Revolutionary Government was
replaced by a Revolutionary Military Council.
The Reagan administration watched these events with mounting interest. On October 19, the day of Bishop’s murder, the U.S. ambassador
recommended that Washington consider plans for the possible evacuation
of American citizens from Grenada. State Department officials argued
that an evacuation would in itself be insufficient; instead, the entire main
island would have to be seized “to save American lives and to serve
broader goals.”
Conservative leaders in surrounding microstates began calling for
U.S. action. On October 20 Tom Adams of Barbados asked the American
ambassador to propose an outright invasion of Grenada. On October 21
the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States (which included Antigua,
Dominica, Grenada, Montserrat, St. Kitts-Nevis, St. Lucia, and St. Vincent) met without Grenada in Barbados (a non-OECS country) and announced what was, in view of their military capability, a ludicrous decision
to intervene in Grenada-more to the point, they invited friendly governments to lend assistance. This meant the United States. On Saturday, October 22 the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) voted to suspend
Grenada from its roster and to impose economic and diplomatic sanctions; that same day Reagan “gave the go-ahead to proceed with invasion
plans.”
It proved to be a fateful weekend. On Sunday, October 23 a suicide
attack by an Islamic fundamentalist led to the massacre of 241 U.S.
marines in faraway Beirut. This provoked intense concern within the
White House about the possible taking of American hostages in Grenada,
a central fear in the Middle East, and it greatly raised the political stakes.
As one participant in the planning sessions recalled: “The overriding principle was not to allow something to happen worse than what we were
proposing to do. The purpose was to deny the Russians/Cubans a feeling
of potency in grabbing small vulnerable states in the region. It had to be
nipped in the bud before it developed into another Cuba.” The next day
Reagan signed an executive order approving an invasion.
At 5:00 a.m. on the morning of October 25, 1983, a detachment of
1,900 U.S. marines and army airborne troops (plus token contingents
from a handful of Caribbean countries) launched an assault on Grenada.
Resistance was spotty at most. All significant military objectives were
achieved in a couple of days. The death toll included forty-five Grenadians (twenty-four of whom were civilians), twenty-four Cubans, and nineteen U.S. servicemen. Reagan justified the operation as an effort to protect 800-1,000 U.S. citizens whose safety was threatened because “a
brutal gang of leftist thugs” had seized power, “to forestall further
chaos,” and to assist in the restoration of democracy. In an address to the
nation he also stressed construction of an airport facility in Grenada
“which looks suspiciously suitable for military aircraft including Sovietbuilt long-range bombers.” As a matter of fact, the president contended,
this otherwise lovely tropical nation actually “was a Soviet-Cuban colony
being readied as a major military bastion to export terror and undermine
democracy.” He breathlessly concluded, “We got there just in time.”
Reagan’s invocation of a global communist threat in this tiny island
country seemed patently absurd. The airport runway to which he referred
was intended for the tourist trade. It was to be 9,000 feet long-shorter
than similar runways in Barbados, Guadeloupe, and Martinique. Financing came from Venezuela and the European Community as well as from
Cuba. A U.S. firm from Miami did the necessary dredging of an inlet; a
British firm had been contracted to install navigation and communication
equipment (after the invasion a company representative flatly denied that
the equipment could have been used for military purposes, citing the absence of no less than eleven key items such as underground fuel tanks).
Washington nonetheless persisted in its grandiose interpretations. One official drew an explicit connection between events in Lebanon and
Grenada: “Not only has Moscow assisted and encouraged the violence in
both countries, but it provides direct support through a network of surrogates and terrorists.” Another commented on broad implications for foreign policy:
Think of the precedent it would set. . . . Throughout the region, there are
little-bitty leftist groups with power ambitions. If we improved relations with
Grenada at no cost to the [allegedly pro-Cuban] government, imagine what
it would say to other putative authorities in the eastern Caribbean. They
would say, “We can pull off a coup and then, after three or four years of trouble with Uncle Sam, he’ll come around.”
Said yet another spokesperson: “We obviously don’t like being put in the
position of the heavy. We want to act like a mature, responsible world
power. But here’s a little country saying insolent things, and we’re forced
to reply.”
The rest of the world did not quite agree. At the UN Security Council, Mexico’s ambassador Porfirio Munoz Ledo denounced the invasion as
“a clear violation of the rules of international law . . . totally lacking in justification.” A council resolution which “deeply deplored the armed intervention in Grenada” received a favorable vote of 11-1-3-with support from France and the Netherlands, and an abstention from Britainand was vetoed by the United States. An identical resolution passed the
General Assembly by a vote of 108-9. Perhaps most stunning to Ronald
Reagan was the vociferous criticism of Margaret Thatcher, his ideological
soul mate, who pointedly observed that the U.S. government had engaged in the military invasion of a British Commonwealth nation.
Order returned to Grenada. First, the U.S. occupation force swelled
to more than 6,000 troops. Second, political authority was invested-in
name, at least-in the governor general, Paul Scoon, who oversaw a new
round of elections in 1984. Victory went to a moderate group, the National Party, and peace came back to Grenada. By his own standards,
Ronald Reagan had achieved a decisive success.
Central America: The Contra War
While Grenada appeared to lend itself to a quick-fix solution, Central
America would preoccupy the Reagan administration during its entire
eight-year period in office. Convolutions in El Salvador and Nicaragua
threatened to change the political order, to spread to neighboring countries, and to pose new challenges to the United States. Reagan’s analysts
seized upon the opportunity to stress the global implications of this otherwise local imbroglio, identifying the isthmus as a fundamental testingground of national resolve in a worldwide struggle against the forces of
communism. As early as 1981 this would lead Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Jimmy
Carter’s acerbic critic and Ronald Reagan’s ambassador to the United
Nations, to make the absolutely remarkable statement that “Central
America is the most important place in the world for the United States
today.”
El Salvador
Part of the story began in El Salvador, a mountainous coffee-growing
country of 5 million citizens ruled by an unholy alliance of large-scale
landowners and military officers. Acceleration of agricultural exports during the 1960s led to increased concentration of rural holdings and the
rapid displacement of campesinos-by the mid1970s about 40 percent of
peasants had no land at all, compared with 12 percent in 1960. A reformist challenge to the status quo came through the Christian Democratic Party, under the leadership of Jose Napoleon Duarte. As mayor of San
Salvador (1964-70), the dynamic and articulate Duarte built a strong following among intellectuals, professionals, and other middle-class groups.
As presidential candidate he may well have won the election of 1972, but
the military intervened and imposed dictatorial rule. Fraudulent elections in 1977 led to the installation as president of General Carlos Humberto
Romero, who promptly imposed a “law to defend and guarantee public
order.” Duarte himself was imprisoned, tortured, and exiled-but he did
not take to the hills.
Others took a revolutionary path. A movement called the Farabundo
Marti Liberation Front (FMLN)-named for the leader of a popular uprising in 1932-came to pose a major challenge to El Salvador’s rightwing regime. A complex organization, including a political wing as well as
a military capacity, the FMLN developed considerable support among the
peasants of the countryside. It would soon expand to the cities as well.
In October 1979 a group of junior officers ousted Romero and attempted to implement long-needed reforms. The junta sought support
from “popular organizations” and invited Christian Democrats to join the
government. Official repression persisted, however, and killings continued at the astonishing rate of nearly 1,000 per month. On March 24,
1980 Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero, an outspoken critic of the violence, was assassinated in the national cathedral; on December 3 four
U.S. churchwomen were murdered on a country road. Civilians protested
and the liberal wing of the PDC defected from the ruling coalition. Now
looking undeniably conservative, a beleaguered Duarte took over as titular head of the government. For most of the 1980s, official forces and the
FMLN would carry on the struggle in a political stalemate.
While the Carter administration withdrew assistance to the Salvadoran regime because of its human rights abuses, the Reagan White House
devoted unequivocal support to the government in its fight against
the rebels. Though the uprising had fully indigenous roots, Washington
saw the conflict as a sign of alien communist agitation. As explained by
Secretary of State Haig, “Our problem with El Salvador is external intervention in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation in this hemispherenothing more, nothing less.” In February 1981 the State Department
released a white paper purporting to offer “definitive evidence of the
clandestine military support given by the Soviet Union, Cuba, and their
Communist allies to Marxist-Leninist guerrillas now fighting to overthrow the established government of El Salvador.” According to this
analysis, the Salvadoran insurgency represented a “textbook case” of
communist interference within the hemisphere. Not surprisingly, Washington did not look kindly upon a joint Mexican-French declaration
in August 1981 recognizing the FMLN as a “representative political
force.”
The logical corollary for U.S. policy was to terminate this external intrusion in El Salvador. With much bravado, the swaggering Haig declared
that the United States would have to go to “the source”-by which he
meant Cuba. Others focused their attention on nearby Nicaragua. It was
this accusation that would provide the rationale for a renewal of U.S. activity within that troubled country.
Nicaragua
The Somoza dynasty contained the seeds of its own destruction. Coming
to power in the wake of the U.S. occupations of 1916-33, the Somoza
family drew support from several sources: the Guardia Nacional, the
landed elite, and, of course, the United States. Anastasio Sr., it will be remembered, supported the U.S. conspiracy against Arbenz in Guatemala
in 1954; and it was Luis, the elder son, who encouraged the anti-Fidelista
brigade as it set sail for Cuba in 1961. Yet the regime began to weaken in
the 1970s. Self-seeking and corrupt, Anastasio Jr. (“Tachito”) clamped an
iron rule over the country but offended thoughtful Nicaraguans by his
excesses, most notably his extraction of windfall profits from the reconstruction of Managua after a devastating earthquake in 1972. He also
made the mistake of excluding the country’s traditional elite from his entrepreneurial activities.
Unlike El Salvador, where the existence of legal institutions encouraged a reformist option, the near-complete absence of representative institutions in Nicaragua meant that opposition to Somoza could take only
one form: armed resistance. In the 1960s there emerged a guerrilla movement known as the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), which
took its name from nationalist hero Augusto Cesar Sandino. After years of
fighting, the Somoza regime suddenly collapsed in 1979, just as Batista
had given way in Cuba two decades before. The triumph exacted an enormous toll. Approximately 45,000 lives were lost during the insurrection;
economic output declined by 6 percent in 1978 and 24 percent in 1979.
Once in power, the youthful Sandinistas proclaimed two broad policy
goals. One called for the creation of a “mixed economy” in order to
achieve social justice. The other espoused an “independent and nonaligned” foreign policy. In pursuit of these objectives the FSLN sought
economic assistance from other countries of Latin America, from West
Europe, from the United States-and from the Soviet bloc. Between
1979 and 1982 communist countries supplied about 20 percent of Nicaragua’s credit; Latin America provided 32 percent, and Mexico alone gave
almost twice as much economic aid as the Soviets. As late as 1984, the
communist bloc accounted for less than 20 percent of Nicaragua’s international trade.
The Reagan administration viewed the Sandinista government with
fervent hostility. The 1980 Republican Party platform openly denounced
“the Marxist Sandinista takeover of Nicaragua and the Marxist attempts
to destabilize El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. . . . We [Republicans] will support the efforts of the Nicaraguan people to establish a free
and independent government”-in other words, to overthrow the Sandinistas. In early 1981, just after taking office, Reagan formally ended
economic aid to Nicaragua. In March 1981 Reagan signed a “presidential
finding” authorizing the CIA to undertake covert actions in Central
America to interdict arms trafficking by Marxist guerrillas.
True to form, the CIA began to organize a paramilitary oppositionas before, in right-wing Guatemala. This was the origin of a counterrevolutionary movement whose adherents were known as contrarevolucion-
arios in Spanish, “Contras” for short. From the start it included
disaffected Nicaraguans of various political persuasions, but its heart and
soul-and its military capability-rested with former members of the
Guardia Nacional. Heartened by early developments, Reagan signed
an order on November 17, 1981 authorizing $19 million for a 500man Nicaraguan force aimed primarily at the “Cuban infrastructure
in Nicaragua that was training and supplying arms to the Salvadoran
guerrillas.”
In early 1982 a group of pro-Somoza former guardsmen, trained by
the CIA, destroyed two bridges in northern Nicaragua. Encouraged by
this tangible success, the Reagan administration then made a firm commitment to the Contra cause-and expanded its policy goals. The purpose of U.S. activity was no longer just interdiction of arms shipments to
neighboring El Salvador. It became, first and foremost, an attempt to topple the Sandinista government. As the deputy director of the CIA would
claim in March 1982, this was necessary because Nicaragua was turning
into a “Soviet bastion.”
Reagan’s policy encountered serious obstacles. One was the U.S. Congress, which, in reflection of public opinion, was reluctant to endorse outright intervention in Central America. In December 1982 the House approved an amendment sponsored by Edward Boland of Massachusetts
(later known as Boland I), prohibiting the use of U.S. funds to overthrow
the government of Nicaragua. The other obstacle loomed in January 1983,
when representatives of four countries-Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia,
and Panama-met on the island of Contadora in order to devise a plan for
peaceful negotiations among contending parties on the isthmus. This
diplomatic initiative would continue for years and would prove to be a constant thorn in Reagan’s side.
Seeking to muster popular support, the president addressed a joint
session of the U.S. Congress in April 1983. “The government of
Nicaragua,” he solemnly proclaimed, “has treated us as an enemy. It has
rejected our repeated peace efforts. It has broken its promises to the Organization of American States, and most important of all, the people of
Nicaragua. . . . The national security of all the Americas is at stake in
Central America.” Moreover, Reagan insisted, the stalemate in Central
America threatened to damage the credibility of U.S. commitments elsewhere around the globe: “If the United States cannot respond to a threat
near our own borders,” the president asked, “why should Europeans or
Asians believe we are seriously concerned about threats to them?”
Buildups meantime continued. By 1983 the Contra forces comprised
12,000-15,000 troops and by 1985, according to some estimates, they
may have grown to 20,000 fighters. In response the Sandinista government expanded the Nicaraguan military from around 5,000 troops in 1979 to 31,000 in 1981 to 119,000 in 1985. And not surprisingly, the
October 1983 action in Grenada had a profound impact on the Sandinista leadership: it signaled that Nicaragua would have to prepare not
only for the Contras but for a U.S. invasion as well.
Reagan continued his relentless campaign. In September 1983 he
skirted Boland I through a presidential finding that authorized “material
support and guidance to the Nicaraguan resistance groups” not for overthrowing the FSLN government, but for two other reasons: pressuring
the Sandinistas into negotiations with neighboring countries, and forcing
them to terminate support for the FMLN in El Salvador. A month later
the Sandinista government accepted this second condition, offering to
pledge that Nicaragua “will not permit [its] territory to be utilized to affect or threaten the security of the United States or to attack any other
state.” The White House ignored the proposal.
Amid continuing skepticism, Reagan resorted to yet another means of
quieting his critics: appointment of a bipartisan, blue-ribbon panel to study
the problem and produce policy recommendations. Chaired by Henry
Kissinger, the commission consisted largely of pliant Republicans and conservative Democrats. Its explicit purpose was to build a national consensus
around a single policy. As its January 1984 report insisted at the outset,
there was to be “no room for partisanship. . . . The crisis is nonpartisan,
and it calls for a nonpartisan response.” The Kissinger commission produced a meandering report that advocated a large-scale program of economic assistance to Central America, conditional support of the military
forces in El Salvador, and-in rather opaque prose-continued support for
the Contras.6 To justify this conclusion, the commission engaged in fanciful speculation:
A fully militarized and equipped Nicaragua, with excellent intelligence and
command and control operations, would weigh heavily on the neighboring
countries of the region. This threat would be particularly acute for democratic, unarmed Costa Rica. It would have especially serious implications for
vital U.S. interests in the Panama Canal. We would then face the prospect,
over time, of the collapse of the other countries of Central America, bringing
with it the spectre of Marxist domination of the entire region and thus the
danger of a larger war.
Here again was the domino theory, now applied to Central America, with
Mexico the largest domino of all. Given this analysis, the United States
had no choice but to stand firm.
The Reagan White House interpreted the Kissinger report as an endorsement of its policy. The CIA, in the meantime, was off on a path of
its own. In September 1983 CIA-backed planes bombed the airport in
Managua-just at the time that U.S. Senators William Cohen (R-Maine)
and Gary Hart (D-Colorado) were landing!-an episode that heightened
congressional criticism. In early 1984, just after submission of the Kissinger report, CIA-trained operatives planted mines in three of Nicaragua’s harbors, and the explosives inflicted damage on a British ship. Congress
had never been told about these plans, as required by statute, and a furious Barry Goldwater sent a famous letter to CIA director William Casey
summing up his feelings: “I am pissed offl” The Senate followed up with
a resolution denouncing and prohibiting the mining of the harbors by a
lopsided vote of 84-12. (In a 1986 judgment the World Court would
join this chorus of condemnation, finding the United States in breach
of international law for “training, arming, equipping, financing, and supplying the contra forces” as well as for mining the harbors and attacking various facilities in Nicaragua; characteristically enough, the Reagan
administration chose to ignore the decision.) And in mid-1984 the CIA
was revealed to have circulated in Nicaragua a manual on psychological
war that included advice on how to hire professional criminals for “selective jobs” that might help “neutralize” officials, especially judges and the
police.
Congressional support collapsed under the weight of these disclosures. Despite an impassioned speech by Reagan in May 1984, the legislature passed another amendment (Boland II) stipulating a termination of
all lethal aid to the Contras by October 1. This brought an end to congressionally sanctioned support for the Nicaraguan insurgency.
Undaunted by this turn of events, the White House continued with
its policy. Casey’s CIA trained speedboat teams that conducted a predawn
raid at the port of Corinto in October 1984, causing the evacuation of
20,000 residents. In May 1985, after his reelection as president, Reagan
used his executive authority to impose a trade embargo on Nicaragua in
light of a national emergency deriving from “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United
States.” The UN General Assembly condemned this application of economic sanctions on a small, impoverished country by a vote of 91-6, but
Washington persisted nonetheless.
The administration’s most problematic response to the shutoff of
congressional aid was the initiation of a covert war. Under the direction
of Lt. Col. Oliver North, the National Security Council (NSC) secretly
continued and expanded operations in Central America. Unable to turn
to Congress, U.S. officials requested funds in support of the Contras
from, among others, Saudi Arabia ($32 million), the Sultan of Brunei
($10 million), Taiwan ($2 million), and possibly Israel. (In 1991 a Colombian drug kingpin told a Florida court that his cartel had given $10
million to the Contras during the 1980s.) The operation began to unravel
in October 1986, when Sandinista troops captured a CIA agent named
Eugene Hasenfus after shooting down his plane over Nicaraguan territory. Under interrogation, Hasenfus revealed that Washington was supporting the Contras with funds diverted from the (equally covert) sale of
arms to allegedly moderate groups in fundamentalist Iran. It was only a
matter of days before the Iran-Contra scandal was out in the open.
The White House faced withering accusations that it had violated U.S. law and flouted its own policies in order to continue supporting the
Contra cause. As the furor mounted, Reagan was forced to accept the resignations of John Poindexter, head of the NSC, and of Oliver North. In
an unusually friendly telephone call the president described North as a
“national hero,” then issued his ultimate compliment: “Your work,” he
told North, “will make a great movie one day.”
With participants weakened by exhaustion, after eight years of warfare and 43,000 Nicaraguan casualties, the conflict finally wound to a
close. In 1987 President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica proposed a new peace
plan calling on all sides to agree to an immediate cease-fire, negotiation
with the opposition, and termination of outside aid. Implementation of
these provisions was to be followed by reductions in armed forces and by
free elections. In August 1987, as the world watched in amazement, leaders of all five countries signed the document. Reagan and his advisers
could barely contain their fury. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee
rubbed salt in Reagan’s wound by granting the 1987 award to Arias.
In February 1989 the Sandinista leadership announced plans to hold
an election the following year. The country was in a state of devastation.
Because of the continuous fighting, defense had been soaking up 40 percent of the national budget. Economic production had been sliced in half
since the late 1970s. In 1978 Nicaragua had exported $660 million
worth of goods; a decade later the figure was around $200 million and
still declining. Inflation was running at 14,000 percent in 1988, and at
800 percent in 1989. A compulsory draft plus the imprisonment of political dissidents (a fairly standard wartime measure) further alienated many
Nicaraguans. It should have come as no surprise, then, when the opposition movement under Violeta Barrios de Chamorro won the 1990 election with 55 percent of the vote. At last, in roundabout fashion, Reagan
thus achieved what he had sought: ouster of the Sandinistas.
On U.S. Interventions
As interpreted by Washington, the imperatives of the Cold War led to recurrent U.S. interference in the internal affairs of Latin American states.
One of the most telling features of these interventions was political consistency. Under the leadership of both political parties, Democrats and
Republicans, the United States attempted the forceful overthrow of each
and every socialist (or allegedly socialist) government in the Americas.?
The only conceivable exceptions actually prove the rule: they occurred in
Bolivia, where a hybrid government taking power after the revolution of
1952 soon joined the U.S. anticommunist campaign, and Peru, where a
nationalist military regime from 1968 to 1975 attempted major reforms
but was neither Marxist in dedication nor pro-Soviet in foreign policy.
The pattern of U.S. action was impressively consistent.
Washington’s perception of “communist” dangers and tendencies
rested upon exceedingly broad, loose, and often irresponsible criteria. Neither Bosch in the Dominican Republic nor Allende in Chile nor
Bishop in Grenada represented sinister threats to American society or to
national security; they were civilian reformers, more akin to European social democrats than to Soviet KGB operatives. Moreover, even those who
declared opposition to the United States and accepted support from the
USSR-the Fidelistas in Cuba and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua-turned
toward the Soviet bloc only after Washington adopted blatantly hostile
policies. Much of what happened was the result of exaggeration, misperception, and misunderstanding. History did not always have to be the
way it was.
Once decided on a course of action, the United States was usually
able to achieve its goals. Only the Cuban invasion of 1961 proved unsuccessful. All the other campaigns, through either covert support for opposition groups or the overt application of military force, from the Dominican action of 1965 to the Contra wars of the 1980s, led to the ouster of
allegedly socialist regimes. Of course they engendered political backlash
in Latin America. But by the narrowest of Cold War criteria, intervention
worked.
We are all Bolsheviks! I don’t know what socialism is; but I am a
Bolshevik, like all patriotic Mexicans. . . . The Yankees do not like the
Bolsheviks; the Yankees are our enemies; therefore the Bolsheviks must be
our friends, and we must be their friends. We are all Bolsheviks!
Mexican general (early 1920s)
Before our eyes were these two models-Puerto Rico and Cuba. Surely
there was another path, a third path. . . . we were to spend the next
years in our periphery exploring that third path.
Caribbean leader (late 1970s)
The Cold War placed Latin America in a difficult predicament. The
United States emerged from World War II as a preeminent superpower
and it was intent, moreover, on asserting its historic claim to hegemony
throughout the Western Hemisphere. In the meantime Latin America, as
part of the developing world, became a principal battleground in the conflict between East and West. Mindful of protecting its global position, the
United States took decisive and extraordinary steps to counter threats of
communist intrusion, real and imagined, anywhere in the Americas; from
the late 1940s through the late 1980s Washington applied diplomatic
pressure, offered economic incentives, engaged in covert operations, and
on several conspicuous occasions resorted to military intervention. Leaders from Latin America-intellectuals, politicians, and unionists among
them-looked upon these developments with apprehension, alarm, and disdain. They also had to face unpleasant realities of power: the Colossus
of the North was stronger than ever before. What could Latin America
do?
The Cold War closed off several previously available policy alternatives. It was no longer possible to seek protection from a rival European
power, as Bolivar and others had done during the nineteenth century. It
was implausible to pursue subregional hegemony, as Brazilians and Argentines had once imagined. It was useless to formulate high-minded
doctrines of diplomacy or international law, as Bello and Calvo and Drago
had attempted, since the United States simply refused to recognize adverse decisions by the World Court; nor could international organizations
impose meaningful restraints on American power, as shown by Washington’s domination and emasculation of the OAS. Essentially, Latin American leaders had only three options for confronting the Cold War: (1) they
could defy the United States and pursue socialist paths of political change,
(2) they could seek support from the United States on the basis of anticommunist solidarity, or (3) they could attempt to forge an intermediate
or “third” strategy, hoping to avoid alignment with both East and West
and thus to secure economic, political, and cultural independence.
Option 1: The Socialist Path
Marxist ideology achieved substantial appeal in Latin America. Its diagnosis of class conflict applied directly to social inequities throughout the region. Its summons to revolutionary action offered hope to downtrodden
workers and peasants. Its identification of imperialism as “the highest form
of capitalism,” in the language of V. I. Lenin, offered both a coherent explanation of big-power politics and a foundation for asserting national sovereignty. Moreover, Marxist internationalists and Latin American nationalists had one enemy in common: the United States, leader of the capitalist
world and dominant power in the Western Hemisphere. More important
than its doctrinaire principles, however, was an underlying attraction of
Marxist-Leninist thought: as an ideology of the oppressed, it struck a deep
and resonant chord with the cultures of resistance welling up in Latin
America ever since the acquisition of independence. For all these reasons,
socialism seemed to offer a promising pathway for Latin America.
Parties and Elections
Initial efforts in the name of Marxism focused on political parties and
electoral competition. In the wake of the Russian Revolution, old-school
communist parties appeared in a number of Latin American countries
during the 1920s. Usually based in the cities, led by intellectuals and
politicians, they tended to espouse “the peaceful road to power” rather
than insurrectionary action. During the 1930s and 1940s they developed
close, often servile relations to the Soviet Union. As the Cold War erupted Latin America’s communist parties became seriously divided,
weakened, or divorced from their traditional or potential constituencies.
As recounted in chapter 5, governments of Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and
other countries declared them to be illegal in 1947 and 1948; papers were
seized, leaders jailed, and followers harassed, repressed, or exiled. During
most of the 1950s parties sought Soviet protection by defending the
USSR in the context of the Cold War, thus becoming “tribunal” organizations that were more devoted to the advocacy of Soviet interests than to
the struggle for power. Their true “vocation,” according to French theoretician Regis Debray, “was not to promote an assault on power, but
rather to resist assaults from power.” By the 1960s and 1970s communist
parties had become passive observers of national politics in most countries
of the region.
It was perhaps in Guatemala, during the Arbenz administration in the
early 1950s, that local communists (through the Partido Guatemalteco de
Trabajadores) exercised their most significant influence on national policy.
As coalition partners, communists performed only marginal roles in
elected governments in Brazil (1961-64), Chile (1970-73), and to a
lesser degree in Uruguay (1973-74). Nor were they major factors in
revolutionary situations. In Cuba the Partido Socialista Popular achieved
an eventual rapprochement with the Fidelista movement but was never a
center of power. In Nicaragua, Sandinista revolutionaries quickly abandoned their efforts to accommodate the Partido Socialista Nicaraguense.
And in other contexts, from El Salvador to Bolivia, communist party
apparatchiks stoutly opposed the activities and aspirations of armed guerrilla groups.
Ultimately, communist parties in Latin America were victims of the
Cold War. Despite their advocacy of the “peaceful road” and their cautionary policies, their alignment with the Soviet Union opened them to
charges of repressiveness and wickedness. “On the one hand,” as Mexican
commentator Jorge Castaneda has written, the communist party “no
matter how often or vigorously it stressed its moderation and pragmatism, could not shake the image of Communist rule as it existed elsewhere. It was a victim of its own reputation and former policies.” Forces
of the political right could not trust the party’s avowal of moderate positions; but because of its conservatism, the party could not reach agreements with the extremist left. “The Communist parties of Latin America
never overcame this contradiction, this powerful paradox that haunted
them from their conception to their slow and silent passing toward the
end of the 1980s.”1 As formal entities, communist parties never posed
much of a threat.
Socialist parties, on the other hand, sometimes managed to play a
major role in the postwar politics of Latin America. These were groupings
that, for the most part, blended Marxist analysis of class struggle with nationalist insistence on the sanctity of sovereignty; while denouncing U.S.
“imperialism” they did not, however, follow Soviet dictates in the interna tional arena. More flexible than the communists, more attuned to local
realities, socialist parties (in a variety of forms) gave substantial credibility
to the political left. Their most conspicuous successes came in Guatemala,
under Jacobo Arbenz, and in Chile, under Salvador Allende.
But the fate of those same governments demonstrated the impossibility of the “peaceful road” toward socialism. In collaboration with local
allies, the United States worked to overthrow Arbenz in 1954 and Allende in 1973. And for good measure, Washington helped displace the
moderately left-of-center administration of Juan Bosch in the Dominican
Republic in 1965. No matter how free or fair the ballot, electoral politics could not offer a meaningful route to socialist reform; Washington
would always block the path. It did not take long for Latin American leftists to see the handwriting on the wall: their only alternative was armed
revolution.
Guerrilla Movements
Nearly thirty separate guerrilla movements emerged in Latin America
from the early 1950s to the 1980s. Virtually all proclaimed Marxist ideologies, of one sort or another, though they tended to espouse nationalist
and populist causes as well. First and foremost among them was the
Fidelista vanguard in Cuba, where Castro’s rise to power, as Debray recalled, “descended like a clap of thunder on skepticism and legalism.”
Universally emboldened by the Fidelista example and sometimes instigated by Cuban conspiracy, guerrilla movements sprang up in a variety of
countries. In Guatemala, reformist military officers challenged the post-
Arbenz dictatorship in 1960 by forming the MR-13 guerrilla movement
(Movimiento Revolucionario 13 de Noviembre) and later still the Rebel
Armed Forces (FAR). In Venezuela, social opposition to the economic
austerity program of elected president Romulo Betancourt erupted in
violence and the appearance of guerrilla bands in 1962, followed a year
later by the organization of the Armed Forces of National Liberation
(FALN), sponsored by the communists, and the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), led by a splinter group from Betancourt’s own
party. In Colombia, decades of fratricidal conflict between Liberals and
Conservatives (known as La Violencia) gave way in the mid-1960s to the
formation of multiple guerrilla groups: the Colombian Revolutionary
Armed Forces (FARC), allied to the communist party (PCC); the Army
of National Liberation (ELN), inspired directly by the Cuban example;
and a Maoist group, the Popular Army of Liberation (EPL). Two guerrilla groups made brief, if unsuccessful, appearances in the Peruvian
Andes. And in the Bolivian highlands, Ernesto “Che” Guevara organized
a Cuban-led foco in late 1966. Opposed by local communists and unsupported by the peasantry, Guevara’s guerrillas were destroyed in October
1967; Che himself was killed after his capture.
For all practical intents and purposes, Guevara’s death marked the be ginning of the end to what sociologist Timothy Wickham-Crowley has
called the “first wave” of guerrilla movements in contemporary Latin
America.2 Despite this ignominious defeat, the Cuban Revolution continued to fire the imagination of the continental left. Through the 1960s
and into the 1970s, the Fidelista triumph showed that it was possible for a
radical movement to embrace Marxist-Leninism and to seize power; to
oppose the United States but to nonetheless endure; and to promote the
cause of social revolution throughout Latin America, partly as an act of
solidarity and partly in the interests of self-defense. In emulating Cuba regional revolutionaries moved away from the ideology and experience of
the Fidelista movement of 1956-58, when Castro was stressing populist
issues and political reform, including restoration of the 1940 constitution, and closer to the radical tactics espoused by Guevara and others in
the 1960s.
A second wave of guerrilla movements crested in the 1970s and
1980s. In Guatemala, offshoots of the FAR came to include the Guerrilla
Army of the Poor (EGP), the FAR (again), and the Organization of People in Arms (OR-PA); by 1982, according to some estimates, the total
number of guerrillas came to 6,000 combatants. In Colombia, the 19th
of April Movement emerged in protest against allegedly fraudulent elections of 1970; making its first public appearance in 1974, M-19 stole the
sword of Simon Bolivar from its hallowed place in a national museum and
proclaimed: “Bolivar, your sword returns to the struggle.” Pragmatic in
its ideology, M-19 cultivated connections with narcotraficante chieftains
and maintained close communication with the Cubans. In Peru, professors and students at the University of Huamanga organized a Maoist
guerrilla group, Sendero Luminoso, or “Shining Path” (originally known
as “The Communist Party of Peru-Along the Shining Path of Jose Carlos Mariategui,” in deference to the country’s great Marxist intellectual of
the 1920s). Never pro-Castro, its leaders regarded the Cuban Revolution
as “revisionist” and unduly pro-Soviet. Launching armed struggle in April
1980, Sendero succeeded in forming a “popular guerrilla army” by 1983.
It thereafter expanded operations into urban areas, especially in the shantytowns around Lima, where it posed a major threat to governmental
rule.
But the most important movements in this second wave of armed resistance, especially the ones that riveted attention from the United States,
erupted in Central America. In El Salvador, a long-standing alliance between the local oligarchy and the military rule showed signs of decay in
the early 1970s. A number of guerrilla groups took up irregular warfare:
the Popular Forces of Liberation-Farabundo Marti (FPL), born of a
1970 split within the communist party; the Revolutionary Army of the
People (ERP), formed of Christians and communists in 1971; and the
Armed Forces of National Resistance (FARN), which split from the ERP
in 1975. Popular opposition to military rule mounted against patent electoral fraud in 1972 and 1977 and against the undisguised brutality of the General Carlos Humberto Romero regime (1977-79). Guerrilla groups
gradually reached a modus vivendi and merged to form the Farabundo
Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), later establishing an alliance
with the civilian-led Democratic Revolutionary Front (FDR). Resistance
accelerated after a “reformist” civilian-military junta took power in late
1979 but failed to deliver on its promises of social and political change. A
“final offensive” by the guerrillas in early 1981 was unable to oust the
government, however, and armed revolutionaries retreated to the countryside. As described in chapter 7, stalemate continued through the
1980s. Finally, after years of conflict and the loss of more than 80,000
lives, El Salvador reached an uneasy truce under the auspices of the
United Nations.
In Nicaragua, resistance to the thirty-year-old dynasty of the Somoza
family foundered in the 1960s despite sporadic efforts by the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN). In the early 1970s the movement broke into three separate factions: one, known as Prolonged Popular War (GPP), gathered strength among peasants in the mountainous
north-central region; a second, the Proletarios, splintered from the GPP
in 1973 to carry the movement to workers and intellectuals in cities; third
were the Terceristas, a politically moderate and non-Marxist grouping.
Throughout the 1970s elements from the middle classes and the business
sector began to express dissatisfaction with Somoza, and in 1978 it was
widely assumed that he masterminded the assassination of his conservative opponent, newspaper editor Pedro Joaquin Chamorro. Civil and
guerrilla opposition to Somoza thereafter coalesced into a semblance
of unity. Insurrection continued, pressure mounted, and Somoza left
for exile in July 1979. As Castro had done in Cuba twenty years before,
the Sandinistas entered their capital city amidst an atmosphere of popular
euphoria.
Of all the guerrilla movements emerging in Latin America during the
course of the Cold War, only two managed to seize political power: the
Fidelistas and the Sandinistas. The reasons are not far to seek: the success
of revolutionary movements depended not only upon their own resources
but also upon the social support and military strength of incumbent gov-
ernments.3 Especially noticeable is the fact that Fidelistas and Sandinistas
were both challenging corrupt and patrimonial dictatorships that had lost
support from their natural constituencies, landowners and businessmen,
and that in the end received only lukewarm backing from the United
States. Throughout the Cold War as a whole, El Salvador was more the
rule than Nicaragua: wherever feasible, Washington scurried to the aid of
governments under siege from Marxist revolutionists.
Revolutionary States
As a matter of realpolitik, it should have been perfectly possible for revolutionary governments to reach practical accommodations with the United States. The new regimes in Cuba and Nicaragua posed little if any
direct threat to the security of the United States; on their own, they were
incapable of mounting any significant challenge to U.S. power. They also
had much to gain from positive commercial and economic relations with
the United States. From Washington’s point of view, a modus vivendi
with these revolutionary states could reduce the likelihood of Soviet meddling in the hemisphere and, in the bargain, help identify the United
States with popular forces for change throughout the world.
What seemed possible in principle proved unattainable in practice. To
the extent that revolutionary movements in Latin America had a nationalist and anti-imperialist purpose, they were necessarily opposed to the
United States; this was especially true in Cuba and Nicaragua, which had
suffered long and painful experiences of U.S. domination. (In fact, the
Sandinista party anthem proudly proclaimed its determination to struggle
against “el yanqui, enemigo de la humanidad. “) Opposition to the United
States had deep historical roots. And to the extent that revolutionary
movements in Latin America followed Marxist ideology, they were bound
to seek support and solidarity within the communist bloc. Almost inevitably, anti-Americanism and pro-Marxism translated into approval for
the Soviet Union. Under the pressure of the Cold War, Fidelistas and
Sandinistas had shared incentives to befriend the enemy of their enemy.
Nor did Washington greet revolutionary governments with open
arms. In the case of Cuba, as detailed in chapter 7, the Eisenhower administration first sought to keep Batista in power, and then attempted to
sustain batistianismo sin Batista. And after Fidel’s triumph, U.S. officials
treated his government with undisguised hostility. In early 1960 Eisenhower authorized the CIA to undertake a series of covert actions, including the arming and training of exiles, and in January 1961 Washington
severed diplomatic relations with Cuba. Soon after taking office, President John F. Kennedy approved the fateful Bay of Pigs invasion of April
1961. All this took place before Castro declared his revolution to be “socialist,” in April and May 1961, and months before he proclaimed himself
to have been a lifelong Marxist-Leninist. In the meantime, U.S. operatives continued to plot assassination attempts. It is little wonder, in retrospect, that Castro turned to the Soviet Union for help: his country and
his revolution were under constant siege from the United States.
A similar pattern emerged in Nicaragua. Once in power, the Sandinistas attempted to create a mixed economy and to pursue an independent
foreign policy. Following Cuba’s example, the Nicaraguan government
achieved prompt and tangible progress through social programs for literacy, public health, and education. In the political realm, however, the
FSLN decided to preserve a monopoly on power rather than share it with
late-arriving bourgeois supporters. This proved a fateful step. “Once they
did,” as Castaneda has said, “the die was cast. In particular, the role that
Cuba would play was all but predestined: To make a revolution, as opposed to a power-sharing scheme of deep reforms, meant building a new state, without the trusted cadres to do it with: those could only be borrowed, like the funds to reconstruct a nation torn apart by years of civil
war.”4 Toward these ends the Sandinistas welcomed approximately 2,500
Cubans (the count was carefully monitored by the CIA and the State De-
partment)-doctors, nurses, schoolteachers, sanitary engineers-as well
as Cuban military, police, and intelligence personnel. And in order to seek
allies elsewhere in Central America, the Sandinistas began distributing
arms and aid to FSLN comrades fighting in El Salvador.
In both Cuba and Nicaragua, the United States deliberately pursued
courses of action that ended up by pushing revolutionary states more and
more toward the left and into the arms of the Soviet Union. Of course it
is impossible to know what might have happened if the United States had
made genuine efforts at accommodation. Yet the basic trend was apparent. By attempting to isolate, intimidate, and harass revolutionary
governments in Latin America, Washington succeeded in provoking, promoting, and strengthening their reliance upon the Soviet Union. Approaching these regimes within a rigid Cold War framework, the United
States thus managed to accomplish precisely what it sought to avoid: revolutionary entanglements with the USSR that could lead to Soviet intrusions in the Americas.
Option 2: The Anticommunist Crusade
If the Cold War helped galvanize the radical left in Latin America, it
proved to be a godsend for the authoritarian right. In the immediate aftermath of World War II, flushed with triumph over totalitarian forces,
the United States embarked on a short-lived effort to promote democracy
in the Western Hemisphere. Acknowledging the legacy of FDR’s Good
Neighbor policy, Harry Truman’s secretary of state, James F. Byrnes, insisted in October 1945 that “nonintervention in internal affairs does not
mean the approval of local tyranny” and soon endorsed a call from Uruguay for multilateral action against autocratic regimes. Spruille Braden, as
U.S. ambassador to Argentina, openly denounced authoritarian and
protofascist tendencies in the surging Peronist movement. Also in 1945 a
State Department report expressed displeasure over the perpetuation of
dictatorship within the region and expressed the view, repeated frequently
and publicly in ensuing years, that “the United States cannot but feel a
closer friendship and a warmer sympathy for those governments which
rest upon the periodically and freely-expressed consent of the governed.”
Against this background, the outbreak of the Cold War suddenly offered right-wing forces a new lease on life: enlistment in the anticommunist crusade. For elites in Latin America, ideological and political commitment to the anti-Marxist cause could earn goodwill and material benefits
from the world’s preeminent power. It also had the inestimable benefit of
enabling autocrats to denounce domestic opponents as “communists,”
“socialists,” and/or “servants of Soviet imperialism.” The dynamics of East-West conflict in the global arena thus led to redefinition of political
struggle within the local arena, a formulation that depicted opposition to
pro-U.S. rulers as alien, disloyal, atheistic, unpatriotic, and totalitarian.
Given this twist in terms of debate, the central issue was no longer dictatorship versus democracy; it was anticommunism versus communism.
Deliverance for Dictatorship
First to benefit from this fortuitous turn of events was Anastasio Somoza,
Sr., of Nicaragua. As World War II came to an end, the U.S. State Department earnestly attempted to persuade the dictator to step down from
power. As an “elder statesman,” Spruille Braden contended, General Somoza could promote the ideals of democracy “and thus write his name
large on the pages of history.” Reluctantly, Somoza allowed one of his
longtime cronies, Leonardo Arguello, to assume the presidency in May
1947-but when Arguello started acting on his own, Somoza threw him
out of office after just twenty-six days. Outraged by this betrayal, the Truman administration decided to withhold diplomatic recognition of the
new Somoza regime.
The impasse lasted for nearly a year. Unfazed by Washington’s denunciations, the wily Somoza maintained close working relations with the
U.S. military mission, thus exploiting a breach between the State Department and the War Department. And once the Cold War erupted in Europe, Somoza took a strident anticommunist stand. Washington retreated
to a policy of de facto recognition and soon resumed diplomatic relations.
Somoza responded with vigorous efforts to please U.S. officials. By 1950
he confidently explained to an American military attache that he had successfully met leftist threats to his government and “put his foot firmly on
the spark of Communism.” On countless occasions he declaimed communism as a great danger to the hemisphere, a result of Soviet infiltration
and “a cancerous growth which had to be cut away.” Pledging his government’s allegiance to the United States, Somoza instructed his diplomats to vote invariably with Washington at the United Nations and the
Organization of American States.
The culmination of Somoza’s efforts came in 1954, when he actively
supported the U.S.-sponsored coup against the Arbenz government in
Guatemala. As a dictator, Somoza had long regarded the existence of
elected governments in Costa Rica and Guatemala as implicit challenges
to his authority. (He often liked to claim that Nicaragua occupied an unusually difficult geopolitical position because of its location between the
“leftist” governments of Jose Figueres and Juan Jose Arevalo, whom he
had attempted to overthrow in 1949.) The U.S. campaign against Arbenz
thus came as a heaven-sent opportunity. Somoza eagerly promoted a
diplomatic resolution declaring communism as a danger to the region and
a proposal for the formation of a Central American military force to eradicate the menace from the isthmus. As the CIA prepared for action against Arbenz, the United States and Nicaragua signed a bilateral military assistance agreement that opened the way for an enlarged military mission and
the resumption of arms sales. And once the coup had taken effect, Somoza loudly applauded Eisenhower’s decisiveness. Patiently, and cleverly,
Somoza had worked his way back into the good graces of Washington.
Others followed the anticommunist tide. Seizing power in Cuba in
1952, Fulgencio Batista immediately gave Washington private assurances
that he would respect U.S. interests, especially business interests, and he
promised not to renew his old ties to the communists. He depicted his
overthrow of Carlos Prio Socorras as an anticommunist action:
The Caribbean Legion, composed of Leftists, demogogues, adventurers, and
Communist agitators whose mission was to carry out international assignments for the Soviet Union, had the enthusiastic support of President Prio.
The Russian Embassy in Havana was the propaganda center for the entire
Caribbean region and the Gulf of Mexico. Russian agents came and went carrying printed material from Mexico to Cuba, and vice versa. With the blessings of the President and his Administration, Communist travelers and Havana University students met in the Embassy to conspire against Western
democracy.
Once in office Batista promptly met a long-standing U.S. desire by breaking relations with the USSR-which he had himself established in 1942and went on to outlaw Cuba’s communist party. In 1953 Batista denounced Fidel Castro’s July 26 attack on the Moncada barracks as
“Communist,” “anti-American,” and “anti-democratic.” In 1954 Batista
promulgated a decree stipulating that communist activity of any kind
was sufficient cause for dismissal from the civil service, from universities,
or from labor unions. At the suggestion of U.S. ambassador Arthur Gardner, Batista established a special office in the Ministry of War to “fight”
the communists, the Buro de Represion a las Actividades Comunistas
(BRAC). In recognition of these services, Batista earned the gratitude of
U.S. leaders: after a visit to the island in 1955, Vice President Nixon reported that Batista was “a remarkable man” who “seems desirous of
doing a job more for Cuba than a job of [sic] Batista and is also concerned about the social progress of his country.”
Equally audacious was Rafael Leonidas Trujillo Molina, who ruled
the Dominican Republic with an iron hand from 1930 to 1961. Like Somoza, Trujillo initially felt U.S. pressure to liberalize his regime at the end
of World War II. In 1947 the enterprising Trujillo claimed 92 percent of
the popular vote in presidential elections, however, and with the outbreak
of the Cold War he quickly suppressed the political opposition. Proclaiming himself to be “the foremost anti-Communist of the hemisphere,” he
released a White Book of Communism in the Dominican Republic that
specifically criticized unwitting servants of communism who were falsely
working in the name of democracy: foreign journalists, domestic politicians, a growing number of exiles-all were branded as “communist.” One of the first Latin Americans to reach agreement with the United
States under the Mutual Security Act of 1951, Trujillo would receive over
$6 million in military assistance from 1952 through 1961. In exchange
for his loyalty, Trujillo earned extravagant accolades in the United States:
Senator Olin D. Johnson (D-South Carolina) proclaimed in 1957 that
“the Dominican Republic has rendered a greater force [sic] in deterring
the spread of communism in Latin America than any other country in the
Caribbean area.” And during a visit to the Dominican Republic in 1959,
Representative Gardner R. Withrow (R-Wisconsin) made the astonishing
declaration that had Trujillo been born on U.S. soil, he would have become president of the United States!
For these dictators, and many others like them, the Cold War provided a transparent political script. To ensure their perpetuation in power,
autocrats were encouraged to take several steps:
• Declare fervent opposition to communism in all its forms and
expressions.
• Provide support for the United States in international forums, especially the United Nations (where the costs of compliance were
virtually zero).
• Endorse the Monroe Doctrine.
• Denounce all domestic opponents as communists, as communistinspired, or as unwitting dupes of communist conspiracies; outlaw
the local communist party.
• Subscribe to the domino theory, which meant that domestic subversion presented a threat to neighboring countries as well as to
their own governments.
• Open the economy to U.S. investments and commercial interests.
• Express support for U.S. military, paramilitary, and covert actions
against “communist threats” throughout the hemisphere.
• Maintain close relations with the U.S. military establishment (Somoza Sr. went so far as to send Somoza Jr. to West Point).
• Curry friendships with members of the U.S. Congress (Somoza Jr.
had perhaps the closest friend of all in Representative John Murphy, D-New York).
• Cultivate close personal relations with U.S. ambassadors.
The courting of U.S. ambassadors was routinely facilitated by their intellectual mediocrity. Appointments to small Latin American countries did
not receive the highest priority within the U.S. government; in the 1940s
and 1950s ambassadorships often went to stalled-out career diplomats or
to wealthy businessmen, some of whom could not speak Spanish. Thus
Somoza Sr. managed to captivate Thomas Whelan, Somoza Jr. did the
same with Turner Shelton, Batista had his Arthur Gardner, and Trujillo
had William T. Pheiffer. All were severely afflicted by what diplomats
called “clientitis.” All were unswerving spokesmen for their autocrats.
Just as the Cuban Revolution came to inspire the left, it hardened the resolve of the political right. After 1959 (or 1961) the threat of a “communist takeover” no longer seemed distant, abstract, unlikely. If it could
happen in Cuba-where the United States had maintained a virtual protectorate until 1933, only ninety miles off the coast of Florida-it could
happen anywhere. Moreover, the prorevolutionary activism of the Castro
regime allowed the autocrats to identify Cuba as the geographical and political source of their problems. As Anastasio Somoza, Jr., recalled, he had
for years “been advising the appropriate people in Washington that my
real enemy was Fidel Castro and Cuba.” And as late as November 1978
he pointedly insisted to a U.S. diplomat: “The real FSLN is in Cuba.
They left from Havana, and some went from Panama to Cuba.” In other
words, there was no genuine domestic opposition to the Somocista dynasty; it was all the result of international conspiracy.
It is ironic, perhaps, that the United States withdrew support from its
dictatorial allies at crucial political moments. In Cuba, Washington attempted to persuade Batista to step down from office in the late 1950s
and halted military assistance to his regime. In the Dominican Republic,
Washington tried to convince Trujillo to leave power (and when he refused, the CIA took active part in plots on his life).5 And in Nicaragua,
twenty years later, U.S. diplomats eased Somoza Jr. into exile. Yet these
reversals (or betrayals) did not contradict Cold War ideology. In each and
every case, U.S. policymakers reached the conclusion that the perpetuation of dictatorship would increase the chances of a communist takeover,
and that removal of the autocrats would keep the communists at bay.
Even while abandoning its dictatorial allies, Washington remained faithful
to its anticommunist convictions.
National Security Doctrines
In contrast to the personalistic satrapies of the Somoza-Trujillo category,
political developments in South America produced a spate of “bureaucratic authoritarian” regimes from the 1960s to the 1980s. Initiated and
usually dominated by professional armed forces, these governments typically represented an alliance of multinational business, local capital, and
state interests. With cold-blooded instruments of repression they challenged, intimidated, undermined, and emasculated peasant movements
and organizations of the working class. To justify such policies they formulated doctrines of “national security” that drew heavily upon anticommunist litanies of the Cold War, tailoring the dogma to their own realities
and purposes. While American theoreticians of national security stressed
total war and nuclear weapons strategy, and the French, well into the Algerian war, focused on the use of limited warfare in response to the communist movements, their South American counterparts emphasized the
threats of internal subversion and revolutionary warfare.
The prototypical version of national security doctrine appeared in
Brazil, where the armed forces ousted left-leaning president Joao Goulart from office in 1964. In collaboration with colleagues at the Escola Superior de Guerra (ESG), a military think-tank founded in 1949 with
the help of French and U.S. advisers, General Golbery do Couto e Silva
began developing ideas that stressed both the possibility of “indirect attack” from the Soviet Union and the dangers of subversion and/or revolution. Under current conditions, he wrote, the concept of war must be
expanded to include
the entire territorial space of the belligerent states, thus involving the whole
economic, political, cultural, and military capacity of the nation in the enormity of the struggle. All activities are focused on one single aim: victory and
only victory. No distinction is made between soldiers and civilians, men,
women, and children; they face the same danger, and identical sacrifices are
demanded of them. They must all abdicate the secular liberties, which had
been won at such high costs, and place them in the hands of the state, the allpowerful lord of war. . . . Above all total war has eliminated the time scale,
incorporating in itself the time of prewar and postwar, which are in fact now
only extensions of one sole and continuing state of war.
The world now faced a situation of “permanent war.” As a result, “there
is no longer a distinction between where peace ends and war begins.”
In this setting, enemies of the Brazilian state would rely primarily
upon “internal subversion”-particularly “revolutionary warfare,” which
Golbery defined as “a conflict, normally internal, that is stimulated and
aided materially or psychologically from outside the nation, generally inspired by an ideology. It attempts to gain state power by progressive control of the nation.” Revolutionary warfare did not necessarily entail the
use of armed force. It was essentially a struggle over hearts and minds, a
clash of psychological weapons: “A principal characteristic of Communist
revolutionary war,” Golbery said, “is the involvement of the population
of the target country in a gradual, slow action-both progressive and
continuous-which aims at the conquering of minds. It encompasses all
aspects, from the exploitation of existing discontent and protest-with
the incitement of the population against the constituted authorities-up
to the actual organization of dominated and controlled zones or territories.” Tactics of this sort would be especially effective in the developing
world, “in countries of weak national power.” In the face of such challenges, national security required internal security.
To this general argument, Golbery added innovative features. One
focused on geopolitics. Latin America was essential to the West, and
Brazil was the most important country in Latin America. This led Golbery to advocate tough bargaining with Washington: “when we see that
the United States negotiates, using the weight of dollars, immense
amounts of aid in order to gain the support of undecided people or even
frankly hostile nations of the Western European region, in the Middle
East, or in Asia-it seems to us to be only just that we should learn to bargain at high prices and to use the fact that we, as a nation, hold the trump card.” Carried to its logical conclusion, the doctrine furnished the basis
for an independent Brazilian foreign policy. (“We may also invoke a ‘manifest destiny’ theory,” he suggested on one occasion, “especially since it
does not collide directly with that of our bigger and more powerful
brother in the North.”) Second, Golbery stressed the significance of economics. Industrialization offered a key to sovereignty and independence,
in his view, and economic development could promote the integration
and protection of national territory. It was therefore vitally important to
develop the country’s vast uninhabited expanses, which he categorized as
“paths of penetration,” and it would be eventually desirable “to flood the
Amazon region with civilization.” In this conception the purpose of economic development was not so much to raise the standard of living for
the populace as to secure national integrity.
Thus imbued by the Cold War, the Brazilian generals seized power in
April 1964 with promises to “restore legality” and reinforce the “threatened democratic institutions”-and, above all, to “eliminate the danger
of subversion and communism.” A series of “institutional acts” then established a putative juridical basis for authoritarian rule. Institutional Act
No. 1, right after the coup, centralized political authority, eliminated parliamentary immunity, and, in a revealing phrase, launched inquiries into
individuals believed to have “engaged in acts of revolutionary war.”
Under General Humberto Castello Branco, the government promptly inaugurated “Operation Cleanup” (Operacao Limpeza). Within a few
months the regime arrested perhaps 50,000 persons. A professor of engineering was charged with “being really a Communist, subversive, and
agitator, as is well known by public opinion.” A public employee was condemned because “his father was always a militant of the Communist party
and taught him this as a child.” Gratified by such devout expressions of
anticommunism, Washington would remain steadfastly loyal to its newfound allies in Brazil.
Nearly ten years later, in Chile, armed forces once again rose to strike
down a communist threat. In a radio address on September 11, 1973 General Augusto Pinochet reassured listeners that “This is not a coup d’etat,
but a military movement” aimed at “salvaging the country,” while one of
his coconspirators, General Bernardo Leigh, vowed to “struggle against
Marxism and to extirpate it to the last consequences.” An edict the following day proclaimed that anyone displaying a “belligerent attitude” would
be “executed on the spot.” Like the Brazilians, Chilean military officers
were utterly convinced that they were engaged in a permanent war. As
Pinochet declared in a press conference on September 21: “Marxist resistance is not finished. There are still extremists left. Chile continues in a
state of internal war.” Leftists in Chile were “masters of subterranean struggle,” in Pinochet’s words, and communism was “not just another party”
but a “system that turned everything upside down, without leaving any belief or faith.” Anticommunism thus became a tenet of religious faith. In
1974 the regime established the Direccion de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) whose mission was nothing less than the “total extermination of
Marxism.” Years later, Pinochet would look back on the early months of his
government with satisfaction: “If the extremists believed the moment of
confrontation was coming, so did I. They wanted triumph to take total
power; I wanted it to save Chile from Communism.”
Argentina experienced this now-familiar pattern in 1976, when a
military coup ousted the government of Isabel Martinez de Peron. Upon
seizing power, the generals claimed to have brought back the country
from the brink of “dissolution and anarchy” and, like their Brazilian and
Chilean counterparts, vowed to combat “subversion.” What Argentina
required, in their view, was a fundamental reorganization of economic,
social, and political life. Hence they christened their regime as the “Pro-
ceso de Reorganizacion Nacional,” and they sanctified their fight against
subversion as the “Dirty War.”
Aside from counterterrorist operations against leftist guerrillas, principally the Ejercito Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP), the Argentine generals unleashed a relentless campaign of repression against unarmed civilians. As explained by Ramon Camps, chief of Buenos Aires police during
the height of the Dirty War: “You always have a latent element which
awaits an opportune moment to reappear. . . . This is the thesis of Vo
Nguyen Giap and of Mao Tse Tung.” Even before taking power, General
Jorge Videla had coolly foreseen the use of terror: “As many people will
die in Argentina as necessary to restore order.” Hundreds and thousands
of victims simply vanished, becoming known, in the ungrammatical lexicon of the era, as “the disappeared.” A human rights commission was
subsequently able to document more than 9,000 cases of disappearances
during the period from 1976 through 1982, acknowledging that “the
true figure is much higher.” Some observers estimated that there were as
many as 15,000 desaparecidos and an additional 5,000 people who were
murdered but identified. The scope of this official terror was as frightening as its scale: many of the arrests, detentions, and disappearances
appeared to be almost at random, with deliberate disregard for guilt or
innocence. Anyone could be a target; there was no sure means for selfprotection. The purpose was intimidation of the whole society.
Thus did the Argentines fashion their doctrine of national security. As
summarized by Jacobo Timerman, a journalist who was imprisoned in
1977, the creed was both straightforward and bizarre: “World War III has
begun; the enemy is left-wing terrorism; and Argentina was the initial battleground chosen by the enemy. . . . World War III is not a confrontation between democracies and communism, but between the entire world
and left-wing terrorism.” Bringing the domino theory to its apogee, Argentina occupied a vanguard position in a titanic struggle on behalf
of Western civilization. A particularly sinister feature of the Argentine
ideology was its virulent anti-Semitism. As reported by Timerman: “It
was clear that they hated Karl Marx, Che Guevara, Sigmund Freud,
Theodor Herzl. But it was hard to understand why they hated Zionism more than communism, and considered it a more significant enemy; and
that they regarded Israel as a more dangerous foe than Russia. . . .
Communism was more visible than Zionism, therefore easier to identify,
and hence less dangerous, although both ideologies had as their ultimate
intention the destruction of nationality.” Anti-Semitism had a long and
ugly history in Argentine society, and the generals summoned this legacy
of darkness to justify their murderous insistence on national purification.
