European colonizers arrive in the Americas and wipe out up to 90% of Indigenous populations through disease, massacre, and enslavement.

Spain and England develop rival colonial systems with sharply different approaches to land ownership, religious conversion, and racial mixing.

Anglo settlers seize Mexican land in Texas, framing their violent takeover as a heroic revolt against tyranny at the Alamo.

The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo forces Mexico to surrender Texas, California, and the entire American Southwest to the United States.

Gold is discovered in California shortly after the US seizes the territory, generating enormous wealth that Mexico is permanently denied.

The Spanish-American War ends with Spain surrendering Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines to the United States.

The US consolidates the Dominican Republic's foreign debt, establishing a financial protectorate that primarily benefits American sugar companies.

President Wilson sends US marines to occupy the Dominican Republic, entrenching the country's financial dependency on American interests.

Fidel Castro seizes power in Cuba, triggering a massive wave of wealthy Cuban emigration to the United States.

The Dominican Republic holds its first democratic election, easily won by Juan Bosch, whom the US government soon moves to remove.

President Johnson sends US marines to crush the Dominican Constitutional revolt under the pretext of a communist threat.

The Sandinistas topple the Somoza family's decades-long dictatorship in Nicaragua, alarming the US government.

NAFTA opens a common North American market, devastating Mexican small farmers and accelerating immigration to the United States.

Mass protests across 160 US cities successfully defeat the Sensenbrenner anti-immigration bill in Congress.

Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed as the first Latina justice ever to serve on the United States Supreme Court.

The book opens by examining how European colonizers systematically seized Indigenous American lands, establishing the pattern of conquest that would define the hemisphere for centuries. The US perpetuated this pattern by taking Texas, California, and the Southwest from Mexico, then winning Cuba, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines in the Spanish-American War. Throughout the 20th century, the US installed financial protectorates and military occupations across the Caribbean, propping up friendly regimes while suppressing democratic movements. Each intervention — from Wilson's occupation of the Dominican Republic to Johnson's crushing of its constitutional revolt — left behind dependency and instability that drove mass emigration northward. The Cold War era saw the US topple Nicaragua's Sandinista government through the Contra war, continuing a century of imperial interference. By the early 21st century, the consequences of this history could no longer be ignored, as both the Sensenbrenner protests and Sotomayor's Supreme Court confirmation demonstrated the unstoppable rise of Latino political power.

The major turning points of US-Latin American history.

The Iroquois Confederacy's representative system of government directly inspires the framework of American democracy.

The Canales family establishes settlements along the Rio Grande in the colonial territory of Nuevo Santander.

Juan Seguín fights alongside Anglo Texas rebels but is later driven from his land and political office at gunpoint by Anglo newcomers.

The United Fruit Company is formed after the Spanish-American War, acquiring vast Central American landholdings and dominating regional economies.

The US builds the Panama Canal using Black West Indian laborers under a racially segregated gold-and-silver wage system.

LULAC is founded in Corpus Christi, Texas, dedicated to ending racial segregation and teaching English to Spanish-speaking Americans.

The US-trained Dominican national police elevates Trujillo through its ranks, enabling him to seize the presidency as dictator.

The Ponce Massacre kills 19 civilians and two police officers during a Puerto Rican Nationalist march on Palm Sunday.

The US bracero program recruits hundreds of thousands of Mexican workers to fill wartime labor shortages in American industries.

Guatemalan President Arbenz issues Decree 900, redistributing uncultivated land from wealthy owners to landless Indigenous farmers.

The Dulles brothers use their positions in the State Department and CIA to orchestrate the overthrow of Guatemala's democratically elected President Arbenz.

Archbishop Romero of El Salvador is assassinated after becoming a fierce public critic of the ruling elite's violence against the poor.

The Reagan administration designates El Salvador as the largest recipient of US military aid in all of Latin America.

Ana Sol Gutierrez wins a Maryland school board seat, becoming the first Salvadoran-born elected official in US history.

President Clinton publicly apologizes to the Guatemalan people for decades of US support for repressive governments in their country.

Beneath the headline events of US-Latin American history lie the stories of specific communities, families, and individuals shaped by empire. From the Iroquois Confederacy's influence on American democracy to the Canales family's centuries-old roots along the Rio Grande, the book reveals histories deliberately erased from mainstream accounts. The construction of the Panama Canal and the founding of LULAC illustrate how Latin Americans both served American interests and organized to resist discrimination. US-backed dictators like Trujillo — enabled by Washington's occupation forces — and the violence they unleashed, from the Ponce Massacre to the assassination of Archbishop Romero, reveal the human cost of Cold War alliances. Guatemala's story is particularly stark: a democratically elected president's land reform was crushed by a CIA-backed coup that plunged the country into decades of massacres. The pool closes with Clinton's apology to Guatemala and Gutierrez's historic election — small but meaningful signs that these buried histories are finally being reckoned with.

Individual stories and country-level turning points.

The Louisiana Purchase doubles US territory, beginning a century of American expansion into Spanish-speaking borderlands.

Spain signs over Florida to the United States, hoping the treaty will finally protect Texas from relentless Anglo settler encroachment.

President Monroe declares the Americas off-limits to European colonization, a doctrine Latin American nations soon realize does not constrain the United States.

William Walker invades Nicaragua with armed followers, seizes control of the government, and declares himself president of the country.

The Platt Amendment designates Cuba as a US protectorate, giving American businesses dominant control over the island's economy and politics.

Gonzalez's grandfather Teofilo dies during the Great Depression, leaving his family unable to survive together and placing his father in an orphanage.

Puerto Rican and Mexican American veterans return from the war determined to claim the equal rights they had fought for abroad.

Trujillo is assassinated after his plot to kill Venezuela's president finally triggers a CIA-assisted operation to remove him.

The Somoza family steals millions in international earthquake relief funds, galvanizing a new generation of Nicaraguan revolutionaries against them.

The Mariel boatlift brings poorer, darker-skinned Cuban refugees to the US, sparking a racist backlash that contributes to President Carter's electoral defeat.

The CIA trains former Somoza soldiers as the Contra army to wage covert war against Nicaragua's elected Sandinista government.

Jesse Jackson's National Rainbow Coalition shocks political experts by winning a majority of primary votes through a Black-Latino-liberal alliance.

David Sanes Rodríguez is killed during a US Navy bombing exercise in Vieques, sparking a four-year mass protest that ultimately forces the navy out.

The Day Without Immigrants boycott divides the protest movement but powerfully demonstrates the indispensable economic role of Latino workers.

Barack Obama is elected president with overwhelming Latino support, his campaign adopting César Chávez's rallying phrase Yes We Can.

Many of the most consequential moments in US-Latin American history are pivotal decisions and sudden ruptures rather than gradual trends. The Louisiana Purchase and Monroe Doctrine both promised stability while actually accelerating American expansionism — a contradiction that William Walker's filibuster invasions made grotesquely literal. The personal dimension of this history is captured in the death of Gonzalez's grandfather, which scatters his family and dramatizes the human cost of colonial economic devastation. The collapse of Trujillo's regime and the Somoza family's brazen theft of earthquake relief both reveal how the corruption the US enabled eventually collapses under its own weight. The Mariel boatlift and the CIA's Contra war show the US repeating old patterns of intervention and scapegoating even in the 1980s. Yet the Rainbow Coalition, Obama's election, and grassroots movements like the Vieques protests signal that the harvest of history is shifting, as marginalized communities find collective political power.