Becoming a Good Neighbor among Dictators

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Coping with the Caudillos

   • Jorrit van den Berk

   Pages 1-14

3. The Envoys: The Foreign Service in Central America, 1930–1952

   • Jorrit van den Berk

   Pages 15-46

4. Origins: The Rise of the Caudillos and the Defeat of Non-Recognition, 1930–1934

   • Jorrit van den Berk

   Pages 47-91

5. Continuismo: The Good Neighbor and Non-interference, 1934–1936

   • Jorrit van den Berk

   Pages 93-128

6. Becoming Benign Dictators: The Good Neighbor and Fascism, 1936–1939

   • Jorrit van den Berk

   Pages 129-164

7. The Best of Neighbors: The Alliance Against Fascism, 1939–1944

   • Jorrit van den Berk

   Pages 165-197

8. The Casualties of War: The Central American Upheavals of 1944

   • Jorrit van den Berk

   Pages 199-240

9. The Postwar Moment: An Opening for Democracy, 1944–1947

   • Jorrit van den Berk

   Pages 241-282

10. The Middle of the Road: The Cold War Comes to Central America, 1947–1954

    • Jorrit van den Berk

    Pages 283-317

11. Becoming a Good Neighbor Among Dictators

    • Jorrit van den Berk

    Pages 319-327

12. Back Matter

    Pages 329-336

    PDF

Very few works of history, if any, delve into the daily interactions of U.S. Foreign Service members in Latin America during the era of Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy. But as Jorrit van den Berk argues, the encounters between these rank-and-file diplomats and local officials reveal the complexities, procedures, intrigues, and shifting alliances that characterized the precarious balance of U.S. foreign relations with right-wing dictatorial regimes. Using accounts from twenty-two ministers and ambassadors, Becoming a Good Neighbor among Dictators is a careful, sophisticated account of how the U.S. Foreign Service implemented ever-changing State Department directives from the 1930s through the Second World War and early Cold War, and in so doing, transformed the U.S.-Central American relationship.  How did Foreign Service officers translate broad policy guidelines into local realities? Could the U.S. fight dictatorships in Europe while simultaneously collaborating with dictators in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras?  What role did diplomats play in the standoff between democratic and authoritarian forces? In investigating these questions, Van den Berk draws new conclusions about the political culture of the Foreign Service, its position between Washington policymakers and local actors, and the consequences of foreign intervention.

• U.S. Foreign Service
• U.S. Foreign Policy
• U.S. Diplomacy in World War II
• Central American history
• United States- Central American relations
• U.S. intervention in Latin America
• US Foreign Relations
• the good neighbor policy
• Franklin Roosevelt foreign policy
• diplomacy studies
• Central American politics

• Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

  Jorrit van den Berk

Jorrit van den Berk is Assistant Professor of North American Studies at Radboud University, The Netherlands. 

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