bboc/21_North_American_interventions_in_Latin_America,_Paco_Pena.tex

\chapter[Interventions in Latin America]{North American interventions in Latin America}

\chapterauthor{Paco Pena}

The process of emancipation of the Spanish colonies, begun in the early nineteenth century, culminated in the second decade of the last century, ending Spain's domination of the New World.
In 1898, the last strongholds on the continent — Cuba and Puerto Rico — were wrested from Spanish power by the United States, falling under their rule.

Once the colonial link with Spain was severed and its commercial monopoly was broken, it was mainly English and later North American companies that established their predominance in Latin America.

The English preponderance, which supplanted the rigid Spanish commercial monopoly, manifested itself throughout the nineteenth century by the rise of British trade with the recently independent colonies:
they were mainly English ships that frequented the main American ports, such as Veracruz, Buenos Aires, Valparaiso, Havana, El Callao.

It was above all a commercial supremacy that did not seek direct political domination, although England had also tried to make its place in the sun in the New World, employing the big means:
the capture of Buenos Aires in 1806 was followed by the landing in other territories and in the Caribbean, or even the creation of a ghostly “Kingdom of Mosquitia”, on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua and, the occupation in 1833 of the Falkland Islands, populated by them, from 1829, by Argentine settlers.

England was able to establish itself in Latin America during the first half of the nineteenth century, despite the claims of other candidates wishing to gain their share of influence in the region:
France and the United States.

France could not thwart British policy and had to bow to the power of the Royal Navy while seeking to gain or retain territory in parts of the continent:
Haiti, the West Indies, Guyana and Mexico. The latter had always attracted the interest of the French and the first clash took place during the July Monarchy during the incredible cake war (1838).
More serious will be the intervention of France and the European powers from 1861, which ended in the defeat and execution of Maximilian of Austria at Queretaro in 1867.

The United States, for its part, sought in vain, during the first half of the nineteenth century, to challenge English hegemony.
They will be content — because they do not have the means for a more ambitious policy — with the absorption of the territories adjacent to the East Coast.
The time for the “Anschluss” and military interventions had not yet arrived.

It will take place as early as 1835, when the North American expansionist wave engulfed half of the territories belonging to Mexico.
Texas split in 1835 and became part of the union in 1848. In the same year, California and New Mexico were annexed by the United States.
The United States was ceded in 1846 by Great Britain, Oregon in the Northwest, and bought Alaska from Russia in 1867.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, this policy of expansion allowed the formation of a vast territory and, after the Civil War – which diverted the attention and efforts of the North Americans to internal problems – the United States will focus on establishing its political and economic domination in Latin America, replacing English hegemony and engaging in a process of development and industrialization that will place it in the twentieth century at the head of the capitalist countries.

These few lines have the ambition to tell the story of the imperialist interventions in Latin America, which helped in a significant way to increase the strength of the one that would become the first power on the planet and the spearhead of world capitalism.

The interventionist policy of the United States manifested itself very early in Latin America. Although north Americans had a major adversary in this area — Great Britain — they had always looked with lust at the territories that for three centuries had been subject to Spanish colonial rule and that, at the beginning of the nineteenth century — after their independence — experienced long periods of anarchy, the result of the infighting that developed in almost all the young republics.

The process of territorial expansion of the United States began at the end of the eighteenth century. The border being “elastic” to the west, they acquired various territories between 1792 and 1821 \footnote{Vermont, in 1791, Kentucky, in 1792, Tennessee, in 1796.
The latter two territories, along with Mississippi, Alabama, Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, were acquired by the Union in the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
Others, further west, were bought from Bonaparte in 1803.}.

The process continued further west and south, where the voracity of the Union swallowed great extensions of the “middlewest” obtained through the cession or purchase of territories to the European powers.
Purchase and disposal made on the backs of the indigenous populations – “the red skins” – who were turned away and/or exterminated.
This is how the United States managed to significantly increase its initial territory.

Despite a position of official non-interventionism announced by George Washington in his “Farewell Message” of 1796, the United States thought from the beginning of seizing the territories contiguous to those of the Union.
This was the case with Florida.

A vassal of the King of Spain, Pedro Menendez de Avilés, founded the city of San Agustin in September 1565.
This peninsula was in turn occupied by the English from 1763 to 1783. The United States, for its part, claimed that the southern border went up to the 31st parallel, but Spain occupied up to the 33rd parallel and there was a serious dispute over the Mississippi, whose navigation was closed by the monopoly it exercised on the traffic of the river.

In 1811, taking advantage of the presence of Napoleon's troops in Spain, the North American Congress passed a resolution declaring that it intended to occupy Florida in order to remain there.

The text says a lot about the nascent North American interventionist vocation:
“The United States, in the special circumstances of the current crisis, views with grave concern that some of these territories may pass into the hands of a foreign power...
Its own security forces them to proceed with the temporal occupation of these territories... (which) will remain in our hands for future negotiations. ” \footnote{Carlos Machado, Documentos, Estados Unidos y America Latina, Editorial Patria Grande, Montevideo, 1968, p. 11.}.

In 1818 General Andrew Jackson definitively occupied Florida and, the following year, Spain agreed to sell to the voracious new state, a territory almost as large as England, for the trifle of 5 million dollars...

But the desires of the United States were not limited only to Florida.
Luis de Onis, the Spanish ambassador at the time, warned his government about North American ambitions.
He warned in 1812 — at the time of the second war between the Union and Great Britain — about the real aims of North American diplomacy:

\begin{quote}
\enquote{This government has proposed nothing more and nothing less, to fix its borders from the mouth of the Rio Bravo...
in a straight line towards the Pacific, including the provinces of Texas, Nuevo Santander, Coahuila and part of Nueva Viscaya and Sonora...
It may sound delusional, but it is a fact that the project exists and that they have made a map that includes Cuba as an integral part of this republic.}\footnote{Carlos Machado, Documentos, op. cit., p.. 13.}
\end{quote}

Cuba, already in the sights of the United States.

Ferdinand VII's Spain — put back on its throne after the Napoleonic episode — supported by France, Russia, Prussia and Austria, had thought and tried to reconquer its former American territories.

But interests diverged between the imperialist powers.
England, which had been the first beneficiary of the loss of Spain's American colonies, was unwilling for Spanish power to return in force to its former possessions.

Thus, around the second decade of the nineteenth century, when the Spanish monarchy wanted to start the war again to reconquer its former territories, it found in the front line to oppose it, His Most Gracious Majesty who attempted a kind of agreement with the United States.

The British minister, George Canning, invited the North Americans to make common cause and oppose the Spanish claim.

It was then that former President Jefferson replied to President Monroe who was consulting him on the attitude to have towards the European powers:

\begin{quote}
\enquote{Our fundamental motto must be not to meddle in European imbroglios... (and) not to accept that Europe intervenes in American affairs...

Britain is the nation that can cause us the most harm; by having it on our side, we do not fear the whole world...}
\end{quote}

Later the former Yankee president clarified his thought:

\begin{quote}
\enquote{We must ask ourselves the following question: do we wish to acquire for our Confederation, some Spanish-American provinces? ...
I sincerely admit that I have always been of the opinion that Cuba would be the most interesting addition we could make to our system of states...
Domination on this island and Florida would give us control of the Gulf of Mexico and the Isthmus states...}\footnote{Ibid., p. 15.}
\end{quote}

Florida fell into Yankee hands in 1819. Cuba, the obsession with American diplomacy, will be reduced to the state of protectorate in 1898.

A few weeks later, President Monroe in his annual message to the nation would set the guidelines that the diplomacy of the United States should adopt in the face of the desires shown by the European powers towards the Spanish-American nations.
It was what has since been called the “Monroe Doctrine”.

Taking up a number of ideas already set out by Washington and Hamilton, Monroe announced that the United States would not interfere in European affairs and would adopt an attitude of strict neutrality.

On the other hand, the Union would guarantee the independence of the Spanish-American countries, opposing Spain's reconquest of its former colonies on the continent, and any attempt to do so by any other European power.

In his seventh annual message of December 2, 1823, President Monroe informed of the conversations he had had with representatives of Russia and Great Britain.
“They were warned that the United States considered Latin American nations to be free and independent, and that consequently they cannot be subject to future colonization by any European power...
We would regard any attempt by them to take any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and security.”\footnote{Carlos Machado, Documentos, op. cit. cit., p. 18.}

On the other hand, Monroe, reaffirming North American neutrality in European affairs, entrenched himself in the isolationist policy that would characterize the United States in its relations with Europe:


\begin{quote}
\enquote{In the wars between the European powers and in the affairs within their jurisdiction, we have never taken sides...
Our policy towards Europe – which was adopted at the beginning of the wars that have recently shaken it – remains unchanged:
not to interfere in their internal affairs and to regard de facto governments as legitimate.}\footnote{Ibid., p. 19.}
\end{quote}

Although the “Monroe Doctrine” deterred the European powers in their dreams of reconquest, it could not prevent their interference and intervention on several occasions:
England played an important role in La Plata, and succeeded in creating a buffer state in 1828 between Brazil and Argentina, separating from the Provincias Unidas, the Eastern Strip, Uruguay.

