Since the creation of the United States, our government's treatment of the people and the nations of Latin America has been an uninterrupted betrayal of the humane and democratic values that animated our own revolution.

The root of this disgraceful record of intervention, injustice, and iniquity lies in the enunciation, in 1823, of the Monroe Doctrine. While the U.S. was right, at the time, to want to make sure that European countries did not move into Latin America and attempt to re-colonize those states that had just won their independence from Spain and Portugal, we were wrong to interpret the Doctrine to claim Latin America as OUR sphere of influence...a claim that led our leaders, unbeknownst to ordinary Americans, to claim the resources and wealth of the Americas for the use of the United States and, as time passed, U.S.-and multinational-owned corporations.

Every brutal military intervention in Latin America, every overthrow of a sovereign Latin American government by the U.S.(or with U.S. assistance)and, today, the continuing and unjustified blockade of Cuba, were or are justified by the invocation of the Monroe Doctrine.

What was meant as an anti-imperial statement became, instead, a roadmap for economic imperialism by the United States and American-owned corporations.

In a modern, democratic world, it is unacceptable for any country to dominate any OTHER country...economically as well as politically.

And our country's use of the Monroe Doctrine to create and maintain economic and social injustice in Latin America ultimately endangers both OUR own living standards AND our national security.

The United States needs to proclaim itself, once again, as a champion of democracy(political, social, and economic)throughout the Hemisphere.

This can only be done if the Monroe Doctrine is renounced, and then replaced by a new Democracy Doctrine, committing the U.S. to support of a democratic, non-exploitative and egalitarian social order for the whole of the Americas.