Under President Woodrow Wilson the United States intervened militarily in Mexico in the name of Mexican self-determination, but that effort was ineffective. In general, the aim of American foreign policy in the region was to preserve order and stability, and toward that end supported local elites and protected private American property rights, rather than attempting to come to terms with Latin American sensibilities wounded by repeated American interventions and torn by internal revolution. Fearful, however, of German influence during World War I, Wilson took th

The United States sought to defuse the revolutionary ferment stirred up by the Castro revolution throughout Latin America by offering economic aid, the Alliance for Progress initiated by the administration of John Kennedy. This never really got off the ground due to inflated expectations, elite resistance to reforms in Latin America and lack of funding by Congress as well as the diminished enthusiasm of President Lyndon Johnson for it. Gilderhus said LBJ "never persuaded Latin Americans that he knew or cared very much about them or their countries" (p. 184).

The experience of the Depression and the Second

In the short run all these efforts failed, including the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961 by CIA-supported Cuban exiles, the abortive plots to assassinate Castro, etc. After the American-USSR standoff in the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, the United States basically sought to isolate the Castro regime through a policy of diplomatic and economic sanctions, which, while it was unpopular in Latin America, accomplished its purpose, principally because of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the abysmal failures of the planned economy in Cuba.