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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 January 2018
Latin-American international behavior has always seemed puzzling to the policy-makers of Washington, but perhaps never quite as incomprehensible as in connection with the recent Cuban missile crisis. On various occasions, notably during the San José and Punta del Este Foreign Ministers’ Conferences, the United States had attempted to obtain some concerted action against the aggresive and subversive activities of a Communist-dominated Cuba. The response of the Latin-American nations ranged from lukewarm to frigid, and the maximum that the U. S. was able to obtain (and that by a bare two-thirds vote) in the way of anti-Cuban action, was the expulsion of Cuba from the Organization of American States, a step which one must assume was greeted by the Cuban leaders with something less than total consternation.
1 Where popular or army reaction to the abstention at Punta del Este had led to a subsequent rupture of relations with Cuba.
2 Porter, Charles O. and Alexander, Robert J., The Struggle for Democracy in Latin America (New York: Macmillan, 1961), p. 204.Google Scholar
3 Since at least 1938, the United States has been trying to involve Latin America in extra-continental concerns and Latin America has been resisting. The more it gets involved in international, as opposed to regional politics, the weaker the inter-American system becomes.
4 Perkins, Dexter, The United States and Latin America (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1961), p. 48.Google Scholar
5 See Piatt, D. C. M., “British Bondholders in Nineteenth Century Latin America— Injury and Remedy,” Inter-American Economic Affairs, XIV, 3 (Winter, 1960)Google Scholar; and “Business Influence in the Anglo-Mexican Reconciliation of 1884,” in the same journal, XV, 2 (Autumn, 1961).
6 See Arthur P. Whitaker, The United States and Latin America—The Northern Republics, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1948, esp. pp. 153ff. For U. S.Latin American relations in general see Bemis, Samuel Flagg, The Latin American Policy of the United States, New York, Harcourt-Brace, 1943.Google Scholar
7 Foreign Relations of the United States, 1895, p. 558 Olney to Bayard, July 1895.
8 Whitaker, p. 160.
9 Quoted in Curtis Wilgus, A., Readings in Latin American Civilization (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1946), p. 313.Google Scholar
10 Vargas Villa, quoted in Ibid., p. 354.
11 Most of the U. S. pull-out in the Caribbean) had been accomplished under Hoover. The Roosevelt administration merely formalized it and publicized it.
12 Benton, William, The Voice of Latin America (New York: Harper's, 1961), p. 138.Google Scholar
13 Toriello, Guillermo, La Batalla de Guatemala (Mexico: Cuadernos Americanos, 1955), p. 63.Google Scholar Author's translation.
14 For a discussion of the Guatemalan crisis compared with the successful handling of other cases by the OAS, see the author's unpublished Ph.D. manuscript, “The Inter-American Peace and Security System for Dealing with Threats to the Peace and Breaches of the Peace, 1948-1959,” Columbia University, 1962.
15 Alex Pereyra Formoso, “Communism, Democracy and Latin America,” Atlas, August, 1962, p. 125. Originally published in Cuadernos (Paris), April, 1962.
16 New York Herald Tribune, November 25, 1962.
17 Lieuwen, Edwin, Arms and Politics in Latin America (New York: Praeger, 1961), p. 256.Google Scholar
18 Manger, William, Pan America in Crisis (Washington: Public Affairs Press, 1961), p. 95.Google Scholar
19 Ibid., p. 82.
20 Quoted in Hanson, Simon G., “The Failure at Punta del Este,” Inter-American Economic Affairs, XV, 4 (Spring, 1962), p. 39.Google Scholar
21 Samper, Héctor Charry, “La beligerancia del inter-americanismo,” Combate, 14 (January-February, 1961), p. 34. Author's translation.Google Scholar
22 Quoted in Benton, p. 144.
23 Hanson, p. 40.
