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rbennett · Joined: 14 Oct 2009 Posts: 39

I hate Reagan

Anyway. Just like many before him, Reagan really didn’t care about Latin America, and the only time he ever intervened was when it benefited the U.S. As shown by Reagan’s stupidity in the Bolivia-Brazil incident, he was pretty ignorant about Latin America. Reagan didn’t care about what happened to Latin America; like the packet said, his goal was to rid Latin America of communism “consequences be damned,” which is a horrible way to think about it, because there are always consequences, and they are usually bad. I think the failure in Vietnam was a huge contributor to this way of thinking; the government wanted to feel powerful and win something, without worrying about the consequences. The U.S. though it could only gain from involvement in Latin America, so why not just do whatever it wanted? This lead to most of the violence and wars in Latin America being fueled in some way by the U.S.; even if the U.S. wasn’t directly involved in a war, usually its money was involved. I thought that a really good way of describing everything the government did was something the packet said: “symbolic politics.”

My question is: the packet said that for the first time U.S. citizens created networks for activists who were pursuing peace in Central America. Why do you think citizens waited until the 80s to get involved?

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mmcgowan18 · Joined: 20 Nov 2009 Posts: 27

I completely agree with everything Rachel said. I couldn't believe the actions Reagan was taking in South America. He didn't try and learn anything from the countries past with Latin America. He did whatever he wanted. He didn't think about what his actions were doing to any human being, just if it benefitted the US. I think we said that about politicians in the beginning of the class, that they were only interested in the United States, but Reagan defintely takes the cake!

To answer Rachel's question, I think the people of the United States began to see what the US government's actions were doing to the people of Latin America, especially after President Carter's term. Because they were more aware of what was going on they were more able to protest against it.

esumner · Joined: 20 Nov 2009 Posts: 9

I don't like Reagen much either. I do feel like most presidents haven't put Latin America at the top of their to-do list, but also we do have to put in consideration how many other countries needing help are out there. Latin America isn't the most powerful region in the world, so it makes sense that past presidents didn't put all of their time and effort into helping Latin America unless it was beneficial to America. But they seriously could have been nicer about it at least.

In response to Rachel's question, I think people started caring about it in the 80's because they realized how useless all this fighting was, and were getting tired of it. I also think that the people felt that they could actually make a difference and felt like they had a voice.

I wonder what other people think of Rachel's question.

soldsman · Joined: 20 Nov 2009 Posts: 9

so Reagans pretty ridiculous. i agree with what both of you said.

Reagan said basically that diplomacy was stupid and didn't do anything and the only way to go was with action and violence. They helped countries only in ways that benefitted the U.S. When the massacre was going on in El Salvador Reagan did nothing..because it didn't effect the U.S. for the time being. What i thought was hilarious (in a not so funny way though) was the headline from The New York Times: "Pentagon Predicts Big Wat if Latins Sign Peace Accord." Reagan was just searching for war. starting war over a peace accord is rediculoussss. alright enough reagan bashing.

my question is: Why was Reagan re elected? Did enough Americans not know what was going on in Latin America? Was he doing good things for U.S. citizens?

azellweger · Joined: 19 Oct 2009 Posts: 20

Like both Maggie and Rachel said, I really don’t like Regan. He was ignorant not only because of his Bolivia Brazil mix up but because he didn’t learn from past presidents mistakes of getting involved with Latin America. He was against the spread of communism. And I totally agree with Rachel and how Vietnam was a contributor. The US took a huge blow; they lost a lot of their ‘power’.

To add on to Bennett’s question which was, “the packet said that for the first time U.S. citizens created networks for activists who were pursuing peace in Central America. Why do you think citizens waited until the 80s to get involved?” I think Vietnam again had a lot to do with it. Their was a lot of protest against the war in Vietnam, and how it was seen as a mistake for the US to become involved in foreign problems, similar to Latin America. US citizens may have seen the destruction of war in Vietnam as a lesson to not involve ourselves in other countries.

blee · Joined: 20 Nov 2009 Posts: 9

Rachel, I enjoyed reading your post! I agree with everything you said. I didn't know Reagan was such a brutal and aggressive president. I don't think I have read about any other president who was as striaght forward than him. I found that interesting and also, U.S. citizen involvement was intersting. Because U.S. citizens realized that peace was needed for them and for Latin American countries, they created a little social networks to work for them. This reading made me realize that U.S. intervened with so many different countries despite the need to shut down communists.
On page 90, the reason that U.S. aimed for L.A. was because it was the one the you can actually win. I thought I disagree with this, because U.S. never took over L.A. to say that it owns it completely and also, in the reading it said that some U.S. banks almost was out of buisness because Mexican countries could not pay the loans back due to U.S. interference.

My answer to Rachel's queston: I think the citizens waited because first, when U.S. interevened to many other countries, it was actually gaining stuff despite the bad reputation. However, this interference with Reagan, seemed to destroy L.A. and U.S. that they had to become involved.

eeschneider · Joined: 16 Oct 2009 Posts: 30

I think we can conclude that no one like Reagan, he just thinks he's cool because he was an actor and a president.

