US imperialism in Nicaragua and the making of Sandino

Part 2 - US' “Good Men” in Nicaragua

By the nineteenth century, the U.S. was prepping itself to become the new dominant empire in the world. A newfound power that was especially felt in Latin America, a region the North Americans consider theirs by belief in the manifest destiny, which in turn was materialized in the Monroe Doctrine (1823). This way the U.S. assumed their role of self-declared caretakers of the American continent. But it wasn’t until President Theodore Roosevelt (1901 - 1909) that the reach of U.S. imperialism, in Central America specifically, would take its most modern configuration. 

With the new imperialist sense, the U.S. reaffirmed its foreign policy through Roosevelt’s 1904 Corollary, which was was an addition and interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine presented after the European naval blockade to Venezuela in 1902–1903. The corollary states that the U.S. will intervene in Latin American if the rights or property of U.S. citizens or businesses are threatened or endangered.

"Chronic wrongdoing . . . may in America, as elsewhere, ultimately require intervention by some civilized nation," Roosevelt said in his 1904 state of the union, adding that "in the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of such wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power."

Consistent with Roosevelt's foreign policy it legitimized the use of force as a means to defend the interests - in the broadest sense - of the U.S. The result was the so-called 'Banana Wars', a series of U.S. military interventions in several Latin American countries from 1898 to 1934 of which Nicaragua was one of the main victims, as the U.S. wanted to “teach” the country how to choose “good men” as leaders.

Source:

https://www.telesurenglish.net/analysis/sandino-us-imperialism-making-20200219-0029.html

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