After the first and second world wars, everyone was hoping they could catch their breath and take a break from the constant battles. However, after the wars, there were still disputes, not necessarily in Europe, but in other parts of the world. Nicaragua, is one who had started fighting after the Second World War. Located near the Panama Canal that sits next to South America, Nicaragua created their own civil war. The U.S. since the age of communism has been detesting and opposing communism and have noticed its flaws and witnessed the horrible outcomes. They support not only anti-communists groups or countries, but also neutral countries. Nicaragua in the 1933 was under the dictatorship of Anastasio Somoza. A threatening communist Nicaraguan …show more content…
Their cruel leader in the 1950’s, Fulgencio Batista, was overruled and instead a lawyer who led the overruling of Batista became Cuba’s leader. Fidel Castro, although loved at first, began to suspend elections, jailed or executed his opponents, and tightly controlled the press. Castro nationalized their businesses, putting the U.S.’s sugar mills and refineries to no longer belong to them. President Eisenhower made an embargo with all trade with Cuba. Needing support, Castro turned to the Soviet Union. The United States attempted to fight back, but they were humiliated by the Cubans. The Soviets viewed the United States as not being as ambitious and confident as they had first thought, so they assumed that the United States wouldn't try to stop Soviet expansion into Latin America. Soviets began to import tens of missiles into Cuba. A United States spy plane noticed these missiles. President Kennedy viewed these missiles as being too close to the continental United States, and needed to be rid of immediately. He ordered for American soldiers to invade Cuba, but instead Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union’s leader, agreed to not deploy the missiles if Cuba was not invaded by American …show more content…
One fundamental element that could have changed not only the course of their country, but of the whole world’s history. Beginning in Nicaragua, the United States supported the country, but they also supported a group called the Sandinistas, which was soon learned that they were a communist group. The U.S. withdrew their support and relations and instead began supporting an anti-communist group called El Salvador. One of their missions was to destroy the Communist Sandinistas. Hopping just a few hundred miles away lies Cuba, where around the same time they were dealing with a quarrel of their own. Cuba adopted a new leader, Fidel Castro, and one of his reforms was not nationalize their business, forcing the U.S.’s sugar mills and refineries to shut down. President Eisenhower established an embargo with Cuba, leading Cuba to find other support. They found their answer in the Soviet Union. The United States acted upon Cuba’s actions in letting the Soviet Union support them and slowly began fighting back. Similar to that of Cuba, Iran, when in need of support, was assumed to ask the Soviet Union, but the U.S. began to interfere. All of these events was because of the American fear of the spread of communism. Americans had seen the awful sides of communism and did not want it spreading. President Truman even made a foreign policy called ‘containment’, meaning that if a country started
When focusing on Nicaragua one will need to pay close attention to the rebel group called the Sandinistas who took over Nicaragua’s previous dictator, Anastasio Somoza in 1979, in which the United States Congress decided it would be best to provide them with aid that lasted till 1981.1 Nicaragua’s geographic location made it a big concern for President Reagan based on his philosophy that surrounded the Reagan Doctrine. At that point, President Reagan ended the aid deal and adamantly advised that support be sent to those who were trying to over throw the new socialized, Sandinista leadership.2 Furthermore, the Nicaraguan’s were dealing with some of the worst warfare ever, by the mass killings that took place, which were at the mercy of death squads.3 This gruesome realization allowed President Reaga...
As stronger nations exercise their control over weaker ones, the United States try to prove their authority, power and control over weaker nations seeing them as unable to handle their own issues thereby, imposing their ideology on them. And if any of these weaker nations try to resist, then the wrath of the United States will come upon them. In overthrow the author Stephen Kinzer tells how Americans used different means to overthrow foreign government. He explains that the campaign & ideology of anti- communism made Americans believe that it was their right and historical obligation to lead forces of good against those of iniquity. They also overthrew foreign government, when economic interest coincided with their ideological ones (kinzer.215). These factors were the reasons behind America’s intervention in Iran, Guatemala, South Vietnam and Chile to control and protect multinational companies as well as the campaign against communism with little or no knowledge about these countries.
What importance does this have to Noriega and Panama? On January 1, 1959 Fidel Castro led a successful coup against the government in Cuba which at the time was controlled by Fulgencio Batista. By Castro taking control of the Cuban government, he placed communism within a close range of America. This was important because it was feared by most Americans that this takeover by Castro would lead a domino effect throughout Central America, and third world countries further extending the arm of Communism and the reach of the Soviet Union.
Soviet chairman, Nikita Khrushchev, guaranteed President Kennedy that there was nothing going on in Cuba. The U.S. was not fooled with Khrushchev's act and began to discuss the ideas of a quarantine or a military attack. RFK and Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, became the blockade's strongest advocates. They did not accept the idea of the U.S. raining bom...
The U.S.’s relationship with Cuba has been arduous and stained with mutual suspicion and obstinateness, and the repeated U.S. interventions. The Platt agreement and Castro’s rise to power, served to introduce the years of difficulty to come, while, the embargo the U.S. placed on Cuba, enforced the harsh feelings. The two major events that caused the most problems were the Bays of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis.
1 The missiles were being brought to Cuba by Russian leader, Nikita Khrushchev, who guaranteed President Kennedy that the missiles would never be used as a weapon against the United States. This is a lie. Khrushchev fully intended to use the missiles as a mechanism of defense against the United States and as a way to further pursue a relationship with Fidel Castro, who was the President of Cuba at the time. The United States needed to find a way to stop the development of missile sites without causing a break out of violent warfare.
