Latin America–United States relations

Until the end of the 19th century, the US only had a especially close relationship primarily with nearby Mexico and Cuba (apart from Central America, Mexico and the Spanish colony of Cuba), which was largely economically tied to Britain. The United States had no involvement in the process by which Spanish colonies broke away and became independent around 1820. In cooperation with, and help from Britain, the United States issued the Monroe doctrine in 1823, warning against the establishment of any additional European colonies in Latin America.

Texas, which had been settled by colonies of Americans, fought a successful war for independence from Mexico in 1836. Mexico refused to recognize the independence and warned that annexation to the United States meant war. Annexation came in 1845 and the Mexican–American War began in 1846. The American military was easily triumphant. The result was the Mexican Cession of Santa Fe de Nuevo México and Alta California. About 60,000 Mexicans remained in the territories and became US citizens. France took advantage of the American Civil War (1861–65) to take over Mexico during the Second French Intervention. Due to defeats in Europe, France pulled out troops, leaving the Imperialists and Maximilian I of Mexico to face defeat from the Benito Juarez-led Republicans (backed by the US).

The Anglo-Venezuelan boundary dispute of Guayana Esequiba in 1895 asserted for the first time a more outward-looking American foreign policy, particularly in the Americas, marking the United States as a world power. This was the earliest example of modern interventionism under the Monroe doctrine. By the late nineteenth century the rapid economic growth of the United States increasingly troubled Latin America. A Pan-American Union was created under American aegis, but it had little impact as did its successor the Organization of American States.

American cartoon, published in 1898: "Remember the Maine! And Don't Forget the Starving Cubans!"

As unrest in Cuba escalated in the 1890s, the United States demanded reforms that Spain was unable to accomplish. The result was the Spanish–American War of 1898, in which United States acquired Puerto Rico and set up a protectorate over Cuba under the Platt Amendment rule passed as part of the 1901 Army Appropriations Bill. The building of the Panama Canal absorbed American attention from 1903. The US facilitated a revolt that made Panama independent from Colombia and set up the Panama Canal Zone as an American owned and operated district that was finally returned to Panama in 1979. The Canal opened in 1914 and proved a major factor in world trade. The United States paid special attention to protection of the military approaches to the Panama Canal, including threats by Germany. Repeatedly it seized temporary control of the finances of several countries, especially Haiti and Nicaragua.

The Mexican Revolution started in 1910; it alarmed American business interests that had invested in Mexican mines and railways. The United States involvement in the Mexican Revolution, include, among other violations of sovereignty, the ambassadorial backing of a coup and assassination of President Francisco I. Madero and the military occupation of Veracruz. Large numbers of Mexicans fled the war-torn revolution into the southwestern United States. Meanwhile, the United States increasingly replaced Britain as the major trade partner and financier throughout Latin America. The US adopted a "Good Neighbor Policy" in the 1930s, which meant friendly trade relations would continue regardless of political conditions or dictatorships. This policy responded to longstanding Latin American diplomatic pressure for a regional declaration of nonintervention,[2] as well as the increasing resistance and cost of US occupations in Central America and the Caribbean.[3] One effect of the two world wars was a reduction in European presence in Latin America and an increasing solidification of the US position. "The proclamation of the Monroe doctrine that the hemisphere was closed to European powers, which was presumptuous in 1823, had become effective by the eve of the World War I, at least in terms of military alliances," Friedman and Long note.[4] United States signed up the major countries as allies against Germany and Japan in World War II. However, some countries like Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Uruguay and Venezuela only declared war on Axis powers in 1945 (though most had broken relations previously).[5] The era of the Good Neighbor Policy ended with the ramp-up of the Cold War in 1945, as the United States felt there was a greater need to protect the western hemisphere from Soviet Union influence and a potential rise of communism. These changes conflicted with the Good Neighbor Policy's fundamental principle of non-intervention and led to a new wave of US involvement in Latin American affairs. "In the 1950s, the United States shifted from an earlier tradition of direct military intervention to covert and proxy interventions in the cases

Guatemala (1954), Cuba (1961), Guyana (1961–64), Chile (1970–73), and Nicaragua (1981–90), as well as outright military invasions of the Dominican Republic (1965), Grenada (1983), and Panama (1989)."[6]

