Becoming a Good Neighbor among Dictators

The U.S. Foreign Service in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras

Jorrit van den Berk

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319699851
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319699868
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

Very few works of history, if any, delve into the daily interactions of U.S. Foreign Service members in Latin America during the era of Roosevelt's Good Neighbor Policy. But as Jorrit van den Berk argues, the encounters between these rank-and-file diplomats and local officials reveal the complexities, procedures, intrigues, and shifting alliances that characterized the precarious balance of U.S. foreign relations with right-wing dictatorial regimes. Using accounts from twenty-two ministers and ambassadors, Becoming a Good Neighbor among Dictators is a careful, sophisticated account of how the U.S. Foreign Service implemented ever-changing State Department directives from the 1930s through the Second World War and early Cold War, and in so doing, transformed the U.S.-Central American relationship.  How did Foreign Service officers translate broad policy guidelines into local realities? Could the U.S. fight dictatorships in Europe while simultaneously collaborating with dictators in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras?  What role did diplomats play in the standoff between democratic and authoritarian forces? In investigating these questions, Van den Berk draws new conclusions about the political culture of the Foreign Service, its position between Washington policymakers and local actors, and the consequences of foreign intervention.

© The Author(s) 2018

Jorrit van den BerkBecoming a Good Neighbor among Dictatorshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69986-8_1

Begin Abstract

1. Coping with the Caudillos

Jorrit van den Berk¹

(1)

Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

End Abstract

Superpower, hegemon, hyperpower, empire. Some of the labels used in the last years to characterize the U.S. position and its behavior in the world. Whether it describes the political authority, military preponderance, economic prevalence, or cultural dominance of the United States, it is clear that it touches many aspects of peoples’ lives around the world—for better or for worse. But before it was a world power, the United States had a sphere of influence in the Caribbean and Central America. Even the leaders of the early Republic thought of that region as a proper space for U.S. expansion. But this largely remained an empty ambition until the United States could claim a position of almost exclusive regional hegemony after the defeat of Spain and the demise of the Spanish empire in 1898—a position that was confirmed when Europe all but committed collective suicide in 1914.

Born in revolution itself, the United States became a status quo power within the confines of its Southern sphere of influence. It opposed extra-continental threats on the basis of the Monroe doctrine of 1823, which was expanded, during the early twentieth century to also oppose threats to the status quo emanating from the region itself: conflicts between the various states, civil wars, political and social revolutions, and what U.S. observers considered to be general misgovernment or financial irresponsibility. All these occurrences could jeopardize the lives and investments of U.S. citizens in the region, the safety of the Panama Canal, or the prestige of the United States as a regional leader.

In a word, from the nineteenth century onward, the United States desired and attempted to establish stability in its sphere of influence—much like it would on a global scale after its rise to superpower status. Stability, in this case, does not mean the mere absence of war and revolution. From the point of view of U.S. national interests, it means the prevention, or containment, if you will, of any political, social, military, or economic development that could threaten U.S. leadership over the Western Hemisphere or convenient access to its markets. Another way of describing the U.S. role on the American continent would be to say that Washington sought control over it. However, “control” might imply a degree of formalized governance, as one would observe in an incorporated territory or colony, that did not always exist in practice. U.S. policymakers were often content to forego the costs inherent in formal colonization as long as the basic goal of stability could be safeguarded. Thus, even while the United States could withdraw its influence from European affairs in the 1930s, no U.S. leader challenged the basic need for stability in the Caribbean and Central America. The strategies used to achieve that goal, however, changed over time.