The threats contained in the “doctrine” also remained a dead letter, during the English invasion of the Falklands in 1833 and the French intervention in San Juan de Ulua, Mexico, in 1838 (the “Cake War”).
Same thing, when the Anglo-French aggression against Argentina of Rosas and Uruguay of Oribe took place, and when in 1837 the port of Buenos Aires was subjected to blockade by the French navy.
Nor when the French and British organized in 1845 a military expedition on the Parana River, closed to foreign navigation by successive Argentine governments.

Same silence when the Spanish fleet bombarded Valparaiso and Peruvian ports in 1866, and during the cession of the island of San Barthelemy by Sweden to the France, in 1876.

Nor did the “doctrine” prevent the invasion of Mexico in 1861 by Franco-Anglo-Spanish troops and the attempt to establish a “Latin Empire”, with Maximilian of Austria.

On the other hand, in texts that will appear during the decade of the forties, the idea justifying Yankee expansionism begins to manifest itself, which the publicists of the time – writers and parliamentarians – called the Manifest Destinity.

Fate would have granted — an idea close to the notion of predestination, dear to Presbyterian Protestantism — to the American nation a civilizing mission, making it the guardian angel of freedom and democracy, while granting it vast territories to conquer, and a vocation of domination over the entire New World.

The supporters of manifest Destinity, of course, did not say a word about the fate of the thousands of blacks living on the territory of the Union, for whom the manifest destiny manifested itself precisely in the form of brazen slavery.

From the beginning of the independence of the Spanish-American nations, the United States and Great Britain viewed Bolivar's American attempts with a negative eye.
The two Anglo-Saxon nations preferred to rub shoulders with a divided continent, separated by conflicts and borders, instead of a single and powerful country that could become a formidable competitor.

Bolivar, in 1826, convened the First Pan American Congress in Panama and put on the agenda the question of the liberation of Cuba and Puerto Rico, still in the hands of Spain.

But the combined efforts of the British and North Americans succeeded in boycotting it, and Congress was a failure.

England obtained that the Argentine and Brazilian delegates were not present.
And, of the delegates of the United States, one died during the trip, the other, with instructions written by Secretary of State Henry Clay and President John Quincy Adams, was to oppose the war advocated by Bolivar, for the liberation of the last Spanish colonies in America.

Adams and Clay's instructions tended to act in the direction of maintaining the status quo. In relation to Cuba, the directives to the U.S. delegates said:

“No power, not even Spain... has such a great interest as the United States in the future fate of this island...
We do not want any change in his possession or in his political situation... We will not see with indifference the transfer to another European power than Spain.
Nor do we want it to be ceded or added to a new American state.”\footnote{Ibid., p. 23.}

The United States scrupulously applied the idea contained in Monroe's seventh message: “America to the Americans.”
They simply interpreted it as if they had heard: “America to North Americans.”
The history of Mexico's stripping is dramatically instructive in this regard.

\section{The carving up of Mexico}

Texas — a territory larger than France — had always belonged, since the arrival of the conquistadores, to the crown of Spain, and then to independent Mexico.

The colonial authorities maintained relative control, thanks to the combined action of military garrisons and Catholic missionaries: these were the Presidios.

As early as the eighteenth century, Spanish families had settled in Texas.
But, around 1817, a process of infiltration — “illegal immigration” one would say today — began to appear:
Yankees, Germans, Poles, even officers and soldiers of Napoleon's army, were expelled by the authorities after clashes with the Spanish Catholic population.

The real difficulty began when 300 Anglo-Saxon families were allowed by the Mexican Congress to settle in 30,000 hectares of land, allocated free of charge.
They reintroduced slavery — which had been abolished in Mexico — and the Mexican government agreed to make an exception and allow the practice by newcomers.

In December 1826, an adventurer — Hayden Edwards — proclaimed the “Free Republic of Fredonia,” quickly annihilated by the Mexican army.
Another attempt at independence failed the following year. Suggestively began to appear, in various states of the Union, publications denouncing Mexico, guilty of having “seized” Texas.

In 1835, when a new constitution was approved in Mexico — which would be at the origin of an internal conflict between federalists and centralists — the Yankee settler Stephan Austin proclaimed the independence of Texas.
The United States then took advantage of this opportunity, which favoured its expansionist aims. They sent boats with weapons and ammunition from New Orleans.

Mexico, for its part, intended to enforce its sovereignty and sent the famous General Santa Anna.
After some successes of the Mexican armies at San Patricio, Encinal del Perdido and El Alamo — which the newspapers presented to the public opinion of the United States as the defeat of a sublime cause — Santa Anna was defeated on April 21, 1836 in San Jacinto.
Taken prisoner, he was forced to sign a Leonine Agreement (“Convenio Publico”) at Puerto Velasco on May 14, 1836, where it was agreed that the Mexicans would withdraw from Texas on the southern edge of the Rio Bravo.
The agreement provided that “all special properties, including horses, black slaves, in the hands of the Mexican army or passed on the side of this army, shall be returned to the commander of the Texas forces”\footnote{Leopoldo Martinez Caroza, La intervenciôn norteamericana en Mexico, 1846-1848, Panorama Editorial, Mexico, 1985, p. 19.}.

The better-equipped Texas troops had imposed an agreement that, twelve years later, would play an important role in the carving up of more than half of Mexico's territories.
North American support for Texas adventurers was confirmed in the forties by President John Tyler, who said of the separation of Texas from Mexico:

“The mere probability that slavery could be abolished in neighbouring territories must be sufficient grounds for annexing them.”\footnote{Ibid., p. 27}

In 1845, Texas entered the Union as a slave state. The election campaign led by Tyler's successor, James Polk — President of the United States between 1846 and 1850 — had been:
“Annexation of Texas. 54°/40', or death”. (He was referring to the Yankee border and the territories torn from Mexico.)

\section{The Anschluss of New Mexico and California}

Once Texas was swallowed, the next Anschluss was practiced on two other major Mexican provinces: New Mexico and California.

Texas — a former Mexican province — began to claim certain territories from New Mexico, which had always belonged to Mexico, supported in its request by the United States government.
Then, once Texas was annexed by the Union (1845), it was the North American government itself that pushed for the War of Conquest.

California — whose presence of a subsoil rich in gold ores would soon be discovered — had a small population (only some 1,000 North Americans), and suffered several outrages:
an armed “scientific expedition”, sent by President Polk, and in January 1843 the landing of troops under the command of a naval officer who “mistakenly” occupied the Mexican port of Monterrey in California.
He had to re-embark against the firmness of the Mexican authorities.

The pretext sought by the United States was provided by a clash between two border patrols of the respective armies on April 24, 1846, in the hamlet of “Carricitos”, in Mexican territory.

Polk announced a few days later, in Congress, that Mexico had invaded the territory of the United States and shed North American blood.

War was immediately declared and only a few prominent voices were raised to condemn the planned Anschluss. Among them, Abraham Lincoln, Representative of Illinois:
“I believe that the president is deeply convinced that he is in an incorrect position, that he feels that the blood of this war — such as Abel's — is accusing him.”\footnote{Carlos Machado, Documentos, op. cit., p. 32.}

On July 4, when hostilities had already begun, a group of North American adventurers opportunely proclaimed in California the Republic of the Bear, which nevertheless had an ephemeral life.

The invaders landed in Veracruz and, after heavy fighting, occupied Mexico City in September 1847.
A long list of battles punctuated this war of conquest: Palo Alto, Monterry, Angostura, Veracruz, Cerro Gordo, Padierna, Chapultepec.

The people of Mexico City then demonstrated against the occupier. Riots took place and North American troops had to leave the city.
Especially since desertions were taking place among the invaders: dozens of Irish from St. Patrick's Battalion refused to continue the war against a Catholic people.
They were the poor and miserable, fleeing famine in their home countries. They had been enlisted to fight the “Mexican barbarians.”
Thirty-two were hanged for desertion in the Aztec capital.

Hostilities lasted until 1848, when Mexico had to sign the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.

In ten years Mexico had been amputated of half of its territory.

In the years that followed, California gold and the subsequent exploitation of oil and gas in Texas began.
They will make an important contribution to the development of the United States.

But one of the most important consequences will be the age-old resentment and resentment of Mexicans in the face of this dispossession that will indelibly mark the relations between these two countries.
On the other hand, anti-Yankee sentiment, latent among Latin Americans, was born from these usurped Mexican lands.

A Mexican president liked to use an old saying steeped in fatalism, when he wanted to make people understand the particular geographical situation of his country, a source of misfortune for his people:
“So far from God, and so close to the United States.”

The concerns of the United States for much of the nineteenth century were focused on solving internal problems—occupation and colonization of the West, controversy over slavery, destruction of pre-capitalist enclaves by the Civil War, development of agriculture.
They refrained from participating in direct conflicts with the great powers.

This is true in their relations with Europe. But as far as the Latin American countries are concerned, the United States has practised, from the beginning, an interventionist policy.

These interventions and interferences were not limited to neighboring countries, but also, through military interventions or the sending of armed expeditions, to distant South America.

The naval expedition to Paraguay in 1858-1859 is an example of this.