The first decade of the Cold War saw relative high degrees of consensus between US and Latin American elites, centered on anti-communism, though with divergences over the direction of economic policy. Later decades of the Cold War saw higher levels of violence in conflicts with overlapping local, US-Latin American, and global Cold War dimensions,[7] referred to by historian Tanya Harmer as the "inter-American Cold War."[8] The turn of Castro's revolution in Cuba after 1959 toward Soviet communism alienated Cuba from the United States, though reactions to the revolution varied considerably across Latin America.[9] An attempted invasion failed and at the peak of the Cold War in 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis threatened major war as the Soviet Union installed nuclear weapons in Cuba to defend it from an American invasion. The crisis also shook the domestic politics of Latin American countries, where governments initially exhibited little sympathy for Cuba.[10] There was no invasion, but the United States imposed an economic boycott on Cuba that remains in effect, as well as a broke off diplomatic relations, that lasted until 2015. The US also saw the rise of left-wing governments in central America as a threat and, in some cases, overthrew democratically elected governments perceived at the time as becoming left-wing or unfriendly to U.S. interests.[11] Examples include the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état, the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, the 1973 Chilean coup d'état and the support of the Contra rebels in Nicaragua. After 1960, Latin America increasingly supplied illegal drugs, especially marijuana and cocaine to the rich American market. One consequence was the growth of violent drug gangs in Mexico and other parts of Central America attempting to control the drug supply. In the 1970s and 1980s, the United States gave strong support to violent anti-Communist forces in Latin America.[12] The fall of Soviet Communism in 1989–92 largely ended the communist threat. The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in 1994 and dramatically increased the volume of trade among Mexico, the United States and Canada. In the Post-Cold War period, Pastor and Long noted, "democracy and free trade seemed to have consolidated, and it looked as though the United States had found an exit from the whirlpool. But as the first decade of this century concludes, that prediction seems premature. Democracy is again endangered, free trade has stalled and threatens to go into reverse, and the exit from the whirlpool is not as clearly marked."[13]

Street art in Venezuela, depicting Uncle Sam and accusing the U.S. government of imperialism

In the early 21st century, several left-wing parties gained power through elections in Latin America during a period known as the pink tide. Venezuela under the late Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro has been particularly critical of U.S. foreign policy; Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador currently have governments sometimes seen as aligned with Venezuela, while Cuba and the U.S. continue to have non-existent relations. Left-wing governments in nations such as Brazil, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay during this period were considerably more centrist and neutral.

During this period, the center-right governments in Argentina, Mexico, Panama, Chile, and Colombia pursued closer relations with the U.S., with Mexico being the U.S.'s largest economic partner in Latin America and its third largest overall trade partner after Canada and China. Through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) signed with Canada and Mexico in 1994, the United States enjoys virtual duty-free trade with Mexico. Since 1994, the United States has signed other notable free-trade agreements with Chile in 2004, Peru in 2007, and most recently Colombia and Panama in 2011. By 2015, relations were tense between United States and Venezuela.

Large-scale immigration from Latin America to the United States grew since the late 20th century. Today approximately 18% of the U.S. population is Latino Americans, totaling more than 50 million people, mostly of Mexican and Central American background. Furthermore, over 10 million illegal immigrants live in the United States, most of them with Latino origins. Many send money back home to family members and contribute considerably to the domestic economies of their countries of origin. Large-scale immigration to the United States came primarily from Mexico. Smaller, though still significant, immigrant populations from Cuba, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala and Colombia exist in the United States.

Most of Latin America is still part of the Organization of American States, and remains bound by the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance also known as the Rio Pact, which provides for hemispheric defense, with the exceptions of Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Mexico and Venezuela, all of which withdrew from the Treaty during the past decade.

In addition, Argentina is a major non-NATO ally of the United States, the result of a policy of reapproachment and market liberalization led by President Carlos Menem during the 1990s which saw the country send troops as part of the coalition in the Gulf War and become one of the world's largest contributors to UN peacekeeping operations. After a period of worsening relations during the late 2000s administration of Cristina Kirchner, the election of centre-right President Mauricio Macri has resulted in renewed interest in both countries to continue improving trade and bilateral relations.[14]

The Great Depression made overseas military expeditions too costly for the U.S. In January 1931, Henry Stimson, then Secretary of State, announced that all U.S. soldiers in Nicaragua would be withdrawn following the 1932 election in the country. The Good Neighbor policy was the foreign policy of newly elected American president Franklin Roosevelt toward the countries of Latin America. The United States wished to improve relations with its Latin American neighbors in a time of increasing international conflict. Giving up unpopular military intervention, the United States implemented its policy of Pan-Americanism to maintain its influence. This policy supported strong domestic leaders, the training of national guards, economic and cultural penetration, Export-Import Bank loans, financial supervision, and political subversion. The Good Neighbor Policy meant that the United States would keep its eye on Latin America in a more peaceful manner. On March 4, 1933, Roosevelt stated during his inaugural address that: "In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others."[50] This position was affirmed by Cordell Hull, Roosevelt's Secretary of State, at a conference of American states in Montevideo in December 1933. Hull endorsed the resolution, "No country has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another."[51] In December 1933 Roosevelt stated, "The definite policy of the United States from now on is one opposed to armed intervention."[52]