Throughout Latin America, one long-term effect of the Cold War
became readily apparent: the polarization and intensification of political
conflict. Applied to the regional context, the East-West conflict provoked
and energized both the left and the right. As a consequence of its internal
logic, the Cold War tended to encourage extremist forces-at the expense
of centrist reform. Over a period of forty years, the Cold War incessantly
promoted the radicalization of Latin American politics: both the revolutionary excesses of Sendero Luminoso and the national-security fantasies
of the South American military were consummate, and probably inevitable, expressions of this relentless dialectic. Despite its extrahemispheric origins, the Cold War penetrated deeply, and painfully, into the
core of Latin American society.
Human Rights and the United States
Just as unavoidably, the reactionary zeal of right-wing forces led to disagreements with the United States over the question of human rights.
Throughout the Cold War period, U.S. policy pursued two goals that
were often in conflict with one another-anticommunism and democracy.
It was not until the mid-1970s that human rights became a major political issue. One fundamental reason for this change, in the wake of Vietnam
and Watergate, was activism in the U.S. Congress. A 1975 amendment
attached to the International Development and Food Assistance Act,
sponsored by Representative Thomas Harkin (D-Iowa), called for an immediate halt in economic aid to countries engaged in gross violation of
rights; and in 1978, after years of wrangling, Congress finally agreed that
“no security assistance may be provided to any country the government
of which engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights.”
A second factor was the presidential election of Jimmy Carter. In his
inaugural address of January 1977, Carter declared that “our commitment to human rights must be absolute. . . . Because we are free, we
can never be indifferent to the fate of freedom elsewhere.” And in 1978,
on the thirtieth anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights, Carter went on to pledge: “As long as I am President, the government of the United States will continue throughout the world to enhance
human rights. No force on earth can separate us from that commitment.
. . . Our human rights policy is not a decoration. It is not something we
have adopted to polish up our image abroad, or to put a fresh coat of moral paint on the discredited policies of the past. . . . Human rights is
the soul of our foreign policy.” Throughout its term, the Carter administration expressed profound unhappiness over human-rights violations in
Brazil, Guatemala, Chile, and Argentina-but remained conspicuously
silent about abuses in other countries, such as Iran and the Philippines,
which were deemed to be of great strategic value in the East-West conflict. Practically speaking, Carter’s stance on human rights was a policy for
Latin America, not the world as a whole.
Within this context a crisis arose in September 1976, when the explosion of a car bomb in Washington, D. C., killed Orlando Letelier, an exiled official from the Allende government, and his young American assistant, Ronni Moffitt. There was little doubt that the assassination was the
work of the Pinochet regime. The murder drew swift condemnation from
the United Nations and from U.S. senator Edward Kennedy; in the
House, Harkin redoubled efforts to have aid cut off. Eventually Congress
agreed to the ban and approved Harkin’s legislation, aimed principally at
Chile, prohibiting all nonhumanitarian aid to governments that were violating human rights. The Letelier bombing continued to poison bilateral
relations in 1979, when the Chilean Supreme Court refused to extradite
three DINA suspects in the murder and authorized their release. Carter’s
State Department accused Chile of condoning “international terrorism,”
the U.S. ambassador was twice recalled, private commercial credits were
cut, and the navy withdrew from annual exercises with Chile.
Pinochet adopted a defiant stance. Pointing to the Chinese ambassador across the room, Pinochet declared to U.S. ambassador George
Landau in June 1978: “Believe me, Chile can go to China. We are not
married to the United States. I could even turn to the Soviet Union.
They would help. They would do anything to hurt you.” When Landau
asked for clarification about the prospect of an alignment with the USSR,
Pinochet shot back: “Absolutely! I would do it to protect my country.
The Soviet Union would always intervene against American interests. It is
unfortunate that you Americans always fail to understand this.”
Despite its bluster, Pinochet’s response underscored the strength
of nationalist sentiment within the South American military establishments. Unlike the satraps of the Caribbean, leaders of these bureaucraticauthoritarian regimes held deep beliefs in the sanctity of state and nation.
Challenged by the United States on human rights, they reacted with
combinations of annoyance, disdain, bewilderment-but not submission.
Here they were, in their own mind-sets, fighting a crusade for the sake of
Western civilization and receiving only condemnation for their efforts.
Ironically, international ostracism merely heightened their determination
to persevere. Protests by human-rights advocates served to further the
cause of left-wing subversion, in the generals’ eyes, and the only appropriate response was to stand fast. If necessary, right-wing authoritarians
would defy the United States in the name of decency, morality, and anti-
communism.6
Option 3: Seeking a Third Way
Beyond the strategies of alliance with either the Soviet Union or the
United States, of either communism or capitalism, Latin America sought
a third alternative: refuge from the Cold War. As illustrated by the fates of
Cuba and the Southern Cone, alignment with either the East or the West
involved substantial costs.? What many leaders were seeking was an independent course of action, one that would maximize the range of policy
choice and guarantee national sovereignty. Ultimately, this quest would
take two complementary forms: one focusing on economic development,
the other on foreign policy. In both endeavors, Latin America relied
heavily upon-and joined together with-the emergence of new nations
in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
A New International Economic Order?
Decolonization after World War II led to the appearance of new nationstates during the 1950s and 1960s that steadily swelled the ranks of the
Third World. With political independence achieved, they faced the challenge of devising new policies for economic development-an area where
Latin America came to play a major role. In 1948 the United Nations established the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA, with the
Spanish acronym CEPAL) with its seat at Santiago de Chile.8 Under the
leadership of Raul Prebisch, a brilliant Argentine economist, CEPAL formulated a powerful and compelling interpretation of the world economy.
In schematic form, the Prebisch thesis maintained that the international
division of labor, under which developing countries exported raw material
goods and imported manufactures from abroad, was working to the
disadvantage of Latin America. According to cepalista analyses, terms of
trade were constantly moving against the primary producing countries:
the value of their exports was declining but the cost of their imports was
climbing. While productivity advances in the industrialized “center” of
the global economy led to wage and other factor price increases, disguised unemployment and other tendencies resulted in commodity price
declines in the “periphery.” Meanwhile the income elasticity of demand
for raw material imports was relatively low at the center (largely because
of Engel’s law, holding that proportional expenditures on food are on the
average a decreasing function of income) while in the periphery it remained high-especially in view of the high import content of new investments. As income rose in the center, therefore, the percentage expenditure on imports from the periphery declined; but as income rose in the
periphery, the percentage of income going for imports from the center
was likely to increase.
CEPAL proposed a twofold solution. One was industrialization. As
Prebisch sustained in a memorable manifesto of 1949, industrialization is
“being forced upon [new countries] by events. Two world wars and a great economic crisis between them have shown the Latin American
countries their opportunities, clearly pointing the way to industrial activity.” Purposeful state planning and the judicious application of import
restrictions could lead to industrial development that would eliminate
losses from declining terms of trade, stimulate employment, and enhance
the economic sovereignty of developing nations. The other solution was
regional integration. As Prebisch clearly observed, one fundamental limitation to industrial growth in Latin America was “the present division of
markets, with its consequent inefficiency,” an obstacle that could only “be
overcome by the combined efforts” of countries in the region. Industrialization required large markets. This vision came to fruition in 1960, with
the formation of the Latin American Free Trade Area (LAFTA/ALALC).
About twenty years later it would be replaced by the Latin American Integration Association (ALADI), headquartered in Montevideo. Neither experiment met with much practical success, though they came to represent
Latin America’s persisting desire for regional unification. In a significant
sense, they served as contemporary formulations of the Bolivarian dream.
While CEPAL’s empirical studies focused only on Latin America, its
analytical framework applied to the developing areas as a whole. With the
encouragement of Latin American delegates, Third World countries in
1961 pushed a resolution through the UN General Assembly designating
the 1960s as the “United Nations Development Decade,” a decision that
led to the first United Nations Conference on Trade and Development
(UNCTAD I) in Geneva in 1964. As differences emerged between the
perspectives of industrialized and developing nations, representatives of
Third World countries issued a “Joint Declaration of the Seventy-Seven”
which proclaimed their own “unity” as “the outstanding feature of this
Conference. . . . The developing countries have a strong conviction
that there is a vital need to maintain, and further strengthen, this unity in
the years ahead. It is an indispensable instrument for securing the adoption of new attitudes and new approaches in the international economic
field.” Thus emerged the Group of 77, whose membership would eventually grow to well over 100, a loose organization of developing nations intent upon collective action in the pursuit of social justice and economic
development. Operating mainly within the United Nations, the Group of
77 came to be known as a “trade union for the poor.” In effect, it represented the economic voice of the Third World.
Fittingly enough, Prebisch became the first secretary general of
UNCTAD, a post he held until 1969. All countries of Latin America were
among the original signatories of the 1964 declaration of the Group of
77. And because of its institutional capability, rendered through ECLA,
Latin America often played a leading role in setting agendas and shaping
deliberations at UNCTAD meetings.
Economic tensions between North and South came to a head in the
early 1970s. For the Third World, developmental efforts and conventional strategies had yielded disappointing results. The breakdown of the Bretton Woods accords in 1971 (when Nixon took the United States off
the gold standard) cast doubt upon the viability of the prevailing system.
The success of OPEC countries in quadrupling the price of their product
during the “oil crisis” of 1973-74 suggested that it might be time for
confrontation, not accommodation. Nations of the South thus reached
something of a consensus: economic fairness could come only through a
global redistribution of resources and wealth.
In this spirit, G-77 countries and their supporters called for a special
meeting of the General Assembly, which adopted, in May 1974, the “Declaration and Programme of Action on the Establishment of a New International Economic Order.” Achievement of NIEO instantly became a key
objective for the Third World. NIEO embodied five central demands:
• Regarding international trade, it called for higher relative prices of
raw material exports and for greater volumes of raw material and
manufactured exports from the Third World.
• Regarding foreign investment, it appealed for greater access to
international capital, for the removal of legal constraints on expropriation, and for assistance in vigilance over multinational
corporations.
• It established a target of 0.7 percent of GNP for economic assistance from industrialized countries (and also called for lenient debt
renegotiations).
• It stressed the need for scientific and technological institutions in
the developing world and appealed for assistance in persuading
multinational corporations to promote technology transfer.
• It called for a greater voice in the reform and management of the
international monetary system and for increased “automaticity” in
access to loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
For G-77 members, the fundamental goal of NIEO was to accelerate the
pace of their own development and to shift the pattern of income distribution away from the rich nations of the North and in favor of the impoverished South.
For a brief time NIEO became a rallying cry for the Third World as a
whole. Mexican president Luis Echeverria Alvarez became an especially
vocal advocate. As part of a generally tercermundista foreign policy,
Echeverria championed the adoption of a “Charter of Economic Rights
and Duties” by the UN General Assembly.9 (It was rumored, in fact, that
he aspired to become secretary general of the United Nations.) And after
stepping down from office in 1976, he founded the Centro de Estudios
del Tercer Mundo. Mexico also hosted a number of UNCTAD and G-77
meetings, including a North-South “summit” at the resort town of Cancun in late 1981.
Yet the South made little real progress in reaching its goals. A central
reason for this failure was the heterogeneity of the G-77 itself. The sheer
size of the group, with more than 100 members from diverse regions and cultures, made consensus difficult enough. There were structural cleavages
as well. The OPEC successes of 1973-74 and 1979-81 could not be easily
achieved for other commodities, and the resulting price hikes for petroleum imposed serious balance-of-payments difficulties on oil-importing
members of the Third World. Moreover, so-called upper-tier countries of
the G-77 were closely connected with the industrialized world. As political
economist Roger Hansen observed in the late 1970s: “The more the economically advanced members of the South are able to achieve their developmental goals within the present global economic system, the less interest
they will have in changing it in the ways desired by other G-77 mem-
bers.”10 This was especially true for Latin America, whose situation and interests had very little in common with South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.
The final death knell of the NIEO would come with the debt crisis of the
1980s.
Nonalignment and Foreign Policy
A frequent objective for Latin America, and for other countries in the developing world, was to avoid diplomatic entanglement in the Cold War.
Taking sides implied subordination to one of the rival superpowers. An independent foreign policy, a “third way” of sorts, could expand the range of
practical options, maintain flexibility, and assert national sovereignty.
Such was the impetus behind the Non-Aligned Movement, a gathering of Asian and African leaders who held their first major meeting at
Bandung in 1955. The conference issued a summons for (1) nonalignment with East or West, (2) the international self-assertion of former
colonial countries, and (3) militant anticolonialism. Strongly influenced
by Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia and Jawaharlal Nehru of India, a subsequent meeting at Belgrade in 1961 emphasized the need for Third World
countries to take active steps to prevent war between the United States
and the USSR. Denouncing the “two imperialisms” of both East and
West, the delegates proclaimed:
Any attempt at imposing upon peoples one social or political system or another
by force and from outside is a direct threat to world peace. The participating
countries consider that under such conditions the principles of peaceful coexistence are the only alternative to the “cold war” and to a possible general
nuclear catastrophe. Therefore these principles-which include the right of
peoples to self-determination, to independence and to the free determination
of the forms and methods of economic, social and cultural developmentmust be the only basis of all international relations.
A 1964 meeting in Cairo brought the theme of anticolonialism to the
forefront of the agenda, where it remained for the rest of the decade. Just
as the Group of 77 expressed the economic voice of the developing
world, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) came to represent its political
voice.
Latin America’s role in NAM expanded over time. The most active
participant was Cuba, which sent an official delegation to the Yugoslav
meeting in 1961. (Several Latin American leaders were approached about
Belgrade but did not attend because of the invitation to Cuba, which they
regarded as a member of the Soviet bloc; Bolivia, Brazil, and Ecuador
sent observers.) Democratic governments in Chile and Argentina sent observers to the Cairo meeting in 1964 and became full members in the
early 1970s, under Allende and Peron. Peru became an observer in 1970
and a full member in 1973, under the radical military regime of Juan
Velasco Alvarado. After the Sandinista revolution, Nicaragua joined in
1979. Bolivia and Ecuador became full members as well, and Colombia
gained admission in the early 1980s. Most of the new Caribbean Commonwealth Countries took out membership after achieving independence. Despite Echeverria’s militantly tercermundista policies, Mexico
never went beyond observer status. Nor did Brazil, which maintained a
scrupulous desire to avoid entangling alignments-even in the name of
nonalignment! 11
Charismatic and ebullient, eager to maintain close ties to both the
Third World and the USSR, Fidel Castro became NAM president for a
four-year term and hosted a historic summit meeting at Havana in 1979.
Under pressure from Moscow, Castro used the occasion to challenge the
long-standing thesis of “two imperialisms” by proposing that the Soviet
Union should be declared a “natural ally” of the Non-Aligned Movement. Tito of Yugoslavia led the attack on this idea, which found little
support from other delegates, and the plan was summarily dropped. After
the conference Cuba’s chairmanship suffered an additional blow, when a
planning session in New York failed to produce any clear priorities or substantive statements in preparation for the upcoming session of the UN
General Assembly. Cuba’s hope for election to a temporary seat on the
UN Security Council was also countered by Colombia, and a deadlock
ensued until both countries stood down in favor of Mexico-which was
not a NAM member. As Ronald Reagan intensified the Cold War in the
early 1980s Castro was succeeded as NAM president by Indira Gandhi,
prime minister of India.
Perhaps the NAM’s most significant contribution to Latin America
was its powerful support of the NIEO in the early 1970s. At its Algiers
conference of 1973 the NAM turned from its traditionally political
agenda toward economic matters, adopting an “Action Programme for
Economic Cooperation” as a basis for South-South unity and calling for
the establishment of “a new international economic order.” Anticipating
subsequent arguments about a potential “peace dividend,” NAM vehemently condemned the East-West arms race and envisioned disarmament
as a means to free up resources that could be reallocated for the sake of
global development.
By the 1980s the Non-Aligned Movement had more than 100 members. As with the G-77, its membership size was a double-edged sword: it gave the NAM enormous potential clout in international arenas, especially in the UN General Assembly, but it also led to lowest-commondenominator policy positions. Indeed, its general principles had become
high-minded but vague: peace and disarmament, independence and selfdetermination, economic equality, cultural equality, universalism, and multilateralism. On practical policy issues, the NAM could not act as a unified
bloc.
In the meantime several countries in Latin America took deliberate
steps to pursue independent foreign policies on their own. Brazil sought
to intensify relations with Japan and Western Europe in the 1970s, successfully resisting U.S. pressure to overturn a nuclear agreement with
West Germany. Its reliance on imported petroleum prompted new diplomatic initiatives in the Middle East and Africa. Partly in response to declining military assistance from the United States, Brazil developed a
formidable defense industry-and became one of the world’s leading exporters of arms. And in frustration over the Carter administration’s condemnation of human-rights abuses, the military rulers refused to join the
U.S.-sponsored boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games in protest
against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Mexico played for high stakes as well. In his continuing effort to
establish solidarity with Arab and other Third World countries, Luis
Echeverria instructed his representatives in 1975 to support a UN resolution-against Washington’s vigorous opposition-denouncing Zionism
as a form of racism. The U.S. reaction was swift. Jewish leaders and proIsraeli groups began a campaign against tourism in Mexico. Bookings
were canceled, vacations were changed, and Mexico had over 100,000
fewer visitors in 1976 than in 1975. Echeverria’s diplomatic gesture cost
his country millions of dollars in foreign exchange. Beginning in 1976
Mexico abstained or voted No on similar anti-Zionist resolutions in UN
bodies. Economic pressure took its toll.
In general, Echeverria tempered his activism with a strong dose of
caution. He aligned Mexico with leftist and progressive forces-in Chile,
Spain, Cuba. Together with Carlos Andres Perez of Venezuela, he took
the lead in forming the Sistema Economico Latinoamericano (SELA)including Cuba but not the United States-which became a forum for regional consultation within UNCTAD. These matters were significant but
to some extent symbolic. On most issues of major importance, Echeverria
refrained from challenging Washington. After the 1973-74 oil crisis
Echeverria did not, for example, seek full membership for Mexico in
OPEC.
It was Echeverria’s successor, Jose Lopez Portillo, who nettled Washington by purporting to play an active role in Central America-the putative “backyard” of the United States. Openly supporting the Sandinista
revolutionaries, Lopez Portillo in May 1979 withdrew diplomatic recognition from the Somoza regime. In 1980 Mexico and Venezuela began
shipping petroleum on preferential terms to Nicaragua as well as to other nations of the isthmus. In August 1981 Mexico joined together with
France, an extrahemispheric power, to call for recognition of the Salvadoran FMLN as a “legitimate political force.” And in February 1982 Lopez
Portillo unilaterally issued a plan to unravel “three knots that tie up the
search for peace” in Central America-the internal conflict in El Salvador,
distrust between the United States and Nicaragua, and hostility between
the United States and Cuba. His proposal envisioned a negotiated settlement in El Salvador, a nonaggression treaty between the United States
and Nicaragua, and intensified dialogue between Havana and Washington. For all these purposes Mexico offered “to serve as a bridge,” as foreign minister Jorge Castaneda explained, “as a communicator, between its
friends and neighbors.” Intent on imposing military solutions on Central
America, the Reagan administration dismissed the Mexican initiative with
annoyance and contempt.
From Contadora to Esquipulas
After taking office in December 1982 Mexican president Miguel de la
Madrid embarked upon a path of multilateral negotiation. In early 1983
Mexico joined with Colombia, Panama, and Venezuela-the so-called
Contadora Group, named for the island where they first met-to begin
exploring possibilities for regional mediation of the Central American
conflict. Through collective action and joint diplomacy, the Contadora
countries strove to fashion a peaceful settlement that would acknowledge the legitimate interests of contending parties. Backing from a fourcountry grupo de apoyo (a “support group” composed of Argentina,
Brazil, Uruguay, and Peru) gave additional impetus to the Contadora
movement and reflected a new form of political concertacion among Latin
American nations.
The Reagan administration silently resisted these efforts. After the
formation of the Contadora group, Washington launched its own Forum
for Peace and Democracy under the auspices of Honduras and Costa
Rica; the effort failed for lack of regional support. Washington then
turned to the OAS, only to discover that the organization strongly supported the Contadora initiative. In the spring of 1983 Reagan appointed
as special envoy for Central America former senator Richard Stone, a conservative Florida Democrat who had been previously registered as a lobbyist for the right-wing government of Guatemala. Later in the year the
Reagan administration sought to resuscitate CONDECA, a discredited
military alliance for Central American nations, in hopes of consolidating
forces of the anticommunist right. Also in 1983 President Reagan appointed the National Bipartisan Commission on Central America, the
blue-ribbon panel chaired by former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger.
In January 1984 its much-publicized report endorsed much of Reagan’s
policy toward the region and dismissed the Contadora effort with a single
page of condescending adjectives, asserting that “the United States can not use the Contadora process as a substitute for its own policies.” In
other words, Washington would pay no heed.
The Contadora countries nonetheless persisted. In September 1983
the group released a “Document of Objectives”-a list of twenty-one
principles that were accepted by all five nations of Central America. A year
later, in September 1984, the group presented its “Contadora Act for
Peace and Cooperation in Central America,” a broad proposal with three
key provisions:
All participating countries would hold free and fair elections, taking steps “to assure the equal participation of all political parties.”
• Participating countries would suspend “all acquisition of military
equipment,” refrain from authorizing any new foreign military
bases or schools, eliminate existing foreign military bases or schools
within a half year, and establish schedules for the orderly withdrawal
of foreign military advisers.
• Participating countries would desist from giving aid of any sort to
irregular forces or armed bands “whose aim is the overthrow or
destabilization of other governments.”
In practical terms, the Contadora treaty meant that Nicaragua would have
to repatriate Cuban and other military advisers and allow on-site inspection of its military facilities; Honduras would have to terminate U.S. military maneuvers and encampments; El Salvador would have to remove its
U.S. military “trainers.” In other words, all extraregional powers-Cuba,
the Soviet Union, the United States-would have to withdraw from the
isthmus. Under the aegis of the Contadora group, Central America would
settle conflicts by itself.
Prospects for the treaty seemed excellent at first. On September 3
Guatemala announced its readiness to sign; Costa Rica concurred on September 14; El Salvador followed suit on September 19; and Honduras
expressed a generally positive view pending “final adjustments.” Two
days later Nicaragua stunned the diplomatic world by endorsing the
accord “in its totality, immediately and without modifications,” on the
sole condition that the United States would have to sign the supplementary protocol (whereby a number of nations, including Cuba and the
USSR, would consent to abide by the terms of the treaty). The United
Nations, the OAS, and the European Community all expressed their
strong support.
Taken aback by this development, Washington set out to scuttle the
plan. On October 10 Secretary of State Shultz made a sudden visit to
Panama, El Salvador, and Mexico. By this time a U.S. client state, Honduras was persuaded to harden its insistence on adjustments, and pressure
was applied to Costa Rica as well. On October 30 a confidential NSC
memorandum exuded smug satisfaction: “We have effectively blocked
Contadora group efforts to impose the second draft of the Revised Contadora Act.” For public consumption, the Reagan administration con tended that its objections to the treaty focused on the question of verifiability. The problem, claimed Shultz, was the inadequacy of safeguards to
ensure compliance by participants; and the Sandinistas, being Sovietinspired, would no doubt attempt to cheat. In contrast, most independent analysts thought the true reasons for Washington’s intransigence
were political: the Contadora accord entailed acceptance of the Sandinista
regime and it implied a curtailment of U.S. hegemony throughout the region. (Moreover, the provision for Cuban and Soviet signatures on the
supplementary protocols appeared to admit the importance of their
roles.) On points of this nature the Reagan White House was not prepared to surrender.
As the Contadora effort stalled, the U.S. government stepped up its
activities. Military aid to El Salvador climbed from $33.5 million in 1983
to $176.8 million in 1984. Officer training picked up at the School of the
Americas in Panama and at U.S. bases in Honduras. United States operatives planned the mining of Nicaragua’s harbors, distributed manuals
on the art of guerrilla warfare, and redoubled assistance to the neo-
Somocista “freedom fighters.” As the Sandinista-Contra war deepened,
Nicaraguan refugees and Contra elements ensconced themselves in Costa
Rica, another nation put at risk by the Cold War in Central America.
Oscar Arias Sanchez, elected to the presidency in 1986, chose to confront these problems directly. With skillful diplomacy and dogged determination, he persuaded chief executives from Central America to continue negotiations among themselves. The result of this process was the
so-called Esquipulas accords, named after the town where the first meeting took place, that called on war-torn nations of the region to (1) initiate
a cease-fire, (2) engage in dialogue with opposition movements, (3) prevent the use of their territory for aggression against other states, and (4)
cease and prohibit aid to irregular forces or insurrectionary movementsthese last two provisions aimed directly at Nicaragua and the United
States. The August 1987 agreement also called for free elections and
democratization of all nations in the region. It was an ambitious plan, one
that incorporated key provisions from the Contadora documents, but it
had the additional merit of representing a Central American solution to
Central American problems. In fact it helped bring a measure of peace to
the region, and it earned for Arias a Nobel Prize.
Legacies of War
The Cold War took a heavy toll on Latin America. It placed the region in
the center of a worldwide East-West conflict. It subjected the hemisphere
to U.S.-Soviet tension, sometimes real (as in the Cuban missile crisis of
October 1962) but more often exaggerated or imaginary (as in Central
America throughout the 1980s). It made the region susceptible to heavyhanded vigilance, covert action, and military intervention by the United
States. Perhaps even more important, the Cold War deepened political schisms within countries of Latin America and promoted a spiraling
process of polarization.
Chief beneficiaries of the Cold War, at least in the short run, were the
forces of the political right. From the Caribbean to the Southern Cone,
from Guatemala to Brazil, authoritarian governments were able to claim
political legitimacy on the ground of anticommunism. With the brief and
partial exception of the Carter administration, in the late 1970s, they
were able to garner the support of the United States. Devoutly intolerant
of political freedom and staunchly resistant to social change, reactionary
rulers conducted ruthless campaigns to purge their nations of allegedly
subversive, sinister, unpatriotic elements. One result, in some countries,
was to deprive entire generations of imaginative, creative, progressive political leadership. Another was to set back the cause of economic development and social justice by incalculable margins.
The socialist alternative had costs and risks as well. Odds were, from
the beginning, that revolutionary efforts would end in tragic failure. Only
two out of nearly thirty guerrilla movements actually seized power; almost all the others were crushed by military force. And even those that
triumphed, in Cuba and Nicaragua, soon encountered implacable hostility from the United States. Their only plausible option was to seek aid
and support from the Soviet Union, but this only made them dependent
on the USSR and drew them ever more deeply into the Cold War itself.
Once the East-West conflict came to an end, they would be left on their
own, orphans of a war that no longer existed.
At the outset the third way, the quest for economic and political independence, appeared to offer the fewest advantages. It meant forgoing all
the benefits that would result from firm allegiance in one of the two
camps, and it entailed the considerable risk of antagonizing both the superpowers, especially the United States (as happened to Arbenz in
Guatemala, Bosch in the Dominican Republic, Allende in Chile, and others as well). Association with the Third World offered negligible economic compensation and, outside of such forums as the UN General Assembly, scant political power. But in the long run, the search for an
independent stance proved to be the most productive course. It maintained the political integrity of Latin American nations, especially those
under civilian and/or democratic governments, it enabled experimentation with a variety of economic policies, and, most important, it avoided
the costs of wholehearted alignment with one or the other of the superpowers. Insistence on national sovereignty and Third World solidarity
turned out to be more than demagogic appeal. It expanded, preserved,
and maximized political room for maneuver.
So, in sum, what do we see? . . . We see fivegreat economic super
powers: the United States, Western Europe, the Soviet Union, Mainland
China, and, of course, Japan. . . . All nations are important
. . . but these are the five that will determine the economic future and,
because economic power will be the key to other kinds of power, the
future of the world in other ways in the last third of this century.
Richard M. Nixon (1971)
Out of these troubled times . . . a new world order can emerge: a new
era-freer from the threat of terror, stronger in the pursuit of justice,
and more secure in the guest for peace. An era in which the nations of
the world, East and West, North and South, can live in harmony.
George Bush (1991)
In the post-Cold War era, no one knows what foreign policy ought to be.
Leslie Gelb (1994)
Sweeping transformations in the international order during the late 1980s
ushered in an era of optimism, hope, and uncertainty. The crumbling of
the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, the liberation of East Europe, the consolidation of superpower detente, and the eventual implosion of the Soviet Union brought a sudden end to Cold War hostilities.
This development had far-reaching implications not only for Europe but
also for other parts of the world and, more generally, for the international
system as a whole. Yet the shape and content of these ramifications remained far from clear. What kind of international order would emerge in
the 1990s and beyond? How might this affect Latin America and its relationship with the United States? What forces and factors might determine
U.S. policy toward Latin America?
Ending the Cold War
The decline of the Cold War brought an unexpected end to relentless and
decades-long hostility between the Soviet Union and the United States. But this was not merely a big-power rivalry. As pointed out in chapter 5,
the Cold War also involved:
• Intense ideological competition-between capitalism and communism, liberalism and populism, markets and states, doctrines of
Adam Smith and Karl Marx.
• A division of the world into two broad, opposing camps-West
versus East, free world versus peoples’ republics.
• Occasional outbreaks of armed conflicts but within restricted limits
and in permissible places-always on the periphery of the world
arena, never at the center of the superpower rivalry.
The central reason for this containment and curtailment of armed hostility was, of course, the fact that the United States and the USSR possessed mutually deterrent nuclear arsenals. Any direct contest between
them risked the possibility of nuclear exchange, something neither side
could afford, and this led to a counterintuitive result: the principal contenders could never engage in open conflict. Notwithstanding its excesses
and ambiguities, the Cold War established a fairly clear (if unstated) set of
rules of the game for international discourse and interaction. Paradoxically enough, it also managed to maintain global security.
Pundits and politicians in the United States hastened to interpret the
end of the Cold War as a final victory of capitalism over communism.
Francis Fukuyama gave highbrow formulation to this impulse in his celebrated 1989 essay “The End of History,” which claimed that the world
was bearing witness “not to an `end of ideology’ or a convergence between capitalism and socialism, but to an unabashed victory of economic
and political liberalism.” Communism was as dead as fascism; authoritarian doctrines were relics of the past. The implication, therefore, was
that the world had reached “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final
form of human government.” As a process of ideological and intellectual
struggle, history had arrived at a terminal point.’ While Fukuyama did
not mean to imply that all forms of conflict and change would disappear,
as some of his critics misclaimed, he underestimated the power of ideas
and identities most likely to shape the newly emergent world: ethnicity,
religion, and nationalism.
The conclusion of the Cold War did not result from spiritual uplift or
from charitable sentiments or from the innate superiority of West over
East. It resulted from hard-headed calculations on the part of national
leaders. As historian Thomas Paterson has argued, “The Cold War waned
because the contest had undermined the power of its two major protagonists.” As the United States and the USSR confronted mounting challenges, “they gradually moved toward a cautious cooperation whose urgent goals were nothing less than the restoration of their economic
well-being and the preservation of their diminishing global positions.”
From the perspective of the superpowers, the ending of the Cold War was simply a matter of enlightened self-interest. “The Soviet Union fell much
harder than the United States,” Paterson noted, “but the implications of
decline became unmistakable for both: The Cold War they made in the
1940s had to be unmade if the two nations were to remain prominent international superintendants.”2
One set of problems was political, as the United States and the Soviet
Union both faced persistent challenges within their camps. Against U.S.
objections, Great Britain established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1954 and took unilateral military action during
the Suez crisis of 1956. Under Charles de Gaulle, France asserted its independence in the 1960s by developing its own nuclear capacity, withdrawing militarily from NATO, and requiring the removal of all alliance
bases from French territory. After Willy Brandt became chancellor in
1969, West Germany defied the Nixon administration by pursuing a
policy of Ostpolitik which resulted in the Soviet-German nonaggression
treaty of 1970. As for the Soviet Union, Marshall Tito of Yugoslavia faced
down Joseph Stalin in the late 1940s and launched an independent foreign policy. Courageous citizens in 1956 mounted uprisings against communist rule in Poland and Hungary, where the Soviets responded with a
show of force. A profound political, diplomatic, and ideological split
emerged in the late 1950s between the People’s Republic of China and
the USSR. Under Alexander Dubcek, Czechoslovakia attempted to chart
its own path toward political and social reform during the “Prague
spring” of 1968; once again the USSR responded with tanks and armed
troops. During the late 1980s the tiny Baltic states-Estonia, Latvia, and
Lithuania, long considered “captive” by the West-resisted Mikhail Gorbachev’s blandishments and stoutly proclaimed national independence.
In the face of such restiveness, bipolar competition imposed massive
economic burdens. Both the United States and the Soviet Union spent
enormous (and increasing) sums of money in order to wage their Cold
War, and neither side could keep it up. Washington paid out $12.4 billion
for the Marshall Plan, $69.5 billion for the Korean War, $22.3 billion for
the Alliance for Progress, and $172.2 billion for the Vietnam War. From
1946 through 1987 the United States dispensed more than $382 billion
in economic and military foreign aid (about one-tenth of this amount,
$38.4 billion, went to Latin America). Military expenditures were staggering: by the mid-1980s the annual defense budget was more than $300
billion-which meant that the Pentagon was spending an average of $28
million per hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. By 1986 the national
debt climbed to more than $2.1 trillion, with 19 percent of the federal
budget devoted exclusively to interest payments, and by 1990 the U.S.
debt reached $3.2 trillion.
The USSR also allocated massive resources toward military preparedness and foreign ventures. Subsidies to Cuba rose from less than $400
million per year in the 1960s and 1970s to nearly $5 billion per year in
the 1980s, by which time assistance to East Europe was running around $17 billion per year. During 1980 alone, according to one calculation,
the total cost to the Soviet Union for maintaining its system of clientstates was around $38 billion. This inflicted an enormous drain on an
already-weakening Soviet economy. Concurrently, the rate of economic
growth plunged from an average of 5.9 percent in the 1950s to 4.9 percent in 1969-73 to 2.6 percent in 1973-80 to merely 1.9 percent in
1981-85. Like the United States, the Soviet Union simply could not afford to sustain the Cold War.
Although it had historic consequences for the world as a whole, the
fall of communism was an essentially European affair. What happened in
Eastern Europe did not occur in Asia. China and North Korea remained
resolute communist states, and Russia and the United States both maintained their military presence in the region. Instability, tension, and hostility continued to prevail along the Asia-Pacific front.
Rearrangements of Power: The Global Arena
These and other developments led to fundamental realignments in the
international system. One immediate result was the emergence of the
United States as the world’s sole superpower. The implosion of the Soviet
Union meant that the United States would have no serious military rival
anywhere: it could enjoy a “unipolar moment” of unchallenged strategic
and tactical superiority, as epitomized by its devastating performance during Operation Desert Storm against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein in 1991.
Unipolar supremacy was not without its complications. One key
problem was uncertainty about the control of nuclear weapons. During
the Cold War only two major command posts-one in the United States,
the other in the Soviet Union-were positioned to launch a nuclear exchange. This power condominium was, naturally, the objective basis for
their intermittent policies of rapprochement. Fragmentation of the USSR
meant that its former dependencies, most conspicuously Ukraine, would
acquire command and control of these weapons systems: the result was,
in effect, a major increase in proliferation. The ending of the East-West
contest moreover meant that allies and client states, no longer beholden
to the major powers, could pursue nuclear strategies of their own. There
thus emerged a growing number of claimants on power and prestigemidlevel nations with nuclear capability, such as India and Pakistan, and
pariah “weapons states” like Iraq and North Korea-that threatened drastic alteration of the military calculus.
Adding to this irony, U.S. firepower had limited political utility in the
post-Cold War landscape. The challenges and conflicts of the 1990s did
not lend themselves to military solutions. The Gulf War of 1991 was a
glaring exception. The protracted, contradictory, and painful struggles of
Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo seemed more likely to represent the norm.
Partly for this reason, the American public expressed repeated and pro found apprehension about overseas entanglements that might place U.S.
troops in harm’s way; and as a result, the nation’s political leaders became
extremely hesitant (or at least ambivalent) about the use of force. Hence a
fundamental paradox: despite its unquestioned preeminence, U.S. military prowess was becoming a hollow shell.
A second major transformation, more the result of long-term processes than short-term events, was the emergence of economic multipolarity. At the end of World War II the United States was utterly dominant:
it produced more than half the world’s manufacturing, it produced more
than one-third the world’s total of all goods and services, and it held almost two-thirds the world’s total of gold reserves. “Economically,” as historian Paul Kennedy has written, “the world was its oyster.”3 This prominence was not so much a sign of American superiority or know-how,
however, as a result of wartime destruction suffered by other powers.
It could not last forever. Allied nations in Europe made swift strides
during the 1950s and 1960s, thanks in part to U.S. assistance under the
Marshall Plan, and consolidated their position through a steady process of
regional integration. This trend began in the early 1950s, with creation of
the European Coal and Steel Community under joint French-German
leadership, and soon led to formation of the European Economic Community (EEC). In 1986 the Single European Act called for completion of
a European common market, cooperation on social policy and technological development, and progress toward economic and monetary union.
By 1990, after the reunification of Germany, the European Community
(as it was then known) contained a joint population of more than 340
million people with a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of nearly
$6 trillion, which was larger than that of the United States (Table A6). In
recognition of their close cooperation, member states renamed their
scheme the European Union in 1993.
A major impetus to integration came in January 1999, when eleven
EU nations launched a common currency, the “euro,” initially worth
$1.17 U.S. dollars. Stock and bond transfers and credit card purchases
were immediately denominated in the new currency, and banks began to
offer euro-denominated accounts to customers. Euro notes and coins
were scheduled to go into circulation by January 2002; by July of that
year, national bills and coins would no longer serve as legal tender. Adoption of the euro would greatly facilitate trade and investment, establishing
the European continent as a single market instead of a hodge-podge of
currencies and laws. Perhaps most significant of all, with adoption of the
euro participating countries were agreeing to let the new European Central Bank establish interest rates and monetary policy. This was a remarkable sacrifice of national sovereignty for the sake of international coopera-
tion.4 One motivation for this concession was not so much economic as
political-a compelling desire to contain the newly reunified and increasingly powerful Germany.
Adoption of the euro could have profound implications for the global
economic system and for the United States. As C. Fred Bergsten observed
in early 1999,
The launch of the euro offers the prospect of a new bipolar international economic order that could replace America’s hegemony since World War II.
. . . Now Euroland will equal or exceed the United States on every key
measure of economic strength and will speak increasingly with a single voice
on a wide array of economic issues. . . . Economic relations between the
United States and the European Union will therefore rest increasingly on a
foundation of virtual equality.5
And as MIT’s Lester Thurow noted, investors might well prefer to hold
reserves in euros rather than in U.S. currency, thus raising the specter of
runs on the dollar. In general, Thurow surmised, adoption of the euro
“means that the United States will lose much of its power to be a locomotive for the rest of the world . . . [and] signals the end of the postWorld War II American era and the onset of a new economic era.”6
Asia came to represent another challenge to U.S. economic hegemony. Stimulated first by the Korean War and guided afterward by firm
government policy, Japan entered the ranks of advanced industrial nations
during the 1960s and 1970s; by 1990 the country’s GDP per capita was
nearly $24,000, greater than that of the United States (as can be calculated from Table A6). Such nearby countries as South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, and Hong Kong-nicknamed the “four little tigers”-made
equally impressive strides in the 1970s and 1980s. And the People’s Republic of China, prostrate in 1950 after years of Japanese occupation and
decades of civil war, adopted a series of economic reforms in the late
1970s that eventually transformed the country into a swiftly emerging
world-class economic power. As of 1960 the combined gross domestic
product of Asian-Pacific countries (excluding the United States) was
merely 7.8 percent of world GDP; by 1982 it had more than doubled, to
16.4 percent, and by 1990 it had risen to 23.0 percent. Mimicking Henry
Luce’s ebullient 1941 comment about the coming “American century,”
many observers anticipated that the world was on the verge of a “Pacific
century.”
In contrast to Europe, countries of the Asia-Pacific region did not hasten to create a common economic market or institutionalized regional
bloc. At the instigation of the Japanese, they instead employed informal
and de facto modes of integration. One such mechanism was expanding intraregional trade; another was investment and production-sharing. By the
1980s, in fact, Japan managed to establish itself at the head of a so-called
“flying geese formation,” with itself as the source of capital and technology
and neighboring countries as sources of raw materials and low-cost labor.
Yet there was considerable reluctance to formalize these relationshipspartly because it seemed unnecessary, partly because it might antagonize
the United States, and partly because Japan was hesitant to rekindle mem ories of the ill-fated “greater East Asian co-prosperity sphere” that had preceded World War II. In this regard Japanese leaders were especially wary of
China, which was displaying the will and capacity to challenge Japan for regional preeminence within the next decade or so. To be sure, voices were
raised in favor of Asian integration-most repeatedly and insistently by
Prime Minister Mohamed Mahathir of Malaysia. But it was only at Washington’s insistence that members of the council for Asia-Pacific Economic
Cooperation (APEC, which includes the United States) publicly proclaimed in 1994 their intention to create a free-trade area by the year 2020.
With or without formal integration, however, the Asia-Pacific region
loomed as a major actor in the post-Cold War global economy.
A third major development, alongside military unipolarity and economic multipolarity, was expansion and complication of the international
arena. From 1943 through 1989, as erstwhile European empires succumbed to processes of “decolonization,” no fewer than ninety-six countries acquired independence and entered the world community of nations. And while the Third World became a principal battleground for the
Cold War, members of the Non-Aligned Movement made deliberate efforts to resist big-power domination. By sheer force of numbers, Third
World countries exerted considerable influence and independence in
global forums. In the General Assembly of the United Nations, for instance, Third World delegates voted along with the United States about
70 percent of the time during the 1950s; by the 1970s this coincidence
rate had fallen to 30 percent, and by the 1980s it was only 20 percent.
Collapse of the Soviet Union brought still more new players into the
international game. Mikhail Gorbachev fell from office in 1991 and his
arch-rival, Boris Yeltsin, rose to power as a champion of Russian nationalism and political reform. Russia became a sovereign republic and, in short
order, other members of the former USSR soon followed suit: Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Georgia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyztan, Moldova, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan. Former client states in Eastern
Europe had in the meantime become independent in fact as well as in
name. What Ronald Reagan had once decried as an “evil empire” no
longer existed. In its place were numerous countries struggling with massive challenges-economic revitalization, political order, control and dismantling of massive military machines.
The 1970s and 1980s also gave rise to a process of “democratization,”
the transition of political regimes from authoritarianism toward pluralism.
This trend began in Portugal and Spain in the mid-1970s and became most
dramatically evident in Eastern Europe-especially in the former East Germany, Poland, and Hungary, and Czechoslovakia (which soon divided into
two separate republics). It likewise appeared in Latin America-notably in
Argentina, Chile, Brazil-and, less markedly, in parts of Asia-the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan. While self-congratulatory publicists often interpreted this tendency as a decisive triumph for the ideals of American
democracy, there was good reason for caution. Many of these “democra tic” governments showed lingering signs of authoritarian practices. They
were fragile and tentative experiments, by no means immune to reversal,
and they resulted not so much from U.S. leadership as from complex combinations of internal and international factors. Only in Eastern Europe was
there a clear connection between the behavior of the superpowers, especially Gorbachev’s reforms in the Soviet Union, and the emergence of democratic polities. And even there, as shown by Rumania, Bulgaria, and Albania, the extent of democratization was incomplete.
Adding to this complexity, yet another key feature of the post-Cold
War panorama was the increasing importance of nongovernmental actors
and forces-multinational business firms, international traders, migrant
workers, private organizations, and other participants in emerging networks of “transnational interdependence.” Technological innovation, demographic expansion, spreading communications, atmospheric pollution,
and other nonpolitical factors were coming to have more impact on the
daily lives of citizens than the policies of governments. Currency traders
could make decisions around the clock, billions of dollars could move at
the push of a button. The power of the market, in particular, was challenging (or, better said, disregarding) the power of the state. In an era of
downsizing, governments seemed to be retreating from the commanding
heights of national economies.
As a sign of these times, corporate giants were concentrating power
through massive transnational mergers. In 1989, Sony (Japan) announced its intent to acquire Columbia Pictures (U.S.) for $4.8 billion,
and in pharmaceuticals the Beecham Group (Britain) bought SmithKline
Beckman (U.S.) for $7.9 billion. In chemicals Hoechst (Germany) announced its acquisition of Marion Merrill Dow Inc. (U.S.) for $7.3 billion in 1995; in finance Merrill Lynch & Co. (U.S.) took over Mercury
Asset Management Group (Britain) for $5.3 billion in 1997; in publishing Bertelsmann A.G. (Germany) purchased Random House, Inc. (U.S.)
for $1 billion in 1998. In that same year Daimler-Benz (Germany), maker
of Mercedes cars, unveiled plans to acquire Chrysler (U.S.) for $39.5 billion, and in early 1999 Ford Motors announced plans to purchase Sweden’s Volvo for a relatively paltry $6.45 billion. In the largest transnational merger to date, British Petroleum (Britain) announced its purchase
of Amoco (U.S.) for $48.2 billion, second in scale only to the $80 billion
merger of U.S.-based Exxon and Mobil. In something of an understatement, a prominent European banker called the 1990s “the era of very big
companies.” In economic terms, some major firms were as large as entire
countries; many had more assets and revenues than sovereign national
governments.?
Transnational activities also took illicit form. Arms trafficking, drug
smuggling, and clandestine migration took place in explicit violation of
state policies and/or multilateral regimes. Much of this activity, especially
unauthorized migration, resulted from individual decisions and behavior.
Criminal organizations and terrorist groups flourished as well, not only in less developed areas, including Latin America, but especially in the excommunist world. Gangster operations represented a formidable obstacle
to the construction of a new international order and, especially, to effective governance by nation-states.
Paradoxically, too, the post-Cold War arena was providing witness
to the role and importance of international “regimes” in the conventional sense-as a set of “implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules and
decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge
in a given area of international relations.” In a sense these developments
reflected long-term trends: an increasing reliance upon institutionalization (as in NATO and the European Union), an increasing reluctance for
great powers to use force against one another, and an increasing willingness, especially in Europe, to sacrifice or at least “pool” national sovereignty for the sake of supranational organization. As of the late 1990s international regimes were proving to be more effective in the economic
arena than in the political realm. In the Americas they would become especially relevant to hemispheric trade.
Even so, processes of transnational interdependence were still capable
of overwhelming nation-states and nascent international regimes. In mid1997 a currency crisis in Thailand spread through Southeast Asia as foreign investors suddenly lost confidence in once-celebrated “newly industrializing economies” and the vestiges of “crony capitalism.” Banking
systems tottered, stock markets plummeted, corporations failed, and unemployment rose. For 1998 it was officially predicted that economic output would contract by 13 percent in Indonesia (where the decades-old
Suharto regime fell victim to popular protest), 7 percent in Thailand, 6
percent in South Korea, 4 percent in Hong Kong, and 2 percent in
Malaysia; private economists were making even more pessimistic projec-
tions.8 And Japan, deeply mired in a recession of its own, was not in any
position to serve as an engine for growth throughout the region. In August 1998 the financial furies struck again, this time after Russia’s central
bank defaulted on debt payments and Boris Yeltsin’s government announced devaluation of the ruble. As panicked investors fled, the Russian
stock market-in 1997 the best-performing in the world-plunged to
levels 90 percent below its peak. Eighteen of twenty major banks effectively failed under the weight of debt. As Yeltsin struggled to put together
a new economic team, the ruble fell to one-third of its value within just a
month. Consumer prices soared, workers went without pay, output for
the year was projected to decline by 3 percent. As effects of the twin Asian
and Russian crises rippled throughout the world, a former top official of
the U.S. Commerce Department could only express bewilderment: “A
few months ago,” said Jeffrey E. Garten in September 1998, “people
were talking about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Now the only
hope is keeping the world economy from total deterioration. And you get
a sense that this is all now truly left to Adam Smith’s invisible hand-it’s
beyond any country’s ability, or institution’s ability, to control.”
The cumulative effect of all these tendencies, political and economic,
was to transform the shape and structure of the international system. In a
sense, the postwar recovery of European powers, especially in Western
Europe, served to restore the historical and structural balance of power
that existed in the 1920s and 1930s; cast in this light, U.S. supremacy was
destined to be a temporary phenomenon. The appearance of the Third
World, on the other hand, was an entirely new type of development, diffusing power and adding unprecedented complexity to world politics.
Likewise, the rise of multinational corporations and the increasing rate of
transnational flows posed new challenges to the capacity and reach of
classic nation-states. In combination, these trends pointed toward a clear
eventual outcome: the decline of U.S. hegemony on a world scale. With
the conclusion of the Cold War, the political implications of these changes
would start becoming apparent.
Dimensions of Uncertainty
As the twenty-first century approached, it was far from clear whether the
post-Cold War world would manage to achieve a workable code for international behavior. The situation was confusing. As political scientist
Joseph A. Nye, Jr., wrote in 1992, “No single hierarchy describes adequately a world politics with multiple structures. The distribution of
power in world politics has become like a layer cake. The top military
layer is largely unipolar, for there is no other military power comparable
to the United States. The economic middle layer is tripolar and has been
for two decades. The bottom layer of transnational interdependence
shows a diffusion of power.”9 This configuration was unlikely to produce
stability; particularly disconcerting was the sharp discontinuity between
the global distribution of military power, which had become largely
unipolar, and the distribution of economic power, which was increasingly
multipolar. There was a qualitative shift in the bases of power as well,
from military prowess toward economic and technological capacity. As a
result, there was no clear-cut mechanism at work for resolving disputes or
achieving stability: not a balance of power, as in the Imperial Era; not mutual bipolar deterrence, as during the Cold War; and not single-power
hegemony, despite the military preeminence of the United States.
As Samuel P. Huntington observed in 1999, international politics
had thus become “a strange hybrid, a uni-multipolar system with one superpower and several major powers. The settlement of key international
issues requires action by the single superpower but always with some
combination of other major states; the single superpower can, however,
veto actions on key issues by combinations of other states.” The result, at
best, was an ad hoc pattern of tentative arrangements based on fragile
power coalitions, rather than predictable methods for settling disputes.
And this was not a stable configuration since none of the principal
actors-neither the United States nor the other major powers-could be truly satisfied with this status quo, so it seemed destined to change.
“Global politics,” in Huntington’s view, was “now passing through one
or two uni-multipolar decades before it enters a truly multipolar 21st
century. The United States . . . will be the first, last, and only global
superpower.”10
Uncertainty prevailed. One of the defining features of the international arena, as of the mid-1990s, was the absence of any firm or widely
understood set of rules of the game. On this informal level, and especially
in comparison with prior periods, the post-Cold War world was a relatively “lawless” arena. In their own way, both the Imperial Era and the
Cold War established clear codes for conduct; the Age of Uncertainty
could not. This circumstance both discouraged and justified quests for international cooperation.
The basic problem was the unstable configuration of power. It was
possible, of course, that the structural uncertainty of the 1990s would
persist well into the twenty-first century; instability and indeterminacy
could endure for quite some time. But as the international community
searched for order in the post-Cold War environment, there emerged several alternative patterns of interaction and alignment. By the end of the
1990s, they took the form of six distinct scenarios.11
Scenario 1: Global Hegemony for the United States. The international
system would no longer resemble a layer cake: the United States would
reign supreme in economic, military, and political affairs. This vision gained
plausibility as Europe and Japan faced unwelcome problems. As the U.S.
economy recovered strongly in the mid-1990s, the European Union
foundered-with growth rates often less than 2 percent, and unemployment climbing well into double digits (reaching 22 percent in Spain). Not
even the euro could promise instant recovery. Japan also found that its
“bubble” was bursting, as growth rates slipped to 1 percent or less for several years and scandals gripped the once-prestigious banking sector. The
economic crisis that gripped Southeast Asia in 1997 and the Russian meltdown in 1998 likewise weakened potential power centers. It thus became
imaginable that American supremacy would be accompanied or assisted by
stagnation in Europe, depression in Asia and Russia, retrenchment in Japan,
and instability in China.12 As a sole hegemon, the United States would be in
a position to lay down and enforce international rules of the game.
Scenario 2: Intensification of Multipolarity. The international system
of the twenty-first century could come to contain a half-dozen major
powers-as Henry Kissinger predicted, “the United States, Europe,
China, Japan, Russia, and probably India-as well as a multiplicity of
medium-sized and smaller countries.”13 The United States would be important but not dominant, and codes of behavior would result from
agreement and cooperation among the power centers. This view tended
to focus on the long-term distribution of demographic and economic resources, rather than short-term commercial or political developments.
Scenario 3: Conflicts of Civilizations. A variation on this theme, propounded by Samuel Huntington, foresaw the consolidation of seven or
eight “civilizations” (Western, Latin American, African, Islamic, Sinic,
Hindu, Orthodox, Buddhist, Japanese). These broad cultural groupings
would transcend nation-states and shape the outlooks, associations, and
interests of key actors in the world. Conflicts between them would be frequent (sometimes violent), compromise scarce, and tension permanent.
There would probably be mounting antagonism between “the West and
the rest,” as rising cultures of the world sought to acquire and assert commensurate shares of power.14
Scenario 4: Formation of Rival Blocs. This idea envisioned a small number of powerful economic and political blocs, each headed by a major
power. A common version portrayed three regional units: a “European”
bloc, dominated by Germany and the EU, with a sphere of influence
stretching through Eastern Europe to parts of the Middle East and much
of Africa; an “Asian” bloc, led by China or Japan (or both), extending
throughout the Asia-Pacific to the borders of South Asia; and an “American” bloc under the United States, embracing the entire Western Hemisphere. This might not be an easy arrangement to manage. Alarmists predicted that “the twenty-first century will be a century of economic
warfare,” while the respected economist C. Fred Bergsten once made a
similar point with more caution: “the end of the Cold War could sharply
heighten the prospect of trade war.” Without the common cause of anticommunism, leading powers would be tempted to seek economic advantage from one another. Moreover, three-player games tend to be notoriously unstable, since everyone fears that the other two will line up against
it on a permanent basis: “given the inevitable self-perception of vulnerability on the part of each of the three parties, two will tend to ally against
the third under conditions of rough tripolar equality-perhaps in an
effort to create their own so-called `bipolar’ dominance.” This would
strengthen the hand of parochial forces-protectionists in America,
traditionalists in Japan, regionalists in Europe-and precipitate a selfdestructive cycle. “The target would probably seek to form (or expand)
its bloc of nearby supporters, and the other areas would respond in kind.
All economies would suffer, and risks of trade warfare would become
real.”
Scenario 5: North-South Separation. In this perspective there might develop a “North-North” axis of economic and political cooperation encircling the upper half of the globe-from the United States to the European Union through East (or Central) Europe to Russia and Japan.
Capital and commerce would flow freely around this circuit and promote
accelerated growth. With a few exceptions, however, the South would be
left out. Economic benefits would become increasingly concentrated in
the North, resulting in a stark separation between haves and have-nots.15
As Charles William Maynes once observed, “The key division in world politics is likely to become the North-South divide. The reasons are the
relationship between poverty and people and the clash between economics and demographics.”16 Consolidation of a North-North axis could
provoke serious problems. An abandoned South would be liable to become ever more dispirited, desperate, and reckless. Moderate leaders
would lose credibility. Radicals of one stripe or another-nationalists,
populists, ayatollahs (if not leftists)-would come into power. With little
to lose, they would be tempted to pursue high-risk strategies of confrontation. The world would become increasingly dangerous, especially if
nuclear weapons were to proliferate, and temptations for military action
would escalate. Clearly, it would not be in the long-term interests of the
North to have an angered and impoverished South on the other side of
the equator.
Scenario 6: Continuing Globalization. A final scenario, by far the most
optimistic, envisioned progressive and multilateral movement toward a
global regime that could establish and uphold widely accepted rules of
the game. This benevolent scene would be most likely to occur in the
economic realm-perhaps under the aegis of the World Trade Organization. At the same time great powers, including the United States, would
devote fewer resources to military arms and more to economic development. There would be a productive (and efficient) reinvestment of the
“peace dividend” into social equity and human welfare. By creating a
positive-sum game, the promotion of economic development would in
turn reduce the likelihood of international conflict; the curtailment of
military spending would diminish the need for armed defense. The world
would become a gentler, kinder, more livable place.
Roles of the United States
One source of global instability was the unpredictability of the United
States. By the late 1990s the United States was by far the strongest single
nation in the world, but it was unclear whether, how, and under what
conditions the country would deploy its power. Discordant voices called
for policies of unilateral assertion, multilateral cooperation, even international isolationism. Ambivalence prevailed. Tempted to resolve crisis in all
corners of the earth, U.S. leaders nonetheless refused the role of global
police force. Anxious to sustain economic stability and growth around the
world, they were at the same time hesitant to support international finance agencies and reluctant to proffer rescue packages for troubled
economies in Asia, Latin America, and the former Soviet Union.
On such matters significant differences emerged between the American public and its leadership. A 1997 survey by the Pew Research Center
showed that 58 percent of the national elite-“influentials,” as reported
by Pew-expressed “satisfaction” with the way things were going in the
world, 36 percent were dissatisfied, and 6 percent were uncertain. Among the general public, however, only 29 percent were satisfied, 65 percent
dissatisfied, and 6 percent uncertain. This unhappiness with the state of
the world would often lead to demands in (and for) the Congress to alter
U.S. foreign policies.
In contrast to the elite, much of the broader public did not consider
foreign affairs to be important to their lives. Sixty-six percent said that
events in Canada had little or no impact on them; 61 percent viewed
Western Europe and Asia as irrelevant; and 55 percent reported that
Mexico did not matter in their lives. Their concerns about the world focused on nationalism, ethnic hatred, and spread of nuclear weapons.
Among state and local officials and among religious leaders, “drug cartels
and crime” were also seen as a major threat to world stability.
In this context, the general public and the influentials expressed differing preferences for U.S. leadership roles. As shown in Figure 4, which
displays survey results for 1993 as well as 1997, only small proportions of
both groups advocated unilateral leadership by the United States (it is to
be noted, however, that the proportion of influentials supporting the
“single leader” option rose from 8 percent in 1993 to 15 percent in
1997). The largest portion of influentials, 58 percent in 1993 and 50 percent in 1997, called for a proactive American role in multilateral shared
leadership, for the United States to be a kind of primus inter pares. Onehalf or more of the general public, in contrast, supported an active or participatory U.S. role in multilateral cooperation, but not with special responsibilities as leader. By 1997 around 11 percent of the general public
also preferred an isolationist stance, just about as many as wanted unilateral activism.
