10.10 Lecture – Latin America & The Third World

I. Latin America A. Latin American independence from European rule was achieved more than a hundred years earlier, but American economic domination continued. 1. Chile’s copper, Cuba’s sugar, Colombia’s coffee, and Guatemala’s bananas were largely controlled from abroad. 2. In Mexico the revolutionary constitution of 1917 had begun an era of economic nationalism that culminated in the expropriation of foreign oil interests in a. Stability allowed Mexico to experience significant economic expansion during the war years, but a yawning gulf between rich and poor, urban and rural, persisted. b. Although the government dominated important industries like petroleum and restricted foreign investment, rapid population growth, uncontrolled migration to Mexico City and other urban areas, and political corruption challenged efforts to the life of the nation’s poor. c. Economic power was concentrated at the top of society, with two thousand elite families benefiting disproportionally from the three hundred foreign and eight hundred Mexican companies that dominated the country.

3. In Cuba, economic domination by the United States prior to 1960 was overwhelming. a. U.S. companies effectively controlled sugar production, the nation’s most important industry, as well as banking, transportation, tourism, and public utilities. 1. The United States was the most important market for Cuba’s exports and the most important source of Cuba’s imports. b. By 1956 sugar accounted for 80 percent of Cuba’s exports and 23 percent of Cuba’s national income. 1. Demand in the US dictated keeping only 39 percent of the land owned by the sugar companies in production, while Cuba experienced chronic underemployment. c. Between Cuba’s economy grew at 1.4 percent per year, less than the rate of population increase. d. Cuba’s government notoriously corrupt and subservient to the wishes of the American interests.

II. The Third World A. The Bandung Conference marked the beginning of an effort by the many new, poor, mostly non-European nations emerging from colonialism to gain more influence in world affairs by banding together. 1. The term non-aligned nations and Third World, which became commonplace in the following years, signaled theses countries collective stand toward the rival sides in the Cold War. 2. If the West, led by the United States, and the East, led by the Soviet Union, represented two worlds locked in mortal struggle, the Third World consisted of everyone else. a. Third World countries signified freedom from membership on either side. b. Local leaders were trying to develop their nation’s economy and assert or preserve their nation’s interests. 1. Manipulating the superpowers was a means toward those ends and implied very little about true ideological orientation.