This is a talk I gave at a SSP meeting in Jan. ’26. The section on Chile was fleshed out when giving the actual talk.
The Americas, spanning North, Central, and South America, and the Caribbean counts 35 sovereign nations and 22 to 25 dependent territories (depending on who you ask), such as the British Virgin Islands, the Dutch Aruba, French Guiana, and a big ol’ island in North America that is a protectorate of the Danes called Greenland. Of these 60ish nations, the United States has invaded or interfered in all of them bar three.
If I was to spend 90 seconds talking about every one of these countries the US has bothered this talk would last 28 and half minutes, be rather dull, and we wouldn’t learn anything. So this talk on US imperialism in the Americas will be a short history of European colonisation, the Monroe Doctrine, and then two examples of US imperialism in action. The United Fruit Coup in 1950s Guatemala laid out how the US would react to countries interfering with US interests, and a small section on Chile in 1973 which shows what would happen if you dared elect a Marxist as head of state. Hopefully with the background and examples we can try to take lessons on what may happen in Greenland, Cuba, Columbia, Venezuela, and god knows where else.
But how did we end up here? First, a short history lesson.
The history of the Americas are as we know them, stories that don’t take into account the native peoples of these lands. They are stories of unfettered capitalism, colonialism, and imperialism.
Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492, claiming the land for the Spanish monarch who had funded his expedition. In 1493 the first permanent Spanish settlement was established on the island of Hispaniola, which we know as Haiti and the Dominican Republic
Portugal’s Pedro Álvares Cabral claimed Brazil in 1500. There’s a reason why Portuguese and Spanish are the first and second most spoken languages in South America.
The rest of Europe got in on the action too. France held territories in North America in the area that is Louisiana and eastern Canada, in the Caribbean and in South America where they still hold Guiana,. The Dutch held territories in the Caribbean and in North America had the area of the Hudson River. They called it New Netherlands, but since 1664 it’s been called New York after a battle with the English. Russia colonised Alaska, founding their first colony in 1784.
A small note should be made of the colony established by Scotland in what is now Panama. The Darien Venture was Scotland’s attempt to get in on the act and make some cash. The Darien Gap in Panama was thought to be a great place to have a ‘land bridge’ connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Control this stretch of land and a fortune could be made by bypassing the voyage around South America. Simple? Anything but. There were two problems with Scotland’s plan. Firstly, the Spanish had claimed it first and didn’t take kindly to the Scots arrival. Secondly, it was a swampy bog infested with mosquitos. They landed in 1698 and by 1699 the settlement had failed, 80% of those who travelled died, and due to approximately 20% of all the money in circulation in Scotland being invested, Scotland was now broke. This played a role in the 1707 Act of the Union.
Why the history lesson? What relevance does this have to Greenland et al.? This colonisation by European nations shows the background that led to the Monroe Doctrine, a US foreign policy. The phrase Monroe Doctrine has been twisted recently to the “Donroe” doctrine in honour of the egotistical current US president. In 1823 President James Monroe warned the European powers that the Americas should no longer be considered open for colonisation or intervention. The Western Hemisphere was now off limits. The USA would not get involved in European wars, and Europe was not to get involved across the Atlantic oceans. Spanish colonies in South America were declaring independence, and the Holy Alliance of Prussia, Austria, and Russia were trying to re-establish Bourbon rule over Spain and to take back the colonies. The US saw the encroachment of monarchism in their backyard as a threat to their republican (lower case R) ideals. The Doctrine also states “…with Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great, consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any imposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling their destiny…”. I would argue this assertion showed principle, albeit for self preservation, and showed also that the Doctrine was initially for defensive purposes. It didn’t take long for this to change though, and in the early 20th century the American military could be found in Cuba, Honduras, Panama, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. Mostly these occupations were to safeguard customs revenues. The real bastardisation of the Monroe Doctrine as we know it happens post World War 2.