President Roosevelt's policy after 1939 was to pay special attention to Latin America, to fend off German influence, to build a united front on behalf of the war effort, and then to win support for the United Nations. Only Brazil contributed significant numbers of men to fight.[53] British intelligence knew about Roosevelt's fears and exploited them in 1941 by producing a fake map that indicated German plans for taking over South America.[54] Roosevelt's appointment of young Nelson Rockefeller to head the new, well-funded Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs provided energetic leadership; in practice Rockefeller reported to Roosevelt and largely ignored the State Department.[55] Anti-fascist propaganda was a major project across Latin America, and was run by Rockefeller's office. It spent millions on radio broadcasts and motion pictures, hoping to reach a large audience. Madison Avenue techniques generated a push back in Mexico, especially, where well-informed locals resisted heavy-handed American influence.[56] Nevertheless, Mexico was a valuable ally in the war. A deal was reached whereby 250,000 Mexican citizens living in the United States served in the American forces; over 1000 were killed in combat.[57] In addition to propaganda, large sums were allocated for economic support and development. On the whole the Roosevelt policy was a political success, except in Argentina, which tolerated German influence, and refused to follow Washington's lead until the war was practically over.[58][59]

Most Latin Americans have seen their neighbor to the north (the United States) growing richer; they have seen the elite elements in their own societies growing richer – but the man in the street or on the land in Latin America today still lives the hand-to-mouth existence of his great, great grandfather... They are less and less happy with situations in which, to cite one example, 40 percent of the land is owned by 1 percent of the people, and in which, typically, a very thin upper crust lives in grandeur while most others live in squalor.

— U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright, in a speech to Congress on United States policy in Latin America[61]

When democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz attempted a modest redistribution of land, he was overthrown in the 1954 CIA Guatemalan coup d'état

It officially started in 1947 with the Truman doctrine theorizing the "containment" policy, the Cold War had important consequences in Latin America. Latin America was considered by the United States to be a full part of the Western Bloc, called "free world", in contrast with the Eastern Bloc, a division born with the end of World War II and the Yalta Conference held in February 1945. It "must be the policy of the United States", Truman declared, "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or outside pressures." Truman rallied to spend $400 million to intervene in the Greek civil war, while the CIA (created by the National Security Act of 1947) intervention in Greece was its first act in its infancy. By aiding Greece, Truman set a precedent for U.S. aid to regimes, no matter how repressive and corrupt, that requested help to fight communists.[62] Washington began to sign a series of defense treaties with countries all over the world, including the North Atlantic Treaty of 1949, which created NATO, and the ANZUS in 1951 with Australia and New Zealand. Moscow responded to NATO and to the Marshall Plan in Europe with a plan which included the creation of the COMECON economic treaty and the Warsaw Pact defense alliance, as well as gathering Eastern Europe countries which had fallen under its sphere of influence. After the Berlin Blockade by the Soviet Union, the Korean War (1950–53) was one of the first conflicts of the Cold War, while the US succeeded France in the counter-revolutionary war against Viet-minh in Indochina.

In Latin America itself, the US defense treaty was the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (aka Rio Treaty or TIAR) of 1947, known as the "hemispheric defense" treaty. It was the formalization of the Act of Chapultepec, adopted at the Inter-American Conference on the Problems of War and Peace in 1945 in Mexico City. The U.S. had maintained a hemispheric defense policy under the Monroe doctrine and, during the 1930s, had been alarmed by Axis overtures toward military cooperation with Latin American governments, in particular apparent strategic threats against the Panama Canal. During the war, Washington had been able to secure Allied support from all individual governments except Uruguay, which remained neutral, and wished to make those commitments permanent. With the exceptions of Trinidad and Tobago (1967), Belize (1981) and the Bahamas (1982), no countries that became independent after 1947 have joined the treaty.

In April 1948, the Organization of American States (OAS) was created during the Ninth International Conference of American States held in Bogotá and led by U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall. Member states pledged to fight communism on the American continent. Twenty-one American countries signed the Charter of the Organization of American States on April 30, 1948.

Operation PBSuccess, which overthrew the democratically elected president of Guatemala, (Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán) in 1954, was to be one of the first in a long series of US interventions in Latin America during the Cold War. It immediately followed the 1953 overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh.

Background: Arbenz pursued an ambitious social program that focused on income distribution and economic nationalism. President Arbenz created the first income tax in Guatemala and tried to break monopolies by creating governmental competition. This included agrarian land reform, which meant expropriating over 400,000 acres of land from the United Fruit Company (A US-based, banana production firm). The Guatemalan government determined that the lands had a monetary value of $1,185,000, while the United Fruit Company protested, claiming that the lands' true value was $19,355,000. The central disagreement came from the fact that the Guatemalan government did not place much value on the lands because they were not immediately being used for production. The United Fruit Company countered by arguing that they needed extra acres to avoid soil exhaustion, and to keep the plantations separated to avoid dissemination of plant disease. This conflict led to increasing tensions and arguments between President Arbenz, the United Fruit Company and the US State Department. In the end, the Eisenhower administration responded by approving a secret operation to overthrow Arbenz using some Guatemalan rebel forces stationed in Honduras. Part of the rationale for this measure was that the administration had come to view Arbenz as a communist threat. As would later be the case in conflicts with Cuba, Nicaragua, and other Latin American nations, the potential threat of lurking Communism was more than enough justification for intervention. Ultimately, the rebel forces removed Arbenz from power, nullified his reforms, and United Fruit got their expropriated lands back.[63]

Also, the Inter-American Development Bank was established in 1959.