The Pew survey, and others like it, yielded several conclusions. First,
neither the public nor the elite wanted the United States to throw its
weight around the globe as a single leader. Second, there were modest
isolationist tendencies within the general public but not within the elite.
Third, the public and the elite accepted and understood the implications
of a multipolar world. And finally, they envisioned this reality in different
ways: influentials wanted the United States to take the lead in forging
multilateral solutions, while the public preferred cooperation without distinctive American leadership. There was substantial disagreement over the
appropriate level of activism, and this could only accentuate uncertainty
around the world. This was especially true since the decision-making elite
increasingly tended to take its cues from the voting public.
The United States and Latin America:
Hegemony Regained?
One of the most common assertions about inter-American relations, virtually a consensus among experts, is that the United States was losing regional hegemony throughout the Cold War period. “By 1980,” one authority has written, “the United States exerted less dominance in the Western Hemisphere than at any time since World War II.” The U.S.
share of Latin America’s exports was in steady decline, from 45 percent in
1958 to 34 percent in the late 1970s; the U.S. share of direct foreign investment was in decline, from over 50 percent in Brazil in 1965 to just 30
percent in 1979; the U.S. share of weapons sales to Latin America was
also in decline. In 1979 Washington was unable to convince Latin
America to support its proposal for an OAS mission in Nicaragua; in 1980
it was unable to persuade 15 Latin American countries to join a boycott
of the Moscow Olympics (in protest over the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan); in 1982 it was unable to prevent the Falklands/Malvinas
war between Argentina and Britain. By the mid-1980s the verdict appeared to be clear: “The decline of U.S. preponderance in the Western
Hemisphere has been pervasive and fundamental.”17
An important corollary of this thesis maintained that U.S. interventions in the hemisphere during the Cold War represented a weakening of
American hegemony, rather than its consummate expression. Political scientist Abraham Lowenthal has contended that U.S. efforts to overthrow
Allende in Chile were “anachronistic,” since “U.S. preponderance in the
Americas was already substantially diminished.”18 Similarly, historian
Thomas Paterson has asserted that U.S. interventions in the 1970s and
1980s “attested not to U.S. strength but to the loosening of its imperial
net.” 9 If hegemony was operating smoothly, there would never have
been any leftist challenge in the first place; there would never have arisen
any reason for the United States to intervene. By this same standard, the
survival of the Castro regime in Cuba represented a conspicuous sign of
Washington’s inability to exert its political will.
This notion of declining hegemony rests on dubious assumptions.
One entails a working definition of “hegemony” which claims, in effect,
near-total control over political events within the hemisphere. Another
presumes that Latin American resistance to Washington was greater in the
1980s than in the 1950s, although the evidence is far from clear: the reluctance of Latin American nations to send troops to Korea, the antiNixon riot, and the triumph of the Cuban Revolution all took place
under Truman and Eisenhower.
In retrospect, the historical record reveals three basic points: first, the
United States exercised a strong and continuous degree of hegemony
over the Western Hemisphere from the 1950s to the 1990s; second,
within this overall pattern, U.S. hegemony suffered a slight decline from
the 1960s to the 1980s; and third, still within this pattern, U.S. hegemony climbed to an all-time high between the mid-1980s and the mid1990s. Since World War II, in other words, the general trend has always
been for the United States to exert a great degree of influence over Latin
American countries, but the level of this influence revealed some oscillation (up, down, up) from the mid-1950s to the present time.
Data on gross domestic product (GDP) and population size for key
Latin American countries, for the region as a whole, and for the United States provide support for this interpretation (Table A7). The differences
in demographic trajectories are startling: the populations of all Latin
America and the United States were nearly the same size in 1950, just
over 150 million, but by 1990 the population of Latin America was almost 75 percent larger, 436 million compared with 250 million. Yet the
economic productivity of the United States has consistently overwhelmed
Latin America’s regional output: U.S. GDP was more than seven times as
large as the Latin American GDP in 1950, seven times as large in 1970,
and still over five times as large by 1990. In 1950 the GDP of the United
States was 30 times that of Argentina, 33 times that of Brazil, 37 times
that of Mexico; by 1990 the GDP of the United States was 58 times that
of Argentina, 13 times that of Brazil, 23 times that of Mexico. Within the
global arena the United States lost a good deal of ground in relation to
other major powers between 1950 and 1990; within the Western Hemisphere, by contrast, the United States managed to retain its position of
preponderance. 20
A similar picture emerges from data on trade (Table A9). The statistics yield several insights. One, perhaps most significant, is the fact that
the United States was by 1990 the largest single trading partner for every
country of the region. Second is the presence of the European Community (EC), especially for countries of southern South America .(Argentina,
Brazil, and Chile), whose trade with the EC as a collective entity was
greater than with the United States. Third is the virtual disappearance of
the Soviet Union, which by this time captured only a miniscule portion of
trade with Latin America: having been Argentina’s largest customer in the
1980s, due to its purchase of wheat, the Soviet Union (and former Soviet
Union) was fading from view. Finally, the data reflect the commercial rise
of Japan, which would soon become the largest single customer for Chile,
though it was elsewhere eclipsed by the United States. Investments revealed a similar story: during 1990-92 the United States poured about
$22 billion into Latin America, nearly twice the combined amount from
Europe and Japan. The United States thus asserted and affirmed its hemispheric position of economic supremacy; and while Europe and Japan
continued and in some areas intensified economic relations with Latin
America, they did not begin to pose a political challenge to Washington’s
preeminence in the Americas.
The United States was also exerting a profound influence on communications and popular culture. At the expense of European and local producers, Hollywood dominated box offices. Among the 50 top-grossing
pictures in Argentina in 1993, 36 were American, six local, and four
British (Jurassic Park was at the head of the list). A year later in Brazil, audiences were flocking to see The Lion King and The Flintstones, while non-
U.S. foreign films were taking just 2 percent to 3 percent of the market.
In Chile, leading distributors were Warner Brothers (26.2 percent of the
market), Universal (21.3 percent), and TriStar (17.4 percent). In Brazil
every one of the most popular ten films for 1997 came from the United States, among them Lost World and The English Patient. The same held
true for 1998 in Mexico City, where Titanic topped a list that included
Mulan, Godzilla, and Dr. Doolittle.21 In television, too, U.S. companies
were capturing the cable market: by 1997 CBS Telenoticias had 10 million subscribers, ESPN had 8 million, and MTV and the Cartoon Network each had 7 million. Especially within the urban middle classes,
American fashions and fads set the tone: teenagers from Mexico City to
Santiago wore U.S.-style blue jeans, listened to rock ‘n’ roll, followed the
antics of Hollywood stars. In an era of rapidly expanding communications, the appeal of American culture brought a new and subtle dimension to American power.22
For the most part, however, U.S. predominance resulted from a systematic retreat by extrahemispheric rivals. It is in precisely this respect
that the United States came to reassert “hegemony by default.” This occurred not so much because the end of the Cold War provoked the
United States to do anything particularly bold, innovative, or effective; it
happened, instead, because outside powers withdrew from the Americas
and directed their attention elsewhere. The European Community focused on the rehabilitation and reincorporation of East Europe; the Soviet Union withdrew and then collapsed, leaving Russia to cope with
enormous domestic challenges; Japan, ever mindful of its relationship
with the United States (and beset by its own economic problems), proved
reluctant to accelerate involvement in the hemisphere; and China, despite
its headlong rush toward economic growth, was not yet in any position
to pursue an aggressive strategy toward Latin America. There were no
strong competitors for the United States.
The objective conditions for U.S. supremacy in the Americas were
unusually complete. Never in the history of the hemisphere had there
been no extrahemispheric rivals, never had there been such asymmetry in
power resources. Yet a paradox would soon emerge. Because this newfound preponderance did not come about because of concerted action by
the United States, because hegemony came via default, the American
public-and its leadership-would have no clear ideas about whether and
how to take advantage of the situation. The question thus became: What
would the United States do?
Political Implications
Disappearance of the Cold War would have far-reaching consequences.
Conspicuous among them was dissipation of Marxist, Leninist, and socialist ideology throughout Latin America. Long championed by the left
as an antidote to U.S. imperialism and a recipe for social justice, Marxist
doctrine came to be identified with the disintegration of the Soviet
Union-and with the unenviable plights of Cuba and Nicaragua. It was in
Latin America, perhaps more than any other region of the world, where
Fukuyama’s portrayal of the “end of history” seemed most accurate (or least inaccurate): even as a utopian dream, the appeal of communism
seemed to diminish.
Equally important was the collapse of its antithesis. Exploited by
right-wing forces as justification for oppression, as shown in chapter 8,
anticommunism no longer had any logical place within the political arena.
This meant that political forces in Latin America-of both left and rightwould eventually have to confront one another directly, without rhetorical recourse to Manichean global struggles; that reactionary groups
would no longer be able to enlist support from Washington in common
cause against the specter of communism; and, as a result, that there would
be less distortion, polarization, and escalation of local conflict as a result
of meddling by external powers.
Ultimately, the end of the Cold War signified that the United States
would no longer have an archenemy within the hemisphere. To be sure,
Washington policymakers and media pundits had for decades drastically
exaggerated the extent of Soviet influence within the Americas. But even
on these terms, the Soviet/Russian global reach underwent severe contraction. In 1991 Mikhail Gorbachev announced the end of an era by announcing the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Cuba; in June 1993 the
famed and controversial Soviet combat brigade departed the island (leaving only 500-1,000 soldiers behind to protect an intelligence gathering
facility).
The demise of the Cold War conveyed ambiguous implications about
prospects for U.S. intervention in Latin America. Some observers argued
that the new circumstance would lead to increased interference by the
United States in Latin America, to more intermeddling rather than less.
According to this view, it was precisely the logic of the Cold War-and
the possibility of Soviet retaliation, at some distant point on the globe if
not within the Americas-that acted as a deterrent to U.S. action
throughout the hemisphere. Without any risk of Soviet (or other) response in the post-Cold War era, the United States would be able to do
whatever it pleased throughout Latin America. Others maintained that
the unmaking of the Cold War would reduce the likelihood of U.S. intervention: according to former NSC official Robert Pastor, for example,
“The fear of Soviet involvement was probably the single most important
cause of U.S. interventionism during the Cold War. . . . The Soviet
Union was not a deterrent in the Western Hemisphere; its presence was a
motive for intervention.”23 Of course this begs the question of whether
the “fear of Soviet involvement” was justified. In virtually every case of
U.S. intervention, with the partial exception of the Cuban missile crisis
of October 1962, Washington greatly exaggerated the nature and extent
of Soviet threat.
On balance, both arguments appeared to make sense. The retreat of
the Soviet Union reduced the incentives for the United States to meddle
in Latin American affairs; but it also lowered the anticipated costs of intervention. The balance of these calculations would most likely determine the actual course of action. In any event, the anticommunist crusade
could no longer provide justification for U.S. interference. Washington
would require new rationalizations for the imposition of its will on Latin
America.
Ironically, the process of democratization-hailed by Washington as
a triumph for American ideals-could pose an obstacle to the United
States. In 1982 military rulers stepped out of power in Argentina, in 1985
generals stepped aside in Brazil, and in 1988 a reluctant Pinochet accepted the results of a referendum ousting him from office. Elected civilians also came to power in Central America, cockpit of the Cold War in
the 1980s, and in other countries of Latin America. Even Mexico initiated a political opening that resulted in unprecedented setbacks for the
dominant PRI. Throughout the region, popular elections were becoming
the order of the day.
Politics also had its darker side. Corruption continued unabated in
some countries, but the problems were deeper than that. There were few if
any checks on presidential power. Legislatures tended to be weak, judiciary
branches weaker still. The armed forces (and the police) retained a good
deal of autonomy, sometimes carrying out rogue operations without approval from civilian leaders. Media were often controlled, usually through
informal mechanisms, and grassroots movements faced formidable challenges from ruling authorities. As a result Latin America gave rise to what
Fareed Zakaria called “illiberal democracy,” regimes that respected free (if
not always fair) elections but did not respect constitutional guarantees. According to one respected scholar, nearly half the countries of Latin America
in 1993 had levels of human rights abuse that were “incompatible with the
consolidation of [liberal] democracy.”24 Four years later, a 1997 report
from Freedom House rated only eight nations of Latin America as “free,”
ten (including Brazil and Mexico) as “partly free,” and one-Cuba-as
“not free.”25 Democracy still had a long way to go.26
Despite these limitations, the emergence of electoral politics in Latin
America would make it difficult for Washington to sustain its longhistoric claim: that the United States was intervening or otherwise weild-
ing power in order to uphold the cause of democracy. It would require
extremely tortuous logic to justify the overthrow of a democracy in the
name of democracy.27 (Of course the United States had done so on at
least two occasions, in Guatemala and in Chile, but the threat of communism provided a satisfactory rationale. The end of the Cold War removed
this possibility.) Theoretically, at least, the practice of democratic politics
could enhance and preserve Latin American sovereignty in the face of
U.S. hegemony. Elections thus became a line of national defense.
Rediscovering Latin America?
Evaporation of the presumed Soviet and/or communist threat raised fundamental questions about the nature and persistence of U.S. interests in Latin America. What importance would Latin America have for the
United States in the wake of the Cold War? What incentives might establish guidelines for U.S. policy toward the region?
It was entirely conceivable that, without the East-West conflict
and/or the Soviet threat, the United States would lose interest in Latin
America. As political scientist Lars Schoultz described Washington’s
mind-set in the 1980s: “most policy makers believe that the security of
the United States would not be adversely affected if Latin America were,
say, to sink to the bottom of the sea. . . . [I]t is not that policy makers
want much of anything from Latin America but rather that they do not
want the Soviet Union to have it.”28 Without the Cold War, the United
States would have little if any interest in Latin America. From a Latin
American perpective, commentator Jorge Castaneda noted that this
prospect created a serious dilemma for the region:
Paradoxically, after so many years of worrying about excessive U.S. involvement, Latin America may soon suffer from U.S. indifference, compounded
by the rest of the world’s traditional, relative lack of interest. As the geopolitical motivation for U.S. policy toward Latin America fades, its economic
component could also shrink. The hemisphere could well face the prospect of
“Africanization”-condemnation to the margins of world financial and trade
flows but also, inevitably, to neglect and irrelevance. It may well find itself
caught in the bind of a perverse, contradictory tension: between new forms
of U.S. intervention in domestic Latin American policies and new expressions
of U.S. and world indifference to its needs.29
Instead of a “new world order,” Latin America could face the harrowing
process of marginalization.
Economic Interests
As chapter 10 will show, a central axis of inter-American relations would
come to deal with economic issues. These matters would acquire paramount importance for nations of Latin America. Measured in a global
context, however, these issues were of only modest significance to the
United States. As a share of total American trade, for instance, U.S. commerce with Latin America declined from 28 percent to 35 percent in
1950 to 12 percent to 14 percent in the mid-1970s, rising slightly thereafter to 15 peecent to 17 percent by the mid-1990s (Table A9). Trade
with Latin America was not exceedingly important to the United States,
and it was much less important than it had been in the 1950s.
These gross figures conceal a fundamental fact: by the mid-1990s
more than half of U.S. trade with Latin America was with Mexico alone.
At the start of the decade Mexico was, in fact, the United States’ third
largest commercial partner-after Canada and Japan. By 1996 two-way
trade (exports plus imports) between Mexico and the United States came
to $131.1 billion, accounting for 55 percent of all U.S. trade with Latin
America. Second-largest from the region was Brazil, fifteenth among U.S. global partners with $21.5 billion in trade (less than one-sixth the Mexican total); Venezuela was eighteenth with $17.9 billion; Colombia was
twenty-eighth with $9.1 billion; Argentina and the Dominican Republic
were tied at thirty-second with approximately $7 billion each. In 1997
Mexico passed Japan to become the number-two trading partner for the
United States. Within the Americas, U.S. commercial interests focused
mainly on Canada and Mexico.
From the 1980s into the 1990s Latin America supplied from onequarter to one-third of the petroleum imported by the United States. Oil
continued to be of considerable economic, strategic, and geopolitical
value to the United States-and to its major allies in Japan and Western
Europe, which were almost wholly dependent on imported oil. As illustrated by the Gulf War in 1991, a central goal of U.S. foreign policy was
maintaining sources of supply. Secure and steady access to Latin American
petroleum could provide insurance against political instability in the Middle East, and it constituted a significant national interest for the United
States. In fact the United States steadily increased its imports from Latin
America to the point where Venezuela and Canada both surpassed Saudi
Arabia as the number-one supplier, with Mexico as number four. Between
1990 and 1996 the United States reduced Persian Gulf imports from
24.5 percent to 17.5 percent, and OPEC imports from 53.6 percent to
45.3 percent. For all practical intents and purposes, however, U.S. imports of Latin American oil came from Venezuela and Mexico. Concerns
over petroleum might affect Washington’s treatment of these two countries, but not so much the region as a whole.
With the exception of oil, however, Latin America would no longer
have great importance as a source of “strategic” raw materials. During the
Cold War the United States had jealously sought to monopolize hemispheric repositories of nonfuel minerals-bauxite, chromium, cobalt, columbium, managnese, platinum-group metals, tantalum, and titaniumthat could have military applications.30 (Above all, as George Kerman and
others insisted, it was essential to keep these resources out of the hands of
the Soviet Union.) As the Cold War subsided, however, U.S. analysts and
policymakers began to look upon the region as a promising consumer market for American exports. With a large and growing population, Latin
America loomed as a potentially lucrative “emerging market”-along with
Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, and other parts of the world.31
Implications here were paradoxical: modest levels of U.S. trade with countries other than Mexico reflected their lack of commercial importance, but
they also underlined the possibilities for growth.
As with trade, patterns of investment also reflected a decline in relative importance for Latin America. In 1950 Latin America accounted for
well over one-third of U.S. direct investment abroad; by 1970 Latin
America received less than half that share, 16 percent, and by 1990 the
figure had slipped to less than 10 percent (Figure 5). Western Europe,
Canada, and “other” regions, especially Asia and the Pacific Rim, were all hosting substantially more U.S. investment than Latin America. To be
sure, the absolute value of U.S. investments in the region represented a
substantial sum; adding investments in the English-speaking Caribbean
(especially Bermuda), the figure for 1990 rises from $41.8 billion to
$71.6 billion. Within the global scheme, however, Latin America was of less significance to the United States than other world regions, and of
much less significance than in the early postwar period.
Figure 5. U.S. direct investment abroad by region, 1950-1990. [Source: Data in
U.S. Department of Commerce, Historical of the United States, Colonial
Times to 1970, Part 2 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office,
1975), series U 41-46, p. 870; and U.S. Department of Commerce, Statistical
Abstract of the United States, 1993 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing
Office, 1993), p. 801.]
This long-term decline in Latin America’s economic importance augmented its disparity with the United States. Trends in trade and investment meant that in comparison with previous periods the United States
would have less at stake in its dealings with Latin America as a whole-at a
time when Latin America would have more at stake in the United States.
This growing asymmetry gave Washington great potential leverage over
countries of the region.
Changing Determinants of U.S. Policy
As the United States and Latin America were restructuring their economic relationship, long-term trends were changing the factors that affected the shape and content of U.S. policy toward the Americas. One
was growth of the Latin-origin population within the United States. During the nineteenth century, the United States acquired Latino citizens as a
result of territorial expansion and military conquest. During the twentieth
century the Latino population swelled largely as a consequence of natural
growth and especially of migration, the voluntary movement of labor
across “invisible bridges” created through investments, trade, and political domination. Particularly striking was the close connection between
U.S. overseas activity and consequent migratory flows. As sociologist Alejandro Portes has noted, countries that have supplied the major Spanishorigin groups in the United States
were, each in its own time, targets of [an] expansionist pattern of U.S. intervention. . . . In a sense, the sending populations were Americanized before
their members actually became immigrants to the United States. . . . The
rise of Spanish working-class communities in the Southwest and Northeast
may thus be seen as a dialectical consequence of past expansion of the United
States into its immediate periphery. . . . Contemporary migration patterns
tend to reflect precisely the character of past hegemonic actions by regional
and global powers.32
Migrants thus came largely from Mexico, Puerto Rico, Cuba-and, in
Asia, from the Philippines and Vietnam. The Mexican-American writer
Luis Valdes put it most succinctly: “We did not, in fact, come to the
United States at all. The United States came to us.”
By 1990 the “Hispanic” population in the United States amounted
to 22.3 million, according to official census statistics, about 9 percent of
the national total.33 This represented an increase of 53 percent over the
1980 count of 14.6 million, making the Hispanic population one of
the fastest-growing segments in U.S. society. About 60 percent were of
Mexican origin, 12 percent of Puerto Rican origin, just under 5 percent
of Cuban origin. In geographical terms the Hispanic population was
highly concentrated, with nearly three-quarters living in only four states: California, Texas, New York, and Florida. In those areas, especially, the
existence of sizable Hispanic communities led to multicultural social
forms, to the enrichment of popular culture, to ethnic accommodation
and tension-and, especially in California, to backlash from middle-class
Anglos.
Hispanic influence reached from music to films and to sports, including the national pastime. By the end of the 1980s nearly 500 major
league baseball players had come from Latin America-initially from
Cuba, which accounted for 26 percent of the total, and then from Puerto
Rico (25 percent), the Dominican Republic (23 percent), Venezuela,
Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Colombia, and Honduras.34 Rosters for the
1998 season would list 184 players from Latin America, 16 percent of the
entire major leagues, including no fewer than 88 from the Dominican Republic (the town of San Pedro de Macoris having gained fame as a breeding ground for shortstops). Over the years, the Latin-born roster included such outstanding Hall of Famers as Roberto Clemente (Puerto
Rico), Luis Aparicio (Venezuela), Juan Marichal (the Dominican Republic), and Rod Carew (Panama Canal Zone). Stars in the mid-1990s included Jose Canseco (born in Cuba), Fernando Valenzuela (Mexico), and
George Bell, Tony Fernandez, and Pedro Guerrero (all from the Dominican Republic). In 1997 alone, Sandy Alomar, Jr. (Puerto Rico), hit a
home run to win the All-Star Game, Edgar Renteria (Colombia) drove in
the winning run in the seventh game of the World Series, and Pedro
Martinez (Dominican Republic) was voted the best pitcher in the National League, later becoming the highest-paid player in baseball history;
in 1998, Sammy Sosa (Dominican Republic) cracked sixty-six home runs,
shattering the 37-year old record and dueling to the season’s final weekend with Mark McGwire (who ended up with seventy). As with migration, Latin America’s penchant for baseball reflected a clear-cut historic
trend: it flourished in sites of U.S. investment and/or military occupation. It also reflected a determined recruitment drive by North America’s
major league teams. “There are players there and we want to get the best
players,” as the the general manager of the Detroit Tigers once said.
“Baseball is still the No. 1 sport in those countries. Baseball is, unfortunately, not the No. 1 sport in the U.S.”
Hispanic influence was extending to politics as well. This was largely a
reflection of demographic trends, as Hispanics formed significant voting
blocs in major states and would become (soon after the turn of the century) the largest minority in the United States. As of 1998, they represented about 10 percent of the total voting-age population but their political impact was reduced by the fact that a large proportion of Hispanics
(perhaps 40 percent) were not U.S. citizens. This situation prompted intensive citizenship and registration drives by such organizations as the
League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the MexicanAmerican Legal Defense Fund (MALDEF); from 1992 to 1996 the number of registered Hispanic voters rose by 30 percent, to 6.6 million, and LULAC hoped to add another 2 million by the year 2000. Despite these
efforts, however, voter turnout among Hispanics remained very low-
26.2 percent among the voting-age population in the 1996 presidential
election, compared with 50.6 percent for African Americans and 56.0
percent for whites. This ranking for voter participation ratified a pattern
reaching back to the 1970s, when data on turnout were first gathered for
racial and ethnic groups.
As of the late 1990s, moreover, Hispanics did not form a cohesive
group. Mexican Americans in California had different concerns from
Cuban Americans in Florida and Puerto Ricans in New York. And since
they belonged to varying occupational strata and racial categories, they
seemed unlikely to form a cohesive bloc (nearly one-third of Hispanic
women were married to non-Hispanics, in fact, leading one observer to
surmise that they might act in politics as “honorary whites”). Because of
their sheer demographic weight, especially in major states, Hispanics were
nonetheless becoming a significant political factor. In recognition of this
reality President Clinton named two popular Latinos-Henry Cisneros
and Federico Pena-to cabinet positions.
Also significant, in the long run, was the growing influence of Hispanic
groups over elements of foreign policy. Resident Cubans and Cuban
Americans in Florida and (to a lesser degree) in New Jersey formed effective and visible lobbying groups that exerted major impact over U.S. policy
toward Cuba; less obviously, but perhaps inexorably, Mexican Americans
were acquiring influence on U.S. policy toward Mexico. The growth of the
Hispanic community was not only transforming American popular culture.
It was also beginning to shape U.S. foreign policy.
Public Opinion
Another key to U.S. policy came from perceptions, values, and preferences of mainstream society. In the post-Cold War environment, the attitudes of U.S. citizens toward Latin America displayed three predominant
features: ignorance, disdain, and indifference. Lack of knowledge about
the region stemmed from underlying causes that ranged from shallow
treatment in grade-school texts to erratic inclusion in college-level curricula to superficial coverage on television nightly news. For many if
not most Americans, accurate information about Latin America was not
readily available.
To aggravate this problem, popular media indulged in antiquated
stereotypes. Such Hollywood films as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid (1969) depicted Latins as inept and ridiculous, unable to cope with
the derring-do of the characters played by Robert Redford and Paul Newman. Woody Allen’s Bananas (1971) presented political dictatorship and
instability as a form of comic opera. Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
(1974) revived the image of Latin Americans as violent and bloodthirsty
“greasers.” Clear and Present Danger (1994), from the novel by Tom Clancy, stressed the greed and ruthlessness of Colombian drug lords.
There were exceptions to this general rule: as books and also as films, The
House of the Spirits by Chilean Isabel Allende and Like Water for Chocolate
by Mexican Laura Esquivel offered subtle and compelling views of Latin
American life through the lens of “magical realism.” But for the most
part, stereotypes continued to prevail.
Together with reassessments of world conditions, such images helped
form U.S. public opinion toward countries of the region. A national poll
in late 1994 by the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations showed that
Americans took an ambivalent view of Latin America. About 76 percent
of the general public agreed that Mexico represented a “vital interest” for
the United States, but only 35 percent attributed similar importance to
Brazil (Table A10). And while national leaders consistently accorded high
significance to Mexico throughout all such surveys, they did not do so for
Brazil: by 1994 only 49 percent of the leadership sample thought Brazil
was an area of vital national interest, compared with 73 percent in 1978
and 80 percent in 1982.35 Because of geographical proximity and socioeconomic interdependence, Mexico was something of a special case; as
fears of international communism diminished, the rest of Latin America
did not seem to matter very much. Public opinion appeared to confirm a
historic dichotomy in U.S. perceptions of Latin America, expressing intense concern about nearby countries (especially Mexico) and little interest in South America.
In summary, according to a report on the 1990 survey by the
Chicago Council, “The public accords relatively low priority to Latin
America . . . in general, there is little desire to commit substantial U.S.
resources, economic or otherwise, to the Latin American region.” By
1990, only 2 percent of respondents expressed genuine concern for problems of Latin America, down from 10 percent in 1986. By 1994, preoccupation with material self-interest appeared to overwhelm altruism and
idealism. For citizens in general, the leading purpose of U.S. foreign policy was held to be the deterrence of drug trafficking, cited by 85 percent
as a “very important” policy goal; controlling and reducing illegal migration was viewed as very important by 72 percent of the public; the
promotion of democracy was seen as very important by merely 25 percent
of the public (and just 21 percent of the leaders!). As described in chapter
11, drugs and migration would attract considerable (often wrathful) attention from U.S. citizens and policymakers alike. These issues also engendered negative feelings toward the region as a whole.
The Policy Process
Another key dimension was the policy-making process. During the Imperial Era, as described in Part I of this book, Washington worked together
with American business interests in a grand strategy to reduce European
influence and consolidate a U.S. sphere of interest in Latin America. Dur ing the Cold War U.S. foreign policy rested in the hands of a relatively cohesive elite, the so-called “foreign policy establishment” that worked to
implement a broad national consensus. Resulting measures were not always farsighted or effective, but the anticommunist strategy of “containment” yielded a great deal of consistency.
This would no longer be the case. In the post-Cold War period, U.S.
policy-making for Latin America displayed extreme tendencies toward
bureaucratic balkanization. Interagency infighting had long been a feature of the Washington scene, but it reached new heights (or depths) during the 1990s. Different agencies had different policies: the Department
of the Treasury had one policy for Latin America, Commerce had another, State had another, INS another, and so on. There was little discernible effort to reconcile these policies. The State Department and/or
the White House might have been expected to perform this role. Under
Bill Clinton they did not. It remained an open question whether this
would change under a different president.36
Even more conspicuous was the growing importance of domestic
politics and electoral concerns. Almost all issues that came to dominate
inter-American relations-trade, investment, drugs, migration-touched
on matters of local concern (as international issues with domestic implications, they were sometimes called “intermestic”). State and local leaders
took vocal stands on matters relating to Latin America, and they tended
to be heeded in proportion to their political weight. Reflecting Anglo
backlash, for instance, voters in California decisively approved one ballot
measure designed to prevent illegal migrants and their children from receiving social benefits (Proposition 187) and another intended to eliminate racial and ethnic preferences under “affirmative action” (Proposition
209).
Congress came to play a central part in policy formation on key issues
for the hemisphere. Rather than evaluating foreign-policy issues on their
merits, however, legislators tended to respond to constituent demands in
order to enhance prospects for their own reelection. Frequently, too, they
engaged in “log-rolling” deals on issues that bore no substantive connection to each other. And to the extent that the interests of individual congresspersons diverged from those of the White House, there was bound
to be discord and confusion. This was especially true after November
1994, when the Republican Party captured majorities in both the Senate
and the House of Representatives. Predictably enough, this dynamic led
to inconsistent outputs.
Prospects for Engagement: Uncertainties
and Apprehensions
As the Cold War receded into the background, policymakers and policy
analysts pondered the possibilities for U.S.-Latin American relations. A
defining factor was renewed hegemony of the United States. Without any threat from extrahemispheric powers, and without any likelihood of collective challenge from Latin America itself, the United States was free to
impose its will throughout the Americas. More than any time in the past,
Washington could now live up to Richard Olney’s oft-quoted remark of
1895: the United States could rule the continent “by fiat.” A century
later, the question now loomed large: how would the United States react?
What trends and factors would shape the inter-American relationship?
One basic issue concerned the relative priority that Latin America
would have in the eyes of the United States. It had been hoped by many,
and predicted by some, that the region would command new levels of attention. As one leading analyst wrote in 1992, the end of the Cold War
offered “powerful reasons for moving the Americas from the periphery of
U.S. policy toward the center.”37 As explained in chapters to follow, the
post-Cold War agenda came to focus not on grandiose matters of state
but on “low politics”-such uninspiring “intermestic” matters as trade
and investment, environmental protection, international migration, and
drug trafficking. How important were such concerns for the United
States? Would they lead Washington to develop any kind of “grand
strategy” for dealing with Latin America? Some claimed that these problems were of utmost significance and christened them as “the new security
challenge.” Others remained skeptical, noting that Latin America in general appeared to remain-as during the Cold War-a midlevel priority. It
was more important to Washington than South Asia or Africa, for instance, but a good deal less important than Europe (Western and Central/Eastern), East Asia, and the Middle East. There was little sense of urgency about the region.
A second concern was that the U.S. decision makers might focus on
Mexico, or possibly Mexico and the Caribbean, largely at the expense of
South America. Largely because of geographical proximity, Mexico had a
special and historic relationship with the United States-sometimes positive, often negative-and it was a key actor in regard to such issues as migration, drug trafficking, and environmental protection. According to
one prominent analysis, Mexico was one of several “pivotal states” around
the world for U.S. national interests in the post-Cold War environment.
Among all the other nations of Latin America only Brazil qualified for this
same distinction, and to many observers it still seemed far removed, geographically and otherwise, from the orbit of U.S. concerns.-38 It seemed
conceivable, therefore, that Washington might devote considerable attention to Mexico (and perhaps the Caribbean) but not to South America,
thus repeating the pattern of the Imperial Era.
A third question dealt with policy coherence. Despite internecine rivalries and bureaucratic warfare in Washington, would there emerge a
consistent policy-or at least a dominant policy line-toward Latin
America? Might Congress and the White House find ways to agree on the
issues of greatest importance? Or would there be random disorder? It was
apparent that U.S. policy would increasingly reflect the demands and preferences of nongovernmental organizations, social groups, interest
associations, and electoral blocs-including Cuban Americans, African
Americans, and Mexican Americans. Would this lead to incoherent outputs? Or to the democratization of foreign policy? One particularly intriguing sign was the emergence of transnational alliances between interest groups and citizen organizations-labor unions, environmental
groups, human-rights organizations. What effect might this have?
A fourth issue focused on forms of U.S. behavior. Some thought
that, without East-West confrontation, the United States would renounce
unilateral high-handedness and engage in multilateral cooperation with
nations of Latin America. Washington would discover new reasons to care
about the region, such as migration and trade, and this evolving agenda
would reveal an underlying coincidence of interests that would, in turn,
lead to increased cooperation. The tone would become one of mutual respect: tensions of the Cold War would give way to reawakened feelings of
the Good Neighbor period. Other analysts were not so sure. As Thomas
Paterson observed, “Americans nervous about the stormy post-Cold War
era are likely to seek to batten down their traditional sphere of influence
in Latin America. . . . With or without a Cold War, the United States
will likely continue its unilateral, interventionist role in Latin America.”39
Yet another ambiguity concerned political change in Latin America,
in particular the impacts of democratization. At first blush, it seemed that
this trend would strengthen inter-American solidarity: as the world’s
strongest democracy, the United States could draw only satisfaction from
the turn toward pluralistic politics in Latin America. (And as U.S. leaders
would proudly and frequently proclaim, all countries of the hemisphere,
with the lone exception of Cuba, had finally joined the democratic community of nations.) But these political transitions also gave rise to a
counter-hypothesis: the greater the degree of democratization in Latin
America, the more complex and conflicted would become the relationship with the United States. Through the 1990s, Washington was for the
most part able to work and deal with executive leaders in highly presiden-
tialist systems. As opposition parties, legislative bodies, nongovernmental
organizations, and grassroots movements became more and more involved in policy debates throughout Latin America, the more difficult it
would be for Latin American governments to speak with a single voice.
And the more that impoverished and disadvantaged segments of Latin
American society gained effective political participation, the more they
were likely to challenge prevailing policies and established conventional
wisdom. The more that Latin American policy processes resembled those
of the United States, in sum, the more contentious would be the region’s
dealings with the United States.
Free love and free trade.
Economist’s slogan (1992)
Freedom of trade is fair only if it is subject to the demands of social
justice.
Pope Paul VI (1967)
No nation, rich or poor, democratic or authoritarian, can escape the
fundamental economic imperatives of the global market.
Bill Clinton (1998)
By the early 1990s a spirit of optimism suffused Washington and many
capitals of Latin America. As economic matters moved to the forefront of
the inter-American agenda, officials came to agree that the Cold War had
distorted U.S.-Latin American relations by introducing an ideological
factor that was extraneous, artificial, and deleterious. In the newly emerging world, they further concurred, the economic interests of the United
States and Latin America converged with one another. Steadfast pursuit
of economic goals would therefore lead to a happy and harmonious relationship. It was economics, rather than politics, that defined true and legitimate national interests. And with the United States and Latin America
both intent on economic gain, the prospects for hemispheric collaboration were better than ever before.
Four factors determined the framework for inter-American economic
relations in the 1990s. One, described in chapter 9, was the reshaping of
the international arena with the rise of Europe and Japan, with its conse quent impact on power arrangements. Second was the legacy of Latin
America’s debt crisis of the 1980s. Third was an ideological consensus
within the international financial community in support of promarket
reforms and free trade. Fourth was a worldwide concern to reconcile
processes of economic development with the need for environmental
protection.
The Debt Crisis
What came to be known as “the debt crisis” had its origins in the 1970s.
Seeking to increase their profits and exert their political power, members of
the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) halted production in 1973-74 and again in 1979-81. The result on both occasions
was a shortage of petroleum throughout the West, long waiting lines at
gasoline stations in Europe and the United States, a sharp increase in
prices, and windfall profits for oil-producing countries. Unable to absorb
all these funds, OPEC governments deposited massive amounts of dollars
into U.S. and European banks. Obliged to pay interest on these deposits,
the banks then had to lend these sums out to borrowers who would pay
profitable rates of interest.
The moneylenders turned to Latin America. Since advanced industrial countries were facing recession, the most logical targets for lending
were relatively unsophisticated borrowers in the developing world who
were willing to accept higher rates of interest than their industrial country
counterparts. This meant especially the so-called upper tier of Third
World countries-Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, and Mexico. Bankers
were quite comfortable in dealing with public agencies and state enterprises, in the belief that repayment would be guaranteed by governments;
countries may not be able to pay, according to a well-known dictum, but
neither they nor their debts disappear. Meanwhile borrowers were encouraged by modest interest rates (at some points in the mid-1970s real
interest rates, as measured by the difference between nominal rates and
worldwide inflation, were actually negative). Under these circumstances,
Latin America’s total foreign debt swelled from around $30 billion in
1970 to more than $240 billion in 1980.
The general assumption, shared by lenders and borrowers alike, was
that the world economy would continue on a path of moderate growth
with low real interest rates. This prediction turned out to be wrong. Economic growth in industrialized countries declined from 4.9 percent in the
1960s to 3.4 percent in the 1970s; expansion in world trade dropped
from 9 percent in the 1960s to just 4 percent in the 1970s. In the early
1980s the U.S. economy fell into a serious recession. Stagnation in the industrialized world reduced imports of raw materials from the developing
world, while structural transformation-especially the decline of smokestack industries and growth in the service sector-further weakened demand for traditional goods. For Latin American countries, these trends led to a substantial decline in exports and export earnings, which were required in order to service their loans.
As global inflation was accelerating, U.S. Federal Reserve chairman
Paul Volcker responded with a “tight money” policy entailing a sharp increase in interest rates. This had serious impacts on Latin America. Most
of the region’s loans were contracted at variable rates, periodically adjusted in accordance with the movement of some widely accepted international yardstick. For example, operative interest rates might be established
as the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR) plus an additional margin of 0.5 percent to 2.0 percent (depending on the creditworthiness of
the borrower). As a result of fluctuations in the international market, actual average interest rates paid by Latin American lenders climbed from
10 percent in 1978 to 15 percent in 1980 and 18 percent in 1981. Costs
of debt service therefore rose dramatically. According to one calculation,
the accumulation of extra debt due to increases in interest rates (above 10
percent) during the five-year period 1978-82 came to $40 billion to $50
billion!
In the meantime, the value as well as the volume of traditional Latin
American exports, from coffee to nonferrous metals to petroleum, was
sharply plummeting. A steady strengthening of the U.S. dollar intensified
the trend. By the mid-1980s international commodity prices reached
their lowest point in real terms since World War II; as a result, Latin
American nations were earning less hard currency from exports. As the
cost of debt service was rising, in other words, Latin America’s capacity to
pay was declining. In 1984 debt service amounted to 46 percent of the
region’s total earnings from exports.
Oscillations in the price of petroleum were particularly volatile.
Largely as a consequence of OPEC-induced shocks, the average price
climbed from $10 per barrel in the early 1970s to more than $40 per barrel in 1981. This stimulated a new wave of borrowing. Oil importers, like
Brazil, borrowed money in order to purchase petroleum and continue
their drive toward industrialization; exporters, like Mexico and Venezuela, borrowed money with anticipated income as collateral. Then the
bottom dropped out of the market, as prices for oil plunged to less than
$20 per barrel (a level where they stayed until the early 1990s, then dropping sharply later in the decade). As a result of price fluctuations, both
importers and exporters piled up substantial debts; and for different reasons, both would find it difficult to pay.
By the early 1980s both lenders and borrowers were overextended.
Indebted countries were caught in a vicious squeeze between declining
export prices and rising interest rates, so they began to borrow more and
more money just to keep up with payments on debt service. Loans piled
upon loans: between 1975 and 1985 Latin America’s external debt spiraled from $99 billion to $384 billion (Table All). “You borrowed
money like a bunch of drunken sailors,” one prominent banker is reported to have said during a subsequent session with Latin America’s finance managers. “Yes,” came the tart reply, “but we had a drunken
bartender.”
The Mexican Crisis
On Thursday, August 12, 1982, Mexican Minister Jesus Silva
Herzog placed telephone calls to Paul Volcker of the U.S. Federal Reserve, U.S. Treasury Secretary Donald Regan, and International Monetary Fund (IMF) director Jacques de Larosiere. His urgent message:
Mexico could no longer meet its obligations on debt. That night Silva
Herzog hurried to Washington for pressing consultations. By Sunday the
negotiators could announce agreement on two points: a moratorium on
the amortization of Mexico’s debt to commercial banks, and an international package of emergency loans. The most important point was implicit: interest payments would continue as scheduled.
Central to the ensuing negotiations was the creation of a mechanism
for communication between Mexico and its creditor banks-between 800
and 1,000 institutions in all. Discussions eventually led to the formation
of a centralized advisory committee dominated by large-scale “money
center” banks, and placed under the chairmanship of William Rhodes of
Citicorp. Nominally charged with providing advice to the Mexican government, the committee actually served to coordinate the negotiating
stance of the banks. In effect, the bankers succeeded in forming a cartel.
Complications ensued on September 1, when President Jose L6-
pez Portillo abruptly announced the nationalization of Mexico’s banks.
His goal was to halt capital flight by financial speculators-“vultures”
(buitres), as he angrily proclaimed-which led him to impose mandatory
exchange controls as well. While business communities in Mexico and the
United States greeted the news with an admixture of hostility and dis
belief, most international bankers maintained discreet silence: many of
Mexico’s creditors were not at all displeased that the debts of the Mexican
banks, which had made doubtful loans to businesses in trouble, were now
in the hands of the Mexican state.
Negotiations soon resumed, based on the premise that Mexico’s
predicament represented a “liquidity crisis” (a cash squeeze) rather than a
“solvency crisis” (a basic inability to pay). The first step was to strengthen
Mexico’s foreign exchange reserves in order to enable continued payments on interest. This was accomplished through an advance payment
by the United States of $1 billion on purchases for its strategic oil reserve;
a $1 billion credit guarantee for the acquisition of agricultural commodities from the United States; and a loan of $1.85 billion from various
sources, principally the U.S. Federal Reserve.
The second step was to provide long-term financing, and here the
IMF stepped in to play a crucial role. The Fund agreed to provide Mexico
with an authorization of $3.96 billion in exchange for a stringent stabilization program to combat inflation, then running around 100 percent per year. And in November, de Larosiere used this agreement as a means
of forcing Mexico’s creditors to provide a total of $5 billion in new funds.
Come up with the money, he threatened them at a meeting in Toronto,
or the IMF will withdraw its authorization-thus endangering all their
currently outstanding loans. Within a month the banks complied. The
IMF thus initiated a cycle of involuntary or “nonmarket” lending by
creditor banks.
The third step was renegotiation of terms and timing of debt repayments. Discussions eventually led to a rescheduling of the $19.5 billion in
public debt due before the end of 1984 and agreements on a staggered
grace period for repayments on other principal. Mexico and its creditors
could heave a collective sigh of relief. Seized with self-congratulation, participants in these deliberations regarded their handling of the Mexican
crisis as a major success.
In Search of Solutions
As other countries in Latin America announced their inability to meet
debt obligations, the international community sought to find a workable
response. During the first stage of the decade-long crisis, from 1982 to
1985, bankers and debtors attempted to “muddle through” what they
saw as problems of “liquidity.” The reaction nonetheless formed a clear
pattern, with the International Monetary Fund performing a key role as
catalyst and monitor. Once a country proclaimed inability to pay, the IMF
would negotiate an austerity package. IMF authorities were especially
eager to attack both inflation and public-sector deficits (even though interest payments alone accounted for 15 percent to 20 percent of public
outlays, equivalent to 4 percent to 5 percent of GNP). Approval of an
IMF package would then persuade otherwise reluctant creditor banks
to provide fresh loans, which enabled debtor countries to keep up their
payments.
The IMF and the banking community dealt with countries on a caseby-case basis. Each of the major debtors-Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela, and
Argentina-had somewhat different schedules and problems. As a result
creditors could negotiate with individual governments rather than with a
coalition. The bankers could also reduce the incentive for collective action
by offering slightly better terms in each successive round of negotiation.
Through such means the international community was able to prevent
the formation of a debtors’ cartel.
These tactics assured successful rescue of the banks. Negotiators
proudly proclaimed that their purpose was to avoid financial panic, which
could have harmful consequences for the entire international community,
but in practice the pursuit of this goal meant protection of private banks,
some of which were seriously overexposed. A central premise of all negotiations was the continuation of interest payments. And as a result,
the banks managed to survive: as international economist Pedro-Pablo Kuczynski has observed, no major bank failed during the 1980s because
of its Latin American loans.’
A second stage in response to the crisis began in 1985. At a major meeting in Seoul, then-U.S. treasury secretary James A. Baker III
stressed the importance of economic growth for indebted countriesacknowledging in effect that countries faced crises of solvency, not just
liquidity. Recognizing the dearth of commercial lending, Baker called for
an injection of $20 billion in developing countries that were willing to
undertake market reforms. For this task he assigned a major role to the
World Bank, which had so far construed its concern with long-term development as a reason for staying on the sidelines of the debt crisis. The
Baker Plan led to scant practical results, mainly because the $20 billion
proved to be unavailable, but it marked an important shift in the definition and conceptualization of the crisis.
It fell to Baker’s successor, Nicholas F. Brady, to carry on the process.
Announced in March 1989, the Brady Plan proposed a broad portfolio of
debt reduction and restructuring alternatives and offered U.S. government support to countries undertaking market-based economic policies.
The Brady Plan had two distinct features: one was its flexibility and open-
endedness, expressed in its expansive menu of policy options, which created greater willingness among borrowers and lenders than under the
Baker Plan; another was its explicit recognition that debt reduction would
have to be an integral element in any lasting resolution of the debt crisis.
Long anathema to the banks and to the Reagan administration, debt relief was thus legitimized on the basis that it could provide efficiency gains
for both the debtors and the banks.
By February 1990 the Brady Plan resulted in the restructuring of
nearly $50 billion of Mexican debt. Creditor banks were able to choose
from three options: first, they could swap current bank loans at face value
for new bonds paying the relatively modest rate of 6.25 percent interest
(“par bonds”); second, they could swap old loans for new bonds at a respectable rate of interest (LIBOR plus 13/6 percent) but at a 35 percent
discount on face value (“discount bonds”); third, they could exchange
old debt for new debt at face value by agreeing to provide new loans (up
to 25 percent of their total exposure). With 30-year zero-coupon bonds,
the U.S. government agreed to guarantee payment on all these new
bonds. (Creditors were also entitled to recapture Mexican profits on oil
sales over $14 per barrel after July 1996.) Most banks chose the debt reduction options. As a result, the face value of Mexico’s external commercial debt declined by $5.5 billion.
Negotiations under the Brady Plan also led to agreements with Costa
Rica, Venezuela, Uruguay, Argentina, and, in mid-1992, Brazil. With the
exception of Costa Rica and Mexico, however, implementation of the
plan did not bring much significant debt reduction. One result was paradoxical: partial reduction and successful restructuring of the commercial
debt tended to increase the face value of total debt, including official debt, since these measures strengthened the value of outstanding debt
shares in financial markets.
The Washington Consensus
Eventually, the international financial community arrived at the conclusion that Latin America required fundamental economic reform. A principal source of the region’s difficulty was held to be structural distortions
resulting from the strategy of “import-substitution industrialization”
(ISI) through which Latin American countries sought to manufacture
goods once imported from abroad. To a considerable extent, ISI grew
out of cepalista studies in the 1950s showing that secular terms of trade
were running against commodity producers: the real price of raw materials was declining while the cost of manufactures was increasing. Domestic
industrialization under state protection offered a practical and logical response to these conditions. Through the 1970s ISI produced high rates
of growth, and observers referred glowingly to economic “miracles” in
such countries as Mexico and Brazil.
During the 1980s, however, officials and analysts began to attribute
numerous deficiencies to ISI-as a result of its emphasis upon the state,
its reliance upon domestic markets, and its protection of the private
sector. Of course the debt crisis itself was largely due to factors outside of (and outside the control of) Latin America. Notwithstanding this
self-evident truth, economists and policymakers in major international
institutions-from the U.S. Treasury to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund-issued a clarion call for economic restructuring in
Latin America.
What came to be known as the “Washington consensus” entailed three
sets of prescriptions.2 First, it called for reduction and revision in the economic role of the state. Latin American governments should exercise fiscal
discipline-as commonly preached, but rarely practiced at the time, by
Washington itself. They should concentrate their resources not on social
subsidies (such as retirement pensions or price controls on foodstuffs) but
on such economically productive areas as health, education, and infrastructural investment. They should deregulate their national economies, letting
market forces operate without political or bureaucratic constraints.
Second, the Washington consensus advocated support for the private
sector. Latin American governments should sell off state-owned enterprises, which could reduce public deficits through proceeds from the sales
and through the elimination of wasteful subsidies. The governments
should also remove restrictions on foreign capital. Behind the consensus
was a doctrinaire belief that private management, driven by profit motivation and market competition, was inherently more efficient than public
administration.
Third, Latin American governments should drastically revise policies
on trade. They should look outward, not inward, for markets. The reduc tion of tariffs and other barriers to imports would improve access to intermediate inputs, which was necessary for the ability to export finished
products at competitive prices. Excessive protection of domestic industry created costly distortions that penalized exports, punished domestic
consumers, and encouraged inefficiencies. (It was assumed that Latin
America’s recovery required the expansion of nontraditional exports, especially manufactured goods, rather than traditional commodities and
raw materials.) In this regard, trade policy and the encouragement of private enterprise went hand-in-hand: both would stimulate competition, efficiency, and active participation in the international economy.
Either by coincidence or design, this policy package fell neatly in line
with U.S. national interests. At a time when the United States was seeking
new markets abroad, these prescriptions would reduce tariffs and nontariff barriers to trade. And as the United States was searching for ways to regain economic competitiveness, these nostrums would relax conditions
for foreign investment and make it easier for American manufacturers to
take advantage of inexpensive labor and develop export platforms in Latin
America. Generally speaking, the adoption of free-market capitalism by
Latin America would be good for the United States. Not for nothing was
this doctrine called the Washington consensus.
Yet the neoliberal vision contained one major paradox. A centerpiece
of its program was reducing the role of the state, but implementation of
its policies required a powerful state. Economic reform was bound to
encounter resistance from entrenched groups-sheltered entrepreneurs,
unionized workers, public-sector employees. Imposition of broad, equitable, and effective tax codes, another of the Washington proposals,
would generate opposition from almost everyone. It would take a strong
and autonomous state to overcome such pressures. Proponents of the
consensus often sought to resolve this paradox by advocating small but
efficient government, “lean and mean,” but this formulation did not
clearly address fundamental questions about the role and the extent of
state participation in economic affairs.
Eventually, too, the Washington consensus developed political corollaries. Around Wall Street and some academic circles, it came to be argued that free-market policies would establish foundations for political
democracy. The liberalization of markets would lead to the liberalization
of politics: the dismantling of state monopolies would break up old ruling
cliques, the deregulation of business would encourage entrepreneurship,
economic competition would foster political competition. Moroever, as
newly empowered groups took part in the global economy, they would
find it in their practical interest to come from countries with democratic
credentials. As these convictions took hold, inconvenient examples from
East Asia-open economies with closed polities, such as Singapore and
China-were more or less ignored. The early 1990s was an optimistic
time, like the early 1960s, and once again it was imagined that all good
things could go together.
The Mantra of Free Trade
In extension of the Washington consensus, a movement in favor of “free
trade” swept through the Americas. In the mid-1980s Argentina and
Brazil initiated negotiations for what would ultimately become a fourcountry partnership including Uruguay and Paraguay. In 1990 the
United States and Canada accepted Mexico’s proposal to begin discussions for the creation of a North American free trade area; within two
years negotiators reached agreement on a formal treaty. Also in 1990
then-U.S. president George Bush proposed the development of a free
trade zone embracing the entire Western Hemisphere. Seeking to overcome the painful crisis of the 1980s, leaders throughout Latin America
came to regard “free trade” as an essential part of any long-term solution
to the continent’s economic woes.
This movement immersed the Western Hemisphere in processes of
“regional economic integration,” which entailed the removal of stateimposed barriers to the mutual exchange of goods, services, capital, or
persons. According to standard usage, the removal of barriers to the exchange of goods alone would be sufficient to create a “free trade area”
(FTA). That plus the erection of common external tariffs would constitute a “customs union.” Establishment of a “common market” would require the removal of barriers to the free flow of all factors of production,
especially services and capital. As chapter 11 explains, the mutual exchange of persons-that is, the free flow of labor-would constitute one
of the most contentious issues in contemporary processes of integration.
North American Free Trade
The most ambitious and far-reaching instance of regional integration concerned the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Unveiled
in August 1992, the pact was signed that October by leaders of the three
countries in San Antonio, Texas, in the midst of the U.S. presidential
campaign. After ratification by legislatures of the three governments, it
took effect in January 1994. Building on a bilateral free-trade accord between Canada and the United States (approved in 1988, initiated January
1989), NAFTA created one of the two largest trading blocs in the
world-with a population of 370 million and combined economic production of approximately $6 trillion as of 1992, North America could be
a worthy rival to the European Union.3
NAFTA promoted a free flow of goods between member countries
by eliminating duties, tariffs, and trade barriers over a period of 15 years.
Sixty-five percent of U.S. goods gained duty-free status immediately or
within five years; half of U.S. farm goods exported to Mexico immediately
became duty-free. There were special exceptions for certain “highly sensitive” products in agriculture, typically one of the sectors most resistant to
economic integration; phase-outs on tariffs for corn and dry beans in Mexico and orange juice and sugar in the United States would extend to
the year 2009. Tariffs on all automobiles within North America would be
phased out over ten years, but rules of origin stipulated that local content
would have to be at least 62.5 percent for vehicles to qualify. Not surprisingly, spokespersons for Asian governments regarded this clause as highly
“protectionist,” a thinly disguised effort to exclude Japanese industries
and products from the North American market.
NAFTA opened Mexico to U.S. investments in various ways. Under
the treaty U.S. banks and securities firms could establish branch offices in
Mexico, and U.S. citizens could invest in Mexico’s banking and insurance
industries. While Mexico continued to prohibit foreign ownership of oil
fields, in accordance with its constitution, U.S. firms became eligible to
compete for contracts with Petroleos Mexicanos (PEMEX) and to operate, in general, under the same provisions as Mexican companies.
One item was most conspicuous by its absence: beyond a narrowly
written provision for movement of corporate executives and selected professionals, the treaty made no reference at all to large-scale migration of
labor. The continuing flow of “undocumented workers” from Mexico
into the United States-where they were customarily classified as “illegal
aliens,” in a suggestive turn of phrase-remained a major source of conflict and contention in the bilateral relationship. Apparently sensing that
there was no ground for reasonable compromise, NAFTA negotiators decided to avoid the question altogether. But as the next chapter shows,
avoidance did not make the issue disappear.
NAFTA precipitated strenuous debate within the United States (and
to a somewhat lesser extent in Canada, where organized labor and small
business were feeling ill effects from the U.S.-Canadian agreement). In
the heat of the 1992 presidential campaign, Democratic candidate Bill
Clinton pledged to support NAFTA on condition that there be effective
safeguards for environmental protection and worker rights; by September
1993 the governments reached “supplemental” or side agreements on
labor and environment. As the U.S. Congress prepared to vote on ratification, NAFTA moved to the center of the political stage. Texas billionaire (and erstwhile presidential hopeful) Ross Perot led the charge against
the treaty, claiming that NAFTA would entice U.S. business to seek lowwage Mexican labor and thus lose jobs for millions of American workers.
Proponents insisted that NAFTA would stimulate U.S. exports, achieve
economies of scale, and enhance U.S. competitiveness. Disregarding vociferous opposition from unionized labor, a historic bastion of support for
Democrats, Clinton lobbied tirelessly on behalf of the treaty. And after
Perot stumbled badly during a memorable television debate with Vice
President Al Gore, the House of Representatives finally approved the
NAFTA accord by the surprisingly lopsided margin of 234-200; the Senate followed with a vote of 61-38.
In final form, the NAFTA accord had three outstanding characteristics. One was its implicit commitment to regional economic integration. Despite its title, NAFTA was not primarily concerned with “free trade.”
By 1990 tariff and even nontariff barriers to U.S.-Mexican commerce
were already low. NAFTA was primarily concerned with investment. By
obtaining preferential access to U.S. markets and a formal “seal of approval” through NAFTA, Mexico was hoping to attract sizable flows of
foreign direct investment-from Japan and Europe as well as from the
United States. By obtaining untrammeled access to low-wage (but highly
skilled) Mexican labor, the United States was hoping to create an export
platform for manufactured goods to improve its competitive position in
the global economy. It was for these reasons that the NAFTA treaty contained extensive chapters about investment, competition, telecommunications, and financial services. Commerce was only one part of the picture.
Implicitly, NAFTA envisioned a substantially more profound form of integration than its label acknowledged.
Second, NAFTA was essentially an intergovernmental accord. Unlike
the European Community (later European Union), which created an
elaborate structure for governance with genuine supranational authority,
NAFTA relied on negotiations and presumed consensus between national
governments. As revealed by its provisions for dispute resolution, which
called upon contending parties to engage in voluntary deliberations,
NAFTA did not entail any “pooling” or “sharing” or “delegation” of political sovereignty along European lines. The result was inconsistency, some
thought, between the relatively “deep” level of economic integration envisioned by NAFTA and its distinctly “shallow” level of political integration.
Ultimately, it appeared that this disjuncture was likely either to paralyze
processes of economic integration and/or exert enormous pressure for
supranational authority-which could itself become an instrument for the
assertion of U.S. hegemony. One way or another, it seemed likely that
NAFTA would have to confront its own internal contradictions.
