19 Reasons Latin Americans Come To The U.S...

[Toppa]

...That Have Nothing To Do With The American Dream.
The first one is more nuanced in that the area seized by the US from Mexico had been settled and developed by American citizens. It was largely unpopulated by the local Mexican population.


1. Took over half of Mexico



In 1846, shortly after the annexation of Texas, President James Polk ordered U.S. troops into disputed lands, precipitating a war against Mexico. The war ended with the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848. This is what Chicano activists mean when they say "the border crossed them." Today, 33.5 million people of Mexican origin live in the United States.

2. Colonized Puerto Rico in 1898

The United States invaded Puerto Rico in 1898 during the Spanish American War and has retained control of the island ever since. More people of Puerto Rican descent currently live in the United States than on the island.

3. Took over Cuba, put a naval base there, and only left when the new government allowed them the right to intervene at will

And yet somehow, U.S. politicians viewed themselves as liberators. Later U.S. administrations would use the naval base to jail suspected terrorists and hold them indefinitely without trial, also submitting them to torture tactics, according to Human Rights Watch.

4. Invaded and occupied Cuba two more times

Because once wasn't good enough, the United States invaded and occupied Cuba again in 1906 and once more in 1912. It retained the legal authority to intervene in Cuba's affairs until the 1933 Sergeant's Revolt overthrew U.S.-backed dictator Gerardo Machado.

5. Invaded Nicaragua and occupied the country for two decades

The United States invaded Nicaragua in 1912 and occupied the country until 1933. Shortly after the U.S. forces left, Anastasio Somoza took over, launching a decades-long dynastic dictatorship with U.S. support.

6. Invaded Haiti and occupied the country for nearly 20 years

Woodrow Wilson ordered the Marines to invade and occupy Haiti in 1915 after the assassination of the Haitian president. The troops didn't leave until 1934.

7. Invaded the Dominican Republic in 1916



Mainly to collect debts, the United States invaded the Dominican Republic in 1916. The occupation lasted eight years.

8. Overthrew Guatemala's elected government in 1954

At the behest of United Fruit Company, a U.S. corporation with extensive holdings in Central America, the CIA helped engineer the overthrow of the Guatemalan government in 1954, ushering in decades of civil war that resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives.

9. Organized the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961


The CIA organized and financed a group of anti-Fidel Castro exiles in an ill-fated attempt to overthrow the revolutionary government. The botched invasion ended in disaster and Castro declared himself a "Marxist-Lenninist" eight months later.

10. Supported the overthrow of a democratically elected government of Brazil


The administration of Lyndon B. Johnson assisted the overthrow of the democratically elected Brazilian government in 1964. The resulting military dictatorship, which tortured thousands of opponents and "disappeared" hundreds, ruled the country until 1985.

11. Helped overthrow Chile's elected government in 1973


General Augusto Pinochet, with the support of the Nixon administration, overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende, ushering in decades of violent dictatorship.

12. Backed a military dictatorship in Argentina that killed 30,000
When the military overthrew the Argentine government and installed a dictatorship in 1976, the Nixon administration responded by offering its wholehearted support and financial assistance. The dictatorship lasted until 1983.

13. Paid a failed rebel army to overthrow the Nicaraguan government



When the leftwing Sandinista government rose to power in Nicaragua, it did not please Washington. In 1979, the United States began years of financing the "Contras," a rightwing group responsible for committee atrocities and smuggling drugs into the United States with the Reagan administration's knowledge.

14. Invaded Haiti Again In 1994
One invasion wasn't good enough. The U.S. military returned in 1994.

15. Fomented a rebellion in Panama in order to build a canal

The Theodore Roosevelt administration helped a group of Panamanian nationalists break away from Colombia, after that country's Senate rejected the terms of a deal to allow the U.S. to use its territory there to build a canal. After Panama broke away, the new country ceded permanent control of the canal zone to the U.S. government, which finally returned it in 1999, after years of protests.

16. Backed the Salvadoran military as it committed atrocities in the 1980s


El Salvador's military committed atrocities throughout the 1980s with U.S. funding, including -- but not limited to -- raping nuns, assassinating priests and killing hundreds of children in a single massacre at the village of El Mozote.

17. Refuses to control the flow of weapons into Mexico
Mexican authorities seized almost 70,000 weapons of U.S. origin from 2007 to 2011. In 2004, the U.S. Congress declined to renew a 10-year ban on the sale of assault weapons. They quickly became the guns of choice for Mexican drug cartels.

18. Helped create today's drug cartels

The U.S. funded the Guatemalan military during the 1960s and 1970s anti-insurgency war, despite awareness of widespread human rights violations. Among the recipients of U.S. military funding and training were the Kaibiles, a special force unit responsible for several massacres. Former Kaibiles have joined the ranks of the Zetas drug cartel.

19. Pushes trade policies that lead to unemployment


One of the things that prompted millions of low-wage workers to abandon Mexico over the last two decades was the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994. With NAFTA, cheap imports, particularly agricultural products, flooded the Mexican market, leaving farmers and other low-skilled workers without jobs. NAFTA is just one manifestation of free trade policies pushed in Washington that often have adverse effects in Latin American countries. Former U.S.

President Bill Clinton acknowledged as much after Haiti's devastating 2010 earthquake, saying that opening up the Haitian market to cheap U.S. rice "may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked ... I had to live everyday with the consequences of the loss of capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people because of what I did, nobody else."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/18/immigration-latin-america_n_5168356.html

[Toppa]

They did not include when they deposed the Haitian President in 2004