The Legacy of Mesoamerica by Gossen Gary H. Gasco Janine Carmack Robert M

Author:Gossen, Gary H.,Gasco, Janine,Carmack, Robert M.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317346784
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

U.S. MEDDLING AND OTHER

ANTECENDENTS TO THE MODERN ERA

U.S. interference in the affairs of Mexico and Central America has a long history, extending back to the last decades of the colonial period and continuing on into the twentieth century. As early as 1786, Thomas Jefferson expressed the official U.S. attitude toward the region: “Our confederacy must be viewed as the nest, from which all America, North and South, is to be peopled” (Cockcroft 1983:49). Late in the eighteenth century, U.S. merchants and contrabanders broke through the Spanish trade monopoly to sell their wares at huge profits in Mexico and Central America. U.S. commercial representatives began to appear in the major ports of trade of the region, and U.S. political agents engaged in military intrigue, pressuring the colonies to cast aside Spanish control.

No sooner had Mexico and Central America achieved independence than U.S. (along with British and other European) merchants were aggressively maneuvering to monopolize trade with these countries at the expense of British and other merchants. Political meddling immediately increased as well: The first U.S. ambassador to Mexico referred to the Mexicans as “ignorant and debauched,” and correspondingly tried to tell them how to run their government. In Central America the postin-dependence federation was based on the U.S. model; and on one or two occasions, states like El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicaragua went so far as to request admission to the U.S. union.

Despite President Monroe’s warning to the European powers in 1823 to stay out of the region, Mexico and Central America were repeatedly invaded during the nineteenth century by European powers, especially England. The other major offender was the United States. Texas was annexed in 1845, and in 1846 the United States invaded Mexico with the excuse that it was collecting debts owed to its citizens from the time of the independence wars. U.S. soldiers succeeded in occupying Mexico City, at the cost of some 50,000 Mexican lives, and forced the Mexican government to cede almost half of its territory (in the “Treaty” of Guadalupe).

In Central America William Walker, the filibusterer from California, invaded Nicaragua in 1855, and ruled it as a slave state for two years with U.S. official recognition. In 1861, at a time when the United States was preoccupied with its Civil War, Spain invaded Mexico, only to be replaced in 1862 as invaders by the French. The French occupied the country until 1867, when they were driven out by Benito Juárez’s nationalist forces. Veterans of the U.S. Civil War aided the Juárez forces, and Juárez offered important concessions to the United States in exchange for its recognition of the new Mexican government.

The most important concessions to the United States, however, were made by liberal dictators in Mexico and Central America after the 1870s. Porfirio Díaz not only made it legal for U.S. citizens to own property in Mexico but also personally saw to it that U.S. companies were given contracts to build the major rail lines throughout the country. With Díaz’s open-door economic policies, U.S. investors soon dominated mining, oil production, and export agriculture in Mexico.

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