In Latin America, as in other parts of the world, the second Trump administration has adopted an increasingly aggressive policy.

From drone strikes on purported drug traffickers to increased tariffs on imports, and from the blockade on fuel shipments and threats of invasion in Cuba to the Jan. 3 military incursion into Venezuela, the U.S.’s more coercive approach to its hemispheric neighbors evokes an earlier period of U.S. foreign policy.

Many commentators have found echoes of the 1989 capture of Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega in the kidnapping of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. Others highlighted the longer history of U.S. interventions in Latin America stretching back through the Cold War. That includes the Nixon administration’s support for the 1973 coup against Salvador Allende in Chile or the CIA-sponsored removal of Guatemala’s elected president, Jacobo Arbenz, in 1954.

Yet as a historian of early 20th-century Latin America, I believe the Trump administration’s approach to Latin America more closely resembles an older pattern of U.S. policy. Between 1900 and the mid-1930s, U.S. forces intervened in one Latin American country after another. This practice was often justified by the Roosevelt Corollary, President Theodore Roosevelt’s addition to the Monroe Doctrine. In cases of “chronic wrongdoing,” Roosevelt said in 1904, the U.S would find itself compelled to exercise an “international police power” in defense of U.S. interests.

But crucially, how Latin Americans responded to the U.S. exerting its dominance in the early 20th century may hold some lessons for the present day. One of the major side effects of the U.S.’s so-called gunboat diplomacy was an upsurge of resistance and anti-imperialist thinking in the region’s political life.

The roots of anti-imperialism

In the 30 years after Roosevelt asserted the U.S.’s right to intervene across the hemisphere, U.S. forces occupied Cuba three times – in 1906-09, 1912 and 1917-21. They also occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934 and the Dominican Republic from 1916 to 1924. In Nicaragua, the U.S. deployed the Marines from 1912 to 1925 and then again from 1926 to 1933, waging a counterinsurgency in which it used aerial bombardment for the first time.

Across much of the region, then, this was a time when the U.S. was quick to resort to force, unburdened by any concerns for Latin American countries’ sovereignty.

Yet this era of external intervention also coincided with a period of remarkable political ferment, which I describe in my recently published book, “Radical Sovereignty.”

In one place after another, from Buenos Aires to Mexico City and from Havana to Lima, movements sprang up that put forward sharp critiques of U.S power. Many of them grew out of student organizations in the late 1910s, while others drew on the rising strength of labor unions and newly formed leftist political parties.

In 1923, rural workers in the Mexican state of Veracruz formed a Peasant League. From the outset, they saw local issues as closely interwoven with international ones, and they argued that there was a compelling reason for this. As the league put it, “Our internationalism is not the child of a crazed enthusiasm for empty phrases … but of the need to take preventive measures, to bolster ourselves against the enemy,” which they identified as “the imperialism of North America.”

Many of Latin America’s radical movements at this time were inspired by the recent example of the Mexican Revolution. The new Mexican Constitution of 1917 had nationalized the country’s land and natural resources, putting it on a collision course with U.S. companies and landowners.

Others still were energized by the global repercussions of the Russian Revolution. This, of course, included several brand-new communist parties across the region. But at the time, many others in Latin America saw the Bolsheviks as part of a global anti-colonial wave.

Mexico City as activist hub

My book explores the key role Mexico City played as a gathering point for these different political tendencies.

They included groups ranging from Mexican peasant leagues to the American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, an anti-imperialist movement formed by Peruvian exiles. Many of these organizations converged under the umbrella of the Anti-Imperialist League of the Americas. Founded in Mexico City in 1925, it soon had chapters in a dozen more countries across the region.

Between them, these movements brought into focus the novel features of U.S. power. As the Cuban student leader and communist Julio Antonio Mella saw it in 1925 – at a time when his native country was highly dependent on the U.S. but formally sovereign – the U.S. was distinct. Unlike European empires, it largely refrained from direct control of territories, though it had pressed the Cubans to include in their 1901 constitution a provision allowing it to intervene in the island at will.

In Mella’s view, the U.S. was clearly an empire, one that mainly exercised its dominance through commercial or financial pressures. For him, the dollar and Wall Street were as central to U.S. power as the halls of government in Washington, D.C.

For Ricardo Paredes, an Ecuadorean doctor who founded the country’s Socialist Party in 1926, a new term was required to capture Latin American countries’ contradictory position. Formally sovereign, they were not colonies as such. Yet they were economically and politically subordinated to Washington and Wall Street – “dependent countries,” as he phrased it in 1928.

