The United States are not the problem solvers

The United States is perceived to have taken the role as the savior for many Latin American countries. After looking into the actions they have taken over the past century, it seems that the United States has actually caused of many of these problems. The acts taken in the attempt to stop the difficulties of Latin America often created larger issues and seem to only be carried out in the interests of the United States.

In this weeks reading assignment from the text book, Democracy in Latin America, it was clear that during the periods of the cold war, the debt crisis and the drug wars the United States came to the aid of Latin American countries only to protect the interests of the United States. An instance of the US assisting only in its own self-interest can be seen in the section of this chapter, Displacing Inconvenient Democracies. The policy of containment lead to the United States playing a role in over throwing the more liberal governments and the implementing right wing government in their place. In the case of Chile the democratically elected leader was over thrown by a military coup, aided by the US, and replaced with Augusto Pinochet, a military leader who was later brought up on a series of charges of crimes against humanity he committed during his time in office. The United States attacked a democratic electoral system, going against one of the main values that the country holds so dearly. The citizens of Chile elected Salvador Allende in a free and fair election, which shows that the citizens of Chile truly agreed with his policies and wanted them implemented. This was not an attempt to help Chile but to appease the United States’ over arching fear of communism, which blatantly showed that their needs to ward off the possibility of communism were greater than the needs of Chilean citizens.

It is not only clear that the United States needed a social and economic foothold in Latin American countries, as mentioned in the textbook, but a military one also. This same theme in the textbook was also displayed in the book The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas, specifically in the chapter The Military, Political Violence and Impunity. In this text it was clear that the United States had a hand in creating these militaristic governments for its own agenda. The US did this by providing the training schools, which many of the aggressive military leaders in Latin America attended. The United States was in essence creating these violent military coups. According to this reading the United States held training activities through the School of Americas and helped these countries maintain the latest high tech weaponry in the name of fighting off communism. These skills were not only used to the aid of the US against communism but also used to impose military power over the country. In this case the United States used the military for its own purposes with communism, although it came with the price of vicious military coups that violated the human rights of many. Essentially the US created the problems many Latin American countries faced with these oppressive military coups.

In both readings the theme of the United States acting in its own self-interests is present. The textbook provides the example of the US assisting in over throwing a democratically elected leader in order to prevent a possible communist threat at the expense of lives and violations of natural rights. The book, The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas demonstrates instances in which the United States used the School of the Americas to create train military personnel for their own goal of fighting off communism. It was these militaries that brutally went against their constituents, which the United States did not intervene with because their needs were still being met. The US has played a hand in causing many of the problems that Latin American countries have had and continue to face today.

Work Cited

†Gill, L. (2004). The School of the Americas: Military Training and Political Violence in the Americas, chapter Introduction: The Military, Political Violence, and Impunity, pages 1–22. Duke University Press

Smith, Peter H. and Cameron Sells. Democracy in Latin America, 3rd ed. Cam- bridge University Press: New York, NY. ISBN: 9780190611347