[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 943 Introduced in House (IH)]
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118th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. RES. 943
Calling for the annulment of the Monroe Doctrine and the development of
a ``New Good Neighbor'' policy in order to foster improved relations
and deeper, more effective cooperation between the United States and
our Latin American and Caribbean neighbors.
_______________________________________________________________________
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
December 19, 2023
Ms. Velazquez (for herself, Mr. Casar, Mrs. Ramirez, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez,
and Mr. Garcia of Illinois) submitted the following resolution; which
was referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and in addition to
the Committees on Financial Services, and Ways and Means, for a period
to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for
consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the
committee concerned
_______________________________________________________________________
RESOLUTION
Calling for the annulment of the Monroe Doctrine and the development of
a ``New Good Neighbor'' policy in order to foster improved relations
and deeper, more effective cooperation between the United States and
our Latin American and Caribbean neighbors.
Whereas, 200 years ago, President James Monroe announced that the United States
Government would actively oppose any interference by European powers in
the affairs of independent Latin American and Caribbean countries ``for
the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their
destiny'';
Whereas, over time, this policy, referred to as the ``Monroe Doctrine'', came to
be interpreted by many United States policymakers as a mandate for
United States interference in the affairs of Latin American and
Caribbean countries in order to protect and promote United States
economic and political interests, irrespective of tangible threats posed
by foreign powers;
Whereas following a period of western expansion of the United States, resulting
in the massive forced displacement and genocide of Native peoples who
originally inhabited much of North America, United States political and
business leaders took an increasingly active interest in the acquisition
of raw materials and in investment opportunities in other parts of the
Western Hemisphere;
Whereas, after annexing the territory of Texas, the United States invaded Mexico
militarily in 1846 and, after defeating the Mexican army and occupying
Mexico City, acquired 55 percent of Mexico's territory through the
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed in 1848;
Whereas, in 1898, the United States invaded Puerto Rico and Cuba during the
Spanish-American War and continues to maintain control of Puerto Rico as
well as a piece of territory in Guantanamo, Cuba, to this day;
Whereas, from 1898 to 1934, the United States conducted military interventions
in Cuba, Panama, Honduras, Nicaragua, Mexico, Haiti, and the Dominican
Republic, known as the ``Banana Wars'', in order to advance American
financial interests that often came at the expense of United States
support for dictatorships and flagrant human rights violations;
Whereas, in 1904, President Teddy Roosevelt established the Roosevelt Corollary
to the Monroe Doctrine, whereby the United States could intervene to
ensure the protection of United States interests and those of foreign
creditors in the region, and declared that the United States could
exercise ``international police power'' in ``flagrant cases of such
wrongdoing and impotence'';
Whereas, in 1933, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt announced the
establishment of a ``Good Neighbor'' policy toward the region that
sought to emphasize nonintervention, noninterference, and trade in
contrast with the previous policy of using military force to advance
United States interests;
Whereas, in 1947, President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act
which created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and authorized the
agency to begin covert action in the region;
Whereas, in 1953, following Guatemalan President Jacobo Arbenz's actions
targeting United States corporation United Fruit Company, President
Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized the CIA to begin Operation PBSuccess, a
multimillion-dollar project investing in ``psychological warfare and
political action'' that led to the coup against President Arbenz in
1954;
Whereas, in 1961, the United States covertly financed opposition leaders and
began seeking military leaders to support the eventual 1964 coup against
Brazilian President Joao Goulart which resulted in a 21-year military
dictatorship in Brazil;
Whereas the Organization of American States (OAS), headquartered in Washington,
DC, and funded in large part by the United States Government, remained
largely silent and inactive with regard to the many egregious abuses
perpetrated by United States-backed rightwing dictatorships during the
decades of the Cold War;
Whereas, in 1962, the United States imposed a full embargo on Cuba, still in
place today, which led to tens of billions of dollars in capital losses
for the island country;
Whereas following the election of Chilean President Salvador Allende in 1970,
United States President Richard Nixon directed the CIA to spread
propaganda aimed at preventing Allende from taking power, and later,
actively worked with and supported Chilean military leaders that carried
out the 1973 coup of President Allende resulting in a 15-year-long
military dictatorship in which at least 40,000 people were tortured and
more than 3,000 killed;
