The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1925-10-18

big STICK"
HITS PANAMA
Wall Street Grabs the
Canal Zone
BY MANUEL GOMEZ, sec'y.
Anti-lmperialist League,

ARTICLE III.
Theodore Roosevelt, who engineer
ed the statesmanIike rape of Panama,
in 1908, was a very remarkable man.
He committed statesmanIike crimes
against a number Of other Latin-Am-
erlean countries, got lot of pubIicl-
ty as the only man in the United
States who could tell good trusts"
from "bad trusts" sent federal troops
to break a strike Of anthracite coal
miners, and won the Nobel peace
prize. Accompanying his little Pana-
man adventure, Roosevelt issued
significant statement, which has been
called "a new stage in the Monroe
Doctrine" 1t declared that if the
United States was to continue ito
protect Latin-American states," it had
the right to exercise an international
police power over them.
Expressed lmperIaIist Era
This doctrine was a timely express
sion of the policy of imperialist ex-
pansion on which American capital
ism had already entered. Panama was
an outstanding instance. The fact
that today, % years later American
soldiers are patrolling the familiar
streets of the City of Panama, with
fixed bayonets, proves that the doc
trine was no mere chance phrase, but
characterized a whole epoch of con-
scious aggression.
1t was the war with Spain, and the
acquisition of the Philippines and
Hawaii, bringing American capitalism
face to face with new problems in the
Pacific, that made the Atlantic-Pacific
canal an immediate necessity of Am
erican foreign policy" And necessity
knows no law-certainly no law of
any dinlzy little Latin-American state
U. S. Gets Canal Zone
Vigorous pushing of the negotia-
tions for lease of the territory of the
Canal Zone followed as a matter of
course. Possession Of the Canal Zone
was necessary ito assure the safety
of the canal,"-and no doubt the rest
of Panama was made United States
protectOrate to assure the Canal Zone.
And subsequently, of course, the en-
tire Caribbean area had to be brought
under the American sphere of infiu-
ence for the same reason. In much
the same way, Great Britain has been
gobbling up everything in sight in the
eastern hemisphere for generations,
ITO assure the route to India
There is much truth in such claims.
The economic and military problems
Of Imperialism are interconnected.
Once we grant the initial justification
of Imperialism we must expect to be
led far afield, into brutal and bloody
enterprises. for the sake of Wall
Street.
Advance in Caribbean
The building of the Panama canal
and the advance of the United States
in the Caribbean went naturally hand
in hand with the development of new
political policies in what has been
called the larger Canal Zone, that is,
the West Indies, Mexico, Central Am
erica, Colombia and Venezuela. Some
OF these policies, which have been
pretty definitely formulated, are the
establishment of protectorates, the
supervision of finances, the control of
all possible canal routes, the acquisi-
ton of naval bases and coaling sta
lions, and the policing of "disorderly
countries" Porto Rico had been ac-
CURED at the close of the war with
Spain and Cuba had become a pro-
tectorate, the terms of which we're
defined by the Plat amendment.
Panama was brought into the imper-
ial system, and the Dominican re-
public later came under the financial
supervision of the United States:
President Taft landed and maintained
body OF marines in Nicaragua, and
proposed to place both that country
and Honduras under financial super
vision; President Wilson went fur
Their and assumed the administration
OF Haitian affairs, leased from Nicara-
qua for a term of SO years a naval
base on Fonseca Bay, and purchased
the Danish West Indies (now the Vir-
gin islands,.
Monroe Doctrine is Gospel of Grab"
Today, American aggression is re-
spected and feared thruout Latin.Am-
erica. The Monroe doctrine has be.
come the symbol of American i'm
perialism in the western world. 1t is