Essential Questions:
- Is containment an effective foreign policy?
- What should be the role of a superpower in the world?
Latin America During the Cold War
"US involvement in Latin American affairs during the Cold War period was extraordinarily deep and, according to most scholars, generally malicious"
- Jeffrey F. Taffet (oxfordbibliographies.com)
The USA was heavily involved in Latin America throughout the Cold War (1947 - 1989)
"The Cold War (1947-1989) altered Latin America's relationship to the United States profoundly, as the region became a battleground between two competing ideological systems—capitalism and communism."
- Allen Wells, http://resources.primarysource.org
To stop communism from gaining influence in the Americas, the United States and 22 Latin American countries signed the Rio Treaty in 1947 (formally known as the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance). This has been considered almost as an extension of the Monroe Doctrine, prohibiting outside influence into the Americas.
Uncle Sam, representing the USA, has a hold on Central America
As a reminder, the Monroe Doctrine was essentially documentation that declared Latin America as the "United States's backyard"
The national government and policymakers in Washington DC embraced and actually backed a multitude of ruthless anticommunist dictators with control over Latin American countries.
"Do nothing to offend the dictators…they are the only people we can depend on"
- John Foster Dulles, Dwight D. Eisenhower's Secretary of State
Quiz
Who said this quote? "You have a row of dominoes set up, you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is the certainty that it will go over very quickly.”
- John F. Kennedy
- Nikita Khrushchev
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- George C. Marshall
These illegal military regimes defied international law and traditions of political sanctuary to carry out their ferocious state terror and destroy democratic opposition forces. Operation Condor… involved the intelligence agencies… in a joint effort to eliminate perceived enemies of those regimes throughout the world.”
– Daniel Brandt, Public Information Research, USA.
Next we'll show a video to go with this idea
From the clip we just watched, it's pretty clear that US involvement in Latin America during the Cold War wasn't very beneficial for Latin American countries. This becomes clear throughout Latin America the Cold War.
Operation Condor was a campaign of political subduing and chaos. Intelligence operations and assassination of opponents were involved the operation, which started in 1968 and became officially implemented in 1975 by right-wing dictatorships in South America. The operation included the participation of the United States and sought out to eradicate communist or Soviet influence and ideas in the Americas, and to halt any legitimate or possible political opposition movements.
"While repeated interventions, in themselves, suggest that the US government may not have used its power responsibly, the greater problem is that fears about political reliability consistently trumped concerns about democracy, human rights, and economic development."
- Jeffrey F. Taffet, oxfordbibliographies.com
A Bald Eagle symbolizing the USA tearing at Latin America
Addressing Essential Questions:
Is containment an effective foreign policy?
Forum
- What should be the role of a superpower in the world?
Works Cited:
http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199766581/obo-9780199766581-0104.xml
http://resources.primarysource.org/content.php?pid=86804&sid=645699
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttoS5Z3XXOw
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-cias-operation-condor-dirty-war-death-squads-and-the-disappeared/5327003
http://blogs.cfr.org/lindsay/2014/11/07/the-history-of-the-cold-war-in-40-quotes/