Brings together the most important documents on the history of the relationship between the United States and Latin America from the nineteenth century to the present. This second edition features updated selections on current trends, including key new documents on immigration, regional integration, indigenous political movements, democratization, and economic policy.

Latin America and the United States: A Documentary History brings together the most important documents on the history of the relationship between the United States and Latin America from the nineteenth century to the present. In addition to the standard diplomatic sources, the book includesdocuments touching on the transnational concerns that are increasingly taught in the classroom, including economic relations, environmental matters, immigration, human rights, and culture. Among the less frequently cited works reproduced here are Domingo Sarmiento's nineteenth-century reflection onlife in the United States, the Andrews Sisters' 1944 hit song, "Ru and Coca Cola," Jack Kerouac's beatnik observations on Mexico, the U.S. Senate's investigation of CIA assassination plots, and the World Court decision condemning the Reagan administration's Nicaragua policy. The collectionilluminates key issues while representing a variety of interests and views as they have both persisted and shifte over time, including often-overlooked Latin American perspectives and U.S. public opinion.A special feature of this book is the extensive introductions highlighting the historical context and significance of each of the 124 documents. A detailed index provides the thematic and national cross-referencing that both students and instructors will appreciate. Latin America and the UnitedStates: A Documentary History is an ideal text for undergraduate and graduate courses in Latin American history as well as in U.S.-Latin America relations. In addition, it serves as a unique reference tool for foreign policy professionals, international law specialists, journalists, and scholars ina variety of disciplines.

In this sweeping history of United States policy toward Latin America, Lars Schoultz shows that the United States has always perceived Latin America as a fundamentally inferior neighbor, unable to manage its affairs and stubbornly underdeveloped. This perception of inferiority was apparent from the beginning. John Quincy Adams, who first established diplomatic relations with Latin America, believed that Hispanics were "lazy, dirty, nasty...a parcel of hogs." In the early nineteenth century, ex-President John Adams declared that any effort to implant democracy in Latin America was "as absurd as similar plans would be to establish democracies among the birds, beasts, and fishes." Drawing on extraordinarily rich archival sources, Schoultz, one of the country's foremost Latin America scholars, shows how these core beliefs have not changed for two centuries. We have combined self-interest with a "civilizing mission"--a self-abnegating effort by a superior people to help a substandard civilization overcome its defects. William Howard Taft felt the way to accomplish this task was "to knock their heads together until they should maintain peace," while in 1959 CIA Director Allen Dulles warned that "the new Cuban officials had to be treated more or less like children." Schoultz shows that the policies pursued reflected these deeply held convictions. While political correctness censors the expression of such sentiments today, the actions of the United States continue to assume the political and cultural inferiority of Latin America. Schoultz demonstrates that not until the United States perceives its southern neighbors as equals can it anticipate a constructive hemispheric alliance.

An accessible course book on U.S.-Latin American relations “Our Hemisphere”? uncovers the range, depth, and veracity of the United States’ relationship with the Americas. Using short historical vignettes, Britta and Russell Crandall chart the course of inter‑American relations from 1776 to the present, highlighting the roles that individuals and groups of soldiers, intellectuals, private citizens, and politicians have had in shaping U.S. policy toward Latin America in the postcolonial, Cold War, and post–Cold War eras. The United States is usually and correctly seen as pursuing a monolithic, hegemonic agenda in Latin America, wielding political, economic, and military muscle to force Latin American countries to do its bidding, but the Crandalls reveal unexpected yet salient regional interactions where Latin Americans have exercised their own power with their northern and very powerful neighbor. Moreover, they show that Washington’s relationship with the region has relied, in addition to the usual heavy‑handedness, on cooperation and mutual respect since the beginning of the relationship.

A Short History of U.S. Interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean presents a concise account of the full sweep of U.S. military invasions and interventions in Central America, South America, and the Caribbean from 1800 up to the present day. Engages in debates about the economic, military, political, and cultural motives that shaped U.S. interventions in Cuba, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Panama, Guatemala, Mexico, and elsewhere Deals with incidents that range from the taking of Florida to the Mexican War, the War of 1898, the Veracruz incident of 1914, the Bay of Pigs, and the 1989 invasion of Panama Features also the responses of Latin American countries to U.S. involvement Features unique coverage of 19th century interventions as well as 20th century incidents, and includes a series of helpful maps and illustrations

Since the early twentieth century, technological transfers from the United States to Latin American countries have involved technologies of violence for social control. As the chapters in this book illustrate, these technological transfers have taken various forms, including the training of Latin American military personnel in surveillance and torture and the provision of political and logistic support for campaigns of state terror. The human cost for Latin America has been enormous—thousands of Latin Americans have been murdered, disappeared, or tortured, and whole communities have been terrorized into silence. Organized by region, the essays in this book address the topic of state-sponsored terrorism in a variety of ways. Most take the perspective that state-directed political violence is a modern development of a regional political structure in which U.S. political interests weigh heavily. Others acknowledge that Latin American states enthusiastically received U.S. support for their campaigns of terror. A few see local culture and history as key factors in the implementation of state campaigns of political violence. Together, all the essays exemplify how technologies of terror have been transferred among various Latin American countries, with particular attention to the role that the United States, as a "strong" state, has played in such transfers.

Recent U.S. military involvement in Central America has sparked heated debate over U.S. policy in the region. To informed observers of U.S.-Latin American relations, however, Washington's actions reflect U.S. regional and global objectives that have evolved in the course of 150 years of U.S. involvement in Latin America. This text provides students