ABSTRACT
The history of United States (US)—Latin American relations since the New World colonies emancipated themselves from the European monarchies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries shifts uneasily from moments of lyrical friendship to long stretches of acrimony and misunderstandings. Deeply embedded prejudices have conspired to keep Latin America remote from the US intellectual mainstream. The Latin American version of the region's identity has produced its own biases, ranging from conservative criticism that juxtaposes Spain's "spirituality" with Anglo-Saxon "materialism" to liberal denunciations of the absence of democracy in the Spanish heritage. Two elements in the pattern of manifest destiny deserve attention. The first is the theory of the United States wielding international police power by which it preserves law and order in its general sphere of interest. A second aspect of manifest destiny is the view that the United States is fated to be the leader of the world.