He's pretty stupid, the whole Bolivia-Brazil mix up made me laugh at his stupidity. This reading just proved to me more that other countries MUST hate us because the people (cough Reagan cough) that represent us are no smarter than... well than my fish who has been trying desperately to kill himself all day but is failing (poor Lard). ANYWHO! back on track, I completely agree with what Rachel said about the fail of Vietnam contributed a lot to the United States not giving a crap about the consequences they were creating when they go and "help" out countries.

helens · Joined: 22 Nov 2009 Posts: 25

Lol. I really like the post on how much hated Reagan. Although he was pretty stupid I found this of all the mistakes he did to be really funny. I felt that Reagan idea of not using diplomacy to solve the problem only made things worse for both the United States and Latin America. Reagan just completely abandoned human rights. I also feel like this reading was the first to really include how U.S citizens reacted to all the drama that was going on. Which can now lead to Rachel’s question… Now that I think about media was really late on action that was happening in Latin America. I mean didn’t it take weeks for the Massacre at El Mozote to arrive in papers and up to ten years for people to REALLY investigate? I mean no wonder it took only 30 years for U.S citizens to actually start caring.

What I kind of didn’t understand was Reagan reason for “killing the peace” anyone want to explain?

cfairless · Joined: 20 Nov 2009 Posts: 7

First of all, I think that the phrase "Reagan killed the peace" sums up the reading and Reagan's term as president. To answer Helen's question, what I think it means is that Reagan reversed all the good Carter had done to create a better relationship between Latin America and the US. Carter created peace- Reagan killed it.

This also sort of ties in to Rachel's question. I think that the reason people became so motivated to get involved was because Carter gave them a brief window of hope, and when he was gone they missed that. Carter was honest with them, and tried to rectify all the violent actions of previous presidents. Carter's policies showed the American public that peace was possible.

My question: Which other president to you think Reagan was most similar to- Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, or Carter?

RRubbico · Joined: 20 Nov 2009 Posts: 23

I thought it was interesting that US citizens would elect Reagan directly after Carter. They were completely different in how they went abut solving problems. It surprised me to see that someone with such little will for diplomacy and a strong need for violence would get elected so closely after we lost the Vietnam war.

I also thought it was interesting that while Carter was still in office Ragan sent some of his people to Latin America to convince leaders not to listen to Carter’s negotiations. He said that they would have a much freer hand once he was elected. I wonder if you guys think that this was needed and if any of Carters policies needed to be stopped before Ragan became president?

A quote from the reading on page 93 states “…citizens celebrated the invasion [of Grenada] as a much needed show of strength.” I think that Reagan was able to get away with his policies involving less human rights purely because the public needed a win after the Vietnam war. However this was not true throughout his whole time in office. At one point the reading talked about nongovernmental organizations that were getting fed up with the US policies and were actually able to uncover many abuses of power that may not have been discovered had the organizations not been around.

asilver · Joined: 20 Nov 2009 Posts: 28

I have to wonder what would have happened if presidents such as Regan and Johnson had not taken such overly dramatic and violent steps to avoid communism in Latin America. I find it hard to believe that that a more lenient policy would have led to a Soviet take over, and a subsequent domino effect as Regan hypothesized. It seems to me that many of the uprisings would not have dramatically effected US if they were left unchecked. An obvious example of this would be on the island of Granada, were it seems unlikely that the military invasion helped save US lives, and even more unlikely that Granada itself was helped in any way.

My question: Have we learned our lesson from Cold war policies in Latin America?

carterp · Joined: 22 Nov 2009 Posts: 6

Even though I agree with the reading a believe that it presented Reagan in a pretty biased light. The first sentences of the packet were dedicated to showing his ignorance towards latin america and pointing out his mistakes. But i think that even if this reading had presented an unbiased opinion, the reader would still be able to see Reagans attitude toward Latin america. His only motivation was to rid the region of communism and did not stop to consider the consequences (although, admittedly this seems to be a running theme with our presidents).
Had Reagan continued on the course that Carter was taking I believe that the U.S. would have a much better standing in Latin America today. It seems as though our presidents have a severe lack of foresight and only wish to solve immediate problems while not worrying about the future. But as we were talking about in class today, Latin America did not have nuclear capability's so we perceived them as inconsequential.

spsmith · Joined: 20 Nov 2009 Posts: 8

Regan showed that the US government did not see Latin America as a legitimate place with countries and the right to govern them selves without the interference of the US. I could not believe that he said this to reporters. “And you’d be surprised, yes because you know they’re all individual countries.” I think this statement in insensitive and shows his lack of interest in Latin America.

Something that I loved about this reading was that US citizens finally figured out what was going on in Latin America. Before this, they had not been really involved with Latin America and the US government's decisions to interfere there, but now they were protesting and networking.

My question is what was the US’s role in the collapse of Latin America’s economy?

mlockery · Joined: 20 Nov 2009 Posts: 7

I agree with what Carter said, this reading showed Reagan in an extremely biased light. However, he did botch his tour of Latin America by mistaking Brazil for Bolivia. I honestly believe Reagan had little or no idea of the magnitude of the problems in Latin America that resulted from decades of US interference, let alone how to deal with them effectively. Thanks to the Carter administration’s human rights agenda, Americans were more aware of the bad things happening in Latin America, so they were more prone to start groups advocating for their rights.

In response to Sarah’s post, I think the United States spent decades grooming Latin America to be its own personal farm of raw materials. As time went on, the United States began to accuse many Latin American nations of being communist or merely Soviet sympathizers. This led to drastic reductions of trade with those nations, which devastated their economies.

My Question (similar to Charlotte’s): How was Reagan like Johnson, Nixon, or Carter

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