Jumby: I only read the first one. I found it plausible, but I never dug any deeper than that.

I will say this: Where I was during the 1980s (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras), there was also a significant US business presence as well. We had several contingency plans in place in case of a 1979 Somoza/Nicaragua-type repeat in Salvador or Guatemala or Honduras, and these involved US forces extracting American workers and getting them to safety. United Fruit, American Mining Co. and Goodyear were all down there, as well as quite a few smaller operations.

The counterinsurgency “bible” we used was the USMC Small Wars Manual, written circa 1940. This is a fascinating book, and it is the product of the Marine Corps “Banana Wars” of the 1920s and 1930s. I would recommend reading up on these wars, as well as Smedley Butler, the Marines’ go to guy during this period.

Sorry to get a little off track there, but I think very little has changed during the last 100 years or so when it comes to the US and the “American Lake” (the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico) and our continued exploitation of those resources.