Wikimedia Commons, 1912
For almost two centuries, instructed by the Monroe Doctrine, the United States has intervened across Latin America to protect U.S. economic and political interests, including through military interventions and support for rightwing dictatorships.
Juan, a candle maker and store owner in the Guatemalan city of Sololá, once told me some-thing that pretty much sums up the reaction to the current U.S. President throughout much of Latin America: “Donald Trump can go and fuck himself.”
Juan, whose last name I am withholding, was referring to the U.S. President’s hardcore position on the migration of Central Americans to the United States. Since taking office, Trump and his team, including former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and current Secretary Mike Pompeo, have promoted their “America First” policy and re-embraced the Monroe Doctrine, which asserted the right of the United States to shape the destiny of Central and South America.
The Trump Administration has maintained close alliances with the governments of Colombia, Guatemala, and Honduras. And it has continued, though at lower levels of funding, the efforts of the Alliance for Prosperity, an Obama Administration initiative to curb the migration crisis by stepping up security, generating development, and improving judicial systems.
“The United States is cleaning the table [in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras],” says Jesús Hernández, a political science professor at the Rafael Landívar University in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. “This is the excuse to further implement [its] control and influence over the region.”
Trump’s National Security Strategy, published in December 2017, deems China and Russia as threats to U.S. interests and security in the region, including economic and political competition. In 2000, according to an article in Forbes magazine, China represented only 2 percent of trade with Latin American countries, compared to the U.S. share of 53 percent. By 2010, China was controlling 11 percent of trade, with the United States down to 39 percent.
For almost two centuries, instructed by the Monroe Doctrine, the United States has intervened across Latin America to protect U.S. economic and political interests, including through military interventions and support for rightwing dictatorships. In 2013, then-Secretary of State John Kerry, speaking before the Organization of American States, announced an end to the doctrine. But Kerry’s announcement was little more than a symbolic shift, and it did not end attempts by the United States to maintain influence across the region. The Trump Administration has thoroughly embraced the doctrine once again.
“They support repressive governments,” Mark Weisbrot, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, based in Washington, D.C., tells The Progressive. “The closest U.S. allies are some of the most repressive governments in the region: Colombia, Honduras, and Guatemala. And they help to legitimize these governments, and in some cases when they steal an election, like in Honduras, they generally do whatever they can to support the status quo.”
“The closest U.S. allies are some of the most repressive governments in the region . . .”
In 2014, the United States used the courts to block Argentina’s leftwing government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner from paying the country’s debts with bonds, which were restructured as part of the Inter-national Monetary Fund’s response to the country’s economic crisis in 2001. This decision was lifted once the rightwing government of Mauricio Macri took office in 2015.
In August of this year, El Salvador announced it would be severing ties with Taiwan, and moving closer to China. The announcement was met by outrage from U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, who along with Senator Cory Gardner, Republican of Colorado, sought to restrict U.S. funding to El Salvador, and remove that country from the Alliance for Prosperity. He called El Salvador’s decision “a grave mistake that harms relations” with the United States.
Yet experts question Rubio’s efforts to punish Latin American nations for seeking closer relations with China. Margaret Meyers, director of the Asia and Latin America program at the group Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, D.C., describes it as “self-defeating and hypocritical.”
In May, Rubio blocked $6 million in funding for Guatemala’s anti-corruption commission, due to alleged “Russian meddling.” The U.S. Embassy and the Guatemalan Public Prosecutor’s office jointly investigated but were unable to find any evidence to support Rubio’s claims, and the funding was unfrozen in August. The group has maintained intense pressure on Guatemalan president Jimmy Morales, a Trump ally, accused of illegal financing of his 2015 campaign.
On August 31, Morales shut down the commission, which he accused of “selective criminal prosecution with an ideological bias.”