OLLI0078 - Uneasy Neighbors: Latin America and the United States

Course Description

Relations between the United States and its neighbors to the south, from the Rio Grande to Cape Horn, have been marked by friendship and cooperation, neglect and indifference, and, at times, hostility and fear. This course is about the relationships, exchanges, and tensions among the people and nations of the Western Hemisphere, focusing specifically on the connecting points between the United States and the nations of Latin America such as state-to-state interactions at the level of diplomacy and military intervention to questions of culture and perception in inter-American affairs. Eras characterized by the Monroe Doctrine, the Mexican War, the Spanish-Cuban-American War, the Big Stick and Dollar Diplomacy, the Good Neighbor Policy, the Cold War, the Alliance for Progress, human rights concerns, and the Reagan Doctrine of counterinsurgency will receive special attention. Rather than looking only at the influences at work on officials in Washington, we will investigate Latin American initiatives and responses, from the attempts by various nationalist regimes to find an alternative to the traditional model of dependence on the United States, to critiques by leading intellectuals and public officials from the early 20th century to the present. Watch video