Latin America and U.S. Policy

United States policy toward Latin America, which for more than the last half-century, created an unequal relationship marked by intense periods of preemptive U.S. interventionism in the name of U.S. national security. From the 1950s to the 1980s, the United States became engaged in Cold War proxy fights against the Soviet Union by way of its Latin American allies. The end of the Cold War saw a refocusing of U.S. security policy in Latin America, moving from anticommunism to efforts to end drug trafficking.

In the 1950s, the United States saw the Panama Canal as a crucial strategic asset, and tensions over its ownership grew between the United States and Panama. Panama desired full independence and sovereignty over the canal, which was built by the United States and was taken into its possession in 1903. The United States did not see it in its interests to cede control of the canal to anyone, for fear that the Soviet Union or its proxy, Cuba, might use it to threaten or attack the United States.

By 1964–65, tensions were about to boil over. The United States had already found its fears affirmed in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, during which the Soviet Union installed in Cuba clandestine ballistic missiles aimed at the United States. This crisis followed a failed U.S.-backed invasion of Cuba, known as the Bay of Pigs. One result of these events was that the United States grew increasingly resistant to Panama's demands.

President Lyndon Johnson viewed the Panama independence movement as a direct conspiracy run by Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Large-scale anti-U.S. riots erupted in Panama, including one riot that ended with 120 casualties. Irrespective of the riots, it was not until a 13–1 vote by the UN Security Council against the United States, with an abstention on behalf of Great Britain, that the United States was persuaded to take Panama's demands more seriously, and the United States began a reluctant, years-long process of recognition.

United States national security policy viewed the Western Hemisphere in the context of the global East–West Cold War conflict for the better part of the following three decades. This viewpoint became particularly evident in 1982, in the U.S. response to the British-inspired Falklands/Malvinas War. By siding with its valued Cold War ally, Great Britain, rather than its inter-American partner, Argentina, in that war, the United States effectively renounced its enduring 150-year-old Monroe Doctrine, which argued that any foreign political or military advances into the Americas would be deemed a threat to U.S. national security. Overall, however, U.S. national-security policy took an increasingly aggressive turn in Latin America during the 1970s and 1980s. As a result, the U.S. role in the region became marked by more active involvement, rather than the taking of sides.

Cold War Interventions

United States administrations typically fought the perceived threat of communism by providing military aid and political support to Latin American political groups or parties that were construed to be anticommunist and pro-U.S. The United States looked for logistical sites in Latin America that could be used as possible attack launchpads and sought to control them.

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