During the height of the Cold War, Latin America became a strategic pillar of the hemispheric defense doctrine, serving a key to the power struggle between East and West. Following the Cuban Revolution and the overthrow of the US-friendly government of Fulgencio Batista, the United States became concerned with the spread of the Soviet Union's influence in Latin America, becoming heavily invested in retaining as much influence as possible. With the nuclear arms race at its peak, a Soviet transfer of nuclear warheads to its Latin American ally in Cuba nearly concluded in the onset of World War III in October 1962. Afterward, the United States hardened its influence throughout Latin America, involving itself in what became known as the "Dirty War", a process that involved questionable actions including supporting or overthrowing governments depending on political leaning, supporting subversive groups such as the Contras with weaponry and funding, or participating in controversial operations such as Operation Charly and Operation Condor. The fallout from these actions affect Latin America–United States relations to this day.
Having been annexed from Spain in 1898, the unincorporated territory of Puerto Rico represented a paradox during the Cold War, politically belonging to the United States but culturally to Latin America. Its location in the Caribbean converted it in the American response to Cuba, directly affecting the development of its political status. Puerto Rico was allowed to enact a heavily revised local Constitution, but its attempts to employ its sovereignty and use it to remove the application of the Territorial Clause of the United States Constitution ended in failure. The United States military played a key role in perpetuating the status quo, not wanting to risk the possibility that a change in status could affect their presence in the Caribbean. A situation further complicated by the emergence of Marxist guerrillas, including the notorious Fuerzas Armadas de Liberación Nacional Puertorriqueña and Boricua Popular Army, within the pre-existing independence movement in Puerto Rico. Ultimately, the status issue stagnated throughout the remainder of the Cold War, but the pro-sovereignty efforts undertaken during this time frame eventually led to the current incarnation of the free association movement in Puerto Rico.
Background Marxist expansion in Latin America Throughout much of Latin America, reactionary oligarchies ruled through their alliances with the military elite and United States. Although the nature of the U.S. role in the region was established many years before the Cold War, the Cold War gave U.S. interventionism a new ideological tinge. But by the mid-20th century, much of the region passed through a higher state of economic development, which bolstered the power and ranks of the lower classes. This left calls for social change and political inclusion more pronounced, thus posing a challenge to the strong U.S. influence over the region's economies.
In Cuba, the July 26 Movement seized power in January 1959, toppling President Fulgencio Batista, whose unpopular regime had been denied arms by the Eisenhower administration.
Diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States continued for some time after Batista's fall, but President Eisenhower deliberately left the capital to avoid meeting Cuba's young revolutionary leader Fidel Castro during the latter's trip to Washington in April, leaving Vice President Richard Nixon to conduct the meeting in his place. Cuba began negotiating arms purchases from the Eastern Bloc in March 1960.
In January 1961, just prior to leaving office, Eisenhower formally severed relations with the Cuban government. In April 1961, the administration of newly elected American President John F. Kennedy mounted an unsuccessful CIA-organized ship-borne invasion of the island at Playa Girón and Playa Larga in Las Villas Provincea failure that publicly humiliated the United States. Castro responded by publicly embracing Marxism–Leninism, and the Soviet Union pledged to provide further support.
By the 1960s, Marxists gained increasing influence throughout the regions, prompting fears in the United States that Latin American instability posed a threat to U.S. national security. Latin American revolutionaries shifted to guerrilla tactics, heavily influenced by the Cuban Revolution. Arbenz fell when his military had deserted him. Since then, some future Latin American social revolutionaries and Marxists, most notably Fidel Castro and the Sandinistas in Nicaragua made the army and governments parts of a single unit and eventually set up single party states. Overthrowing such regimes would require a war, rather than a simple CIA operation, the landing of Marines, or a crude invasion scheme like the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
American involvement
Throughout the Cold War years, the U.S. acted as a barrier to socialist revolutions and targeted populist and nationalist governments that were aided by the communists. The CIA overthrew other governments suspected of turning pro-communist, such as Guatemala in 1954 under Jacobo Arbenz Guzman. The CIA Operation PBSuccess eventually led to the 1954 coup that removed Arbenz from power. The operation drew on an initial plan first considered in 1951 to oust Arbenz named Operation PBFortune. Arbenz, who was supported by some local communists, was ousted shortly after he had redistributed of United Fruit Company land in Guatemala. United Fruit had long monopolized the transportation and communications region there, along with the main export commodities, and played a major role in Guatemalan politics. Arbenz was out shortly afterwards, and Guatemala came under control of a repressive military regime.
