Us Involvement In El Salvador Civil War

The Cold War, which took place from 1947 to 1991 had eventually altered the Latin America's relationship with the United States profoundly, as the region became a battleground between two different competing ideological systems which was capitalism and communism. Prior to the Cold War, both economic and geopolitical concerns had motivated United States policy toward Latin America. But, after the lowering of the Iron Curtain in Eastern Europe, George Kennan, the chief architect of American foreign policy towards the Soviet Union, advocated containment to stop the spreading of communism, not just in Europe, but including the countries all around the world. The result was a bipolar world featuring proxy wars fought throughout the Third World by alternates and clients of the two superpowers. Latin American nations are historically considered to be part of "our backyard," who were not permitted to remain neutral as Washington expected the Latin American countries to ally with the United States, while the Soviet Union sought to gain access to what had been an American sphere of influence and after world war II many Latin American countries such as Cuba faced political, economic and social challenges.

The number one reason the U.S. involved themselves with El Salvador was because the Communist political party started becoming a magnificent threat to the nation. Communism is the belief directed from Karl Marx, where everyone is essentially treated equal. In El Salvador during the 1980s, the Communist group, the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (a.k.a. FMLN), and three other political parties were pushing for more power. Since these groups were

The motivation behind US endeavors during the Cold War was to interfere with Latin American countries politically to counter the spread of communist ideologies that were seen by the US as being directly opposed to its economic and philosophical interests. The US’ economic interests were spread and consolidated through corporations operating within Latin America such as Alcoa, United Fruit, and others. It is through these corporate interests, which were under threat of nationalizion in their respective countries by leftist governments taking hold, that the US justified much of its involvement toppling governments in the region.

Also, the growing presence of the Soviets and Cuba in Nicaragua escalated the cold war and in order to ‘draw the line” the Reagan administration “doubled economic aid for El Salvador to a hundred and forty four million dollars” (pg 40). According to Danner, “the priorities of American Policy in El Salvador had become unmistakable” (pg 41).Second, The American government was “opposed to dispatching American combat forces to Central America” (pg 22) and in order to prevent another Nicaragua, Congress agreed to “reform” the Salvadoran Army by financing, training and arming its troops to fight the FMLN. As Danner notes, “the Americans had stepped forward to fund the war, but were unwilling to fight it”. Third, the Monterrosa led Atlacatl led batallion through American funding descended in El Mozote with “the latest M-16’s, M-60 machines guns, 90 millimeter recoilless rifles, and 60- and 81 millimeter mortars”(pg 39) and with a list of names massacred an entire village because “communism was cancer”(pg 49). The U.S. government was clearly responsible for the Massacre at El Mozote because without the funding, supporting, and training of El Salvador troops the war would have been tilted in the guerillas favor as they had managed to hold the disorganized army in certain areas. In contrast to neighboring departments El Mozote and its inhabitants of born-again Christians did not fit in as guerilla sympathizers. In fact, the training at American hands

In the book The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War, author Greg Grandin traces Guatemala’s evolutionary period from the late 19th century to the early 1980s. What he dubs as ‘the last colonial massacre,’ the Panzós Massacre of 1978 was the mass murder by the Guatamalan army of 35 Q’echi-Mayan men, women and children who had gathered in the town square demanding democractic representation, land reform and higher wages. Outrage over this massacre led many Guatemalan peasants to join the communist Guerilla Army of the Poor (EGP) which prompted violence and repression by the US backed right-wing government. Grandin’s thesis is that Cold War terror unleashed or excused by the United States, weakened the advancement of democracy

Dwight D. Eisenhower said in the Mandate for Change, “The air support enjoyed by Castillo Armas, though meager; was important in relative terms; it gave the regular armed forces an excuse to take action in their own hands to throw out Arbenz” (Document I). Guatemala was clear of its communist President Arbenz due to the help of the United States. Guatemala did not only get rid of communism but Latin America was free (Document I). These marks on history were great failures for communism but great victories for the United

