(no subject)

[conuly]

U.S. Building Blocks of the Border Crisis (There's a longer list of interventions in Latin America here, though it was posted in 96.)

Note: This sort of intervention isn't limited to Latin America, of course, it's just that we're separated from Africa and Asia and the Mideast by an awful lot of ocean, so it's harder for the people we here in those places to get here.

Comments

[malkingrey]

What's always amazed me is how much -- not all, but a lot -- of US/Latin America/Caribbean fuckups can be traced back to Woodrow Wilson, who at least used to get fairly good press from historians and the like. SF writer John Barnes opined that it was because Wilson was an academic,and academics look after their own. I'm not saying he didn't have a point.

William Walker, though, was a real piece of work. Himself and I ended up making him one of the bad guys in our alternate-historical Civil War fantasy Land of Mist and Snow, because we thought he deserved it.

[conuly]

Wilson presided at the end of WWI and helped set up the League of Nations. That's a good legacy to have. He still has a lot of good press among the general public.

[malkingrey]

He was all about the right of self-determination for smaller nations, provided they weren't occupied by brown- or black-skinned people.

Drat. This was supposed to be a reply to the reply to my original comment. Need more caffeine.

[conuly]

I believe the definition of "nation" used here is the one which means the people themselves, not the land they occupy ("country") or their government ("state"). The nation would be black or brown skinned, and would occupy a country.

/pointless pedant

[malkingrey]

I believe the definition of "nation" used here is the one which means the people themselves

As in the Red Sox Nation, which occupies Massachusetts and much of the rest of New England.