Sordid history of U.S. Latin America policy
Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism
By Greg Grandin
METROPOLITAN/HENRY HOLT; 286 PAGES
When Richard Nixon was told that the Marxist Salvador Allende had won Chile’s presidential election in late 1970, he screamed, “That son of a bitch, that son of a bitch,” and ordered his aides to “bring about (Allende’s) downfall.” Nixon was of course neither the first nor the last U.S. president to order the overthrow of a Latin American government. From the CIA’s ouster of Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz in 1954 to the Bay of Pigs attempt to unseat Fidel Castro to Washington’s support of a 2002 military coup against Venezuelan President Hugo Chāvez (which lasted all of 47 hours), Chile was only one in a long sequence of U.S. impositions into the domestic affairs of our neighbors to the south.
sfgate.com
Is Latin America Really Turning Left?
…The major points of conflict are not capitalism’s aversion to socialism, nor even private ownership versus nationalization of property, let alone social revolution leading to an egalitarian society. The major conflicts are over: 1) Increases in taxation, prices and royalty payments, 2) the conversion of firms to joint ventures, 3) representation on corporate boards of directors, 4) distribution of shareholdings between foreign appointed and state-appointed executives, 5) the legal right to revise contracts, 6) compensation payments for presumed assets and 7) management of distribution and export sales.
I think it’s too early to be condemning Chavez for not being revolutionary enough. There is something very appealing about beating the capitalists on their own playing field. Besides, we’re way better off with him alive, as are the people of Latin America.