The Cold War in Central America

The USA’s testing ground

This article argues that during the Cold War, Central America became a testing ground for US strategies of intervention and anti-communism. US policies not only destroyed democratic regimes, but also generated particularly bloody civil conflicts

Ben Smith

Fidel Castro interrogating a prisoner in 1957 during his guerrilla campaign in Cuba

The Cold War in Central America was anything but cold. Between 1945 and 1996, the USA repeatedly intervened in the politics of Central America’s seven independent republics, overturning elected governments, spreading anti-communist propaganda, training death squads, and even harnessing the drug trade to pay for these operations.

For 50 years the countries shown in Figure 1 became what historian Greg Grandin has termed the ‘empire’s workshop’, a testing ground for the USA’s most destructive, interventionist policies.