This week’s reading starts off by claiming that the United States were violent oppressor and a threat to Latin America. At first, America did not consider themselves as imperialist, but as they acquired more lands through Manifesto destiny, Latin America started to view them as imperial aggression. Although America did not take territories in Latin America by conquering regions, they instead intervened militarily. They did that in order to protect and maximize their national interest. After reading this part of the text, I felt that this is still the case today. Even though people no longer see sending troops abroad, the US government always act just to protect their profit even when other countries suffer.

It was intriguing to look at how a private company from the US dominated Guatemala’s economy. United Fruit Company or UFCO was the largest banana producer in the world and they dominated and monopolized the market. The book stated that they were an agent of imperialism and the company had the right to “veto power over legislation that might affect it adversely” in Guatemala. This shows that company was so strong that basically, Guatemala was under the US sphere. Moreover, its economy heavily relied on America and consisted of 85% of Guatemala’s foreign trade. In order to change this situation, Abenz introduced the law called “Plan 900.” This law allowed the government to confiscate what the company had to redistribute to poor peasants. In response to this, UFCO launched the propaganda against the government and labeled them as communist. Hence US official started to find the way to overthrow the regime. Finally on June 25 Abenz fled to Mexico and America was able to establish a pro US government. Before I read the text, I knew that Guatemalan government was overthrown, but I did not know the reason why. Once reading the text, I could understand factors that collapsed the government, which I found interesting.

It is astounding that America was able to influence to greater extent by bananas. One the surface, US military carried out intervention as the spread of democracy, but in reality it was the use of violence in order to increase US interest. In my opinion, this is true even to this day because America effectively use economic sanction in order to gain what they want.