In June 1960 the Organization of American States' Human Rights Commission issued a scathing report on violations in the Dominican Republic. Supported by the U.S. State Department, the commission accused the dictator Rafael Trujillo of flagrant and numerous violations of human rights against the citizens of the Dominican Republic. Trujillo retaliated against the chief proponent of the report, Venezuelan President Romulo Betancourt, by actively supporting an assassination attempt. The plot failed and Trujillo's involvement in the conspiracy became public in a report by the OAS Council's (the organization's general assembly) investigating committee. Composed of representatives from the United States, Argentina, Mexico, Panama, and Uruguay, the committee verified Dominican complicity and placed responsibility on "high officials" within the government. Responding to a Venezuelan call for collective action, on August 20, 1960, the OAS Council passed a resolution invoking diplomatic and economic sanctions against the Trujillo government. The resolution, passed fourteen to one (the Dominican Republic dissented while Brazil, Argentina, Guatemala, Haiti, Paraguay, and Uruguay abstained), marked the first time that the organization had taken such actions against a member nation. As a show of support, President Dwight D. Eisenhower suspended all economic and diplomatic relations with the Dominican Republic.

Trujillo was assassinated on May 31, 1961, by a small band of conspirators led by Antonio de la Maza and Antonio Imbert Barrera. The coup attempt that followed failed to seize power and all of the conspirators except Imbert were found and executed by Ramfis Trujillo, the dictator's son, who remained in de facto control of the government for the next six months through his position as commander of the armed forces. Trujillo's brothers, Hector Bienvenido and Jose Arismendi Trujillo, returned to the country and began immediately to plot against President Balaguer. On November 18, 1961, as a planned coup became more evident, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk issued a warning that the United States would not "remain idle" if the Trujillos attempted to "reassert dictatorial domination" over the Dominican Republic. Following this warning, and the arrival of a fourteen-vessel U.S. naval task force within sight of Santo Domingo, Ramfis and his uncles fled the country on November 19 with $200 million from the Dominican treasury.

Fidel Castro during a visit to Washington, D.C., shortly after the Cuban Revolution in 1959

The 1959 Cuban Revolution, headed by Fidel Castro, was one of the first defeats of the US foreign policy in Latin America. In 1961, Cuba became a member of the newly created Non-Aligned Movement, which succeeded the 1955 Bandung Conference. After the implementation of several economic reforms, including complete nationalizations by Cuba's government, US trade restrictions on Cuba increased. The U.S. halted Cuban sugar imports, on which Cuba's economy depended the most. Additionally, the U.S. refused to supply its former trading partner with much needed oil, creating a devastating effect on the island's economy. In March 1960, tensions increased when the freighter La Coubre exploded in Havana harbor, killing over 75 people. Fidel Castro blamed the United States and compared the incident to the 1898 sinking of the USS Maine, which had precipitated the Spanish–American War; he could provide no evidence for his accusation.[64] That same month, President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the CIA to organize, train and equip Cuban refugees as a guerrilla force to overthrow Castro, which would lead to the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion authorized by president John F. Kennedy.[65]

Every time the Cuban government nationalized US properties, the US government took countermeasures, resulting in the prohibition of all exports to Cuba on October 19, 1960. Consequently, Cuba began to consolidate trade relations with the Soviet Union, leading the US to break off all remaining official diplomatic relations. Later that year, U.S. diplomats Edwin L. Sweet and Wiliam G. Friedman were arrested and expelled from the island, having been charged with "encouraging terrorist acts, granting asylum, financing subversive publications and smuggling weapons". The U.S. began the formulation of new plans aimed at destabilizing the Cuban government, collectively known as "The Cuban Project" (aka Operation Mongoose). This was to be a co-ordinated program of political, psychological and military sabotage, involving intelligence operations as well as assassination attempts on key political leaders. The Cuban project also proposed false flag attacks, known as Operation Northwoods. A U.S. Senate Select Intelligence Committee report later confirmed over eight attempted plots to kill Castro between 1960 and 1965, as well as additional plans against other Cuban leaders.[67]

Besides this aggressive policy towards Cuba, John F. Kennedy tried to implement the Alliance for Progress, an economic aid program which proved to be too shy signed at an inter-American conference at Punta del Este, Uruguay, in August 1961.

