Spain first defeated and colonized the Indigenous civilizations of Latin America in the 1500s. When the US became a nation in 1776, what was their stance toward Latin America?

From the beginning, the US plotted to acquire the vast areas south and west of its borders. In 1786 Thomas Jefferson was asked why the US shouldn’t help the Spanish colonies gain their own independence. He replied by letter that he saw Spain’s rule as a holding action until the day the US was big and powerful enough to populate it and “gain it from (Spain) piece by piece.”

After roughly 50 years, the US saw its chance. Mexico freed itself from Spanish rule in 1821 — and the US quickly established its political and economic dominance over the new nation. Two years later President James Monroe announced the Monroe Doctrine. 

Monroe said the US would safeguard newly independent Latin American countries from foreign meddling. They would halt the Spanish coming up from the south and Russian expansion coming down from the north along what was then Mexico’s Pacific Coast. Russia owned Alaska, and it had already expanded its fur trade all the way down to what today is Sonoma County. 

So, allegedly, the intent of the Monroe Doctrine was to keep foreign powers out of this hemisphere, not about the right of the US to intervene in Latin American affairs?

In 1885 the Olney Corollary stated that the US could intervene in any dispute between a Latin American country and a foreign power. The British owned Guyana which neighbored Venezuela, and both countries laid claim to territory between them. The US stepped in and forced Britain to agree to the US as arbiter.

The US resolved the dispute in the name of Venezuela, but not for Venezuela — all US decisions were about what was best for US capitalists. The recent conflict between Venezuela and Guyana over the oil-rich Essequibo region has roots in that US-designed Treaty.

In 1902 the Roosevelt Corollary said that the US has the right to intervene in the internal affairs of a Latin American country if it failed to pay its debts. And in 1912, the Lodge Corollary proclaimed that the US had a right to intervene even in matters involving private interests, not just national governments. Mexico was planning to sell Magdalena Bay to private Japanese interests; the US stepped in and stopped the sale. 

In the 20th century, the US intervened repeatedly. Between 1962 and 1968 alone, it played a role in 14 coup d’états in Latin America. When military interventions become less acceptable after Vietnam and Chile, the tool of economic sanctions was invented. NGO’s also play a role — under the guise of “humanitarian” aid, many dollars have been channeled to pro-US organizations and against democratically elected governments. This is happening in Mexico today.

In opposition to the Monroe Doctrine, Simón Bolívar had a different vision for the hemisphere, right?

Venezuelan Simón Bolívar’s original mission was to liberate Latin America from Spanish rule. Between 1810 and 1825 he led the revolutions that established Venezuela, Panama, New Granada, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia as independent countries. No wonder he is revered across Latin America. There are more statues of Bolívar than of anyone else in the world! 

The Army of Simón Bolívar in battle

After liberation from Spain, the Bolivarian vision proposed a united bloc of independent Latin America nations against US dominance. The goal was to establish equilibrium between equal sovereign nations to achieve sustainable peace. Haiti was the first nation in Latin America to gain independence in 1804, and it financed Bolívar’s armies — there would be no slavery in the new Latin American republics.

Did Mexico’s presidents support the Bolivarian vision?

Many of the PRI governments did the bidding of the US and allowed the exploitation of Mexican natural and labor resources in exchange for the personal gain of the presidents and top officials.

Under his leadership, the September 2021 CELAC Summit laid out some fundamentals: abolish the OAS and create a new institution, without the inclusion of the US. The new alliance would accept the differences among themselves in regard to domestic politics — the goal was to align with one another and function internationally as their own united economic bloc, without having to choose between US or China.

Can the Monroe Doctrine finally be buried? 

If we review the many Presidential and legislative elections in Latin America from October 2020 (Bolivia) through November 2023 (Argentina), the people of most nations voted for national sovereignty, natural resource sovereignty, and governments that proposed economic plans benefitting the majority of citizens. As an election observer in Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Venezuela, Chile, and Mexico, I’ve witnessed the people reject the Monroe Doctrine.

But while the Mexican people and their president want sovereignty, they also share a 1900-mile border with the US. They are the US’s biggest trading partner. The Monroe Doctrine won’t be buried until the people of the US demand a change in foreign policy. 

This is a key task for the US left. If we want sustainable peace across the hemisphere, the Bolivarian principles of equality and respect must replace dominance and disdain.

Stories about AMLO — Readers Beware

The piece/A February 1 piece by The Hill reporter Rafael Bernal — "Reports of drug money in Mexican politics shake up relations with US” — summarizes other outlets’ reporting of unproven, 13-year-old allegations that AMLO’s 2006 presidential campaign took drug traffickers’ money, promising them protection once in office.

The claim/According to Bernal, Drug Enforcement Agency officials closed the 2011 inquiry — months before the 2012 presidential election, and AMLO’s second bid — because the likely winner, the PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto, seemed ambivalent about the DEA’s activities in Mexico. They were concerned that a criminal investigation targeting AMLO might jeopardize US-Mexico security cooperation. The piece mentions no other factor behind the decision to close the case.

The back story/Bernal’s article cites reporting by ProPublica, InSight Crime and Deutsche Welle (DW) — "three distinct reports” that tell “essentially the same story.” All three outlets mention the DEA’s political considerations that factored into the decision to close the case. 

But their stories do differ on one fundamental point.

Bernal’s piece omits the fact that both ProPublica and InSight Crime make clear that DEA investigators believed that their informants’ allegations and the agency’s follow-up detective work had failed to produce solid evidence criminally implicating key figures in AMLO’s 2006 campaign.

Bernal, on the other hand, takes the thesis forwarded in the (Spanish-language) DW piece by Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández, in which she writes that the DEA had indeed established “solid evidence” of criminal wrongdoing. Without evidence backing her own claims, she goes as far as describing a phone call allegedly made by AMLO in 2006 thanking a Sinaloa Cartel operative for the funds.

The bottom line/Notwithstanding her longtime reputation as a muckraking journalist and author of well-researched books on organized crime, Hernández’s DW columns in recent years have taken on a sensationalistic quality that puts shock and awe over analysis and, most importantly, the citation of sources. (In an interview to discuss her piece, Hernández said she would name her sources at a later date.)

While the DW piece has been ridiculed for becoming the latest example of yellow journalism, Bernal decided to use its unsubstantiated assertions and to cherry-pick from the three outlets’ reporting. This is a reminder (along with Hernández’s latest career twist) to news consumers to remain vigilant and to hold media outlets accountable, no matter their past work or established reputations.