\section{The expedition to Paraguay}


In 1851, the United States government had appointed Edward A. Hopkins of the United States and Paraguay Navigation Company as Consul in Asuncion, one of the owners of a shipping company domiciled in Rhode Island.

Hopkins, a former sailor and adventurer, knew Paraguay where he had stayed since 1845.
Armed with letters accrediting him as an official agent of the United States government, he had broken into the corridors of power and knew the Paraguayan president, Carlos Antonio Lopez\footnote{Carlos Antonio López, 1790-1862, President of Paraguay between 1840 and 1862.}.

A series of intrigues, involving offers of North American mediation to coax its neighbors in a border dispute with private affairs and the interests of the United States, which intended to take advantage of the Parana waterway, resulted in Paraguay's non-ratification of the Treaty of Commerce and Navigation in 1854.

The Paraguay Navigation Company was sanctioned in 1854 for violating Paraguayan legislation and was forbidden to operate in the country.
Hopkins was expelled in turn for disrespect following a confused brawl with Paraguayan soldiers.

From a friend of Paraguay and President Lopez, he became his fierce enemy, developing in official circles and the entourage of Presidents Pierce, then Buchanan, a propaganda that encouraged North American military intervention in “this country of Berber-Asians”, this “outgrowth of the international body. .. less civilized than the Sultanate of Moscato.”
He asserted in his diatribes that South Americans were barbarians who should “receive treatment accordingly.
Talking with them is a waste of time; we must speak to them with our cannons” \footnote{Ynsfran Pablo Max, La expedición norteamericana contra el Paraguay, 1858-1859, Editorial Guarania, Mexico, Buenos Aires, 1954, 2 vols., p. 208.}.

It was then that the Water Witch, a North American Navy ship that, exceeding the authorization given to it, crossed the Paraguayan border and arrived at the Brazilian port of Corumba, entered the scene opportunely.
Authorizations for peaceful passage were suspended and a presidential decree banned the navigation of foreign warships.

On February 1, 1855, the Water Witch, ignoring the Paraguayan decree, attempted to force a dam on the Parana.

The officer of the Paraguayan garrison of Fort Itapiru who controlled the passage of the ships ordered him to turn back, then fired two warning shots blank.
Faced with the refusal to comply, a cannon shot destroyed the rudder, killing the helmsman of the Yankee ship.
The Water Witch was then swept away by the waters of the river and had to retreat.

Then began a major campaign of press and intimidation to force Paraguay to apologize.
Finally, in May 1857, the United States Congress approved the dispatch of a “small armada” of twenty ships that set sail in October 1857.
The toast to the company's success was greeted by one of the officers, according to Pablo Max Ynfrans, with an overflowing flight of geopolitical exuberance:

\begin{quote}
\enquote{I raise my glass... so that our difficulties with Paraguay end and we end up annexing the entire basin of the Rio de la Plata...}\footnote{Ibid., vol. II, p. 42.}
\end{quote}

This wish, fortunately, will not be granted.

 But the “little armada” arrived in Paraguay in early 1859 and President Carlos Lopez had to bow down.

Paraguay apologized — guilty of enforcing its sovereignty over its own territory — compensated the family of the Yankee sailor who died during the Itapiru confrontation, and had to accept, under threat of force, the Treaty proposed by the United States.
The United States and Paraguay Navigation Company, for its part, continued a long lawsuit against the Paraguayan government, in which it was later dismissed.


\section{The Buccaneers}

By the mid-nineteenth century, the conflict of interest between Britain and the United States for control of the Caribbean worsened.
The two countries were led to sign the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty by which the contracting parties declared that they were working for the construction of an interoceanic canal in Nicaraguan territory, without informing Nicaragua of this.
They recognized each other's prerogatives in its future use and asserted that they had no intention of building fortifications or “occupying Nicaragua... nor to exercise domination over any territory of Central America...”\footnote{Lemaitre Eduardo, Panamá y su separación de Colombia, Ediciones Corralito de Piedra, Bogota, 1972, p. 66.}

Nicaragua lived, in the fifties of the nineteenth century, like many states in the region, in the midst of continuous civil wars.
In 1854, a conflict between liberals and conservatives escalated into an international conflict: the liberals called for help from Yankee mercenaries. The time for the buccaneers had arrived.

Among them, William Walker, a staunch supporter of slavery and its extension to Central America, tried to seize Nicaragua, proclaiming himself president in 1856.

Despite the official neutrality displayed by the United States, an emissary of Walker was received by President Franklin Pierce, but the countries of Central America put an end to the adventure\footnote{An account exists of this episode: \emph{La guerra de Nicaragua}, translated from English by Ricardo Fernádez Guardia, Ediciones Universidad Centroamericana, San José, Costa Rica, 1970.}.

For its part, Britain was trying to resist Yankee power in the region, clinging to a “state” created by it from scratch, the “Kingdom of Mosquitia.”
With imprecise contours, populated by the Miskitos Indians, in a vague place, the "kingdom" had to be on Nicaraguan territory.
It was fiction, and everyone knew it was a farce.
Britain wanted, with this ghostly kingdom, not to lose its rights to the future inter-oceanic canal to the United States.

The end of the century nevertheless marked the rise of the United States in the world.

Entangled in their Civil War in the 60s, they then very firmly demanded the departure of French troops from Mexico.
They intended to remain the only masters in Central America and succeed in making the Caribbean a new Mare Nostrum.

The desire for North American expansion, which would result in an active foreign policy, is dated back to the late nineteenth century.
However, this desire for expansion, as we have seen, has existed for a long time at the expense of the Latin American nations.

What is true, however, is that at the end of the nineteenth century, the United States effectively entered the world international scene, replacing in Latin America the hegemonic role held until then by the British.

The United States had become a great industrial power and had reached an imperialist phase that was now vying the other powers for its share in world affairs.

Some authors point to the role played in the new foreign policy of successive governments of the time by Alfred Mahan, author of The Influence of Maritime Power in History.
Mahan, in this book, recalled the superiority of maritime empires over land powers in history.

In this perspective, the constitution of a powerful navy, linked to the possession of bases and sea and river routes, was essential.

Anticipating this theory, which would be in vogue at the turn of the century, President Ulysses Grant presented, in May 1870, a project to the Senate for the purchase of Santo Domingo, considered a point
strategic in the Yankee Mare Nostrum.  The project reveals a interest that goes back a long way and that will be a permanent obsession of the U.S. governments: getting their hands on Cuba.

In his project, Grant claimed that Santo Domingo was a weak nation, but that its territories were rich, “the richest that exist under the sun, capable of accommodating in luxury 10 million human beings...
The acquisition of Santo Domingo suits us by its position... would give us control over all the islands I told you about...
The acquisition of Santo Domingo... is a national security measure... it is a question of ensuring the control of the commercial traffic of Darien (Panama) and of resolving the unfortunate situation in which Cuba finds itself...”\footnote{Carlos Machado, Documentos, op. cit. cit., p. 41.}

From the “belly of the beast”, and in front of the plans for annexation of Santo Domingo and Cuba, the pen of the apostle of Cuban independence, José Marti, rose in New York on March 21, 1889.

Marti addressed a clarification to The Manufacturer where he stigmatized the unignified Cubans who called for the outright annexation of the island by the United States:

\begin{quote}
\enquote{No dignified Cuban can want to see his country united with another... Those who went to war and were exiled... Those who build with their work... a fireplace,
 ... engineers, teachers, journalists, lawyers and poets... do not desire annexation by the United States and are suspicious of the evil elements who, like gusanos in blood,
 have begun their work of destruction...}\footnote{Ibid., p. 43.}
\end{quote}

The United States, imbued with a very strong nationalist sentiment — it was the time of “Jingoism”\footnote{Jingoism: “English term synonymous with patriotic chauvinism”, Universalis.} — went so far as to consider an intervention against distant Chile.
Indeed, in 1891 took place the Baltimore incident in Valparaiso\footnote{Vial Gonzalo, Historia de Chile, vol. II (1891-1920), Santillana editions, Santiago de Chile, 1983.}.

The Baltimore was a 4,600-ton Yankee warship that had just been built in England. It had the reputation of being “the fastest boat in the world.”
It was in front of the Chilean coasts as soon as April 1891 — during the civil war that had broken out against President Balmaceda — its mission being to protect North American nationals.

On October 16, 1891, a brawl of drunkards broke out in the red-light district of Valparaiso between Yankee sailors and port workers.
As a result of the general brawl, several sailors were wounded with knives. Two North Americans died.

However, in a banal brawl, the United States engaged in an international conflict, blaming the new Chilean government — which, supported by London, had just won the civil war against President Balmaceda — and adopted an arrogant attitude that the Chilean government deemed unacceptable.

The war preparations of Benjamin Harrison's North American government were well advanced. 
Gonzalo Vial reports that the father of the “naval power” himself, Alfred Mahan was called for consultations in Washington\footnote{Gonzalo Vial, op. cit. cit., p. 165.}.

The Chilean government bowed to the threat of the use of force and agreed to apologize to the United States, compensated the families of the sailors, and withdrew expressions held by Foreign Minister Manuel Antonio Matta, considered offensive by North Americans.

