This piece is an excerpt of a chapter by John Lindsay-Poland in an upcoming book, “Bases, Empire and Global Response,” edited by Catherine Lutz and published by Pluto Press. Download the whole chapter here (PDF) [1].

The United States has operated military bases in Latin America since the beginning of the 1900s, when it first established Army camps in Cuba during the Spanish-American War and in Panama at the beginning of US canal construction there. These bases have served explicitly to project and protect US government and commercial interests in the region, as part of a project of empire. More recently, the explosion of US military interest and funding for Plan Colombia, occurring in the wake of the United States’ withdrawal from military bases in Panama in December 1999, gave rise to a proliferation of new US bases and military access agreements in the region. The growth of bases constituted a decentralization of the US military presence in the region, Washington’s response to regional leaders’ reluctance to allow large US military bases or complexes while maintaining a broader military foothold.