Relations between Latin America and the United States

The relations between Latin America and the United States are from the 18th century marked by the contrast between the desire for independence of Latin American countries and the influence of the United States on their politics and economics. Traditionally, especially the States of Central America by the United States as its "backyard" ( backyard considered). Depending on the foreign policy orientation of the United States, there were phases of massive influence up to and including changes of government initiated and organized by the secret service or coups against elected governments and direct military interventions .

Especially during the Cold War (approx. 1947–1989) the USA feared an expansion of communism and in some cases overthrew democratically elected governments on the American continent that were viewed as left-wing and / or unfriendly towards US economic interests. These included the coup d'état in Guatemala in 1954, the coup in Chile in 1973 and support for the insurgents in the Nicaraguan Contra War , with right-wing authoritarian regimes or military dictatorships often used with the support of the CIA . In the 1970s and 1980s, as a result of this policy, a large part of the countries of Central and South America was finally ruled by right-wing military dictatorships, which were supported and promoted by the USA because of their anti-communist orientation, and the massive human rights violations by the regimes were accepted with approval or even unofficially endorsed (see also domino theory and dirty war ).

In the late 1980s and 1990s, the dictatorships in most countries were replaced by democratically elected, mostly bourgeois governments, which predominantly pursued neoliberal economic policies, which the USA welcomed and promoted. In the 2000s, as a backlash, left parties came to power through elections in numerous Latin American countries, which was based, among other things, on the perceived disappointment with the results of neoliberal policies and in some cases had extremely negative effects on relations with the USA.

The governments of Cuba , Venezuela , Nicaragua , Bolivia, and Ecuador are usually referred to as left , while the governments of Costa Rica and Uruguay are usually referred to as moderately left. Social democratic and liberal- conservative governments such as those in Argentina , Paraguay , Belize , Honduras , Panama and Colombia have good relations with the USA in some cases. Mexico and the USA have mixed relationships, because on the one hand there is close cooperation in the field of economy and free trade , as well as on international issues, but on the other hand there are always tensions regarding illegal immigration to the United States via the US American southern border , or drug smuggling. However, there is also strong cooperation in the area of organized crime to fight the drug cartels .

1820s to 1920s: struggle for supremacy and gunboat politics

The naval battle of Santiago in the Spanish-American War observed in July 1898 from the deck of a US warship

The Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which ushered in a long phase of isolationism for the United States, ensured that the United States would be kept out of European affairs and in return prohibited any military intervention by other countries on the American continent. The Monroe Doctrine thus strengthened the autonomy of Latin American nations, but also allowed the USA to pursue its economic policy there at its own discretion. The effect of the doctrine remained very weak until the beginning of the 20th century, as the US did not have the military potential to enforce it.

The USA demonstrated its hegemonic claims over Latin America in 1848 with the victory over Mexico in the Mexican-American War . The US Secretary of State James G. Blaine introduced a Big Brother policy in the 1880s that would bring Latin America under US leadership and its markets subject to its trade. Blaine was Secretary of State in the Cabinet of President James Garfield in 1881 and again under President Benjamin Harrison from 1889 to 1892 . Blaine organized and chaired the first Pan-American conference , held in Washington in 1889. A few years later, the Spanish-American War ended Spain's supremacy in the Caribbean and the Pacific in favor of the United States. With the Paris Treaty of 1898 , they obtained control of the former Spanish colonies of Puerto Rico , the Philippines , Guam and Cuba , which sought relative independence from the new ruler until 1902.

The Panama Canal

The Panama Canal cut the country in half

Theodore Roosevelt , President of the USA since 1901, had a great strategic interest in a canal in Central America that would connect the Atlantic to the Pacific and controlled by the United States . This idea got an upswing after the destruction of the warship USS Maine near Cuba on February 15, 1898. The USS Oregon stationed in San Francisco , which was to take his place, took around 67 days to travel around Cape Horn . Although it arrived in time to be used in the battle in Santiago Bay, the journey through a Central American channel would have taken only three weeks.

Roosevelt was able to reverse the Walker Commission's decision for a Nicaragua Canal and supported the French project to build the Panama Canal. Since Panama was part of Colombia, Roosevelt opened negotiations with the country. In 1903 the two negotiating diplomats signed the Hay-Harran treaty.

Roosevelt also assured Panamanian separatists the support of the US Navy in independence uprisings. Panama then declared its independence on November 3, 1903, and the presence of the USS Nashville in near-shore waters prevented any interference by Colombia (see gunboat policy ).

The victorious Panamanians returned the favor by giving the United States control of the Panama Canal Zone for $ 10 million on February 23, 1904 . This had already been stated in the Hay-Bunau-Varilla Treaty signed on November 18, 1903 .

Roosevelt Corollary and Dollar Diplomacy

In 1904, the US President formulated the Roosevelt Corollary, a supplement to the Monroe Doctrine, which laid down the right of the United States to intervene in Latin America. In addition to the original goal of keeping European hegemony out of the region, the expanded Monroe Doctrine now also pursued the inclusion of Latin America as a branch of the expansion of US trade interests. The Corollary also declared the legality of the United States to intervene in Latin American conflicts as an inter-American ' protecting power '.

In 1902, when the Venezuelan government under Cipriano Castro was no longer able to dissuade the demands of the European bankers for debt repayment, British, Italian and German naval forces erected a sea blockade along the Venezuelan coast. They even fired on accessible fortifications. During the presidency of Juan Vicente Gómez , petroleum was found under Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela . Gómez managed to stop the country's rising debt by granting concessions to foreign oil associations. This earned him the support of the US and European powers. The growth of the oil industry strengthened the economic ties between the United States and Venezuela.

Banana Wars

US soldiers with a captured Sandinista flag in Nicaragua during the 1926-1933 invasion . (1932)

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the United States led several military interventions that came to be known as the Banana Wars . The term arose from a coupling of interventions and the predominance of commercial interests, beginning with those of the United Fruit Company , which held large financial stakes in the production of bananas , tobacco , sugar cane and many other agricultural products in the Caribbean, Central America, and the northern states of South America .

North Americans who justified this imperialism after the First World War often argued that these conflicts had made Central and South America more stable. Some imperialists felt that the limited interventions of the past did not advance US interests enough and called for greater action in the Latin American region. Anti-imperialists (for example the Cuban José Martí ) argued that these actions would be a first step on a slippery slope leading to a new colonialism.

Some contemporary observers have suggested that these interventions would have resulted in the emergence of colonial rule for the United States (with Central America either incorporated directly into statehood like Hawaii or US territory like the Philippines , Puerto Rico, and Guam ) if not that US interest in international activity would have decreased due to the experience of World War I. This view is heavily criticized, not least because the foreign policy activity of the USA (including military interventions) increased again in the 1920s after a brief decline from 1918 onwards. As before, those responsible emphasized that the interventions were free of colonial ambitions. The Banana Wars ended with the 1933 announced good neighbor policy of Franklin D. Roosevelt .

Banana wars took place in Cuba , where the Platt Amendment allowed the US military interventions, in the Dominican Republic (1916–1924), Honduras , Haiti (1915–1934), Mexico (1916–1919), Nicaragua (see US military interventions in Nicaragua 1909–1925 and 1926–1933 ) and in Panama . Although many other Latin American countries were likely also influenced or dominated by the US banana or food industry in general, there was no military intervention here.

1930s and 1940s: Good Neighbor Policy

The Good Neighbor Policy initiated by President Franklin D. Roosevelt was the predominant US foreign policy towards Latin America between 1933 and 1947 . The United States valued good relations with its neighbors, especially when the conflicts in Europe began to ferment again. The US campaigned for Latin America's support. Since they had given up military interventions for the time being, they looked for other possibilities of influence and found them in the Pan-Americanist ideology , in the support of strong local leaders, in the training of armed forces in the respective countries, in economic and cultural influence, export-import banks , and financial supervision and political upheavals. The Good Neighbor Policy meant that the US controlled Latin America more peacefully. In his inaugural address on March 4, 1933, Roosevelt stated: “In world politics I dedicate this country to the politics of good neighborliness - a neighbor who respects himself and therefore also the rights of others.” Foreign Minister Cordell Hull confirmed this position at the 7th Pan-American Conference in Montevideo in 1933 : “No country has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of any other state.” This became even clearer when Roosevelt again emphasized a turning point in US foreign policy with regard to Latin America in December of the same year: "The policy of the United States from now on is opposed to that of armed intervention."

During the late 1930s, negotiations between the Axis Powers and Latin American rulers over military cooperation and use of the Panama Canal alerted the US to increased vigilance. At a conference with Latin American countries in 1936, Roosevelt proposed that the Monroe Doctrine be made multilateral . It was agreed in the (legally non-binding) declaration of Buenos Aires that "that every act susceptible of disturbing the peace of America affects each and every one" in America ( German : "that every action endangering the peace of America every American nation something concerns "). During the war, the United States promised Latin America protection from attacks by the Axis powers. Argentina officially entered the war, while other countries provided the Allies with material, technical assistance and troops, or provided military bases. Roosevelt noted that the good neighborhood had now been replaced by a good partnership.

Extradition of Germans from Latin America

After the United States declared war on Germany, the FBI drew up a list of all German citizens in 15 Latin American countries suspected of subversive activity, and requested their extradition to the United States to investigate each suspected case. Many countries then delivered a total of 4058 Germans to the USA. Around ten to 15 percent were supporters of the NSDAP , including a few dozen trainers of National Socialist overseas troops and eight people suspected of espionage. Among the extradited were 81 Jewish Germans who had fled because of persecution in their home country. However, the majority of the individuals concerned were ordinary expats who had lived in Latin America for years or decades. Some of them were extradited from their new homes to the United States because corrupt Latin American officials seized the opportunity to usurp their property or because of the financial rewards the FBI paid them for doing so. Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico refused to participate in this US-initiated action.