In reality, the conflict of interest between the United States and Great Britain was through interposed countries.

Thus, three years later, in 1895, there was a border conflict between Venezuela and the colonial georgetown government in British Guiana. 
Faced with British war preparations, the United States warned Britain that it would not tolerate intervention. 
And President Cleveland's Secretary of State instructed his ambassador in London to do so, saying that the rights of the United States were born of “its infinite resources”.

At the end of the century, Yankee interventions multiplied: Hawaii, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Cuba, Guam, Samoa, the ports of China and Panama. 
Dismayed, Mark Twain wrote: “Let us paint the white stripes black and add the shins and skull where the stars are placed.”


\section{Cuba under the U.S. boot}


Since 1868, Cuban patriots had taken up arms against the Spanish colonial power. Defeated after ten years of fighting, they started the war again in 1895. 
They had achieved success in the war. Victory and independence were within their reach.

It was then that the United States hastened to intervene.

Yankee investments in the island's sugar plantations and mines were significant, and U.S. leaders did not hesitate to say publicly that, to them, Cuban sugar was of vital importance, like wheat and cotton from India and Egypt to Britain.

The pretext found this time was the explosion of the battleship Maine in Havana which caused the death of more than 250 crew members. 
There was no evidence of Spain's involvement — and later it was learned that it was an accidental explosion — but President Mac Kinley, driven by Jingoist hysteria, declared war on Spain on April 21 1898.

It was short-lived. The Spanish fleet was annihilated at Santiago de Cuba and Yankee troops landed in Cuba. 
Among the Rough Riders who occupied the island was Theodore Roosevelt, the future president of the United States who would become the champion of intervention policy and the Big Stick.

By the Treaty of Paris (December 10, 1898), Spain ceded to the United States, Puerto Rico and the Philippines.

The war between Spain and the United States marked the entry into force of the latter as one of the main players on the international scene. 
On the other hand, for Spain, it was the last act of the progressive international erasure, which would lead it to withdraw into itself.

Cuba, which had become theoretically independent, was subject to the authority of the Yankee military governor, Leonard Wood, leader of the occupying troops. They will stay for three years.

It was Wood himself who convened a constituent assembly.
An amendment drafted by Connecticut Senator Orville Platt was then introduced, despite opposition from several constituents who considered it an unacceptable interference that violated Cuba's sovereignty and independence.

In Havana, demonstrations broke out against this diktat and Governor Wood issued an ultimatum: 
“The United States will continue to occupy the island until a Cuban government is organized, whose constitution bears, as an integral part of it, all the precepts of the Platt Amendment.”\footnote{Carlos Machado, Documentos, op. cit. cit., p. 53.}

The Platt amendment was a blatant demonstration of the state of vassalization in which Cuba had been placed. On May 23, 1903, it was incorporated into the constitution. 
It was only in 1934 that certain clauses were amended. Here are some pearls: 
Article I: “The Government of Cuba shall not sign any agreement which allows a foreign power to obtain, for naval or military purposes, a part of the island...”

Article III was particularly humiliating: 
“The government of Cuba consents to the United States being able to exercise the right to intervene to preserve Cuban independence (sic!) and the maintenance of an adequate government for the protection of life, property...”

Article VII gave the right to establish military bases on Cuban territory. Guantanamo is, in the news, living proof of a supposedly bygone era.

Governor Wood was not mistaken when, in a letter to Roosevelt in 1903, he wrote:

\begin{quote}
\enquote{Little, if any, independence has left Cuba with the Platt Amendment. The most sensitive Cubans understand this and think that the only positive thing left for them to do is to call for annexation.}\footnote{Ibid., p. 55.}
\end{quote}

Invoking the amendment, the Yankee troops will land several times: in 1906, 1912, 1917. 
It was only in 1934 that Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to withdraw certain clauses, particularly binding.

\section{The Drago Doctrine and the “Roosevelt Corollaries” of the Monroe Doctrine}

In December 1902, British, German and Italian warships appeared in front of the Venezuelan coast, sank a few ships and blocked ports. 
They demanded the payment of compensation due to European nationals.

“Teddy” Roosevelt, then President of the United States, approved the naval action of the European powers. But Latin American countries were indignant at this aggression.

Argentina's Foreign Minister, Luis Maria Drago, then sent a note to the State Department — which later set a precedent and was adopted by the Hague Conference in 1907 — in which he called for a prohibition of the use of force as a means of recovery of debts incurred by a State. 
The "Drago doctrine" was born.


But Roosevelt did not intend to let the European powers police his area of influence. He reserved this police right only for the United States. 
On December 6, 1904, in his annual message, the North American president stated: 
“If a nation demonstrates that it knows how to act with reasonable efficiency and in a decent manner... if it maintains internal order and pays its debts, it will not need the intervention of the United States... Mistakes... or impotence... can force the United States... to exercise an international police role...”\footnote{Ibid., p. 64.}

A year after Roosevelt — who had been New York's police chief — warned in his annual message to Latin American nations that he intended not to apply the “Monroe Doctrine,” that is, not to prevent the punitive actions of foreign powers in the continent: 
“If a republic of the South... makes a mistake against any nation... The Monroe Doctrine would not require us to intervene to prevent the punishment of fault, except to prevent punishment from turning into an occupation of the territory...”\footnote{Ibid., p. 66.}

Roosevelt's two speeches will serve as a justification for the Yankee imperialist policy that will result in interventions in Panama, Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti and Santo Domingo. 
The Big Stick policy — “speak softly and take with you a big stick” — would be the official policy of the Yankee government for the first decades of the century.

\section{The secession of Panama}

Since the time of the Spanish conquest, many people had striven to imagine an inter-oceanic passage in Central America. 
Several projects and scouting to find the most suitable place had been made. 
The territories of Nicaragua and Panama were “foreseen”. It will be the latter which, as a result of an organized secession fomented by the imperial power, will finally see the coveted canal dig on its soil. 

Panama had declared itself independent in 1821 and voluntarily proclaimed its attachment to Colombia. 
Ten years later, a secessionist movement proclaimed its autonomy while declaring itself part of the “Colombian Confederation”. 
In August 1831, the army returned the isthmus to Confederation.

In 1840 and 1855 there were other separatist attempts. Organized the first by General Tomas Herrera, an “Estado Libre del Istmo”, was proclaimed. 
Brought back to the right path by the army of the Confederation, Panama will experience a new attempt at secession in 1855, but also declared itself part of the “Nueva Granada” (Colombia). 
In 1858 the new constitution of the “Confederacion Granadina” was enacted, of which the isthmus was still a part. 

After the annexation of California, the Colombian province of Panama became a vital point of east-west communications for the United States.

As early as 1851, a Yankee company, the Panama Rail Road Company, had managed to run the first train, and in 1854 a locomotive crossed the isthmus. 
The route of the railway had been made in a particularly unhealthy area and prone to tropical diseases.
More than 6,000 people lost their lives because of malaria and other diseases: Chinese coolies, West Indians and a significant number of Irish, German and Austrian.

The California gold rush forced thousands of men to cross the isthmus — a must from the east — and the United States made the unfortunate habit of moving its troops through Panama without asking Colombia for permission.

Several draft treaties were submitted by the Yankee companies to the Colombians, but they were not approved by the Congress of Bogota. 
Yankee Ambassador Sullivan wrote to his government in 1869:

\begin{quote}
\enquote{If you want to get the rights to the canal through a route that is not a treaty, things can be easier in the Colombian Congress with some funds from the secret service.}\footnote{Lemaitre Edouardo, op. cit., p. 75.}.
\end{quote}

But, despite North American efforts, it was Lucien Bonaparte Wyse — grandson of Lucien Bonaparte — who, between 1878 and 1880, obtained, for the French of the “International Civil Society”, ”the exclusive privilege for the execution and exploitation through his territory of a maritime canal between the Atlantic and the Pacific”\footnote{Ibid., p. 95.}.

U.S. President Rutherford Hayes threatened and declared that he wanted to break through another canal in Nicaragua. 
He warned the international community by demanding “the right to exercise an exclusive protectorate on the canal that the French plan to break into Colombian territory.”\footnote{Ibid., p. 128.}

Wyse convinced Ferdinand de Lesseps – the builder of the Suez Canal in 1869 – to take charge of the work, financed by a loan launched by the “Universal Company of the Inter-Oceanic Canal”.

But in the following years a great financial scandal broke out which, together with certain technical errors made in the drilling of the canal, caused the company to go bankrupt in February 1889.

It was then that a French adventurer, liquidator of the company, Philippe Bunau-Varilla, intervened, who tried to sell to the United States the rights to the concession of the canal. 
At the same time, Britain freed them from the commitments made in the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty and they were able to draft a treaty with Colombia (Herran-Clay Treaty), which was to be ratified by the Bogota Congress.

The majority of Colombian senators considered the project to be an attack on Colombia's sovereignty, and on August 12, 1903, refused to ratify it.

Faced with this refusal, the United States provoked the secession and uprising of the Colombian province of Panama.

One day before the Declaration of Independence, on November 3, 1903, the State Department sent a cable to the Yankee consul in Panama:
“Inform the Department as soon as the uprising takes place... Not yet, the uprising must occur during the night....”\footnote{Carlos Machado, Documentos, op. cit. cit., p. 57.}.

