Week 4 the Pressure to Withdraw from The Dominican Republic Discussion Week 4 (April 27-May 3): Latin America II. Reading McPherson, The Invaded pp. 159-26

Week 4 the Pressure to Withdraw from The Dominican Republic Discussion Week 4 (April 27-May 3): Latin America II. Reading McPherson, The Invaded pp. 159-269. Initial post due Thursday April 30 by 11:59 pm PT and peer responses due Sunday 5/3 by 11:59 pm PT. Your initial post should be at least 350 words and your peer responses 150 words each. 1. Pick one of the countries from McPherson and discuss the international pressures that forced the U.S. to withdraw. 2. What were the domestic pressures that forced the U.S. to withdraw from the countries discussed in McPherson? The Invaded
The Invaded
How Latin Americans and Their
Allies Fought and Ended
U.S. Occupations
AL AN McPHERSON
1
1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide.
Oxford New York
Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi
Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi
New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto
With offices in
Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece
Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore
South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam
Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press
in the UK and certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by
Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016
© Oxford University Press 2014
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with the
appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction
outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McPherson, Alan L.
The invaded : how Latin Americans and their allies fought and ended
U.S. occupations / Alan McPherson.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–534303–8 (alk. paper)
1. Latin America—Relations—United States. 2. United States—Relations—Latin
America. 3. Anti-Americanism—Latin America—History—20th century. 4. Nicaragua—
History—1909–1937. 5. Haiti—History—American occupation, 1915–1934.
6. Dominican Republic—History—American occupation, 1916–1924. I. Title.
F1418.M3729 2014
327.8073—dc23
2013023259
1
3
5
7
9
8
6
4
2
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
To Cindy, my love
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
ix
Introduction: Occupation: Why Fight It?
PART ONE
1. Nicaragua, 1912
2. Haiti, 1915
1
INTERVENTION RESISTANCE
13
22
3. The Dominican Republic, 1916
PART T WO
4. Nicaragua, 1913–1925
5. Haiti, 1916–1920
34
OCCUPATION RESISTANCE
53
59
6. The Dominican Republic, 1917–1922
7. Nicaragua, 1927–1929
8. Brambles and Thorns
73
91
vii
68
PART THREE
9. Cultures of Resistance
113
10. Politics of Resistance
131
THE STAKES
PART FOUR TR ANSNATIONAL NET WORK S
AND US WITHDR AWALS
11. US Responses, Haitian Setbacks, and Dominican Withdrawal,
1919–1924 159
12. The Americas against Occupation, 1926–1932
13. Nicaraguan Withdrawals, 1925–1934
14. Haitian Withdrawal, 1929–1934
238
Conclusion: Lessons of Occupation
262
Notes 275
Bibliography
Index 369
347
213
194
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was a decade in the making, and many are to thank for making it my
most rewarding, personally and professionally.
Funding the research was arduous and precarious, but eventually many generous sources came through. My former employer, Howard University, provided me with a New Faculty Research Grant that allowed travel to Nicaragua,
France, and England. The federal government awarded the project a Fulbright
to the Dominican Republic. The Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute of the
Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, the Hoover Presidential Library Association, the
University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies, and the Duke-UNC
Consortium for Latin American Studies kept my spirits buoyant with research
grants. Harvard University’s David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies, where I was the Central American Fellow for a semester, finally allowed me
to write the manuscript.
Archivists and colleagues at home and especially abroad helped me find and
understand a multinational set of sources. Archivists and reference librarians at
all institutions I visited in the United States, France, and England were invariably
courteous and resourceful.
In the Dominican Republic, Roberto Cassá and Quisqueya Lora proved
that professionalism and a boost from the state could rehabilitate Caribbean
archives. The Universidad Autónoma de Santo Domingo was helpful with the
papers of Tulio Cestero. Vetilio Alfau opened his father’s collection to me. “Natacha” González showed me how to teach Dominican students. Hamlet Hermann helped me understand Dominican politics. Federico “Chito” Henríquez y
Vásquez, the grandson of Federico Henríquez y Carvajal, provided family documents over a cafecito. Also helpful were Salvador Alfau, Julio del Campo, José del
Castillo, Emilio Cordero Michel, Dantes Ortíz, and Alejandro Paulino. The US
embassy’s cultural staff, especially Rex Moser, gave me the opportunity to share
my findings at public universities throughout the Dominican Republic.
ix
x
acknowledgments
In Nicaragua, Margarita Vannini of the Instituto de Historia de Nicaragua y
Centro América not only allowed me access to her center’s archive but also facilitated entrance into the jewel of Sandino history in Nicaragua, the Centro de
Historia Militar. There, Soraya Sánchez did the hard work of digging up relevant
materials.
