Chapter 10: Latin America

Neocolonialism, Monoculture, and Export Economies

Neocolonialism is the policy of using the underdeveloped world as a source of raw materials, and as a market for manufactured goods. While the motivations are the same as in outright imperialism, the main difference is that the developed nation does not directly control the underdeveloped one, therefore making the process seem innocent at first glimpse. It appears that the underdeveloped nation is autonomous and maybe even democratic, but control can be imposed in different ways.

The United States carried out neocolonialism against Latin America for most of its history. Most Latin American colonies attained their independence from Spain and Portugal in the early 19th century (except, notably, the Caribbean islands). In 1823, the United States declared the Monroe Doctrine, in which it forbade European recolonization or domination of Latin America. The US claimed that it wanted to protect the new Latin American nations from European predation. Not only was it very bold of the US to make this claim – in 1823, the US couldn’t have prevented France or England from doing anything – but the real reason for the doctrine was to reserve Latin America assets for the United States.

US citizens and corporations then proceeded to buy assets in Latin America, from farmland to mineral wealth. Before the Mexican Revolution (1910 – 1920), American interests owned no less than 25% of all Mexican land. The relative wealth of the US allowed its citizens to purchase all this at low prices, and the US, furthermore, had the technical expertise and start-up cash to open mines. This was not good for the Latin Americans, since they were reduced to low-wage workers on foreign-owned farms and mines. Most of the profit went up to the US. And if those assets should come under threat – for example, in a revolt, or from a politician who wanted locals to control these assets – the US could, and did, send troops to overthrow the government or protect US assets. Prior to the Cold War, the US invaded Latin American nations no fewer than 36 times in order to get its desired political or economic outcomes. Between control of assets and the ever-present threat of invasion, it is no wonder the US has been called the “Hovering Giant,” forever dominating Latin America. Or, as Mexican dictator Porfirio Dias put it, “Poor Mexico, so far from God, so close to the United States.”

But US dominance was not the only reason for weak Latin American economies. Two more factors came into play: monocultures and export economies. Monoculture is when a nation specializes in only one main agricultural export, such as coffee (El Salvador and Brazil) or sugar (Cuba). Because the farmers are skilled in growing this crop, and the land suited to it, it is typically profitable to grow that single crop to maximize profit. The price for the crop on the international market will inevitably change, and when it does, it can adversely affect the entire economy. This causes drastic swings in the nation’s GNP. Export economies are dependent on exporting raw materials to the developed world. Such an economy seems to make sense, since the nation’s own population is too poor to buy its own raw materials or lacks the factories which require them. But a country without its own manufacturing base must import manufactured goods from other nations. Since raw materials are less expensive than manufactured goods, it means that the nation is selling cheap goods to buy expensive ones – not a winning economic strategy. Also, exporting raw materials suffers from the same problem as monoculture in that prices and demand for them can vary wildly, destabilizing the national economy.

All this explains why the Great Depression was so bad for Latin America. The US no longer needed the raw materials of Latin America, because US factories were closed. And the US also stopped buying the monocultures of the region (coffee, sugar, tobacco, bananas, etc.) because people no longer had the disposable income for such luxuries.

Weak Political and Economic Legacies

Another important factor in Latin American history goes all the way back to the start of European colonization of the Americas – and, in fact, even before that.

When the British began colonizing North America, the colonists brought with them certain cultural advantages. First, Great Britain was probably the freest, most democratic country in the world at the time. Although Great Britain was still a monarchy, the power of its kings and queens was circumscribed by Parliament, preventing the absolutism seen in France or Russia. Furthermore, the rights of British subjects had been guaranteed by the Magna Carta for centuries. The British brought this culture of relative democracy and freedom to the New World (without extending those rights to the indigenous and slaves). The British had also adopted capitalism, a relatively new and very profitable economic system. When the colonists successfully rebelled in the American Revolution, the new nation inherited both democracy (now without the king) and capitalism, the most effective systems of politics and economics yet discovered. This is why the United States is sometimes called the “first modern nation.”

By contrast, Spain and Portugal had very backward economic and political systems, which they exported to the New World. Both nations were absolutist, with little democracy or civil rights for its citizens. Neither practiced capitalism, retaining instead a medieval system of feudalism and guilds. This meant that Latin American nations, after independence, inherited inferior political and economic models relative to the United States, giving them a disadvantaged start. This is another reason why Latin America has developed, both economically and in terms of human rights, more slowly than the United States. As the Latin American saying goes: “If only we had been colonized by the British.” They understand the consequences of history.