Romulo Betancourt's inaugural address in 1959

In Venezuela, president Rómulo Betancourt faced determined opposition from extremists and rebellious army units, yet he continued to push for economic and educational reform. A fraction split from the government party, Democratic Action, and formed the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR). Leftists were involved in unsuccessful revolts at military bases during El Barcelonazo, El Carupanazo, El Porteñazo). Elements of the left parties then formed the Armed Forces for National Liberation (FALN), a communist guerrilla army, to overthrow the democratic Betancourt administration. This drove the leftists underground, where they engaged in rural and urban guerrilla activities, including sabotaging oil pipelines, bombing a Sears Roebuck warehouse, kidnapping American colonel Michael Smolen, seizing soccer star Alfredo Di Stefano, and bombing the United States Embassy in Caracas. FALN failed to rally the rural poor and to disrupt the 1963 presidential elections.

After numerous attacks, the MIR and Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) members of Congress were finally arrested. It became clear that Fidel Castro had been arming the rebels, so Venezuela protested to the Organization of American States (OAS). At the same time, the U.S. suspended economic and/or broke off diplomatic relations with several dictatorships between 1961 and JFK's assassination in 1963, including Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras and Peru. However, these suspensions were imposed only temporarily, for periods of only three weeks to six months. However, the US finally decided it best to train Latin American militaries in counter-insurgency tactics at the School of the Americas. In effect, the Alliance for Progress included U.S. programs of military and police assistance to counter Communism, including Plan LAZO in Colombia from 1959 to 1964.

The nuclear arms race brought the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear war. In 1962, President John F. Kennedy responded to the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba with a naval blockade—a show of force that brought the world close to nuclear war.[68] The Cuban Missile Crisis showed that neither superpower was ready to use nuclear weapons for fear of the other's retaliation, and thus of mutually assured destruction. The aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis led to the first efforts toward nuclear disarmament and improving relations. (Palmowski)

A Marine heavy machine gunner monitors a position along the international neutral corridor in Santo Domingo, 1965.

Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet shaking hands with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1976

During the 1970s the US worked to stop the spread of what it called "Communist subversives", leading to them support right-wing governments. They also supported Augusto Pinochet's 1973 Chilean coup against democratically elected Salvador Allende. By the end of the 1970s, much of South America was ruled by military dictatorships, called juntas. In Paraguay, Alfredo Stroessner had been in power since 1954; in Brazil, left-wing President João Goulart was overthrown by a military coup in 1964 with the assistance of the US in what was known as Operation Brother Sam; in Bolivia, General Hugo Banzer overthrew leftist General Juan José Torres in 1971; in Uruguay, considered the "Switzerland" of South America, Juan María Bordaberry seized power in the June 27, 1973, coup. In Peru, leftist General Velasco Alvarado in power since 1968, planned to use the recently empowered Peruvian military to overwhelm Chilean armed forces in a planned invasion of Pinochetist Chile. Starting in 1975, a "Dirty War" was waged all over the subcontinent, called Operation Condor, an agreement between security services of the Southern Cone and other South American countries to repress and assassinate exiled political opponents, which was backed by the CIA.[12] The armed forces also took power in Argentina in 1976,[71] and then supported the 1980 "Cocaine Coup" of Luis García Meza Tejada in Bolivia, before training the "Contras" in Nicaragua, where the Sandinista National Liberation Front, headed by Daniel Ortega, had taken power in 1979, as well as militaries in Guatemala and in El Salvador. The US heavily supported right-wing governments during the Salvadoran Civil War, and Guatemalan Civil Wars that ended in the 1990s.[72]

With the election of President Jimmy Carter in 1977, the US moderated for a short time its support to authoritarian regimes in Latin America. It was during that year that the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, an agency of the OAS, was created. At the same time, voices in the US began to denounce Pinochet's violation of human rights, in particular after the 1976 assassination of former Chilean minister Orlando Letelier in Washington D.C.

The inauguration of Ronald Reagan in 1981 meant a renewed support for right-wing authoritarian regimes in Latin America. In the 1980s, the situation progressively evolved in the world as in South America, despite a renewal of the Cold War from 1979 to 1985, the year during which Mikhail Gorbachev replaced Konstantin Chernenko as leader of the USSR, and began to implement the glasnost and the perestroika democratic-inspired reforms. South America saw various states returning progressively to democracy. This democratization of South America found a symbol in the OAS' adoption of Resolution 1080 in 1991, which requires the Secretary General to convene the Permanent Council within ten days of a coup d'état in any member country. However, at the same time, Washington started to aggressively pursue the "War on Drugs", which included the invasion of Panama in 1989 to overthrow Manuel Noriega, who had been a long-time ally of the US and had even worked for the CIA before his reign as leader of the country. The "War on Drugs" was later expanded through Plan Colombia in the late 1990s and the Mérida Initiative in Mexico and Central America.

