The U.S. in Latin America—A Reckoning of Shame

Most Americans react indignantly when the U.S. is accused of following a path of world conquest. Comparisons with Hitler, with Stalin, and with the imperial machinery of England and France in the nineteenth century are met by shocked outrage. Educated persons may concede that there are some valid surface parallels but then insist that U.S. expansion, and the role of world policeman which America has reluctantly assumed, cannot be put in the same class with traditional imperialist aims.

A brief review of American expansion in the Western Hemisphere from the point of view of a Latin American may bring light to this question. It is obvious, of course, that such an interpretation of U.S. history would reflect another kind of bias—fo...