For some reason, it seems that the United States always finds itself involved in Latin American countries such as El Salvador, Costa Rica, or The Dominican Republic. Though the constant reasons that come up always make it seem as if the U.S. is there to help, I wonder at times for the real reasons of it’s involvement. With the U.S. being the most dominant superpower of all countries, why would it be so important for them to help out other struggling countries? It must be benefiting from it somehow or, what I feel, perhaps it is trying to quietly control countries through puppet governments and such. It has always been known that possession of power leads to the want of more power. This is certainly the case with the U.S.’s involvement in Latin America.

I started my research by gathering the things I already knew about this. When pledging Phi Iota Alpha, the entire process is centered on giving a pledge an understanding of who they are, where they come from, and an understanding of what it is to be Latin American. Through that process I was able to learn much about this topic and it was then that I initially got interested. I had learned the history of my country, the Dom

A very interesting piece of information that I found while looking up the Venezuelan incidents is what I learned about the School of the Americas. This was a military institution but not just any regular one. “The US Army School of Americas (SOA) based in Fort Benning, Georgia, trains Latin American soldiers in combat, counter-insurgency, and counter-narcotics. Graduates of the SOA are responsible for some of the worst human rights abuses in Latin America. Among the SOA's nearly 60,000 graduates are notorious dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. Lower-level SOA graduates have participated in human rights abuses that include the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero and the El Mozote Massacre of 900 civilians” (www.soaw.org). This is definitely one of the most important things that I have learned in gathering the information for this paper. I noticed that the School of the Americas is barely ever spoken about and those who know about it are only those who have studied or looked hard to find it. It is one of the clearest examples that the U.S. is not interested in helping Latin America. It is instead just trying to obtain either more power for itself through bullying less powerful and unorganized countries or, it is simply taking actions to keep these countries quietly in control.

The next step in the researching process took me to the library where I had to learn to use the databases. At first it was difficult to find relevant topics but then I searched in the foreign policy sections and was able to find helpful information and it was easy to find recent events dealing with this issue such as the attempted Venezuelan coup. Throughout the 60’s and 70’s there were many examples of the U.S.’s presence in Latin America. One of the most recent was seen in the failed coup attempt in Venezuela. “ In the hours following the April 11th arrest of President Hugo Chavez, the Bush administration signaled that it was fully behind the takeover. ‘We wish to express our solidarity with the Venezuelan people and look forward to working with all democratic forces in Venezuela to insure the full expression of democratic rights,’ State Department spokesperson Phillip Reeker told the press” ( Hallinan). The attempt to overthrow Chavez was backed by the U.S. because they felt that Chavez “had to correct his ways and govern in a ‘fully democratic manner’” (Hallinan). Where does the U.S. have the right to tell another countries president how he should and should not run his government? My opinion is that if the president is acting in a manner that can steer the country away from the U.S.’s influence, then the U.S. deems this as form that needs to be corrected. That is why the U.S. was a large fact in the attempted coup, because they were not happy with Chavez’s foreign policy. “Indeed, Was

Some topics in this essay:
Dominican Republic, Latin America, Latin American, Chavez Chavez, Colombia’s FARC, Appel Appel, Ecuador” Hallinan, Woodrow Wilson, Chavez Bush, Jose Marti, latin america, dominican republic, latin american, school americas, foreign policy, jose marti, involved latin, latin american countries, dominant superpower, bush administration, chavez’s foreign, human rights abuses, involvement latin america, chavez’s foreign policy, involved latin america,