One consequence of a weaker democratic tradition in Latin America is the role of the military in political culture. The United States has never had a military coup; its military remains aloof from politics. Latin America, however, has seen a great many military coups. A coup might come when a president is passing policies counter to what the generals (or the United States government) want to see. Perhaps bad policies are leading to social chaos, like riots or revolts, and the generals want to stabilize the situation. It may be that the coup plotters are simply ambitious and want to make themselves dictators (Somoza in Nicaragua was a prime example of this). It may seem like a convenient solution at the time, but military coups are extremely harmful of democracy in the long run. They don’t allow democracy a chance to solve its problems, never let the institution seep into the culture and become part of the national identity. Military coups simply delay the full development of democracy. Most every Latin American nation has suffered at least one; many have suffered dozens.

Another relic of the backward politics from Portugal and Spain is a reliance on strongmen in Latin American culture. This can manifest as giving one’s loyalty to a wealthy local elite or to a national political candidate. For example, one could faithfully vote for a political candidate, and in return could receive benefits like jobs or protection from crooked police. Such a system is called patronage, and is common in poor countries where the average person does not have enough money or civil liberty to live comfortably or safely; they must attach themselves to a stronger savior who will protect them in a patriarchal manner. That patriarch demands loyalty in return, even including one’s participation in a coup if necessary. Again, this is bad for democracy, where one’s freedom and safety should be guaranteed by the state, not an individual who will demand payment for it. It allows the powerful to become dictators; and, coupled with the military coups launched by ambitious men, it means that Latin America has seen a great many dictators and semi-democratic strongmen. Juan Peron of Argentina ran such a patronage system in which the poor urban workers received higher wages and other benefits, as long as they voted for him; the benefits did not come from the workers’ rights under the constitution, but from Peron himself. On the other hand, Peron did not tolerate dissent, and suppressed opposition politicians and journalists. This is why patronage is patriarchal: the relationship is as children to a father, not as citizens to elected leaders.

Indigenous Populations

One of the most important factors in Latin American history, and a major difference between the US and Latin America, is the history of indigenous peoples. In the United States, the indigenous people (known in the US as Indians) were removed from their lands, forcibly assimilated, or killed. The survivors were forced onto reservations, which are marginal, unproductive lands. Although indigenous culture in the United States survives to a small degree, its influence on modern US culture is negligible.

Girl from the Embera tribe in Panama. Compliments of Yves Picq via Wikipedia Commons.

The situation in Latin American is much different. As the Spanish were busy destroying indigenous culture, the Catholic Church stepped in to prevent a complete genocide. The Church, which was in a long battle against the Spanish crown for power, forced the state to allow the surviving indigenous to retain what land they still had, especially if those people converted to Christianity. Since they had enough good land to practice farming, the indigenous’ numbers rebounded. They retained their culture, despite pressure to assimilate into the wider society, and kept their languages and religions (the Church was not pleased with the last).

The result is that, today, a large percentage of Latin Americans identify as indigenous. The number varies by country, and many people are part-indigenous, so determining who is indigenous is a notoriously difficult task. Guatemala is at least 45% indigenous, though most nations are under 10%. Still, there at 45 million indigenous people in Latin America, who have to some degree or another retained their original culture. In the US, the number is only about 6 million.

The upshot is that indigenous culture still has a profound effect on Latin America. The indigenous retain at least some of their ancient, pre-capitalist lifestyles. This means that they are not necessarily committed to the prevailing national culture of consumerism and paid labor. They may have their own land to work, their own clothes and other household items; they do not need to work for someone else in an office, or buy someone else’s commodities. This means that they do not necessarily provide cheap labor to companies, do not participate in the market, and do not provide much in taxation, all to the chagrin of political and corporate elites. Governments have often run programs to assimilate the indigenous into the wider society, sometimes forcibly, so that they can contribute to the economy. This is no longer a problem for governments of the US, Canada, and Europe, since they essentially eliminated their indigenous populations long ago. But it is another reason why Latin American economies struggle; a great many people do not want to fully participate in them.