In the years leading up to the First World War, there were two major powers that competed for political influence in Latin America, those powers being the United States and Mexican governments. The U.S. intervened more directly in Nicaragua on two separate accounts in 1911 and 1912. The objective was to ensure rule of government that would be ideologically similar and friendly in terms of foreign affairs with the United States1.This in turn meaning that the U.S. political and commercial interests would on the agenda and a priority for Nicaragua2. Along side that the Nicaraguan government would then serve as an example, being under the watchful protection of the United States, of a stable form of government in Central and Latin America3. During this time, the officials that were in President Taft’s administration saw the United States as intervening in Nicaragua as a way to verify good government, but this caused a backlash that would be seen by a great deal of Nicaraguans as an overall encroachment on their sovereignty as nation that is seeking economic, and political gains4.
During the second half of the twentieth century, when the Cold War was on its midst, the United States played an important role in world affairs. The increasing military power that the United States had during the Cold War, allowed it to influence the political decisions that many countries had during this time. The United States directly opposed the idea of communism, which the Soviet Union promoted. This conflict between this two great powers, lasted for five decades, and it tremendously affected the political ideologies of the world. Both countries tried to push their political and economic interest to as many nations as they could, especially those close to their borders. During this time, Guatemala was undergoing a social revolution with communist ideas. The revolution happened as a response to the social injustice committed by the United Fruit Company. The United Fruit Company started to lose land, due to a land reform passed b...
The United States embargo of Cuba has its roots planted in 1960, 53 years ago, when “the United States Congress authorized President Eisenhower to cut off the yearly quota of sugar to be imported from Cuba under the Sugar act of 1948… by 95 percent” (Hass 1998, 37). This was done in response to a growing number of anti-American developments during the height of the cold war, including the “expropriation of United States-owned properties on the island… [and] the Soviet Union [agreeing] to purchase sugar from Cuba and to supply Cuba with crude oil” (Hass 1998, 37). Bad sentiments continued to pile up as Cuba imposed restrictions on the United States Embassy and especially when, after the United States “officially broke off diplomatic ties with Cuba, and travel by United States citizens to Cuba was forbidden ... Castro openly proclaimed his revolution to be ‘socialist’” (Hass 1998, 38). The day after this, the Bay of Pigs invasion occurred, but it failed in its job to topple Castro (Hass 1998, 38). Left with no diplomatic options and a failed military attempt, the United States decided that the only way to end Castro’s socialist regime was to sever all ties, and from 1961 to 1996, a series of acts were passed prohibiting the majority of trade and interaction with Cuba. (Hass 1998, 38).
Kennedy proposed this cooperative program to replace prior failing efforts of the United States to aid Latin America. The intended alliance marked a shift toward a policy of expanded U.S. economic assistance to Latin America in the wake of Fidel Castro’s successful Communist revolution in Cuba. The United States was fearful of a communism spread due to the poverty and social inequities of the Latin American nations. The U.S. felt that the southern continent was ripe for violent radical political upheaval, which would eventually bring forth the spread of communism.
...he Cuban missiles in exchange for a promise by U.S. leaders not to invade Cuba. The
During the next 20 years, although not always president, Somoza maintained control of Nicaragua. Nicaragua declared war on the Axis powers on December 9, 1941. In June 1945 it became a charter member of the United Nations. Nicaragua joined the Organization of American States in 1948 and the Organization of Central American States, created to solve common Central American problems, in 1951. In 1956 Anastasio Somoza, who had resumed the presidency, was assassinated.
The Mexican Revolution began November 20th, 1910. It is disputable that it extended up to two decades and seized more than 900,000 lives. This revolution, however, also ended dictatorship in Mexico and restored the rights of farm workers, or peons, and its citizens. Revolutions are often started because a large group of individuals want to see a change. These beings decided to be the change that they wanted to see and risked many things, including their lives. Francisco “Pancho” Villa and Emiliano Zapata are the main revolutionaries remembered. These figures of the revolution took on the responsibility that came with the title. Their main goal was to regain the rights the people deserved. The peons believed that they deserved the land that they labored on. These workers rose up in a vehement conflict against those opposing and oppressing them. The United States was also significantly affected by this war because anybody who did not want to fight left the country and migrated north. While the end of the revolution may be considered to be in the year of 1917 with the draft of a new constitution, the fighting did not culminate until the 1930’s.
However, the US played a much larger role in Cuba’s past and present than the building of casinos and the introduction of the first taints of corruption. In the past, even before Batista, Americans were resented by Cubans because the Americans made a lot of Cuba’s decisions. Under Batista, 80% of Cuban imports came from the US, and the US controlled at least 50% of sugar, utilities, phones and railroads. If Cuba was a business in the stock markets, then the US would have been close to owning 50% of its shares. When combined with a long history of US-backed leaders, and US involvement, it is understandable that Cubans begrudged the Americans....
Throughout history, countless uprisings have occurred. Historians classify any forcible overthrow of a government or social order in favor of a new system as a revolution. The success or failure of a revolution is directly related to the revolution’s causes and courses. The French Revolution was more successful than the Nicaraguan Revolution, because the Nicaraguan Revolution left the country in social and financial ruin, foreign powers had much greater interference, and it precipitated a period of political unrest with multiple leadership changes.