Abstract

The history of U.S. relations with Cuba and Mexico has always been complicated by differing political, cultural, social, and economic systems in addition to geographic proximity. The major difference between the 1930s and the earlier and later periods was that the U.S. government decided to change the nature and practice of its relationship with Latin America in response to domestic American pressure and anti-American resentment in the region. The U.S. government ended its policy of political interference and armed intervention in the internal affairs of both Cuba and Mexico, but wanted to retain its large economic and investment stake in the two countries. It also responded to the dislocations produced by the Great Depression in all three countries: increased nationalism and political-economic polarization. The objective of this thesis is fourfold: (1) to examine the dynamics of the U.S. relationship with Cuba and Mexico to determine what compelled the U.S. government to end the practices of "empire" in its relations with the two nations; (2) to investigate the exercise of "hegemony" in U.S. relations with the two countries to ascertain whether it was different from "empire"; (3) to study the internal political, social and economic developments of both Cuba and Mexico in the 1930s that allowed the U.S. shift from empire to hegemony; and (4) to explain how the impact of the onset of the Second World War consolidated the American adoption of hegemony.