The indigenous relate to capitalist culture in many ways. Some conservative indigenous completely reject capitalist culture and do not even speak Spanish or Portuguese, but only their original languages. Others abandon their indigenous identities and assimilate; given the racism they face as indigenous people, this is understandable. Many indigenous keep one foot in either world. They might work part-time in the capitalist economy, usually for low wages, then return to their own lands for a while and live their traditional lives. They have the clothes and languages to switch worlds. These people live fascinating lives, at once ancient and modern, although abiding by the norms of both can be challenging.

The Cold War

The Cold War introduced a new and impactful element into US relations with Latin America. Before the Cold War, the protection of US-owned assets and economic opportunity was the primary driver of US policy in the region. With the start of the Cold War, the primary driver shifted to preventing any sort of socialist presence in Latin America. The United States perceived the region as its rightful sphere of influence and believed that preventing socialist gains there was necessary to its security. It was prepared to go to almost any length, legal or otherwise, to do so.

One important aspect of Cold War relations in Latin America was the fact that the USSR was not very interested in supporting socialist movements in the region, and certainly did not try to launch them. Soviet leadership, as mentioned in Chapter 2, was much more interested in defense than aggression, and was most defensive along its borders. Spreading communism in Latin America was considered counterproductive to their goals, as it would might provoke war with the US with little or nothing to gain from it. Helping the Latin Americans free themselves from capitalism was not in their calculations.

The socialist movements of Latin America were homegrown, the results of dictatorship, poverty, and a lack of human rights in those countries. They were locally launched and supported; at most, communist Cuba might support them, since Castro was more idealistic than the Soviets. But the US always acted as if all socialism in Latin America emanated from Moscow. This did serve as an excuse to retain control over Latin American economies and protect US assets, and provided the opportunity for US political leaders to appear as heroes for “saving” Latin America. One problem for the US was that recognizing that the socialist movements were homegrown would be an admission that these Latin American nations had real political and economic problems, and that the socialists had legitimate complaints. That was not a useful conclusion when the US objective was to maintain the status quo in the region.

The first notable US interference in Latin America during the Cold War was a CIA operation called PBSUCCESS. In 1944, a popular uprising had overthrown military dictator Jorge Ubico and established the first democracy in Guatemala. Successive presidents improved the minimum wage to aid the poor. This angered United Fruit Company (UFC), an American corporation holding vast areas of banana-growing land in Guatemala; it was, in fact, the single largest landowner in the country. Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz, elected in 1951, decided to seize, with compensation, all privately-owned agricultural lands that were not actually being cultivated, in order to provide land to poor peasants for farming. This included UFC lands.

In retaliation, UFC spent half a million dollars on a lobbying campaign to convince US congressmen, and President Eisenhower, that Árbenz was a communist, and was planning to allow the USSR to station troops in Guatemala. Eisenhower therefore approved a plan by which the CIA would train and equip a mercenary army, led by Guatemalan exile Castillo Armas. The coup was carried out in 1954, and, though amateurish in execution, managed to succeed. Árbenz went into exile and Armas became dictator of Guatemala. UFC took back all its lands. The CIA then tried to find evidence that Árbenz was working for the Soviets; they found none. Armas destroyed democracy in Guatemala, leading to the four-decade Guatemalan Civil War, which killed upwards of two hundred thousand people before finally restoring democracy to Guatemala.

This operation set the standard for US intervention in Latin America during the Cold War. Although US troops were sometimes deployed (Dominican Republic, Grenada, Panama), the usual method was to aid rightist governments with equipment, money, and advisors, while also carrying out election interference and propaganda campaigns. The CIA also executed direct action campaigns, especially in Cuba.

The most famous episode in Cold War Latin America, and the only one directly involving the USSR, involved Cuba. In March 1952, Fulgencio Batista staged a coup with the help of the military to install himself as dictator of the island nation. US citizens and corporations (including United Fruit Company) owned the vast majority of sugar-growing land in Cuba. The US quickly recognized Batista’s government, though it was clearly illegal, because he promised to take protect American assets. Not only did Batista allow the US to operate with low taxes, but also let US citizens buy ever more land until they owned about seventy percent of all arable land in Cuba and almost all its oil industry. Batista pocketed most of the money from these sales. The population, however, was largely impoverished; they were reduced to low-wage laborers, with 20% unemployment. Only about one-third of homes had running water.
All attempts to change the situation – by protests or through the courts – were met with a brutal response. Batista’s police state tolerated no dissent, and murdered some 20,000 Cubans to retain power. The US continued to support Batista, selling him weapons which he used against his own people. Furthermore, Batista allowed US organized crime to operate in Cuba with impunity, and permitted Cuba to become a drug transshipment point. The US government continued to ignore all this.

