LW Humanist Association

The Leisure World Humanist Association will meet Sunday, Feb. 1, at 10:30 a.m., in Clubhouse 3, Room 1, with guest speaker Craig Hendricks.

Hendricks is a retired history teacher at California State University, Long Beach, and has written eight books. His areas of expertise include the history and politics of South America. He has spoken several times for the Humanist Association.

His presentation will be about the relationship between the United States and the Latin American nations, dating from the early 19th century. In the 1820s, the U.S. tried to offer commercial trade and protection from European nations that sought to establish or re-establish control over their former colonies. The U.S. was mostly interested in gaining control over the vast west of North America. When the U.S. began to develop as an industrial nation in the 1850s, its policies sought to control the natural resources of the southern continent, such as oil, metals and agricultural products. The U.S. asserted that it would protect the new nations of Latin America from foreign exploitation when it issued the Monroe Doctrine. By 1900, Latin American nations came to regard this as cover that allowed the U.S. to exploit its neighbors. Eventually, the U.S. sent military forces to a number of its southern neighbors more than 25 times by 1940. Hendricks will compare this history to current events.