News of the South

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News of the South
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Central American Whirlwind

• Background Archetype of Dependency
• Classic plantation economy
• Results
• Polarized bi-class society
• Little industrial development
• No significant labor
• Weak middle-class
• Ag Export
• Bananas Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama
• Coffee Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua
• 60 - 90 exports to US in the 1950s
• United States intervention

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Colonial Background

• Not a site of major empire at time of Conquest
• Kingdom of Guatemala part of Viceroyalty of New
  Spain
  
• Panama under Peru, later Colombia
• Church very powerful
• Modest economic activity no big mines
• Society
• 4 white creole or peninsulare
• 65 Indian
• 31 Ladino

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Independence

• Came as a single entity except Panama
• Iturbide had designs on it but not successful
• Politics Liberals and Conservative
• Liberals upper middle classes
• Conservatives landed creole

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Ascendancy of Conservatism

• 1837 Revolt in Guatemala José Rafael Carrera
• Traditional judicial procedures
• Reinstate church rights
• Amnesty for exiled conservatives
• Obedience to Carrera
• A power until death - 1865

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Conservative Theme

• Catholic Church official power and rights
• White elite power
• Dropped assimilation of Indians but created laws
  to protect Indians segregation
  
• 1838 congress declared all states soveriegn

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US Intervention Theme

• William Walker filibuster
• Tennessee Intellectual
• Pro-slavery
• Unsuccessful invasion of Mexico
• Landed in Nicaragua 1855
• US toleration
• Ousted in 1857
• Tried again 1860 executed in Honduras

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Republican Dictatorships

• Late 1800s ala Porfirio Diaz
• Central authority
• Rigged elections
• Control of society
• Modern military and police to secure power
• Close relationships with US, Britain, Germany
• Liberal when came to Church
• Stripped power
• Led to eventual creation of new Church here

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Economic Growth

• Coffee
• Small family farms
• Less assault on Indian lands
• Locally owned
• No big influx of immigrants
• Rural peasants not rural proletariat

• Bananas
• Foreign control
• Boston Fruit Company
• Tropical Trading and Transport Company
• Merge United Fruit Company
• US managers imported workers
• Need for extra land political involvement

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Central American Common Market

• Created 1960
• An attempt to resolve economic dependency
• Free trade within
• Common protective tariffs on nascent industry
• Fell apart in the 1970s

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Dependency Society

• Primacy of agriculture
• Population rural
• Lack of urban working class
• Never developed industrial society
• Few middle class
• Conflict along class lines
• Little education
• Only 45-60 literacy 1970 (except Costa Rica)
• Very little education and only brief time

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Panama

• Originally part of Peru, then part of Colombia
• Importance of Canal
• US Teddy Roosevelt
• War of the Thousand Days US troops into Panama
• Hay-Herrán Treaty US authorized to build Canal

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Panama

• Originally province of Colombia
• Semi-autonomous
• US involvement part of Whitemans Burden and
  Social Darwinism
  
• Phillipe Bunau-Varilla instigator of Panamanian
  independence
  
• John Hay and Bunau-Varilla sign treaty

John Hay and Bunau-Varilla
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Panama

• Dependence on ag-exports
• US Market
• Carter negotiated withdrawl by 1999
• Small oligarchy control often military
• Omar Torrijos 1968 1981
• Manuel Noriega 1982 1989
• School of the Americas
• Corruption
• December 1989 US intervention

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Costa Rica

• Exception to the rule
• No large subservient class nor large oligarchy
• Middle class, racially homogenous
• Greatest democratic tradition
• Nicaragua issues cause problems
• More outside investment

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Esquipulas Accord

• President Oscar Arias Sánchez 1986
• To confront the problems caused by the
  Sandinista-Contra conflict

• Agreement reached August 1987
• Cease-fire
• Talk to opposition movements
• No use of other countries for forces
• Prohibit aid to other insurgencies
• Free elections and democracy

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Nicaragua

• Long history of US involvement
• Protectorate of US until 1933
• Resistance led by Augusto César Sandino

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Augusto César Sandino

• Lead guerrilla war against US intervention
• Continued to fight National Guard
• Executed when meeting to discuss peace

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Somozas

• The Samoza Family Dynasty 1936 1979
• Gen. Anastasio Somoza Garcia 1937 1956
• Luis Somoza Dabayle 1957 1963
• Anastasio Samoza Debayle 1967-72, 1974-79

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Sandinistas

• Sandinista National Liberation Front
• Independent non-aligned
• Create a mixed economy
• Most of nationalized land owned by Somozas
• Walked line between Marxism and West
• US embargo and aid to Contras
• ½ budget spent fighting
• Inflation 33,000 at 1988

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Ernesto Cardenal

• Born 1925 poet, writer, Minister of Culture
  1979-1988
  
• Jesuit Priest ordained 1965
• Became a Marxist after visiting Cuba 1970

http//www.worldbank.org/poverty/povlit/povlit2p24
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El Salvador

• Las Catorce (The Fourteen) Oligarchy that owned
  it all
  
• Almost no middle class
• Peasant land wars
• 1932 10,000 20,000 killed in conflicts. Pop.
  1.4 mil.
  
• Repression is the rule

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The Church in El Salvador

• Medillín Conference 1968
• Capitalism Communism denounced
• Rich powerful to blame for pain of poor
• Church was very active in support of poor
• Archbishop Oscar Arnulfo Romero
• 1980 shot dead in Cathedral
• Government killing up to 1,000/month
• 1980 3 nuns and 1 lay woman killed
• US stance changes between Carter Regan
• 1989 6 Jesuit priests killed

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Guatemala

• Strong man rule
• United Fruit partner
• Attempt at social change in the
• Convert from dependency
• Establish modern capitalism not fuedal state
• Raise standard of living

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Jacobo Arbenz Guzmán

• 1950 came to power from minister of defense
• Agrarian reform
• Expropriated unused land
• UFCO 85 of holdings unused
• US upset

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1954 CIA Coup
John Foster Dulles Sec. Of State
Allen Dulles - CIA

• From law firm with ties to UFCO
• Feared fall of Central America to Communists
• Domino Theory
• CIA organized exiles in Honduras
• Eliminated political center

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Guatemala

• Paramilitary death squads
• Mano Blanco
• Ojo por Ojo
• 80,000 killed from 1960 1990
• Fighting over lands in the northern rural areas

Rigoberta Menchú
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Vocabulary