The United States has always considered itself the obvious hegemon (absentee landlord) of Latin America. In 1823, President James Monroe proclaimed that we would not tolerate further interference in our neighborhood to the south by the bad, bad Europeans. This was the genteel equivalent of all the movie scenes of the farmer-with-a-shotgun warning the revenooers, “Git off ma land.” We saw the exploitive Spaniards out of Cuba in 1895 and installed and supported benevolent despots well aware of who was picking up the check.
