Banana Wars - Scope

Scope

• Cuba and Puerto Rico, U.S. intervention in Cuba and invasion of Puerto Rico in 1898.

• Panama, U.S. interventions in the isthmus go back to the 1846 Mallarino-Bidlack Treaty and intensified after the so-called Watermelon War of 1856. In 1903, Panama seceded from the Republic of Colombia, backed by the U.S. government, amidst the Thousand Days War. The Panama Canal was under construction by then, and the Panama Canal Zone, under United States sovereignty, was then created (it was handed down to Panama as of 2000).

• Nicaragua, which, after intermittent landings and naval bombardments in the previous decades, was occupied by the U.S. almost continuously from 1912 through 1933.

• Cuba, occupied by the U.S. from 1898-1902 under military governor Leonard Wood, and again from 1906–1909, 1912 and 1917–1922; governed by the terms of the Platt Amendment through 1934.

• Haiti, occupied by the U.S. from 1915–1934, which led to the creation of a new Haitian constitution in 1917 that instituted changes that included an end to the prior ban on land ownership by non-Haitians. Including the First and Second Caco Wars.

• Dominican Republic, action in 1903, 1904 (the Santo Domingo Affair), and 1914; occupied by the U.S. from 1916 to 1924.

• Honduras, where the United Fruit Company and Standard Fruit Company dominated the country's key banana export sector and associated land holdings and railways, saw insertion of American troops in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924 and 1925. Writer O. Henry coined the term "Banana republic" in 1904 to describe Honduras.

• Mexico, The U.S. military involvements with Mexico in this period are related to the same general commercial and political causes, but stand as a special case. The Americans conducted the Border War with Mexico from 1910-1919 for additional reasons: to control the flow of immigrants and refugees from revolutionary Mexico (pacificos), and to counter rebel raids into U.S. territory. The 1914 U.S. occupation of Veracruz, however, was an exercise of armed influence, not an issue of border integrity; it was aimed at cutting off the supplies of German munitions to the government of Mexican leader Victoriano Huerta, whom US President Woodrow Wilson refused to recognize. In the years prior to World War I, the U.S. was also alert to the regional balance of power against Germany. The Germans were actively arming and advising the Mexicans, as shown by the 1914 SS Ypiranga arms-shipping incident, German saboteur Lothar Witzke's base in Mexico City, the 1917 Zimmermann Telegram and German advisors present during the 1918 Battle of Ambos Nogales. Only twice during the Mexican Revolution did the US military occupy Mexico; during the temporary occupation of Veracruz in 1914 and between the years 1916 and 1917, when US General John Pershing and his army came to Mexico to lead a nationwide search for Pancho Villa.

Other Latin American nations were influenced or dominated by American economic policies and/or commercial interests to the point of coercion. Theodore Roosevelt declared the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904, asserting the right of the United States to intervene to stabilize the economic affairs of states in the Caribbean and Central America if they were unable to pay their international debts. From 1909-1913, President William Howard Taft and his Secretary of State Philander C. Knox asserted a more "peaceful and economic" Dollar Diplomacy foreign policy, although that too was backed by force, as in Nicaragua.