Latin America has long been considered at least by the Americans as their backyard part of their sphere of influence what happens in South America is the business of the United States it's one of America's oldest foreign policy doctrines called the Monroe Doctrine however as the Cold War began to settle in things seem like they might be in a rough position and the United States needed to act to ensure the loyalty of Latin America I'm your host David and today we'll be taking a quick tour of what the situation in Latin America looked like in the early Cold War period this is the Cold War Latin America was a land of incredibly stark inequality this meant that well a few families and individuals sat on vast fortunes many who lived in Central and South America struggled for the necessities of life this level of inequality can breed dissent and is a right target for a socialist movement however the governments who fostered said inequality were good friends of the United States the US had solidified alliances with every latin-american country save Uruguay who preferred neutrality and Argentina which did not get involved but had warm feelings for Germany during the Second World War many Latin American countries provided support during the war such as Mexico's legendary fighter squadron the Aztec Eagles or the support of Brazil protecting the Atlantic and even participating in the campaign for Italy after the war the US had other arenas of the Cold War to focus on in places like Europe Korea and Vietnam so Latin America was a lower priority they did however feel their influence could use some work they were disturbed that during the war Axis forces made overtures to Latin American countries and in some countries such as Argentina were somewhat receptive so as in other regions the u.s. established regional defense oriented organizations to counter the influence of communism the most famous you might recognize is NATO the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which will definitely feature heavily on this channel the seeds of a Latin American pact began in response to those axis overtures in the 30s during the regular meetings of the international conferences of American states they work to create a defensive body of these states and made a strong effort to keep them from leading America's sphere of influence in 1945 many of the same countries attended the inter-american conference on problems of war and peace or to Chapultepec conference it mostly focused on working through development and aid and the role of previous pan-american goals with the new United Nations project here they worked out a system of regional security pacts which then passed in the UN the gang got together again after the war in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro to discuss what this hemispheric defense pact might look like America's number one goal in this 1947 conference was to counter the growth of Soviet influence the idea would be to make whatever pact that came out of said conference a pact that was explicitly anti-communist in case you had any doubts they got what they wanted and the group signed the inter-american Treaty of reciprocal assistance or simply the real treaty this treaty would make the u.s. feel like they had the Latin American situation contained for now they would use it as needed throughout the Cold War including during the Cuban Missile Crisis to facilitate more collaboration and cooperation between states in the Western Hemisphere 21 American countries signed the charter of a new Organization of American States in Bogota in 1948 the idea behind the OAS was similar to many in the United Nations they wanted to foster development maintain regional peace and promote representative democracy something that the US would definitely not be interested in honoring and no discussion of Latin America would be apt without heavily setting up and darker chapters to come the United States at the same time it was setting up these organizations of mutual defense and cooperation was spearheading an intervention to prevent a communist takeover of Greece the thing though is that the side the us-backed was a monarchy from the first American interventions in the Cold War it became apparent that being anti-communist was more important to US interests than fostering a democratically elected government the first chapter in the many many incidents this thinking would play out in Latin America happened in Guatemala in 1954 since the spanish-american war the dictatorship government of Guatemala were more than happy to go along with the US economic interests in return for America's support one of those financial interests was the UFC the Ultimate Fighting chain no the United Fruit Company which received signal and land concessions and control over vast amounts of Guatemalan infrastructure UFC eventually had a complete monopoly over Guatemalan banana exports this is why you might find countries like these referred to as banana republics the u.s. even sent the military into Guatemala to make sure no new elected president dare violate the interests of the Fruit Company definitely two mismatched fighters in that octagon this changed when popular sentiment against the dictator Jorge Biko began to really sour in 1944 forcing him to leave in the wake of a student-led revolution the revolution turned guatemala into a democracy and elected their first president juan jose Arevalo he was a conservative but still many liberal reforms happened in guatemala under his rule such as the introduction of a minimum wage he also managed to do multiple things to suppress communist influence such as banning most unions and cracking down on labor party nonetheless the US suspected Arevalo of having Soviet influence because he backed a group called the Caribbean League which had the goal of toppling US backed dictators around the region in 1950 Guatemala had an election and jacobo árbenz became the new president of Guatemala a liberal moderate but one slightly more in favor of change than his predecessor he wanted to improve the lives of the poor workers and peasants in Guatemala he also undertook one of the most dangerous things you can do during the Cold War land reform the idea was to take uncultivated land away from wealthy landowners and give them to poor farmers to have their own land to live on it would reform the new fuel system in Guatemala and it led to a quick increase in agricultural output and the economy actually began to do better but then there's the whole United Fruit Company situation they were fabulously wealthy owned tons of land in Guatemala and controlled the only major Atlantic port that country had these lands and labor reforms threatened to affect the United Fruit company's bottom line in the context of the Cold War it didn't take much convincing for the u.s. to be convinced that this was the encroachment of communism so the CIA set its sights on Guatemala and enacted Operation pp fortune the plan was to enact a coup as well as assassinate dozens of people deemed communists in late 1952 a United Fruit Company ship came into port loaded with weapons disguised as farming equipment however the plan was abruptly canceled for reasons not certain to this day but the story wasn't over the new CIA director Allen Dulles a part of the Eisenhower administration had ties to the United Fruit Company also in 1953 the CIA had successfully overthrown the democratically elected leader of Iran to install a pro-american dictator so they knew that this could work now they enacted a new plan operation P V success the plan got approval from Eisenhower and trained a group of mercenaries in Nicaragua and Honduras to overthrow the Guatemalan government a group of 480 men and US air support invaded Guatemala in June 1954 outnumbered the army also used psychological warfare to convince them that the 480 men led by Castillo Armas had already taken over the country and that President our bends needed to resign the officer corps of the Guatemalan military eventually turned on our bands he was forced to resign and receive political asylum in Mexico Castillo Armas became the leader of a military junta in Guatemala there was another CIA project after the coup to retro actively try and find justification for it called Operation PD history they were looking for a connection to the USSR but none ever came up the operation itself received almost universal condemnation from America's enemies and allies the USSR got a PR victory by pointing out the u.s. helped overthrow a democratically elected government at the bidding of a Fruit Company the successes in Guatemala and Iran would make the CIA confident in its abilities to intervene on behalf of American interests abroad future revolutionaries like Fidel Castro would learn from this tactic and make sure that when the CIA came for them they wouldn't make the same mistakes the cool also exile a young Che Guevara who would become one of the most notorious Marxist rebels of the 20th century if you don't know who Che Guevara is you've likely seen him on a t-shirt somewhere I did say this was the first chapter didn't I stories like this would take on a grim familiarity in Latin America throughout the Cold War Guatemala would not be the first elected government to experience a right-wing coup backed by the CIA the story from here only gets more depressing and darker so let's just put a cork in this particular bottle for the time being we hope you enjoyed today's topic and to make sure you don't miss future episodes please make sure you subscribe to our Channel and if press the bell button we can be reached via email at the Cold War channel at gmail.com or on facebook at WWF facebook.com/ slash the cold war TV we rely on our patrons to create these videos so consider supporting us via w w pgrn comm slash the cold war this is the cold war channel and we will catch you on the next one