1940s and 50s: Cold War and Rio Assistance Pact

“Most Latin Americans have watched their northern neighbors get richer; They have watched the elites of their own country get richer - but the people in the streets or in the country in today's Latin America still live hand to mouth like their grandparents ... They become more and more unhappy in conditions in which to one For example, 40 percent of the land is owned by one percent of the people, or in which a very small upper class lives in splendor and splendor while most of the others eke out their lives in misery. "

- J. William Fulbright

Truman Doctrine

US President Harry S. Truman , the architect of the containment policy towards the Soviet Union, which had serious consequences for Latin America.

The Truman Doctrine , propagated in 1947, sealed the principle of the United States' containment policy during the Cold War and also had consequences for Latin America, which the United States saw as part of a western, free world. It must be the policy of the United States, Truman said, to support free peoples who would fight against submission by armed minorities in their own country or against external pressure. Truman got the US to spend $ 400 million on the first use of the (by the National Security Act ) newly established Central Intelligence Agency in the Greek Civil War . With this support, Truman set a precedent for future US military operations in foreign countries, which regimes, regardless of their level of corruption and repression, would come to the aid of as long as it served to fight communists. Washington began to sign a number of defense treaties around the world, such as the North Atlantic Treaty , from which NATO emerged , and in 1951, together with Australia and New Zealand, the ANZUS Agreement . Moscow's response to the establishment of NATO and the Marshall Plan was the formation of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact as the defensive alliance of the Eastern Bloc, which had fallen under its sphere of interest . After the Berlin blockade by the Soviet Union, the Korean War (1950–53) was one of the first conflicts of the Cold War. The USA continued to be militarily engaged on the French side in the crushing of the Việt Minh uprising in the Indochina War , which later developed into the US-led Vietnam War .

Rio Pact and Hemispheric Defense

In 1947, many countries in Latin America signed the Rio Pact (TIAR) with the USA , an inter-American assistance pact that subscribed to a doctrine of hemispheric defense (German: "hemispheric defense"). It was the execution of the " Chapultepec Act ", which was decided in 1945 at an inter-American conference in Mexico City . Since the Monroe Doctrine, the USA had already had a large-scale protective power policy in Latin America. During the Second World War , Washington had won the support of allied countries in Latin America (with the exception of neutral Uruguay ) and wanted to keep these connections permanently. With the exception of Trinidad and Tobago (1967), Belize (1981) and the Bahamas (1982), no other states that gained independence after 1947 joined the alliance. In April 1948, the participants in the 9th Pan-American Conference , which was held by US Secretary of State George Marshall in Bogotá , founded the Organization of American States . The member states pledged to fight communism on the American continent. On April 30, 1948, 21 states signed the joint Charter of the Organization of American States .

Invasion of Guatemala

With the aim of fighting communism, the United States justified a series of interventions in the sovereignty of Latin American countries. The operation PBSUCCESS that in 1954 the democratically elected president of Guatemala , Jacobo Árbenz crashed, was the first intervention of this kind. In Guatemala there had been a process of reform since 1944, during which agrarian reform was planned that the interests of the US American United Fruit Company . This CIA operation led to the establishment of the dictator Carlos Castillo Armas and to a phase of instability in the country that culminated in a civil war that lasted for several decades, which was characterized by the rule of military dictatorships and did not end until the 1980s. The Latin American community in the US was also dismayed by some of the kindnesses the US showed towards dictators. For example, the US ambassador to the Dominican Republic praised the ruling dictator Rafael Trujillo in the highest tones. Dictatorial regimes, such as those in Cuba, Peru or Colombia, officially declared themselves to be fighting communism in the early 1950s.

1960s: between equality and paternalism

Alliance for Progress

John F. Kennedy suspended cooperation with several military dictatorships and wanted to promote democratic development in South America.

“We not only supported a dictatorship in Cuba - we also supported dictators in Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia, Paraguay and the Dominican Republic. Not only in Cuba have we ignored poverty and need - in the entire hemisphere we have not been able to reduce poverty and need in the last eight years. "

- John F. Kennedy , United States President, October 6, 1960

On May 13, 1961, John F. Kennedy announced in his ten-year plan for America that every American republic would be free to master its own democratic revolution. He wanted to show that humanity's striving for economic progress and social justice is bearing the best fruit in democratic systems. The Alliance's new foreign policy for progress included an economic development program for Latin America ( Act of Bogotá ), but this turned out to be too cautious and not met with much willingness to cooperate. At the time, eight Latin American states had diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and only Argentina, Uruguay, Mexico and Brazil had weak trade relations with Moscow. The Cuban Revolution in 1959 had created a nationalist tendency in Cuba, the further direction of which was not yet in sight. In 1960, Cuba began to develop political, military and economic ties with the Soviet Union. Between the start of the Alliance for Progress in 1961 and the Kennedy assassination in 1963, the US suspended economic and diplomatic relations with several dictatorships, including Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru. However, the exposures were limited to short periods of three weeks to six months. The program to disadvantage dictatorial regimes was discontinued in 1964 under President Johnson.

To prevent further changes uncontrolled by the United States, they began training Latin American military personnel in counterinsurgency tactics at the controversial School of the Americas (now the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) . The US Office of Public Safety , which was related to the CIA and was controlled by the United States Authority for International Development , supported American security forces with training in questioning methods and counterinsurgency, as well as with equipment. In Uruguay, the US police officer Daniel Mitrione became known for his systematic use of torture. The Alliance for Progress , for example, promoted measures of political and military cooperation to combat communist tendencies and guerrilla groups .

The left Brazilian President João Goulart wanted to carry out land reform and massive literacy campaigns for the benefit of the poor. He was overthrown in a US-backed military coup in 1964, four months after Kennedy was assassinated .

After the experience of the Cuban nationalizations, the USA also set a supplement ( Hickenlooper Amendment ) to the Foreign Assistant Act, the foreign policy guideline to end the development aid of the Alliance for progress in every country in which there is expropriation of US companies without corresponding compensation payments had given. This initially led to Honduras weakening a planned land reform in 1962, which should allow the redistribution of unused land (partly owned by the United Fruit Company ). The US also froze aid to Peru between 1963 and 1966 to persuade the country to settle a dispute with the International Petroleum Company , an offshoot of the former US Standard Oil Company . This intention failed due to a lack of communication.

In 1962 and 1963 there were military coups in Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic and Honduras. The diplomatic and economic punitive measures taken by US President Kennedy in response to the coup in Peru were received negatively by some Latin American countries.

In March 1964, the USA approved the military coup in Brazil against the left-wing President João Goulart and were prepared to intervene on behalf of the coup plotters as part of Operation Brother Sam, which was specially designed for this purpose . For many states this left the bitter impression that the US would prefer conservative military coups against democratically elected, social democratic or socialist governments. A year later, the US sent 24,000 soldiers to the Dominican Republic to prevent a possible left-wing takeover under Operation Power Pack . Juan Bosch was elected President of the Dominican Republic in 1962 and overthrown in a military coup in 1963. When he tried to regain power, supporters of the then military dictatorship asked the United States for help and received military support, referring to the need to avert an alleged communist threat. The troops, which to a small extent also consisted of armed forces from other OAS countries, helped Bosch's rival Joaquín Balaguer into the presidency and withdrew in 1966. Through this intervention and the Hickenlooper policy, the Alliance for Progress suffered a huge loss of reputation and importance in Latin America.

"The [US-American] slogan " We will not allow another Cuba " hides the possibility of expressing disagreement without fear of retaliation - as it was used in the Dominican Republic or before the massacre in Panama - and it contains the clear warning that that the North American Army is ready to intervene wherever a ruling regime in Latin America is overthrown if this goes against their interests. "

- Che Guevara , April 16, 1967

Cuban Revolution and Cuban Crisis

Fidel Castro in 1959, the year of the revolution. The liberation movement, which was originally not ideologically determined, was only brought onto a communist course by Castro in the following years, after the USA in particular had massively sanctioned Cuba's independent economic policy.

The Cuban Revolution of 1959, led by Fidel Castro , was one of the first victories over repressive US foreign policy in Latin America and was perceived by Washington as a threatening signal. In 1961, Cuba became a member of the newly formed movement of the non-aligned states that emerged from the Bandung Conference of 1955. Early attempts by the USA to turn other Latin American countries against revolutionary Cuba (for example through the Declaration of San José in 1959 or the development of an inter-American development fund in 1960) were initially unsuccessful.

After various reforms were carried out in Cuba, including the nationalization of entire industries, the US severely limited its trade with Cuba. Cuba expropriated a total of $ 1.8 billion in real estate and equipment to date owned by US companies. Every time the Cuban government nationalized North American property (e.g. large estates owned by the United Fruit Company ), the United States took countermeasures, which on October 19, 1960 resulted in a complete ban on US exports to Cuba. This put an end to the US buying Cuban sugar and selling oil to the island - both trading processes on which Cuba's economy depended. In previous years, the US had negotiated the so-called "sugar agreement" with the dictatorial rulers of Cuba , according to which Cuba had to sell a large part of its sugar to the US. After the US embargo, Cuba started negotiations with the Soviet Union on sugar exports, thus violating the sugar agreement from the US perspective. This rating is due to the attitude of the USA to only conclude international treaties like the Sugar Agreement with allies. Cuba began to strengthen its diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. As a result of its diplomatic mission, the USA withdrew from the Caribbean island. Later that year, US diplomats Edwin L. Sweet and Wiliam G. Friedman were arrested and expelled from the island for "promoting terrorist activities, asylum violations, funding subversive publications and arms smuggling". Gradually the United States gained the support of other American countries in their action. During a meeting of eight Latin American foreign ministers in January 1962, they declared that communism was incompatible with the inter-American system and therefore officially excluded Cuba.