For the Peruvian poet Magda Portal, a leading member of the anti-imperialist American Popular Revolutionary Alliance, U.S. dominance played out differently in different parts of Latin America.

In a series of lectures she gave in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic in 1929, Portal divided the region into zones. While countries such as Argentina or Brazil were mainly sites for U.S. investment, Mexico and the Caribbean were regularly subjected to U.S. military force. Or, as Portal put it, “Here imperialism wears no disguise.”

Portal concluded her lectures with a phrase that combined her analysis of U.S. dominance with a resonant appeal for unity: “We have a single and great enemy; let us form a single and great union.”

United states of resistance?

Yet while there was much Latin American anti-imperialist thinkers could agree on, there were also profound divergences between them. This included questions of strategy as well as issues of principle. What role should different classes play in their movement? How radical a transformation of society were they pushing for? And what kind of state should emerge from it?

Over time, these differences turned into deep rifts that pitted revolutionaries against democratic reformists, internationalists against nationalists, and pro-Soviets against anti-communists. These disagreements played an important role in Latin American politics over the rest of the century.

While many of these rifts became especially prominent during the Cold War, they developed out of earlier divisions over how best to counter U.S. dominance.

The anti-imperialist upsurge of the 1920s and ’30s was formative for a generation of Latin American radicals. Several of those who entered political life during these years went on to play key roles in major events of the 20th century. Raúl Roa, for example, who served as foreign secretary for Cuba’s revolutionary government from 1959 to 1976, was first politicized in the island’s anti-imperialist movement of the 1920s.

The men and women whose political visions were formed in the interwar period carried those ideals forward into the Cold War era. In important ways, the 1920s and 1930s laid vital groundwork for later and better-known radical movements.

Past is, of course, not always prologue. It is impossible to predict what the long-term consequences of current U.S. policy in Latin America will be, especially given the rightward tilt that is currently unfolding across the region.

But looking at the region’s anti-imperialist traditions does point to one possible outcome: The U.S.’s newly aggressive stance will, sooner rather than later, fuel a resurgence of anti-imperialist sentiment as the organizing principle for a new generation of activists.

Tony Wood does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

The CBS television show “It’s What’s Happening Baby” aired a music video featuring Martha and the Vandellas performing their hit song “Nowhere to Run” to kick off its national broadcast dedicated to Detroit on June 28, 1965.

In the video, the Detroit-based trio sang about how they could not escape missing an ex-lover after a breakup while sitting in a white Mustang moving slowly down the assembly line in the Ford Motor Co.’s River Rouge plant.

As a cultural and labor historian, I see the “Nowhere to Run” video as an iconic testament to Detroit’s reputation as the “Motor City” and the role of the autoworker in the American imagination.

Motown founder and CEO Berry Gordy, Jr. worked on the Ford assembly line and used it as inspiration for Hitsville U.S.A., the famed headquarters and music recording studio that served as a space to train performers and perfect the “Motown sound” for the masses.

Martha and the Vandellas were part of Motown’s illustrious roster of artists in the 1960s. Initially comprised of Martha Reeves, Rosalind Ashford and Annette Beard, and with members changing over the next three decades, they helped establish the Black “girl group.” They presented themselves as working class in videos like “Nowhere to Run.”

Their classic anthem “Dancing in the Street” reflected the revolutionary mood of civil rights protesters, especially Black Americans in the 1960s. As lead singer, Reeves also emerged as a pioneering R&B “diva,” helping pave the way for Black female solo vocalists like Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Mary J. Blige and Beyoncé.

A patient path to stardom

Martha Reeves was born in Eufaula, Alabama, on July 18, 1941. Soon after, her family moved to Detroit’s east side. Music occupied a central place in her life from childhood.

Reeves writes in her 1994 memoir, “Dancing in the Street: Confessions of a Motown Diva,” about her father serenading her mother with his guitar while she was pregnant with Martha. Her mother, Ruby, also sang. Reeves’ parents passed their love for music to her, and she sang in her church choir and aspired to a life of performance.

“At that young age I was already hooked on pleasing the crowd with my singing,” Reeves wrote.

Reeves graduated from Northeastern High School. As a teenager, she used fake IDs to get into night clubs to watch singers perform, and she sang in open mics and talent shows. She scored her first break after earning a three-night performance at the 20 Grand, a popular Detroit night club located on 14th Street and Warren Avenue.

