The U.S. Seeks Good Relations with Latin America: 1928-29

In the twenties, the U.S. was not interested in controlling any country in Latin America the way that Britain and France were controlling portions of Africa and Asia. The belief in the Manifest Destiny of the United States was not what it had been in the late 19th century. In no Latin American country were people from the U.S. exercising the kind of power that the descendants of missionaries had been experiencing in Hawaii. In the twenties, the United States wanted good relations with the whole of Latin America, and it wanted to protect U.S. business interests in Latin America and the lives and property of U.S. citizens.

The U.S. had withdrawn its Marines from the Dominican Republic, but it believed it was necessary to keep its contingent of Marines in Haiti. In Guatemala, capital from the United States had been pouring in, as it did over much of Latin America. But there was to be no intervention there -- for the time being -- as Guatemala remained politically stable and its currency sound. The same could be said for El Salvador, and especially the most stable of Central American nations, Costa Rica.

During the twenties the United States moved to patch up its differences with Mexico, with much of Latin America looking at U.S. policy towards Mexico as a measure of U.S. attitude toward the whole of Latin America. Mexico responded favorably to the U.S. move, and the two powers began discussions on the status of property in Mexico owned by U.S. citizens -- largely oil and mining concerns that had been confiscated during Mexico's revolution.

A conference of American nations assembled in Havana in 1928 -- attended by the U.S. President, Calvin Coolidge -- a conference seen as a showdown between Latin American nations and the United States. The expressed aim of the conference was to prevent the Americas from repeating the conflicts that had marked Europe and Africa. The first order of business at the conference was settling the long-lasting border war between Chile and Peru. The conference established new treaties that demanded arbitration in disputes between American nations. And an agreement was reached that led to a formal end to the war between Chile and Peru.

In February 1929, the U.S. moved to counter "misunderstandings" with Latin American nations that had arisen from its intervention in Nicaragua. It revoked the Theodore Roosevelt corollary to Monroe Doctrine -- Roosevelt having assumed for the United States the right to intervene in Latin American nations in order to forestall the possibility of a European intervention. The February 1929 announcement included a claim that the Monroe Doctrine was not originally intended as an instrument of aggression against Latin American nations and was not to be used as such.

to "The U.S. to the Crash of 1929"

Good American Neighbors