From colonization to today.
The early twentieth century brought profound upheaval to Haiti, culminating in a U.S. military occupation that lasted from 1915 to 1934. Citing political instability and the protection of American financial interests, U.S. Marines took control of the country’s customs houses, finances, and constabulary. The occupation modernized some infrastructure but also provoked lasting resentment, particularly after […]
Guyana, then the colony of British Guiana, saw the rise of an anti-colonial movement centered on the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), founded in 1950 by Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham. The PPP won the colony’s first election under universal adult suffrage in 1953, but Britain, wary of the party’s leftist orientation amid Cold War tensions, […]
A popular uprising known as the October Revolution overthrew the long-standing dictatorship of Jorge Ubico in 1944, ushering in a decade of democratic reform under presidents Juan José Arévalo and Jacobo Árbenz. Árbenz’s government pursued an ambitious land redistribution program that transferred unused land from large estates, including holdings of the U.S.-based United Fruit Company, […]
Grenada gained independence from Britain in 1974 under Prime Minister Eric Gairy, whose increasingly authoritarian and erratic rule, including reliance on a personal paramilitary force known as the “Mongoose Gang,” alienated much of the population over the following years. In March 1979, the leftist New Jewel Movement, led by Maurice Bishop, ousted Gairy in a […]
El Salvador’s twentieth century was shaped by deep-rooted inequities in land ownership and political power that stretched back to the previous century. Salvadoran elites, backed by the military, resisted meaningful economic reform for decades, and popular demands for change were repeatedly met with force. This pattern culminated in 1932 in La Matanza, a massacre in […]