I owe a special debt of gratitude to graduate assistants who brought me mountains of materials, to which I responded with demands for bigger mountains.
Among these were Sarah Chancy, Joseph Hartman, Christina Violeta Jones,
John Kitch, and especially Glenn Chambers.
Colleagues provided advice and feedback as I made presentations and wrote
short pieces. Thanks to John Britton, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Max Friedman,
Michel Gobat, Michael Kazin, Hal Jones, Joseph McCartin, Marisa Navarro,
Mary Renda, Yannick Wehrli, and John Womack. Jeffrey Taffet was most helpful
by reading the entire manuscript.
My present employer, the College of International Studies at the University
of Oklahoma, has been more than generous, giving me time, resources, and encouragement to bring the book to completion. Thanks especially to Zach Messitte and Mark Frazier and to fellow Latin Americanists John Fishel, Robin Grier,
Erika Robb-Larkins, and Charlie Kenney. Special thanks go to Sandi Emond and
Ronda Martin.
Susan Ferber at Oxford University Press was an attentive editor, giving my
originally bloated manuscript two thorough, fastidious readings that slimmed it
down and improved its accessibility. Oxford also sent the manuscript to the two
best anonymous readers I have ever experienced, greatly enhancing the finished
product.
Finally I owe my greatest debt to my family. Work on this book overlapped
with the birth of my two lively, lovely boys, Luc and Nico, who bring joy into
my life every day—even though that day starts earlier than I’d like. The project
germinated before I even met my wife, so since she has known me, Cindy has
been married also to this book. With all its demands on my time, this project was
most challenging for her, and she responded with patience and encouragement.
To her I dedicate this book.
The Invaded
Introduction
Occupation: Why Fight It?
Shortly after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, a Washington Post reporter tagged
along with a US Army company in Baghdad. He asked the troops if the people of
Baghdad wanted them to stay. “Oh yeah,” responded a twenty-year-old specialist from Louisiana. Assessing the friendliness of the neighborhood they were
about to enter, he offered, “95 percent.” The Post man asked a staff sergeant from
Minnesota the same question. “Maybe 10 percent are hostile. About 50 percent
friendly. About 40 percent are indifferent.” Around the block, an Iraqi offered his
own statistic: “We refuse the occupation—not 100 percent, but 1,000 percent.”1
In fact, polls throughout the occupation indicated that around three quarters of
Iraqis wanted the occupation to end.2
A lot can account for these wildly varying assessments. Surely nationality, but
rank, region, religion, education, past perceptions of the war, and self-images
also play a role. Such markers of identity always lie at the heart of resistance
movements to military occupations and determine both their motivations and
effectiveness. They were certainly salient during US occupations in Latin America in the first third of the twentieth century. Depending on how one defines
interventions, there were from 40 to 6,000 south of the Rio Grande between
the Civil War and the 1930s.3 Three of them—Nicaragua (1912–1933), Haiti
(1915–1934), and the Dominican Republic (1916–1924)—are the subjects of
this book.4 There were other occupations—Puerto Rico, Veracruz in Mexico,
Chiriquí in Panama, and several in Cuba—but these three were the longest and
most complex.5 They involved large numbers of US troops—2,000 in Haiti,
3,000 next door, and well over 5,000 in Nicaragua. Intended to be temporary,
they were neither annexations nor colonizations.6 Neither were they mere interventions. During occupations, US Marines took over many of the functions of
the state—least so in Nicaragua, where politicians invited the occupation; more
so in Haiti, where the marines ruled indirectly through a treaty; and completely
so in the Dominican Republic, where Washington ran a military government.
1
2
t h e i n va d e d
Marines also policed a large portion of these territories and interacted with
every social group.
Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua were all small, poor, agricultural nations with only incipient industrial sectors. In Haiti, French and Kreyol
were spoken; in the others, Spanish, with some indigenous languages, and English in Nicaragua. Haiti was the smallest in area and had the densest population,
including a capital, Port-au-Prince, of as many as 100,000 souls. Dominicans
were a third of Haiti’s population and far more dispersed, and only 21,000 to
35,000 lived in Santo Domingo during the occupation.7 Nicaragua was about
three times the size of the Dominican Republic, but with a population of only
400,000 concentrated on its coasts.
In all three countries, those who resisted invasion were motivated not primarily by nationalism but by more concrete, local concerns that were material,
power-related, self-protective, or self-promoting.8 Resistance to these occupations proved effective at bringing about an official US policy of nonintervention, the Good Neighbor Policy.9 This book argues that resistance was the most
important factor in ending occupations precisely because it reflected concrete
grievances and also because it spurred transnational resistance movements.
Latin Americans were at their most effective (determined, united, persistent,
persuasive) when their interests (personal security, land, culture, local autonomy) were most threatened.
While most studies of occupation focus on occupiers, this book views events
through the eyes of the invaded.10 To do so, it draws on a score of state and personal archives in five countries and three languages, engaging specific events
on the ground and emphasizing similarities and differences among these three
occupations.11 Some of the similarities are well known: each occupation confronted a rural insurrection, motivated partly by marine brutality. Less known
is why the Haitian and Dominican insurrections failed while the Nicaraguan
one outlasted the marines, or why the Dominican occupation ended in 1924
while Haitians lived through another decade of occupation. This book also distinguishes between two waves of resistance, a first against the fact of occupation
and a second against its conduct.
Past studies have also limited a comprehensive understanding of resistance
to occupation in Latin America by emphasizing the actions of peasants and
rural guerrillas. But, with notable exceptions, peasants put up relatively less
resistance to marine rule than all other groups save merchants. Once violent
insurrections ended and occupations continued in Hispaniola, contact between
the military and peasants declined. Several other underprivileged groups—
workers, prostitutes, other urban “untouchables”—had more than their share
of encounters with occupiers, many of them unpleasant. The process of occupation also threatened the status and wealth of prominent groups. Unemployed
Introduc tion : Occupation : W hy Fight It ?
3
politicians, landowners, lawyers, and journalists became second-class citizens
under US rule and engaged in everyday acts of resistance. The invaded were
already engaged in contested, violent processes of centralization, which occupation both accelerated and placed in the hands of foreigners, prompting further
contestation and violence. This book gives peasants and rural insurgents their
due while adding weight to the resistance of other groups, especially peaceful
ones, which were ultimately more effective than guerrillas, save for Nicaragua
in 1927–1933.12 It also uncovers links between rural folk, urban resisters, and
other groups.
Among those other groups were anti-occupation allies abroad. Unlike in traditional war, anti-occupation activists cannot use their nation-state to resist and
instead resort to insurgency, civil disobedience, sabotage, and defiance of censorship. They also operate above the state, appealing to overseas civil societies
that collaborate as transnational networks of resistance. In Latin American occupations, links forged in Santiago de Cuba, Tegucigalpa, Mexico City, Buenos
Aires, New York, Washington, and elsewhere allowed those living under occupation to communicate their grievances to the Americas, Europe, and beyond.
The progressive movement, the growth of higher education, the war in Europe,
improvements in communications and transportation, and the global expansion of US power helped spur the creation of overlapping and interlocking
transnational networks made up of activists, writers, scholars, religious leaders,
and government officials who argued that the era of occupations should come
to an end. From 1912 to 1934, these networks helped amplify the messages of
the invaded through their informational power and political freedoms as well
as an increasingly coherent pan-hemispheric identity. While not supplanting
occupied activists, transnational networks provided crucial links to an antioccupation chain that began with the invaded and ended with policymakers in
Washington.13
The battle over occupations was primarily a struggle over political culture. The
beliefs and practices of politics were what occupiers wanted to change and what
the occupied wanted to protect.14 The repertoire of political culture during US
occupations in Latin America included elections, to be sure, but also other goals
ranging from a narrow insistence on constitutional forms of rule to efforts to
broaden socioeconomic equality, depending on occupiers’ own beliefs and
prerogatives and on local conditions.15 In addition, large gaps existed between
the rhetoric and practice of political culture. Rhetorically, clear differences over
political assumptions distanced occupied Latin Americans from US occupiers.