Whereas, from 1975 to 1980, the United States actively supported Operation
Condor, a coordinated campaign of political repression and state
terrorism that saw the United States work closely with military
governments in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay,
Peru, and Uruguay to help kidnap, torture, and kill people who had left
their home countries in exile;
Whereas following a regional debt crisis sparked in part by historic Federal
Reserve interest rate hikes, the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
vastly expanded its lending portfolio in Latin America;
Whereas the IMF, whose largest shareholder is the United States, promoted
austerity, deregulation, and other structural reforms that resulted in
stagnant economic growth in much of Latin America in the 1980s and
1990s, following two decades of strong economic growth;
Whereas, in 1983, under the false pretense that the safety of 600 United States
medical students in Grenada was under threat, President Ronald Reagan
authorized the military invasion of the island country, a move condemned
as a ``flagrant violation of international law'' by the United Nations
General Assembly;
Whereas, in the 1980s, the Reagan administration supported security forces in
Guatemala that perpetrated a genocide against Mayan indigenous peoples,
according to the Commission of Historical Clarification; death squads in
El Salvador; rightwing paramilitary militias (Contras) in Nicaragua; and
participated in efforts to coverup egregious crimes perpetrated by
Central American security forces, such as the massacre of 6 Jesuit
priests and 2 other unarmed civilians by an elite United States-backed
battalion in El Salvador;
Whereas the United States-backed ``dirty wars'' of Central America triggered a
major wave of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Nicaragua to
the United States in the 1980s and early 1990s;
Whereas the CIA covertly financed units of the Haitian military, whose officers
led a violent coup d'etat in 1991 that overthrew the country's first
democratically elected President, and then continued to support
individuals involved in death squads that targeted supporters of the
ousted President;
Whereas, beginning in 2000, the Bush administration blocked development and
humanitarian assistance to the Haitian Government and provided financial
support to opposition groups culminating in another coup against the
elected President in 2004;
Whereas, starting in 2000, the United States provided billions of dollars of
funding to Plan Colombia, a joint counter narcotics and counter
insurgency initiative which resulted in thousands of civilian
casualties, massive human rights abuses perpetrated by military and
paramilitary forces, and the forced displacement of millions of mostly
Afro-Colombian and indigenous civilians, while failing to reduce the
production and trafficking of cocaine;
Whereas the United States-backed drug war, along with economic displacement
attributable in part to United States-sponsored free trade agreements,
resulted in another major wave of migration from Central America and
Mexico during the first two decades of the 2000s;
Whereas, from 1941 to 2003, United States Navy operations in Vieques, Puerto
Rico, caused the death of civilians and high rates of lethal illnesses
to the population;
Whereas, in 2002, the United States Government provided funding and other
support to political actors that carried out a short-lived coup against
the democratically elected Government of Venezuela, and subsequently
expressed support for the coup;
Whereas, following the 2009 coup in Honduras, the United States continued to
support the country's illegitimate government by providing, between 2009
and 2016, an estimated $200,000,000 in military and police aid to
Honduran security forces engaged in violent extrajudicial killings and
other human rights crimes targeting protesters, activists, land rights
advocates, and other civilians opposed to the regime;
Whereas in a 2013 address to the OAS, Secretary of State John Kerry declared
that the ``Monroe Doctrine era is over . . . The relationship that we
seek and that we have worked hard to foster is not about a United States
declaration about how and when it will intervene in the affairs of other
American states. It's about all of our countries viewing one another as
equals, sharing responsibilities, cooperating on security issues, and
adhering not to doctrine, but to the decisions that we make as partners
to advance the values and the interests that we share.'';
Whereas, in 2014, Presidents Barack Obama and Raul Castro announce the thawing
of and eventual normalization of relations between the United States and
Cuba;
Whereas, in 2017, President Donald Trump threatened to invade Venezuela
militarily and imposed broad unilateral sanctions against the country;
Whereas, in 2019, United States National Security Advisor John Bolton announced,
``Today we proudly proclaim for all to hear: the Monroe Doctrine is
alive and well.'';
Whereas the migration of Cubans and Venezuelans to the United States has
increased dramatically since the imposition (and reimposition) of broad
economic sanctions against these countries;
Whereas, in late 2019, a military coup was staged against the elected Government
of Bolivia following unfounded claims of electoral fraud made by an OAS
Electoral Observation Mission, while the subsequent coup government
received support from the Trump administration and OAS Secretary General
Luis Almagro;
Whereas President Trump reversed the Obama administration's policy of
normalization with Cuba, imposed new sanctions, and, as one of his last
acts in office, put Cuba back on State Sponsors of Terrorism list
without justification;
