Commerce, Coercion, and America’s Empire - 4 documents

The entire business with the UFCO and the banana industry is truly fascinating, but also disheartening. I see it as a reflection of the American economic expansion into Latin America, at the expense of Latin Americans and their independence and self-sustenance.
Augusto Sandino's Political Manifesto is a very heart-felt declaration, with clear and straight-forward statements. The sentence "The last of my soldiers who are soldiers for Nicaragua’s freedom, might die, but first, more than a battalion of you, blond invader, will have bitten the dust of my rustic mountains" shows how determined he is to fight for the independence of Nicaragua and the sovereignty of Central American countries from the United States, even if it means that by achieving peace and sovereignty, one must go through war.
The Journey to Banana Land film was very interesting to watch. It was educational, to an extent, teaching Spanish words to the viewer. However, it is quite propaganda-ish and paints a happy picture of the banana business, using stereotypes of both Latin Americans and US Americans.
In the film Silent War, we see the battle against malaria, the yellow fever, from an American perspective. It also turns into a war, imperialistic propaganda at the end of the movie and also a fight against fascism. They really snuck that one in.
In From the Noble Savage to the Third World  by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Matterlart, we see the relationship Disney had in the expansion of American interests. The line "According to Disney, underdeveloped people are like children, to be treated as such, and if they don't accept this definition of themselves, they should have their pants taken down and given a good spanking." It is something that you could imagine happening in a Disney movie, in a comical way, but it shows how American propaganda infiltrated something as popular as Disney movies.