General Trends in Latin America

Economic and Political Developments

• Since the nineteenth century, Latin Americans had exported raw materials while buying manufactured goods from industrialized countries.

• By the 1960s, however, Latin American countries were still experiencing economic problems.

• These economic failures led to instability and reliance on military regimes.

  • These regimes also encouraged multinational corporations (companies with divisions in more than two countries) to come to Latin America.

• In the 1970s, Latin American nations grew more dependent as they attempted to maintain their weak economies by borrowing money.

• To get new loans, Latin American governments were now forced to make basic reforms.

  • Many hoped that encouraging peasants to grow food for home consumption rather than export would stop the flow of people from the countryside to the cities.

• With the debt crisis in the 1980s came a movement toward democracy.

• The movement toward democracy was the most noticeable trend of the 1980s and the early 1990s in Latin America.

Latin American Society

• Latin America’s economic problems were made worse by dramatic growth in population.

• With the increase in population came a rapid rise in the size of cities.

• The gap between the poor and the rich remained enormous in Latin America.

  • The traditional role of homemaker continues for women, who have also moved into new jobs.

  • The international drug trade brought crime and corruption to some Latin American countries, undermining their stability.

The United States and Latin America

• The United States has always played a large role in Latin America.

• In 1948, the states of the Western Hemisphere formed the Organization of American States (OAS), which called for an end to military action by one state in the affairs of any other state.

• As the Cold War developed, so, too, did the anxiety of American policy makers about the possibility of Communist regimes in Latin America.

Latin American Culture

• Writers and artists have played important roles in Latin American society.

• In literature, Latin Americans developed a unique form of expression called magic realism.

• Perhaps the foremost example of magic realism is One Hundred Years of Solitude, a novel by Gabriel García Márquez.

  • García Márquez, a Colombian, was the most famous of the Latin American novelists.

• Latin American art and architecture were strongly influenced by international styles after World War II.

Mexico, Cuba, and Central America

The Mexican Way

• The Mexican Revolution at the beginning of the twentieth century created a political order that remained stable for many years.

• During the 1950s and 1960s, steady economic growth led to real gains in wages for more and more people in Mexico.

  • The next two presidents, Luís Echeverría and José López Portillo, made political reforms and opened the door to the emergence of new political parties.

• In the late 1970s, vast new reserves of oil were discovered in Mexico.

• The government was forced to adopt new economic policies.

  • One of these policies was privatization, the sale of government-owned companies to private firms.

  • The debt crisis and rising unemployment increased dissatisfaction with the government.

• Support for the PRI dropped, and in 2000, Vicente Fox defeated the PRI candidate for the presidency.

The Cuban Revolution

• In the 1950s, a strong opposition movement arose in Cuba.

  • Led by Fidel Castro, the movement aimed to overthrow the government of the dictator Fulgencio Batista, who had controlled Cuba since 1934.

• Relations between Cuba and the United States quickly deteriorated when the Castro regime began to receive aid from the Soviet Union

• In October 1960, the United States declared a trade embargo, prohibiting trade with Cuba, and just three months later, on January 3, 1961, broke all diplomatic relations with Cuba.

  • Soon after that, in April 1961, the American president, John F. Kennedy, supported an attempt to overthrow Castro’s government.

• The Cuban missile crisis caused Castro to realize that the Soviet Union had been unreliable.

• Nevertheless, in Cuba, Castro’s Marxist regime continued, but with mixed results.

• The Cuban economy continued to rely on the production and sale of sugar.

Upheaval in Central America

• Central America includes seven countries: Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Panama, Belize, and Guatemala.

• Economically, Central America has depended on the export of bananas, coffee, and cotton.

• Fear in the United States of the spread of commu- nism often led to American support for repressive regimes in the area.

• After World War II, the wealthy elite and the military controlled the government in El Salvador.

  • In the late 1970s and the 1980s, El Salvador was rocked by a bitter civil war.

  • In 1984, a moderate, José Duarte, was elected president.

• In Nicaragua, the Somoza family seized control of the government in 1937 and kept control for the next 42 years

  • By 1979, the United States, under President Jimmy Carter, had grown unwilling to support the corrupt regime.

  • The Sandinistas inherited a poverty-stricken nation.

  • Soon, a group opposed to the Sandinistas’ policies, called the contras, began to try to overthrow the new government.

  • The war waged by the contras undermined support for the Sandinistas.

• Panama became a nation in 1903, when it broke away from Colombia with help from the United States.

  • In return for this aid, the United States was able to build the Panama Canal and gained influence over the government and economy of Panama

  • After 1968, power in Panama came into the hands of the military leaders of Panama’s National Guard.

  • One such leader was Manuel Noriega, who took control of Panama in 1983.

  • At first, Noriega was supported by the United States.

    • Noriega was arrested and sent to prison in the United States on charges of drug trafficking.

The Nations of South America

Argentina

• Argentina is Latin America’s second largest country.

• In 1943, in the midst of World War II, a group of army officers overthrew the oligarchy.

• Using his position as labor secretary in the military government, Perón sought to win over the workers, known as the descamisados (the shirtless ones).

  • In 1944, Perón became vice president of the military government and made sure that people knew he was responsible for better conditions for workers.

  • Perón was elected president of Argentina in 1946.

  • Perón’s regime was authoritarian.

• Fearing Perón’s power, the military overthrew the Argentinian leader in September 1955.

  • Perón went into exile in Spain.

• In 1976, the military once again took over power.

• At the same time, economic problems plagued the nation.

• In 1983, Raúl Alfonsín was elected president and worked to restore democratic practices.

Brazil

• Like other Latin American countries, Brazil experienced severe economic problems following World War II.

• The armed forces remained in direct control of the country for the next 20 years.

• Ordinary Brazilians benefited little from this economic growth, however.

  • The new democratic government faced enormous obstacles — a massive foreign debt, increasingly severe inflation (it was 800 percent in 1987), and a lack of social unity.

Chile

• In elections held in 1970, Salvador Allende, a Marxist, became president of Chile.

  • Allende’s policies were not popular with everyone.

• In March 1973, new elections increased the number of Allende’s supporters in the Chilean congress.

• The Pinochet regime was one of the most brutal in Chile’s history.

• The regime’s horrible abuses of human rights led to growing unrest in the mid-1980s.

Peru

• The history of Peru has been marked by instability.

• A military takeover in 1968 led to some change.

• General Juan Velasco Alvarado sought to help the peasants.

  • His government seized almost 75 percent of the nation’s large landed estates and put ownership of the land into the hands of peasant cooperatives (farm organizations owned by and operated for the peasants’ benefit).

• Economic problems continued, however, and Peruvian military leaders removed General Alvarado from power in 1975.

• New problems made the task of the civilian gov- ernment even more difficult.

• A radical Communist guerrilla group based in rural areas, known as Shining Path, killed mayors, missionaries, priests, and peasants.

• In 1990, Peruvians chose Alberto Fujimori as president.

Colombia

• Colombia has long had a democratic political system, but a conservative elite led by the owners of coffee plantations has dominated the government.

• After World War II, Marxist guerrilla groups began to organize Colombian peasants.

• Peasants who lived in poverty turned to a new cash crop—coca leaves, used to make cocaine

• High unemployment (around 20 percent in 2000) continues to hamper Colombia’s economic growth