Not "A Nation of Immigrants": Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and a History of Erasure and Exclusion

by Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Under the guise of protecting US lives and interests during political disturbances, in March 1853, US Marines landed on the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua for two days, and in July 1854, US naval forces bombed and burned San Juan del Norte on the Nicaraguan coast over a period of nearly a week.98 US pro-expansionist William Walker, under the banner of manifest destiny, believed Central America was destined to be the key to global trade and should be annexed by the United States. In April 1855, Walker and fifty-seven mercenaries (called filibusters at the time) sailed from San Francisco to Nicaragua to support one side in an ongoing civil war, but within a few months the mercenaries seized control of the country with a plan to make it a white settler country, introducing slavery, with Walker as president. President Franklin Pierce recognized the regime as legitimate. The other Central American countries combined their armies, with support from South American states as well, and forced Walker out in May 1857, executing him in a firing squad.99 Although Walker’s plan failed, it was a dress rehearsal for longer official US occupations and military interventions. After sending troops to eastern Nicaragua for varying lengths of time in 1894, 1896, 1898, 1899, 1907, and 1910, the US occupied Nicaragua from 1912 to 1933, leaving once the first Somoza family dictatorship was installed and ruled for more than four decades. During the same time frame, the US invaded and occupied Haiti ...