America’s reputation in Latin America as an imperial bully mortified Kennedy. He was sick of the U.S. government being seen “as the representative of private business,” he told Goodwin. He was tired of Washington propping up “tinhorn dictators” and corrupt regimes in countries like Chile where “American copper companies control about 80 percent of all the foreign exchange. We wouldn’t stand for that here. And there’s no reason they should stand for it. . . . There’s a revolution going on down there, and I want to be on the right side of it.”