Except for the cases of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the United States has declined to take direct control over the nations of the Caribbean and Central America and to rule them as colonies. In the interest of stability, however, Washington did establish formal, treaty-based protectorates over Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, and Panama during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Dressed up in a U.S. version of the civilizing mission, with Theodore Roosevelt asserting that Latin Americans should “behave themselves” while Woodrow Wilson wanted them to “learn to elect good men”, U.S. “experts” built schools, oversaw finances and trained constabularies in its protectorates. That policy would have tragic consequences when, for reasons that will be discussed at greater length below, the United States withdrew military forces from its protectorates during the 1920s and early 1930s and started to experiment with new tactics to promote stability.¹

The withdrawal of troops from Latin America and the termination of the protectorates marked the beginning of a new era in United States relations with the hemisphere under a policy known as the Good Neighbor .² That term was popularized by Franklin Delano Roosevelt , who used it in his first inaugural address in 1933. Eventually, the administration adopted it to refer to its Latin American policy. The Good Neighbor became a multifaceted drive to improve the relationship with Latin American nations—a relationship that had suffered severely from the United States’ unilateral interventions of the past. Among others, it included the adoption of a more respectful tone when high policymakers spoke to or about the southern neighbors; the negotiation of new reciprocal trade agreements; cultural programs to improve the image of the United States among Latin Americans; and, eventually, a political alliance against the threats emanating from Nazi Germany and imperial Japan.³

For the purpose of this book, however, the United States’ renouncement of intervention in the affairs of its sister republics is the most important pillar of the Good Neighbor.⁴ It is important to acknowledge, with regard to the adoption of the non-intervention principle, that it did not originate with the Franklin Roosevelt administration. Neither was its adherence to that principle without fault. The adoption of the non-intervention principle was a process that started with President Herbert Hoover , who announced that he would adhere to it and set in motion the withdrawal of U.S. troops, and was not complete until 1936, when Roosevelt’s secretary of state, Cordell Hull , definitely renounced the “right” that the United States had claimed for itself to protect its nationals against war and unrest in Latin America.⁵

While some historians have given the United States, the Roosevelt administration in particular, high marks for the wisdom of the non-intervention policy, others have criticized the Good Neighbor for its cozy relationship with a new generation of dictatorships, particularly in the Caribbean and Central America. Beginning with the Dominican Republic, where U.S. withdrawal was first completed, local strongmen used their control over U.S.-trained constabularies to establish long-lasting military dictatorships. Thus, Rafael Trujillo came to power in the Dominican Republic, Fulgencio Batista became the king-maker of Cuba, and Anastasio Somoza García established an authoritarian dynasty in Nicaragua. Since the historiography of U.S. relations to Central American and Caribbean dictators focuses mostly on the former protectorates, and the relationship with men like Trujillo and Somoza, it is easy to forget that many nations in the region were not U.S. protectorates, even if they were undeniably part of a more informal U.S. sphere of influence. Remarkably, considering their lack of modern, U.S. trained constabularies, few of these nations escaped the regional trend toward military dictatorship. In Central America, Jorge Ubico assumed the presidency of Guatemala in 1931, Maximiliano Hernández Martínez did so in El Salvador in 1931, and Tiburcio Carías Andino in Honduras in 1933. Only Costa Rica maintained a relatively liberal government while neighboring states were ruled by dictators until the end of World War II, with a legacy of violence and militarism that haunted Central America for the remainder of the century.

An important argument that historians have made about the Good Neighbor is that U.S. policymakers resolved the conflict between its emphasis on non-intervention on the one hand and the long-term desire to promote stability on the other, through their reliance on the peace and order provided by the new generation of dictatorships. Thus, Alan McPherson recently defined a symbiotic relationship between Washington and the dictators as one of the important pillars of the Good Neighbor: “… Roosevelt deepened what would be Washington’s acquiescence to dictatorship in Latin America, also a crucial element of the Good Neighbor Policy. Support for strongmen such as Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua, Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, and Fulgencio Batista of Cuba outsourced the dirty work of keeping peace and order in the Caribbean area after the marines withdrew.”⁶

