U.S. INTERVENTION IN CENTRAL AMERICA.
Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua.
The history of Central America since 1945 is the clearest demonstration of the extraordinary and terrifying lengths that the United States will execute in order to achieve complete control over a region. In taking its first rudimentary steps into foreign empire building, the US Public Relations machine did not operate at the level of sophistication that they do today and thus the activity is more plainly in view.
The first five countries show parallel histories of U.S. interference. The sixth, Nicaragua, takes the story a stage further and shows what would happen in the other five countries should they too be successful in expelling foreign interference.
“I think it’s not asking too much to have our little region over here which never has bothered anybody” – U.S. State Secretary of War Henry Stimson, 1945.
“We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. Our real task … is to … maintain this position of disparity … we should cease to talk about vague and … unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of living standards and democratisation.” Head of State Department Policy and Planning Staff. George Kennan, February 1948.