Latin America since 1900: Revolution, Dictatorship and Democracy

Independent, but not always free to choose

Most Latin American countries had been independent since the 1820s, as you learned in The World, 1789–1900. Yet in the twentieth century they faced powerful outside influence, especially from the United States, deep inequality between landowners and peasants, and long struggles between reformers, revolutionaries and military rulers. By the end of the century, almost every country in the region had elected governments, and Indigenous and human rights movements had changed politics.

The "big stick" era

After defeating Spain in 1898, the U.S. became the dominant power in the Caribbean. It helped Panama break away from Colombia in 1903 so it could build the Panama Canal (opened 1914), and it sent troops into several countries to protect American investments and enforce debt payments. In Nicaragua, Augusto Sandino fought U.S. Marines from 1927 to 1933; he was killed in 1934 by the National Guard of Anastasio Somoza, whose family then ruled Nicaragua until 1979.

Populism and national development

The Depression hit Latin American exporters hard. New leaders promised to modernize, build national industry and include workers in politics:

• Getúlio Vargas ruled Brazil (1930–1945, and again 1951–1954), building state industries and labour laws, but also ruling as a dictator from 1937.
• Juan Perón (Argentina, 1946–1955) and his wife Eva Perón won enormous support from workers with wage increases and social programs. Women in Argentina won the vote in 1947.
• Lázaro Cárdenas in Mexico nationalized oil in 1938, as you saw in Revolutions in Mexico, Russia and China.

Many governments followed import substitution industrialization: protecting new local factories with tariffs so they could replace imported goods.

Revolution and the Cold War

• Guatemala, 1954: President Jacobo Árbenz, elected in 1950, gave unused land to peasants, including land owned by the U.S.-based United Fruit Company. The U.S. called him a communist threat, and a CIA-backed invasion forced him out in 1954. A civil war from 1960 to 1996 followed. About 200 000 people were killed or disappeared, most of them Maya. A UN-backed truth commission (1999) concluded that state forces had committed acts of genocide against Maya communities. The K'iche' Maya activist Rigoberta Menchú won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1992 for her work for Indigenous rights.
• Cuba, 1959: Fidel Castro's revolution expanded literacy (a 1961 campaign sent young volunteers to teach in the countryside) and health care, but it created a one-party state that jailed opponents. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans left. Cuba's example inspired guerrilla movements, and alarmed the U.S. and Latin American elites.
• Chile, 1973: Salvador Allende, a Marxist elected president in 1970, nationalized copper mines and banks. The U.S. worked to destabilize his government. On September 11, 1973, the military under General Augusto Pinochet seized power; Allende died during the coup. Thousands were killed or disappeared, and tens of thousands were tortured. Many Chileans fled, and several thousand came to Canada.
• Argentina, 1976–1983: the military regime waged what it called a "Dirty War" against suspected leftists. Human rights groups estimate that up to 30 000 people were "disappeared": kidnapped and secretly killed. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo began marching silently in front of the presidential palace in 1977, wearing white headscarves, to demand to know where their children were. The Grandmothers have since helped identify more than 130 children who were stolen from detained parents and raised by other families.
• Central America, 1980s: in Nicaragua, the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1979; the U.S. armed the opposing Contras. In El Salvador, a civil war (1980–1992) killed about 75 000 people. Archbishop Óscar Romero, who spoke out against killings by the army, was assassinated while saying Mass on March 24, 1980.

Debt, democracy and new movements

• The debt crisis: in the 1970s, governments borrowed heavily. When interest rates rose, Mexico announced in August 1982 it could not pay, and crisis spread. The 1980s became the "lost decade": incomes fell, and lenders demanded cuts to spending and the sale of state companies (often called neoliberal reforms).
• Return to democracy: Argentina (1983), Brazil (1985), Uruguay (1985) and Chile (1990, after voters rejected Pinochet in a 1988 plebiscite) returned to civilian rule. Truth commissions documented crimes, and some military leaders were later tried.
• Indigenous movements: on January 1, 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, the mainly Maya Zapatista Army of National Liberation rose up in Chiapas, Mexico, demanding land, autonomy and dignity. In Bolivia, Evo Morales, an Aymara leader, became the country's first Indigenous president in 2006, and a 2009 constitution renamed the country a "Plurinational State".
• The twenty-first century: left-wing governments won elections in many countries in the 2000s (the "pink tide"), followed by swings back and forth. Venezuela's political and economic crisis led millions of people to leave the country after 2015.