The more general idea that a mutually beneficial relationship existed between Good Neighbor diplomats and Central American and Caribbean dictators is almost as old as the policy itself.⁷ However, it became more widely accepted among U.S. scholars during the Central American Crisis of the 1980s, when the Reagan administration supported right-wing governments and groups against the perceived danger of communist aggression. Historians sought to explain this policy, together with U.S. responsibility for the Crisis, in the context of a long tradition of U.S. resistance against social revolution and support for right-wing and authoritarian forces. Thus, with regard to the Good Neighbor, Walter LaFeber argues that support for dictators in Central America, including those beyond the former protectorates, became an important strategy to contain social revolutions in the region. A later generation of scholars explains U.S. tolerance of, and even support for, dictatorships during the Good Neighbor era in the context of a long tradition of North American racism and cultural arrogance toward its neighbors in the Western Hemisphere. Lars Schoultz argues that after the abandonment of intervention, the United States supported “friendly dictators”, because it was “unwilling to grant complete freedom to the people of the Caribbean”. David Schmitz argues that: “The quest for order … without American intervention would lead the United States to support brutal dictatorships”, initially in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Cuba, but later across the region.⁸

One of the reasons why the idea of U.S. acquiescence in the establishment and continuation of dictatorial rule throughout the Good Neighbor policy is attractive, is because it can explain important historical continuities. While military intervention was renounced under the Good Neighbor policy, Washington policymakers came to appreciate the ability of pro-American military dictators to provide the political and social stability that the United States had traditionally sought to establish in the region. In turn, the tactic of supporting dictatorships during the Good Neighbor era is argued to have informed U.S. policies during the Cold War. In that sense, this interpretation of the Good Neighbor establishes a tradition of U.S. foreign policy—support for pro-American dictators—that ties the interventionist or imperial era of the early twentieth century to the Cold War.

However, several historians have pointed out particular instances where the relationship between Washington and the dictatorships was problematic and at times even conflictual.⁹ Thus, Paul Coe Clark and Andrew Crawley, two authors who wrote detailed studies of U.S. relations with the Somoza regime during the Good Neighbor era, empathically reject the idea that the U.S. consistently supported the Nicaraguan regime.¹⁰ Additionally, Eric Paul Roorda shows, in his study of the Good Neighbor and the Trujillo regime, that it is difficult to identify a single U.S. policy toward the Dominican dictator. U.S. military representatives, for example, tended to appreciate the military-style order and discipline that the regime provided, while U.S. diplomats regretted the liberties that were lost under the Trujillo government. Additionally, he demonstrates how, due to the frictions and contradictions within U.S. policy, Rafael Trujillo himself played an important role in shaping the impact of U.S. policy on his government and his country.¹¹

This book seeks to enhance our understanding of the process whereby the dictators of Central America and the Caribbean were integrated into the Good Neighbor policy. Interpretations that emphasize long-term continuities—U.S. acceptance of regimes that promoted stability under the Good Neighbor—tend to exaggerate the ease with which Washington reached an accommodation with the dictators, while they downplay the significance of real frictions and conflict. On the other hand, the excellent case studies of U.S. relations with Trujillo and Somoza need to account for the unique legacies—both historic and historiographic—of the U.S. occupations of the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. Historica...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Coping with the Caudillos
• 2. The Envoys: The Foreign Service in Central America, 1930–1952
• 3. Origins: The Rise of the Caudillos and the Defeat of Non-Recognition, 1930–1934
• 4.  Continuismo: The Good Neighbor and Non-interference, 1934–1936
• 5. Becoming Benign Dictators: The Good Neighbor and Fascism, 1936–1939
• 6. The Best of Neighbors: The Alliance Against Fascism, 1939–1944
• 7. The Casualties of War: The Central American Upheavals of 1944
• 8. The Postwar Moment: An Opening for Democracy, 1944–1947
• 9. The Middle of the Road: The Cold War Comes to Central America, 1947–1954
• 10. Becoming a Good Neighbor Among Dictators
• Back Matter