X.

Latin America: The Roosevelt Corollary

Roosevelt enjoyed enormous popularity at home, but his expansionist policies in Latin America created tensions in much of the Western Hemisphere. In his annual message to Congress in 1904, the president introduced the Roosevelt Corollary, which updated and strengthened the Monroe Doctrine’s rejection of possible European claims to territory in the Americas. Roosevelt vowed that the United States would maintain stability in the region even if it required an exercise of international police power. With an eye on the potential of connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by means of a canal through the Isthmus of Panama, Roosevelt openly involved the United States in a partly contrived revolution against the government of Colombia, whose territory included the future site of the canal. Roosevelt bragged that he “took the Canal Zone, and let Congress debate,” noting that “while the debate goes on the canal does also.” The one-sided terms of the treaty ceded to the U.S. a 16-km (10-mi) strip of land through newly independent Panama and gave the owners “all the rights, power and authority [as] if it were the sovereign of the territory.” Despite such expansion, the United States cautiously continued to avoid alliances with other powers.

Subsequent administrations found themselves drawn into Latin American affairs. Taking office in 1909, President William Howard Taft continued intervention in Latin America through what he termed “dollar diplomacy,” policies that aggressively promoted investment in the region. The Taft administration provided military protection for U.S. commercial activity. His successor Woodrow Wilson criticized these policies in Latin America, but after becoming president in 1912 Wilson found himself involved in a war against Mexico’s popular revolutionary heroes. Elsewhere in Latin America, Wilson vowed to promote democracy and legitimate government, and he compiled a substantial history of interventionism in places such as Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

United States diplomacy was nowhere as bold and tied to domestic commercial interests as in Latin America. The region became an important source of commodities and a market for manufactured goods. Whether it acted for reasons of commerce or for protection of the Panama Canal, the United States came to be viewed as the colossus of the north. Imperialistic policies planted the seeds for the troubled relationships with Latin American countries that continued through the 20th century. Resentment of the United States grew over several decades and came to a head during the Cold War, when anti-American figures such as Fidel Castro of Cuba and the Sandinistas of Nicaragua denounced “Yankee imperialism” to the delight of their supporters.