The Many Other Latin American Invasions
* What: US invasions, US government-ordered overthrows, and military threats against Latin American nations. In every single case except mercenary invasions, these invasions, coups, or threats were ordered by US presidents.
* The Body Count: It is extremely difficult to get clear figures for most of these invasions. The US military often does not keep records of enemy deaths or civilian deaths. When they do so, they always err on the side of caution, listing only confirmed deaths, not estimates. Estimates thus almost always come from outside sources, foreign journalism accounts especially.
* It is a fair guess that each of these invasions resulted in anywhere from several hundred to several thousand deaths. What is even more difficult to guess is how many deaths resulted in the long term because of US takeovers of these countries, disruptions of these societies, crushed movements for self government, worsened economies, and continued poverty. Ironically, the rationale often given for these invasions is help local peoples.
* Who Also Gets the Blame: The list of ideologies blamed for US invasions is itself almost as long as the list of invasions themselves.
* Manifest Destiny is now being taught about in American high schools, something generally not true twenty years ago. But students are often being give the sanitized version, that the belief is America was destined to span “sea to shining sea.” That makes the belief seem both inspiring and psychic. In fact, Manifest Destiny was always an explicitly racist belief, that white Americans were destined to rule over all land between the oceans, and over all peoples already there, either controlling them or wiping them out. It was an ideology of conquest or extermination against both indigenous groups, American Indians and Mexicans.
* “Maintaining order” has always been a self serving notion, sometimes referred to as the World's Policeman, that the US has a self designated responsibility as a world power to keep other nations in line, especially in Latin America. Part of the intent of this claim has been to pretend these invasions or overthrows are done reluctantly.
* “The Flag Follows the Dollar” was an argument most famously advance by Marine Corp Commandant Smedley Butler that American invasions and ordered overthrows were because there were US companies out to make money off Latin Americans. But in many cases there were not any substantial US investments or property in the country being invaded.
* Pseudo scientific racism or paternalistic racism, the notion that nonwhites were incapable of running their own nations and thus must bow to American elites who supposedly know better, clearly did play a part in some overthrows, especially under Presidents McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt, Taft, and Wilson.
* Fighting Communism as a reason or excuse for invasion goes back fairly far, almost right after the Bolshevik Revolution. Wilson was the first president to use anti-Communism as a rationale for invasion, by the US of the Soviet Union in 1919. Dedicated anti-Communists were extremely fanatic and conspiracy minded, imagining Communism where there often was none. (See Sections One and Four.) But US invasions did not stop with the Cold War.
* Fighting terrorism is the latest rationale, sometimes of countries that did not actually support terrorism such as Iraq. (See Section Four.) In Latin America, the latest nation to be falsely accused of supporting terrorism is Venezuela. It is a fair guess that, were Al Qaeda destroyed tomorrow, US ordered overthrows likely would not cease.
* US invasions rise or fall depending on how sick the American public is of seeing American deaths. Deaths of people in other countries can be another matter, since the media often dehumanizes foreigners, especially nonwhite ones. Often this is made easier by many Americans knowing little of other cultures.
* There were two main types of US invasions before the Civil War. US government ordered invasions included the War of 1812, the US-Mexico War, and the dozens of US invasions of Native tribes. There were also many US invasions done by private mercenary armies, often called filibusters. Most Americans are not aware that Americans invaded Canada five times, four times by private armies in 1797, 1837, 1838, 1839, and of course by US armies in the War of 1812.
* The list of other places invaded by private US armies is long. Texas was invaded six times by US mercenaries, in 1800, 1801, 1813, 1819, 1825, and finally in 1835. That makes the fact of the US finally decided to take it both less inevitable and over less surprising. Other countries that US mercenaries tried to take over and make part of the US include; Venezuela in 1806; Tristan de Cunha in1810; the Spanish colony of La Florida in 1812 and 1818; Mexico in 1844 and California in 1845, both before the US-Mexico War; the Spanish colony of Cuba four times, in 1848, 1849, 1850, and 1851; Nicaragua in 1855; Costa Rica in 1856; Mexico in 1857, hoping to take away the state of Sonora; and Honduras in 1860.
* For a quarter century after the Civil War, there were no US invasions of Latin America because most Americans had enough of wartime violence. But as the Civil War generation died off, there were almost three dozen US invasions in slightly over 40 years, from 1890 until the 1930s. The first was Argentina in 1890; then Chile in 1891, Haiti the same year; Nicaragua no less than seven times, in 1894, 1898, 1899, 1907, 1909, 1910, and then in 1912, when US troops controlled the country for the next 21 years; Panama in 1895, 1903 (See Section Five), 1912, 1918, and 1925; Honduras six times, in 1903, 1905, 1907, 1911, 1912, and 1924 ; the Dominican Republic in 1903, 1914, and then 1916, when US troops controlled the country until 1924; Mexico in 1905 and 1914; Cuba in 1906, 1912, and 1917, when US troops controlled the country until 1933. Haiti was invaded again in 1914 and US troops controlled the country until 1934, and Guatemala in1920, 1921.
* These invasions almost came to an end for a decade and a half. Franklin Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy declared an end to wars against nations in America's “backyard” and he vowed to always negotiate, avoiding being pushed into war with Mexico. (See Section Eight.) The big exception to that is Panama in 1941, when he recognized the overthrow of a fascist dictator.
