The series of U.S. military interventions in Latin America from 1898 to 1934 is known as the Banana Wars.
The term describes U.S. occupations, police actions, and interventions mainly in Central America and the Caribbean. The period began around the end of the Spanish-American War in 1898 and conventionally ended with the U.S. withdrawal from Haiti in 1934, alongside President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor policy.
U.S. forces intervened in places including Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Honduras, and Mexico. The United States cited strategic concerns such as protecting the Panama Canal and political stability, while American commercial interests in bananas, sugar, railroads, and shipping were also significant.
“Dollar Diplomacy” is related but narrower: it refers especially to the Taft administration’s use of investment and financial pressure. The Banana Wars is the broader historical label for the military interventions themselves, not a war fought over bananas alone.