ABSTRACT
SIMÓN BOLÍVAR HAD a decidedly mixed view of the United States. He once praised it as a “land of freedom and home of civic virtue.” However, in Latin America he is better known for a different quotation. Dismayed that the United States had worked diplomatically to help defeat his proposed constitution, which would have made him president for life, Bolívar wrote in a letter to a British diplomat in Colombia: “The United States appears destined by Providence to plague America with misery in the name of liberty” (Bushness 1986). Bolívar’s political failures had more to do with a domestic factor-the attitudes and actions of the Creole elite-than with outside intervention by the United States or Europe. However, his prophecy has proven sadly true in many respects. Latin America’s sovereignty has repeatedly been compromised by U.S. intervention, usually cloaked in democratic rhetoric. An old joke in Latin America says that the United States has never experienced a coup because there is no U.S. embassy in Washington.
