Development, Ideology, and Catastrophe in the Americas

Abstract

This chapter discovers the relations between the United States and Nicaragua in the age of development, from the pinnacle of modernization as ideology in the 1960s through the end of the Cold War in the 1990s. The chapter explores US plans for development as they changed in reaction to events in the global South, beginning with the Cuban revolution, that set off a global program of anticommunist modernization. It reveals how Nicaragua played an important role in US plans for Latin America thanks to its leaders' close affinities with the United States and the two countries' long interconnected histories. While requiring attention to interests and imaginings emanating from the United States, the chapter also tracks closely the circulation of development ideas between North and South. It examines how elite Nicaraguans especially responded to US programs for development. From the Alliance for Progress onward, US officials made Latin American ideas, networks, and individuals an intimate part of programs for reshaping the region's political and economic life.