Christgrossed less than $8.4 million in the United
States and approximately half that amount in other
countries. Suits brought against Scorsese and Uni-
versal Studios were decidedly less successful, how-
ever, as decisions handed down in several state and
federal courts reaffirmed the director’s and studio’s
First Amendment rights to produce and distribute
the movie despite its objectionable subject matter.
Beyond its narrative, the film was noteworthy for its
set design, which was lauded by critics for generating
a sense of what Galilee would have looked like in the
time of Christ. Similarly, the innovative sound track
by New Wave musician Peter Gabriel was composed
and performed primarily on instruments that ex-
isted at the time that Christ lived.
Further Reading
Keyser, Lester J.Martin Scorsese. New York: Twayne,
1992.
Riley, Robin.Film, Faith, and Cultural Conflict: The
Case of Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of
Christ.”Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003.
Laurence W. Mazzeno
See also Film in the United States; Religion and
spirituality in the United States; Scorsese, Martin.
Latin America
Definition The Western Hemisphere nations
located south of the United States
During the 1980’s, the United States’ promotion of its own
interests in Latin America led it frequently to support bru-
tally oppressive regimes at the expense of the human rights of
the Latin American people.
U.S. foreign policy in Central and South America
and the Caribbean was shaped decisively by the Cold
War in the 1980’s. Fidel Castro’s Marxist govern-
ment remained in power in Cuba. In 1979, mean-
while, the Marxist Sandinista National Liberation
Front had overthrown Nicaragua’s Anastasio Somoza
Debayle, a brutal right-wing dictator supported by
the United States. In 1984, the Sandinistas spon-
sored free elections, winning two-thirds of the popu-
lar vote and making Daniel Ortega the freely elected
socialist president of a democratic nation. These two
threats to the interests of global capitalism sparked
grave concern in the United States, as did a growing
drug trade from south of the border. As a result, the
U.S. government conducted two invasions and lent
support to several Latin American governments that
used terror and murder to suppress popular insur-
gencies.Central America and the Caribbean Beginning in
1981, the Ronald Reagan administration opposed
the Sandinistas by supporting the Contras, a rebel
army fighting against the Sandinista government. It
also provided aid to the military governments in
Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. President
Reagan courted public support for his policies
throughout the decade by warning that communist
movements in Central America, if successful, would
threaten Mexico and ultimately the United States.
The Contras, however, did not limit themselves to at-
tacking military targets. Concerned by the Contras’
treatment of civilians, Congress banned any finan-
cial aid to the group, but the Reagan administration
illegally circumvented this ban, resulting in a scan-
dal known as the Iran-Contra affair. This scandal,
which dominated much of Reagan’s second term in
office, ultimately led to the criminal conviction of
several members of his administration.
In El Salvador, a series of military juntas con-
fronted a liberation movement led by the Fara-
bundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN).
The juntas responded to the movement with death
squads that operated with government approval.
The thousands of victims of these death squads in-
cluded Roman Catholic archbishop Oscar Romero
of San Salvador, four American nuns, and two Amer-
ican aid workers. Visitors to the capitol were fre-
quently told that body dump sites were a “must-see”
attraction. Throughout the 1980’s, nevertheless, the
U.S. Department of State continued to issue optimis-
tic reports on the supposed “progress of democracy”
in El Salvador in order to justify continuing aid
money to the Salvadoran government. Many of the
military officers who were responsible for the death
squads were trained in the School of the Americas in
the United States.
The United States also provided aid to neighbor-
ing Honduras in exchange for permission to train
Contras there for the war in Nicaragua. A group of
thirty Salvadoran nuns and religious laywomen fled
to Honduras after the assassination of Archbishop
Romero and subsequently disappeared. It was later
revealed that the women had been arrested by theThe Eighties in America Latin America 573