Third, NAFTA possessed an underlying political rationale. In this respect it shared a trait that was characteristic of all enduring integration
schemes. From the time of its foundation in the late 1950s, for instance,
the European Union had two major political goals: placing constraints on
Germany, in order to preserve postwar stability, and strengthening West
Europe against the Soviet bloc, in order to contain communism. As one
study of the subject has concluded, “Regional integration builds upon
political foundations. Integration is not merely an economic enterprise. It
is also a political compact. . . . Integration requires a clear and recognized convergence of political interests for all participant states. This does
not mean that political interests must be identical. It means that they
must be compatible and clearly understood.”4
Political Dimensions of NAFTA
For both the United States and Mexico, political concerns were driving
the NAFTA agenda. This was less true for Canada, which had just reached its own bilateral free trade agreement with the United States, and
was unhappy to learn in mid-1990 about ongoing discussions between
Mexico City and Washington. Although reluctant, Ottawa eventually decided to join the NAFTA negotiations for defensive reasons: to prevent
Mexico and the United States from devising a bilateral accord of their
own that would damage Canadian interests. Economically, Canada appeared to have little to gain (and something to lose) from the inclusion of
Mexico in an expanded North American market; politically, Ottawa could
hope to trim its losses only by taking part in the process.
The United States, for its part, had four basic political goals. One was
the preservation of stability along its southern border. This had been the
cornerstone of U.S. policy toward Mexico ever since the revolution of
1910. The idea was that NAFTA would stimulate economic growth in
Mexico, easing social pressure and sustaining the regime. Notwithstanding public rhetoric, it was not Washington’s primary intent to promote
democratic change; it was to uphold political peace.
Second, NAFTA provided the United States with an important bargaining chip in its trade negotiations with Europe, Japan, and the General
Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. In confronting a potential “fortress Europe” or a resistant Japan, in other words, Washington could threaten to
form an exclusive economic bloc in North America-or perhaps the Western Hemisphere as a whole-and pursue highly protectionist policies.
Ironically, the international community eventually interpreted the ratification of NAFTA as a vote in favor of free trade, rather than protectionism,
a development that helped restore U.S. leadership in the world arena.
Third, the United States sought to assure itself of increasing access to
petroleum from Mexico, a leading source of U.S. imports. Mexican shipments in the late 1980s and early 1990s were roughly half as large
as those from the topmost source, Saudi Arabia. By 1997 Venezuela
had moved into first place, and Mexico-with nearly 14 percent of U.S.
imports-was barely behind the Saudis. (Total imports from the Persian
Gulf were only 17.5 percent of the total, in fact, down from 24.5 percent
in 1990.) Petroleum continued to have major geostrategic significance, as
the Persian Gulf War eloquently testified, and secure and steady access to
sources within the hemisphere could counterbalance the potential costs of
political turbulence elsewhere in the world. During the NAFTA negotiations Washington strenuously attempted to secure Mexican commitments
to guarantee steady oil supplies (as in the U.S.-Canada bilateral accord)
and to obtain rights for U.S. firms to engage in excavation. Mexico firmly
resisted both these demands-the latter on the ground that it would contravene the constitution of 1917-but opened substantial opportunities
for U.S. participation in the petrochemical sector.
And fourth, the United States wanted to consolidate diplomatic support from Mexico on foreign policy in general. As demonstrated by
disagreements over Central America during the 1980s, foreign policy
had long been a source of bilateral tension. And with NAFTA in place, Mexico became unlikely to express serious disagreement with the United
States on major issues of international diplomacy. None other than the
U.S. ambassador to Mexico, John D. Negroponte, said as much in a controversial (originally confidential) memorandum to Washington in April
1991. “Mexico is in the process of changing the substance and image of
its foreign policy,” he wrote to Bernard Aronson, the assistant secretary
for inter-American affairs: “It has switched from an ideological, nationalistic and protectionist approach to a pragmatic, outreaching and competitive view of world affairs. . . . The proposal for an FTA is in a way the
capstone of these new policy approaches. From a foreign policy perspective,
an FTA would institutionalize acceptance of a North American orientation
to Mexico’s foreign relations” (emphasis added). That Negroponte made
this statement does not necessarily mean that it was correct, but it does
convey a sense of expectations within the U.S. government.
On the other side, Mexico was seeking, first and foremost, preservation of its social peace. The hope was that NAFTA would attract investment, stimulate employment, and provide meaningful opportunity for the
one million persons entering the job market every year. This would alleviate poverty, reduce social tension, and strengthen the country’s political
regime. In this sense the goal of the PRI was thoroughly compatible with
Washington’s desire to prolong stability in Mexico.
Second, NAFTA offered President Carlos Salinas de Gortari an opportunity to institutionalize and perpetuate his economic reforms. Under
his leadership Mexico had taken aggressive steps in accordance with (if
not in response to) the Washington consensus-liberalizing trade, privatizing the parastatal sector, encouraging foreign investment, redefining
the role of the state. Such policies were threatening to long-established
interests in Mexico and caused a good deal of resentment. In order to
preserve his innovations, Salinas wanted to insulate them from the historic vagaries of presidential succession, which permitted each new chief
executive to reverse or ignore predecessor policies. Under NAFTA, the
Salinista program of “structural readjustment” now became part of an international treaty-one that was subscribed to by the world’s only remaining superpower. These circumstances would sharply narrow the plausible range of choice for opponents of this model and for Salinas’
successors. With NAFTA, the Salinista reforms were cast in bronze.
Third, Mexico was seeking international benediction for its notquite-democratic political regime. Such acceptance was especially important because, in comparison with Argentina, Chile, Brazil, and other
countries undergoing processes of “democratization,” Mexico no longer
looked like a paragon of political civility. Prospects for democratization in
Mexico became a matter of prominent debate.5 Skeptics insisted that
NAFTA would prolong and consolidate Mexico’s authoritarian system.
Advocates maintained that NAFTA would promote democracy by unleashing social forces that would ultimately lay the foundation for democratic development in Mexico. According to this logic, the Mexican po litical regime deserved approbation not because of its authoritarian present but because of its democratic future. Mexico was seeking legitimation through anticipation.
Finally, Mexico believed that NAFTA would provide the country
with diplomatic leverage vis-a-vis the rest of Latin America and, by extension, the Third World as a whole. Association with Canada and the
United States would link Mexico with advanced industrial democracies
and leaders of the “first world.” Consequently Mexico could serve as a
“bridge” between the developing world and the developed world, as a
representative and interlocutor for aspiring peoples of the South. The negotiation of NAFTA prompted some analysts to charge that Mexico was
turning its back on Latin America and the Third World. The assumption
in Mexico City, however, was that NAFTA would in the long run
strengthen Mexico’s diplomatic and political prestige.
All these calculations were suddenly upset. On January 1, 1994-the
day that NAFTA went into effect-a guerrilla movement in the povertystricken state of Chiapas rose up to denounce the free trade accord, the
Salinista economic model, and the undemocratic character of the political
regime. With colorful and able leadership, the Zapatista National Liberation Army (EZLN) captured national and international attention during
the course of highly publicized negotiations with governmental authorities. On March 17 an assassin’s bullet struck down Luis Donaldo Colosio,
Salinas’ handpicked successor and the presidential candidate of the PRI.
Salinas hastily chose another candidate, the forty-two-year old Ernesto
Zedillo Ponce de Leon, who scurried to develop a credible campaign for
the upcoming August election. And on September 28 another shooting
took the life of Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu, the number-two leader of
the PRI and one of Zedillo’s most trusted political allies. These shocking developments inflicted a devastating blow to Mexico’s international
image. Mexico could no longer be seen as an up-and-coming country on
the brink of joining the first world; it looked, instead, like a Third World
society threatening to come apart at the seams. Had these events occurred before the U.S. Congress voted on NAFTA, most analysts agreed,
the pact would have faced certain rejection.
Under these new and tragic circumstances, NAFTA confronted an
uncertain future. Some reassurance came from the August 1994 presidential elections, by all accounts the cleanest in Mexican history, in which
Zedillo triumphed with 48.8 percent of the vote (compared with 20.6
percent for the rightist PAN and only 16.6 percent for the populist PRD).
Most observers interpreted this result as a mandate for continuity rather
than change. But as events would soon demonstrate, Mexico remained in
the midst of major upheavals.
Early Results, Mixed Reviews
NAFTA went into effect nonetheless. Commerce promptly increased.
Two-way trade between Mexico and the United States climbed steeply, from $83 billion in 1993 to $100 billion in 1994, $108 billion in 1995,
and $157 billion in 1997. By this time the United States was exporting
more to Mexico than to China, Korea, and Singapore combined, and
Mexico displaced Japan as the second largest trading partner of the
United States (Canada remained in first place). There were numerous explanations for this expansion in trade, among them conclusion of the
Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations, but NAFTA no doubt had an
impact. According to an understated and somewhat technical report from
the White House in mid-1997, NAFTA resulted in “a modest increase in
U.S. net exports, controlling for other factors,” and boosted jobs in the
export sector by 90,000 to 160,000.6
NAFTA also confronted a massive currency crisis. Only three weeks
after taking office in December 1994, the Zedillo administration unexpectedly widened the band for trading pesos with dollars from 3.47 to
4.00-in effect, permitting a 15 percent devaluation of the peso. This
prompted a speculative run against the peso; within days the government
was obliged to abandon its position, letting the peso float freely against
the dollar. Unable to persuade foreign investors of Mexico’s trustworthiness, the newly installed secretary of the treasury-Jaime Serra Puche, the
secretary of commerce under Salinas who had played a key role in the
NAFTA negotiations-submitted his resignation. Yet investors failed to
respond. The resulting crisis threatened to decimate foreign investments
in Mexican securities, derail Mexico’s pattern of growth, delegitimize
free-market reforms, and destroy the credibility of NAFTA itself.
Faced by such prospects, Washington had no choice but to race to
the rescue. The U.S. government, and especially the Clinton administration, had invested too much capital in debates over NAFTA ratification to
permit disintegration of its neighbor. Chaos in Mexico would vindicate
opposition to NAFTA, emphasize the fallibility of the Clinton team, and
throw confusion into U.S. relations with trading partners around the
world. Washington could not permit “collapse” in Mexico.
By late January 1995 the Clinton administration managed to put together a multilateral package of nearly $50 billion, including $20 billion
from the U.S. government, but the peso continued to slide. To combat
inflationary pressures (and meet the demands of international creditors)
the Mexican government adopted rigorous adjustment programs. Stringent measures eventually stabilized financial and foreign-exchange markets, but at a staggering cost: output contracted, unemployment increased, and real wages fell. The combination of recession and high
interest rates threatened the financial health of numerous companies and
jeopardized the solvency of the entire banking system. Overall, the Mexican GDP declined by more than 6 percent in 1995, while crime rates rose
to record levels.
The crisis had international repercussions as well. As a result of the
“tequila effect,” as the ripple (or hangover) from Mexico’s meltdown
came to be known, Brazil and other emerging markets suffered large
losses of reserves; in Argentina, capital flight caused the central bank’s re serves to fall from $16 billion to $11 billion by May 1995. The Mexican
debacle had little effect on such countries as Chile or Peru, however, and
Brazil and Argentina both managed to adjust before the end of the year.
Despite much hand-wringing in financial circles, as Albert Fishlow has
written, “The so-called tequila effect in the end had little impact. That is
one of the remarkable features of this crisis: unlike its historical predecessors it did not simply expand.”7
In the meantime, Zedillo struggled to consolidate his hold on power.
His government foundered on numerous fronts. The adjustment measures of 1995 inflicted enormous pain on large sectors of the population,
making little or no headway against poverty and income maldistribution.
Government investigators failed to solve either the Colosio murder or the
Ruiz Massieu assassination. Prolonged negotiations with Chiapas guerrillas resulted in stalemate, while a new uprising broke out in the state of
Guerrero.
Eventually, the Mexican economy began to recover. The long-term
decline in the dollar value of the peso gave a strong boost to U.S.-bound
exports (which came to $86 billion in 1997, compared with only $71 billion in imports). Direct foreign investment increased as well, as savvy U.S.
and European executives sought to take advantage of lowered production
costs by constructing or purchasing manufacturing facilities. The Mexican
GDP registered growth rates of 5.5 percent in 1996 and 7.0 percent in
1997, the best performances in close to twenty years. Whether this would
last was yet another matter.
From NAFTA to WHFTA?
Also unclear were the prospects for creation of a free trade zone embracing all of the Americas. Almost from the beginning, NAFTA was envisioned not only as a three-way partnership but also as the stepping-stone
toward a hemispheric accord (soon nicknamed WHFTA, for Western
Hemisphere Free Trade Area). As George Bush proclaimed when launching the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative in June 1990, the ultimate
goal was to be a free trade zone “stretching from the port of Anchorage
to the Tierra del Fuego.” Bush and later Bill Clinton announced that the
process of expansion would commence with Chile. And in December
1993 Vice President Gore pronounced his vision of “a Western Hemisphere Community of Democracies” that would consolidate political and
economic harmony throughout the region, with NAFTA as “a starting
point.” Eager to gain access to this privileged circle, Latin American leaders came to regard eventual accession to NAFTA as a key part of their development strategy. Expectations were soon running high.
The question was whether they might be fulfilled. The United States
had substantial interests in the region, in both investment and trade, and
many analysts were predicting that the Latin American market had potential for high rates of expansion. Latin America, for its part, wanted WHFTA as a quid pro quo for major transformations in development
strategies. In keeping with the Washington consensus, countries of the region were lowering barriers to trade, privatizing state-owned companies,
promoting foreign investment, and reshaping the role of the state. It was
not clear whether governments were undertaking these changes on the
basis of unilateral and voluntary decisions or in response to pressure from
the international community; in either case, they had reason to want
something in return. A WHFTA would enable them to achieve some degree of commercial reciprocity on the part of the United States, thus assuring access to the North American market. More important, accession
to WHFTA would provide new members with an internationally recognized seal of approval as suitable sites for foreign investment.
Creation of a WHFTA could occur in various ways. One would be for
countries of the Americas to enter NAFTA directly through accession: if
NAFTA eventually were to include all countries of the hemisphere, it
would automatically become a WHFTA. A second would be for the
United States (or Mexico) to form a series of “hub-and-spoke” arrangements with Latin American countries that could ultimately lead to integration of the region by “filling in the rims.” A third possibility would be
for Latin American countries to accelerate their own processes of subregional integration (described in chapter 12) so these groupings could
then negotiate free-trade agreements with NAFTA. There was more than
one route to WHFTA.
Yet formation of a WHFTA faced formidable obstacles, both economic and political. The commercial rationale was much less compelling
than in the case of NAFTA. As shown in chapter 9, trade relations between the United States and Latin America outside of Mexico were declining in importance to the United States over time. Moreover, a WHFTA
could result in substantial trade diversion, especially for countries of
South America most notably Brazil).
Institutional and political impediments were equally daunting. In
final form, NAFTA did not establish criteria for admission. In a deliberately uninformative accession clause, the treaty simply held that new
countries may join NAFTA “subject to such terms and conditions as may
be agreed” by the member countries, and “following approval in accordance with the applicable approval procedures in each country.” This
vague language meant that member countries retained the right to establish arbitrary or impossible accession criteria if they so chose-and that it
would take considerable time to develop any criteria at all. One especially
difficult question was whether admission would be restricted to “democratic” states, in which case there would have to be serious and significant
provisions for oversight. This was of course greatly complicated by the
fact that a founding member of NAFTA was Mexico, which had one of
the most durable nondemocratic regimes in the Americas. Democracy as a
criterion for accession to NAFTA by other countries would thus appear to
set a double standard.
Any expansion of NAFTA would have to be in the interests of all the
member states, of course, as well as in the interests of the applicants. In
this respect the interests of NAFTA partners appeared to be ambiguous.
Canada had resisted negotiations with Mexico in the first place, and was
unlikely to welcome the accession of still more Latin American countries.
The United States might regard expansion of NAFTA as a means of consolidating economic and political influence-and of gaining access to new
markets-but would have to balance these advantages against potentially
negative impacts on relations with Europe and Japan. Mexico presumably
wanted to be the only NAFTA-approved site in Latin America for foreign
investment, and would therefore oppose new accessions (admission of
new members from the region would also dilute Mexico’s political status
as a unique interlocutor between Latin America and the United States).
Decisions on accession would have to be unanimous, at any rate, which
meant that each of the three member countries possessed a veto. And it
seemed most doubtful that, in the wake of the Chiapas uprising and the
Colosio/Ruiz Massieu assassinations, either Washington or Ottawa
would be eager to expand the risks associated with new membership.
Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, WHFTA lacked clear political motivation. As explained, NAFTA had the makings of a credible political bargain. WHFTA did not. Geopolitical motivation could come
about in response to major events, realignments, or developments in the
international arena, but nothing of the sort had occurred by the late
1990s. This weakness amounted to a major obstacle. Without strong political motivation, there could be no lasting integration.
Summitry and Setbacks
As uncertainty and anxiety mounted over prospects for free trade in the
Americas, heads of state moved to the center of the hemispheric stage.
This was not uncommon for Latin America but it was most unusual for
the United States, which generally relegated decisions on inter-American
affairs to middling levels of the governmental bureaucracy. It had been
noticed, in capitals around the region, that Bill Clinton made not a single
visit to Latin America during his first term as president. And from Washington’s perspective, it seemed important to provide assurances that the
United States would neither neglect nor abandon Latin American countries outside of Mexico. The solution came in the form of a dramatic gesture, a high-profile gathering of hemispheric leaders that initiated an ongoing process of presidential summitry.8
The Miami Summit: 1994
Accordingly, the Clinton administration promoted and hosted a grandiose “Summit of the Americas” in the Latinized city of Miami in December 1994. Attended by thirty-four heads of state, with the conspicuous exception of Cuba’s Fidel Castro, this was the first such gathering since
1967, when the United States and Latin America concurred on a stillborn
plan for economic integration. The ostensible goal of the Miami summit
was to develop a blueprint for hemispheric collaboration into the twentyfirst century.
As the date of the meeting approached, the U.S. government proposed a complex fourteen-point agenda. Under the Clintonesque rubric
of “reinventing government,” one set of recommendations called for attacks on corruption and drug trafficking. A second series focused on the
strengthening of financial linkages and the promotion of free trade, to be
based upon the principles of “open regionalism.” And a third category,
under the always-elastic label of “sustainable development,” envisioned
commitments in the areas of public health, education, resource management, and environmental protection-to “reduce environmental problems and negative impacts, promote a level playing field for industries
operating in the hemisphere, increase demand for environmental technologies and services, and offer opportunities for public participation
in the environmental policy-making process.” Moreover, the “upward”
harmonization of environmental standards in the Americas “would
strengthen legal frameworks, enhance environmental compliance and enforcement capacity, and build institutions through technical cooperation,
training, and education.”
Latin American leaders regarded the Clinton agenda as unfocused,
intrusive, and irrelevant. Instead they focused on free trade and hemispheric integration. And as a result of this pressure, the heads of state
agreed to the formation of FTAA, a Free Trade Area of the Americas
(rather than the less mellifluous WHFTA). As a sign of good faith,
NAFTA members also invited Chile to commence negotiations on accession. Confidently predicting that FTAA “will stretch from Alaska to Argentina,” Clinton boasted that the accord marked “a watershed in the
history of the hemisphere.” With a combination of amnesia and hyperbole, the American president went on to proclaim that “the so-called lost
decade of Latin America is a fading memory.” With the exception of
Cuba, he exulted, the region had “freed itself from dictatorship and debt,
and embraced democracy and development.”
What happened in fact was that signatories in Miami designated the
year 2005 as a deadline for the conclusion of negotiations for a free trade
area-with implementation to follow in subsequent years. This was an
ambiguous result. Advocates hailed the agreement for its high-minded
principles and ambitious goals. Skeptics lamented its vagueness and its
drawn-out timetable, which meant that official talks could drag on for a
decade or more. Complained Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada, the president
of Bolivia: “It would be a tragic mistake to engage in a prolonged process
where struggling nations with fragile democracies must wait 10, 15,
maybe 20 years in an economic purgatory. The cost could be nothing less
than the democratic foundations of our countries.”
Ironically enough, the principal resistance to the practical realization
of an FTAA would come not from Latin America but from the United
States. “The fact of the matter,” admitted one Clinton aide in Miami, “is
that three-quarters of the countries here would join NAFTA tomorrow
morning if they could. But we do not think they are ready.” And as political scientist Mark B. Rosenberg remarked, “The real pitfalls are the U.S.
Congress and the U.S. public. . . . The public is not ready for a freetrade agreement with Latin America. In the post-Cold War environment,
they don’t understand what the dominant values are. The pace of change
is so rapid, and Americans are very insecure.”
Falling Off the Fast Track: 1997
How accurate was this prediction. Well over two years later, in September
1997, President Clinton submitted to Congress a proposal for renewal of
“fast track” consideration of international trade agreements. Despite its
name, “fast track” referred not to the speed of deliberation but to the
stipulation that Congress would have to vote on trade agreements as
complete packages, yes or no, rather than amending them. Fast track had
become a staple of trade policy since the early 1970s, as it enabled representatives from the United States and other countries to reach agreements
with the assurance that they would not be subjected to crippling revisions
by special interests in Congress. And for the Western Hemisphere, the
fate of the legislation by this time had symbolic as well as practical significance. “For most governments of Latin America and the Caribbean,” as
one supporter wrote, “fast-track approval is the acid test of the U.S. commitment to hemispheric free trade and stronger economic cooperation
with the region.”
Immediately, the bill ran into rough sledding. Eager to reassert its
political weight, organized labor mounted a $1 million advertising campaign against fast track. Proclaimed AFL-CIO president John J. Sweeney:
“The battle over `fast track’ is important to every union . . . craft, industrial, service and public unions alike-because trade agreements without worker rights and human rights and environmental standards undermine the wages and jobs of us all just as they damage the communities
where we live and work.” As in the debates over NAFTA, organized labor
expressed fear that free-trade agreements would lead to the export of U.S.
jobs and the lowering of U.S. wages. These concerns were echoed by
such political leaders as Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, leader of House
Democrats and presidential aspirant, and the battle was thus joined.
As controversy mounted, one expert made the astute observation that
“fast track has become a referendum on NAFTA.” This meant trouble for
the Clinton bill. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in early 1997
showed that 43 percent of Americans believed that NAFTA had a negative
impact on the United States. And in September, a Week/Harris
Poll revealed that only 42 percent of the public had a positive opinion of
NAFTA; 36 percent had a negative view and 22 percent were undecided or unsure. More to the point, a strong majority-54 percent-did not favor
extension of NAFTA to other countries of Latin America, and an identical
percentage opposed renewal of fast-track authority. “NAFTA has become
a dirty word politically,” as one advocate of free trade ruefully acknowledged. Fairly or not, NAFTA seemed to be suffering from a political
malady common to integration schemes: benefits would be long-term and
diffuse, while costs were short-term and concentrated.
It soon became clear that fast track would not pass the House of Representatives. President Clinton could count on most Republicans, around
160 out of 228, but only a small number of Democrats, perhaps 45 out of
205. A frustrated Clinton angrily denounced a group of twenty-five rightto-life pro-Christian Republicans who offered to vote for fast track in exchange for a White House commitment to withhold foreign assistance
from organizations performing or promoting abortion as a means of birth
control, a deal that he refused to accept, but the real story was the defection of his own party. Uncharacteristically, Bill Clinton had made some
political blunders-by speculating that fast track would win a secret vote,
which suggested that opponents were cowed by organized labor and environmental interests, and by asserting that approval was a “no-brainer,”
which implied that critics were stupid or irrational.
An amalgam of organized labor, environmentalist groups, disgruntled Democrats, and doctrinaire Republicans demolished the administration’s approach to Latin America. There was nothing to take its place.
In a sense, the defeat of fast track represented an abdication of U.S.
hegemony. It could open the door to extrahemispheric rivals in Latin
America, alter international alignments, and restructure power relations.
As Charlene Barshevsky, the U.S. trade representative, hinted darkly on
one occasion: “our competitors would like nothing better than for us to
sideline ourselves, debating NAFTA and our relationship with Mexico for
several more years while they move ahead.” It was widely understood that
these unnamed competitors were Europe, Japan, and rising economic
powers.
This unseemly denouement also provoked a strong reaction in Latin
America. As one Peruvian columnist acidly noted:
The repercussions of this legislative humiliation are potentially devastating.
The immediate and practical effect will be that it will be impossible for U.S.
officials to broach complex initiatives of major importance. In the absence of
a continued U.S. drive, the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) has
been condemned to what it has been so far: a bombastic rhetorical exercise
rich in expressions of good will, but lacking concrete results. Chile’s dream of
joining NAFTA has likewise been cut short, and the same can be said about
APEC trade opening talks.
To be sure, reaction varied across the continent. Not everyone was anxious to join a hemispheric scheme under American tutelage. But without
fast track, most observers agreed, there would not be FTAA or any other
formal integration scheme involving the United States.9
The Santiago Summit: 1998
The implications of the fast-track failure became clearly evident in April
1998 in Santiago, Chile, during a follow-up to the ebullient Miami summit of 1994. Although President Clinton assured his fellow heads of state
that “our commitment to the Free Trade Area of the Americas will be in
the fast lane of our concerns,” the U.S. delegates were unable to press
these issues with force and credibility. “There will be a lot of smiling and
back-slapping this weekend,” as one Latin American finance minister confided, “but the reality is that we are growing frustrated and more and
more skeptical that the United States is really committed to free trade.”
To be sure, the Santiago meeting resulted in a unanimous pledge to
make “concrete progress” toward creation of an FTAA by the end of the
century and to adopt an intensive schedule for negotiating sessions. Leaders of the hemisphere decided to set up a multilateral process for evaluating progress against illicit drug trafficking, and they agreed to hold interAmerican summits “periodically”-with the next gathering to be hosted
by Canada. Perhaps most important, they also adopted an ambitious plan
(with anticipated loans of $6 billion from the World Bank and the InterAmerican Development Bank) to provide universal access to elementary
school education by the year 2010 and high school education to 75 percent of the region’s youth by the same year. Conspicuous, however, was
Washington’s low-key demeanor on the question of free trade. According
to Jose Miguel Vivanco of Human Rights Watch, the educational plan
represented “the silver lining to Clinton’s failure to get fast track-a shift
away from trade to human issues.”
In the aftermath of Santiago, it was possible to imagine three general
scenarios for hemispheric trade. One envisioned prolongation of the status quo, with a three-member NAFTA as the only formal trade accord
connecting Latin America to the United States. The failure of fast track
virtually assured continuation of this situation for the foreseeable future.
A second possibility might be called “NAFTA-plus”-that is, a scenario
under which NAFTA would undergo limited expansion to include three
or four other countries of Latin America. The process would begin with
Chile, which was invited to begin negotiations at Miami in December
1994, and then move on to other countries. In fact, however, the list of
viable candidates seemed to be very short, and congressional disenchantment with NAFTA made this a dubious prospect. A third possibility envisioned the achievement of an FTAA, assuming that the White House
eventually obtained fast-track authority. Via links with the United States,
all countries of Latin America would have access to capital and markets of
the advanced industrial North. Theoretically this could come about
through successive accessions to NAFTA, in which case the resultant extent of hemispheric integration would be relatively deep. An alternative
path might include some kind of FTA or other “docking” arrangement
between NAFTA and subregional schemes in South America (described in chapter 12). But perhaps the most feasible route to FTAA would be the
promulgation of an entirely new hemispheric organization, bypassing
NAFTA completely, in which case the eventual degree of integration
would be relatively shallow. For the short-to-medium term, however,
continuation of the status quo seemed by far the most realistic prospect.
For many in Latin America, this came as a great disappointment.
Legacies of Neoliberal Reform: An Interim Assessment
Faced by international pressures and the threat of economic marginalization, Latin America’s leaders hastened to impose reformist policies in the
1980s and 1990s. They lowered tariff and nontariff barriers to trade,
opened doors to foreign investment, sold off public enterprises, and reduced the role of the state. Out of necessity or choice, often at the expense of lower-income strata in their own societies, policymakers dutifully
obeyed the “neoliberal” prescriptions of the Washington consensus. According to conventional wisdom, such displays of wisdom and courage
would soon bring material rewards. What were the results?
The 1980s were an unmitigated nightmare, and would come to be
remembered as the “lost decade.” Economic and social progress was negligible at best, negative at worst. Renegotiations and restructurings led to
reliance upon continuous lending (and borrowing), which forced the region’s external debt up from $242 billion in 1980 to $431 billion by
1990. Meeting their contractual obligations, Latin American countries
transferred a net amount of more than $200 billion to advanced industrial
countries. They slashed imports-from $98 billion in 1981 to $59 billion
in 1984-and doled out one-third to one-half their export earnings in the
form of interest payments.
Economic growth came to a virtual halt. Growth rates of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita for the region were actually negative for
1981, 1982, 1983, 1988, and 1989; for 1983 alone the figure was minus
5.0 percent (Table A12). From the decade as a whole per capita output
declined by 8.3 percent, and for individual countries the performance was
much worse: -23.5 percent for Argentina and -24.9 percent for Venezuela. (For entirely different reasons, mostly associated with the Contra
war, Nicaragua suffered a staggering decline of -33.1 percent.) Unemployment swelled and wages plummeted. For Mexico, whose conduct set
a model of good behavior for other debtor countries, real wages declined
by nearly 50 percent. Poverty spread, especially in cities, as did inequality:
over the course of the decade, the bottom 20 percent saw their share of
the region’s income drop to just 4 percent of the total. The social reality
was painfully clear: for peasants, workers, and downwardly mobile segments of the middle class, the debt crisis had a devastating impact.
As free-market reforms began taking hold, Latin America finally resumed the path of growth. For 1991-98 the annual average growth rate
for the region as a whole was 3.5 percent, a vast improvement over the dismal record of the 1980s. Chile led the way with an average of 7.4 percent, followed by Argentina (5.8 percent) and Peru (4.8 percent). But
there were downsides as well. Some of the largest nations in the regionBrazil, Mexico, Venezuela-posted average growth rates of 3 percent or
less. The figure for the Caribbean was only 1.6 percent. And even among
the most successful countries, Chile excepted, year-to-year patterns
tended to be sluggish and uneven (Table A13). To be sure, Mexico rebounded from its 1994-95 peso crisis with strong performances in 1996
(5.5 percent growth) and 1997 (7.0 percent). Economists hailed 1997 as
“the best performance in a quarter of a century,” with a 5.2 percent
growth rate combined with low inflation rates, but there was no guarantee that this would continue. Partly as a result of contagions from Asia
and Russia, in fact, the rate for 1998 fell to merely 2.3 percent.
This stop-and-go recovery failed to ameliorate one of Latin America’s
most pervasive and persistent problems: the blight of poverty. According
to CEPAL estimates, in fact, the relative incidence of poverty increased,
from 35 percent in 1980 to 39 percent in the 1990s. As a result of population growth, this meant that the absolute number of people living under
conditions of poverty swelled from 125 million to 186 million, an increase of 61 million, or nearly 50 percent. (By 1997, according to other
calculations, the total figure may have surpassed 200 million.) And as revealed in Figure 6, poverty levels held steady or increased every major nation of the region except Chile.’0 Tangible benefits of economic reform
were not yet trickling down.
Indeed, it appeared that the market-led expansion of the 1990s was exacerbating social inequality. Prosperous sectors were doing well, those in the
middle faced uncertainty, those at the bottom-from industrial workers to
self-subsistent campesinos-were lagging far behind. Working people continued to suffer the brunt of restructuring: in Mexico and Argentina, the average wage in the mid1990s was 30 percent below 1980 levels; in Peru, the
average worker was making just over a third of what he made in 1980. The
richest quintile in Latin America received nineteen times the income of
the poorest 20 percent.’ I In Brazil, the wealthiest 10 percent enjoyed more
than half the nation’s income; in Chile and Venezuela, the top tenth took in
over 40 percent of the total; in Mexico and Colombia, the figure was approaching 40 percent as well. Overall, Latin America displayed some of the
highest rates of income inequality in the entire world (Table A14).
This situation could have serious political repercussions. “After almost a decade of reform,” as Sebastian Edwards wrote in 1997,
the region has little to show in improved economic performance and social
conditions. Poverty has not been reduced. Growth has been modest at best. In
many countries wages have stagnated and job creation has been sluggish. The
reining in of inflation has been one of the few commendable accomplishments.
Without visible signs of improvement, Edwards continued, “political support for Latin American reformist governments will erode.”12 Since the United States was so closely identified with the “Washington consensus”
that promoted neoliberal economic reform, this could have profound
negative implications for U.S.-Latin American relations. And as will be
shown in chapter 12, the economic uncertainties and downturns of the
1990s provoked waves of social unrest and substantial levels of intellectual
fement.
There were other clouds on the horizon. Almost as soon as the debt
crisis passed, Latin America’s external borrowing began to rise again. This
was due to several factors: debt-creating flows of private capital, capitalization of rescheduled interest, and depreciation of the U.S. dollar (which
increased the nominal value of the debts). For Latin America and the
Caribbean, total debt outstanding rose to $563 billion in 1994 (compared with less than $400 billion in 1985), more than $607 billion in
1995, around $650 billion by 1997. The region’s debt service-to-export
ratio, a widely accepted indicator of debt burden (and an inverse measure
of capacity to pay), crept up by 1997 to 34 percent, an ominously high
level. Mexico and Brazil each had debts of more than $150 billion, and
together held 15 percent of total debt to low- and middle-income countries around the world. Of course national profiles took various forms:
as of early 1998 the World Bank classified only Haiti, Honduras, and
Nicaragua within Latin America as “severely indebted low-income” countries; Argentina, Brazil, Ecuador, and Peru fell in the “severely indebted
middle-income” category; Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela were
placed in the “moderately indebted middle-income” group; Costa Rica
and some other small countries received the most favorable rating as “less
indebted middle-income” nations.13 So long as exports remained strong
and interest rates low, it appeared that Latin America would manage to
carry its burden. But if those conditions should change, as in the 1980s,
there could be trouble ahead.
Apprehension mounted as economic crises in Asia and Russia began
taking their toll in late 1998. As jittery investors hastily withdrew their
funds from Latin America, stock markets plummeted-by the end of August 1998 they had dropped 39.4 percent from the year’s peak value in
Mexico, 66.4 percent in Venezuela, 45.1 percent in Brazil, 30.8 percent
in Chile, and 49.1 percent in Argentina (compared with 83.8 percent in
Russia and just 13.8 percent in the United States). Individual countries
also suffered from plunging commodity values: over the course of a year
the price of oil fell by 30 percent, hurting Mexico and Venezuela, while
the price of coffee fell by 43 percent, damaging Colombia and Brazil. Attempting to maintain investor confidence, Venezuela raised short-term
interest rates to 120 percent; Mexico and Brazil also hiked interest rates
and announced budget cuts as well. Even so, Standard & Poor’s lowered
its bond rating for Venezuela and Brazil from stable to negative, placing
these countries in the same category as Jordan, Lebanon, Paraguay, and
Bolivia; Moody’s also downgraded Brazil. Said a frustrated President Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil: “We cannot enter into a game here in which the market imposes and decides. There are moments when it is the
country that has to take control and make decisions.”
Most analysts agreed that Latin America did not deserve this kind
of treatment. Unlike other “emerging markets,” especially Russia and
Southeast Asia, it had dutifully implemented prescriptions of the Washington consensus (in the words of one commentator, Latin America was
“the good neighbor in a bad neighborhood”). Despite its virtues, however, the region remained extremely vulnerable to the vagaries of global
capital markets. As Mexico’s treasury minister, Jose Angel Gurria, would
plaintively remark: “Sometimes there is this feeling that there’s not very
much you can do. Basically, you are in the presence of forces you can’t
control.” Looking back over the debt crisis of the 1980s, more than one
observer quizzically wondered: Isn’t this where we came in?
Environmental Protection
The embrace of free trade in the Americas coincided with a global movement on behalf of the environment. Ecological disasters such as the meltdown of nuclear reactors at Ukraine’s Chernobyl, in April 1986, and the
Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska’s Prince William Sound, in March 1989,
captured worldwide headlines and provoked popular outrage. From Europe to the United States to Latin America, there emerged citizens’ public interest groups with the avowed intent of bringing a halt to environmental degradation. The international community took up the cause, and
by the early 1990s a broad array of institutions claimed a role in “correcting” environmental abuses throughout the Third World.
Sizing Up the Problem
Rising awareness about the environment led to the inescapable conclusion that, especially during the twentieth century, economic development
was wreaking havoc with the planet Earth. One of the most startling realizations concerned depletion of the ozone layer. Damage came from the
release of gases that react aggressively to destroy ozone molecules that accumulate in the stratosphere and establish a protective shield that absorbs
a large part of the sun’s ultraviolet rays. By the early 1990s scientists
could confirm a 50 percent erosion of the ozone layer over the Antarctic,
a hole that covered about 10 percent of the southern hemisphere. The resulting penetration of ultraviolent rays would increase the frequency of
skin cancer and cataracts, inflict harm on algae and microscopic marine
animals that make up basic food for the fish population, and have negative
effects on land plants, including major crops. The source of this problem
was the industrialized world, which produced 95 percent of the gasesknown as chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and halons-responsible for the
destruction of ozone molecules. (CFCs were used as aerosol propellants,
refrigerants and solvents, and in the manufacture of plastic foams; halons for fire extinguishers.) Prosperous countries were also the largest users of
CFCs: with only 5 percent of the world’s population the United States
alone accounted for 29 percent of consumption.
Of more immediate relevance to the inter-American agenda was the
threat of “global warming,” which occurs as the earth’s atmosphere traps
more and more gases-mainly carbon dioxide from fossil fuels (coal and
oil) but also natural gas, nitrous oxide, and the ubiquitous CFCs. Creating a “greenhouse effect,” the resultant canopy of gas causes the atmosphere to reflect heat back to the earth’s surface rather than allowing it to
escape. Experts predicted that gas accumulations could, in consequence,
produce an increase in the global mean temperature of three to eight degrees Fahrenheit during the twenty-first century, a fundamental climate
change which could (by melting glaciers) raise sea levels by as much as
two feet. This would lead to coastal flooding, which, in turn, would cause
enormous damage to the United States and other countries; it could totally engulf some small low-lying island states, causing them literally to
disappear from the map; and it would provoke massive human displacement and suffering in such nations as Bangladesh, India, China, Indonesia, and Egypt.
One significant source of global warming was deforestation, which
contributed approximately 14 percent of the overall effect. On average,
17 million hectares of tropical forests (an area equivalent to Virginia plus
West Virginia) disappeared every year between 1981 and 1990. Deforestation resulted from transient cultivation by subsistence farmers and use
of wood for fuel and, more importantly, from the inroads of commercial
logging, cattle ranching, road construction, and permanent agriculture
and colonization schemes. Clearing was done mainly by burning, rather
than cutting, which poured millions of tons of carbon dioxide into the
world’s atmosphere. Despoliation of forests was especially flagrant in
Latin America, which accounted for 40 percent of net carbon emissions
from this process. Particularly egregious was the case of Brazil, host to the
world’s largest tropical rain forest, where environmental degradation became an international cause celebre.
Deforestation had a devastating impact on biodiversity. Forests covered only one-sixteenth of the earth’s surface but held 50 percent to 90
percent of the world’s plant and animal species, which may range from 5
million to 100 million. Largely as a result of deforestation, 100 species
were becoming extinct every single day of the year. This destroyed genetic material essential for industrial, agricultural, and especially pharmaceutical processes and goods. Concern focused in large part on Latin
America because five of the world’s “ecologically megadiverse” countries
were located in the region: Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and Ecuador.
Environmental problems affected Latin America in numerous ways.
Carbon dioxide emissions from automobiles, industrial waste, acid rain,
and lack of sanitation and social services posed palpable threats to public
health throughout the region, especially in such major metropolises as Mexico City, Sao Paulo, and Santiago de Chile. In rural areas overexploitation of land was leading to rapid desertification through erosion of
soil and loss of fertility. By the 1990s approximately 70 percent of the
productive and lands of South America and Mexico had suffered desertification. Agricultural production relied upon excessive use of fertilizer and
pesticides derived from fossil fuels, which were often harmful to human
health as well as to the soil. About 75 percent of the pesticides used in
Central America were either prohibited or restricted in the United States.
In summary, the Western Hemisphere faced four broad types of environmental challenge by the 1990s. One consisted of problems affecting
the entire world, such as depletion of the ozone layer, caused almost entirely by the industrialized countries. Second were worldwide problems,
such as global warming, caused partly by Latin America but more so by
the United States. Third were bilateral problems, such as cross-border
pollution, caused mainly by Latin America (though often as a result of
joint undertakings with the United States). The fourth consisted of continental problems, such as air pollution, caused largely by economic activity
and public policy within Latin America itself.
The United States became concerned about environmental devastation in Latin America during the 1980s for a simple reason: because environmental abuse in Latin America could cause harm to the United States.
Depletion of the ozone layer, global warming from the greenhouse effect,
and the loss of biodiversity threatened the United States as much as other
countries. The proximity of Latin America to the United States meant
that there could be spillover effects, especially across the U.S.-Mexican
border. In addition, a hemispheric commitment to environmental improvement would create opportunities for U.S. firms to export technologies for clean-up and monitoring. While a good deal of international discourse spoke loftily about common purpose and global community, one
underlying fact was apparent: the United States perceived a matter of national interest.
Debates and Disagreements
Environmental issues provoked substantial controversy and, particularly,
differences in outlook between the industrialized countries of the North
and the developing countries of the South. Each side wanted to place its
own concerns at the top of the international agenda and to blame the
other for its contribution to environmental deterioration. The North was
eager to talk about species extinction and climate change, especially
ozone thinning and global warming. The North thus tended to focus on
such issues as destruction of the Amazon rain forest and also stressed imminent dangers from the potential role of the South in future patterns of
degradation, as from industrial expansion in China, India, or Brazil. The
North was particularly inclined to call for population control-meaning,
of course, population control in the Third World. Projections showed that the world’s population, around 5.5 billion in 1990, was likely to
reach 8.5 billion by 2025 and 10 billion by 2050. In quasi-Malthusian
fashion, analysts warned that this kind of demographic explosion would
place impossible demands on the earth’s supply of natural resources. Particularly disturbing, in their view, was the fact that so much of this growth
would take place in less developed countries of the world. On occasion
these alarms took on a racist tinge.
The South strove to discuss water pollution, air pollution, and the
degradation of agricultural lands. Threats to the planet came not from the
South’s population but from excessive consumption by the industrial
countries. With only 26 percent of the world’s population, spokesmen for
the South observed, developed countries consumed 80 percent of the
world’s commercial energy, 79 percent of its steel, 86 percent of other
metals, and 85 percent of its paper. The United States alone emitted more
than one-fifth of the world’s carbon dioxide in 1989, and advanced industrial countries together produced nearly one-half the total. By contrast
Latin America, despite its abuse of tropical forests and its fondness for
automobiles, contributed only 13 percent to 14 percent of total carbon
dioxide emissions. By every conceivable measure, the North had done
much more to cause problems of ozone depletion and global warming
than had the South.
The basic problem for the Third World was not its people, spokesmen
insisted, but its poverty. “For the majority of the world population,” declared a Brazilian official in the early 1970s, “the betterment of conditions is much more a question of mitigating poverty, counting on more
food, better clothing, housing, medical assistance, and employment, than
seeing atmospheric pollution reduced.” It was callous and misleading to
compare “luxury emissions” in the North with “survival emissions” from
the South. Snorted a representative from India: “The wealthy worry
about car fumes; we worry about starvation.”
Many Latin Americans identified the debt crisis of the 1980s as a further cause of environmental abuse. Insistence on debt service and the
consequent transfer of more than $200 billion to international creditors
placed excruciating demands on the region’s economies. In response
Latin American countries desperately sought to increase exports, and this
resulted in overexploitation of resources. According to this argument,
debt alleviation was essential for dealing with environmental problems.
Seeking to reconcile views of North and South, the UN’s World
Commission on Environment and Development in 1987 articulated the
notion of what it called “sustainable development,” defined as economic
development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising
the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”14 It should be
possible, in other words, to reconcile economic development with environmental responsibility. In practice, however, the principle of “sustainable development” was subject to a vast array of definitions.
Not surprisingly, the differing viewpoints of North and South led to different prescriptions for remedies-and different financial obligations.
Often condescendingly, the North opined that countries of the developing world could fund their own efforts at environmental protection by reallocating resources-by reducing military expenditures, by privatizing
public enterprises, by rooting out corruption, by revising economic priorities in line with the Washington consensus, and by “improved governance in general.” The South responded by charging that a long history
of heedless development and predatory resource exploitation on the part
of the North meant that “the industrialized countries have incurred an
ecological debt with the world.” It was not for poor nations to bear the
costs of correcting problems they did not create. That was up to the
North. After all, polluters ought to pay.
The Rio Summit: 1992
In view of these disagreements, many observers anticipated that the June
1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de
Janeiro would deteriorate into a bitter clash of North and South. Indeed,
this “Earth Summit” proved to be the largest international conference
ever held-with more than 100 heads of state or government in attendance, 8,000 delegates, 9,000 members of the press, and 3,000 accredited representatives of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The conference approved several charters, including some nonbinding statements
of principle, but its central task was the adoption of Agenda 21, a comprehensive action plan to guide the policies of governments for the remainder of this century and the next. With 40 chapters covering 115 program areas in more than 400 pages of text, Agenda 21 spanned a broad
range of environment and development issues-from atmosphere, soil,
forests, and oceans to population, consumption, toxic and solid fuel disposal, technology transfer, and financing. Its purpose was to forge a partnership between developed and developing countries in search of “sustainable development.” Its central premise was that alleviation of poverty
in poor countries and changes in consumption patterns in rich countries
would be required in order to achieve this goal.
Agenda 21 ran into difficulty, however, partly because all decisions
required complete consensus (among the 178 countries in attendance).
In one area after another, small coalitions vetoed or diluted key provisions. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, and other members of OPEC watered
down references to energy taxes and renewable energy sources. The Holy
See, Argentina, Ireland, and Colombia eliminated the population chapter’s references to family planning and contraceptives. But the anticipated
North-South standoff failed to materialize. While the Group of 77 (G77) countries (now 129 countries) continued to represent the Third
World, it accepted many moderate positions. Latin American countries on
the whole exercised a mellowing influence within the G-77, with Brazil
acting as a skillful and gracious host. One factor behind the relatively co operative stand of the South may have been rivalry with other regions
over tranfer payments. In particular, erstwhile members of Soviet-led bloc
were now competing with Third World countries for international assistance in order to clean up their own environmental problems.
It was the Biodiversity Convention that exposed the Bush administration’s half-hearted commitment to environmental cooperation. As
drafted, the convention had two basic weaknesses: it failed to provide
adequate protection for intellectual property rights, and it gave an unacceptable degree of financial control to developing countries (with decisions to be made on the basis of one-nation one-vote, regardless of the
magnitude of financial contributions). As head of the U.S. delegation,
Environmental Protection Agency director William Reilly cabled Washington in an effort to find a way to approve the accord, but his memorandum was leaked to the press and his position undermined. “For me personally,” Reilly later recalled, “it was like a bungee jump. You dive into
space secured by a line on your leg and trust it pulls you up before you
smash into the ground. It doesn’t typically occur to you that someone
might cut your line.” Adding to Reilly’s dismay, the Bush administration
refused to accept a binding commitment, embraced by Europe and Japan,
to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2000 to their 1990 levels.
The financing of Agenda 21 presented yet another challenge. Its average annual costs were projected to be $600 billion; $475 billion would
come from developing countries, but the remaining $125 billion, or 20
percent, would have to be from the developed world. With the current
volume of worldwide development assistance around $55 billion, this
meant that Agenda 21 required an increase of $70 billion. When the
United States refused to make any commitments on aid, G-77 countries
pointed out that the additional increment represented a proportional increase in foreign aid from 0.35 percent of GNP to 0.70 percent (precisely
the level once endorsed by the UN General Assembly; the United States
had not only opposed this resolution, but proceeded to reduce its foreign
aid to only 0.15 percent of GNP). A major confrontation was avoided
through intercession by the World Bank, which volunteered to support
developing countries in carrying out the UNCED agenda through an annual “earth increment” of about $18 billion to $22 billion for 1993-95.
Despite the fragility of its support and its financing, many experts concluded that Agenda 21 represented a reasonable framework for international collaboration on environmental matters.
NAFTA and the Environment
Mounting concern over the compatibility of economic development and
environmental protection drew public attention to the relationship between environment and trade. Many analysts maintained that an emphasis
on export-oriented development, as promoted by the Washington consensus, would accentuate abuse of natural resources in Latin America.
They further insisted that economic liberalization, including privatization and foreign investment, would promote the formation of “pollution
havens” (analogous to “tax havens”) in countries of the region. In contrast, trade advocates argued that economic opening and international
competition would lead to widespread adoption of “clean” technologies
and improved production techniques. They also charged that excessive
concern for the environment could furnish a clever disguise for economic
protectionism on behalf of selfish interest groups.
These issues came to a head during NAFTA negotiations in the early
1990s. As originally drafted, NAFTA made only passing reference to environmental concerns, as in the provision that its member countries “recognize that it is inappropriate to encourage investment by relaxing domestic
health, safety or environmental measures.” Like the GATT, NAFTA was
not intended to be an ecological charter, but environmental groups
protested that the so-called green language in NAFTA was vague and inadequate. In response, the three NAFTA countries discussed in September 1992 the creation of a trilateral commission on the environment to
assist in implementation of the trade agreement, known as the North
American Commission on the Environment (NACE). This body was to
be charged with issuing an annual report and making recommendations
on environmental matters, including the sensitive issue of pollution
havens. The provision for NACE proved instrumental in winning support
for NAFTA from the National Wildlife Federation, which, with 5.3 million members, was the largest conservation organization in the United
States. Even so, the prospects for congressional ratification of NAFTA remained far from clear.
In keeping with his October 1992 campaign pledge, President Clinton initiated negotiations on a supplementary NAFTA accord on environmental protection in March 1993. Predictably enough, the result was a
compromise: the United States wanted strong provisions, Mexico did
not, and Canada was somewhere in between. The final agreement established an environmental secretariat with limited authority, and without
the power to initiate dispute settlement and sanction procedures. Private
groups were authorized to make submissions, as the U.S. delegation proposed, but they could not take international legal action on their own;
they could also press their views before a Commission on Environmental
Cooperation (the successor to NACE), an officially recognized forum for
lobbying. A violation of standards was ultimately defined as a “persistent
pattern of failure . . . to effectively enforce” domestic environmental
law. (Even so, the accord explicitly acknowledged the need for “reasonable” discretion in the application of laws, and the starting point for tracing violations would be January 1, 1994, which meant that it would take
substantial time to accumulate a record of “persistent” transgression.)
Penalties could be imposed on an offending party only by an arbitration
panel established by a ministerial decision of two countries out of three,
and only after a lengthy and cumbersome quasi-legal process. Nor was it
clear what such sanctions would mean. One curious feature was that, if
applied, commercial sanctions would actually penalize private producers (and consumers), rather than the governments that failed to enforce their
own laws.15 To paraphrase Bill Clinton, the environmental accord did not
seem to have a lot of teeth.
The U.S.-Mexican border received special attention as a consequence
of NAFTA. The frontier had for decades posed serious environmental
hazards, including problems of renegade sewage (mainly from Tijuana toward San Diego), industrial pollution (especially in the “gray triangle” of
southern Arizona-northern Sonora), air contamination (as in the twin
cities of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez), and water pollution (in rivers and
underwater aquifers). To confront these harsh realities the United States
and Mexico developed an Integrated Environmental Plan for the U.S.-
Mexico Border Areas, a multiyear program of intensified cooperation in
collaboration with a bilateral Border Environmental Cooperation Commission (BECC). To assist these efforts Mexico committed $460 million
for border cleanup during 1993-95 and the United States pledged $379
million. One key question was whether this program would work. Another concerned potential creation of a precedent: as one U.S. government memorandum speculated in early 1994, “With its concepts of
private sector involvement, public input and bottom-up project development, should the BECC be a model for application elsewhere in the
Americas?”
In these ways the free trade movement revealed one clear political
consequence: it provided the United States with a new kind of leverage
over Latin America. As nations of the region aspired to “free trade”
agreements with the United States, or to membership in NAFTA or
FTAA, Washington could establish environmental standards as a price of
admission. And since environmental concerns were subject to ample definition, the resulting influence could become intrusive and extensive. In
exchange for access to the U.S. market, in other words, Latin America
would have to accede to U.S. demands on the environmentally related
matters that could reach far into realms of domestic public policy.
The Santa Cruz Summit: 1996
Environmental issues continued to command attention in post-NAFTA
years. In December 1996 Bolivian president Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada
hosted a Summit of the Americas for Sustainable Development in the
provincial city of Santa Cruz, a gathering intended to follow up on the
Rio conference of 1992 and the Miami summit of 1994. Its specific goal
was to establish an inter-American agenda for cooperation on environmental matters in anticipation of the 1998 Summit of the Americas at
Santiago.
Despite some high hopes in Latin America, most expectations for the
meeting were modest. So were the results. Only fourteen out of thirtyfour heads of state bothered to attend. The head of the U.S. delegation
was Vice President Al Gore, who delivered a lofty speech on the urgency of matters at hand, but the whole event received very little publicity. Participants approved a high-minded Plan of Action “for the purpose of
overcoming the most pressing problems faced by our people and assuring
an adequate and decent standard of living for present and future generations.” Drafted mostly by technical committees, the plan contained no
less than sixty-five initiatives-on health and education, agriculture and
forestry, cities and communities, water resources and coastal areas, energy
and minerals. It established no clear priorities, however, no targets for action, no timetable for implementation, and no provision for funding. Participants solemnly vowed that “The primary responsibility for implementing the Plan of Action . . . falls to governments, individually and
collectively, with the participation of all sectors of our societies.” (Indeed,
the stress on civil society was perhaps the most notable feature of the entire document.) Revealingly, too, signatories turned over all responsibility
for “coordinating follow-up on the various decisions” to the Organization of American States, an institution that had yet to find its role and
purpose in the post-Cold War world.
The discussions were more illuminating than the conference document. Latin American leaders expressed consistent apprehensions about
the overexploitation of natural resources, the relationship between trade
and environmentalism, and the persistence of poverty. Noting the threat
posed by neoliberal economic policies, President Juan Carlos Wasmosy of
Paraguay fervently vowed not to “let economic factors prevail over the
destruction of our national patrimony, because I am committed to respect
it and enforce respect for it . . .” Alberto Fujimori of Peru stressed the
challenge of poverty: “We must not only protect the environment and
our nonrenewable resources, but also eliminate a factor that renders the
problem unmanageable: abject poverty. This is the starting point. The dynamism of poverty promotes a survival strategy and this entails an extremely high cost. The poor have no recourse other than to use the resources at hand, and thus, in some cases, they grow things such as coca
leaves that are marketable and in high demand.” Added Eduardo Frei of
Chile, “There cannot be sustainable development with the high level of
poverty that exists in vast areas of our continent.” Once again, voices
of the South were making themselves heard.
By the end of 1990s, a decade or more of environmental activism had
produced mixed results. The most positive achievements were in the setting of agendas: raising popular consciousness, lobbying for provisions in
treaties and laws, expanding nongovernmental organizations and citizens’
groups, placing environmental concerns in a prominent position on the
inter-American docket. Practical accomplishments on a significant scale
were yet to come. Beyond success in plans to reduce the lead content of
gasoline, for instance, one sympathetic evaluation could find only “modest” tangible progress on sustainable development.16 There could be little
doubt, however, that environmental protection would comprise a major
item in hemispheric affairs for the twenty-first century.
The only law the narco -terrorists do not break is the law of supply and
demand.
Virgilio Barco (1990)
International migration is ultimately driven by economic realities.
Whether “pushed” by untenable conditions in Mexico or “pulled” by
opportunities in the United States, workers face an essentially economic
decision.
Bilateral Commission on the Future of
United States-Mexican Relations (1988)
The risk remains that the United States may intervene anywhere in the
world, especially Latin America.
La Republica, Lima, Peru (1994)
Increasing interdependence between the United States and Latin America
greatly broadened the inter-American agenda during the 1980s and
1990s. Human interaction on a routine, day-to-day basis penetrated
deeply into both societies. These connections resulted not from governmental initiatives or diplomatic negotiations but from decisions and actions on the part of private citizens. Such transnational linkages arose
apart from the state and, in some cases, in spite of the state. In the
post-Cold War environment, the resolute persistence of these ties betrayed the continuing inability of governments to exert control over social
dimensions of the inter-American relationship.
Outstanding among these issues were drug trafficking and undocu mented migration. Both resulted from the interplay of economic forces:
drug trafficking responded to consumer demand for hallucinogenic substances, migration reflected the search by labor for employment. Both
had visible impacts on the social order in Latin America and the United
States. Both were unwelcome to the U.S. government, which declared
them to be illegal. In vain, too, Washington sought to establish international regulations in an effort to halt both types of interaction. As frustration mounted, drugs and migration led to calls for military action; eventually, public concern over these issues established rationales for a U.S.
invasion of Panama and an armed occupation of Haiti.
Drugs and Drug Trafficking
Commerce in illicit drugs long resisted governmental efforts at control.
Despite the public declaration of a “war on drugs,” annual sales in the
United States in the 1990s were approaching $60 billion per year. The
economic toll from drug abuse and drug-related accidents was also $60
billion per year. About 200,000 children were born to drug-dependent
mothers every year; nearly half these infants were “crack babies.” Meantime the costs of law enforcement were steadily rising, while violence was
surging in major cities of America-in Miami, New York, Chicago, Los
Angeles, and Washington, D.C.
Dimensions of Demand
The fundamental source of the drug problem, of narcotrafico in the
Americas, was the presence and power of consumer demand. Demand for
drugs was most conspicuous in advanced industrial countries, in Europe
and-especially important for Latin America-in the United States. The
legal status of specific drugs derived from social convention, not scientific
deduction. While the sale and use of tobacco and alcohol were permitted
under U.S. law, prohibition was placed on other substances: marijuana,
cocaine, heroin, and so-called designer drugs such as phencyclidine
(PCP), lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD or “acid”), or methaqualone
(Quaalude). As a consequence, the U.S. legal structure declared that two
of the world’s most harmful and widely used drugs were acceptable while
other drugs of varying potency and danger were impermissible.