The former spoke of violence as a legitimate tool for achieving political legitimacy; the latter preferred constitutional means. The occupied were personalists, believing in following leaders and parties regardless of ideology; occupiers
4
t h e i n va d e d
emphasized platforms and programs. The occupied believed that the state existed mainly to enrich officeholders; occupiers saw government as a collective
service. The occupied often operated without an opposition, preferring to repress it; occupiers claimed that occupations should respect civil liberties.
In reality, the occupied cherished their peaceful independence, distrusted
their leaders, and knew little about their governments. US occupiers meanwhile pursued peace through war, pluralism through dictatorship, civic responsibility through relieving the occupied of responsibilities, and civil liberties
through censorship and repression. This book upholds the central proposition
of ­occupiers—that their primary purpose was to “improve” Latin American political culture—yet takes exception to the assertion that the United States did so
for “idealistic” reasons.16 Equally important, it asserts that political culture, while
not originally the primary stake in interventions, became so as other reasons
faded to the background.
Resistance to political cultural change emerged from the fact that, in the decades
leading up to the Great War in Europe, US policymakers concluded that political culture was the connecting tissue of geopolitical, economic, and cultural rationales for occupation. Stabilizing politics was not necessarily the most urgent
problem, but it proved the most convenient rationale. When military fears of European intervention turned out to be exaggerated, US policymakers fell back on
their political altruism. When economic rapaciousness could not be admitted or
did not exist, the desire for political change did and could. And when policymakers proved unable to recognize their prejudices, they explained culture through
identifiable political behaviors. Occupiers stated clearly and often their intent to
transform the politics of the occupied.17
To be sure, these other motivations may have been sufficient to prompt at
least short-term military interventions. Geostrategically, the US Navy wanted
to secure the Windward Passage—the natural shipping lane from the Atlantic to
the Caribbean that runs between Cuba and Haiti—and partly for that reason acquired a naval base at Guantánamo Bay after the War of 1898. In 1891 and again
in 1913, US administrations also tried to buy Haiti’s Môle Saint-Nicolas, which
stood on the other side of the passage.18 Dominican leaders offered Samaná Bay,
the most attractive spot in the Caribbean for a naval base. By 1914, with war
brewing in Europe, the US Navy was even more eager to secure lanes to the newly
opened Panama Canal. During the war the United States purchased Mexican oil
and Chilean nitrates, crucial for its allies, so keeping enemies out of the Caribbean was crucial.19 Washington had long wanted a canal in Nicaragua instead
of—then in addition to—Panama, and in 1914 it signed the Bryan-Chamorro
Treaty, which gave it the right to dig in exchange for $3 million to the Nicaraguan
government.20 Part of Washington’s reason for deposing Nicaraguan President
Introduc tion : Occupation : W hy Fight It ?
5
José Santos Zelaya in 1909 was to keep him from selling the canal rights to another power, perhaps Japan.21 Another common strategic argument was that the
United States landed in Haiti in July 1915 because the French cruiser Des Cartes
arrived in Port-au-Prince and the Germans plotted to do the same.22
While geostrategies may have justified interventions, they were insufficient
to explain the transformative occupations that followed. The Japanese had no
intention of taking Nicaragua or digging a canal. The French merely wanted
to protect their lives and property in Haiti and retreated as soon as they saw
the US Navy doing the job for them. “Anything likely to cause difficulties with
[the] United States should be avoided,” ordered the Quai D’Orsay.23 During
World War I, German submarines never operated in the Caribbean.24 When
Robert Lansing, Woodrow Wilson’s secretary of state, once explained the Haitian occupation on the basis that he suspected a German move, the New York
Times responded that that “scarcely justifies” occupation.25 Naval planners in
1904 did foresee “advance bases” in Haiti and the Dominican Republic that
might require occupation, but the idea largely lost its appeal by the late William Howard Taft adminis…
Purchase answer to see full
attachment

Online assignment writing service website that provide students with original and unique academic essays, research proposals, research papers, term papers, movie reviews, Book reviews, scholarship essays, personal statements, projects, presentations, dissertation, theses, admission essays, annotated bibliographies, reports, application papers, among others.

Need Help Writing an Essay?

Tell us about your assignment and we will find the best writer for your paper.

Get Help Now!

Stuck on a homework question? Our verified assignment writers can answer all questions, from basic math to advanced rocket science!