Guatemala and the United Fruit Company
The United Fruit Company was much more than just a fruit company. United Fruit owned huge tracts of lands across Central America, and in Guatemala it also controlled the railroads, the docks, and the communication systems. By 1900 UF had become the largest exporter of bananas in the world, and held a monopoly over the Guatemalan banana trade. In the shadow of the Great Depression of the 1930s, wealthy Guatemalan landlords decided to support Jorge Ubico for president, who would go on to win the 1931 election uncontested. To ‘repay’ the faith of his backers Ubico ran an oppressive regime. He introduced a vagrancy law that stated all landless men had to perform 100 days of forced labour annually – forced labour of course being a euphemism for slavery. Ubico allowed landlords and companies to take any actions they wished against employees, including execution. Historians have since called this legalised murder. It’ll come as no surprise to you that Ubico admired fascist leaders Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. An anti-communist, Ubico reacted to several peasant rebellions with mass incarceration and massacres. UF by this time was the largest landowner and employer in Guatemala. To thank UF, Ubico granted them 490,000 acres of public land and an exemption from taxes. To thank the employees of UF, Ubico requested that UF not pay them any more than 50 cents a day, so that workers for other companies wouldn’t be able to demand higher wages. Believe it or not, these policies of favouring UF over the working class turned out to be very unpopular. In June 1944 a popular uprising caused Ubico to flee, and leave a three person junta in charge. This junta apparently had learnt nothing from the uprising and carried on with Ubico’s policies for a whopping four months, until in October 1944 toppled them. A new president, Juan Jose Arevalo all was elected and enacted policies that created health centres, more liberal Labour laws, increased funding to education, enacted a minimum wage, and created state farms to employ the jobless. Far from being a wonderful socialist, Arevalo was a conservative who criminalised unions and cracked down on the communist Guatemalan Party of Labour. The next elections in 1950 were free elections and won by Arbenz, the Guatemalans clearly liked the liberal policies of Arevalo and wanted to go further. Arbenz aimed to emancipate workers from the feudalism that many still lived under. Part of this involved his agrarian reform bill, which he drafted himself after seeking advice from economists across Latin America. The aim of this policy was to transfer uncultivated land from large landowners and give it to poor labourers who would be able to start their own farms. Remember who the largest landowner in Guatemala is at this time? UF. It would of course be unfair to just take the land from the landowners, there would be recompense based on the declared value of the land in the 1952 tax returns. However, UF had vastly unreported the value of the land so they would have to pay less tax. They didn’t just underpay their workers, turns out they also underpaid the tax man. UF only had 15% of the land in cultivation, leaving the remaining 85% up for grabs. By 1954 1.4 million acres of land had been expropriated and distributed. Approximately half a million citizens, or one sixth of the population, had received land. The law resulted in the significant improvement of living standards for peasant families, a great many of whom were indigenous.
By 1950 UFs annual profit was 65 million dollars, twice as large as the revenue of the Guatemalan government. This gave UF a lot of money to lobby US politicians with, and to run a public relations campaign against the Guatemalan government. The angle taken? The Guatemalan government was communist, and needed to be with. As part of the campaign UF produced a large report – that historians have said was largely over-stated, exaggerated, scurrilous, and bizarre – but it was effective. The US congressmen that read it agreed that something was to be done. Half a million dollars well spent.
In 1954 the US decided to throw a coup. President Eisenhower authorised the CIA to carry out Operation PBSuccess and were granted a budget believed to be between 5 and 7 million dollars – 2.7 of which was to be spent on psychological warfare and political action. A former army commander, Castillo Armas was given enough money to recruit a force of mercenaries from other exiles and people from surrounding countries. Training was supplied by the CIA in Nicaragua and Honduras, and the CIA also provided their first known manuals on assasination techniques. I’m going to skip over the details of the actual coup, these I feel are a bit gratuitous and can be easily found online. The result was President Arbenz resigned, and would end up being granted asylum in Mexico. About 120 of his loyal supporters and communists were also allowed to leave on the basis that their lives would also be in danger. Army Chief of Staff Colonel Carlos Enrique Diaz was left in charge, but two days later was informed that the CIA thought he was “not convenient for American policy”. Elections were held, and the CIA backed Castillo Armas who had led the coup was the only name on the ballot as all political parties were barred from entering. He won with 99% of the vote.
Chile
This will be a shorter, but just as important example. The 11th of September. The original one. This was the Chilean Coup in 1973 in which democratically elected socialist Salvador Allende and his Popular Unity coalition were overthrown by General Augusto Pinochet, ending civilian rule.
The United States feared that the example of a well functioning socialist experiment in the region would be a terrible lesson for South America to learn. You’ll understand fully that the US was horrified when Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro made a four week state visit. Thankfully for the Americans they had established the US Army School of the Americas in Georgia. This institute had by the year 2000 educated more than 60,000 Latin American military, law enforcement, and security enforcement. It is important to point out that the school was not always located in Georgia – it had been in Panama until it was expelled in 1984.
America brought the Chicago school of economists in. Milton Friedman. This was to be a neoliberal experiment like no other.
Failed.
Chile had been seen as a symbol of democracy and stability in the area. The fifty years prior to 1973 it was known as the presidential republic, with approximately 30% of the country middle class.
What lessons can we take from these two examples? I feel that the Guatemalan example is most useful when it comes to Greenland. While Donald Trump has said repeatedly that they need the land for the defensive reasons, it has been pointed out repeatedly that the US and Denmark signed an agreement in late 2023 that gave the US “unhindered access” to Danish military bases for storing equipment, training and operations. The Danes have not stopped the US from having bases on Greenland – there is the Pituffik Space Base that was built in the 50’s to counter Soviet missiles and bombers over the Arctic. It would appear that the impetus for the Greenland expansion is that it is thought to be home to vast amounts of minerals underneath rapidly melting ice. Guatemala shows that the US has no trouble throwing its substantial weight behind its real priority – where the profit can be made.
Why should we ask socialists to keep an eye on these developments? Beside the question of what is morally right, Lenin’s core idea detailed in Imperialism, the Highest State of Capitalism is that it’s the monopoly stage of capitalism, driven by finance capital and the division of the world among great powers, leads to inevitable decay, war, and revolution. He saw this stage as capitalism’s final, parasitic phrase. What does this mean? Capitalism needs to grow to survive, it will take in and destroy the resources of your nation, so to keep costs down they raid other countries for their supplies, their labour, anything they can extract. This would lead to socialist revolution.
Watch the El Conde Pinochet vampire film. Read Naomi Klein Shock Doctrine.
I put to you all now, what should we learn from the past? How can we apply this to the future?