The uprising was proclaimed and a junta was formed in Puerto Colon. 
Yankee troops disembarked from ships, which conveniently were on the spot and which prevented the Colombian forces from putting down the rebellion.

On November 6, the United States recognized Panama's “independence.”

Philippe Bunau-Varilla, a French citizen — who had taken part in the rebellion without moving from the 1162 suite of the Waldorf Astoria in New York — later acknowledged that the idea of secession had been discussed with President Roosevelt\footnote{Buneau Varilla Philippe, From Panama to Verdun, p. 162 et seq.}.

He was hastily appointed Minister Plenipotentiary of Panama by the junta and on 18 November in Washington signed with Secretary of State Hay — a day before the panamanian envoys arrived — a Leonine treaty that mortgaged the sovereignty of the isthmus in perpetuity.

Three years later, Theodore Roosevelt received the Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1936, Roosevelt (Franklin) made some adjustments to the treaty.

The head of the National Guard, Colonel José Antonio Remon, succeeded in 1955 in obtaining some modifications from Eisenhower. 
Then, Kennedy agreed that the Panamanian flag be hoisted alongside the Yankee flag, which did not prevent clashes in 1964 between Yankee troops and Panamanian students, causing more than 20 deaths and a hundred wounded.

Colonel Omar Torrijos negotiated with Carter in 1977 the end of the Yankee stranglehold on the canal and the recovery of its sovereignty by Panama, planned, according to the Torrijos-Carter Treaty, for the year 2000.

Remon and Torrijos will die in two mysterious aviation accidents.



\section{Interventionism in the Caribbean}


The Caribbean area was a privileged place where North American armed interventions were concentrated.

In 1901, the first intervention of the century was carried out in Nicaragua, and in 1903, as we saw in Panama. 
The canal opened a new path for \emph{manifest destinity}.

It was in 1905 that, “answering the call” of several leaders of the Dominican oligarchy, the future Nobel Prize, “Teddy” Roosevelt, installed — with the support of the Marines — Yankee tax collectors in the customs of Santo Domingo... The presence of diligent experts lasted four years.

Secretary of State Elihu Root signaled in those years that interventions would take place “whenever North American capital was in danger”\footnote{Castor Sucy, La ocupaciôn norteamericana de Haitî y sus consecuencias, Casa de las Américas, La Habana, 1974, p. 22.}.

A new landing of marines in 1916 put Santo Domingo under the Yankee boot until 1924.

In Nicaragua, President José Santos Zelaya of the Liberal Party had been in power since 1893. 
He had managed to get rid of the English on the Atlantic coast and tried to interest the Japanese in building an inter-oceanic canal. 
The United States saw this as a challenge and armed the Conservatives who had risen up against Zelaya and landed at Bluefields. 
He resigned along with his successor, José Madriz. The presidency then fell to a former employee of the Yankee mining company Fletcher, Adolfo Diaz.

Nevertheless, a liberal-led revolt broke out in 1912 and President Taft sent 1,700 Marines to protect conservative President Adolfo Diaz. They remained until 1925.

At the same time, the United States imposed on Nicaragua the Bryan-Chamorro Treaty (August 5, 1914), by which it was granted the rights to establish a naval base in the Gulf of Fonseca as well as the cession for 99 years of the various islands and islets.

El Salvador was occupied in 1921 and Honduras in 1924. Yankee interference came to such an extent that the appointment of a Honduran president was made in those years aboard the North American battleship “Tacoma”. 
Precedent of the future oath taken in 1989 in Panama, in a Yankee base, by “President” Endara?

In Guatemala, the North American-owned fruit company United Fruit — including Foster Dulles, Secretary of State and brother of the head of the CI.A. — had been operating in the region since the turn of the century.
A true state within a state, it had signed a first contract in 1901 with the Guatemalan dictator Estrada Cabrera, immortalized by Miguel Angel Asturias in El Senor Presidente.

By the end of the Great War, the United States had begun to oust European influence — mainly British, but also German and French — from Latin America. 
Over this period, Cardoso and Faletto report that “... the American presence expanded rapidly... 
The countries of the Pacific coast were fully incorporated into the economy of the United States and those of the Atlantic, such as Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina, fell under its influence”.\footnote{Cardoso F. H. and E. Faletto, Dependency and Development in Latin America, PUF, 1983, p. 83.}

From the end of the twenties, North American capital will exercise an undeniable preponderance in the region.

The presence of Yankee capital had its corollary in an imperialist policy which, as we have seen, manifested itself several times throughout those years. The new interventions in Mexico were an example of this.

\section{Interventions in Veracruz and Tampico}


After the overthrow and assassination of President Francisco Madero in 1913 —in which Yankee Ambassador Henry Lane Wilson took part— General Huerta seized power.

Venustiano Carranza, former governor at the time of Porfirio Diaz, then rebelled against the one he considered a usurper.

President Taft had refused as early as 1912 to recognize Huerta as head of the Mexican government and was massing troops on the border.

In the midst of the whirlwind of the Mexican Revolution, General Victoriano Huerta sought and gained the support of English investors.
At the same time he sketched a rapprochement with Germany and Japan.

In the meantime, Wilson had succeeded Taft and deployed warships to the Mexican coast. 
Thus, on April 16, 1914, an incident occurred between Mexican soldiers and Yankee sailors, who had illegally landed.

Unacceptable demands for reparation were addressed to the Mexicans and, at the expiration of an ultimatum, 50 warships carrying 23,000 men presented themselves at Tampico.

On the 20th the landing took place in Veracruz. Despite fierce resistance, Yankee troops managed to seize the city and get their hands on \$8 million that was in the coffers of customs.

On the same day, President Wilson addressed Congress for approval “so that the armed forces of the United States may be employed (against) General Huerta... and obtain from him the recognition of our rights...”\footnote{Carlos Machado, \emph{Documentos, op. cit.}, p. 75.}

Five years later, in 1919, Woodrow Wilson was also awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

And when in 1924, General Obregon appointed his successor – Elias Calles – part of the army did not accept this decision and rose up. 
Calles exerted a harsh repression and counted with the support of the Yankee troops to put down this rebellion as well as that of “cristeros”, who had revolted against the measures taken by Calles against the Church and who for three years (1926-1929) stood up to the army.

\section{Intervention in Haiti}

North American investments were estimated at \$15 million in Haiti. 
Aside from interests in sugar, transportation and ports, Yankee investors owned 50\% of the shares in the Haitian National Bank.

One of the most important businessmen was Roger Farharm. Vice-president of the National Bank, of the Railroad of Haiti, he was also an official of the National City Bank.


He played a leading role in the conflict between the government of Davilmar Theodore — and in 1915, that of Vilbrun Guillaume Sam — and the Yankee bankers and led the campaign that provoked the North American military intervention.

On December 17, 1914, at his request, marines from the cruiser Machias disembarked and took away \$500,000 belonging to Haiti from the vaults of the Haitian National Bank. 

Faced with protests from the Haitian government, Secretary of State Bryan signaled that the United States must “protect North American interests that were under threat,” adding that this was “a simple transfer of funds”\footnote{Castor Sucy, op. cit. cit., p. 28.}.

Pressure from Yankee businessmen, addressed to the State Department, wanted to push it to seize control of Haitian customs.

The pretext was the situation of chaos and civil war that developed in April 1915 and caused abuses on both sides, resulting in the horrific death of President Sam.

On July 28, the Marines landed in Haiti. This time, they will stay for 19 years.

The president of the Haitian Senate, deputies, ex-ministers and notables — protected by the bayonets of the marines — hastened to assure Admiral Capperton, commander of the occupation troops, of their agreement to place Haitian customs and finances under Yankee control.

It was Capperton himself who gave the green light for the appointment of Sudre Dartiguenave. On 11 August he became president for a period of seven years.

Three days later, the draft agreement with the United States was submitted to deputies and senators. 
The conditions were so humiliating for Haiti that within this submissive assembly there were voices of protest: 
“According to the statements of their agents, the government of the United States — in the name of humanity — carried out a humanitarian intervention in our country and, with its bayonets..., its guns and its cruisers, presented us with a project. 
So what is this project? A protectorate imposed on Haiti by mister Wilson...”\footnote{Ibid., p. 35.}

The project was approved on 16 November. In 1918 a new constitution was promulgated, the inspiration and one of the drafters of which was the undersecretary of the Yankee Navy, Franklin D. Roosevelt, theorist of the doctrine of "good neighborliness".

Over time, Dartiguenave himself will show some resistance to his protectors. He was replaced in 1922 by the docile Luis Borno.

Thus Haiti was offered to imperialist voracity. 

Article V of the constitution, which for a century had prohibited whites from owning the land, was abolished.

Haitian peasants were the first victims of the arrival of the owners who bought and developed new plantations.
This, in addition to the systematic repression of the campaigns carried out by the occupying troops, provoked a veritable exodus of peasants to Cuba: 
from 23,490 in 1915, the number rose in 1920 to more than 30,000. Another migratory flow headed for Santo Domingo.

