Latin America is sometimes referred to as the backyard of the United States, i.e., a dependent periphery where Washington more or less does whatever it wants. This view of this part of the world was already foreshadowed by the Monroe Doctrine, but it began to be fulfilled by the "big stick" policy, i.e., American imperial expansion at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, and was fully realized during the Cold War. With today's aggressive policy towards Panama, Venezuela, and Colombia, Trump is attempting to return to the "big stick."
The reasons behind the Monroe Doctrine
When President James Monroe declared in 1823 that the US would not interfere in European affairs, but at the same time would not tolerate European powers interfering in American affairs, he placed his country in the role of protector of Latin America against European colonialists.
His argument was not only geopolitical but also ideological: Washington was to protect American democracies from European monarchies. However, the main motivation behind his speech was economic: American business needed access to foreign resources and markets and needed to get rid of the obstacles posed by the Spanish Empire and other colonialists. In reality, it was not about protecting the independence of Latin American states or their democracy. And nothing changed in this regard over the next two centuries.
The Mexicans were the first to feel the effects. No sooner had they freed themselves from Spanish rule than their northern neighbors took more than half of their territory in the 1840s. However, the United States still lacked the fleet necessary for further expansion southward. Whenever they attempted to establish a military foothold further from their borders, they came away empty-handed. Either they were not yet a match for the Spanish, or they encountered the British, who, thanks to their global naval power, were economically occupying the space vacated by the Spanish.
The situation changed in the last years of the 19th century, when the US, as the world's strongest economy, also had the military power to bring order to its wider neighborhood. In 1898, they defeated Spain in a short war and deprived it not only of the strategic Caribbean islands of Cuba and Puerto Rico, but also of the Pacific islands of the Philippines and Guam. To secure their sea lanes, they also annexed the previously independent Hawaiian Islands.
The American understanding of "democracy" in their backyard
Washington's local allies quickly discovered what Washington meant by democracy. While they were fighting the Spanish, Washington supported them and assured them that it would recognize their independence. However, as soon as Madrid surrendered, the Americans took over the role of colonial power. In Puerto Rico, they remain to this day, while in Cuba, after a brief occupation, they settled for a military base at Guantanamo, subsequently leaving Cuba with its own government. However, this government operated under a protectorate that guaranteed the interests of American owners of sugar cane and tobacco plantations.
In the early years of the last century, they were unable to agree with Colombia on the terms of leasing the Isthmus of Panama, where they needed to dig a canal to shorten the connection between New York and San Francisco. They organized a rebel group on site, which, under the protection of American gunboats, declared the independent Republic of Panama. The new government of the new republic immediately handed over the requested territory to Washington and concluded a protectorate treaty.
At the same time, President Theodore Roosevelt expanded the Monroe Doctrine to include the right of "police" intervention in the event of unrest anywhere in the Western Hemisphere. Of course, this does not refer to unrest per se, but to situations where someone touches on American interests. And they often resort to this "big stick" policy: in Mexico, Guatemala, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti.
Latin American countries are not just passive puppets
However, shelling from gunboats, naval blockades, and marine landings are just the tip of the iceberg of American power. The policy of force supports the interests of American companies, aided on the ground by local agents and Protestant missionaries, and at home by media campaigns that defend interventions before Congress and public opinion on moral, civilizational, or democratization grounds.
Before World War I, however, the Yankees, as North Americans are nicknamed in the South, only managed to dominate the Caribbean and Central America. In South America, the British remained the decisive force until World War II, with whom the Yankees fought and shared influence.
In Argentina, they were able to reach an agreement, but elsewhere their disputes led to proxy wars over oil-producing territories and oil pipelines: between Bolivia, supported by the US, and Paraguay, encouraged by the British; and between Colombia and the US on one side and Peru, Britain, and Japan on the other. In the 1930s, Germany also strengthened its position in Chile and Argentina at the expense of the Anglo-Saxon powers.
However, Latin American countries were not just passive puppets in the hands of Washington and its competitors. With economic development, their self-confidence grew, as did their unwillingness to suffer American or other interference.
Mexico, which had suffered more than anyone else from the US, distinguished itself most significantly in this way between the wars. It was also the first country in the region to recognize the Soviet Union. However, each potential rebel must carefully consider its resilience to possible economic sanctions from Washington and the influence of Yankee interest groups on the domestic scene.
The American fight against "communists": everything on the contrary
After World War II and with the onset of the Cold War, the Latin American situation became geopolitically simpler. The US became a global economic and military superpower that tolerated no resistance or competition in the Western Hemisphere. However, it also could not tolerate attempts at independent sovereign politics, which inevitably clashed with the interests of local and American big landowners, who were labeled as communists regardless of the facts. The newly established CIA quickly learned to organize coups against anyone who went against American interests.
Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala was the first to feel the effects of this. In 1954, with the help of the CIA, he was overthrown when his social democratic program clashed with the interests of American planters in United Fruits. The American-installed general then led the country into a civil war that lasted until the mid-1990s. This did not bother Washington, as United Fruit's interests were taken care of and the fight against the rebels made every Guatemalan government dependent on the US. Others followed.