Whereas the United States Government has failed to apologize for its past
support for military coups in the region;
Whereas Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) provisions found in United
States-backed free trade agreements allow multinational corporations to
sue governments before panels of corporate lawyers based on claims that
regulatory frameworks, including those designed to protect workers and
the environment, will lead to future losses, and whereas thus far Latin
American and Caribbean countries have been sued a total of 346 times
under ISDS provisions, more than any other region of the world;
Whereas a United States-based company has filed an ISDS claim against the State
of Honduras for nearly $11,000,000,000 in alleged future losses, more
than a third of the country's yearly economic output, as a result of the
Honduran Government's announcement that the company can no longer
continue to operate as a ZEDE, a territorial area largely governed and
controlled by private investors developed under former President Juan
Orlando Hernandez, who is now awaiting trial in the United States on
charges for drug trafficking; and
Whereas President Biden has expressed his strong opposition to ISDS provisions
and to their inclusion in future trade agreements: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That it is the sense of the House of Representatives
that--
(1) in order to send a strong signal to the region that the
United States Government wishes to turn the page on a long era
of political and military interference in the region, the
Department of State should formally confirm that the Monroe
Doctrine is no longer a part of United States policy toward
Latin American and the Caribbean;
(2) in place of the Monroe Doctrine, the Federal Government
should develop a ``New Good Neighbor'' policy, designed to
foster improved relations and deepen more effective cooperation
with all the countries of the hemisphere, with measures that
include--
(A) developing, jointly with the Department of the
Treasury, the United States Trade Representative, the
Department of State, and the United States Agency for
International Development, a new approach to promoting
development based on a respect for the integrity of
sovereign economic development plans of the region's
governments, support for equitable and sustainable
economic transitions through technology transfers and
new forms of climate finance that prioritize
grantmaking and concessional lending;
(B) terminating all unilateral economic sanctions
imposed through Executive orders, and working with
Congress to terminate all unilateral sanctions, such as
the Cuba embargo, mandated by law;
(C) working with Congress to develop legislation
that triggers an automatic review of bilateral
assistance to a government whenever there is an
extraconstitutional transfer of power, until the United
States and a majority of regional governments determine
that the new leadership is legitimate under that
country's constitution;
(D) proceeding with the prompt declassification of
all United States Government archives that relate to
past coups d'etat, dictatorships, and periods in the
history of Latin American and Caribbean countries that
are characterized by a high rate of human rights crimes
perpetrated by security forces;
(E) working with Latin American and Caribbean
governments on a far-reaching reform of the
Organization of American States to--
(i) ensure accountability surrounding any
potentially unethical or criminal activities in
which the Secretary General or other senior
officials have been involved;
(ii) ensure full transparency surrounding
the financial and personnel decisions taken by
the Secretary General;
(iii) establish an ombudsman's office that
is fully independent from the Secretary
General;
(iv) ensure that the Office of American
States electoral observation division is
independent from the Secretary General and
appointed by a majority of Office of American
States members; and
(v) ensure that the Inter-American
Commission on Human Rights and its rapporteurs
are financially independent from the Secretary
General's Office;
(F) working with Congress to secure major,
recurrent contributions to the Amazon Fund;
(G) supporting democratic reforms to the
International Monetary Fund, World Bank, Inter-American
Development Bank, and other international financial
institutions to ensure that the developing countries of
the region are able to play an equitable role in
shaping the lending and grantmaking policies of those
institutions;
(H) supporting regular issuances of International
Monetary Fund Special Drawing Rights to help avert
balance of payments difficulties and to promote greater
fiscal space for regional governments, thereby allowing
them to expand investments in health care, education,
economic development, and in climate adaptation and
mitigation programs; and
(I) supporting the creation of a Loss and Damage
Trust, under the auspices of the United Nations, to
support climate action in developing countries, and
working with Congress to secure major, recurrent
contributions to this fund; and
(3) the United States should work with regional bodies such
as the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States
(CELAC), the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), the Union of South
American Nations (UNASUR), the Southern Common Market
(Mercosur), and other groups to increase cooperation around the
major challenges of our time, including the response to climate
change, inequality, arms trafficking, tax evasion, illicit
financial flows (particularly those derived from drug
trafficking), the protection of workers' rights, and promoting
the rights of indigenous peoples and Afro-descendent
communities.
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