The shameless collaboration of the bourgeois elites was counterbalanced by the epic of the “Cacos” of Charlemagne Peralte, who for four years (1915-1919), practiced a guerrilla war and stood up to the occupying troops before being treacherously murdered.

The marines did not leave Haitian territory until July 1934.


\section{The third intervention in Nicaragua}


In August 1925, the marines left the country after thirteen years of occupation. 
Two months later, Emiliano Chamorro deposed President Carlos Solorzano but had to return power to former President Adolfo Diaz — the former employee of a Yankee mining company and a trusted man of the State Department — who thus returned to the presidency.

In December 1926, Vice President Juan Bautista Sacasa led a force to restore legality, but Yankee Admiral Latimer landed with 2,000 soldiers and forced the warring parties to make peace and surrender their weapons to the marines.

One of the liberal leaders, Augusto César Sandino, opposed it and returned to the northern mountains.

On January 10, 1927, U.S. President Calvin Coolidge, in his annual message, explained that the Yankee intervention had proved necessary because “now we have great investments in sawmills, mines, coffee and bananas plantations...
If the revolution continued, North American investment would be seriously affected... ”\footnote{Carlos Machado, Documentos, op. cit. cit., p. 85.}

Sandino and his “crazy little army” will resist victoriously in the mountains for six years the Yankee troops, who engaged in looting and bombing the countryside and villages.

Sandino turned the struggle for the restoration of flouted legality into a war of national liberation against the foreign occupier: 
“I am fighting to expel the foreign invader from my homeland... 
The only way to put an end to this struggle is for the forces that have invaded the national soil to withdraw immediately...”\footnote{Du rêve à la Révolution, Solidarité Nicaragua N° 3, Paris, 1982, p. 5.}

Faced with the impossibility of a military victory, the United States pushed for a political agreement: 
Sacasa, the vice president became president as Sandino demanded and the marines left Nicaragua in January 1933.

But the real strongman, the head of the National Guard, Anastasio Somoza, a former poker player and counterfeiter, was devoted to the Yankees.

It was he who organized, on February 21, 1934, the kidnapping and assassination of Sandino. This crime opened the doors of power to him in 1936.

Faithful to imperialist interests, his government was a series of abjections, crimes and corruptions.  He remained in power until 1956, when he was riddled with bullets by the poet Rigoberto Perez. 
Franklin D. Roosevelt had said of Somoza, the man of the United States: “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he's our son of a bitch.”


\section{The Chaco War: An Expression of Imperialist Rivalries}


Between 1932 and 1935 the bloody Chaco War took place. 
An old conflict over the demarcation of the borders between Paraguay and Bolivia escalated when the Yankee company Standard Oil thought it had discovered, in Bolivian territory, what seemed to be a rich oil field. 
For its part, the Anglo-Dutch company Royal Dutch, made a similar discovery in the Paraguayan Chaco.

The two countries then engaged in a chauvinist campaign, encouraged on both sides by the oil companies. War broke out in June 1932 and was particularly cruel.

The armistice concluded in June 1935 forced Bolivia to push back its border by 300 kilometers and the existence of oil in the Paraguayan Chaco proved illusory.

More than 130,000 Paraguayans and Bolivians had been killed, driven by chauvinist hysteria and the voracious appetite of oil companies.

The Life Conference of American States meeting in Havana in 1928 condemned Yankee interventionism, the occupation of Haiti, the occupation of part of Panama, and the maintenance of the Platt Amendment in Cuba.

At the VII Conference of 1933 in Montevideo, Franklin D. Roosevelt had to set out the Good Neighbour Policy, and the conference in the section on “Rights and Duties” stated:

\begin{quote}
\enquote{No State has the right to intervene in the internal affairs of another State.”}\footnote{Carlos Machado, Documentos, op. cit. cit., p. 87.}
\end{quote}

Yankee Secretary of State Cordell Hull voted for the article “with reservation,” but avoided a condemnation of U.S. customs protectionism.

Then, the VIII Conference, held in Lima, authorized the meetings of consultations of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs.

It was during the Second World War that these meetings took place and the United States imposed on the Latin American countries the severance of diplomatic relations with the Axis.

Only Chile and Argentina refused to bend.  It was not until 1944 that the Argentine government broke with Germany and Japan, which provoked a coup, organized by soldiers who disagreed with this decision.

In 1945, the “Chapultepec Act”, approved on the occasion of the “Inter-American Conference on the Problems of War and Peace”, celebrated in Mexico — where the absence of Argentina had been noticed — committed the countries of the New World to face the aggressor together in the event of an attack. 
Article 3 specified that: “Any aggression ... against an American state will be considered aggression against the signatory states.”\footnote{Ibid., p. 89.}

This provision, which should have played fully in 1982, on the occasion of the Falklands War, was not applied.

On September 2, 1947, the “Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance” was signed in Rio de Janeiro, defining the scope of the Mexican Conference. 
Argentina delayed until 1950 to affix its signature.

\section{The United States and Perón}


The quarrel between Argentina and the United States dated back to the time of the Second World War. Perón, who came to power legally in 1946, had been in office in Mussolini's Italy between 1939 and 1941. 
Accused of pro-fascist sympathies, he participated in the military movement of 1943 and became Minister of Labour, then of War in 1944.

He advocated a nationalist policy that offended North American interests, and the United States worked hard for him.

The Yankee ambassador in Buenos Aires, Sprulle Braden, a man with the Esso oil company, led an openly anti-Peronist campaign. 
Supported by the Communists, he intervened in the current presidential campaign, publishing a “Blue Book” in which he accused Perón as a Nazi.

Perón retaliated in a “Blue and White Book,” where he asserted that the United States wanted to ”install... a government of their own, a puppet government, and for this they began by ensuring the assistance of all the “Quisling” available.”\footnote{Ibidem, p. 90.}

For its part, through Ambassador Braden, the White House did not mince its words: “The majority of the Argentine people have always been democrats and contrary to totalitarian ideas... the government follows the German model of 1933...”\footnote{Carlos Machado, Documentos, op. cit., p. 91.}

The election result gave Perón a large majority, and the Saturday Evening Post newspaper, commenting on the State Department's policy of intervention in Argentine internal affairs, wrote:
“This is evidence of political schizophrenia that undermines North American prestige and influence. 
The Argentine people have responded as any people would have replied when foreigners feel entitled to tell them what policy they should follow...”\footnote{Ibid.}


\section{The “guatemalazo”}


The Cold War increased the paranoia of the United States, which behind every strike or demonstration saw the hand of the Communists.

The policy of “containment” had been enunciated by Truman and the White House was striving to counter communist expansion in the world.

In 1944, in Guatemala, a revolt of students, peasants and officers, deposed the men of Washington linked to the powerful United Fruit company, (Mamita Yunai as the Guatemalans called her).

The successive governments of Arévalo and Arbenz carried out reforms: 
especially the first, which began a timid redistribution of land, which Colonel Arbenz – elected in 1951 – tried to deepen, decreeing an agrarian reform that met the aspirations of the peasantry, the majority sector of the population. 
85,000 hectares of the United Fruit were expropriated.

It was not to reckon with the reaction of the powerful Mamita Yunai, Foster Dulles, Secretary of State and his little brother, Allen, head of the CIA.

In the midst of the Cold War, they stirred up the scarecrow of communism, and in the Pan-American Conference in Caracas (March 1954), Foster Dulles attempted to equate the presence of communists in any government in the hemisphere with “extra-continental aggression.”

Meanwhile, his younger brother Allen was arming a “liberation” army with the complicity of the Honduran government, which placed itself under the orders of Colonel Castillo Armas, linked to the International Railways of Center America, a subsidiary of united Fruit.

In the Caracas conference, Foster Dulles declared that “the domination and control of the political institutions of any American state by the international communist movement would constitute an intervention by a foreign power, and would be a threat to peace in America.”\footnote{Carlos Machado, Documentos, op. cit., p. 96.}.

Arbenz's government had expropriated land, established social security, built roads — the United Fruit held a monopoly on transportation — and laid the groundwork for the construction of a new port, the only usable one belonging to Mamita Yunai. 
At the same time, he undertook a reform of education, while keeping political rights and freedoms once unknown.

But the United States saw only the hand of communism behind the Arbenz government, and the Conference approved a declaration that went in the direction desired by Dulles.

As early as May, Yankee aircraft flights began over Guatemala. Then came the bombings of Puerto Barrios and Puerto San José.

The landing of the mercenaries of Castillo Armas occurred and soon after guatemala City fell into the hands of the “liberators”, while a young Argentine doctor of twenty-six years — Ernesto Guevara — desperately sought to organize the defense of Arbenz's legal government.

The Guatemalan spring had lived.

As soon as he came to power, Castillo Armas repealed the land reform and other measures taken by Jacobo Arbenz.

\section{Bay of Pigs}


Triumphant in 1959, the Cuban Revolution caused an earthquake throughout the continent.
A few miles off the Yankee coast was a revolutionary power that would become the nightmare of nine North American presidents.

Very quickly, after the Cuban government had decreed land reform and the North Americans, in retaliation, had refused to refine Soviet oil and suspended the purchase of Cuban sugar, provocations and aggression took place.

