Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-7qhmt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T17:19:52.853Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

3 - The United States in Latin America

from PART ONE - EL SALVADOR IN THE COLD WAR

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2016

Russell Crandall
Affiliation:
Davidson College, North Carolina
Get access

Summary

[Washington] will not be able to hurt us if all of Latin America is in flames.

– Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro

[Latin America] reminds me of an active volcano.

– Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet Premier, 1960

Examining the evolution of the Cold War is essential in grasping the ideological and geopolitical factors that underlined the sustained American engagement in El Salvador in 1980. El Salvador was an unexpected locale for deep U.S. involvement during the Cold War since, unlike many of its neighbors, it was not seen as especially prone to a victorious Marxist revolution until the late 1970s. By the early 1980s, though, El Salvador had seemingly overnight become the most likely candidate for America's “next Vietnam.” While it never ended up becoming the American tragedy that unfolded in Vietnam, El Salvador nonetheless shared many characteristics with this Southeast Asian country – at least from the standpoint of U.S. involvement.

In both instances, the United States attempted to guard against what it believed was a looming expansion of global communism. What is clear is that America's strategic and political debacle in Vietnam that officially ended in 1975 strongly influenced how the United States engaged El Salvador. America approached the country with a hefty dose of caution, given the palpable fears that El Salvador could be one more “slippery slope” resulting in a militarily maximalist, yet strategically and morally dubious, U.S.-led effort to “hold the line” against communism. But before we can fully appreciate the United States in El Salvador in the 1970s and ’80s we must first turn to two broader historical threads: the emergence of the United States’ “Big Stick” in the first half of the 20th century, when the U.S. reserved the right to intervene in the affairs of a country it deemed in disarray; and successive Cold War presidential administrations, which strove to achieve victory over communism through counterinsurgency and economic and political development.

Rise of the Big Stick

After easily defeating in Cuba what by this time was a sclerotic Spanish empire, in 1898, over the following decades the United States intervened frequently in political and economic affairs, often to combat “chronic instability” as Spanish American war veteran and president Theodore Roosevelt would characterize it while in office.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Salvador Option
The United States in El Salvador, 1977–1992
, pp. 25 - 35
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2016

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×