In March 1960, tensions rose when the freighter La Coubre exploded in the port of La Havana, killing 75 people. Fidel Castro blamed the United States and compared the incident to the sinking of the USS Maine , which preceded the Spanish-American War in 1898 . However, he admitted that there was no evidence to support his allegations. That same month, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the CIA to train and arm Cuban refugees in order to overthrow Castro. This led to the unsuccessful invasion of the Bay of Pigs in April 1961. The "Operation Mongoose" (also " The Cuban Project " ) also included other measures that were intended to lead to the destabilization of Cuba: political, psychological and military sabotage , intervention by secret services, attempts political leaders to murder , and operations under false flag , like the " operation Northwoods " . The US Senate Select Intelligence Committee reported that between 1960 and 1965 eight plans for attacks on Fidel Castro were drawn up or prepared, and that there were also plans for attacks on other Cuban leaders.

Cuban Missile Crisis 1962: Range of the various Soviet missile types in Cuba. The SS-5 could reach almost any point in the United States at 2200 nautical miles (about 4000 km).

The nuclear arms race put the two superpowers in dangerous situations during the Cuban Missile Crisis in autumn 1962. US President John F. Kennedy responded to the deployment of Soviet medium-range missiles in Cuba in October 1962 with a naval blockade - a show of force that brought the world to the brink of nuclear war . The Organization of American States supported the US naval blockade; Venezuela and Argentina sent warships and six Central American countries provided bases. The superpowers resolved the conflict through a negotiated settlement. Cuba then protested to the Soviet Union that it had no say in the negotiations. The Cuban Missile Crisis showed that neither of the superpowers was willing to use their nuclear weapons for fear of retaliation from the others. Thus the balance of horror was consolidated and the international system stabilized. In the period that followed, both powers showed increased efforts towards nuclear disarmament and better relations with one another.

As a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Cuba was perceived as an aggressor in many Latin American countries. In the autumn of 1963, for example, the Venezuelan government led an arms delivery from Cuba to Venezuelan guerrillas in order to accuse Cuba of meddling in its internal affairs. Venezuela and other countries broke off their diplomatic relations with Cuba. Mexico remained neutral, despite great pressure from the US and many Latin American countries to also break off diplomatic relations with Cuba.

Between 1963 and 1967, Latin American countries led by Mexico developed the Tlatelolco Treaty , which contained a commitment that none of the signatory states should manufacture, test or buy nuclear weapons. Except for Brazil and Chile, which signed with reservations, Argentina, which signed but did not ratify the treaty, and Cuba, which protested against US policies by not signing, all Latin American countries became members of this set of rules. In addition, all nuclear powers signed not to contribute to the importation or development of nuclear weapons in Latin America.

US move away

In the second half of the 1960s, many Latin American countries recovered from difficult economic situations. The region's gross national product rose steadily and social inequalities decreased. However, the volume of trade with the US decreased. Because of the beginning of the Vietnam War , the USA initially turned away from its own continent. The détente that followed the Cuban Missile Crisis allowed many Latin American countries to establish relations with the Soviet Union; At the end of the 1970s, only Paraguay had no diplomatic relations. In the second half of the 1960s, many Latin American countries were looking for new trading partners in Europe, the Middle East (oil-producing countries) and Japan. Mexico and Central America were less affected by this development than the South American countries.

The political scientist Jorge I. Domínguez sums up: Democratization was always more difficult for Latin America when the USA was particularly afraid of subversive overturns and guarded the hemisphere more closely; greater democratic successes emerged when the US held back.

1970s: The Juntas Era

US support for authoritarian rule

US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told representatives of the Argentine military dictatorship in 1976 that he hoped they would "get their terrorism problem under control as soon as possible." Unexpectedly strengthened by this - they had expected sharp criticism - the military murdered up to 30,000 opposition members over the next six years , most of whom they disappeared without a trace.

After the Cuban Revolution in 1959 and the implementation of Che Guevara's focus theory in many countries, the USA waged a “secret war” against the “communist infiltration” of South America , primarily through its secret services and military cooperation . The US countered the expropriations of some North American companies in Chile, ruled from 1970 by the democratically elected, socialist President Salvador Allende , with economic sanctions. In 1973 they financially supported demonstrations and actions by the Chilean opposition aimed at overthrowing Allende. This support for the Chilean right through secret service activities led to the 1973 coup d'état by Augusto Pinochet . Within a few years before and after the events in Chile, other right-wing military dictatorships in South America, so-called military juntas , came to power in a similar manner, often supported by the US secret service . In Paraguay , Alfredo Stroessner had ruled since 1954 ; in Brazil , left-wing President João Goulart was overthrown in the 1964 military coup; in Bolivia , General Hugo Banzer overthrew General Juan José Torres on the left in 1971 ; in Uruguay , Juan María Bordaberry couped power on June 27, 1973. In Peru , the left general Juan Velasco Alvarado (in power since 1968) wanted to defeat Pinochet's armed forces with his military during an invasion of Chile. Alvarado's dictatorship was one of the few left-wing military dictatorships in recent Latin American history.

States participating in the state terrorist , multinational secret service operation Operation Condor (green); States that only partially participated are marked in pale green, and the USA, which is a supporter, in blue. To date, the role of the USA has not been fully clarified.

The era of the "dirty wars" and "Operation Condor"

Dirty wars by military dictatorships against their own people, that is, the violent illegal suppression of any opposition, spread across the entire continent. This was usually accompanied by the massive deployment of so-called death squads , which were in fact informal state murder squads and illegally murdered political opponents or "made them disappear ". This development culminated in Operation Condor from 1976 (see adjacent map). The operation was based on a top-secret agreement between the secret services of the South Cone and other South American countries for the joint suppression, persecution and murder of political opponents with the help of the USA. As a result of the operation and accompanying direct measures by the military dictatorships involved against opposition members , several hundred thousand people were killed , the majority of whom disappeared forcibly , the so-called Desaparecidos .

In a text by the Heinrich Böll Foundation , this phase was described as follows:

“Ideologically armed with the doctrine of national security , which was also inspired by the USA , the Latin American military justified their claim to a central role in the state and society since the 1960s. They saw themselves as the only force capable of leading the nation state. The military dictatorships took control of national development and internal security . This was legitimized with the construct of an "internal enemy" who was physically destroyed to defend the "national interests" and large parts of the population had to be controlled to combat it. "

Kissinger and the Argentine military dictatorship

In 1976 the military also seized power in Argentina . The Argentine military junta assumed that it had US approval for massive violence against political opponents in order to combat their “terrorism”. This was based, among other things, on several meetings between the Argentine Foreign Minister Admiral Guzzetti and the US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger from June 1976 onwards, in which he had given positive signals against the generals' initial expectations for a tough approach to solving the Argentine "terrorism problem". Robert Hill, the US ambassador to Argentina at the time, complained in Washington about Guzzetti's “euphoric reaction” after meeting Kissinger. Guzzetti then reported to the other members of the government that, in his opinion, the United States was not concerned with human rights , but that the whole matter would be "resolved quickly". The military junta subsequently rejected admonitions from the US embassy regarding the observance of human rights and referred to Kissinger's “understanding” of the Argentine situation. Hill, who himself was fighting for the lives of several embassy workers kidnapped by the military at the time, wrote after another meeting of the two:

"[Argentine Foreign Minister] Guzzetti reached out to the US in full expectation to hear strong, clear and direct warnings about his administration's human rights practice; instead he came home in a state of jubilation, convinced of the fact that there was no real problem with the US government on this matter. "

Over the next seven years , the military murdered up to 30,000 people , most of them disappearing without a trace . This period became known as the " Dirty War ".

Hundreds of thousands of victims

The US military also supported the Cocaine Coup of Luis García Meza Tejada in 1980 in Bolivia, the trained counter-revolutionary "Contras" in Nicaragua, where the by Daniel Ortega led Sandinista National Liberation Front in 1979 the US-backed dictator Somoza was overthrown, and security forces in the Guatemalan Civil War and in El Salvador . As part of Operation Charly , which was supported by the USA, the Argentine military exported state terrorist tactics to Central America , where dirty wars continued well into the 1990s and as a result hundreds of thousands of people disappeared without a trace or were murdered by death squads . In El Salvador alone , the US-backed dictatorship murdered around 40,000 political opponents within a short period of time in the early 1980s (see below), and by the end of the decade the number of victims had almost doubled.

Human rights organizations estimate the overall balance of Latin American repression policy in the 1970s and 1980s as follows: Around 50,000 people were directly murdered by right-wing regimes, around 350,000 are considered to have "disappeared" permanently, and 400,000 were temporarily held prisoner for political reasons. The playwright Harold Pinter addressed these events, as well as the lack of coverage in his opinion in Western media, in his Nobel Prize speech in 2005:

“After World War II ended, the United States supported , and in many cases, created every right-wing military dictatorship in the world. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador and of course Chile . The horrors America inflicted on Chile in 1973 can never be atoned for and never forgiven. There have been hundreds of thousands of deaths in these countries. Did it really exist? And are they really all attributable to US foreign policy ? The answer is yes, they existed, and they are part of American foreign policy. But of course you don't know anything about it. It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even when it happened, it didn't happen. It does not matter. Nobody cared. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, infamous, ruthless, but very few people have really spoken about them. You have to give America that. It has operated a rather cool manipulation of power worldwide, and in doing so has acted as a champion for the universal good. A brilliant, even witty, extremely successful act of hypnosis. "

The Doctrine of "National Security"

The authoritarian regimes embedded their own policies in the US doctrine of "national security" to prevent an overthrow from within. In this way they violently crushed the left opposition and mostly pursued a neoliberal economic policy. Chile became a testing ground for economic shock therapy under the leadership of the Chicago Boys , influenced by Milton Friedman's monetarism .

Despite these militaristic tendencies, Latin American countries did not wage interstate wars between 1942 and 1981. There were only border conflicts. During this time, the defense budgets of the states remained below average in a global comparison and usually comprised significantly less than ten percent of total expenditure.

The influence of the "French doctrine"

The French journalist Marie-Monique Robin has published extensively about the fact that the techniques underlying state repression were based in part on the so-called French doctrine , which had been developed by the local military for the Algerian war in the 1950s . They were then exported to Latin America , where they were first used on a large scale in the 1970s in the military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina . French military and intelligence advisors played an important role in training some of the intelligence agencies involved in Operation Condor .