Continuing to seek ways to oust Castro following the Bay of Pigs Invasion, Kennedy and his administration experimented with various ways of covertly facilitating the overthrow of the Cuban government. Significant hopes were pinned on a covert program named the Cuban Project, devised under the Kennedy administration in 1961.
In February 1962, Khrushchev learned of the American plans regarding Cuba: a "Cuban project"approved by the CIA and stipulating the overthrow of the Cuban government in October, possibly involving the American militaryand yet one more Kennedy-ordered operation to assassinate Castro.Zubok, Vladislav M. (1994). "Unwrapping the Enigma: What Was Behind the Soviet Challenge in the 1960s?". In Diane B. Kunz (Ed.), The Diplomacy of the Crucial Decade: American Foreign Relations During the 1960s. New York: Columbia University Press. p. 158–159. . Preparations to install Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba were undertaken in response.
Alarmed, Kennedy considered various reactions, and ultimately responded to the installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba with a naval blockade and presented an ultimatum to the Soviets. Khrushchev backed down from a confrontation, and the Soviet Union removed the missiles in return for an American pledge not to invade Cuba again. Castro later admitted that "I would have agreed to the use of nuclear weapons....we took it for granted that it would become a nuclear war anyway, and that we were going to disappear."James G. Blight (2002), Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis, and the Soviet Collapse, Rowman & Littlefield, p. 252.
The Cuban Missile Crisis (October–November 1962) brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever before. It further demonstrated the concept of mutually assured destruction, that neither superpower was prepared to use their nuclear weapons, fearing total global destruction via mutual retaliation. The aftermath of the crisis led to the first efforts in the nuclear arms race at nuclear disarmament and improving relations, although the Cold War's first arms control agreement, the Antarctic Treaty, had come into force in 1961.National Research Council Committee on Antarctic Policy and Science, p. 33
In 1964, Khrushchev's Kremlin colleagues managed to oust him, but allowed him a peaceful retirement. Accused of rudeness and incompetence, he was also credited with ruining Soviet agriculture and bringing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Khrushchev had become an international embarrassment when he authorized construction of the Berlin Wall, a public humiliation for Marxism–Leninism.
History The PPD and the pursuit of sovereign association The pursuit of sovereignty within the Popular Democratic Party (PPD) can be traced to the moment of its foundation. The organization was originally created to support the independence of Puerto Rico, following the division of the Liberal Party. Among the party's early leaders were Muñoz and Antonio Fernós-Isern, both supporters of Puerto Rican independence. Within the PPD, the concept of an Estado Libre Asociado (lit. "Associated Free State") was conceived by Fernós as a sovereign body associated to the United States by mutual consent. He first presented his idea of a sovereign association that preserved a common coin, citizenship and market access in a press article published in 1939. Fernós declared that Puerto Rico had a right to acquire its sovereignty and as such, could also delegate part of it as long as it was on equal juridical and moral terms. He proposed a model which allowed a proper nationality that was associated, but not subordinated to the other. The proposal intended to negotiate which rights and responsibilities each side would retain through a "bilateral organic pact". The idea took some inspiration from Ancient Greece, where deferent states would enter into confederations in order to cooperate in common interests. Like its Liberal Party predecessor, this proposal was also influenced by the British model.
Fernós argued that the Commonwealth realm relationship between Canada and the United Kingdom surpassed a simple form of autonomy, instead being a kind of association superior to any status that would keep the sovereignty of Puerto Rico in the hands of Congress. He considered his proposal a "free federated commonwealth" and a "republic lacking international relations", which would be freely delegated to the Federal Government of the United States. Among other observations, Fernós also noted how ridiculous it was to see the United States Congress hold the sovereignty of Puerto Rico when it wasn't the sovereign of the United States or its people and only served as a representative of the popular vote. He ultimately condemned the idea of a status where sovereignty was forfeit in favor of autonomy, comparing such an arrangement to a monarchy. The following year, Fernós analyzed the complications of directly transitioning from the colonial economic model established by the United States and listed what he considered could be possible steps for a prosperous sovereignty. On July 21, 1940, the founding assembly for the new party was held with the collaboration of 2,000 delegates. Fernós, who thought that the socio-economic issues should be attended first, was largely responsible for drafting the respective part of the party's program, being joined by Vicente Géigel Polanco and Rafael Arjona Siaca.
Inspired by a painting by Ramón Frade named "El Pan Nuestro", he proposed the jíbaro as the party's mascot and also coined the "Partido Popular" part of the name, which was completed in a reunion to earn its current name, Popular Democratic Party. For the following years, Fernós played a key role within the PPD, most notably in its legislation and finances. He reluctantly ran for the position of Resident Commissioner at the 1940 general elections.