In their fight against communism, the Americans supported oligarchs and generals whose regimes committed the worst crimes against those who sought sovereignty and social justice. If Washington were serious about its ideology of freedom and democracy, it would have had to take the opposite side in most of the countries where it intervened. This policy was not limited to the small Central American republics, but also affected the South American giants Brazil and Argentina.
The US drove national leaders into Moscow's arms
There were few real communists and Moscow agents in Latin America. However, US policy often drove local nationalist leaders into Moscow's arms. This was the case with Fidel Castro in Cuba and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Neither of them was a communist, but when the Americans tried to destroy them, they took advantage of Soviet offers. Moscow thus gained geopolitical positions in the middle of America's backyard, and local leaders gained the opportunity to implement part of their program under Soviet protection.
The fact that neither of them was merely a Moscow puppet is evidenced by the fact that Castro's regime survived the collapse of the empire and managed to reform, while Ortega returned to the head of state through democratic means in 2006. The loss of Cuba was particularly painful for the Americans, for economic, strategic, and prestige reasons. However, apart from little Nicaragua, they did not allow anything similar to happen elsewhere. Until the end of the Cold War, they ruled the region with an iron fist.
After the Cold War, Washington loosened its grip on Latin America. Not because it had lost interest in the region, but because it was so confident of its victory and global position that it did not feel the need to intervene more significantly. It took a single strategic step toward Latin America by concluding a free trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. With this agreement, Washington economically tied to itself a country that had tended to distance itself from it.
The advent of a multipolar reality, Chinese, and Cyrillic
However, the US did not face any global rival from which it needed to protect its interests; moreover, it had the impression that it had the world under control. Even if independently minded leaders such as Morales in Bolivia, Lula in Brazil, Chávez in Venezuela, and Correa in Ecuador came to power in Latin American countries, the reality of globalized capitalism, whose rules are written in New York, showed them that they had no alternative. Washington prefers to devote its military and intelligence resources to Islamic radicalism, Iraq, and Afghanistan.
When there was talk at the time of the American base at Guantanamo, it had nothing to do with the Caribbean, where the base is located, but with Middle Eastern Islamists who were tortured there by the CIA. A late fruit of this policy was Obama's normalization of diplomatic relations with Cuba. However, this was not a reconciliation, but an offer to return to an economic reality controlled by the US. At that time, however, little remained of the illusion of a world under control.
In the second decade of our century, a multipolar reality has definitively taken hold, in which the US faces the Chinese economic superpower and the military rivalry of a resurgent Russia. Let us leave aside for now the fact that Washington has been doing everything in its power for the last 20 years, with surprising consistency, to ensure that these two rivals unite against it. The important thing is that the US is finding that Chinese characters are appearing more and more frequently in Latin America. And with its foolish policies, it is clearly asking for signs in Cyrillic.
Trump takes off the gloves
Trump's policy represents a return to Roosevelt's "big stick." He dispenses with talk of freedom and democracy and brutally confronts Latin American countries with American interests. Although he appears aggressive, he is not so much aiming for expansion as for securing a sphere of influence against the backdrop of the rise of new superpowers. It's a bit like when Russia began its military operation in Ukraine.
In the early days, Trump treaded carefully. He tried to corner Mexico over migration, but ultimately reached a decent agreement with President Obrador. He listened to the influential anti-Castro lobby, but only to the extent that he returned to the previous policy of no diplomatic relations and sanctions with Cuba. He also tried to get rid of the inconvenient Venezuelan President Maduro.
In his second term, he is taking off the gloves. He is sending one plane after another to Latin America to deport illegal migrants, eliminating resistance with the threat of punitive tariffs. He threatens the Panamanian government with military intervention if it does not expel Chinese companies from the canal area, sinks Venezuelan and Colombian ships suspected of transporting drugs to the US, and the pressure against Maduro is no longer just diplomatic and propagandistic—a real intervention force is gathering on US ships off the Venezuelan coast.
Unrealistic policy and the rise of "Latinos" in the US
Washington's efforts to secure its sphere of influence are understandable, but rather than being based on realistic grounds, they are driven by Trump's megalomania and lobbying pressure from Florida, which is home to immigrants from Cuba and Venezuela and the home state of Secretary of State Rubio. It is unrealistic in its method, because by shamelessly threatening to use force, the US is turning other countries in the region against it and opening the door to its rivals. Russia has sent two military ships to the Venezuelan coast: if the Americans can support Zelensky, why shouldn't the Russians support Maduro?
It is also unrealistic in its goals, although it is not entirely clear what Washington wants to achieve. However, it cannot expect to ever regain the exclusive position it had in Latin America during the Cold War; it will never have such dominance again.
In a multipolar world, it will have to share its influence with others, as it did in the past. In the first half of the 20th century, these were Britain, Japan, and Germany; in the future, they will be China, India, Russia, and others. Moreover, countries such as Brazil and Argentina are already playing their own global role today, which they did not have a hundred years ago. They themselves will exert influence on the US.
And then there is something that goes beyond geopolitical strategies: the Latinization of the United States itself. Not only are the territories once taken from the Spanish Empire and Mexico now demographically occupied by Spanish-speaking migrants and their descendants. The US is no longer ruled by a white Protestant elite; the influence of "Latinos," including Rubio, the son of Cuban immigrants, is growing. While the last two hundred years have been about US influence over Latin America, the next two hundred may be about Latin American influence not only over the United States, but also within it.