After Cuba was successfully taken over by Castro, were any other Latin American socialist movements inspired to attempt the same thing in their home countries? How close did any f these movements get to seizing power? Did the USA change it's policy towards Latin America after the revolution?
Here in Brazil we had a military coup supported by the USA due to the fear of a communist revolution. That fear was mostly caused by the strong developmentalist tendencies of the two presidents prior to the coup, wich were Jânio Quadros (1961) and João Goulart or "Jango" (1961-1964). These two presidents can be considered developmentalists because they wanted to Brazil to be independent economically and politically.
During the government of Jânio he Reestablished diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and China, condemned the bay of pigs invasion, gave a medal to Che Guevara and also proposed land reform. Seven months after he was elected he resigned due to opposition pressure. But his vice president, João Goulart, was in China when Jânio resigned, wich led to him almost not being able to take the presidency because the opposition was calling for the presidency to be declared vacant so new elections could be held. After returning to Brazil Goulart made an agreement with the opposition and took the presidency,but his legitimacy would always be questioned after this event. Did his government he wanted to do reforms, such as, land reform,tax reform, educational reform and a voting system reform.
During this period of time there were some communist factions in Brazil, such as the Peasant League, led by Francisco Julião. Francisco was a known socialist, he believed in revolution and even visited Cuba and met Fidel. It is known that about 200 Brazilian men received military training in Cuba.
These factors led to the formation of a strong opposition to the government, this was formed by most of the military, landowners, the industrial elite ,the Catholic Church and a great part of the Urban middle class. During the first day of April 1964 the military seized the power and president João Goulart was overthrown. The military were supported by the USA because Kennedy believed Goulart was getting too friendly with anti-American Radicalists in the Brazilian government. The US government predicting an all-out civil war, and with the opportunity to get rid of a left wing government in Brazil,authorized logistical materials to be in place and a US Navy fleet led by an aircraft carrier to support the coup against Goulart. These included ammunition, motor oil, gasoline, aviation gasoline and other materials to help in a potential civil war .
There was no civil war Goulart fled to Uruguay, the military regime would be in power for the next 21 years.
El Salvador was a country of 5 million, 85% of the wealth and land was owned by 14 prominent families. So, El Salvador had a long history of repression and violence since La Matanza in 1932 when around 40,000 peasants were slaughtered after an attempted Communist uprising, lead by a guy called Farabundo Martí. This violence continued with repression against any sort of protest and eventually the Church, inspired by Liberation Theology in the 1970s would start to encourage people to form trade unions and attempt to gain more human rights. Basically these priests etc. would help people “conscientise” (aka teach them how to read, make them understand they weren't dying and poor because of themselves, but rather oppression) and then be killed/ targeted by the death squads or the army.
Oscar Romero was made Archbishop in 1977, a few weeks afterwards his friend Father Rutilio Grande was killed by the police, and a few weeks later the army stormed Grande’s parish of Aguilares and killed around 400 people there. They were considered subversive due to their organisation into unions and them attempting to get increased rights, wages and so on...
In 1979 a coup occurred promising to stop the repression of the previous government. However, the army kept on killing and nothing changed. Oscar Romero was at this point an outspoken defender of human rights. He gave a homily saying "in the name of God: Stop the repression!" and was assassinated celebrating mass the next day in 1980. At his funeral, the state placed bombs and shot at the crowd as they ran for shelter into the cathedral.
At this point, everyone knew Civil War was imminent. After Che’s failure in Bolivia, Cuba understood that you had to have a united left to win any kind of war. So, Cuba insisted that all of the guerrilla groups in El Salvador merge into one. The FMLN (Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front) formed from a merger of several Salvadoran communist guerrilla groups. Their ethos was Marxist-Leninist, Maoist, and they drew upon Che Guevara's foco theory and theory of guerrilla warfare...
So, the FMLN declared war and very quickly the US began pouring money into El Salvador in response. This is basically because of the Domino Theory, where the US felt if one Central American country fell to socialism, the surrounding countries would also succumb.
The army would commit multiple genocides, kill civilians and so on for the next 12 years. US would give the country (which is tiny- smaller than Wales – over $6 billion in funding – most of which went to army training). At the same time, the Soviets, Cuba and Nicaragua were providing funding/arms/training to the FMLN.
Throughout the war, the right/state was responsible for around 85% of atrocities during this time. There were multiple genocides in El Mozote, El Calabozo and the army would also forcibly recruit young boys into the army, where they would then have to commit atrocities. There was also widespread rape, torture, kidnap and murder by the army. Eventually, the army killed six priests (who had Spanish citizenship) who had been outspoken critics of the war and the repression by the Salvadoran state. It got a lot of attention on the international stage and the US withdrew funding due to this, previously they had been complicit in sweeping murders under the rug.
Ultimately, El Salvador tried really hard to follow in Cuba’s footsteps, with Cuba's support, but the US wouldn’t let that happen. Basically, the two protagonists in this war were the US and the FMLN. Without US funding, the war would have ended much quicker. The FMLN took part in the elections following the end of the war and won. (But also an amnesty law meant no one got punished.)
Sources:
https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/file/ElSalvador-Report.pdf
http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/nsa/publications/elsalvador2/
http://www.romerotrust.org.uk/homilies-and-writings
https://www.amazon.com/Our-Own-Backyard-Central-1977-1992/dp/0807848573
https://www.amazon.com/Stories-Civil-War-El-Salvador/dp/146962866X