Cold War respite in Latin America

After his election in 1977, US President Jimmy Carter sent clear signals to punish the violation of human rights by the military dictatorships. It even took part in the overthrow of dictator Somoza in Nicaragua, whom the US had long supported. However, the change in direction was not permanent.

Other countries, such as Brazil, distanced themselves from the USA during this time. In the 1960s, the strong US-Brazilian alliance was still considered a successful example of North American foreign policy. Now the country has terminated the common defense alliance, pursued a development program for nuclear energy together with the Federal Republic of Germany against the will of the USA and established diplomatic relations with communist countries, e.g. B. to Angola, which is also Portuguese-speaking . Right-wing Argentina decided in 1980 not to support the economic sanctioning of the Soviet Union by the USA because of its invasion of Afghanistan . Already a major economic partner before, it provided her with the wheat that the USA withheld from her.

In the 1970s there were further conflicts between the superpowers over Cuba. In 1970, for example, the Soviet Union built a submarine port in Cuba, in 1978 the delivery of fighter jets to Cuba and in 1979 Soviet ground troops in Cuba. These conflicts could be resolved through diplomatic channels and with mutual concessions. A heterogeneous international set of rules was created that laid down competencies and sovereign rights in and around Cuba.

After the election of US President Jimmy Carter in 1977, the US briefly weakened its support for authoritarian regimes in Latin America. During this time the Inter-American Court of Human Rights , an office of the OAS, was established . With his help, Carter took offensive action against human rights violations by the authoritarian regimes in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, Bolivia, Guatemala and El Salvador. At the same time, critical voices in North America began to criticize Pinochet's human rights violations - especially from 1976 after the assassination of the former Chilean minister Orlando Letelier in Washington DC.The USA also took part in the ousting of the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza Debayle and established good relations with the new revolutionary government in Nicaragua. In 1981, however, Carter withdrew Nicaragua support again because it had participated in an arms shipment to El Salvador. In addition, the US government negotiated the Torrijos-Carter treaties in 1977 , which provided for the Panama Canal to be returned to Panama by 2000.

1980s: Reagan Doctrine and "covert operations"

In the late 1970s, the Carter administration had taken various measures to reduce US involvement in human rights violations by dictatorships in Latin America. The arrival of Ronald Reagan , but in 1981 led to a renewed support right- authoritarian regime. Against the background of the rollback policy and the domino theory , which were already conceived in the 1950s, anti-communism once again became a central motif of US foreign policy. This was expressed in particular in the so-called Reagan Doctrine , which actively combating leftist governments by intelligence and military covert operations ( Covert Operations included) and overt military action.

Counterinsurgency training for officers in the "School of the Americas"

In addition, cooperation with the secret services of right regimes and the training of Latin American officers in measures was counterinsurgency ( counterinsurgency ) strengthened. To this end, the previously restricted operation of the controversial School of the Americas (SOA) in the Panamanian Canal Zone, a military school for Latin American officers operated by the US military, was reinforced. In Latin America, critics refer to this as the "Putschist School" (Escuela de Golpes) or "Murderer's School", as many of the officers trained there were involved in serious human rights violations, such as torture and the disappearance of political opponents, as well as coups against democratic governments in their home countries were involved. On several occasions the US government had to admit that the school's curriculum did indeed include such practices and exchanged relevant teaching materials under public pressure in the US.

In 1996, for example, the results of an internal investigation by the Department of Defense from 1992 were published, according to which intelligence manuals used by the School of the Americas between 1982 and 1991 contained instructions on torture, executions, extortion and other coercive methods in the fight against "insurgents". At the same time, the Ministry of Defense stated that the teaching materials had been changed as a result of the investigation and that the courses had since contained mandatory "education on human rights issues".

Conflicts in Central America

Contra war in Nicaragua

As a result of Reagan's inauguration, the US relationship with the Argentine military dictatorship, largely frozen under Carter, improved . In the Reagan administration, the factual hardly correct conviction that the ruling left Sandinista in Nicaragua were allies of the Soviets and the Cubans had prevailed . In 1981 Reagan authorized cooperation with the opposing forces, the Contras . The Argentine secret service helped Reagan by training and armed the Contras for the fight against the Sandinista government ( Operation Charly ). The Argentine secret service unit Batallón de Inteligencia 601 , which also attracted negative attention in other contexts , trained the Contras under the supervision of US Ambassador John Negroponte in Lepaterique in neighboring Honduras . Argentina withdrew its support in 1982 when the US gave up its neutral position in the Falklands War in favor of warring Great Britain . The CIA in particular now organized the training of the subversive. From 1983 onwards, the conflict to the Contra War intensified , in which the Contras resulted in numerous serious human rights violations. The US government was aware of the contras' human rights abuses against the civilian population of Nicaragua, but this was presented differently to the US public to justify support for the contras: while Ronald Reagan publicly called the contras the "moral equivalent of the founding fathers [ the USA] ”, he referred to them in private circles as“ vandals ”.

The US war in Nicaragua in 1986 led the case to the International Court of Justice . This confirmed that the US violated international law with its actions . They were sentenced for their direct and indirect military participation in the Contra War to end the unlawful use of force against Nicaragua and to pay reparations . The USA did not recognize the judgment, however. In the same year, the Iran-Contra affair over the illegal funding of US aid to the Contras turned into a domestic political scandal and put the Reagan administration in dire straits. The US could no longer hope for the support of European allies. So the Social Democratic government guaranteed by the Federal Republic of Germany (until 1982) or the Socialist International under the leadership of Willy Brandt of the FSLN Sandinista help.

El Salvador and Guatemala: Death squads as a means of politics

Mural of Archbishop Óscar Romero in San Salvador. The murder of the socially committed liberation theologian by the military in 1980 contributed to the escalation of the conflict.

In 1981, Reagan's foreign minister, Alexander Haig , declared Central America to be the “test field of the Cold War”. Within a few years later, the US-backed dictatorship in El Salvador killed around 40,000 opposition members, around 0.8 percent of the population, using so-called death squads .

Memorial site for the 900 civilian victims of the El Mozote massacre , committed by a Salvadoran special unit built and trained by elite soldiers (Special Forces) of the US Army .

Protest against US support for the Salvadoran government, Chicago 1989.

The US also supported authoritarian regimes in Guatemala, Grenada and El Salvador. In the absence of international and domestic support for aggressive, interventionist policies in Central America, and to justify its own intervention, the Reagan administration declared the internal political conflicts in Central America a Cold War issue . As a result, she tried largely unsuccessfully, but with great effort and propagandistic methods, to portray the uprisings in El Salvador and Guatemala as the result of Cuban or Soviet interference. The support of the dictator Efraín Ríos Montt in the Guatemalan civil war and the alliance with President José Napoleón Duarte during the civil war in El Salvador were legitimized by the Reagan administration as part of the Cold War , although other allies strongly criticized this approach (e.g. in the election manifesto of the French Parti socialiste of 1981 mentioned in 110 proposals ).

Reagan called Rios Montt, President and Dictator of Guatemala from 1982 to 1983, a man "of great personal integrity and willingness to act, facing the challenge of a brutal, foreign-backed guerrilla." Montt was sentenced to 80 years in prison in May 2013 for genocide and crimes against humanity . This makes him the first politician to be convicted by a local court of genocide in his own country. During Montt's reign, the military carried out an extensive campaign against the Mayan Ixil indigenous people who were suspected of supporting the Marxist guerrillas . Around 400 villages were destroyed, over 1,100 residents were killed and over 1,400 women raped. Soldiers cut open the bellies of pregnant women and dismembered their fetuses. In the 2013 trial of Mont, it was found that his government had used "starvation, mass murder , displacement , rape , and air bombing as tactics to destroy the Ixil". According to the court, the murder of infants and pregnant women was designed to destroy the Ixil and sexual violence was used as a means of destroying social cohesion.

Politically motivated mass murder in El Salvador

With the subsidization of the Salvadoran right-wing military dictatorship, US Secretary of State Alexander Haig named the country in 1981 a “test ground for the Cold War”. The Reagan government consciously accepted the Salvadoran government strategy of the systematic murder of around forty thousand opposition members by death squads in order to prevent left groups from taking power. The relative domestic political calm in El Salvador that followed the mass murder of the opposition, which was officially denied by the US government, the Reagan administration explained to the US public by saying that the government's successful land reform had led to general pacification. The blatant human rights violations of the US-backed regimes in Central America quickly led to considerable opposition within the US, especially from circles of the Catholic and other churches, who opposed this foreign policy massively, but ultimately largely unsuccessfully. Some of them also campaigned for priests and church officials who were close to liberation theology in Central America, but this hardly diminished their endangerment by the military. The church's political commitment was described as the strongest since the resistance against the Vietnam War . It was particularly compounded by atrocities by Salvadoran military such as the 1980 murder of Archbishop Óscar Romero , the El Mozote massacre in 1981, the murder of six Jesuit fathers in 1989, and the rape and murder of three American nuns.

For domestic political reasons, that is to say to curb the considerable protest from the churches against this foreign policy, the US government officially spoke of "progress" in the area of human rights in El Salvador and also in Guatemala. However, the rulers there actually did not change their approach - this is also attributed to the fact that the military in El Salvador knew, for example, that the USA wanted to prevent an impending "loss" of the country to the left-wing liberation movement FMLN in any case. The US government was well aware internally who it was dealing with, as a Reagan Vice Defense Minister unofficially called the Salvadoran military “a bunch of murderous thugs ” (orig .: a bunch of murderous thugs ). The US government also endeavored to keep news of the atrocities and massacres committed by the assisted military out of the US media . According to the New York Times, attempts were made to cover up the El Mozote massacre of 900 civilians carried out by the Salvadoran, US-trained anti-guerrilla special unit Batallón Atlácatl , and Foreign Minister Alexander Haig reported a heavily glossed -over one to the US Congress , According to the New York Times, a fictitious version of the rape and murder of three American nuns by Salvadoran soldiers, which he vehemently denied years later.