It was after one of those performances when she met William Stevenson, Motown Records’ executive for discovering new talent. Stevenson invited Reeves to the label’s headquarters.

Reeves came to the studio, but she didn’t audition for reasons that aren’t entirely clear today. Instead, Stevenson told her she could answer the phones. That’s how she got a job in the A&R Department and began working with other Motown artists.

In 1957, Reeves joined her first group, the Del-Phis. Formed by Edward “Pops” Larkins, the Del-Phis also included leader Gloria Jean Williamson, Rosalind Ashford and Annette Beard.

Reeves soon caught another break. In September 1962, Stevenson called for her to fill in for Mary Wells in a Marvin Gaye studio session. Reeves enlisted the other Del-Phis, and they performed so well that they became the supporting vocal group for Gaye.

After the Del-Phis toured with Gaye and recorded “I’ll Have to Let Him Go,” Gordy offered Reeves, Beard and Ashford a recording contract. The group also took on a new name, Martha and the Vandellas.

Martha and the Vandellas enjoyed commercial success soon after, with songs like “Come and Get These Memories,” “Quicksand” and “Heatwave.”

An anthem for revolution set to a groove

“Dancing in the Street,” written by Gaye, Stevenson and Ivy Jo Hunter, was released in the summer of 1964 and became a signature hit for Martha and the Vandellas.

Reeves wrote in her autobiography that she did not like “Dancing in the Street.”

However, she made it her own, and Reeves later acknowledged that the song embodied the spirit of civil rights protests.

“It became the anthem of the decade,” Reeves wrote.

She was right.

At the time of the song’s release, the Civil Rights Movement was in full swing. Black Americans in Harlem took to the streets to protest the killing of 15-year-old James Powell by an off-duty New York Police Department officer.

The 1960s set off a string of “long, hot summers” as racial tensions intensified. Black folks in the Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles in 1965 protested in the streets in response to police violence.

More than 100 protests were organized in response to Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968, from Chicago to Washington and Baltimore.

Detroit erupted a year earlier, in July 1967, after Detroit police officers raided a “blind pig,” or an unlicensed bar, on 12th Street.

The iconic opening lines of “Dancing in the Street” announced a new attitude among Black folks: “Calling out around the world/ Are you ready for a brand new beat?”

The high-octane, optimistic song is laced with slogans interpreted as invitations to take action. Martha and the Vandellas’ declaration that “Summer is here and the time is right for dancing in the street” reflected Black Americans’ willingness to not only march, but to take measures in their own hands and fight for equality and justice.

Battle for fair pay and recognition

The late 1960s and early 1970s were a time of transition for Reeves and the Vandellas. The Supremes were on the rise and threatened to displace them as the most prominent girl group on the Motown label. Reeves also experienced creative differences with Motown executives and struggled with drug addiction. Then, in 1972, Gordy moved Motown to Los Angeles so he could try his hand at filmmaking.

Martha and the Vandellas broke up later that year after the release of their album, “Black Magic.” However, Reeves continued as a solo artist, releasing five albums, including her self-titled debut “Martha Reeves” in 1974, “The Rest of My Life” in 1976 and “We Meet Again” in 1978, among others.

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, along with many Motown artists, experienced a resurgence in popularity during the 1980s. Motown Records’ 25th anniversary show in Pasadena, California, in 1983 launched them back into the mainstream. The group reunited and started performing again in 1989.

Also, Reeves and the group sought to resolve their old conflicts with Motown Records. Reeves and various members of the Vandellas sued Gordy and Motown in 1989 for unpaid royalties. Motown Records settled the suit in 1991 for an undisclosed amount.

Four years later, the B-52s inducted Reeves and the Vandellas into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

The diva archetype

Martha and the Vandellas played a vital role in laying the foundation for future all-Black female groups like En Vogue, TLC, SWV and Destiny’s Child.

They helped set the standard for turning songs about the trappings of love and heartbreak into anthems. Reeves embraced being an “R&B Diva” long before music critics applied the persona to singers like Mary J. Blige and Beyoncé. Reeves was not just a larger-than-life vocal presence; she showed future generations of Black female vocalists that, to be a diva, one must have control of one’s own career.

“We became the Vandellas and with me being the only lead singer, my name was put out there because I did all the work,” Reeves said in a 2020 interview. “I did all the singing … I managed to just come up with my own destiny, with my own future in show business.”

Austin McCoy does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.