History of US Military Intervention in Latin America

     The History of Latin America cannot be described without taking a look at the long history of influence and involvement by the United States of America. While a lot of involvement by the United States was to further ties between the US government and other Latin American countries, a lot of military intervention by the US was performed throughout history. On the map below, you can see the different countries in which overt military intervention, by the United States government, occurred. Most of the countries labeled on the map show that the U.S. military intervened or invaded their country multiple times throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In the data shown on the map, there are the dates of overt U.S. military intervention, usually through the purpose of peacekeeping or invasion and overthrow of the current political regime. The map displays that none of these invasions occurred in South America, only in the Caribbean or the Central American states.

    The reasoning behind the United States only intervening in the smaller Caribbean and Central American countries has to do with the a couple of factors that lead to political instability in this region before U.S. intervention. One of these factors has to do with the Cold War and the domino theory behind communism spreading from one country to the next. After Cuba and Nicaragua elected Marxist-Leninist Governments, the U.S. feared the influence the USSR would have on these countries in the peak of the Cold War. The U.S. also, justifiably, feared that the more left-leaning countries in Central America would fund rebel groups in nearby countries. This led to many different covert and overt operations in these countries to defeat regimes and rebels that were much more left-leaning politically. Another reason behind the U.S. only overtly intervening in Central America and the Caribbean is because of the size of these countries. The U.S. held many different covert operations in South America such as in Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia. They covertly operated in South America because the U.S. relied on the size and strength of the militaries in South American countries to do all of the heavy lifting in terms of a coup or repression. In Central America, a lot of the fighting was done by different political groups and smaller militaries in which the U.S. military could easily dominate the battlefield such as in Panama where the U.S. easily toppled the regime of Manuel Noreiga. Some of these interventions were not completely ideologically motivated as some interventions in Haiti were triggered by gang violence that had taken over after destructive earthquakes such as the one in 2010. However in the earlier history of Haiti, the U.S. invaded Haiti in 1914 to impose a pro-US leader and prevent any foreign influence in the region. These smaller countries had a larger chance of being influenced by other international powers and the U.S. sought to make sure that it would be the only power with influence in the Americas.