The central argument of the book is that U.S. foreign policy toward Latin America has been based largely on a feeling of superiority over Latin Americans either due to their higher proportions of black and indigenous peoples, their Spanish descent, or their Catholicism. It's a really unique relationship, I think, because it mirrors the colonizer-colonized relationship in actual substance, but not in fact. Our government often treats Latin American countries as if they belong to us (The Monroe Doctrine) but in terms of the law, the only one that does is Puerto Rico.
After the Spanish American War, Puerto Rico became a US colony but not Cuba. Why? Cuba had a very strong sugar economy, and Utah senators who wanted to protect the sugar beet industry couldn't accept a new state that would be producing more sugar than the other 50 combined (I may be exaggerating) and so Cuba became more or less independent with a hefty sugar tariff while Puerto Rico, which had no such industry, became a colony. This is a main theme of the book-- short-term domestic politics often have a big impact on long-term foreign policy.
American policy spent a little over a hundred years from the founding of the United States in the 1780's until the end of the Spanish American War in 1898 attempting to take land from Latin American countries, planning to make states out of Cuba, Nicaragua, Guatemala, or parts of Mexico (which succeeded), mainly to expand slavery at the will of southern politicians before the Civil War and then as a matter of prestige and to control key military bases in the Caribbean afterwards. Canal politics have always been critical. The shift came with Taft to Dollar Diplomacy, which basically meant the fusing of the economies of the Americas, a process that continues a century later thanks to NAFTA. Dollar Diplomacy was largely continued by the Wilson administration with the addition of the need to establish democracies in Latin America. Later administrations realized that this meant that Latin peoples might choose something not in American interests and decided to install dictators, which would be the policy of the government through the 1980's at least, and it's definitely not completely over. In 2004 the United States assisted in a coup in Haiti and likely did the same in Venezuela in 2002.
One problem with US policy is that since the fall of the Soviet Union, we've justified creeping hegemony in the region by arguing that problems such as drug trafficking are just as threatening as the old Soviet adventurism and influence in Central America, Cuba, and Peru. The problem is that policy makers have seen it as a list of problems rather than a definite amount of "threat" which can increase and decrease as a total amount. In the real world, sometimes you are in great danger and sometimes you are not. When you are in a car flying at 80 miles per hour into another car you are in more danger than when you are cruising at 40 and not about to hit someone. The same goes for foreign policy- at the end of the Cold War, there were fewer foreign threats to the USA, and the biggest one was removed. However, policy makers failed to see that for what it was. When your full-time job is to solve foreign policy threats globally, you end up justifying creeping hegemony by not seeing total threats, but by seeing a long list of threats, where nothing changes when a threat is removed, the rest just jump up a spot. People with greater expertise would have been able to warn that nothing had really changed in most of Latin America, except for maybe Cuba. This is extremely important because it proves that the US government, at least in this sphere of foreign policy, has so much momentum in one direction (expanding US influence and hegemony) that its own bureaucrats are incapable of reversing it.
Before I continue, here are some facts:
Fact #1.
In 1854, rumors spread to Europe that the Pierce administration was planning to purchase a Mediterranean naval base from the prince of Monaco, and although it never happened, at least one British official said, "The annexation of Piedmont [(a region of northwestern Italy that would actually lead the country's unification just five months later)] would be their first objective," and that Americans would be jumping on steam ships to avenge some imaginary Sardinian insult. It's an amazing quote because it almost exactly predicts the war with Spain over 40 years later.
Fact #2.
Thomas Jefferson was interested in building a canal across Panama in 1787! That's over a hundred years before it would be built.
Fact #3.
In the 1930's, much of Central America reverted to being run by Caudillos (military strongmen) because the USA stopped using the Marines to stop coups de etat in the region. As a result, the only people who could keep power were those with military support, AKA strongmen. This aided the transition away from democracy to dictatorships mentioned above.
Dwight Morrow, the former US Ambassador to Mexico, wrote something that I think was especially prescient, "I think I become more and more convinced that good government is not a substitute for self-government. The kind of mistakes that America would make in running Cuba would be different from those that the Cubans themselves make, but they would probably cause a new kind of trouble and a new kind of suffering." I guess it depends on what your goal is. If your goal is to make a country strong and independent, you let them run themselves, but if you want them weak and subservient to you, you can intervene. It's obviously a complicated choice, because there are atrocities that governments can commit against their people that deserve intervention from abroad like genocide and torture, but it is clear that this has not been the main reason for US intervention in the past.
To conclude, American policy in regards to Latin America has been successful at keeping the United States dominant in the region, but it has come at the expense of Latin America. I have to believe that by allowing Latin American countries to strengthen their own institutions and by building economic links with them, that we are all better off. Our policy has kept us #1 on the list of powers in the hemisphere, but it has made us worse off in absolute terms. If Latin Americans were richer they would buy more US products and we'd all be better off. To borrow from the author, Lars Schoultz, the United States is extremely bad at military occupation and extremely good at business. It would be far more productive and merciful to focus on the latter. No one wants to be occupied by our military, but just about everyone wants cheaper products and better paying jobs. It would benefit us as well to extend our economic influence because it would extend cultural influence, leaving us with a region of friends who respect us out of love, rather than subservient peoples who respect us only out of fear.
"The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive."- Harry Truman
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