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As the end of Obama’s term in office approaches, it may be of interest to evaluate his performance on Latin America. One of Obama’s foreign policy promises at the beginning of his first term was to change the way America does business with Latin America.
The promise to change the way America does business in its backyard was a significant one because the way America has played in its backyard has a long and consistently appalling history. The history of interference and regime change began early when President McKinley betrayed Cuba and stole it under the deceptive promise of liberating it from Spain. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt severed Panama from Columbia, declared it an independent nation and put in power a government whose first act was to sign over the future Panama Canal. In a little discussed maneuver, the U.S. cooperated with the 1908 removal of Venezuelan President Juan Vicente Gómez. In 1909, President Taft removed Nicaragua’s José Santos Zelaya because he insisted that US companies in Nicaragua honor their agreements and tried to make his country less dependent on the US by borrowing from European, and not American, banks.
http://original.antiwar.com/ted_snid...latin-america/
The promise to change the way America does business in its backyard was a significant one because the way America has played in its backyard has a long and consistently appalling history. The history of interference and regime change began early when President McKinley betrayed Cuba and stole it under the deceptive promise of liberating it from Spain. In 1903, Theodore Roosevelt severed Panama from Columbia, declared it an independent nation and put in power a government whose first act was to sign over the future Panama Canal. In a little discussed maneuver, the U.S. cooperated with the 1908 removal of Venezuelan President Juan Vicente Gómez. In 1909, President Taft removed Nicaragua’s José Santos Zelaya because he insisted that US companies in Nicaragua honor their agreements and tried to make his country less dependent on the US by borrowing from European, and not American, banks.
http://original.antiwar.com/ted_snid...latin-america/