Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

The U.S. is the Worst Kind of Neighbor
Bill Quigley
10 Sep 2008
🖨️ Print Article

The U.S. is the Worst Kind of Neighbor

MonroeDoctrineA Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

"The United States has repeatedly raped and ravaged Latin
America and the Caribbean."

In 1933, the new administration of Franklin D. Roosevelt
announced its Good Neighbor Policy for the Americas. It was supposed to be a
change from the more than century-old Monroe Doctrine, which treated Latin
America and the Caribbean like the United States' backyard, to do with as
Washington saw fit. President Roosevelt withdrew the Marines from Nicaragua and
Haiti, where they had waged savage wars against the peasants, and abrogated
parts of the 1903 treaty it had imposed on Cuba, by which the U.S. had reserved
the right to intervene whenever it wanted in Cuba's internal affairs.

Roosevelt declared, "The definite policy of the United
States from now on is one opposed to armed intervention." The U.S. Secretary of
State at the time, Cordell Hull, said quite bluntly that "No country has the
right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of others."

Needless to say, the Good Neighbor Policy, such as it was,
did not last long. In the three generations following FDR's death, the United
States has repeatedly raped and ravaged Latin America and the Caribbean,
causing the premature deaths of millions through direct and indirect
intervention. Not one neighbor to the South has been spared. The great success
story in Latin America has been Cuba, an island the U.S. once considered
annexing as a slave territory, but which flipped the historical script on the
racist bully to the North, to become a beacon of independence in the
hemisphere.

Cuba has stretched out her arms to Africa, where its
soldiers held back the armies of the white minority South African regime,
backed by the U.S., to preserve Angolan independence. Twenty-five thousand
Cuban doctors serve in 68
countries
around the world, and Cuba's infant mortality rate is lower
than the United States
.

"Cuba told Washington to
keep its pocket change."

It is Cuba that has shown what a Good Neighbor Policy really
is, extending its hand even to the people of the vastly wealthier United States,
training young American to become doctors in U.S. inner cities, and offering
millions of dollars in medical personnel and life-saving drugs to New Orleans
in the wake of Hurricane Katrina - an offer the Bush regime rejected.

In the last several weeks, two major hurricanes have slammed
into Cuba, the first, Hurricane Gustav, destroying 100,000 homes. What did the
superpower United States offer its wounded neighbor? A measly $100,000 - and
that only if the pittance would be handled by an aid group of Washington's own
choosing. Cuba, of course, told Washington to keep its pocket change.

Despite Hurricane Gustav hitting with the force of what
former Cuban President Fidel Castro called "an atomic bomb," no
fatalities were reported. Cuban society is organized for self-defense - not
just against the United States, but against the ravages of nature.

In the neighboring nation of Haiti, once again reduced to a
virtual colony of the United States and its minions in the United Nations, many
hundreds have died this hurricane season. Having deposed and kidnapped Haitian
President Jean Bertrand Aristide and systematically destroyed Haitian civil
society, the population is rendered helpless to the elements. That's the kind
of neighbor the United States is: super-petty, mean-spirited,
small-minded and stingy - a blight on the whole hemispheric neighborhood.

For Black Agenda Radio, I'm Glen Ford.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted
at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Do you need and appreciate Black Agenda Report articles? Please click on the DONATE icon, and help us out, if you can.


More Stories


  • Oliver Robinson
    Trump Terror, Complicit Local Leadership, and the Assault Against Southeast D.C.
    09 Apr 2025
    Donald Trump’s new “Safe and Beautiful” task force is little more than a thinly veiled assault on Black working-class communities in Southeast D.C., accelerating policing, displacement, and white…
  • Orinoco Tribune
    Ecuador’s Ex-Diplomat: Far-Right Can Do Anything to Sway Election (Interview)
    09 Apr 2025
    As Ecuador heads into a pivotal runoff election, left-wing candidate Luisa González emerges as the favorite—but the shadow of foreign interference and political violence looms large. In an exclusive…
  • Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti
    Remembering Mario Joseph, BAI Managing Attorney
    09 Apr 2025
    The world has lost a champion of justice with the passing of Mario Joseph, a Haitian human rights lawyer who spent nearly three decades fighting for victims of state violence, cholera negligence, and…
  • Palestine Chronicle Staff
    Sole Survivor of ‘Paramedics Massacre’ in Rafah Exposes Israeli War Crime
    09 Apr 2025
    Monther Abed, the sole survivor of the Israeli attack on paramedics in Rafah, reveals the details of the crime in which 15 humanitarian workers were killed.
  • Jehad Abusalim
    "It Is Neither Death, Nor Suicide"
    09 Apr 2025
    For 76 years, Gaza has been has been the defiant heart of Palestinian resistance. Today, as Israel’s genocidal war lays bare the brutal dead end of Zionism, Gaza’s struggle transcends geography,…
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us