There was considerable uncertainty about the level and location of
consumer demand for illicit drugs in the United States. Government reports estimated the number of users through a periodic survey conducted
by official agencies-initially the National Institute on Drug Abuse
(NIDA), then the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration-whose representatives administered a questionnaire to willing respondents about drug use by household members. Resulting data showed
a substantial decline in the number of current users (defined as those who
had taken drugs within the past thirty days) from more than 25 million in 1979 to 13.5 million in 1990, 12.0 million in 1992, and 13.0 million in
1996. This implied a drop of nearly 50 percent in overall drug usage.
Current users of marijuana, by far the most popular of the illicit drugs,
declined from nearly 19 million in 1985 to 10 million or so in the 1990s.
Past-month users of cocaine followed a similar trend, dropping from 5.7
million in 1985 to the 1.4 million to 1.7 million range (Table A13). Casual drug usage was declining within the American middle class, especially
the white suburban middle class. Judged by these standards, the “war on
drugs” would appear to have been a success.
At the same time, levels of hard-core addiction were holding fast.
While past-month usage declined, the estimated number of weekly users
stood around 600,000.1 Some independent studies gauged the number
of heavy users of cocaine around 2 million and rising in the early 1990s,
while the number of emergency-room visits for cocaine-related problems
was climbing to record heights. Other studies estimated the number of
heavy users of cocaine around 2 million, with a slight rise from 1990 to
1991, while the number of emergency-room visits for cocaine-related
problems climbed to record heights in 1992. In the meantime, heroin
was regaining popularity as a drug of choice. The NIDA/SAMHSA results estimated the population ever to have used heroin around 2 million;
more refined studies calculated the number of casual users of heroin
around 380,000 in 1991 and the number of heavy users around 590,000,
up from 515,000 just the previous year. And among the teenage population, the overall number of drug users declined from 4.1 million in 1979,
at which time nearly 40 percent of graduating seniors acknowledged current use of illicit substances, to 1.3 million in 1992, then up to 2 million
by 1996. By the mid-1990s drug use among high-school seniors was reported to be on the rise, with LSD and cocaine regaining popularity.
Drug traffic was also reaching markets in other parts of the world. A
U.S. government report painted a somber picture in early 1994: “Multiton shipments of cocaine, which once flowed mainly to the United States
and Canada, now reach every corner of the globe. All major European
capitals report a growing influx of the drug, with Russian authorities seizing over a metric ton of Colombian cocaine in St. Petersburg alone. No
place seems exempt. The heroin situation is no more reassuring. The drug
which cocaine displaced in the 1980s is making a comeback everywhere.”
Despite government efforts and publicity campaigns, the worldwide market was thriving.
Sources of Supply
Over the years, from the 1970s to the 1990s, the United States consistently promoted attempts to suppress the production of illicit drugs
throughout the hemisphere. In pursuit of this goal the U.S. government
advocated two approaches: first, elimination of the sources of supply, by
destroying crops and laboratory facilities; second, interdiction of ship merits bound for the U.S. market, by conducting surveillance at the border and on the high seas. The idea was to reduce the flow of illicit drugs
into the United States, drive prices upward, harass the traffickers, discourage consumption, and push the users out of the market.
During the 1980s public concern over drug abuse and drug-related
violence mounted steadily until, characteristically enough, the Reagan/
Bush administrations chose to declare a “war” on drugs. At stake was not
only the health of U.S. citizens. According to William J. Bennett, first
head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, it was a matter of national sovereignty:
The source of the most dangerous drugs threatening our nation is principally
international. Few foreign threats are more costly to the U.S. economy.
None does more damage to our national values and institutions and destroys
more American lives. While most international threats are potential, the damage and violence caused by the drug trade are actual and pervasive. Drugs are
a major threat to our national security.
Thus draped in the banner of “national security,” U.S. international policy
on drugs justified its long-standing emphasis on supply control.
Almost by definition, this strategy focused mainly on Latin America.
Countries of the region produced or transshipped more than 80 percent
of the cocaine and 90 percent of the marijuana that entered the United
States. (It is to be observed that the United States produced at least onethird of the marijuana consumed in the United States by the early 1990s,
and became one of the world’s leading producers of methamphetamine
and designer drugs.) In particular, the concern with cocaine prompted
U.S. authorities to devote special attention toward coca leaf production in
nations of the Andes-especially Bolivia, Peru, Colombia-and toward
the processing and trafficking “cartels” residing in Colombia.
By official U.S. estimates, coca leaf production nonetheless continued
to increase (Table A14). Output grew from 291,100 metric tons in 1987
to more than 305,000 metric tons in 1990 and more than 333,000 in
1992; a subsequent drop in 1993 occurred largely because of a natural
fungus in Peru, not as a result of policy. By 1996 Peru had nearly regained its earlier production levels and overall output was back over
300,000 metric tons. Partly because of competition from growers within
the United States, marijuana cultivation in Latin America underwent a
cyclical pattern, rising from 1987 to 1990 and then falling off in 199396. Meantime, the production of heroin was picking up throughout the
region. While the world’s largest source of opium remained the “Golden
Triangle” (Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar), Latin American entrepreneurs
moved quickly into the burgeoning U.S. market. Producing high-quality
heroin at relatively low prices, the Colombian cartels suddenly began to
offer stiff competition to their Asian counterparts.
Eradication campaigns had substantial effect on marijuana but almost
no consequential impact on cocaine. During 1992 an estimated 217,808 hectares of land were devoted to coca leaf production; only 6,108
hectares-less than 3 percent of the total-were actually eradicated. In
1993 less than 2 percent of coca leaf crops were eradicated. Nor did
seizures make much difference in availability. Despite increases in effort, a
steady pattern emerged. Through the early 1990s, foreign governments
seized 8 percent to 12 percent of the cocaine destined for the American
market. As goods approached or entered the United States, federal authorities impounded an additional 15 percent to 20 percent. As a rule,
therefore, about three-quarters of real and potential shipments reached
the U.S. market. Traffickers came to understand that some seizures would
take place, and incorporated this assumption into their shipment and marketing strategies. Variation in volumes of cocaine at the retail level responded to variations in production of coca leaf, not to rhythms of eradication or interdiction. The most telling evidence came from retail prices
of cocaine, which showed a long-term decline from the 1980s to the
1990s (as did total sales, estimated to have dropped from $80 billion to
$100 billion in 1990 to $40 billion to $52 billion in 1995).2 Contrary to
expectations, supply control was not constricting the market or pushing
retail prices out of reach.
The allocation of profits varied according to distribution channels for
each product. Earnings from cocaine and heroin tended to be concentrated in the hands of the cartels; profits from marijuana and designer
drugs were more dispersed. Such patterns underscored key features of the
trafficking phenomenon. First, economic values of drug shipments correlated with perceived levels of risk, which in turn responded to the likelihood of law enforcement. Second, most of the profits stayed in the hands
of distributors, of middlemen, rather than the producers. Third, the
largest share of profits accrued not in Latin America but at the retail end
of the market, suggesting that a great deal of drug money stayed in the
United States. For this reason money laundering became a central issue,
especially in the United States.
Finally, trafficking and distribution routes became extremely flexible.
In response to new obstacles or opportunities, traffickers switched routes
from one country to another, or from one form of transportation to another. Increased risk of apprehension in the Caribbean led the Colombian cartels to move transit routes from the Caribbean to Mexico. Joint
ventures between Colombian lords and Mexican traffickers thoroughly
transformed the drug scene in Mexico, as profits and power of local organizations multiplied. Around 1990 U.S. officials believed that about
three-quarters of South American cocaine shipments were entering the
United States through Mexico. By the mid-1990s, however, the Colombians became impatient with their Mexican partners, who were now demanding half of every load delivered and distributed in the United States,
so they curtailed shipments through Mexico and turned back to the
Caribbean, especially to The Bahamas and the Dominican Republic,
where states were weak and enforcement lax. Antidrug authorities scram bled to catch up with this new reality. Reflected one DEA special agent:
“They figure out a way to do it, we figure out a way to stop them. They
figure out a way to do it again. It’s like a big chess game.”
Policies and Wars
The United States devoted massive resources to its war on drugs. In the international arena, U.S. policy stressed the control of supply, especially
through (1) suppression of production, including crop eradication, (2) interdiction of shipments, especially at the U.S. border, and (3) encouragement for other nations to join in these efforts, usually through bilateral
arrangements but also through multilateral treaties. On the domestic front
U.S. efforts emphasized law enforcement, including the incarceration of illicit drug users. (Partly as a result, the United States came to have the highest rate of incarceration in the world; by 1992 nearly 60 percent of federal
prisoners were drug offenders.)3 Demand reduction, through education
and treatment, received much less attention than application of the law. As
political pressure continued to mount, so did federal expenditures-the
annual drug control budget climbed from $4.7 billion in 1988 to nearly
$12 billion in 1992. Together, the Reagan and Bush administrations spent
nearly $65 billion in support of these strategies.
More than a year after taking office, the Clinton administration announced its antidrug policy in early 1994. The plan called for a recordhigh budget of $13.2 billion in fiscal year 1995. Drug policy director Lee
Brown proposed a slight revision in spending priorities, targeting just 59
percent for supply control and law enforcement and 41 percent for demand reduction-the first time that demand control activities received 40
percent or more of the budget. Domestically, Brown expressed special
concern for hard-core users in the inner cities and pledged to provide
more education and treatment. Internationally, the Clinton program
placed less emphasis on interdiction of drugs, except along the U.S.-
Mexican border, and instead planned to move directly against the cartels
(without indicating how this would be done). One of the most significant
changes came at the rhetorical level: instead of depicting drug abuse as
the result of moral failure, Brown and his associates interpreted inner-city
drug addiction as a response to poverty and hopelessness.
For political reasons this line looked too soft (it is to be remembered
that Clinton himself was vulnerable on the drug issue, having uttered the
unbelievable claim that as a youth he had tried marijuana but did not inhale). So in 1995 Clinton replaced Brown, the African American former
police commissioner of New York City, with retired General Barry R.
McCaffrey, a career military officer and former head of the U.S. Southern
Command in Panama. With symbolism back in place, the federal antidrug
budget continued its inexorable climb, from $13.2 billion in fiscal year
1995 to $15.0 billion in fiscal year 1997, $16.0 million in fiscal year
1998, and a requested $17.1 billion for fiscal year 1999. Priorities also re sumed their historic positions: demand reduction accounted for just onethird of expenditures, as in the Reagan/Bush years, while law enforcement went back up to two-thirds of the total.4
Throughout these shifts in emphasis, the Clinton policies provoked
persistent tension with Latin American governments. Washington expressed initial frustration with the government of Alberto Fujimori in
Peru, which refused to conduct eradication campaigns against peasant
growers in the Andes, occasional frustration with the government of
Cesar Gaviria in Colombia, which negotiated terms of amnesty with leading drug entrepreneurs, intermittent frustration with the government of
Ernesto Zedillo in Mexico, which seemed incapable of stanching corruption within its own ranks, and unrelenting hostility toward the government of Ernesto Samper in Colombia, which had allegedly gained office
by accepting drug money during a hotly contested presidential campaign.
In May 1998 American customs agents climaxed a three-year investigation by luring scores of midlevel Mexican bankers into the United States
through a “sting” operation and arresting them on money-laundering
charges. Notified only at the last minute, Mexican authorities were outraged by the deception and the lack of trust: “There are a lot of things
that we have not accepted and that we are not going to accept,” declared
foreign minister Rosario Green. “We Mexicans are very jealous of our national sovereignty.”
Antidrug policies produced complex and contradictory results. In the
United States, repeated public declaration of a “war” on drugs led to demands for “total victory” (whatever that might be), encouraged calls for
enlistment of the military in antidrug efforts, and often led to ostracism
of those who disagreed with the government-as though their patriotism
and/or sanity were in question. In Latin America, campaigns of repression erupted in organized violence between armed groups, including the
military and the police.
To provide a sense of this complexity, Table 2 outlines seven simultaneous kinds of drug wars waged throughout the region in the 1980s and 1990s.5 In the first, the United States took on drug suppliers in one way
or another, most conspicuously through agents of the Drug Enforcement
Administration. In the second, Latin American governments responded
to challenges by “narcoterrorists,” agents of drug cartels who used terror,
violence, and intimidation to assert raw political power. (This was most
clearly apparent in Colombia, where the government achieved a major
political victory by killing Medellin kingpin Pablo Escobar in December
1993.) In the third drug war, Latin American governments engaged in
struggles with armed guerrilla movements that formed unholy alliances
with traffickers. In the fourth, Latin American governments waged armed
campaigns against narco-traffickers-those who produced and exported
illicit drugs but did not engage in systematic political terrorism. In the
fifth war, drug cartels fought among themselves, usually over market
share. This explained much of the violence in Colombia, where Escobar’s
former associates played a major role in exposing him to government authorities, and also in the cities of America, where rival distributors waged
campaigns of attrition against one another. In the sixth confrontation,
drug traffickers engaged in conflict with their sometime allies, armed
guerrilla groups; this often occurred once the traficantes began to use
their profits to purchase land and join the socioeconomic establishment,
against which the guerrillas had taken arms in the first place. In the seventh and last kind of war, unique to Colombia in the 1980s, narcotrafi-
cantes declared war against political opponents, in this case left-wing parties. For the most part, however, drug operations obeyed no single
ideology.
Table 2. Drug Wars in Latin America
Source: Reprinted from Drug Policy in the Americas, Peter H. Smith
(ed.), 1992, by permission of Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado.
The diversity in drug wars underlined the range and variability of interests involved in public policy. The “drug problem” in Colombia was
markedly different from the “drug problem” in Peru, Bolivia, or Mexico
(not to mention the United States). Also striking was the ubiquity of unintended consequences. Colombia’s crackdown on the Medellin cartel
produced a temporary decline in the price of coca leaf in Peru and Bolivia;
instead of enticing coca producers to turn to cultivation of licit crops,
however, it encouraged them to process their products (thus increasing
value-added) and to export coca base instead of coca leaves. In this fashion, a “success” in the Colombian drug war could exacerbate the problem
in Bolivia or in other neighboring countries. Indeed, it appears that the
Colombian crackdown accelerated the dispersion of drug-trafficking activities throughout the continent, from Chile and Argentina to Costa
Rica and Belize, especially as transit routes and as sites for money laundering. “Latin America as a whole is sliding into the drug war,” said one
well-informed observer in the early 1990s. “Argentina and Brazil can see
their future in Bolivia. Bolivia sees its own [future] in Peru, Peru in
Colombia, and Colombia in Lebanon. It’s an endless cycle.”
While the U.S.-sponsored drug wars failed to achieve the goals of reducing supply and raising prices for illicit drugs in the American market,
they had serious effects on Latin American society and politics. First, they subjected the countries and peoples of the region to staggering levels of
violence and intimidation-not only in Colombia, but also in Peru and
Mexico, where antidrug campaigns produced large-scale violations of
human rights. Second, the drug wars exposed national institutions to corruption. One of the lessons of antidrug campaigns, around the world, was
that law-enforcement agencies risked corruption by drug traffickers and
lords; increased contact with traficantes, even in an adversarial manner,
increased the possibility of compromise and subversion. Third, prosecution of the drug wars placed increasing autonomy and authority in the
hands of the Latin American armed forces. Drug wars encouraged militarization. This could pose a substantial threat to still-fragile democracies
throughout the region.
Finally, the drug wars created major complications for U.S.-Latin
American relations. One specific source of aggravation was the annual
process of “certification,” mandated by congressional amendment to the
Foreign Assistance Act of 1986. According to the statute, governments
failing to cooperate with U.S. antidrug strategy would lose economic assistance and face U.S. opposition in multilateral lending organizations. In
1996 and 1997 Colombia was denied certification; in 1998 it received a
national interest waiver.6 Every year the evaluation of Mexico led to high
drama: in 1998 the Clinton administration decided to certify Mexico
against opposition from a significant number of lawmakers.? And while
the rituals of certification provoked recurrent controversy, General Mc-
Caffery and his cohorts continued to support the process: “While denial
of certification carries important foreign assistance sanctions as well as a
mandatory U.S. vote against multilateral banks lending money to such
countries,” according to the White House, “the major sanction is public
opprobrium at failing the standard. This process has proved increasingly
effective. It has fostered the development of realistic performance benchmarks and increased cooperation in important countries.”g
Debates over drugs became dialogues of the deaf. U.S. politicians
regularly succumbed to the temptation to charge Latin American countries (usually Mexico, Colombia, or Peru) with responsibility for drugrelated problems in American society; in reply, Latins pointed their fingers
at U.S. demand. Moreover, Latin American countries faced different challenges from those in the United States. They did not have serious problems
with consumption. Instead their most urgent problems stemmed from the
power of cartels, from waves of narcoviolence, and from the subversion of
state authority (through corruption and other means). As described by
Maria Celia Toro for the case of Mexico, the most pressing concerns were
fundamentally political. One was “to prevent drug traffickers from directly
confronting state authority,” to obstruct the formation of “states within
the state,” and to diminish the threat of narcoterrorism. A second goal,
“equally important,” was “to prevent U.S. policy and judicial authorities
from acting as a surrogate justice system in Mexico.”9 In other words, U.S.
policy itself posed a significant danger to Mexican national interests.
For reasons of its own, the United States strongly encouraged Latin
American governments to enlist in the antidrug wars. And Latin American
leaders responded, but for differing reasons. Sometimes, as in the case of
Bolivia, they were reluctant to precipitate what they regarded as all-out
wars against the peasantry. Other times, as in the case of Colombia, they reacted to challenges from drug cartels with considerable force-but even
then, they were not waging the same war that the United States was advocating. The U.S. government was asking Latin American governments to join
ranks in a war against the narcotraffickers, and thus to forge an alliance with
the United States. (In terms of Table 2, this would mean a combination of
War No. 1, waged by the United States, with War No. 4, to be waged by
Latin America.) But as successive Colombian presidents have shown, the
concern in Colombia was not so much with narcotraffic as with narcoterror
(War No. 2 in Table 2). This meant different purposes, strategies, and policies. Such incongruity in antidrug campaigns not only led to confusion. It
also led to missed opportunities and, in one conspicuous instance, it helped
provoke armed conflict between governments.
Panama: Operation Just Cause
Panama seemed an improbable place for a U.S. invasion. The country
owed its very existence to pressure from the United States, which in 1903
openly promoted a secessionist rebellion against the government of
Colombia in order to acquire a site for construction of a transisthmian
waterway. Universally hailed as an engineering miracle, the Panama Canal
immediately became a major economic and political asset for the United
States. The original treaty established U.S. control of the canal and its associated Zone “in perpetuity”; under President Jimmy Carter, negotiations led to an agreement for a gradual transfer of the canal to Panama by
the end of the year 1999. To uphold its position, to protect the canal, and
to project U.S. power throughout the surrounding region, the Pentagon
located the headquarters for its Southern Command within the Canal
Zone. U.S. influence permeated virtually every layer of Panamanian society and politics. With a population in the late 1980s of 2.4 million and a
military force of 14,000, Panama seemed unlikely to pose a legitimate
threat to U.S. interests.
Moreover the country’s political strongman, Manuel Antonio Noriega, had close links with the United States. A protege of Omar Torrijos,
the swaggering soldier-populist who seized power in 1968, Noriega became the National Guard’s chief of intelligence in 1970. After Torrijos
died in an airplane crash in 1981, Noriega patiently maneuvered to gain
command of the guard by 1983. Around this time he began cooperation
with the Reagan administration, allowing the United States to use
Panama as a staging area for its military operations in Nicaragua and El
Salvador and assisting the CIA in its efforts to strengthen Contra resistance to the Sandinista regime. (In this role Noriega would eventually have meetings with Oliver North, William Casey, and other top U.S. officials; ever the double agent, he had good connections with Fidel Castro
as well.) Noriega also opened Panama to money laundering for drug profits, protected by the nation’s strict secrecy laws for banks, and established
a working relationship with the Medellin cartel, which used the country
as a transit route for occasional shipments, as a temporary site of operations, and as a sanctuary to escape pressure from Colombian authorities.
Mercurial and cunning, Noriega reached a tacit understanding with the
U.S. government: in a display of realpolitik and/or hypocrisy, Washington would ignore his drug business as long as he supported U.S. anticommunist policies in Central America. To avoid suspicion Noriega cooperated from time to time with the antinarcotics efforts of the U.S. Drug
Enforcement Administration, earning the “highest commendation” for
Panama from Attorney General Edwin Meese III in 1987.
As commander of the National Guard, renamed the Panamanian Defense Forces (PDF), Noriega wielded supreme political power. His situation began to unravel in June 1987, when Colonel Roberto Diaz Herrera, retiring second-in-command of the PDF, denounced Noriega for
participation in electoral fraud, personal corruption, and the assassination
of opponents. Then a bombshell fell in February 1988, when federal
prosecutors in Miami secured a twelve-count indictment against Noriega
under the conspiracy statute known as RICO (Racketeer Influenced and
Corrupt Organizations Act). If convicted on all charges, Noriega could
receive up to 145 years in jail and $1,145,000 in fines. The charges
claimed that Noriega had taken part in shipping drugs and laundering
money, but the heart of the case rested on the accusation that he had accepted a $4 million payoff in order to shelter and protect the Medellin
cartel. With the exception of one drugs-for-arms deal in March 1986, all
these transactions had taken place between October 1982 and June 1984.
The indictments sent shock waves through Washington as well as
Panama City. Noriega was by far the most powerful foreign official ever to
have been indicted by the United States. His collaborators in the U.S.
government-including the CIA, the NSC, the Pentagon, and many in
the DEA-were stunned by these developments. The State Department
proposed asking the Department of justice to drop the charges if Noriega
would go into exile, but the general rejected the offer.
In late February 1988 President Eric Arturo Delvalle, in an uncustomary act of bravado, relieved the general of his duties as PDF commander. Within eight hours a pro-Noriega National Assembly abruptly dismissed Delvalle and installed the pliant Manuel Solis Palma. Despite
Delvalle’s dubious political credentials-becoming vice president as a result of fraud in 1984 and president as a result of Noriega’s interference in
1986-the U.S. government announced its “unqualified support for civilian constitutional rule in Panama” and continued to recognize Delvalle as
the legitimate president. Thus emboldened, Delvalle issued a proclamation through the U.S. embassy in Panama City ordering that all money payable to Panama should be placed in escrow and that his government
would not recognize any payments made to the Noriega-controlled
regime. With the aid of high-priced lawyers and well-placed friends in
Washington, the Delvalle team took control of $35 million to $40 million
in four New York banks, and a cooperative U.S. government announced
that all Canal Commission payments, about $7 million per month, would
go into Delvalle’s escrow accounts. The effect of these measures and subsequent sanctions was impressive: the Panamanian gross domestic product contracted by a staggering 15.8 percent in 1988 alone, and the total
loss in its governmental revenue mounted to $450 million.
Washington stepped up its rhetoric as well. In May 1988 President
Reagan declared that the U.S. goal in Panama “must be the removal of
Noriega from power.” Vice President Bush, running hard for the presidency, maintained that the United States should be prepared to do
“whatever is necessary, including military force,” to protect “sacred” U.S.
interests in Panama. The CIA took active part in covert-action plotsperhaps as many as five separate plots-to get rid of Noriega.
Elections in Panama were scheduled for May 1989. Noriega considered a run for the presidency but eventually handed his party’s nomination to one of his long-time associates, Carlos Duque.1° The opposition
supported a coalition headed by Guillermo Endara and supported by
Ricardo Arias Calderon and Guillermo “Billy” Ford as vice presidential
candidates. As Panamanian citizens turned out to vote in large numbers,
the Catholic Church organized a “quick count” showing that Duque was
losing by a 3:1 margin. When the electoral council began replacing actual
results with counterfeits, an observation team under former president
Jimmy Carter denounced the fraud and returned to Washington. Tension
mounted in Panama City, and during one pro-opposition demonstration
Noriega’s “Dignity Battalions” inflicted a bloody beating on Billy Ford
and roughed up other participants in the rally.
In mid-May the Organization of American States formally condemned
“the grave events and the abuses by General Manuel Antonio Noriega in
the crisis and the electoral process in Panama,” and dispatched a mission to
negotiate a peaceful transfer of power. Denouncing U.S. interference in
Panamanian politics, Noriega refused to cooperate with the OAS delegation. Latin American governments were nonetheless reluctant to impose
sanctions against Panama, although the Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights issued a report in November 1989 calling Noriega’s regime
“devoid of constitutional legitimacy.” The United States increased troop
levels in the canal area, but Noriega refused to buckle under the pressure.
Offended by Noriega’s insolence, President George Bush discovered
a strong political motive for action on Panama: the antidrug campaign. In
September 1989 he delivered a major speech in which he called drugs the
country’s “gravest domestic threat.” Polls reported that 64 percent of the
American people identified drugs as the nation’s number-one problem.
Having renewed the war against drugs, Bush needed some sort of victory. By November an exasperated Bush was determined to invade: as one official on the scene recalled, it was “a decision in search of an excuse.”
A pretext soon arrived. On December 15 the Noriega-controlled National Assembly proclaimed that a “state of war” existed with the United
States and named Noriega for the first time as chief of government. With
tensions high, members of the PDF the next day opened fire on a car carrying four U.S. military officers when it refused to stop at a roadblock.
One officer was killed, a second was injured, and a third who witnessed
the event was arrested and beaten. That same day an American navy lieutenant was detained and beaten, while his wife was subjected to sexual harassment. President Bush professed “enormous outrage” and soon gave
his approval to invasion plans.
Attack!
At 1:00 A.M. on Friday, December 20, the United States struck Panama
with overwhelming force. Backed by helicopter gunships and sophisticated
aircraft, 13,000 troops flew into Panama to join the 13,000 comrades already at U.S. bases in the canal area. Parachute drops and amphibious assaults allowed the Americans to gain quick advantage over the PDF, while
the air force-including two F-117A Stealth fighter-bombers carrying
laser-guided 2,000-pound bombs-rained 422 bombs on Panama within a
span of thirteen hours. Flames engulfed the slum neighborhoods of Chor-
rillo and San Miguelito, both bastions ofpro-Noriega sentiment. The PDF
put up little resistance, and U.S. forces secured control of the country
within five days. Neighborhood sweeps by American troops rounded up
nearly 5,000 prisoners, more than the entire number of combat troops
within the PDF. The Pentagon decided to call the action “Operation Just
Cause.”
Its proclaimed objectives were to capture Noriega, to install the government of Guillermo Endara that had been elected in May, and to protect American citizens. Noriega at first managed to elude the U.S. dragnet, however, and Bush put a $1 million bounty on the general’s head.
On Christmas Day an exhausted Noriega sought asylum in the Papal
Nunciature, and the Vatican refused to turn him over to the “occupying
army.” American forces then laid siege to the Nunciature, playing rock
music at a deafening volume. Inside, Archbishop Jose Sebastian Laboa
adopted the role of confessor-counselor with Noriega. Finally, on January
4 Noriega donned a clean uniform, strode through the embassy’s gates
and offered his formal surrender to General Maxwell Thurman. The next
day Noriega was arraigned in Miami on multiple counts of drug trafficking and conspiracy, the charges listed in the indictment handed down in
February 1988.
From Chile to Mexico, reaction to the invasion was swift and negative. Bush had not bothered to consult any Latin leaders beforehand. On
December 22 the OAS passed a resolution that “deeply regrets the mili tary intervention in Panama” and urged the withdrawal of American
troops. Twenty nations voted for the resolution, seven abstained, and
the United States was alone in opposing it. The UN General Assembly
passed a stronger resolution, condemning the intervention with a vote of
70-20-40. Essentially, however, these were rhetorical gestures. The U.S.
intervention was a fait accompli, and no one was about to take action
against it. In the post-Cold War world, the United States could wield its
power in the hemisphere with relative impunity.
The Panama operation gained widespread support from the American people, as confirmed by public opinion polls, though the death toll
became an object of bitter dispute. Critics expressed dismay over the extent of devastation, all for the alleged purpose of capturing one man. Former U.S. attorney general Ramsay Clark, among others, charged that
thousands of innocent civilians had been killed. The Pentagon released
official figures of 23 American soldiers dead and over 100 wounded; 314
Panamanian military killed and 125 wounded; and 202 Panamanian civilians killed. In time, however, independent human rights groups were able
to demonstrate that the U.S. government figures greatly overestimated
the number of Panamanian military killed-which was more like 50,
rather than 300-plus, indicating that the level of resistance was much less
than originally reported. Similarly, Americas Watch put the number of
civilians killed at 300, with as many as 3,000 wounded, and rendered a
harsh critique of U.S. violation of the “ever-present duty to minimize
harm to the civilian population.”
Nonetheless, the ultimate rationale was that Just Cause represented a
successful operation in the war on drugs. Exulted Representative Ike Skelton (D-Missouri): “The international snake Noriega has finally been put
in his cage.” Intoned Republican Senate leader Bob Dole: “Noriega’s bad
news is good news for our war on drugs. It proves America won’t cave in
to anyone, no matter how powerful or corrupt.” Added Senator Carl
Levin (D-Michigan): “All Americans rejoice that the United States armed
forces have brought this indicted drug-running thug to justice.” Concurred Representative Morris K. Udall (D-Arizona): “Until the U.S. action taken today, an entire country had been held hostage by a drug
dealer.” Chimed Representative Jim Kolbe (R-Arizona): “Noriega has removed himself from the civilized world. One hopes this puts a good scare
into some of the drug warlords. Noriega was a drug warlord. He just happened to run a country.”
Aftermath
Operation Just Cause had virtually no impact on drug trafficking. Noriega had been a minor player in the narcotics business, and, even according to the Miami indictment, he had retired from active participation in
March 1986. In this sense his removal was totally insignificant. Nor did
the arrest of Noriega, the presence of U.S. troops, or the installation of the Endara administration have any observable effect on Panama’s role as
a site for drug transit and money laundering. According to congressional
testimony in March 1990 by State Department official Michael Kozak,
who had played a key role in Panamanian events, “Our law enforcement
people would say that it has picked back up to the level where it existed
before Just Cause.”
The trial of Manuel Noriega had more enduring significance. His
lawyers immediately launched a broad challenge to the U.S. case, asserting that his arrest was illegal, that his status as chief of state made him immune to prosecution, that he was a political prisoner captured in an invasion that violated international law. At issue was the fundamental question
of whether U.S. agents could seize suspected drug traffickers in foreign
countries and forcibly bring them to the United States for trial. (Much
the same question arose in the case of Humberto Alvarez Machain, a
Mexican doctor accused of participating in the 1985 murder of DEA
agent Enrique Camarena; the case was eventually dismissed on grounds of
flimsy evidence, not on the principle of illegal seizure.) Noriega’s legal
team also sought the release of classified documents about the general’s
long-standing relationship with the CIA, a subject of great potential embarrassment to former agency director George Bush. The presiding judge
ultimately refused to allow Noriega to demonstrate the strength of his
past ties to the CIA, on the ground that it had no bearing on the charges
in question, but the issue persisted: if a person committed legal transgressions in the course of cooperating with one agency of the U.S. government, was it appropriate for a different government agency to bring that
individual to a criminal trial? In mid-1992 a jury finally convicted Noriega
on eight charges of drug trafficking and racketeering, and he received
a sentence of 40 years in prison without parole. A relieved and selfrighteous George Bush declared that this was “fitting punishment for
drug crimes that have harmed all America. It demonstrates that international drug felons are not above the law, no matter how great their
wealth, their status or their armed might.”
Notwithstanding the imprisonment of Noriega, the benefits from
Just Cause did not extend to much of Panama. Overweight and uninspiring, President Endara was unable to provide firm leadership. Only one
year after taking office he had to call on U.S. troops to put down a military uprising on behalf of the popular Colonel Eduardo Herrera, who had
been dismissed and then imprisoned by the government. As the Panamanian economy took longer than expected to recover, unemployment
and poverty remained at staggering levels. Endara’s approval rating
plunged from 73 percent in mid-1989 (just after the contested elections)
to 17 percent in March 1991, and it continued to slide after that. According to a popular refrain, “General Noriega has been replaced by General
Discontent.”
Presidential elections in May 1994 added yet another twist. Victory
went to Ernesto Perez Balladares, a former Noriega crony who earned 33.3 percent of the votes by appealing to widespread frustration. “There
is runaway unemployment and runaway corruption here,” a resident of
San Miguelito explained, “and Toro [Perez Balladares] is the only one
who can stop that.” During the campaign Perez Balladares distanced
both himself and his party from Noriega, invoking instead the legacy of
Omar Torrijos, but the basic fact remained: Noriega loyalists were back in
power. Second in the balloting was Mireya Moscoso, the widow of threetime president Arnulfo Arias, with 29.1 percent; third was salsa star
Ruben Blades, with 17.1 percent, followed by Ruben Dario Caries, with
16.1 percent. Had Moscoso and Caries joined forces, a progovernment
candidate might have won; this failure simply emphasized the persistence
of narrow-minded bickering within and between the traditional parties
Upon taking office in September 1994, Perez Balladares eagerly
complied with U.S. requests and demands. He gave temporary haven to
thousands of Cuban emigrants (then overcrowding U.S. facilities at
Guantanamo Bay, as reported in chapter 12) and cooperated with Washington in a crisis over Haiti (described in this chapter). He pushed
through a constitutional amendment that abolished the PDF, leaving
only a civilian “public force” which functioned more or less as a police
force. Perhaps most important, his moderate conduct and pro-U.S. pronouncements served to legitimize the 1989 invasion and the reinstatement of political democracy. In reward for good behavior Perez Balladares received a warm welcome from President Clinton during a visit to
Washington in September 1995.
Panama’s economy began to show signs of recovery, averaging 4.7
percent annual growth in GDP from 1991 through 1998. Perhaps the
biggest problem was unemployment, still in double digits (13.2 percent)
by the end of 1997. Joblessness remained “among the highest in Latin
America and it has been a persistent problem in the past decade,” according to one report, “with the surge in growth in the early 1990s only
slowly bringing down the figure from its crisis level of 16.3 percent in
1988-89.” As in other countries of the region, working classes were not
obtaining many benefits from the neoliberal model.
By the late 1990s two showdown dates were approaching. One was
May 1999, when a presidential election would determine the country’s
leadership. In mid-1998 Panamanian voters soundly defeated a proposal
for a constitutional amendment that would have permitted Perez Balladares to run for yet another term. With El Toro removed from contention, the political picture became extraordinarily contentious and confusing. The other was December 1999, when formal control of the
Panama Canal would pass from the United States to Panama, in accordance with treaty agreements of 1977. What would happen then? In
keeping with the terms of ratification, U.S. negotiators were avidly exploring the possibility of a continued American military presence in
Panama as part of a multinational counternarcotics force. Specifically, the
U.S. proposal was for a long-term (12-year) renewable contract that would leave 2,000 American soldiers at Howards Air Force Base and provide an annual income of $200 million to Panama (compared with $350
million per year before reversion of the canal). Bowing to nationalist sentiment, the Perez Balladares government insisted that other countries join
this “multilateral” effort and made approaches to Colombia, Mexico, and
Brazil (with no result as of this writing). At the same time, Panamanians
were complaisant: public opinion polls showed that 66 percent supported
a U.S. presence in their country after the year 2000, and 63 percent did
not consider the proposed antidrug center as a threat to national sovereignty. After all these years, there was not much sovereignty left to
defend.
The Process of Migration
Like drug traffic and consumption, international migration occurred
throughout history in nearly all parts of the world. During the nineteenth
century vast waves of people left Europe in search of a better life in the
Americas, settling in the United States and, in the Southern Hemisphere,
in Argentina and Brazil. Migration continued into the twentieth century
and spread to all corners of the globe: Turkish workers moved to Germany, Algerians to France, Commonwealth citizens to England, Salvadorans to Honduras, Colombians to Venezuela. Out of a world population
of nearly 5.5 billion, there were by the mid-1990s between 80 million
and 100 million immigrants, refugees, and legal and documented workers
living outside their country of citizenship.
The United States developed as a nation on the basis of migration.
Between 1900 and 1910 the United States accepted 8.8 million additional immigrants, mostly from Europe, and over the following two
decades the country granted legal access to nearly 10 million more new
arrivals. This influx came to a near-halt in the 1930s, under pressure from
the Great Depression, and resumed after the close of World War II.
Figure 7 displays trends in the magnitude and composition of legal
immigration from the 1950s through the 1980s, a period through which
the United States attempted to set strict limits on migratory flows. Several
patterns stand out. One is a steady increase in the volume of legal migration, from 2.5 million in the 1950s to 6.0 million in the 1980s-the
highest figure in the world, it might be said, but well below the levels of
the early 1900s. Another is the precipitous decline in the proportion of
immigrants from Europe and Canada (mostly Europe), from 66 percent
in the 1950s to 14 percent in the 1980s, and the concomitant rise in
Asian immigration from 6 percent to 44 percent. Legal immigration from
Mexico held steady, 12 percent to 14 percent of the total, while flows
from elsewhere in Latin America increased sharply during the 1960s and
subsequently hovered around 26 percent to 27 percent of the total.
These trends underline important points. First, there was, and continues to be, a significant volume of legal migration from Mexico and Latin America to the United States. Indeed, the inflow of Mexicans in the
1920s was just about as large as during the 1960s, and legal admissions
increased markedly in the 1970s and 1980s. Even in the absence of illegal
immigration, these flows would have a considerable impact on American
society.
Figure 7. Regional origins of legal immigrants to United States, 1951-1990.
[Source: Data published by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.]
Second, alterations in the composition of the immigrant streamespecially the relative decline of the component from Europe-prompted
xenophobic, nativistic reactions among the U.S. public. Often this response took overtly racist form. As conservative presidential candidate
Patrick J. Buchanan opined in 1992, “I think God made all people good,
but if we had to take a million immigrants in, say Zulus, next year, or
Englishmen, and put them in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less problems for the people of Virginia?” In
some parts of the country, particularly California, racist feelings erupted
in virulent denunciation of Mexicans, condemned as “illegal aliens” in a
land that once was theirs.
Third, the establishment of numerical quotas proved to be an illusory
exercise. Even the increase in legal entries-which nearly doubled between the 1960s and the 1980s-could not accommodate growing pressures for migration to the United States. As a result many people chose to
enter the United States without official authorization, in violation of the
law. It is by definition impossible to gauge the magnitude of this population with much precision, but responsible demographers have settled on
rough estimates of 4 million to 6 million “illegal aliens” from all parts of
the world by the latter 1990s. Particularly conspicuous was illegal migration from Mexico, estimated to account for 55 percent to 60 percent of
unauthorized residents in the United States. (A recent study put the stock
of illegal Mexicans around 2.3 million to 3.4 million as of 1996. )11 Other
migrants came from all points of the globe, from Haiti to Ireland to
China, frequently entering the country legally and then overstaying their
visas.
Trends in U.S. Policy
Within the Americas, U.S. policy on migration devoted special attention
to Mexico. From the turn of the century until the 1930s, an informal
“open border” policy toward Mexico provided U.S. employers with an
immense pool of unskilled workers to accommodate seasonal and cyclical
variations in labor demand, primarily in agriculture, mining, and construction. Mexican workers met special needs for temporary labor during
World War I and, more generally, played a valuable role in the development of the American Southwest. Restrictions during the 1930s came as a
direct consequence of the Great Depression. Not only did Mexican migration come to a screeching halt; amidst anti-Mexican sentiment, the
forcible deportation of a half million Mexicans led to a reversal of the
flow. Despite its unseemly conclusion, this first migration cycle convinced U.S. employers of the economic advantages that derived from access to an
unregulated, flexible, and inexpensive supply of labor.
World War II began a second cycle of Mexican immigration. In response to labor shortages in agriculture, the U.S. government in 1942
proposed a formal agreement to utilize Mexican workers. Formally legislated as U.S. Public 45, but more popularly known as the bracero
program, this temporary-worker agreement between Mexico and the
United States began as an emergency measure to replenish labor lost to
military service. The accord continued without significant interruption
until 1964, when Washington allowed the agreement to lapse.
The Walter-McCarran Immigration Act of 1952 continued and tightened the quota system first established in the 1920s. By establishing a
preference system that gave priority to prospective immigrants with special skills in short supply in the United States, Walter-McCarran explicitly
acknowledged the principle that immigration should be coordinated with
labor demand in the United States. But the statute also revealed internal
contradictions. Most glaring was the Texas Proviso, which enabled growers in that state to hire undocumented field hands from Mexico; as a result, Walter-McCarran made it illegal to be an undocumented alien but
not to hire one. In actual practice, Mexicans were largely exempted from
these regulations.
Next came the immigration reforms of 1965. Passed in the midst of
the Civil Rights movement, this legislation set the stage for dramatic
changes in the size and composition of migrant streams. To abolish the
discriminatory quota system, the 1965 amendments nearly doubled the
worldwide number of annual U.S. visas, from 158,000 to 290,000; established a more equitable distribution of visas by region, allotting 170,000
to the Eastern Hemisphere and 120,000 to the Western Hemisphere; and
reordered priorities for visa preference categories, giving relatively greater
emphasis to family reunification over labor market considerations. The
original legislation set a maximum of 20,000 visas per nation from the
Eastern Hemisphere but placed no ceiling on individual countries in
the Western Hemisphere, a provision which allowed Mexico to acquire a
disproportionate share. In 1976, however, supplementary legislation applied the 20,000 limit to nations of the Western Hemisphere-to the direct detriment of Mexico.
Impacts of IRCA
Against this backdrop, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986
culminated a succession of attempts to curtail undocumented immigration. Passage came amidst a national clamor to “take control of our borders,” in President Reagan’s telling phrase, and as persistent unemployment fueled public resentment against workers from Mexico and other
countries. Attorney General Edwin Meese III also proclaimed, in the face
of both logic and fact, that restrictions on illegal immigration would re duce the flow of illicit drugs to the United States. Sponsored by Senator
Alan Simpson (R-Wyoming) and Representative Peter Rodino (D-New
Jersey), the bill contained three principal provisions:
• economic sanctions against U.S. employers who “knowingly employ, recruit, or refer for a fee” undocumented workers
• permanent amnesty for undocumented workers who could prove
continuous residence in the United States since any time before
January 1, 1982
• partial amnesty for undocumented workers in the agricultural sector who had worked for at least ninety consecutive days in the
three consecutive years before May 1986 (SAW I) or during the
year between May 1985 and May 1986 (SAW II); and a provision
for the readmission of “replenishment agricultural workers”
(RAWs) in 1990-92.
Ultimately, IRCA represented a compromise between those political
forces opposing unauthorized migration (from organized labor to racist
reactionaries), those who benefited from its existence (mostly employers),
and Hispanic leaders expressing concern about the potential aggravation
of ethnic prejudice.
IRCA achieved mixed results. The employer-sanctions portion of the
law proved to be toothless. It remained possible for employers to comply
with the law and still hire undocumented workers. For instance, Simpson-
Rodino obliged employers to request official papers from job applicants,
but did not require them to verify the authenticity of the documents:
merely by inspecting any one of twenty-plus possible documents, widely
available in counterfeit form, employers could technically satisfy their
legal requirements. As a consequence, employer sanctions had only marginal impact on illegal migration.
Support for this point comes from data on annual apprehensions of
illegal aliens from the mid-1970s through the early 1990s (most apprehensions took place along or near the U.S.-Mexican border, so 90 percent or more of the detainees were Mexican). The figures suggest that
IRCA posed a temporary deterrent to illegal migration, as the total number of apprehensions declined from 1.76 million in 1986 to 1.2 million in
1987 and less than 1 million by 1989, a drop of 45 percent; but then the
figures began to inch up, climbing to 1.2 million in 1991 and 1.3 million
by 1993-which was just around the pre-IRCA level of 1985 (Figure 8).
(The 1993 figure for apprehensions of Mexicans was almost exactly the
same as in 1985.) In other words, IRCA appeared to have a dual impact
on illegal migration: first, it led to an increase of unauthorized flows in
1985 and especially 1986, as anxious migrants sought to gain access before implementation of the much-discussed law; and second, it led to a
temporary reduction in illicit crossings in 1987-89, but this almost certainly resulted more from the extension of amnesty to formerly illegal migrants than from the effect of employer sanctions.
Figure 8. Apprehensions of illegal aliens in the United States, 1976-1993.
[Source: Data supplied by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.]
It must be said, if only in passing, that the number of arrests in Figure
8 provides a less-than-perfect guide to the number of illegal entries. Conventional wisdom holds that during this period there were two (or three
or four) entries for each arrest; multiplied by one of these ratios, data on
arrests yield semiofficial estimates on unauthorized flows. But apprehension statistics refer to events-that is, to the number of arrests-rather
than to people. They make no allowance for multiple arrests (anecdotal
evidence indicates that individuals could be arrested more than once in
the same day). They make no adjustment for voluntary returns to Mexico
or other homelands (while survey data indicate that the vast majority of
migrants came only for temporary periods). And they are bound to respond to the varying intensity and magnitude of enforcement efforts by
the U.S. Border Patrol.
In contrast to employer sanctions, the amnesty portion of IRCA
turned out to be highly successful. Seeking to improve its public image,
the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) gave high priority to
the program, opening 109 new offices to handle an eventual volume of
3.9 million inquiries. Approximately 1.7 million applications were submitted under the “pre-1982” program and 1.3 million under the SAW
program. More than 90 percent of the pre-1982 applicants had their status adjusted from temporary to permanent resident. All SAWs approved for temporary residence automatically received permanent resident status.
As a result, nearly 3 million people acquired legal status in the United
States as a result of Simpson-Rodino.
In the meantime there continued a historic shift in the nature and
composition of indocumentados from Mexico, away from the temporary
or seasonal migration of single working-age males toward the longer-term
settlement of families, women, and children. But as one expert concluded, “There is no evidence that IRCA has reduced the total pool of
Mexican migrants employed or seeking work in U.S. labor markets.”12
While sharpening the distinction between migrant workers with and without legal status, in fact, IRCA might even have served to increase the size
of the overall pool, and in so doing it may have exacerbated social and political tensions within American society.
During the 1990s the United States redoubled efforts to deter illegal
immigration. Seeking to take a tough line on this issue, the Clinton administration increased the INS budget from $1.4 billion in fiscal year
1992 to $2.6 billion for fiscal year 1996. It sharply expanded the size of
the Border Patrol. And it intensified enforcement efforts at key crossing
points: in 1993 the administration proclaimed Operation Hold-the-Line
in El Paso, Texas (formerly known as Operation Blockade), in 1994 it
launched Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego, and in 1997 it initiated
Operation Rio Grande in McAllen, Texas. An INS strategic plan called for
a long-term, phased effort to extend such concentrated enforcement operations across the entire southwestern border. As Attorney General Janet
Reno declared at the inauguration of Gatekeeper: “We are securing our
nation’s borders, we are aggressively enforcing our nation’s borders, and
we are doing it now. We will not rest until the flow of illegal immigrants
across our nation’s border has abated.”
It remained unclear whether such efforts could ever be effective-or
whether they would simply encourage would-be entrants to seek new
modes of access.13 Data on INS apprehensions of illegal aliens along the
U.S.-Mexican border from January 1990 through August 1995 revealed
substantial continuity in overall levels of migration and in seasonal cy-
cles.14 The first semester of 1995 showed a marked increase, on the order
of 30 percent, in response to the peso crisis of December 1994 and the
ensuing recession, but there was not any mass exodus.15 On balance, it
appeared that migration from Mexico and the Caribbean obeyed fairly
consistent economic and social dynamics, and was relatively resistant to
law enforcement efforts or to short-term pressure.
And it would continue to generate friction and misunderstanding.
Labor-exporting countries were likely to tolerate, if not favor, these outward flows: annual dollar remittances to Mexico alone amounted to $4.5
billion in the mid-1990s, and the northward flow of workers provided the
country with a social safety valve. Governments of sending countries
would also take steps to protect their citizens from abuse, mistreatment,
and harassment within the United States. Undocumented migration tended to create bad feelings on all sides, and stepped-up measures to
deter the flows were merely exacerbating these inherent tensions.
There was a special complication in regard to Mexico: the United
States was embracing economic integration through NAFTA on the one
hand, and constructing walls along the border on the other. (Some would
even assert that Washington was taking steps to militarize the border, a
claim that was dramatized by the shooting of a Texas teenager in May
1997.) The resulting policy contradiction emerged on three levels. One
was symbolic (and hence political): the construction of a wall along the
U.S.-Mexican border seemed utterly inconsistent with the spirit of a newfound economic partnership. A second was procedural and institutional: although NAFTA made no provision for labor migration, the U.S. emphasis
on unilateral assertion undermined the principles of cooperation and consultation enshrined in the free trade agreement. The third was substantive:
experience around the world showed that economic integration fostered
social integration. Freer trade encouraged transnational investment, which
generally stimulated cultural interaction and, ultimately, labor migration.16
By taking anti-immigration measures, the Clinton administration was tacitly attempting to restrict and curtail the social consequences of the economic policy that it so strongly endorsed. You could not have it both ways.
The Refugee Question
Yet another stream of foreigners came to the United States not as economic migrants but as political refugees, people seeking to escape persecution and repression in their native lands. As a matter of U.S. law,
individuals were entitled to asylum in the United States if they could
demonstrate a “well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political
opinion.” And as a matter of U.S. tradition, acceptance of refugees reinforced the nation’s self-image as a bastion of political freedom. Unlike
economic migrants, refugees were coming to this country not merely for
wages or employment; like America’s forefathers, they were seeking the
full expression of their fundamental human rights.
By its nature, the granting of asylum was an explicitly political
decision-and it was inevitable, perhaps, that it would be used (and
abused) for political purposes. Since there was no scientific means for discerning whether someone had a “well-founded fear of persecution,”
judgments tended to be arbitrary. In general, the U.S. government was
quick to grant asylum to people fleeing from hostile regimes and loath to
give asylum to people fleeing from its allies. During the Cold War, this
meant that Washington was happy to embrace refugees from the Soviet
Union, the People’s Republic of China, or Fidelista Cuba and Sandinista
Nicaragua, but it was notoriously inhospitable to ‘applicants from
Guatemala, El Salvador, or Chile under Pinochet. The actual hazard to
human rights had little or no bearing on such cases. What mattered was Washington’s desire to embarrass its enemies, support its friends, and
reap propaganda value on behalf of the “free world.”
Termination of the Cold War threw the refugee question into total
disarray, leaving the United States without any guidepost for its hemispheric asylum policy. By the early 1990s only Castro’s Cuba remained an
enemy of the United States. And while other nations in Latin America
were undergoing processes of “democratization” (for which Washington
often took credit), human-rights abuses continued to occur. In fact some
of the most egregious violations, as in Colombia and Mexico, resulted
from governmental cooperation in the U.S.-sponsored “war on drugs.”
In this topsy-turvy world, policy decisions on human rights and refugees
were likely to become more arbitrary than ever.
Equally disturbing, from Washington’s standpoint, was the prospect of
massive waves of refugees from nearby countries of the region. At the outset, policymakers had imagined that actual numbers of refugees would be
modest enough to avoid entanglement in questions about assimilation into
U.S. society. Indeed, the preference was for high-profile individuals whose
defection from enemy states would endorse the superiority of western
capitalism and the wisdom of U.S. policy. In 1980 the Mariel boatlift challenged that happy assumption by suddenly unloading 128,000 Cubans in
the United States, creating numerous episodes of social turbulence and
turmoil. Refugees en masse posed questions not only about respect for
human rights in foreign countries but also about U.S. attitudes toward foreigners. Arriving in large scale, political refugees from Latin America encountered the same kind of rancor, resistance, and reaction as did economic migrants. With xenophobia on the rise, the refugee issue became a
migration issue as well.
Haiti: Operation Uphold Democracy
One of the most cynical acts of the Cold War was a 1981 compact between the Reagan administration and the right-wing regime of jeanClaude (“Baby Doc”) Duvalier, an agreement under which the U.S.
Coast Guard would repatriate Haitian citizens after perfunctory on-board
hearings. Over the next ten years the United States picked up 22,716
Haitians on the high seas, most attempting to flee their country in small
boats or makeshift rafts-and admitted only 28 (0.12 percent!) for political asylum. The purpose of this accord, in the name of anticommunism,
was to spare embarrassment for the murderous Duvalier regime, to intimidate its political opponents, and to minimize the number of unwanted arrivals on Florida shores.
In the eyes of American society, Haitians were especially undesirable.
They were poor. They were black. And they were identified as carriers of
AIDS, a stigmatization that intensified anti-Haitian sentiment during the
course of the 1980s. By the early 1990s it was estimated that as much as 9
percent of the Haitian population might be HIV-positive, a proportion that was bound to be much higher among the young adult males most
likely to take to the seas. Victims of manifold prejudice, Haitians found
themselves unwelcome in the United States.
After Duvalier’s fall in 1986, Haiti finally held a free and fair election
in December 1990. The undisputed winner, with two-thirds of the vote,
was Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a 37-year-old Catholic priest who curried
support from the popular masses. A devotee of liberation theology, a
Christian doctrine espousing drastic social change, Aristide expressed profound resentment of the mulatto elite, the armed forces, and the historic
role of the United States. “I cannot forgive what your country has done
to Haiti,” he said to a group of distinguished Americans shortly after his
election. Inaugurated in February 1991, Aristide proceeded to antagonize opponents without consolidating power. In September 1991, less
than nine months into his term, he was forced into exile by a military
coup. Haiti once again fell under the heel of the armed forces, led by
General Raoul Cedras.
The overthrow drew sharp condemnation from the Organization of
American States, which called for Aristide’s prompt reinstatement and imposed a trade embargo in November 1991. U.S. secretary of state James
A. Baker III proclaimed that Haiti’s illegal regime had “no future.” The
OAS began a ceaseless round of negotiations with Aristide, Cedras, and
other political forces in Haiti. The Inter-American Commission on
Human Rights dispatched a team to the country, issued statements, and
denounced violations of human rights. An already-poor populace suffered
from the embargo while illicit commerce flourished. Nurturing anti-
Aristide sentiment, Cedras managed to consolidate support within the
business elite. Discussions continued but there was no movement.
As repression mounted, Haitians set out for the United States. By
January 1992 the U.S. Coast Guard had taken at least 12,600 Haitians
into custody at sea, providing “safe haven” for thousands at Camp Guantanamo (in Cuba). By May 1992 U.S. authorities had processed 34,000
requests for asylum, granting about one-third, while Guantanamo was
bursting at the seams. Citing a “dangerous and unmanageable situation,”
President George Bush that same month ordered the Coast Guard to pick
up all Haitians on the seas and return them to their homeland without
any screening at all. Democratic presidential candidate Bill Clinton denounced the Bush policy as immoral, “a callous response to a terrible
human tragedy.” In one of his more memorable malapropisms, Bush defended his stance by explaining: “We’re not trying to starve the people of
Haiti and we’re not trying to freeze them or cook them or do anything of
that nature.” The Coast Guard held the line.
The refugee problem confronted U.S. authorities with a serious
dilemma. In order to justify forcible repatriation, they would have to deny
political asylum on the ground that Haitians were taking to the seas for
economic reasons; that is, they would have to maintain that applicants
had no “well-grounded fear of persecution” from the Cedras regime. In making this case, however, they would implicitly have to concede that
there was no systematic denial of human rights in Haiti. Washington was
unable to have it both ways: there was a stark choice was between rejecting the migrants or denouncing the regime. Bureaucrats and politicians
attempted to obscure the issue, contradicting themselves from time to
time, but the dilemma persisted nonetheless.
Emboldened by Clinton’s campaign rhetoric, Haitians began taking
to the sea after his election in November 1992. Judging from the number
of boats and rafts under construction, Coast Guard analysts estimated
that as many as 200,000 Haitians were preparing to set sail for the United
States. Notified by Bush of this development even before his own inauguration, Clinton ruefully announced that the Bush policy of forced repatriation would stay in place. An aide to Aristide denounced the “floating
Berlin Wall,” especially in light of a U.S. policy granting automatic asylum
to refugees from Cuba, and Aristide himself expressed impatience at inaction by the OAS: “History will never forgive 34 countries if they continue
to just talk instead of doing what they have to do.”
The initiative then moved from the OAS to the United Nations,
which appointed Argentina’s former foreign minister Dante Caputo as
chief negotiator and intermediary. In June 1993 the UN Security Council
imposed a worldwide embargo on shipments of petroleum to Haiti.
Within a month Caputo persuaded both Aristide and Cedras to accept a
compromise: Aristide would regain the presidency by October 30, Cedras
would step down as army chieftain, Aristide would appoint a prime minister (with the approval of the Haitian parliament), and there would be a
general amnesty for involvement in the September 1991 coup. Signed in
July 1993, the so-called Governors Island accords appeared to offer a
workable solution. But as the time approached for Aristide’s return, Cedras realized that the Clinton White House was in no position to enforce
the UN plan. On October 3 eighteen American soldiers had been killed
during a peacekeeping mission in Somalia, an event that led to instantaneous demands for the recall of U.S. troops from foreign lands. In the
meantime, the United States prepared to meet its obligations under the
Governors Island accords by providing military advisers to help professionalize the Haitian armed forces and police. With about 200 lightly
armed troops aboard, the USS Harlan County steamed into Port-auPrince on October 11-only to find that its berth was blocked by small
boats and a menacing crowd of heavily armed civilians threatened violence. Unwilling to risk confrontation, Washington ordered the Harlan
County to withdraw from the harbor. Cedras and his paramilitary attaches
had faced down the United States and the United Nations. As an American official would later reflect, “When we caved, we pulled the plug on
Governors Island.”