In 1953, Fidel Castro, a young lawyer, launched an uprising against the government by attacking the army barracks in Santiago with a small group of men. The attack failed and Fidel, along with his brother Raúl, were captured and imprisoned. They were sentenced to fifteen years’ imprisonment, but served about two; in 1955, to deflect public criticism of his regime, Batista released some political prisoners, including Castro. It would prove his worst error.
Castro went to Mexico to prepare for his next attempt. In Mexico City, he met Alberto Bayo, a Cuban who had fought in the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s on the side of the socialists. Castro asked Bayo to train rebels for him, and Bayo agreed. While in Mexico, Castro also recruited Argentine doctor Che Guevara into the insurgency. In December 1956, when they had gathered enough money and weapons, Castro led 82 revolutionaries into Cuba to begin the insurgency.

Fidel Castro and fellow rebels in the mountains of Cuba.

Batista’s cruelty meant that Castro had no problems finding recruits. His army grew in the southern mountains of Cuba while Batista’s army weakened; his cruelty and anti-democratic impulses finally became mainstream news in the US, and Congress decided to stop selling him weapons. After that, the rebels won nearly every encounter with the army.

Finally, the revolutionaries left the mountains and pushed towards Havana in 1958. Batista collected his family and millions of dollars in cash and fled to the Dominican Republic. Castro took Havana on January 9, 1959.

Castro was shortly appointed prime minister of Cuba and established relations with the US, whose leaders were anxious to see what Castro would do in Cuba. Castro claimed that he was not a communist, and whether he initially was is debated. But US leaders were quickly disappointed. In May 1959, Castro nationalized US-owned lands, to redistribute to the Cuban people, and seized US oil assets. As is usually the case, it was the seizure of US assets which caused relations with the US to sour. The US broke diplomatic ties with Cuba and initiated an embargo the next year, hoping to bring Castro to heel. It was a bad error, as it caused Castro to turn to the USSR for aid. The Soviets agreed to buy Cuban sugar in exchange for oil, which Cuba needed.

The US then attempted to remove Castro by supporting an invasion of anti-Castro exiles in a redo of PBSUCCESS. The April 1961 invasion (the Bay of Pigs) failed, and only strengthened Castro’s popularity in Cuba. Castro then declared Cuba a socialist state. His attempts to defend Cuba from another US attack led to the Cuban Missile Crisis (see Chapter 3). The CIA then attempted to assassinate Castro in a program called Operation Mongoose, and failed many times to do so. Castro was, above all else, a survivor. He died of natural causes in 2016.
The US failure in Cuba in no way discouraged the superpower in its policy of dominating Latin America. Starting in the mid-1970s, the CIA coordinated a plan across South America called Operation Condor. Ostensibly, the objective was to prevent socialist subversion and Soviet influence; but such guerilla movements as existed were incapable of overthrowing their nations, and Soviet intervention was nonexistent. Instead, the operation helped right-wing dictatorships in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and elsewhere to repress opposition to their rule. The targets included union leaders, priests, nuns, and students – anyone who spoke out against the dictators and called for democracy, including the guerillas. With their militaries and intelligence organizations cooperating, and trained in torture by the CIA, the dictatorships imprisoned at least 400,000 people and killed at least 50,000. It was in the 1970s that a new technique for suppression appeared in Latin America – disappearances. This technique was popular during the Dirty War in Argentina, when the dictatorship suppressed all dissent during Condor. To hide the repression as much as possible, the government would arrest people, drug them, and then dump them into the sea. The advantage of this technique was that international human rights organizations could not prove that an arrest and murder had taken place, giving the government some deniability. Tens of thousands of people simply vanished in the night, giving rise to a new term in Latin America: desaparecidos, the disappeared.