The conflict reached the point of no return on April 17, 1961 when the CIA, duly authorized by President Kennedy, organized a landing in the Bay of Pigs.

The CIA, using Cuban and Central American anti-Castroists, thought the news of the landing would provoke an insurrection on the island.
But this time, little brother Dulles was wrong.

Within days, the attempted invasion was quelled by Cuban militiamen and more than 1,000 “gusanos” (literally, earthworms) were taken prisoner.

Kennedy was appalled and denied Yankee involvement in the affair.
But when the evidence of U.S. involvement became irrefutable—pilots shot down by the Cuban DCA—and although the planned invasion had been bequeathed to him by his predecessor, Dwight Eisenhower, he took responsibility for the failure in these terms:

\begin{quote}
\enquote{If ever the inter-American doctrine of non-intervention obscures or allows a policy of passivity, if the nations of this hemisphere fail in their struggle against communist penetration, then I want to
let it be clear that my Government will not hesitate to assume its responsibilities... If this moment ever comes, we do not intend to receive lessons of non-intervention...}\footnote{Ibid., p. 101.}.
\end{quote}

Since then, Cuba's history has been the story of continuous resistance to thwart intervention plans and to counter U.S. interference with the island.

Encouragement from opposition groups followed assassination attempts against Cuban leaders.

Forced to resist the greatest power in history, Cuba had no other solution than to flee forward.

Thus, apart from sugar and rum, the export of a "non-traditional" product became, for more than two decades, the weapon with which Cuba counter-attacked: the export of the revolution.

The latest interventions aimed at making the economic situation in Cuba even more difficult (Torricelli Act, 1992) provide for economic sanctions against countries that provide assistance:
a ban on trade with Cuba for subsidiaries of United States companies in third countries, and a ban on docking in a Yankee port for ships that have allegedly touched Cuban ports in the last six months.

This law has been widely condemned by the international community.
Its extraterritoriality violates international law and tries to discourage third countries in their trade relations with Cuba, which has been supporting a ruthless embargo for thirty years.

Since the advent of the Cold War, the United States has been tasked with training officers of Latin American armies.
They trained them for the fight against communism that they believed they saw in every social protest, or in the many struggles for better living conditions that swept across the continent in the sixties.

Kennedy, panicked by the growing prestige of the Cuban Revolution, launched in 1961 the idea of a vast program of economic and social aid: “The Alliance for Progress”.

This little “Marshall Plan” was abandoned by Johnson a few years later when the effort to fight communism resulted in collusion between Washington and the Latin American military.


\section{Coup in Brazil}


The coup, against President Joao Goulart, inaugurated a series of coups in which the United States appeared directly involved.

Goulart's government had shown its willingness to fight against the miserable conditions in which thousands of his compatriots found themselves.
He announced the right to vote for the illiterate and his intention to promote an agrarian reform law.

On March 31, 1964, the armed forces deposed Goulart, assuming control of the country, and President Lyndon Johnson hurried on April 2 to send the military “his warmest wishes,” adding that the North American people had “watched with anxiety the political and economic difficulties your great nation was going through...
We admire the resolute will of the Brazilian community to resolve these difficulties within the framework of constitutional democracy... (sic!)”.

The democratic convictions of the military were expressed in the following years.
They unleashed a savage crackdown on left-wing movements and parties that were trying to resist the dictatorship.

Only from 1979, a return to civilian rule would begin.



\section{The intervention in Santo Domingo}


The United States intervened and occupied Santo Domingo from 1916 to 1924.

Rafael Leónidas Trujillo, a trusted man of the North Americans, had seized power in 1930. Thus began the “Trujillo era” with its aftermath of deaths, tortures and abuses.

The “Benefactor” — a megalomaniac dictator, only comparable in excess in this century to another Washington protégé, Anastasio Somoza — remained in power for more than thirty years with the acquiescence of the United States.

The dictator was killed in an attack in 1961 and one of his loyalists — Joaquin Balaguer — converted into a democrat in a hurry, was then promoted to president.

A succession of coups and backlashes from states ended with the call for the first truly democratic elections in December 1962.

It was Juan Bosch, a democrat exiled for twenty-five years, who won hands down.

Bosch's victory was decidedly not part of Washington's plans. Although anti-communist, the United States was suspicious of him. In September 1963, he was overthrown by Colonel Elias Wessin y Wessin.

But a group of constitutional officers, led by Colonel Francisco Caamaño, took up arms against the usurpers and proclaimed — supported by the vast majority of the population — its desire to reinstate the overthrown president, Juan Bosch.

Clashes broke out and the constitutionalists of Caamaño were on the verge of winning.
It was then that Johnson decided to send the Marines once Ambassador Tapley Bennet had announced his intention to protect North American nationals.

The world then watched, amazed, by an operetta in which Lyndon Johnson strove to deny the flagrant violations of the provisions of the Charter of the O. E.A., and had to, after many prevarications and lies
— and in the face of the wave of indignation, particularly strong in Latin America, where Yankee embassies and companies were stormed by demonstrators —
to disguise the Yankee intervention with the participation of troops from four military dictatorships, the only ones who agreed to follow Washington in its invasion:
the Brazil of the military putschists, Nicaragua of Somoza, Paraguay of Stroessner and Honduras.

It was for the North Americans to prevent the establishment of a new Cuba, which justified, in their eyes, all the breaches of the standards established by the O.E.A. itself:
“I understood that there was no time to waste, talk and consult... American nations cannot, must not and will not allow the establishment of another communist government in the Western Hemisphere...”\footnote{Ibid., p. 109.}

In September of the same year, a resolution of the United States House of Representatives (Selden Resolution) declared that, faced with the mere threat of communist danger, American nations could and should assist each other.

Balaguer, the former loyalist of dictator Trujillo, was accepted by North Americans and elected president in 1966.
Colonel Caamaño, crowned with immense prestige, died a few years later, in a last attempt to bring the armed struggle to Santo Domingo.


\section{The Thousand Days of Popular Unity}


The specter of communism — Washington's obsession — seemed to turn into flesh and blood when Chilean socialist physician Salvador Allende, supported by a coalition of left-wing parties — Popular Unity — won the election on September 4, 1970.

Chile was jubilant and from the balcony of the historic Federation of Students of Chile, in the center of Santiago, Salvador Allende, moved, pledged, in front of his supporters, to carry out the promised program.
Then he asked them to withdraw peacefully and not to respond to provocations.

Not a single disorder, not an incident occurred, not a window was broken that night, and the Chilean people celebrated, with sobriety, their victory.

But in the beautiful neighborhoods, in the opulent houses and in the shade of the thick walls of the U.S. embassy, those who had always accused the left of being the bearer of barbarism, were already sharpening the knives.

The Yankee intervention in Chile has been widely known since the publication of the secret TTI documents and the report — Covert Action — presented to the Senate by the Church Commission.

U.S. action began — in collusion with the Chilean right — during the presidential campaign.
The CIA copiously watered newspapers and parties of the center and the right.
The ineffable Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, made it a point to declare in June 1970:
“I don't see why we would fold our arms without acting and watch a country become communist because of the irresponsibility of its people...”\footnote{Davis Nathaniel, \emph{Los dos ultimos anos de Salvador Allende}, Plazay Janes editores, Barcelona, 1986, p. 18.}

The head of Chile's main news outlet, El Mercurio, and the vice president of Pepsi-Cola met on September 15, 1970 in Washington, D.C., with CIA Director Richard Helms.
On the evening of the same day, Henry Kissinger, Richard Helms and President Nixon coordinated a plan of action — “Track I”, then, “Track II,” to prevent Congress from proclaiming Salvador Allende President of the Republic.

According to the Church Commission, Nixon's instructions were precise, written in his own hand:
“Save Chile... we must not deal with the risks, do not compromise the embassy, 10 million if necessary ... full-time work... action plan in 48 hours...”\footnote{Ibid., p. 19.}

The “Track II” plan included several phases, ranging from the corruption of deputies, generals and admirals, to the assassination of the army commander-in-chief who refused to follow the putschists and was ambushed in October 1970.

Nixon's instructions were, as has been said, precise:
everything had to be done to prevent Allende from coming to power, except for an action like the one that had been undertaken in Santo Domingo.
Nathaniel Davis, the U.S. ambassador to Chile to the Allende government, questioned the CIA's plan to assassinate the allende.

Nevertheless, Allende was appointed by Congress and governed for three years. It has implemented the promised programme:
nationalizations of copper, banks, nitrates, telephones, insurance, agrarian reform, etc.

But Chile faced an invisible plot, “A Silent Vietnam,” said poet Pablo Neruda who, taking his weapon, the pen, wrote: “Incitement to nixonicide...”.

A plan, supported from the outside, destabilized the country and led to the coup d'état of September 11, 1973. Yankee Navy ships, the Richard Turner, the Tattersali, the Vesol and the submarine Clamagore, were conveniently in front of the Chilean coast that day to participate in the naval maneuvers of Unitas.

In a few hours, the soldiers broke through the narrow wall that adorns the civilization of barbarism.

Allende set himself on fire in his burning palace.