With the collapse of UN mediation, the Clinton administration
turned toward bilateral negotiations under veteran diplomat rence
Pezzullo. The U.S. goal was to find a centrist solution that would resolve the crisis without restoring Aristide to power. Around this time Aristide
was falling into disfavor in Washington. In October 1993 word leaked out
about a CIA report depicting Aristide as politically vengeful and mentally
unstable. And as part of its search for a centrist solution, Washington
began to equivocate on the assessment of human rights in Haiti. An official at the U.S. embassy in Port-au-Prince scornfully denounced independent human-rights reporting as “all bullshit.” “If any of it were true,
I’d be tripping over bodies on my way to work every morning.” The
reevaluation reached its pinnacle in April 1994, in the unlikely form of a
diplomatic cable dismissing concerns over human rights as political exaggeration: “The Haitian Left, including President Aristide and his supporters in Washington and here, consistently manipulate or even fabricate
human rights abuses as a propaganda tool.” Composed by Ellen Cosgrove, the U.S. embassy’s human rights officer, the cable cast doubt on
widespread reports of political rape: “For a range of cultural reasons (not
pleasant to contemplate) rape has never been considered or reported as a
serious crime here. . . . We are frankly suspicious of the sudden high
number of reported rapes, particularly in this culture, occurring at the
same time that Aristide activists seek to draw a comparison between Haiti
and Bosnia.” While acknowledging the presence of abuse, Cosgrove emphasized the theme of manipulation: “President Aristide and his lobbying
apparatus in Washington have increasing substantiation for charges that
the human rights situation here is getting worse-and what they cannot
substantiate they will fabricate.” In this malign endeavor, she added,
“they are wittingly or unwittingly assisted by Human Rights and by [the
UN and OAS].” Signed and sent by Ambassador William L. Swing, the
cable not only expressed profound antipathy toward Aristide but also
yielded an unmistakable conclusion: Haitians seeking political asylum
were economic migrants posing as victims of persecution. After news reports about the missive produced a public furor, the State Department
disavowed its implications and Swing, without explanation, simply retracted the document. Key U.S. officials nonetheless defended its interpretation. As Pezzullo maintained, “Certainly there has been a great deal
of hype put into the human-rights situation . . . the situation isn’t a
pretty one, but it’s being overplayed by people on the left in Haiti and by
human-rights groups.”
The U.S. search for a centrist solution came to naught, however, and
the Clinton administration then returned to a hard line against the
regime. Domestic politics became the driving force behind U.S. policy,
especially as black American leaders stepped to the fore. In April 1994
Randall Robinson, the head of an activist organization known as Trans-
Africa, began a hunger strike in protest against the policy on refugees, declaring that Clinton “has set up a dragnet around Haiti to catch Haitians
and return them to the killing fields.” As Robinson’s condition weakened,
Clinton revised the policy by announcing that U.S. authorities would
now process rafters at sea, offering asylum to victims of political repres sion. Clinton also replaced Pezzullo as special envoy with William Gray, a
former member of the Black Congressional Caucus, which had long been
demanding strong action on Haiti. To tighten the screws on Haiti, Washington then pressed for a resolution by the UN Security Council imposing new economic sanctions and condemning “any attempt illegally to remove legal authority” from Aristide and declaring “that it would consider
illegitimate any proposed government resulting from such an attempt.”
News of this policy shift led to yet another wave of rafters in search of
asylum. The U.S. Coast Guard was suddenly picking up 2,000 Haitians
per day. Hundreds drowned. Guantanamo was reopened, and the administration began looking for other countries to provide “safe haven” until
Aristide could be restored.
Clinton was running out of options. The only choice was to remove
Cedras and reinstate Aristide, and to use force if necessary. On July 31,
after Haiti expelled a UN team of human rights monitors, the Security
Council approved a new resolution authorizing the United States “to use
all necessary means to facilitate the departure from Haiti of the military
leadership.” United States ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright
summarized its message to the junta: “you can depart voluntarily and
soon, or you can depart involuntarily and soon.” Disturbances at the
refugee camp in Guantanamo added to the growing pressure. In late
August Cedras refused to accept another UN mediation effort, and paramilitary gunmen shot down yet another prominent ally of Aristide. After
a short visit to the Caribbean Community, a few of whose leaders volunteered token participation in a multinational force, a top Pentagon official
proclaimed: “The multinational force is going to Haiti. The [only] issue is
the circumstance under which that force enters Haiti.”
By this time the White House was actively planning for an invasion,
and the United States began stepping up its military pressure. In early
September 1994 naval ships and other forces were readied to move closer
to Haiti. United States warplanes increased window-rattling flights over
the island. On September 11 Warren Christopher said once again: “Time
is running out.” Having issued so many public warnings, the United
States would now have to take military action. “We’ve tried everything
else,” one U.S. official said glumly. “This is the only option we have left.”
As the countdown continued, U.S. politicians began to express reservations. Republicans called for a congressional vote on any possible invasion. Senator Bob Dole put it bluntly: “Is there any real national interest
in Haiti?” An ABC News poll showed that 73 percent of Americans
opposed the idea of an invasion of Haiti. Even Senator Claiborne Pell
(D-Rhode Island), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
and a staunch Clinton supporter, pronounced misgivings: “I find it hard
to identify a palpable U.S. interest in expending blood and treasure in
restoring democracy in Haiti when we have not done that elsewhere in
Latin America over the past 40 years or so,” he said in a letter to Clinton.
“I keep asking myself why it is so important to restore democracy in Haiti when we took no such steps in countries such as Chile, Argentina, El Salvador and Bolivia, to cite just a few examples of countries that have experienced anti-democracy coups over the years.”
On Thursday, September 15, Clinton attempted to explain his position in a nationally televised speech. Denouncing the Cedras government
as “the most violent regime in our hemisphere,” the president cited several reasons for concern over Haiti: “to stop the brutal atrocities that
threaten tens of thousands of Haitians, to secure our borders, and to preserve stability and promote democracy in our hemisphere, and to uphold
the reliability of the commitments we make and the commitments others
make to us.” The moment of decision had arrived: “The message of the
United States to the Haitian dictators is clear: Your time is up. Leave now,
or we will force you from power.”
Beneath the presidential rhetoric, it was the refugee issue that defined
the fundamental interest of the United States. “I know that the United
States cannot, indeed we should not, be the world’s policeman,” Clinton
conceded, “and I know that this is a time, with the Cold War over, that so
many Americans are reluctant to commit military resources and our personnel beyond our borders. But when brutality occurs close to our shores
it affects our national interest and we have a responsibility to act.” He
went on to explain the logic behind this deduction:
Thousands of Haitians have already fled toward the United States, risking
their lives to escape the reign of terror. As long as Cedras rules, Haitians will
continue to seek sanctuary in our nation. This year, in less than two months,
more than 21,000 Haitians were rescued at sea by our Coast Guard and
Navy. Today, more than 14,000 refugees are living at our naval base in Guantanamo. The American people have already expended almost $200 million to
support them, to maintain the economic embargo, and the prospect of millions and millions being spent every month for an indefinite period of time
looms ahead unless we act. Three hundred thousand more Haitians, 5 percent of their entire population, arc in hiding in their own country. If we
don’t act, they could be the next wave of refugees at our door. We will continue to face the threat of a mass exodus of refugees and its constant threat to
stability in our region and control of our borders.
No American should be surprised that the recent tide of migrants seeking refuge on our shores comes from Haiti and from Cuba. After all, they are
the only nations left in the Western Hemisphere where democratic government is denied, the only countries where dictators have managed to hold
back the waves of democracy and progress that have swept over our entire
region.
Ultimately, it was the prospect of 300,000 refugees that determined U.S.
policy. As Doyle McManus of the Los Angeles Times would remark,
“Never before has the United States gone to war to stop refugees from
coming to our shores.” Haitian journalist Anne-christine d’Adesky concurred with this judgment, arguing that Clinton’s stance reflected “less
his concern about human rights or democracy, than his belated assess ment that the only way to keep refugees away from Miami is to stop the
murders in Haiti.”
Cedras countered Clinton’s warning with expressions of defiance,
and an invasion seemed imminent. Clinton agonized: “I know it is unpopular. I know the timing is unpopular. I know the whole thing is unpopular. But I believe it is the right thing.” Then he dispatched a highlevel delegation, led by former president Jimmy Carter, for a last-ditch
effort at negotiation. At first the talks went poorly. At 1:00 P.M. on Sunday, September 18, Clinton gave orders for an invasion to commence at
one minute past midnight. Carter continued his negotiations and presented the Haitians with a draft agreement that called for Aristide’s return
to power by October 15 and amnesty for the military rulers. At 5:30 P.M.
one of the Haitian leaders burst into the room with news of mobilization
of U.S. paratroopers at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and denounced
the Carter mission as a deceptive trap. At 6:45 P.M. U.S. commanders
launched sixty-one planes toward Haiti with troops aboard. As talks were
about to break up, negotiators paid a final call on President Emile
Jonaissant. “We’ll have peace, not war,” the octogenarian executive said.
Though Cedras and his chief of staff refused to sign the document, the
deal was nonetheless done. A relieved Clinton recalled the planes and
canceled the invasion.
The next day U.S. troops would occupy the country without any organized resistance. In less than a week there were more than 15,000
American troops on the ground and there would eventually be more than
20,000 in place. The nature of this operation, called by some an “interva-
sion” (a cross between an intervention and an invasion), was elusive and
shifting. It began as a limited military occupation but, even after Aristide
took office in mid-October 1994, it developed into a temporary takeover
of the governmental apparatus. By the end of March 1995 a contented
President Clinton celebrated the replacement of U.S. troops by a UN
peacekeeping force of 6,000 troops-with 2,400 American soldiers and a
U.S. commander in charge. In mid-1996 this “UN Mission in Haiti” was
scaled back to 600 troops and placed under Canadian leadership. A year
later this force was replaced by a “UN Transition Mission in Haiti,”
which began training some 6,000 recruits for a Haitian National Police.
The nation’s armed forces-the army, navy, and air force-had in the
meantime been demobilized. They had not been constitutionally abolished as in Panama, but they existed only on paper. For practical intents
and purposes, the military was no longer a factor in national life.
Under intense international observation (and quasi-military occupation), elections took place in orderly fashion. Aristide resisted the temptation to succeed himself and Rene Preval, one of his former associates and
ex-prime minister, won the elections of December 1995 and took office
in February 1996. Governing was something else again. Aided and abetted by the international community, Preval sought to impose promarket
economic reforms. Against this program Aristide moved into the opposi tion, refurbished his populist credentials, and assumed the leadership of
the Lavalas Party-with a majority in both houses of parliament. Haiti fell
into stalemate. For more than a year the country had no prime ministerand no active government-since Preval was unable to win approval for
any of his nominees from the fractious parliament. Strikes and demonstrations mounted. Political violence continued as well, ranging from beatings and occasional murder to and high-profile assassination of opposition
figures (such as Antoine Leroy and Mireille Durocher Bertin). Observers
summarized the political scene in one word: chaos.
In the meantime the economy was sputtering. After devastating years
in 1993 and 1994, under the weight of the U.S.-sponsored embargo,
Haiti enjoyed a mild recovery in 1995 with GDP growth of 5.0 percent.
In 1996 the growth rate slipped to 2.8 percent, however, and in 1997 it
fell to just 1.1 percent. Three-quarters of the population was living in abject poverty. Less than half the adult population was able to read and
write. Unemployment was running around 60 percent, and the future offered little hope. In the wake of U.S. intervasion, Haiti remained in desperate condition.
Reflections: On Power and Hegemony
As the first U.S. military actions in Latin America of the post-Cold War
era, the American operations in Panama and Haiti cast much light on the
dynamics of the contemporary age. First, Just Cause and Uphold Democracy demonstrated the absence of international rules of the game and, in
particular, of concerns for national sovereignty. From the 1890s through
the 1920s, the United States launched repeated interventions in order to
protect business and commercial interests. The calculation was economic
and the rationale appealed to democracy and international law. During
the Cold War, the United States launched systematic interventions against
governments perceived to be leftist, socialist, procommunist, or communist. The calculation was geopolitical and the rationale was ideological. In
a way the Panama and Haiti operations bore considerable resemblance to
those interventions of the bygone Imperial Era, but in another sense they
represented applications of raw power, unconstrained by international
protocol and undisguised by diplomatic niceties. In both instances the
United States arrogated for itself the right, if not the duty, of overthrowing governments in the Americas.
Second, Just Cause and Uphold Democracy were undertaken in the
name of democratic restoration, which imbued them with an aura of
Wilsonian high-mindedness. Yet the restitution of democracy itself was
insufficient cause for military action; were that the case, American troops
would have been scattered all over the globe. In each of these two cases,
there were pressing political considerations as well: the need for visible
progress in the drug wars and the clamor for stoppage of illegal immigration. It was the power of these social issues within the United States, fil tered through the lens of domestic politics, that provided the ultimate
motivation for the operations in Panama and Haiti. Democracy alone was
not enough; democracy plus a domestic political problem could provide a
recipe for intervention.
Third, these efforts to impose democracy were fairly successful. The
nature and extent of democratic practice would be sharply limited, more
so in Haiti than in Panama, but it was nonetheless true that relatively free
and fair elections came to result in peaceful transfers of power. One reason for this happy outcome was that Panama and Haiti were small countries with small military services that could not begin to thwart the power
of the United States, which deployed or threatened overwhelming force
in both cases. A second reason was that, as a result, the postinvasion governments could abolish or demobilize their respective military establishments, thus eliminating major actors from contention for power. A third
reason was that, in both instances, the United States retained a strong political and institutional presence-with military units overseeing the
Panama Canal at least through 1999, and possibly beyond, and with U.S.
troops spearheading the multinational force and subsequent UN operations in Haiti. Yet these same factors revealed the special features of these
cases. (Through the late 1990s Iraq’s determination to maintain its military capacity and its stubborn resistance to UN inspection teams underlined the difficulty of dismantling armed forces in larger and stronger nations.) In short, the installation of democracy in Panama and Haiti was
not a precedent for U.S. action elsewhere. In theory it might apply to
ministates in Central America and the Caribbean, but not to larger nations of Latin America.
Fourth, in the absence of grand politics, these two actions revealed a
heightened emphasis on personality. In many ways the Panama invasion
resulted from a clash of individual wills, with the diminutive Noriega upholding his macho credentials and the worrisome Bush struggling to shed
his persisting image as a “wimp.”17 Indeed, official portrayals and media
depictions of Noriega in the United States presented him as the embodiment of malice-“a man so black of heart,” as journalist John Dinges has
written, “so evil of soul, that any means necessary, even invasion, was justified to consummate his exorcism.”18 And in Haiti, similarly, the cool defiance of General Cedras challenged the authority of a stumbling Bill
Clinton, who repeatedly denounced the “thugs” and “dictators” in
power (although, to the great consternation of the White House, Carter
would praise Cedras as a patriot). In the absence of a contest over ideology, without any conceivable communist threat, the U.S. government
needed to vilify its opponents to justify its chosen course. Satanization of
rivals became a fixture of the post-Cold War period.
Fifth, these two operations underlined the extent and character of
U.S. hegemony within the Western Hemisphere. Despite murmurings
and resolutions in august international bodies, from the OAS to the
United Nations, there was never any prospect of meaningful retaliation against the American actions. In practical terms, the international community tacitly accepted the U.S. claim to uncontested dominance in the
Americas. And for these very reasons, these two operations appeared to
settle any questions about U.S. interventionism in the post-Cold War period. Regardless of how small the stakes, the United States would not
hesitate to intervene throughout the region.19
At the same time, Just Cause and Uphold Democracy revealed the
limitations of U.S. power. These applications of military force did not,
and could not, bring a halt to the illicit transnational flows they were intended to deter. Long after the invasion of Panama, drug trafficking continued without abatement; and while the military occupation brought a
sharp (but incomplete) reduction to the tide of rafters from Haiti, it
hardly offered a plausible recipe for stanching undocumented migration
from all of Latin America.20 What these episodes showed, in other words,
was that Washington wielded great hegemony over governments throughout the hemisphere, but that the United States could neither control nor
deter undesirable social forces within the region. To this extent post-Cold
War hegemony displayed a hollow quality.
Latin America’s community is the Third World.
Colombian foreign minister (1974)
We want Mexico to be part of the first world, not the third.
Carlos Salinas de Gortari (1990)
Look, it’s simple. There is an Americanization of the world. We cannot
go in the opposite direction. At last we are going to make America
here.’
Carlos Alfonso Ferraro (1998)
Passage of the Cold War brought mixed blessings to Latin America. The
end of East-West conflict meant that the region would no longer serve as
a battleground for superpower rivalry. Within Latin America, this new
situation relaxed the terms of ideological contention, weakening forces of
left and right and reducing levels of polarization in domestic politics. By
strengthening centrist elements, it reinforced processes of liberalization
under way throughout the 1980s and enhanced the prospects for democratic consolidation.2 Ending of the Cold War prompted the hope, as
well, that Washington could come to evaluate and appreciate Latin
America on its own terms, respecting regional aspirations and supporting
local efforts for social and political development.
It was also anticipated that conclusion of the Cold War would expand
the range and quality of policy options for Latin America. This may or may not be so. During the 1990s leaders in the region were confronting
two imperatives. One was to find a viable position in the newly emerging
global economy, a niche that could provide a foundation for long-term
development and growth. The other was to forge a response to changing
patterns in the distribution of international power, and, in particular, the
intensification of U.S. hegemony within the Western Hemisphere. How
might Latin America address these concerns? What was the range of plausible choice? For which countries of the region?
Narrowing Options
As major powers wrestled with reconfiguration of the world community
and struggled to devise new rules of the game, Latin America found itself
at a distinct disadvantage. The continent was not a major power center. It
would have only a modest role in determining the shape of the post-Cold
War world. Notwithstanding an initial burst of continental optimism, it
soon became apparent that the post-Cold War environment provided
Latin America with a distressingly slim range of practical options.
In the early 1990s it seemed no longer possible, as Bolivar fervently
hoped, to seek protection from an extrahemispheric power. In full enjoyment of its “unipolar moment,” the United States held uncontested military supremacy throughout the world. And despite the redistribution of
global economic power, all major powers were elsewhere predisposed: the
Soviet Union had collapsed, Western Europe was promoting the rehabilitation and incorporation of Eastern Europe, Japan was focusing attention
on its own economic downturn, the plight of its Asian neighbors, and its
bilateral relationship with the United States. There was nowhere for Latin
America to turn.
Nor could Third World solidarity provide a plausible substitute. Indeed, the “developing world” was becoming increasingly fragmented into
differing strata-between the conventional Third World and what came
to be known as the “Fourth World,” including countries such as Ethiopia,
Burkina Faso, and Bangladesh, an area of bone-crushing poverty and
structural underdevelopment. Within Latin America, the World Bank
classified only Haiti (with a GNP/capita of $360 in 1989) as a “lowincome” country; most countries of the region stood above the international median; Venezuela and Brazil both qualified as “upper-middleincome” (with GNP/capita of greater than $2,400), in fact, with Mexico
and Argentina close behind.-3 And as foreshadowed by struggles over the
“new international economic order” in the 1970s, Latin America’s strategic and economic interests would not always converge with those of Asia,
the Middle East, and Africa. South-South cooperation offered gratifying
opportunities for rhetorical expressions of political solidarity; perhaps in
search of leverage, too, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru joined with
other prominent Third World countries to form a so-called “G-15” in
1989. But in the wake of the 1980s debt crisis Latin America’s economic destiny was, for better or worse, inextricably tied to the North. The South
could not provide a durable solution.
Nor was there a clear-cut formula for attracting attention and support
from the United States. During the Cold War, political rulers of all
stripes, from centrist reformers to rightist dictators, could invoke the
threat of communism in order to obtain moral and material assistance
from Washington. This was no longer possible. Leaders of Latin America
would have to find some other means of engaging attention from Washington. It was not obvious what this could be.
Farewell to Revolution
The end of the Cold War brought an end to revolutionary ferment in Latin
America. As detailed in chapter 8, the intrinsic appeals of Marxist ideology
plus long-standing resistance to the United States helped foment guerrilla
uprisings and socialist movements from the 1950s through the 1980s.
With the collapse of communism, however, Marxism-Leninism lost legitimacy as both a diagnosis of social ills and (especially) as a prescription for
their remedy. Without the Soviet Union, there was no external patron for
revolutionary movements. And without any fear of retaliation, either in
Latin America or some other part of the world, the United States was free
to wage unremitting war against revolutionary groups and socialist states.
Guerrilla movements throughout the hemisphere quickly lost force. As
a rule, only those groups with continuing sources of income-usually obtained through collaboration with narcotraficantes, particularly in Peru
and Colombia-could keep up operations. And even then, many coman-
dantes were able to interpret handwriting on the wall. In Colombia, the
M-19 turned in its arms in order to join the electoral arena; its leader, Antonio Navarro Wolf, ran a respectable campaign in the presidential race of
1994. In Peru, Sendero Luminoso lost momentum and popular support
after the capture in 1992 of its enigmatic leader, Abimael Guzman. The
only significant new guerrilla movement of the 1990s appeared in Mexico,
in the state of Chiapas, with an essentially reformist agenda. Armed revolution no longer offered a path to redemption.
Socialist states faced difficulties too. In Nicaragua, the Sandinista
government fell victim to final vestiges of the Cold War itself. Unceasing
campaigns against the U.S.-supported Contras obliged the government
to spend half its budget on defense and to alienate its citizens with the
imposition of a military draft and other wartime measures. Partly as a result of such factors the Nicaraguan economy went into a serious tailspin;
output declined by 4 percent in 1987 and 8 percent in 1988, while hyperinflation climbed to the spectacular level of 33,000 percent. In February
1990 presidential elections pitted Daniel Ortega, the Sandinista leader,
against Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, widow of Pedro Joaquin Chamorro
and representative of a fragmented opposition coalition (UNO from its
Spanish initials). Most pollsters announced that Ortega’s lead was widen ing as the election approached. Then came the stunning results: UNO
captured 54.7 percent of the vote against 40.8 percent for the Sandinistas. At the urging of Jimmy Carter, in attendance as an international observer, Ortega made a gracious concession speech. Buffeted by the U.S.-
imposed economic embargo and harassed by the U.S.-sponsored Contras,
the Sandinista revolution came to an end with a whimper.
It was in Cuba, perhaps, that the end of the Cold War had its most
decisive effect. East-West detente and collapse of the Soviet Union
sharply curtailed commercial ties and economic subsidies for Cuba. During the Cold War the USSR had consistently overpaid Cuba for sugar,
while Cuba underpaid the Soviets for petroleum: the result was an annual
subsidy estimated between $3.5 billion and $4.5 billion per year. Termination of this arrangement led to economic devastation. Critical industrial, raw material, and food imports from Russia plummeted by over 70
percent between 1989 and 1992, and continued to decline in 1993. Petroleum imports from Russia dropped by more than half-from 13.3 million metric tons in 1989 to a 5.7 million metric tons in 1993-leading
Cuba to import bicycles from the People’s Republic of China. Largely
due to inclement weather, sugar production fell from 8.4 million metric
tons in 1990 to merely 4.3 million in 1993. Together with the longstanding U.S. boycott, the implosion of Soviet communism imposed the
equivalent of a “double embargo” on the beleaguered island. As a result,
the estimated gross domestic product dropped by 45 percent between
1989 and 1993-and, according to responsible projections, continued
its downward slide in 1994. This meant penury for millions of Cuban
citizens: in 1992, according to one official source, 65 percent of Cuban
families had monthly incomes equivalent to less than $2.00 (U.S.) per
capita at prevailing black-market rates of exchange.
Fidel responded to this adversity with an ambiguous stance, alternating between liberalization and crackdown. Seeking to find a new niche in
the global economy, the government began attempting to attract foreign
capital, technology, and tourism and to stimulate nontraditional exports.
In 1993 the regime granted permission for Cubans to possess hard currency, allowed self-employment in trades and crafts, and created relatively
autonomous cooperatives for sugar and agricultural production. In time
these policies bore fruit. By the end of 1996 the accumulated stock of foreign direct investment in Cuba (from fifty countries) was about $1 billion, with signed pledges for another $1.1 billion. In the same year Cuba
also exported $20 million worth of goods to eleven countries, with notable increases to Canada and Spain.
But there were limits to these innovations. Having promulgated the
slogan of Socialismo o Muerte in 1989, Fidel and his advisers concluded
that Mikhail Gorbachev’s eventual undoing resulted from excessive reformist zeal. Anxious to avoid this fate, Fidel took an uncompromising
stance at the December 1993 meeting of the National Assembly of People’s Power, contemptuously dismissing “the idea that capitalism can solve some of our problems” as “a crazy and absurd dream.” El Lider
continued:
I believe in socialism and despise capitalism. What I feel is repugnance toward
capitalists. . . The better I know capitalism, the more I love socialism. I
have such a concept of the garbage, unfairness, baseness, alienation, and immorality that capitalism is in all its forms, including its politicians.
To emphasize the point, a new constitution in late 1992 affirmed that the
Cuban economy would rest on the “socialist ownership of the means of
production.” It appeared that Cuba was moving toward hybrid marketLeninism along the lines of post-Mao China. And in the political realm,
crackdowns on dissidents coexisted with an uneasy truce between three
groups-reformists, centrists, and hard-line Fidelistas-with Castro retaining the decisive hand.
Hard-pressed Cuban citizens faced three alternatives: they could endure the hardships stoically; they could erupt in protest, as in April 1994;
or they could flee to the United States. First hundreds, then thousands,
attempted to traverse the Florida Straits in homemade rafts. The number
of balseros climbed from just under 500 in 1990 to approximately 2,500
in 1991 to nearly 3,500 in 1993-then escalated sharply in mid-1994.
During August 1994 the U.S. Coast Guard rescued more than 3,500
Cubans from the dangerous waters of the Straits. Governor ton
Chiles of Florida declared a statewide emergency and appealed to Bill
Clinton for help.
In late August 1994 the Clinton administration responded by announcing the end of a thirty-year policy giving preferential treatment to
refugees from Cuba, ordering instead their detention in Guantanamo and
in Florida. Recalling the so-called Mariel exodus of 1980, when 128,000
people left Cuba for the United States, Clinton denounced the wave of
balseros as “a cold-blooded attempt to maintain the Castro grip on Cuba
and to divert attention from his failed communist policies. . . . Let me
be clear: The Cuban government will not succeed in any attempt to dictate American immigration policy.” Within days Clinton also announced a
ban on dollar remittances to Cuba, often sent home to family members
by Cubans in the United States, and a plan to increase and amplify antiCastro broadcasts by Radio Marti. To justify these steps, Clinton offered
his interpretation of reasons behind the balsero exodus: “The real problem is the stubborn refusal of the Castro regime to have an open democracy and an open economy, and I think the policies we are following will
hasten the day when that occurs.” Another top official explained that
Washington’s ultimate goal was “to encourage a peaceful evolution to a
democracy with free markets.” As on so many prior occasions, the U.S.
intent was Castro’s overthrow.
In September 1994 the United States and Cuba reached an interim
accord. Negotiated by midlevel officials, the agreement specified that the
United States would accept a minimum of 20,000 Cubans per year on a regular basis and, for one year, all eligible Cubans then on the waiting list
at the American diplomatic mission in Havana (perhaps 4,000 to 6,000).
In exchange, Cuba agreed to “take effective measures in every way it possibly can to prevent unsafe departures using mainly persuasive methods.”4
In May 1995 the Clinton administration announced that it would admit
the Cubans at Guantanamo (who would just about fulfill the year’s
quota) but henceforth return to the island any new balseros picked up on
the high seas-thus overturning the decades-long policy of embracing
Cuban emigrants as refugees. Although this decision drew harsh criticism
from leaders of the Cuban American community, it was calculated to capitalize on anti-immigration sentiment throughout the state of Florida.
This delicate dialogue came to a rude halt in February 1996, when
Cuban air force pilots shot down two unarmed civilian planes flown by
volunteers from “Brothers to the Rescue,” a Miami-based exile group.
Ever since 1991 the Brothers had been making regular flights over the
Florida Straits, attempting to help balseros and other refugees. They had
also penetrated Cuban air space on numerous occasions. In July 1995 one
Brothers plane buzzed Havana. In January 1996 another dropped antiCastro leaflets over the capital city, prompting the Cuban government to
vow “all necessary measures” against future violations and to lodge yet
another request for Washington to restrain the Brothers-the fourth such
plea in less than two years. It remained unclear whether the February 24
flight had entered Cuban air space; at the time of the shootdown they
were over international waters, however, apparently headed for home.
Washington responded with fury. President Clinton denounced the
shooting as “a flagrant violation of international law.” Madeleine Albright, the U.S. ambassador to the UN, icily averred to actions of the
Cuban airmen: “Frankly,” she said, “this is not cojones. This is cowardice.”
After some hesitation Clinton agreed to sign the Cuban Liberty and
Democratic Solidarity Act, a.k.a. Helms-Burton, authorizing legal action
against firms from other countries that might “traffic” in property seized
by Cuba from U.S. nationals (including naturalized citizens) anytime
since 1959. For months the president had staunchly promised to veto the
bill, partly because of the vehement opposition it engendered among U.S.
allies and partners-especially Canada, Mexico, and the European Union.
As the electoral season approached, however, principle gave way to expediency. Clinton signed the bill into law on Tuesday, March 12, the day of
the Florida primary.
Nearly three years later, in January 1999, President Clinton announced a new series of initiatives “to reach out to the Cuban people”expanded remittances and flights, licenses for the sale of food and agriculture goods, and permission for two baseball games (between the
Baltimore Orioles and the Cuban national team). These were positive but
modest steps beyond a somewhat similar gesture taken in March 1998.
In adopting such limited measures, the president was failing to heed a
Republican-backed proposal (endorsed by such stalwarts as John Warner, George Shultz, and Henry Kissinger) to create a bipartisan commission to
review the long-standing embargo, as well as a creative but cautious report of the blue-ribbon Council on Foreign Relations. He was also failing
to take the advice of the pope, who had urged the United States to
“change, change, change” its hostile stance toward Cuba during a visit to
the island in early 1998, or to recognize the implications of a May 1998
report by the Pentagon concluding that Cuba “does not pose a significant
military threat to the United States or to other countries in the region.”
The paramount reason for this hesitation, according to most analysts, was
unwillingness to jeopardize Vice President Al Gore’s political prospects in
Florida and New Jersey during the upcoming presidential campaign in the
year 2000. According to Wayne Smith, who served as America’s ranking
diplomat in Havana under Presidents Carter and Reagan: “The rightwing exiles raised hell about [more decisive innovations] and the Administration backed down, so we get these piddling steps. There isn’t much
political courage in Washington these days.”
It seemed, to many, that Castro was in an untenable situation. As
early as 1992 one knowledgeable observer confidently proclaimed that “it
is only a matter of time before Cuban communism collapses. While the
date of its demise is obviously unknown in advance, it can be expected
sooner rather than later.” But Fidel displayed remarkable resilience, especially in the face of scattered opposition, and he was able to capitalize
upon widespread resistance (within Cuba and around the world) to the
perpetuation and intensification of the U.S. commercial embargo.5 As
Jorge Dominguez shrewdly observed, “Washington’s rigid opposition
continued to allow Castro to rally citizens to defend what many Cubans
are able to recognize as the regime’s legitimate successes. The United
States has been a staunch enemy of Castro, but with an enemy like this
one, he may not need friends.”6
No longer inspired by the Cuban model, the revolutionary option
tended to evaporate. Disenchanted by politics in general, Latin Americans
gravitated toward social movements instead of partisan campaigns. Having endured human-rights abuses by authoritarian regimes and economic
deprivation during the debt crisis, citizens became increasingly skeptical
about the uses of the state. No longer inclined to seek utopian solutions,
they came to rely on local grassroots movements for the sake of pragmatic, practical change. Paradoxically, the gradual emergence of civil society in Latin America coincided with a downsizing of political ambitions,
a focus on self-help, and an acceptance of incremental reform.
For national leaders in Latin America, however, the questions still remained: what place to seek in the new global economy? How to attract
attention and support from the United States? Interpreting the interAmerican agenda of the post-Cold War era, they fastened on economic
relations. There was almost no other choice: unlike the communist threat,
migration and drugs furnished weak bargaining chips; and as Panama and
Haiti served to demonstrate, tension along these lines could lead to U.S. military intervention. Instead regional leaders placed economics over
politics, opportunity over principle, pragmatism over ideology. Their
major concern was to avoid isolation and abandonment. As they focused
on strategies for economic cooperation, free trade became the watchword
of the day.
Option 1: Trading Around
One possibility was to undertake unilateral programs of economic liberalization, more or less according to the Washington consensus, and to
strengthen commercial and financial ties with major power centers.? A
“plurilateral” approach toward economic intercourse seemed to comply
with multipolar realities of the new global economy, especially the rise of
Europe and Japan. Systematic reduction of commercial barriers promised
to achieve the anticipated benefits of free trade. Moreover, unilateral action had the advantage of maintaining flexibility. Within a general strategy
of export-led development, the corresponding policy prescriptions were
relatively straightforward: diversify products and partners, seek foreign investment from multiple sources, avoid restrictive entanglements; in other
words, embark on a unilateral project in the name of free trade.
Among all countries of Latin America, Chile pursued this option with
greatest alacrity. Like other nations of the region, Chile adopted an increasingly protectionist trade policy from the 1930s to the early 1970sby 1973 the modal tariff was 90 percent, with a maximum of 750 percent, accompanied by an extensive network of nontariff barriers (NTBs)
as well. From 1974 onward the Pinochet regime imposed a radical change
in policy. Most nontariff barriers were eliminated at the outset, and tariffs
were steadily lowered to a flat rate of 10 percent on nearly all items by
1979. In reaction to the debt crisis the government temporarily hiked tariffs back up to 35 percent in 1984, while avoiding NTBs, and subsequent
steps brought tariffs back down to 11 percent by the early 1990s. The democratic governments of Patricio Aylwin and Eduardo Frei (Jr.) have
continued the Pinochet emphasis on commercial liberalization. “Free
trade has been widely accepted as an integral part of Chile’s development
model,” according to one well-informed analysis, “and there is consensus
that a return to protectionism is not a reasonable option.” In demonstration of this point, there was no meaningful opposition to reduction of the
tariff rate from 15 percent to 11 percent in mid-1991.
Results of this outward-looking strategy were dramatic. Exports as a
share of Chile’s GDP grew from 31 percent in 1974 to 71 percent in
1990. After sharp contractions in the early 1980s, the economy achieved
strong and steady rates of economic growth-reaching 10 percent in
1989 and 11.6 percent in 1992, and far outperforming the region as a
whole (Table A13). Chile further achieved unusual success in the diversification of its commercial partnerships. By 1991 Japan replaced the
United States as the country’s largest customer. Chile also cultivated ex tensive trade connections with the European Community (EC), especially
with Germany, and imported about as many goods from the EC as a
whole as from the United States. In time, as we shall see, Chile would
supplement (or supplant) its go-it-alone strategy with alternative policies,
but by the early 1990s unilateral liberalization could be scored as a
success.
In addition, Chilean leaders aggressively scaled back the role of the
state. During the 1970s and 1980s the Pinochet government sold off
about 550 state-owned enterprises, about 90 percent of all state companies inherited from the Allende period; after a mild retrenchment in
1982-83, due to a short-term economic crisis, the regime resumed the
program of privatization. One of its most innovative achievements was reform of social security, which was transformed from a traditional “pay-asyou-go” arrangement (as in the United States) to a system based on individual savings funds administered by private investment institutions.
Major state firms-telephones, telecommunications, energy, bankingwere sold directly to private bidders or first broken up into competitive
firms and then privatized. Only two public monopolies-CODELCO,
the state-owned copper company, and ENAP, the petroleum enterpriseremained in state hands. And all of Chile’s companies, private or public,
became subject to uniform rules and regulations. This general policy
stayed in place under subsequent democratic governments: the rate of
privatization slowed down somewhat, but Christian Democrats granted
numerous concessions to the private sector to build and operate public
works (roads, tunnels, ports, bridges, parks). In narrow economic terms,
according to one analysis, “There seems to have been a very minor improvement in firm-level efficiency associated with privatization in Chile.”8
In broader terms, however, the success of Chile’s privatization program
transformed the country into a poster child for free-market doctrine and
the Washington consensus.
By the late 1990s Chile confronted major questions: whether to pursue a free trade agreement (FTA) with the United States, whether to nurture closer ties with neighboring countries of South America, and how to
deal with extrahemispheric partners in Europe and the Pacific Rim. Despite these uncertainties, Chile had succeeded in forging a workable and
productive general strategy. By developing commercial ties with Europe
and Japan as well as the United States, Chile was not beholden to any single trade partner. By publicly advocating the virtues of free trade, Chile
claimed a leadership role throughout the region. And having restored its
traditions of democracy, Chile became a political model as well.
Other nations would probably have liked to pursue the Chilean path,
and several attempted to do so. The fact, however, is that Chile managed
to capitalize upon unique advantages. Some were economic: the lack of a
larger and dominant commercial partner; a relatively isolated location;
natural resources in widespread demand; and, paradoxically, smallness of
size-with a population of less than 14 million and a GDP of only $41.2 billion as of 1992, Chile threatened no one. The other main advantage
was political. Since the transition toward democracy, a strong consensus
emerged in favor of unilateral opening. This occurred because adjustment
costs were borne largely under the Pinochet dictatorship, because economic benefits were clearly apparent, and because of the urgent need
to maintain national harmony in the post-Pinochet environment. This
unanimity-or, at minimum, this de facto truce among opinion leaders
and policymakers-was essential for continuation of this strategy.9 As
things turned out, only Chile could reap full-fledged benefits from the
Chilean model.
Option 2: Joining with the North
A second strategy was to find a way to join with the North, or, more
specifically, with the United States. In the early 1990s Washington encouraged this prospect, perhaps more as a means of confronting economic rivals elsewhere in the world (especially Europe and Japan) rather
than of proclaiming solidarity with neighbors in the hemisphere, but the
resulting opportunity was nonetheless apparent. It therefore became conceivable, under these new conditions, for countries of Latin America to
align themselves with the United States on economic grounds.1° This alternative looked attractive because it assured some form of integration
with the world economy.
Affiliation with the North would naturally entail costs. Admission to
the club would carry a substantial price, probably consisting of multiple
elements:
• acceptance, at least in broad outline, of the economic tenets of the
“Washington consensus,”
• liberal opportunities for foreign investment to operate within the
local market,
• advantageous concessions for access to raw materials,
• low-cost labor for foreign investment, and
• in the political realm, loyal cooperation on foreign-policy issues.
Bidding could lead to competition and differences among the countries
of Latin America, rather than to solidarity. As a Central American legislator ruefully predicted: “We will each vie to become the fifth little tiger.”
Among all nations of the region, Mexico was in by far the best position to pursue this option. It had a number of built-in advantagesgeographical proximity, petroleum deposits, a relatively skilled work
force, and a large and growing market. The complexity of the bilateral
agenda, ranging from drugs to migration to foreign-policy questions,
added further incentives for Washington.
The negotiation of NAFTA, described in chapter 10, made it possible
for Mexico to affiliate itself with the dynamic core of world capitalism,
but as a conspicuously junior partner. (It goes without saying that this was not the same thing as “joining the First World.”) In exchange,
Mexico would have to abdicate many of its pretensions to independent
political leadership in Latin America or the Third World. And within the
bilateral arena, in instances of conflict arising from economic integration,
Mexico would face a still-enormous asymmetry in power resources. This
was perhaps a bitter trade-off, but it was the essence of the bargain.
Precisely for these reasons NAFTA was not, in fact, Mexico’s first
choice. Early in his term Carlos Salinas de Gortari attempted to pursue
the kind of “plurilateral” strategy pioneered by Chile, reaching out
through commerce and investment to multiple centers of world economic
power (and, at the same time, carefully tailoring economic relations with
the United States through a series of sector-by-sector agreements). But
this option proved not to be viable. Financiers in Europe were directing
their resources toward the rehabilitation and reincorporation of Eastern
Europe, as Salinas learned to his dismay at a memorable meeting in
Davos, Switzerland, in February 1990, and Japanese investors were proving reluctant to meddle in what they saw as a U.S. sphere of interest. Anxious to attract investment capital, Salinas then turned toward the United
States. NAFTA would guarantee future access to the U.S. market, ensure
the continuation of his economic policies, and, most importantly, send a
crucial signal to the business community. In one analyst’s summation, an
FTA with the United States would provide “an excellent chance to advertise to the world the business opportunities available in Mexico.”
At issue, in the mid-1990s, was whether this kind of institutionalized
alignment with the United States offered the most appropriate alternative
for other nations of the hemisphere. This was the central idea behind the
Enterprise for the Americas Initiative. Several countries-Chile, Argentina, Costa Rica, Colombia for a time-expressed immediate interest in
the possibility of free trade arrangements with the United States. These
overtures raised three practical questions: the assessment of likely costs
and benefits; the utility of NAFTA versus a separate bilateral compact; and
the likelihood of ratification by the United States.
The principal concern about costs and benefits focused on potential
trade diversion. This risk was substantial for countries with major commercial partners outside the hemisphere. Chile thus insisted that any FTA
involving the United States should not interfere with its commercial ties
to Europe and Japan. The lower the unilateral barriers to imports, of
course, the more plausible this approach; and the greater the prior concentration of trade with the United States, the less the room for trade diversion. For a country like Brazil, however, with extensive European connections and substantial import barriers, the prospects of trade diversion
were genuinely worrisome. For this reason policymakers in Brasilia displayed considerable reticence toward the idea of special trade agreements
with the United States.
A second concern focused on NAFTA itself. This was a highly specialized treaty, adorned with special provisions and festooned with supple mentary agreements on environmental and labor issues. While it met the
particular concerns of its three members, it seemed to offer an exceptionally cumbersome instrument for accession by other countries. What
Chile, Costa Rica, and Argentina really wanted were bilateral FTAs with
the United States, straightforward and simple accords that would certify
the signatories as appropriate and desirable sites for foreign investment
and guarantee access to the U.S. consumer market. NAFTA, with complex provisions ranging from rules of origin to environmental protection,
was both more and less than they wanted.
Third was uncertainty about the United States. Despite all the compelling reasons in favor of a free trade agreement with Mexico, the U.S.
Congress ratified NAFTA with a substantial degree of reluctance, and
only under intense political pressure from the White House. (President
Clinton won approval for NAFTA in the House of Representatives from
75 percent of Republicans, but only 40 percent of Democrats.) Subsequent crises throughout 1994-the January uprising in Chiapas, the
March assassination of presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio, and
the September slaying of PRI leader Jose Francisco Ruiz Massieu-led
many lawmakers to revise their views of Mexico. Concurrent events in
other parts of the region, including the late-summer crisis in Haiti, reinforced popular stereotypes about violence and instability throughout
Latin America. It was not at all clear, in other words, that accession to
NAFTA or bilateral government-to-government accords would receive
final approval from the U.S. Congress. In addition to other caveats, this
uncertainty posed strong disincentives for Latin America. For any national leader, the political costs of rejection by the U.S. legislature were
bound to be enormous: better to avoid the possibility than to have tried
and lost.
Even without such dire prospects, the stance of the U.S. government
was critical. As economist Nora Lustig wrote in early 1994:
The future of regional integration crucially depends on the position of the
United States. Is the U.S. going to follow suit with its earlier promises and
promote a free trade area in the hemisphere? Is it going to do it by extending
NAFTA or through bilateral agreements? Is NAFTA an open bloc? The answer is not clear. . . . Until the U.S. government defines its position and
strategy, the process of hemispheric integration will continue to be haphazard
and the prospects of lowering trade barriers between the regional integration
arrangements will be small.1 i
As in other historic eras, the range of options available to Latin America
was contingent on the performance of the United States.
And as of 1997-98, the failure of fast-track legislation brought a
cloud over the entire WHFTA enterprise. For many in Latin America, this
came as a great disappointment. Rio de Janeiro’s Jornal do Brasil explained: “The creation of the FTAA will now be carried out at a slower
pace, as Brazil and Argentina want. This means these countries’ markets will not open abruptly unless their economies recycle to become more
competitive and as long as the United States does not eliminate restrictions against some of our more competitive projects.” One of South
America’s most prominent political scientists also found a bright side to
the failure of fast track: “Instead of applying for NAFTA membership,
now the hemisphere’s 34 nations can compete on an egalitarian basis in
creating the FTAA.”
Option 3: Affirming Self-Reliance
A third alternative for Latin America entailed regional (or subregional)
economic integration. The region had a long history of efforts in this
area, of course, dating from formation of the Latin American Free Trade
Area (LAFTA) in 1960. Subregional projects also abounded, from the
Central American Common Market (successful in the 1960s) to the Andean Pact (1969) to the Caribbean Common Market (1972). Most of
these schemes sought to promote industrial development by expanding
markets and erecting protectionist barriers against outside competition.
Partly because the economies of member countries tended to be more
competitive than complementary, however, regional markets never became especially important: intraregional market shares peaked at 26 percent for the Central American Common Market, 14 percent within
LAFTA/ALADI, and merely 4.8 percent for the Andean Group.
In the aftermath of debt crisis and Cold War, Latin American leaders
sought to promote new forms of regional integration. Now the idea was
not to foster growth through market protection, but integration with the
global economy. As economist Sylvia Saborio described the integrationist
revival of the 1990s:
As part of the broader agenda of economic reforms, it is outward-oriented
rather than inward-looking. It seeks rather than shuns foreign investment as a
source of capital, technology, and distribution outlets. It relies primarily on
market signals and competitive forces rather than on policy interventions to
allocate resources. And, last but not least, it favors across-the-board, automatic measures over selective, piecemeal approaches to minimize backsliding
and special interest pressure.12
A principal goal of this movement, as Monica Hirst has recently observed,
was to “reduce [the possibility of] marginalization in the face of global
economic processes. . . .”13 Regional integration thus received a new
impetus, based not on the expansion of internal markets but on competitive connections with the world economy.
Construed as a program for all of Latin America, regional integration
harkened back to Simon Bolivar’s vision of unification: as a Central
American diplomat once said, “This would give us an opportunity to
achieve the Bolivarian dream of continental unity.” It would also constitute a plausible defensive measure against the potential formation of a North-North axis. Integration of Latin America would strengthen the regional hand in dealing with the North, especially with the United States,
and thus minimize the prospects of isolation and abandonment.
Yet continental unification seemed a long way off. Not every nation
sought immediate participation: it was to Chile’s advantage to pursue its
unilateral options, just as it would be Mexico’s choice (for different reasons) to enter into NAFTA. And not every country was prepared to follow a regional strategy: around 1990, for instance, Peru was widely regarded as an economic basket case. As Bolivar had himself discovered,
regional collaboration was more easily imagined than achieved.
Under these circumstances Latin American leaders focused not on
continental unification but on subregional integration-projects for economic cooperation among groups of Latin American countries, rather
than for the continent as a whole. During the 1990s this led to three distinct strategies: (1) subregional integration as a path toward broader integration, (2) subregional integration as a means of consolidating markets
and economies of scale, and (3) subregional schemes as a means of advancing geopolitical interests. These variations were not always mutually
exclusive.
Paths Toward Integration
As of the late 1990s, Latin America had created more than thirty collective or “minilateral” schemes for economic cooperation. Many were bilateral arrangements; some involved three or four countries. As such, they
reflected legitimate fears of confronting the post-Cold War world all
alone. There seemed to be safety in numbers.
The Central American Common Market was resuscitated, CARICOM
reinvigorated, and the Andean Pact reshaped and revitalized. The general
goal of these schemes was to avoid exclusion from the global economy. The
more specific goal was to use these schemes as means of gaining access to
larger and more important groupings, particularly NAFTA or FTAA. Successful forms of subregional integration could assist this process in two
ways: by demonstrating the capacity of member countries for submitting to
the disciplines of international accords, and by consolidating markets and
(perhaps) production processes. In tandem, it was thought, these features
could enhance the attractiveness of the group (and its members) in the eyes
of larger nations and/or blocs.
This was particularly clear in the case of the Andean Group. On its
own, the arrangement did not dramatically serve the economic interests
of its partners. But it strengthened the ability of members to negotiate
with other subregional blocs and to contemplate possible prospects for
the FTAA. As Miguel Rodriguez-Mendoza has written, such subregional
groupings “are seen as `paths’ toward larger integration efforts at both
the Latin American and hemispheric level.” 14
It is not always an easy process. There often exists a temptation for the more advanced or liberalized economies within a group to negotiate
alone, rather than together with other members of the group. One conspicuous case in point was Costa Rica. In the mid-1990s its leaders decided, for the moment, to negotiate with outside powers through the
Central American Common Market, but critics argued that the country
might well be able to proceed more effectively by operating on its own.
This was especially apparent with regard to NAFTA: Costa Rica might
well gain admission by itself, while the isthmus as a whole had almost no
chance at all.
MERCOSUR
A second type of subregional scheme involved the creation of markets
for their own sake. The most conspicuous case of this model was the
“Common Market of the South,” known from its Spanish acronym as
MERCOSUR. This effort began with a bilateral agreement between Argentina and Brazil, and soon included Uruguay and Paraguay. Under the
Treaty of Asuncion, reached in March 1991, the four member countries
committed themselves to construct by December 1994 a customs union,
with a common external tariff (CET), and to move toward a full-fledged
common market in subsequent years. There were setbacks-partners resisted the CET, and both Argentina and Brazil raised some tariffs in response to the Mexican “tequila effect” and the 1997 Asian crisis. In view of
long-standing rivalries among its members, however, MERCOSUR was a
truly remarkable development. Its partner countries comprised nearly onehalf of Latin America’s gross domestic product, more than 40 percent of its
total population, and about one-third of its foreign trade.
Internal trade within MERCOSUR expanded at impressive rates,
climbing from $4.1 billion in 1990 to $17.0 billion in 1996. During the
same period intra-MERCOSUR trade as a share of total exports increased
from 11.1 percent in 1991 to 22.7 percent in 1996 (and a projected 24.7
percent by 1997). By 1995 MERCOSUR had a combined GDP of $714
billion, making it the world’s fourth-largest integrated market-after
NAFTA, the European Union, and Japan.
Beyond its economic agenda, MERCOSUR had clear political goals:
the consolidation of democracy and the maintenance of peace throughout
the Southern Cone. At the time that MERCOSUR was taking shape,
agreements were reached in the nuclear field between Argentina and
Brazil, countries that shared significant nuclear capacity as well as historic
rivalry. And at a summit gathering in 1992, the presidents agreed to
stipulate that “an indispensable assumption for the existence and development of MERCOSUR is that democratic institutions are in force.”15 In
practical terms MERCOSUR provided civilian democrats throughout the
subregion with regular opportunities for consultation and mutual support, thus offsetting the long-established conclaves for chieftains of the
armed forces.
Unlike NAFTA, MERCOSUR developed a complex structure of
decision-making institutions. A Common Market Group, coordinated by
the foreign ministries, constituted the executive organ. General policy was
set by a Council of the Common Market, under the foreign and economy
ministers, with biannual meetings attended by the four presidents. There
was also a Joint Parliamentary Commission drawn from members of the
respective national parliaments. Even so, MERCOSUR remained an intergovernmental accord-one that revolved around the bilateral axis between Argentina and Brazil. There was no supranational bureaucracy, and
presidential summits played a key role in the decision-making process. As
Monica Hirst has observed, presidential participation was so crucial that it
became “more a project of governments than of states.” And as a result,
decisions were made by consensus.
From the start MERCOSUR’s designers saw it as a dynamic institution, one that would evolve rapidly over time and also crystallize relations with economies of the North. Once Bush announced the EAI,
MERCOSUR became a potential instrument for collective bargaining: as
a Brazilian observer recalled, “there was the perception that it would be
interesting to concentrate efforts to negotiate en bloc.” It also became a
powerful instrument for collective bargaining with the European Union.
Contradictory tendencies nonetheless emerged: Argentina for some time
expressed eagerness to negotiate its own FTA with the United States
(and/or seek membership within NAFTA), an act that would have led to
the dismantling of MERCOSUR. Within all such subregional groupings,
tradeoffs between unilateral initiative and multilateral solidarity have presented individual countries with agonizing policy dilemmas.
Hubs and Spokes
Inevitably, the plethora of integrationist agreements in the 1990s led to
“hub-and-spoke” formations. Under this system a central country, or
“hub,” enjoys special preference in the market of each “spoke” country
under a series of separate bilateral agreements. The spokes, however, do
not have preferential access to each other’s markets; even worse, they
have to compete among themselves for preferences within the hub market. What is good for the hub is not always good for the spokes.
There were initial fears that the United States was intent upon the
formation of a hemispheric hub-and-spoke system with itself at the center.
It was this concern, in fact, that prompted a reluctant Canadian government to join the U.S.-Mexican negotiations over what would eventually
become NAFTA. Rather than become one of two competitive spokes in a
North American market, it was preferable for Ottawa to take full part in
the creation of a trilateral arrangement.
Efforts to avoid a U.S.-centric system did not, however, prevent
Latin American countries from attempting to create their own hub-andspoke arrangements. There are economic and, especially, political advan tages in the hub position. By virtue of size and/or strategic location, only
three nations had realistic opportunities to pursue this strategy: Chile,
Mexico, and Brazil.
Starting in the early 1990s, Chile supplanted its pattern of unilateral
liberalization with a selective network of bilateral FTAs. In 1991 the
Aylwin administration reached an agreement with Mexico, for the purpose of establishing an FTA by January 1996. In 1993 the government
forged compacts with Colombia, for an operational FTA by 1994, and
with Venezuela, for the realization of free trade by 1999. Chile also concluded less ambitious agreements with Argentina, Bolivia, Canada, Costa
Rica, Ecuador, and Uruguay. The goals of these negotiations were manifold: to open new markets, to assure supplies of critical products (such as
petroleum), and to establish Chile’s position as a continental leader. As
Patricio Meller explained:
Given the widespread proliferation of preferential trade agreements, the first
best strategy for improving market exports for domestic exports is to become
a member of those agreements. It is usually said that the first best option for
a small country is a multilateral free-trade world. However, a better option
would be to enjoy preferential access, so that the small country can play the
“hub and spokes game” in which Chile would be the center and its trading
partners the spokes. By taking advantage of its good economic and political
image, this is precisely what the recent Chilean trade strategy has intended.16
Moreover, membership in FTAs would provide Chile with a small measure of protection from the vagaries of an uncertain world, especially at a
time when the Uruguay Round of GATT negotiations remained much in
doubt.
This headlong pursuit of FTAs led to problems. As Meller again observed: “the Chilean government in the 1990s was willing to sign an FTA
with all trading blocs; there existed the illusion that every trade agreement was keenly interested in incorporating Chile as a member. . . .
Observers now say there was an overdose of wishful thinking about
Chile’s acceptance into FTAs, and the extreme optimism generated frustrations. . . .”17 As in so many walks of life, moderation appeared to be a
virtue.
In contrast to Chile’s approach, the Mexican strategy was to establish
itself as the central interlocutor between the United States and Latin
America. This could be welcome to Washington, given its long and troubled history of relations with Latin America; it could also provide considerable leverage for Mexico, and compensate for Mexico’s loss of independence in other areas of foreign policy. As a founding member of NAFTA,
Mexico could exercise a veto over applications for admission. This alone
represented a substantial source of hemispheric influence.
Mexico thus began pursuing a series of subregional negotiations: the
bilateral pact with Chile (1991), a bilateral pact with Costa Rica (1991),
pacts with other countries of Central America (1992 ),18 a trilateral ar rangement with Venezuela and Colombia (1993) to create the Grupo de
los Tres, and a bilateral accord with Bolivia (1994). The resulting pattern
created a good deal of confusion, but their political meaning was clear: as
long as NAFTA expansion remained the preferred route toward WHFTA,
any road to hemispheric integration (and the U.S. market) would have to
go through Mexico. By the same token, hemisphere-wide negotiations
for FTAA would tend to diminish the Mexican role. (In fact, all three
members of NAFTA-even the United States-stood to have less bargaining power in FTAA negotiations than they would have on NAFTA
accessions.)
Brazil took a still different tack, attempting to affirm its position as a
subregional hegemon rather than as a conduit to the United States. Already the dominant country within MERCOSUR, Brazil officially
launched in April 1994 its proposal for a South American Free Trade Area
or SAFTA (Area de Libre Comercio Sudamericana, ALCSA). The goal of
SAFTA was to create a free trade zone for “substantially all trade” within
the continent (in GATTspeak)-that is, on all products except those
touching on “sensitive” national interests. This meant about 80 percent of intraregional trade. SAFTA would accomplish this target largely
through a linear, automatic, and progressive schedule of liberalization
over the ten-year period from 1995 to 2005. It would remove nontariff as
well as tariff barriers, though it would deal only with goods and not with
labor or services. Public intentions behind SAFTA were manifold: to capitalize on the experience of MERCOSUR, to reach out to neighboring
countries (and groups), and to accumulate negotiating power for dealing
with broader integration schemes in the Americas.
There was a political purpose as well. SAFTA would confirm Brazil’s
historic claim to be a continental hegemony, its long-standing sense of
manifest destiny. By itself, without any formal link to North America or
the United States, SAFTA would reflect and ratify regional domination by
Brazil. Alternatively, during the course of any ensuing negotiations with
the North, Brazil would become the principal intermediary between the
continent and the United States. Either way, SAFTA would lead to the
strengthening of Brazil’s international position. Brazil would become
the hub of South America.
SAFTA had significant prospects for success. Apparently frustrated by
the slowness of NAFTA negotiations, Chile became an “associate member” of MERCOSUR in mid-1996: this satisfied Brazilian aspirations for
expansion, as well as Chile’s reluctance to take part in the CET. Bolivia
followed suit shortly thereafter. As of 1998, MERCOSUR was also holding active negotiations with the Andean Group (now Community). Piece
by piece, SAFTA seemed to be falling into place.
At least temporarily, this momentum came to a screeching halt in
January 1999. Buffeted by international financial markets, Brazil had
managed to negotiate a $41.5 billion package with the International
Monetary Fund the previous November in order to curtail inflation, up hold exchange rates, and recapture the confidence of investors. Only two
months later, newly reelected President Fernando Henrique Cardoso was
forced to announce that the Brazil real would float freely because the
government could no longer afford to intervene in international currency
markets (foreign reserves having dwindled from $75 billion to $30 billion
in merely five months). The real promptly lost 40 percent of its value in
relation to the dollar. This was a devastating turn of events, since exchange-rate stability had provided the key to an otherwise successful battle against inflation and to Cardoso’s reelection. Behind this failure was
the president’s inability to maneuver IMF-required reforms past vested
interests and thus reduce a budget deficit amounting to 8 percent of
GDP. Support of the real became particularly implausible after Itamar
Franco, a political rival and the governor of Minas Geris, announced his
refusal to continue payment on state debt due to the federal government.
By the end of the month President Cardoso succeeded in getting some of
his reforms through a jittery Congress, but by that time much of the
damage was done. With employment running at its highest level in fifteen
years, Brazilians were holding Cardoso personally responsible for promising to defend the real and then failing to do so, and his approval rating
dropped to merely 22 percent (compared with 56 percent two years before). Under these circumstances Brazil was forced to look inward, to put
its economic house in order and to recover its sense of political purpose,
rather than to concentrate on expanding its field of subregional influence.
SAFTA would take a back seat for a while.
