Monroe Doctrine leaves trail of atrocities in L. America

MEXICO CITY－Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his Bolivian counterpart Luis Arce refused last week to attend the June 6-10 Summit of the Americas in the United States if the host insists on excluding Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Their stance reflects regional opposition to keeping those countries out of the summit, but this is not the first time the US has tried to impose its will on the entire American continent, nor will it be the last.

In the nearly 200 years since the US adopted the so-called Monroe Doctrine in 1823, US atrocities in Latin America have overshadowed bilateral relations.

After its founding, which entailed dispossessing North American Indians of their own land, the US embarked on a policy of expansion against Mexico.

Through war, the US had appropriated half of Mexico's territory. At the end of the 19th century, the US launched another offensive, taking possession of Puerto Rico in the Caribbean Sea through the Spanish-American War, and occupying Cuba.

At the turn of the 20th century, US military aggressions in Latin America gradually brought regional countries into its sphere of influence.

In 1903, the US forcibly leased Guantanamo, Cuba's natural port in the Caribbean, turning it into the first US military base abroad. To this day, the US refuses to return it to Cuba.

By 1930, the US United Fruit Company controlled around 1.4 million hectares of land in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama and more than 2,400 kilometers of railways, as well as the countries' customs, telecommunications and other essential services.

In 1962, the US launched a trade embargo against Cuba that grew into a full-on blockade of the island nation, leading to more than $150 billion losses as of mid-2021.

Entering the 21st century, as Latin American countries recovered from recurring political and economic crises, their relationship with Washington began to be characterized by contradictions and conflicts.

In 2011, the region's 33 countries established the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, the first regional organization in the Americas to forgo the participation of the US and Canada.

The US then was forced to adjust its policy toward Latin America.

"The era of the Monroe Doctrine is over," former US secretary of state John Kerry declared in 2013.

But that's not the truth. Uncle Sam's shadow still lurks behind many Latin American political developments, said Adalberto Santana of the Center for Research on Latin America and the Caribbean at Mexico's National Autonomous University.

Washington's fingerprints are all over the 2009 military coup in Honduras, the ouster of Brazil's Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and the ongoing crisis in Venezuela. Since the pandemic began, the US has deported undocumented Central American migrants without the usual safeguards.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said the US fails to see that Latin America and the Caribbean have changed and the Monroe Doctrine can no longer be reinstated.

Xinhua