Latin America Is Working to End the Monroe Doctrine

FEBRUARY 20, 2023
BY DAVID SWANSON



By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, February 20, 2023

David Swanson is the author of the new book The Monroe Doctrine at 200 and What to Replace It With.

History seems to show some partial benefit to Latin America in moments when the United States was otherwise distracted, as by its Civil War and other wars. This is a moment right now in which the U.S. government is at least somewhat distracted by Ukraine and willing to purchase Venezuelan oil if it believes that contributes to hurting Russia. And it is a moment of tremendous accomplishment and aspiration in Latin America.

Latin American elections have increasingly gone against subservience to U.S. power. Following Hugo Chavez’s “Bolivarian revolution,” Néstor Carlos Kirchner was elected in Argentina in 2003, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Brazil in 2003. Independence-minded President of Bolivia Evo Morales took power in January 2006. Independence-minded President of Ecuador Rafael Correa came into power in January 2007. Correa announced that if the United States wished to keep a military base any longer in Ecuador, then Ecuador would have to be permitted to maintain its own base in Miami, Florida. In Nicaragua, Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega, ousted in 1990, has been back in power from 2007 to today, though clearly his policies have changed and his abuses of power are not all fabrications of the U.S. media. Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) was elected in Mexico in 2018. After set-backs, including a coup in Bolivia in 2019 (with U.S. and UK support) and a trumped-up prosecution in Brazil, 2022 saw the list of “pink tide” governments enlarged to include Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Peru, Chile, Colombia, and Honduras — and, of course, Cuba. For Colombia, 2022 saw its first election of a left-leaning president ever. For Honduras, 2021 saw the election as president of the former first lady Xiomara Castro de Zelaya who had been ousted by the 2009 coup against her husband and now first gentleman Manuel Zelaya.

Of course, these countries are full of differences, as are their governments and presidents. Of course those governments and presidents are deeply flawed, as are all governments on Earth whether or not U.S. media outlets exaggerate or lie about their flaws. Nonetheless, Latin American elections (and resistance to coup attempts) suggest a trend in the direction of Latin America ending the Monroe Doctrine, whether the United States likes it or not.

In 2013 Gallup conducted polls in Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, and Peru, and in each case found the United States the top answer to “What country is the greatest threat to peace in the world?” In 2017, Pew conducted polls in Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, and Peru, and found between 56% and 85% believing the United States to be a threat to their country. If the Monroe Doctrine is either gone or benevolent, why haven’t any of the people impacted by it heard about that?

More:
https://warisacrime.org/2023/02/20/latin-america-is-working-to-end-the-monroe-doctrine/