Even so, it remained clear that FTAA or any other form of WHFTA
would have to include and accommodate Brazil, which was taking a firm
and singular stand on negotiating strategies. While U.S. delegations (in
general) wanted to accelerate agreements, Brazil called for caution and
care; whereas Washington proclaimed that FTAA should go well beyond
global WTO standards, Brazil insisted that it should merely meet WTO
guidelines; and though Washington wanted to achieve market openings
(through reduction of tariffs and NTBs) early in the FTAA negotiations,
Brazil sought to postpone consideration of such matters. Beneath these
political expressions of discord were divergences in national interests and
aspirations. But FTAA simply could not function without Brazil, so it
would be essential for negotiators from Washington and Brasilia to find
some means of reconciling these differences. In tacit recognition of this
fact, the Santiago summit stipulated that Brazil and the United States
should jointly chair final stages of the FTAA process during the years
2003-05.
Option 4: Seeking Extrahemispheric Partnerships
Around 1990 it appeared that Latin America would have no chance of
striking major deals with extrahemispheric powers and thus offsetting the
hegemonic position of the United States. By the middle of the decade, however, regional leaders were making remarkable efforts to develop economic (and political) ties to outside powers. In differing degrees, they
courted two possible allies: the European Union and the Asia-Pacific region, especially Japan. (Both these objects of affection, it might be noted,
were advanced industrial regions or countries. In a sense this quest for extrahemispheric partnership represented an attempt to extend and consolidate connections with the North.)
The European Campaign
Efforts to engage European powers in Latin America had a long historical
tradition. In 1974, Europe made a modest reappearance in the Americas
with the initiation of biennial meetings of parliamentarians. In 1984
Europe discreetly opposed the Reagan administration’s policy in Central America through the San Jose dialogue. Starting in 1990, the European Community (now Union) developed steady interaction with the Rio
Group.
There were significant economic ties as well. The European Union
was taking in nearly 20 percent of Latin American exports. It was the region’s second-leading source of direct foreign investment (during the
1980s, in fact, Latin America received a larger share of net FDI from Europe than from the United States). Europe was also the largest source of
economic aid for Latin America: in 1993 the combined total for the EU
and member states accounted for 61.5 percent of total assistance to the
region, far ahead of Japan and the United States. By 1996 the Union’s aid
commitment was nearly 50 percent greater than in 1991.
In view of these connections, some European analysts expressed apprehension about U.S. designs on Latin America-as expressed in the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative, NAFTA, and the FTAA proposal. One
EU think tank declaimed such developments as thinly disguised efforts to
dress the Monroe Doctrine in new garb. Off the record, EU officials were
wont to denounce the prospect of “Anglo America,” while the Instituto
de Relaciones Europeo-Latinoamericanas (IRELA) affirmed that “Europe does not intend to assume a passive role in the face of western hemisphere trade integration. The EU has significant economic incentives to
expand its presence in Latin America, which is a particularly dynamic market for European goods.” And if the FTAA process were to continue,
IRELA maintained, “EU-US economic rivalry in Latin America is likely
to become increasingly explicit.”
On a rhetorical level, these economic ties were often reinforced by
reference to common historic and cultural linkages. In the words of one
EU document:
Latin America’s cultural identity is heavily imbued with the values that
shaped Europe’s character and history. Five centuries of uninterrupted relations between the two regions have caused European ideals to permeate to
the core of Latin American societies, which have in turn exercised an irre sistible pull on the old continent. Constitutions, legal principles and ideas of
liberty and democracy found across Latin America are drawn from the body
of philosophical and legal concepts that are Europe’s heritage.
This seemed like a generous assessment, given complex legacies of conquest and imperialism, but it served to make the point: Europe and Latin
America had much in common, including rivalry with (or resentment of)
the United States.
Since joining the European Community (EC) in 1986, Spain took
the lead in promoting strong ties with Latin America. Spanish companies
poured billions of dollars into Latin America, purchasing telephone companies, banks, hotels, and airlines in such countries as Argentina, Chile,
Mexico, Peru, Venezuela, and Cuba. Spanish banks invested at least $4
billion from 1992 through 1997, while Telefonica acquired about $5 billion in assets in Latin America. About 60 percent of Spanish FDI was
heading for Latin America. The government organized state visits to key
countries by King Juan Carlos I, intensified cultural exchanges, and, since
1991, sponsored an annual Ibero-American Summit. Television Espanola
was carried on cable systems almost everywhere, and magazines like
Hola! and Interviti were widely circulated. In Spanish circles, the overall
policy came to be known as the creation of “an Ibero-American space.”
Spain’s political clout in Latin America was greatly enhanced by its integration with Europe, of course, and expanding ties with Latin America
could also bolster Spain’s position within the EU. “We will be much
stronger in Europe as long as we grow in America, where we have a natural advantage,” said Antonio de Oyarzabal, Spanish ambassador to the
United States. Largely at Spanish insistence, the EU established embassies
in virtually every Latin American capital. While Spain wanted to maintain
its position as the critical link between the EU and Latin America-as a
hub between two large regional spokes-Latin American leaders, for their
part, preferred to deal directly with the EU as a whole. They had little desire to leave their commercial links-and access to capital-in the hands
of one of the EU’s junior members.
Promoting Rapprochement
In October 1994 the European Council adopted a general policy proposal for a new partnership with Latin America. In December 1995 EU
negotiators signed a framework agreement with MERCOSUR. Its immediate purpose was to promote close relations in political, economic, commercial, industrial, scientific, technological, institutional, and cultural
fields. It sought to strengthen democracy and respect for human rights,
and called for regular political dialogue as well as economic cooperation.
The eventual goal was “to pave the way for an Interregional Association
in the medium term.”
The framework agreement prompted extensive follow-up. In April
1997 foreign ministers of the EU and MERCOSUR states met to review the December 1995 accord. An EU/Latin American summit meeting, an
event that could surpass the Miami and Santiago gatherings in splendor
and grandeur, was scheduled for mid-1999. But beyond all the talk, there
was not much material progress. As one knowledgeable analyst observed
in 1998, “it is not at all clear where this will lead.” One critical issue
would be opening the European market to agricultural goods from Latin
America, as Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso bluntly observed during a visit to London in December 1997.
EU negotiators also started discussions with individual Latin American countries. In June 1996 the Union reached a framework agreement
with Chile, which was just about to become an associate member of
MERCOSUR. Around that same time the EU began talks with Mexico,
which had managed to emerge from the 1994-95 peso crisis as a plausible
partner-partly because of its market, partly because of its access to the
United States. And from the Mexican standpoint, an EU accord offered a
way to reduce dependency on the United States (apparently increasing
under NAFTA). As Francisco Gil Villegas explained, the peso crisis intensified official interest in “the European option”:
Today the European Union provides the best alternative for Mexico to offset
its excessive concentration of economic relations with the United States.
When officials in the Foreign Ministry talk about a project of “diversification” for Mexican foreign policy, they are thinking fundamentally about Europe, and only then about Japan or Latin America.
In turn, NAFTA provided Mexico with a valuable asset for EU negotiations:
Mexico belongs to Latin America but is also part of North America, and is integrated into the grand regional pact that is NAFTA, something that is
clearly different from any of Latin America’s regional economic agreements.
The special treatment that Mexico is receiving from the bosom of the EU is
justified by the country’s sui generis location. . . . To the suggestion that
Mexico should align itself with other Latin American countries in order to
negotiate jointly with the EU, the invariable reply should be that Mexico’s
own regional bloc is North America, not MERCOSUR or the Andean Pact.
Geopolitics is destiny, and for once Mexico does not deserve to be pitied because of its proximity to the United States.
In late 1997 Mexico and the EU announced agreements for economic
partnership, political cooperation, and cultural exchange, much along the
lines of the MERCOSUR accords. Exulted Mexican foreign minister Jose
Angel Gurria: “With this agreement we initiate a new and ambitious relationship with the European Union. . . Europe is today a high priority for
our foreign policy.” This offered the prospect for diversification of international ties and for an alliance, as well, with a “trustworthy partner” in confronting the United States. The allusion, quite clearly, was to the HelmsBurton law, which Mexico and the EU both condemned. U.S. policy
toward Cuba was thus encouraging Mexican ties with Europe.
The agreements required ratification by both the Mexican Congress
and the European Parliament, however, and the outcome of ensuing discussions initially remained far from certain. Citing the EU’s “democratic
clause,” human-rights groups in Europe protested Mexico’s handling of
its Chiapas crisis and mounted a public campaign against the accords. In
April-May 1998 both the Mexican Senate and the European Parliament
eventually gave their approval, though it remained unclear where the ensuing negotiations might lead. The optimal result, in the Mexican view,
would probably be a formal free-trade agreement. For reasons explained
below, the Europeans would probably settle for a good deal less.
The Asia Card
In anticipation of the much-touted “Pacific century,” Latin American
leaders turned toward Asia as well. This was not only the world’s most dynamic region through the early 1990s; with its development model, it
also appeared to hold the keys to economic success. The “Asia card” became a potential trump for Latin America.
One way to pursue this avenue was through bilateral ties-principally
with Japan, thought to provide a useful counterweight to the United
States, and to a lesser extent with China. Conspicuous here were the efforts
of Peru, which unleashed “Fujimori fever” throughout Japan with the
1990 election of a president of Japanese descent, and of Brazil, which
hosts the world’s largest Japanese emigre community. Mexico also sought
close links with Japan. President Ernesto Zedillo and Prime Minister
Ryutaro Hashimoto exchanged state visits in 1996-97-and in May 1997,
after a three-and-a-half year hiatus (due to political and economic instability in Mexico), the two countries resumed bilateral private-sector talks.
The other mechanism for courting the Asia-Pacific was APEC, the
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum-which represented 40 percent
of the world’s population, 55 percent of its wealth, and 46 percent of all
world trade. APEC was an unusual institution, preferring to work through
consensus rather than traditional diplomatic agreements. Under pressure
from the United States, to be sure, the organization agreed to establish an
FTA by the year 2020, but in general it evinced a loose form of association
that relies on unilateral cooperation rather than political coercion.
In principle, APEC adhered to the high-minded (if oxymoronic) idea
of “open regionalism”-a pattern of regional integration that would be
outward-oriented, not inward-looking, designed to achieve integration
with the world economy rather than protection from it. As construed in
Latin America, open regionalism implied two understandings: average external tariffs (and NTBs) by any member must not be elevated against
non-FTA countries, and opportunities for accession by nonmembers
should be clearly available. As practiced by APEC, however, open regionalism referred mainly to voluntary agreements by member countries to
liberalize trade in concert, according to a common timetable.
Three Latin American countries gained accession to APEC. First was
Mexico in 1993, largely under the shelter of NAFTA. Second was Chile,
which had for some time aspired to establish connections with the Pacific
Rim. During the 1980s, in fact, the Pinochet regime began to resuscitate
nineteenth-century notions about the country’s “manifest destiny” in the
Pacific-while also searching for economic partners who would not condemn the regime for human-rights abuse. And soon after its democratic
transition, Chile launched a concerted diplomatic initiative toward APEC
membership. Ebullient over the country’s full and formal incorporation
in November 1994, analysts predicted that this triumph would “open
great opportunities for the continued expansion of Chile’s international
economic relations in the Asia-Pacific area . . .” Accession to APEC thus
crowned “the most advanced effort by any Latin American country” to
forge meaningful links with the Pacific Rim.19
Third was Peru, which, like Chile, mounted a persistent diplomatic
campaign. At an early stage Malaysia-the largest importer of Peruvian
tin-expressed support on the ground that APEC “should not become an
exclusive club restricted to certain countries only. Pacific countries are also
entitled to become members, regardless of their economic status. For this
reason, Malaysia supports and nominates Peru as a new member.” And as
the foreign minister added, “Malaysia and Peru share the view that nontrade issues, such as labor relations, human rights, and the environment,
must not become an obstacle to trade relations among countries grouped
in the WTO. These nontrade issues can be discussed at other forums.”
Probably more crucial was the role of Japan-which was eager to express
gratitude for Peru’s support of Tokyo’s bid to gain permanent membership
in the UN Security Council (and, it is said, for Fujimori’s decisive resolution of the Japanese hostage crisis of 1996-97). So Peru received an invitation to join along with Vietnam and Russia in November 1997, just as
APEC announced a ten-year moratorium on new memberships.
Although these APEC accessions represented genuine diplomatic triumphs, it was not entirely clear what benefits would result. Precisely because APEC was such a loose organization, Latin Americans did not
obtain binding commitments from other members. Nor did it offer an
unambiguous means of counteracting U.S. hegemony, since the United
States was APEC’s most powerful member. Finally, the Asian crisis of
1997-98 reduced the practical and symbolic value of association with
APEC. Asia no longer looked like the answer to Latin America’s development problems; indeed, the crisis itself threatened to have negative fallout
for countries of Latin America.
The Problem of Asymmetrical Significance
There was every reason for nations of Latin America-such as Mexico,
Chile, and MERCOSUR members-to seek close ties with extrahemispheric powers in Europe and the Asia-Pacific. Since the mid-1990s Mexico had been stressing the importance of “diversification” in economic and diplomatic relations. Seeing itself as a “global trader,” with
commerce all over the world, Brazil also aspired to consolidate links with
Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. To emphasize the point, President
Fernando Henrique Cardoso insisted that Europe was “central” to Brazil
and, by implication, to the rest of South America.
The question was whether Latin America’s would-be partners shared
this same conviction. How important was Latin America for Europe and
Asia?
The sad truth was: not very. This condition of “asymmetrical significance” had serious consequences. It meant that Latin America would give
high priority to extrahemispheric negotiations, but the EU and Japan
would give them much less time, attention, and energy. Latin America
was likely to seek binding and long-term agreements; the EU and Japan
would be inclined to settle for vague declarations of principle. Above all,
the EU and Japan would not want to undertake any Latin American
agreements that might jeopardize larger interests in other parts of the
world; in particular, they would not want to antagonize the United
States. Under such circumstances, the potential for miscommunication
and disenchantment in discussions between Latin America and the EU or
Japan became extremely high.
Trade indicators offered one insight into the extent of this asymmetry. As of the mid-1990s, the world’s leading economic entities-the
United States, the European Union, and Japan-were trading more with
advanced industrial countries than with developing areas. Among the developing countries, only those of Asia had significant trade relations with
a major partner-principally Japan. The United States conducted 15 percent to 18 percent of its trade with Latin America, but more than half of
that was with Mexico alone. The European Union carried on barely 2
percent of its total trade with Latin America-less than 5 percent as a proportion of external trade (discounting internal trade within the EU).20
Japan did only 3 percent to 4 percent of all its trade with Latin America
(Table A17). The EU and Asia might be important to Latin America,
in other words, but Latin America was not very important to Asia or
the EU.
Two-way trade flows emphasize this point. In 1996 Brazil had $26.3
billion in trade with the EU-which represented 25 percent of Brazil’s
total trade, but less than 1 percent of all EU trade (and less than 2 percent
of the EU’s external trade). MERCOSUR showed a similar profile: 22.4
percent of its trade was with Europe, which represented only 2.4 percent
of the EU’s external trade. Similarly, Chile conducted more than 10 percent of its trade with Japan-which amounted to less than 0.5 percent of
all Japanese trade. Throughout the Americas, in fact, the United States
continued to overshadow all extrahemispheric traders: it was somewhat
less present in MERCOSUR than was the EU as a whole, but far more
significant than any single country (European or otherwise).
Investment data confirmed this general picture. Despite expansion in
the 1990s, Latin American holdings represented modest proportions of
total FDI for prominent investor countries. The major economic centers
tended to circulate funds among themselves: to put it more precisely, the
United States and Europe were investing in one another, while Japan was
investing in both (but twice as much in the United States as in Europe).
Latin America’s share of accumulated Japanese overseas FDI declined from
14.8 percent in 1980 to 11.9 percent in 1995, as Japanese investors became increasingly attracted to Europe and the United States.21 Latin
America increased its share of European FDI from 6.4 percent in 1987-88
to 11.7 percent in 1992-93, nearly a doubling of the proportion-but still
not to very high levels, barely more than the percentage of European investments in Asia. Meanwhile Latin America held its ground as a site for
U.S. investment, with 15.2 percent of the U.S. total as of 1980 and 15.6
percent in 1995. The region was retaining its position relative to the
United States; losing its (already modest) importance to Japan; and advancing as an investment site for Europe, but within strict limits (Table
A18). Despite its efforts and its aspirations, Latin America was not a major
economic partner for Japan or the EU.
The problem of asymmetrical significance was thus pervasive and profound. The outside world might well be important to Latin America, but
Latin America was not so important to the outside world (i.e., to the EU,
Japan, or China as of the 1990s). As The Economist pithily observed about
EU-MERCOSUR relations: “The trouble is that Europe is not, in fact,
central to Latin Americans, and still less so-far less so-are they to it.
Uncle Sam has not for years been the only, all-powerful outside figure
that counted to them, as myth had it. But he is still number one.”
The prognostication therefore had to be: Latin America would not
get very far in its attempts to cultivate close and meaningful ties to extrahemispheric powers. The effort made consummate sense from the standpoint of Latin America, but Europe and Asia were not likely to respond in
kind. There would be a good deal of talk, invocations of cultural heritage,
and symbolic gesticulation. Documents would undoubtedly be signed
amid great ceremonial fanfare, but they were likely to be more cosmetic
than substantial. Unfortunately, the conditions for serious commitment
did not appear to exist.
Events in the late 1990s cast an additional pall upon these efforts.
After years of optimistic anticipation, neither of Latin America’s putative
allies was looking especially dynamic: Asia fell victim to economic crisis
in 1997-98, while Europe was struggling through modest growth and
double-digit unemployment. The Russian meltdown of 1998 posed further trouble for the EU and was bound to absorb the Union’s attention,
energy, and capital. These developments raised fundamental doubts about
the ultimate plausibility of Latin America’s extrahemispheric strategy.
From one perspective the global distribution of economic power, long regarded as multipolar, could indeed be on the way to becoming unipolar, with the United States alone at the top. From another perspective, of
course, ebbs and flows in Europe and Asia would not alter long-term
power equations. But in the short to medium term, they diminished enthusiasm for extrahemispheric partnerships.
Options in Review
It might appear that optimistic predictions about the post-Cold War environment were coming true: Latin America had a broad menu of strategic
options, and regional leaders could select from a variety of means to connect their countries with the global economy. Choices included unilateral
liberalization for an open, plurilateral trade policy; formal alignment with
the United States; subregional integration, a general approach with various subtypes; and partnerships with major powers outside the hemisphere. There was much that Latin America could do about its position in
the world, one might conclude, and much was being done.
To illustrate the point, Table 3 sets out these different strategies, their
application by specific countries, and (on a highly impressionistic basis)
their results as of early 1999. The table shows, for instance, that Chile
employed a number of approaches, moving from unilateral liberalization
in the 1970s and 1980s to the pursuit of accession to NAFTA, associate
membership in MERCOSUR, formation of subregional hub-and-spoke
arrangements, and full membership in APEC (plus negotiations with the
EU). Mexico opted for alignment with the United States, through
NAFTA, and then attempted to diversify its economic and political rela tions through membership in APEC and discussions with the EU. Brazil
focused its initial attention on the consolidation of MERCOSUR, later
supplemented by the drive toward SAFTA (with Brazil as the hub) and
negotiations with the EU. Argentina and Colombia both entertained
thoughts of accession to NAFTA until 1994 or so, then moved in differing directions: Argentina turned toward MERCOSUR and the
EU-MERCOSUR negotiations, while Colombia helped rejuvenate the
Andean Community as a means for collective bargaining with other blocs.
During the 1990s Colombia and Peru also made strides toward unilateral
liberalization. Peru in the meantime merged its reentry into the Andean
Group with trans-Pacific aspirations, as revealed by President Fujimori’s
special attachment to Japan and the successful campaign to join APEC.
Venezuela adopted only one broad strategy, subregional integration as a
means of gaining access to larger groups, although petroleum provided
that nation with a potentially effective resource for negotiation on its
own. Caribbean countries clamored for special treatment under NAFTA
and bolstered their collective capacity through both CARICOM and the
Association of Caribbean States. Similarly, Central America attempted to
strengthen its hand through subregional integration, while Costa Rica, always a special case, made progress on its own through unilateral liberalization and, for a time, had hopes of entering NAFTA.
Table 3. Strategic Options and Preliminary Outcomes: Countries and
Regions of Latin America
So the menu looked fairly rich. Yet there were fundamental problems.
One was that opportunities were not evenly distributed across Latin
America. In theory, any country of the region (or the world) could apply
any or all of these strategies. In practice, the range of feasible choice was
restricted by key structural factors-geographic location, natural resources, demographic size, and level of development. The ability to capitalize on opportunities was further determined by political will. Only
Chile and to a lesser extent Colombia, Peru, and Costa Rica had the economic and political resources to make effective use of unilateral liberalization as the foundation for a long-term strategy. (Other countries opened
their economies, but mainly as a prelude to or as part of some other option.) Only Mexico, with its size and location, managed to join with the
United States through NAFTA. Only MERCOSUR established itself as
an autonomous and more or less viable bloc; and only Brazil, with its size
and strength, could entertain hopes of becoming a subregional hegemon.
Only MERCOSUR, Chile, and Mexico attracted enough interest from
the EU to initiate trade negotiations. Only Chile, Mexico, and Peruwith their special links to Asia-gained membership in APEC. Options
were not available in the same degree to everyone. While a few countries
in the region managed to pursue a variety of strategies, most had a slim
range of choice.
An extreme case in point, Cuba was facing a bleak horizon. The ideological thrust of the 1959 revolution had lost appeal in the Americas. The
collapse of the Soviet Union eliminated Cuba’s principal source of international support and subsidies. Perpetuation of the U.S. embargo, re cently intensified by Helms-Burton legislation, was only tightening the
economic stranglehold. Faced by these pressures, Fidel Castro pursued
two main options: cultivation of extrahemispheric support, especially
from Europe, through expanding trade and investment opportunities;
and subregional integration, most notably through the Association of
Caribbean States (which is a political organization, not an economic integration scheme). A visit by Pope John Paul II in January 1998 conferred
legitimacy upon the embattled regime-it is time, said the pontiff, “for
the world to open to Cuba, and Cuba to open to the world”-and Castro
followed up with a whirlwind tour of the English-speaking Caribbean (including Grenada, where he made amends with postinvasion leadership).
Such stratagems helped to shore up the Castro government, but could
not promise long-term solutions to the island’s economic plight.
Missing: Option 5?
One additional option for Latin America was most conspicuous by absence: concerted participation at the global level. Clearly, nations of the
region would benefit from a strong international regime for trade and finance. This would foster worldwide liberalization, guarantee access to
markets and capital, and level the economic playing field: strong and weak
countries would have to abide by uniform rules. To enhance such
prospects, the most effective strategy for Latin America would be to vote
as a uniform bloc in key international organizations (as it formerly did in
the UN). This would require coordination, consultation, and commitment. It would hark back to traditional notions of continental solidarity
and, of course, the much-invoked myth of the “Bolivarian dream.”
Yet this strategy appeared to have little support in the 1990s. It encountered classic problems of collective action. There were too many
incentives for too many countries to pursue their own alternatives, and
this impeded coordination. From one perspective, the available menu of
policy options offered Latin American countries a tempting array of possibilities; from another perspective, it led to fragmentation and dispersion
of effort. Option 5 remained merely a hypothesis, a missing item in the
region’s strategic inventory.
Despite the range of policies in place, the prospects for success did
not seem very good. Andean nations were using subregional integration as a means of connecting with larger blocs, perhaps starting with
MERCOSUR, but the outcome was not yet clear; Caribbean countries
and Central America made little headway in their attempts to deal with
NAFTA. MERCOSUR was plainly a success, for its members and presumably for its associates, and Brazil seemed to be forging this into an effective hub-and-spoke arrangement for South America. But as for extrahemispheric partnerships, it remained to be seen what Chile and Mexico
and Peru would actually gain from APEC membership. It also remained
to be seen what would emerge from negotiations between Europe and Chile, Mexico, and MERCOSUR-with the outcome much in doubt. In
other words, Latin American leaders were making creative and extensive
use of available policy options, but most of these options had limited chances
for success.
Outlooks and Attitudes: Accommodation
and Resistance
The vagaries and complexities of the post-Cold War world prompted intense intellectual and attitudinal ferment throughout Latin America. The
1990s became a time for rethinking orthodox wisdom, reassessing longheld assumptions, discarding outmoded shibboleths. As leaders and citizens searched for new ideas and solutions, the very meanings of standard
political categories-left, right, center-were coming into question. Rearrangements of power in the global and hemispheric arena not only
altered the terms of diplomatic and commercial intercourse, they revised perceptions and outlooks as well, altering “cognitive maps” that
Latin Americans had constructed about their world, their continent, and
themselves.
Perhaps the most conspicuous change was a sharp transformation of
other nations’ views of the United States. In the wake of the Cold War,
peoples of Latin America adopted and expressed increasingly favorable
opinions about their northern neighbor. The implosion of the Soviet
Union and the collapse of socialist ideology appeared, for many, to confirm
the legitimacy (or at least the inevitability) of U.S. leadership throughout
the hemisphere. In this new context, the United States was not so much a
resented Colossus of the North; it was a triumphant major power. Intimacy
with U.S. presidents, rather than anti-imperialist rhetoric, suddenly became a positive commodity in Latin American politics.
This shift was somewhat puzzling. It reflected, in part, increasing levels of societal interdependence-from trade and migration to popular
film, music, and sports. It reflected a pragmatic recognition of global realities, and it may have represented, at least for some, the only available alternative. One means of accommodating the reassertion of U.S. hegemony was to re-label it, to give it a new name and thereby diminish its
threatening quality. The power of the United States thus came to represent not a source of danger, as it had for so long, but of hope and opportunity. There was no other way for many Latin Americans to make sense
of the post-Cold War world.
Changing views of the United States went hand-in-hand with relaxation of traditional nationalism. Throughout Latin America, ruling elites
were busily engaged in the redefinition (or dismissal) of the classical nationalism that sought to uphold historic principles of sovereignty and selfdetermination. In pragmatic and flexible fashion, they were tending to
define national interests in terms of economic opportunity, not political
principle, and they seemed fully prepared to surrender portions of sover eignty in the interests of regional integration. This transformation was
probably more thorough among ruling elites than among the citizenry as
a whole. And though it represented a remarkable change, its significance
should not be overestimated: temporarily silenced in the early 1990s,
voices of nationalism would make themselves heard once again as the century drew to a close.
In any event, softened sentiments and soothing rhetoric were unlikely
to achieve hemispheric harmony. While Latin America was becoming less
nationalistic in the 1990s, the United States was becoming more nationalistic. Within the United States, the end of the Cold War and victory in the
Gulf War set off demonstrations of patriotic triumphalism, just as economic rivalry with Europe and especially Japan prompted expressions of
defensive nativism. Indeed, many observers in the United States were interpreting the movement toward orthodox liberalism and free trade
within the hemisphere-from NAFTA to the EAI and FTAA-as yet another confirmation of the wisdom and superiority of U.S.-style capitalism.
While Latin Americans were seeking a new partnership with the United
States, in other words, the United States was anticipating unilateral dominion throughout the Western Hemisphere. This disjuncture could lead
to serious frictions.22
There were subtle signs of restiveness. Even as their strategic options
narrowed, Latin American governments refused to comply with Washington’s directives on some key policy questions. Throughout the 1990s
they voted unanimously for resolutions in the UN General Assembly condemning the U.S. embargo of Cuba. In mid-1994 fourteen presidents of
Latin American governments-members of the so-called Rio Groupreiterated this appeal, calling for suspension of the U.S. embargo in exchange for “a peaceful transition toward a democratic and pluralist system
in Cuba.” And while Washington was able to cobble together international support for its September 1994 occupation of Haiti, as described in
chapter 11, it drew no substantive backing from any major country of the
hemisphere.23 Beneath the protestations of harmony, lingering tensions
prevailed.
Among the populace at large, the uneven and apparently unfair consequences of economic liberalization gave rise to mounting waves of social protest. In 1989 crowds in Caracas erupted in a riot against the
“structural adjustment” program imposed by once-popular president
Carlos Andres Perez; as a sign of continuing resistance, student protests
commemorated the anniversary of the so-called caracazo throughout the
1990s. By 1998 the country’s soon-to-be president, Hugo Chavez Frias,
a retired army colonel who had led a military coup attempt in 1992, took
a populist stance that hinted at a moratorium on debt payments, protectionism against foreign trade, and reconsideration of concessions to foreign oil companies. In January 1994 peasant rebels in the Mexican state
of Chiapas denounced NAFTA and its inequities as one of the reasons for
their uprising. The following year, as fallout from the 1994-95 peso crisis drove interest rates to unconscionable levels (well over 100 percent per
annum), mostly middle-class debtors joined together to form a movement known as El Barz6n. Suddenly strapped by farm and/or home
mortgages, credit cards, car loans, and other debt, half a million Mexicans
railed against “neoliberal technocrats in the government and business and
the financial elite, backed up by Washington and the international financial institutions” and embraced the slogan Debo, no niego/Pago to justo (I
owe, I don’t deny, [but] I’ll pay what is fair).24 Even in 1997, well after
the supposed end of the crisis, 65 percent of respondents in a national
survey opined that the Mexican economy was headed “in a wrong direction.” That same year a coalition of social movements seized the cathedral
of Quito, in Ecuador, demanding an end to privatization and to a hardnosed policy package; in 1999 mass movements throughout the country
forced the president to soften austerity measures and cancel a 60-day state
of emergency. In Argentina, as elsewhere, labor unions vigorously denounced structural adjustment programs, especially their impact on employment, with the teachers’ union in the vanguard of the charge. As unemployment climbed to 17 percent in 1997, protests erupted all over
the country, not only in Buenos Aires but also in the interior cities of
Rosario and Cordoba and the far-removed provinces of Salta, Jujuy, and
Neuquen. Labor manifestations also took place in Brazil, where open
unemployment increased sharply in 1998, and the presidential candidate
of the country’s second-largest party-the Workers’ Party-radically opposed neoliberal economic policies in the 1998 campaign. Political parties
in Uruguay and other nations also mounted vigorous challenges to the
neoliberal orthodoxy. As in other parts of the world, ordinary citizens and
social movements were taking fervent issue with free-market dogma and
its inequitable outcomes.25
Emerging Policy Debates
Within this context of uncertainty and protest, economists and social scientists throughout Latin America were seeking to articulate feasible alternatives to the “Washington consensus.” One vital issue concerned the
optimal role of the state. Conventional wisdom tended to exalt the omniscience of the market. According to this view, Latin America could find
the keys to development merely by “opening” its economies-by enabling external forces to reshape and reinvigorate factors of production
through trade and investment. Latin America’s principal task was to become a passive recipient of these benevolent influences. States should
merely get out of the way, and, in the most literal sense, adopt a laissezfaire stance.
A growing corps of analysts came forth to dispute this contention.
Market forces were not always efficient or benign. They could lead to unnecessary problems and exacerbate difficult situations, as in Mexico in
1994-95 and in Brazil in 1998-99. If it had been necessary for the mar ket to discipline irresponsible states in the early 1990s, it might now be
time for states to discipline irresponsible markets. Drawing upon the socalled “Asian model” of development, as typified in Korea and Japan,
commentators and policymakers began to stress the need for strong and
capable states (which, it will be remembered, were implicitly required by
the Washington consensus itself). Instead of “downsizing” the state, the
new imperative was “rightsizing”-creating efficient centers of authority
that could shape, direct, and channel market forces in productive and equitable directions.
Such concerns crystallized in accelerating debates over a “second
generation of reforms”-that is, reforms that would follow upon the initial wave of economic liberalization and neoliberal adjustment. Almost
everyone agreed that a new cycle of reform was needed. The question was
what they should entail. Die-hard free-marketeers argued that the next
step should be to extend and complete the reforms of the 1980s and early
1990s, removing any remaining impediments to market forces and carrying neoliberal prescriptions to their ultimate conclusion. Others claimed
that the most urgent task should be to address the problems of poverty
and income distribution-which had resulted partly from the first wave of
reforms, and which were now provoking social protests and rebellions
throughout the region. Still others insisted that the next phase should
focus on the unfinished tasks of democratization, particularly the creation
of institutions that were truly accountable and the empowerment of civil
society. These debates were far from merely academic: they defined crucial issues and priorities for public discussion, political resolution, and
long-term strategy.
One of the most deliberate and thoughtful analyses of Latin
America’s predicament emerged from the Economic Commission for
Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the same institution which
had so convincingly espoused import-substitution industrialization during the 1950s and 1960s. Under the influence of the late Fernando
Fajnzylber and his cepalista colleagues, policymakers fashioned a series of
ideas that stressed the centrality of national development policies. As explained by Sergio Bitar and Colin Bradford:
The new paradigm is as different from the stylised version of import substitution industrialisation identified with Latin America since the 1950s as it is
from the stylised version of export-oriented growth identified with East Asia
more recently. National competitiveness is conceived of as a project that
originates internally as a means of mobilising the society towards economic
transformation and dynamism which would result in international competitiveness rather than the other way round. It is built on the idea that no market, sector or industry is insulated from the world and that relative efficiency
is relevant to all economic actors. The idea is to combine internal and external elements in highly productive, synergistic modes so as to achieve the maximum stimulus to output growth. Whereas the orthodox view advocates export-led growth through uniform trade liberalisation, the new paradigm articulates a path of growth-led exports through nationally differentiated
strategies for achieving competitiveness. Whereas market forces are the centrepiece of the orthodox view, they are but one of several crucial means of
achieving national competitiveness.26
ECLAC analysts expressed profound concerns with questions of social
equity, not just economic growth. Analyzing the much-heralded models
of East Asia, especially the “four tigers,” Fajnzylber and his associates argued that Latin America suffered from a relative lack of investment in
technology, especially in its exploitation of natural resources. They also
perceived that strategies for economic development contained political
implications, and that the region faced a dual challenge: the need to reinforce nascent democratic structures in Latin America, and the need to
provide effective support for opening national economies within the
global system. These imperatives called for substantial investment in
human resources, particularly education, which ECLAC regarded as a
critical priority.
Economic stimulus could not come merely from outside. On the
contrary, according to this view, “Growth is from inside outward and is
supply-driven.” The key issues confronting Latin America were matters of
national policy, rather than external commercial arrangements. Free trade
alone was not the answer: the challenge was to define Latin America’s optimal position in the world economy and to implement policies accordingly. Even in the global economy of the 1990s, with all its uncertainties
and ambiguities, Latin America could and should take charge of its
future.
The Question of Identity
Amid such swirling intellectual currents, one classic theme persisted: the
preservation of cultural identity. This was a confusing era. National selfidentification was weakening (but not disappearing) throughout much of
Latin America. In some areas, ethnic identities and local loyalties were
giving rise to social movements and even political parties-as in the case
of southern Mexico and highland Bolivia and Ecuador. And as they
scanned the international arena, some commentators cast doubt on the
time-honored notion of continental solidarity and unity. Increasingly, according to this view, countries of Latin America were following divergent
paths: Brazil was reaching into South America, Chile was moving toward
the Pacific Rim, and Mexico was entering North America. The range of
policy options and the diversity of national interests was pulling countries
of the region apart, rather than together. They no longer had much in
common.
Such circumstances presented an occasion to re-evaluate the entire
concept of “Latin America” and its practical significance. Perhaps it was
an outmoded construct, a romantic relic of an idealistic past: continental
unification may all along have been a chimera. More forcefully than ever before, underlying assumptions of the Bolivarian dream were coming
under challenge. Ironically, these doubts were spreading just at a time
when political and diplomatic coordination could provide Latin America’s
leaders with a potent and practical weapon for confronting and shaping
global prospects in the century to come.
And in the opinion of many, the ultimate challenge was to preserve
and sustain the autonomy of Latin American culture against the faceless
and inhuman forces of the global marketplace. In the eloquent words delivered in mid-1993 by Fernando Solana, Mexico’s former secretary of
foreign relations:
Above all, we seek the defense of our sovereignty. We are aware of the globalism that characterizes telecommunications, information, and business. At the
same time, we do not want to see any dilution of our nationality [nuestra
mexicanidad], of our distinct and special culture, of our capacity to take decisions and to shape the destiny of our resources and our territory. We firmly
believe that cultural and philosophical diversity enriches the world. It is the
alternative, the idea of a homogeneous world with uniform customs and
means of confronting challenges, that would mean the true End of History.
Here was a quest without end. Come what may, citizens and leaders of
Latin America would continue their struggles for identity, empowerment,
and dignity.
The evolution of U.S.-Latin American relations reveals patterns of continuity, consistency, and change from the 1790s to the 1990s. Long-term
historical trends also provide a basis for looking ahead to the future. The
purpose of this chapter is not to prescribe policy nostrums, however, but
to reexamine fundamental questions: What have been the driving forces
behind U.S. policy toward Latin America? What have been the key determinants of Latin America’s response? What has been the nature of the
inter-action? And, by extension, what are likely to be major factors in
shaping U.S.-Latin American relations in years to come?
Looking Back: Summation
As postulated at the outset, the dynamics of U.S.-Latin American relations complied closely with what I have interpreted as prevailing rules of
conduct in the global arena. Transformation in these rules reflected
changing global realities and gave sharp definition to three distinct
chronological periods: the Imperial Era, stretching from the 1790s
through the 1930s; the Cold War, lasting from the late 1940s through
the late 1980s; and the current era, what I have called the Age of Uncertainty, starting in the 1990s. Each of these epochs contained its own rules
of the game-codes that informed not only U.S. behavior toward Latin
America but also the Latin American response. This conceptual framework shapes and supports the fundamental contentions of this book: that
U.S.-Latin American inter-actions revealed structural regularities, that
these regularities followed principles of logic, and that these regularities changed over time in understandable ways. United States-Latin American
relations have responded not to cultural whimsy or psychological caprice
but to objective realities and governing norms in the international scene.
During the Imperial Era major powers promulgated an operative
code of conduct that sought to maintain a balance of power among themselves and to preserve their sovereignty. Each of these powers acquired
colonial possessions that ultimately figured in the calculus of power, and
each therefore controlled a clearly defined and widely recognized sphere
of influence. The United States entered this contest in the early 1800s
as an aspiring challenger and soon began to advance its claims by acquiring territory mostly from Spain (Florida) or from ex-Spanish colonies
(Mexico). United States politicians, publicists, and theologians justified
this expansionist policy on the grounds of “manifest destiny,” with its presumptive mission to extend the reach of political democracy throughout
the hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine and its subsequent corollaries established rationales for restricting Europe’s presence in the New World
and securing the U.S. sphere of influence. Since curtailment of European
power in the Caribbean area was of paramount importance, the island of
Cuba became an object of special imperial desire. At the end of the nineteenth century Washington shifted its overall strategy from territorial expansion toward the promotion of economic and commercial interests, adjusting its political tactics toward the installation of protectorates and the
periodic use of military intervention. In contrast to most European powers, the United States rarely created formal colonies, with the conspicuous
exceptions of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, while continuing to proclaim its dedication to democratic principle. FDR’s Good Neighbor
policy represented a culmination of U.S. imperial strategy, not a departure from it, as Washington managed to consolidate its sphere of influence through commercial exchange, hemispheric diplomacy, inculcations
of Pan-American solidarity, and the cultivation of goodwill.
Confronted by this steady rise of U.S. power, Latin America had several plausible responses at its disposal. One enshrined the Bolivarian
dream of continental unification, a theme that would appear and reappear
in varying guise over time; another sought extrahemispheric protection;
still others included aspirations for subregional hegemony, entertained
mainly by Argentina and Brazil, and reliance on legalistic codes of international behavior. Expressions of cultures of resistance, with special emphases on national self-determination and the rejection of American society and values, were not quixotic manifestations of collective envy; they
offered meaningful counterinterpretations to North American claims of
manifest destiny, exposing ideological tensions that would persist in
decades to come. As cultivated by the weak against the strong, doctrines
of resistance constituted a substantial power resource for Latin America
and its leadership.
Beginning in the late 1940s, the Cold War led to major rearrangements of the global arena. The United States and the Soviet Union emerged from the ashes of victory in World War II to dominate a bipolar
world. Locked in a nuclear standoff, the United States and the USSR
would engage in a geopolitical and ideological rivalry that interpreted
the Third World as a global battleground. Reflecting the intensity of
this struggle, the rules of this international game acquired remarkable
transparency and clarity. Within Latin America, by now established as a
U.S. sphere of influence, Washington pursued relentless but coherent
policies-banishing or outlawing what it regarded as suspect forces, supporting friendly governments, and overthrowing allegedly dangerous
regimes. The anticommunist crusade pervaded virtually every facet of
U.S. policy toward the region, from the cultivation of moderate labor
movements in the 1960s to the promotion of counterrevolutionary guerrilla movements in the 1980s. For Washington, the Cold War was an obsession.
These circumstances left Latin America with a limited range of strategic alternatives. The most daring and dangerous was the quest for socialist
revolution, an effort that could succeed only with the protection of an extrahemispheric superpower-meaning, in practice, the Soviet Union. The
fate of revolution thus became hostage to big-power politics. A second alternative, pursued with energy and verve by an unseemly assortment of
dictators, was to join the anticommunist crusade. This tactic offered the
great advantage of defining one’s rivals as enemies of capitalism, democracy, and therefore the United States, whose power could then be
brought into play. A third kind of option was to seek an independent
path, a “third way,” often through political affiliation with the NonAligned Movement or economic membership in the G-77. While this alternative made some significant strides, as in the Contadora Group’s efforts to mediate the Central American conflict of the 1980s, it usually
drew expressions of wrath or disdain from the United States. In a bipolar
world, there was not much room for maneuver.
In the late 1980s the end of the Cold War brought another transformation to the international arena. The distribution of global power became multilayered and complex-unipolar in the military sense, where
the United States remained supreme, and multipolar in the economic
sense, where Europe and Japan (and other burgeoning regions) vied for
global preeminence. In this Age of Uncertainty, there existed no coherent
or recognized rules of the game. Around the world, patterns of conflict
and major-power behavior became disturbingly unpredictable. Within the
Western Hemisphere, by contrast, U.S. hegemony was uncontested and
complete: there were no significant extrahemispheric rivals, and the
power differential between the United States and Latin America reached
unprecedented heights. As U.S. interests shifted from military security toward economic and social concerns, domestic constituencies came to have
conspicuous impacts on U.S. foreign policy: the business community promoted free trade, environmentalists pushed for biological diversity, a
disparate coalition supported a sometimes hysterical crusade against il licit drugs, nativists joined an equally hysterical crusade against undocumented immigration. Largely in response to such domestic political pressures, but always in the name of democracy, the United States took military action against Panama in 1989 and Haiti in 1994.
In this post-Cold War context, Latin America had even fewer options
than before. There was no way to avoid or evade the fact of U.S. power.
There were no extrahemispheric patrons immediately at hand. Revolution
was out of the question. In a world without established codes, international law and multilateral organization would have little serious impact.
Essentially, the alternative for countries of Latin America was economicto adopt the growing emphasis on liberalization and “free trade.” They
could seek to implement this strategy in one (or more) of several ways: by
expanding commercial ties with Europe and Japan as well as the United
States, as Chile did; by seeking an institutionalized relationship with the
United States, as Mexico did; or by resuscitating dreams of subregional
unification, as Brazil attempted to do through MERCOSUR and SAFTA.
There still lingered traces of popular resistance to U.S. power, as shown
by the Chiapas uprising in January 1994 and street demonstrations at
other times, but these were relatively few and far between. The Age of
Uncertainty was perhaps not the end of history, as some analysts surmised, but it may have signaled the triumph of neoliberal ideology. In
dialectical fashion, however, this very triumph would soon engender intellectual and cultural ferment.
Looking Back: Analysis
The central thesis of this book is that the dynamics of U.S.-Latin American relations reflected prevailing rules of the international game within
each historical period, and that these dynamics underwent change in accordance with alterations in the rules of the game. Transformations in
these operative rules, or codes, came about in response to change in three
factors: the number of major powers, the nature of power resources, and
the goals of international policy (Table 4). The number of powers determined whether global contests would be multipolar, as in the Imperial
Era; bipolar, as in the Cold War; or multilayered, a combination of unipolar and multipolar, as in the Age of Uncertainty. The nature of power resources varied in complex ways: military capacity ranged from conventional forces to thermonuclear capability to a combination of the two,
though military prowess lost much of its practical utility after the end of
the Cold War; economic capacity ranged from commercial penetration to
direct investment to financial linkages, all employed in varying degrees
over the time spans in question. The principal goals of international rivalry evolved from the acquisition of territory (either as colonies or possessions) to the cultivation of political affinity (especially during the Cold
War) to the development of economic cooperation and alignment (in the
post-Cold War era).
Table 4. Global Contexts for U.S.-Latin American Relations
Throughout these transformations the invocation of ideology played
an important but essentially subordinate role in these contests. The
United States proclaimed its “manifest destiny” as the diffusion of democratic politics, European powers embarked on civilizing missions, the Soviet Union insisted that its goal was the socialist liberation of downtrodden peoples. During the early twentieth century, too, racist doctrine
helped to rationalize the U.S. tendency to impose protectorates (or military governments) on countries in Central America and the Caribbean.
Ideological claims provided essential and significant justifications for bigpower actions, though they rarely determined the course of such policies.
In its broad international contexts, the conduct of U.S.-Latin America
relations was essentially derivative. Notwithstanding the Monroe Doctrine,
the Western Hemisphere was not an isolated arena; on the contrary, the
doctrine itself can best be understood as a challenge to European powers.
The United States sought to impose a sphere of influence in the Americas
not so much for its own sake but as a power resource for dealing with
extrahemispheric rivals. The evolving drama of inter-American relations
played out on a broad international stage.
Explaining U.S. Policies
Within these global schemes, there were significant sources of variation in
U.S. conduct toward Latin America. Four factors, or variables, helped determine patterns and changes in U.S. behavior over time: (1) the relative
importance of Latin America vis-a-vis other world regions, (2) perceptions of extrahemispheric rivalry, (3) definitions of U.S. national interest,
and (4) the relationship between state actors and social groups in policy
formation. These factors were closely interrelated.
The historical record demonstrates that Latin America commanded
considerable attention from the United States throughout the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, but that there was significant variation in the
relative degree of importance ascribed to the region. During the Imperial
Era, Latin America was a cultural policy concern for Washington: it was
the region where the United States expressed its own imperial ambitions
and sought to eradicate all vestiges of European power. By the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, when the United States appeared isolationist
in respect to Europe and the rest of the world, Latin America came to occupy “first place” in the nation’s diplomacy. During the Cold War, the dynamics of East-West competition transformed Latin America into an
arena for struggle, a prize in the superpower contest, a status it shared
with the Third World as a whole: Latin America commanded special attention from Washington because of geographical propinquity and alleged “security” interests, but it was less unique or privileged in this sense
than at previous times. Once the Cold War ended, Latin America occupied an ambiguous position in the eyes of Washington. In ways that were
reminiscent of the imperial contest, the region came to constitute a
sphere of U.S. influence, uncontested at last, a place where the United
States could exercise its hemispheric hegemony for the purpose of confronting a complex and multipolar world; but attention to Latin America
became selective as well, more focused on Mexico and the Caribbean than
on South America, more attuned to social and economic interactions than
to broad geopolitical concerns. In summary, Latin America was always
important to the United States, but its relative degree of importance varied across these three historical periods-roughly speaking, from very
high to high to rather mixed.
Washington’s view of Latin America depended upon its rivalry with
extrahemispheric powers. The basic rule was straightforward: the greater
the perception of extrahemispheric threat, the greater the attention to
Latin America. During the Imperial Era, the United States was explicitly
and consciously engaged in an effort to banish European influence from
the Western Hemisphere: in a multipolar world, Britain and Germany
were the most powerful rivals, though other Continental powers-Italy,
Holland, France-also played meaningful roles. During the Cold War, the
United States steadfastly pursued its policy of “containment,” seeking to
prevent the Soviet Union-and/or its allies or puppets-from gaining influence in the Americas. The perception of danger was greatly exaggerated, as a result of anticommunist hysteria, but it had profound political
meaning: Washington saw itself as the leader of a worldwide crusade, and
it formed policies in accordance with this sense of purpose. With the end
of the Cold War, extrahemispheric influence in the Americas virtually vanished. For the first time in history Washington had no rivals (real or imagined) in the hemisphere, though it confronted a multipolar challenge on
the global scene. By the 1990s the United States had finally realized its
ambition of the 1790s: to create a zone of uncontested influence within
the Western Hemisphere.
A third key factor behind U.S. policy concerned prevalent definitions
of national interests. At the most general level, these interests were constant: the accumulation and expression of international power. Yet the
content of U.S. national interests varied over time. During the Imperial
Era, the United States pursued two goals: territorial expansion and commercial influence. The overall purpose was to achieve rank as a major power. During the Cold War, as one of two rival superpowers, the United
States sought geopolitical and ideological advantage in a worldwide
struggle. And in the contemporary period, the United States has been attempting to consolidate economic hegemony in the Americas, partly as a
tool for bargaining with other powers in a multipolar world. In light of
increasing interdependence, Washington has also been attempting to protect the United States from unwelcome social influences, such as illicit
drugs and undocumented migration. In long-term perspective, the primary impetus behind U.S. policy thus shifted from territorial and commercial motivations from the 1800s to the 1930s, to ideological and
geopolitical purposes from the 1940s through the 1980s, to economic
and social concerns from the 1990s onward.
Throughout this sweep of history the United States steadfastly professed its intention of fostering democracy throughout the Americas,
often invoking notions of hemispheric solidarity and the existence of a
“Western Hemisphere idea.” The promotion of democracy supplied a
useful, sometimes crucial, rationalization for the application of American
power. In this particular respect, the post-Cold War era came to bear an
exceedingly strong resemblance to the pre-Cold War period. No longer
able to appeal to anticommunism for ideological orientation, Washington
now proclaimed the extension of democracy as its guidepost in foreign affairs. Bill Clinton’s earnest pronouncements about democracy had more
in common with the lofty declarations of Woodrow Wilson than with the
Machiavellian calculations of Cold Warriors. United States efforts to promote democracy had been conspicuously unsuccessful in the Imperial
Era, however, and there was not much sign that Washington had learned
many lessons from this history by the 1990s.
A fourth factor shaping U.S. policy concerned the relative roles of
state elites and social actors. During the early nineteenth century, when
the United States embarked on territorial expansion, the government apparatus defined and implemented American foreign policy. It was statesmen of the time-Jefferson, Adams, Polk, and others-who steadfastly
pursued the acquisition of land; and while they enjoyed considerable
popular support in this enterprise they did so largely on their own initiative. Later in this era, from the 1890s through the 1930s, state elites operated in close collaboration with the business community, especially
banking interests. Intent upon the extension and consolidation of economic influence, rather than the expansion of physical boundaries, governmental elites and financial representatives developed joint strategies
that ranged from diplomatic pressure to military intervention. This partnership was especially evident in Central America and the Caribbean,
where private bankers assumed control of outstanding national debts,
thus eliminating the primary motivation for European powers to meddle
in the hemisphere, while the U.S. government backed up the bankers
with American military force. Though its goals may seem nefarious in retrospect, this was a smooth and effective public-private alliance.
The Cold War brought governmental elites to a supreme and unchallenged position in policy-making. In light of the bipolar U.S.-Soviet rivalry, international strategy derived from a geopolitical and ideological
calculus stressing the containment and curtailment of communist influence. Application of this doctrine was the preserve par excellence of professional bureaucrats, career diplomats, and seasoned politicians.
interests (and organized labor) occasionally played a strong supporting
role: United Fruit promoted U.S. intervention in Guatemala, ITT clamored for action in Chili, the AFL-CIO trained and supported anticommunist labor leaders. Yet investors and financiers tended to have subordinate
parts in policy formation during this period: U.S. interventions in Cuba,
the Dominican Republic, and Grenada came about as a result of ideological and geopolitical considerations, not for economic reasons. State elites
dominated the policy arena throughput the East-West conflict. For better
or worse, one consequence of this monopoly was a clear, even rigid, consistency in U.S. policy.
Termination of the Cold War brought a sudden end to this bureaucratic stranglehold. No longer governed by a geopolitical calculus, no
longer guided by a coherent doctrine, foreign policy became vulnerable
to the interplay of domestic interests. Ethnic groups with growing importance in the electoral arena-Cuban Americans, Mexican Americans,
African Americans-came to have a crucial impact on America’s policies
toward Castro’s Cuba, the NAFTA agreement with Mexico, and the
Cedras regime in Haiti. Popular condemnation of drug trafficking and
undocumented migration helped stiffen governmental resolve to halt
these flows, while business interests avidly supported promotion of the
Washington consensus on free trade and on economic policy. Such influence was not so much a deliberate and voluntary partnership, as in the
1910s and 1920s, as a result of grass-roots mobilization and electoral
blackmail. By the 1990s pressure groups were able to penetrate (if not to
capture) specific issue-areas in foreign policy. Washington fell into a decidedly reactive mode, responding not only to the outbreak of international crises but also to the clamor of domestic interests. As a result, and
in sharp contrast to the Cold War, U.S. policy acquired a decidedly ad
hoc, makeshift quality.
Table 5 summarizes the determinants of U.S. policy toward Latin
America for each time period and demonstrates that a combination of factors-the relative importance of Latin America, the presence (or perception) of extrahemispheric rivals, the definition of national interests, and
the composition of policy actors-had a determining influence upon the
resultant set of strategies and policies. Even in schematic form, Table 5
serves to emphasize two central points: first, that there was an underlying
logic behind the construction of U.S. policy within each historical period,
and second, that there was an underlying logic to the transformation of
U.S. policies between these periods as well.
Table 5. Principal Determinants of U.S. Policy
Understanding Latin American Responses
As U.S. strategies underwent long-term change over time, so did Latin
America’s capacity to respond. There were continuities as well. A central
premise of this analysis has stressed the presence and significance of power
inequalities. From the mid-nineteenth century onward the United States
was stronger than all countries of Latin America-economically, militarily,
and politically-and by the early twentieth century the United States became more powerful than the region as a whole. The conduct of interAmerican relations reflected and reasserted this fundamental asymmetry
in myriad ways. Interaction took place not between equal partners but between the strong and the relatively weak. Individually and collectively,
Latin American countries were constantly confronting a more powerful
and better endowed adversary, a sometime ally engaged in a quest for
constant advantage, a hemispheric neighbor smitten by global ambitions,
an expansive power proclaiming the virtues of democracy: the Colossus of
the North.
To counter the United States, and to pursue its own destiny, Latin
America over time developed a cumulative total of six distinct strategic alternatives. One was the Bolivarian notion of collective unification.
Though it never took full institutional form, the idea persisted over time
and could claim some notable success-in the insistence on principles of
self-determination and nonintervention from the 1890s to the 1930s, in
the formulation of economic doctrines in the 1940s and 1950s, and in
the settlement of Central American conflicts in the 1980s. A second
broad strategy consisted of a search for support, protection, and patronage from extrahemispheric powers-especially the United Kingdom in
the nineteenth century and the Soviet Union during the Cold War (and,
to a much more modest extent, Europe and the Asia-Pacific in the current
era). A third strategy entailed a quest for subregional hegemony, visions entertained by Argentina and Brazil in the nineteenth century and by
Brazil in the contemporary era. A forth stressed the uses of international
law and/or international organization, the principles of which could protect weaker countries from predatory or arbitrary actions by the strong;
relatively successful during the Imperial Era, these efforts foundered during the Cold War and show little prospect for realization during the contemporary age.’ A fifth strategic alternative, especially plausible during
the Cold War, sought South-South solidarity with other nations of the socalled Third World. Sixth was the quest for social revolution, especially
socialist revolution, that also reached its peak during the period of EastWest confrontation.
Beyond these assertions of defiance and autonomy there remained, of
course, another kind of option-alignment with the United States, either in
deference to Washington’s power or in pursuit of tactical advantage. During the Imperial Era Brazil sought an alliance with the United States as a
matter of grand geopolitical strategy, while client rulers in Central America
and the Caribbean accepted Washington’s tutelage as a matter of political
survival (and personal profit). The Cold War offered association with the
United States as a strategic opportunity for the authoritarian right, which,
with notable success, invoked the cause of anticommunism to justify its
claims on power. And now, during the Age of Uncertainty, Mexico has
most categorically thrown itself into the arms of the United States; other
countries of the region, from Costa Rica to Argentina, seem prepared to
follow this same course. It should be noted, however, that leaders and peoples of Latin American have not always chosen affiliation with the United
States out of admiration, loyalty, or affection-but because it has appeared
to suit their purposes. This implies a portent for the future: if reliance on the
United States does not produce the anticipated results for Latin America, or
if other plausible options emerge, the public display of inter-American harmony that characterized the early 1990s may not endure forever.
Strategic alternatives became available in differing degrees and combinations at different periods of time (Table 6).2 During the Imperial Era,
leaders of Latin America could entertain a fairly broad array of choices,
achieving a substantial measure of success in the area of international law
(partly as a result of diplomatic unity). The Cold War narrowed the range
of maneuver, pressuring Latin American countries into alignments with
either the United States or the USSR, though courageous and enterprising leaders pursued an independent path, often in collaboration with
other Third World countries, and were able to help mediate conflicts in
Central America and elsewhere. During the present era, ironically, the inventory of options appears to be even more restricted: whether they want
to or not, most Latin American leaders have little choice other than to
implement policy prescriptions of the Washington consensus and to seek
economic accommodation with the United States and the advanced industrial nations of the North, including the European Union and Japan.
In summary, the display in Table 6 demonstrates yet another basic thesis of this book: Latin America’s reactions to the United States reflected just as much logic and regularity as did U.S. policies. Both the
United States and Latin America were forging reasonable responses to
their prevailing environments. The dynamics of their interaction, as well
as of their policy initiatives, revealed regularity and structure.
Table 6. Strategic Options for Latin America
Yet another essential component of Latin America’s response to the
United States took the form not of practical policy measures but of cultural interpretations of reality. Latin American politicians, pundits, and intellectuals developed a series of ideological and attitudinal outlooks. During the Imperial Era, leaders and representatives of Latin America forged
cultures of “resistance.” During the Cold War, many expressed resentment of the United States by subscribing to Marxist beliefs. And in the
post-Cold War period an era most notable for its absence of ideological
contentiousness, many Latin Americans have taken part in inchoate
protests against the conventional wisdom; others have been forging cultures of “accommodation” that recognize realities of U.S. power but also
sustain the value and integrity of Latin America’s social identity.