Reading the book Harvest of Empire by Juan Gonzalez, has been very informative to me and has changed my perspective on U.S. foreign policy. Each account of the families from the different Latino countries has similar underlying trends that can be found because of the U.S. involvement in their countries. Every single instance of U.S. involvement in Latin American countries seems to evolve around the idea of greed and profit. The U.S. is like a business that only cares about the income of money and not about the morality of their actions. On top of all the injustice the U.S. government has employed, they don’t bother to own up to their mistakes and they tend to sweep their involvement under the rug. For example, the Iran-Contra scandal mentioned in the book of the Reagan administration was the result of using drug money from Iran to buy weapons for the Nicaraguan contra rebels against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. It infuriates me that the U.S. would support a dictator that suppresses the rights of its citizens and all the while they want to take down the established, popular Sandinista government. The U.S. wants to do all this so that the new government will support U.S. interests in Nicaragua. When the scandal was uncovered, all Reagan could say was “I’m sorry” and “It won’t happen again” even though our involvement had the result of many lives lost in that war/rebellion. Unfortunately, this theme did not only occur in Nicaragua

In the 1980s, the Soviet Union was plagued with a stagnant economy – it had no incentive to promote communism in Central America. Ignoring the USSR’s economic weakness, Reagan asserted squashing the Salvadoran rebels would stem the spread of communism and would reestablish American preeminence in Central America. Reagan believed that enforcing anti-communist ideology would protect American national security interests by protecting the United States from its Bolshevik enemies.

“The United States adopted a policy called, containment, according to which the U.S. committed itself to preventing any further expansion of the Soviet powers” (Tradshad, par. 5). This was the cause of thousands of American soldiers deaths because it required the United States military to be sent out all over the world to help other countries keep their own types of governmental systems. Many people also payed the United States to keep communism out of the country so that they could remain under the same powers as before the Cold War had ever began. Even though the fear of communism was taken care of, the feelings toward the Soviet Union remained the same in the thoughts that they were trying to ruin everyone’s lives. Except for the fact that the Cuban Missile Crisis was somewhat compromised when the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles in Cuba, which were pointed at the United States, in return that the U.S. would pledge to never try to spy or invade in or around their countries again. 6 but not

My dad was born in the small Central American nation of El Salvador, more specifically in Anamoros located on the east side of the country. He lived in the countryside so he often played with their animals, spent most of his childhood swimming in the rivers or playing soccer with his friends, and would frequently hang out with his grandparents in the afternoons. In 1980, when he was about 12 years old that all began to change, he and all those around him needed to be more cautious about their surroundings.

Central Americans in 1980s, including Nicaraguans, Salvadorians and Guatemalans tries to migrate to the United States for several reasons. Some of the main reason including revolution such as the Sandinista Revolution and civil war which could be also be defined as the cold war. The idea of communism is what caused all these violence, where Central America military wants to eliminate all revolutionaries such as the communist. Because of this conflict and idea to stop communist movement, the three countries in Central America, Nigcralgua, El Salvador and Guatemala used different methods where El Salvador and Guatemala shared very similar methods. President of the United States, Ronald Reagan believed that the cold war needs to be fought in Central

Kristen Rake 11/11/2015 Professor Lopes CLAS 170 Latin America and Guatemala The Cold War took place between 1947-1989 including both the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The cold war forever changed how Latin America and the United States would now see each other. Before the war even started there was a lot of conflict surround economical and geological terms regarding who had greater power, and that may be one of the reasons that could have started this war. There were now two competing forces with capitalism and communism which was now tearing the country apart because no one knew what side to take.

Located on the Pacific Coastline, El Salvador is the smallest country in Central America, and the most populated. The United States of America foreign policy on El Salvador is best explained by President Obama’s approach on Latin America where the United States is focused on economic growth and equality, energy and climate control, and regional and citizen security (Foreign Policy, 2012). This is best explained using the international level of analysis and neo-liberalism where the global structure and economic interdependence provides the foundation of America’s foreign policy. To ensure that one can see the transparency in United States methodology I will provide the history of El Salvador, the creation of United States interest in El

The real situations that many Central Americans faced were either from backlash of communism resulting in U.S involvement or just straight up domination

“So I guess in a way they are counter revolutionary, and God bless them for being that way and I guess that makes them contras, and so it makes me a contra too.” In 1979, a bitter war broke out in Nicaragua between the Sandinista Junta of National Reconstruction, the Nicaraguan government, and the Contras, a vicious rebel group. The goal of this war was simple, overthrow the Nicaraguan government and restore freedom for all Nicaraguan citizens. It was this that caught the eye of the American government and it was not too long before the U.S began to fund the Contras. Although the United States government funded the contras, they viewed them with skepticism being that they were extremely controversial.