This past week we learned and discussed Latin America and the effects of colonialism and American intervention. Western intervention in developing countries has been a theme of other weeks as well. In Latin America, it was generally the United States that was intervening with political affairs. As we learned from Professor Holt’s lectures, the Bayly reading, and the Galeano reading, the United States was not always intervening on the basis of creating democracies. The U.S. also attempted to overthrow and remove democratically elected officials that they did not agree with or support. You also saw the U.S. supporting dictatorships if it meant keeping who they wanted in power and not someone they disagreed with.
When looking at Cuba, the United States on many occasions attempted to assassinate Fidel Castro. By any means necessary. For example, they attempt to kill Castro by putting LSD in his scuba mask. The United States was trying to get rid of Castro because of his communist ideals and ties to the Soviet Union, the red scare was a strong motivating factor for the U.S. Their economic intervention only strengthened those ties to the Soviet Union. The economic blockade of the US sent Cuba to rely on the U.S.S.R. Seemingly all the U.S. was trying to stop, happened because of their attempts to stop it. The U.S. wanted Castro removed and Cuba to have no ties to the Soviet Union, but instead failed at removing Castro and sent Cuba to directly rely on the Soviet Union, the opposite of what the U.S. wanted.