The Atlacatl battalion

The Salvadoran anti-guerrilla special unit Bataillon Atlacatl was instrumental in some of these war crimes . It had been educated at the US military academy School of the Americas and was trained by American special forces during the conflict . Immediately before the nightly murder of the six Jesuit priests, she had received special training for night fighting and used the night vision devices of her US instructors during the murder , allegedly without their knowledge.

Attempts to resolve internal conflicts

In the early 1980s, some uninvolved Latin American countries came together as the Contadora Group to resolve the conflicts in Central America. Between 1983 and 1986 the group worked unsuccessfully to pacify the wars with the support of Canada and many European countries. In Nicaragua, the USA gradually ended its operation in the late 1980s. The contra war ended in 1990 after the split opposition, an alliance of bourgeois to contra-friendly parties whose election campaign had been organized and financed by the USA, won early elections, mainly due to the population's tiredness in the war. The wars in Central America left some 200,000 dead and millions displaced.

Drug trafficking and the "war on drugs"

Washington pursued an aggressive since the 1980s war on drugs ( "War on Drugs" ), who in a 1989 US invasion of Panama peaked. Manuel Noriega , who had worked with the US and the CIA for a long time, was to be caught there. Noriega was captured and taken to a US prison. The US kept Panama under occupation for months after the invasion. In the 1990s, Plan Colombia expanded the war on drugs and continues to this day.

In apparent contradiction to this, the Contra rebels , for example, had smuggled several tons of cocaine into the USA under their eyes or with the help of the CIA in the early 1980s to finance their Contra war against Nicaragua. This has now been confirmed by extensive internal CIA investigations and investigations by the US Congress. See for example the Iran-Contra affair , as well as the work of the historian Alfred W. McCoy and the investigative journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner Gary Webb .

The US Secretary of State John Kerry , who served under Barack Obama, headed a committee of inquiry in 1986, the results of which he summarized as follows:

“The evidence makes it clear that the Contras supporters were involved in the drug trade, that the Contras support network was used by drug trafficking organizations, and that elements within the Contras themselves knowingly received financial and material assistance from drug dealers. In each of the cases, one or the other US government agency had information about these events, either as they happened or immediately afterwards. "

The USA in the Falklands War

Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher 1981.

Reagan's support to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the Falklands War of 1982 against the Argentine military junta worsened relations between Washington and Buenos Aires. US Secretary of State Alexander Haig initially tried to mediate in the conflict , but at the same time the US Navy secretly helped the attacked NATO partner Great Britain prepare for war. Argentina asked for help from other pact states, such as the United States, under the Rio Pact for Assistance. Although they recognized Argentina's claim to the Falkland Islands , they did not want to provide military or political aid. On April 3, the UN Security Council called for a complete withdrawal of troops in Resolution 502 . On April 30, 1982, the USA broke its neutrality and imposed moderate sanctions against Argentina after EU states, including Germany, Austria and Switzerland, had already imposed their sanctions in mid-April. As a result of the military defeat, the military junta fell and Argentina became democratic again.

Many Latin American states saw the position of the USA in the Falklands War on the part of Europe, despite the promises of the Rio Pact, as a clear example of how so-called "hemispheric relations" worked. Inter-American relations deteriorated. Some observers assume that the Rio Pact thus became invalid.

The warlike interventions of the USA in the conflicts in Central America in the 1980s made the legitimacy of the inter-American system dwindle because US politics had broken the rules of the Organization of American States and the Rio Pact , i.e. the inter-American security agreements.

After this renewed Cold War flare-up from the USA between 1979 and 1985, the global situation eased when Mikhail Gorbachev took office and his democratically inspired reforms ( glasnost and perestroika ) in the Soviet Union. In South America, several states embarked on a process of democratization . Symbolic of this is Resolution 1080 passed by the OAS in 1991 , according to which the Secretary General must convene the Permanent Council (Joint Council) within ten days if a coup has taken place in one of the member states.

Latin American debt crisis

In economic terms, Mexico's inability to pay its debts (which had been badly hit by the oil crisis barely ten years earlier ) exposed a problem from 1982 that had arisen in the 1970s: the Latin American debt crisis . In August 1982, Finance Minister Jesús Silva Herzog announced severe payment problems and asked the international community for help. Mexico's economy was saved, but the entire continent suffered a recession for the next ten years . The countries' high foreign debts were particularly problematic. Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil had borrowed a large proportion of their money from US banks. The USA, together with the International Monetary Fund , therefore became the main coordinators of the debt restructuring .

The import-substituting industrialization pursued by most countries until then was replaced by an export-oriented industrialization that was initiated by the International Monetary Fund , the World Bank and the World Trade Organization . Many military regimes had to give up their power due to the debt crisis. The close ties between Mexico and the USA during the fight against the crisis resulted in Mexico being included in plans to form the North American Free Trade Agreement in the early 1990s . In South America, in March 1991, as a result of the crisis, Mercosur was formed , a free trade area that was supposed to promote the economy through the free movement of goods and prevent further crises.

1990s: neoliberalism

Regionalism in Latin America

While the effects of globalization were felt all over the world, inter-American relations in the 1990s were shaped primarily by the Washington Consensus , which initiated a series of neoliberal economic reforms in Latin America. Democratization and the establishment of neoliberal economic models went hand in hand in almost all of Latin America. The lost decade of Latin America triggered by the debt crisis was replaced in the 1990s by the concept of integración abierta or regionalismo abierto , which promoted the economic integration of Latin America both internally and externally (e.g. to Europe). Above all, however, Latin America was now oriented towards creating its own zones of cooperation, its own regionalism.

Inter-American cooperation between the USA

The "Enterprise for the Americas" initiative of the first Bush administration in 1991 is a move by the USA which for the first time did not seem to be about security considerations, but about economic cooperation. With the end of the Cold War and the resulting diversity, the US market was faced with new challenges: energy dependence, dependence on the globalized market, the growing market power of other trading countries (e.g. Asian rivals) through regional markets (free trade zones) and the development green technologies and their markets. The foreign policy interests of the USA had changed: Now economic goals were in the foreground; social (e.g. drug trafficking) and ecological problems (e.g. test field for environmental policy strategies) in the second row and the ideological spread of democracy and liberalism has sunk to a secondary interest.

At the first America Summit , which was held in Miami in 1994, the creation of an American Free Trade Area (ALCA) was decided by 2005. The ALCA was supposed to bring about the extension of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which also came into force on January 1, 1994 between Canada, the USA and Mexico. The integration of the USA into NAFTA was more promising for the USA than further trade agreements with Western Europe or Japan. This process also caused a growing interdependence between the two zones, which was supported by the incipient Latinization of the USA (through migration, bilingualism), drug trafficking and the connection between the stability of the US banking system and the solvency of Latin America. Contemporary observers also spoke of a “chaos power” in Latin America over the USA.

Anti-liberalism

The first opposition to NAFTA and ALCA was articulated by the Mexican EZLN , led by the EZLN spokesman Subcomandante Marcos . The group became active at the same time as NAFTA was founded and declared itself to be opposed to the ideological glorification of globalization and neoliberalism that it saw in NAFTA.

2000s: Democratic Socialism

The election of Hugo Chavez as President of Venezuela in 1998 ushered in a shift to the left in Latin America.

The political framework changed once again with the electoral victories of socialist parties in various South American countries. Latin America's “shift to the left” was brought about by the victories of socialist politicians in the presidential elections: Hugo Chávez in Venezuela (1998), Lula da Silva in Brazil (2002), Néstor Kirchner in Argentina (2003), Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay (2004) , Evo Morales in Bolivia (2005) (re-elected in 2009 with 64 percent of the vote), Michelle Bachelet in Chile (2006) , Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua (2006), Rafael Correa in Ecuador (2007), Fernando Lugo in Paraguay (2008) and José Mujica in Uruguay (2009) . Although these political leaders vary in their attitudes towards the USA and neoliberalism and the states they govern show different development tendencies, which sometimes even lead to rivalries and mutual disdain, they agree both in their rejection of the American Free Trade Area and in striving for regional ones Integration without the USA. While Chávez and Morales seem to want to work together on the left, Kirchner and Lula, who has been criticized by the Brazilian left (e.g. by the movement of soilless farm workers ), are considered more moderate. In the 2005 elections, the landless peasants movement called for Lula's second term in office to be voted. There was some friction between Bolivia and Brazil during this period. Chile traditionally pursued its own policy, which differed from other South American countries and was close to the USA. Nouriel Roubini , professor of economics at New York University , said in May 2006:

“On the one hand, there are a number of states that are implementing moderate economic reform. On the other hand, a counter-movement to the Washington Consensus (liberal economic policies that US institutions wanted to enforce in Latin America, which included privatization, trade liberalization and tax regulation) is establishing itself and populist leaders are gaining power. "

This fits in with the fact that the geopolitical context has hardly changed since the 1970s, although leaders like Chavez verbally attacked the Bush administration in the 2000s (as did the latter him) and Chavez proclaimed to lead a social-democratic Bolivarian revolution . Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs said:

“ La Paz is economically and politically connected to the shift to the left in Caracas , but is economically tied to Brazil and Buenos Aires. Morales knew that he could neither give up his campaign promises to his electorate nor deprive Bolivia of the much-needed financial income from these connections. "

Bolivia's President Evo Morales initiated a wave of nationalizations in the energy sector from 2006 onwards and gave Fidel Castro as a political role model.

A symbol of the US setback in the region was the election of José Miguel Insulza , a member of the Socialist Party of Chile (PS) and former interior minister of the country, as OAS Secretary General in 2005 . For the first time, the Washington-backed candidate Luis Ernesto Derbez , member of the Christian-conservative PAN party in Mexico and former foreign minister of the country was rejected by a majority of the member states. He was only supported by the USA, Canada, Mexico, Belize, St. Vincent and the Grenadines , Bolivia (under President Carlos Mesa ), Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, while Insulza was supported by all countries in the South Cone , Brazil and Ecuador , Venezuela and the Dominican Republic was supported. José Insulza was elected in the third ballot and took office on May 26, 2005.

