This is a vicious cycle of falling back to dictatorship to avoid imperialism, or some of it.

A) The country opens up and holds free elections, leading to an American puppet winning and the country turning into a vassal state at best, a glorified colony at worst.

B) The country turns into a dictatorship to limit foreign influence and fight back against imperialism, becoming a similarly terrible place to live, but at least without giving anything to the empire. Also note that as time passes, it's quite likely that the dictatorship will forget why it was even created, i.e. it will no longer be about rejecting imperialism.

There are often the only two realistic scenarios for countries targetted by the American Empire. Both are bad and I'm not sure I feel like analyzing which one is slightly less bad for the average person.