* In some cases, money was the motive for invading. US companies' investments had been or were perceived to be threatened. Often US troops were sent to collect debts, break unions, guard property, or crush governments or rebel groups said to be unfriendly to the US. Marine Corps Commandant Smedley Butler, who himself took part in many of these invasions, bluntly described it:
* ““I helped make Mexico…safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-12. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras ‘right’ for American fruit companies in 1903....Looking back on it, I felt I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three city districts. We Marines operated on three continents.”
* Butler continued his angry denunciation: “The flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.” Later Butler got his chance to stop bankers and protect the Bill of Rights, when some of Wall Street's elites tried to overthrow Roosevelt with a private army and set up a fascist state. (See Section Eleven.)
* The Cold War brought a new set of justifications to invade, overthrow, or threaten Latin American nations. Many fanatic anti-Communists believed in unrealistic conspiracies that imagined even small nations could be a threat to the US, and often saw Communist threats where there were none. (See Section Four.) So the US threatened little Uruguay in 1947, sending nuclear armed planes to its presidential inauguration. A Puerto Rican independence uprising was crushed in 1950. Guatemala, trying its first timid reforms, was smeared as Communist and then its government overthrown in 1954 simply for no longer outlawing Communists. This began a long civil war that, with Reagan's complicity, turned into outright genocide in the 1980s. (See Section One.) In Panama, demonstrators against the canal were killed by US Canal Zone police. (See Section Four.)
* Cuba faced perhaps more US assaults than any other nation in the Americas, a US bombing and invasion followed by the threat of nuclear war (Section Eleven again), then likely biological warfare (See Section Five) and extended terrorist attacks from Cuban-Americans for decades (See Section Six). The Dominican Republic was invaded and taken over by US troops from 1965 to 1966, simply because Lyndon Johnson falsely imagined a democratic movement might be Communist. In Bolivia, the US sent Special Forces against a tiny rebel group in 1967. In El Salvador, the US military bombed the country for much of the 1980s, sent in advisers and a campaign of repression to break a protesters and a rebel movement. (See Section One.) In Nicaragua, the US government mined the harbors and sponsored terrorists. (Section One again.) In tiny Grenada, the US invasion force was one tenth the size of the entire island's population. Not finding the Cuban base Reagan claimed was there, his administration fabricated a claim that construction workers were Cuban commandos.
* Yet the end of the Cold War did not end US invasions in Latin American either. In 1989 a US invasion overthrew the Panamanian government as part of the Drug War. (See Section Four.) In 1994 it was Haiti where a US invasion overthrew the government, this time to put back into power a president overthrown by secret police working with the CIA. In Colombia in 2000, US troops were again sent as part of the Drug War. In Venezuela in 2002, a military coup advised by the US government failed to overthrow the nation’s president. Again in Haiti, in 2004, CIA funded rebels overthrew the same president put back into power by the US in 1994. In Honduras and Paraguay, the overthrowing of two presidents was US-supported after the fact.
* Which presidents were to blame for these invasions? Unlike invasions of Native tribal lands and wars of extermination, which were often done by Anglo-American colonists or US Army generals against the orders of presidents, every single one of these invasions or overthrows after 1890 was done with presidential approval. Here are the Latin American invasions, overthrown governments, or sending of the US military to Latin America that each president was responsible for:
* Jackson- Spanish Florida (as general)
* Polk- Mexico
* Benjamin Harrison- Argentina, Chile, Haiti, Nicaragua
* Cleveland- Nicaragua, Colombia (Panama)
* McKinley- Nicaragua (twice), Puerto Rico
* Teddy Roosevelt- Cuba, Dominican Republic, Honduras (three times), Mexico, Panama *
* Taft- Honduras (twice), Nicaragua (twice), Panama
* Wilson- Cuba, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Haiti, Mexico, Panama
* Harding- none, but continued occupations begun by Wilson.
* Coolidge- Honduras, also continued occupations begun by Wilson.
* Hoover- El Salvador, also continued occupations begun by Wilson.
* Truman- Puerto Rico, Uruguay
* Eisenhower- Guatemala, Panama, Cuba (planning stages)
* Kennedy- Cuba (failed)
* Lyndon Johnson- Bolivia, Dominican Republic, Guatemala
* Nixon- Chile, Colombia (See also Operation Condor.)
* Reagan- Colombia, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Nicaragua
* Bush Sr.- Colombia, Panama
* Clinton- Colombia, Haiti
* GW Bush- Colombia, Haiti, Venezuela (failed)
* Obama- Colombia, Honduras and Paraguay (both supported after the fact)
* Some names are conspicuously absent. Except for Polk, there are no US presidents before 1890. Franklin Roosevelt, because of his Good Neighbor Policy, left Latin America alone for a decade and a half. Jimmy Carter also did because of his human rights policy. Ford did the same, partly because he was only president for two and a half years, but also because a CIA scandal was recent.
* In terms of just how destructive these invasions were, no other president comes close to Reagan, with two campaigns of state terrorism and one complicity with genocide, plus one direct invasion. In terms of who invaded the most often, Wilson clearly has that dubious distinction. His invasions were also much longer lasting, in several cases for decades. Wilson notoriously stated, “I''m going to teach the South American republics to elect good men,” followed by several decades of US control where no elections were allowed.
* Smedley Butler was, in the larger view, mostly wrong. US invasions of Latin America have mostly not been about money. Most of the time they are because an American president decided he knew, or convinced himself he knew, what was best more than the people of that nation themselves.
* Today, of course, the US has just been through two very costly, enormously destructive, and almost useless wars. If the pattern of the past holds, it should be 15-30 years before the US invades another Latin American nation. For Obama, so far the only military force he has sent have been drones used for assassinations in Colombia.