The relationship between Latin America and the United States has been marked by periods of tension and cordiality.
Post-Columbian era
Post-American Revolution
Venezuelan independence Following the events of the Revolution of April 19, 1810, the Captain General Vicente Emparán, designated by Joseph Bonaparte to govern the Captaincy General of Venezuela, were deposed by an expanded municipal government in Caracas that called itself the Supreme Junta to Preserve the Rights of Ferdinand VII (La Suprema Junta Conservadora de los Derechos de Fernando VII). One of the first acts of the Junta was to send a diplomatic mission to the United States to seek the recognition of the Supreme Junta of Caracas as the legitimate government of Venezuela in the absence of the King. Juan Vicente Bolívar Palacios, Jose Rafael Revenga and Telesforo Orea managed to attract the interest of the government of President James Madison to support the Supreme Junta.
Chilean independence In 1811, the arrival of Joel Roberts Poinsett in Santiago de Chile marked the beginning of U.S. support for Chilean independence. He had been sent by President James Madison in 1809 as a special agent to the South American Spanish colonies to investigate the prospects of the revolutionaries in their struggle for independence from Spain.John J. Johnson, "Early Relations of the United States with Chile." Pacific Historical Review 13.3 (1944): 260–270. online
Monroe Doctrine
The 1823 Monroe Doctrine, opposed additional European colonialism in the Western Hemisphere. It held that any intervention in the political affairs of the Americas by foreign powers was a potentially hostile act against the U.S.Mark T. Gilderhus, "The Monroe doctrine: meanings and implications." Presidential Studies Quarterly 36.1 (2006): 5–16 online . It also began Washington's policy of isolationism, stating it was necessary for the United States to refrain from entering into European affairs. The doctrine was central to U.S. foreign policy for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries. However some brief European interventions continued to occur in Latin American countries. These include the French naval blockade of Argentine ports between 1839 and 1840, the Anglo-French blockade of the River Plate from 1845 to 1850, the failed Spanish invasion of the Dominican Republic between 1861 and 1865, and the failed French intervention in Mexico between 1862 and 1865. In addition permanent intervention involved the re-establishment of British control over the Falkland Islands in 1833,Adrián F. J. Hope, "Sovereignty and decolonization of the Malvinas (Falkland) Islands." Boston College International and Comparative Law Review 6 (1983): 391+ online. and the Mosquito Coast in Nicaragua.Craig Dozier, Nicaragua's Mosquito Shore: The Years of British and American Presence (U of Alabama Press, 1985).
Anderson–Gual Treaty
The Anderson–Gual Treaty was an 1824 treaty between the United States and Gran Colombia (now the modern day countries of Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and Ecuador). It was the first bilateral treaty concluded by the United States with another American country. It was ratified by both countries and began enforcement in May 1825. The commercial provisions of the treaty granted reciprocal most-favored-nation status and were maintained despite the dissolution of Gran Colombia in 1830. The treaty contained a clause that stated it would be in force for 12 years after ratification by both parties; the treaty therefore expired in 1837.Michael L. Connif, Panama and the United States: The Forced Alliance (University of Georgia Press, 2001) p. 11.
Failed Congress of Panama, 1826 The notion of an international union in the New World was first put forward by the Venezuelan Liberator Simón Bolívar. At the 1826 Congress of Panama he proposed a league of all American republics with a common military, a mutual defense pact and a supranational parliamentary assembly. Bolívar's dream of Latin American unity was meant to unify Latin American nations against external powers, including the United States. The meeting was attended by representatives of Gran Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, the United Provinces of Central America, and Mexico. However the grandly titled "Treaty of Union, League, and Perpetual Confederation" was ultimately ratified only by Gran Colombia. The United States' delegates to the Congress were delayed; one died en route to Panama, and the other (John Sergeant) arrived after the Congress had concluded. In the meantime, several European nations had managed to negotiate trade deals with newly-independent Latin American nations ahead of the United States. Bolívar's dream soon foundered, with civil war in Gran Colombia, the disintegration of Central America and the emergence of national, rather than New World, outlooks in the newly independent American republics.Frances L. Reinhold, "New research on the first pan-American congress held at Panama in 1826." Hispanic American Historical Review 18.3 (1938): 342–363 online.
