The question about why the US government would intervene in Latin American politics has come up repeatedly in comments over time. Namely, there seems to be a disbelief that the US would ever intervene in a region where there seems to be no resources that the US can mobilize (i.e. Iraq has oil, Afghanistan gives the US several bases in a hostile region where they otherwise could not have bases.). The following article addresses that disbelief in a really compelling way.

Why do they care so much about who runs these poor countries? As any good chess player knows, pawns matter. The loss of a couple of pawns at the beginning of the game can often make a difference between a win or a loss. They are looking at these countries mostly in straight power terms. Governments that are in agreement with maximizing U.S. power in the world, they like. Those who have other goals — not necessarily antagonistic to the United States — they don’t like.

Not surprisingly, the Obama Administration’s closest allies in the hemisphere are right-wing governments such as Colombia or Panama, even though President Obama himself is not a right-wing politician. This highlights the continuity of the politics of control. The victory of the Right in Chile last week, the first time that it has won an election in half a century, was a significant victory for the U.S. government. If Lula de Silva’s Workers’ Party were to lose the presidential election in Brazil this fall, that would really be a huge win for the State Department. While U.S. officials under both Bush and Obama have maintained a friendly posture toward Brazil, it is obvious that they deeply resent the changes in Brazilian foreign policy that have allied it with other social democratic governments in the hemisphere, and its independent foreign policy stances with regard to the Middle East, Iran, and elsewhere.

It should be noted, Latin@s and Latin Americans already know the reasons listed in the article. But it’s still good to have evidence and proof when dealing with a skeptical and uninformed public.