Rag-Tags, Scum, Riff-Raff, and Commies: The U.S. Intervention in the Dominican Republic, 1965-1966 (review)
Económica that U.S. officials manipulated Guatemala’s five-year plans in areas such as infrastructure, agriculture, education, healthcare, and housing. This manipulation facilitated the economic domination of Guatemala by UFCO, IRCA, and Empresa Eléctrica, which together accounted for virtually all of the $120 million the United States had invested in Guatemala. This is, again, a well-documented and well-written examination of the methods of control exercised by the United States in the decade after the successful overthrow of Jacobo Arbenz. An unfortunate note of the work was Streeter’s inability to access Guatemalan archival material outside of published government documents, newspapers, and journals. Perhaps we will have to wait until such materials become available to ascertain what Streeter states as his goal, the view from the Guatemalan side. This unavoidable omission notwithstanding, Stephen Streeter has presented readers—from undergraduates to accomplished scholars—with an important look at the methods and goals of United States power in Latin America during the depths of the cold war.