Francisco Garcia Calderón criticizes US imperialism and expansionism in Latin America, 1912
[from Latin America: Its Rise and Progress]
To save themselves from Yankee imperialism the [Latin] American democracies would almost accept a German alliance, or the aid of Japanese arms; everywhere the Americans of the North are feared. In the Antilles and in Central America hostility against the Anglo-Saxon invaders assumes the character of a Latin crusade. Do the United States deserve this hatred? Are they not, as their diplomatists preach, the elder brothers, generous and protecting? And is not protection their proper vocation in a continent rent by anarchy?...
The nation which was peopled by nine millions of men in 1820 now numbers eighty millions—an immense demographic power; in the space of ten years, from 1890 to 1900, this population increased by one-fifth. By virtue of its iron, wheat, oil, and cotton, and its victorious industrialism, the democracy aspires to a world-wide significance of destiny; the consciousness of its powers is creating fresh international duties. Yankee pride increases with the endless multiplication of wealth and population, and the patriotic sentiment has reached such an intensity that it has become transformed into imperialism....
This...expansion is opposed to the primitive simplicity of the Monroe doctrine. In 1823...President Monroe upheld the republican integrity of the ancient [former] Spanish colonies. The celebrated message declared that there were no free territories in America, thus condemning in advance any projected establishment of European colonies upon the unoccupied continent of America, and that the United States limited their political action to the New World, and renounced all intervention in the disputes of Europe....
The Monroe doctrine has undergone an essential transformation; it has passed successively from the defensive to intervention and thence to the offensive. From a theory which condemned any change of political régime among the new democracies under European pressure, and which forbade all acquisitions of territory, or the transfer of power from a weak to a strong nation, there arose the Polk doctrine,[in 1845 President James Polk announced that the United States would not tolerate any action by a European power designed to hinder any peoples in North America from "deciding their own destiny." By this Polk meant the right to be annexed by the United States.] which, in 1845, decreed the annexation of Texas for fear of foreign intervention.... In 1895 Secretary of State [Richard] Olney, at the time of the trouble between England and Venezuela, declared that the United States were in fact sovereign in America. From Monroe to Olney the defensive doctrine has gradually changed to a moral tutelage....
Interventions have become more frequent with the expansion of frontiers. The United States have recently intervened in the territory of Acre,[western Brazil] there to found a republic of rubber gatherers; at Panama, there to develop a province and construct a canal; in Cuba, under cover of the Platt amendment,[sponsored by Senator Orville Platt of Connecticut, attached to Cuba's constitution in 1901. It limited Cuba's rights to establish treaties, contract its public debt, gave the US the right to naval bases and to intervene militarily in Cuba if an unstable government failed to protect "life, liberty, and property."] to maintain order in the interior; in San Domingo, to support the civilising revolution and overthrow the tyrants; in Venezuela, and in Central America, to enforce upon these nations, torn by intestine disorders, the political and financial tutelage of the imperial democracy. In Guatemala and Honduras the loans concluded with the monarchs of North American finance have reduced the people to a new slavery. Supervision of the customs and the dispatch of pacificatory [peace-keeping] squadrons to defend the interests of the Anglo-Saxon have enforced peace and tranquility: such are the means employed. The New York American announces that Mr. Pierpont Morgan[6] proposes to encompass the finances of Latin America by a vast network of Yankee banks. Chicago merchants and Wall Street financiers created the Meat Trust in the Argentine. The United States offer millions for the purpose of converting into Yankee loans the moneys raised in London during the last century by the Latin American states; they wish to obtain a monopoly of credit. It has even been announced, although the news hardly appears probable, that a North American syndicate wished to buy enormous belts of land in Guatemala.... The fortification of the Panama Canal, and the possible acquisition of the Galapagos Islands in the Pacific, are fresh manifestations of imperialistic progress. . . .
Unexploited wealth abounds in [Latin] America. Forests of rubber, as in the African Congo; mines of gold and diamonds, which recall the treasures of the Transvaal and the Klondike; rivers which flow over beds of auriferous [gold-bearing] sand...coffee, cocoa, and wheat, whose abundance is such that these products are enough to glut the markets of the world. But there is no national capital [for investment]. This contrast between the wealth of the soil and the poverty of the States gives rise to serious economic problems.... Since the very beginnings of independence the Latin democracies, lacking financial reserves, have had need of European gold.... The necessities of the war with Spain and the always difficult task of building up a new society demanded the assistance of foreign gold; loans accumulated, and very soon various States were obliged to solicit the simultaneous reduction of the capital borrowed and the rate of interest paid. The lamentable history of these bankrupt democracies dates from this period.
For geographical reasons, and on account of its very inferiority, South America cannot dispense with the influence of the Anglo-Saxon North, with its exuberant wealth and its industries. South America has need of capital, of enterprising men, of bold explorers, and these the United States supply in abundance. The defence of the South should consist in avoiding the establishment of privileges or monopolies, whether in favor of North Americans or Europeans. The descendants of the prodigal Spanish conquerors, who knew nothing of labor or thrift, have incessantly resorted to fresh loans in order to fill the gaps in their budgets. Politicians knew of only one solution of the economic disorder—to borrow, so that little by little the Latin-American countries became actually the financial colonies of Europe.
Economic dependence has a necessary corollary—political servitude. French intervention in Mexico[7] was originally caused by the mass of unsatisfied financial claims; foreigners, the creditors of the State, were in favor of intervention. England and France, who began by seeking to ensure the recovery of certain debts, finally forced a monarch upon the debtor nation. The United States entertained the ambition of becoming the sole creditor of the American peoples: this remarkable privilege would have assured them of an incontestable hegemony over the whole continent.
In the history of Latin America loans symbolise political disorder, lack of foresight, and waste.... Old debts are liquidated by means of new, and budgetary deficits are balanced by means of foreign gold.... The budgets of various States complicate still further a situation already difficult. They increase beyond all measure, without the slightest relation to the progress made by the nation. They are based upon taxes which are one of the causes of the national impoverishment, or upon a protectionist tariff which adds greatly to the cost of life. The politicians, thinking chiefly of appearances, neglect the development of the national resources for the immediate augmentation of the fiscal revenues; thanks to fresh taxes, the budgets increase. These resources are not employed in furthering profitable undertakings, such as building railroads or highways, or increasing the navigability of the rivers. The bureaucracy is increased in a like proportion, and the budgets, swelled in order to dupe the outside world, serve only to support a nest of parasites. In the economic life of these countries the State is a kind of beneficent providence which creates and preserves the fortune of individual persons, increases the common poverty by taxation, display, useless enterprises, the upkeep of military and civil officials, and the waste of money borrowed abroad....
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