Origins - SJC HISTORY€¦ · Monroe Doctrine 1820 •Much of Latin America becoming independent •U.S. expanding it’s territory to the west •President James Monroe issue a declaration

Origins

Westward Expansion

Monroe Doctrine

1820

Clayton-Bulwer

Treaty 1850

Roosevelts Corollary to the Monroe

Doctrine 1904

Manifest Destiny

U.S. Independence & Westward Expansion

Monroe Doctrine 1820 • Much of Latin America

becoming independent

• U.S. expanding it’s territory to the west

• President James Monroe issue a declaration in a state of the union address declaring that no further European colonization in the Americas!!!

Clayton-Bulwer Treaty 1850• It was negotiated in response to attempts to build the Nicaragua Canal, a canal in

Nicaragua that would connect the Pacific and the Atlantic.

Both

agreed- NO

MILITARY

USE!!!!!!!

Roosevelts Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine 1904

Justification

The Mexican Revolution• eg. Of the “Talk softly and carry a big

stick” at work

US military forces were sent to Mexico

four times between 1913 and 1919.

Dollar Diplomacy – Gunboat Diplomacy

• Dollar Diplomacy = we [U.S.] lend you money for being a “friend” & allow our companies to operate in your country

• Gunboat Diplomacy= we invade you if you can’t pay us back

Society & Politics

• Owned/ Controlled most resources, land & business

• Private neighbourhoods- schools, clinics, restaurants & hotels

• Controlled Local Politicians

• Rural areas- yet restricted access to land

• Urban Areas- lived in barrios

• Driven into poverty- limited access to education

NEOCOLONIALISM

U.S. Support “Friendly”

Dictators- Driven By

Economics

U.S. support dictators during great depression Honduras + El Salvador

Case Study

Social Awakening

After several decades of conflicts between rival factions of the old Liberal and Conservative parties, new political ideologies began to pervade the isthmus during the 1920s and ‘30s. Though these Central American countries were “independent”, the living conditions of the indigenous people had not changed much from their colonial era, in fact one would question whether or not these people were “independent” at all. The growing involvement of the United States in Central America engendered anti-imperialist reactions. U.S. political and military interventions aroused nationalist sentiments, though there were always Central Americans who stood to gain from alliances with the foreign power. Local workers and entrepreneurs resented the influence of the U.S. companies that ran the banana industry and many of the railroads, banks, and public utilities.

The 1920’s and 30’s ushered in a new era of ‘social awakening’ for these people. Being influenced by the philosophies of the Mexican Revolution which broke out in 1910, and having to suffer under the realities of neo-colonialism by the U.S., revolts and revolutions began to break out across Central America. Unfortunately for these people, the U.S. supported the dictators who ran these countries, simply because these dictators were friendly to U.S. businesses in the region. Elections were hopeless for these people in renewing the government or bringing about social reforms, so the only options these people faced was physical rebellion against these U.S. backed dictatorship. Out of these revolutions emerged heroes like Emiliano Zapata and Pancho Villa in Mexico, FarabundoMarti in El Salvador, and Augusto Sandino in Nicaragua. To this day some of the philosophies of these martyrs still encourages unity amongst peasants across the region who still holds true to the fight against U.S. intervention in the region, U.S. support of corrupt governments and also they hold true to the fight for radical social reforms.

Augusto Sandino, Nicaragua andSomoza Dynasty start

Timeline from BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/country_profiles/1225283.stm

1st anti-U.S. movements in Latin America

Sandinistas

An 87-year-old veteran of the first Sandino rebellion stands with an 18-year-old Sandinista guerrilla in Leon, Nicaragua, June 19, 1979.

Founding of the Sandinista National Liberation Front -FLSN

In 1961, the Sandinista National Liberation Front (Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional, or Sandinistas) was founded by Silvio Mayorga, Tomás Borge, and Carlos Fonseca. The group took its name from Augusto Cesár Sandino, who led a Liberal peasant army against the government of U.S.-backed Adolfo Díaz and the subsequent Nicaraguan government in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Inspired by Fidel Castro’s and Che Guevarra’s Cuban Revolution, the group sought to be “a political-military organization whose objective is the seizure of political power through the destruction of the bureaucratic and military apparatus of [Somoza’s] dictatorship.”

According to Dennis Gilbert, the first members of the FSLN were nationalistic students who were outraged at conditions in Nicaragua under Somoza. They were also outraged at the United States over what they saw as consistent U.S. intervention in Nicaraguan affairs. He argues that the Sandinistas’ ideology was rooted in Marxism and in a mistaken reading of Sandino as a pseudo-Marxist. (Sandino himself was a populist who sought Nicaraguan independence from U.S. imperialism. While he sought relief for the poor, he did not advocate for a Marxist class struggle.)

However, the Sandinistas were heavily influenced by Marixst-Leninist teachings, as the party leaders themselves sometimes admitted, but they interpreted these ideas in the context of their view of Nicaragua’s history. Specifically, they thought of themselves as a Leninist vanguard party, a group of “professional revolutionaries” that would unite the Nicaraguan workers and peasants to destroy the “present system of capitalist exploitation and oppression” run by the Somoza dynasty and supported by the United States. After they had rid Nicaragua of those who were resistant to change, the FSLN would lead Nicaragua toward socialism, at least in a broad sense; as Gilbert notes, the Sandinistas did not all agree on what socialism actually meant.

Read more: https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/n-sandinistas.php

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LpEhi9XYllA