After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington, the United States attempted to reactivate the 1947 Rio Pact and called on the allies of the time to join the war on terror advocated by the Bush administration . This plan failed. In addition, Mexico declared its official withdrawal from the treaty with reference to the role of the USA in the Falklands War .

During the surveillance and espionage affair triggered by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013 , there was considerable diplomatic tension between the USA and Latin America. It became known that especially Brazil is in the sights of the American secret services. For example, the communication of the Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was bugged. When the Bolivian President Evo Morales then had to make a stopover in the presidential plane because several European countries had denied him the overflight rights under pressure from the USA because Edward Snowden was suspected on board, countries such as Argentina, Ecuador, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia reacted outraged. Morales threatened to close the US embassy. After Snowden applied for political asylum in Ecuador, the US threatened to terminate a trade treaty that would bring Ecuador customs concessions. For its part, Ecuador terminates the treaty and made it clear that it will not tolerate blackmail. In response to the forced landing and US pressure, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Bolivia offered Edward Snowden asylum.

Free trade and regional integration

The idea of an all-American free trade area was rejected at the 4th America Summit in Mar del Plata in 2005 amid strong protests against US President George W. Bush , which also included demonstrations by the piqueteros . But free trade agreements as such were not rejected. Economic integration continued at the regional level: under the Bush reign, the US, which already had two free trade agreements with Latin America, signed eight further agreements (including the US-Chilean free trade agreement of 2004 and the Colombia-US free trade agreement of 2006). Three others, including the US-Peruvian Free Trade Agreement (signed in 2006), have not yet been ratified by the US Congress .

The Cuzco Declaration , which was signed a few weeks before the third South American summit (2004), announced the establishment of the Union of South American Nations (Unasul / Unasur), which was to unite the Mercosur states and the Andean Community . Its goal is to remove all tariffs for non-sensitive goods by 2014 and for all goods traffic by 2019.

In addition, the free trade agreement between the Dominican Republic and Central America ( DR-CAFTA ) has been ratified by all states concerned except Costa Rica . The president of this country, Óscar Arias , who was elected in 2006 and is a member of the Partido Liberación Nacional , has, however, expressed his support for this agreement. Canada, which previously had a free trade agreement with Costa Rica, has now agreed to such an agreement with Central America ( Canada - Central American Free Trade Agreement ). Chile , which had long pursued policies that differed from those of its neighbors, signed the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership with Brunei , New Zealand and Singapore . The regime came into effect in May 2006. All of the signatory states are also APEC states.

Investment protection agreement

In addition to binational free trade agreements, the USA concluded a number of investment protection agreements (BIT) with Latin American countries that created favorable conditions for direct investment . These contracts include "fair and equitable treatment", protection from expropriation , free movement of goods, and complete protection and security. Critics complain that the US can control the pace, content and direction of bilateral negotiations more strongly than in larger negotiation contexts.

In the event of a dispute between a multinational company and a state over an investment in a Latin American country, the company can initiate legal proceedings before the International Center for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), an international court that is dependent on the World Bank . Such a procedure was initiated by the multinational company Bechtel , headquartered in the USA, as a result of its expulsion from Bolivia, which resulted from the protests in Cochabama (2000) . The local population had demonstrated against the privatization of the water company, which was called for by the World Bank after the mismanagement by Bechtel . Afterwards, Bechtel asked the Bolivian state to pay compensation in the amount of 50 million US dollars. The company dropped the charges in 2006 after massive criticism and international protests.

The USA concluded such investment protection agreements with a number of countries: Haiti (entry into force in 1983), Grenada (1989), Panama (1991, expanded in 2001), Argentina (1994), Trinidad and Tobago (1996), Ecuador (1997), Jamaica (1997), Bolivia (2001), Honduras (2001). Treaties with El Salvador (1999) and Nicaragua (1995) have been signed but not ratified.

Relations between USA and Venezuela

With his policy, the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez thwarted the policy of the United States, which wanted to secure dominance over their "backyard" in the long term by transforming all of Latin America into a free trade area. His friendly contacts with Fidel Castro , Muammar al-Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein also helped to arouse opposition from the USA. When Pedro Carmona attempted a coup in 2002, the United States sided with the coup plotters and immediately recognized Carmona as head of state when he briefly held the presidency.

In response to the planned American Free Trade Area (ALCA), Chávez founded the ALBA together with Castro in 2004 . When Bolivia joined, Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia also signed the Peoples' Trade Treaty in 2006 . Venezuela, which has rich natural gas and oil reserves ( OPEC state), also established improved trade relations with Argentina, Brazil and Nicaragua. Chávez initiated the Petrocaribe Agreement, which twelve of the 15 members of the Caribbean community signed in 2005.

The Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA has been supplying people in need in the USA with cheaper heating oil in the winter months through its US subsidiary Citgo in cooperation with the US social organization Citizens Energy since 2005.

Another rift between the ALBA and the US emerged when the ALBA objected to US intervention in the Nicaraguan elections in December 2008. Her message to the northern neighbors (published as an official announcement by the Venezuelan State Department) read: "We strongly reject US intervention in Nicaragua's internal affairs and reaffirm the exclusive right of the Nicaraguan people and their institutions to conduct the recent parliamentary elections. President Daniel Ortega and the FSLN have already proven their capacity for democracy in the election campaigns of the 1980s and in the acceptance of the election victory of their opponents. "

Military cooperation in the Iraq war

In June 2003, around 1200 soldiers from the Dominican Republic , El Salvador , Honduras and Nicaragua joined forces with the 1300 Spanish military forces as part of the US initiative of the Coalition of the Willing in Iraq to form the Plus Ultra Brigade . The brigade was disbanded in April 2004 after Spanish troops withdrew from Iraq. All Latin American countries also withdrew their troops.

In September 2005, it was revealed that Triple Canopy , a US private security and military company that also worked in Iraq , was training Latin American mercenaries in Lepaterique , Honduras. Lepaterique was a former training center for the Contras . 105 Chilean mercenaries were deported from the country for this . According to reports from the Honduran newspaper La Tribuna , 108 Hondurans, 88 Chileans and 16 Nicaraguans were shipped to Iraq in November. Around 700 Peruvians, 250 Chileans and 320 Hondurans worked for Triple Canopy in the Baghdad Green Zone . They were paid only half the wages of North American employees. The news also sparked a stir in Chile when it became known that Marina Óscar Aspe , a retired military man, was working for Triple Canopy . In his home country, he was involved in the murder of Marcelo Barrios Andrade, a 21-year-old member of the FPMR , who is now on the list of victims in the Rettig Report . Marina Óscar Aspe, on the other hand, is on the 2001 Ethics Committee against Torture . Triple Canopy also has a subsidiary in Peru .

In July 2007, Salvadoran President Antonio Saca reduced the number of soldiers stationed in Iraq from 380 to 280. Since the station was deployed in 2003, four Salvadoran soldiers have been killed. At the same time, 200 projects aimed at rebuilding Iraq were completed.

Nationalization of natural resources in Bolivia

US struggles for natural resources and supranational defense of national interests have never ceased since the height of US support for banana republics in the 19th century. But the geopolitical context has changed and the principles of action of all states have evolved. This can be seen in the example of Bolivia. Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in South America and was hit hard by protests and riots in the 1980s and 90s - mainly because of shock therapy that previous governments had imposed on the country, and also because of anger over the US’s coca eradication policy . Coca is a traditionally cultivated plant of the Quechua and Aymara , which they use for therapeutic (against altitude sickness ) and cultural purposes.

The Bolivian Gas War (2003/04) was sparked by the plans of the Pacific LNG Association to export natural gas from Bolivia, which has the second largest natural gas resource in Latin America after Venezuela, to California. The export route was supposed to lead via the neighboring country Chile, with which Bolivia had not had good relations since the Saltpeter War (1879–1884), as it had robbed the country of its access to the Pacific Ocean. As a result, the plan to create the ALCA in Bolivia was also criticized in demonstrations led by the Central Obrera Boliviana and Felipe Quispe Huancas Movimiento Indígena Pachakuti (MIP).

A sign of the new geopolitical context since the turn of the millennium is shown in an announcement Evo Morales ' made in connection with election promises: The country's natural gas reserves were to be nationalized . He stressed that the nationalizations would not take the form of expropriations or confiscations ; perhaps because he feared a violent reaction. The nationalizations, which, after Vice President Álvaro García Linera, increased the government's income from the energy sector sixfold in the following year, led to criticism from Brazil, whose oil company Petrobras is one of the largest foreign investors in Bolivia. It controls 14 percent of the country's gas reserves. Brazil's energy minister, Silas Rondeau , called the Morales announcement "unfriendly". According to Reuters , Bolivia's actions would be similar to those of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez , probably Morales' greatest ally, who enforced the nationalization of its oil reserves with forced contract overrides and retroactive tax hikes - terms that big oil companies agreed to.

The Bolivian gas company YPFB , which had been privatized by the former president Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada , paid foreign companies for their services. The payments were equivalent to around 50 percent of production value, although a decree indicated that the companies using the country's two largest gas reserves were entitled to only 18 percent. After initially hostile reactions, the Repsol YPF expressed its will to work with the Bolivian government and Petrobras withdrew its call to refrain from investing in Bolivia. Nevertheless, according to Larry Birns , the high media awareness of the nationalizations could lead the United States State Department to venture into the region, even with the support of the CIA or the US military; but it is more likely that it will try to subvert the weak point of Latin American defense: the Latin American military.

