[Congressional Bills 118th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H. Res. 943 Introduced in House (IH)]

<DOC>






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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