War is never a good thing and was probably at its highest and maybe the worst in the 1930’s when World War II well controlled the world. Also, soon before this the great depression began and ravaged parts of the world including the United States. Then with the attack on pearl harbor were many American lives were lost along with Japanese kamikaze pilots and that added not only to the terrible deaths of the war but also the added to the United States reasons to join in on the war. Also, with the acts done by Hitler’s and the Nazi’s actions towards the Jewish population in Europe with the mistreatment in concentration camps. The climate of the world was not the easiest to be in and the current United States president FDR knew this especially as he pushed the United States into the second world war. He knew America would need allies in the war, so he looked to Latin America for help. He announced the “Good Neighbor Policy” as an attempt to make the relationship between the United States and Latin America. In this policy the United States swore off military intervention in Latin America and Cuba and Panama could no longer be places were American marines could go in and out of the countries as they pleased. This made the relations between the two nations very good so much so that many countries in Latin America like Brazil joined in the fight against Germany and gave the Allied side a good advantage with some Latin American countries coast being so close to the fight. Also during the time when relations between the United States and Latin America were strong there was a lot of influence from the Afro-Brazilian samba not only in Latin America but in America as well because of a woman wearing a fruit headdress whose name was Carmen Miranda who was a singer, actress, and samba dancer. To show the great relationship between the two nations many American films began to feature her. Also, there were many things like this and one that I can remember from my childhood which is the work by Walt Disney. The Three Caballeros was a Disney cartoon I watched may times over and it was the tale of how Donald Duck teamed up with a parrot from Brazil and a rooster from Mexico. I do not remember exactly why they teamed up and when I watched the show it was in color and animated unlike in the 1930’s but, there was one thing I remembered and that was the song they sang as they went on a travel or at the end of the show and they sang it a bunch and when I was a kid it was one of my favorite things to watch little did I know then what the true meaning behind that cartoon was. Besides the point things were good between Latin America and the United States after the war and for the most part now. For most of Latin America (meaning the places with the higher population and urban lifestyle) life after the war was great the industrial parts of Latin America profited greatly and was able to make a boom with the other world powers. However, for the rest of Latin America it was not as much rainbows and butterfly kisses. Some of the more rural countries suffered and were often very poor and still almost still going through a depression they even had shantytowns in the countryside and some of those shanty towns still stand today with people living in them. Speaking on the state of other countries I wanted to talk about the government aspect of the nations. Most of the Latin American countries were in this nationalist government and whatever that would benefit the country was good by the people especially in Brazil and after the war that remained until the Revolutionary party came to Mexico in 1934-1940. The revolutionary party had a presidential candidate by the name of Lázaro Cádenas and he was different than other politicians in that for one he wasn’t too big on the whole nationalism business. Second he did something that was very different in that even as the front runner to win his election he still went to every small village throughout Mexico and got to know those people and that is when I believe Latin America began to populism because this man was popular everywhere in Mexico and even though he was a shoe in to win the election but doing that made his political career probably that much easier. So, war in the 1930’s and life in the 1930’s sucked and that is putting it lightly, but many good things came out of it for both America and Latin America.
References
Chasteen J. C. (2016). Born in Blood & Fire: A Concise History of Latin America Fourth Edition. New York, NY. W. W. Norton & Company.
Latin America 