Decolonization and U.S. intervention in the Third World

Websites and Documents:

Here's One View

Making the World Safe for Hypocrisy from DIRTY TRUTHS by MICHAEL PARENTI

Introduction to William Blum, Killing Hope:U.S. Military and CIA Interventions
Since World War II ( Common Courage Press, 1995, 2001). This page contains links to many of the cases of U.S. intervention Blum examines, including Guatemala.

Another View

THE US AND THIRD WORLD DICTATORSHIPS: A CASE FOR BENIGN DETACHMENT by Ted Galen Carpenter

Setting Things Right in Guatemala

In one of the most famous and ultimately counterproductive covert operations of the Cold War, the U.S. government in 1954, with the CIA in the lead, overthrew the democratically elected government in Guatemala and replaced it with a military dictatorship, inaugurating nearly 40 years of military-dominated rule and leading to a civil war that between 1962 and 1995 led to the deaths and disappearance of more than 250,000 Guatemalans, overwhelmingly at the hands of the U.S. trained Guatemalan armed forces. Below are some of the many sites that you can use to pull together a lesson plan exploring the question of U.S. intervention in the so-called Third World.

Guatemala Documentation Project A portal for the National Security Archive's extensive collection of documents on Guatemala, including a briefing book on the CIA's plans for assassinating Guatemalan leftists following the ouster of Arbenz in 1954.

Everybody teaches history: Travel Guide Account of Guatemalan History and Coup.

Travel Guide map of Guatemala

The Case of Jennifer Harbury and her husband Efrain Bamaca Velasquez.
Jennifer Harbury is a Harvard-educated lawyer whose three-year quest to find her Guatemalan husband, Efrain Bamaca Velasquez, has revealed high-level involvement between the CIA and the Guatemalan military.

The CIA provides a collection of 5,120 documents,120 documents (over 14,000 pages) on its involvement in the 1954 Guatemala coup. "These records encompass the events and circumstances causing U.S. policymakers to plan the overthrow of the Guatemalan Government in June 1954 as Cold War tensions mounted between the two superpowers...; CIA plans for and execution of the covert action; the outcome; and CIA historical analysis of CIA's performance and impact of the coup. The collection includes reviews of the event by CIA historians, administrative memos regarding operational plans and internal approvals; operational cable traffic; and summaries of the Sherwood tapes used for propaganda purposes."

U.S. Department of State. Office of the Historian. Ed. Susan Holly. Foreign Relations of the United States, Eisenhower Administration, 1952-1954, Guatemala. Washington, DC: GPO, 2003. This is a new, supplemental volume to the original 1983 volume that did not mention the 1954 coup.

GUISD Case Studies

Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy (http://www.guisd.org/) has published nearly 300 case studies in international affaris, some of which are very useful for exploring U.S. foreign relations history. Among those related to the question of U.S. intervention and decolonization are:

U.S. Intervention in Chile, 1970-1973

U.S. Covert Operations in Indonesia, 1958

Other Document Collections from the National Security Archive:

Recently declassified documents on Chile and the overthrow of Allende

Recently declassified documentson U.S. support for Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in 1975

Kissinger to Argentines on Dirty War: "The quicker you succeed the better"
Documents show Secretary of State gave green light to junta

Brazil Marks 40th Anniversary of Military Coup
Declassified Documents Shed Light on U.S. Role

Videos:

Books and Articles:

Empire and Revolution. The United States and the Third World since 1945. Edited by Peter L. Hahn and Mary Ann Heiss (Ohio, 2003)

Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War. Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times (Cambridge, 2005)

Kenneth Lehman. “Revolutions and Attributions: Making Sense of Eisenhower Administration Policies in Bolivia and Guatemala,” Diplomatic History 21 (spring 1997): 185-213 (28pp.)

Stephen M. Streeter, "Interpreting the 1954 U.S. Intervention in Guatemala: Realist, Revisionist, and Postrevisionist Perspectives," Journal of American History, November 2000.Link

 Schmitz, David, Thank God They're on Our Side: The United States and Right-Wing Dictatorships, 1921-1965, Chapel Hill, 1999.

Karabell, Zachary, Architects of Intervention: The United States, the Third World, and the Cold War, 1946-1962, Baton Rouge, 1999.

 Kolko, Gabriel, Confronting the Third World: United States Foreign Policy, 1945-1980, NY, 1988.

 Latham, Michael, Modernization as Ideology: American Social Science and "Nation Building" in the Kennedy Years, Chapel Hill, 2000.

 Gleijeses, Piero, Shattered Hope: The Guatemalan Revolution and the United States, 1944-1954, Princeton, 1991.

 LeoGrande, William, Our Own Backyard: The United States in Central America, 1977-1992, Chapel Hill, 1998.

 LaFeber, Walter, Inevitable Revolutions: The United States and Central America, 2nd ed., NY, 1993.

 McClintock, Michael, The American Connection, vol. I: State Terror and Popular Resistance in El Salvador, London, 1985.

 McClintock, Michael, The American Connection, vol. II: State Terror and Popular Resistance in Guatemala, London, 1985.

 Paterson, Thomas, Contesting Castro: The United States and the Triumph of the Cuban Revolution, NY, 1994.

 Rabe, Stephen, Eisenhower and Latin America: The Foreign Policy of Anticommunism, Chapel Hill, 1988.

 Rabe, Stephen, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America, Chapel Hill, 1999.

 Schoultz, Lars, Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy toward Latin America, Cambridge, 1998.

Little, Douglas, American Orientalism: The United States and the Middle East since 1945, Chapel Hill, 2002.

 Borstelmann, Thomas, Apartheid's Reluctant Uncle: The United States and Southern Africa In the Early Cold War, NY, 1993.

Gleijeses, Piero, Conflicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 1959-1976, Chapel Hill, 2002.

Horne, Gerald, From the Barrel of a Gun: The United States and the War Against Zimbawe, 1965-1980, Chapel Hill, 2001.