south america is kept in check by cia-funded activities (guerrillas come to mind)
Actually the USA has pretty much lost it's grip on South America now, politically. 21st Century South America is 180 degrees from even 1990's South America, in terms of toeing the pro-US Party-Line. It's been a fairly rapid domino effect starting in 1998 with Venezuela.
Every single South American mainland nation has had a Democractic Socialist or center-left president since Chavez, except Colombia, (which was cited by GW Bush as the poster boy for "Democracy" in South America). Leftist sympathizers in Colombia have very short life-expectancies.
Previously, South America was split into two rival mercantile unions,
Mercosur centred on Brazil, and
CAN, centred on the Andean states, both with backing from America. How's that for Machiavellian divide and rule? But due in part to the advocacy of Chavez and Da Silva (ex president of Brazil) they've now merge those into one bloc, and even have South American Parliament modeled closely on the European Union. Apparently this isn't newsworthy and the few mentions of this development in the US press tend to be "look at the monkeys thinking they're civilized. it'll never work you dumb bickering brown people" stuff with some racist undertones.
These are two of the regional bodies formed in recent years to integrate Latin America into a single political and economic bloc, modeled on the EU:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_of_South_American_Nations"Unasur" has the 12 sovereign nations of South America, a single parliament and encompasses ~5 trillion dollars worth of GDP. This is a SERIOUS up and coming power bloc. By merging the two previous warring trade blocs which were both back by the USA they've settled their rivalries and realized they don't have to be puppets of the USA. This also involves a 12-nation military alliance, and they're talking about a single currency.
And, if you go by pro-Us papers like the New York Times, apparently this isn't newsworthy in the least. UNASUR is mentioned in 8 stories on nytimes, the first one dating in 2012, 4
years after it was formed. It was quite clearly a deliberate media blackout on the topic. None of the stories is actually
about UNASUR or explains what it is, it's just "this club a bunch of countries belong to". So after 4 years of avoiding the topic, they suddenly decide, "ok you can mention it now, but please don't explain what it is about". So much for New York Times being progressive and keeping people informed!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_Latin_American_and_Caribbean_States"Celac" is a more recent creation, it contains all the Unasur nations, plus an extended trade bloc, all the way up to Mexico. Only two countries in the hemisphere were not invited to join: USA and Canada. Fancy That. This is an extended trade bloc, with about 7 trillion in GDP, making it about half the size of USA, China or the EU. Also not newsworthy if you go by American papers.
There is exactly 1 mention of this in a nytimes article, also dating from 4 years after it was formed, and the entire article is just questioning whether Latin American people have their shit together, and whitewashing US involvement in coups and human rights abuses (they admit to US-backed coups, but it was in the name of stopping those damn commies).
So, Latin and South America are waking up that the USA is only feeding off them, and that their longterm best interest is regional self-determination and economic integration / solidarity. The USAs only effective response so far seems to be to pretend it's not happening and a media blackout.
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