The seed of a United States world order was first planted in the middle of the Western Hemisphere. Long before the advent of nuclear weapons and spaceflight, the topical lands of Latin America beckoned to ambitious Yankee adventurers, entrepreneurs and politicians, who set out on military and commercial expeditions in search of glory and profit. A US world order began to take root in the verdant valleys of Central America and its "banana republics". In the nineteenth century, Central America was a metaphor for the possibilities of American empire. Unable to deal with the products of its own system, the Unite States from Eisenhower on resorted to force. The result has been more revolution. In the twentieth, as war, revolution and counterrevolution spread through El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua, Central America became a metaphor for the American empire's ugliness. In the twenty-first, since the Bush Doctrine, which equated terrorist-financing states with terrorists and approved of preventative war, pre-emptive war, and democracy promotion, no president has announced their own foreign policy doctrine. All three of his successors—Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden—explicitly ran against the Bush Doctrine, but all were ultimately unable to expunge it as none had a clear idea of how to replace it. . In this SDG we will delve into the history of Central America's relationship with the United States; the shortsighted decisions made again and again by US leaders that bring suffering and mayhem to the people in Central America; and the subsequent unleashing of a chaotic torrent of Central Americans immigrating to the US. This SDG is NOT about what to do about immigration, but rather to study the causes of Central American immigration to the US because of American foreign policy decisions.
Week One : Setting up the System between the US, Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala.
LaFeber, Intro through Chapter 1 (80 pages)
Week Two: Maintaining the System of interdependency for raw materials begins to unravel. LaFeber, Chapter 2 (60 pages)
Susanne Jonas, Central America as a Theater of US Cold War Politics, Sage Productions, Latin American Perspectives ,
Summer, 1982, Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 123-128
Week Three: Kennedy and LBJ attempt to update the relationships. LaFeber Chapter 3 (50 pages)
Joseph S. Tulchin, The United States and Latin America in the 1960s, Cambridge University Press, Journal of
Interamerican Studies and World Affairs , Spring, 1988, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Spring, 1988), pp. 1-36
Week Four: Nixon turns his back on Central America; Carter takes a spiritual approach. LaFeber Chapter 4 (70 pages)
Mark T. Berger, The Reconquest of Central America, Sage Publications, Latin American Perspectives , Jan., 1997, Vol. 24,
pp. 7-72
Week Five: Reagan declares: There is no more important place in the world for the US than Central America today. LeFeber Chapter 5 (50 pages)
Kimbra Krueger, Internal Struggle over U.S. Foreign Policy toward Central America: An Analysis of the Reagan Era, Wiley,
Presidential Studies Quarterly , Fall, 1996, Vol. 26, No. 4, pp. 1034-1046
Week Six; The Bush doctrine. LeFeber Chapter 6 (35 pages)
Michael Cox, Imperialism and the Bush Doctrine, Cambridge University Press, Review of International Studies , Oct., 2004,
Vol. 30, No. 4 (Oct., 2004), pp. 585- 608,
Week Seven: Obama, Trump and Biden: who has a policy?
Julia Buxton, Dangerous Complacencies: Obama, Latin America, and the Misconceptions of Power, Forward into History:
Understanding Obama's Latin American Policy, Sage Publications, Latin American Perspectives , July 2011, Vol. 38, No. 4,
pp.14-28; 29-45
Abraham F. Lowenthal, Obama and the Americas: Promise, Disappointment, Opportunity, Council on Foreign Relations
Foreign Affairs , July/August 2010, Vol. 89, No. 4 pp. 110- 124
Carlos Oliva Campos and Gary Prevost, The Trump Administration in Latin America: Continuity and Change, Pluto
Journals, International Journal of Cuban Studies , Vol. 11, No. 1 pp. 13-23
Rafael Castro Alegría, When Tone Is Not Everything: Joe Biden and Latin America, German Institute of Global and Area
Studies (GIGA) (2021)
LaFeber, Walter, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States in Central America, Norton & Co., 1993
PDFs of articles will be provided by Coordinator
Excerpts from Jonathan Blitzer's, Everyone who is Gone is Here, The United States, Central America and Making of a Crisis, Penguin Press, 2024. Hardback is kind of pricey, not available in paperwork, try your library or e-book.