How Transnational Activists Ended US Occupations in Latin America, 1912–34

Historians have still not adequately explained the formation of the central component of the Good Neighbor Policy in the 1930s—the US decision to end military occupations, generally assigning it to the morality of President Franklin Roosevelt, the financial imperatives of the Great Depression, or the vague “pressure” from Latin Americans. My paper, based on my recent book The Invaded: How Latin Americans and their Allies Fought and Ended U.S. Occupations, will argue that such pressure largely came from a network of transnational activists whose dominant nodes were in Cuba, Mexico, and New York and Washington. They created the chain of financing, propaganda, and lobbying that brought the grievances of occupied Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Dominicans to the ears of the White House and State Department. This largely forgotten chapter in Latin America’s transnational history has a lot to teach subsequent networks of anti-imperialists.