ABSTRACT
The US was rightly proud of that great feat of engineering, the Panama canal, and quite determined to protect and defend it. The final piece in Alfred T. Mahan's geopolitical vision of US interest in the Caribbean was in place, and events would follow their natural course. By the end or the 1920S the Wasoman idea of extending the Roosevelt Corollary into a moral policeman role was under heavy attack by members of the Republican Herbert Hoover administration. Geopolitical stability, not economics drove US policy, especially in the archipelagic Caribbean. In Central America, economic interests might not have been predominant, but they certainly were important. In the midst of the labyrinthine politics of Nicaragua, US geopolitical interests got caught up in the financial interests of US bankers and in the slippery self-interests of Nicaraguan and Mexican caudillos.