The US also supported coups against left-wing leaders wherever they cropped up, under the prejudice that any such leader would automatically help spread communism in Latin America. One such example was the government of Salvador Allende in Chile. Elected in 1970, Allende was the first Marxist to win a democratic election. The United States immediately castigated him as an enemy and planned a coup against him. In 1973, the CIA assisted right-wing General Augusto Pinochet in staging a military coup against Allende, who was killed in the process. Pinochet ruled Chile as a dictator, repressing all democratic movements, until 1990.

Historians have noted that the primary trigger for US intervention in Latin America is nationalization – that is, if the Latin Americans seize US property to make the country less economically dependent on foreigners. This raises the question of whether US interventions were done to prevent socialist infiltration, or to protect the private property of US citizens and corporations. Was it done for politics or money? Although the debate continues, Guatemalan president Jacobo Árbenz believed that ideology and perceived security was the main driver of US policy during the Cold War. As he famously stated after the coup which deposed him: “They would have invaded us even if we had no bananas.”

Central America in the 1980s

The dictatorships of Latin America, supported by the United States, caused tremendous misery to all but the most elite groups in Latin America. The dictatorships were generally good for the elites, who concentrated their wealth at everyone else’s expense; wages were low, with few if any worker protections. Consequently, poverty was widespread, particularly in the countryside. Reformers who sought to change the system – union leaders, religious leaders, journalists, and assorted leftists – were imprisoned, disappeared, or murdered. This arrangement intensified until it created a deadly, radicalized environment in the 1980s, unsurprisingly in the poorest region of the hemisphere: Central America.

Guatemala had been engaged in a civil war since the 1960s, pitting a series of US-backed military dictators against the people. Probably the worst place in Central America, however, was El Salvador. A 1979 coup by the Revolutionary Government Junta, a collection of civil and military leaders, established a right-wing, anticommunist government, whose goal was preventing wealthy Salvadorans from losing their positions and wealth to unions and pro-democracy activists. Claiming to save El Salvador from communists, the government quickly gained US support. The junta then carried out a terror campaign against reformers, murdering thousands. In March 1980, when the archbishop of San Salvador, Óscar Romero, spoke out against the violence, he was murdered while saying mass by government soldiers.

Óscar Romero

The repression led to the birth of a unified, armed resistance, led by the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), a collection of various leftist rebel groups. Knowing that the rebels had the support of a large segment of the society, particularly among the poorest, the government essentially attacked its own people in a campaign of terror to discourage anyone from helping the rebels. The US aided the campaign with equipment, money, and advisors. The war continued with great suffering until a peace agreement was signed in 1992. As in Guatemala in 1996, the solution entailed allowing the rebels to become legal political parties and participate in elections. This essentially switched the realm of conflict from the military to the political.

Nicaragua was another Central American hotspot, especially when the US became involved. Since 1934, the nation had been run as a private fiefdom by the Somoza family, handing down the dictatorship from father to son. The third Somoza, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, was particularly notorious for corruption and brutality, at least the equal of Batista in his criminal tendencies. During the 1970s, his regime was challenged by several rebel groups, but the foremost was the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), simply known as the Sandinistas. They had named themselves after Augusto Sandino, a leftist rebel in 1920s Nicaragua who fought for the rights of the poor. In 1979, the Sandinistas launched a rebellion against the hated Somoza regime, with support from various Latin American governments; Somoza was roundly disliked in the region. When the victorious Sandinistas closed in on Managua, Somoza fled by plane to Asuncion, Paraguay, where he was assassinated by communist rebels the next year.

The Sandinistas, though influenced by Marxism, established a social democracy with multiparty elections. Although US president Ronald Reagan castigated the Sandinistas as a communist threat, the leftist government never presented any threat to the US, and declared nonalignment in the Cold War. Nevertheless, the US formed the Contras, a rightist rebel group dedicated to overthrowing the Sandinista government. The Contras operated from bases in Honduras, crossing the border to attack Nicaragua. Word soon got back to the US that the Contras were terrorists, murdering Nicaraguan civilians to convince them to vote the Sandinistas out of office. The US Congress then cut support to the Contras and forbade Americans from aiding them. This led certain elements in the US intelligence community to fund the Contras illegally. The program consisted of secretly selling weapons to Iran – which was against US law – and then giving the proceeds to the Contras. The program was exposed in 1986, and came to be known as the Iran – Contra scandal. The Sandinistas were voted out of office in 1990.
The end of the Cold War in 1991 removed the fear of Soviet aggression from the United States’ calculations. Furthermore, various peace processes in the 1980s and 1990s ended Latin American civil wars (except in Colombia, where leftist rebels had basically become drug-producing empires; they signed a peace deal in 2016).

