As United States foreign investments increased during the 1920s, so did the frequency of American military interventions. The 1928 Havana Pan-American Conference found President Calvin Coolidge defending U.S. intervention in Nicaragua—which lasted from 1912 to 1933—from attacks by Latin American delegates. U.S. press coverage largely ignored the controversy, preferring to herald trans-Atlantic aviator Charles Lindbergh’s arrival in Havana with a message of “goodwill.” “How sweet it sounds in the ears of the Pan-American delegates,” commented the radical magazine New Masses in the caption to this cartoon, “but how different it looks to Sandino and the Nicaraguan patriots.”
Source: Hugo Gellert, New Masses, February 1928—Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.