In the 1982 Falklands War between Argentina and the United Kingdom, two close American allies engaged in a military conflict with each other. While the United States was officially neutral in the conflict, allegations that Reagan provided intelligence to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher during the war had a key role in the change of relations between Washington and Buenos Aires, as the military government had been actively helping Reagan. The Argentine intelligence service was training and arming the Nicaraguan Contras against the Sandinista government (Operation Charly). The 601 Intelligence Battalion, for example, trained Contras at Lepaterique base in Honduras, under the supervision of US ambassador John Negroponte. While the U.S. was fighting against Nicaragua, leading to the 1986 Nicaragua v. United States case before the International Court of Justice, the U.S. supported authoritarian regimes in Guatemala and Salvador. The support to General Ríos Montt during the Guatemalan Civil War and the alliance with José Napoleón Duarte during the Salvadoran Civil War were legitimized by the Reagan administration as part of the Cold War, although other allies strongly criticized this assistance to dictatorships (for instance in the French Socialist Party's 110 Propositions).

Due to the covert U.S. support allegedly given, without mediation, to the United Kingdom during the Falklands War in 1982, a deep weakening of hemispheric relations occurred. In Brazil, this was taken by the academic establishment as a clear example of how the Hemispheric relations worked, leading to new perspectives in matters of foreign policy and international relations by the Brazilian establishment. Some of these academics, in fact, argue that this definitively turned the TIAR into a dead letter,[73] and the Mexican government withdrew from the treaty in 2001 citing the Falklands example, though notably Argentina itself is still a TIAR member.

United States invasion of Panama in December 1989

In 2001, the United States invoked the Rio Treaty (TIAR) after the September 11 attacks, but only a few Latin American democracies would join the Coalition of the Willing during the 2003 Iraq War.

On the economic plane, hardly affected by the 1973 oil crisis, the refusal of Mexico in 1983 to pay the interest of its debt led to the Latin American debt crisis and subsequently to a shift from the Import substitution industrialization policies followed by most countries to export-oriented industrialization, which was encouraged by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank and the World Trade Organization (WTO). While globalization was making its effects felt in the whole world, the 1990s were dominated by the Washington Consensus, which imposed a series of neo-liberal economic reforms in Latin America. The First Summit of the Americas, held in Miami in 1994, resolved to establish a Free Trade Area of the Americas (ALCA, Área de Libre Comercio de las Américas) by 2005. The ALCA was supposed to be the generalization of the North American Free Trade Agreement between Canada, the US and Mexico, which came into force in 1994. Opposition to both NAFTA and ALCA was symbolized during this time by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation insurrection, headed by Subcomandante Marcos, which became active on the day that NAFTA went into force (January 1, 1994) and declared itself to be in explicit opposition to the ideology of globalization or neoliberalism, which NAFTA symbolized.

Chávez visiting the USS Yorktown, a US Navy ship docked at Curaçao in the Netherlands Antilles, in 2002

The political context evolved again in the 2000s, with the election in several South American countries of socialist governments.[74][75][76][77][78][79][80][81] This "pink tide" thus saw the successive elections of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela (1998), Lula in Brazil (2002), Néstor Kirchner in Argentina (2003), Tabaré Vázquez in Uruguay (2004), Evo Morales in Bolivia (2005), Michelle Bachelet in Chile (2006), Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua (2006), Rafael Correa in Ecuador (2006), Fernando Lugo in Paraguay (2008), José Mujica in Uruguay (2009), Ollanta Humala in Peru (2011), Luis Guillermo Solís in Costa Rica (2014), Salvador Sánchez Cerén in El Salvador (2014), and Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico (2018). Although these leaders vary in their policies and attitude towards both Washington, D.C. and neoliberalism, while the states they govern also have different agendas and long-term historic tendencies, which can lead to rivalry and open contempt between themselves, they seem to have agreed on refusing the ALCA and on following a regional integration without the United States' overseeing the process.[82] In particular, Chávez and Morales seem more disposed to ally together, while Kirchner and Lula, who has been criticized by the left-wing in Brazil, including by the Movimento dos Sem Terra (MST) landless peasants movement (who, however, did call to vote for him on his second term[83][84]), are seen as more centered. The state of Bolivia also has seen some friction with Brazil, as well as Chile. Nouriel Roubini, professor of economics at New York University, said in a May 2006 interview: "On one side, you have a number of administrations that are committed to moderate economic reform. On the other, you've had something of a backlash against the Washington Consensus [a set of liberal economic policies that Washington-based institutions urged Latin American countries to follow, including privatization, trade liberalization and fiscal discipline] and some emergence of populist leaders."[85] In the same way, although a leader such as Chávez verbally attacked the George W. Bush administration as much as the latter attacked him, and claimed to be following a democratic socialist Bolivarian Revolution, the geo-political context has changed a lot since the 1970s. Larry Birns, director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, thus stated:

La Paz has found itself at the economic and political nexus of the pink tide, linked by ideology to Caracas, but economically bound to Brasilia and Buenos Aires. One thing that Morales knew, however, was that he couldn't repudiate his campaign pledges to the electorate or deprive Bolivia of the revenue that is so urgently needed.[82]

One sign of the US setback in the region was the OEA 2005 Secretary General election. For the first time in the OEA's history, Washington's candidate was refused by the majority of countries, after two stalemates between José Miguel Insulza, member of the Socialist Party of Chile and former Interior Minister of the latter country, and Luis Ernesto Derbez, member of the conservative National Action Party (PAN) and former Foreign Minister of Mexico. Derbez was explicitly supported by the US, Canada, Mexico, Belize, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Bolivia (then presided by Carlos Mesa), Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, while Chilean minister José Insulza was supported by all the Southern Cone countries, as well as Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela and the Dominican Republic. José Insulza was finally elected at the third turn, and took office on May 26, 2005

Free trade and other regional integration

Momentum for the Free Trade Area of the Americas (ALCA) was lost after the 2005 Mar del Plata Summit of the Americas, which saw strong protests against the proposal from members of the Anti-Globalization Movement from across the continent, however free trade agreements were not abandoned. Regional economic integration under the sign of neoliberalism continued: Under the Bush administration, the United States, which had signed two free-trade agreements with Latin American countries, signed eight further agreements, reaching a total of ten such bilateral agreements (including the United States-Chile Free Trade Agreement in 2003, the Colombia Trade Promotion Agreement in 2006, etc.). Three others, including the Peru-United States Free Trade Agreement signed in 2006, are awaiting for ratification by the US Congress.[86]

The Cuzco Declaration, signed a few weeks before at the Third South American Summit, announced the foundation of the Union of South American Nations (Unasul-Unasur) grouping Mercosul countries and the Andean Community and which as the aim of eliminating tariffs for non-sensitive products by 2014 and sensitive products by 2019. On the other hand, the CAFTA-DR free-trade agreement (Dominican Republic–Central America Free Trade Agreement) was ratified by all countries except Costa Rica. The president of the latter country, Óscar Arias, member of the National Liberation Party and elected in February 2006, pronounced himself in favor of the agreement. Costa Rica then held a national referendum in which the population voted to approve CAFTA, which was then done by the parliament. Canada, which also has a free-trade agreement with Costa Rica, has also been negotiating such an agreement with Central American country, named Canada Central American Free Trade Agreement.

Reformist Luis Guillermo Solís of the Citizens Action Party was elected in 2014. Solís belongs to a moderate Progressive party and had no link with the far-left, and also kept a friendly relationship with the USA, nevertheless his victory was also attributed to a general contempt toward Washington-endorsed neoliberal policies (Solís, for example, was a staunch opponent of CAFTA). During his presidency Solís established close relationships with some Progressive governments of South America, to the point of leaving the United Nations' chambers during Michel Temer's speech in protest for Rousseff's impeachment in September 2016.[87] On the other hand, the Costa Rican Foreign Ministry has condemned Venezuela's government accusing it of being authoritarian and anti-democratic.[88][89][90]

U.S. President Donald Trump with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro in June 2019

Mercosur, the trade agreement between Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay (with Venezuela currently suspended) is also in negotiations to sign a wider free-trade agreement with the European Union, following the signing of similar agreements with the Andean Community, Israel[91] and Egypt[92] in August 2010, among others. These negotiations between Mercosur and the EU are advancing rapidly again after stalling during the 2000s.[93]

On the other hand, a number of Latin American countries located in the Pacific such as Chile, Mexico and Peru have signed the Trans-Pacific Partnership with Australia, Brunei, Canada, Japan, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore and Vietnam. The agreement, originally signed on February 4, 2016, is being renegotiated after the United States withdrew.[94] The eleven remaining members reached a partial agreement on November 11, 2017.[95]

The ALBA

Main article: Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas

Manuel Santos, Hillary Clinton, Sebastián Piñera and Hugo Chávez meeting on January 1, 2011, Brasília

In reply to the ALCA, Chavez initiated the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA). Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia signed the TCP (or People's Trade Agreement), while Venezuela, a main productor of natural gas and of petroleum (it is member of the OPEC) has signed treaties with Nicaragua, where Daniel Ortega, former leader of the Sandinistas, was elected in 2006 – Ortega, however, cut down his anti-imperialist and socialist discourse, and is hotly controversial; both on the right-wing and on the left-wing. Chávez also implemented the Petrocaribe alliance, signed by 12 of the 15 members of the Caribbean Community in 2005. When Hurricane Katrina ravaged Florida and Louisiana, Chávez, who called the "Yanqui Empire" a "paper tiger", even ironically proposed to provide "oil-for-the-poor" to the US after Hurricane Katrina the same year, through Citgo, a subsidiary of PDVSA the state-owned Venezuelan petroleum company, which has 14,000 gas stations and owns eight oil refineries in the US.[98][99]

Bolivia's nationalization of natural resources

Further information: History of Bolivia

2003 Poster for a photo exhibition of the Bolivian Gas War, which lead to the resignation of president Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada and the subsequent election of Evo Morales.

