After its struggle for independence, the Dominican Republic borrowed an enormous amount of money from European countries - amounts that they could never hope to pay back. Britain and Germany threatened to take over the Dominican Republic because of these outstanding debts. Because of the threat of European involvement in Latin America, the US (now under President Theodore Roosevelt) passed the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. It basically said that because they couldn't govern themselves, it was the duty of the US to govern Latin American nations that were in trouble. Under Woodrow Wilson, troops were sent to Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and various other Caribbean nations. The Platt amendment was applied to most of the Caribbean.

The Monroe Doctrine and its amendments formed the way America responded to Latin America. The US had active military control over many Caribbean countries until Franklin D. Roosevelt's "good neighbor policy" vanquished the Monroe Doctrine. However, even after the demise of these obviously imperialistic policies, the United States continued to control Latin America - both openly and in clandestine ways. One of the Clandestine methods the US used to dethrone regimes was the formation of a CIA-sponsored rebel army. It was used for the toppling, in 1954, of the Guatemalan government, which had been led by Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. An American puppet dictator replaced the ousted Guatemalan government.

This rebel army method was also tried, without success, in Cuba shortly after the communist revolution. The United States landed Anti-Castro, Cuban refugees in the Bay of Pigs (the invasion is known as the Bay of Pigs invasion). These forces were quickly defeated when President Kennedy refused to supply air support to them. This incident turned out to be a great humiliation to the US, but didn't really effect its power in Latin America.

Even though the United States has professed the good neighbor policy, it remains true to its original designs. It has installed puppet governments in Nicaragua and encouraged the overthrowing of Vietnamese as well as Korean leaders during between the 1940s and 1950s. The United States has taken the Monroe Doctrine, as well as its imperialist designs with it into the late 20th century. The tone set by the early leaders remains in tact today.

| 1 | 2 | 3 |
Return to Essays