US military in the tri-border region: Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay

The Argentine film Sed, Invasión Gota a Gota ( German : "Durst, Invasion, drop by drop"), directed by Mausi Martínez , portrays the armed forces of the United States as they slowly and continuously establish their presence in the Triple Frontera (triangle of Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil) increased. The main objective of the increasing presence of US troops and the joint military exercises (especially with Paraguay) is to observe and monitor the large Arab population in the region. Martínez claims in the documentary, however, that the USA is interested in the freshwater resources of the Acuífero Guaraní aquifer and fears a subtle takeover of the valuable water reserves.

In 2005, the establishment of a US military base and airfield ( Dr Luís María Argaña International ) near Mariscal Estigarribia in Paraguay because of its proximity to the water reserves of the triangle and to the oil reserves of Bolivia, as well as the signing of a military training agreement between the USA and Paraguay, aroused great concern . which also provided for the immunity of US soldiers before the International Criminal Court (ICC) and was renewable. US President George W. Bush also visited Paraguay and, in Nicanor Duarte Frutos, received a Paraguayan president in the White House for the first time . The military airfield is also designed for large aircraft such as the B-52 or Lockheed C-130 , which the Paraguayan Air Force does not even own. The governments of Paraguay and the United States allegedly even subsequently declared that the airport was only intended to be used for the transport of a few soldiers. The Argentine newspaper Clarín speculated that the military base was being used for strategic purposes. As reasons, she cites its proximity to the triangle, the Acuífero Guaraní and Bolivia (less than 200 km) and the simultaneously growing interest of the USA in the Altiplano in Bolivia, while pointing the finger at the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez , whom the Bush administration declared the devil of regional stability. In October 2006, US President George W. Bush negotiated, according to media reports, near Mariscal Estigarribia for the acquisition of a 400 km² ranch.

However, Paraguay decided in October 2006 not to extend the protection of US soldiers' immunity. The other Mercosur member states (Argentina as an important non-NATO ally of the USA , Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela) had resolutely rejected the guarantee of immunity for US troops.

Appendix: Timeline of the forms of government in the countries of South America from 1950

Timeline of the political direction of the governments in South America
country	50s										60s										70s										80s										90s										2000s										2010s
country	0	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	0	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	0	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	0	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	0	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	0	1	2	3	4th	5	6th	7th	8th	9	0	1	2	3	4th	5	6th
Suriname Suriname
Guyana Guyana
Venezuela Venezuela
Colombia Colombia
Ecuador Ecuador
Peru Peru
Bolivia Bolivia
Brazil Brazil
Paraguay Paraguay
Uruguay Uruguay
Argentina Argentina
Chile Chile

██ Left / Socialist ██ Center-Left ██ Independent / Liberal / Centrist ██ Center-Right ██ Dictatorship or military regime

literature

Stephen G. Rabe: The Killing Zone: The United States Wages Cold War in Latin America. 2nd Edition. Oxford University, Oxford 2015, ISBN 978-0-19-021625-2 .
Thomas Leonard (Ed.): Encyclopedia of United States-Latin American Relations. CQ Press, Washington, DC 2012, ISBN 978-0-87289-762-5 .
Stefan Rinke: Latin America and the USA. A story between rooms - from colonial times to today. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 2012, ISBN 978-3-534-24551-2 .
William Blum : Destruction of Hope. US and CIA armed intervention since World War II. Zambon Verlag, Frankfurt 2008, ISBN 978-3-88975-141-6 .
Eduardo Galeano : The open veins of Latin America . Hammer, Wuppertal 2009, ISBN 978-3-7795-0271-5 .
David W. Dent (Ed.): Historical Dictionary of US-Latin American Relations . Greenwood Press, Westport 2005, ISBN 0-313-32196-5 .
J. Patrice McSherry: Predatory States: Operation Condor and Covert War in Latin America. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Lanham 2005, ISBN 0-7425-3687-4 .
Cecilia Menjivar, Nestor Rodriguez: When States Kill. Latin America, the US, and Technologies of Terror. University of Texas Press, Austin 2005, ISBN 0-292-70679-0 .

Web links

Detailed analysis of the US engagement in El Salvador from 1980 . with background information on the toleration of the serious human rights violations committed by the military and death squads
Tensions Rise in Latin America over US Military Plan to Use Three Bases in Colombia. (No longer available online.) In: Democracy Now! July 27, 2009, archived from the original on August 5, 2009 ; accessed on March 9, 2018 (English).

Individual evidence

^ Jorge G. Castaneda: Latin America's Left Turn. (No longer available online.) In: Foreign Affairs . 2006, archived from the original on October 7, 2008 ; accessed on March 9, 2018 .

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Benjamin Schwarz: Dirty Hands. The success of US policy in El Salvador - preventing a guerrilla victory - was based on 40,000 political murders. Book review on William M. LeoGrande: Our own Backyard. The United States in Central America 1977-1992. 1998, December 1998.

↑ Peter Kornbluh: CIA Acknowledges Ties to Pinochet's Repression . September 19, 2000

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Argentine Military believed US gave go-ahead for Dirty War. National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, 73 - Part II, CIA Confidential Documents, published 2002

↑ Robert Jay Glickman: Norteamérica vis-à-vis Hispanoamérica. ¿Oposición o asociación? Toronto, Canadian Academy of the Arts, 2005.

^ Franklin Delano Roosevelt: First Inaugural Address. Washington DC. March 4, 1933.

↑ Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1992. 7th edition. 1993, p. 376.

^ Edgar B. Nixon: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs. Volume I, pp. 559-60.

↑ ^a ^b Paul S. Holbo: Cold War drift in Latin America. In: Current History, 44, 258, 1963, pp. 65-72, here p. 66.

^ Thomas Adam: Transatlantic relations series. Germany and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History. A Multidisciplinary Encyclopedia. Volume II, ABC-CLIO, 2005, pp. 181f.

↑ Speech by J. William Fulbrights to the United States Congress on US policy on Latin America, in: Inter-American economic affairs. Volumes 15-16, Institute of Inter-American Studies in Washington DC (Ed.), Inter-American Affairs Press 1975 (translation).

↑ Walter LaFeber: America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1992. 7th edition. 1993.

^ Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy at Democratic Dinner, Cincinnati, Ohio, October 6, 1960. In: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum . Retrieved March 9, 2018 (English, translation). .

^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 1.

^ ^A ^b Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, pp. 47-49.

↑ For the paragraph: Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 18.

^ PMH Bell: The World Since 1945 . Oxford University Press, 2001, 0340662360.

^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 18.

^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, pp. 7 and 15f.

^ Robert H. Holden, Eric Zolov: Latin America and the United States. A Documentary History. Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-19-512994-6 (translation).

^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 11.

^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 47.

^ ^A ^b Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 42f.

^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 12.

↑ Fursenko; Naftali: The Cuban Missile Crisis. Pp. 40-47.

^ Operation Zapata. Bay of Pigs. Global Security.org . Retrieved July 9, 2011.

^ Castro marks Bay of Pigs victory. BBC News. Retrieved July 9, 2011.

↑ Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders. Assassination archives and research center. Original document. Retrieved July 9, 2011.

↑ Craig Calhoun: Cold War. Dictionary of the Social Sciences. Oxford University Press, 2002.

↑ For the paragraph: Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 14.

^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 62.

^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 55.

^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 22.

^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 77.

↑ Christopher Hitchens : The Case Against Henry Kissinger . In: Harper's Magazine . February 2001, p. 37 ( Online [PDF; accessed February 7, 2012]). Online ( Memento of the original from August 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2
↑ National Security Archive: Chile: 16,000 Secret Documents Declassified. CIA Forced to Release Hundreds of Records of Covert Operations , Nov. 13, 2000
^ Telegram from the US ambassador to Panama on the use of US facilities by Condor agents (PDF; 48 kB), October 20, 1978, source: George Washington University
↑ The Current Role of Military Power in Latin America. ( Memento from October 21, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Invitation text for the day seminar of the educational institute of the Heinrich Böll Foundation Berlin in cooperation with the FDCL, September 8, 2007.
^ Kissinger Gave the "Green Light" for Argentina's Dirty War Mother Jones, January 14, 2014
↑ Rights at risk. (No longer available online.) In: Jahrbuch Menschenrechte 2003. Amnesty International, archived from the original on February 13, 2018 ; Retrieved December 17, 2008 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2
^ "Operation Condor" ( Memento from September 12, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) - Terror in the name of the state. tagesschau.de, September 12, 2008
↑ Harold Pinter: Speech on receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature 2005 .
^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 65.
^ Marie-Monique Robin: Death Squads - How France Exported Torture and Terror. (No longer available online.) In: Arte program archive . September 8, 2004, archived from the original on July 21, 2012 ; accessed on March 9, 2018 .
^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 56.
^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 73.
^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, pp. 70f.
^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 78.
^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 82.
↑ Dana Priest:US Instructed Latins on Executions, Torture . ( Memento of the original from January 7, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The @1@ 2 archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Washington Post , September 21, 1996 (English). Retrieved from the SOAW website on November 26, 2013

^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 87.

^ ^A ^b Robert Parry : How John Kerry exposed the Contra-cocaine scandal Salon.com, October 25, 2004

^ Case concerning military and paramilitary activities in and against Nicaragua . ( Memento of March 9, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) International Court of Justice, June 27, 1986

^ Susanne Jonas: Central America As a Theater of US Cold War Politics. In: Latin American Perspectives, 9, 3, Social Classes in Latin America, Part I: Rural Class Relations, 1982, pp. 123–128, here p. 127.

↑ ^a ^b US-backed Guatemalan former dictator gets life for genocide. (No longer available online.) In: Russia Today . May 11, 2013; Archived from the original on June 30, 2013 ; accessed on March 9, 2018 .

^ The American Presidency Project. Remarks in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, Following a Meeting With President Jose Efrain Rios Montt of Guatemala. 4th December 1982

^ Profiles: Guatemala's Efrain Rios Montt. BBC, May 10, 2013

↑ Cecibel Romero: Former dictator under house arrest. In: the daily newspaper . January 27, 2012, accessed January 30, 2012 .