Mexican–American War and Second French intervention in Mexico
Texas, settled primarily by Anglo-Americans, fought a successful war of independence against Mexico in 1836. Mexico refused to recognize the independence and warned that annexation to the United States meant war. The U.S. annexation of Texas occurred in 1845; predictably, war followed annexation in 1846. Due to an ambush, the American military was triumphant. As a result of the capture of Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, the president of Mexico at the time, the United States was now able to purchase New Mexico, Arizona, California, and adjacent areas. About 60,000 Mexicans remained in the new territories and became US citizens. In 1862, French forces under Napoleon III invaded and conquered Mexico, giving control to the monarch Emperor Maximilian I. Washington denounced this as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine, but was unable to intervene because of the American Civil War. In 1865, the United States stationed a large combat army on the border to emphasize its demand that France leave. France did pull out and Mexican nationalists executed Maximilian.M. M. McAllen, Maximilian and Carlota: Europe's Last Empire in Mexico (2014)
Ostend Manifesto The Ostend Manifesto of 1854 was a proposal circulated by American diplomats that proposed the United States offer to purchase Cuba from Spain, while implying that the U.S. should declare war if Spain refused. Nothing came of it. Diplomatically, the US was content to see the island remain in Spanish hands so long as it did not pass to a stronger power such as Britain or France.
Post-American Civil War
War of the Pacific (1879–1883)
The United States tried to bring an early end to the War of the Pacific in 1879, mainly because of US business interests in Peru, but also because American leaders were worried that the British government would take economic control of the region through Chile. Peace negotiations failed when a stipulation required Chile to return the conquered lands. Chileans suspected the new US initiative was tainted with a pro-Peruvian bias. As a result, relations between Chile and the United States took a turn for the worse. page 70
Big Brother policy US Secretary of State, James G. Blaine, created the Big Brother policy in the 1880s, aiming to rally Latin American nations behind US leadership and to open Latin American markets to U.S. traders. Blaine served as United States Secretary of State in 1881 in the cabinet of President James Garfield and again from 1889 to 1892 in the cabinet of President Benjamin Harrison. As part of the policy, Blaine arranged for and lead as the first president the First International Conference of American States in 1889. Blaine went on to live for a few years in Mexico following his success in their relations.
Venezuelan crisis of 1895
The Venezuelan crisis of 1895 occurred over Venezuela's longstanding dispute with the United Kingdom about the territory of Essequibo, which Britain claimed as part of British Guiana and Venezuela saw as Venezuelan territory. As the dispute became a crisis, the key issue became the British government's refusal to include the territory east of the "Schomburgk Line", in the proposed international arbitration, which a surveyor had drawn half a century earlier as a boundary between Venezuela and the former Dutch territory of Surinam.King (2007:249) By December 17, 1895, President Grover Cleveland delivered an address to the United States Congress reaffirming the Monroe Doctrine and its relevance to the dispute. The crisis ultimately saw the British Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, accept the United States' intervention to force arbitration of the entire disputed territory and tacitly accept the United States' right to intervene under the Monroe doctrine. A tribunal convened in Paris in 1898 to decide the matter, and in 1899, awarded the bulk of the disputed territory to British Guiana.Graff, Henry F., Grover Cleveland (2002). . pp123-25 For the first time, the Anglo-Venezuelan boundary dispute asserted a more outward-looking American foreign policy, particularly in the Americas, marking the United States as a world power.
Spanish–American War (1898) The Spanish–American War was a conflict fought between Spain and the United States in 1898. Hostilities began in the aftermath of the sinking of the USS Maine in Havana harbor, leading to American intervention in the Cuban War of Independence. The sinking of the USS Maine occurred on February 15, resulting in the deaths of 266 people and causing the United States to blame Spain, since the ship had been sent to Havana to protect a community of U.S. citizens there. American acquisition of Spain's Pacific possessions led to its involvement in the Philippine Revolution and ultimately in the Philippine–American War.
Revolts against Spanish rule had been occurring for some years in Cuba as is demonstrated by the Virginius Affair in 1873. In the late 1890s, journalists Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst which used yellow journalism, anti-Spanish propaganda, to agitate U.S. public opinion and encourage war. However, the Hearst and Pulitzer papers circulated among the working class in New York City and did not reach a national audience.W. Joseph Campbell, Yellow journalism: Puncturing the myths, defining the legacies (2001).
After the mysterious sinking of the US Navy battleship in Havana Harbor, political pressures from the Democratic Party pushed the administration of Republican President William McKinley into a war he had wished to avoid.. Spain promised time and again that it would reform, but never delivered. The United States sent an ultimatum to Spain demanding it surrender control of Cuba. First Madrid, then Washington, formally declared war..