Beneath the United States

by Schoultz, Lars

• ISBN13: 9780674922761
• ISBN10: 067492276X
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780674043282
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-06-15
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

In this sweeping history of United States policy toward Latin America, Lars Schoultz shows that the United States has always perceived Latin America as a fundamentally inferior neighbor, unable to manage its affairs and stubbornly underdeveloped. This perception of inferiority was apparent from the beginning. John Quincy Adams, who first established diplomatic relations with Latin America, believed that Hispanics were "lazy, dirty, nasty...a parcel of hogs." In the early nineteenth century, ex-President John Adams declared that any effort to implant democracy in Latin America was "as absurd as similar plans would be to establish democracies among the birds, beasts, and fishes." Drawing on extraordinarily rich archival sources, Schoultz, one of the country's foremost Latin America scholars, shows how these core beliefs have not changed for two centuries. We have combined self-interest with a "civilizing mission"--a self-abnegating effort by a superior people to help a substandard civilization overcome its defects. William Howard Taft felt the way to accomplish this task was "to knock their heads together until they should maintain peace," while in 1959 CIA Director Allen Dulles warned that "the new Cuban officials had to be treated more or less like children." Schoultz shows that the policies pursued reflected these deeply held convictions. While political correctness censors the expression of such sentiments today, the actions of the United States continue to assume the political and cultural inferiority of Latin America. Schoultz demonstrates that not until the United States perceives its southern neighbors as equals can it anticipate a constructive hemispheric alliance.

Table of Contents

Preface	xi
Encountering Latin America	1	(13)
Acquiring Northern Mexico	14	(25)
Struggling over Slavery in the Caribbean	39	(20)
Ending an Era: Regional Hegemony over a Defective People	59	(19)
Beginning a New Era: The Imperial Mentality	78	(13)
Testing the Imperial Waters: Confronting Chile	91	(16)
Excluding Great Britain: The Venezuela Boundary Dispute	107	(18)
Establishing an Empire: Cuba and the War with Spain	125	(27)
Creating a Country, Building a Canal	152	(24)
Chastising Chronic Wrongdoing	176	(29)
Providing Benevolent Supervision: Dollar Diplomacy	205	(15)
Continuing to Help in the Most Practical Way Possible	220	(33)
Removing the Marines, Installing the Puppets	253	(19)
Establishing the Foundations of Honorable Intercourse	272	(18)
Becoming a Good Neighbor	290	(26)
Attacking Dictatorships	316	(16)
Combatting Communism with Friendly Dictators	332	(17)
Combatting Communism with Economic Development	349	(18)
Two Centuries Later	367	(22)
Sources	389	(6)
Notes	395	(66)
Index	461