Hooray!
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This is a great book about U.S. involvement in Central America that starts with the Monroe Doctrine and goes through to today. Interesting, coherent, and with lots of interesting quotes, it provides a great beginning to learning more about this area.
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A sordid history of US involvement in Central America.
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In Inevitable Revolutions, Walter LaFeber paints a thorough picture of United States involvement in Central America. It is a sordid picture. Tracing back to the mid-19th century, LaFeber pinpoints the moments when the U. S. government began carving out its sphere of influence in this poor region. He comprehensively brings his analysis into the 20th century with corporations such as United Fruit and the continuing utilization and expansion of the Monroe Doctrine. This concept was continually shaped in so many various ways that it became unrecognizable from its original form. Of course the dominating force in Central America in the middle and later parts of this century was anti-communism. LaFeber justly attacks characters such as the Dulles brothers, who selfishly pursued their own agenda at the expense of the people in the region. Support for dictators and military-oligarchial complexes play a major part of this century's troubles in Central America. The Somozas in Nicaragua benefitted from their close relationships with US lawmakers and politicians. Somoza (all three of them) made our politicians feel comfortable, they spoke English, and they went to our universities, they also carefully guarded our institutions and corporations. This is really a sad history, the bottom line is that scores of people in these countries never benefitted from the US-Central American relationship. The Reagan era proved to be worse than any other eras, the revolutions and their after effects finally came to fruition. LaFeber shows that if the Reagan administration had not looked to Central America as a zealot's playground, there could have been measurable progress. A sordid tale, indeed.
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