Latin America

Shauna N. Gillooly and Sofia-Alexa Porres

Oct 12 2023

In 2023 alone, President Biden has met with four Latin American countries led by left-wing governments, including Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, and Colombia. Considering the historic tendency of the US to support the right in Latin America, what could these meetings signal towards the future of Latin American-US relations? Relationships between the United States and its southern neighbors have been historically marked by U.S. interventionism in the region, particularly during the Cold War. The Cold War (1947-91) was a moment in history that was marked by simultaneous increase in panic over left-wing ideologies like communism and socialism along with new trends toward globalization in the United States. Truman argued that it was no longer safe to simply depend on the security of US territory for national safety, but rather it now depended on stopping the expansion of Soviet totalitarianism and defending those states that could be corrupted. This vision of interventionism led to the Truman Doctrine. As a result, U.S. interference in Latin American countries increased, with the primary aim of combatting the possible involvement with the Soviet Union in the region as well as the spread of leftist ideologies in respective Latin American governments. This US perspective toward Latin America is one that has been slow to change.

During the ‘banana republic’ era, this intervention took on a more capitalistic approach. US interventions sought to replace democratically elected left-wing governments with those that were more sympathetic to U.S. interests, particularly U.S. business interests abroad. In Guatemala, for example, the U.S. government backed a military coup aimed at overthrowing the democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz. In 1951, Guatemala held their first democratic presidential election in which Colonel Jacobo Arbenz was elected. However, some of Arbenz’s policies directly threatened U.S. business interests and profit in the country. The Arbenz Administration had introduced Decree 900, which outlined a progressive stance on wages and land reform, which threatened the profit structure of the United Fruit Company, a privately-owned, U.S.-based company. The U.S., seeing this as a threat, involved the CIA in a covert operation during which they armed, trained, and funded the Guatemalan military. The military then overthrew the Arbenz administration. Following the coup, Guatemala remained under a military dictatorship for multiple decades, during which time resulted in the genocide of Indigenous Mayan people in Guatemala in the 1980s. The search for the disappeared is still ongoing in Guatemala today.

Following U.S. intervention in Guatemala, the National Security Council wrote a report in which they outlined the objectives and focus of U.S. policy toward Latin America. In particular, they outline the important role that Latin American had in the Communist expansion era. It reads: “A defection by any significant number of Latin American countries over their governments, would seriously impair the ability of the United States to exercise effective leadership of the Free World […] and constitute a blow to U.S. prestige.” The National Security Council explicitly outlined the need for respect, partnership, and cordiality with other countries in the Americas. However, the report includes a clause which states that they shall recognize Latin American governments “unless a substantial question should arise with respect to Communist control.” This report and subjective quote created leeway and a policy justification for the U.S. to continue to implement policies of interventionism in their ‘own backyard.’

From here on, the U.S. continued to intervene in various Latin American countries and contexts. In Colombia, the U.S. assisted the Colombian government with the threat that leftist guerrilla groups like the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) posed through Plan Colombia and Plan Patriota. In Argentina, they turned a blind eye to the “Dirty War” that happened in the late 1970’s through the early 1980’s. In Bolivia, various U.S. administrations participated in covert operations throughout the 1960’s. In Chile, they used covert actions to fund electoral candidates, “run anti-Allende propaganda campaigns and had discussed the merits of supporting a military coup,” in the 1960’s and 70’s. We can look to Cuba, where the U.S. participated in both covert and overt operations in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Last but not least in El Salvador, the U.S. funded and trained paramilitary groups that caused unrest and violence in the 1960’s. Most countries in the region had their trajectories of governance altered by U.S. intervention, which continues to have implications for today’s foreign policy discourses and decisions.

With this troubled context of U.S. interventionism in mind, we asked U.S. policymakers how they felt about the progressive wave of administrations recently elected in Latin America. Based on our results, it seems that bureaucrats and technocrats within the U.S. government are no longer particularly concerned over a perceived “leftist threat” in the region. However, that change in attitude is not necessarily shared by many officials in Congress.

More:
https://www.e-ir.info/2023/10/12/a-tale-of-two-attitudes-toward-leftist-governments-in-latin-america/