The Cold War in Latin America was a combination of two major threads in regional history: US hegemony, and the dominance of dictators as a consequence of old, anti-democratic feudal traditions. The US was most successful in its anticommunist policies in the region when it could cooperate with local authoritarian leaders – the very ones who were creating the conditions leading to left-wing revolts. With the fall of the USSR in 1991, however, the US lost its biggest excuse for intervening in Latin America. The last US military intervention was the 1989 invasion of Panama.

One lingering consequence of US intervention is a vein of anti-US sentiment throughout Latin America. While far from universal, this feeling is strong enough that certain leaders have tapped into it and used it to support their policies; Castro in Cuba was obviously one such leader, and Manuel Noriega, strongman of Panama in the 1980s, was famous for stirring up anti-US sentiments as well.

The 1990s – Neoliberal Failure

The end of the Cold War led to a new phase in the global community: globalization (see Chapter 14). The developed world now wanted to integrate Latin America more deeply into the new globalized economy. This led to a push to remove tariffs and other protections for local businesses, the privatization of nationalized industries, and removal of government regulation. Many Latin American nations accepted this promise and adjusted their economies appropriately. Some took loans from the World Bank and IMF under Structural Adjustment Programs (see Chapter 9), which forced such neoliberal policies on them in return for the money. Many Latin American nations accepted this promise and adjusted their economies appropriately.

It didn’t work out. Despite new levels of industrialization in Latin America, their economies were still mainly export-oriented, based on raw materials. Before long, the governments were running a deficit, as the commodity markets, now globalized and extremely competitive, fluctuated. Many Latin American governments ended up in debt to foreign banks.

To cover the increasing debt, some countries took emergency loans from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, or private banks. They came at a steep price: the lenders imposed austerity measures in exchange for the loans. The receiving countries had to restructure their economies to guarantee that they could repay the loans. The governments were forced to cut expensive social programs, such as food or housing assistance, as well as education budgets. In other words, the poor had to foot the bill for the government’s failure. This led to a series of violent protests throughout Latin America in the 1990s, as well as some soul-searching at the World Bank and IMF, whose leaders reconsidered the wisdom of their loan policies.

The same neoliberal policies manifest in Mexico in a particularly telling way. In 1994, Mexico signed onto the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The agreement between the US, Canada, and Mexico (which is in North America) was meant to remove all barriers to trade between the three nations. At the time, the US could not sell corn in Mexico, as Mexican farmers could not compete with US producers, who could produce corn much more cheaply. After NAFTA was signed, cheap US corn flooded into Mexico, reducing the price of the commodity by 66%, putting hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers out of work.

This was one cause of the revolt by the Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN or, more commonly, the Zapatistas) in the southern state of Chiapas. The Zapatistas were already angered by the reversal of communal land protections along the neoliberal model; when NAFTA was signed, they launched an armed revolt in Chiapas to express their anger. They seized seven towns in Chiapas before retreating from the Mexican army. Their protests against neoliberalism and government corruption continue to this day through nonviolent demonstrations.

The Pink Tide

Subcomandante Marcos and Comandante Tacho in La Realidad, Chiapas, 1999. Photo by Cesar Bojorquez via Wikipedia Commons (Creative Commons 2.0)

The failure of neoliberalism in Latin America led to a resurgence of left-wing politics. Without US intervention after the Cold War, left-wing parties could make political gains without fear of violence. In the late 1990s and the early years of the 21st century, a swell of left-wing governments in Latin America came to be called the Pink Tide. These leftists were not Cuban-style Marxists; that path had largely fallen out of favor since the collapse of the USSR. Rather, most parties and politicians were progressives operating within the context of multiparty elections. These parties leveraged the failure of right-wing neoliberal policies and offered an alternative. The Pink Tide included leftist victories in Brazil (with the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva), Venezuela (Hugo Chávez), Bolivia (Evo Morales), and a dozen other Latin American states.

These leftist governments set up welfare programs to reduce poverty. The programs were very expensive, and taxing the rich to pay for them would lead to a political backlash. Instead, the governments leveraged the rising global commodities markets at the time, exporting raw materials while prices were high. For example, Chávez’s generous programs in Venezuela were paid for with oil money.