The struggle for natural resources and the US defense of its commercial interests has not ceased since the zenith period of the banana republics supported by the US. The general context has changed significantly and each country's approach has evolved accordingly. Thus, the Bolivian Gas War in 2003–04 was sparked after projects by the Pacific LNG consortium to export natural gas – Bolivia possessing the second largest natural gas reserves in South America after Venezuela – to California (Baja California and US California) via Chile, resented in Bolivia since the War of the Pacific (1879–1884) which deprived it of an access to the Pacific Ocean. The ALCA was also opposed during the demonstrations, headed by the Bolivian Workers' Center and Felipe Quispe's Indigenous Pachakuti Movement (MIP).

A proof of the new geopolitical context can be seen in Evo Morales' announcement, in concordance with his electoral promises, of the nationalization of gas reserves, the second highest in South America after Venezuela. First of all, he carefully warned that they would not take the form of expropriations or confiscations, maybe fearing a violent response. The nationalizations, which, according to Vice President Álvaro García, are supposed to make the government's energy-related revenue jump to $780 million in the following year, expanding nearly sixfold from 2002,[103] led to criticisms from Brazil, which Petrobras company is one of the largest foreign investors in Bolivia, controlling 14 percent of the country's gas reserves.[104] Bolivia is one of the poorest countries in South America and was heavily affected by protests in the 1980s–90s, largely due to the shock therapy enforced by previous governments,[82] and also by resentment concerning the coca eradication program – coca is a traditional plant for the Native Quechua and Aymara people, who use it for therapeutical (against altitude sickness) and cultural purposes. Thus, Brazil's Energy Minister, Silas Rondeau, reacted to Morales' announcement by condemning the move as "unfriendly."[105] According to Reuters, "Bolivia's actions echo what Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, possibly Morales' biggest ally, did in the world's fifth-largest oil exporter with forced contract migrations and retroactive tax hikes – conditions that major oil companies largely agreed to accept." The Bolivian gas company YPFB, privatized by former President Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada, was to pay foreign companies for their services, offering about 50 percent of the value of production, although the decree indicated that companies exploiting the country's two largest gas fields would get just 18 percent. After initially hostile reactions, Repsol "expressed its willingness to cooperate with the Bolivian government," while Petrobras retreated its call to cancel new investment in Bolivia.[82] However, still according to Larry Birns, "The nationalization's high media profile could force the [US] State Department to take a tough approach to the region, even to the point of mobilizing the CIA and the U.S. military, but it is more likely to work its way by undermining the all-important chink in the armor – the Latin American armed forces."[82]

In a review of 341 published academic books and articles on US-Latin America relations, Bertucci noted that the subject appears and combined a number of academic disciplines, including history, political science, international relations, and economics. Descriptive and normative research is prevalent, and that in works published through 2008, explicit theory-building and hypothesis-testing was limited. That work reviewed showed a prevalence of foreign policy analysis, especially of US foreign policy, with more limited attention to non-state actors and multilateralism.[106] In her study of International Relations as studied and taught within Latin America, Tickner notes that US IR sources remain dominant in the teaching of IR, but that in research, these theories are commonly adapted and reinterpreted in a "Latin American hybrid." She notes the presence of original concepts and emphases; some of these emerge from dependency theory and explore autonomy and international insertion.[107]

There are two broad schools of thought on Latin America–United States relations:[108][109]

• The "establishment" school which sees US policy towards Latin America as an attempt to exclude extraterritorial rivals from the hemisphere as a way to defend the United States. This grouping of scholars generally sees the US presence in Latin America as beneficial for the region, as it has made warfare rare, led to the creation of multilateral institutions in the region and promoted democracy.
• The "revisionist synthesis" school of scholarship that emerged during the 1980s and 1990s and saw US policy towards Latin America as imperial. This grouping of scholars emphasizes the role of US business and government elites in shaping a foreign policy to economically dominate Latin America. More recently, scholars have expanded the use of Latin American archives and sources, providing greater attention to Latin American agency. Previously, empirical knowledge about Latin American policymaking had been limited by uneven access to archives in the region, which has generally improved in recent years. "As a result, scholars spent time looking under the lamppost of U.S. foreign policy to locate problems in inter-American relations."[110] The more recent "internationalist" approach first emerged largely in history and has expanded to political science and International Relations. Darnton has referred to work by Harmer, Keller, and others as an explicit attempt to "decenter" the study of US-Latin American relations away from a previous focus on US policymaking.[111] These changes also reflected contemporary shifts in international relations in the Americas, namely the rise of "post-hegemonic" groupings and the salience of China as an outside economic option for many South American countries.[112]

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