The new group, announced its organizers, would be a source of reliable information and analysis on Latin America that could be of use to activists. It would focus on systemic analyses of wealth and power in the Americas rather than on scandals or policy “mistakes.” It would be informed by a belief that what happened in the United States was integrally related to what happened in the rest of the world. In this context, NACLA's understanding of U.S. policies and power was formed by looking at the United States from a Latin American perspective, through a Latin American lens. The United States and Latin America were operating within the same system, and contradictions in that system were frequently bubbling up and becoming visible in Latin America first, particularly those involving U.S. interventions that violated Washington's self-declared democratic principles: the 1954 CIA-orchestrated overthrow of the reformist Arbenz regime in Guatemala; the 1961 invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs by a Florida-based anti-Castro mercenary force; the 1965 invasion and occupation of the Dominican Republic. Later, the 1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende's elected government in Chile and the U.S. role in the Central American wars of the 1980s would dominate NACLA's agenda.