What got you interested in U.S. and Latin-American relations?

When I was at college, I was very interested in American foreign policy. It occurred to me that Latin America was the region with which the United States had the longest history of involvement – and the most intense relationship. That led me to study the internal politics of Latin-American countries – politics that are directly influenced by the relationship with the United States. Washington has dominated the hemisphere for the last 200 years.

Let’s have a look at some of the different aspects of that relationship. Your first book is Lars Schoultz’s Beneath the United States.

This is a wonderful, sweeping history of U.S. relations with Latin America, from the Monroe Doctrine of 1823 to the late 20th century. Drawing on an enormous array of declassified documents from over the years, Schoultz shows that some very consistent themes ran through U.S. policy in that period. One was a presumption that the United States was, and ought to be, the dominant power in the Western Hemisphere. Other scholars have called this the ‘hegemonic presumption’ – the idea that the United States could unilaterally dictate the terms of its relationship with Latin America.

The second theme was the notion of a ‘civilising mission’. Not only was the United States entitled to be the dominant power in the hemisphere – it was a good thing, too. It was good for the United States and for Latin America, because the United States had its best interests at heart.

So a fairly patronising attitude?

Extremely. And that applies to the third theme, one of racial superiority. The reason the United States felt justified pursuing this ‘civilising mission’ was that it regarded Latin America as racially inferior. You don’t come across that approach today. But it was explicit in a lot of diplomatic correspondence before World War Two.

The book is a wonderful read because Schoultz has done a great job extracting some phenomenally revealing passages from the historical record. You really get a sense of the way U.S. diplomats and decision-makers saw the region and their mission. This was one of the first books to argue that the relationship was about more than American self-interest.

He does not deny the existence of an underlying policy of self-interest – a drive to defend the national interests of the United States. But he highlights an agenda of self-justification and self-righteousness that American policymakers also applied. They honestly thought they were ‘uplifting’ Latin America as they pursued their interests. 

Your next book, Graham Greene’s Our Man in Havana, is often described as a satirical spoof.

Yes. What I like about this book is how Greene captures so beautifully the Cold-War contradictions of U.S. policy in the region. Even though the United States plays no role directly, Greene captures the way in which U.S. policy is often so blind to the realities on the ground that it produces disastrous, unintended consequences. 

The story is, of course, about a British citizen living in Havana during the 1950s, recruited as a spy by the British Secret Service. He has no idea what do to – so he just pretends and makes up information, which he then sends back to London. However, his actions lead others, presumably the Russians, to think he really is a spy. They start killing people with whom he’s been in touch. Only then does he realise the mess he has got himself into.

To me, this very funny satire perfectly captures the ineptness, insensitivity and cluelessness of large powers trying to manipulate events in the Third World. In the story, as in reality, innocent people die as a result.

Walter LaFeber’s Inevitable Revolutions looks at the US/Latin-American relationship from a slightly different perspective.

It complements Schoultz’s book well because it focuses, very specifically, on the countries of Central America. It covers a shorter timeframe, picking up when the United States first intervened militarily in Central America at the turn of the 20th century. This was the time when the United States was expanding its commercial interests beyond the borders of the 48 states. That expansion fed most heavily on Central America.

As the United States developed commercial interests in the region, it became involved in the internal politics. Ultimately, it intervened militarily to protect U.S. interests whenever and wherever there was instability. LaFeber traces how U.S. influence in the region in the 1920s and 1930s gradually moved from power exerted by military force to economic dominance. He shows how the region became economically, and therefore politically, subordinate to the United States.

He then describes in detail how, after World War Two, Central America’s authoritarian systems began to decay. He looks at the rise of popular opposition to these systems and how the United States reacted. Once again, it became militarily involved, propping up these brutal regimes in the face of popular challenge. During the Central-American wars of the 1980s, LaFeber’s book was widely read in the United States. It influenced many critics of U.S. foreign policy.

How would you describe the United States’ relationship with Latin America now, given that the new wave of governments, though not communist, is certainly left-wing?

Interestingly, the left-wing governments in Latin America today, with the possible exception of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, do not really pretend to be socialist in the traditional sense. Even some of Chavez’s allies – Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua – are pursuing essentially social-democratic policies.