Differentiating Latin America
Some countries of Latin America, in some situations, were better prepared than others to confront the United States. Variations in capability reflected the impact of four related factors: (1) size and strength, (2) geographical proximity, (3) links to extrahemispheric powers, and (4) intellectual and cultural resources.
In terms of population size, economic output, and military capability,
some nations of Latin America were stronger than others. Argentina and
Brazil possessed resources that Honduras, Haiti, and Cuba did not. Such
capacities enabled these countries not only to avert outright U.S. interventionism but also, at times, to entertain visions of continental grandeur
and subregional hegemony. In the nineteenth century Argentina and
Brazil each nurtured notions of challenging, or at least offsetting, the rise
of U.S. power, and in the twentieth century Brazil has continued to see
itself as the natural leader of South America. The resulting proposition
borders on the circular: differential levels of power meant differential capacity to resist pressures from the United States. Size and power also exercised a deterrent effect: while the United States displayed recurring willingness to launch military invasions of small countries, Washington never
considered sending troops into Brazil.
Geography supplied a second key determinant. Countries surrounding the Caribbean Rim-Mexico, Central America, the islands of the
Caribbean-were much more likely to feel the weight of U.S. power than
were South American nations. From the 1790s onward, and especially
from the 1890s through the 1990s, policymakers in Washington ascribed
particular importance to the greater Caribbean Basin-because of maritime routes, commercial ties, financial investments, natural resources,
geographical propinquity, and (for all these reasons) national security.
From the start, Washington was more predisposed to project its power in
this area than in South America. Exceptions to this rule occurred mainly
during the Cold War, when all countries of Latin America became squares
on a global checkerboard; hence U.S. support for the Brazilian coup of
1964 and, even more conspicuously, for the Allende overthrow of 1973.
With the ending of the anticommunist crusade, the United States reduced its interest in South America and refocused its attention on the
Caribbean Basin. Geographical location did much to shape the tenor and
tone of bilateral and continental relations: the closer to the United States,
the greater the degree of attention from Washington-and the greater the
consequent level of conflict.
A third factor concerned linkages with extrahemispheric powers. For
historic and economic reasons some countries, such as the ABC nations of
South America, enjoyed close and significant ties to Europe, especially in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As Simon Bolivar anticipated in the 1820s, these connections furnished a significant amount of
diplomatic and political leverage in dealing with the United States. During the Cold War, Cuba and (to a lesser degree) Nicaragua turned toward
the Soviet Union in search of protection. This was a high-risk strategy,
however, since it ran directly counter to anticommunist ideology and to
Washington’s persisting quest for undisputed hegemony within the hemi sphere. (Latin American nations did not have the luxury enjoyed by other
Third World countries, such as Egypt, that were able to play the superpowers off against each other: located within the putative “backyard” of
the United States, Latin American countries would generally have to follow Washington’s lead-or move into the rival camp.) And with the end
of the Cold War and the virtual withdrawal of extrahemispheric powers,
this alternative collapsed. By the late 1990s Latin America was making
earnest efforts to develop ties with Europe and Asia, but the resulting
links were likely to be more cosmetic than substantive. Ultimately, Latin
America would still have to confront the United States.
Yet another differentiating factor among Latin American countries
was cultural tradition. This was an amorphous concept, to be sure, one
that embraced intellectual resources, educational institutions, and historical legacies. Yet in actual practice it was a factor that provided some countries, such as Mexico and Cuba and Nicaragua, with the capacity to construct powerful cultures of resistance that ultimately laid the ideological
foundations for social revolution. In different form, it was a factor that
shaped the cosmopolitan and European outlook of such distinguished jurists as Chile’s Andres Bello and Argentina’s Carlos Calvo, who devised
legal doctrines of national sovereignty and nonintervention. And it was a
factor that, still more recently, permitted the rise of subtle and complex
cultures of accommodation in the wake of the Cold War.
In this respect there was a countervailing factor at work. Because of
traditions of continental solidarity, dating back to Bolivarian dreams of
unification, intellectual and cultural achievements in any one part of Latin
America quickly became assets for the region as a whole. Jose Marti spoke
not only for Cuba but for what he called “nuestra America”; Victor Raul
Haya de la Torre sought reform not only in Peru but across the entire
continent; Cesar Augusto Sandino became a martyr not only for
Nicaragua but for all revolutionary activists; Fidel Castro and Salvador
Allende fired political imagination not only in their own countries but
throughout the region; in different ways, Raul Prebisch and Fernando
Henrique Cardoso charted paths of economic development for all of
Latin America; and writers of the left and right, from Gabriel Garcia
Marquez and Carlos Fuentes to Jorge Luis Borges, gained renown as interpreters and representatives for Latin America as a whole. Each national
struggle had regional dimensions, each voice became the clamor of a continent at large. A defining paradox of Latin American nationalism was its
ability to transcend national borders, especially insofar as it focused on the
paramount challenge of common concern: the overweening power of the
United States.
In retrospect, the determinants of U.S. policies and of Latin
America’s options combined to establish the dynamic structure of interactions between the United States and Latin America. During the Imperial Era, the United States was attempting to incorporate all or parts of
Latin America into its own sphere of interest, through either conquest or commerce, while Latin American leaders engaged in various forms of resistance. During the Cold War the United States attempted to penetrate
into Latin American societies and governments, to purge them of undesirable political and ideological elements and thus rid the hemisphere
of putative threats to national security; right-wing Latin Americans responded by exploiting the resultant opportunities, leftists reacted with
calls for revolution, reformists attempted to identify intermediate paths.
And in the 1990s the United States has sought to integrate Latin America
into its economic community, and at the same time to repel unwanted social interactions. Confronted by this ambivalent message, Latin American
leaders have responded by seeking selective cooperation with the United
States-choosing to cooperate on economic matters, in other words, but
to retain freedom of action in other areas. In so many ways, the Age of
Uncertainty was proving to be the most complex of all eras.
Looking Ahead: What Now?
The principal outlook for the future of U.S.-Latin American relations
flows directly from this book’s central argument: it will be conditioned by
the nature, form, and implicit rules of global politics. As the post-Cold
War world continues its search for a “new international order,” if one is
ever to appear, it is the worldwide pattern and conduct of international
relations that will determine the shape and substance of inter-American
relations. As in previous eras, hemispheric affairs beyond the year 2000
are likely to be cast within a global framework. As from the beginning to
the present, U.S.-Latin American relations will be intimately linked to
trends and developments in the global arena. More to the point, the underlying codes for hemispheric interaction will be essentially derivative
from the international rules of the game.
In many senses the Age of Uncertainty bears more resemblance to
the Imperial Era than to the Cold War. Like the late nineteenth century,
the end of the twentieth century displays a complex and multipolar distribution of power, at least in the economic arena. In the absence of established rules of the game, the current environment places fewer constraints
on big-power action than did the Cold War. And the countries of the
South, or Third World, have little power and few strategic options. Their
major concern at present is not so much that they will be colonized, however, as the fear that they will be neglected and abandoned. During the
Cold War, especially in Asia and Africa, developing countries at least
could entertain hopes of taking advantage of the superpower rivalry, of
playing off the United States and the Soviet Union against one another.
Such leverage no longer exists.
A principal difference between the Imperial Age and the present is
the fact of uncontested U.S. hegemony within the hemisphere. During
the earlier period, as shown in Part I, the presence of European nations established a multipolar distribution of power within the Americas. It was
a complex contest, a long-term struggle in which the United States
sought consistently to banish or reduce European influence in order to
construct its own sphere of influence. That struggle no longer prevails.
With the implosion of the Soviet Union, the withdrawal of extrahemispheric powers, and the triumph of neoliberal ideology, the United States
now stands supreme within the hemisphere. As a result, there are few
constraints on Washington. In the post-Cold War world, the United
States can intervene at will. It has done so in Panama and Haiti; it will
probably do so again.
It is pointless to hazard specific prognostications about the future of
U.S.-Latin American relations. In a global environment without established rules of the game, almost anything could happen. To anticipate
possible trends in the twenty-first century, however, it should be useful to
identify key factors at both the global and hemispheric levels that seem
most likely to affect the shape of future developments.
The most critical variable in the worldwide arena concerns the eventual distribution of power and associated forms of alignment and conflict.
As sketched out in chapter 9, there are several scenarios currently in play.
One envisions single-power hegemony of the United States; another foresees multipolar competition; a third predicts a long and violent clash of
civilizations that would, at times, be reduced to a battle between “the
West and the rest.” Other outlooks stress the possible formation of rivalrous economic blocs-in Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific Rimarrayed in an economic and political contest for supremacy; or the potential creation of a North-North axis that would, with various exceptions,
exclude the countries of the South; or, most optimistically, the formation
of an open, benign, and equitable global community that would serve the
interests of peoples and countries throughout the world. (Still another
scenario is, of course, continuation of the current state of confusion and
uncertainty.) The resolution of these possibilities will come not so much
from the Western Hemisphere, or from Latin America, as from interactions and arrangements among the major global powers.
The global structure of power will determine the conduct and tone of
inter-American relations for generations to come. Unequivocal U.S.
hegemony will leave Latin America with little choice but to accept (or to
protest) hemispheric preeminence of the United States. The most feasible
policy would be to curry Washington’s favor. Intensification of multipolar
competition, by contrast, should make it possible for Latin American
countries to cultivate meaningful relationships with extrahemispheric
powers (and thereby reduce, if not directly challenge, the impact of U.S.
influence). A clash of civilizations, if ever such a nightmare should come
to pass, would probably mean that Latin America would have to cast its
lot with Europe and the United States (“the West,” in opposition to “the
rest”). This could prove a hazardous venture. For Latin America as a whole, the most desirable worldwide scenario would entail the construction of a global community, open to all, governed by uniform rules and
regulations according to multilateral consent; the least desirable outcome
would be North-South separation consigning poor and powerless countries to marginal oblivion. To be sure, individual countries of Latin
America might stand to gain from U.S. hegemony or even North-South
separation, but most of the presumed advantages would doubtless prove
to be short-term and illusory. Conflicting incentives of this kind have,
however, hindered continental prospects for collective action.
A subsidiary question concerns the extent to which economic blocs,
if they appear, will be open or closed. Closed blocs would limit countries
of Latin America to dealing with the United States; at least in principle,
open blocs could permit them to cultivate economic and political relations with other major powers of the world. Similarly, the creation of
loose and informal blocs might leave latitude and flexibility for countries
of Latin America; rigid, highly institutionalized blocs would be more
likely to curtail their freedom of action. Once again, however, decisions
on these matters are not likely to originate from Latin America; they will
emerge from tacit understandings among the major world powers.
Within the Western Hemisphere there is every reason to anticipate
the perpetuation, and perhaps the accentuation, of U.S. hegemony. In
this event, a key determinant of U.S. policy toward Latin America will be
the relative importance of the region within the overall global arena. This
value will depend largely on U.S. relationships with major extrahemispheric powers and its own position in the world system. The more important Latin America is for purposes of U.S. policy, the more attention
the area will receive; the less important the region, the less the attention.
Here again, Latin America must contemplate a bitter irony: having long
endured excessive attention and meddling by the United States, in the
post-Cold War environment it faces the unsettling prospect of neglect.
Whatever the ultimate shape of the international system, the character of U.S.-Latin American diplomacy will depend largely upon the U.S.
management of social issues. For the foreseeable future, inter-American
economic relations will probably generate positive feelings in the United
States, since Latin America will be depicted and seen as an asset for
America’s recovery and growth; moreover, the negotiation of arcane
treaties on trade and investment usually stays within bureaucratic circles
and does not become fodder for public political battles (though this was
not true for NAFTA, and it may not pertain to the future). Social and cultural relations are another matter. Continuation of illegal flows of unwelcome products and people-that is, of drugs and migrants and refugeesis likely to generate disagreement and tension. The spread of Latin
American culture, from language to music and everyday fashion, may also
produce a nativist backlash. And it is in these areas, more than others, that
the popular voices of American citizens tend to be loudest. The more responsive U.S. foreign policy becomes to domestic clienteles, the more likely the emergence of serious agitation over sociocultural issues-and
the greater the likelihood of conflict with Latin America.
To some degree this outcome seems inevitable. Largely to improve its
position vis-a-vis other major powers, the United States appears intent on
intensifying, consolidating, and deepening economic contact with countries of Latin America. This process will necessarily have important social
consequences. Accelerations in the exchange of goods, capital, and services stimulate flows of labor and other items, including unauthorized migrants, refugees, drugs, and expressions of popular culture. In other
words, increasing economic interdependence will lead to increasing sociocultural interdependence, which often provokes volatile political reactions. To exaggerate the point: as a result of increasing economic collaboration, the United States and Latin America may find themselves on a
social and cultural collision course.
A central challenge for Latin America concerns collective solidarity.
The more unified the countries of the region, the greater their overall
bargaining power with the United States (and other world powers); the
less the unification, the less the bargaining power. The principal difficulty,
in the contemporary era, is that there are so many incentives in favor of
pursuit of individual gain; this is especially apparent in the economic
realm, where some nations are better positioned to form links with the
United States and the North than others. The ultimate risk is that the
pursuit of individual advantage will contribute to fragmentation of
the hemisphere, to a two-tier system of ins vs. outs, haves vs. have-nots,
that could eventually provoke serious and sustained conflict within the
Western Hemisphere. Perhaps the most effective means to avoid this danger would come from the promotion of regional solidarity among nations
of Latin America on their own, not under the tutelage of the United
States. It is fittingly ironic that the eventual achievement of a hemispheric
“community of democracies,” as envisioned by Washington, may require
revitalization of the Bolivarian dream of Latin American unity.
All in all, the end of the Cold War has exerted decisive impacts on
U.S.-Latin American relations. It has altered the content of the interAmerican agenda, shifted the locus of policy making in the United States,
and rearranged the menu of strategic options available to Latin America.
Curiously, too, it has shown the titanic East-West struggle to have been a
somewhat isolated interlude, a forty-year distortion of perceptions and
priorities. Yet the passing of that contest has not led to harmonious and
trouble-free relations in the Western Hemisphere. Despite optimistic predictions, it has ushered in a complex and occasionally contentious period
that bears substantial resemblance to the Imperial Era. The similarity involves neither direct replication or linear extrapolation; it is more a matter
of legacy, ambience, and echoes from that seemingly distant time. Once
again economic issues dominate the public agenda, Washington readily
offers solutions for Latin America, democracy justifies interventions, and
diplomacy revolves around formation of a Pan-American alliance; once again, the implications of this relationship are profoundly ambiguous for
people and governments of Latin America. And as in all historical eras,
the United States devotes primary effort to strengthening its place in the
global arena, Latin America copes with the fact of U.S. power, and the
structure of the international system shapes the terms of U.S. interactions
with Latin America. As the twenty-first century beckons, paradox and
continuity abound.
Table Al. Major Trading Partners for Latin America: Selected Countries, 1913
Source: Division of Economic Research, Pan American Union, The Foreign Trade of Latin
America since 1913 (Washington, D.C.: Pan American Union, 1952), pp. 37-50.
Table A2. Major Trading Partners for Latin America:
Selected Countries, 1938
Source: Division of Economic Research, Pan American Union, The Foreign Trade of Latin
America since 1913 (Washington, D.C.: Pan Ameerican Union, 1952), pp. 37-50.
Table A3. Estimated Membership of Communist Parties
in Latin America, 1947-1957
Source: Data in Rollie Poppino, International Communism in Latin America: A History of
the Movement, 1917-1963 (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1964), Appendix II, 231.
Table A4. Trends in Latin America’s Per Capita Gross Domestic Product:
Selected Countries, 1961-1970
Source: Data in L. Ronald Scheman, “The Alliance for Progress: Concept and Creativity,” in
Scheman (ed.), The Alliance for Progress: A Retrospective (New York: Praeger, 1988), p. 15.
Table A5. Infant Mortality Rates in Latin America:
Selected Countries, 1960-1968
Source: Data in L. Ronald Scheman, “The Alliance for Progress: Concept and Creativity,” in
Scheman (ed.) The Alliance for Progress: A Retrospective (New York: Praeger, 1988), p. 28.
Table A8. Major Trading Partners for Latin America: Selected Countries, 1990
Source: Data in James W. Wilkie, Carlos Alberto Contreras, and Christof Anders Weber (ed.), Statistical Abstract of Latin America, 30 (Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Center, 1993), Part 2,
Table 2602 and 2612-2633, pp. 850-852, 862-923.
Table A9. Trade with Latin America as Percentage of Total U.S. Trade,
1950-1996
Source: Joseph Grunwald, “The Rocky Road toward Hemispheric Economic Integration: A
Regional Backgrounder with Attention to the Furure,” in Roy E. Green (ed.), The Enterprise for the Americas Initiative (Westport: Praeger, 1993), ch.8, Table 8.1, and data in International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Yearbook 1997 (Washington, D.C.:
IMF, 1997), pp. 452-454.
Table A14. Income Inequality in Latin America: Selected Countries,
1989-1994
Source: World Bank, World Development Report 1997: The State in a Changing World (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1997), Table 5, pp. 222-223; for Argentina, Nora Lustig
(ed.), Coping with Austerity: Poverty and Inequality in Latin America (Washington, D.C.:
The Brookings Institution, 1995), pp. 8-9, 44.
Table A15. Drug Use in the United States, 1979-1996
Sources: Data in Office of National Drug Control Strategy, National Drug Control Strategy: Reclaiming Our Communities from Drugs and Violence (Washington, D.C.: The White House,
1994), p. 100; and ONCDP, National Drug Control Strategy, 1998: A Ten Year Plan (Washington,
D.C.: The White House, 1998) p. 75.
Table A16. Latin American Production of Illicit Drugs, 1987-1996
Sources: U.S. Department of State Bureau of International Narcotics Matters, International
Narcotics Control Strategy Report 1991 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1991), 22; International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, April 1994 (1994), 20; and
ONDCP, National Drug Control Strategy, 1998, p. 90.
Table A17. World Trade Flows, 1996
Source: International Monetary Fund, Direction of Trade Yearbook 1997 (Washington, D.C.: IMF, 1997).
Table A18. Accumulated Stock of U.S., European, and Japanese Investment,
by Destination
Source: Adapted from Table 7 in Keiichi Tsunekawa, “Assessing NAFTA’s Effects for
Mexico: A Japanese View,” paper presented at symposium on “Japon y Mexico hacia el
nuevo siglo: situacion actualy perspectivas del NAFTA,” Toyko, March 1998; and Interamerican Development Bank/Instituto de Relaciones Europeo-Latinoamericanas, Foreign
Direct Investment in Latin America in the 1990s (Madrid: IRELA, 1996), p. 91.
Introduction
1. See Paul Kennedy, Preparing for the Twenty-First Century (New York:
Random House, 1993), ch. 7, “The Future of the Nation-State.”
2. Stephen Krasner, “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes
as Intervening Variables,” in Krasner (ed.), International Regimes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), p. 2. As Stephen Haggard and Beth A. Simmons
have observed, Krasner’s emphasis on norms takes an intermediate stance between two other notions of regime-one that interprets a regime as any form of
regular and patterned behavior, another that insists on the existence of explicit
multilateral agreements; see Haggard and Simmons, “Theories of International
Regimes,” International Organization 41, no. 3 (Summer 1987): 491-517.
3. Also in contrast to Krasner, I do not regard the acceptance of recognized
“decision-making procedures” as essential to the existence of a regime-unless
competition and conflict, even military conflict, could be considered as a decisionmaking procedure.
4. For a recent contribution in this vein see Gilbert M. Joseph, Catherine C.
LeGrand, and Ricardo D. Salvatore (eds.), Close Encounters of Empire: Writing the
Cultural History of U.S.-Latin American Relations (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998).
5. See Robert A. Pastor, Whirlpool: U.S. Foreign Policy toward Latin
America and the Caribbean (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992).
6. Robert Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); and Richard Rosecrance, Action and Reaction in
World Politics-International Systems in Perspective (Boston: Little, Brown,
1963).
7. In Action and Reaction, for example, Richard Rosecrance finds nine dif ferent systems in operation from the eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth
century; for his assessment of the post-Cold War period see Richard Rosecrance,
“A New Concert of Powers,” Foreign Affairs 71, no. 2 (Spring 1992): 64-82.
8. I employ the concept of “system” in a general way, to refer to a specific
and regular pattern of interaction among diverse units according to some principle or method of coherence or control; it is closely related to the idea of “structure.” For sophisticated discussion of these issues see Kenneth Waltz, Theory of
International Politics (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1979) and Robert O.
Keohane (ed.), Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press,
1986).
9. I use the term hegemony in its broadest sense, as the capacity of an actor
(or nation) to impose will over others without significant challenge.
10. Peter H. Smith, “Trouble Ahead? Prospects for U.S. Relations with
Latin America,” in Albert Fishlow and James Jones (eds.), The United States and
the Americas: A 21st Century View (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), ch. 7;
“Mexico,” in Paul Kennedy et al. (eds.), The Pivotal States: A New Framework
for U.S. Policy in the Developing World (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999),
pp. 215-243; and “Strategic Options for Latin America” (Washington, D.C.:
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1998).
Chapter 1
1. William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, 2nd ed.
(New York: Franklin watts, 1976), p. 21.
2. On this concept see John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson, “The Imperialism of Free Trade,” Economic History Review 2nd series, 6, no. 1 (1953): 1-15.
3. Jefferson felt especially betrayed because he had favored France in foreign
policy, strongly condemning a proindependence uprising against French rule in
Haiti-partly because he thought it would set a nefarious example for American
slaves.
4. Haiti acquired independence from France in 1804, after a black rebellion
led by ex-slave Toussaint L’Ouverture, and took control of the Dominican Republic from 1822 to 1844; under Faustin Soulouque (1847-59), Haiti made two
unsuccessful attempts to recapture Santo Domingo.
5. After the period of Haitian rule (1822-44), the Dominican Republic was
briefly retaken by Spain from 1861 to 1865, when political revolts and yellow
fever persuaded Isabella II to withdraw voluntarily. In 1868 Ulysses Grant proposed annexation of the Dominican Republic by the United States, but the U.S.
Senate voted down the plan.
6. The precise terms of his boast remain a matter of scholarly controversy:
see James F. Vivian, “The `Taking’ of the Panama Canal Zone: Myth and Reality,”
Diplomatic History 4, no. 1 (Winter 1980): 95-100.
7. In January 1917 Germany’s foreign minister, Arthur Zimmerman, dispatched a secret telegram in code to the German minister in Mexico, proposing an
alliance with Mexico in exchange for “an understanding on our part that Mexico is
to reconquer her lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.” Intercepted
and decoded by British intelligence, the telegram was published by the Wilson administration on March 1, 1917, five weeks before the U.S. declaration of war.
Chapter 2
1. For an in-depth exploration of such attitudes, see Lars Schoultz, Beneath
the United States: A History of U.S. Policy toward Latin America (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1998).
2. Paul W. Drake, “From Good Men to Good Neighbors: 1912-1932,” in
Abraham F. Lowenthal (ed.), Exporting Democracy: The United States and Latin
America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), pp. 3-40.
3. Los Angeles Times, September 18, 1994.
Chapter 3
1. Still the standard source is Bryce Wood, The Making of the Good Neighbor
Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961).
2. Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt were distant family cousins; Franklin’s
wife, Eleanor, was also Theodore’s niece.
3. Arthur P. Whitaker, The Western Hemisphere Idea: Its Rise and Decline
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1954). This view drew considerable support
during the 1930s from popularization of the historical thesis of Herbert Eugene
Bolton, a prominent scholar who contended that the Americas had more in common with each other than with Europe. See Lewis Hanke (ed.), Do the Americas
Have a Common History? A Critique of the Bolton Theory (New York: Alfred A.
Knopf, 1964).
4. See Gerald K. Haines, “Under the Eagle’s Wing: The Franklin Roosevelt
Administration Forges an American Hemisphere,” Diplomatic History 1, no. 4
(Fall 1977):373-388.
5. Allen L. Woll, The Latin Image in American Film (Los Angeles: UCLA
Latin American Center Publications, University of California, Los Angeles, 1977),
p. 60.
6. “Chica Chica Boom Chic,” by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren © 1941
Twentieth Century Music Corporation © Renewed 1969 and assigned to EMI
Miller Catalog Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Warner Bros. Publication USA Inc., Miami, Fl 33014.
7. Irwin F. Gellman, Good Neighbor Diplomacy: United States Policies in Latin
America, 1933-1945 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), p. 38.
Chapter 4
1. Reflecting racial tenets of the time, Bolivar insisted that the United States
and Haiti should be excluded from this union, as they would be “a foreign substance in our body.” He was silent on the question of Brazil, at this time the seat
of the Portuguese empire.
2. Throughout this book, the adjective regional embraces all of Latin
America; subregional applies to portions of Latin America (such as Central America
or South America); and the term hemispheric refers to all of Latin America plus
North America (in principle, though not always in practice, including Canada as
well as the United States).
3. The U.S. view of international law shifted to convenience Early in the
nineteenth century American leaders dismissed European “black-letter” law as antiquated and irrelevant, as shown in chapter 2, because it conflicted with expansionist policy; by the end of the century, at least in this context, American spokesmen supported principles of international law that reflected national interests.
Chapter 5
1. Thomas G. Paterson, On Every Front: The Making and Unmaking of the
Cold War, rev. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), ch.3, “Spheres: The Quest
for Influence to 1947,” pp. 41-69.
2. It is thus revealing that the “bureaucratic politics” interpretation of U.S.
foreign policy-making arose during and in reference to the Cold War; see Graham
T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little,
Brown, 1971), and Abraham F. Lowenthal, “United States Policy toward Latin
America: `Liberal,’ `Radical,’ and `Bureaucratic’ Perspectives,” Latin American
Research Review 8 (Fall 1973): 3-25.
3. Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of
Anticommunism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), p. 13.
4. Leslie Bethell, “From the Second World War to the Cold War: 19441954,” in Abraham F. Lowenthal (ed.), Exporting Democracy: The United States
and Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), p. 48.
5. Rollie Poppino, International Communism in Latin America: A History
of the Movement, 1917-1963 (Glencoe: The Free Press, 1964), p. 36.
6. Poppino, International Communism, p. 195.
Chapter 6
1. Convinced of the existence of a worldwide communist conspiracy, Western analysts usually put the People’s Republic of China in the “second” world; especially after their late 1950s split with the Soviet Union, Chinese leaders saw
their country as part of the “third” world. An alternative classification stressed not
political allegiance but economic development, categorizing countries on a continuum from “most” to “least” developed; in practice, the least developed countries tended to correspond to membership in the “third” world.
2. Stephen G. Rabe, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy
of Anticommunisn (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988),
p. 16-17.
3. Despite the president’s evident goodwill, his omission of the pronoun “el” before the word Progreso was a poignant reminder of Washington’s
inattention to Latin America; somewhere in the White House, one might have
thought, there must have been someone with a working knowledge of Spanish
grammar.
4. Tony Smith, “The Alliance for Progress: The 1960s,” in Abraham F.
Lowenthal (ed.), Exporting Democracy: The United States and Latin America
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), p. 74.
5. William D. Rogers, The Twilight Struggle: The Alliance for Progress and the Politics of Development in Latin America (New York: Random House, 1967),
p. 199.
6. Smith, “Alliance,” p. 72; and L. Ronald Scheman (ed. ), The Alliance for
Progress: A Retrospective (New York: Praeger, 1988), pp. 10-11.
7. Estimates for net resource flows range from roughly $4 billion to $10
billion.
8. L. Ronald Scheman, “The Alliance for Progress: Concept and Creativity,” in Scheman (ed.), Alliance for Progress, p. 18.
9. According to Jerome Levinson and Juan de Onis, “There is no official
transcript of the meeting, but Mann’s remarks were reported by Tad Szulc in the
New York Times of March 19, 1964. Mann was later to claim that the Szulc report
was distorted, but other participants in the meeting (who ask that their names be
withheld) have corroborated Szulc’s report.” The Alliance That Lost Its Way: A
Critical Report on the Alliance for Progress (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970),
p. 88, note 7.
10. Deane J. Kirkpatrick, Dictatorship and Double Standards: Rationalism
and Reason in Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982), p. 26.
Chapter 7
1. Eisenhower, in fact, was prepared to uphold the Ydigoras Fuentes regime
for this very reason. Hearing of a near-revolt in Guatemala in late 1960, he later
recalled his determination “that if we received a request from Guatemala for assistance, we would move in without delay.”
2. Hugh Thomas, The Cuban Revolution (New York: Harper & Row, 1977),
p. 585.
3. U.S. Congress, Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operation with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving
Foreign Leaders, Senate Report No. 465, 94th Congress, 1st Session (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), p. 71. Underworld figures
were prepared to cooperate with plans to eliminate Castro because they had lost
extensive gambling and prostitution operations in Havana as a result of the Cuban
Revolution.
4. Ibid., pp. 191-215.
5. There was some discussion of a possible assassination of Allende, as
reported by Seymour Hersh in The Price of Power: Kissinger in the Nixon
White House (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983), pp. 258-259, though this is
largely discounted by Paul E. Sigmund in The United States and Democracy in
Chile (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), p. 51. All we know
from prior episodes is that an assassination plot was not outside the bounds of
possibility.
6. See William LeoGrande, “Through the Looking Glass: The Kissinger Report on Central America,” World Policy Journal (Winter 1984): 251-284.
7. To complete this picture, the United States also took covert action against
the government of Cheddi Jagan in British Guiana in the early 1960s; see Robert
A. Packenham, Liberal America and the Third World: Political Development Ideas
in Foreign Aid and Social Science (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973),
pp. 75-81.
Chapter 8
1. Jorge G. Castaneda, Utopia Unarmed: The Latin American Left after the
Cold War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), p. 38.
2. Timothy Wickham-Crowley, Guerrilla Movements and Revolution in
Latin America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), esp. pp. 209-220.
3. On this see Wickham-Crowley, Guerrilla Movements, esp. ch. 12; and
Margaret E. Crahan and Peter H. Smith, “The State of Revolution,” in Alfred
Stepan (ed.), Americas: New Interpretive Essays (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1992), pp. 79-108.
4. Castaneda, Utopia, p. 111.
5. U.S. Congress, Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, Alleged Assassination Plots Involving
Foreign Leaders, Senate Report No. 465, 94th Congress, 1st Session (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), pp. 191-215.
6. Defiance did not work forever. In October 1998 a Spanish magistrate
charged Pinochet with crimes against humanity as he was undergoing medical
treatment in London, and the ex-general was placed under arrest while the British
government decided on a course of action. In March 1999 the House of Lords
determined that Pinochet was legally subject to extradition-but only for offenses
committed after September 1988, when torture became punishable as an international crime under British law. Despite the ambiguity of this ruling, the political
message was clear: abuse of human rights was increasingly unacceptable under international law.
7. Strictly speaking, the “Southern Cone” of South America embraces Chile,
Argentina, and Uruguay (which also fell under military rule during the 1970s); in
colloquial usage, the term sometimes includes Paraguay and even Brazil.
8. As former European colonies in the Caribbean acquired independence,
the organization changed its name to the Economic Commission for Latin American and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
9. The charter was opposed by only six industrialized countries-the
United States, Great Britain, West Germany, Belgium, Denmark, and Luxembourg-on the ground that it would lead to more expropriation of foreign investment and to more Third World producer associations like OPEC.
10. Roger D. Hansen, Beyond the North-South Stalemate (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1979), p. 101.
11. By 1989 sixteen Latin American states were full members of the NonAligned Movement: Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador,
Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, St. Lucia, Suriname,
Trinidad-Tobago. Eight were observers: Barbados, Brazil, Costa Rica, Dominica,
El Salvador, Mexico, Uruguay, Venezuela, as were three organizations: ECLAC,
SELA, and OLADE (the Latin American Energy Organization). Non-members
included Antigua-Bermuda, Bahamas, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti,
Honduras, Paraguay, St. Kitt-Nevis, St. Vincent.
Chapter 9
1. Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” The National Interest 16
(Summer 1989): 3-16.
2. Thomas G. Paterson, On Every Front: The Making and Unmaking of the Cold War, revised edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992), pp. 192193.
3. Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change
and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Random House, 1987),
p. 358.
4. The participating countries were: Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Luxembourg, Belgium, Finland, and Ireland. For the
time being Great Britain, Denmark, and Sweden opted out of the plan: Greece
wanted to join but failed to meet criteria for membership. Norway and Switzerland did not belong to the EU and were not using the euro.
S. C. Fred Bergsten, “America and Europe: Clash of the Titans?” Foreign
Affairs 78, no. 2 (March/April 1999): 20-34, with quote on p. 20.
6. Lester C. Thurow, “The Dollar’s Day of Reckoning,” The Nation 268,
no. 2 (January 11/18, 1999): 22-24.
7. In 1997, for example, revenues for General Motors came to $178
billion-which was larger than the gross domestic products of Denmark ($174
billion), Norway ($158 billion), and Saudi Arabia ($126 billion).
8. As though to illustrate the confusion that resulted, the Sunday New York
Times of May 31, 1998, carried one story indicating why Asia would recover from
its crisis (“The Southeast Asians Did Some Things Right,” in the Week in Review)
and another on the unsalvageability of the regional economy (“The World’s
Biggest Going-Out-of- Sale,” in the magazine section).
9. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “What New World Order?” Foreign Affairs 71, no. 2
(Spring 1992): 83-96, with quote on p. 88.
10. Samuel P. Huntington, “The Lonely Superpower,” Foreign Affairs 78,
no. 2 (March/April 1999): 35-49, with quotes from pp. 36-37.
11. For some of the voluminous writings on this subject see Hans-Henrik
Holm and Georg Sorensen, Whose World Order? Uneven Globalization and the
End of the Cold War (Boulder: Westview Press, 1995), Jochen Hippler, Pax
Americana? Hegemony or Decline (Boulder and London: Pluto Press, 1994), Alpo
M. Rusi, Dangerous Peace: New Rivalry in World Politics (Boulder: Westview
Press, 1997), and Donald M. Snow, The Shape of the Future: The Post-Cold War
World, second edition (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1995).
12. As though to confirm these trends, on September 30, 1998, the U.S.
government announced a budget surplus of $70 billion (the first in nearly 30
years) on the same day that the International Monetary Fund released an unusually pessimistic report about prospects for Russia, Japan, Southeast Asia, and the
global economy in general. New York Times, October 1, 1998.
13. Henry A. Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994),
pp. 23-24.
14. Samuel P. Huntington, “The Clash of Civilizations?” Foreign Affairs
72, no. 3 (Summer 1993): 22-49, and The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). For provocative commentary on this thesis see Foreign Affairs 72, no. 4 (September/October 1993):
2-26.
15. To some extent this is already happening, as suggested by trade flows
(Table A17) and investment trends (Table A18).
16. Charles William Maynes, “America without the Cold War,” Foreign
Policy 78 (Spring 1990): 3-25, with quote on pp. 22-23.
17. Abraham F. Lowenthal, Partners in Conflict: The United States and
Latin America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), p. 33; also in the revised edition, Partners in Conflict: The United States and Latin America in
the 1990s (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), p. 36.
18. Lowenthal, Partners, p. 32; and revised edition, p. 35.
19. Paterson, On Every Front, p. 213; also Paterson, “Why the Cold War
Ended: The Latin American Dimension” (unpublished paper, 1993), p. 23.
20. In relation to population size, the spread in per capita output grew
steadily: in 1950 GDP per capita in the United States was just over seven times as
large as in Latin America, and by 1990 it was nearly ten times as large. By this
standard, U.S. preponderance was increasing over time.
21. Among the top-ten highest-grossing films in Mexico City for each of the
years 1996 through 1998, a total of 30 productions in all, only one (Il Postino)
was not from the United States.
22. On the notion of “soft power” see Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Bound to Lead:
The Changing Nature of American Power (New York: Basic Books, 1990), esp.
pp. 193-195.
23. Robert A. Pastor, Whirlpool: U.S. Foreign Policy toward Latin America
and the Caribbean (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 230.
24. Fareed Zakaria, “The Rise of Illiberal Democracy,” Foreign Affairs 76,
no. 6 (November/December 1997): 22-43.
25. “Freedom House Warns: Wave of Democracy May Be Receding,” press
release, December 18, 1997.
26. Jorge Dominguez, “Latin America’s Crisis of Representation,” Foreign
Affairs 76, no. 1 (January/February 1997): 100-113.
27. This point is somewhat different from the widely accepted notion that
democracies do not wage war on one another. On this see Bruce Russett, Grasping the Democratic Peace: Principles for a Post-Cold War World (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1993), and Joanne Gowa, “Democratic States and
International Disputes,” International Organization 49, no. 3 (Summer 1995):
511-522. For discussion of the potentially bellicose tendencies of polities in the
process of democratization, in contrast to established democracies, see Edward D.
Mansfield and Jack Snyder, “Democratization and the Danger of War,” International Security 20, no. 1 (Summer 1995): 5-38, with ensuing discussion in 20,
no. 4 (Spring 1996): 176-207.
28. Lars Schoultz, National Security and U.S. Policy toward Latin America
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), p. 310.
29. Jorge Castaneda, “Latin American and the End of the Cold War,” World
Policy journal 7, no. 3 (Summer 1990): 469-492, with quote on p. 477.
30. Upon examination, it appears that some of these materials were less
“strategic” than policymakers imagined. See Schoultz, National Security, ch. 4 on
“Strategic Raw Materials.”
31. The concept of “emerging markets” initially focused on opportunities
for investment in securities markets, but soon extended to trade as well.
32. Quoted in Ruben G. Rumbaut, “The Americans: Latin American and
Caribbean Peoples in the United States,” in Alfred Stepan (ed.), Americas: New
Interpretive Essays (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 278-279.
33. This figure refers to U.S. citizens or to persons legally present in the
United States; understandably, the practical definition of the “Hispanic” population is subject to uncertainty and debate.
34. Puerto Rico is not customarily regarded as a political or economic
member of Latin America, but its inclusion seems appropriate in this social
context.
35. “Leaders” in the Chicago Council poll were analogous to “influentials”
in the Pew Center surveys reported earlier in this chapter.
36. Clinton’s indifference to this question long preceded the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal that erupted in full force in August 1998. There was little doubt,
however, that the Lewinsky matter would perpetuate paralysis.
37. Robert A. Pastor, “The Latin American Option,” Foreign Policy 88 (Fall
1992): 107-125, with quote from p. 107.
38. Robert S. Chase, Emily B. Hill, and Paul Kennedy, “Pivotal States and
U.S. Strategy,” Foreign Affairs 75, no. 1 (January/February 1996): 33-51; and
Kennedy et al. (eds)., The Pivotal States: A New Framework for U.S. Policy in the
Developing World (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999).
39. Paterson, “Why the Cold War Ended,” 40-41.
Chapter 10
1. Pedro-Pablo Kuczynski, Latin American Debt (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press/Twentieth Century Fund, 1988), p. 86.
2. The classic (and controversial) formulation of this consensus appears in
John Williamson, “What Washington Means by Policy Reform,” in Williamson,
ed., Latin American Economic Adjustment: How Much Has Happened? (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1990), pp. 7-20.
3. Comparison of the economic size of these two blocs was highly contingent on exchange rates for the U.S. dollar; according to some calculations (at
some moments) NAFTA was larger than the European Union, according to others it was smaller.
4. Peter H. Smith, “Conclusion-The Politics of Integration: Guidelines
for Policy,” in Smith (ed.), The Challenge of Integration: Europe and the Americas
(Miami: North-South Center, 1993), p. 393.
5. Peter H. Smith, “The Political Impact of Free Trade on Mexico,” Journal of International Studies and World Affairs (July 1992): 1-24.
6. Study on the Operation and Effects of the North American Free Trade
Agreement (Washington: The White House, 1997), p. iii.
7. Albert Fishlow, “Foreword,” in Riordan Roett (ed.), The Mexican Peso
Crisis.- International Perspectives (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1996), p. ix.
8. See Richard E. Feinberg, Summitry in the Americas: A Progress Report
(Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1997).
9. In something of an anticlimax, the House of Representatives formally rejected fast track legislation in September 1998 by a vote of 243 to 180 (with only
29 Democrats in favor, 171 against, and 3 abstaining).
10. Most of Chile’s progress in this area was simply due to economic
growth, which helped to generate employment and to push up real wages. According to econometric estimates, social policy may have accounted for 20 percent to 40 percent of the overall poverty reduction. Patricio Meller, “Pobreza y
distribuci6n del ingreso en Chile (decada del 90),” paper presented at conference
on Chile: Model for Development and Democracy? at the University of California, San Diego (December 1998).
11. Abraham F. Lowenthal, “Latin America Today: Images and Realities”
(Los Angeles: Pacific Council on International Policy, 1997), pp. 9-10,
14-15. See also Robert Kaufman, “The Next Challenges for Latin America,”
Centro de Estudios Avanzados en Ciencias Sociales Estudios/Working Paper 1997/108 (Madrid: Instituto Juan March de Estudios e Investigaciones,
1997), esp. pp. 8-9; and Nora Lustig (cd.), Coping with Austerity: Poverty and
Inequality in Latin America (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution,
1995).
12. Sebastian Edwards, “Latin America’s Underperformance,” Foreign Affairs 76, no. 2 (March/April 1997), 93-94.
13. World Bank, Global Development 1998: Analysis and Summary
Tables (Washington, D.C. World Bank, 1998), p. 67. Note that estimates of the
overall magnitude of external debt vary from source to source because of differing
criteria.
14. World Commission in Environment and Development, Our Common
Future (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 8.
15. An exception was granted to Canada, which agreed to pay fines from its
national treasury.
16. A blue-ribbon monitoring group, the Leadership Council for Inter-American Summitry, gave the hemisphere a “modest” score-2 out of a possible 5-for
progress on sustainable development in the wake of the Miami summit. From Talk
to Action: How Summits Can Help Forge a Western Hemisphere Community of Prosperous Democracies, A Policy Report (Miami: North-South Center, 1998).
Chapter 11
1. The NIDA/SAMHSA surveys raised serious problems of measurement.
Candor in response might well vary over time: the greater the level of social intolerance about drugs, the less probable that people would provide complete information. And these surveys dealt only with households; by definition, they did not
cover the homeless, the prison population, students in dormitories, and those
downtrodden segments of society most likely to be engaged in “doing” drugs.
2. According to one report, a kilo of cocaine that sold for $38,000 in Miami
in 1984 was selling for as little as $12,000 to $15,000 in 1988 and for $12,500 to
$18,000 in 1998.
3. By 1993 Russia moved into first place, with United States firmly ensconced in second. As of 1995 the U.S. rate of incarceration (600 per 100,000)
was three times that of Romania (200), more than five times that of Canada
(115), six times those of England and France (100), and more than ten times that
of Norway (55).
4. In 1998 McCaffery’s office divided budgetary expenditures into five categories, rather than just two, but simple addition shows that the overall percentages were much the same as before. Office of National Drug Control Strategy,
National Drug Control Strategy, 1998: A Ten Year Plan (Washington, D.C.: The
White House, 1998), pp. 58-59.
5. Note that Table 2 does not refer to educational or therapeutic campaigns,
though politicians frequently described such activities as part of the antidrug
“wars.” It refers only to organized violence.
6. See U.S. Department of State, Bureau for International Narcotics and
Enforcement Matters, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report,
March 1997 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of State, 1997), pp. xlii, 83.
7. A bill to decertify Mexico (presented by Senator Dianne Feinstein of California) failed in March 1998 by a vote of 54-45.
8. White House, Drug Control Strategy 1997, p. 52. As of this writing it is
impossible to evaluate the proposal to create a “multilateral” mechanism to evaluate antidrug efforts, as agreed at the Santiago Summit of the Americas in April
1998. Whatever happens, it is difficult to imagine that the U.S. Congress would
relinquish its sovereign right to pass judgement on the performance of other nations throughout the world.
9. Maria Celia Toro, Mexico’s “War” on Drugs: Causes and Consequences
(Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1995), p. 2.
10. Earlier, Noriega had apparently been planning to nominate Duque to
the crucial position of Administrator of the Panama Canal Corporation, a move
that might also have met powerful resistance in Washington. See Michael L. Conniff, Panama and the United States: The Forced Alliance (Athens, GA: University
of Georgia Press, 1992), pp. 161-162.
11. Binational Study on Migration between Mexico and the United States
(Mexico: Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores, 1997), p. ii and ch. 2.
12. Wayne A. Cornelius, “From Sojourners to Settlers: The Changing Profile of Mexican Immigration to the United States,” in Jorge A. Bustamante, Clark
W. Reynolds, and Raul A. Hinojosa Ojeda (eds.), U.S.-Mexico Relations: Labor
Market Interdependence (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), p. 184.
13. For an excellent discussion of these initiatives see Wayne A. Cornelius,
“Appearances and Realities: Controlling Illegal Immigration in the United
States,” in Myron Weiner and Tadashi Hanami (eds.), Immigration, Refugees,
and Citizenship: Japanese and U.S. Perspectives (New York: New York University
Press, 1998).
14. See Peter H. Smith, “NAFTA and Mexican Migration,” in Frank D.
Bean, Rodolfo O. de la Garza, Bryan R. Roberts, and Sidney Weintraub (eds.), At
the Crossroads: Mexico and U.S. Immigration Policy (Lanham MD: Rowman &
Littlefield, 1997), pp. 263-281, esp. pp. 275-278.
15. See also Binational Study, pp. 8-11.
16. It is often argued that economic integration should eventually diminish
wage differentials between partner countries and thus reduce the incentive for
labor migration. That may be true in theory but it is not apparent in practice,
since economic integration also creates noneconomic incentives for continued migration. Also, any significant reduction in wage gaps between the United States
and Latin America (especially Mexico and the circum-Caribbean) would take
decades if not generations.
17. Also important, witnesses say, was Bush’s quaint sense of chivalry. “If
they kill an American Marine,” he said at a news conference, “that’s real bad. And
if they threaten and brutalize the wife of an American citizen, sexually threatening
the lieutenant’s wife while kicking him in the groin over and over again-then
. . . this president is going to do something about it.”
18. John Dinges, Our Man in Panama: The Shrewd Rise and Brutal Fall of
Manuel Noriega (New York: Random House, 1991), p. 319.
19. Some thought it highly unlikely that the United States would actually
undertake military action against any Latin American nation by the late 1990s.
For a scenario involving Mexico, however, see Caspar Weinberger and Peter
Schweizer, The Next War (Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 1996), pp. 163-213;
Weinberger was secretary of defense under Ronald Reagan. And by this time, of
course, military action did not require the physical deployment of ground troops
on land masses. As shown by the shelling of suspected terrorist strongholds in Afghanistan and the Sudan in 1998 and by the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, a
great deal of damage could be inflicted by long-range missiles alone.
20. Indeed, the annual number of Haitian refugees intercepted by the U.S.
Coast Guard fell to 600-700 in 1996 and 1997, but then picked up to more than
1,200 in 1998-with an accelerating pace in early 1999.
Chapter 12
1. There was a play on words in the original, since the phrase hacer
America means to get rich-usually through a windfall. Ferraro was the Peronist
governor of the Argentine province of Jujuy.
2. The ending of the Cold War was not, however, responsible for Latin
American movements toward democratization; as mentioned in chapter 9, the
major transitions-in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay-all took place before the
communist collapse.
3. World Bank, World Development Report 1991: The Challenge of Development (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), Table 1, pp. 204-205.
4. In fact, it was not clear precisely how the Cuban government could stem
the tide of balseros. Apparently Castro first relaxed strictures against emigration
because he was greatly (and understandably) annoyed by U.S. official welcomes to
Cuban refugees who had hijacked ferry boats in Havana.
5. In October 1994 the UN General Assembly expressed overwhelming
disapproval of the American embargo by a vote of 101 to 2 with 48 abstentions,
with only Israel supporting the United States. In November 1997 the vote against
U.S. policy was 143 to 3 with 17 abstentions. A year later the vote was 157 to 2
with only 12 abstentions.
6. For differing interpretations see Susan Kaufman Purcell, “Collapsing
Cuba,” Foreign Affairs 71, no. 1 (Winter 1992): 130-145, and Jorge Dominguez,
“Secrets of Castro’s Staying Power,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 2 (Spring 1993):
97-107.
7. Much of the material to follow has been adapted from my paper on
“Strategic Options for Latin America” (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1998).
8. Rolf J. Liiders, “Did Privatization Raise Enterprise Efficiency in Chile?”
in William Glade with Rossana Corona (eds.), Bigger Economies, Smaller Governments: Privatization in Latin America (Boulder: Westview Press, 1996), ch. 7.
9. Bilateral and multilateral negotiations provide policymakers with the opportunity to emphasize quid pro quo concessions, which can make them palatable
to the domestic public; this is not the case with unilateral liberalization, however,
which explains the need for strong political consensus.
10. As Argentina has shown, it is also possible to align oneself with the
United States on geopolitical grounds (by steadfastly seeking relaciones carnales
with Washington, as the foreign minister once quipped). A decade of faithful support for U.S. leadership on foreign policy culminated in President Clinton’s bewildering coronation of Argentina as a “major non-NATO ally” in late 1997. It is
impossible to fathom what this really means.
11. Nora Lustig, “The Future of Trade Policy in Latin America,” unpublished paper (The Brookings Institution, March 1994), p. 17.
12. Sylvia Saborio, “Overview: The Long and Winding Road from Anchorage to Patagonia,” in The Premise and the Promise, pp. 16-17.
13. Monica Hirst, “El MERCOSUR: evolucion economica dinamica
politica,” paper presented at symposium on “Japon y Mexico hacia el nuevo siglo:
situacion actual y perspectivas del NAFTA,” Tokyo, March 1998, p. 2.
14. Miguel Rodriguez-Mendoza, “The Andean Group’s Integration Strategy,” in Ana Julia Jatar and Sidney Weintraub (eds.), Integrating the Hemisphere:
Perspectives from Latin America and the Caribbean (Washington, D.C.: InterAmerican Dialogue, 1997), p. 10.
15. As quoted in Felix Pena, “Strategies for Macroeconomic Coordination:
Reflections on the Case of MERCOSUR,” in Peter H. Smith (ed.), The Challenge
of Integration: Europe and the Americas (Miami: North-South Center/Transaction, 1993), p. 195.
16. Patricio Meller, “An Overview of Chilean Trade Strategy,” in Jatar and
Weintraub (eds.), Integrating the Hemisphere, pp. 145-146.
17. Ibid., p. 150. As another observer has noted, these bilateral trade agreements with Chile are sometimes seen as “the FTAs that don’t matter,” since
Chilean exports do not compete with locally produced goods in Mexico, Chile, or
Venezuela.
18. Mexico concluded a bilateral pact with Nicaragua in late 1997, and negotiations with the “northern triangle” of Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras) were in progress as of this writing.
19. See Manfred Wilhelmy and Rosa Maria Lazo, “La politica multilateral de
Chile en Asia Pacifico,” Estudios Internacionales 30, no. 117 (enero-marzo 1997):
3-35, esp. pp. 4, 35.
20. In fact, the European role in Latin America was declining: the EU took
only 17 percent of Latin America’s exports in 1996, down from 21 percent in
1990, while the U.S. share increased from 38 percent to 42 percent.
21. It might be noted, as well, that Mexico has never been seen by Japanese
corporations as one of the ten most promising short-term (three-year) sites for investment; in a ten-year perspective, Mexico made the top ten (in tenth place) in
1996 but not in 1995 or 1997. Keiichi Tsunekawa, “Assessing NAFTA’s Effects
for Mexico: A Japanese View,” paper presented at symposium on “Japon y Mexico
hacia el nuevo siglo: situacion actual y perspectivas del NAFTA,” Tokyo, March
1998, Table 10.
22. See Gary Wills, “Bully of the Free World,” Foreign Affairs 78, no. 2
(March/April 1999): 50-59.
23. As stated in chapter 11, Canada assumed eventual leadership of the UN
peacekeeping mission-but not until 1996, well after the 1994 occupation.
24. In Spanish barz6n means “the yoke,” or, more literally, the leather strap
connecting a wooden yoke to oxen. In popular usage in Mexico, it refers to the
yoke of debt.
25. On this see William Greider, One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic
of Global Capitalism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997); and Dani Rodrik, Has
Globalization Gone Too Far? (Washington, D.C.: Institute for International Economics, 1997).
26. Sergio Bitar and Colin I. Bradford, Jr., in Bradford (ed.), Strategic Options for Latin America in the 1990s (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, 1992), p. 14.
Conclusion
1. Hopes lingered in some quarters for multilateral organization, especially
the OAS, and to some extent NAFTA may have represented an attempt by
Mexico to set rules and restrictions on the United States in areas of economic
policy; by the late 1990s, however, there was little indication that such strategies
were likely to succeed.
2. Of necessity, Table 6 is greatly simplified. For a more complete picture of
Latin America’s strategic options in the 1990s, see Table 3, chapter 12.
This bibliography offers an introductory guide to further reading on
U.S.-Latin American relations. Listings appear under four headings: International Relations: Concepts and Trends, The United States in the
Global Arena, U.S. Policy toward Latin America, and Latin America:
Politics, Strategies, and Policies. While these categories overlap to some
extent, individual entries are listed only once.
International Relations: Concepts and Trends
Dougherty, James E., and Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Jr. Contending Theories of International Relations: A Comprehensive Survey, 3rd ed. New York: Harper &
Row, 1990
Gilpin, Robert. War and Change in World Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981.
. The Political Economy of International Relations. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1987.
Greider, William. One World, Ready or Not: The Manic Logic of Global Capitalism.
New York: Touchstone, 1997.
Haggard, Stephen, and Robert R. Kaufman (eds.). The Politics of Economic Adjustment: International Constraints, Distributive Conflicts, and the State.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Hansen, Roger D. Beyond the North-South Stalemate. New York: McGraw-Hill,
1979.
Hirst, Paul, and Grahame Thompson. Globalization in Question: The International Economy and the Possibilities of Governance. Cambridge: Polity Press,
1996.
Holm, Hans-Henrik, and Georg Sorensen. Whose World Order? Uneven Globalization and the End of the Cold War. Boulder: Westview Press, 1995.
Holsti, Ole R. “Models of International Relations and Foreign Policy.” Diplomatic History 13, no. 1 (Winter 1989): 15-43.
Huntington, Samuel P. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World
Order. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996.
Kennedy, Paul. Preparing for the Twenty-First Century. New York: Random
House, 1993.
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: Economic Change and Military
Conflict from 1500 to 2000. New York: Random House, 1988.
Keohane, Robert O. After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984.
Keohane, Robert O. (ed.). Neorealism and Its Critics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1986.
Keohane, Robert 0., and Joseph S. Nye. Power and Independence, 2nd ed. Glenview: Scott, Foresman, 1989.
Krasner, Stephen (ed.) International Regimes. Cornell University Press, 1983.
Structural Conflict: The Third World Against Global Liberalism. Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1985.
Kuttner, Robert. Everything for Sale: The Virtues and Limits of Markets. New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.
Nye, Joseph S., Jr. Bound to Lead: The Changing Nature of American Power. New
York: Basic Books, 1990.
Oye, Kenneth A. (ed. ). Cooperation under Anarchy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986.
Rodrik, Dani. Has Globalization Gone Too Far? Washington, D.C.: Institute of International Ecomonics, 1997.
Rosecrance, Richard. Action and Reaction in World Politics: International Systems
in Perspective. Boston: Little, Brown, 1963.
Rothstein, Robert L. Global Bargaining: UNCTAD and the Quest for a New International Order. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979.
Smith, Peter H. (ed.). The Challenge of Integration: Europe and the Americas.
Miami: North-South Center/Transaction Publishers, 1993.
Smith, Tony. America’s Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for
Democracy in the Twentieth Century. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1994.
The Pattern of Imperialism: The United States, Great Britain, and the
Late-Industrializing World since 1815. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1981.
Snow, Donald M. The Shape of the Future: The Post-Cold War World, 2nd ed. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995.
The United States in the Global Arena
Ambrose, Stephen E. Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy, 1938-1980, 2nd
rev. ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1980.
Chase, Robert S., Emily B. Hill, and Paul Kennedy (eds.). The Pivotal States: A
New Framework for U.S. Policy in the Developing World. New York: W. W.
Norton, 1999.
Desch, Michael C. When the Third World Matters: Latin America and United
States Grand Strategy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
Gardner, Lloyd C. Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy. Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1964.
Goldstein, Judith. Ideas, Interests, and American Trade Policy. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1993.
Haass, Richard N. Intervention: The Use of American Military Force in the PostCold War World. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1995.
Hunt, Michael H. Ideology and U.S. Foreign Policy. New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1987.
Lake, David A. Power, Protection, and Free Trade: International Sources of U.S.
Commercial Stategy, 1887-1939. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
McCormick, Thomas J. America’s Half Century: United States Foreign Policy in
the Cold War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989.
Merk, Frederick. Manifest Destiny and Mission in American History: A Reinterpretation. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1963.
Oye, Kenneth A., Robert J. Lieber, and Donald Rothchild (eds.). Eagle Resurgent?
The Reagan Era in American Foreign Policy. Boston: Little, Brown, 1983.
Eagle Defiant: United States Foreign Policy in the 1980s. Boston: Little,
Brown, 1983.
Packenham, Robert A. Liberal America and the Third World: Political Development Ideas in Foreign Aid and Social Science. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1973.
Paterson, Thomas G. On Every Front: The Making and Unmaking of the Cold
War, rev. ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1992.
Tucker, Robert W., and David C. Hendrickson. The Imperial Temptation: The
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U.S. Congress. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with
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Gilderhus, Mark T. Pan American Visions: Woodrow Wilson in the Western Hemisphere, 1913-1921. Tuscon: University of Arizona Press, 1986.
Gleijeses, Piero. Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United
States, 1944-1954. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.
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of North Carolina Press, 1992.
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University of Wisconsin Press, 1970.
Johnson, John J. A Hemisphere Apart: The Foundations of United States Policy toward Latin America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
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The United States and the Caribbean in the Twentieth Century. Athens:
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Levinson, Jerome, and Juan de Onis. The Alliance That Lost Its Way: A Critical
Report on the Alliance for Progress. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1970.
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Partners in Conflict: The United States and Latin America. Baltimore:
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The United States and Latin America in the 1990s. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1990.
Lowenthal, Abraham F. (ed.). Exporting Democracy: The United States and Latin
America, Themes and Issues. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991.
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Tulchin, Joseph S. The Aftermath of War: World War I and U.S. Policy toward
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Latin America: Politics, Strategies, and Policies
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