Commodity markets constantly rise and fall. When the commodity prices again fell, the governments could not sustain the welfare programs, and had to cancel them. Furthermore, some of these governments leaned towards authoritarianism, censoring the media and suppressing dissent; Chávez in Venezuela and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua were known for such things.

With the collapse of the commodity markets, the Pink Tide waned and several governments shifted back to the right, as people were now disillusioned with the left. Far right-wing politician Jair Bolsonaro’s election in Brazil was the clearest indication of this.

Starting around 2018, another pink tide began in several countries in Latin America, as a backlash against the right-wing backlash to the first pink tide (which itself was a backlash against the right wing). Mexico and Argentina, for example, re-elected left-wing parties. Lula da Silva again became president of Brazil in 2022. The same year saw Gustavo Petro become the first left-wing president of Colombia.

Immigration

One of the major issues concerning Latin America and the United States has been Latin American immigration. Due to its relative freedom, strong economy, and especially geographical proximity, the United States is a common destination for Latin American immigrants. While undocumented immigration is a hot topic in US politics, the effect on the United States has been complex and, in broad terms, a benefit to both the US and Latin Americans alike.

During WWII, the US initiated the Bracero Program, designed to bring hundreds of thousands of Mexicans to the US for agricultural work; the WWII draft had deprived the agricultural sector of workers, and the US’ pre-war immigration policy had almost completely shut out non-Europeans. The Bracero Program continued until 1964; during that time, it also led to a government crackdown on undocumented Mexican immigrants who were bypassing the program. By 1970, there were well over 7 million Latinos living in the US, three times as many as in 1940.

The Cold War brought waves of Latin American immigration to the US. For example, the Cuban Revolution led to an exodus from Cuba to Florida. Because Castro’s government was an enemy of the United States, Cuban refugees were almost always accepted into the United States. Refugees from the USSR or Warsaw Pact countries were similarly granted asylum in the US, as they made for good propaganda. The hundreds of thousands of Central Americans who fled in the 1980s received a chillier welcome, and most of them entered without visas (or even passports) and were usually fleeing countries whose governments were allied with the United States. Talk of communist agents slipping in among refugees abounded. Central American governments were not keen to accept them back, either, as remittances (money sent back to their families in Central America) from immigrants was a large part of their countries’ income; for example, in 2003, about 19% of Honduras’ GNP was remittances. Eventually, about one million Central Americans were permitted to settle in the US in the 1990s. In 1990, there were about 21 million Latinos in the US.

Although the terrible bloodletting of the 1980s ended, the neoliberal policies of the 1990s and beyond created more havoc in Latin America; although the programs generated some manufacturing jobs, particularly in Mexico, they destroyed many low-paying jobs. The poverty and lack of opportunity in Latin America, coupled with the danger of gang-related violence in Central America, continue to drive undocumented immigration, although at a much lower rate than it once was.

Latin American immigration presents problems for the US, mainly in the form of lowering wages for uneducated workers in the areas where migrants are concentrated (in the US Southwest, for example). But immigration also provides inexpensive labor for these markets, which is particularly important in the US; with its ageing population and decreasing birthrate, the US needs more young workers. Economically, Latin American immigration is a net benefit for the United States, and the negative consequences could be managed with better economic policies.

Conclusion

The most important development in Latin America since WWII has been the increasing commitment to real democracy. Democracy was delayed in Latin America by US interventions during the Cold War. The US’ ham-fisted Latin American policies promoted anti-communist, anti-democratic dictators in an attempt to stop the USSR from infiltrating the hemisphere at a time when no such threat existed. The irony of the policy was that the brutality of the dictatorships only inspired homegrown socialists, a fact the CIA noted during the Cold War. With the end of the Cold War and the coming of globalization in Latin America, leftist revolts have withered, as have US military interventions.

One of the biggest indicators of the increasing democratization of Latin America is the rise of a strong civil society. New human rights organizations in the region are growing powerful, pushing back against oppressive systems and lobbying for positive social change. People are becoming more aware of their rights and how to fight for them. This includes the indigenous peoples of Latin America, who have been challenging unfair political and economic policies in court across the region.

