Week 9: Commerce, Coercion, and America’s Empire

This was an extremely interesting topic to read on. It was basically about the ideas of Roosevelt and how the pictures of Latin America were depicted towards the rest of the world. Such could be cartoons and live action documentary series with Walt’s Disney. These shows described Latin America as beautiful, friendly and lively. Until today I didn’t realise the amount of Latin American influence on television. There had been in shows like Donald Duck and a few others which show and illustrate Latin America’s ideals and the country as a whole. One such instance of Latin American influence in cartoons is when Donald dances to Samba music. Even though this is minor it still shows a lot about the country itself and portrayed how Latin America had been associated with things like dance and music at the time, and even now.

 These shows were mostly used to provide propaganda and the interactions between Latin America and USA in order to provide some sense of stability in the eyes of the Europeans. 

The lecture also talks about the drug cartels and how the US was not doing enough in order to prevent such situations. I was shocked to discover that US had invaded Latin America over 20 times in the 20th century and it makes me question what they wanted from them as they kept coming back to invade.

Moreover, the lectures explore the dominance of the USA on the rest of the world and how they have huge involvements and interventions with regard to South America and other countries in the world.  

The topic of imperialism is also explored: It is associated with a ton of other words such as globalization. The country used the “divide and conquer” method for its own selfish interests. The second video done by students was very interesting. Over 4 minutes of the start of the video was about Banana’s and their adverts and how it had become a monopoly.  Some countries like Guatemala relied on such goods and because the US was a monopoly at the time other countries suffered while the US thrived.


I can now see and relate to certain perspectives that have been explored within the student video and the lecture videos as it is evident how US controlled such a huge part of the world and kept wanting more dominance from other countries for their own selfish reasons.

For a fact I know that the US is still one of the most powerful territories in the world, but do events such as these still happen today? Are there any current situations like US and Latin America but with other countries instead?  



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