↑ Tim Johnson: Guatemala court gives 80-year term to ex-dictator Rios Montt. (No longer available online.) In: The Miami Herald . May 10, 2013, archived from the original on June 29, 2013 ; accessed on March 9, 2018 .

^ Anthony Lewis: Abroad at Home; Fear Of the Truth. The New York Times, April 2, 1993

^ Activist Church Leaders Oppose US Policy in El Salvador. Reading Eagle, April 19, 1981

^ Jon Sobrino: Jesuit Martyrs of el salvador: a research guide. (No longer available online.) Saint Peter's College , archived from the original on June 10, 2012 ; accessed on March 9, 2018 .

↑ Americas El Salvador murdered nuns case stays shut. BBC online, June 5, 1998

^ Activist Church Leaders Oppose US Policy in El Salvador. Reading Eagle, April 19, 1981

↑ As Rios Montt Trial Nears End, a Look Back at US Role in Guatemala's Civil War. PBS Newshour, May 10, 2013

^ ^A ^b Anthony Lewis: Abroad at Home; Fear Of the Truth. The New York Times, April 2, 1993

↑ Thomas Sheehan: Friendly Fascism. Business as Usual in America's Backyard . In: J. Richard Golson (Ed.): Fascism's Return. Scandal, Revision, and Ideology since 1980 . University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln / London 1998, pp. 260–300 ( religiousstudies.stanford.edu ( Memento from June 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive ; PDF)), cf. there note 12.

^ ^A ^b ^c Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, pp. 91-93.

^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 67.

^ Institutions and cooperation: Sanctions during the Falkland Islands Conflict (PDF); Lisa L. Martin in International Security , Volume 16, Issue 4

↑ Ricardo Sennes, Janina Onuk, Amacio Jorge de Oliveira: The Brazilian foreign policy and the hemispheric security. In: Revista Fuerzas Armadas y Sociedad, 1, 2006.

^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, pp. 100f.

^ Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 115.

^ Gerhard Drekonja-Kornat: Nova geometría. Latin America in the Atlantic Triangle. In: Blätter for German and international politics, 6, 1999, pp. 710–718.

↑ ^a ^b ^c Robert E.Ford Hudson, Valerie M .: The United States and Latin America at the end of the Columbian age. How America 'cut the Atlantic apron strings' in 1992. In: Third World Quarterly, 13, 3, 1992, pp. 441-462.

↑ ^a ^b ^c Friedrich von Krosigk: Inter-American relations under the sign of turbulent interdependence. In: Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte , 28, 1992, pp. 23–31.

^ Abraham F. Lowenthal: Latin America. Ready for Partnership? In: Foreign Affairs, America and the World, 72, 1, 1993, pp. 74-92, here p. 90.

↑ Sao Paulo Journal; Lula's Progress: From Peasant Boy to President? Article by James Brooke. In: New York Times, December 27, 1993

^ Venezuela championing a new socialist agenda. ( Memento from July 18, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Article by Michael Schild. On bBNET, February 2007.

^ Argentina's Néstor Kirchner: Peronism Without the Tears. Analysis by COHA Research Associate Hartford Campbell, January 27, 2006, Council on Hemispheric Affairs.

^ Socialist takes oath as Uruguay president. Article by Kevin Gray Associated Press, 2005.

^ Daniel Ortega - the Sandinista is back as president of Nicaragua. Article by Dimas Mateus Fazio dated June 13, 2007.

^ Paraguay's new president believes in God and 21st-Century Socialism. Article in RIA Novosti of April 23, 2008.

^ ^A ^b ^c ^d ^e Larry Birns, Michael Lettieri: The Aftermath of Bolivia's Gas Golpe . In: Political Affairs Magazine , July 5, 2006

↑ Interview with Geraldo Fontes from the MST. In Motion Magazine , March 26, 2005.

^ MST calls for Congress-Brazilian people alliance. Broadcast in: Radiobras on June 23, 2005.

^ Carin Zissis: Bolivia's Nationalization of Oil and Gas. ( Memento of July 19, 2006 on the Internet Archive ) US Council on Foreign Relations , May 12, 2006.

↑ George Bush défie Hugo Chavez sur son terrain . In: Le Figaro , March 8, 2007.

^ Latin America: Bilateral Trade Deals Favor US Interests. ( Memento of July 4, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Article of November 12, 2002.

↑ Jim Shultz: Bechtel Corp.vs. Bolivia's poor. (No longer available online.) In: The Democracy Center . December 18, 2001, archived from the original on February 2, 2002 ; Retrieved March 9, 2018 (open letter from Jim Shultz to Riley Bechtel).

↑ Gerhard Piper: Venezuela: From Putsch to Putsch. In: BITS. Retrieved August 15, 2011 (July / August 2002).

↑ Harald Neuber: Cheap heating oil for 16 US states. In: amerika21. December 12, 2007, accessed August 11, 2011 .

^ Citgo to continue oil aid to US poor. In: Reuters. January 7, 2011, accessed August 11, 2011 .

^ ALBA Rejects US Intervention in Nicaraguan Elections. InsideCostaRica.com, November 17, 2008.

↑ ^a ^b Capítulos desconocidos de los mercenarios chilenos en Honduras camino de Iraq . ( Memento of May 27, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) In: La Nación , September 25, 2005.

↑ Cesar Uco: Latin American mercenaries guarding Baghdad's Green Zone . World Socialist Web Site, December 28, 2005.

↑ contingents IX con menos soldados a Iraq . In: La Prensa Grafica , July 15, 2007.

↑ Bolivia's military takes control of gas fields. Article con Reuters of May 2, 2006.

^ Bolivia gas under state control. Article on BBC News dated May 2, 2006.

↑ Camila Marques: Ministro de Minas e Energia classifica decreto boliviano de “inamistoso” . In: Folha de Sao Paulo , May 1, 2006.

↑ Sam Logan, Matthew Flynn: US Military Moves in Paraguay Rattle Regional Relations. (No longer available online.) In: Americas program. International Relations Center , December 14, 2005, archived from the original on July 12, 2006 ; accessed on March 9, 2018 .

↑ ^a ^b Claudio Aliscioni: Los marines de EE.UU. ponen un pie in Paraguay . In: El Clarín , September 9, 2005.

↑ Pres. Bush buys 100,000acre ranch in Paraguay . In: Prensa Latina , October 19, 2006, provided by SF Bay Area Independent Media Center.

↑ Gobernador admite que hay versiones de que Bush Compro tierras en el Chaco. Article dated October 11, 2006, provided by Neike Periodismo Independiente

↑ Pedro Servin: Paraguay Hardens US Military Stance . In: The Washington Post , October 3, 2006.

[Foreign_Affairs-1] Jorge G. Castaneda: Latin America's Left Turn. (No longer available online.) In: Foreign Affairs . 2006, archived from the original on October 7, 2008 ; accessed on March 9, 2018 .

[Atlantic-2] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h ⁱ Benjamin Schwarz: Dirty Hands. The success of US policy in El Salvador - preventing a guerrilla victory - was based on 40,000 political murders. Book review on William M. LeoGrande: Our own Backyard. The United States in Central America 1977-1992. 1998, December 1998.

[3] Peter Kornbluh: CIA Acknowledges Ties to Pinochet's Repression . September 19, 2000

[Kissinger-NatArch-4] ↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f Argentine Military believed US gave go-ahead for Dirty War. National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book, 73 - Part II, CIA Confidential Documents, published 2002

[5] Robert Jay Glickman: Norteamérica vis-à-vis Hispanoamérica. ¿Oposición o asociación? Toronto, Canadian Academy of the Arts, 2005.

[6] Franklin Delano Roosevelt: First Inaugural Address. Washington DC. March 4, 1933.

[7] Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1992. 7th edition. 1993, p. 376.

[8] Edgar B. Nixon: Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs. Volume I, pp. 559-60.

[Holbo1-9] Paul S. Holbo: Cold War drift in Latin America. In: Current History, 44, 258, 1963, pp. 65-72, here p. 66.

[Adam-10] Thomas Adam: Transatlantic relations series. Germany and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History. A Multidisciplinary Encyclopedia. Volume II, ABC-CLIO, 2005, pp. 181f.

[11] Speech by J. William Fulbrights to the United States Congress on US policy on Latin America, in: Inter-American economic affairs. Volumes 15-16, Institute of Inter-American Studies in Washington DC (Ed.), Inter-American Affairs Press 1975 (translation).

[12] Walter LaFeber: America, Russia, and the Cold War, 1945-1992. 7th edition. 1993.

[13] Remarks of Senator John F. Kennedy at Democratic Dinner, Cincinnati, Ohio, October 6, 1960. In: John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum . Retrieved March 9, 2018 (English, translation). .

[14] Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 1.

[Domínguez2-15] A ^b Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, pp. 47-49.

[16] For the paragraph: Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 18.

[since-17] PMH Bell: The World Since 1945 . Oxford University Press, 2001, 0340662360.

[18] Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 18.

[19] Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, pp. 7 and 15f.

[20] Robert H. Holden, Eric Zolov: Latin America and the United States. A Documentary History. Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-19-512994-6 (translation).

[21] Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 11.

[22] Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 47.

[Domínguez1-23] A ^b Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 42f.

[24] Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 12.

[25] Fursenko; Naftali: The Cuban Missile Crisis. Pp. 40-47.

[26] Operation Zapata. Bay of Pigs. Global Security.org . Retrieved July 9, 2011.

[27] Castro marks Bay of Pigs victory. BBC News. Retrieved July 9, 2011.

[28] Interim Report: Alleged Assassination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders. Assassination archives and research center. Original document. Retrieved July 9, 2011.

[29] Craig Calhoun: Cold War. Dictionary of the Social Sciences. Oxford University Press, 2002.

[30] For the paragraph: Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 14.

[31] Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 62.

[32] Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 55.

[33] Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 22.

[34] Jorge I. Domínguez: Latin America's Relations with the United States and other Major Powers (1960–1990). Center for International Affairs (Ed.), 1991, p. 77.