There is still a dependence on strongmen in Latin America, even at the national level. These strongmen, however, are not dictators; when they fail to deliver for the people, they are being removed via elections. If democracy is wedded with economic growth, dependence on strongmen will weaken to the point where they no longer are deemed necessary.

At the moment, poverty and gang-related violence are the biggest challenges in Latin America. These are huge problems, but considering the horrors of Latin America in the Cold War, it is clear the region has come a long way. If truly democratic governments can take root in Latin America for enough time, the results would be responsive administrations willing to make real progress towards alleviating poverty and the accompanying crimes. Democracy has been slow to come to Latin America, but democratic forces now seem to have the momentum.

Glossary

Anastasio Somoza Debayle: Third dictator in a family dynasty that ruled Nicaragua from 1934 to 1979.

Augusto Pinochet: Right-wing dictator of Chile from the time of his coup (1974) to 1990; infamous for human rights abuses during his tenure.

Austerity measures: A government policy reducing expensive programs to alleviate poverty; carried out due to budget shortfalls.

Bay of Pigs: The location of a US-sponsored invasion of Cuba by anticommunist exiles. The operation failed.

Bracero Program: A US WWII program to permit increased immigration from Mexico in order to make up for a lack of agricultural workers.

Castillo Armas: A right-wing colonel in the Guatemalan military who, with CIA help, seized control of the country and made himself dictator.

Che Guevara: An Argentine doctor who joined Castro’s revolutionary movement and became a rebel commander.

Contras: Right-wing counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua in the 1980s, dedicated to overthrowing the Sandinista regime.

Cuban Missile Crisis: The standoff over Soviet nuclear missiles in Castro’s Cuba in 1962; nearly led to war between the superpowers.

Desaparecidos: People who have been “disappeared” by a government and never seen again.

Dirty War: A campaign of anti-left terrorism in Argentina from 1974 to 1983; run as a part of Operation Condor.

Ejército Zapatista de Liberación Nacional (EZLN): A leftist, and mainly indigenous, rebel group in the state of Chiapas in Mexico.

Export economies: National economies mainly dedicated to exporting commodities to other countries. In the Latin American context, it refers to exporting raw materials and agricultural goods.

Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN): An umbrella command of several rebel groups in El Salvador during the Salvadoran Civil War of the 1980s.

Fidel Castro: The Cuban lawyer who led the Cuban Revolution in the 1950s and ruled for five decades afterward.

Fulgencio Batista: President, then dictator, of Cuba; leader of Cuba at the time of the revolution.

Iran – Contra scandal: the public revelation that the US sold weapons to Iran in order to financially support the Contra rebels. Led to the imprisonment of several individuals.

Jacobo Árbenz: 25th president of Guatemala from 1951 to 1954; was overthrown by Operation PBSUCCESS.

Monoculture: An agricultural economy which depends on growing a single crop.

Monroe Doctrine: The 1823 US policy of preventing European nations from dominating Latin America.

Neocolonialism is the desire to use the underdeveloped world as a source of raw materials and as a market for your finished goods.

North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA): An international economic agreement to remove trade barriers between Canada, the US, and Mexico.

Operation Condor: A multinational effort between the US and South American nations to suppress leftist groups, whether or not they presented a threat to their governments.

Operation Mongoose: The failed CIA operation to either assassinate Fidel Castro or otherwise remove him from power.

Óscar Romero: The archbishop of San Salvador who was murdered for his outspoken support of human rights in El Salvador.

Patronage: A system of exchange in an unequal power relationship. Often seen in poor, undemocratic nations where the people need a strongman to protect them.

PBSUCCESS: The 1954 CIA operation to overthrow the government of Guatemala.

Pink Tide: A series of left-wing political victories in Latin America, starting in the late 1990s.

Remittances: Money sent by immigrants back to their families in their home countries.

Revolutionary Government Junta: The civilian-military dictatorship of El Salvador, which came to power in a 1979 coup.

Salvador Allende: President of Chile from 1970 to 1973; overthrown by General Augusto Pinochet.

Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN): Leftist guerilla group in Nicaragua, dedicated to overthrowing the Somoza regime. It succeeded in 1979 and governed Nicaragua until an election loss in 1990.

United Fruit Company (UFC): A US corporation (1988-1970) which owned large tracts of land in Latin America; often accused of neocolonialism.