The victorious counter-revolution was then able to restore capitalism to new foundations, sinking the country for seventeen years into a bloody dictatorship that proposed to “eradicate the Marxist cancer forever.” As a result, thousands of opponents have been arrested, tortured, killed and/or disappeared.

A democratic transition began in 1989 when the dictator Pinochet was forced to call for a plebiscite.
Defeated, he had to give way, in 1990, to a democratically elected civilian while remaining commander-in-chief of the army until 1998 when he agreed to retire... in the Senate... the same Senate he closed in 1973.



\section{Intervention in Nicaragua}



On July 19, 1979, E.S.L.N. troops entered liberated Managua.
Two days earlier, Anastasio Somoza Debayle, heir to a dynasty founded by his father in 1936, fled.

The Sandinista government then faced the immense task of having to rebuild a devastated country.

It implemented an agrarian reform, redistributed land, developed a vast literacy campaign while fighting, from the first months, against the ex-guards of Somoza who were massing on the Honduran border.

The Reagan administration, which during the presidential race had denounced the Sandinistas as agents of Moscow, began a gigantic international campaign, accusing the Managua government of wanting to seize all of Central America.

From the beginning of the eighties, the silent invasion of Nicaragua began. Reagan banned credit, encouraged opposition parties while funding and arming the “contras” in Honduras.

In the international press campaign, the Reagan administration emphasized Sandinista “overarming,” which posed a clear danger — Reagan said — for the “free” governments of the region.

“Irangate” demonstrated the Yankee intervention in Nicaragua as a provider of funds and weapons to the "contras" who used the territory of Honduras as their main base of operations.

Nicaragua was bled by the war decided by Reagan and led by “contras” interposed.
The United States government was condemned by the International Court of Justice for its participation in terrorist acts such as the mining of the port of Corinto.

In this “little belt of Latin America”, as Pablo Neruda called it, a little of the dignity of Latin America was played out in the eighties.

Carlos Fuentes, the famous Mexican writer said it in his own way in Mexico, in a demonstration in support of Nicaragua:
“The war of time... the war that concerns us all, is being waged by nicaraguans on behalf of all... The war being waged in Nicaragua is wrapped in ideological pretexts...
But, they want to restore, or create democracy, those who for a century and a half have only been concerned with their privileges...
Nicaragua is required to become what no Latin American nation can be:
a democracy like the United States, something that somoza was never asked to do, or that we would not ask of the contras in power.”

The "low-intensity war", the attacks, the generalized violence, the death of young soldiers, killed in ambushes by the contras, ended up tiring part of the population.
In 1990, the Sandinista government — decried as a totalitarian regime — held elections. The candidate of the United Opposition, Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, won in a country ravaged by years of conflict.



\section{The invasion of Granada}


The invasion of the tiny island of Grenada was part of the new Cold War that took place during the first half of the eighties.

The United States, which felt it had been abused internationally in recent years — Vietnam, Iran, Nicaragua, Africa, Afghanistan, and Lebanon — wanted to let the world, and especially the Soviet Union and its allies, know that “America is back.”

Reagan attempted to counter revolutionary movements in Central America and, in his crusade against the “evil empire,” he supported the military escalation of the contras in Nicaragua and encouraged successive Salvadoran governments in their struggle against guerrilla warfare.

It was in this context that the United States invaded, on October 25, 1983, the small island of Grenada — 110,000 inhabitants — in the Caribbean.

A conflict between two factions vying for power, which “endangered the lives of North American citizens,” was Reagan's pretext.

Subsequently, he added, for propaganda purposes, that Cubans were developing the runway of pointe-Salines airport with the obvious aim of landing large Soviet planes...
And interventionist hysteria gripped millions of North Americans.

Without fear of ridicule, President Reagan went so far as to tell, very seriously, that the intervention had been decided "after an urgent request", emanating from five Caribbean countries, whose weight could be measured on the international scene: Antigua, Barbados, Dominica, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent...

The “Granada victory”—more than 6,000 heavily armed Marines against Cuban construction workers—would serve Reagan in his re-election campaign the following year.

For the North American administration, it was also a question of making people forget the fiasco in Lebanon, where, a few weeks earlier, more than fifty soldiers had been killed.

The operation that “liberated Grenada from a Marxist dictatorship” had an electoral purpose, but, at the same time, it served to show the world the determination of the Reagan administration in its fight against communism.



\section{Operation \enquote{Just Cause}}


On October 2, 1977, a referendum in Panama ratified the new Carter-Torrijos Treaty. The Panamanian people abrogated the Leonine Hay-Bunau Varilla Treaty, “never signed by a Panamanian,” as General Omar Torrijos liked to repeat.

Panama, under the terms of the treaty, would gain full sovereignty over the canal and its facilities in the year 2000.

General Torrijos, head of the National Guard, had to overcome the obstacles and encroachments that the Yankee senators — enemies of the treaty — opposed to the signing of the treaty.

Senator De Concini's amendment added a clause that sought to guarantee the United States the right to intervene militarily in the canal:
“If the canal were closed or its operations prevented... the United States will have the right to take action... including the use of military force...”\footnote{Conte Porras Jorge, \section{Del Tratado Hay-Buneau Varilla, al Tratado Torrijos-Carter}, Impresora Panama, 1982, p. 144.}.

Torrijos then wrote to Carter and Carter pledged “not to use this amendment as a legal justification for possible further intervention in Panama”.

Torrijos died in 1981 in a mysterious and never solved aviation accident.
The Panamanians give him credit for having managed to reach new agreements on the canal, under extremely difficult conditions.

General Noriega became, after Torrijos' death, head of the National Guard. He was said to have been a man of the Americans, working for years for the CIA.

As is well known, the Bush administration did not bother in 1989 with legal subtleties or so-called seniority rights at work.

That year, presidential elections were held. The opposition regrouped around Guillermo Endara who later claimed to be the winner.
But, under pressure from the National Guard, Francisco Rodriguez was appointed president of the republic.

A tug-of-war then began between the opposition – supported by the United States – and General Noriega's National Guard.

General Noriega, who presumably worked for the CIA a few years earlier — and as such was Bush's former employee — was accused by Bush of involvement in drug trafficking.

An arrest warrant was issued against him. At the same time, Yankee troops stationed in the Canal Zone engaged in provocations and intimidation against the population, which in part supported Noriega.

On December 20, 1989, Bush — a few days after Malta, where he had toasted with Gorbachev, celebrating the end of the Cold War — launched Operation \enquote{Just Cause}.

And the Yankee troops, regardless of the legal justifications, once again invaded Panama using thousands of soldiers, aviation and helicopters.

But the Guard resisted as well as the working-class neighborhoods where weapons had been distributed.
They were bombed by the soldiers of the “Just Cause”, the only way to overcome the resistance that the invasion was encountering.

More than 2,000 people were killed in the rubble of the bombed-out neighborhoods.

The leader of the opposition, Guillermo Endara, preferred the comfort and air conditioning of a Yankee military base – proof of the tranquility that reigned in the country and the popular support for the North American coup – to be sworn in as president of the republic...
George Bush imposed a president who, in the 1970s, had created a company domiciled in Panama, whose partner was none other than General Manuel Contreras, head of Pinochet's secret police...

Noriega was arrested by his former employers on 3 January 1990. Brought to the United States, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison.

In May 1994, Ernesto Perez Valladares of Noriega's party triumphed in the elections.

Panamanians are holding their breath waiting for the year 2000 which, according to the last Treaty, will bring them full sovereignty over the canal. Unless...


\section{Humanitarian response in Haiti}


Contrary to what many people think they know, the North American intervention of the nineties in Haiti, does not date from October 15, 1994, but...
of September 30, 1991, when President Aristide was overthrown by a coup d'état organized by Haitian soldiers with the “assistance of the CIA and the American Embassy”.\footnote{Wargny Christophe, Manière de voir N° 33, February 1997, Le Monde Diplomatique, p. 68-C.}

In 1971, Jean-Claude Duvalier, Baby Doc, succeeded his father — François Duvalier, Papa Doc — in power since 1957.
Baby Doc was overthrown in 1986, and moved to France, once the government of Prime Minister Laurent Fabius granted him a residence permit.
He found a very comfortable refuge on the Côte d'Azur where, since then, he has been living his days of forced retirement.

General Raoul Cendras, head of the junta that overthrew Father Aristide in September 1991, had perpetrated the 172nd coup since Haiti gained independence in 1804, almost two centuries ago.

Christophe Wargny wrote, in 1996, with Pierre Mouterde, a book that bears the suggestive title of \emph{Apre bal tambou lou:  five years of American duplicity in Haiti, 1991-1996} \footnote{Éditions Austral, 1996.},
where he shows the combined action against Aristide — not free of contradictions — by the United States, the military, the Haitian oligarchy and the Vatican. 
The latter, being opposed to Father Aristide, because of his commitment to liberation theology.

The last North American military intervention in Latin America — September 1994 — brought President Aristide back to Port-au-Prince. 
It was a “humanitarian operation” authorized by the UN.

Thus, three years after his overthrow, Father Aristide returned to power, transported by the power that had contributed to his downfall.


\rauthor{Paco Peña}


Paco Peña is a Chilean professor, journalist, contributor to Punto Final.