The main foreign policy initiative of the United States was the Good Neighbor Policy, which was a move toward a more non-interventionist U.S. policy in Latin America. Since the 1890s Americans had seen this region as an American sphere of influence. American forces were withdrawn from Haiti, and new treaties with Cuba and Panama ended their status as U.S. protectorates. In December 1933, Roosevelt signed the Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of States, renouncing the right to intervene unilaterally in the affairs of Latin American countries. The U.S. repealed the Platt Amendment, freeing Cuba from legal and official interference by the United States.