Introduction

Given the domination of the United States over continental affairs and the Soviet Union's inability to project its power beyond its immediate neighbours, Central and South America remained in the 1940s rather distant from the issues that lay at the heart of the East-West division.

This development owed much to Latin American dissatisfaction with the reality and implications of American domination. American economic and political dominance of the Western Hemisphere had been well established in the first half of the twentieth century and was justified under the principles of the Monroe Doctrine. Whether through direct intervention, as had been the case until the early 1930s, or via local dictators (such as the Somozas in Nicaragua, Batista in Cuba or Trujillo in the Dominican Republic), the United States effectively controlled its Central American neighbours to its own economic and political advantage. The South American countries were exempt from the presence of American troops, but their economies depended heavily on the United States. The Second World War, by removing any serious challengers to Washington’s hegemony (such as Britain, Germany or Japan) from Latin American markets, only heightened American influence.

Truman Doctrine

The policy of American president Harry S. Truman, as advocated in his address to Congress on 12 March 1947, to provide military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey. Subsequently used to justify aid to any country perceived to be threatened by communism.

Monroe Doctrine

The doctrine declared by President James Monroe in 1823 in which he announced that the United States would not tolerate intervention by the European Powers in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere.

However, in the aftermath of the Second World War, the United States discovered that it could no longer take for granted this troubled continent where economic and social dislocation was widely spread and where American dominance (‘Yankee imperialism’) was often identified as the chief reason for the pervasive inequality. If in Washington military dictators were generally considered the only force that could ensure stability south of the Rio Grande, the post-war years saw these same dictators become targets of popular revolts fuelled by persistent economic inequality, anti-Americanism, nationalism and socialism. Thus, even as direct Soviet involvement in Latin America remained negligible, calls for removing the ‘yoke ofAmerican imperialism’ created a problem of massive proportions for American policy-makers. Their responses — whether covert or overt, economic or military — helped sustain the reality of American dominance throughout much of Latin America in the decades following the Second World War.