Today a lot of historians again and again are looking for the answers to the eternal questions about the history of the USA, the answers to the questions about the history of US and Central American relations. Walter LaFeber is one of these historians. He sees a long pattern of the United States actions contributing to political and economic conditions virtually guaranteed to lead to the revolutions. And he reflects his ideas and thoughts in his book “Inevitable Revolutions”.
The author creates a realistic representation of some characteristics of the events which appeared in the end of the 19th century. The Central American countries become the place of considerable American investments, and their roles in the American economy provide the basic products for the American market and the markets for the American industries. Besides, the most Central American countries are situated near the important sea lanes, and that fact intensifies the importance of the construction the Panama Canal.
The author begins his book with the characteristic of five Central American countries: Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, and from his opinion the United States was using those countries as feudal possession of the United States for 100 years. The USA operated those countries economically, politically and militarily, and that’s why the conditions for “inevitable revolutions” were created which took place for last century.
In “Inevitable Revolutions” Walter LaFeber draws a fundamental picture of the United States dependence in Central America. The author creates a disgusting picture. Coming back to the mid-19th century, LaFeber shows the moments when the American government has started to cut out the sphere of the influence in that poor region. The author exhaustively puts the analysis in 20th century with some corporations, for example United Fruit, and the proceeding usage of that and the expansion of the Monroe Doctrine “in which the president and Adams warned European colonial powers to keep hands off the Western Hemisphere and the Doctrine would neatly leave the United States as the greatest power in the hemisphere”. (Inevitable Revolutions. Setting up the System, 23). This concept was thorough and through figurated in so different kinds of forms that it became irrecognizable from its original form.
Of course the ruling violence in Central America in the mid and in the end of this century was anti-communism. The author strikes the characters such as the Dulles brothers. They distributed their own power at the spending of the people in that area. Supporting for dictators and military-oligarchial complexes has a great part of this century’s disturbances in Central America. The Somozas in Nicaragua had their own profits from their intimate contacts with US delegates and politicians. The workers and the ordinary people were under this family’s control.
Moreover, the ruling elites of the Central American vassal states were the only ones who benefitted from the profiteering and exploitation. The pleasant majority were incessantly driven to the margins while the oligarchs and the corporations appropriated the best lands. In fact, this is really a sad history. As a result of those situations the ordinary people and the workers never took any advantages from the US-Central American relationship. According to Walter LaFeber the American power leaned against the indirect rule through the indigo governments, usually repressive military regimes as that family of Somoza, having the managements in the tandem with small higher estate. The nature of economic relations between the USA and the Central American countries also proceeded with the increase of the population which led to the developing depauperation of the greater part of people in Central America.